Okay, so due to a combination of a lack of internet access, two small American-Mongolian children with a fondness for playing 'jail,' a long late-night conversation about poisonous animals with a guy in UB and a session of beer and Pulp Fiction in Beijing, I have singularly failed to update the blog in a whole week. This means, of course, that I will now go into turbo-speed blogging overdrive and there will be eleventy gazillion posts in a single day. Apologies again for the rather schizophrenic update pattern.
Anyway, the slow train has now finally reached its destination (although as I'm lazy, the blog name will remain the same for the next six months), and after traipsing across the Czech Republic, Poland, Ukraine, Russia, a bit more Russia, Mongolia and China, we're now finally in Chongqing, where the last two days have been spent relaxing in our frankly luxurious apartment, eating terrifyingly large amounts of food, having comprehensive 'medical tests' to check that we're not a threat to the Chinese nation and enjoying our first visit to a Chinese karaoke bar.
Whilst it's very tempting to dive straight into writing about Chongqing, I shall resist the temptation to create blog chaos and instead ask you to pretend whilst reading the subsequent posts that the last week is a figment of our collective imagination. As such, it is now in fact Saturday, February 21st and I have just arrived in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia....
Thursday 26 February 2009
Friday 20 February 2009
Siberia
We're now in Ulan Bator, Outer Mongolia, but before we get to that I realise that despite talking about toilets, multiple fallings over and breakages, I haven't really actually at all described where we've been over the last week. So, brace yourselves for three quick posts, illustrated with pretty pictures, about the lands across which we have recently traversed.
After leaving Yekaterinburg, we made our way by train across Siberia to Irkustk, where we spent Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. Having finally seen it, I can confirm that Siberia is big. Very big. And cold. And pretty empty. But - around the train line at least - not necessarily as empty as you might believe; on the three day journey we passed industrial, smoggy cities, tiny villages with traditional wooden buildings, lots of cargo trains transporting coal and gas, miles and miles of forest, and a 500km area near Novosibirsk called the Baraba Swamp, which looked about as welcoming as the name suggests. But - until near Irkustk at least - not hills, for Siberia is flat as can be.
I'll avoid rambling on too much, as the pictures hopefully speak for themselves, but suffice to say that the whole scale of Siberia is epic and majestic, and it's the sort of place that you can happily spend all day gazing at of the train window. It is hostile, certainly, and seeing it one can understand why it is the land of exile par excellence; even excluding the terrors of the gulags, the miles and miles of frozen nothingness extending as far as the eye can see would itself induce despair; unless granted a pardon and allowed to return, exiles would have little hope of ever making it home.
Perhaps because it is just so far away from anywhere and everywhere, Siberia also seems the sort of place where the magical could quite easily happen without too much disruption to the rest of the world; I would not have been too suprised to have seen ice bears come thundering across the plain, the stars turn into flying troikas, or some many-limbed, steamy monster emerge from the smoke and ice of the Yenisey River. Such imaginings are what three days on a train does to you.
Anyway, I'm very glad that I got the opportunity to come here and see it at its wintry and majestic best, and here are some (slightly blurry) pictures:
(This last one was taken through the window of the unheated area between each two carriages. These were freezing and the windows made very pretty ice patterns.)
Irkutsk 40 million - Jenny 0
Lest anyone think I was being smug by pointing out Katie's drubbing at the hands of Siberia, I should mention that I too failed to get the better of the frozen wasteland. In fact, it wreaked destruction upon my possessions.
Oh, I thought I was doing well, too well. Not only did my beautiful sheepskin boots mean that my tootsies were well insulated against the Siberian cold but they also came with grip, so I did not have to adopt Katie's 'five year old with rickets' walk to save myself from constantly falling over. These boots are so absolutely wonderful that I have been comtemplating writing an ode to them, but so far I haven't, which means that you don't have to suffer through my doggerel.
Anyways, Siberia was not willing to let me get away scot free, oh no. I slipped, slightly, once, coming down a steep, icy hill in Listvyanka, and whilst I was absolutely fine, sadly my glasses were not.
Voici:
Given that the temperature was somewhere between -22 and -30 at the time, my glasses were just a little chilly, and as such were not really best placed to withstand the pressure of being squashed under my hand (I was cleaning the lenses - which had completely frozen over - at the time of my little tumble).
The glasses have been temporarily fixed with a plaster, which I hope you will agree looks very cool ideed. I did get a few strange looks back at the hostel, so decided that it was perhaps best not to venture into town with these babies on. Plus, every time I look down they fall off, which is quite annoying.
So, for now I am a little bit blind. I do have a spare pair of glasses, but alas these are not quite as strong as the broken ones, meaning that I might have six months of squinting ahead. I'm trying to think that it makes me look curious and interested, but really it just makes me look stupid. Ah well.
Oh, I thought I was doing well, too well. Not only did my beautiful sheepskin boots mean that my tootsies were well insulated against the Siberian cold but they also came with grip, so I did not have to adopt Katie's 'five year old with rickets' walk to save myself from constantly falling over. These boots are so absolutely wonderful that I have been comtemplating writing an ode to them, but so far I haven't, which means that you don't have to suffer through my doggerel.
Anyways, Siberia was not willing to let me get away scot free, oh no. I slipped, slightly, once, coming down a steep, icy hill in Listvyanka, and whilst I was absolutely fine, sadly my glasses were not.
Voici:
Given that the temperature was somewhere between -22 and -30 at the time, my glasses were just a little chilly, and as such were not really best placed to withstand the pressure of being squashed under my hand (I was cleaning the lenses - which had completely frozen over - at the time of my little tumble).
The glasses have been temporarily fixed with a plaster, which I hope you will agree looks very cool ideed. I did get a few strange looks back at the hostel, so decided that it was perhaps best not to venture into town with these babies on. Plus, every time I look down they fall off, which is quite annoying.
So, for now I am a little bit blind. I do have a spare pair of glasses, but alas these are not quite as strong as the broken ones, meaning that I might have six months of squinting ahead. I'm trying to think that it makes me look curious and interested, but really it just makes me look stupid. Ah well.
Wednesday 18 February 2009
The Stalactite of Doom....
Sorry for the generally lavatorial nature of recent posts - I have now found my level and I am resolutely sticking to it. Here, therefore, are some interesting things that happen when you have a wee on a trans-Siberian train.
As on English trains, trans-Siberian train toilets deposit their contents directly onto the track. Unlike English trains, however, this is not done discreetly; instead of a pause followed by a strange suction noise, the bottom of the toilet bowl simply flips open and you can thus see your offering deposited at speed onto what must by now be a very sewagey train track.
Now this is fine in theory, but given that Siberia in February is at night twice as cold as your average home freezer, it does not work very well in practice. Understandably, the natural reaction of water or watery liquids in Siberia is to freeze, which, as the picture a couple of posts ago illustrates, means that the collective wee forms a giant pissy stalactite below the train. This makes going to the loo frankly rather interesting.
After you gingerly place your bum onto the freezing metal seat and begin to wee, the first thing you feel is your behind being bathed in a pleasant hug of warm steam. This, we think, happens because your warm wee temporarily melts the frozen dribbe of water in the bottom of the toilet bowl, but we cannot discount the possibility that the top of the 'wee column' has also been melted, and that steamy wee comes back up the toilet bowl to meet you. Which is not a very pleasant thought.
The excitment continues when you then insert toilet paper into the bowl. As the ice (and wee) at the bottom of the loo bowl have by this point refrozen, the loo roll sticks to the ice. And as the now expanding column of wee means that the toilet bowl does not fully close, a stream of Siberian air rushes in, meaning that the part of the toilet paper not glued to the bottom of the metal toilet bowl bounces around like a Mexican jumping bean on speed. It is rather hard to make it go away.
And that, I promise, is the end of all loo-related posts. At least until I eat some Sichuan hotpot....
As on English trains, trans-Siberian train toilets deposit their contents directly onto the track. Unlike English trains, however, this is not done discreetly; instead of a pause followed by a strange suction noise, the bottom of the toilet bowl simply flips open and you can thus see your offering deposited at speed onto what must by now be a very sewagey train track.
Now this is fine in theory, but given that Siberia in February is at night twice as cold as your average home freezer, it does not work very well in practice. Understandably, the natural reaction of water or watery liquids in Siberia is to freeze, which, as the picture a couple of posts ago illustrates, means that the collective wee forms a giant pissy stalactite below the train. This makes going to the loo frankly rather interesting.
After you gingerly place your bum onto the freezing metal seat and begin to wee, the first thing you feel is your behind being bathed in a pleasant hug of warm steam. This, we think, happens because your warm wee temporarily melts the frozen dribbe of water in the bottom of the toilet bowl, but we cannot discount the possibility that the top of the 'wee column' has also been melted, and that steamy wee comes back up the toilet bowl to meet you. Which is not a very pleasant thought.
The excitment continues when you then insert toilet paper into the bowl. As the ice (and wee) at the bottom of the loo bowl have by this point refrozen, the loo roll sticks to the ice. And as the now expanding column of wee means that the toilet bowl does not fully close, a stream of Siberian air rushes in, meaning that the part of the toilet paper not glued to the bottom of the metal toilet bowl bounces around like a Mexican jumping bean on speed. It is rather hard to make it go away.
And that, I promise, is the end of all loo-related posts. At least until I eat some Sichuan hotpot....
Final Scores
Ekaterinburg 5 0 Katie
Irkutsk 5 2 Katie
As well as not really being best suited to freezing conditions, Katie has had, shall we say, a few problems remaining upright whilst in Siberia. The combination of dead Doc Martens with no grip, Katie's woeful balance and packed down ice all over the streets has meant that she has managed some pretty spectacular wipeouts. After the first two, which took place in Ekaterinburg with her rucksack attached, I came up with a points system. The city concerned gets a point whenever Katie falls over, and Katie gets a point whenever she breaks something in the city. The final scores are above, and I think you will agree that it was basically a drubbing. I asked Katie if she would like to comment, and her comment is merely 'ow.'
Yesterday we went to Lake Baikal, and after two falls and one incident in which she karate-chopped me in the back of my neck in an attempt too save herself, we resorted to hand-holding. Combined with the fact that Katie is wearing approximately seventy-five layers of clothes, this basically means that she looks like a little five-year old all bundled up for winter.
My mysterious unknown Slavonic ancestor (I have been told many times -again - on this trip that I look Czech/Russian/generally Eastern Europe and not in fact English) has perhaps bestowed upon me a useful gene, for I've been finding the Siberian temperatures quite invigorating and actually not too painful. The coldest we've had so far is -32, although I'm hoping for -40 just so I can find out what that feels like. And yes, mother, I have been doing Siberia in my H & M coat....
Things That Freeze at -30 Degrees
Your eyelashes......
Your hair.......
Gunther......
Urine from the train (credit to Jesse for this picture, which I have shamelessly stolen. One of the train guards' responsibilities is to hack the column of frozen wee off when the train stops.)....
Your hair.......
Gunther......
Urine from the train (credit to Jesse for this picture, which I have shamelessly stolen. One of the train guards' responsibilities is to hack the column of frozen wee off when the train stops.)....
Friday 13 February 2009
Sorry
Right, mega upload now all finished, sorry to come at you with about twenty gazillion posts at once like that. We're off to catch the train to Irkutsk at about 2am this morning. Estimated temperature for our time of arrival (4 am Monday morning); -41 degrees.
An Interesting Cultural Observation
Russian toilet paper has no hole in the middle. Just thought you’d like to know.
Of course we all dress like Britney...
Last night, Katie, Sophia and I decided to go out for a drink. This is not as easy as it seems, as in Russia there aren’t really pubs –it’s either a restaurant or a nightclub, the latter of which means strict dress codes, inflated prices and ‘face control.’ As this is about as far from our scene as you can get, going out in the evening in Russia has been limited – certainly in central Moscow it is difficult to find anything that isn’t an incredibly up-itself swanky nightclub for Moscow’s nouveau-riche. After initially drinking mojits in what was essentially a coffee shop, we resorted on the second night to drinking beer in the hostel, which was where the extended conversation with the Indian-Malaysians that disrupted the blogging came into it all.
Given this, we were quite excited when Katia recommended to us a Beatles-themed café and bar called Yellow Submarine, which has food, beer and live music. The bar itself was fun (and very sixties/seventies- themed, with prog-style airbrushed portraits of bands on the walls and every item on the menu named after a Beatles song), but unfortunately Katie, Sophia and I were then cornered by a young Russian guy, who despite having quite limited English claimed to work as an English-Russian translator and interpreter (if he does, it would explain a lot about the quality of English translations in these parts). In the course of the evening he berated Sophia for the crime of being German, sang loudly and terribly to ‘accompany’ the singer who was playing, claimed that when he met Italians they’d all flashed him to show that they had ‘big balls,’ and, most bizzarely of all, repeatedly insisted on wanting to touch Katie’s nose. When, after about two hours of interesting ‘conversation’ he eventually decided to go to the toilet, we quickly paid for our food and beers and made a hasty getaway for fear of another two hours in his company.
He was absolutely desperate to impress, and talking about Sophia about her experiences in Tomsk and to Katia about modern Russia, it seems that most young Russians are, like him desperate to be ‘western’ (although few are strange freaks like he was). However, as few have had the opportunity to travel outside the country, most of the information Russians have about western fashions and culture comes from the songs, films, and TV. This has led to some interesting misconceptions –our friend last night was mightily confused as to why the few foreign travellers he has encountered do not try to dress like Britney Spears, who is apparently the pinnacle of style among young Russians. We tried to explain that basing your fashion choices on the decisions of a woman who has a history of failing to wear underwear, shaving her head and hitting a photographer’s car with an umbrella might not be the wisest policy, but he continued to insist that young Russian girls (rightly in his view) aspire to look like Britney. Apparently Sex and the City is also very popular here, which explains why so many Russian women insist on teetering about in four inch heels despite the fact that the ground is covered in ice. According to Sophia, the female students in Tomsk all dress like this despite the -40C temperatures, and bulimia and anorexia are big problems.
This obsession with image, fashion and style may also explain why Russian clubs, even outside of Moscow, try so hard to be ‘cosmopolitan,’ Although it did have the Yellow Submarine, Ekaterinburg also boasts the most ridiculously try-hard concept for a club that I have ever seen; a club cum car park. At Park King, you pay to drive your car – provided, of course, that it passes the desirability test - into what is essentially a car park. The ‘music’ is then provided by the assembled cars (resulting, I imagine, in a hideous cacophony of techno and bad house), and drinks are served at inflated prices. This seems not only stupid, but a surefire way of ensuring that your formerly desirable car will end the night scratched and covered in sick. Right.
At the moment, being young and Russian thus appears to be a labour-intensive and rather thankless business – being freezing and tottering around in -30 temperatures to try and look like a TV star doesn’t really sound like a particularly fulfilling way to go about life. Possibly if more actual opportunities become available to young Russians, and if they ever get the chance to see a bit more of the world, this try-hard desperation will lessen, but at the moment I do feel a bit sorry for them. Except for our friend last night. He'd be weird anywhere.
Given this, we were quite excited when Katia recommended to us a Beatles-themed café and bar called Yellow Submarine, which has food, beer and live music. The bar itself was fun (and very sixties/seventies- themed, with prog-style airbrushed portraits of bands on the walls and every item on the menu named after a Beatles song), but unfortunately Katie, Sophia and I were then cornered by a young Russian guy, who despite having quite limited English claimed to work as an English-Russian translator and interpreter (if he does, it would explain a lot about the quality of English translations in these parts). In the course of the evening he berated Sophia for the crime of being German, sang loudly and terribly to ‘accompany’ the singer who was playing, claimed that when he met Italians they’d all flashed him to show that they had ‘big balls,’ and, most bizzarely of all, repeatedly insisted on wanting to touch Katie’s nose. When, after about two hours of interesting ‘conversation’ he eventually decided to go to the toilet, we quickly paid for our food and beers and made a hasty getaway for fear of another two hours in his company.
He was absolutely desperate to impress, and talking about Sophia about her experiences in Tomsk and to Katia about modern Russia, it seems that most young Russians are, like him desperate to be ‘western’ (although few are strange freaks like he was). However, as few have had the opportunity to travel outside the country, most of the information Russians have about western fashions and culture comes from the songs, films, and TV. This has led to some interesting misconceptions –our friend last night was mightily confused as to why the few foreign travellers he has encountered do not try to dress like Britney Spears, who is apparently the pinnacle of style among young Russians. We tried to explain that basing your fashion choices on the decisions of a woman who has a history of failing to wear underwear, shaving her head and hitting a photographer’s car with an umbrella might not be the wisest policy, but he continued to insist that young Russian girls (rightly in his view) aspire to look like Britney. Apparently Sex and the City is also very popular here, which explains why so many Russian women insist on teetering about in four inch heels despite the fact that the ground is covered in ice. According to Sophia, the female students in Tomsk all dress like this despite the -40C temperatures, and bulimia and anorexia are big problems.
This obsession with image, fashion and style may also explain why Russian clubs, even outside of Moscow, try so hard to be ‘cosmopolitan,’ Although it did have the Yellow Submarine, Ekaterinburg also boasts the most ridiculously try-hard concept for a club that I have ever seen; a club cum car park. At Park King, you pay to drive your car – provided, of course, that it passes the desirability test - into what is essentially a car park. The ‘music’ is then provided by the assembled cars (resulting, I imagine, in a hideous cacophony of techno and bad house), and drinks are served at inflated prices. This seems not only stupid, but a surefire way of ensuring that your formerly desirable car will end the night scratched and covered in sick. Right.
At the moment, being young and Russian thus appears to be a labour-intensive and rather thankless business – being freezing and tottering around in -30 temperatures to try and look like a TV star doesn’t really sound like a particularly fulfilling way to go about life. Possibly if more actual opportunities become available to young Russians, and if they ever get the chance to see a bit more of the world, this try-hard desperation will lessen, but at the moment I do feel a bit sorry for them. Except for our friend last night. He'd be weird anywhere.
I Love "Sverdlovesk"
Sverdlovsk/Ekaterinburg is a very nice town; spacious and calm, with nice wide streets and a big lake (now frozen) right in the centre. It does, however, have the dubious fame of being the place where the deposed Tsar Nicholas and his entire family were shot and bayoneted to death in 1919 after the Communist government decided that they were too great a threat. The same year, Nicholas’ sister Elizabeth was thrown down a well, and after they realised she was still alive they buried her alive and set her on fire. In honour of these achievements, the city, which was originally named Ekaterinburg after Empress Catherine the Great (who did not in fact die having sex with a horse, but did, apparently, have a room devoted to bizarre sex objects), Lenin decided to rename the city Sverdlovsk after the commander (Sverdlov) whose idea it was to do the Romanovs in.
Since 1992, the city has reverted to the old name of Ekaterinburg, and now Romanov-iana is back in a big way; the church has not only constructed the huge and ostentatious Church of the Blood on the site where the Romanovs were killed, but indeed has made the entire Romanov family (Tsar Nicholas, Tsarina Alexandra, their four daughters Olga, Tatiana, Maria and Anastasia, their haemophiliac son Alexei, and Nicholas’ sister Elizabeth) official Orthodox saints. The Church of the Blood is thus mega-blinged up, and houses the most expensive icon in all of Russia. Seeing twentieth century historical figures (and not particularly bright ones in the case of Nicholas and Alexandra) decked out in the full regalia of Orthodox saints was certainly one of the many surreal experiences I’ve had in Russia. Unfortunately you’re not allowed to take pictures in the church, but you are (of course) allowed to buy tourist tat, meaning that I am now the proud owner of this rather glorious Romanov necklace.
What adds to the strangeness of the whole experience is that despite the official renaming the town is still often known by its old name of Sverdlovsk (and there is a sign saying 'I Love Sverdlovesk, the picture of which I was hoping to put up but which forgot to put on the flash drive). The name Sverdlovsk proudly stands above the railway station and the statue of Sverdlov continues to stand prominently in the town square. Only in post-Communist Russia could a city have both a big fat cathedral to the Romanov ‘saints,’ and a big fat statue of the guy who decided to do them in – and only in post-Communist Russia could both still be venerated by large groups of the population.
Meeting Point
After we refused Sergei’s entreaties to start drinking again at 2pm, we left the train at Ekaterinburg at about 7.45pm local time. For some unknown reason, despite the fact that Russia spans about a gazillion time zones every single train in Russia operates according to Moscow time. This means that not only do you have to remember to keep adding on hours as you pass through all of the time zones, but you also have to keep Moscow time straight in your head so you don't end up missing your next train. It is really quite stupid.
Anyway, on leaving the train we were supposed to take the tram to the hostel but this proved to be significantly more difficult than we anticipated. Firstly, we could not for the life of us figure out where to buy tram tickets – although the little office was staffed, the curtain was down and my repeated entreaties of ‘dobry vyecher’ were met with the unhelpful response of the cloaked official turning the light in the booth off. We decided to ask the surrounding passengers, but the first person I asked (the Russian is getting a little better) directed me back to the station, and the second person at said station directed me straight back to the tram stop. We eventually decided to get the tram and risk another fine courtesy of mean Commie-era officials, but then said tram decided not to turn up for half an hour, during which Katie’s feet began to freeze. Discarding the possibility of a taxi after the driver we asked quoted us an astronomical fee, we thus decided to walk the two miles; Katie with her backpack and me with my big fat red case, which whilst enabling me to pack my computer and have enough clothes to live for six months in China, is not designed to be wheeled around a snow-covered city in the middle of winter.
The walk seemed to take an age; the wheels of my case got completely stuck in the snow and refused to turn, meaning that I was essentially dragging a 25-30 kilo weight for about two miles. The situation was not helped by Katie singing ‘the wheels on the bag go round and round.’ Then again, she didn’t do too well either – not being particularly good at remaining upright at the best of times and hampered further by the combination of heavy bag and slippy ice, she managed two complete wipeouts in two miles. One looked horrid and both myself and some Russian women standing outside the philharmonia feared she’d broken herself, but fortunately she was okay apart from a bruised knee, so the trudge continued with us nearing giggling hysterics.
(A cool ice wall with graffiti we saw along the way)
Fortunately, once we finally found the hostel (by this time it was way after 10pm), it was worth it. Called ‘Meeting Point,’ the hostel has only been operational since the beginning of January, and is quite unlike anywhere else I’ve ever stayed. It’s been opened by Katia, a young Russian who having travelled abroad herself and stayed in backpackers’ hostels, decided to quit her job last year and turn an old apartment owed by her family into the third hostel in Ekaterinburg. Although the hostel is at the moment mostly airbeds in an apartment, Katia’s put in internet, and provides free tea, coffee, breakfast etc. She’s also incredibly friendly and welcoming with excellent English, and is still so excited about having hostel guests that she keeps coming round to chat and caters to your every need. We’ve had a really nice couple of days exploring Ekaterinburg and just chilling out in what essentially feels like your own flat. There’s some amazing old Soviet furniture here that would probably be worth a fair bit back home, and Ekaterinburg itself just feels like a nice, relaxed place to be. Given that there are only two other hostels in Ekaterinburg, I think Katia’s new business will do well – she’s got herself on all the internet hostel list sites and we’re all going to write nice reviews about her to entice the travellers here.
(An amazing Soviet lamp in Katia's hostel)
Although the hostel is very new, it’s already busy; in addition to Katie and I on the first night there were Natasha, Christina and Emerald (three English friends on a pre-university gap year), and Sophia, a German economics undergraduate who volunteered to be an exchange student and was unfortunate enough to be reluctantly sent to Tomsk, Siberia. She had spent her three week winter break in Moscow as a refuge from the -48 C temperatures in her temporary home town, and was stopping in Ekaterinburg for a couple of days on her way back east. All of them are very nice, and crucially, after an incident in Napoleon Hostel, Moscow in which I came very close to murdering a hapless sleep disturber named Marcus, not one of them snored.
Anyway, on leaving the train we were supposed to take the tram to the hostel but this proved to be significantly more difficult than we anticipated. Firstly, we could not for the life of us figure out where to buy tram tickets – although the little office was staffed, the curtain was down and my repeated entreaties of ‘dobry vyecher’ were met with the unhelpful response of the cloaked official turning the light in the booth off. We decided to ask the surrounding passengers, but the first person I asked (the Russian is getting a little better) directed me back to the station, and the second person at said station directed me straight back to the tram stop. We eventually decided to get the tram and risk another fine courtesy of mean Commie-era officials, but then said tram decided not to turn up for half an hour, during which Katie’s feet began to freeze. Discarding the possibility of a taxi after the driver we asked quoted us an astronomical fee, we thus decided to walk the two miles; Katie with her backpack and me with my big fat red case, which whilst enabling me to pack my computer and have enough clothes to live for six months in China, is not designed to be wheeled around a snow-covered city in the middle of winter.
The walk seemed to take an age; the wheels of my case got completely stuck in the snow and refused to turn, meaning that I was essentially dragging a 25-30 kilo weight for about two miles. The situation was not helped by Katie singing ‘the wheels on the bag go round and round.’ Then again, she didn’t do too well either – not being particularly good at remaining upright at the best of times and hampered further by the combination of heavy bag and slippy ice, she managed two complete wipeouts in two miles. One looked horrid and both myself and some Russian women standing outside the philharmonia feared she’d broken herself, but fortunately she was okay apart from a bruised knee, so the trudge continued with us nearing giggling hysterics.
(A cool ice wall with graffiti we saw along the way)
Fortunately, once we finally found the hostel (by this time it was way after 10pm), it was worth it. Called ‘Meeting Point,’ the hostel has only been operational since the beginning of January, and is quite unlike anywhere else I’ve ever stayed. It’s been opened by Katia, a young Russian who having travelled abroad herself and stayed in backpackers’ hostels, decided to quit her job last year and turn an old apartment owed by her family into the third hostel in Ekaterinburg. Although the hostel is at the moment mostly airbeds in an apartment, Katia’s put in internet, and provides free tea, coffee, breakfast etc. She’s also incredibly friendly and welcoming with excellent English, and is still so excited about having hostel guests that she keeps coming round to chat and caters to your every need. We’ve had a really nice couple of days exploring Ekaterinburg and just chilling out in what essentially feels like your own flat. There’s some amazing old Soviet furniture here that would probably be worth a fair bit back home, and Ekaterinburg itself just feels like a nice, relaxed place to be. Given that there are only two other hostels in Ekaterinburg, I think Katia’s new business will do well – she’s got herself on all the internet hostel list sites and we’re all going to write nice reviews about her to entice the travellers here.
(An amazing Soviet lamp in Katia's hostel)
Although the hostel is very new, it’s already busy; in addition to Katie and I on the first night there were Natasha, Christina and Emerald (three English friends on a pre-university gap year), and Sophia, a German economics undergraduate who volunteered to be an exchange student and was unfortunate enough to be reluctantly sent to Tomsk, Siberia. She had spent her three week winter break in Moscow as a refuge from the -48 C temperatures in her temporary home town, and was stopping in Ekaterinburg for a couple of days on her way back east. All of them are very nice, and crucially, after an incident in Napoleon Hostel, Moscow in which I came very close to murdering a hapless sleep disturber named Marcus, not one of them snored.
A Cautionary Note on the Perils of Drinking Vodka With Russians
At some point between Vladimir and Nizhny Novgorod, Katie and I decided to go and explore the train and to try and see what the quality of the food was like in the restaurant car. Walking down through the endless carriages we were stopped in surprise by a young gingerish bloke who heard us squealing nonsensically in English. This ginger fellow turned out to be Mike, a British former soldier and current wanderer who, strangely enough, had done his TEFL course with Oxford TEFL in Barcelona last year. After initial discussion of travel plans, unknown language journals and learner profiles, the three of us ventured down to the café car, where we made friends with the staff - two brothers from Irkutsk named Sergei and Alexei and a girl named Anna. Through a combination of bad Russian, mime and drawings, we managed to hold a conversation, and were then of course introduced to the most Russian of all customs; that of downing alarming amounts of vodka. Now, a single shot in Britain (and most other places) is 25ml, but a single shot in Russia is at least the equivalent of an English double. As we downed them in the traditional Russian fashion, Sergei kept bringing more (all for free), and despite our protests of ‘nyet, nyet,’ it was not really possible to refuse. The following picture shows the result of too much vodka:
Fortunately we eventually did manage to convince Sergei that we really didn’t need any more vdka, and so whilst we were fairly drunk fortunately Katie and I weren’t hung over in the morning (though we do have the accolade of being harder drinkers than a former soldier as Mike didn’t emerge until quite late the next morning). Being hung over on a hot, moving train is not an experience I’m keen to have – I’ve been hung over on a plane and that was truly horrible. Anyway, Katie now also has an admirer in the form of young Alexei, who despite being only 22 is lacking quite a few teeth (vodka is bad, kids), but who hopes that Katie can be prevailed upon to move to Irkutsk and have little Siberian babies. I fear he may be disappointed, but one never knows…..
Fortunately we eventually did manage to convince Sergei that we really didn’t need any more vdka, and so whilst we were fairly drunk fortunately Katie and I weren’t hung over in the morning (though we do have the accolade of being harder drinkers than a former soldier as Mike didn’t emerge until quite late the next morning). Being hung over on a hot, moving train is not an experience I’m keen to have – I’ve been hung over on a plane and that was truly horrible. Anyway, Katie now also has an admirer in the form of young Alexei, who despite being only 22 is lacking quite a few teeth (vodka is bad, kids), but who hopes that Katie can be prevailed upon to move to Irkutsk and have little Siberian babies. I fear he may be disappointed, but one never knows…..
Moscow - Ekaterinburg
The one task we had to accomplish in Moscow was seemingly simple: to pick up our train tickets from Real Russia's office. It of course turned out, however, to be a bit of an odyssey; having misunderstood the address, we ended up spending about 2 hours wandering round a random Moscow suburb in an attempt to find a building that did not exist. Getting out of the centre and into one of what I imagine neighbourhoods full of Communist tower blocks was interesting, but by the time we realised what our mistake had been we'd grown rather tired of Novoaleksandreevskaya Street and its environs. This, however, is what most of the real, non-touristy Moscow looks like:
Anyway, we did eventually manage to take possession of our grand-looking trans-Siberian railway tickets. They have little golden trains on them and are very pretty, which makes me quite excited. And so, tickets in hand, we boarded the train at Moscow Kazanskaya station on Tuesday afternoon. The first leg of our proper trans-Siberian journey was from Moscow to Ekaterinburg, a journey of about 26 hours through the traditional European centre of the Russian nation.
Each compartment in second class houses four people, and we were sharing with a very nice Russian chemistry professor who now works in the Netherlands but was heading back to Ekaterinburg to visit his parents. He spoke excellent English, which meant that we could have an interesting conversation that included more than the very limited phrases I have picked up from my 1991 Soviet era phrasebook (lovingly adopted from Haringey library). Our other companion rotated as the journey went on; when we woke up in the morning, the young man with terrible gelled hair who had initially been in the fourth berth had been replaced by an elderly gentleman with a wonderful briefcase and fur hat combo that made him look straight out of the fifties. He departed at Perm, and was replaced by Olga, a bubbly lady who I used my limited Russian to hold a basic conversation with and who gave us what might have been the nicest pear I have ever had.
Although this journey did not take us into Siberia, western Russia still looks pretty winter-tastic - everything is covered in snow and there are rows and rows of little dachas where Russians retire to escape from the city and pick berries. There were, of course, also some interesting commie factories and industrial cities, but for the majority of the journey the landscape was enticingly pretty, with. Although we spent a lot of time talking to our cabin-mates and most of the evening in the restaurant car (see next post), it was easy to kill time just looking out of the window at the winter wonderland outside. None of the Ukrainian slush here. Unfortunately fact that the train was moving and that there was quite a bit of dirt on the windows mean that the pictures don’t fully capture the landscape, but hopefully these will give with some indication of how pretty it is.
Anyway, we did eventually manage to take possession of our grand-looking trans-Siberian railway tickets. They have little golden trains on them and are very pretty, which makes me quite excited. And so, tickets in hand, we boarded the train at Moscow Kazanskaya station on Tuesday afternoon. The first leg of our proper trans-Siberian journey was from Moscow to Ekaterinburg, a journey of about 26 hours through the traditional European centre of the Russian nation.
Each compartment in second class houses four people, and we were sharing with a very nice Russian chemistry professor who now works in the Netherlands but was heading back to Ekaterinburg to visit his parents. He spoke excellent English, which meant that we could have an interesting conversation that included more than the very limited phrases I have picked up from my 1991 Soviet era phrasebook (lovingly adopted from Haringey library). Our other companion rotated as the journey went on; when we woke up in the morning, the young man with terrible gelled hair who had initially been in the fourth berth had been replaced by an elderly gentleman with a wonderful briefcase and fur hat combo that made him look straight out of the fifties. He departed at Perm, and was replaced by Olga, a bubbly lady who I used my limited Russian to hold a basic conversation with and who gave us what might have been the nicest pear I have ever had.
Although this journey did not take us into Siberia, western Russia still looks pretty winter-tastic - everything is covered in snow and there are rows and rows of little dachas where Russians retire to escape from the city and pick berries. There were, of course, also some interesting commie factories and industrial cities, but for the majority of the journey the landscape was enticingly pretty, with. Although we spent a lot of time talking to our cabin-mates and most of the evening in the restaurant car (see next post), it was easy to kill time just looking out of the window at the winter wonderland outside. None of the Ukrainian slush here. Unfortunately fact that the train was moving and that there was quite a bit of dirt on the windows mean that the pictures don’t fully capture the landscape, but hopefully these will give with some indication of how pretty it is.
Graveyard of the Fallen (plus a cat)
(This picture has nothing to do with the post, it's just here because I like it).
Having tried and failed to get into the Kremlin (owing to, we later discovered, a failure to find the entrance), we ended up going on a long and chilly wander down the Moskva River to Gorky Park, the largest and most famous of Moscow’s outdoor spaces. For once, we had a goal, which was the sculpture park outside the modern art museum, which now houses a bizarre ‘graveyard’ of all the Communist statues that Russia didn’t quite know what to do with after 1992. The seldom-visited park was covered in knee-deep snow and as we visited at twilight, the place had quite an eerie air, with dead Communist heroes (with the obligatory strong jaws and best-fist forward poses) peeking out from behind skinny little trees.
As you can see in the following picture, I managed to befriend one particular statue (no idea who this dude is – we think from his pensive pose that he might be a poet or a writer rather than a politician), and also a cat. Lord knows where this cat appeared from or why it was wondering round a sculpture park, but it was very sweet and quite happy to sit on my knee while we took the pictures. Don’t you think we make the perfect little Communist family?
Basil the Simpleton
Once we got to Moscow, we checked into the hostel, and then wandered down to Red Square, where the first thing we did was to explore St Basil's Cathedral. St Basil’s is, as cathedrals go, absolutely crackers. It is in reality far smaller than it appears in the photographs, and looks as if it is made essentially out of lathe and plaster (or gingerbread) and belongs in some Russian-themed of Disneyland. I’m sure the fact that it has existed for 450 years indicates that it was well constructed, but to see it one just gets the impression that Ivan the Terrible, the rather unpleasant first Russian Tsar who commissioned the thing, was on some really strong hallucinogenic drugs. For some reason the cathedral was named after a sixteenth century oddball called Basil the Simpleton, who spent his days wandering around Moscow as a generally idiotic hermit. That seems to me appropriate given the general slightly insane feel of the place.
Inside, of course, the cathedral is blinged out to the max; every wall is painted, every altar is covered in gold, every corner is stuffed with icons. Visually Russian Orthodox Christianity is basically Catholicism writ large; more candles, more incense, compulsory long, Rasputin-like beards for priests, and never-ending services that mostly consist of the priest chanting whilst a revolving congregation bow their heads and make the sign of the cross at every available opportunity. Whilst the church was heavily restricted in its operations during the Communist period, since 1991 it has made something of a comeback; although plenty of Russians still aren't keen, others are re-embracing orthodoxy. I of course have bought a couple of the tackiest icons available - it would seem a shame to go to these places and not come back with a couple of lovely Mary and 'Old Man Baby' pictures.
Russian Guards...
Now, about 50% of the times that we’ve mentioned that we’re going by train through Russia, the first thing somebody has said has related to Russian border guards, who appear to be known and feared worldwide. This seems to be with good reason; apparently a recent study revealed that 60% of Russian border guards are mentally unstable and should not be trusted in command of weapons (said study was commissioned after a couple of unfortunate incidents in which deranged border guards went on shooting sprees and killed their colleagues).
Given this reputation, and given that my previous encounters with border personnel across the world have rarely been entirely pleasant, we expected that our meeting with the Russians would be nothing if not memorable. Alas, we were to be disappointed. Perhaps since the publication of said study the recruitment policy has been changed (i.e. they are not recruiting from category A prisons), for the guards that came on the train were all very young and not very threatening at all. The guard who came into our carriage was a woman not much more than my age, who was the possessor of an imposing fur hat but did not appear to be at all psychotic, mentally unbalanced, or trigger-happy. She even smiled at us, and there was never any talk of a fine. Perhaps the Russia-Mongolia border will furnish us with better stories but for now I unfortunately have no interesting/scary Russian guard stories to report. We did get another stamp though, which always makes me unreasonably happy.
Kelly also enquired about drug mule bunkmates. Again, sorry to disappoint, but our cabin mate going across the Russian border was a Ukrainian babushka who I very much doubt had a secret career as a heroin trader. She did supply us with lots and lots of food which may, I suppose, have contained barbiturates or something, but of all the people I’ve ever met on my travels she didn’t immediately strike me as one of the more dodgy. She was about 65 and was going to visit her son in Moscow, which didn’t strike me as suspicious either, but then again, she could have been a Ukrainian spy en route to crack the secrets of the Kremlin. Maybe.
Given this reputation, and given that my previous encounters with border personnel across the world have rarely been entirely pleasant, we expected that our meeting with the Russians would be nothing if not memorable. Alas, we were to be disappointed. Perhaps since the publication of said study the recruitment policy has been changed (i.e. they are not recruiting from category A prisons), for the guards that came on the train were all very young and not very threatening at all. The guard who came into our carriage was a woman not much more than my age, who was the possessor of an imposing fur hat but did not appear to be at all psychotic, mentally unbalanced, or trigger-happy. She even smiled at us, and there was never any talk of a fine. Perhaps the Russia-Mongolia border will furnish us with better stories but for now I unfortunately have no interesting/scary Russian guard stories to report. We did get another stamp though, which always makes me unreasonably happy.
Kelly also enquired about drug mule bunkmates. Again, sorry to disappoint, but our cabin mate going across the Russian border was a Ukrainian babushka who I very much doubt had a secret career as a heroin trader. She did supply us with lots and lots of food which may, I suppose, have contained barbiturates or something, but of all the people I’ve ever met on my travels she didn’t immediately strike me as one of the more dodgy. She was about 65 and was going to visit her son in Moscow, which didn’t strike me as suspicious either, but then again, she could have been a Ukrainian spy en route to crack the secrets of the Kremlin. Maybe.
Concrete Rainbows and Beautiful Views
After our 36 hour trundle through the flat, grey and rather unlovely landscape of eastern Poland and western Ukraine, we woke up to find ourselves finally approaching the city of Kiev. To save on a night’s accommodation, we’d decided to take the train to Moscow that evening, and thus we had about ten hours to kill wandering around the Ukrainian capital. After booking our tickets and putting our luggage safely in lockers, we headed off naively in search of the centre and/or the grand cathedral that was pictured in gaudy blue and yellow posters throughout the rather grand train station. Given that we had no guidebook, not a single word of Ukrainian at our disposal and absolutely no knowledge about Kiev, this was a rather questionable strategy, and initially we found ourselves wandering down backstreets and then through a bustling market in which the products for sale included plastic bags from famed western ‘designers’ such as Marks and Spencers and Peacocks, which if you are a fashion conscious but poor Ukrainian can be yours for the princely sum of 10p.
After much confusion, we did finally find the centre, although the cathedral continued to elude us - despite ten hours of wandering all around the city centre, we never laid eyes on it. I have now come to the conclusion that said cathedral might actually be in Lviv. Anyway, after eating what turned out to be a really delicious lunch of veal with ceps and tomato sauce (much appreciated after two days of living on bread and apples), we meandered around aimlessly for the next eight hours.
‘Faded’ would be a fair description of Kiev; seventy years of socialism have evidently left quite a deep visual impact on the city, which still has a rather ‘back in the USSR’ vibe. Unlike Prague - which having been largely spared from the twin scourges of wartime destruction and post-war reconstruction has quickly returned to its art nouveau, Habsburgian best - Kiev looks just as one imagines an eastern bloc city to look; gloomy, grey and, well, a bit shit. There are some wonderful nineteenth century and art deco buildings, but with few exceptions they are falling apart, with paint peeling off the windows and graffiti adorning the walls. And then there are lots of the brutalist blocks so beloved of sixties town planners, most of which appear to be in various stages of decay. The aura of depression was also heightened by the fact that the city was cloaked in a thick, grey fog; we climbed the hill that advertised itself as a viewpoint over the city only to find that the viewpoint furnished us with only a beautiful view of Ukrainian fog. All was not lost, however, for the park was also home to some other Kievan curiosities. The first was an alarmingly large number of wedding parties; car after car was blinged up with crepe paper and ‘Anya loves Sergei’ number plates, and most of these cars seemed to house brides, who were wandering around in the grey slush in strapless, snow white wedding gowns. The second was a big fat rainbow, lovingly rendered in concrete by some enthusiastic party architect. Unlike Prague, which quickly tore down all of its Communist monuments (Stalin was replaced with a giant neon metronome) Kiev seems to be in no hurry to pull down the Soviet statues. Perhaps they can’t afford to, or can’t decide what they would build instead, for there is certainly no love lost between Ukrainians and Russians and little evident nostalgia for the USSR. Fittingly, however, the rainbow is now situated next to an endearingly crap bright blue dodgem rink, on which two slow, sad dodgems were knocking forlornly into the wall as the radio pumped out tinny American pop. It was basically post-socialism crammed into a single scene.
All in all, the blue and yellow ‘We love Ukraine’ banners that were bedecked all around the city seemed to be more of an aspiration that a reality, for Kiev today is certainly looking a little sad. Despite this, it was a place that was surprisingly easy to feel fond of, and not merely in the ‘so rubbish it’s good’ sense. The city has not only a faded grandeur, but a visible defiant pride in its relatively new independence. This was shown by the fate of the historic 11th century monastery St Michael’s (which dates from the period when Kiev was the capital of the first identifiably Russian nation, Kievan Rus). The monastery was torn down in the 1930s by the USSR, a fact which clearly enraged the sensibilities of Ukrainians (after all, Russia got to keep most of its historic churches intact). Upon independence in 1992, the new government decided that the only possible solution was to rebuild the monastery exactly as it was when it was demolished. Work was finished in 2002, so the St Michael’s Monastery that stands today, despite looking like its existed for centuries, is actually only six years old.
Sticking it straight back up again like it had never been away shows a certain moxie, as does Ukraine's general attitude towards their Russian neighbours. The recent gas issue gave rise to the following - amazing - poster, in which the newspaper Glavred gives the Prime Minister, Yulia Tymoshenko (who isn't getting along so well with her erstwhile ally, President Yushchenko), credit for getting the gas supplies restored:
It is a very interesting time to visit Kiev, as I imagine that in another ten or fifteen years the city will look quite different from today. Clearly change is on the horizon, although the pace is being restricted both by the fact that the country has been bankrupted by the economic crises (and has had a few difficulties in remembering to pay its gas bills) and by Russia’s continuing belief that the Ukraine belongs to it. Ukraine, however, is certainly defiant, so who knows what the future will bring. Probably more political squabbling and arguing with the Russians, actually. Anyway, despite being a bit rubbish, I actually quite liked Kiev (mainly because I felt a bit sorry for it), and I definitely wish it well.
After much confusion, we did finally find the centre, although the cathedral continued to elude us - despite ten hours of wandering all around the city centre, we never laid eyes on it. I have now come to the conclusion that said cathedral might actually be in Lviv. Anyway, after eating what turned out to be a really delicious lunch of veal with ceps and tomato sauce (much appreciated after two days of living on bread and apples), we meandered around aimlessly for the next eight hours.
‘Faded’ would be a fair description of Kiev; seventy years of socialism have evidently left quite a deep visual impact on the city, which still has a rather ‘back in the USSR’ vibe. Unlike Prague - which having been largely spared from the twin scourges of wartime destruction and post-war reconstruction has quickly returned to its art nouveau, Habsburgian best - Kiev looks just as one imagines an eastern bloc city to look; gloomy, grey and, well, a bit shit. There are some wonderful nineteenth century and art deco buildings, but with few exceptions they are falling apart, with paint peeling off the windows and graffiti adorning the walls. And then there are lots of the brutalist blocks so beloved of sixties town planners, most of which appear to be in various stages of decay. The aura of depression was also heightened by the fact that the city was cloaked in a thick, grey fog; we climbed the hill that advertised itself as a viewpoint over the city only to find that the viewpoint furnished us with only a beautiful view of Ukrainian fog. All was not lost, however, for the park was also home to some other Kievan curiosities. The first was an alarmingly large number of wedding parties; car after car was blinged up with crepe paper and ‘Anya loves Sergei’ number plates, and most of these cars seemed to house brides, who were wandering around in the grey slush in strapless, snow white wedding gowns. The second was a big fat rainbow, lovingly rendered in concrete by some enthusiastic party architect. Unlike Prague, which quickly tore down all of its Communist monuments (Stalin was replaced with a giant neon metronome) Kiev seems to be in no hurry to pull down the Soviet statues. Perhaps they can’t afford to, or can’t decide what they would build instead, for there is certainly no love lost between Ukrainians and Russians and little evident nostalgia for the USSR. Fittingly, however, the rainbow is now situated next to an endearingly crap bright blue dodgem rink, on which two slow, sad dodgems were knocking forlornly into the wall as the radio pumped out tinny American pop. It was basically post-socialism crammed into a single scene.
All in all, the blue and yellow ‘We love Ukraine’ banners that were bedecked all around the city seemed to be more of an aspiration that a reality, for Kiev today is certainly looking a little sad. Despite this, it was a place that was surprisingly easy to feel fond of, and not merely in the ‘so rubbish it’s good’ sense. The city has not only a faded grandeur, but a visible defiant pride in its relatively new independence. This was shown by the fate of the historic 11th century monastery St Michael’s (which dates from the period when Kiev was the capital of the first identifiably Russian nation, Kievan Rus). The monastery was torn down in the 1930s by the USSR, a fact which clearly enraged the sensibilities of Ukrainians (after all, Russia got to keep most of its historic churches intact). Upon independence in 1992, the new government decided that the only possible solution was to rebuild the monastery exactly as it was when it was demolished. Work was finished in 2002, so the St Michael’s Monastery that stands today, despite looking like its existed for centuries, is actually only six years old.
Sticking it straight back up again like it had never been away shows a certain moxie, as does Ukraine's general attitude towards their Russian neighbours. The recent gas issue gave rise to the following - amazing - poster, in which the newspaper Glavred gives the Prime Minister, Yulia Tymoshenko (who isn't getting along so well with her erstwhile ally, President Yushchenko), credit for getting the gas supplies restored:
It is a very interesting time to visit Kiev, as I imagine that in another ten or fifteen years the city will look quite different from today. Clearly change is on the horizon, although the pace is being restricted both by the fact that the country has been bankrupted by the economic crises (and has had a few difficulties in remembering to pay its gas bills) and by Russia’s continuing belief that the Ukraine belongs to it. Ukraine, however, is certainly defiant, so who knows what the future will bring. Probably more political squabbling and arguing with the Russians, actually. Anyway, despite being a bit rubbish, I actually quite liked Kiev (mainly because I felt a bit sorry for it), and I definitely wish it well.
Thursday 12 February 2009
Craphole Glowny
Well, after having been a bad blogger who chose drinking over writing, I now have to bore everybody by posting multiple entries at once. If nothing else, they will remind me in the future about what I did during this trip other than look at snow, wander round churches and drink inadvisable amounts of vodka. I'm now in Ekaterinburg, but rather than writing about this place now I'll start at the very beginning with our trip from Prague to Kiev last Thursday/Friday. As I can't connect my laptop to the internet at the moment these posts will be pictureless for now - I'll add pics as soon as the opportunity presents itself.
Anyway, we had initially planned to get the bus from Prague to Kiev, but after a fruitless and particularly frustrating afternoon in Prague spent vainly wandering between the bus station and an impossibly well-hidden bus company office (in the course of which I nearly ended up stranded on the motorway), this plan appeared increasingly implausible. In eastern Europe, it pays to know that just because badly translated transport company websites say that there are services, this does not actually mean that these services ever actually operate or that they have existed in any form since about 1993. I unfortunately did not know this fact, and in a resulting fit of pique decided to book the train, despite the fact that it was both longer and more expensive than the bus. It was thus, on Thursday, that we said our goodbyes to Prague and departed via Kiev en route to Moscow. The diversion via Kiev was necessitated by the fact that Belarus, which is the most direct route between Prague and Moscow, is a mean country that charges British citizens the princely sum of 65 quid just to pass through its borders. As even Americans pay less than us, it would appear that as a nation we have done something to piss off the Belorussian government. Given that it is the only remaining authoritarian government left in Europe, I can live with that.
The 36 hour journey to Kiev was largely uneventful; although we were booked into a three person cabin the train was almost empty, so Katie and I had the cabin to ourselves and no Ukrainians to bond with.As the journey involved two nights, the time passed relatively quickly, with the exception of our soujourn in Krakow Glowny station, where the train spends a scheduled seven hours shunting around in the sidings. Given that they don't change that gauges (this is all done later, in another enjoyable three hour stop at Prezmysl on the Polish-Ukranian border), and that nobody can get on or off, the purpose of this diversion other than to thoroughly bore the passengers remains entirely unclear. Those seven hours were long and dull, and although I'm sure Krakow is as lovely as it's rumoured to be, from our vantage point in the sidings of Krakow Glowny station it thoroughly deserved its new official name of Craphole. By this stage we were also running out of food; having incorrectly anticipatedthat the train would have a restaurant car and that we could get off and restock at Krakow, we had boarded the train with only some stale bread (stolen from Cafe Louvre), two apples each, a packet of crisps and, in my case, a little lollipop shaped like an elephant. It was thus with empty stomachs and sad faces that we trundled slowly across the foggy plains of eastern Poland. The landscape was generally flat, sad and unlovable, and we came to the conclusion that eastern Poland would not be the ideal place for a winter break. As night fell, we passed (slowly and painfully) into Ukraine, where we officially left the EU's loving embrace and collected our first, bright orange, passport stamp.
Anyway, we had initially planned to get the bus from Prague to Kiev, but after a fruitless and particularly frustrating afternoon in Prague spent vainly wandering between the bus station and an impossibly well-hidden bus company office (in the course of which I nearly ended up stranded on the motorway), this plan appeared increasingly implausible. In eastern Europe, it pays to know that just because badly translated transport company websites say that there are services, this does not actually mean that these services ever actually operate or that they have existed in any form since about 1993. I unfortunately did not know this fact, and in a resulting fit of pique decided to book the train, despite the fact that it was both longer and more expensive than the bus. It was thus, on Thursday, that we said our goodbyes to Prague and departed via Kiev en route to Moscow. The diversion via Kiev was necessitated by the fact that Belarus, which is the most direct route between Prague and Moscow, is a mean country that charges British citizens the princely sum of 65 quid just to pass through its borders. As even Americans pay less than us, it would appear that as a nation we have done something to piss off the Belorussian government. Given that it is the only remaining authoritarian government left in Europe, I can live with that.
The 36 hour journey to Kiev was largely uneventful; although we were booked into a three person cabin the train was almost empty, so Katie and I had the cabin to ourselves and no Ukrainians to bond with.As the journey involved two nights, the time passed relatively quickly, with the exception of our soujourn in Krakow Glowny station, where the train spends a scheduled seven hours shunting around in the sidings. Given that they don't change that gauges (this is all done later, in another enjoyable three hour stop at Prezmysl on the Polish-Ukranian border), and that nobody can get on or off, the purpose of this diversion other than to thoroughly bore the passengers remains entirely unclear. Those seven hours were long and dull, and although I'm sure Krakow is as lovely as it's rumoured to be, from our vantage point in the sidings of Krakow Glowny station it thoroughly deserved its new official name of Craphole. By this stage we were also running out of food; having incorrectly anticipatedthat the train would have a restaurant car and that we could get off and restock at Krakow, we had boarded the train with only some stale bread (stolen from Cafe Louvre), two apples each, a packet of crisps and, in my case, a little lollipop shaped like an elephant. It was thus with empty stomachs and sad faces that we trundled slowly across the foggy plains of eastern Poland. The landscape was generally flat, sad and unlovable, and we came to the conclusion that eastern Poland would not be the ideal place for a winter break. As night fell, we passed (slowly and painfully) into Ukraine, where we officially left the EU's loving embrace and collected our first, bright orange, passport stamp.
Monday 9 February 2009
Bad Blogger
Apologies for the lack of updates in recent days - I was going to blog late last night, but events got the better of me, and I instead spent the wee hours drinking beer in the hostel and discussing Hindu temples with some Indian-Malaysian doctors. The posts I was writing thus somehow never quite got finished...
Anyway, today we're leaving Moscow on the first stage of our trans-Siberian voyage. We'll reach Yekaterinburg tomorrow and then on Friday it's off to freeze our arses off in Irkutsk, where Saturday's temperature is forecast to be a balmy -30 C. Aisch.
We've had a great time in Kiev and Moscow and I'll use some of the many forthcoming hours train time to write about it before I forget it all - tales of Ukranian babushkas, concrete rainbows, Communist cats, and Lenin's embalmed corpse to come....
Anyway, today we're leaving Moscow on the first stage of our trans-Siberian voyage. We'll reach Yekaterinburg tomorrow and then on Friday it's off to freeze our arses off in Irkutsk, where Saturday's temperature is forecast to be a balmy -30 C. Aisch.
We've had a great time in Kiev and Moscow and I'll use some of the many forthcoming hours train time to write about it before I forget it all - tales of Ukranian babushkas, concrete rainbows, Communist cats, and Lenin's embalmed corpse to come....
Wednesday 4 February 2009
Nashledanou Praha (Defenestration Nation).
First of all, credit goes to Jon for my new blog header, which is very lovely and makes the blog look oh-so much cooler. I am still disappointed that he didn't come up with the GIF-tastic, WordArted, hideously tacky version that he promised, but this certainly goes someway to make up for the Gunther-torture. I've put a link to Jon's design blog so anyone who's interested can check out his designs and tees.
Anyway, this morning we've had our interview with Nancy, the orange-haired Trinity moderator, so as of tomorrow we should (hopefully) be fully TEFL-qualified and free to teach our wonderful language to curious kidlets and grownups across the globe. Which means, of course, that it's time to leave Prague and continue our journey eastwards; this evening we're off on a 36-hour jaunt to Kiev and from there it's pretty much straight to Moscow, which is where I imagine I'll next be able to update on our progress. Time to crack open the Russian book, buy some cigarettes to use to 'befriend' guards and border officials (apparently this generally works a treat), and brace ourselves for the cold.
It's all very exciting, but at the same time I shall be sad to say goodbye to Prague, a city where I have spent a very happy month and where I could very easily live and grow fat. I shall miss the cake, the goulash and dumplings, all the lovely folk at Oxford TEFL, the cheap beer, the snow, golem statues, Konvikt pub, the mulled wine and potato pancakes in Old Town Square, the wonderful buildings, and, of course, the spirit of dear, departed Rudolf. And lots of other stuff that I have momentarily forgotten. Excluding the busted orange lamp in my room that insists on falling on the floor all the time and the thoroughly repugnant tram inspector who fined me 700 Kc for having mistakenly double stamped my ticket (a huge, completely unreasonable woman who probably once enjoyed life as a minor Communist official), there has really been nothing unpleasant about my time here.
Prague has many claims to fame, both of the price of beer = very low and the lots of important stuff happened here varieties, but I think that one particulary Prague fact I discovered last week is quite special and worthy of sharing before I leave. It was in this city that the wonderful verb to defenestrate was coined, for the Czechs have a long and venerable history of killing people (generally public officials, members of the town council or irritating clerics) they dislike by simply chucking them out of windows. The town council got the push en masse in 1419, and then in 1618 it was the turn of two Habsburg imperial governors to discover the power of gravity, although the latter managed to survive by landing on a steaming pile of manure. There have been incidents of defenestration as late as 1948, meaning that the country deserves the moniker of Defenestration Nation that I have bestowed on it. I am aware that this sounds like a terrible 90s Europop hit, and am indeed trying to come up with a ditty worthy of the title. You are very lucky this blog doesn't have sound....
Digression over, sorry. Anyway, for now it's goodbye to Defenestration Nation and off to the land of vodka, fur hats, frozen lakes and CCCP tat. I have rubbed the supposedly lucky statue of St. Jan Nepomucky pictured above (this guy avoided defenestration by instead being thrown off the Charles Bridge), which apparently means that I shall one day return to Prague. I certainly hope that's true, as this city agrees with me, but for the time being it's nashledanou and thanks for all the beer!
Sunday 1 February 2009
A War on Trees
Having now spent four weeks in Prague, I feel like I know the place fairly well - not only am I no longer lost in the streets of Stare Mesto, but I can even tell my knihkupectvi (bookshop) from my kadeřnictvi (hairdressers), vaguely understand menus in Czech, and recommend nice restaurants and bars to perplexed tourists. I must admit, however, that there are still things that still have me a little mystified, and foremost among them is the question of what the police in Prague are actually paid to do.
Before I start, I must admit that compared to some of the other police I've encountered around the world, the Prague force are shining beacons of competence and moral rectitude. When I was doing my Spanish course in San Andreas, Guatemala, the balcony of the police station was everyday filled with about 20 fat drunkards who spent their day leering at girls, and despite this rather sizeable crime-fighting force for a large village, every day you'd hear people discussing last night's tally of murders and shootings. In Kenya, the police basically operate as a bribing racket - once you've paid your way into the force, you can spend your days at the side of the road happily accepting bribes from matatu drivers to 'overlook' the fact that they are driving hideously overloaded death-traps apt to crash at any moment.
I should not, thus, complain, but what does confuse me particularly about the Prague police is the fact that their job seems to primarily consist of wrapping inanimate objects in police tape. Real criminals don't seem to bother them unduly; there is a drug dealer, for example, who every night you can find on the same street just off Old Town Square. He is not a particularly discreet drug dealer, his general greeting invariably being 'drugs? You want some drugs?' Nor is he particularly fearsome, being around 5'4" and having the physique of a limp stick of celery. This rubbish drug dealer, however, is allowed to operate unimpeded, for the police are far too busy dealing with the scourges of misbehaving chairs and left over Christmas trees.
Our apartment is opposite a police station, and for three weeks there lay on the pavement outside a growing pile of broken chairs, all lovingly wrapped up in police tape. This confused us; were they saving a parking space? Had the chairs misbehaved in some way? Were the police just really, really bored? The chairs are evidently benign, however, compared to the threat posed by another type of evil object: Christmas trees. A few days ago we were walking across Namesti Republiky - a big square near to where we live - when we saw about three police vans show up and stop at the side of the road. One even had its sirens on. Thinking, naively, that the police were doing standard police-type things such as catching criminals, we continued on our way. When we walked back through the square half an hour later, however, all that was left of their presence was a poor, abandoned Christmas tree, left in the middle of the tram lines and covered in reams and reams of police tape.
People, I am at a loss. Has President Klaus become bored of the war on terror rhetoric and instead declared war on trees? Is there a war on wood and all objects made from it? Are the police just trying to use up their tape after an over-zealous clerk put in a bumper order? I have no clue whatsoever. Any suggestions, of course, are muchly welcomed, for I would hate to leave Prague without having solved this crime-fighting condundrum.
(Sadly I didn't have my camera with me when we came across the tree, so Slanty Santy, our fondly-remembered tree from this year, has had to substitute).
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