Itkutsk & another Train

Lenin's statue is still evident

Tuesday 31^st was our last day in Irkutsk. This was an opportunity to see a few things that were still on the list and to stock up with a few provisions for the train.

We got to breakfast before 9 am, so that there was something left to us. This wasn’t necessarily a good move – the food was lukewarm and unappetising, but, at least, we avoided the creamed rice (which was an off-white colour today, in contrast to the yellow colour of yesterday).

The day itself is beautiful. The sky is a cloudless blue and the wide Angara river viewed from our room has barely a ripple, even though it moves quite quickly.

We checked-out of the hotel mid-morning, leaving our bags in their care, and headed off to explore. We headed to the north-east of the central city. On the way, we found the cental market, which was a crowded, bustling place, selling plants, vegetables, meat and all manner of other products. It was clearly a popular place with locals.

Volonsky House

Further on, we found the Volonsky house. In 1825, a group of aristocrats led a poorly organized "revolt" against the new Tsar (they are called the Decemberists, because of the timing of the revolt). The Tsar magnanimously dispatched only 60 of the plotters and sent the rest (about 150) to Irkutsk. The wives of about 25 decided to follow their husbands to the wilds of Siberia. One of these was Maria Volonsky. These wives established themselves in Irkutsk and became the centre of social life. This house is a large wooden structure and contains furniture and fittings from the time. After seven years, the husbands were released from hard labour and after about 25 they were given amnesty (when the Tsar died) - so the wives lived and raised families in this very remote location. The house is worth seeing, as are the exteriors of some of the other wooden houses in the area.

We took a tram back into town and found a beer garden for lunch.

After that, it was off to the Supermarket to stock up for the train. I found a deightful cask of what I hope is French red (one "French" that I found proved on examination to be from that impressive appelation "melange of Europen countries").

A quiet lager by the Angara River

It was a beautiful clear and warm day - the best that Irkutsk can provide. It seemed as though every young lady had put on their most fashionable outfits and their highest heels because we were in town.

 We repaired to a floating kiosk on the river and had a few beers, before going back to the hotel to meet our transport and head for the Baikal train at the station. The train was to be our home for the next two days.

Katya arrived, took us to the train station and saw us safely onto the train. This is train #009, called the Baikal. First class is comfortable, but not as well laid out as the Rossiya (no shelves, less handing space). There seem to be only two cabins occupied in our wagon.

Dinner was a hot roll stuffed with sausage at the train station, followed by cheese and bread on-board. We accompanied this with a charming little red that we found at the supermarket - a 3 litre cardboard box of French Rouge Moelleux with the wonderful name of Garson. (a beautiful, unnecessary over-correction of the Russian “C” to the European “S”). Of course, the supermarket stocked every form of wine except Russian.

Irkutsk

We spent Monday 30^th in Irkutsk. While our hotel is quite good, it still has examples of the service that has made the reputation of the Russian hotel industry. We arrived for breakfast at about 9am, well before closing time of 10 am. It was a good thing that we wouldn’t have liked most of the hot food on offer – nonetheless, the empty rank of bain-maries made an impressive sight. We had what looked like scrambled eggs (but which turned out to be creamed rice), rice and a thing described as boiled sausage. Luckily, it only took two requests and 10 minutes to get two cups so that we could have a cup of tea.

Restored Russian Orthdox cathedral shows a new interest in religion

We went off exploring on our own. The town is 350 years old, a milestone that will be celebrated in June or September or whenever the preparations are complete, Irkutsk was (and remains) a major centre of Siberian trade and this prominence, along with a gold rush in the 1800’s, resulted in a prosperous city with distinctive wooden houses, some impressive buildings and pleasant parks. Apparently, all this is limited to the city centre, with the suburbs being the usual displays of Soviet style.



There are a number of old churches, though what was apparently the largest and best was destroyed on Stalin’s orders to allow the construction of a concrete carbuncle as Communist Party headquarters (used now by the Regional Administration).



Streetscape on Karl Mark St.



The city centre has a wide selection of shops and evidences an interest in fashion and reasonable prosperity. Women are well dressed, including the obligatory tall heels. Certainly the city feels much larger, richer and better maintained than Vladivostok, though the latter may actually have a larger population. Most cars are Japanese and are typically imported as used cars (thereby having a right-hand driver’s seat). Even though a good salary here is 15,000 rbl/month (about $500 a month), some citizens obviously are quite wealthy, given that we saw some new Lexus, Mercedes and Range Rover 4WDs.

Lunch was at the Sneginka on the main street (Karl Marx St.). The restaurant has some ornate decoration, but the food and the service were good. We had a few glasses of the restaurant’s house wine, which was reasonable and unidentified.

Katya met us for a walking tour. In large part, this covered much of the ground that we had previously explored, though it did fill in a few gaps about the city. We discovered that Irkutsk is a something of a university town, with 15 universities attracting students from across Siberia. The other revelation was that water is heated at a central (coal-fired) utility and piped to all homes as the source of heating and domestic hot water, at a cost of about $30 a month per home.

Dinner was at a restaurant in the Hotel Angara. The interior was arranged as a sequence of rooms, each of which was a wooden Siberian house. The muzak was terribly, but the food was good. Our wine tour continued – this time with a Chilean chardonnay, The white wine was served at room temperature, which seems the norm here. Russian wine remained elusive.

CircumBaikal Railway

On Sunday 29th, we took the CircumBaikal railway. We packed up and took a taxi from Rita's the short distance to the ferry terminal at Lystvanka, where we met Katya.

The train winds around the lakeside edge

The half-hour ferry takes you across the Angara River entrance to Port Baikal, where you catch the CircumBaikal railway. This is now a tourist or recreational train, but the route was previously that of the Trans-Sib. The route was completed in 1905 and was the last part of the Trans-Sib to open. Built at great cost, the railway hugs the steep southern shore of Lake Baikal, passing through 39 tunnels as it winds its way around the lake.

The train is now a four or five car modern diesel rail-motor, which is a popular outing for locals. The train travels slowly. It stops at a number fo scenic locations. On the train and at each stop, a Russian guide keeps up an unceasing commentary, while the traveller eat and drink their way through the provisions that they have brought. Inevitability, some of the travellers are we lubricated after a few hours.



An abandoned bridge at our lunch stop

 The views were execllent, particlarly in the warm sun. The whole is rather like a railway version of the Great Ocean Roan.

The whole exercise is very long. It's about seven hours to travel the CircumBaikal and then another three or so to travel back to Irkutsk from the place where the CircumBaikal hits the main Trans-Sib line.

Our lunch was at one of the stops, at a small village in a stream valley by the lake. Lunch was provided by a babuska, It was all home made food, consisting of borscht, pelmeni, pastry and a vodka infused with cedar.



Lunch at a babuska's



After a long time we got to the main Trans-Sib line at Sludyanka and then about 3 or four hours later, we were back in Irkutsk - by now it was 10:3 pm, so it was a long day.

Our Irkutsk hotel is good - it is a large ex-Soviet hotel that has been renovated. Fortunately, it had a bar where we coud get a meal at 11pm. We had a good steak. Again, the menu offered no Russian wines, so we settled for a Wallaby Creek red, followed by a Russian vodka.

Lystvanka

Lystvanka is a small villiage on the shores of Lake Baikal. It is a popular desitnation to see the lake. Lack of planing controls means that it's original architecture of quaint wooden houses is being slowly and inexorably displaced by ugly constructions of brick, though there are some attractive new wooden structures.

On Saturday 28th, we woke to a beautiful clear, cool day with distant mountains in the haze over a still lake. Breakfast was eggs & sausage, bread and blinis & jam. There is one other group here; three Canadians.

Lunch time at the Museum of Wooden Architecture

Rita's has WiFi, so we could use Skype and get this blog up to date. Katya picked us up at 11am and took us to the Museum of Wooden Architecture. Set in birch forest about 20 km from Lystvanka, this is a collection of wooden architecture from various places in Siberia, along with some recreations. It gives a good guide to the architecture of the pioneer times.

We had lunch there. Soup was solyanka (meat and vegatables), followed by pelmeni (meat dumplings) and blinis and honey. It was a good Russian lunch. After lunch, Katya returned us to Listyvanka.

An afgternoon beer on the Baikal lakeside

After a brief rest, we set out to explore Lystvanka. The villiage is strung out along the lakeside, hemmed in by steep hills, with a couple of small creek valleys cutting back into the hills. The lake is very clear and quite cold. The narrow beach of pebbles is unimpressivve. Lots of people were out, taking in the sunshine and looking around. A couple of small markets sold tourist stuff and smoked or fresh local fish. A beer by the lakeside was welcome and very inexpensive at A$1.60 for a half-litre bottle.

We wandered through the villiage and called in on the local wooden Orhodox church. We caught about 10 minutes of the services in the small church, which internally was covered with paintings/icons. We went back to Rita's and found that our laundry was finished, so we are back to the full complement of clean washing that we started with a week ago.

We walked to Katya's recommended restaurant for dinner. This is a fish area, so we had a fish salad, followed by a fish main course (based on omul, the well-regarded local fish). In spite of our attempt to find wine everywhere, we deferred this time when we found the only wine on the menu was Asti Spumante at A$50 a bottle. After the mean, we strolled along the lake back to Rita's.

Tomorrow we leave, taking a ferry to Port Baikal to catch the CircumBaikal Railway back to Irkutsk.

Train - Vladivostok to Irkutsk - Day 3

Friday 27^th was our third (and final) day of this part of the trip. When we woke, the train was travelling through the last part of a mountain region (Yablonovy Mountains) that it had crossed while we slept. Shortly after, we stopped at Khilok, a larger town where the principal activity is railway maintenance. We’ve come 3400 km, and it still 5932 km to Moscow!

The scenery is mainly open country, often with distant low hills covered in green fir trees. Small settlements are more common now, with the traditional wooden Siberian houses much less common. There are even some made local roads.

By midday (our time) we pulled into the busy station at Ulan Ude, which was our first large city for some time (about 400,000). Large buildings and apartment blocks replaced the single dwellings surrounded by a wooden fence that had been the norm for two days. While most people looked Russian, we saw some of the local Buryat people, who are ethnically linked to the Mongolians.

The trees has noticeably thicker foliage now and there are more blossoms – obviously spring comes a little earlier here than further east. Outside the big city, every house is a detached dwelling, generally wooden, with a fenced yard and everyone seems to have well-maintained vegetable beds and even greenhouses, though there is no sign of this seasons growth yet.

Light blue has been the predominant colour everywhere, with a very occasional outbreak of green. If it’s painted, it’s painted light blue. Window frames, the base of poles, some walls and fences, railway fittings and even the railings around graves.

Broken ice covers this part of Lake Baikal

By about 3 pm, we had come upon Lake Baikal. Quite unexpectedly, it was covered with broken ice, the remnants of the winter ice covering. As we travelled, we had Lake Baikal on our right and snow covered mountains on our left. After a brief time, the all sign of ice on the lake disappeared and we were left with a wide expanse of still blue water, with the opposite shore visible through the haze.

The train stopped for two minutes at Slyudyanka, where the provonik recommended the omul. So we bought some smoked omul fish and enjoyed it with a sip of vodka.

We continued for three hours to Irkutsk. Where the train arrived exactly on-time and we were met by our guide, Katya.

Katya drove us to Lystvanka, on the shores of Lake Baikal, a drive of just over one hour as soon as we had cleared the Friday afternoon rush. Apparently this excellent road was constructed in the late 1950’s in the expectation that President Eisenhower would visit Irkutsk and Lystvanka. The road was completed, but the U2 Spy Plane incident intervened and Eisenhower never made it. However the excellent bitumen road remains as his legacy.

Our accommodation is a room with shared facilities called “At Rita’s”, which is a modern wooden building, with considerable use of wood internally. Dinner is just up the road at “Olga’s”, a homestay. This means that we get some Russian home cooking, which turned out to be local fish, potatoes, tomatoes & mayonaisse and a cabbage salad. t was quite good and was accompanied by cups of hot tea (with milk, which we hadn't seen for a while).

Train - Vladivostok to Irkutsk - Day 2

One day follows another on the train. The next day (Thursday 26th) found us about 2000 km from our start, but still in the Russian Far East. We were still not in Siberia!

Breakfast is black tea, cheese and rye bread, all of which travels well on the train.

The country slowly became more heavily forested and less marshy. In some areas, the forests are very thick and largely impenetrable. With blue skies, sunshine and the green growth of spring, it was hard to recognise that this is very tough country. The ground is permanently frozen below the surface (permafrost), experiences frosts from October to April and has a January average of -33 ^oC.

Buying snacks at a station stop

By mid-morning, we crossed into Siberia. Otherwise, the scenery remained unchanged, with forests of thin birch trees and some taller conifers. The traditional train lunch of cup noodles or bread and cheese was taken as we rolled through the countryside.

The Kindles are proving their value as lightweight libraries. We read and snoozed as the world rolled by.

By afternoon the forests became thinner and the land increasingly more open, with low rolling hills. By evening, the country was very open – rolling hills swathed with green, small rivers and watercourses and occasional stands of small, thin trees with small settlements of wooden houses. We saw horses and some cattle grazing and local Russians enjoying the warm evening, generally by relaxing beside the rivers (fishing, picnicking and camping). With the rivers and the green fields, the country looked like parkland. There is plenty of space here – any group that we saw was on its own.

In various towns, we would sometimes see a very fashionably dressed young Russian lady walking down the street. The fact that all local streets are unmade dirt, and are presumably snow-covered for much of the year, did not seem to be a barrier to wearing the highest possible heels. The clothing of the young Russian males is perhaps more dressed-down, generally being T-shirt, shorts and thongs or sneakers.

In the dining car

Following some pre-dinner Balticas in our cabin, we transferred to the dining car. It doesn’t seem to get much custom; we were the only customers. We are learning to ignore the menu and simply to ask what is available. Tonight it was fish, steak & potatoes or snitzel. We elected for the snitzel which was quite good. We asked for white wine and were given a bottle which we presume was the only option. It was a wine bottled in France, but seemingly consisting of “wines from various European counties”. So, both the grape types and the production counties were unspecified – it’s appropriate that it was described in the French as a “melange”. So our world-wide wine tour through Russia continued!

Train - Vladivostok to Irkutsk - Day 1

Our first train is the Rossiya (#001), which is one of the premier trains of Russia, making the 9289 km journey from Vladivostok to Moscow every second day, and similarly the return journey from Moscow.

A top Russian train has three classes. First class has two sleepers to a cabin and second has four sleepers in a similar sized cabin. The third class is a more open car, which holds six sleepers in a similar space to that of the first or second class cabin plus its adjacent corridor. Prices are roughly in line with the space (second class is 50% of first class; third class is 30% of first class).

We were in a first-class compartment. The carriage is only about 25% occupied, so we certainly aren’t bothered by people. Each carriage has an attendant (for a male, he is called a provonik; a female is a provodnitsa). There is a boiling water urn at one end of the carriage and two toilets at the other end (one permanently locked; reserved for the provodnik?).

Russian first class carriages vary in interior design, though the layout is generally the same – two beds, a curtained window (which doesn’t open), storage under the beds, a small table and various hooks and small storage areas. Our interior design is from the “general hospital” school of design – everything off-white and clinical.

Our train left on Tuesday 24^th at 10:20 pm Vladivostok time. As the train crosses multiple time zones, all the timetable information on-board is at Moscow time (seven hours behind Vladivostok), so it’s wise to set your watch to Moscow time. We had some bread and cheese with some Baltica beer and settled in for the night.

The beds are comfortable and the cabin warm (even over-warm), so it’s possible to get a good night’s sleep. In any case, there’s no urgency to meet a deadline the next day.

The next morning (Wednesday 25^th) found us at Vyazemskaya, which is otherwise unremarkable except that it is a stop where locals sell red salmon caviar. Matthew bought some and we had a Russian breakfast of salmon caviar, bread and a little vodka.

The train continued through the day, heading north and then turning to the west. The line tends to parallel the Chinese border, though is 50 to 100 km back from the border.

This is a big country, so there is lots of open space, with light or heavier coverings of birch or like trees. There is plenty of water about and much of the ground seems marshy. There are also some very big rivers, which were (and possibly still are) and important means of transport and trade. At one point, a 2.6 km bridge, the longest on the railway, spans the Amur River.

There are plenty of smaller towns and some large cities – Khabarovsk at 690,000 is the largest, but there are others of 60,000 to 80,000 and numbers with 15,000 to 30,000.

You fall into a rhythm on the train – reading, resting, watching the world go by and getting off at the stops, which occur about every three hours.

For much of the day, we travelled though the Jewish Autonomous Region set up by Stalin in 1928. It wasn’t a great success and today less that 6000 of the 200,000 inhabitants of the 30,000 sq. km. territory are Jewish. The fact that Stalin’s anti-Jewish purges even extended to this area, closing synagogues and banning Yiddish, may explain some of this, as does the significant migration of Russian Jews to Israel, particularly at the end of the Soviet era. Train station signs here are often in Russian and Hebrew.

The traditional Trans-Sib lunch is packet noodles, so that’s what we had. We checked out the dining car for pre-dinner drinks (more Baltica) and for dinner. Dinner was something that translated as meat & potato stew, but which was quite palatable. As we found elsewhere, Russian wine is a rare commodity in Russia. Continuing our world wine tour, we had a light Spanish red with our meal.

Around Vladivostok

The next day (Tuesday 24th May) commenced with breakfast (of course, they didn't have the orange juice on the menu).

Russian navy in Vladivostok harbour

Our guide met us and took us to a landing on the harbour. We boarded our boat - just the two of us and our guide - for a tour of the harbour. It is a big, bustling, port, There are Russian navy boats (only a few) and lots of commercial shipping, ferries and coast guard. There is also a very large ice-breaker.

Commercial shipping includes containers (mainly handled by modern handing facilities) and smaller ships being loaded by cranes (including coal and scrap metal). Import of used Japanese cars seems well established - so much so that you don't see any Russian cars on the streets. This means that, while Russia drives on the right (US and European style), most of the drivers are sitting on the right-hand side of the car.

The cruise, of about 90 minutes, gave us a good view of the harbour, though it was foggy and quite cold on the boat. We could see the two new bridges under construction - the one between Vladivostok and Rossiya Island will be an impressive span. Rossiya Island was an off-limits military area (it's now a leisure destination, with about 200 inhabitants, serviced by ferry). It's a big bridge to let APEC meet on Rossiya Island.

We had lunch in a Georgian restaurant. In spite of Georgia's reputation for wine, the best we could find was a South African Colombard Chablis (which, of course, wasn't on the menu). Locals were sensibly drinking vodka! The meal was good, even if most of the menu wasn't available. One of the locals introduced himself - Viktor was apparently a local seaman (a Chief Radio Officer), but conversation was a little difficult (our dubious Russian, his limited English and possibly the vodka he had taken on board).

Following a bit of a walk, we had a look at the Fortress Museum. Vladivostok was heavily fortified in the 20th century, particularly in WWII and this Museum was at one of these fortifications. Unsuprisingly, the museum was mainly cannons of all sorts and other military paraprenalia.


Trans-Sib marker at Vladivostok Station

At 8:55, Natalia collected us, took us to a supermarket  to stock up on provisions and saw us to the train. The train station is in the centre of town and is an interesting and attractive structure (pitched roof, arches, columns and other ornamentation, inside and out), designed to highlight the importance of the railway.

Vladivostok

OK - here we are. Vladivostok Airport certanly isn't a major hub. We are help up waiting - we thought that we were waiting for a gate, but now suspect that we were wating for the stairs. Two planes landing around the same time creates a bottleneck. Down the stairs and into the bus to be carried to the terminal. The bus then moves 15 m to the terminal and we disembark.

To our surprise, both we and our luggage managed three flights and two connections without incident. Exactly as planned, we met our guide (Natalia) at Vladivostok airport.

Vladivostok airport is 50 km outside the city, which sits at the end of a long peninsula. The single road from the airport is under repair - all 50 km of it - so that it is like a cattle road, crowded, dusty, bumpy and slow. We discovered that Vladivostok is to host an APEC meeting in 2012, so they are making major infrastructure upgrades to improve the city.

Our hotel is a couple of km outside the central city, but is clean and comfortable. It must be a god hotel - a plaque on the room opposite ours records the stay of Kim Jong Il some years ago.At least we have discovered that we can buy Baltica beer for about $1.50 nearby.

We had a good Russian meal - Solyanka (a meat & vegetable soup) and fish and got a good nights sleep. The best wine that we could find was "Wallaby Creek", a S.E. Australian chardonnay - served at room temperature. I think that we will have to get used to meals without wine. Only beer and vodka is served cold.

The next day (Monday) we met our guide and had a tour of the city. Vladivostok is not an old city (founded in 1860) and it is certainly still under development - in fact, everything seems to be in some sort of state of repair. This doesn't mean that we are seeing a brilliant city emerge from a major co-ordinated urban re-development. Far from it, it's all a bit run-down, tired and dirty with many repairs seemingly half-finished.



Attractive buildings, but the footpath and underpass need some attention

 Many of the better buildings were probably built in the late 19th and early 20th century, before the heavy hand of Soviet architecture was applied. Some are in good condition, but many more need some care. Later building are bland and often slowly decaying. Some new construction appears abandoned, thought here are a couple of more modern new shopping complexes. Most footpaths seem to be partly dug-up, but there is little evidence of activity to complete any work.

We have to guess that the infrastructure for APEC (the freeway from the airport and two massive bridges) will possibly not be completed in time. Maybe they can arrange for all the dignaturies to arrive and leave in darkness.

The city is a major commercial port. An arm of the port near the city is called the Golden Horn (it is a sheltered harbour, shaped like a single cattle horn) and is lined with commercial port facilities (and some naval facilities). One of the major new bridges will span this waterway.

So, we had a good look around the city. We saw a submarine museum (inside a WWII submarine) and the Regional Museum, which has some interesting displays of some of the regional animals (suitably stuffed).

A small market near the railway station was doing a good trade in fresh vegetables, fish, meats and baked goods, but otherwise the shopping areas were uninspiring.

We successfuly negotiated the bus system to get back to our hotel. We dined there, as the food had been reasonable the night before (and because there wasn't anywhere else nearby). Apparently, it doesn't matter what you ask for on the winelist - they haven't got it. We eventually settled for an over-sweet French wine (which wasn't on the list). We think that they have a supply of about four wines.

Let's take a train.....

One evening in late 2010, the Fagan's and Entwisle's were discussing Russia. Somehow, Matthew and Michael decided to take some Russian trains and Margaret and Bernadette agreed with the idea.

About six months later, we had organized an itinerary, tickets, tours and visas and we are ready to go.

The plan is to fly to Vladivostok, via KL and Seoul. After a few days in Vladivostok, we travel by train to Moscow, stopping for four days in Irkutsk and a day in Ekaterinburg. After a few days in Moscow, we travel to the Crimea, with a stop to check out the area of the Kursk battle.

Then it's one last train, to Odessa. After a few days, we fly to Istanbul for two days. Then it's home,via Doha.

We leave on Saturday 21st May and return on Monday 20th June 2011.