Per coincidence I found out some weeks ago, that Matt, a friend of mine, whom I knew from Vienna and Großgmain is now working in Yekaterinburg. So we were supposed to have a cityguide at least on the evenings.
We were sleeping in a quite new hostel in the middle of the city center. Some guy rented it from the government and is now doing the renovation of this 160 year old building step by step. Matt picked us up just some hours after our arrival from our hostel and brought some beer (which is always good ;-)). Afterwards we met some other guys, with whom we were drinking at a bus stop after it started to rain in Boris Jelzin street (we called it later the “Boris Jelzin Memorial Drinking”) and moved on to some pub, where we had some good examples how russians are going out.
The next day we where glad, that we had not to work, as Matt. Flo and me started some sightseeing in this nice City, which is hosting the FIFA Championship in 2018 and the Expo in 2020. We went up to the highest building within some 100s kilometers, which will change soon. Currently they are building the highest house between Moscow and Vladivostok in Yekaterinburg, but in Russia you never know, when this will be finished. In the evening we had dinner at an outstanding pub with cuisine from Uzbekistan and afterwards we met Matt, but it didn’t last too long tonight. More or less in a good shape we followed the rest of the red Line in Yekaterinburg. This was built for tourists and connects all the main sights within the city center. One of the highlights was the Cathedral of Blood, which has been built 20 years ago on the place of the Ipatiev house, where the Romanovs have been shot in 1918 and WWI ended.
Our last evening we again had some beers on the Iset River and then went out. The next morning it was time for Flo to leave towards Austria and I had my train in the late afternoon to Novosibirsk. Before that I visited the Boris Jelzin Memorial, who started his political career in this city