Lewisham, United KingdomDeparture from the UKBremen, GermanySchuelpBack to BremenChristmas in the HarzDriving in the HarzAround Bad Harzburg and Christmas Market in GoslarWinter Tourism im HarzAnd home againViennaNew Year'sSightseeing in Vienna Day 2More sightseeing in Vienna and some plansArrival in BudapestTickets Booked!Bath HouseTrain to LvivWe made it to Ukraine!Leaving LvivOdessa, UkraineEventful arrival in KievMorning in KievOn the train to MoscowBrief stop in MoscowOur first trip east of the KnownOn the train to Kazan - a lot to catch up onkazan - at an ungodly hour of the morningOn the train to YekaterinburgOne night until SiberiaSiberia!!!!! Tobolsk - it's not on Google Maps! It's 4 hours north of TyumenDay trains5 Hours from IrkutskSafe arrival in IrkutskLake BaikalBack to IrkutskGoodbye to BaikalAn Experience in Ulan-UdeCrossing the Border - Happy New Year and Australia DayPlans changing in HarbinEnchanted with BeijingBeijing WanderingsCrashingMore CrashingSam's almost better againSecond last day in BeijingLast day in BeijingTianjin, ChinaIncheon ArrivalSeoul!!!Exhausting full day of enjoying SeoulI still love SeoulRainy and grey in BusanUnvalentine's DayInfinite turtlesDry land againA Perfect EndCoolangatta International Airport, or lack thereofBrisbane, AustraliaMum and Dad's
 | samandleonie |  | Heading East |  | Goodbye to Baikal |
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Jan 23 2009, 12:18 PM
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Ulan-Ude, Russia
The rest of our day in Listvyanka was very relaxing. We walked along the lake to a restaurant and had some Omul dishes (as the menu said: “Omul, an endemic fish of Baikal”). I had Omul “in old Russian way”, which involved potatoes and cheese, which was delicious. Sam had a nice white wine sauce. And we got a table overlooking the lake to watch the sunset. Once the sun ducked beneath the low layer of steam, we couldn't see much, but we enjoyed seeing it begin to sink.
We'd eaten an early dinner and then had a Banya, a Russian sauna. After the terrible temperatures, it was so relaxing. I even fell asleep in the outside room in between sauna sessions. We'd been quite tired for a long time, really, getting whatever sleep we can on trains and uncomfortable hostel beds and having to get up at strange times to catch trains or get off trains and I still think we were a bit “jet-lagged” from the timezone changes on the train. We still didn't get a fantastic night's sleep at Listvyanka because of the heating. When we retired for the night, our cabin was very cold. There was a little electric heater in the bathroom, making it the warmest part. We had a stove in the corner, but it wasn't on and, although there was firewood on the doorstep, we didn't have matches or a lighter or kindling. I had thought Andrey would probably come and set the fire up, but he didn't. In the end, Sam went and asked him and basically got mimed instructions on how to use the stove and was given matches, magazine pages and some small bits of kindling. Luckily, Sam makes a magnificent fire. He had it going in about two minutes flat, although it took a while to warm up the cabin. We would have lit it earlier, if we'd realised.
It was very cosy in our our little cabin with a fire in the stove, and it was also quite warm. The only problem was that the stove was absolutely ravenous for the lovely soft pine we had to feed it. Sam had to get up several times during the night and re-stock the wood. I got up at one stage to fetch more pieces from the porch (it was very, very cold). It was a bit of an adventure, but it wasn't a full, uninterrupted night's sleep, which we needed.
Andrey made us a tasty omelette for breakfast (sprinkled with the obligatory dill). It was much more to our taste than the strange breakfast we'd got at the hotel in Tobolsk. We showed up in the cafe for breakfast and were presented with a meatball and buckwheat. It was tasty, but not particularly breakfast-y. After the omelette, we had a bit of trouble finding out about the bus back to Irkutsk. We were quite keen to get back, because we hadn't seen anything of the town. Andrey called his daughter (the public transport specialist) and she confirmed the bus should leave at eleven, but we weren't sure from exactly where. It had dropped us off about fifty metres from Derevenka, but there was no sign there to indicate it was an official bus stop and we didn't want to run the risk of it going past without picking us up. We also weren't sure if we could buy tickets on the bus, as it hadn't seemed possible on the way down. Nevertheless, after a little confusion, we were picked up by a supremely convenient Marshrutka (private bus/public taxi – they have official routes and prices, but they aren't public buses). So we enjoyed his lovely, brand new, heated minivan all the way back to Irkutsk and it cost the same as the bus.
I didn't do very well on either trip down the Listvyanka highway – I was a little car sick both times – so when we got back to Irkutsk, we hung around the hostel for a while, recovering, and chatting to other “inmates”. We had a potter around town eventually. It's a much prettier city than I imagined and it seems to have a nice way of life, but there isn't anything of particular interest to a tourist rather than the usual architecture and churches and the steaming river (it's been dammed for a hydroelectric plant, so it never freezes). I was quite tired when we got back to the hostel around dark, certain last night was a good night to catch up on sleep. That wasn't to be. We got chatting with the others at the hostel and stayed up drinking wine until 3am! We had to get up again at 7. It was the first time we'd had other native English speakers to chat with since Kiev, and there was only one British guy there who owned the hostel, so it wasn't really a sharing of travel stories. At the hostel in Irkutsk, almost everyone spoke English natively. Most were British, and there was one guy from Sydney (there were some Finnish people, too, but they had such good English they almost count). So we stayed up and exchanged stories and plans and practical information and opinions. We're all going in the same direction, which is interesting. We meet up again with the group of four Brits at our hostel tonight in Ulan Ude! We might all end up in Beijing together, too. Most of them don't have any trains booked either, so we might all end up stranded somewhere in the middle of China over the New Year celebrations instead.
So we had a hard time getting up this morning, but we made the train and have since got some more sleep. This train is so quiet compared to our others. We have a whole cubicle to ourselves (i.e. six beds), which is lucky, because it meant we could choose which windows to look out. We sat in the wrong seats to get the best view of the lake before and the mountains were out our other window.
This is our second-last Russian train. It's almost a little sad.
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