Tag Archives: Trans-Siberian

A Short Stay in Nizhny Novgorod

Continental divide? Totally anti-climactic. Just a quick blur of an obelisk saying Europe this way, Asia that way. But it meant that I’m back in the West, as much as Russia can be the West, and then my phone skipped back by two hours to put me in the Moscow time zone and I arrived in Nizhny Novgorod.

By now my stories of arriving in a new Russian city are either like a car crash (you just can’t look away from the drama: how oh how will she get lost this time? Stay tuned!) or funny. You tell me – I’m the one living through them and therefore no great judge. This time it was the fault of the hotel website, which told me the wrong bus number. Yes, it really wasn’t my fault for once.

Shortly after I found my bus (in the snow, might I add? First snow in Russia and I’m not even in Siberia anymore), it pulled into the terminus. I showed the driver the map I had printed out and he wrote down what bus I needed to take to get close to the hotel, then made me wait in the warm bus until my bus had pulled in and he’d talked to the other driver about the lost American girl. That driver and the conductor (a lady who sells the tickets) told me where to switch buses, made sure I got off at the right stop and crossed to the other bus stop, and even wrote out a note for me to give to the next conductor so that person could tell me at which stop to get off. I’m not sure what the note said – I think I’m going to keep it till I can get a Russian speaker to translate (“I’m a stupid lost tourist who needs to get off at the stop for the hotel Ibis and don’t speak a word of Russian. Can you help me?”). Whatever it was, it worked! Like Blanche Dubois, I always depend on the kindness of strangers. This time it worked out well. I might splurge and just have the hotel call me a taxi for my return this evening, though.

I got to the hotel before noon, pretty much exhausted. I munched on leftover Trans-Sib food (mmmm, Nutella) and watched most of the rest of The Lizzie Bennett Diaries on YouTube (great show). Then I figured I should use a couple of hours of daylight to explore a little bit of the city while the snow had lessened.

I walked out to the Bolshaya Pokrovskaya, a pedestrian shopping street lined with classic Russian 18th or 19th century architecture painted pale greens and blues and yellows. Bronze statues of people in 19th century dress dot the street – a shoe shiner, a lady with a parasol, a man on a bench. Even in snow, it’s charming, though I fear that some of the lovely facades are only that: facades. Looking at the sides of buildings, they’re not in as good repair.

The street ends at a big square in front of the Kremlin. (No, not that Kremlin. A kremlin is really just a word for fortress.) After going to the end of the square to look down at the view of the magnificent Volga, a huge river, I wandered back through one of the Kremlin’s imposing gates and explored inside and outside the ring wall. At that point my boot had leaked and it was snowing harder, so I headed back to the hotel, where I had beef stroganoff. You can’t not have beef stroganoff in Russia, right?

The weather was better yesterday, my only full day in Nizhny Novgorod, so I took full advantage of it and walked a lot. I headed out to try to find the Ostrog, a prison museum (this city having been used as a place of internal exile), and then looped back through a different part of the city to explore the Kremlin again more thoroughly. (No luck on the Ostrog, but it’s on the list for today.) This time I saw the church at the center, with the eternal flame and WWII monument behind it (again surrounded by cadets like in Irkutsk), and the amazing view down to the bottom of the Kremlin near the water. The Kremlin sits on a very steep hill, the walls circling the descent down to the Volga as well as part of the flatter top. One can imagine that if invaders managed to take the bottom of the Kremlin, they’d still have a hard time getting up to the heart of it as the defenders have the high ground.

The State Art Museum is in the complex, and is supposed to be one of the best regional collections of Russian art (about which I am profoundly ignorant), so I popped in for an hour. Russian museums (small ones, anyway) are very interesting: instead of guards in each room, they have babushkas who guide you about which rooms to enter in which sequence, often going ahead to open doors (in house museums where they have humidifiers going) and turn on lights. I’m guessing the Hermitage will be more like the western museums I’m used to – I’ll find out later this week! (I am so looking forward to St Petersburg! Seeing a great city and meeting up with a great friend from college.)

I saw a floor of Russian icons and then a bunch of 19th century Russian artists. I feel a little more knowledgeable now! On my way out, I stopped to buy some postcards and had a great chat (with a few words of English and a few words of Russian) with the lady selling them. She wanted to know where I was from, how long I was traveling for, whether I were married or had kids – the usual questions I’ve encountered from my nice older train companions. She also managed to tell me she had travelled to Marrakech. Then she saw a younger colleague whom she called over to speak more English and give me recommendations on what to see.

Following her recommendations, I took the road down to the bottom of the Kremlin and walked out onto another historic street, lined with 18th century houses and a church whose dome is covered in multi-colored tiles. (Somehow the word bijou comes to mind.) Then I had a relaxing lunch at an Italian cafe where I devoured some fresh vegetables (all this train travel has made me very happy to eat fresh food) and risotto and rested my poor weary feet. I must say, I love Russian “business lunch” specials. They usually run until 3 or 4 pm and provide 2 to 3 courses for $8-$15, the same price one dish usually costs at these restaurants. It’s great for the budget traveller. Since I ate lunch so late and there was a supermarket just down the street, I bought some picnic food to have dinner in my room.

I continued walking on the Embankment by the Volga, until I came to the immense Chlakov Staircase (closed for repairs over the winter). The Staircase goes from the banks of the river all the way up to the plaza in front of the (top part) of the Kremlin. At this point I was really tired, and the area was pretty empty of pedestrian traffic except for a few men taking smoking breaks by the river, so I decided I’d feel more comfortable in a more populated area. I headed back to the hotel, retracing my steps (and yes, that means climbing back up the steep road to the top of the Kremlin).

And now it’s today, Tuesday, and I have till this evening in the city and then it’s the overnight train to St Petersburg! Yay for less than 24 hours on the train! So I’m off to pack and hopefully mail some postcards.

Asia to Europe: Three More Days on the Trans-Sib

I got on the train, expecting another babushka speaking only Russian, and instead was pleasantly surprised to be with two women of around my age who both speak English. One is a geologist or a cartographer (or both) who stayed with us till Novosibirsk. The other is second mate on a sailing ship and is heading to St Petersburg. I have an invitation from her to come check out the ship next week!

We’ve had an enjoyable time chatting. The scenery hasn’t changed a great deal until the last hour or two, though currently we’ve passed from Siberia to the Urals region. There are fewer woods and more settlements, especially now as we will soon pull into Yekaterinburg. Shortly after that is the continental divide! I hope we see it – it sounds like it’s easy to miss.

And here’s an example of where Russians have been very nice and welcoming in personal interactions. When I unpacked my snacky food, we all had a good laugh at the fact that the dried fruit I’d bought was meant for the Russian drink “compote”. That would explain why I bit into a dried apricot and crunched through the pit. (I quietly disposed of the rest in the garbage.) My geologist friend popped her head back in after getting off at Novosibirsk and handed me two packages of dried fruit (meant for actual eating) – apparently she had called her father who was picking her up at the station and asked him to bring them. I’m not sure I understand the Russians and the contradictions of how they treat strangers.

Cartier on Karl Marx Street: Irkutsk

I had planned for four days in Irkutsk, hoping to spend some time on the famed Lake Baikal. As it turned out, early April is not a great time to go – the Circumbaikal train wasn’t running till the end of the month. I’m guessing early April means flooding on parts of the track as things thaw.

Oh well, my oasis was simply going to be even more restful. I spent the first day in full tourist mode, exploring the city, and was enchanted. The historic center looks much wealthier than that of Ulan Ude – the sidewalks were in decent repair and many 19th century buildings had gotten a recent coat of paint in the style of St Petersburg (classic facades in pastel colors).

I walked to the center square where the main government buildings are located, alongside a Polish neo-Gothic cathedral and a couple of lovely Russian Orthodox churches. Looking for an overpass over the road to the Angara River, I stumbled across the WWII monument and eternal flame, guarded by a bunch of young women (cadets of some kind?) in uniforms which included hair things that resembled nothing so much as white pom poms. As I watched, another group came high stepping around to replace the first. I managed to snap an unobtrusive pic.

After that minor diversion, I headed to the Angara. I found signs placed by the Irkutsk tourist office (the first such office I had encountered in Russia) suggesting a walking route around the city, which I more or less followed. This let me see a number of the wooden houses of the type I had seen in Ulan Ude, in rather worse repair (and sinking in parts) than the other buildings I had seen in the city. I exited this neighborhood onto the big, ritzy shopping street. Am I the only one who finds it ironic that this capitalist mecca is called Karl Marx Street?

I passed Bennetton and Columbia and continued on to find the Trubetskoy House Museum. The Trubetskoys were part of the Decembrist Revolution and as such, condemned to hard labor and then exile in Siberia. The house was much grander than I imagined, till I went through the museum and it put it in perspective: this house was built for one of their daughters during exile, after their miserable period of penal servitude. So it made sense that they would live aristocratically 20 years after arriving in Siberia.

The following day, I set out for the touristy little town of Listvyanka, on Lake Baikal. I took a mashrutka (minibus) to the bus station. Well, actually, to the stop after the bus station. The problem with minibuses is that you have to request stops, which presupposes 1. that you know where you’re going and 2. that you speak Russian. There were no buses pulled into the station so I missed my stop, luckily getting off not too far away when the next passenger got off.

I took a minibus to Listvyanka, about an hour ride through birch tree forest and up and down steep hills. It was lovely, and I got to see parts of town that I never would have seen on foot as we drove out of Irkutsk. There was a nice middle-class looking neighborhood by the airport with new apartment buildings but also areas of old decrepit wood houses that looked like shanty towns.

We arrived at the cold, windy, deserted Listvyanka. It was so quiet! I saw blocks of ice pushed up at the edge of the lake, some colored a clear pale blue. I saw some men carrying buckets of water from the lake, which is supposed to have pristine water away from specific areas of pollution (like the mouths of the rivers that flow past cities with polluting industry like in Ulan Ude).

I wandered a little into the village, but it was cold and deserted so I decided to get some food (pozhi – Buryat dumplings finally!) and then walk to the Baikal Museum. Turns out the Baikal Museum is about three or four kilometers away from where the minibus dropped me off. What is it with my remedial map reading skills on this trip? I swear, normally I don’t have problems reading maps!

Unfortunately the Baikal Museum signs are all in Russian, and the tour group that the museum lady wanted me to join was German (I guess all foreigners are the same?), so I didn’t get as much out of it as I would have wished. I did get to see the freshwater seals in the aquarium, however. They were such cute cylinders!

I do know that I would love to go back to Lake Baikal to actually go hiking at a better time of year.

I had two more days to fill, so I took it easy, buying knitting needles and supplies for the train, and drinking pots of tea. I bought the knitting needles in what I thought was a department store called TK, but which turned out to be almost an indoor market with many tiny stores. Luckily one of the ladies at the hotel knits, so she was able to tell me where to go.

Everything was lovely and relaxing till the very end, when I had an embarrassing trip to the post offfice and later a traumatic minibus ride back to the station.

I wanted to mail some items home so I wouldn’t have to carry them, so I went to the post office on Karl Marx street. The first person told me I needed to go around the corner to the other part of the office, so I did. There I got yelled at by the post office lady (who had an assistant sitting there doing nothing in timeless bureaucratic tradition) that I needed to go to the international post branch. (Word to the wise: just because I don’t speak Russian doesn’t mean I’m deaf or stupid, and shouting will not make me understand better. Writing out the address of where I should go might. Luckily the lady behind me in line translated for me.)

As for the minibus, it took a turn to the right instead of the left as I expected, I tried to ask for the train station, and the driver grunted in incomprehension and then ignored me. Almost in tears, I tried to ask other passengers if they spoke English, but nobody did and nobody was willing to try to help figure out what I wanted to say or where I wanted to go. Fortunately, we were just making a large loop and I got to the train station in one piece, but visions of being lost and trying to get an overpriced taxi in Russian had been dancing in my head. What is it with Russians not wanting to help with directions? Most Russians I’ve had personal interactions with (barring post office employees in Irkutsk) have been nice.

Ulan Ude to Irkutsk: Still in Eastern Siberia

My trip from Ulan Ude to Irkutsk was only about eight hours long, all daylight, going by Lake Baikal and what is probably the most scenic section of the entire trip.

I don’t know what it was – possibly the human contact that I’d enjoyed over the prior 24 hours – but pretty much everything went smoothly and I was back to enjoying my trip thoroughly.

My compartment- mate was again an older lady, one who seemed to be moving her household and a small garden. I walked in to see a host of green cuttings and various plants (I recognized the African violets!) on the table between the beds. It was lush and welcoming. Then I realized that there were also plants up in the upper bunk luggage compartment, along with bags there and under both her and my bunk. Luckily my backpack fit in the little remaining space.

This nice lady only spoke Russian, but unlike some of the others, she didn’t let this deter her, and she continued chatting away to me in Russian, some of which I understood.

She was doing embroidery and I noticed a lovely crocheted or knitted shawl on her bunk, so I asked her (trying to sign knitting) whether she had made it. She hadn’t, but she did show me her knitting project and then showed me photos of her other impressive projects. It was entertaining to see her scroll through photos, because she had to use the side of her finger due to her long artificial nails. Apparently Russian women take their nails seriously! (I heard it said that a Russian bride will match her groom’s tie to her nail polish.)

The scenery was gorgeous as advertised, especially once we got mountain scenery and not just the lake. Without the mountains, the lake is a white expanse of frozen water as far as the eye can see, not terribly exciting. Along the edge of lake were chunks of ice, some wrapped in a blanket of snow looking like little igloos. Then we hit the area with mountains and it was almost like being in Switzerland (though the mountains aren’t as tall). It was breathtaking. Unfortunately, after half an hour of staring at gorgeous mountains, I drifted off. (Remember, no guilt on this trip, and no sleep in hostels either.)

I arrived at the Irkutsk train station and easily found the bus one of the American students had mentioned. I took it for two stops, got off, and found my hotel right across the street. Finally, a painless arrival in a Russian city! I was staying at the Courtyard Marriott, and while in some ways I feel like a spoiled American (it could have been in any US city, no Russian atmosphere at all), I reveled in it. I had American style service (helpful, in English, with a smile), a large comfy bed, no roommates, and my own bathroom! Oh yes, and a toilet I could flush. After the train and the hostel, it was amazing to get good nights’ sleep for the four nights I was there.

Buddhism in Siberia: the Ivolginsky Datsan

I was awakened around 6 by a flurry of activity as a bunch of people came to the hostel and crashed. When I got up some time later, I found that two groups of young American college students who studied Russian in Irkutsk had arrived. Over breakfast, I had a great conversation about science and grad school with one of them who was excited to hear I had just left Madison as he is from Wisconsin. He’s an interesting kid – I think he’ll do well.

Since his group planned to go to the Datsan, the center of Russian Buddhism, and that had been my plan as well, I asked if I could join them. It would be a relief to spend a day with people who spoke both Russian and English – in many ways I had had a rough time in Russia up to this point because of the language barrier, the isolation, and the perpetually getting lost on arriving in a city.

I spent the morning and afternoon with them, getting to the Datsan by a strange series of events that will happen when there is a group of 7 people. (They needed to get tickets to go to Ulan Bator in Mongolia but they were sold out, so I awkwardly tagged along as they worked out their plans. I’d have gone to the Datsan by myself but at this point they felt bad for having dragged me around and insisted I come with them.)

Eventually they worked out their plans and I joined them in a van heading about an hour out of the city. We headed out across the plain, towards the mountains. After our drive, we found ourselves outside a fenced enclosure. I popped into a yurt to buy a photography pass, and we headed inside, our guide (the hostel owner) explaining that we needed to go in a clockwise manner to be respectful of Buddhist practice. We walked around the complex, catching a glimpse of birch trees hung with prayer flags outside, turning prayer wheels, entering a few of the shrines. It was interesting but odd to see this complex in the heart of Siberia.

We saw a couple of adorably chubby puppies. The American girls commented on how cute they were while our guide chuckled. With all the stray dogs, I have to wonder whether people here keep dogs as pets, at least in an area like Ulan Ude.

I spent the evening by myself, having bought what I hoped were Buryat dumplings called pozhi but turned out to be Russian dumplings called pelmeni. Oh well, they were tasty.

I’d really appreciated the chance to speak English with the college group, and I was equally glad when they finally left early the next morning, after an hour and a half of blaring alarms and noisy packing. I spent a quiet morning chatting in French with three older French ladies who had arrived the night before and who invited me to join them. Had I not been heading out that morning, I would have taken them up on their offer.

As it was, I headed out to the train station, back under the underpass without mishap. I had scoped out the “faster” route the day before, which involved the highest overpass I’ve ever seen. I believe that I’ve mentioned not being a huge fan of heights. Well, picture a high overpass over the road, that then climbs a story over the railroad tracks, and combine it with the poorly maintained infrastructure so that there are holes in the concrete you can look through, and you can see why I didn’t go back that way. I went a different,abbreviated route (abreviated compared to getting lost on arrival anyway), and was thrilled not to get lost again.

Adventure Is a Euphemism for Getting Lost

Never have I felt such joy in beholding Lenin’s face.

Let me explain, lest you think me now a supporter of the Communist Party. Rewind by an hour or two and you see me getting off the Trans-Siberian in Ulan Ude. We had pulled into track 3 or 4, and as I looked about for a way to get to the station, I noticed that everyone, babushkas and passengers laden with many bags included, were just walking over tracks 1 and 2. I resolved to follow them, despite the fact that the tracks were covered by a thick layer of ice and I am a little top heavy when carrying my backpack.

I made it across, exited, and dodged the taxi drivers to start out for my hostel, located near Soviet Square and the Lenin head (the biggest one in Russia). Unlike for my arrival in Vladivostok, I had prepared for my arrival in Ulan Ude by examining the map in my guidebook and actually leaving my guidebook accessible. I set out walking in the general direction of my hostel based on the map. I walked for a way and realized that none of the street names were on the map. I passed a dead dog on the side of the street and was walking over sheets of ice or mud covering whatever sidewalk there was. The state of the infrastructure was in stark contrast to the nice clothes people (especially the young women) were wearing. They managed walking in heels on ice very well! What also threw me a little while I was walking along was the large number of Buryat, an ethnic group in the area who resemble Mongols. (Ulan Ude is the capital of Buryatia). What was strange was that their native language is Russian but since I’d recently been in Japan and Korea, I expected the Buryat to speak an Asian language.

I tried to stop a person or two to ask for directions but they shied away – I suppose I looked pretty wild-eyed. Finally an older lady stopped long enough to point me in the right direction. Actually, I’m pretty sure she was telling me to take the tram but there was no way I was going to let myself get as lost as quickly as you can by vehicle!

I walked…and I walked. I was worried the lady hadn’t understood my request as I still wasn’t seeing the big head of Lenin which decorates the main square. I realized that I had a lovely picture of Lenin’s head in my guidebook and I used that to ask a young Buryat lady for directions. She pointed me in the direction of the underpass (yes, under the railway tracks) and my suspicion was confirmed – I had exited the station on the wrong side, and had been walking off the map.

Once I knew that, it took me very little time to get to where I was going (barring the ice). And that brings me to my profound joy upon seeing Lenin’s head.

I found the hostel shortly thereafter and immediately took a shower – three days on the train with no shower made bring able to wash my hair an amazing delight. Unfortunately, the toilet was similar to that on the train where you couldn’t flush any paper products, but rather had to throw them away. (Maybe the hostel’s building had a septic tank?) I did however simply assume that the hostel’s water was safe to drink and haven’t had any ill effects from brushing my teeth with it, though all other water was boiled. (It was strange to me that I would have to ask about water safety in Russia.)

I took some awkward pictures of myself in front of Lenin’s head, and explored Arbat Lenina, a pedestrian-only street that’s lined by 19th century buildings. I took some detours down random side streets, again without sidewalks, but lined in atmospheric, Siberian wooden houses. These houses are built of old, dark, weathered wood and they often have wooden fret-work trimming their eves and big painted shutters. If you think of Dr Zhivago, you won’t be far off. (Not to mention all the birches there are in Siberia – I feel like I should be in a sleigh pulled by horses, and possibly pursued by wolves or some scary supernatural creatures – instead of in a cozy sleeper on a modern train.)

Everywhere there are stray dogs, but they don’t seem too preoccupied by the humans around them.

On my way back through the old city, I stopped by the city museum. It had a couple of rooms set up in 19th century fashion to show what life was like back when.

I returned to the hostel, which is almost more like a home stay. There are 12 or 16 bunks in two rooms, a communal room, a kitchen, and the owner and his wife’s rooms. Perhaps because it is the smallest hostel I’ve stayed in, or perhaps it was that I was traveling on my own, but it had a nicely communal feel. I ended the evening chatting with the two French guys, guy from Hong Kong, woman from Germany, and owner.

Westward Ho! From Vladivostok to Ulan Ude

And now I’ve almost caught up blogging (minus pictures) with where I am today, with the minor caveat that the posts have been written but not posted, as I have no Internet access right now. Hopefully the hostel in Ulan Ude will provide.

I’ve been on the Rossiya for about 40 hours of my first, 60+hour leg of my trip. My first Russian compartment mate got off yesterday morning and another took her place. I think this one deeply regrets that I don’t speak Russian as she seems like normally she’d be the chatty sort. Yesterday morning she spent quite some time setting up a Russian to English translator program and we were quite excited till we realized that it’s a one way conversation. We can’t make it do English to Russian, so I can’t answer her questions very well. We did try valiantly to communicate this morning, and showed each other photos of loved ones, but for much of the day, she’s watched videos on her laptop and I’ve either written posts (about five, I think!), looked at the window at the taiga, or read.

According to my guidebook, we didn’t even reach Siberia till today – we were still in the Far Eastern territories for about 2000 km. Today we got some sun, but yesterday, everything was white: sky greyish white with clouds and sometimes snow, white snow on the ground (be it hill or flat marsh), white birch trees among the other darker trees. It’s pretty to look at, but somewhat similar over the course of a day. As my compartment-mate said, eh, it’s taiga.

Yesterday almost the entire rest of the carriage was filled with young soldiers. Keep in mind that Russian trains are kept very warm (high 70s F, mid-20s C) and everyone changes into shorts or track pants and tee shirts (or no shirts, in the case of a couple of buff young men). So for all of three seconds I pulled a Lydia Bennett (“ooooh, soldiers!”) till I realized that our carriage has basically turned into a boys dorm, with the attendant smells and messier bathroom, and yopung men inadvertently starting to come into our compartment till it registers that it contains two females and not four bros. I am amply defended by the babushka in here (though she’s still a little young for that title) and we both start cracking up whenever the boys forget to read the number on the door. In all fairness to them, I think we may be the only compartment to have zero soldiers, since we’re women only.

In Which I Have A Guide

Tuesday March 26: two weeks after leaving the US, in the third country of this leg of my trip.

I admit that I was a little nervous about the part of my trip to Russia outside of the big cities of St Petersburg and Moscow. And in truth, I did feel safer looking lost on the streets of Tokyo or Seoul than lost on the streets of Vladivostok. Luckily, I found a private, affordable tour in Vladivostok on tourbylocals.com. Maria spoke decent English and spent the morning showing me around the city sites, kindly pointing out a cafe with good coffee for my afternoon after the tour and a place to get a good, affordable Russian lunch. I was very glad to have booked the tour, as it was great simply to be able to communicate well again.

We started off at the train station, where I was very happy Maria was able to act as interpreter as I swapped my e-reservations for tickets and needed to write my passport number, issuer, dates, and signature for each one. It would have been hard to know what the person was asking me to fill out. The train station itself is a pretty building, with the main waiting room decorated with a painting on the ceiling of Moscow and Vladivostok. And of course the mile marker for the end of the Trans-Siberian is here, so I obviously needed a picture!

Interestingly, everything in Russian railways is set to Moscow time – the train schedules on the board, my downloaded e-reservations (which freaked me out at first!), and the clocks in the station. This is a bit of a challenge when trying to then figure out what the actual local time is, as this trip goes through 7 time zones and my cell phone won’t update till I connect to wifi at the hostel in Ulan Ude. (I am writing this while on the Trans-Sib between Vladivostock and Ulan Ude, and will email it to myself so I can post it when I get somewhere with a computer. Email works better than blogging on my tiny phone-sized screen.)

Tickets achieved, we walked down a couple of the main streets of the historic center (in better repair than the pretty ugly streets near my hotel, riddled with potholes the size of craters) and Maria pointed out how many of the pastel-painted 19th century facades were reminiscent of the architecture in St Petersburg.

We popped into several museums: the Arsenev (with some exhibits on flora and fauna and another on some lovely flapper fashion, along with a room dedicated to a woman from Maine, Mrs Pray, who moved to Vladivostok to help her family’s business in the late 19th century and wrote so many letters home, the collection is now the best social history of the city of the period), the WWII submarine, and the 19th century house of a regional administrator who supported the tsar and whose son died supporting the Bolsheviks.

I even got to see an actual submarine come into harbor, tiny dots of people on top. I was encouraged to take a picture – when I asked if that were really ok, I was told “this isn’t North Korea!”

Once Maria headed out, I got my bearings and headed for lunch at a place she had recommended, the cafe attached to the department store GUM. I ordered meat rissoles wrapped in a cabbage leaf, which was pretty tasty, along with the inevitable tea. Russians seem to drink a lot of plain black tea with lemon, often Liptons Yellow Label. It’s interesting the difference in tea among the countries I’ve visited so far, as all of them drink a lot of it. In Japan it’s usually one of a variety of green teas, in Korea it’s a sweet fruit tea, and in Russia it’s black tea.

Over lunch, I wrote some postcards, then headed to the post office. Yet another adventure! I noticed that people were waiting for their number to be called, but I couldn’t figure out where they were getting the little pieces of paper with their number. So I waited till someone else came in and I followed her to the machine. I was confronted with 8 options. It dawned on me that several of these options were probably for banking and other similar matters of business, but I wasn’t sure whether posting things was one of the options. However, there was a counter nearby that did not have a line and it looked like people were buying envelopes there, so I hovered with my postcards out and the lady behind the counter helped me out. (She even decided to help me put the stamps on the postcards, and tut-tutted when I covered the postcard description. She then noticed that the Russian descriptions remained uncovered so promptly continued covering over the English!)

After that, I decided to kill some time at the Oceanarium, so I headed back the way I had come, in hopes of a warm place to sit. After almost falling asleep in a warm dark corner staring a fish swimming in circles, I decided to go get some coffee and cake at the cafe Maria had recommended. The cake was 3-4 times as expensive as other places in town (though the total was still reasonable by US standards) but the coffee was good and the atmosphere was charming. I settled in to read a book on my kindle and kill some time, as my train didn’t leave till 10:30PM.

I attempted to get dinner at the same place I had gotten lunch, asking for borscht, and was told I couldn’t have it either because they were no longer serving lunch items or because they were only serving items on their blackboard. Ah the language barrier! I’d seen a fast food place called Magic Burger and thought that fast food might have less of a language barrier. They even had an English menu posted at the entrance! Of course, I’d forgotten that minimum wage high schoolers tend to be the staff in such establishments, and I got a blank stare at my first attempt at ordering. So I gave that up, pointed blindly at a random burger, and ate my overcooked patty feeling really isolated and lonely. At this point, I’d been communicating really only very basic needs other than for a few days out of the past two weeks, and I missed having a conversation with someone. I’d known to expect loneliness but that often strikes later. It’s not so much the traveling alone as the not speaking the language AND traveling alone that got to me that evening. I’m sure having a cold didn’t help, either!

I returned to the hotel to pick up my bag and waited at the train station for the remaining three hours before the Rossiya was scheduled to leave.An hour before departure time, the track for my train was posted and people started moving closer to the track. I figured that the train had perhaps arrived early, so I asked the young man at the x-ray machine if the train I saw out the window was for Moscow. He hemmed and hawed so the soldiers nearby chimed in. Seeing my blank face at the spate of Russian, one of them indicated on his watch that I had to wait another hour. I thanked him and returned to the waiting room, where he and a fellow soldier followed me to look at my ticket to confirm they had told me the right thing and to make sure I understood what the Moscow time on the ticket meant. It was very nice of them, but it’s never the most comfortable feeling to have a couple of armed soldiers follow you, especially in Russia!

Nonetheless, I got safely on my train ( after a tough time finding the carriage) and tried chatting a little with my Russian matron compartment mate, thanks mostly to her use of a Russian equivalent of Google Translate on her laptop. (She must have had a mobile hotspot as well, because I definitely can’t connect.) Finally, as we pulled away from Vladivostok, we heard rousing orchestral music playing in the station.