13/02/07

Well it was a race against time but we made it, now we are on the Tran-siberian heading from Irkutsk to Moscow. This leg of our trip is the longest and will take 4 days straight on the train. My impressions of Russian systems is that whatever it is that they are optimized for its not efficiency, consistency, or transparency. Buying our tickets was a disaster (this is the second, the first time they messed up the passport number and name on my ticket, yes you need your passport several times a day in Russia, and we only discovered when boarding the train with about 7 minutes to race back to a ticket office and get the name changed. This of course cost half the price of the original ticket, but you can hardly argue with policy regarding incompetence - right?!?)

Buying our tickets to Moscow:

Arriving in Russia we were quite aware that we would have to be uber organized, however evidently almost not prepared enough. After arriving in Irkutsk we headed straight for the ticketing office, there are trains leaving on the date we want but of course you can’t book any seats because the updated seating allocation doesn’t come out till 6pm. Ok, so we will find someone that speaks Russian and Englishski and get them to call up after 6pm. Next morning we walk down to reception and request to use their ‘ticket booking service’. “No problems, the numbers busy now but we will call you room when we get through”. All is going well…. So we head out for the day and make sure to give them our mobile number. Upon returning we check in with them having heard nothing. “O yes, Of course, here are the prices but you can’t book until the day after tomorrow” Are you sure? The lady at the train station says she reserved some. “Yes, sure” Ok…(reluctantly)..and you can book them for us? “Ofcourse!” Great.

So we have some fun, play in the snow, walk on a frozen lake, get a hover craft ride, then 2 days later head back to reception to book the tickets. Of course by this time the staff has changed several times, and they have no idea what we are talking about. So they call up and check train times and prices. Now they tell us that the train for the 11th is booked out and unless we want to spend 4 times as much we will have to wait one more night. Of course we might be able to just jump on a train and find a seat later…(yeah right and risk 4 days of agony). Oh, and by the way they can’t book tickets without 3 days notice now. So after discussing the hotel staff are either incompetent, or scheming to get us to stay longer because its off season, we head back to Irkutsk to the train station to book tickets ourselves.

Upon arriving, the nice (if incompetent) English speaking lady has been replaced with a large butch immovable Russian martian. Who tells us (after much agony, and with much reluctance) that tickets we want aren’t available until the 14th now! This would mean a 3 day delay. Not acceptable. The only other tickers are for 2.5 times the price for the class we wanted, and leave tomorrow, the 12th. One days delay, another hostel, after some tears because the Russian lady is … well… speaking Russian loudly at Ellie because she thinks she is deaf or stupid or both, we walk away with expensive tickets, cursing the Russian martian and booking system generally.

The rush for the train:

It was all because closed minded skeptical people wouldn’t sell me mentholated spirits (as fuel for our cooking stove), this threatened to spoil our carefully planed out vegetarian meal options for a 4 day train trip. I spent 3 or more hours looking for simple burning alcohol (in a snow blizzard), exactly like the stuff you drink only 95-100%, I checked sports stores, camping stores (who sold the same stove we have, and empty fuel bottles), auto stores (as it is commonly used as a degreasing agent), paint stores (strong alcohol makes a good paint remover), several pharmacies (its great for disinfecting wounds), and one supermarket (its also sold as aftershave). No one could help me!!! The little bit of paper with all these translations must have been a bit over whelming for people. So it was we were running (again) for the train through the snow with only minutes to spare. Of course we made it, we always do, we must be approaching the end of our years fast and soon though at the rate we are loosing them what with all the stress.

So now it is I’m sitting hear on a train with 4 days worth of cold baked beans, pasta and pancake mix, pots pans, cutlery and plates but no fuel!!

Thank god for the chocolate.

Over & out, N

We’re into day three of our three day four night train epic from irkutsk in eastern russia to moskow. Said to be a once in a life time experience… Both nathan and I agree that we’d do it again given the chance. I’ve done the maths and including visas and invitations (the russian visa system is a nightmare), and transport to/from western europe this part of our trip will cost around $600 in second class - $450 if we’d gone 3rd class (or if we had gone with a bare bones tour agency it would have been $1900) I think that’s a pretty affordable way to get across the world. And fun!

Well acctually it’s often been ungodly boring. Like yesterday I hadn’t yet learned how to read the schedual of stops but had depended on our cabin mate Ellena to let me know when there’d be a 20 or 30 minute stop for us to streach our legs and stock up on supplies. I missed the morning stop because I was sleeping and then ellena slept the whole morning so I couldn’t tell when I could get off. I started to get cabin fever big time. Getting up on my bunk and then down again. To the toilet, eat some chocolate, play sudoku, read, up, down. Eat some more. The next stop (I finally figured out the timetable) was in 2 hours. Sigh. And then finally it came around. Though the stops is only usually 20 minutes. It really brightens the day for at least an hour. Half an hour before the stop you begin to get excited. Start the ritual of puttingon the layers. But be sure not to be too eager! The cabin is heated to 27degC so tomany layers too soon can be problematic. Shoes, jumpers, scalf, hat jacket… Then wait. We’re sslowing down we can see all the snow decked houses. Some people working on the tracks others going about their day. Then the station! We head out into the cold. It’s refreshing! We scan the platfrom for babuschkas selling their wares, kartoshka (roast potatoes) are a favorite but we’ll settle for water, maybe some cheese, bread, and juice from one of the many Kiosks lining the platform. Laden with our new purchases we head back to the carrrage. Some times we settle back down inside but other times we savor every breath of fresh air. Then we wait again. Today there won’t be another stop until 9:30 pm. When the sun goes down at 5:30 that’s a late stop and I don’t know if I’ll still be awake. We arrive tomorrow at 4AM so I think an early night is inorder. The nightcaps (vodak, coniac…) fed to us by our cabin mate ensure that our long nights sleep are peaceful. Each day is 25 hours as we head to the west and while the train runs on moskow time we have tried to keep up with the time zones and change our about watches once a day for us time is pretty subjective. The train, crampt and boring as it can gets, certainly beats jetlag and has come as a welcome rest for us. I’ve already finish one book 1421 the year china discovered the world - I recommend it! And I’ve started on “salt; A world history” by mark kurlansky a great writter and what’s shaping up to be a great story for those that love odd facts about the world.

Anyway I think I’ll sign off with that today. Our next post will probably come from moskow. We’re certainly looking forward to it!

Much love

ELlie

Hi-ski (AKA “zadrastvuyte” or hi) Ellie here again.

Adding”-ski” to the end of every word began as a joke on the first day here in Russia but it seems to have stuck and while a can hardly pronounce “hello” in Russian I’ve been kidding myself into thinking I sound Russian when I simply use a Russian accent (which sometimes borders on Swedish or even Scottish) it’s a really bad habit… But fun! In fact we’ve been getting on really well here with the language. Mostly because a lot of people speak English but also I can understand some words because of their similarity to English, German or even (surprisingly) Italian. Written Russian is another story though! They have 34 or so characters and even the ones they have in common with English are not always pronounced the same so in shops and resturants it means trying to spark conversation with who ever is serving you and hoping they have some patience.

I guess one of the main reasons we have had such a good run here in Russia is because of the great people that have taken us under their wing. I met Jennia in my carriage (Nathan and I were split up for the night as we got some of the last tickets) on the train from zabaikalsk to chita. She asked me something in Russian, I told her I don’t speak Russian and so we had a stilted but welcome conversation about what the heck I was doing in Russia if I don’t speak Russian and how dangerous and horrible Russia is. Jennia was coming home (chita) after having her Chinese work visa revoked (she had worked as a translator for a Chinese manufacturer) she said she moved away from Russia primary because of the dangers here and the lack of protection from police who are underpaid and we are told, often supplement their income by abusing their position. Completely negating the picture she had just painted of her country Jennia was on the phone to her mother within about 10 minutes checking that it was ok to invite us back to their house for breakfast, a shower and a snooze. Having not showered since Harbin this was an offer I couldn’t refuse! when the food trolley came along she bought beer and we spent the evening chatting.

After a great relaxing day in Chita with Jennia and her family we jumped back on the train for our third consecutive night. I can’t tell you how much I was looking forward to getting out on the frozen lake Baikal and just being in one place for a few days. But on arrival in Irkutsk we had a few errands to run before we could relax.

1st encounter with Russian militsa (police)

When we realized my (brand new) camera had been stolen I was not looking forward to going to the police for the required police report. We’ve heard not a few stories of dodgy police and long waits for the simplest requests. So before going to the police I called my travel insurance company to ask if it was absolutely necessary for me to have a police report. She told me it was and she highly doubled that the police would put me in jail if I didn’t cough up a bribe so with trepidation I left Nathan with our luggage and headed to Irkutsk police headquarters. Thankfully a woman who had lost her passport spoke English and was able to explain my predicament to the humorless officer who clearly wasn’t appreciating the game of schirades I was playing with him. Barely moving his lips he told my translator that I’d have to go to the railway police. So back to Nathan empty handed I went and we gathered our gear and went back out to the railway station.

This time the officer didn’t seem to mind our schirades and were pretty sure they got most of the story the first time. They ushered us into a room and they just about every officer (on duty and off) came in and chatted to us. Our favorite was max. He spoke no English but we practiced every phrase in the language chapter of our lonely planet and he heard all about our travels from Singapore over land to Russia. Apparently when he’s not a militsa he studies physiology (or so we understood). Then came a guy who kinda spoke englishski. He interrogated us a little more and then we bribed the lot of them with chocolate which seemed to do the trick and 2 hrs after arriving we left the station with three lines of writing in Russian, a signature and a stamp. We were assured it would do the trick but time will tell.

Off to Baikal

Finally we headed to the bus station! We wanted to go to olkhon Island one of the biggest fresh water islands in the world with a great reputation for natural beauty and an awesome homestay sty hostel. We were worried that we’d be too late for the 6 hour journey out there but when we got to the bus station we found out the time was the least of our worries. Call it an usually warm winter if you will but I’m calling it Climate change. Olkohn, usually accessible to cars and even busses over the ice from November to early April, was inaccessible due to the ice thawing, there was no way to get out there at least this week. So we settled for our second option (we’ve learned to have back up plans) and waited for a bus to listvyanka just an our from irkutsk. I don’t know how long we waited in the snow for that bus but when the first one finally arrived I could tell there were far too many people waiting than could fit on the miniscule thing. By that time I was worrying that pain in my toes might have been frostbite and fought tooth and nail with ladies in furs for a seat…. Unfortunately I couldn’t secure one for Nathan but another bus rolled up on cue and we jumped in that one instead.

We arrived in Listvyanka after dark and the concept of finding a nice homstay cabin down one of the dark streets proved too much so we headed for the 7 story lighthouse style building that dominated the otherwise nonexistent skyline with it’s strobe light lighting up the icy lake baikal. We figured even if it wasn’t a hotel we could probably find some help there. It was indeed hotel marka… Totally swish but surprisingly affordable if there is such a thing in this country. Their motto seemed to be “ofcourse!” it seemed the receptionists could achieve anything (except the super human feat of booking train tickets which you’ll hear about later from nath).

All in all we had a very pleasant stay on lake baikal. Though there’s not much to do we managed to fill the days with eating, reading, and walking on the lake. Highlights were a ride on a hovercraft, being interviewed for a tourism documentary and sliding countless times down the ice slide.

I love baikal. Wanna come back in summer sometime, anyone care to join me?

Much love,

Ellie.