next Stop: Siberia

As I already wrote earlier, it was time for me to leave Ekaterinburg on Thursday evening towards Siberia. Destination of the journey should be Tomsk with a 10 hour stopover in Siberia’s capital Novosibirsk.

When I took the metro to the railway station, I ran into my first police control. It turned out that they just wanted to scan my baggage, because such a big rucksack looked in their eyes somehow suspicious. After five minutes the procedure was finished and I went down into the Metro.

In the station I waited for one of the most famous trains in Russia. It was the ROSSYIA train #002, which was doing the entire trip from Moscow to Vladivostok. The equipment was better then in other trains. For example air condition in the whole train and an on-board restaurant.

Together with the other passengers I boarded the train and now the worst thing happened. There was this old drunk man sitting in our part of the  compartment, offering everybody things, starting from chocolate to some kind of unknown alcohol, bothered everybody with some nonsense and so on… After a while it was enough for me and I decided to go into my upper berth and take a nap. At the next station I woke up, saw some policemen in our compartment who finally took away this old drunken man from the train. Once he was gone, the journey to Novosibirsk was quiet. The two other guys, sitting next to me, seemed to be nice, but me with knowing only some words in Russian and them not knowing English communication was quite difficult. At least I managed to tell them where I am traveling.

The next afternoon we reached Novosibirsk. I managed to put my baggage in the left luggage and hat a look in the city. It was loud and ugly. The small number of sights, my Lonely Planet knew, I have seen them in 2hours. When heading back to the train station, I was passing by a police station and heard some screams putting my teeth on the edge… Frightening… Welcome to Russia!

At midnight I jumped on my train to Tomsk. Had a short, but quiet night, but with this train I could safe some money for later trips. Arriving at 6.30 am in Tomsk, it was raining like hell. As I couldn’t find the hostel at the first try, it was instead of a 30 minute walk a 2 hour walk with my big rucksack. Most of the time it was raining.

Finally I found the hostel, had a shower and got two more hours of sleep.

2 thoughts on “next Stop: Siberia”

  1. Ja, die Fotos sind ja super, Deine Erlebnisse spannend, aber sei froh, dass Du im Zug nicht mit dem entlaufenen LÖWEN Jungen zusammengetroffen bist, Mama hat erzählt, das war in Ekaterinenburg….also besser ein Besoffener und die Polizei…your English kann sich sehen lassen…
    хороший прогресс УДН теплое приветствие!

  2. Bei den Recherchen für unsere 100er Feier im Haus stieß ich auf eine russ. Schriftstellerin aus Ekaterinenburg, die mit ihrem Salzburger Ehemann aus der Sowjetunion 1925 ausgewiesen wurde, ALJA RACHMANOWA (Pseudonym). Sie emigrierten nach Wien, dann Salzburg.
    In Wien hat sie, um den Lebensunterhalt in diesen Notzeiten zu bestreiten, ein MILCH- geschäft betrieben. Das Buch (“Milchfrau in Ottakring”) war ein absoluter Renner in der Zwischenkriegszeit, und erinnerte einen ehemaligen Hausbewohner, der im Juni 90 Jahre alt wird, an das Milchgeschäft, das hier jahrzehntelang im Haus war…
    gute Weiterreise und auguri!

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