A Childhood Dream Comes True

Casey writes:

I have always dreamt of visiting Russia. As a child, my imagination frequently conjured up images of freezing blizzards whipping the cold and barren steppes of Siberia, icy landscapes from horizon to horizon, and trees bending over double with the weight of settled snow.

I realised, however, that with less than two weeks until summer, this dreamy perception was unlikely to become a reality on this trip, and that blue skies, green grass and blossoming flowers were far more probable. 

Boy was I wrong. Almost as soon as we had crossed the Mongolian-Russian border, the snow began to fall. The view outside the train window was magical. The ground became instantly white, the air was thick with huge swirling snowflakes, and the trees looked stunning with their layer of fluffy snow. This definitely wasn't summer, but it was absolutely beautiful, and it fit my stereotype of Russian landscapes to a tee.

Arriving at Ulan-Ude at 9:30pm, we began the walk towards our hostel. We had originally organised a lift to our hostel for 11:00pm because we didn't fancy roaming unfamiliar Russian streets in the dark, but when we realised we had miscalculated the arrival time, we instead decided to walk in the rapidly fading light.

By the time we walked out of the station, the snow was falling quite heavily and walking was tricky. I didn't mind at all, and in fact, I was revelling in this childhood fantasy.

However, after twenty minutes of walking, becoming increasingly cold and snow covered, we discovered that we had headed in the wrong direction. With a map in hand, we beseeched some locals for help, but the language barrier made communication impossible. Walking back the other way, we finally got ourselves back on track. By this stage our backpacks were heavy with snow, my feet were soaking, and I had to keep shaking the heavy snow off my umbrella. Richard's hair was white with snowflakes, as were his eyelashes. Attempting to negotiate the many slippery steps of the railway overpass, I slipped on the icy metal and fell heavily only a few steps from the bottom. The weight of my backpack compounded my fall. Landing awkwardly, and eventually settling on my back, I felt like a turtle lying on its shell: The weight of my bag prevented me from rolling over or standing up, and my legs were flailing ridiculously in the icy snow. I didn't know whether to laugh or cry... I think I did both. Eventually, I righted myself, and once I had confirmed that no part of me was broken, we continued on our trek to our hostel. 

Twenty more minutes passes before we conceded we were still lost. With me desperate to get out of the snow, Richard entered a supermarket to try to get assistance. In limited English the shopkeepers attempted to help him, and gave vague directions in the form of hand waving and pointing. Meanwhile, Richard had thawed out and a large puddle of slushy water was appearing on the supermarket floor beneath him, creating a nice cleaning job for the workers.

We continued walking. Ten more minutes passed before we gave up. The roads didn't match the map, which was now a soggy mess in our hands. It was dark, cold and wet, and my neck had begun to seize up from my fall. In defeat, we entered another business' premises (we still don't know if it was a restaurant or theatre or what exactly) and asked the girls there to ring our hostel for us. They did, and within minutes the owner of our hostel appeared. We had waved the white flag literally metres from the door of our salvation.

The hostel was warm, the owner was friendly, and we went to bed relieved, knowing we'd be up early to make the most of our morning in Ulan-Ude.

Ulan-Ude is known as one of Siberia's most likeable cities. It has a small-city charm, and a quiet and relaxed atmosphere. Roaming the streets at 8:00am, we discovered that nothing opened until 10:00am (despite it being a Tuesday), which gave us plenty of time to discover the city streets. The largest Lenin head in the world was definitely the highlight. I'm not sure where the rest of his body was, nor why insignificant Ulan-Ude was graced by his presence, but the statue was impressive nonetheless.

A pretty cathedral, snow covered streets, a supermarket and a shopping centre made up the sights of the rest of our morning, before we headed back to the hostel enroute to the train station.

Russian train tickets are incredibly confusing. All timetables are aligned to 'Moscow Time', meaning that Russia's nine timezones cause regular confusion (to foreigners at least) when trying to work out what time the train will arrive at a local station. Staring at the electronic board at the Ulan-Ude station, it showed that our train would be arriving at 08:31. We had to add five hours on to work out the local time of arrival, and thankfully, we counted correctly. With many more train trips ahead of us, fingers crossed our maths skills don't let us down!