After catching the train into Irkutsk we didn't end up staying in the city, instead spending a few days in a log cabin hostel in a town on the edge of Lake Baikal. Our honcho there, Uliana, was a redhead who looks like Kirsten Dunst and likes the Big Bang Theory (??!!?). I'm pretty convinced there's a monster living in Lake Baikal but I didn't see it. The lake was well impressive to look at; we got one good day to spend walking around it and boating on it and eating tasty shashlik and then one stormy day to spend not doing much at all.
Jenny, here is a story that will be close to your heart: the alleys of Lake Baikal were filled with tons of pet dogs who you'd see wandering around every now and then. They were mostly harmless, but then the two girls from our group went for a walk down an alley and one of them got bitten on the ankle. She had to go to hospital for rabies shots! It's your nightmare become a reality!
In Lake Baikal this great show was playing on the TV in our hostel, some kind of "policewoman beauty pageant". They had all these girls doing beauty pageant things on a catwalk, but then would interperse this with shots of them going about their day-jobs as tough Russian police ladies. What a brilliant show. Ah, Russia!
We got a day to wander around Irkutsk and then got on the train for our epic train trip to Moscow: 4 nights, 3 days. I ate a lot of apricot jam, a lot of pot noodles (and one unexpected pot buckwheat), a lot of bread and cheese and drank vodka to be in the full spirit of vodkatrain. Passed the time with reading, cards, lots of celebrity heads and hopping off at stations – most of which turned out to have the same kind of shops, but I did find a couple of good scores (pirozhki and a mug). I made one "local friend", a guy from Kyrgyzstan who enjoyed sitting in our cabin and chatting with us by pointing at things in the phrasebook and use of comical gestures. I didn't spot any bears, but I did spot a fawn (I think). As we got closer to Moscow we passed through the bushfire region and the train got pretty sweltering hot – the last day was spent lounging around and struggling with crazy heat lethargy, but then we got a thunderstorm at night which succesfully cleared away all the smog for Moscow! The smog disappeared just before we got there, and then was due to come back just after we left. Woah!
I successfully got to see what felt like a huge amount of Moscow in the few days we had there, which was wicked. Red Square, the Kremlin, "classic Moscow" was cool but my #1 favourite place I went to was the Cosmonautics Museum, a space museum devoted to the Russian/Soviet space program and achievements. This place was awesome, it had a hall of satellites, tons of Gagarin memorabilia, space suits, space pods, a walk-in shuttle, awesome Soviet space propaganda posters. I couldn't understand a word of it because all the signs were in Russian with no English translations, but it was nonetheless the coolest place to walk around. After this we went to an old Soviet expo centre that is now a sort-of fun park that was also mega impressive.
On our last day in Moscow our honcho Marina invited us over to her house for lunch which we helped provide from the supermarket, and we ate squash pancakes with vegemite, awesome home-cooked pasta (thanks Alicia), watched half of The Castle and generally chilled out. A pretty excellent end to Moscow-time!
Got to St Petersburg by a well comfy overnight train and here I've been living the good life walking through all the 18th-century buildings. I got to spend a good chunk of my first day here seeing the Hermitage museum, where I had just enough time to see the vast majority of the things I was interested in. The throne room, the portrait hall and the wood-panelled library were the best! The next day we did a lot of walking around and got to go on a boat cruise through the river and the canals. For our final official night of vodkatrain we bought up big at the supermarket and had an awesome picnic in the park!
The next night there were a few of us still left around St Petersburg, so we went to the “Travelling Bag for the Pregnant Spy” restaurant (which was mysteriously more horror-themed than spy-themed) and then Tony and I went to see Zenit St Petersburg play Auxerre in the UEFA Champions League qualifiers. Awesome!!
In a case of bitter irony we were 5 minutes late for the match because we hadn't expected to be held up by mega security getting into the stadium – and the only goal scored (which was by St Petersburg) was 3 minutes in! Man, unfair! Still, it was an awesome night (weather and fun-wise), we had wicked views and I did my best to bluff my way through some Russian chants. Good times!
Here's the best link for all my Russian photos: here
I'm here in St Petersburg til Monday when I fly to Copenhagen, so I'll be trying to see a bit more of the city before I head off. But otherwise, I am catching up on the internet and hanging around and just generally enjoying being in Russia! For some reason I keep getting asked here if I'm German. Is this the European equivalent of people in Perth asking if I have an accent?
Also, I've discovered I can't vote in St Petersburg after all, only in Moscow – so I guess I'm counted out of this one!
I hope everyone's well who's reading this! Any stories from Perth-town?
До свидания (for now)!
Rabies shots is crazy! The themed bars and the pregnant spy restaurant sound good, and the cosmonaut museum, but couldn't see many photos of them on flickr, how were they ?
ReplyDeleteSome of those fountains and churches look awesome!
What other kinds of curious food are you getting in Russia?
Re perth, nothing too exciting, but I've somehow managed to get behind on my reading for my units already! I'm currently sitting in Reid library not lectopia-ing the lectures I missed (unavoidable 2 hour trusts lecture clash, ouch D=)
On the other hand, I'm reading an enjoyable book called 'Declare' about spies in the cold war and an occult underworld that the super-secret agencies deal with. This is probably taking up time that should be spent studying law and formal logic =P
That was more of stories about me, rather than perth I guess =P. It's rainy.
The themed bars were wicked (mostly pretty small places with a foosball table and pumping music, but there are tons of them around the city!), the pregnant spy restaurant was cool but a bit of a disappointment - too much torture stuff, not enough spy! Also all the coolest tables (ie. one in a car) were reserved. The cosmonaut museum was the coolest of all but I didn't take my camera in! Some of the other guys in the group did, though, and I've got hold of their pictures so I can show you some when I get back if you're interested!
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure if I've tried anything really crazy in Russia.... I've had the classics in the form of borscht, beef stroganoff and blini, all of which were awesome. Lots of food with dill and potatoes! Oh, I did try one great Russian drink called kvas which is like cider but brewed with rye bread. Mmm, bready cider. Pretty tasty, and everywhere seems to have it, apparently it's a 'summer thing'!
I also went to a Ukrainian restaurant that had lard. Lots and lots of lard. Tasty lard.
Catching up on a backlog of 2-hour clash-missed lectures sounds painful! I can understand why the internet would provide a welcome distraction. Spies + occult book sounds pretty cool! If it's good, remind me about it when I get back to Perth as I currently plan on reading many more spy books.
Good luck with the reading! I hope it goes fruitfully in windows of study enthusiasm!