From Russia with Love

DSC00809, originally uploaded by Louise and Luke.

For anyone who has been bored by the length of our blog entries so far (but is strangely still reading the blog), anyone who has only just started reading the blog (eg my parents), or anyone who just likes facts and numbers, we have put together a summary of our time in Russia.

Russia by Numbers

During our 26 days in Russia we:
Slept in 10 beds
Made 9 Metro Journeys
Took 5 long distance Mashrutki (a minibus) journeys
Made 4 long distance train journeys
Travelled just over 4400 miles
Spent 116 hours in transit
Spent about 20 hours in train stations (not including all 7 hours at the border crossing)
Went to 22 churches
Visited 11 museums
Saw 11 statues of Lenin
Walked down 4 different Ul Leninas (Main streets called Lenin)
Crossed 2 continents
Saw the deepest lake in the world
And visited Asia for the first time.

Our Top 10 Russian Experiences
1. Taking a Russia Banya.
2. Seeing the spectacular views and watching the sunset over Lake Baikal.
3. The Trans Siberian train journeys.
4. Standing in Red Square.
5. Visiting Dvortsovoya Square and the Hermitage.
6. Spending Saturday night in Food Master in Tomsk.
7. Taking a boat ride through St Petersburg.
8. Seeing Siberian snow.
9. Eating Russian Food. Seeing the beautiful architecture of Russian Railway and Metro Stations.
10. Meeting lovely, generous Russian people who looked after us, fed us and entertained us!

Our Top 10 Food Experiences

Whilst we spent a lot of our time eating noodles, soviet bread and two litre bottles of Russian beer that cost a quid. We also just about managed to eat out a few times throughout our time in Russia, and these were our favourite culinary experiences:

1. Eating baked Omul, a fish unique to Lake Baikal
2. Going to Stollie Pies in St Petersburg for the best pie we've ever eaten.
3. Having Russian Borsch Soup with sour cream.
4. Enjoying Beef Stroganoff on our first night in Russia.
5. Eating fish, bread and tomatoes with beer with Olga on the train.
6. Food Master's Chicken Pot, a dish of chicken, cream, cheese, onions and carrots in a pot.
7. Fried potatoes with onions and mushrooms every where we went.
8. Breakfast at Mu Mu's - two eggs, a toasted sandwich and real coffee for R99.
9. Stuffed cow's tongue and red caviar on potato pancakes in Terema's in Krestovka.
10. Eating Fried chicken and mashed potato in Napolean Hostel.

As we spent most of our time in Russian supermarkets, not being able to speak Russian, here are our best (and worst) food discoveries:

1. Strawberry flavoured chocolate and strawberry flavoured biscuits (not honey flavoured -they are horrible).
2. Ekra - A paste made from mashed fried aubergines.
3. Mushroom flavoured Lays (crisps that actually tasted of Mushrooms).
4. Baltika 3 and 7.
5. Cabbage baked in bread.

And finally the 10 things you just couldn't seem to get enough of in Russia:

1. Mashrutki buses - crowded and cheap minibuses going everywhere and anywhere
2. Russian Euro pop - played everywhere from trains to restaurants and always bad
3. Police - on every corner looking scary
4. Knee high boots - despite the snow, ice, cobbled streets and bad pavements Russian women don't go anywhere without there knee high boots
5. People drinking beer - despite suposedly being a nation of vodka drinkers everyone seemed to be drinking beer, young and old, night and day.
6. Stray dogs - the further east we went the more stray dogs there were.
7. Ugly Grey Soviet Buildings - every town has at least 10.
8. Lenin -from statues, streets, a giant head or his actual body, he was everywhere.
9. The smell of cababage - everywhere we stayed seemed to have a stairwell that smelt of cabbage.
10. Beaurcracy - why fill in one form when you can fill in three.

Then it was off to Mongolia for us....

Stay warm,

Luke and Louise

(Posted by Louise)

To the Dogs or Whoever

DSC00893, originally uploaded by Louise and Luke.

Lake Baikal is not, apparently, the biggest lake in the world but it is certainly the biggest lake I’ve ever seen. This is not surprising as the lake is three times the length of Wales.

Surrounded by forest and snowed toped hills, the whole area is incredibly beautiful and scenic. The lake water is amazingly clear, and unusually clean for Russian water. A sign in the village informed us this is because the Russian government limits how much pollution is allowed to be pumped into the lake. Although, considering the lake water supplies all of the tap water in the area, unfiltered, and holds 20% of the worlds fresh water I would personally have preferred that they just didn’t pollute it at all…

We stayed just up the road from the village of Litvyanka in Krestovka valley, a tiny hamlet made up of traditional Siberian wooden houses, right on the lake. Being afraid of stray dogs, Luke was delighted to discover upon arrival that Krestovka is some kind of dog haven. Being the region’s centre for dog sledding every house seemed to have at least one dog and every road and path had at least one stray dog wandering about. At night all you could hear for miles around was the sound of barking and howling. I was just glad that I would never have to doorknock this area.

Aside from the dogs Lake Baikal was very peaceful. The guide book warned us that there wasn’t much in Litvyanka, and it was true to its word. Besides the port the highlight was a post office which didn’t sell stamps, but did – intriguingly - sell three types of tinned spam. However, far from being disappointing, our Siberian retreat was the perfect place to finish our Russian experience.

And one experience you can’t leave Russia without is a Russian banya. Similar to a Swedish sauna, except that after sitting in the sauna for 10 minutes or so you thrash each other with birch sticks and jump in an ice cold pool. We had a traditional banya in a wooden log cabin, at the lovely Terama just opposite where we were staying. It was here that we also had delicious Omul, the famous Baikal fish, which only exists in Lake Baikal.

Despite the glorious sunny weather it was still around -10C in Listvyanka, so we didn’t swim in the lake, which is supposed to bring you good health. We did however spend many hours enjoying the scenery which was unbelievably stunning. The hour trek up to the viewing point, above the Baikal Hotel and the view was worth every second. Our amateur photography does not do it justice, but feel free to take a look on Flickr anyway. Next stop Irkutsk - again.

Louise and Luke

xx

(Posted by Louise)