Sleeping on Benches and Underwear Saunas in Siberia

I know it’s been a while since I’ve posted anything, but this time it isn’t entirely my fault. Apparently the Chinese not only block Facebook and filter Google, but also block WordPress, so I couldn’t post anything new while we were there.  Here is all the info about the rest of our time in Russia and expect posts about Mongolia and a few (possibly) about China in the next few days.

We left Nizhny Novgorod by train to Novosibirsk. This was the first long train ride on our Trans-Siberian adventure. We took a third class cabin and were in two beds above two old Russian women who didn’t speak a lick of English. Next to us was a young couple with a 2 year old daughter who also didn’t speak any English. We were a little leery going in about how this would go, but it turned out to be awesome. The old women were these little babushkas and totally what you would picture when thinking of an old Russian woman. They brought a ton of home cooked food with them and wouldn’t take no for an answer when they would offer it to us. They gave us these meatballs and potatoes and we shared cookies with them. Despite the language barrier, we still tried to talk with them. We’re pretty sure we got it across that we were married and enjoyed Russia. They made it very clear that we needed to have babies as soon as possible and every time Erin stood up they would rub her belly. Must be a Russian thing? The daughter of the other couple next to us was hilarious and constantly running up and down the aisle. She hadn’t quite acquired her train legs yet though, so anytime there was a big bounce or a sudden jerk she would go flying. Apparently she didn’t find it as amusing as I did.

Once we got to Novosibirsk, the babushkas gave us big hugs as kissed our cheeks and we were on our way to find the bus station. The plan was to take a bus from Novosibirsk to Tomsk that evening. We had already arranged to stay with a guy through couch surfing (our first attempt at this… I’ll discuss this more later) and, as a backup, reserved a hotel room. The bus didn’t get in until 1am and, as the couch surfing guy had a little kid, we decided it was too late to call him up and walked to the hotel. The hotel was about a mile and a half from the bus station, but we found it no problem. Everything seemed to be going our way! When we get into the lobby of the hotel this huge guy behind the desk just starts making big X’s with his arms when we ask for a room. He calls this other lady who was apparently supposed to speak English down to assist, but she must not have enjoyed being woken up because she was less than helpful (read: she really sucked). We tried to explain that we had emailed back and forth with someone who worked there and had a room reserved. Erin showed the lady her email address. The lady looked at the computer for what couldn’t have been longer than 3 seconds and just shook her head. We then asked if we could use the phone to try and call some other places. You would have thought we had asked for their first born by the way this lady vehemently refused our request. Well, so much for our plan/backup plan. Luckily, I had remembered where a guy we had met in Suzdal told us he was staying. It wasn’t on our map, but I was fairly certain we could find it. It was about another mile and a half away, but at this point we really didn’t have any other options (our bags were starting to get heavy though). We finally roll up to this other hostel (which we were able to find through dumb luck), but no one answered the buzzer (we later found out they don’t staff anyone there past 9pm). So, it was about 2:30 in the morning, we had just taken a 45 hour train ride followed by a 6 hour bus ride, 3 seemingly solid alternatives had fallen through, and we were completely out of options. Outside this last hostel was a little park with some benches. After talking it over we walked over to them and Erin wiped them off (it had been drizzling off and on this entire time). The plan was Erin would get about 3 hours of sleep on the bench while I listened to my iPod until the sun came up and then we’d figure something out. We took our bags off, sat on the benches, and after about 10 seconds both came to the conclusion that we couldn’t do it. We threw our bags back on and decided to walk the 3 or so miles back to the train station and sleep in there (hopefully). After walking for about 5 minutes or so a car pulls up next to us. All I could think was, “Great, what now.” The driver was a guy a little younger than us who was speaking pretty quickly in Russian. I just told him that I didn’t speak Russian while I continued to walk. Then in semi-broken English he says, “Are you lost, do you need help?” We asked him if he knew of any hostels or cheap hotels close by and he was said we should get in and he would take us to one. Erin and I looked at each other kind of shrugged our shoulders and through our crap in the back seat. Probably not the wisest move but at that point what else bad could happen right? Turned out the kid was a senior at the local university and was on his way home from work. He said we didn’t look like locals (probably because of the huge bags on our backs, because I’m sure the scowls on our faces fit in pretty well). We kept thanking him for helping us and he kept saying it was his pleasure and that it was very interesting for him to meet foreigners. He took us to one of the hotels that was close by and in our Lonely Planet, but it was like 500 bucks a night and he was like, “I know of a cheaper place”, so we pile back into his car and drive to a different hotel. This one looked even nicer than the first one, but because it was already like 3:30 in the morning the lady at the desk said she wouldn’t charge us for that night just the following night (she just kind of treated it as an early check in). We again thanked the guy that picked us up, and headed into our awesome hotel room. It definitely was a lot better than spending the night on the bench and, with the free night, turned out to be about the same price as the hostel that turned us away. It’s cool how over the span of about 2 hours or so we were able to meet two totally different types of people, the asses at the first hostel and the guy willing to take an hour of his own time in the middle of the night to help two foreign strangers. It really will make me think twice before just passing people staring blankly at a map in DC (although my knowledge of DC isn’t probably much better, but if I run into any lost travelers in Burke or Centreville I can point them in the right direction).

After sleeping for a few hours we woke up and checked out Tomsk… in the daylight. Tomsk is known for its old wooden houses, so we spent most of the day walking around admiring the architecture and hunting down the most well preserved of these beauties. Like most of the cities in Russia we have been in to this point, there were also a number of gorgeous churches that we checked out. One cool thing about traveling this time around is we are running into a number of other travelers that we are able to chat with and are either taking a similar route as we are or are doing the Trans-Siberian from Beijing. We are running into the same people as we make different stops which is fun to share stories (the near bench sleeping experience usually gets a few laughs), and we are able to get some good info and tips for future stops from the people traveling in the opposite direction. One guy we met in Suzdal, Tom, we met randomly in a coffee shop here in Tomsk, and it was great to catch up with him and learn about his future plans and get some tips based on his research on where to stay in the next few towns we’ll be in (saves us from doing extra internet research).

The next day we woke up early to catch a bus back to Novosibirsk. Due to a scheduling hiccup, we had a night in Novosibirsk before our next train ride. There really were no cheap hotel/hostel options in town, so Erin brought up trying out couch surfing. She has had a few friends try it out with always good results. It always seemed like a pretty sketchy thing to try (for those of you who don’t know, couch surfing is a way to find a place to stay in a given city. People login to couchsurfing.com and find people hosting couches or guestrooms for you to crash in for free… they just may or may not be a psycho), but I was willing to give it a shot… everything I’ve ever heard about Russia is that all of its people are stable and completely above board, right?  We ended up finding a French guy living in town who was willing to host us. After meeting up with him at a coffee shop next to his apartment he walked us over to his place and gave us a beer while we just sat around and talked. Then he made us a really good quiche dinner. Afterwards, he showed us some of the pictures he had taken in the cities we’ll be heading to next. Before we went to bed we told him that our train the next day wasn’t until the afternoon, but to just let us know what time he had to go to work so we could be out of there and not make him late. He told us that we could just sleep as late as we wanted, gave us a key, and told us to just lock up when he left. Couch surfers are a different breed (I wouldn’t give the key to my apartment to Oleszek, and I’ve known that joker since 9^th grade), but it ended up working out really nicely. In the morning we walked to a dammed up lake nearby then caught our train in the afternoon.

Our next train ride was about 18 hours on the way to Krasnoyarsk. Forthis ride we were in the two top bunks above a couple with a 4 year old boy. This kid was constantly moving about a mile a minute. He was really funny though and the parents were super nice. Again, no English, but we were able to use broken sign language enough to get the point across when needed. I can’t tell you how many times so far in Russia someone will go on for about 20 seconds in superfast Russian, I’ll just put on an awkward smile and sort of shrug my shoulders, they’ll point to something, I’ll say “Oh, you just want X”, they’ll sort of shrug their shoulders, I’ll hand them X and from then on out they’ll assume I understand Russian. The train ride went by pretty quickly. Most of the time Erin and I will either be listening to our iPods, reading, or doing Sudoku races. Right before we left Erin bought 2 of the same Difficult Sudoku puzzle books. We’ll start a puzzle at the same time and it’s a race to see who can finish first (marriage is pretty glamorous, no?). She talked up a pretty big game about how we’d probably only get through a few before I got bitter with losing and quick… let’s just say as of now (mid-October), Erin’s win percentage is just a shade under 20%. I don’t know what’s sadder, that winning percentage, or the fact that I’m bragging about beating my wife at Sudoku… via a blog.

We had such a good experience couch surfing we thought we roll the dice try it again in Krasnoyarsk. Our train got in really early, but the girl we were staying with met us at the train station and took us back to her place. She had to go to work but gave us a key told us to sleep for a few hours and shed meet us that night for dinner. After sleeping until around noon, Erin and I took a bus to the city center (about a 15 minute ride) and walked around to see the sites. While it’s one of the bigger cities in Siberia, Krasnoyarsk didn’t really have a whole not to see downtown. We walked by a few of the churches, saw the Lenin statue, made the obligatory “first down” joke (surprisingly after all of the statues we’ve seen, these are still funny, although I’m sure if Erin were writing this you’d be reading something different), then kind of we left with some time to kill before we had to meet up with our host. We did what any Americans would do in a situation like this, we hit up an Irish bar that was playing a Michael Jackson live concert circa ’91 on TV and had a few pints. We met up with our host at her house around 6pm, and then we ended up taking the bus back to the city for her to show us around. The city was nice in the evening as the streets were all lit up and there were lights on the fountains. The next morning we were planning on hiking around the Stolbi National Park about an hour outside the city. Our host organized to have a friend of a friend show us around the park. At first, Erin and I were a little bummed by this. It was really really nice of her to set it up, but we just kinda wanted to hike around and do our own thing. It turns out the park was about 5-6km away from the bus stop (unmarked of course) and then the park itself was pretty tough to find your way around, so having the guide with us was perfect. Our guide and his girlfriend showed us around the park and showed us how to climb up some of the stolbis (large rock formations) in the park. He even gave Erin a (very basic) lesson in rock climbing. It was a great time. We got back to our host’s apartment kind of late and she had borscht soup made (a Russian staple with veggies and meat in a tomatoy broth). The next morning we woke up early to jump on a train to Irkutsk.

On this train Erin and I had a top and bottom bunk, so it was the first time we didn’t have to sit on a stranger’s bed during the day (we had only both had top bunks to this point). We were next to a French couple who spoke good English and a Russian lady with a 5 year old son. The French couple was pretty cool, and we talked with them for a while on the trip. We got to Irkutsk around 6 the next morning after about an 18 hour ride and immediately jumped on a bus to Olkhon Island in the Lake Baikal. Lake Baikal is a huge lake (the deepest lake in the world) that has crystal clear water. The island itself is sort of sparsely habituated, but we stayed in a little town about an hours drive from where we caught the ferry onto the island. The main attraction on the island is the large Shaman’s Rock which is one of the most sacred places in the world according to some Buddhists. We spent 5 days on the island mostly just relaxing. It was awesome. We met a really cool American couple who was near the end of their year long journey who we were able to hang with a lot of the time which was cool. Erin and I spent one day mountain biking (we got lost following a really crappy hand drawn map, so after a good 3 hours of ride up 45 degree inclines in 3 inches of sand… a lot of pushing the bikes during this part, we realized we were going the wrong way… the way down was a lot more fun), and a few days just kind of walking around. The coolest thing we did here were the banyas. A banya is basically a Russian sauna. We found one that was edged right up to the banks of the lake though. The two days we did took banyas the outside temp was in the high 40s to low 50s and the water temp was the same if not colder. The process pretty much involves stripping to your bathing suit (or underwear as it were the first time we did it as we came unprepared), get into the banya which is 150-160 degrees Fahrenheit, sitting in there for 15 or so minutes, then running into the lake to cool off, and repeating 2 more times. These plunges into the water, although the water was so cold, felt really good, and as soon as you got out of the water your core was still so warm that the temperature outside felt great. Once the whole process was done we were soooo relaxed. It was great. After our relaxing few days on the island we caught a bus back to Irkutsk and immediately hopped on a train to Ulan-Ude… our last stop in Russia!

This train ride was pretty short (about 9 hours) through the night, so we pretty much just went to sleep as soon as we got on and didn’t really get a chance to talk to anyone in the morning (we got in again around 6am). We walked to our hostel that morning and took a few hours nap. When we woke up we took a bus to the Ivolginsky Datsun, the most important Buddhist monastery in Russia. The monastery itself had really cool architecture and it was interesting seeing all of the monks walking around in Russia which you pretty much only associate with the Orthodox Church. On the way back to the hostel we had some fun taking pictures with the world’s largest Lenin head… good times. The next morning we woke up early with seemingly the entire hostel to get to the train station for our train to Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia!!!

We had a great time in Russia. It was a little hectic due to the strict visa requirements and have to book all of our train tickets ahead of time, but it worked out to be a great beginning to the first leg of our trip. If we were going to do it again, I wish we would have spent more time in Moscow and St. Petersburg and less time in Siberia, but the whole money issue (basically we’re running out) necessitated we only spend a few days there. On to Mongolia!

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In Mother Russia, Blog Reads You

Well, let’s just say I’ve been pretty lazy with keeping up with the blog over the last 2 months, but I’ll try to catch you up. After we scaled Mt. Kilimanjaro, we went on a few day safari through 4 national parks in Tanzania (Lake Manyara NP, Serengeti NP, Nogorongoro Crater NP, and Tarangire NP). This was a blast because we were able to see literally hundreds and hundreds of animals, but the “budget safari” definitely lived up to its name as we the door on my side of the SUV would pop open every 5 minutes, we got stuck in a riverbed for a good hour (in the middle of one of the parks with wide animals roaming around… we saw lions like 5 minutes before), and our SUV ran out of gas on the way back home on the last day and the guy had to bum 10 bucks off me for gas. The experience was amazing none the less and Erin and I were able to get a pretty good laugh as this craziness was happening (when we weren’t worried about being eaten). After the safari we took a ferry over to Zanzibar where we hung out on the beach for a week or so. The beaches there were gorgeous, Stone Town (the capital) was really fun, and we were able to meet a bunch of cool travelers to swap stories and just hang out with.

After a few nights in Nairobi, Kenya to catch our flight home we left Africa. Our layover was in Amsterdam and we were able to extend for 5 days to check out that city. Amsterdam was a lot of fun. We rented bikes one day and just rode around checking out the beautiful city, went to the Ij brewery to sample some real good beer, and walked through the red light district so Erin could window shop the prostitutes (only half joking, but this is a quick recap). Finally after 4 and a half months we got home in the middle of July. Our trip home was a blast as well. It was great to get home and see our families and friends. We made quick trips up to Ohio and Buffalo to see as many family members as we could (we hope to see the rest around Christmas), and back in Virginia it was great to catch up with everyone (well not everyone… again we hope to see everyone else around Xmas time).

While we were back home, our plan for the second leg of our trip changed. Before we left in February, our plan for round 2 was to fly to Thailand to teach English and travel around southeast Asia in our spare time and come home around February 2012. After thinking about it at the beach in Zanzibar, we decided that we would rather be home for Christmas this year. Because we would only be gone 4.5 months instead of 6, we really couldn’t find a worthwhile teaching gig in Thailand, so we decided to scrap the whole teaching idea and just travel around until Christmas. We started out thinking about just traveling around SE Asia the whole time, but this seemed like small area for the amount of time so our scope slightly broadened.

Last Tuesday we flew to St. Petersburg, Russia to take the Trans-Siberian Railroad through Russia and Mongolia and end up in Beijing, China. Along the way we’re going to hop on and off the train to check out various cities for a few days each. After getting to Beijing, the plan is to go travel through China a little bit, but then our plans are kind of up in the air. Right now we’re either thinking of heading to SE Asia from China and working our way through Burma and Bangladesh on our way to India, head to Tibet and Nepal on the way to India, or some hybrid/new idea that we’ll figure out along the way.

So far, our trip has been amazing. We got to St. Petersburg around 11am last Wednesday, and, after catching up on a few hours sleep in the hostel, we took off to check out the city. St. Petersburg is one of the most “European” cities in Russia and kind of reminded us of Amsterdam with a bunch of canals running through the city and awesome architecture everywhere. After walking around for a while, we were pretty thirsty, so hit up a Russian microbrewery. The beer was pretty good, but we were so jetlagged we could only hang around for one. The next day we were able to hit a lot of the city highlights. We first went to the State Hermitage which is a huge art museum. Erin opted against the audio guide in exchange, choosing rather to listen to my witty commentary (a lot of lousy Russian accents and Communism jokes… at least we saved some money). Next we walked over to the Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood which, despite the rather graphic name, is one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever seen. Erin and I both literally gasped as we walked in. The interior of the church is covered from floor to ceiling in really cool murals. The last thing we did before we left was climb 230 stairs to the top of another church in the city to check out the view of the entire city from the top. That evening we caught a night train to Moscow.

Our Trans-Siberian adventure will be made via the third class cabins on the train. We chose to do this for two reasons: to save money, and to get the chance to meet more people (both Russian and other travelers) along the way. Third class cabins are basically a regular train car, which, instead of being broken into little rooms with either 2 or 4 beds (1^st and 2^nd class), isn’t broken into any rooms and is just lined with bunks. I didn’t really know what to expect on the first train ride, but it was fine. A little cramped, but totally cool. We didn’t get a chance to meet anyone more than a few hellos (still working on our Russian), but this was probably because everyone went to bed pretty soon after the train took off and we arrived to Moscow at 6am.

Once we got to Moscow, we again crashed for a few hours (still pretty jetlagged at this point) and then went to check out the city. Erin really wanted to go to the All Russian Exhibition Center, so after picking up our train ticket to Mongolia, we headed over. The Exhibition Center is this huge park with 15 or so hugely extravagant buildings built in the 30’s to represent the power of the Soviet Russian economic system.  Today, the buildings are surrounded with carnival games and state fair-esque rides. The whole thing is super cheesy and pretty much sums up the rise and fall of the CCCP. Lenin must be rolling over in his mausoleum (he wasn’t… we saw him the next day). After grabbing a quick bite and a beer (you can just walk around with a beer everywhere in Russia… they even have stands which sell draft beer and after getting off trains/busses we’ve definitely seen locals hitting these stands up as early as 7am), we took the metro to Red Square to walk around for the rest of the night. The metro in Moscow is awesome. You never have to wait more than 3 minutes for a train, regardless of what station you’re at, and the stations are amazing architecturally, as well. All the stations are different, but we saw some with murals, chandeliers, mosaics, stained glass, and statues. It was really cool. The next few days we spent hitting all of the tourist sites, going through the kremlin, checking out St. Basil’s Cathedral, walking along the Arbat, and walking around many of the other amazing churches/monasteries/cathedrals spread throughout the city. It was crazy to think that just a few decades ago exactly where we were standing (Red Square/ the Kremlin) evoked fears into many Americans, because we had a blast and experienced nothing but hospitality from our Russian comrades. Hopefully, a few decades from now (or sooner!) our kids can travel to Iraq or Afghanistan and say the same thing (thanks Matt).

The next stop on our trip was a small town about 4.5 hours from Moscow called Suzdal which we bussed to. Suzdal is a small sleepy town along a windy river which although its population is only a few thousand, has over 30 churches. It was a capital city during medieval times so the majority of the churches are from the 13-15^th centuries. The whole town looked like it could have been made by Disney it was so picture perfect. Everyone in town was extremely nice, especially the old lady who ran our hostel who helped us call other hostels (using a lot of sign language – she spoke no English) along our route to help us make reservations (clearly haven’t done that yet). We caught a bus after 2 nights in Suzdal to Vladimir where we had a train to catch the following morning. It didn’t take long for not making reservations to bite us in the ass though as we had to spend the night in the Vladimir train station (actually not as bad as it sounds… there were a few train station attendants making sure everything was above board and that no hobos were around).

After we woke up we had a 6:45am train from Vladimir to Nizhny Novgorod. We hopped on the train ready to sleep for the 3 hour trip, but couldn’t find our beds. Turns out we jumped on the wrong train (still not sure why the attendants checking our tickets let us on). Luckily the train went to the same place and arrived at the same time, we just had to sit in chairs rather than lay in beds (Erin managed to sleep the entire trip regardless). Today we walked around Nizhny all afternoon, checking out the kremlin, a few churches, and their main drag. The gorgeous town is along the Volga River and is at the top of this huge hill, so we definitely got a work out. We needed one, because tomorrow we take our first long train ride… 45 hours on the way to Tomsk. We’re having a blast so far, but already miss everyone back home. We can’t wait for the rest of our adventure though!

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