The Soviet Union - Blogabond

Finally, i have arrived in russia. the point of the whole trip was to travel on a train through russia. And Irkutsk is my first port of call. I was not impressed when i got off the train. a bland station with pissy corridors and scowling locals. At least mongolians smiled when they weren't being knocked down or covered in soot. But once we got off the 1950's tram and started walking in the pleasant warm air of the town, things picked up. It was, to use a weak adjective, chraming. Nicely painted buildings, a beautiful river near the hotel and an english speaking girl at the reception. sweet...things were looking up. we also managed to buy our tickets from moscow to helsinki here. Another frinedly lady helped here. I complimented her english and i thought she was gonna have a mild heart attack. im guessing she hadnt been complimented very often. She even became my best friend. when i went back into the office cos i'd forgotten my sunglasses, she cut off the poeple she was talking to with a stern wave of the hand, like a jedi. they silenced, i felt loved.

the room was a shoddy box with intermittent cable but at least it had hot showers, toilet paper, no smugglers and wasnt in a dangerous part of town. I showered in hot, nice water for the first time in 3 days, or to sound more dramatic, 3 countries. Sounds very pretentious but i hadnt showered since china. It was great to get the scrud of mongolia from under my fingernails and out of my nostrils.

ON walking around the city i realized that this wasn't some soviet deathcamp relic but actually a nice, functioning town with young couples snogging on the streets and techno music come out of car windows. again my expectations had been dashed. So far so charming...then we went to somewhere to eat/get a beer. the beer was fine and the cafe was pretty but the beautiful staff member was as cold as her home town in winter. with a arrogant glimmer in her eye she quickly said in russian "we dont have an english menu". Now, i am a resounding low level russian speaker but after a handful of lessons i knew the words she said. so i said in english, oh no problem and watched her angrily catwalk away to her station to get our russian menus. i can read the cyrillic so i know how to read beer in russian, luckily. cos otherwise i would have looked like a right tool if i couldnt understand anything...we ordered 2 beers then ran away to our next restaurant. This place, described in the guide book as a friendly, crowded bar was anything but. the woman here made the last staff seem like a long lost friend. If memory serves me right, she threw the menu at us and shouted NO ENGLISH in russian then turned around to continue wasting her time putting make=up on her sour face. we ordered 4 beers and ran away. the second round of beers was to just piss her off more and make her do something she didnt wanna do. hehehe. On leaving i made a distinct point of saying thank you until she had to stop putting on mascara and acknowledge me. i got a sense of satisfaction when her her friend laughed at her...

Finally we had dinner in a traditional russian english pub with traditional danish beers. haha, we love the traditional places.

The next day we ate superoverpriced pancakes for breakfats that took 1 hour to make (?) and set off to visit lake Baikal, the largest freshwater lake in the world. its as long as Britain! massive. and very very clear. we took a pre-war bus from the pre-war bus station that smelled like a thousand peoples urine and arrived at the lake 90 minutes later and had to buy tickets back immediately cos the last bus back was about 600 and we arrived at 4! we stuck our extremities in the cold cold water to ensure that we get an extra 5 years of life (thats the myth they try to convince you of at this place in order to make you visit) and then we went and ate the indiginous fish of the lake the mysterious "omul". dont know what it is in english...tasted like fish though and a surprisingly nice one at that. here we recieved equally cold, slow service as in the second place the night before but it was here that we hatched a plan to try and drink each of the famous russian beer baltika which comes in 10 varieties numbered 0 to 10. at this lakeside cafe we had 3, 6 and 7. only 7 more to go.

Back to Irkutsk for dinner. we went to a new place near the football stadium. The staff were very friendly and gave us an english menu despite not speaking english themselves (I think). our spirits were raised. Irkutsk was a nice place after all. the weather was pleasant and so was the beer. i think we had a number 5 baltika here. 6 more to go.

The next day we got the train to moscow. this was to be the big one. 77 hours in one compartment. 5800km. what are we in for?

written by

adamski752 on August 30, 2008 from Irkutsk, Russia

from the travel blog: Adam's Leisurely Return Home

tagged Irkutsk

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