Long ago, in 3 unity HSC History, in 1992, I had learned that Lenin, the founder of Communist Russia was entombed and on display in Red Square.  This was something that I absolutely had to see.  The whole concept fascinated me then, and still does today.

For those, not in the know, there are also others.  It has become somewhat of a Communist tradition, to have your first leader stuffed and put on display for all to see.

Way back in 2001, myself and my good mate Tam walked many miles, followed by a Vietnamese kid trying to sell us postcards, stood sandwiched reverentially in a crush of other Vietnamese people and then shuffled into a dimly lit edifice, housing Ho Chi Minh’s mummy.  Yes, he does look like Colonel Sanders.

Fast forward to 2008, we queued up with about 1,000 assorted foreigners and Chinese to see Mao.  Mao’s tomb is a microcosm of old China meets new China.  Sure there are guys in uniform, there is tight security, there are people in quiet contemplation and then, there are also people that will sell you a spot further up the line, after you see the body you come out in a kitchy Mao themed gift shop and you can buy plastic flowers as a mark of respect, that are collected up at the end of the day and resold the next.  Many say Mao is fake, that it’s a wax dummy, due to the original embalming being botched, but it’s pretty hard to tell when less than a minute later it’s time to run the gauntlet of Mao watch, clock, little red book and t-shirt sellers.

By far, the most somber, reverential and scary was the Kim Il Sung mummy.  North Korean’s are turned out in their best clothes, many are crying, legitimately I might add.  You file through many barriers, where your shoes are cleaned, your clothes vacuumed and you are thoroughly searched.  You have to line up, you have to show respect, you even have to do military drill, by marching forward as a row of 4 people, and you must bow at 3 sides of the coffin.  This is a very emotional and overwhelming experience for the North Koreans and you can clearly see that the cult of personality is still in full effect.  We ticked this box in December 2009.

So by the time this year had rolled around and we had planned to do the Trans Siberian, I was finally within a cooee of seeing Lenin and with Lenin complete, I would have seen all four dead Communist leaders.

However, today, Lenin was closed.  I felt like Clark W. Griswald.  We were there very early, it was about 13 degrees.  I only had a pair of thin cotton pants, a t-shirt and a free dodgy Chinese raincoat to stay warm.  At first, we thought we would be the first ones through; there was no one around.  We began to grow suspicious and spoke to the guards, who told us to come back tomorrow.  I was devastated.

We decided to go for a bit of a walk down to the old Lubyanka Prison, headquarters of the feared KGB.  It’s a very sombre looking edifice and it still has many of it’s old hammer and sickle Soviet era decorations.

After this, we then went and met another guide, who would take us on a Vodka tour.  This is something I didn’t really want to do, it sounded a bit bogan, to be quite honest.  However, Tanya was adamant that we could not leave Russia without doing this tour and she’s six months pregnant!  Other travelers had even told us how awesome this experience was meant to be.  But basically, it was a bag of shite.  A metro ride away, to a place so kitchy and touristy, that it makes one, recoil in horror, but we did learn an interesting story.

Many Russians, tap their throat with the right hand.  This basically means give me another drink.  The story behind this goes, that the Angel, atop the Peter and Paul Cathedral, in St Petersburg, had been broken during a storm.  At the time the Czarist coffers were running a bit low on cash, due to the war with Sweden, so, instead of forking out themselves, and getting a few tradies in, Peter the Great called for someone brave enough to fix the Angel.  Someone did come forward, but they demanded free drinks for life, in exchange for a successful repair job.  It’s a dangerous climb, so it was a pretty fair exchange.  They managed to get the Angel fixed and were presented a certificate, that could be presented at St Petersburgs bars for free drinks.  Naturally after about a week on the sauce, the bloke lost the certificate, one night when pissed.  Having lost his pay day, he approached Peter the Great for another certificate, but alas, the Czar was pretty fed up, so instead had the imperial decree of free drinks for life tattooed on the blokes neck.  This is why people flick their throat, when they want another drink.  A great story, but not worth the trip to hear it.

We headed back to Red Square, which by this stage was closed, for god knows what.  Soldiers and police were everywhere.  Even the streets around Red Square had been closed.  We had a bit of a wander through the souvenir market, where I found 200 Euros on the ground!  By now the heavens had opened and we were now in a torrential downpour, we decided to go and have lunch in GUM and sit out the rain.

I’m not sure if anyone buys anything in GUM.  It’s full of the same over priced Gucci, Prada, Louis Vuitton stores that are spreading across the world like a plague, and it’s also full of brides, having their photos done.  Strangely enough, not one person getting married looks happy, especially the brides.  This bloke took a phone call during the middle of his photo shoot, so I can kind of understand why this bride is pissed off.  No wedding night action for him I’m afraid.

You're taking a call during our wedding Photos....BASTARD!!!!

Here’s the post call photo.

Unimpressed!!!

We were pretty much stuck in GUM, due to the rain.  Here is the view from where we ate lunch.

GUM's glass roof

As you can see, not only is it amazing, GUM’s interior was an engineering marvel in the early 20th century.

Here’s me with our 200 Euros.  After closer inspection, I think it is counterfeit.  The paper felt all wrong, there is no water mark, or holograms.

Fat City....literally

After sitting around for a few hours, we decided even though it was still raining, we had to get on with it and went to buy some souvenirs.  We figured we’d get a good deal.  Outside GUM, it was total chaos due to the horde of wedding parties descending upon the place, the road closures and the torrential rain.

Can we go back to the hotel yet

I did manage to pick up a 1980 Moscow Olympics t-shirt and a Vladimir Putin Matryoshka doll, for a song.  Later, we went to the metro to dry out.

Tonight we feasted on fish balls, succulent lamb kebabs and about a bottle and a half of Peter Lehman Shiraz (okay, so Tans was on the soda water).  The Moscow Hilton, has a truly awesome exec lounge.

Down in Gorky Park, it’s basically last one to leave turn out the lights.  The only thing we were remotely interested in seeing, was a sign that says Gorky Park in an easy to read format, which we didn’t find, and Russias answer to the space shuttle, the Buran.  The one in Gorky Park is only a training vessel, that never flew in space, but it’s still pretty cool. Sadly, it was closed for maintenance.

Never flew in space, closed for maintenance

With this disappointment behind us, we headed off to the Fallen Monuments Park, which contains many vandalised statues that were torn down in the waves of anti Soviet feeling that swept over Russia, after the collapse of the Soviet Union.  This place was actually pretty cool.  Check the gallery below.

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Back onto the Metro and back to Red Square, for our visit to the Kremlin.  We wait for our guide out the front of the General Zhukov statue which is basically Moscows answer to the clocks at Flinders St.

General Zhukov

We met Irena, our guide.  Irena was pretty cool and about 150% into the Kremlin and Armoury.  The Kremlin is like NOTHING I expected, it was actually one of those rare moments when travelling, that you see something you’ve heard of, but really have no idea of what to expect.  Now, if your in the same boat as I was, look away now, because here come some pictures.

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See, how good was that!  In my opinion, stunning, and you haven’t even seen inside some of those churches.  The interiors of Russian Orthodox churches are stunning.

Later, we visited the Armoury, inside the Kremlin.  The Armoury contains pretty much all of the Czarist treasures, ranging well back into the middle ages.  The Armoury makes The Tower of London, look like a garage sale, the kind of garage sale you come late to and all of the good stuff has already been taken.  Inside, are solid gold bible covers, encrusted in rubys and emeralds, they have full suits of armour, including horse armour, there are handmade rifles and pistols, that are more artwork than weaponry, they have original clothing, carriages, art, plates, cups and the famed Faberge eggs.

The Faberge eggs, were much smaller than I expected, but this somehow makes them even more amazing.  One egg, commemorating the opening of the original Trans-Siberian, contains a minature train made out of solid gold, that is also fully operational.

At this stage we’ve been on the go for around 9 hours, but there is still more to pack into our day.  After a bit of a sit and a snack in the Alexander Gardens next to the Kremlin, we decided to take advantage of the good weather and grab some more photos of St Basils.

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Your probably wondering, what more could we have done, but there was more.  Walking back through Red Square, on the way to the Metro, we heard beautiful music coming from one of the churches.  We found ourselves wedged into a Russian Orthodox church, during the evening service.  One of those “happy accidents” that make travel, the truly awesome experience it is.  We stood shoulder to shoulder, with babuskas, old men, families and listened to truly angelic singing.  It was a pretty magical experience.

Finally, at around 7pm, we got back to the hotel and unleashed our hunger on the exec lounge for a second session of eating and drinking.

]]> http://onegoodeye.org/photos/down-to-gorky-park-to-listen-to-the-wind-of-change/feed 0 http://onegoodeye.org/photos/down-to-gorky-park-to-listen-to-the-wind-of-change http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/OneGoodEye1/~3/MJYnSNx6YWA/moscow-moscow-man http://onegoodeye.org/trans-siberian/moscow-moscow-man#comments Thu, 26 Aug 2010 14:45:30 +0000 Kirk Nesbitt http://onegoodeye.org/?p=502 Continue reading →]]> After 7 nights, 7,800 kilometers, 4 books, 12 beers (only), half a bottle of vodka and 2 bowls of pot noodles (more than I care to eat again in my entire lifetime), we are in Moscow.  We decided to have a bit of a splurge and splash out on the Hilton, which actually works out well, as I am super secret double platinum status, which affords me all of the free food and alcohol I can put inside myself in a 4 hour period………every single night!!!  Another plus, thanks to corporate rates, it worked out cheaper than staying in a hostel or 3 star hotel.  Moscow well and truly delivers the goods in shear cash vaporising expensiveness and well and truly earns it’s 4th spot on the Mercer cost of living survey, as one of the worlds most expensive cities.

After having a glorious, long,  hot shower and changing into a pair of denim shorts and polo top, that made me look like Chip Douglas the 3rd from Boise Idaho, we decided to make for the nearest metro station and head directly to Red Square.  I was dressed like this due to Moscow’s unprecedented hot weather, unfortunately by the time we arrived it was around 12 degrees!

We were meant to be met by someone from a Moscow based tour agency, but after having no email, or phone contact from them, we figured we would wander around with them the next day and do the Kremlin that afternoon.

However, as luck or misfortune, would have it, we were soon cornered by an angry woman of middle age and limited altitude wondering why we were 20 minutes late.  After first abusing the front reception staff, the concierge and yelling in English “I’ve had better service at a 3 star hotel”, no doubt for our benefit, our City Tour began.  The only reason she found us, was because she was looking for a pregnant foreigner, I wonder how many other pregnant foreigners she accosted that morning.  All of this shenanigans was because the hotel had failed to pass on a message and let us know that our tour would be starting that day…….oh well.

We all stomped off to the Metro.  Once at the Metro, we were given a lecture that because basically we were foreigners, and by inference, therefore stupid, we would find it incredibly difficult to navigate and unravel the mysteries of the Moscow Metro.  Now, the Cyrillic alphabet has 33 letters, as opposed to our 26, they are all easy to discern and just sound a bit different, it isn’t rocket surgery!  In fact the Metro is totally kick ass, cheap, efficient and interesting.  It’s definitely your best option for getting around.  Just don’t get caught in the very rapidly closing doors.

During the short and quiet ride to Red Square, I tried not to look at “the woman”, for fear that I would turn to stone.  At this point I was going to pull out of the tour, as quite frankly I was happy to wander around myself, but Tans convinced me to stick it out.

We arrived in Red Square to find the Lenin memorial closing in 5 minutes and the rest of the place covered in scaffolding for an upcoming military tattoo, things can only get better from here.

Red Square is truly amazing, the cobblestones, the red walls of the Kremlin, the ornate and elegant facade of the GUM department store and the crazy, garlic bulb shaped domes of St Basils are absolutely stunning.  Standing here, I’ve managed to tick another item off my bucket list.

After an obligatory photo in front of St Basils, we walked around the streets of Moscow, it is pretty amazing, there are no modern glass and steel skyscrapers (that we could see), just beautiful well maintained stately old buildings, built in the 19th and early 20th century.  We walked down the Arbat, visited the Bolshoi Theatre, we saw the old KGB headquaters, the Duma, Radio Moscow, statues, architecture, and art.  Moscow is an amazing place.  We were particularly fond of the Eliseeevsky Magazin, what was once a palace and is now an upscale, well stocked deli, full of smoked herring and vodka and caviar……oh my!  We also saw a statue of Russia’s foremost poet and literary hero, Alexander Pushkin, who, we were reliably informed by “the woman” that “anyone who has not heard of Pushkin would have to be an idiot”, happily we learned about him in Yekaterinburg.

We also learned that many of the buildings along Tverskaya had been literally jacked up and moved back to make the street wider in pre-war Moscow, all while the residents were inside or asleep in their beds.  Apparently people woke up the next day with their building in a totally different position.  Amazing.  We bid farewell to “the woman”, she never did tell us her name, but she did manage to cheer up a little bit.  As an interesting aside, she did tell us she lives alone, with a cat.

After this we had lunch……at McDonaldski’s.  I’m disgusted in myself, but we’d walked a long long way, Tans had to eat, it was cheap and sometimes you do really want to satisfy your curiosity as to whether or not it’s the same as where you are from.  Plus, it had a toilet.

We’d had clear, if not cold weather all day, but the rain was closing in, so we decided to visit every single station on Moscow’s famed Ring line.  Each station is completely different and are the result of some of Russia’s top architects and designers of the 1930′s, 40′s and 50′s.

Each station features at least one, or all of the following features, chandeliers, mosaic tiling, porcelain reliefs, marble tiling, gun toting statues, stained glass windows and massive escalators.  Many of the stations were used as bomb shelters and command posts during WWII.  To do all 13 stations on the ring line took us around 2 hours and was a very cheap and supremely interesting way to spend a rainy afternoon in Moscow.

After around 8 hours on tour, we arrived back at our metro stop, Комсомо́льская (Komsomolskaya), which as it turns out, is in my opinion the most detailed and stunningly beautiful station on all of the ring line.

We repaired to the hotel for, in my most humble opinion, the single best spread I have seen put on in a Hilton executive lounge, anywhere I have been.  There was fresh fish, succulent chicken, amazing Russian beer, Australian wine, vodka, Champagne and even vegies.  You could totally have a decent meal there, which was well deserved after all of the walking we had done, I estimate we walked around 10 KM’s.

We were able to have a good look around the Yekaterinburg train station, which is built in Stalinist style and has great examples of Socialist Realist art in it’s large waiting room.    There is the usual “Defence of Stalingrad” painting, the ubiquitous burly blonde haired men and comely women pulling in a bumper harvest and perhaps the most interesting a painting that depicts the shooting down of Francis Gary Powers, a U2 spy-plane pilot, shot down over Yekaterinburg in May 1960.

We also managed to finally get the classic “Front of the Train” shot, after numerous failed attempts

We boarded our train, which we would only spend 29 hours on.  Again, our carriage was pretty much brand new, and totally empty.  So this will be a short post..

There are hardly any stops on the way to Moscow, so we were relegated to eating in the dining car, where the cost of food is an indirect relationship to the tastiness, portion size and quality.  We had one meal here and then stuck to eating nuts, dried fruits and more bloody noodles in a bowl.

Like I said, it was a pretty uneventful journey, eating, sleeping, reading and then repeat.  We did watch most of the dining car staff sitting around watching Daniel Steele movies, dubbed into Russian.  We also saw beautiful forest, villages with quaint wooden houses, and some fire affected areas.

The train is a great way to travel, very relaxing, but as we head further north, it gets exponentially more civilised.  Other passengers even know how to use a toilet correctly and everything.

We got into Moscow, on time and unmolested at 9:30am, the following day.

The Checkhov has all you need, free wi-fi, a comfy bed, quality TV, strong shower pressure, hot dogs for breakfast, friendly staff and a boutique hotel feel.  To top it off a great 24 hour Italian restaurant is over the road, handy for late night train arrivals.

This morning we met our guide, Olga and we were promptly taken to a Volkswagen van, ushered into the back and promptly on our way to the village of Koptelovo, where we would see a performance of singing, eat a traditional Russian lunch and visit some traditional Siberian Izba houses.

Our luck with the weather had run out at this stage and the heavens opened up, and remained open for pretty much the rest of the day.  Given that our rain gear consists of a bunch of emergency ponchos, which are little more than large plastic shopping bags, with holes for heads and arms, plus the free raincoats given to us by our Beijing based tour company, this was not good news.

Yekaterinburg is on the border of Europe and Asia.  The food is European, the people look and act more European, but the driving is firmly rooted in Asia.  It’s pouring with rain, do we moderate our driving in any way?  No!  It’s raining harder and we are now driving on a dirt forest road, do we continue to tailgate and flick our lights off and on?  Totally!  Visibility is down to about 5 metres due to heavy rain and wind, do we continue to overtake on a two lane road?  Absolutely!

Upon arrival at the village we saw the village spring, where a church had been built over the top of it, making the spring holy.  It contained the clearest and cleanest water I think I have ever seen, second only to Lake Baical.

We then visited the traditional Izba house, which was also ver interesting, we learned about all of the work that the women had to do, making rugs, cooking porridge, fetching and carrying water, chopping wood, bearing children, making beer, cooking, washing, cleaning and numerous other tasks that explain why many Russian women were as tall as they are wide, especially in olden times.  I’m pretty sure that the men had it tough as well, felling trees, plowing fields, fighting off wolves with their bare hands and having to go outside to work in the Russian winters.  Unfortunately no one lived in the house anymore, it is now a museum.

After this we were met by a horse and cart and a very cute foal that was still so young it was following it’s mother around.  For the slower learners, the mother, it’s called the mare was pulling the cart.  All of this would have been fine and dandy, had it not taken place in an icy cold torrential downpour.  Cheap Chinese made raincoats don’t cope too well in a torrential downpour, and the heatwave here is well and truly over.  Bythe time we got to the museum, we were soaked to the skin, miserable and cold.

We were a mere 6 Russian folk songs away from a few shots of vodka and some hearty Russian fare.  During the songfest our guide would turn to us and ask “Can you guess the meaning”?  ”Everyones happy they have exceeded their wheat harvesting quota and will not be put in a GULAG” was my best guess, but it was wrong.  One of the songs outlined a young flaxen haired maiden who was so taken by the sight of a strapping young man that she could not decided to kiss him or eat nuts, either way, said maan would have walked away a happy customer.

Finally, after a traditional dance number where we all had to get involved in surrounding and punching an old woman, it was time for lunch.

Lunch, was fabulous, cold egg and bacon salad, real mayonnaise, fresh baked bread, salad, dumplings, vegetable soup and shot after shot of Kaptelovo.  Kaptelovo is a rose coloured spirit, made in Koptelovo village, strong enough to give you a warm glowing warming glow in the pit of your stomach, yet surprisingly smooth and damn tasty.  So good I bought 3 litres of the stuff, that was proudly delivered in two used soft drink bottles.  After drying off, being stuffed full of food and walking away slightly loaded, I was ready for the olde timey farmy equipment museum, which was coming up after lunch.

We saw farm equipment, a traditional blacksmiths shop and numerous other exhibits.  The highlight of our afternoon was playing with scythes and pretending to be the grim reaper, re-enacting the famous salmon mousse incident.  After this we braved more tailgating, speeding and generally eratic driving to make it back to Yekaterinburg for a bit of a look see at the city.

Once we were back the rain cleared and we basked in beautiful warm sunlight.  We watched as old Communist era trams went up and down the main street, we heard stories about the secret space and arms factories that used to be all over the city and we were also told that most of the workers were forbidden to travel outside the city, lest they fall into the hands of the CIA.  It was all sounding very interesting and then we went to the Stone museum.  I wont write much, but suffice to say it was one room full of rocks from all over the Ural Mountains an a few other countries.  I was happy to whip through in five minutes, Tanya is much too polite, yes it was as boring as it sounds.

After this, we went to the far more interesting Church on the Blood, which was built on the site where the Bolsheviks executed Czar Nicholas II, and his entire family.  The entire Romanov family are now Saints in Russian Othodoxy.

After this, it was around 9:30pm, still daylight, but we were totally shagged, so we ate at the Italian place near the hotel, again.

After what I call a bears breakfast, of almonds and dried fruit, we lay back on our comfy beds, chat, read and occasionally look out the window at quaint Russian villages, with quaint wooden houses, all in a quaint forest setting. The scenery ranges from pretty to dead boring, sometimes it’s forest, sometimes it’s farmland, sometimes it’s something that looks like prison camps, occasionally it’s army barracks with hundreds of mothballed Soviet era tanks and other vehicles. Once Tanya saw an army truck towing a tank.

One highlight of the day was finding chicken and chips on the station. The chips were cold, but my godfathers the chicken was melt in your mouth divine and certainly made a good lunch

One lowlight was buying bowls of instant noodles and noticing the chicken joint on the way back to the carriage.

Our afternoon consisted of reading and sleeping. We did venture down to the dining car, which is expensive and pretty ordinary. I had chips and meatballs, Tans had pork and chips.

The only spot of bother is timezones. Everything runs on Moscow time, but it’s a bit confusing, as our itinerary is all in local time. Tans spent half the night awake thinking we’d missed our stop, as it turns out we still have around 10 more hours to go, as I write this it’s 12:30pm, Moscow time.

We have also seen some evidence of forest fires, and some bog fires that are still smoldering away.

Tonight we arrive in Ekatirinburg, the city where the Romanovs were executed by the Bolsheviks and a city that has only been open to foreigners for the last 20 years.

We breakfasted in a restaurant at the hotel, bedecked in deep red wallpaper and lots of soft core porn. Above our table was a framed portrait of a woman who looked like she was putting her hot pink tights back on after a severe ravishing at the hands of some vikings. Hands and torn rags were strategically placed, there was no money shot, but it was all a bit distracting at 8:30am in the morning. Soft porn, like alcohol needs to begin at midday at the earliest.

Breakfast, we have had no luck with breakfast in hotels and the Angara did not disappoint. There was a hot section that consisted of large white sausages floating in suspect looking water, luke warm pre-fried eggs and a pot of porridge. We both opted for porridge. The porridge had been sitting for a while and needed to be diluted, as I poured my “milk” on I noticed it looked a little lumpy, perhaps a bit thick, I figured it was just full cream milk. What I had done was pour sour milk, a Russian “delicacy” onto my porridge, this combined with butter and sugar tasted “interesting” to say the least, I managed to get it down, but worse was to come.

In the cold section there were cakes, from a distance they looked pretty appetising, especially a big white number with what looked like cream cheese icing. Naturally this caught Tanya’s eye and she proudly deposited two enormous slabs of said cake on our table. One bite was all it took to realise that the “icing” was in fact sour cream and the “cake” was in fact cake, but mostly made from cottage cheese. It’s probably the most disgusting thing I’ve had in my mouth, and I’ve eaten fresh mutton blood sausage.

We went out for another walk in Irkutsk and had a look at the insides of the churches we had seen last night. We walked some more and then had lunch at Cinema Donatella where we were prepared with our Russian phrasebook and some restauranty phrases, but the menu was all in English and the food decidedly western. After the breakfast debacle, we needed something familiar in the stomach, I had a burger, Tan’s a club sandwich.

We ran into another tourist, an Australian who is about one day behind us on the Trans-Siberian, staying one night with us at Olga’s. He proudly informed us that he had been arrested in Listvyanka for, wait for it, throwing a rock at a police car. The story goes that he was walking home from the pub and the same car kept cruising up and down the highway, possibly on patrol, so he decides to throw a rock at it. Soon after he was cuffed, put in the divvy van with five officers of the Russian constabulary and driven halfway to Irkutsk, which is an hour and a half drive. At the halfway point they stopped, let him out of the van and stood around wondering what they should do with him. Olga, for fear of having to halt her upstairs building works and second inside toilet construction, probably rang the tour company pronto, as the Russian cops slapped the cuffs on him in Olga’s front yard. For whatever reason, the cops apparently decided to turnaround after 45 minutes of driving and 10 minutes of deliberation in the forest and headed back to Listvyanka. I suspect someone with the tour company had gotten in touch with the Listvyanka police or said Australian bloke has paid a large “fine” in the forest and avoided a beating, a long walk back to Listvyanka or both. The story seems a little flaky in places, but whatever the case, I am convinced, somewhere, someone is out of pocket for a few thousand Roubles. I pointed out to this guy that he was lucky to get off scott free, without having to pay a large bribe or take a beating from the cops. He claims that when he was pulled out of the van in the forest in the dead of night, he was not scared, he also maintains that if they had of touched him, he could have fought them and later brought them all up on charges of “police brutality”. Some people live in fairy land. I personally would have been shitting myself. This guy is also 32 years of age, so should know better.

After our lunch, we went for a bit of a stroll and sat in the park opposite the Angara hotel. This is a truly beautiful park and I was reminded of my mother’s love of flowers and love of repeating “absolutely beautiful” in the presence of pretty flowers. We found a nice bench, under a shady tree and just sat and enjoyed the sunshine. About 30 minutes in it was getting a bit boring, but no fear, the good citizens of Irkutsk put on a spectacle for us. A young man and woman, I dare not use the word lady, enter the park, clearly fighting. We can tell, as her harpy like voice can be heard a good 300 metres away, as can the slaps as she connects with her man friends face. After this she rips off her dress (we have photos) and throws it away, but her man friend covered her up, encouraged her to get dressed and got a punch in the face for his chivalrous efforts. This continued for around another 45 minutes, it would seem to calm, the man went off to buy the woman a coke, this seemed to ark her up again, I would have chosen something with a lot less caffeine, as the slapping, kicking and general abusive screaming continued for another 15 minutes. Eventually the man walked away, the woman giving chase, by this time, it was clear there would be no more rending of garments, so we also went back to the hotel to have some pizza for dinner and gather our things for tonights train journey.

We boarded the train at 7:20pm, Irkutsk time. We were in a brand new carriage, so new, it had that brand new carriage smell. This carriage was like nothing we have experienced before, it has such modern comforts as a sewerage tank, meaning you can have your number two’s whilst the train is stopped at a station, but it also means you can no longer shout GERONIMO!!!!! as you watch last nights dinner leap to certain doom on the track and sleepers flashing past below. The beds, whilst a little narrow are firm and comfortable, with scrupulously clean linen. The Provodnitsa’s are also nice, and even smile, which is contrary to pretty much what everyone else, the guidebook and our own experience tells us. The Russian Provodnitsas even clean the toilets regularly in stark contrast to our Chinese and Mongolian carriage attendants. Given that we are begining a 50 hour two night train epic, we are both pretty happy with our accommodations.

Other people must have sensed the bravery / stupidity of my actions as a few cars tooted and flicked their lights at me as I walked down the lonely windswept highway for my morning swim.

Once at the beach, I moved quickly. I stripped off my T-shirt, dropped my towel, weighted them both down with rocks, as a bit of a stiff and chilly breeze had sprung up. I left my glasses in an easy to find position and sprinted into the water. This time I think I managed about 10 seconds, before it began to feel like I was being stabbed by 1,000 knives and I developed a severe icecream headache. I opened my eyes underwater, no stinging and I could see for a long long way off into the distance where the density of water turned into a solid blue green. I got out, toweled off, got dressed and headed up the road for a double espresso, but the cafe didn’t open until 9am.

On the walk back home I got a lot of odd looks from Russian mums, rugged up in trench coats and scarves, walking similarly bundled up children to school. It was 7 degrees, which I would have thought would be t-shirt weather when your winter is minus 40, but apparently not.

For breakfast we ate porridge, great slabs of french toast and rhubarb and orange marmalade. After about 1,000 cups of tea and a few slices of toast, the feeling and warmth had returned to my body.

After breakfast we packed and to our horror discovered that one of Tanya’s socks had gone missing during our laundry run. I approached Olga, who had just helped her surly husband and surlier son put up some scaffolding. I held up the sock and siad in my clearest, slowest and loudest English “one sock, or two sock”. She immediately reacted as if I had accused her of stealing the sock “vone sock, vone only, vone sock” she repeated with louder and louder volume. At this I simply walked back into our room and continued packing, we did find the errant sock, it never made it to the washing, why she wouldn’t tell us this on return of our washing I will never know, I’ll just stand by my theory that Communism sucks the initiative out of people and leave it at that.

Our driver turned up, the only reason we knew this was because we happened to notice the car pull up, he never left the vehicle or made his presence known, there wasn’t even a toot of the horn. I loaded all of our things in the car, no help from the driver and we were off to pick up Steve and Carol, who were also heading back to Irkutsk.

During the drive, we discovered that Steve, is the world authority on Toby Jugs. I’m sure you’ll all be interested to know that Toby Jugs are jugs, that contain a full likeness from head to foot of a person. Steve has a museum in Chicago that houses over 7,000 examples of Toby Jugs, fascinating.

Upon arrival in Irkutsk, we checked into the Angara hotel, a relic of Soviet times and planning. It’s not quite a dump, but it is clinging onto it’s 3 star rating like grim death. It’s clean, relatively secure, the beds are adult size, but way too soft. Will I ever get a decent bed on this trip! These beds are so soft, that I reckon there is a 5cm gap between my arse and the floor laying in the prone position.

We were greeted by the manager of the tour company, who looked strangely like the lead singer of the Scorpions, he got us checked into the hotel, obviously this would have been too difficult for us to do, he told us we would have a city tour at 6:00pm and then disappeared.

We dropped our bags, did some black market RMB to Roubles exchange with Steve and then went to find some lunch. We chose Cafe Mamchka, which was like an old fashioned Coles cafeteria, set inside a funky space that increased it’s level of coolness exponentially, by playing Jazz. The food was good and cheap, after this both of us were pretty shagged after 2 nights in childrens beds, so we went back to the hotel for a bit of kip.

At 6pm sharp, Tatiana was waiting for us in the lobby. We followed her over to the Church of the Assumption, in a square where the Bolsheviks blew up another church in 1920, in order to use the bricks for new buildings. The Church got it’s own back, it was too well constructed and it had to be blown up twice, turning the bricks to dust and raising the level of the square by around 1 metre. All new buildings are level with the square and all old buildings are below the level. All of a sudden Mr Scorpions appeared with our train tickets and much like a drug deal, we were handed our tickets to Ekaterinburg and Moscow, the final two legs of our journey. I wasn’t keen to be carrying these tickets around with me, if you lose them, you have to pay full fare, no tickets are re-issued on the Trans-Siberian.

The tour continued with Siberiorg (Siberiorg, a Siberian, cyborg) monotone delivery for the next 2 hours. I’ve never seen a persons face hold the same expression for so long. We saw the Irkutsk Circus, which has animals, acrobats and a shitload of the ugliest and hardest looking prostitutes I have ever seen. Why they would stake out a circus? A family venue, I’ll never know. Maybe husbands deposit their families at the circus and then spend the next 30 minutes looking for “parking”.

We also saw the office of the Trains-Siberian, a statue of the founder, two girls in short short skirts and high heels trying to ride a bactrian camel, the Irkutsk whitehouse, Karl Marx st and a couple of traditional Siberian wooden houses thrown in for good measure.

After this I was keen to go back to the circus, but Tans said we should eat. We had dinner on Karl Marx st in a place called Snowflake. No one spoke English, menu all in Cyrilic, no other foreigners in the joint, we knew we were in the right place.

We managed to find the word for main course and I have almost learned the Cyrilic alphabet so I could tell that Cteak, is actually Steak. For Tan’s, we gave up and just started throwing the names around of Russian culinary warhorses, like Chicken Kiev and Beef Stroganof. Beef Strog, was a bingo and as we had struggled with the menu for a good 20 – 30 minutes, they gave us (well me) two glasses of Gluvine for our trouble, gratis.

Our meals arrived and my Cteak turned out to be pork, the strog was great and we also tucked into a pretty impressive Greek salad, washed down by two Czec beers. All this great service, good food and an excellent venue for the low low price of 1400 Roubles, a steal at $AUD 50.

It was around 10pm when we wandered back to the hotel,still twilight, the street lights beginning to flick on. We attempted to watch Life of Brian on the laptop, but after 1 hour with my arse barely 5cm’s off the floor, we drifted off to sleep.

Todays breakfast consisted of a totally huge slab of cottage cheese and sugar pie, made from flaky pastry. It was damn good, even if said slab measured around 20cm x 20cm. Yesterdays now stale bread made a reappearance, as did the cheese and rhubarb and orange marmalade. It honestly took me around 30 minutes to get the pie down, it tasted great, but man, it was heavy going to get it all eaten. It sat like a big fat house brick in my stomach, luckily todays trekking did not begin for another 2 hours.

Valyera our trekking guide and resident botanist with an interest in the algae living in the lake turned up at 11am sharp. He had on a pair of Teva sandals, instead of boots and a pair of the most gnarled, cracked and tough looking feet I have ever seen.

We set off at a brisk pace down the main road of Listvyanka, once that had run out, we then began a slow climb up a hill on a forest access road, where we ate wild strawberries and learned about the local Doc Rose, that can be used as an antiseptic for cuts. We followed this road for a few more kilometres and eventually set off along a narrow forest track. This trek was sold to us as “soft trekking”, which is about 50% right, the soft part is completely wrong. Whilst it’s not a challenging walk, there are some pretty steep bits and very narrow bits, where if you put a foot wrong, your going down the side of a cliff and landing in a broken heap at the bottom of the lake. The path is also muddy and slippery in parts, pretty tough on the ankles and knees. I’d call it more of an easy to medium difficulty walk.

We were told that Valyera spoke excellent English, but it turned out that this really consisted of the words “attention”, “20 metres”, “5 minutes” and “how are you”. Every time there was a perceived hazard on the path, Valyera would bark “ATTENTION”, to well, bring our attention to it, whilst continually asking “how are you”, meaning, are you doing OK. When asked, “how far to the top of this hill” he would answer “20 metres” or “5 minutes”.

We saw some beautiful views of the lake, eventually climbing to the top of one of the mountains where the plan was for us to descend and have lunch on the stony beach below. After about 10 minutes of discussion we managed to find out that we were walking back via the same route and that Tanya would have to ascend a bloody steep hill to get back from the beach. This, we could not do, so instead we had lunch on the top of the mountain. Valyera lit what was basically a bonfire and began to cook our lunch, which was mushroom soup, cakes, biscuits, lollies, potato and cabbage pies, followed up with some caramel pies and finally a pot of forest tea, made with all manner of wild spearmints, which again is a no no for those that are up the duff.

Having had around 50,000 cups of tea at breakfast and about 50,000 more at lunch, I was bursting and needed to relieve myself in the forest. We walked back along the same track in the warm afternoon sun, Valyera collected wild mushrooms that he will dry and eat during the winter.

We arrived back in the town, and bought a beer and some Sprite for Tan’s, then we headed down to the beach via Olga’s to change and pick up a towel.

The beach is great, all little pebbles and no annoying sand that gets into everything. I dug a little pit for our drinks and buried them underwater to cool down, whilst I nerved myself up for a swim.

The weather was stunning, a light breeze, 25 degrees Celsius, no clouds and a clear view to the snowcapped mountains on the other side of the lake.

I stripped off and took a few small steps into the lake, it’s bloody freezing. I ventured further, by this time I could not feel anything below the knee, I got out to where the water was at around bum height and went under. A full two seconds later I was seated on the beach, shivering, the warmth slowly coming back to my extremities. After a bit more time in the sun and a now icy cold beer in my belly, it was time for dip number two. This time I think I was in for a 5 full seconds. The water is around 5 to 7 degrees this time of year. To warm up, we went and had a coffee.

Back at Olga’s we had Omul and potato for dinner, as there was another traveler at Olga’s, I was able to have a banya this evening. Olga, who’s son is a dwarf kept encouraging Tanya, to have a banya, “my banya not hot”, “my banya no problem” she’d say. We did check it out, but at around 50 degrees inside, and perhaps the evidence of one too many banyas walking around next to us, Tans decided to pass.

I do have to say, the banya is totally awesome. There is a small changing room that you enter from outside and another door off that, where you enter the banya proper.

Inside the banya is a stove, which is full of scalding hot water, a huge metal tub of cold water and a series of wooden benches the same as a dry sauna. You risk burning your hand on the stove, fill a plastic tub with piping hot water, dilute it with a little cold and douse yourself in it. You then soap up, wash your hair and other bits and pieces and then continue to douse yourself in hot water until thoroughly clean. It is the bathroom of champions and would go down well during the Siberian winter, which regularly cracks minus 40.

The family left us alone in the house at around 9pm, Tans had a shower in Sputnik 1 and we both fell asleep in our childrens beds.