Saint Petersburg

Saint Petersburg is one of those cities that for me has been shrouded in mystery. Ask anybody and they'll tell you how beautiful it is, but how many people do you know who have actually been there? The only reason people say it's beautiful is because other people have told them it is.
I don't mean that as a criticism, simply that it's a remote city with a big reputation that for me has been based more on rumor than fact.

I was a little worried this might be a recipe for disaster. Surely It wouldn't live up to these amazing expectations which I kind of had, but weren't really sure what they were.

But having now seen it with my own eyes, let me say one thing for certain. Saint Petersburg really is an achingly beautiful city. Believe the hype.

It is often referred to as the Venice of the north, and a comparison like this is a compliment to both cities. Character and charm drip from every building. It is as elegant a city I've ever been to, yet there was hardly a tourist to be seen, and while prices were high by Russian standards, they are still cheap by European or Australian standards.

I was also really impressed by the attitude of locals towards me. On the whole, the people I saw on the street in St Petersburg seemed to be the most affluent I'd seen in Russia. I was half expecting this to result in them being a bit snobbish and cold, but it was far from the truth. They were warm, friendly, down to earth, interesting and approachable.

The city was created from scratch 300 years ago under order of Peter the Great as Russia's new capital, and was designed to be a "window to Europe". As such it has a much more western-European flavor about it than other parts of Russia I've seen, but it combines the best of Europe and the best of Russia into a single, beautifully cohesive city.

It doesn't have the energy or dynamic feel of Moscow, but it more than makes up for it with an incredible charm.

This has got to be one of the best/worst kept secrets of Europe. I assume the hassles associated with getting a Russian Visa is the main reason the place isn't overrun by tourists. If so then make the most of it while you can. Getting a Russian Visa isn't that big a deal, but being able to experience a city like this without being run down by hundreds of tourist buses is well worth the hassle. Not to mention the fact you'll be able to afford much more on your holiday here.

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Location:Saint Petersburg, Russia.

Russian Hospitaility

As I'm writing this I'm mid-way through the longest single leg of my Trans-Siberian rail journey, traveling from Irkutsk to Moscow. A journey of four continuous nights on the train and a five-hour difference in time zones, all the while sharing a "soft sleeper" cabin with three other passengers. This is the train ride my little one and two night overnight trains through Vietnam, China, and Mongolia have been preparing me for.

And it's hard for me to put into words what an experience it has been. On the surface it's just a long train ride, but that doesn't begin to do it justice. The train itself and the incredible, beautiful, unending snow-covered landscape that unfolds before us is just the stage for the show. The real experience comes from the people I've met and the real-life movie that I've become part of.

Although I expected passengers to get on and off the train during the journey, I didn't really think how that would effect my experience. for some reason I expected to spend the whole journey with basically the same group of people. Instead I've shard my cabin with seven different people so far, and I still have two nights to go. Two of the bunks in my cabin are currently empty, and each station we stop at is a lottery about the possibility of new roomies.

As I write this now, a little girl from the next cabin (aged maybe 2) keeps popping her head into my cabin and waving to me. When I wave back she bursts into laughter and waddles back to her dad out in the corridor. Even the quiet times are interesting here.

When I first got on this train in Irkutsk, I had the cabin to myself. Normally this might be a good thing to have some space and privacy, but the prospect of four days alone is enough to drive anyone mental, and I didn't come here to just be a spectator anyway.

But I needn't have worried, About 2 hours later I got my first visitors; A young Russian couple in their early 20's named Pasha and Nastja traveling with Nastja's mother; Tatyana.

Neither Nastja nor Tatyana could speak a word of English, but Pasha's English was pretty good. Certainly good enough to have some decent conversations and learn about his home and talk about Australia, etc. They come from a small town of 500 people near Tomsk, and the main source of income for the people there is a coal mine. Tragically in May this year there was an accident killing 17 of the workers who live in the town.

I spent my first night with these quiet yet friendly people. They were happy to chat but also kept to themselves a bit. I think they perhaps didn't quite know what to make of me, but were still hospitable and polite, if a little serious. As well as chatting I had plenty of time to read and listen to music and relax by myself. This was a good easing into things without being thrown into the deep end.

They did seem to appreciate my terrible attempts at speaking Russian from my little phrase book. Tatyana was in fits of laughter!

They left the train the following afternoon and for the next few hours I had the cabin to myself again, in fact the whole train seemed pretty empty.

Then we arrived at a fairly big station and while my cabin still had three empty beds, I heard people move into the cabins beside me.

Soon after I noticed a young woman standing out in the corridor gazing out the window while she charged her mobile phone (there are power sockets in the corridors). She saw my cabin was empty and asked if she could join me. I soon discovered why she was so keen - the people she was sharing a cabin with next door included the same 2 year old child that has been popping her head into my cabin as I write this entry, except last night she was crying her head off and her parents were trying to get her to sleep.

So Ksacha and I spent the next few hours chatting in my cabin. She has a job designing nails (as in decorative fingernail designs), but is also studying English at university. This meant her English was excellent and it was so refreshing to be able to have an in-depth conversation where we could actually discuss complex things without running into language barriers. These moments have been few and far between over the last month, so I take them when I can. We only spoke for a few hours but discussed many things including music, politics, photography and travel. Her father is a portrait photographer, and although she is studying English to become an interpreter, her heart is more in music and the arts, so she's having second thoughts about her career.

Then we pulled into another big station and the trans-sib lottery dealt me up some new cabin-mates and condemned poor Ksacha back to her cabin of infant noise hell for the night.

I went out into the corridor to make room while my three new cabin-mates moved into their bunks. There was a man aged about 30 traveling alone, and a man and wife couple in their 40's. I wasn't quite sure how this was going to pan out, but things soon became very clear when I walked back into the cabin and Alestar, the guy traveling alone, pulled out a bottle of cognac and plonked it on the table, followed by Andrey and Tatiana with the bread, cheese, pork, and tomato. The best I had to offer was some decent chocolate and some mixed nuts. It was going to be one of those nights.

And so it began. The most memorable yet a bit hazy night of my trip so far, sharing a cabin with these wonderful people.

Alestar is a fireman while Andrey is a military doctor and his wife Tatiana is his assistant. I'm not sure what rank Andrey is, but I get the feeling he's a pretty highly-ranked officer. He and Tatiana have been together 15 years, since he was a luitenant. He is now 48 and has had many promotions since then but I couldn't understand the specifics.

The language barrier presented it's ever-present head throughout the night, but that proved to be half the fun. Communication just became a hilarious drunken game of charades/pictionary. It didn't really matter.

After the cognac, a bottle of vodka appeared from somewhere. Then we stopped at a station and Alestar disappeared and came back with some Russian champagne. Then finally when the champagne was gone and Alestar had gone to bed, Andrey and I continued on beer while Tatiana stuck with tea.

You couldn't imagine a more lovely couple than Andrey and Tatiana. The most warm, friendly, unassuming, patient, down to earth and kind people you could hope to meet. And to be having a night like that in the context of a train traveling across Siberia is an experience money just can't buy. That alone makes a trip like this worthwhile.

My little 2 year old friend just poked her head in the door again, but this time the train lurched and she banged her head on the door frame. It ended in tears instead of laughter. Maybe that's the end of that game.

I should point out that on this train, time doesn't work in the normal way. My journey from Irkutsk to Moscow spans a five hour time zone difference, so at any point we are just somewhere in between Irkutsk time and Moscow time, but nobody really knows where and it doesn't really matter anyway. The whole Russian rail system works on Moscow time, so I just set my watch to that so I can at least keep track of where we are when we arrive at a station and I look at the schedule. But it's been dark outside for hours and my watch says it's only 4pm, so it makes no sense to try to live by Moscow time until I get to Moscow.

So Andrey and Tatiana left the train just before I started writing this entry, and Alestar is getting ready to leave at a stop soon. I wonder who my next companions will be?

And my little friend is back waving at the door. It seems it takes more than a bump on the head to keep her out of action. They breed 'em tough in Siberia.

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Location:Somewhere on the Trans-Siberian Railway, Russia

Exiled to Siberia

Well the good news is I made it into Russia ok. Only time will tell if I make it out so easily. Filling out seven different forms during the border crossing (where we stopped ALL DAY) gave me my first taste of Russian beaurocracy. I'm sure there'll be plenty more where that came from.

Within a couple of hours of entering Russia I've already been asked not to take photographs by three different officials (in different locations, it wasn't like I kept going back trying to get the same photo over and over). Admittedly there were a bunch of military trucks and soldiers at the station, but I was being careful not to take photos of anything sensitive like customs or immigration areas. Ok maybe I snuck one photo of the soldiers, but I didn't get caught taking that.

But what else was there to do except take photos? When I woke up this morning about 7am we were already stopped at the Mongolian border checkpoint where we did the customs thing and stayed until about 10am before moving on. I got a shock when I got off the train to find our carriage had been left stranded alone while the rest of the train had taken off on some other route during the night.

Then when we did move, it was only 10 minutes up the line to the Russian checkpoint where we stopped again until 4:30pm! Considering sunset happens around 5:30pm, I didn't get to see a lot of the countryside from the train. What I did see during the remaining hour of sunlight was spectacular though.

There wasn't a lot of snow to see in Mongolia (it did start snowing the night I left), but so far there's been plenty in Russia. Snow everywhere and dramatic skies, wide open plains and frosty rivers, villages scattered every once in a while with dodgy old Russian cars, even dodgier old Russian men, and sometimes a conspicuous military presence. The rickety old villages are full of wonky wooden houses with beautiful ornate colourful window frames. Occasionally there'll be cattle, horses or dogs wandering around aimlessly. This is the Siberia from the storybooks.

Within minutes of getting off the drain and wandering around the Russian border station, I was approached by a dodgy looking old guy with a big grin full of gold teeth who was looking for a bit of conversation. He didn't want his photo taken but was quite happy to take photos of me standing in front of the train station.

Onwards to Irkutsk, my first destination in Russia. A city of about 600,000 located near the shores of the huge Lake Baikal, Irkutsk is a centre for research and culture in eastern Siberia. It's also famous for it's old ornate wooden houses. During the communist purges, many intellectuals and artists were sent into exile to Irkutsk, to the point where up to 1/3 of the population were people in exile. This is one of the reasons it became a city that punches above it's weight when it comes to research.

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Arriving in Mongolia

We arrived at the China/Mongolia border stop of Erlyan about 9pm last night.  It was a fairly long stop because, apart from other things, all the train carriages need to be lifted up and have their bogeys changed due to the railway lines being a different guage in Mongolia to China. That in itself was pretty interesting.

We did get about 20 minutes to get off the train and wander about and grab some food from the little market shop in the railway station.

The border guards came and took our passports and various forms, but then wandered off and didn't return them for about 4 hours.  I would have been concerned but my cabin mate (who has done the journey 27 times) seemed perfectly at ease with it all, and I also read in the Trans-Siberian Guide to expect this kind of thing.  I ended up falling asleep, and I think we finally left a bit after 1am.

I slept like a log and woke up about 9am.  Then my roomie and I spent the rest of the morning gazing out the window watching the world go by, looking at photos we each had of friends and family, watching a dodgy bootleg copy of the new Shrek film (English with Mongolian subtitles), and generally just chilling out and chatting as best we could.

The train had a restaurant carriage at the back, and I made the mistake of attempting two meals there.  The menu promised a selection of various dishes, but really I think it just came down to two choices - chicken or pork.  I ordered different things but ended up with the same thing both times, fried pork and onion with a dodgy sauce and gluggy rice.  It was edible, but easily the worst two meals I've had since leaving Australia.  The beer was decent at least, but warm.  How could it be warm in these temperatures?? Did they heat it up deliberately?  I think the restaurant car is there mainly for the benefit of guards and the restaurant staff... as they seemed quite happy sitting around talking and smoking (under the no smoking sign), and when a customer arrived they were greeted by the staff with a sigh and a slightly dirtly look at the prospect of having to actually *do* something.

I should point out that each carriage also has two attendants who are responsible for that carriage, and as far as I could tell those ladies did an *excellent* job.  One of the things I wasn't looking forward to was the state of the toilet after a night or two on a long train journey like this, but I need not have worried here as every time I went to the loo, it looked freshly cleaned.  I was impressed!

As the morning progressed, the landscape looked less and less like China.  No more jagged mountains, now we have rolling hills with not a tree to be seen.  Patches of snow, no real roads, no real towns any more, just a few clumps of houses here and there, and each railway station we passed seemed to have a playground, making me think they serve a dual role as a school?  Aeroplanes seemed to pass overhead quite regularly, and all left a spectacular vapour trail in the clear blue sky.

And then we started passing the occassional Ger.  Firstly they would appear pitched in the backyard of a house, but then we started passing them pitched in the middle of wide open plains, complete with a handful of grazing horses.  These were real proper Mongolian nomads.

Then after passing through some gorgeous snow-covered mountains we began to encounter civilization again as we approached Ulaanbaatar.

Before we pulled in I threw on some thermals and rugged up ready to face the cold. My cabin-mate had her whole family ready and waiting to help her unload.