Day 2 Kazan
The bed was goooooood! It was soft and it was long enough and I had heaps of room to actually roll over rather than twist in a single spot to change sleeping position. It was great.
Disappointingly I didn't sleep very late but I did laze around in bed for a while.
I also took the opportunity to spend some time repacking my bag since I have gained and last a couple of things over the past few weeks. I ditched some stuff I'd bought but never used, got rid of the new jumper I hate and just ended up with a bit better organised bag and slightly more space. I'm sure I'll need that soon with more cold weather gear.
I found another Russian canteen style place next door to the hostel so I went there for breakfast. It was a bit fancier than the other one and a little more expensive but the variety wasn't noticeably better. Food was still tasty though.
Not a huge amount planned for today since I covered pretty much all of the stuff I was interested in yesterday. Which could be awkward because my train isn't til 8pm. There wasn't a lot of choice from Kazan to Moscow. Either leaves at a good time and arrives super early or leaves late and arrives at a decent time. So I'm leaving at 8pm and arriving in Moscow at 7.30am.
My first stop after breakfast is a recommendation from Pierre and Carina from Olkhon Island ... The Temple of All Religions.
It's about a 30 minute city bus ride out of the city and is basically an art project in the middle the suburbs that is is supposed to reflect the temples of 16 religions of the world. From a little reading it seems like the artist wanted to create something that reflected peace and harmony and whatnot but then he died and it's been a bit of a shitfight between the family as beneficiaries since then. And apparently there was a fire there a while ago which destroyed a bunch of it.
So I headed out there and it sure stands out. It's very architecturally diverse and you can see spires and domes and whatnot that are reminiscent of many religious buildings I've seen in person or picture.
The closer you get though the shittier it looks. It's colourful and diverse but it doesn't look like very good quality work. There were a couple of guys there doing some sort of construction on the place (rebuilding from the fire I guess). Inside there were a bunch of shitty artworks and a lot of random junk lying around. Outside is worse ... it looks like the backyard of one of those people you see on hoarders. There's building materials lying everywhere, a few muddy paths and lots of overgrown grass and plants. I wander around for a while going into all the buildings I can access. Can definitely see evidence of a fire or something and half the place is a crumbling ruin so it's got a lot of work left.
Overall it was interesting for about half an hour. And while the sentiment ... which I guess is all religions coexisting peacefully together ... is nice it's very much let down by the execution. Hopefully with more money they will be able to make a better job of it.
At the very least it gave me half a dozen more unique ingress captures :). And while the bus ride out wasn't amazing it was interesting seeing the outskirts of Kazan. Definitely very Russian but didn't seem as rundown as other parts of country. I guess we're on the wealthier side and more populated side of the nation now so it makes sense.
I got the bus back to the station and went to check out the local market to maybe get some lunch. The market was just a market. Plenty of fresh meat, fish and vegetables as well as the usual assortment of random shit you see at every market in the world. One of the things that was interesting though was the number of stalls with piles of spices and dried fruits. The market is in a district with a lot of mosques and Turkish people apparently so parts of it were reminiscent of pictures I've seen of big spice markets overseas. A lot more modest in scale but still interesting.
I ended up having lunch at a popular Turkish restaurant at the market. There were tons of locals in there eating and I ended up having a meal recommended by the dude at the counter. Was just like a chicken and vegetable dish on a hot plate with some Turkish bread and chai tea. It was delicious.
I'd pretty much exhausted everything I wanted to see in Kazan at this point so I ended up just wandering around for a while, playing a bit of ingress, walking past a few big mosques and churches and just generally rubbernecking.
It started to get pretty cold so I was looking for somewhere to sit down for a bit. I'd read somewhere there was a cinema in town that sometimes showed movies in English so I headed in that direction. Unfortunately there weren't any English language movies on today but inside the cinema complex was nice and warm so I found a seat on the ground floor and just sat down and read for a while. I considered going to a pub and nursing a beer for a while but I just didn't feel like a drink.
Eventually it became time to think about heading toward the station.
I stopped in at Dom Chaya again on the way back for an early dinner before the train. I had some some sort of a beef and potato soup, dressed herring and piroshki type thing.
Kazan is a nice little town to visit but 2 days is more than enough I think if you're only going to be staying around the city.
I decided to try third class again since I was just sleeping but this time I made a better selection of bunk. I went top bunk but one of the ones where I could stick my feet out into the aisle and it was a much better experience this time. Still don't have any room to sit up on the bunk but I was definitely able to sleep this time.
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