They call this a homestay?

Tuesday, August 17, 2010

(Written on the day.)

Wow! The homestay is so much better than I expected. This house is spectacular. We're spread out over three floors of the wood walled house with beautiful front garden and greenhouse. Each room has its own bathroom with shower (hot water!) and heated floors. My room, in the attic, has a small windowed alcove overlooking the front of the house. A delicious breakfast was on the table when we arrived at 10 - porridge, cheese, meats, bread, cowberry jam, plus coffee and tea. Unfortunately, as the forecast predicted, it is raining. We're still planning to have a walk around the town, so I imagine I'll get pretty wet.

Am currently clean after my hot shower - lovely feeling after two nights on the train. The train ride was extremely quick. When we arrived in Irkutsk this morning, our driver Max was at the station ready to whisk us to Listvyanka, after a quick stop at a hotel where we could complete our Russian registration (it also had wireless so I put in a quick skype call to my mom). Since the train didn't depart until 9pm, we basically went to sleep a couple hours after boarding. I took an Ambien and had a fabulous rest. We arrived at the border crossing around 5am but got to sleep until 8, as I wrote before. We eventually left the Mongolian border (Sukhbaatar) and headed for Russia, where we handed over our passports again at the border town Naushki (5902km from Moscow). I made myself some lunch just before we arrived as I was getting a bit peckish.

Everyone hung around chatting while we waited for the passports. Anna took us for a walk around Naushki once our precious documents were safely returned. All the houses were constructed in the traditional wooden Siberian style (so cute!) and a local girl rode her bike down the street acting as if we were invisible. We took another "street" on the way back and noticed some military trucks, which eventually drove past us on the street at a speed fast enough to kick some mud and small stones into the air - lovely.

After a quick pit stop, a group of us wandered down to river on the opposite side of the tracks that the French guy on the train recommended. Other than the heaps of trash along the way, the yellow wildflowers, rolling green hills and flowing river were beautiful. The scene was characteristic of so many places around the world that I didn't feel as though I was in Siberia. Anna took a dip in the water, which carried her quickly downstream due to the fast current, while the rest of us sat on the river banks. A warm afternoon; lovely to be off the train.

We boarded again around 4pm local time (an hour later than Mongolia) and got underway for the remaining 15.5 hours of the journey. The rest of my cabin ate a late lunch of cheese and pickles on French bread before Anna started our Russian lesson. Once again, all 12 people squeezed into our berth. She began with the easy letters and sounds, before moving on to the more complicated letters and phrases. After an hour of Russia, most of which went over my head except for a few phrases which when said quickly in English sound Russian (like "horror-show" which means good, ok), Stuart broke out a bottle of vodka and we toasted to Russia with vodka and grapefruit juice. People hung around in our hot cabin for a while before returning to their own berths for dinner. I sat with Stuart, Shelley, Kristy and Steph for a bit, and when I returned to my cabin, my berth-mates, were playing truth-or-dare. I joined in the fun. Very few dares arose, but the couple that did involved Liz wearing the window curtain for ten minutes, for me to get a picture of someone in our group wearing the curtain, and for Liz to eat three pickles. Other than the typical sexual questions that come up in truth-or-dare, the majority of the questions were get-to-know-you and ranged from childhood dreams, to relationships, to religion and politics.

After dinner, I broke out the pretzels and frosting I'd bought in Mongolia. Fantastic dessert. People came back into our berth for a little more drinking, even though I was hoping to go to bed. By midnight, the last lot had finally cleared out and I could get some sleep. We had to wake up at 6am this morning to clear the beds and get ready for our arrival in Irkutsk. More later, we're going for a walk.

(Written after the walk, still on August 17.)

Boy am I glad to be inside right now. Just walked through the howling wind and pouring rain to get back to the homestay. The wind seems to be gradually picking up making it hard to walk, and hard to keep my jacket hood on my head to keep the water off my hair. But its warm inside and I now feel protected from the elements. Definitely won't be venturing outside to make the 20 minute walk (each way) to the hotel with wireless just to update my blog.


We met at noon to have a walk around Listvyanka, the town on Lake Baikal where we are based. I wore my rain jacket and poncho for cover due to the heavy mist. The homestay is about 1km from the lake side, so we walked down our partially muddy street before hitting the main road. We walked around town, stopped into the hotel with wireless where I made a quick skype call to my parents, and checked out some small souvenir stalls.

For lunch, we decided to try Omul, the local fish specialty, but there was no place to sit at the original location. So we walked a bit further and found more stalls selling Omul. Anna did the ordering: 6 hot smoked omul, 3 cold smoked omul and 3 cold salty omul. Stuart picked up six large pieces of bread for everyone, and we sat down in a small "cafe" serving drinks to eat. The cafe serves food, but primarily acts as a place where you can sit inside and enjoy your omul with a drink. I had a small cup of the local brew. We unwrapped the fish, divided it among the group and tucked in. It was surprisingly delicious (goose-no in Russia). LP describes it as a cross between salmon and trout so I wasn't sure I'd like it. Personally, the hot smoked omul was my favorite, even though the cold smoked had more flavor. It was so much fun to be squeezed in at a local beer cafe in Siberia eating fish with our bare hands (forgot to say that we had no silverware). So cool. :)


After lunch, Ana took us further down the road to a look out point. Sadly the clouds covered the mountains surrounding the lake and the gray sky made the water seem dull. The young ones decided not to continue up the hill to the observatory, while the older couples joined Anna to the view point. We walked back, and given the current weather, I'm glad we did; its pretty gross outside.

A bit about Lake Baikal (courtesy of LP). "Lake Baikal the 'Pearl of Siberia', is a crystal-clear body of the bluest water. It's drinkably pure, surrounded by rocky, tree-covered cliffs and so vast that you can sail for hours without the mountain backdrops becoming appreciably closer. Shaped like a banana, Lake Baikal - 636km from north to south, but only 60km wide - was formed by rifting tectonic plates. Though nearly 8km of the rift is filled with sediment, it is gradually getting deeper as the plates separate. It will eventually become the earth's fifth ocean, splitting the Asian continent. In the meantime it's the world's deepest lake: 1637m near the western shore. As such, it contains nearly one-fifth of the world's fresh, unfrozen water - more than North America's five Great Lakes combined.
The lake itself is a living museum of flora and fauna, 80% of which is found nowhere else on the planet, most famously the loveable black-eyed nerpa (freshwater seals) and salmonlike omul fish, which are delicious smoked."

Having a banya in a bit and dinner at 8pm. Time to type up my other journals. By the way, this trip is awesome. I'm so glad I'm doing it.