Ulaanbataar

Now being completely and totally prepared i had not read a single book about the trans-siberian railway or any of the cities along the way until i was on the train and borrowed someone else's book. however, reading about mongolia i was getting more and more keen to arrive and more and more disappointed that i was only going to spend 3 days there! mongolia has a population of about 2-3 million with over 1 million of them living in the capital UB. the rest of the population still live nomadic lives moving about the rest of the country side. so basically mongolia's landscape is in almost pristine condition with few townships marking the rolling hills and steppes.



having only 3 days we (the pom, the belgian and i) decided to try and see a bit of everything and spend half the time in the terelj national park (about an hour and a half out of UB) and half the time in the city. well for a predominantly nomadic peoples (even in UB half the pop lives in tents) they have made a good effort at creating a very large city. the air when we arrived was thick with dust from the strong wind and 'gardens' (read: patches of fenced dirt) which are everywhere in the city, it was like a heavy smog and made it so that you could only just make out the hills which surround UB. the city itself is composed mainly of communist style appartment blocks which are in an advanced state of decay. the written language is a mix of traditional mongolian script (looks like a cross between chinese and arabic) and quasi-russian (looks like russian but apparently is not). actually speaking more than a couple of words is a laughable prospect but the people are invariably very friendly.



around the central square area and parliament building there are several nice and large buildings however the appeal of the large square was diminished somewhat by the clouds of dust blowing across it from the gardens surrounding it. while in the city i visited the mongolian historical museum which despite being housed in a smallish building was packed with information in english, rock art and tools (some dating back to the early paleolithic - about 800,000 BC), spear heads, whole rooms dedicated to Genghis Khan and objects from the pre-, post- and communist times. i also checked out the lama monastery which contained a 30m high statue of some buddhist deity and a lot of pigeons.



definitely the best aspect to UB was the food. it was very big and very nice and very cheap. the first night we ate at a place with the slogan 'meat is for men, grass is for animals' and that was pretty much the theme everywhere. the currency is one of those in which there are way too many zeros on every note but we had lunch for about $2 and dinner for $5. the final night we ate at 'The Great Mongol' - opposite the state department building near the state circus for those interested - with some people i had met in the national park and a local guy on whose couch Maarten intended to sleep for a couple of weeks. the house brewed beer was very good and i had a mixed grill. ok it wasn't very mongolian but there were 5 types of meat and it arrived on 3 plates!! it cost about $11 and the mongolian ate my salad.



the national park was beautiful. endless rolling green hills dotted with Gers (tent houses), horses and rocky peaks. i spent my time horse riding, meeting a local family and climbing some of the peaks surrounding my ger. the local family served me some sort of yak milk tea, little dried bits of curdled yoghurt (apparently a sweet, but basically yak milk which has been left outside for a couple of days) and some home made bread. i politely tried a bit of everything. camping next to me was group of 5 people including an australian bloke and 4 (more bloody!) dutch. we spent that evening playing a local game with goat's anklebones.



i was sad to be leaving but nearly everyone i had met so far was going to be travelling on the same train to beijing so i wasn't going to be lonely...

Home

Hi All,

So now I am home and slightly depressed about it! I dont really have much more to add from Richards account of Berlin, Poland and being with my family.

As much I would love to tell more about Poland I feel it is best for Richard if I do not. All I can say is I was not happy and he is very sneaky! I will say however the reason for no photos of Poland is we had left our cameras is the car when we parked thinking that we were just meeting up with Will then would be heading back to the car, this was not the case sadly!

As for being with my family, it was a wonderful time even though Richard did turn up with a black eye. The funniest moments though which he did not mention was watching my 30ish year old male cousin dance! Undescriable and rather amusing. The other thing was going to a kitchen party and playing a game called circle of love!! It is a card game so dont get to many ideas, hard to explain in writng but had me in fits of laughter.

Well I would add the photos for Richard (ones I have anyway) but I sadly am not skilled in this department! So I will go back to counting the days when my love returns and being depressed its all over!

Love Sarah

Moscow to Ulaanbataar (or: The Very Long Train Ride - Part 1)

Just a quick hello from Ulaanbataar, Mongolia!!



We arrived this morning at 7.30am after 5 days on the train from Moscow. The journey was quite amazing and definitely a great experience. The scenery gradually changed from spruce and pine forests in central Russia to rolling grassy hills and frozen lakes in Mongolia. The view was dotted at regular intervals with muddy wooden villages and wide icy rivers. Luckily we could open some of the windows and i was able to take a couple of photos - capturing the experience however was impossible.



the train itself was no less exciting. i was sharing my 4 berth cabin with a young Belgian ecologist named Maarten but we were the only english speaking passengers in our half of the train! it seemed nearly everyone else on board was a mongolian trades-person carrying dubiously large quantities of leather goods or clothing. most cabins were completely packed full of goods, with mongolian women and children perched on top while their husbands were all in the next cabin drinking vodka and arguing.



although none spoke english they were all very friendly and more than willing to wander into your cabin uninvited to recount tales of Genghis Khan and the mighty mongolian empire (in Mongolian) or to share some vodka (at like 9am in the morning). Or more usually just to see if you were in need of a genuine leather jacket or boots.



at dinner the first night we discovered that we weren't the only tourists on board as we passed through a carriage (which became known as the netherlands) on the way to dinner containing 16 dutch tourists (the carriage, not the dinner). we also discovered a young english journalist way down the other end of the train perched amongst several mongolian women and a lot of new leather handbags.



so we spent the journey swapping guide books to siberia, playing cards, learning dutch and buying 2 minute noodles off the locals at station platforms. about 30min before every stop there was a mass movement of goods throughout the train as the mongolians prepared to move their entire stock onto the platform. and at every station there was inevitably several hundred locals awaiting teh arrival of our train. what proceeded during the 10min stops was like a local market in fast forward! if we were lucky we could push our way through and stretch our legs for a couple of mins before resuming our journey.



so there will be more detail and hopefully some photos later but that's all for now!

Moskva!!

РУДДЩ АКЩЬ ЬЩЫСЩЦ!!! Or equivalently 'Hello from Moscow!!!' when written on an english keyboard (if you can only see boxes don't worry, the real text doesn't look much different). it may look funny to you but try finding your way around when every street sign (when there is one) is written like that, as well as every metro (sorry, METPO) station, AND as well as my only map. i think there is a logic to the language somewhere but it's buried beneath a tonne of unpronouncable symbols. actually i think i'm doing alright - i recognise some of the greek characters and so PI (п) gives a P sound and so on. ie Photo becomes фото.



Even so, my train station is called Partizanskaya but in Russian that's ПАРТИЗАНСКАЯ... (Pi_A_P_T_back-to-front-N_3_A_H_C_K_A_back-to-front-R, for those with squares) and i had to find it at 1am in the rain after i landed at one of Moscow's 4 international airports. Not so hard i hear you say.. well it is when you understand that Moscow has something like 200 train stations and about 15 different lines (and that's just the metro), AND, you have to catch some private airport (which isn't even on the map) train to connect with the public lines... plus no-one speaks english.

anyway i did make it, only due to the directions i got from some considerate pimp (i had to decline his offer of entertainment for the remainder of the evening). unfortunately i hadn't been very successful in extending my accommodation to include sunday night over the phone - mainly due to the language barrier, but probably also due to the limited mental capacity of the staff member. so when i rocked up at 1am looking for a room i was informed that my booking was for monday and tuesday nights only. luckily the staff member (from phone conversation fame) called her manager over who told me that the hotel's day started at 2am and so my room for the following night would be available at 2am!! so i had to wait around in the lobby for an hour but in the end scored 3 nights for the price of 2 :) i think i was the only person in the lobby who didn't charge by the minute.



so this is all very interesting but doesn't really tell you anything about moscow except that it's full of dodgey people. Second only to the number of dodgey men and women are the number of police officers, although it's a close race between them and the stray dogs - at least the dogs aren't corrupt. however, other than all this moscow is quite a beautiful city - much like prague on a larger scale. this unfortunately means it's impossible to walk around and see everything. i did try a walking tour from my hotel (which is 4 metro stations from red square, well actually 5 but one is closed for some reason) but after walking for 2.5 hours in a state of semi-knowledge of where i was (the big landmarks like rivers and above ground train lines were where they should have been but the smaller land marks like roads and walking paths didn't correlate with what was on the map) i eventually stumbled into a station (i'll come back to this) to discover i had only advanced 2 stations down the line in 2.5 hours! i promptly jumped on the first train that came by and arrived at red square 10 min later.



now, about stumbling into the station: metro stations (ie the underground lines) are impossible to find. and i'm not joking, even ignoring the language barrier. every 2nd building in moscow looks the same. it's either a brick/concrete box or a gold encrusted church. the stations are some of the boxes but they're tucked away down back streets, miles apart and there's no signs. the only way i found this station was by walking in whichever direction there was more people.



but again, i digress. my hotel is located near the old olympic village, right next to a large park and a market area so the area is 'quite nice' (very relatively speaking). the area around revolution (red) square in central moscow is also very nice, with many beautiful buildings and parks right next to the river. i had a look inside the kremlin walls one afternoon (for 300 rubles ~ US$15) and i'm really glad i did. visitors are tightly restricted to a small area inside the walls but this area includes many small chapels, palaces and cathedrals. inside there are many tombs of kings from the middle ages plus some of the most decorated interiors i've seen, rivaling the raphael rooms in the vatican museum. the exteriors are no less impressive - gold capped onion domes ahoy.



there was also the tsar cannon and tsar bell. the cannon has a caliber of about 1m and each shot must weight a *&^$load. the cannon itself weights something like 40t and is about 3m high and 6m long but unfortunately i don't think it was ever fired (although the descriptive plaque was in russian so not 100% sure). the bell is even more ridiculous.. over 200t and 6m high. i don't think it was ever used either tho. apparently it was used as a chapel at some stage tho (i'm not joking, that's how big it is).



so moscow is very beautiful although it would probably be more so during winter when all the rubbish and concrete is covered with snow. tonight i'm getting on the train and heading towards beijing, therefore i'm not sure how much net i'll have until i arrive in china (2nd May). so that's why i've tried to update the posts if you're wondering why the sudden spurt in news. i'm in a 4-berth cabin but i don't know who else will be in there so that could be exciting. the first stop is at Ulaanbataar in Mongolia in just over 4 (!!) days. hopefully the windows are clear enough to get some decent photos. so that's all for now, hope everyone is well and keeping up with the posts. i'm off to the market to stock up on biscuits and vodka.

The end of the world

Well I think Sarah can do a more thorough post on our stay with her family in Rodalben but since i've got command of a computer i put one up for the time being (still not photos tho folks - i know, i know, blame the russians).

In all we spent about a week and a half in Rodalben with Sarah's family. This was definitely not enough. Although Rodalben is not a well known tourist destination (in fact it's not a known tourist destination at all, or even a tourist destination) being in Germany it was well endowed with castles, ruins and forests. Rodalben (for those of you who haven't visited before, ok all of you), is very close to the french border and i think we spent almost as much time in france as we did in germany. we also ducked across to luxembourg one day to check out the capital (ie. luxembourg - they obviously weren't very inventive with names).



Sarah's cousins only speak halting english and their parents not at all so our stay was punctuated with hand gestures, novice german and schnapps (spelling unknown). our stay got off to a flying start when i rocked up with a black eye. the 'beat a polish bar owner in a vodka drinking competition' story went down a treat when translated. the most memorable aspect to our stay was the food. sarah's cousin frank is a professional chef and happened to be on holiday during our stay so he spent a considerable amount of time in the kitchen. including on one occaision to prepare my 'ideal animal' - a meal composed of chicken breast, bacon, cheese and ham. being a chef he went all creative and threw in some egg, beef and bratwurst as well. the meal received fairly positive reviews.



despite waking up after breakfast most mornings we were basically force fed traditional german meals for dinner (accompanied by considerable amounts of alcohol) with the result of both of us putting on about 100kg. one of the other german activities we participated in was going to a soccer (fussball) match. we saw kaiserslautern flog some other team 2-0 which apparently is a very rare event indeed so we were very privilaged. it was a home game for K which obviously held special meaning for us aussies. i came home with a scarf and sarah came home with a cold chest (you figure it out).



anyway i have 28sec left on net so gotta go!!!

Poland

We spent Saturday / Sunday nights in Berlin and then we ducked over to Poznan in west Poland to catch up with Will on Monday night and then we headed back to Berlin Tuesday / Wednesday nights. So we didn't have all that long in Poland. The drive from Berlin to Poznan took about 3 and a half hours and was remarkable only for the rain and the extraordinary number of trucks and potholes on the polish roads.

We'd agreed to meet Will at the main square in Poznan so we headed in what we thought was that direction. Unsurprisingly neither Sarah nor I speak Polish and we didn't have a town map so our first two attempts were somewhat unsuccessful. Eventually we found a servo, admitted defeat and bought a map. After one more lap of Poznan (just to make sure we'd really seen the sights) we found the main square. Not much to it really, nor Poznan for that matter. Couple of nice looking churches and a lot of roadworks really.. the rain probably didn't help :)

After a short while we also found Will and his room-mate and set about finding the nearest watering hole. Will assured us he knew just the one and we headed that way. Apparently the barmaid was a friend and so we had a couple of beers. I might remind our readers at this point that 'a beer' in Europe refers to 500ml and not, as one might assume, a measly 275ml. So we were getting along alright and decided to grab some food (which wasn't bad) and hit up the local Aussie bar.

I'm not sure what about this bar distinguished it as the Aussie bar because as far as I could make out the owner and all the customers were (very) polish. In fact I think when Will and Martin first visited the establishment they were the first australians to do so. Anyway after a couple more drinks someone suggested shots. My recollection gets slightly hazy at this point but i remember tequila and vodka, lots of vodka, and something blue (which may have also been vodka). For some reason (which was obviously important but which now escapes me) i challenged the bar owner to an arm wrestle. This was probably my first mistake. Apparently 'arm wrestle' translates to Polish as 'vodka drinking competition'.

At this point I'll make a quick diversion to Sarah's memory. On returning from the toilet she found a disturbingly long line of empty shot glasses on the bar and the polish bar owner collapsed on the floor.

Back to my memory: I woke up at midday with a sore head. Apparently I had remained strong right up until the point where I had to walk somewhere. Also apparent (from my forehead) was the fact that I'd fallen over at some stage.



So.. Will's residence was located in a nice old (and large) building, now being used for a school about 30min out of town and we had lunch the next day in town at an interesting little place which served savory pancakes from around the world. The drive back to Berlin was surprisingly a lot better than the drive into Poland, probably because i slept for a large percentage of it.



Result: I don't actually remember a whole lot of Poznan and the only photos we've got are of a pretty decent sunset on the road back to Berlin.

Berlin (Part 3)

Just thought I'd add a couple a things to the main Berlin post..

Travelling on the autobahns with a new peugot at some stage we were going to have to test out how fast it would go. Usually in the unlimited areas we'd been sitting on about 150 and the car was doing this pretty easy at about 4000rpm. I think it was on a quite bit of road on the way to Berlin from Prague we got it up to about 196 before we hit a 120km/h speed zone so thought we'd better ease back a bit :) wouldn't have got much quicker tho - the speedo only goes up to 210.. there's video evidence too.

The drive from Berlin to Sarah's family in Rodalben (south west of frankfurt right near the french border) took us about 7 hours for those playing at home. In other news I forgot to read the ODO when we dropped the car back but it would've been about 4600km. Anyway, I'd better leave this post here before i confuse you with more time jumps..

PS. I'm in mockva and sarah's probably just touching down in aus!