Hey everyone,
How's it going? Well, this is the second attempt at sending this message. The first one
Technical Explanation:
we lost cause the internet connection timed out and while trying to reconnect with russian prompts we lost it
NonTechnical Explanation
we lost.
Anyways, since we last talked to you, we have been to Yekaterinburg and Novosibirsk, and now we're in Irkutsk. Yekaterinburg was formerly called Sverdlovsk (for those of you with politically incorrect maps).
Yekaterinburg was, well, formerly called Sverdlovsk. That's about all we have to say about the city. However, the people we met there were amongst the friendliest people ever. A lady on the train told us which bus to take, and we must have taken it in the wrong direction, cause nyet less than six people on the bus (this version of Word converts 'n-o' into something weird, must be like teh in english but in russian, so wehave to use 'n-y-e-t') helped us figure out where we were going, and then showed us the proper connection, told the conductor on the bus where we were supposed to be going. We were very impressed.
Novosibirsk was pretty cool. We were split up on the train cause there weren't two seats together. I had a cabin to myself (Russian train logic for ya) and Gerry ended up in a cabin with a girl (Variya) from Novosibirsk who was going home from Moscow. Anyways, her Mom met Variya at the train station, and then insisted that we stay at their house. As the Lonely Planet says (it is the authoritative guide), one of the best ways to see Russia is to stay at a local's home. We talked about basic life things, like how many years of school and stuff. They even called all their english speaking friends to come over and meet the two Canadskis. They play SOS, Crazy 8's, Battleship, and even keep their garbage under the sink. And all during the cold war, I thought they were the bad guys. Weird, eh?
The train from Novosibirsk to here was pretty cool too. It was probably the low end of the second class russian trains that we've taken. But we were the celebrities of the train. We introduced ourselves to the other lady in our cabin (in Russian!), and within 10 minutes the entire train knew that there were two Canadskis on the train and they all knew our name. It was pretty neat being the centre of attention. One guy kept on insisting 'Canada? Futbol!' and we kept on saying 'Nyet, hockey'
Speaking of hockey, we read that Messier nyet longer plays for the Rangers. Where'd he go? (Some of you who have nothing new to say about your lives can use this as an excuse to reply to us) Also on the hockey topic, the Stanley Cup was in Moscow last week. They had in front of Lenin's tomb. Maybe it was news in Canada?
Now for something different. We'll have recurring features in our little update to keep you interested.
Toilet Update: (thanks to MSB for the enquiry)
- Still western sit-down style. Although the train toilets do have little anti-skid things for those who prefer to squat.
- Toilet Paper Quality: Going downhill. Poland was okay, Russia's is, well, paper and it is used in the toilet and so I guess technically is toilet paper.
Local Customs:
- Hangover Cure: Called 'Rassoule', it's pickle juice. And it works, based on my experience.
- Standing-in-lines: this part of the Russian stereotype is true, especially in train stations. We usually spend about an hour waiting in line, only to be told we have to go to another window.
- Drinking before noon: we're going to try this tomorrow.
Big Mac Combo research:
- BMC in Moscow was R25,000. (About US $4.25) The cheapest so far on my journeys has been El Salvador, at about US $2.35
Well, that's it. We now have higher expectations of finding e-mail in places cause we found 4 places here in Irkutsk! So, you can (please) send us mail.
Love,
Eric and Gerry (or Gerry and Eric)
Tuesday, August 26, 1997
Friday, August 15, 1997
Our pre-Siberian update
Hey there folks (it's my turn to type this time ...gmt)
Well, we've been here in Moscow for 4 days now and we're still alive and kicking.
Here's an interesting adventure that happened to us yesterday though. We were sitting around in the Metro station waiting for a surprise rain-storm to subside when a Police Officer approached us and asked to see our Passports. This was the second time that a policeman had made such a request during the course of the afternoon (We thought some murder had been committed by a foreigner or something). Of course, we generally don't walk around with our Passports and valuables on our person so when we showed him our photocopies he didn't seem too impressed and he brought us over to talk to his other police-type buddies. Of course, nobody spoke English and suffice it to say that our Russian isn't up to snuff for this type of conversation (or any type of conversation) ... and nowhere in the Lonely Planet does it say how to pronounce "I'm innocent". Some more heated discussions amongst officers and we were shuffled off to the Police Station in a Police Jeep (a first for us) and we met several more non-english-speaking officers who seemed to have made several jokes at our expense. One in-charge-type officer looked at us and asked one oficer why they'd brought us in and laughed at the response by telling us to "good-bye" (we didn't bother to correct his grammatical use of good-bye as a verb) ... so, we quickly left in the rain and managed to get suitably drenched before we made it back to the hostel ... hmmm ... we still don't know why they brought us in there in the first place but we now have photocopies of our passports and recently registered visa documents so hopefully the next police-type people might be more inclined to just let us go home.
Moscow itself is quite beautiful really (although not nearly as nice as St. Petersburg). We've been to the Kremlin, Red Square, the original McDonalds, the Russian White House, several cathedrals and we've seen one dead body of Lenin (he winked at me though).
So, we ate a McDonalds (it had to be done) and while there we were amazed at the sheer velocity of the place. We've never seen every cash-register being operated in any McDonalds and here there were about 30 all being used by two employees (one taking orders and the other getting food). The place was a model of efficiency in a country where efficiency generally isn't in the top 3 of priorities. We took pictures (and I got one with Ronald).
Next on the list for us is a train eastward to the Ural Mountains. We'll be stopping in Yekaterinburg (sp?), 18 kilometers inside Asia (wahoo) and only a mere 29 hours from Moscow. We don't really know anything about the place so we'll probably be surprised at what we find. From Yekaterinburg another 22 hour train ride will bring us to Novosibirsk and then another 12 to Krasnoyarsk before hitting Irkutsk (yes, the Irkutsk from RISK ... We hope this RISK related fame has created a technology hub and introduced internet cafe's or something ... send us messages and we'll get them eventually). Then, on to Mongolia (which we now have a 30 day visa for) to get some inner peace. (Eric is waiting until we get to Nepal to get his inner peace but I think I'll like the Mongolian product better). We hear they sell it in the streets. Our route following China may now go through Tibet, Nepal, India, Bangledesh, Myanmar (ya know, Burma), Thailand, etc. We keep getting these great ideas from other travellers we meet.
That's it for now. We'd say more but it's cutting into our Friday night drinking time (not like we need a weekend to drink though). We're very impressed by the quantity and quality of all your messages ... it's great to hear good ole Canadian sarcasm at its finest.
Love Gerry & Eric (or Eric & Gerry)
Well, we've been here in Moscow for 4 days now and we're still alive and kicking.
Here's an interesting adventure that happened to us yesterday though. We were sitting around in the Metro station waiting for a surprise rain-storm to subside when a Police Officer approached us and asked to see our Passports. This was the second time that a policeman had made such a request during the course of the afternoon (We thought some murder had been committed by a foreigner or something). Of course, we generally don't walk around with our Passports and valuables on our person so when we showed him our photocopies he didn't seem too impressed and he brought us over to talk to his other police-type buddies. Of course, nobody spoke English and suffice it to say that our Russian isn't up to snuff for this type of conversation (or any type of conversation) ... and nowhere in the Lonely Planet does it say how to pronounce "I'm innocent". Some more heated discussions amongst officers and we were shuffled off to the Police Station in a Police Jeep (a first for us) and we met several more non-english-speaking officers who seemed to have made several jokes at our expense. One in-charge-type officer looked at us and asked one oficer why they'd brought us in and laughed at the response by telling us to "good-bye" (we didn't bother to correct his grammatical use of good-bye as a verb) ... so, we quickly left in the rain and managed to get suitably drenched before we made it back to the hostel ... hmmm ... we still don't know why they brought us in there in the first place but we now have photocopies of our passports and recently registered visa documents so hopefully the next police-type people might be more inclined to just let us go home.
Moscow itself is quite beautiful really (although not nearly as nice as St. Petersburg). We've been to the Kremlin, Red Square, the original McDonalds, the Russian White House, several cathedrals and we've seen one dead body of Lenin (he winked at me though).
So, we ate a McDonalds (it had to be done) and while there we were amazed at the sheer velocity of the place. We've never seen every cash-register being operated in any McDonalds and here there were about 30 all being used by two employees (one taking orders and the other getting food). The place was a model of efficiency in a country where efficiency generally isn't in the top 3 of priorities. We took pictures (and I got one with Ronald).
Next on the list for us is a train eastward to the Ural Mountains. We'll be stopping in Yekaterinburg (sp?), 18 kilometers inside Asia (wahoo) and only a mere 29 hours from Moscow. We don't really know anything about the place so we'll probably be surprised at what we find. From Yekaterinburg another 22 hour train ride will bring us to Novosibirsk and then another 12 to Krasnoyarsk before hitting Irkutsk (yes, the Irkutsk from RISK ... We hope this RISK related fame has created a technology hub and introduced internet cafe's or something ... send us messages and we'll get them eventually). Then, on to Mongolia (which we now have a 30 day visa for) to get some inner peace. (Eric is waiting until we get to Nepal to get his inner peace but I think I'll like the Mongolian product better). We hear they sell it in the streets. Our route following China may now go through Tibet, Nepal, India, Bangledesh, Myanmar (ya know, Burma), Thailand, etc. We keep getting these great ideas from other travellers we meet.
That's it for now. We'd say more but it's cutting into our Friday night drinking time (not like we need a weekend to drink though). We're very impressed by the quantity and quality of all your messages ... it's great to hear good ole Canadian sarcasm at its finest.
Love Gerry & Eric (or Eric & Gerry)
Tuesday, August 12, 1997
Moscow, Russia
Hi Everyone!
How's it going? Well, we have just come down from Murmansk, a 35 hour, 2 night train ride to Moscow. It was pretty comfortable though, we bribed our carriage lady with a Canadian flag pin and she took good care of us. We even got breakfast in the first morning. Plus there was this Russian guy in our compartment who didn't speak a lick of english, but we managed to figure out he was a officer in the army or something, anyways, he pulled out this huge bag of food, bread, sausages, tomatoes, cucumbers, boiled eggs, home brew beer. Man, we haven't eaten that much since I don't even know when. Apparently it's traditional on the trains though for Russians to share their food.
We gave him a nectarine. (and some cheese)
So Murmansk was nothing special. Just way north, that's all, near 69 degrees. We were there on a Saturday night, lotsa sailors and their girls walking about. We stayed up playing crib (oh yeah, we started counting in Russian playing crib on the train. I'm not sure if the officer was impressed or going to shoot us at the butchering of the language) trying to stay up until it got dark, but because it was cloudy, it got dark at around 1:30 and bright at 3:00. I think if there were no clouds that the sky would have been white the whole night.
Well, we arrived in Moscow, walked through the train station (with our big packs), walked to the hostel, got a room, walked to the subway, took the subway here (even had to change lines) and not once were we mugged, approached or looked at by any mafia types. The whole thing has been blown way out of porportion by the western media. Of course, they're driving around in cars with big corporate expense accounts, it's no wonder they're targetted. It's no more dangerous here than any other big city, if you walk around counting your money in dark alleys while drunk, you probably are asking for trouble. (Not that we didn't do that in St.Petersburg, although we were just using the alleys for pit stops, and we never walk out of bars with money). So we're not in danger from Mafia thugs.
We'll give an update later this week, we're here for at least five days (till Aug 17) after that we're going to the non-technical expanse of Siberia. So if you want to send a message to us (hint, hint, nudge, nudge, knowwhatimean, knowwhatimean?) if you send it by the end of this week, we'll pick it up before we get to Beijing.
Love
Eric and Gerry (or Gerry and Eric, you know who you are)
How's it going? Well, we have just come down from Murmansk, a 35 hour, 2 night train ride to Moscow. It was pretty comfortable though, we bribed our carriage lady with a Canadian flag pin and she took good care of us. We even got breakfast in the first morning. Plus there was this Russian guy in our compartment who didn't speak a lick of english, but we managed to figure out he was a officer in the army or something, anyways, he pulled out this huge bag of food, bread, sausages, tomatoes, cucumbers, boiled eggs, home brew beer. Man, we haven't eaten that much since I don't even know when. Apparently it's traditional on the trains though for Russians to share their food.
We gave him a nectarine. (and some cheese)
So Murmansk was nothing special. Just way north, that's all, near 69 degrees. We were there on a Saturday night, lotsa sailors and their girls walking about. We stayed up playing crib (oh yeah, we started counting in Russian playing crib on the train. I'm not sure if the officer was impressed or going to shoot us at the butchering of the language) trying to stay up until it got dark, but because it was cloudy, it got dark at around 1:30 and bright at 3:00. I think if there were no clouds that the sky would have been white the whole night.
Well, we arrived in Moscow, walked through the train station (with our big packs), walked to the hostel, got a room, walked to the subway, took the subway here (even had to change lines) and not once were we mugged, approached or looked at by any mafia types. The whole thing has been blown way out of porportion by the western media. Of course, they're driving around in cars with big corporate expense accounts, it's no wonder they're targetted. It's no more dangerous here than any other big city, if you walk around counting your money in dark alleys while drunk, you probably are asking for trouble. (Not that we didn't do that in St.Petersburg, although we were just using the alleys for pit stops, and we never walk out of bars with money). So we're not in danger from Mafia thugs.
We'll give an update later this week, we're here for at least five days (till Aug 17) after that we're going to the non-technical expanse of Siberia. So if you want to send a message to us (hint, hint, nudge, nudge, knowwhatimean, knowwhatimean?) if you send it by the end of this week, we'll pick it up before we get to Beijing.
Love
Eric and Gerry (or Gerry and Eric, you know who you are)
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