It's been a while now since my last update. Many things have happened, but most importantly; I'm back home! If you'll remember (or indeed, just read the previous update) last time I put something on here I was still in Irkutsk, ready to hop on the train that would depart for Moscow. Since it has been 2 weeks ago all of this occured I'll try to do my best to give a complete as possible story. Basically I still have to report on the whole Russia part since the last update was just a short one... so anyway, here we go...
When we departed from Ulaanbatar we were already told the bordercrossing could take as long as 12 hours. Luckily, it didn't take that long for us, since we could continue our journey already after 11.5 hours! This basically tells the whole story about that period of time since all we could do was just hang around and wait for stuff to happen, which it obviously didn't. This part of the journey would take us a similar amount of time as from Beijing to Ulaanbatar. The main difference was that instead of two days like that one, this was two nights. The whole waiting part was during daytime so as soon as we got moving again nightfall was kicking in soon enough. In the train we met our first Russians, a father and son. They were travelling with various bottles of vodka that without any doubt took us as a complete surprise. It turned out to be a fun evening after all.
The next day we arrived in Irkusk and were greeted by our honcho. We were loaded into a bus and taken straight to lake Baikal. From what I've seen Irkutsk seems a nice enough town but we didn't visit it much in the end. The trip to baikal didn't take long and we arrived after about one and a half hours. The weather was really shitty, very clouded which gave everything a bit of a depressing feel to it. I'm sure the baikal area looks great when the sun shines, but it wasn't that obvious with the weather we had. We were brought to our accommodation which was actually really nice. It was a big wooden building with several rooms, just a 5 minute walk into town from lake baikal itself. After checking in and arranging which room goes to who, we went for a walk. The honcho wanted to show us the lake and took us uphill where we had to take a chairlift to go up higher. This chairlift was probably the slowest chairlift I've ever seen or been on in my life. It took us seriously 15 minutes for about 100 meters or so. Anyway when we came up the hill it was very foggy. Hence, we couldn't see much. We kept walking again and came to a spot which is supposed to be an amazing lookout place over the lake. Unfortunately we didn't see anything because of the weather, so this plan didn't work as well as our honcho wanted it to work. Not much we could do but head back for the amazing chairlift and head down again. Coming back down we just walked down passed the lake again and saw the same weird guy we saw on previously. I forgot to mention the first time, but we saw a guy that could seriously compete with Chuck Norris and probably win. This guy was pure evil disguised as a pure evil russian. You had to be there... Anyway, upon reaching the village again we saw some boats no doing much, so we decided we wanted to go on a boat trip. After some negociation (which didn't work well for us at all) we managed to get on a boat for an hour. The great plan was to eventually jump off, adventurous rascals as we were. The boatsmen first didn't let us because the water is supposed to be freezing cold, but after some persuation we could. And we did. And yes, the water was indeed freezing cold. Nevermind that, at least I can say I swam in the worlds deepest lake and on top of that we all had a blast.
That evening we didn't really do much. We had dinner at the accommodation since it started raining severly when we wanted to depart for a restaurant. That evening we just stayed inside. John, Yoko, Tash and me played some cards, and Tash did the occasional dancing now and then.
The next day we set off for a walk first because some of the pansies didn't go on the boat and wanted to swim off the shore. Before that we actually went to a local market where we bought some stuff and John showed off a bit by demonstrating his excellent bargaining skills. It went something like this: John wanted to buy an extremely cool matruska doll of former Russian presidents. It had Putin painted on the front. So he after hearing prices of similar kind of those things he decided to offer the lady selling it 600 roubles to buy it. She stared at him for a bit before answering "no, 550".
We went back to the accommodation and hung out for a bit before Steve and me decided to take a small hike up a hill to a observatory we've seen from the boat the previous day. After about an hour or so we arrived there and saw there was a fence surrounding it. Behind a the fence was a the most vicious dog we had ever seen and it was ready to attack. However, it seemed it was attached to a line that was attached to a fence so we considered to walk around the complex and see if there was an easy to access it. We found a gate which so poor constructed we could both perfectly fit through it (keep this in mind, this bit is essential before reading the next part). Everthing seems fine at first; no evil Russian guards who wanted to make us political prisoners what so ever. So I started to pose in front of the observatory to take a picture and stuff. Suddenly we heard the noise of a chain and barking. We looked at the right side of the building and saw a dog (whether it was the same one as before or not) approaching us with great speed and before knowing it we were running as fast as we could back to the fence, naturally assuming that behind it we would be perfectly safe. Of course, if could get through it the dog wouldn't have a chance reaching us any more (right!). To make matters worse, I got stuck in the fence with my body (fat bastard) and the gate just swung upon. It was never locked! The dog was luckily attached to a chain (it probably was the same dog as before) and we couldn't stop laughing. We went back inside to actaully take the pictures and look inside some windows. Steve then spotted some Russian soldiers coming out of the building and yes we run for it again. Although I wanted to experience Russia to the fullest, spending some nights in Russian prison didn't really appeal to me that much so we kept running for a while.
Afterwards we walked around for a bit before heading for a restaurant back in town. The rest of the group went for a sauna while we were doing our running excersice so we met them afterwards in the restaurant. The evening we didn't really do much. It was quite late already before we came back at the accommodation. Dave and I went to do a bit of nigh photography and some beers, but not much interesting happened.
The next day was moving day and in the morning we had to pack our stuff before heading back to Irkutsk where the train to Moscow would depart at around 4 pm. We departed from Baikal at around 12-ish and had lunch in Irkutsk. We went to an internet cafe there, which was the place I had my last update before arriving home. The train left for Moscow as predicted around 4 pm. The traintrip would take a good 78 hours which immediately marks the longest consecutive time I've been on a train. The trip was doable since we went drunk the first night and just hung around the other two (!) nights.
I'm going to leave it at that for now. We arrived in Moscow on saturday the 11th which marked my return to Europe after almost 7 months of absense. I will discuss the Moscow and St. Petersburg the next time since a lot happened as well...
thank you, bye bye!
That evening we didn't really do much. We had dinner at the accommodation since it started raining severly when we wanted to depart for a restaurant. That evening we just stayed inside. John, Yoko, Tash and me played some cards, and Tash did the occasional dancing now and then.
The next day we set off for a walk first because some of the pansies didn't go on the boat and wanted to swim off the shore. Before that we actually went to a local market where we bought some stuff and John showed off a bit by demonstrating his excellent bargaining skills. It went something like this: John wanted to buy an extremely cool matruska doll of former Russian presidents. It had Putin painted on the front. So he after hearing prices of similar kind of those things he decided to offer the lady selling it 600 roubles to buy it. She stared at him for a bit before answering "no, 550".
We went back to the accommodation and hung out for a bit before Steve and me decided to take a small hike up a hill to a observatory we've seen from the boat the previous day. After about an hour or so we arrived there and saw there was a fence surrounding it. Behind a the fence was a the most vicious dog we had ever seen and it was ready to attack. However, it seemed it was attached to a line that was attached to a fence so we considered to walk around the complex and see if there was an easy to access it. We found a gate which so poor constructed we could both perfectly fit through it (keep this in mind, this bit is essential before reading the next part). Everthing seems fine at first; no evil Russian guards who wanted to make us political prisoners what so ever. So I started to pose in front of the observatory to take a picture and stuff. Suddenly we heard the noise of a chain and barking. We looked at the right side of the building and saw a dog (whether it was the same one as before or not) approaching us with great speed and before knowing it we were running as fast as we could back to the fence, naturally assuming that behind it we would be perfectly safe. Of course, if could get through it the dog wouldn't have a chance reaching us any more (right!). To make matters worse, I got stuck in the fence with my body (fat bastard) and the gate just swung upon. It was never locked! The dog was luckily attached to a chain (it probably was the same dog as before) and we couldn't stop laughing. We went back inside to actaully take the pictures and look inside some windows. Steve then spotted some Russian soldiers coming out of the building and yes we run for it again. Although I wanted to experience Russia to the fullest, spending some nights in Russian prison didn't really appeal to me that much so we kept running for a while.
Afterwards we walked around for a bit before heading for a restaurant back in town. The rest of the group went for a sauna while we were doing our running excersice so we met them afterwards in the restaurant. The evening we didn't really do much. It was quite late already before we came back at the accommodation. Dave and I went to do a bit of nigh photography and some beers, but not much interesting happened.
The next day was moving day and in the morning we had to pack our stuff before heading back to Irkutsk where the train to Moscow would depart at around 4 pm. We departed from Baikal at around 12-ish and had lunch in Irkutsk. We went to an internet cafe there, which was the place I had my last update before arriving home. The train left for Moscow as predicted around 4 pm. The traintrip would take a good 78 hours which immediately marks the longest consecutive time I've been on a train. The trip was doable since we went drunk the first night and just hung around the other two (!) nights.
I'm going to leave it at that for now. We arrived in Moscow on saturday the 11th which marked my return to Europe after almost 7 months of absense. I will discuss the Moscow and St. Petersburg the next time since a lot happened as well...
thank you, bye bye!
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