The Baikal..

Well.. that's gonna be a hard post to write, because i'm just speechless!

...

After arriving to Irkutsk on the 3rd, i just spent one night in the city and jumped the next morning in the first bus to Khuzhir, on the island of Okhlon, 6 hours north of Irkutsk on the lake... and i just landed in paradise!

I'm not sure how to describe the clear blue waters of the lake, the white sand beaches, the pine tree forests with pink flowers covered grounds, the red cliffs, the immense prairies, the mountains skyline, the sunrises and the sunsets changing the color of the lake.... all i can say is if you get a chance, that's one place that is worth seeing! And after visiting all these cities the fresh air was very welcome! I'm glad i still have a month of emptiness before reaching giant Beijing!

I'm taking a train tonight to Ulaan Baatar (or however you want to spell it!).. I'll get there on the 11th.. Thierry (Joseph) if you're reading this, your postcard will come soon! ;-)

.. and while i'm here writing to everyone; after almost 2 weeks cut from the world i'm over 50 emails late so it'll take some time to catch up! please apologise.. and i doubt it's gonna get much better with Mongolia.. so thanks a lot everyone for your patience and support! :-)

The Baikal crew!

4 days in a train..

So that was it.. I travelled the famous Transsiberian and i must say it was awesome!
4 days in a train with no book and no music and i didn't find a minute to get bored! (robbed certainly but not bored!)

First, being the cheap person you know, i had to travel "platzkart".. in "kuppe" it's twice the price and you travel in a closed 4 bunks compartment with 3 other people.. but in platzkart, the whole wagon transform into a big dorm and you just make friends with everyone, sit on every bed, talk to everyone, learn russian, play guitar for the whole wagon... it was great! (the only counterpart being that i had to sing "i will survive" about 200 times in 4 days! it'll teach me to not know any popular song!)

So I was the only foreigner in the wagon.. There was Andrei, whom i took for an american backacker when i first saw him, because he seemed to not talk much to others and had a "typical backpackers necklace"! (we all have our prejudice, right?)
But Andrei turned out to be a very nice Russian lad, no more american than you or me (although i'm not so sure about some of you!) and before getting off in Krasnoyarks, he actually gifted me his necklace as a souvenir from Russia! So now i'm the one with a typical backpacker's necklace!!
Aside from Andrei there were Gene, and Ravil (who kept asking "Tina Turner!" every five minutes!) and Ilkhome and Sergei and.... all super nice and helpful.. and eventhough none of them spoke a word of english we somehow managed to talk the whole time and i did end up learning quite a bit of Russian..

Russians..

After a month in this country i guess it's time to share with you the analysis of my experience:
"Russians: the ones who don't rob you are incredibly nice!"

Is it only bad luck if I got robbed again in the train?!!
Don't worry nothing serious this time.. just a drunken military shithead (which is probably as close as you can get to a pleonasm) stole my (second) wallet with about 500 roubles, from my pocket while i was sleeping.. everyone knows who did it as the guitar pick i kept stored in the wallet was found just at his bed, but of course he denied..

Having said that, i must also say that the whole wagon pretty much felt responsible for it and everyone insisted to give me money and food and friendship and what have you! These people are incredible! With all my efforts to refuse i still ended up with 150 roubles just gifted to me!

You know what?

You are just one lucky bunch!!

Before letting me go on my transsiberian ride, Albina gifted me a new small digicam!! No joke, she really did! Just so that you, dear blog readers can still have images to look at! (at least until i drop it or get robbed again!)

I'm quite a lucky bunch myself as my little Albina/Vladimir/Anton russian family has taken such good care of me during these last days in Moscow.. They even helped me prepare the food for the train and cooked and wrapped some chicken and potatoes and vegetables and fruits... They're awesome!

So now thanks to Albina's camera, i was able to take some shots of the siberian landscape and share with you some of the things i've seen and learned...
except that.. hum... i'm just missing a cable to transfer the images! so you'll still have to imagine a little bit!

Birioza : the most typical tree on the way
[photo of a Birioza!]

Derieva : tree - Liess : forest
[photo of a forest!]

Plain/Field : Pole
[photo of a plain!]

Dom : house
[photo of a house!]

Dierievna : village
[you guess..]

Oziero : lake
[and so on.. you got the idea]