Irkutsk Day 2 I guess?
I tried to sleep in a little this morning but everyone in my room was up and about and I couldn't nod off again. So I got up, showered, said goodbye to the French ladies then packed my bag and headed out for the day.
My train to Yekaterinburg isn't until the afternoon so I've got a whole day to kill.
I decided to follow the green line today since I had neglected it a couple of days ago. The weather was cold but it wasn't raining or windy so it was actually a fairly pleasant walk.
It took me past a bunch of interesting buildings, some parks and the usual assortment of sculptures, monuments and churches.
The large Russian Orthodox Church in town is very beautiful both outside and in. There are spectacular murals inside but the star of the show is a giant gold altar with a bunch of pictures of what I assume are saints.
Pull my finger
I ran into a few groups of tourists getting guided tours from very attractive Russian girls. I'm not sure why that tour agency wasn't getting more publicity because I feel like I might have taken them up on a walking tour of the city. Purely to help those girls with their English of course.
On that note - the attractiveness quotient of girls in Russia is very high. There seems to be a very high percentage of very attractive women in this country. At least in the places I've been so far. I can only imagine that will continue as I get to the big cities where all the money is.
I don't think anything particularly interesting happened during my walk.
I finished up by going to the supermarket and getting some food for my train ride. This time I decided to pack like a Russian. I took a loaf of bread, some sausage, some cheese and I bought a knife to cut it all up. I also took some fruit and vegetables for a bit of balance but I did NOT take any sweets this time. Just some almonds to snack on. Since I was a bit underdone last time I also got some instant soup packets in case I was really fanging. I had so much food.
My favourite item from the shopping trip was some rabbit jerky. I've never seen rabbit jerky before and though it was a little expensive I decided I had to try it. It was delicious so I was munching on it all afternoon.
I got to the station a bit early (another tram - yay!) so I stopped for a beer at an Irish Pub across the road. They had a kriek (cherry beer) on tap (yay!) so I nursed one of those for a while til it was time to go find out where my train was leaving from.
Meet my new Russian family. This is Oksana and Matvie. Not sure of spelling. Oksana is a Russian police officer and they have just come back from a holiday in China. We had some great fun that first night trying to communicate via Google translate. I eventually figured out how to add a Russian keyboard to my phone so once we lost internet coverage we were still able to communicate after a fashion. They also had shitloads of food.
Oksana would take me under her wing for the next couple of days which was fantastic. It's nice to see teenage boys talk to their mothers in exactly the same tone on the opposite side of the world. Mother - I apologise.
I'm on the top bunk in 2nd class this time. It has its pluses and minuses.
+ I prefer it for sleeping. Because there is no table there I have more shoulder room which is good and makes things a bit more comfortable.
+ It's also nice to have somewhere to escape when I don't feel like talking.
- I missed having dibs on the little table for my food.
- I missed having dibs on the single power point in the cabin.
- I felt like any time I wanted to use the table to prepare food that I was intruding. People are happy to move of course but I still felt like I was intruding.
- I don't like lying down all the time. There's nowhere comfortable to sit on the upper bunk. I like to have my feet on the ground and I can't sit cross-legged for long.
So ultimately I think I would go for bottom bunk next time even though it is a much higher price.
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