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Irkutsk, Russian Federation
52° 15' N 104° 20' E
Aug 28, 2006 10:29
Distance 1440km

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Other entries in Irkutsk

Last Day Novosibirsk, Train Departure to Irkutsk

Text written in: English

I took an extremely relaxing morning and spent 2 hours interneting and planning onward parts of my journey. Vika dutifully took care of the former babushka that she was living with.  The woman was pretty old, incredibly large and not very mobile. She was grumpy too, but vika to her credit had a good demeanor about all of that. I am sure thats one of her strengths.  A small misunderstanding left me on the second floor lounge and vika downstairs in the lobby for about 30 minutes.

Vika then took me to the small and incredibly interesting Musuem of the Sun. It was incredibly difficult to find, trying to find it is nearly something of legend and you are supposed to keep asking people, as many as it takes until you find it. It was run by an eccentric former nuclear physicist who decided that he wanted to take images of the sun from all culture throughout history (or as much as possible) and display them in his museum. Much of the display was wood carvings that he made of rock carvings, paintings, anything and everything you can imagine. The collection was quite comprenhensive including all sorts of cultures throughout history in every location on the planet. To her wonderful credit vika even translated everything he said. He also spoke a small bit of english. Most people in Russia could always speak more english with better pronounciation then I could muster in russian. The museum was clearly a labor of love and he had been operating it for ~13 years. I also had some impression that he lived there, but I am not sure.  In the middle of all of this description he stopped and had a series of metal rectangles, that he played with music that was supposed to represent the sun in some culture and then he did some  throat singing. I must say I was impressed and quite happy with vika that she showed me all of this. I bought his CD gave it to vika and asked her to eventually make it into MP3's for me.

I was having problems with my knuckles splitting and bleeding so I had vika take me to the Apteka, or apothecary, chemist, or drug store. And there was quite a conversation between Vika and the woman behind the counter regarding my nationality and delicate hands. So I had to accept that unscented lotion was not available in russia and just ended up with the lotion that smells like handsoap.

We then went to the supermarket (in russia they are pretty small) bought some food and Vika cooked me a tradtional russian meal, there is a russian name, but I would best describe it was boiled meat dumplings. It was certainly filling and good and I appreciated the effort. There always seemed to be mayonaise for the meat dumplings, this was something I didn't understand so well.

We had a short time for tea, which was becoming something of a ritual for me in russia and then it was time for me to head back to my dorm so that I could gather my stuff and say goodbyes as Vika walked me towards the minivan stand that would take me to the train station.  Right as I was leaving Vika suggested that she would ask her family if they were iteresting in having me for a couple of days when I was in Ulan-Ude since they lived not so far outside the city. Being interested more in Russian village life compared to the urban expanses I had seen I greatfully accepted the possibility of the offer.

The Novosibirsk train station was certainly the nicest one I had seen in Russia. The ones in Petersburg and Moscow had no places to sit which left anyone who arrived early for their train to just sit on the floor, which I happily did.  I am sure the one in novosibirsk was up to european standards and very much resembled an airport yet the architecture was grand and the waiting hall felt like something of a ballroom. And of course the pay bathroom was actually clean unlike the pinnicle of bad bathrooms that I had found found in the St. Petersburg train station. I had nearly 90 minutes of waiting and I happily spaced out and waited for the start of my 32 hour train ride to Irkutsk, labeled as the Chicago of Siberia.