Lee and Clare, The road home

St Petersburg - Kazan - Ekaterinburg

6^th October 2003

We are SO SO SO SO SO pissed off. We just wrote probably about the longest e-mail we've ever written and this bloody Internet place cut us off just as it was finished. We want to kill somebody. Lee's busy looking up all the rude words in the phrasebook. They are letting us go back on to write it again but 'fraid it'll never be as good as the one we'd written!

Well where were we up to when we were so rudely interrupted yesterday. (They said our time was up, this place is weird. You pay for hire of the machine for an hour then 6 roubles per megabyte used. Now what's that all about??)

We arrived in Kazan in the morning 'bout 7am and first thing bought ourselves a ticket out again for the evening - no worries there. We put our bags into baggage lockers (now that was hard to work out, sure those things must be pre-soviet). It seems that a lot of Kazan is falling down, but we did see a bit of construction work going on. A guy we talked to yesterday said that no work was done in many parts of Russia over the past 10 years but things are starting to pick up now. We went to see the town's Kremlin and wander and soak up some atmosphere. There were bits that were done up and there was a good vibe there, especially at night.

Did we mention that Kazan is the capital of Tatarstan? They want their independence. All the signs are bilingual in Russian and Tartar, which made things a bit more confusing for us! We had a very nice lunch - borsch (beetroot soup), mashed potatoes and meatballs, a beer and a juice all for under $4 US for both of us. It was so good we even went back to the same place for dinner.

Kazan is 1000 years old and was captured by Ivan The Terrible in the 1550s and St Basils in Moscow (the funky one with the onion domes) was built to commemorate this.

We got on the train again in the evening at 9pm. We had two middle aged ladies in our compartment with us this time. One of them LOVED to talk! We are sure that every moment she wasn't sleeping she was talking. Lee kept on encouraging her with the phrase book, but eventually constant Russian in your ears will send you mental in an enclosed space!!

We are quite good at sleeping on trains now. Good we got over that one! It was so cool to look out the window and watch the autumnal countryside roll by. It is so beautiful to see and cool to actually be on the Trans-Siberian railway. The trees are mostly all yellow now, but you do see a bit of red and orange. There are lots of little wood villages along the way, mostly without any roads. It's quite relaxing to sit with a book and look out the window every now and then as long as you can block out the constant Russian from the (very nice!) lady. We've been eating noodles and tuna for main meals so far with bread (Lee's had too much of that bread by the way), and tinned fruit and cereal for breakfast, and some kind of Russian biscuits. The ladies made us some teas too.

Bit of a stress getting off the train at the right stop. Ekaterinburg is also called Sverdlorsk did you know, on railway timetables and boards and also by a lot of people. Bit of a mission once we got off the train too. We had to walk 45 minutes with our packs on our backs to find accommodation. We are staying at a hotel for $13US a night for both of us. The room is really nice but there is only one toilet on the whole floor. It's miles away down corridors, and the shower is 5 floors down in the basement and you have to buy a ticket for it. Imagine how much you would want a shower after 3 days of being on the train, then carrying a heavy pack for 45 minutes. Think how frustrated you would be if when you went down to the basement with your ticket, a lady just yelled at you in Russian and slammed the door. (Its good thing is that they can't understand you either so you can yell any profanity you want back!). Then the next morning when you want to have a shower at 8.30 before going out the door is locked. Thank goodness we have a basin in our room!! The showers are weird anyway; cubicles with no curtains and no male or female signs.

The other dodgy thing is the girls that hang out on the landing outside our room each night. On our first night Lee was excited to be asked by one of them "you want any girls?." He's offered to catch me up in Irkutsk.

Yesterday we went out for the day into Siberia. It was very cool. It was kind of a tour type thing. We were taken by this Russian dude,called Konstantin, along with a French girl. We stopped on the Ural/Siberian boarder and had tea. It was another nice day.

The weather here has been really good for us. We don't think we've seen a cloud the whole time we've been in Russia, apart from one day in St Petersburg (touch Clare's head). It's about 20-25 degrees every day. It gets to 0 at night but we're tucked up by then. Our guide yesterday did say that it's very unusual for this time of the year and that it can change very fast. There could well be snow on the ground tomorrow.

Anyway, back to Siberia. We went to a Siberian village founded in 1663. There are 1500 people living there. It's 150kms from Ekaterinberg. It's 10deg colder there than in town. Saw inside one of the original houses, and got told lots of stories of how they used to live and still live - very interesting. It was pretty cool to see how people lived, and still live, out in the middle of nowhere in houses made of wooden logs. Very peaceful place - you can see the attraction of living there but maybe not in the winter!

We had a group of Babushkas (old ladies) singing to us Russian folk songs. It was pretty cool - you could see how much fun they were having. One of them was 88. It was funny when we went in the museum later to see old black and white photos of a couple of them when they were young. Had a big feed put on for us too, 4 courses. Salads, chicken noodle soup, mashed potato and chicken and tea and cakes, yum yum. Also had some home made strong drink kind of like whisky. You have to drink it in one shot and it went straight to Clare's head - giggly!

Looked around a really good museum, not made for tourists at all, more for locals and school kids from the city. Really good day out, great to get out of cities into the countryside and also a good break from being on the train.

Good thing too as we'll be on one for a while on our next leg. We got the ticket last night. We leave here tomorrow morning, 6th October and arrive in Irkutsk 53 hours later on the 8th. By this time we'll be only 4 hours behind NZ so it'll be about midnight NZ time when we arrive. Would've only been 3 if it weren't for your daylight savings.

Today we did a Lonely Planet walking tour of Ekaterinburg. Saw where the Romanovs were killed by the communists in 1916. Nicholas II, the last Tsar and his family.

Tonight we are shopping for food for the train journey and relaxing. We have to get back to our hotel room and take down all our washing that's strung up all over the place!

Not too sure what we'll get up to in Irkutsk yet, or how long we'll stay before setting off to Mongolia. We e-mailed someone regarding an excursion out to an island on Lake Baikal and they wanted to charge us $250 each for 4 days! We are under budget so far. To get to Irkutsk from Moscow on the train we've only spent $108US each and that includes the 4 night's accommodation too. That is really good considering how much tour packages are. So we are pretty happy with ourselves!

Lee and Clare