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!

Berlin (Part 1 & 2)

It's currently 12.29am Sunday morning - Sarah is flying home and i'm flying to Moscow later today!!

Back to the point... our time in Berlin was split between two short visits - we ducked over to Poland inbetween, but more about that later. We arrived Saturday evening and, due having obtained a map before entering the city limits, we arrived at our accommodation in record time. We were staying at another Wombats - the one in Munich was good and had a sister hostel - and so knew the drill. To obtain your room key you have to hand over some form of photo ID as insurance, our ID of choice was my MET concession card. To the uninitiated this may not seem out of the ordinary but if you've seen it before you'll understand when I say it scored us 8 free drinks in the house bar.



Since it was Saturday night and we'd heard Berliners liked to partay we decided to head out. Scouring the 'suggested night spots' we settled on a funky little bar with a swimming pool. No joke. To our great disappointment the pool was nowhere to be seen and is apparently closed during winter but the club was going off anyway and we got home about 5am. Sunday we arose slightly after breakfast closed and decided to head out and check out the sights. There were several markets setup and plenty of people about, a surprising percentage of whom were wearing inline skates. The reason for which turned out to be some sort of organised endurance event (complete with crowds, collapsing skaters and inappropriately worn bike shorts).



Our tour of Berlin's sights by foot led us to the Reichstag, which you can enter for free and climb the large dome on the roof - which apparently gives good views of the city. Being a sunday arvo the queue was phenomenal and being early spring in Germany it was raining and being still slightly drunk upon departing our residence that morning we had come out in light (un-waterproof) clothing. After a not so lengthy second glance at the queue we caught the train back to our hostel.



Sunday also happened to by our 1 year anniversary so we (read: Sarah) decided we'd better do something (or else..). Something turned out to be straightening Sarah's hair for what seemed like about 3 hours while Richard had a nap. By the time both parties were awake and ready to party it was approaching dinner time. However, we had 8 free drinks at the bar to make use of and being students it would have been rude of us not to do so. 3 romantic games of pool followed (in which Sarah was very unromantically flogged) before we realised it had approached dinner time quite some time before and was fast approaching not dinner time.



We were both pretty hungry and so settled upon the first open place we happened across. This turned out to be some sort of brauhaus, which also may have been in some sort of shopping centre. Some may claim this is not the most romantic setting by I'll take this opportunity to point out that we were having dinner in a traditional German restaurant in Berlin, which ought to be worth more than a couple of flowers.



So the next morning we headed to Poland to meet up with Will (Richard's cousin) and we returned to Berlin on Tuesday. We spent a day checking out the sights we'd missed on the weekend (including the Reichstag dome and Checkpoint Charlie). The most memorable aspect to the dome was the inordinately time consuming security check on the way in. The checkpoint Charlie museum was quite good but surprisingly huge and packed full of exhibits and information. It was a mix of personal stories, genuine and mock artifacts, artwork and a detailed history of the whole affair. The museum opened in 1962 and bits and pieces had been added ever since so it was a bit confusing at some times but worth a look.



We spent one more night in Berlin before heading across Germany to Sarah's relatives.

Postcript to Prague

Hi,

Sorry I just have to add two small things that were quite amusing that Richard realised he had forgot to put in.

On our drive out of Czech Republic we were pulled over by the police. This made us both a little nervous as we were thinking about the visa that we did not have. We had to show our passports which were conveniently in the boot of the car, locked in our packs and somewhat buried. Then we had to show our drivers license which were in the glove box! Then we were asked for our car papers!! What??? We had no idea what he was talking about. Lucky for us we are Australian as this did seem to please the officer who called out to his mate "skippy" and pointed at us. He was looking at my passport and it seemed he recognised that I have a German surname, so he asked me in German do I speak German. I thought about what response I should give as I know a number of random sentences and decided that I would go with "we are having fun"!! I thought it would ease the nervousness I was feeling and everyone always laughs when I say it! Well it worked a treat! He laughed handed us back our stuff and did not worry about the car papers and we were on our way again

Not ten mins down the road from this there was a house on the side of the road with big windows. Richard was driving so I noticed it and he did not. I thought it was strange because before we got right in front of it I thought I could see what looked like a leg wearing stockings and a high heel in the window. I found this strange and was wondering if it was a real leg. Well it was!!! And it was attached to a prostitute who was displaying her wares in the window!!! I was so suprised and shocked that I let out some sort of cry which startled Richard! I almost wanted him to turn back so he could see because it was one of the funniest things I have ever seen (as well as a little shocking).

So we must go again. We will write more later.

Love us