Irkutsk, Russia and My birthday

20th August 2008


Train three of ten was a really pleasant ride, the Russian train officer was a little scary and the wait at the boarder took forever, about seven hours, but we got our passports stamped and made it though. While waiting at the Russian boarder town our train started moving, it's a little scary seeing you train moving and you aren't sure if you're supposed to be on it or not. Turns out we didn't have to be on it, it was just moving tracks.

Russia is very different to other countries I have visited, we'd been hearing stories about the Russians not being very helpful and that no one really speaks English and can confirm that these are both true after arriving at Irkutsk early on Tuesday morning. Everyone sounds really angry, no one smiles and the people we have had interactions with seem like they can't be bothered to talk/deal with us. There are loads of really boxy cars on the road straight out of the 80's and there is about a 50/50 mixture of left and right hand drive cars. And also what seems to be a large number of boy racer type cars and people, complete with Trance music blaring out of all kinds of cars. Women have incredibly long legs, can walk in heels and it feels like they tower over me when they walk down the street. It also reminds me a lot of first being in Japan, I can't read anything and the language is really different. I keep bowing at people if I want them to help me. People are all kinds of ethnic origins here so it's hard to tell who is a gai-jin/tourist and who isn't.

Waiting at the bank in Irkutsk to change travellers cheques there was a middle aged couple who were trying to change sterling in to Russian rubles, from what was going on it looked like the bank thought she was trying to change fake money, they kept looking in massive folders and putting them under UV light to test their authenticity. Among the stack were two large brown notes, I don't know what domination they were, but they looked a little suspect. It took them forever to finally change about 250 GBP out of what looked like about 600 GBP. She didn't look that pissed off when she left, so maybe they were fake. When I get to the counter they are equally as suspicious of my sterling travellers cheques, again after a long time looking in folders and checking the procedure I finally got some Russian rubles.

Like UB there are no MacDonald's or Starbucks and as Skye are I were walking round for a place to have a birthday lunch there was very little on offer expect banks. We found a place that offered omul, a freshwater fish that is only found in lake Baikal, so we spent the afternoon there. Went out for drinks in a cute beer garden that reminded me of S. Africa.