Krasnoyarsk

Well, once again, hoping not to fall behind as I have fallen behind on one of my new year posts on Vladivostok, I feel that I need to get the whole weekend in Krasnoyarsk under control. On the morning of the 25th, Guillaume and I met up at the train station and bought the tickets together, 2054 roubles each including return tickets. The lady was quite helpful and gladly suggested we take one train over the other as the seats on it were in the same section and that therefore we wouldn't be sitting separately. Also, very pleasingly, she did congratulate us on our Russian, mentioning that there weren't many foreigners who could speak Russian and buy the tickets there! The ticket to Krasnoyarsk was at a basically perfect time, leaving in the early evening and arriving there at midday. After this, we went to the free-wifi café near my university and waited around for a bit so that Guillaume wouldn't need to go back home before lessons. We also met up with a Russian friend from his university, who was in charge of sorting out the open-doors day presentation for the history department of their university.

After leaving the café, I went back home and spent most of the rest of the day simply packing up, buying some food for the journey (there AND back), and trying to find out where on earth we would be staying. I put a post on couchsurfing, asking for people to text me directly, as I would be leaving in a few hours (this is what comes from such impromptu trips!), but nobody did, and I assumed nobody saw it (I checked afterwards and found that two people had offered me their couches to surf on and one more had told me that his couch was taken by two other couchsurfers, but that he could try and sort something out for me). However, fortunately, during our time on the train, Anya, who was with us when we went to Peak Cherskovo, helped us out by putting us in touch with her second cousin who lives in Krasnoyarsk. I then texted Sergei and asked him if he could suggest anywhere where we might be able to stay, and he answered us saying that he'd pick us up from the train station when we arrived and sort something out.

Self and Tatiana on Train to Krasnoyarsk

And now, for the train journey. This was hardly a long train journey. Admittedly longer than the little getaway to Ulan Ude that weekend in October, but nothing on the scale of the time we spent on the train going to Vladivostok. To Krasnoyarsk, the train took approximately 18 hours. We got in there whilst it was still light and started talking to a middle-aged lady (Tatiana) who was sitting there, in the seats opposite ours, and, eventually, with Samuel, an Armenian who was also in our compartment, and who told us that if we were interested in having a look around the military base somewhere between Irkutsk and Krasnoyarsk (Guillaume did ask him about it), we should give him a call and we would meet there for him to show us around (definitely a plan for another weekend!). Tatiana also mentioned to me that she'd seen me walking around Irkutsk just a few days beforehand, and although I have no recollection of this, its quite possible that this was just so! After going to sleep at about 1am, we woke up again to find that Samuel must have left at some point during the night. Thus, we carried on the rest of our time doing Russian crosswords which were incredibly hard for the two of us. Fortunately, though, I managed to salvage some shreds of dignity by filling in several blanks, although most of these were exactly the same in Russian as in English!

A view of the hill near Krasnoyarsk by the river Yenisei

The dam closest to Krasnoyarsk itself

So, just after midday on Thursday, our train pulled into the station at Krasnoyarsk (the conductor approached me just a short while before we arrived and told me that i shouldn't forget my friend, else he was like to sleep all the way to Moscow - coming from Guillaume this is something I no longer doubt). We hung around at the station, and, sure enough, within about 5 minutes Sergei and Nastya, a friend of his from university turned up and led us out. The two of them had decided to take the entire day out, and also skip one lesson on Friday. We were taken at first to grab a bite to eat (a medium-sized pizza for 200 roubles - actually 99 roubles, but we shared the difference between us), and then once more headed out in Nastya's car to see some of the sights around Krasnoyarsk. Unfortunately, we did find that someone had scraped along the side of the car door with a key, which was obviously quite infuriating to Nastya who had just had it re-done. She did, nonetheless, drive us to a viewpoint from where we got some amazing views of the Yenisei river, and the onwards to a huge dam which they built a bit further up the river (which now stops the river from freezing over and has had quite a large impact on the environment). I wanted to go to another dam a bit further up river, which is supposedly the largest in the world, but it turned out to be about 500 kilometres away, which is quite a distance by anyone's standards!

Some of the grafittis in the competition

Masha and Guillaume

The bridge to the island

We soon after returned to Krasnoyarsk, where Nastya dropped us off at Sergei's place. There we dumped our things, had a bit to eat and met another friend of his, Masha. We chatted with her for a while, then we were told that Masha was going to show us around, and so we left Sergei at home and went for a stroll around the city. Krasnoyarsk has, apparently, a 'good' side and a 'bad' side. Sergei's house was on the 'good' side, and so from there we wandered down a few avenues, crossing the organ hall, which was almost exactly the same as the Polish church here in Irkutsk, the statue of a drunk man standing outside a club, and then proceeded to walk along the side of the river, on the side of which were numerous graffitis which had been painted there in a graffiti competition held some while ago. We walked most of the way along until turning left onto one of the main squares, and from which we walked to a small island on the Yenisei which is linked by a bridge (the vine bridge, but apparently nobody calls it that, and instead refer to it as the bridge to the island). However, once there we realised that it was already starting to turn dark and it was also growing a fair bit chillier - for Krasnoyarsk, anyway! Hence, we turned around and walked back, making our way gradually past some more of the sights of Krasnoyarsk, until eventually we came to a square with a statue of Pushkin and one of his wife. As we were standing there, Nastya turned up again, and after having a brief conversation with Masha, ushered Guillaume and myself over to her car, where two other girls, Diana and Sandra were already sat.

Viktor, Max, Sasha, Sergei, Max, Diana and Guillaume at
the dacha

From Pushkin square, we drove over the river, to the 'dodgy'-side, and then further out of the city, until we reached a small town which seemed to be entirely made out of dachas, and therefore probably only being used by Russians during their weekends and holidays. It was to one of these that Nastya finally drove us, showing that Russians can actually drive well by not plunging us into the river on a rather rickety old bridge which was just the right size for the car to cross. A little bit further and we arrived at the dacha, where Sergei was waiting with his father, who had just been helping him to start up the banya, but soon headed off. We weren't told implicitly, but it was relatively easy to realise that we had somehow merited an invite to Sergei's birthday party (his birthday was two days prior to it). Soon, in a couple of waved, a load more Russians arrived, totalling 7 boys (Guillaume, Maxim, Maxim, Sasha, Sergei, Viktor and myself) and 4 girls (Diana, Nastya, Sasha and Tanya). We then spent a lot of time, as the night grew darker, cooking meat on the barbecue outside to make the traditional Russian shashlyk, and then, after a brief party inside we went out to the banya, where Guillaume and Sergei proceeded to have a rather deep discussion about the Russian soul.

About half past 3: Guillaume, Max, Nastya and Sasha

After the banya, which, as usual sapped most of our strength, we went back into the dacha and started playing a couple of games. Obviously they were all entirely in Russian which meant that Guillaume and I would inevitably lose, not that this was a problem, although it was suggested to me that I try to play in English or French so as to level my chances slightly. At about 4am, Guillaume, who had been sitting in a semi-comatose state on the huge bed for several hours went to sleep in the kitchen on a mattress which somebody had whipped up, whilst the rest of us carried on playing, although I doubt that any of the Russian words I learnt in those hours stuck at all! Eventually, people seemed to be packing up to go to bed, and I wandered into the kitchen to find Max and Nastya sitting drinking vodka and wine on the other mattress in there, so I sat down and joined them. Max had been and carried on drinking throughout the night, and asked him to teach him a Spanish phrase, which I did, and which it took him a fair few hours to memorise! After this, he insisted that we speak in English for a bit, as he had very few opportunities to practice. Although initially I just carried on speaking Russian and correcting his English, eventually I relented and spoke in English as well until about 8am I pointed out to him that it was starting to get light outside and it might be an idea to get some sleep.

A slightly distant view of Stolby

Three hours later I was once more up and about, setting about the arduous task of cleaning up all the food, confetti and trash that people had left lying around the night before. As it happened, the last two to rise were Guillaume and Max, the latter remembering very little of the previous night, save for the fact that he thought it was a good idea to intersperse shots of vodka with swigs of wine and the occasional beer. The girls with one of the other two Maxes left relatively early so as to get ready for going to classes later, but the rest of us stayed around. However, as there were six of us and only one car, we decided it would be best if Guillaume and I got the bus back to Krasnoyarsk and met up with them again there later. Hence, they drove us a short way to the bus stop and told us what stop to get off at. The bus was about to leave as we arrived, so we hopped on and drove away immediately, once more seeing Stolby as we drove away (Stolby is a famous centre of climbing in Russia, for those readers - I assume that there are a few! Who don't know!). The bus took about 40 minutes to the town centre, where we got of at Gorky stop. There, realising that I had no signal, we went for a wander, saw another huge statue of Lenin and walked through the park until eventually we got a call from Masha who was wondering where we were.

Central square of Krasnoyarsk

A statue of the writer in whom's museum we
met the old man

Leaving the park, we met up with her and wandered back to Sergei's place, where we had a quick shower and a cup of tea before we geared up again and picked up our bags. We then left the house together and walked a way through the city until I eventually figured out that the two of them were going to lessons, but before they went, they had found two girls, one of whom Masha knew, Olga, and Olga's friend, Olga. As we left Masha and Sergei, he did such a nice thing, giving each of us something by which to remember the city - Guillaume a key-ring of Krasnoyarsk, and me a 10-rouble note (the 10-rouble note is the one of Krasnoyarsk, on which appear three of the main sights of the city). With the Olga's, we then carried on and chanced upon a small museum which we decided to have a look around. As we went in, and elderly gentleman heard Guillaume and Olga talking in French and started a whole conversation with them, including the fact that he was a communist and that the government were searching for him. All in all we had a few laughs, before he went on his way and we carried on walking through the city. Eventually, the two Olga's decided two take us up to one of the symbols of Krasnoyarsk, the oldest building there, an old church, from which can also be seen the entirety of Krasnoyarsk.

Olga, self and Olga

Krasnoyarsk skyline

Self Olga and Olga at the Chasovnaya

After being there, we walked back down to the city, which was quite a walk away and saw a number of monuments on the way until Olga's boyfriend turned up in his car and took us down to the shore again, where we took a little walk by the river before we all hopped back into his car and he drove us to the other side of the river. By this point, Guillaume and I were already starting to wonder where we were going to be staying the night, and then we pulled up at the first Olga's house, where I was instructed to get out. Therefore, I hopped out of the car, and Guillaume was just following me out, when Olga told him that he was staying with other Olga and her boyfriend, and that the next day we would be meeting up and go to the train station together. So, from there, Olga and I went back to her home, where she introduced me to her mother - apparently Olga works in some sort of agency which helps out foreign students who come for a couple of months on some kind of exchange programme, and therefore is used to hosting foreigners from time to time, although not really any who speak any Russian. After a short while, chatting to Olga and her mother and having stuff to eat, Olga's father came home. Being, as he is, a worker at a vodka factory, the logical thing to do was to bring out the vodka and promptly start toasting with me and drinking shots of vodka, despite my insistence that one small one would be enough. Eventually, however, I managed to creep away to bed and have a proper good nights sleep!

My room - actually Olga's, as it turned out!

The following day, I got up at about 8am and went straight in to have some breakfast - tvarok, a strange milk with milk and more milk type of food, which I was very much confused by (my inability to handle blini was a source of much amusement to the whole family). Eventually, however, I got my things together, and, together with Olga and her father we went to collect Guillaume (who had, once again, overslept). From there we carried on until the university for Olga to hop out on her way to classes and were taken on unto the train station, where her father insisted in seeing us all the way until the door of the train (I'm not entirely sure of how confident he was in my level of Russian and my ability to find my way onto the train in time). Either way, we soon hopped aboard the train and were off again once more. This time, instead of an Armenian officer, and a middle-aged Russian lady, we met a Tajik who was living in Altai and a Russian who worked for a military factory building tanks near Chelyabinsk. After befriending them and then taking a small nap, I then awoke to find that whilst I was sleeping, Guillaume was happily chatting away to a new fellow in our wagon, an Uzbek builder. However, this Uzbek wasn't alone, as, there were a total of 19 of them on the wagon. Nonetheless, it wasn't until I came down and we agreed on having a game of 'durak', did all the other Uzbeks come to watch us play, although only one of them spoke any Russian and served as our 'translator'.

The image most people got of Guillaume over the 5 days! -
By the end of it, he was admittedly tired enough to merit
at least a few hours sleep!

We played 'durak' for two hours - the two uf us playing against a succession of different Uzbeks. Considering how many times I've played the game, I managed to hold my ground fairly well, and managed to defeat them on a number of occasions, although they were cheating a great deal and clearly thought that I didn't notice, although I was a hardly fool enough to challenge 19 Uzbeks at a card game! Eventually, however, one of them turned out to have a real gift for playing card games, and proceeded to beat us in almost every game. The rest of them found this hilarious, particularly when we started repeating pretty obvious Uzbek phrases - the names of the suits for instance, or simply 'take that!'. In the end, of course we had a jolly good time, and they even offered us some drugs which they had somehow smuggled onto the train, which we politely refused. After this, I managed to grab but a few hours of sleep before being roughly woken up at 5am by the conductor who instructed me to wake up Guillaume and Maran, the Tajik who was also sleeping in our compartment. Maran was fairly easly to wake up, but I left Guillaume until 5 minutes before arrival, as he kept falling asleep again as soon as I woke him.

Gloria and self with the torrijas

After a few relatively sleepless nights, today has, of course, been a quiet one. I stayed in all day, hanging out with the people who haven't been here for the past while, and this evening went over to Gloria's place to help her make torrijas (help being used here in the wider sense of the term - as in, she prepared the ingredients and I cooked them). Of course, the larger part of the day has been spent writing this blog, which, I suspect at somewhere in the region of three thousand words, should take anyone a short while to read!