Quick update

Howdy all. I can't update at the moment as I need access to a desktop or laptop computer in order to add photos. Currently smashing around the Greek island if Corfu with Alex Grimes. Keep tuned for posts on Ukraine, Gallipoli, ANZAC day, Malta, and Greece!

European Russia

Goof and I spent three days (+ 5 hours due to the bloody time zone differences) on a train as we traveled from Siberia to western Russia. It was mostly passed in a daze of reading books, playing cards, and sipping vodka.

and sleeping, there was a lot of sleeping.

Our first stop was Kazan, the capital of the Republic of Tatarstan. We met our latest Honcho, Katie, at the station and she promptly dropped us off at our hotel with pretty strict instructions that we should shower. After thus we proceeded to take in the local sites. These included the World Heritage Site the Kazan Kremlin, which houses bizarrely shaped mosques, massive statues, and a fire station. We also visited a cathedral that houses the Our Lady of Kazan holy icon.

This was the first of many awesome mosques I have since visited - Kazan set a high standard for beautiful structures.

This icon was found by a young girl after receiving a vision of the Virgin Mary in the 1500s, and the cathedral was built where the icon was found. One of the many humourous things from our journey was our honcho's insistence of visiting their new zoo in Kazan. Turns out it was a petting zoo with all of the usual farm animals (chickens, rabbits, sheep, goats, pigs, etc. Oh, and emus - we cant forget the emus). At first she couldn't quite understand why we were not as excited as she was - until we explained that Goof grew up on a farm and I regularly visited my grandparents farm.

I didn't let Baiky feed the animals at the zoo (Katie, in all her delighfulness, provided some food for us to give to the animals). To atone for this I let him ride a cat we found at another mosque.

During our wanderings in Kazan we were joined by Katie's cousin, Olga, who also works as a tour guide. We went to the pub and that's pretty much all I remember. I think it gies domething like this - after many beers Goof and I ventured to a nightclub called Coyote Ugly. We were given strict instructions not the touch the girls and then we drank the night away. After many more beers I joined in a drinking round with some Russians, not too sure what I was drinking but I think it involved Jaegar. I was told by Goof that at one stage the 'Aussies' were called to the bar so they could give us some cocktails. Goof carried me home (we got lost) and I must have fallen over and bumped my head because I had a massive bump which made me physically ill to touch for the next week.

The leaning tower of Kazan - located in the Kremlin. I cannot remember the exact details, but poor planning led to one side of the building sinking slightly. This, it turns out, is not uncommon. There is a legend that the last queen of Kazan threw herself from the top of the tower instead of marrying Ivan the Terrible (I think). Not quite accurate but adds to the terribleness of Ivan.
The next day I was a mess, but the show must go on. We visited more mosques and had lunch at a famous monastery outside of the town, and cleaned our shoes.

Baiky also warranted to quick 'shoe buff'.

Our next destination was Suzdal, a small town of just over 10 000 people 26 kms from Moscow. I gathered it is much like Batemans Bay- lots of people from Moscow like to travel there on weekends in summer to escape the big smoke (and Moscow is the biggest of smoke). While it used to be of political importance it is now mostly a religious center (there are a shitload of churches). It was an incredibly beautiful place and our Honcho here had the best English of all and also joined us for a beer (the first Honcho to do so).

Beers in Suzdal. Goof is angry because he has to share me with a seal and a Honcho.

Here we visited some churches, including the Church of St Nicholas, a wooden church that is part of an outdoor museum of wooden architecture. There was also an old prison in a monastery that we visited, but all I remember is that it had an awesome story, not the story itself (I had a raging headache all day because I couldn't stop touching my bump).

Suzdal in all of its snowy goodness. Even two weeks later I was still fascinated by frozen bodies of water

After our one night stay in Suzdal we were bundled into a car and driven to Moscow. While the outskirts of Moscow was only a few kms away the drive to the city centre took hours. Moscow is a huge sprawling metropolis of approximately 2 500 square kms and 11 000 000 people.

St Basil's Cathedral. A shot of this is in every movie that uses Moscow as a location (I may have made that up, but it was in Die Hard 5). 

I mentioned previously that the Chinese and Mongolians to big very well. Moscow architecture dwarfs them. Stalinist architecture is based around two things; keep it square and make it massive! Moscow was pretty cool and the first place our Honcho, Tanya, took us to an the museum of soviet arcade machines (at our insistence). Most of the games revolved around fine tuning soldiering skills (submarine captain, airforce pilot, shooting games, etc).

Goof destroys some tanks in fine style at the Arcade museum. 30 seconds after he finished the game the Russians conscripted him into the armoured corps.

We visited the Red Square, which houses the Moscow Kremlin and St Basil's Cathedral. We got to see the changing of the (goose stepping) guards at the Eternal Flame at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. This is a war memorial dedicated to the Soviet soldiers killed during WWII. We chencked out an outdoor sculpture gallery, and visited the Moscow University. The architecture of the Museum epitomizes Stalinest Architecture, the maths and physics building is all types of huge. The uni was pretty much the end of our great Vodka train trip after 24 days of culture.

A huge statue of Peter the Great. Originally it was supposed to be a statue of Columbus, but instead it commemerates the navy. Fun facts I just found on wikipedia - its the eighth tallest statue in the world and it was voted the tenth ugliest building by Virtual Tourist. Pity, it can be seen from a long way away - but in all honesty I was impressed by it.

Oh, there was also a shuttle.

Pictured: one shuttle

Goof and I did have one more day left in Moscow, as we had both decided to rest before the next leg of our respective trips. We found our way to a historic street called Arbat street, smashed some burgers at a Hard Rock café and enjoyed a quiet beer at a famous English pub opposite the Kremlin..

Yup, a few quiet beers, followed by a 'Death of Hassan' (that's a drink). That nice Russian ringing the bell introduced us to it. I'm not too sure how many he had, but we had to put him in a taxi on our way out. Here's the story, the bartender mixes a bright drink full of interesting looking spirits, plonks a hardhat on your head and then hits you the helmet quite hard. Someone starts ringing the bell and doesn't stop until you have sculled the drink. As Goof said, 'any drink that requires you to wear a hard hat you should be wary of.'

Its okay, we got home. It just took a long. long time, but we found more cool stuff on the way. What we did learn though, is that turning up hungover to an airport is not recommended. I am pretty sure I never even said goodbye to Goof as we parted ways. I just grunted and stumbled through immigration.

The happiness wears off about few hours later as we crawl into a cab at 6 am.

Siberia

So, first things first, spring in Siberia is cold - there is snow and cars drive on lakes! Secondly, despite what we had been told, Russian people are awesome (if somewhat confused at why we would leave Australia to visit Siberia). We visited three cities in Siberia; Ulan Ude, Irkutsk, and Listvyanka. All them were in the vicinity of Lake Baikal, a bloody massive lake that happens to be the largest repository of fresh water in the world and, most importantly, the only place where one can find fresh water seals.

Pictured: Cold (but, you know, not too cold).

We only spent one day in Ulan Ude (the first night was outlined in the Entry into Siberia post) but it was a great introduction into Russia. We had two Honchos and they took us on a  tour  that exhibited the rich history of the city. We started with an outdoor museum that had been reconstructed to resemble the  structures of early western settlers. Attached to this was a small zoo which had foxes, bears, wolves, and reindeer.

Rudolph - home at last.

Afterwards we wandered through town and the honchos showed us sculptures that commemorated things such as women's suffrage, various religions, and unity between their aboriginals and the western settlers.

One of the many sculptures in Ulan Ude. I am pretty sure this one was for Buddhism with the fish representing knowledge.

The native people of the area, who are of a distinct asian heritage, and the 'white russians' seemed to be completely integrated within their society. However, I guess they have had a few more hundred years than Australians to achieve unity. During this time Goof grilled the poor girls on local politics. Oh, and as mentioned earlier, the biggest head of Lenin resides in this town.

Leading a revolution is bound to give one a big head.

At 5pm the honchos left us with strict instructions be back at the hotel at 11pm so we could catch our train. We found a pub with some friendly Russians, who after offering us vodka, politely warned us of the folly of mixing beer and vodka. Lets just say that Goof and I barely made the train. Alas Rudolph was not so lucky and somewhere between the pub and the train he jumped ship. In all honesty he had achieved his goal, which was to leave the hot climate of Australia for his natural habitat. I like to believe he found his way back to the reindeer we had spotted earlier. Either that or he is with the Russian girls - and I cannot begrudge him that decision.

Yeah, we had about 15 mintues until we had to leave at this point.

The next morning I awoke in Irkutsk (one of the largest cities in Siberia) with very little recollection of our mad rush to the train and still somewhat tipsy. This was a good thing, as Goof was not in a talking mood and in my still inebriated state I filled in the void as Julia, our lovely new honcho, showed us around the historic town. As with all Russian towns there were monuments to founders, Lenin, and famous actors/writers/poets. It was a sensational tour, but at the time I beleived I had lost my camera the night before so Goof took all the photos. Alas he is yet to email them to me so  do not have any photos of Irkutsk right now (but watch this space, I will add some as soon as get them).

Without any pictures of Irkutsk I had to make do with this scenic view from our accomodation in Listvyanka. This is looking towards the lake.

Just as my hangover started to kick in we jumped in a car and drove to Listvyanka, a quant tourist spot on the shores of Lake Baikal and here the fun began (not in the car, we slept pretty much the whole way). Listvyanka was awesome, mostly because even walking seems like tourist activity when it is snowing, covered in ice, or you are actually walking on solid water.

Standing on Lake Baikal under a huge chunk of ice. at this point in time Goof and I were very nervous. 

To list some of the awesomeness we went dog sledding, rode on a hovercraft, climbed to the top of local hills, visited an aquarium, walked on the lake, drove on ice, and went ice fishing in the lake. Julia accompanied us on all our adventures, including our long walk on the icey lake. This must have bee frustrating for her is while it was a novelty for us, I am sure she has done it before. It is a pretty difficult endeavour as every second step our feet would slide in all directions. We had a running bet to see who would fall over first - I won one thousand tobruk (mongolian currency; appromately 80c (we made a lot of one thousand toburk bets).

Ice fishing - there was always a small concern we would fall in. You can also see a seal next to the fishing hole. He made many comments alluding to the fact that he was better at fishing than we were.

She also had to translate everything for us including menus, museum displays, and everything the ice fisherman said - and he said a lot. He really liked his job and Lake Baikal. The most fascinating thing he said was "usually you cant drive on the ice at this time of year because it is too thin. However its been a long winter so it should be okay" This was all said while looking at us and not where he was going. Granted, it was on a lake and there is very little to run into but we have all seen the crashed paddock basher that managed to hit the only tree in the paddock...

Eating our catch.

To cap off an amazing adventure that was Siberia (mostly Lake Baikal) I also found a fresh water seal who has indescribable urge to visit the Mediterranean. He returned our duo into a mighty trio and off we traipsed  to see what  European Russia had to offer (hint: it started with a  three day train ride. This is not recommended).

Baiky the Seal saying goodbye to his home as he searches for the warmer climates of the Mediterranean.