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Got interviewed about our trip from St. Petersburg to Beijing for Slovenian radio. I’ve had a pleasant chat about the trip with Nejc Jemec from Val 202 and you can check out the result below. Sorry international readers, the whole thing is, of course, in Slovene.
Oddaja Generator 9. 1. na Valu 202 (the interview part starts at 32:30)
Horseback over Mongolia with Joni and Tim
This blog has been a bit stagnant lately, as the travails of travel have prevented me from updating it. As you can imagine, charging a phone can be difficult in a nomadic ger (large circular tent) nested in the vast Mongolian expanses. Now, on a train from Ulanbataar to the Chinese city of Jinan I can once more continue where I have left off.
24., 25. July, Omsk
The hotel we have awoken in that early afternoon was special. Special not in a way you would find an especially beautiful sunset special, not even in a way a drooling mentally retared person is special, but special like a greenish and occasionally wiggling infection of your genitals is special. The latter was probably readily available in the bathrooms of the aformentioned institution. These were a rusty and peculiar affair. For example, the toilet was quite a large room with poor outside insulation, which must be especially fun in the harsh Siberian winter. It contained two toilet bowls placed next to each other without any kind of separation. Good for bonding and toilet humour.
Walls of the hotel were last painted when Nikita Khruscev was still in power and it showed. Furniture was old and squiggly. When I tried to pick up a chair my fingers and brains where overwhelmed by a sticky sensation, memory of which I cannot lose to this day, though not for lack of trying.
Still we have always expected to end up in a place like this somewhere along the way, so the hotel really had a nice adventureous feeling to it and we accepted the conditions in good humour. Everything wasn’t that bad as well. On the flipside, sheets were reasonably clean, the receptionists were friendly and we had our own room for about 10€ per night, which is incredibly cheap for Russian circumstances. There was also a shower with hot water, even though there was only one for all the four floors of the hotel.
Half rested and a bit hungover we went on to explore the city of Omsk. The neighbourhood really wasn’t glamourous, although it did contain the building of a permanently built circus, around which children were constantly riding horses. Permanently built circuses might not be common where I come from, but they can be found in every major city in Russia and Mongolia.
Omsk itself was nothing special. The odd Lenin statue, Hare Khrishna chanting group by the muddy river, a pleasant sandy beach by the muddy river, people sometimes less pleasantly bathing in the muddy polluted river. People dying of cancer, wondering why it happened to them. Probably near the muddy river as well. The river is called Om, if you wondered. Get it? Om->Omsk. Pure genius.
There was also the street of Josip Broz Tito, next to it a cinema/shopping mall monstrosity that made me think of establishing an International Criminal Court for Architects for crimes against usability and good taste.
There was also a curious statue of a man climbing from a sewer, I curiously witnessed a Russian wedding, where the bride and the groom curiously wear crowns and curiously, there was even some good coffee to be found. Coffee in Russia is mostly a sad “just add water” instant thing going by the name of “tri u jednom”. When you do find proper coffee it’s mostly really good and the coffee shops are full of posters describing the origins of the coffee you’re drinking along with diplomas from baristas competitions. It’s priced appropriately, or inappropriately, depending on how you look at it. An average cup of Joe at a place like that will set you back between 80 руб and 120 руб. Keep in mind that 80 руб is about 2 €.
The history of the town is a bit more interesting, it was closed to foreigners in the time of the Soviet Union due to it’s weapon factories and the related secrecy and paranoia. Even before it was a capital of Russia, but another Russia, White Russia. When the Bolsheviks took over in 1918, a Siberian general with a bunch of troops stood up to them and founded an independent White Russia loyal to the czarist principles. To their aid came Czechoslovakian troops who were helping in the first World War effort, but were unfavorable to the Bolsheviks and unable to return home. They ruled over Siberia until 1920 when they were decisively beaten. Interesting story though, look it up on Wikipedia.
We gave up on Omsk earlier than general Kolchevik though and having thoroughly exhausted the “minimalist” sightseeing resources of Omsk, we decided that adding an extra letter to the city name might do the trick and headed on to Tomsk.
Although Yekaterinburg does not have many tourist attractions, they do have a war museum. That sounded really interesting to me, but not so much to the girls so we parted our ways. I went to play with guns and they with Barbies so to speak. :)
The war museum primarily deals with the second world war and is a classical war museum, especially similar to other such museums built under totalitarian regimes. Why? Well if I knew nothing about WWII before, I would assume it started with the entire Russia somewhere behind the Urals. From there they orchestrated a brilliant victory and soon overtook Berlin, naturally with plenty of suffering and heroism on their side. I’m not disputing the latter, but there’s no mention of e.g. Molotov-Ribbentropf pact, Warsaw massacre, with the early German victories only mentioned in passing from the perspective of hero-cities. “Gorod heroj” is a title given to cities that suffered the most, like Leningrad, Stalingrad, Kiev… While that bias was to be expected, the museum is still a decent display of weaponry and other equipment, including some armoured vehicles and mobile rocket launchers parked outside the rapidly decaying and with Soviet symbols ornamented building. But as always in Russia, only a naive fool on crack would expect any explanations to be written in a language other than Russian.
There’s a square accross the street where I witnessed a wedding celebration on bicycles. The bride and the groom were sitting on a bike, as well as most of the entourage. Judging by a local news camera crew and an interview just going on with the happy couple, I assumed that’s not a common type of wedding in Russia. I certainly hope on-bike childbirth isn’t an emerging trend as well.
Just behind them was a monument with a much more somber tone. A monument of a broken down soldier, sitting on the grond in despair with a rifle on his side. It’s a reminder of the ten year war and the Soviet defeat in Afghanistan. Parallels with the current situation there draw themselves. Once again history repeats itself as farse.
Passing by a local photo shop to inquire about a camera, I headed towards the lake to see what the girls were up to. They tend to get their share of admirers and they were talking to two young Russians when I arrived. Though a bit inebriated, they were great fun and very interesting interlocutors. Together they were a MC/DJ team, or so they claimed, in local night clubs. We even got a freestyle rap performance which I plan to put on YouTube later. One of them was wearing a sailor’s cap and shirt, which I assumed was a joke. But that was just my prejudice, since I come from Slovenia, where sailors on the street are not a common occurrence. He really was a sailor in the Black sea fleet of the Russian military and told some personal accounts of the war with Georgia. Due to the language barrier the stories were sadly a bit short on details. With some of my prodding I did manage to get some political views out of them. Basically they were very patriotic, even nationalistic, while taking great pride in Russia’s army and size. Not unusual, but disheartening to me, a fervent globalist. They knew little of other geopolitical factors and largely based their opinion of countries on those two factors. When I told them Slovenia has one really small war ship and a 35 meter one now on order from Russia, they couldn’t believe me. “How can such a country be in NATO?” they wondered. When we told them about our 2 million population, they immediately assumed we were under the complete control of the USA, which they still perceive as their arch nemesis. European Union, they never heard of. We later returned to more casual conversations and exchanged Skype usernames at the end.
With stomachs growling we dreamt of Serbian meat deliciousness. Luckily, just such a restaurant wasn’t far. Serbskii Dvorik is a lovely traditionally Serbian decorated restaurant. A bit on the expensive side, but the owner quickly offer us the “business lunch” option (about 6€ for a 3 course meal) when he saw we were of more student pocket depth. The owner was really friendly and it felt good to speak in the much more familiar Serbian instead of performing linguistic acrobatics in Russian. When we saw quite a collection of Slovenian wines on sale and Arsen Dedić and Tereza Kesovija started playing from the speakers the Yugo-nostalgic atmosphere was complete. We even got a delicious free desert and tea on the account of it. For me, the beef tongue with radish and the home made ice cream were most memorable. We were also surprised to hear that there were 8 Serbian restaurants operating in the city, some even importing all their fish from the Adriatic. Serbian fish restaurants, a bit ironic, but anyway…
As I went for some more rare camera hunting, this time successful, the hour of departure was fast approaching. Soon we were frantically searching for our wagon when we heard a familiar sound. “Slovenci?” was the question and it turned out a young Slovenian couple was in the coupe right next to ours. We got along quickly with Peter and Lana and had a lively debate over beers in the train restaurant. When that closed we moved back to the hall to wait for our cranky Russian roommate to move out at the next station. Just then a really wasted, but enormously fun Scotsman came past and we started a series of absurd conversations that would take a literary genius to describe properly. Our cranky roommate did move out at the next station and some booze we bought moved in. We also got a much nicer Russian for a roommate. Pyotr was a middle aged gentleman, didn’t speak any English but he didn’t mind our partying at all, even though it was in full swing by then. He got on with the flow as more and more people came, Scottish kilts were on display, explained and much was debated in a total language mish-mash. Soon more Russians, a Polish guy came and even our incredibly patient young Siberian stewardess finished her shift and joined us, out of uniform this time. All was undoubtedly accompanied by plenty of chicken and vodka. When we arrived at the station in Omsk in the morning we were exhausted since we haven’t slept a wink and emmm… didn’t throw our money in the wind. We said our goodbyes since most, including the Slovenians, continued their journey onwards with the train.
In Omsk Pyotr again turned out to be an extremely nice guy and he and his friend escorted us on the tram to a really budget-friendly place to sleep. The place officially didn’t accept foreigners, but he negotiated that for us, before leaving to do his work in Omsk as a horse race supervisor.
The hotel really was something else, but we couldn’t find the words for it until we got some much needed sleep.
22. July, Yekaterinburg – Some of you may have heard of Yekaterinburg under it’s previous name, Svedrlovsk. Svderlovsk was a renowned Bolshevik and after the October revolution the city got to bear his name. After the 1991 transition, it was again swiftly changed back in honor of Catherine the Great. Pick your preferences yourself.
The first sight we visited there has a similar historical significance, it was the place where the Romanov family where shot. If the Romanov name seems unfamiliar, Nikolaj Romanov, tsar of Russia, might ring more bells. His bells rang out long ago though, in a local engineer’s house after the 1918 revolution. The house is long gone, replaced by a cathedral built in 2000. The church and tsarist sympathies go hand in hand in Russia for obvious historical reasons. I wouldn’t loose much sleep over the demise of the Russian monarchy, but it would be hard to argue that the Bolsheviks that came after were any better. It’s one failed ideology after another for the Russians and their apetite for them does not seem to be drying out lately. One party rule seems quite a popular concept here, and I’m not thinking of the kind of party you would find in uvala Zrče. They both seem to inspire drunkeness though, one with power, the other with alcohol. Or is it both? Jelcin springs to mind…
Nevertheless, Russia still seems quite different today, with new, glass clad skyscrapers rising up in the tidy center of Yekaterinburg. 1.3 million of inhabitants is no small number either and is bound to grow as it seems.
We enjoyed the day more leisurely this time, laying on the grass right next to the lake occupying the centre of the city, observing passers by and generally not giving a shit about the lack of more classical tourist attractions. The usual batch of photos of the everpresent Lenin statues sufficed, along with some unlenin-like cruises through the shopping mall. All your ideology, all in one place, now with 20% discount for members of the communist party. ;)
One needs a good sip of beer after all those idiosyncracies and the Tinkoff brewery was the place to do just that. Unfiltered white beer, exactly what the doctor perscribed. Sadly, we couldn’t get the beer on perscription alone. Russia might need a health reform as well. :P
20., 21. July – Moscow was fun, but it was time to move on, go east. We took the metro to the Jaroslawski train station, had our breakfast at a local buffet and purchased some food for the long ride ahead. One of the benefits of Russia is cheap caviar, so I stocked up with a full jar of its black variety for not much more than an euro. While waiting at the shop an akward chat developed with a customer and the security guard. At first they were unsure about the whereabouts of Slovenia, but they soon remembered the football match with Russia and briskly left, somewhat dismayed. :)
The next 31 hours were spent on a train from Moscow to Yekaterinburg. One would think this is where the story ends, that there wouldn’t be much to write about. One would be wrong. One has much to learn about Russian train travel. Who is this rethoric one I speak of? I don’t know. Ask him, or her. Whatever.
First, we came to the train on the platform, gave the stewardess (yes, they’re called the same on trains) our tickets and she blurted out our seat numbers. We muddled along to our coupe, where there was already a middle aged and, due to the heat, topless gentleman. He spoke only Russian, but seemed rather nice. We proceeded to unpack our belongings, make our beds. After a few minutes, another three topless gentleman came, politely asking if we were all going to stay here and asking for our tickets. They said they were all traveling together and that this was their coupe. After another glance at our tickets we realised our, and the stewardesses’ mistake, then moved two coupes forward.
We repeated the settling process and mentally prepared for a day and a half of relative boredom. But it was not to be. Our previous acquaintances soon invited us over to their coupe for some drinks. It turned out to not be only drinks, as an entire corpse of a baked chicken lay on the train table. The table was almost comicly small when put in perspective with the chicken and accompaniyng vegetables. We tried it reservedly, but the main focus of the feast was elswhere. Vodka. Their Praznichnaya variety went down really easy, as if it did not contain all that alcohol. Naturally we still had to seal the deal with a few sips of beer. As the often repeated and useful Russian saying goes: “Drinking vodka without beer is like throwing money into the wind.” And we couldn’t act so wastefully, could we?
A debate soon developed, although a bit hampered by differing languages. Jasmina’s and Maja’s knowledge of Russian came in handy, as ususal I struggled through with the few words I know and my improvised Serbo-Croatian with Dolenjska accent which, when put together, can sound surprisingly like Russian.
As you might have gathered by now, the guys were really friendly and talkative, a fact in no doubt emphasised by the dashingness of my female cotravelers. During the small talk we found out that they were construction workers from Belgrad, a Russian town near the border with Ukraine on their way to Perm for a month-long job. When, much later, our limited vocabulaires left us with little more to disscus, we retired to our quarters for a few rounds of cards and observing of the shanty lumber towns and berch forests we were passing by.
Surprisingly time went by quickly. Before we knew it, it was already the evening of our second day on the train and we’ve arrived at our destination – Yekaterinburg. It was quite late, we didn’t have a place booked, so we took a taxi to a nearby hotel that was in the Lonely Planet guide. It turned out to cost a lot more than we would have liked it to and the energetic and business savy taxi driver offered to call around for other offers while he kept repeating he has a brilliant memory. That extra service of course increased the price of our taxi ride to about 10€. When I tried to haggle my response was met with a non-threatening “I called hotel, I now control situation”, the ususal “I have a brilliant memory, you know” and the slightly racist “I work for good price, I am no nigro”. In the end he came through, quickly got us a good and much cheaper hotel and even waited to see that we got our room keys. So I suppose he well earned his fee. :)
Afterwards we did a quick midnight walk around our part of the city of Yekaterinburg, which used to be known as Svedrlovsk. What more it had to offer would have to wait until the following day.
