Ulan-Ude

Spent the weekend away, and didn't get a chance to write on Friday either, so a fair amount to write up now! In the morning I sat through my two French lessons - Jakob felt a bit ill, so went home after the first of these. I had, however in our French language lesson, succeeded in accurately translating a sentence from Russian into French, something which I felt quite proud of. The Belgians then saw me chatting to the girls from my French class after this lesson, and have not stopped teasing me since... My second lesson was French Literature, and was also quite puzzling - of the six of us in the class, I'm pretty certain that I spoke at least twice as much as all the rest of the students put together. Maybe the teacher is a real troll underneath, but frankly my classmates all seemed grossly disinterested. I may be a bit too keen by comparison, but seeing as its my second lesson, I felt quite proud of my ability to analyse Mauriac's 'Une Vie'.

Miken, Yoona, Minjie, Cristine, Hyo Eun, Rima, Jakob,
Corinne, Juan, Brenda, Chang Min, Jiae, Luís, Soojin, He Jin

After this lesson, I joined Danya, Katrien, Lara and Maria to go to the market to buy wool so that I can start knitting scarves for the coming winter months. I've not yet started to knit this wool, but I think it should be quite nice if I ever actually learn to make something out of it! I then hurried back to university for the two more Russian lessons in the afternoon. Not very different from usual, to be sure, but it was the last day that Juan and Luís are here, so I asked Rima if we could take a class photo in order to remember us all by (everyone was present save for the chinese boy, Seo-tse, whom we suspect has been moved to a lower class or one which goes at an easier pace). I also managed to explain to Rima the negative connotations oft associated with being patriotic in Spain. She seemed very upset by this, but when I mentioned the Гражда́нская война́ в Испа́нии, she appeared to take it a little better - Russians are, after all, very patriotic.We managed to get out and get on a bus fairly quickly, which was handy as we had arranged to meet at Vika's apartment before going on to the train station.

Back in the residence, Maria had already cooked a quick meal for Lara and myself, which we wolfed down before getting changed and throwing a few essentials together in a bag. We caught the 16k to town and carried on, we had been told when we had to get off, but the bus driver decided, after only Corinne and Sara had gotten off, that he's drive off again, so we had to jump off at the next stop and walk back to meet them, Vika, and her flat-mate, Natasha. Once we arrived at the residence (she lives in a rented apartment with two other girls; Natasha and Christina), we immediately started snacking on some of the toffee-cones which Vika had bought, and cookies we brought along as an offering. We also got a message from Cristine, telling us that she had decided not to come with us, as she wasn't feeling it today.

At about eight o'clock, we headed to the train station, where we met Emily, thus completing out group. (Those of us going to Ulan-Ude, just for the record, were Britt, Corinne, Danya, Dries, Elien, Emily, Katrien, Lara, Lara, Maria, Sanne, Sara, Vika and myself - Cristine was meant to be coming, but changed her mind, and Vika was only going one way, and staying there a couple more days). The train left Irkutsk at about 23:00 and we were due to arrive in Ulan-Ude just before 07:00. We decided to go for the full Russian experience and got a shared cabin (about 54 people). People were scattered around in twos and threes - Lara sat alone, and we convinced a Russian to swap places with Corinne so she could sit beside me instead of with some other Russians. Funnily enough we ran into another group of tourists (10 or so English, Spanish, American people) who were in the same section of the cabin as we were, so we got talking to them. However, many people started going to sleep, and the others, who had come to our section to celebrate Jewish New Year with apples and honey, drifted back to their sections. Each separate compartment in standard class was comprised of two benches facing one another, with a folding down bunk above it so four people could sleep in each compartment. There is no physical division between that and the two seats facing one another on the other side of the corridor. These also have a bed above them, and the table between the two seats folds down to create a sixth bed.

Lara, Danya, Corinne, Timur, Emily and myself

The toilet is also closed for 40 minutes after each stop (for health reasons??) - however, I went to see if it was open before going to bed - it was here where I met Timur, the Mongol guide for the other foreign travelers. As I chatted to him, Corinne and Emily also came along and joined in the conversation, which then led to us consuming copious amounts of vodka (Mostly Timur, it must be said, who drank a lot of it just before deciding to go to bed himself) and becoming very good friends, partly because he and Corinne had a similar taste in books, and both agreed on their favorite book being '100 years of solitude'. We eventually got to sleep at about 5 in the morning, and were woken at about six by one of the very military female train wardens, who bustled her way through the cabin telling everyone to get up for Ulan-Ude.

Giant head of Lenin in Ulan Ude

It was still dark as we got off the train, and, according to the digital thermometer on the station door, the temperature was only 1ºC - Vika took us to the bus stop, and pushed half of us into a marshrutka, before telling the driver to take us to the ploshad (square) - this was, initially, slightly worrying, how many squares might there be in Ulan-Ude! We needn't have worried though, the square is unmistakeable, considering it has the giant head of Lenin in it, the largest head of Lenin and, indeed, the largest head in the world. The Russian do appear to have a bit of a Lenin-fetish - everywhere has a main street named after him, squares named after him, and his is the only statue which both Irkutsk and Ulan-Ude seem to share (there may have been statues which I did not get to see!) We waited around in the square for a while before deciding it was way too cold and dark to be happy and decided that we'd be better off in a 'Subway'. We went there for breakfast and stayed an hour or so whilst Vika went home to drop off her stuff and then came back with a friend of hers, Natasha, who is also from Irkutsk and was going to help show us around - she was very good, indeed at understanding what I meant whenever I tried to explain something to her!

The fountains in the square

Archway to Ulan-Ude

Statue of two dancers

Having finished our 'Subway' sandwiches, we then started on our tour by walking back to the giant head of Lenin. It was just as massive as before, so we stared at it in awe for a while, took photos and fooled around a bit at 2ºC before continuing to the rest of the square, where there was a very beautiful and intricate fountain. Strangely enough my pictures of it came out rather better than expected - there was also a large graffiti of Stalin on one mural and several statues and buildings, including the hotel. Elien, who had been feeling a bit poorly, decided at this point, as we were looking at the archway which establishes the date when Ulan-Ude became formally known by that name, that she would stay here, and so she, Sanne, Britt and Vika went to the hotel to book her a room for the day to lie down, rest and recover (the other three would catch up with it a short while later). We saw the Mongolian consulate in Ulan-Ude, a statue with two dragons' heads, one of two birds in flight, and a map, which I took a picture of so as to be able to get my bearings were I to get lost (fortunately this was not the case). As we were stood admiring a large spike with CCCP and a sign asking the proletariat of the world to unite, we were joined by Nastya, one of Natasha's friends, who was also here to help out.

Mural with a picture of Stalin on it

Danya, Lara, Lara and Sanne with the kittens

We kept on walking for a while, past a little chapel, where we took many pictures of groups of us sat on the love bench - supposedly when two lovers have quarreled, they sit on this bench and make up, because the incline of the chair forces them to sit together or to slide towards each other. Not far from this, just round the corner, was a tree, aptly labelled the 'Love Tree' due to the locks which couples had attached to it to show that they would never be apart. At this point, however, we had a bit of a heart-wrenching moment, as a tiny kitten ran up to Dries in the park. It was shortly after followed by a second kitten and then Lara found a third nestled in the roots of a tree. We spent a while fussing over them, as they were really cold and trembling, and we held them close for warmth. Sadly, however, even from the moment we saw them we knew that we would have to leave them behind, so eventually we put the three of them down together and left. One of them ran after us, and Dries had to pick it up, put it back and then run away before it could do the same again (we were afraid it would be run over if it ran into the road behind us). We then walked to the bus stop, going via a house which was overgrown with hops (Sara's favorite plant), and we all got on a marshrutka together to a Dartsan.

One of the main buildings of the Dartsan

The lama's building and part of the queue

A Dartsan is the Buryat name for a Buddhist temple - and as we stood before it, it dawned on us that we're not only in Russia, we're in Asia too, and for the rest of the day we were quite, quite stunned by this! The large numbers of buryat people, and the Buddhist architecture were enough to make us see the world in perspective! We walked around the temple, handing over a few kopecks and spinning the prayer wheels. There was also a large temple, wherein, we were told, is the body of a lama, who, according to the Buddhists, achieved the highest form of meditation 75 years ago, and has not moved since. The body is only brought out 11 days a year, but the queues were so long we decided against going in to see what we can only suspect to be a long-dead lama. Afterwards we had a look around the shops, but I resisted people's attempts to sell me items which I deemed to be of little or no interest. There was a comfy and warm Yak-fur hat, but I already have my shapka, and one hat is enough for now!

Russian church in the ethnographical museum

Once we were done there we returned to Ulan-Ude for a meal - we did, however, misjudge the size of the pizzas we ordered, and ended up feeling very very full indeed, maybe not ideal on the next marshrutka journey to visit the Ethnographical museum there. We walked around and saw a load of interesting buildings made specifically for the purpose of the museum. There was also some sort of zoo there, which we went into, and although it is, as always nice, to see the animals, it was very upsetting to see so many of them behind bars - the birds in tiny cages, the foxes, wolves and bears having barely enough room to move around in... All in all, very sad, many of them would no longer be able to survive in the wild, but I still find it cruel that they should be penned up like this. As we were leaving we also saw a tiny squirrel which amazed us with its antics (if I sort a blog out for Dries, no doubt he'll put photos of the squirrel up, otherwise I'll ask him for them and post them myself...).

A yak, one of the happier animals there

Four one-edition 10 rouble coins

We had dinner at a restaurant in town, where everything was OK, except for the queuing for the toilets (I preferred to wait until we returned to the train station) and for the service, which included a lot of mixed orders. We had a brief moment of panic as we were paying, wondering whether or not we would get back in time for the train, and then when waiting for a marshrutka. Once one finally arrived, there were only four or five places free for us. Somehow, all of us managed to squeeze in and make it to the station. We boarded the train and said goodbye to Vika. Once again, paired up in a cabin with Corinne, both of us on the bottom floor, and two sour Russians above us, who, despite my attempting a friendly overture, did not speak a word to either of us for the whole journey. Being fairly tired, we went straight to bed, and have had a fairly chilled out day today! Most people wanted to catch up on sleep (Dries went to Baikal with his exchange student's family), but other than that, not much else has happened! I have, I must admit, started collecting a series of 10 rouble coins from different years with the coat of arms of individual oblasts within Russia on them, which are very nice.