Taltsi

Abandoned spire

The church

Nothing much has been happening this week, save for on the weekend, when we've increased our knowledge or Irkutsk and returned to Baikal - the museum of Taltsi on the Angara, and to Listvianka. Yesterday we decided to go to the second hand clothes shop, and on the way, all of us went to Govinda, a Russian vegetarian restaurant with really good food near the central market. The service is all buffet and you pay at the end. There is a surprising amount of variety for such a small place in Russia, but apparently also quite a niche market. Emily also brought along a French friend, Guillaume, with whom we all talked in French, to the annoyance of those among us who do not understand the language!! After this, we decided to go and look at an old book store near the Decembrist square, on the way to which we walked past quite an impressive abandoned spire and a number of interesting-looking windows (more on the windows of Russia to follow in a later post, once I've taken more photos of them!) We found the bookshop, where I bought a cheap book for 20 roubles (about a pound), about letters to Irkutsk from the Russian front during the second world war. It looks really interesting, hopefully I'll be able to make sense of it! We also walked past a church which is the same one as appears in the background of this blog, which was quite nice to see!

Lara and Guillaume at Govinda

Me with two of the birds

Today, after staying up until two in the morning last night, we got up and left at ten to go to Baikal again and also to the outdoors settlement museum in Taltsi, which is on the way. We arrived in Taltsi, and worked our way through the woods and the houses down towards the Angara. We walked past a flock of birds which would come and eat out of our hands, which was really amazing. At one point I even managed to get one in each hand, although this required a bit of cheating and using pieces of pine cone as bait. From there we walked along the path and came to a village, apparently modeled after a village which existed near Bratsk in feudal Russian times. There were, however, houses from different cultures and from a relatively wide span of time, including a really nice Russian fort, church, and a large number of normal houses and crafts places, where people were sat practicing their trades and then selling their wares. The matrioshkas which they were selling were absolutely horrendous and had pictures of disney princesses on them, or seals, both of which looked very out of place and incredibly tacky. We walked down to the Angara and I once more dipped my feet in the water, but it was fairly cold this time and I didn't particularly fancy a swim! Once we were all done, at about two o'clock, we walked back to the bus stop to get a marshrutka on to Listvianka, where we had arranged to meet Guillaume.

One of the churches of Taltsi

Emily and Britt living the Russian dream

The marshrutka's, are, unfortunately, generally full when they arrive at Taltsi, so we waited for a fair while, until eventually half of us poured onto one marshrutka, whilst the rest of us waited and the caught the second one to Listvianka. Once there, we went for a short stroll and then ate some omul, skimmed stones and played around on the shore. Britte, Eline, Guillaume, Lara, Lara and Sanne had not seen Baikal before, so it was nice for them to finally get to see it before it starts to snow, and nice for us to see it looking slightly different, as all of the leaves have fallen off the trees. The view was amazing, and the visibility a fair bit better, so we could see the snow-capped mountains on the other side of the Angara, quite a way away - we intend, at some point, to do the train-tour of the Baikal, which would be really amazing, although it takes ten hours, being larger in size than Belgium! Despite a few issues and leaving people behind in Listvianka, we finally all made it back, and hopefully getting an early sleep tonight!