Dad and Dave in Siberia Dad and Dave in Siberia A father-son adventure - Bruce and David will ride the Trans-Siberian Railway in July 2007. Via Japan to Vladivostok, west to St Petersburg via Irkutsk, Yekaterinburg and Moscow, stopping in Riga, and finishing in Barsinghausen Articles
The last train ride
2007-08-07 08:35:00 I’ve found my way back to Nara, coming full circle from when our trip started. I arrived in Osaka at about 9am this morning, and have until 9pm tonight to spend some time, so found myself on the phone to the Takemotos, who promptly invited Deno-san around. We’re going through photos of Audrey and recent ... More About: Ride , Train , Siberia , TRAI , The Last
The Long Trip Home
2007-08-06 11:51:00 Leaving the baptism party was the beginning of mytrip home to Melbourne. Birge kindly dropped me off at the local station where I caught a train to Hanover. From there I had a 2 1/2 hour trip on the Inter Clty Express(ICE) to Frankfurt. That wos o pleasant trip ard I enjoyed watching rural ... More About: Home , Trip , Long , Siberia
A Baptism in Barsingausen
2007-08-06 11:14:00 We have enjoyed the final days of this trip in a very relaxed way at the home of David’s friends Stefan and Birge along with their two beautiful daughters Maiko & Suzuna. David first met Stefan at university in Japan. He and his family live in the town of Barsinghausen in Saxony, Germany. Stefan is ... More About: Siberia , Baptism
A Baprism in Barsingausen
2007-08-06 11:12:00 Barsinghausen We have enjoyed the final days of this trip in a very relaxed way at the home of David’s friends Stefan and Birge along with their two beautiful daughters Maiko & Suzuna. David first met Stefan at university in Japan. He and his family live in the town of Barsinghausen in Saxony, Germany. Stefan is ... More About: Siberia , Prism
Copenhagen transit stop
2007-08-02 14:37:00 We’re here in Copenhagen Airport, sitting by the window and watching the world go by, waiting for our connecting flight to Hannover. Dad is about to upload a post about Riga, so watch this space. We left Riga this afternoon, after having a look around the central market this morning. All sorts of offal were available for purchase ... More About: Stop , Siberia , Tran , Transit
Riga
2007-08-02 14:33:00 There was a young lady from Riga Who smiled as she rode on a tiger They returned from the ride With the lady inside And the smile on the face of the tiger. We haven’t seen a tiger yet, but after being in Russia for the past 19 days, the city of Riga seems much more comfortable to us. It’s ... More About: Siberia
St Petersburg
2007-07-30 17:34:00 Our lack of posts over the last few days is simply a sign that we have been very busy since arriving in St Petersburg . Whilst on the train we had much more time available to devote to writing than we have had over the last three days. It feels as though we haven’t stopped ... More About: Siberia
Photos of St Petersburg
2007-07-30 16:46:00 We’ll try to post an update about our time in St Petersburg shortly. In the meantime, here are some photos of this amazing city. This is the Church of the Spilled Blood, completed in 1907, built on the site where Tsar Alexander II was murdered. The Soviets let is decay during the communist years, and it ... More About: Photos , Siberia
Images of Moscow
2007-07-30 16:28:00 Now I’ve had some time to edit them, here are some photos of our time in Moscow . One of our first stops in Moscow was the reconstructed Cathedral of Christ the Saviour. Stalin built 7 gothic skyscrapers across the city, now called the Seven Sisters. This one is a university. You can imagine them being used ... More About: Images , Siberia , Ages
Moscow - Part 2
2007-07-27 20:18:00 Our exploration of Moscow began in earnest yesterday morning with a visit to Red Square to visit Lenin’s tomb. We travelled by the metro (subway) which is distinctly impressive. The Moscow Metro was begun in Stalin?s time in the 1920s. It has over 200 kilometres of track to 172 stations across 11 lines. Some of the ... More About: Part , Siberia
Moscow - Part 2
2007-07-27 20:18:00 Our exploration of Moscow began in earnest yesterday morning with a visit to Red Square to visit Lenin?s tomb. We travelled by the metro (subway) which is distinctly impressive. The Moscow Metro was begun in Stalin?s time in the 1920?s. It has over 200 kilometres of track to 172 stations across 11 lines. Some of the ... More About: Part , Siberia
Moscow
2007-07-26 17:27:00 We arrived in Moscow early yesterday morning and because our hotel room would not be ready until 2.00 pm, we were given a whirlwind tour of the city highlights. It seemed that we went to a hundred places in a very short time and I can’t remember everything hat we saw other than the KGB Headquarters, ... More About: Siberia
Moscow
2007-07-26 17:27:00 We arrived in Moscow early yesterday morning and because our hotel room would not be ready until 2.00 pm, we were given a whirlwind tour of the city highlights. It seemed that we went to a hundred places in a very short time and I can’t remember everything hat we saw other than the KGB Headquarters, ... More About: Siberia
No hands in pockets in front of Lenin!
2007-07-26 16:09:00 We’ve been in Moscow for a day and a half, and have already started to got a feel for this city. I’m not sure what I expected, but whatever they were, those expectations have been exceeded. The part of the city we are staying in is almost Parisian in style, there are amazing buildings, and ... More About: Hands , Lenin , Front , Siberia
No hands in pockets in front of Lenin!
2007-07-26 16:09:00 We’ve been in Moscow for a day and a half, and have already started to got a feel for this city.?? I’m not sure what I expected, but whatever they were, those expectations have been exceeded.?? The part of the city we are staying in is almost Parisian in style, there are amazing buildings, and ... More About: Hands , Lenin , Front , Siberia
Tony Boom Boom, the major, the policeman & the vodka shots
2007-07-25 16:28:00 “Tony Montana Boom Boom Boom”! That’s how Tony, one of the others in our small group of travelers, has become known to us. It’s obligatory to mime the action of shooting a machine gun at the same time as saying this. On our train between Irkutsk and Ekaterinburg, we were befriended by a Russian soldier and a policeman, who were in the next compartment to the others in our group. Dad & I missed the first night, but it seems that Valeriye (the major) and the policeman (whose name I’ve forgotten) had a bottle of vodka or three that needed consuming. They took Tony under their wing, and, not speaking any English other than the words “boom boom boom”, the only other Tony they knew was Tony Montana from the movie Scarface. Nothing like being able to equate a name with a character in a gangster movie! Apparently a good time was had by all, including a few friendly headlocks from the policeman, but perhaps wit... More About: Shots , The V , Major
Tony Boom Boom, the major, the policeman & the vodka shots
2007-07-25 16:28:00 “Tony Montana Boom Boom Boom”! That’s how Tony, one of the others in our small group of travelers, has become known to us. It’s obligatory to mime the action of shooting a machine gun at the same time as saying this. On our train between Irkutsk and Ekaterinburg, we were befriended by a Russian soldier and ... More About: Shots , Siberia , Major
Ekaterinburg - Eurasia - photos
2007-07-25 16:22:00 This is the outlet of the dam in central Ekaterinburg, which is now a feature of the riverside park. This is the city hall. Our driver, nicknamed Fast Eddie, copped some police attention for driving into the big square here the wrong way. This is the Church of the Blood, which idolises the executed Romanov royal family. This is t he war memorial in Ekateringburg, mainly to the Afghanistan war, but also others in which Russia has been involved over the Cold War years. The list of theatres was a bit unfamiliar to Australians, but included Chechnya, Czechoslovakia & Hungary, the Spanish civil war, Cuba, Angola, some of the Caucuses countries, and Vietnam. One of the 7 churches at the Ganina Yama monastery. This is the memorial to thousands of victims of Stalinist purges located just outside Ekaterinburg. Toasting the border between Asian & Europe in the Urals - about 14r km from Ekaterinburg. More About: Photos , Teri , Erin
Ekaterinburg - Eurasia - photos
2007-07-25 16:22:00 This is the outlet of the dam in central Ekaterinburg, which is now a feature of the riverside park. This is the city hall. Our driver, nicknamed Fast Eddie, copped some police attention for driving into the big square here the wrong way. This is the Church of the Blood, which idolises the executed Romanov royal ... More About: Photos , Siberia , Teri , Erin
48 hours from Irkutsk to Ekaterinburg
2007-07-25 16:13:00 This post has photos of our two days on the train between Irkutsk and Ekaterinburg. Being summer, there are lots of flowers in bloom. This meadow is full of a small purple flower. The cow in the front was just good timing! Often enough, the Siberian landscape is interrupted by large industrial sites, including this power station. Many of the sites are in disrepair or are derelict. This is a typical village that the train passes. It only stops at bigger towns, although we saw locals waiting on small station platforms for local trains. This was a nice meadow that we passed. Then we were back to more industry in the middle of nowhere. Those Soviets never let aesthetics get in the way of things. This is a small shop in one of the villages that we passed. Siberia has some very larger rivers, with some very large girder bridges crossing them. I think that this is the Yenisey River when we were arriving into Krasnoyarsk, a large S... More About: Hour , Teri , Hours , Erin
Images of Baikal
2007-07-25 16:10:00 We haven’t been able to post any photographs for a while, given that we’ve been on trains or haven’t had time to prepare photos for upload when we were in Ekaterinburg. So, I’m going to upload three posts worth of photos to do a bit of catching up. You’ll have to link up the images with the text that we’ve already posted. This set is photos of Listvyanka, the town on the shores of Lake Baikal, about 50km from Irkutsk. On the way, we stopped at the Taltsy Museum of Wooden Architecture. This was one of the buildings there - a replica of what would have been a Siberian village’s town office. When we arrived at Listvyanka, we got to see the real thing. This is one of the homes in the street in which our guesthouse was located. It had the nicest window shutters in the whole street. With Kostya, Dad and I walked up a hill to a local observatory. Here we are at the top, with Lake Baikal behind us. ... More About: Images , Ages
Running off with the Romanovs in Ekaterinburg
2007-07-24 14:41:00 Our short stay in Ekaterinburg exposed us to more contemporary Russian history (and its current repercussions), particularly the early communist years, than in any other place that we have visited so far. Ekaterinburg is a city of 1.5 million people and is located at the foot of the Ural Mountain Range, with a big impact on history. It is famous as the place where the Tsar and the rest of the Romano v family was executed in 1918, wiping out the Russian royal family. Ekaterinburg is where US pilot Gary Powers’ U2 spy plane was shot down in 1962. It is where Boris Yeltsin’s political career began. For some reason, there is a proposal to rename the university after Yeltsin. We learned that Kostya Tzu has recently enrolled as a student there, which would see a university named after a once drunk president attended by a once or twice punch-drunk boxer. Ekaterinburg’s more recent claim to notoriety was its high-profile mafia killing spree in the 19... More About: Running , Teri , Erin
Thinking of the Sunday Roast
2007-07-22 05:19:00 Well, we are still on the train 42 hours after leaving Irkutsk and we have another 6 hours before we leave the train at Ekaterinburg. Today is Sunday and I’m thinking of that traditional Sunday Roast , so I thought I would post an article about our food on the train (which I ... More About: Siberia , Thinking
Thinking of the Sunday Roast
2007-07-22 05:19:00 Well, we are still on the train 42 hours after leaving Irkutsk and we have another 6 hours before we leave the train at Ekaterinburg. Today is Sunday and I’m thinking of that traditional Sunday Roast , so I thought I would post an article about our food on the train (which I will get to shortly). Just now, we are half an hour behind schedule. One of the reasons is that a tourist in the next carriage (not one of our group) is quite sick and he has needed to see a doctor. A man and a woman, obvoulsy doctors, appeared in their white coats and took some time before they left again. Kostya, our guide, has been very busy interpreting. We had heard stories about the dining car on the train being booked out by large tour groups, making it difficult to get food. That perhaps may take place more frequently on the trains heading east than our westerly bound train. On our first train from Vladivostok, we were the only people using the restaurant car as the local people thought that the... More About: Thinking
Back on the Train
2007-07-21 09:47:00 We finished our brief interlude in Irkutsk with an overnight stay at a chalet in the lakeside town of Listvyanka. Our home stay was in a rambling guest house - a bit like some of those at Marysville in Victoria. The village of Listvyanka was about an hour from Irkutsk. It is a holiday village for Irkutskites, and felt a bit like a Russian version of going to Dromana for a holiday weekend. On the way, we stopped off at the Talsty Museum of Wooden Architecture. This is a collection of traditional buildings - homes, churches, schools etc that existed over the centuries. Most of these examples have been saved from the rising waters of the Angara River when it was flooded by a hydro dam near Irkutsk in the 1950s. The lake is very clear and seems to have a number of boats that operate on it for both freight and transport. It is the world’s deepest lake - 1637 metres at its deepest point, 636 kms long and 60 kms wide. In winter, it freezes to a depth of 1 metre. It contains more ... More About: Train , Back , TRAI
Back on the Train
2007-07-21 09:47:00 We finished our brief interlude in Irkutsk with an overnight stay at a chalet in the lakeside town of Listvyanka. Our home stay was in a rambling guest house - a bit like some of those at Marysville in Victoria. The village of Listvyanka was about an hour from Irkutsk. It is a ... More About: Train , Back , Siberia , TRAI
Beaten with birch sticks in the banya
2007-07-21 05:05:00 [post by David] At our guesthouse next to Lake Baikal, I had the opportunity to take a Russian sauna. In the old days, the sauna in the banya (bathhouse) might have been the only way to keep clean. In theory, your pores are cleaned by sweating out all the dirt. A bucket of cold water ... More About: Siberia , Stick , Ticks , Birch , Tick
Beaten with birch sticks in the banya
2007-07-21 05:05:00 [post by David] At our guesthouse next to Lake Baikal, I had the opportunity to take a Russian sauna. In the old days, the sauna in the banya (bathhouse) might have been the only way to keep clean. In theory, your pores are cleaned by sweating out all the dirt. A bucket of cold water is then poured over you to complete the process. At the end, you feel very clean and relaxed. The sauna at our guesthouse was heated to 130 degrees, which seared the inside of the nostrils when breathing in. It only took a few minutes before the sweat started dripping, and it was time to step out for a cold bucket of water. This was repeated several times. On one round, a bundle of leafy birch sticks was produced. Don’t take this the wrong way, but being beaten by birch leaves in the sauna was, well, bloody good. One more cultural experience notched up. More About: Stick , Ticks , Birch , Tick , Sticks
Baikal beauties, shiny cars & grandpa Y-fronts
2007-07-20 05:36:00 How do you catch two young Russian girls while wearing nothing but a pair of white baggy grandpa Y-fronts? The best theory is that is has something to do with being able to afford a shiny car. Let me explain. Kostya took dad & I for a hike from our guest house in the town of Listvyanka (next to Lake Baikal) up a hill to a local observatory. There was a good view from the top back over the lake. Well, there was lots of observing to do, and it was astronomical in a sense. We walked along the beach and lakeshore, then headed up the hill behind the town. As we went round a bend out of sight of the lake, we came across a shiny 4WD parked beside the road (much nicer than all the Ladas and Volgas we’ve seen), and in the grass next to it were sitting two brunettes and a man wearing nothing but baggy white underpants. The girls giggled as we walked past, and the man watched on. How did this situation arise, we asked. Kostya’s theory is that ownership of the shiny... More About: Cars , Al B , Shin , Shiny
Baikal beauties, shiny cars & grandpa Y-fronts
More articles from this author:2007-07-20 05:36:00 How do you catch two young Russian girls while wearing nothing but a pair of white baggy grandpa Y-fronts? The best theory is that is has something to do with being able to afford a shiny car. Let me explain. Kostya took dad & I for a hike from our guest house in the town of Listvyanka ... More About: Cars , Siberia , Al B , Shin , Shiny 1, 2, 3 |
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