Day 3 Vladivostok
A couple of random statue pictures first.
I spent a lot of today shopping. I had planned to get some cold weather clothes in Vladivostok but had found it quite difficult to find anything that wasn't a boutique label.
I'm finding this is one of the challenges of travel so far. Back at home if I wanted to get something basic (clothes, shoes, coffee mug, cutlery) I'd go to a department store like Target or Big W, or a cheapo store like Cheap as Chips (if I wanted something disposable) and I'd be able to get something that would do the job for a low price. In another country I have no idea where to go for this sort of thing.
There has to be department stores somewhere right? But it's been a challenge finding them at times. Vladivostok was one of those cities where I had a lot of trouble finding something like this. Maybe they are in the suburbs but the thing they called a "department store" near my hostel was what I would call a shopping centre or mall with a heap of different stores selling mostly fashion items.
So given the trouble I'd had finding stuff I ended up going out to the "Chinese market". It's basically a flea market with semi-permanent stalls selling all sorts of shit. They didn't really have what I wanted unfortunately but I did buy a jumper which is a tad tight but will hopefully be warm. I can tell I got ripped off (despite knocking 35% off the price) because the guy handed me a free pair of socks as I was leaving. Must have felt pretty bad at how bad I got fleeced.
The market was not as big as I was expecting from what I had read on the Internet and there was hardly anyone shopping there. Bigger on the weekend maybe. They have some of the world's shittiest trams here.
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I keep thinking Vladivostok is a bigger town than it actually is. It's smaller than Adelaide according to some Russians I met.
So because I was starting to get a bit concerned about how I was going to deal with the cold when I got to Irkutsk I decided to throw some money at it. I ended up going to a small hiking / camping / outdoor store in the shopping centre near my hotel and bought some under layers there. Glad I ditched my sleeping bag as these take up slightly more room so I needed that space. I also got a beanie, some gloves and a face wrap thing. I may need to upgrade all this stuff later but I really don't know as I've never had to deal with the type of cold I'm about to experience. Ah well. This is a risk money will be able to solve when it becomes an issue.
I decided to finish up today with a visit to some cultural stuff.
I started at the Arsenev Regional Museum which was small but had some interesting exhibits. They had some information about early russian explorers, some art, a bit about early Russian cultures and an exhibit dedicated to Lenin. The Lenin room exhibit was a bit odd. Both rooms were painted bright Russian red and they had some famous Russian song (I've heard it before but don't know what it was - not the national anthem) played by what sounded like a heavy metal band repeating on a loop. They had a couple of panels explaining Lenin's life and rise to the top and then it was basically a ton of sculptures, posters, pictures and painting of him. I'd almost call it a shrine.
Next was the Primorksy Picture Gallery. This turned out to be a tiny art gallery (only 1 floor of pictures) but they did have some really nice paintings, a few sculptures and a vase. I gather they were primarily Russians artists but they were across a variety of styles and I thought there were some good ones. I didn't take any pictures because I just didn't but I probably spend an hour wandering around looking at them. I'd say there were probably half a dozen I'd consider hanging a copy of in my own home. Mostly landscapes but there was a picture of Hercules throwing some dude off a bridge which was I really liked and a portrait of a Russian girl with very piercing eyes wearing a head scarf.
Next door there was a free exhibition from some local artist which was tiny but interesting enough. A big wall painting which looked to me like it was a strip of the colours of every flag in the world themselves arranged into a giant rectangular flag. There were also a bunch of tiny sculptures reflecting people doing various jobs and a big table seating 60 or 70 people under a white canopy. I'm not entirely sure what the point of the exhibit was and the artist only spoke Russian and she didn't want to explain using google translate so I left pretty quickly.
My last stop for the day was the Fortress Museum. Essentially the old gun emplacements protecting the harbour it's mostly just a shitload of big guns from ww2. There were permanent gun emplacements, missiles, cannons, rocket launchers, machine guns ... you name it. Good if you like guns but otherwise pretty boring. Took me ages to find it because Google maps had the directions completely wrong. It took me to the back fence where there was no entrance so it probably took me 20 minutes longer to get there than it should have. Ah well.
I did a little grocery shopping for the train on the way back to the hostel because I wasn't quite sure what time the train left. All train tickets in Russia are printed using Moscow standard time as the departure time. Very useful if everywhere shared the same Timezone. Vladivostok is 7 hours ahead of Moscow. So while my ticket says 12.10pm departure it actually departs at 19.10pm. I had the lady at the hostel clarify this for me and it turns out it was actually written on the ticket. All I had to do was use google translate to take a photo and I would have known. Ah well. Looks like I have a whole day to kill tomorrow.
It's difficult to know what to bring on a train journey like this in terms of food. There is always a dining car but apparently its opening hours are somewhat unpredictable. Since I'm mostly going to be sitting around I assume I'm not going to be that hungry but I also want to take some stuff to share in case I end up with a good carriage of people who do the picnic thing you hear about in guides for the train. There are supposedly vendors on the platforms of many of the train stations selling food. So I don't want to overcater but I'm sure I won't go hungry. I also don't really know what the drinking water situation is going to be like on the train. I know there is always an urn of boiling water supplied but not sure about cold drinking water.
In the end I settled on a couple of things of cup-noodles, a 1.5 litre bottle of water, a couple of packets of teabags, bananas, apples, some small cured sausage and a packet of some donut shaped biscuit things they had at the hostel for people to snack on.
Tonight I caught up with a few of the local ingress players at the same craft beer bar I went to on the first night. Really nice people and a couple of them had good English so we were able to chat which was good. Like all cultures I've met so far on the trip Russians are very friendly people. They do have a somewhat stern demeanour but once you smile and have a laugh they are very friendly.
One of the interesting things Farooq and I noticed was that Russians walking around tend to always look down. They don't like to make eye contact or smile at people on the street. According to the ingress guys this is mostly because the Russians want to make sure people are friendly first. Check first then smile.
It was a fun night anyway and didn't have too much to drink since they were all working the next day.
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