Travelog

This diary tracks our progress along the Silk Roads, with episodes appearing in date order, most recent first.  You can get to earlier entries by turning pages at the bottom of the screen.

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Category: Travelog

Ooh it was only a few days ago but St P seems ages away.  We had some really lovely hosts (Hi Vladi and Anna, Cat and Andy!) who looked after us really well and laughed at my attempts to speak Russian.  At least I can say "I'm going to bed now" in Russian.  We have pretty much got the hang of the Cyrillic letters, and a surprising amount on Russian is English written funny - we particularly noticed that traffic "stop" signs say "stop" in cyrillic, and lots of other words are the same, which makes it easier.  I'm not saying I could read a book, but finding our way round the Metro and busses every day helps with the practice.  The food is great, I've been having buckwheat kasha (kasha is any type of porridge) and kifirrrrrrr, kind of slightly thinner yoghurt, for breakfast, but I can't roll my rrr's, so I have ordered kifir and ended up with coffee - bleugh!  Andy has to do it for me.

We had an amazing picnic at Peterhof, and didn't spend half enough time in the Hermitage, but I have consoled myself that I will go back one day.....  We saw the finds from the Pazyryk barrow - utterly brilliant to come across them by chance in the museum when I had been reading about them a few months ago in England.

It was lovely meeting up with Elena again, and we walked for a while though woods in the rain (must buy boots, had to wring socks out and they dried all gakky in the morning after a night on the train), to the cemetary where many of the people who died in the siege of Leningrad in 1942 are buried.  It made a big impression on me first time round and I really wanted to visit it again.

After walking through the cemetary again, I felt that I had come to the end of a jouney I started at Auschwitz.  It is difficult to put into words, but it was a sudden realisation that the journey we (and you, vicariously) are doing is actually helping people to understand each other better, and that is a GOOD THING. It might help a little in stopping the kind of unimaginable terrors that so many people have experienced and in some places continue to do so.  It's funny, but even the EU seems like a good idea if it prevents countries fighting, whatever else it does.

 I really like the Hospitality club for helping with this journey, it is amazing staying with people in their homes, and the kindness we have been shown is astounding.  Long evenings talking and exchanging views on everything from globalisation to goth music are definately the way forward.

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On Thursday night I took my first ever overnight train.  Apart from some logistical challenges getting onto our (upper.  Note to self: wrong choice!) bunks the whole thing went without a hitch, and we arrived in Moscow to bright skies.  We managed to walk straight past our host Anna who was holding a massive 'Andy and Ellen' sign but luckily for us she is much more gifted in the practicality department and finally picked us out sometwhere near the main exit.  On arrival at her appartment she explained that she works a lot and often stays with her boyfriend in the evenings, so for the time being at least we seem to have ended up with our own flat in Moscow - woo-hoo!  On the one hand this is A Good Thing as we could do with some quiet space to catch up with ourselves, and certainly its convenient in terms of coming and going.  But on the other hand Anna seems really nice and it would be lovely if she comes out to play while we're here.

On Anna's advice we went to her local market, which was huge and varied.  Its excellent to be able to shop locally at the market and come home to cook, this few days is allowing us live a relatively normal life.  Well, apart from the strange item I chose for this morning's breakfast.  It was square, and on the oustisde was made from flakey pastry which had clearly been folded.  Aha! Pastie, or a fruit pasty at the very least I thought, but no: the inside was made of flakey pastry too.  I've no idea what you are supposed to do with these things but a dish so thoroughly lacking in any interesting ingredients has to be called a Soviet Pasty.

The rest of the day was spent going from pillar to post in search of someone who will register our Visas we finally got it done, and today I found myself stood in Red Square not really believing that it was happening.  The sheer scale and power of the place is quite overwhelming, and the sesne of unreality was reinforced by the fact that one in ten people there were strolling around in either a wedding dress or morning jacket.  The completely bonkers St Basil's Church at one end of Red Square has to be seen to be believed, and will have to be revisited as a seperate trip before we depart.

We may delay getting Mongolian visas until we reach Irkutsk, which we believe is possible to do.  For now all we need to do is book tickets to Irkusk and confirm plans with our next HC hosts - then lie back and take in to atmosphere of this immense, although surprisingly clean and couteous, city.  Hoorah for Russia!

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Tuesday was just going to be one of those days where nothing works out.  We slept too long and got into town late, and then spend the best part of 5 hours just buying a ticket to Moscow.  We tried to get over it by having lunch in what the Lonely Planet describes as a 'delicious budget cafe' but which actually sold overpriced tasteless slop.  So with a little time left in the day we headed to the 'nearby' internet cafe so we could arrange some Moscow details only to find a sign on the door saying they had moved to the other end of town.  The bus we got on to take us there hit gridlock and so all time was gone and we had to head back home.  This was to have dinner with some Australian friends of our hosts, who have just done the Trans-Sib east to west and therefore of great interest to us, and upon returning we learned they had to cancel.

Lessons learnt from the day:  Don't oversleep when you've got lots to do; don't try to save $5 by buyng tickets from one of Russia's 'central ticket offices' which are actually free conversation centres as far as I can tell - its well worth the small surcharge to go to a main train station where there will be a cool, empty 'service centre' who will just sort it all out for you; don't use old foreign travel guides as authentic sources of eatery info; don't get the bus along a gridlocked street when you're in a hurry; don't let all these mistakes stress you out - I did and it didn't help!

As it was I found myself at the end of the day on a balcony with blue skies above me, a warm gentle breeze, a beer in one hand and a roll-up from the best tobacco I have ever tasted in the other (Mac Baren original, Danish, found during Trying Tuesday and worth every bit of grief I experienced!).  All this after eating a delicious meal prepared by our fantastic new hosts Cat and Andy, who are wonderful, kind, generous and realy good company.  So if this has been a bad day then I can count myself very luck indeed.

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A complete reversal of fortune in less than 24 hours - not bad!  We got up on time and went to a market that Cat told us about.  A market?  Only the finest permanent indoor market I've ever seen in my life!  Acres of delicious fruit, veg, perfectly matured meat, fresh fish, caviar, honey, cheese, you name it.  So we've stocked up on picnic goodies and hope to take a boat trip to Peterhof, which from what I can tell is Peter the Great's answer to Versailles.  Plus we've hunted down the elusive Internet Cafe to its lair and this one, uniquely in SP it seems, allows us to upload our piccies at last.  So today you should be able to see some of Estonia and St Petersburg - woo hoo!

Addendum - the day continues to be blessed.  In this internet cafe I've just been served only the third ever cup of what I would consider to call espresso.  If you're ever in Saint Petersburg and you need internet, come only to Quo Vadis (Pr. Nevsky 76)!

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We have moved to our new hosts, Catherine and Andrew, in south SPB.  They are lovely, and have made us extemely welcome - they even cooked for us on our first night, taking my awkward vigitarianski-ness into account, which was fabulous.  We went to the Peter and Paul fortess today first, but it was all under wraps with the dulcet sound of hammering, drilling and JCB's to add to the ambiance.  So we had a quick look in the cathedral, taking note of all the photos of the current Romanov clan, who look in no danger of either starving or dying out.

Got to go, the machine is about to go ping!