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julietHello, I am in Siberia. Specifically, in Irkutsk, where I have learnt the lesson that even if late September is too early to be wearing scarf, gloves, and hat in London, it is not so in Siberia. Happily I picked up scarf & gloves in Moscow (& already had hat) and have been v grateful for them. The gloves are particularly awesome, being those fingerless-plus-fliptop-mitten type that enable one to operate camera, guidebook, lunch, etc without removing most of the nice warm glove.
The train - all 82-odd hours of it - was v comfortable. I was sharing with a nice Russian couple (Dina, didn't catch her husband's name & then it was Too Late), & another chap who only went as far as Kirov. There's 4 berths in a compartment, of which the bottom 2 turn into 3 seats each side in the daytimes. So lots of room for sitting since there are only 4 of you (or in my case 3) to fit in. Free unlimited hot water from the samovar in each carriage (the Baikal service has just been overhauled so the samovar is a technological marvel); no shower but there's a drain in the floor of the toilet/bathroom so you can wash with a bowl of water & a mug. (I personally recommend the Ortleib folding bowl thingy which did the job admirably.)
The restaurant car wasn't up to much (at least not for vegans...) but I was anticipating this & had arguably a slight overstock of noodles, cupasoup etc.[0] Excitingly, there are people at lots of the stops selling food of various sorts. Dina bought a whole dried fish at one point (thankfully it mostly smelled of smoke); I acquired about a kilo of potatoes boiled with dill - still warm! And very tasty. Also some v nice rye bread which is still mostly fresh 3 days later (rye bread *lasts*). Three or four times a day there are stops of 20 min or so, which is plenty of time to wander up and down the platform in search of food (or just a stretch of legs).
Time goes surprisingly fast, as well - I'm still only halfway through Book 2 of the Baroque Cycle, & only about 100 rows into my shawl[1]. I spent a lot of time looking out of the window. Mostly what was there was trees - birch and fir, largely. As far as I can tell there's basically one forest all the way from Moscow to Irkutsk, apart from where it's not technically forest but clumps of trees in grassland. Lots of clumps of trees, though, quite close together. There are also villages at intervals, and dacha - wooden houses, usually belonging to city-dwellers, where they grow veg and gather fruit etc. The gardens are in the process of closing up for the winter, but there's still assorted flowers (marigolds!) and lots of cabbages. Obviously Russians are better with the brassicas than![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
marnameow & I. Sadly my Russian is not up to asking how they achieve this. Anyway: despite the predominance of trees, it's surprisingly absorbing just to watch.
My Russian has now got to the point where I am at least *competently* incompetent. Thus, exchanges such as this are possible:
Me (in Russian): [carefully pre-prepared sentence]
Other Person (in Russian): [something incomprehensible, i.e. anything that isn't "yes", "no", or "hello"]
Me (in Russian): I don't understand, sorry.
After which we progress to either English or charades, depending on the language competency of Other Person.
I can read things now, albeit very very slowly; so I spent lots of time at the museum today transliterating labels. Which sometimes means being able to understand at least the gist of them: Russian being a European language has all sorts of words that are either loans from English/Latin/French/German[2], or share roots with one or all of the above, so you can get a fair way with that when reading. It was very pleasing, though :)
I can also divide spoken Russian up into words, when I'm listening to it; I just don't know what many of the words *mean*. My own vocabulary is probably about 50 words or so now, maybe a little more (a fair bit of which learnt from Dina & husband on the train, either deliberately or by listening to them), but I have virtually no grammar so can't string them together very well. If I were doing this again (which I definitely mean to; I'm really sad to be leaving Russia so soon) I would want to actually learn some Russian first rather than relying on the phrasebook. Especially as I'd like to go further up into Siberia, where there's much less English spoken. If I'd been starting other than from scratch, I would have picked up a lot from the last 3 days hearing nothing but Russian.
Anyway: yesterday I arrived at Irkutsk, dumped my big rucksack at Left Luggage, and headed off across the city to find the bus station & a minibus to Listvyanka, the closest Lake Baikal village. The minibus journey was as usual on these occasions, i.e. soundtracked by very loud local pop music, with the sort of driving that makes you want to adopt the "brace" position for the duration of the journey. But we arrived at Listvyanka without incident, to discover that it was absolutely bloody freezing & there was a roaring gale blowing.
Nothing daunted, I set off up the shore for a wander, & after finding a picnic area with a hole-in-the-ground (literally) loo, found a path of sorts (more like a goat-track) heading up the hillside. Which was top fun, and only involved a small quantity of scrambling. Happily the wind was at least blowing me *into* the hillside, not off it. Eventually it petered out altogether, and I sat on a rock for a bit, watching a ferry pass. Even in overcast weather, the lake is gorgeous, and there wasn't anyone else out where I was at all - didn't see a single soul (other than the hypothetical people on the ferry, who I didn't actually see either) for over an hour.
On the way back to the village, I went paddling. I did not actually brave Real Swimming, because
a) it was bloody freezing and blowing a gale;
b) I knew nothing about the water and there was no one around to assist if I got into any sort of trouble;
c) it was bloody freezing and blowing a gale.
So I paddled. With gloves & scarf & hat on; I am not kidding about the "bloody freezing" part.
Got back to the village and found a picnic table to eat my lunch at. Happily, being British, I am not put off by the idea of picnicking at barely-above-zero temperatures and a force 5 or so wind. Wearing gloves. Indeed, I embrace it. (Possibly.)
Shortly after this, it started snowing.
I did nevertheless head up in the other direction, through the village, for a bit, admiring log cottages and the lakeside and so on, before spotting the minibus heading back in (you could tell it was the minibus from the high speed & the sound of over-revved engine) so decided that I'd had enough walking for the day and would return.
On arrival back at Irkutsk, I then spent the next 2 hrs walking around the city in the No Room At The Inn crisis, viz: everywhere was booked up. Except the place I saw first & rejected on the grounds of being too expensive for what it was, i.e. a broom closet with a bed in. Of course, this meant that I eventually paid *way* more than that, but at least the room I fetched up in was nice, with its own bathroom (luxury!) & a fantastic river view.
Today I've been pottered round Irkutsk in the sunshine (of course, today is lovely); looking at the Volkonsky House Museum (see wikipedia on the Decembrists, specifically the bit about people being exiled to Siberia) and the Regional Museum, and having a walk through the Recreational Park. Which appears, from the available litter-evidence, to be primarily frequented by people with a very *narrow* view of recreation, viz one that involves narcotic substances. I eventually found a fallen fence which was *not* surrounded by vodka bottles/beer cans/used syringes, on which I ate my lunch. (The narcotic-favouring denizens of Irkutsk obviously don't like the sunshine as the only people around were people out for a lunchtime walk.)
This evening I'm off to Ulan Bator on another train. Hurrah. Although (see above) I am sad to leave Russia.
[0] Did you know how many calories there are in a cupasoup? About 120. That's not *food*. That's not even a decent snack. Bah.
[1] There are 250 rows, but as every row increases 2 stitches, this isn't even *close* to halfway.
[2] e.g. "magazeen" for shop. Or "medaly" for medal which I worked out in the museum today :)
The train - all 82-odd hours of it - was v comfortable. I was sharing with a nice Russian couple (Dina, didn't catch her husband's name & then it was Too Late), & another chap who only went as far as Kirov. There's 4 berths in a compartment, of which the bottom 2 turn into 3 seats each side in the daytimes. So lots of room for sitting since there are only 4 of you (or in my case 3) to fit in. Free unlimited hot water from the samovar in each carriage (the Baikal service has just been overhauled so the samovar is a technological marvel); no shower but there's a drain in the floor of the toilet/bathroom so you can wash with a bowl of water & a mug. (I personally recommend the Ortleib folding bowl thingy which did the job admirably.)
The restaurant car wasn't up to much (at least not for vegans...) but I was anticipating this & had arguably a slight overstock of noodles, cupasoup etc.[0] Excitingly, there are people at lots of the stops selling food of various sorts. Dina bought a whole dried fish at one point (thankfully it mostly smelled of smoke); I acquired about a kilo of potatoes boiled with dill - still warm! And very tasty. Also some v nice rye bread which is still mostly fresh 3 days later (rye bread *lasts*). Three or four times a day there are stops of 20 min or so, which is plenty of time to wander up and down the platform in search of food (or just a stretch of legs).
Time goes surprisingly fast, as well - I'm still only halfway through Book 2 of the Baroque Cycle, & only about 100 rows into my shawl[1]. I spent a lot of time looking out of the window. Mostly what was there was trees - birch and fir, largely. As far as I can tell there's basically one forest all the way from Moscow to Irkutsk, apart from where it's not technically forest but clumps of trees in grassland. Lots of clumps of trees, though, quite close together. There are also villages at intervals, and dacha - wooden houses, usually belonging to city-dwellers, where they grow veg and gather fruit etc. The gardens are in the process of closing up for the winter, but there's still assorted flowers (marigolds!) and lots of cabbages. Obviously Russians are better with the brassicas than
marnameow & I. Sadly my Russian is not up to asking how they achieve this. Anyway: despite the predominance of trees, it's surprisingly absorbing just to watch. My Russian has now got to the point where I am at least *competently* incompetent. Thus, exchanges such as this are possible:
Me (in Russian): [carefully pre-prepared sentence]
Other Person (in Russian): [something incomprehensible, i.e. anything that isn't "yes", "no", or "hello"]
Me (in Russian): I don't understand, sorry.
After which we progress to either English or charades, depending on the language competency of Other Person.
I can read things now, albeit very very slowly; so I spent lots of time at the museum today transliterating labels. Which sometimes means being able to understand at least the gist of them: Russian being a European language has all sorts of words that are either loans from English/Latin/French/German[2], or share roots with one or all of the above, so you can get a fair way with that when reading. It was very pleasing, though :)
I can also divide spoken Russian up into words, when I'm listening to it; I just don't know what many of the words *mean*. My own vocabulary is probably about 50 words or so now, maybe a little more (a fair bit of which learnt from Dina & husband on the train, either deliberately or by listening to them), but I have virtually no grammar so can't string them together very well. If I were doing this again (which I definitely mean to; I'm really sad to be leaving Russia so soon) I would want to actually learn some Russian first rather than relying on the phrasebook. Especially as I'd like to go further up into Siberia, where there's much less English spoken. If I'd been starting other than from scratch, I would have picked up a lot from the last 3 days hearing nothing but Russian.
Anyway: yesterday I arrived at Irkutsk, dumped my big rucksack at Left Luggage, and headed off across the city to find the bus station & a minibus to Listvyanka, the closest Lake Baikal village. The minibus journey was as usual on these occasions, i.e. soundtracked by very loud local pop music, with the sort of driving that makes you want to adopt the "brace" position for the duration of the journey. But we arrived at Listvyanka without incident, to discover that it was absolutely bloody freezing & there was a roaring gale blowing.
Nothing daunted, I set off up the shore for a wander, & after finding a picnic area with a hole-in-the-ground (literally) loo, found a path of sorts (more like a goat-track) heading up the hillside. Which was top fun, and only involved a small quantity of scrambling. Happily the wind was at least blowing me *into* the hillside, not off it. Eventually it petered out altogether, and I sat on a rock for a bit, watching a ferry pass. Even in overcast weather, the lake is gorgeous, and there wasn't anyone else out where I was at all - didn't see a single soul (other than the hypothetical people on the ferry, who I didn't actually see either) for over an hour.
On the way back to the village, I went paddling. I did not actually brave Real Swimming, because
a) it was bloody freezing and blowing a gale;
b) I knew nothing about the water and there was no one around to assist if I got into any sort of trouble;
c) it was bloody freezing and blowing a gale.
So I paddled. With gloves & scarf & hat on; I am not kidding about the "bloody freezing" part.
Got back to the village and found a picnic table to eat my lunch at. Happily, being British, I am not put off by the idea of picnicking at barely-above-zero temperatures and a force 5 or so wind. Wearing gloves. Indeed, I embrace it. (Possibly.)
Shortly after this, it started snowing.
I did nevertheless head up in the other direction, through the village, for a bit, admiring log cottages and the lakeside and so on, before spotting the minibus heading back in (you could tell it was the minibus from the high speed & the sound of over-revved engine) so decided that I'd had enough walking for the day and would return.
On arrival back at Irkutsk, I then spent the next 2 hrs walking around the city in the No Room At The Inn crisis, viz: everywhere was booked up. Except the place I saw first & rejected on the grounds of being too expensive for what it was, i.e. a broom closet with a bed in. Of course, this meant that I eventually paid *way* more than that, but at least the room I fetched up in was nice, with its own bathroom (luxury!) & a fantastic river view.
Today I've been pottered round Irkutsk in the sunshine (of course, today is lovely); looking at the Volkonsky House Museum (see wikipedia on the Decembrists, specifically the bit about people being exiled to Siberia) and the Regional Museum, and having a walk through the Recreational Park. Which appears, from the available litter-evidence, to be primarily frequented by people with a very *narrow* view of recreation, viz one that involves narcotic substances. I eventually found a fallen fence which was *not* surrounded by vodka bottles/beer cans/used syringes, on which I ate my lunch. (The narcotic-favouring denizens of Irkutsk obviously don't like the sunshine as the only people around were people out for a lunchtime walk.)
This evening I'm off to Ulan Bator on another train. Hurrah. Although (see above) I am sad to leave Russia.
[0] Did you know how many calories there are in a cupasoup? About 120. That's not *food*. That's not even a decent snack. Bah.
[1] There are 250 rows, but as every row increases 2 stitches, this isn't even *close* to halfway.
[2] e.g. "magazeen" for shop. Or "medaly" for medal which I worked out in the museum today :)
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no subject
Date: 2008-10-01 08:37 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-10-01 09:15 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-10-01 09:34 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-10-01 08:46 am (UTC)If you were playing Risk, you'd be able to invade Siberia, Yakutsk, Mongolia or Kamchatka.
no subject
Date: 2008-10-01 09:13 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-10-01 09:14 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-10-01 09:12 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-10-01 09:14 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-10-01 09:23 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-10-01 11:11 am (UTC)By the way, this all sounds like it's been a bit cold! I bet it will be a laugh what changes in climate you encounter as you move south.
And I'm sorry I didn't sit down and make plans for teaching you Chinese before you left, I could have totally had you up to bare minimum for travel, but we would have had to have started in June. I can't believe it's already October! Where has the time gone?
no subject
Date: 2008-10-06 11:32 am (UTC)It has transpired that the podcasts etc were enough to give me the hang of the tones, and I remember more words than I expected, so that's good. I have a phrasebook now, anyway, so that should help.
no subject
Date: 2008-10-01 11:41 am (UTC)Most. British. Thing. Ever. well done :)
no subject
Date: 2008-10-04 01:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-10-01 11:58 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-10-01 01:17 pm (UTC):-)
Glad it sounds like you're having a good journey.
no subject
Date: 2008-10-01 01:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-10-01 02:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-10-01 06:38 pm (UTC)That competently incompetent exchange is so true. Substitute Spanish for Russian and you have a large proportion of my conversations in Peru...
And go you for paddling :)