Yekaterinburg
Aug. 21st, 2012 08:29 pmWriting in a train again. It is the late afternoon of Tuesday, August the 21st, and posting will, again, happen at a later time. We've left Yekaterinburg behind and are heading straight for Novosibirsk. We decided we don't want to hurry and spend just one day in Omsk, so we're skipping it entirely, thus winning a while day. Having a spare day in our schedule also can't hurt, given that trains CAN be booked full.
As I said, our hostel in Yekaterinburg was rather nice. We had not much trouble finding it, but it was at first hard to believe it was where it was said to be. At the address specified, we found a perfectly ordinary apartment block, and nowhere was there a hostel sign to be seen. We went to a stairway and climbed to the correct apartment; at its door was a small logo but still no writing. We dared to go in, and inside were some friendly guests and an equally friendly, very very old man, who was the janitor, housekeeper or similar. He welcomed us and let us leave our bags in a nice, modern, white room which wasn't ready for us yet (as it was still morning) but would be ours. The hostel itself was just a normal two-bedroom apartment converted to a hostel, with one two-person room and one dorm. So we left our stuff and went exploring the city.
Our first targets were a couple of churches. Yekaterinburg is perhaps most famous for being the death place of the Romanovs, that is the last Czar and his family. The house whose cellar the killing happened was demolished in the 1970's, for then-local-governor Boris Yeltsin's fear that it would attract monarchists. But there's now a cross that marks the place the house once stood in, and near it there's the stunningly beautiful Church On Blood. We went inside to see the interior and hear people chanting, and it was great.
What else did we do? Ate! A couple of times during our stay in Y-burg we ate in rather fancy Russian restaurants, in order to have our share of pelmeni, shashliki, borsch and chai. But we also got to know the cheap but very decent eateries where everything you can order is on display in front of you and you can just point and order, and it comes quickly and cheaply. Pies, main courses, drinks, and a seemingly endless choice of cakes. We also checked out a Lonely-Planet-recommended microbrewery pub, but it turned out to be a rather soulless big sports bar and even the unfiltered wheat beer wasn't very good.
On our second day we tried to go to several museums but mostly failed. There was supposed to be a railway museum on the station, but it was nowhere to be seen and a policeman we asked said there is no museum there. We walked around the station and checked a few of the neighbouring buildings, but no. Then we walked across the centre in order to find the war museum, but it was closed on Mondays. There was a fascinating inner yard that we could access, though, where numerous antique tanks stood and children played on and around them. Nearby was an impressive monument to Russian soldiers who had died in all the wars Russia had fought in the 20th century. (Including "Finland, 1939-1940".) All but despairing of any hope to see any museum in Y-burg, we happened upon a building that said Museum of Russian something (we didn't understand the rest), and went inside to see; the building itself was also intriguing, an old, brown wood-lace house. It turned out to be a museum for literature in the first half of the 20th century in the Urals, and for under one euro, we saw a beautifully put-together little museum and even had an English-language explanatory leaflet. We learned that literary life in the Urals flourished during and after WWII, as so many authors from Moscow and St. Petersburg were evacuated to the Urals.
We also got to know the city's very attractive riverside quite well. There's a "City Pond" (as our guidebook calls it), and a river that the pond is a part of, cutting the city center in half, and on both sides of the river/pond there are very nice promenades. People, especially young couples, gather there in the evening to hang out and take walks. The weather during all of our stay was quite pleasant, a sharp, hot sun alternating with partly cloudy skies and just a few drops of water.
All in all, Lonely planet let us believe the city would be unattractive and made mostly of Constructivist concrete buildings, but that was not our impression of the place at all. There was the run-down concrete side of it, yes, but all in all, it was a nice place full of charming wooden houses and splendid palace-like 1800's buildings as well as several magnificent churches. Also remarkably peaceful for a city of 1.2 million inhabitants.
Russian trains have modernised a lot since I last was here, in 2005, by the way. At the Yekaterinburg station, we bought our tickets at a machine. A machine! Which spoke English. English! (Rule one: If you can avoid Russian officials, do.) There are so many variables when buying train tickets that this ease of communication and explicit choice is a godsend. There's the choice of train by departure and arrival times, class, top or bottom bunk, corridor or not, bedsheets or not.
Another modernisation: the train lavatories nowadays seem to be bio-toilets, which you can use even if the train is at a station. A great improvement!
But the beds are not any bigger... At quite exactly six feet (183 cm), I definitely feel two sizes too tall! During the night, I have a choice between various cramped positions or having my feet on the corridor from the ankles down, for passers-by to hit. I spent the night changing from one bad position to another, and in the morning was glad that today we mostly sit in the train instead of doing anything active. Next time, I'll want the bottom bunk; it's at least slightly longer, since the supporting wires that the top bunk hangs from cut another couple of inches from the length.
All in all, Russia feels so much more like home than last time. I have no idea how much it is westernisation and how much I've just grown up, learned more Russian, and learned to be at peace in different places of the world. And maybe I've stopped expecting the people and the food and everything to be the same as at home, and just learned how it is here.
Our plans for Novosibirsk include at least trying to go to the opera or ballet! They have an opera house that is bigger than Moscow's famous Bolshoi theatre, and supposedly it's magnificent. Also what is Russia famous for if not ballet?
Pics later!
As I said, our hostel in Yekaterinburg was rather nice. We had not much trouble finding it, but it was at first hard to believe it was where it was said to be. At the address specified, we found a perfectly ordinary apartment block, and nowhere was there a hostel sign to be seen. We went to a stairway and climbed to the correct apartment; at its door was a small logo but still no writing. We dared to go in, and inside were some friendly guests and an equally friendly, very very old man, who was the janitor, housekeeper or similar. He welcomed us and let us leave our bags in a nice, modern, white room which wasn't ready for us yet (as it was still morning) but would be ours. The hostel itself was just a normal two-bedroom apartment converted to a hostel, with one two-person room and one dorm. So we left our stuff and went exploring the city.
Our first targets were a couple of churches. Yekaterinburg is perhaps most famous for being the death place of the Romanovs, that is the last Czar and his family. The house whose cellar the killing happened was demolished in the 1970's, for then-local-governor Boris Yeltsin's fear that it would attract monarchists. But there's now a cross that marks the place the house once stood in, and near it there's the stunningly beautiful Church On Blood. We went inside to see the interior and hear people chanting, and it was great.
What else did we do? Ate! A couple of times during our stay in Y-burg we ate in rather fancy Russian restaurants, in order to have our share of pelmeni, shashliki, borsch and chai. But we also got to know the cheap but very decent eateries where everything you can order is on display in front of you and you can just point and order, and it comes quickly and cheaply. Pies, main courses, drinks, and a seemingly endless choice of cakes. We also checked out a Lonely-Planet-recommended microbrewery pub, but it turned out to be a rather soulless big sports bar and even the unfiltered wheat beer wasn't very good.
On our second day we tried to go to several museums but mostly failed. There was supposed to be a railway museum on the station, but it was nowhere to be seen and a policeman we asked said there is no museum there. We walked around the station and checked a few of the neighbouring buildings, but no. Then we walked across the centre in order to find the war museum, but it was closed on Mondays. There was a fascinating inner yard that we could access, though, where numerous antique tanks stood and children played on and around them. Nearby was an impressive monument to Russian soldiers who had died in all the wars Russia had fought in the 20th century. (Including "Finland, 1939-1940".) All but despairing of any hope to see any museum in Y-burg, we happened upon a building that said Museum of Russian something (we didn't understand the rest), and went inside to see; the building itself was also intriguing, an old, brown wood-lace house. It turned out to be a museum for literature in the first half of the 20th century in the Urals, and for under one euro, we saw a beautifully put-together little museum and even had an English-language explanatory leaflet. We learned that literary life in the Urals flourished during and after WWII, as so many authors from Moscow and St. Petersburg were evacuated to the Urals.
We also got to know the city's very attractive riverside quite well. There's a "City Pond" (as our guidebook calls it), and a river that the pond is a part of, cutting the city center in half, and on both sides of the river/pond there are very nice promenades. People, especially young couples, gather there in the evening to hang out and take walks. The weather during all of our stay was quite pleasant, a sharp, hot sun alternating with partly cloudy skies and just a few drops of water.
All in all, Lonely planet let us believe the city would be unattractive and made mostly of Constructivist concrete buildings, but that was not our impression of the place at all. There was the run-down concrete side of it, yes, but all in all, it was a nice place full of charming wooden houses and splendid palace-like 1800's buildings as well as several magnificent churches. Also remarkably peaceful for a city of 1.2 million inhabitants.
Russian trains have modernised a lot since I last was here, in 2005, by the way. At the Yekaterinburg station, we bought our tickets at a machine. A machine! Which spoke English. English! (Rule one: If you can avoid Russian officials, do.) There are so many variables when buying train tickets that this ease of communication and explicit choice is a godsend. There's the choice of train by departure and arrival times, class, top or bottom bunk, corridor or not, bedsheets or not.
Another modernisation: the train lavatories nowadays seem to be bio-toilets, which you can use even if the train is at a station. A great improvement!
But the beds are not any bigger... At quite exactly six feet (183 cm), I definitely feel two sizes too tall! During the night, I have a choice between various cramped positions or having my feet on the corridor from the ankles down, for passers-by to hit. I spent the night changing from one bad position to another, and in the morning was glad that today we mostly sit in the train instead of doing anything active. Next time, I'll want the bottom bunk; it's at least slightly longer, since the supporting wires that the top bunk hangs from cut another couple of inches from the length.
All in all, Russia feels so much more like home than last time. I have no idea how much it is westernisation and how much I've just grown up, learned more Russian, and learned to be at peace in different places of the world. And maybe I've stopped expecting the people and the food and everything to be the same as at home, and just learned how it is here.
Our plans for Novosibirsk include at least trying to go to the opera or ballet! They have an opera house that is bigger than Moscow's famous Bolshoi theatre, and supposedly it's magnificent. Also what is Russia famous for if not ballet?
Pics later!
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