Late is as late does and we're sorry, but you just wouldn't believe the fun you can have down the Brizzle looking for places to live and work, having car crashes and pretending that the festive period is ages away. Hope you all have a wonderful Christmas time and are looking forward to 2006 as much as us. If you have a spare ten minutes then please read on....
So what happens next, right, is that we pull out of Beijing on another beauty of a day. The train is unerringly on time and we introduce ourselves to our Mongolian cabin buddies before they nip out for a fag never to be seen again. Curiouser. So we have the cabin all to ourselves as we watch the world go by and run out of wows as we get to see some more great wall slide by. The only other ‘traveller’ we find is a Swede called Robert, so we blether and then decide to get drunk on Chinese red red wine. Recommended! There’s more great wall of the unrestored variety and finally we’re in Inner Mongolia (which is still China). The sun sets on our left as the huge moon pops up to the right and the sky is a hundred hypnotic colours all at once.
The hues blended with beers, wine and the carry-on-smuggling teams all around us was an unbeatable start to our loco adventure. Our contraband provodnitsa obviously had us earmarked and so she stashed boxes of flame candles and then far more bizarrely taped 100 eggs to the underside of our table! Nudge nudge over the border to (Outer) Mongolia with our bogies changed so as not to come off the rails and we drunkenly drifted off to dream of heroin-injected eggshells.
Our first glimpse of Mongolia proper is on the edge of the Gobi desert and vast plains of sand and scrub lie underneath the warmest cloudless deep blue sky. Mesmerised again. The land changes to steppe and we spot the occasional wild horse or ger or camel in between meeting up with Robert.
And so to Ulan Bator and the closest I can get to a description is a cross between a music festival, Lockleaze and outer space. Can you picture that? Our first evening on the town here featured THE cultural show of the trip and if you’re ever ........ I remember the blissful music, the cheery dancers, the contortionist who could almost squeeze herself inside a can of beans (albeit an empty one) but most of all the throatsinging which initially had me stifling giggles but which finally moved me to the brink of tears (not the laughing kind either)!
The tales of danger danger seemed a bit OTT as we struggled to comprehend the mobile phones with a difference (radio waves we now understand) before heading out of the city for the Terelj National Park for another 24 unforgettable hours again featuring our crazy Swedish friend, but this time with a gang of six Durham Russki students. Moonscapes, horseriding, tasty unusual fare, hiking we’re liking, vodka, silly songs, wonderful hosts and a grrr ger were a few of our many memories. Nobody was naked on a horse at any stage.
All too soon we’re back at UB for temples, shamanism, mutton and one more night at the madness of the overfilled UB guesthouse. Insanity gone mad I tells thee. Short and sweet, but Mongolia was definitely another highlight – many others we met were going bush on week-long Gobi safaris that made us envious but now we had a deadline with Brizzle and off to Siberia we went.
To share our next trip was the bunk buddy Belarus Bear, Gerna, and the token ‘other’ traveller Matthias from Munich who had a nasty camera loss at dodgy Ulan Bator smugglers’ central. So we practised German, learnt basic Russian and window-licked as Mongolia’s empty beauty slowly rolled past.
As we approached the Russian border, Helen thought it best to double-check our visa entry date after leaving Beijing a day early and then getting the superduperwithbellsonexpress to Irkutsk. Hearts (non-Jambo) were then placed in mouths as we realised today was October 21, we weren’t permitted entry until October 22 and we had a few hours of the day left. Our exit from Mongolia was miserably quick although there was the usual smuggling fiasco (this time we were told to hog jumpers and blankets) before we made our way to Russia. Now time is a tricky one on the Trans-Siberian as it’s always Moscow time on the Russian trains and you never quite know the correct hour locally. We had been travelling north and assumed Mongolian time would be the same as the Russia border = the whole of China (answers on a postcard please). Gerna informs us that Irkutsk oblast is one hour behind and as it’s 22:45, we’re about to visit the toilet when he corrects himself and says one hour ahead. The train pulls in to Naushki just as Helen turns her watch forward and we see 23:59 turn to 00:00 as we pull to a halt in true Hollywood last-second style. No problemski, stamped in and vodka celebrations in the freezing night air ensue.
We wake up in Siberia for more fantabulous scenery by the icy blue Lake Baikal after Gerna had started the snoreathon. Irkutsk was sunny and not that cold seeing as it was late October in Siberia. A bit grim though, apart from the grand churches and traditional wooden houses. The Russians seem to have a bit of a drinking problem and Irkutsk was like one huge outdoor pub with everyone (almost) constantly supping from a Baltika bottle, puffing and weeing. Only the pork scratchings were missing.
The males scruffily donned their sloppies whilst any woman under the age of 40 was dressed to kill in kinky boots, mini skirts and figure-hugging furs. Cockle warming no doubt.
We met more Sibbers going the other way and the snore baton was taken up by a couple of roomrattlers before our trip to the wondrous clear Lake Baikal with Pierre, and to a sleepy village called Listvyanka where we indulged in more glorious Russian goodies including smoked Omul and caviar and tried to fathom Russian snooker played with 15 white balls.
Then it was back to Irkutsk and the next stage of our journey to Tomsk. The Russian roulette of cabinsharing was a close shave here as we just missed the string-vested Rab C Nesbittskis (especially Sergey) and ended up with a very generous Russian couple named Vitya and Olia who plied us with various delicacies and who knew all there was to know about vodka and gherkins. Lifechanging. As they were so kind and lovely to us, we forgave their attempt to force us in to death by strangulation as they synchronised their snores to be one continuous dirge.
So we bade them farewell at Taiga where we met some exotic gypsies who everyone else warned us against before one more train up to Tomsk in a futile search for a womble. The early indicators were Irkutskish but Tomsk turned out to be a very pleasant retreat for a few days and we had a great time on the trams, in the snow, eating blinis from some crazy Russian dolls, visiting the wonderful University sisters and desperately trying to catch up on some zzzs after the unsponsored snoreathon drew to a close.
And that’s all folks from me – I hope you’ve enjoyed reading about our travels and see you soon if I haven’t already. So (with Richard Whiteley gag sadly removed) it’s time for the final countdown......
......here she comes again with vodka in her veins, velocity girl Elena Gawlerova:
Ahh, how fitting, I get to have the last word(s). I hope you’ve enjoyed sharing our trip with us.
So we left a snowy Tomsk behind us and on another overnight train we said goodbye to Siberia. After our, so far, painless passage through Russia, Yekaterinburg was a bit of a shocker to say the least. Our pidgin Russian was simply shrugged at in the train station and our chances of getting a ticket out of this charmless city seemed slim, until a lovely trilingual Ukrainian lady came to our rescue. So with our next train journey booked, all we had to do was find somewhere in Yekaterinburg to stay for a couple of nights. In almost 8 months of travel, not once had we booked a room in advance and winging it had become second nature, but our run of good luck had come to an end. It was 5pm, dark and the temperature was just the wrong side of freezing, and there was no room at the inn. Feeling like donkeys, we trudged the grey streets of the city in hope that we would find a bed. Eventually, some miles, several full hotels and some not so helpful help later, we ended up at the unlikely sounding Academy of Geology hotel – so we were no longer stuck between a rock and a hard place!!!
We never did discover why almost all of the hotels in Yekaterinburg were full - it certainly wasn’t Russia’s top tourist destination! Its main attraction was the beautiful Church of the Blood - the site where Russian royalty came to a rather nasty end. A tsarry state of affairs!
Despite already having our tickets, getting out of Yekaterinburg wasn’t easy. The board in the station announced our train would be departing from platform 1. Simple we thought; but it seemed that there was no such platform. I was hoping for a Harry Potter-esque Platform 9¾ experience, but disappointingly an unusually friendly Russian pointed us in the right direction.
This, our final ‘trans-sib’ leg would take us to Moscow. Thankfully we had no worries about the snoring propensity of our potential cabin sharers as there would be none; we’d come up trumps and scored the 2 berth cabin. The scenery along the journey was more same-same than how-wow, but when we woke up on the outskirts of Moscow we were treated to a wonderful sunrise which reflected beautifully on the snowy ground.
I couldn’t believe that we were in Moscow so soon or that our flight home from Tallinn was only a week away. So time was of the essence, and despite being more tired than tired things from Tiredsville, Arizona, there are places to visit and sights to see and besides, the dark shadows under our eyes just help us fit in with the locals; just the obligatory can of Baltica and we’ll look like fully fledged Russkis!!!
Whistle-stop is probably the best way to describe our tour of Moscow. We were blessed with wonderfully unseasonal bright blue skies and mild temperatures but blighted by crazy Russian rules – the Kremlin was shut! Eventually we got in, not by scaling the walls, but by being accompanied by a crazy Russian guide impersonating Biggles with a fetish. It was inside the Kremlin that Derek got to see an object from a childhood game – the biggest bell in the world which has never been rung! My favourite, however, was the enchanting St Basil’s Cathedral - it’s colourful turrets made even more magical against the backdrop of grey buildings.
Whilst in Moscow, we experienced the unforgettable Banya – a Russian steam bath. There was steam, there was nakedness and there were buttocks being flagellated with birch branches, a most surreal yet enjoyable evening!
All too soon our visit to Moscow was over and we were back on the train, this time to St Petersburg. It was a comparatively short overnight train journey, just the 8 hours, and we arrived in St Petersburg at approximately stupid o’clock in the morning. Another accommodation nightmare ensued with our chosen hostel being sticklers for the rules; they wouldn’t let us stay unless we paid for a very pricey stamp on our visas. Not amused, we looked elsewhere, and this turned out to be for the best. Not only were we awestruck by seeing some of St Petersburg’s incredible buildings eerily lit by the first morning light, but we also struck lucky with a wonderful hostel right next door to the Hermitage Museum.
Aside from that first morning, we didn’t really get to see St Petersburg in all its glory, as for most of the time we were there it didn’t stop raining. This, however, didn’t stop us trying and we pounded the streets seeing some of the numerous sights between ducking in and out of shelter. It’s definitely on the ‘must come back to one day’ list. Our final night in Russia was a mad one with David from Surrey and David from Canada - we stepped out to investigate a Russian cool-spot for one or two drinks... Derek and I were forced to make our excuses at 4am and I vaguely recall dancing in the street with a Russian couple before passing out in our bunks. Approximately five seconds later, it was time to pack our bags and get our bus to Estonia. That morning is pretty much a blur, I’m sure we were still feeling the effects of the local brew, but I do remember getting to our bus with just over two minutes to spare!
So it was from Russia with love, and on to Estonia. The nine-hour journey was a welcome rest and most of it was spent snoozing, trying to recover from the night before. After a successful border crossing, we slowly felt that Russia was behind us and we were on our way back to Europe proper. Eventually the lights of Tallinn appeared on the horizon and it wasn’t long before we were in the comfort of a posh hotel (there was no shared bathroom, no bunk beds and no snoring – bliss) a special treat for our last three nights.
We left the rain behind in St Petersburg, and enjoyed a wonderful couple of days strolling around the beautiful old town, taking in the old buildings, enjoying the local fare and of course indulging in the local beer. Our final night was spent enjoying a lovely evening in a medieval restaurant where the sausages were made from bear and the beer was spiced up with cinnamon. A wonderful end to an absolutely amazing trip. We took one final stroll through the beautiful square in the heart of the old town, we stop to reflect on our trip and talk about going home tomorrow. Then, before I knew it, Derek was down on one knee, asking me if I’d like to marry him. And I said........
THE END
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