Exile: Moscow to Siberia

Since last writing, 2 weeks ago, we've traveled 5192 km along the Trans-Siberian.  4 days were spent in Moscow meeting locals, eating caviar pancakes, and learning in the museums about everything from the advent of Russian imperialism to the progressional stages of Russian avant-garde painting. 

Red Square (Beautiful Square in old Russian)

We found a Bulgarian restaurant in Moscow.  

The WW2 Unknown Soldier Monument in Moscow.  It really caught my eye because it shows artistic freedom, while
 breaking the monotonous mold of all the other Soviet era monuments.

The finger, in the metro, in Moscow.
 (Stalin invested heavily in the Moscow Metro.  Every station is like its own art gallery.)

Waiting for the the train at the 0 km marker.

After leaving the Capital, we started our money saving travel method of exploring cities during the day and moving further east, via Trans-Siberian sleeper trains, overnight.  Our first test was in Nizhny Novgorod.  We first waited for the sun to rise while seeking shelter from the torrential downpours (and drunks), and then bombarded four different ticket booths trying to get tickets for our next stop.  2 hours later, after multiple denials, we finally found the magic ticket.  All it took was us figuring out a local re-route to the beginning of the Trans-Ural line.  I can't imagine how difficult traveling by train may get when we're in China and can't speak the language anymore.

The Beginning of the Trans-Siberian

We repeated this process of early-morning ticket begging in Kazan, a city recommended to us by many.  This city, the capital of the Tatarstan Republic, is an ancient outpost of the Volga Bulgarian Empire.  Jesse and I got our first sense of the many different regions, and cultures, that help to make up the puzzle of Russia.  In the Kremlin is a large mosque, nestled right next to a smaller Russian church.

Looking at the unique Mosque in Kazan's Kremlin.

The beach we found had great views of Kazan's multicultural Kremlin.

2 am at the station in Kazan, getting ready for our next stint to Yekaterinburg.

I had to test the supposed Bulgarian yoghurt.

Disembarking at 5am off the train in Yekaterinburg began our 24 hour tour of the city, including our first use of train station showers.  The biggest tourist attraction here is the site where Tsar Nicholas II and his family we're most likely murdered under Lenin's orders.  The huge, and expensive, Church upon the Blood has replaced the small house where the killing occurred.  We finished up here by 9:00am and spent the rest of the day walking, eating, and preparing for our next trip into the woods in Krasnoyarsk.

Jesse, at the memorial to the

murdered last tsar and his family.

The Trans-Siberian from Yekaterinburg to Krasnoyarsk took over 30 hours.  Each wagon on the train is equipped with a never ending kettle of hot water which enables us to drink large amounts of tea while eating instant potatoes.  Third class tickets on the Russian trains put you in a wagon that resembles a large room full of bunk-beds.  These allow for more entertainment and interaction on a +30hr ride.

Some cow tongue on the Trans-Siberian.

Jesse, inside the Trans-Siberian

Jesse climbing Meat, with me at the belay.

We knew Krasnoyarsk would be a highlight, but our time here ended up being much more memorable than imagined.  Our first evening was with an absurdly nice married couple that we met through the couchsurfing website.  After being woken up at 8, and fed breakfast, they brought us straight to the woods for a long day of climbing and bouldering in the Stolby Nature Reserve.  This area is 17,000 hectares large, and full of volcanic pillars(stolby) that make for perfect climbing.  In Bulgaria we trained on a lot of cracks, but on these pillars there were large flat faces where the only thing you could grab were tiny pebble like grains.  Frighteningly, the local climbers call themselves Stulbists, and tend to climb these cliffs with no ropes.  While Jesse and I were initiated into the Stulbist crowd with a good spanking on top of the first pillar, we're not yet ready for free soloing.

No injuries.

Back at the campsite we were engulfed by groups of hyper friendly local climbers.  During one of the many conversations I had that evening, I heard a phrase that gave me one of those genuine, deep down, ear to ear smiles.  The Russian language has a formal and informal method of addressing the person you're speaking to, like most other European languages.  I've read in my study books that when speaking to your elders in Russia it's very important to stay in the formal unless invited to the informal, by way of the phrase "davai na ti."  : )

While trying to make the most of our visas we've come to a realization of the obvious, that the surface of Russia can barely be scraped in just 1 month.  That won't keep us from clawing away though.  Our next stop is a big one; Lake Baikal.  Click here if you're interested.  http://bww.irk.ru/

Our early morning arrival in Irkutsk.

Out of the Woods

 

The security guard.

This past week has been a dream.  As planned, Jesse and I headed up north to a small town called Kooznyechnaye, in search of a lake some 15km away.  Armed with just a low quality satellite image with dots drawn on it, we bought a couple bags of food and started walking while asking lots of questions.  Most of the locals had never heard of the lake we wanted, but when we got to the outskirts of town people started responding a little more knowledgeably.  Eventually, we found ourselves walking through a large granite quarry when a security guard pulled up next to us in his Jeep.  Instead of kicking us off his land, he drove us around while showing us some great views into the quarry.  The guard finished our tour by dropping us off at a trail head that he guaranteed would take us to our lake.  This was the beginning of a very lucky day.

Post Russian bath with the Armenian Family

About 15km and 5 hours later ( I wish I had a picture to show how much we were carrying), Jesse and I arrived at the lake.  Continuing my question asking crusade on every person we see, I ask the first man I see for some advice on where to camp.  Georgi turns out to be an Armenian living in Russia, and he invites us to camp with him and his family.  His actual words were (in Russian), "If you camp with us tonight, then you can join us in a Russian bath". Intrigued, we accept the invitation.  For the next couple of days, this amazingly friendly family fed us barbecued pork, chicken soup, 20 year old Cognac, and best of all, let us take a Russian bath with them two nights in a row.  The Russian bath turned out to be a small homemade plastic hut with a rack full of stones in it.  The idea was that you could light a fire under the stones for several hours to heat them up, and then voila, you've got a sauna right next to a cold lake!

This is the home made Russian bath (sauna).

Jesse scouting out one of the climbing sites.

Jesse taking a break from climbing the rocks.

  Instead of jotting down a novel here, I'll wrap up the rest of the trip.  Jesse and I ended up climbing for three days whenever the sun came out, and then practicing our Russian with the Armenian family back at the campsite.  At 5:00 am on the 9th, we hiked back to Kooznyechnaye and took the next bus to Saint Petersburg.  From there, we booked the night train to Moscow.  One of my dreams about traveling across Russia was to drink vodka with a Russian while playing chess.  Within 30 minutes of our first train ride, the Russian man sleeping underneath Jesse, his name was Sergei, buys a bottle of Vodka and starts throwing back shots with us.  This is, of course, before he plays me in several matches of chess.

Me climbing the left wall.  Courtesy of Panorama Ruffes

A view from our campsite.  Because we were so far north, the sunsets lasted for hours.  No kidding.

And so it begins.

My Peace Corps (PC) service in beautiful Bulgaria has come to an end. The time has come for the post PC obligatory travel stint, and I want to use this page to keep my amazing friends and family informed as to what we're up to, should anyone decide to meet us along the way.

While I've been mentally preparing for this trip since before PC, Jesse and I have been training for the last several months to physically prepare ourselves for a rock-climbing trip across half the world. The idea was to fly into Helsinki from Sofia, and from there take trains across Russia, Mongolia, China and beyond. Along the way, we'll be eating new food, learning new languages, and making new friends while using our 60m rope to access whichever local or world-class crags we can track down.

We've actually already flown from Sofia to Helskinki on the 30th of July as a team of four. After our first couch surfing experience in the amazingly blond country of Finland, Jesse and I split off from the team and headed east. Good luck in Finland, guys!

We crossed the Russian border at about 1 am on July 1st, and since then we've been in Saint Petersburg. I don't have time to write about all of the things we've been up to, so I will be posting pictures along the way for anyone interested in following our route.

While wandering the city, we got our hands on a guide book for rock climbing in Northern Russia. Though the whole thing is written in Russian, we're excited enough by what it says that we've delayed our trip to Moscow. Instead, tomorrow we're taking the 8:30 am train north to Кузнечное(kooznyechnaye), and then hiking off into the Russian forest to find a grouping of lakes surrounded by rock. Tentative plans are to be there for 5 days. If anyone wants to get in touch, our Kindles will keep us connected (possibly).