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.