The Blood of Russian Royalty & Thugs
A month on the road and 6 countires tagged (incl UK). That went way too fast !
Lydia (our host) made us an edible breakfast. Fried rice and sasuage. On the whole the homestay was a good (although odd) experience. In 30C heat we challanged ourselves to the bus into town. One good thing about the busses and subway in Russia – you pay a fixed price no matter where you are going.
First stop was the Mineralogical Museum. A private collection of the cool (but boring) rocks and fossils found in the Urals from where Yekateringburg gets its cash. We were the only patrons and the curator followed us arround turnig off the display lights as we went along – talk about energy saving 🙂
The old centre of the city is compact and has a pleasant atmosphere compared to Moscow – far more chilled. We strolled around passing the site where the Romanovs where executed. A big (ugly) church now replaces the original house that Yeltsin destroyed.
‘The A Team’ is showing (in Russian) but couldn’t twist V’s arm – instead she took to me to a photographic museum and gallery. Some technically interesting stuff. I miss my big (heavy) camera but am relieved we don’t have it on this trip.
We went shopping in the flea market for some baggy shorts for me to sleep in on the train and some tin mugs – no luck – we’ll manage. My strops were doing a great job wearing my toes in so we sat in a sqaure for a bit and watched some skateboarders and a dog show/competition (lots of of Collies and a Jack Russell that was more interested in the smells than the obstacles). We spent the rest of the afternoon wandering around – was a great day out.
In the afternoon we had a long slog with our packs and train food to the station – should have taken a bus! We ate supper on the station steps (were not going to pay to use a waiting room) and waited there for a very, very long time.
Some Russian entertainment passed by. Two drunk guys engaged in a bloody fist fight. As soon as the first punch was thrown a member of the crowd appointed himself referee, making sure that when one guy was down the other did not mash his opponent’s face into the tarmac too much and giving them both a ‘fair’ chance. It didn’t take long for one to go down permanently and the ref ended the brawl pulling the attacker off. Of course the police were nowhere to be seen until it had ended !
So after all that excitement we now have 3 nights on a train. Should be interesting.
– Posted from my iPhone
Rough night on the train. Our polite cabin buddy turned out to be a champion sleeper and a world class snorer! I hardly slept. My head being 50cm from what sounded like an Orc with a head cold. 
The train ticket prices from the operator were excellent but they ripped us on the rest. We should have been confident enough to arrange tickets and accomodation ourselves but reading online scared us off. We estimate we could have saved 30-40% on the entire Trans Siberian package had we done it all ourselves – hard to put a price on the stress that we would have had to endure though.
We’re on the Trans-Siberian (Mongolian). First leg around 24hrs to Yekaterinburg ! The cabin and train are good – better than the last hostel just smaller. The rest of the trip will be on lesser trains. Our cabin buddy is a polite Russian guy. No English at all. I have exhausted my translation app (designed to ask things like ‘where is the toilet ?’) finding out that he is from Yekaterinberg and is a factory foreman. Time to catch up on some podcasts!
Nervously (for me) we made our way to the train station to drop our gear for later. With some dollars folded in my passport we did everything to make sure we did not look like foreigners (hard to hide I guess, but to be honest we have been continuously mistaken for Russians). The police did not harrass us so we stepped it up and visited the Lubyanka area (the evil old prison and offices of the KGB and now the FSB). Still no arrest – this spy stuff is easy!
The Cosmonautics museum was well worth the trek back out to the outskirts of Moscow. Lots of cool space stuff to see (unfortunately no English info again) but bits like Gagarin’s space suit, rocket motors, full sized space station module and Mark Shuttleworth’s jumpsuit (i’m sure for the price he also has a few) kept us enthralled.
Across the road from Gorky Park is the Tretyakov Art Gallery (which we skipped – even V has has enough art for now) and a sculpture park full of odd bits of Soviet sculptures that have been torn down since the collapse. We skipped that too – made no sense to pay and entry fee for a park full of discarded junk !
A quick list of things to remind us of our time in Norway.
The Moscow metro (underground) had us a bit confused this morning as we headed out to the Cosmonautics Museum. The lines are different colours like the London Underground but the light blue, dark blue and general info boards all look the same colour (in addition to being in Cyrillic only). Red and orange lines seem to be random shades of each other. Someone needs to give these guys a Pantone chart for xmas !
Day 2 out on the square (the red one). We were first in line for tickets to the Armoury and Kremlin – even managed to get a friendly response using my extremely limited Russian. The ‘Summer Snow’ (poplar seeds) are falling thick across the city – freaky. 
We spent the rest of the morning walking aroud the various cathederals ( x lots) and attrations (the Tsars canon and Bell) in the Kremlin. After the awe of the Armoury it was pretty dull. 
Just got word from Arne – the German guy who fed us in Norway. He made it through epic conditions to Nordkapp on his bicycle. Well done sir! We’ll have to try something like that one day.
It took some doing but I managed to arrange a parade for V. Well actually it was the SPB City Day parade that came pouring down Nevsky prospect (main street) while we were there. The police had closed the road for at least 3km with officers posted every 15m so we were expecting a show. I have to admit it was rather lame compared to soviet era ones, but was still an unexpected treat. The parade consisted of: A few hundred people on harleys and every other kind of motorbike, a flock of rollerbladers, a herd of power striders (google it), a bunch of girls on with a band on a flatbed. The finale – the street sweepers 🙂 Really ! No tanks or ICBM’s. 