Pekinese

I carried on sleeping while they changed the wheels of the train, as Chinese railways have different sizes to Russian ones.  When I woke up it was already morning at a train station.  I remembered that Demian and Joe (those from the Mongolian group) got off it Datong and I went towards their compartment (first of all taking a toilet break).  When I arrived they had already got off (then I found out that they had looked for me while I was in the toilet) and I couldn't say goodbye from a couple that was so energetic.  It was a shame and I went to look through the window, capturing bits of the Great Wall from time to time.  Not only that but you could see something that you couldn't see before: people, constructions, farms, roads, development.  We were definitely not in Mongolia.  Silvia asked me where I was going to stay in Beijing and I told her I would stay in the Hutong.  She asked me which and I told her in the Hutong.  She released me from my ignorance by telling me that hutong is a collection of alleyways of typical Chinese life, with eating places everywhere, incessant bicycle bells, people screaming and throwing yuans in card games, a thousand and one shops, public toilets and many Chinese flag.  That's how my hutong was and the best part was that it was very untouristy.

I was invited that same night to an underground Chinese metal concert, that looked promising, but before I went out I met 3 Argentinian girls: Julia, Yael and Romina, and had to choose between spending the night with 3 really nice girls or to see people moshing Chinese style.  I decided to hang around chatting and left the metal of my adolescence.  When we went to have something to eat we couldn't stop looking at people taking their dogs for a walk and saying, this one's going in the pan, this one's really skinny, this one looks like it's going to taste bad.  Luckily that night we didn't end up eating dog but a really spicy dish with camaroni and pepper.

The next day I met up with Silvia in front of the forbidden city, of which nothing is forbidden!!  As tehre was a festive week in China for the commemoration of 60 years since the founding of the republic, Silvia and I had an emotional shock at seeing how many Chinese people there were everywhere.  It was incredible, Chinese people to the left and right, Tiananmen Square, which is the largest in the world, looked like a jungle of people that moved erratically in all directions.  That's why I say that the forbidden city is no longer forbidden, because there were also crowds of people everywhere, so much so that we kept having to take breaks.  After the immensity and solitude of Mongolia, China is a very strong mental challenge.  The forbidden city was enormous and somehow monotonous.  Yes, it's beautiful and grand but after a short time the buildings look the same with very few interesting variations (the same goes for all the temples I have seen in China), so that after a few hours of break-crowds-break, we decided to leave and go to Jinghshan park located in the north of the forbidden city, and it was necessary to free ourselves a bit from the crowds.  I say a bit because the park was also full of people.

We stayed in the park until sunset and from there wer left for the night market where you can buy lots of weird stuff.  It's a really touristy place as the same people take photos next to spines with scorpions and noodle dishes.  Before you ask me, no, I did not eat dog, and yes, I did eat other interesting things, among them: scorpions (crunchy), silk worms (with the taste of sand), seahorse (it tastes like fried fish), starfish (crispy and a bit strange in the centre) and some other things I don't remember very well.  One of the things that I most liked to find was a type of Kumis, like the Colombian one. I hadn't tried one of those for ages.  We finished off the day in Tiananmen Square where in spite of being almost 11pm there were still thousands of Chinese tourists.  I was reduced to a state of idiocy watching the military parade that was constantly being presented on 2 enormous screens (also on the metro and on buses).  It goes without saying that the Chinese want to show off to the world with their military arsenal and barbaric capacity of coordinating and managing large masses.

The following days I carried on with my touristy activities, more temples and also the Olympic park.  The Olympic stadium is very impressive with its bird nest design.  It reminded me that in the market they sold bird nests to eat.  In theory the bird saliva mixed with straw works as a type of encouragement.  I didn't try that one either.

One of those days Silvia convinced me to try Pekinese duck in an elegant place.  I went because they say it's really worth it and really delicious.  When we arrived they sent us to the 5th floor, so imagine the size of the place.  We ordered a duck between two of us and one of a thousand chefs came and cut it in front of us.  Then they gave us the duck's identity card (I suppose its the cage where it lived) and we ate.  If I'm honest, it didn't impress me.  It tasted of home-made duck, the difference being that the skin was not dry and crispy but soft and very fatty.  They manage this by inflating the duck before cooking it until the skin comes away from the meat.

Something I really admire of Chinese culture is that they go to parks a lot, to walk, to dance in groups, to play cards, stretch and relax.  It's strange seeing the old people stretching using the different facilities that have been installed for that or doing gymnatics, somersaults in the air tied to a bar as I saw with Thomas and Silvia (we tried and didn't even reach half of the required height) or another time they were playing instruments and a large group of passers-by came to sing in unison the songs that surely bring them memories of their childhoods, or whole families (from grandfather to child) stamping a type of saucer with feathers in the air.  I remember how difficult it was to get my grandmother out to play volleyball. Those parks are very welcoming.

One of those nights I was speaking with the Argentinian girls and they told me they wanted to go to the Great Wall to sleep there one night.  I liked the idea and we started discussing the issue, concluding that it was very cold without a sleeping bad (I'm really wimpy about the cold) and we didn't find a place to rent one so they organised a place where we could stay in a village close to the wall.  The idea was to arrive at a place called Jinshanling and then walk 10km to the village called Simatai.  We arranged to meet at 8am but like good Latin Americans left only at 9, making us miss the bus to Jonshanling.  We took the next bus and after several hours it left us in the middle of the motorway, in a place where there was nothing, only a police station.  From there we managed to arrive at the right place but before that we had a few problems with police officers whom we asked in Chinese about the bus: minibus jinshanling and they looked stunned, as if they were calculating the first 10 numbers of the square root of 2.

Julia was ill but still decided to continue with the walk, but as was expected the walk ended up being too difficult for her physical state and we had to go back.  That was the beginning of the big soap opera.  To begin with, we didn't go back very fast because Romina and Yael were very happy taking photos.  When we arrived in Jingshanling it was already night and there was nowhere to stay apart from a hotel that cost 400 yuan (40 euros) or there was a taxi to Beijing for 550 yuan.  We decided to stay but they didn't let the girls because they didn't have their passports, so we had to phone a hostel in Beijing and get them to send a photocopy by fax.  That took several hours and the three girls changed their minds every two minutes - we're staying, we're going, staying, going, staying.  I finally persuaded them that logistically and financially it would be better if they went back to Beijing.  When they finally decided to leave the copies of the passports arrived and they started again with the - we're staying, leaving, staying, leaving, staying, ahhh!!!!  They ended up going to Beijing and that's as far as the story goes because I stayed.  I wasn't that desperate to pay for a hotel so I walked towards the mountain looking for a place where they rented out sleeping bags.  I rented a sleeping bag and a couple of insulators that were not very cheap but four times cheaper than the hotel, and went towards the wall.

Gasping from tiredness, emotion and anxiety I arrived at a tower and realised I had taken the wrong left and I was on a more difficult and less well preserved route.  I arrived at a tower that only had half a roof and the floor was covered with rock dust.  I decided to stay there and have a very bizarre experience.  A place without doors or windows with only the sound of the wind rushing through the ruins.  I asked myself how many people had spent nights on watch, watchning for Mongolian invaders that tried to pass to the Southern empires.  I was there a while, taking delight in the nocturnal shapes of the Great Wall that snaked along the mountains like  a chameleon's spine.  I slept full of joy, at being able to have this great experience.  Ironically the Argentinian girls, who had had the idea in the first place, couldn't join.  A really strange noise woke me up and I saw the sunrise of a red sun that timidly came out through the mountains to then become hidden again behind a constant cloud cover that accompanied my two days on the wall.  After returning the sleeping bag, walking the 10km to Simatai and then half negotiating the return to Beijing I met up with the Argentinian girls again who couldn't believe I had stolen their idea.  Julia asked me what I had done the day before.  She told me that those who had died constructing the wall were buried there.  Good that I didn't have that thought the night before or it would have been a very long night.

The following days were taken up by meeting up with Silvia (from the Mongolia trip) and Thomas (whom I'd met in Baikal), speaking to them and exploring the city with no fixed aim.  Once we saw some streets where everything was in Russian which was really nice for us three as we'd done the Transsiberian, and we almost made Silvia buy a pair of those enormous Russian-style heeled shoes.  Those two went their separate ways and I stayed for another few days in Beijing because I liked a lot about the city.  The remaining days I visited various very interesting places, among those factory 798 which was a factory with electronic items but is now one of those complexes of modern art galleries.  I spent 5 hours there and it was not enough.  It's huge and there was a lot to see.  One of my favourite pieces was an enormous sculpture of a bull that was goring a person against the wall.  Those days I also had good times with Pierre, French, and Boris, German.  Pierre was on the road for a year and hadn't shaved the whole time so looked like a photo of Jesus Christ or Taliban or Dumbledore.  He also used a type of white shirt that he hadn't washed in literally 5 weeks and you could already see splashes of all that he'd eaten.  Boris was more pragmatic and serious but also interesting.  He had gone through several countries by bike and had really interesting projects going on with his gang of cyclists in Hamburg.

I spent my last day in Beijing queueing for an hour and a half, pushing and shoving and watching a large number of Chinese people jump the queue because they wanted to see Mao for ten seconds.  I also had Pekinese duck again in a place that was not as luxurious or tasty, and finally I took a night train to a city called Datong.
In Datong it was horribly cold and after a while I arranged to see the tourist attractions, the Yungang caves and the hanging monastery.  The caves are spectacular, apparently the best preserved in the whole of China, and the monastery brought me memories of Tanya's photos (she suggested I go there).  But after that the city is a disgusting place where I had to spend two days against my will.  It wasn't that bad in the end because I met Alrick, a French guy who spoke Spanish and like a good French guy he knew how to complain about everything.  He really reminded me of the husband of a friend of mine as they were physically similar, very funny and protested in teh same way.  We talked quite a lot and the next day we spend a long time looking for a decent toilet for him as he refused to use one without a proper seat.  We looked in private offices and they were even trying to sell us an apartment in Datong. We refused such tempting offer and his arse has saved in a luxurious hotel where the blue eyed blond guy was treated with high respect。  Alrick left at 4 and I still had 7 hours in that abominable town.  I killed time by getting my hair cut, seeing a street market, and on the net.  I took the train to Pingyao which is where I am now.

Some notes of interest: Pekinese dog comes from a type that lived only in the forbidden city for a long time and that's where the name comes from. It's a myth that the Great Wall is the only structure from ancient man that can be seen from space - you can't see it! Peking or Beijing?  The Chinese created pinyin which is the phonetic representation of Mandarin in Roman characters.  Some names of cities changed when they were transliterated, so Peking is Beijing in pinyin.

Thanks for reading  this long entry.

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celestial back spine

Mongolia is the most sparcely populated country per square kilometre in the world.  That description is not enough to understand how far apart Mongolians are in their country or how they keep their way of life, as many of tham still live as their ancestors lived 1000 years ago, as nomads or semi nomads, raising animals and enduring the brutal winters that lash against these lands.  At the beginning Mongolia did not look very promising as UB is like a cloud that overshadows the earth of constant blue skies, but once you leave this chaotic metropolis of Soviet buildings and gers spread about beyond its borders, you find the read attraction of Mongolia: the rich and varied landscapes and wildlife.
I loved Mongolia: immense and beautiful, different from anywhere else I have seen in my life, and Mongolians are different as well: influenced by the Russians and Chinese, for sure, but they still keep their kind and humorous character.

THE BEST

To see the milky way so clearly, and that circular phenomenon.  It was fascinating to be able to appreciate so clearly the stars in the silence of the Gobi

 

THE GOOD The surprises that Mongolia reveals after each hilltop.  It is difficult to get bored of appreciating the huge landscapes.  The sand dunes of the Gobi.  Despite the fact that they don't extend very far, it's one of my favourite landscapes.  My travel group, as we got on quite well and it was a shame when we had to take different paths.

 

THE BAD Mongolians genetically can't take alcohol and when they are drunk they can become unpleasant.  Ulan Batar, which is a city that is very difficult to love and it has high levels of crime.  I think I eventually made my peace with UB.

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Ger ing

A ger is a cylindrical skeleton made of wood, covered by a sheep and camel wool cover, with a folding roof through which there's a metal tube that serves as a chimney.  The entrance to a ger is always towards the south,  weapons are left outside.  Inside the ger you walk in the direction of the hands on a clock and you sleep with your feet pointing towards the door.  The ger is what Mongolians have used for hundreds of years to make a home from inhospitable places that reach 40 degrees in summer and -40 in winter.

This is what I expected for the following two weeks in Mongolia: gers scattered across large distances in huge landscapes where a type of inexorable emptiness dominates.  Only 20 minutes after leaving UB you see solitary gers of nomad families with flocks of sheep, goats, horses, cows, yaks or camels depending on the region.

Our driver was called Jack and he was nice.  He knew exactly where to stop to collect stones that had interesting colours and shapes.  He managed to spot galoping deer and we followed them in the van.  He showed us wild animals on the horizon and made us laugh with his comments and good sense of humour.  One thing that I could not understand was how he drove 2000km in a place where there are no roads or signs.  How he knew at which 'obol' (pile of rocks decorated with offerings, they beeped to have good luck on the road) to beep, where to turn right and what to avoid.  My conclusion is that he was guided by the sun and the mountains, but all those mountainous forms really looked almost identical on the horizon.  I really respect Mongolian drivers.
 
The beginning of the journey was towards the south, bringing us deeper into the Gobi desert, which is not the sand desert you expect but a succession of landscapes that vary considerably after each hill.  Mongolia's beauty definitely lies in its landscapes and not in its cities, as all of the ones we saw were horrible places where nothing happens and you just can't wait to escape.

Mongolia is not famous either for its exquisite cuisine.  Basically its food consists of lamb with rice or pasta or potatoes.  There are also other half interesting things, like camel yoghurt, which I liked, but my fellow travellers didn't.  There's also camel cheese that just I didn't like.  There's also a drink called airag which is based on mare milk and tastes sour.  In theory it's alcoholic but to me it seemed more repulsive than intoxicating.

We cooked our own lunch, something that became more interesting with the strong winds that swept across the desert.  One day we had to cook inside the van :D  The nights were quite cold and some nights we warmed up with vodka; other nights with firewood.  The mornings were even colder and my body had (and still has) this annoying habit of waking up at 4.30am, so I had to stay in bed with my thoughts and other people's snores until someone else in my group woke up.

The first night there was a new moon and I saw the milky way as I'd never seen it before: clear, beautiful, full of stars and lightly staining the night sky.  It was spectacular.  I was the only one who went out into the cold before going to sleep to admire the beauty of the stars, always recognising the Plough and trying to create shapes with the millions of stars.

Another night, while we talked in our ger, Jack told us we should go out.  When we looked at the sky we saw a phenomenon we had never seen or heard of!  It was a type of circle in the zenith of the firmament, and it was becoming wider slowly and regularly.  Its edges were the colour of stars and in the middle, while it grew it took on the colour of a clearer darkness.  It grew and grew so much that it almost disappeared on all horizons.  Mongolians say that when this happens it means there will be a cold winter.  One thing that made this phenomenon so interesting is that no one had heard of it.  It took us by surprise and left us speechless.  Can anyone tell me what it was that I saw?

My travel group was 1A.  There was Joe, the English guy for whom leaving the civilised world was proving difficult; Silvia, the Austrian teacher that added something interesting to the group with her numerous travel experiences (and her Austrian style), and there were Johan and Demian, the Welsh couple who are slow travellers and took everything with such freshness and joy that the added a nice touch to the group.  They had been travelling for 8 months: 2 in Vietnam, 2 in Laos and 4 in China, so they entertained us with their many comical and tragic stories about their travels.  We also used them as a source of advice as we were all going towards China and they also had alot to tell about being there.  Demian loves beer and is always in a good mood.  We also enjoyed hearing them speak Welsh (a language that is dying) and a card game that they knew. 

As Demian and Johan had been on the road for 8 months, their stomachs were already trained for food with dubious origins.  The rest of us were still in training.  Silvia and Joe were the first to be affected on day 7 of the journey.  That was close to a very interesting canyon in a really strange place.

The tour was really good.  We saw different types of very varied landscapes, among those one of my favourite: sand dunes.  For me, sand dunes are magical places and there is nothing quite like them on this earth.  Mountains are spectacular, beaches are beautiful, forests are charming, rock formations are hair-raising, but sand dunes are just magical!! You can hear the sound of the wind playing with the sand, incessantly changing the landscape, creating figures and shapes from another world.  You find strange animal tracks and the mind soars uncontrollably.. oh, how I love sand dunes.  I think that the other people in my group thought I was pretty strange because I spent a long time in the dunes in a trance-like state.

I should be ashamed that I spend 19 days in Mongolia and only learned to say 6 words.  Mongolian is a language with difficult guttural sounds.  After leaving behind the harmony and beauty of the Russian language, hearing Mongolian is like listening to a dog fight.  The words I learned are the following: hi, goodbye, thanks, let's go, beer and khushur.  Khushur is a type of pasty filled with lamb meat (for a change) which is very fatty.  We ate this dish in Kharkhorin, the ancient capital that Genghis Khan established as the centre of the largest empire the world had ever seen.  The Khushur tasted really good but my stomach made sure it reminded me twice that night how fragile it is and it punished my greed at eating those fried things three times.

As we got closer to UB it became colder and I wanted to go back to civilisation; it's a somewhat strange feeling to know that you're so close but you still have so many hours on the road and intense heat in the van, but then you go out and freeze in 10 seconds from the savage wind.  Back in UB we were happy to not have to spend more hours in the van, to be able to take a shower and eat different types of food.  That night we ate at a Mexican restaurant and laughed at the many adventures we'd shared together.  Joe left the following morning for Beijing and the rest of us would take the same train three days later.

The last two days in UB I washed my clothes, spent a while on the internet and saw some attractions I hadn't seen at the beginning because I'd been going around looking for a tour.  On Saturday the 3rd of October we were taken to the station and we took the last leg of the transsiberian which took us to the Chinese capital.  That's how my last 3 weeks in the land of Genghis Khan were spent.  It is a unique part of the world thanks to its history and its great and fascinating landscapse.

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UB

Ulaan Bataar, Ulan Bator, Ulaan Baatar, Ulan Batar, Ulanbatar or as travellers call it, UB, it's the capital of Mongolia and contains half of its population.  It seems that no one has agreed on how to spell the name of this city in the Latin Alphabet.  It means Red Hero in Mongol.  Mongol is written in the cyrillic alphabet, thanks to the fact that the SONETICOS offered to help Mongolia out when the country decided to become communist.  Tehre is a great legacy from that era, for example you can see evidence of the infamous Soviet urban planning system and many Mongolians were educated in communist states. In the supermarkets you can find many Russian and (east) German products and a large number of cultural and environmental projects with East German collaboration.  Now the United States collaborates a lot, to show the Russians and the chinese that even though Mongolia is sandwiched between these two titans, it's not alone in the world. The train between Russia and Mongolia was pretty much a tourist train as tehre were very few Russians or Mongolians.  All of the passengers had booked some hostel and absolutely all of them apart from myself were picked up at 6am from the station.  I had other plans, but the cold morning, tiredness, the sudden solitude and the bad reputation of the city made me have second thoughts.  I arrangeed it so that I would arrive at Begz' work, another CS member with whom I was going to stay 2 nights.  The decision of being hosted by Begz and his family was being clouded over by the desire to be able to take my bag off, the fact that hostels in UB cost 6 dollars per nights and the fact that Begz had a rule in his house that guests should pay 7000 tughriks as he had 6 mouths to feed in his house. This rule goes against the principle of CS, that it should be a cultural exchange and free accommodation.  When you mix money in the equation the principle is damaged and you might start having expectations from the price paid.  In spite of this, I decided to see what would happen.  I met Begz and two Americans that had stayed with him.  Begz told me that I should come back at 6pm so that his kids could take me to the house.  I spend the day with the Americans, speaking about their stay in Begz' house which seemed promising, according to the American enthusiasm.  One of these two guys was obsessed with the 'red button' - if the Chinese decide to invade Russia, the Russians will use the red button, if the Russians annoy the Americans, the red button to the rescue, and Iran can show its power using the red button. In the afternoon I went back to Begz' work and met two of his children, ? , who took me to their ger in the suburbs of the city by a disgustingly full and unpleasant bus.  After an hour of being pushed and shoved around, we arrived at his modest residence and I met the motherand the other two daughters (whose names I forgot after 10 seconds). This family is really traditional.  They live with few comforts; they have 2 cows, a dog, and there is no drinking water at home.  The woman got up, did her Buddhist prayers and spent the rest of the day like a little ant, working without respite until it was time to go to bed.  They cooked with cow manure and also used it to heat up the ger.  We played typical games with sheep bones which were used for everything - darts, cards.. I couldn't beat Todo in many of the games that we played and I found Manuji really sweet.  Then Begz showed me his guest book where each traveller described what a great time they had.  He also showed me how his name appears in the book 'On the Couch', written by an English girl who went around the world only doing CS and ten writing a book about it.  Begz, shirtless, told me about Mongolia, its projects and customs, for example you have to lick the plate as soon as you finish eating.  I didn't believe it until I saw him and the boys cleaning the dishes, using their tongues at the same time.  They all sleep together on the floor as soon as dinner is finished, and I didn't ask how they make children in that mess of arms and legs. For breakfast they gave me tea, home-made jam, bread that was a bit crusty due to the egg shell that Begz' wife added to it, and butter that they had made the night before and which tasted just as good as the butter my grandfather used to make. It was a unique place and experience and I don't regret having gone there.  The only bad thing was that the house was far from the centre and it was very difficult to get there alone so I couldn't spend much time in the city, and this can be a nightmare when you try to organise a tour through Mongolia.  After the second night I decided to go to a hostel in the centre of the city and many things started to improve - I managed to find a tour to the Gobi desert at a good price and the other people in the group, John and Demian from Wales, Joe from England and Silvia from Austria seemed like a good combination for a two week trip. As far as CS is concerned, it's a great idea and I really like taking part in it, but it takes up quite a lot of time and effort and you need to be really flexible.  Now that I'm going into more varied countries, it becomes more difficult to find hosts, so I'll stop this type of travel for the time being.  Gobi, here we come! pd.  this post was ready ages ago but the chinese internet blockade is too strong and I just managed to bypass it :D

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Rusifikaciya

In order to facilitate the expansion and homogeneity of the Russion empire and of the USSR, the Russians created a process called Rusificaciya, that is, Russification.  One of the great achievements of this process was that the language expanded across all areas with very little variation.  Another characteristic of Rusificaciya was the fact that Russian families were sent all over the territory so that tehre would be an ethnic mix and so that the local families would 'Russify' themselves culturally and politically.

Russia is the largest country in the world and its population has gone through very dramatic changes.  In less than two centuries it has gone from being a feudal land to an empire, then becoming the centre of communism until communism broke down and then Russia became a capitalist country.  The remains of the Soviet Union were picked by the wisest and the remaining crumbs were divided up among its decent folk.  Now the country is growing and has a large number of natural resources, extended territory, armaments and miliatary knowledge, as well as thirst for power.  With an absurd bureaucracy, mafia everywhere and a detestabe reputation, it's difficult to imagine what you will find when you come into the country.

I had a lot of expectations of Russia, many of which were negative, but through its people my opinion took a completely different path.  Gustavo with his Colombian point of view, Aleksa and Karina, the provadnidtsas from the train, Rina and her mother, Jorge the Spanish guy with a Russian soul, Elena the Russian girl with the heart of a dancer, the beauty and complexity of the language and in spite of the fact that many people think differently, the delight of its cuisine... all this and much more has made Russia occupy a special place in my memories.

There is a term in informatics called WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) and I want to describe Russia in this way.  At the beginning it looks horrible, indomitable, inhospitable, ugly buildings and people who can treat you like an enemy, but close to these ugly masses of concrete, you see unique and beautiful buildings and people who are extremely hospitable and kind.  There are those who treat you badly from the beginning and those who treat you well until the end.  I think my heart has started a process of Rusificaciya.

THE BEST

• Meeting Aleksa and Karina on the train.  I hadn't expected such hospitality.

THE GOOD

• Lake Baikal.  What a magical place with amazing water
• St Petersburg and Moscow, two very special cities
  
• The Transsiberian.  It's great spending 46 hours on a train.

THE BAD

• Extreme bureaucracy which afflicts the whole country, in theory and in practice- you have to get a visa with an invitation, you have to register the visa in every city where you spend more than three days and each time you see a police officer you have to look in a different direction and walk away from them so they wouldn't 'fine' me due to problems with my visa.

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The blue eye of Baikal

A screen showed 0 degrees when I arrived at Irkutsk at 6am.  I met Elena, also from Couchsurfing, who woke up at that ridiculous time to come and pick me up from the station one Sunday.  She speaks Spanish and likes to practise with travellers.  She took me to her house and we went to sleep again.  I woke up and started reading a bit until her son came out and grumbled at me.  I ignored him and waited until Elena got up, then we ate something and she gave me a tour around the city.  She gave me lots of advice about how to get to Baikal and we spoke a lot about Latin America.  She really likes the culture and dances tango really well.  She wants to have a school for tango/dance in general. That night she invited me to a salsa evening with her friends.  I went but had a feeling that I would be the worst dancer in the group, and that's exactly how it was.  Those Russians really shocked me at how well they could dance.  I had to remind myself that I was in the middle of Siberia and not in a salsa club in Latin America!!  Also, they danced a bit of everything - meregue, tango, bachata, souk, afro and a load of other dances that I don't even know what they're called.  Yet again I regretted not knowing how to dance and yet again I went through the list of how I'm not a typical Colombian: - I don't know how to dance - I don't like football - I don't drink coffee - I hate aguardiente - I think twice before having a 'tamal' for breakfast - I have never tried the product that we export most - And even though it's not true, a lot of people tell me that I don't look Colombian The list is longer but let's leave it like that.  At one point different couples came together and did a choreographed dance, at various points swapping partners and jumping in the air.  It looked more like a professional dance as they were synchronised like a watch.  After seeing that I didn't feel like dancing and looking stupid and Elena told me that that always happens.  People didn't want to dance with her because she dances too well. In ancient times, the powerful Baikal was sensible and cheerful.  He loved his only child Angara.  She was the most beautiful girl in the whole world.  In the afternoons she turned into light that was as clear as the sky and in the nights, darker than a cloud of thunder.  And everything that went by Angara glorified her, even the passing birds: geese, swans, ducks came down but rarely touched Angara's watery face.  They said, 'how can we turn light into darkness?' The old Baikal looked after his daughter more than himself.  One time, while Baikal slept, Angara escaped to see the young Enisey.  Her father awoke, furious, and moved his waters.  A  great storm broke.  The mountains cried, the trees fell, the sky turned black and the fearful animals ran far across the world.  The fish dived to the depths and the birds flew towards the sun.  Only the wind blew fiercely and the sea worried. The powerful Baikal beat the mountain and broke part of it, throwing it at his daughter.  The cliff fell on her beautiful neck.  The blue-eyed Angara cried and begged: 'Father, I'm dying of thirst, forgive me and give me at least a drop of water!"  Baikal responded, furiously, 'The only thing I can give you are my tears!' Now, thousands of years after, Angara flows towards Enisey with tears, and the solitary grey Baikal has become gloomy and dismal. I decided to see Baikal from the island of Okhlon.  In the middle of the island there's the village of Khuzir which didn't look very promising but that was where my hostel was which was a backpacker's paradise.  I was very grateful for this as my brain didn't want to leave the 'one-word conversation' mode.  I stayed 3 nights on the island and felt a bit sad when I left.  I met really nice people and Baikal is a magnet whose beauty attracts anyone.  It's simple, blue, beautiful and very cold. I didn't think about swimming in Lake Baikal but after speaking to a couple of travellers that had done it, the sheep mentality got hold of me and I had to take the risk.  When I told a Spanish guy I'd gone in he told me I really had guts for going in there.  I stayed submerged in the lake until I could no longer feel anything which was about 50 seconds after I went in.  They say that if you submerge your entire body you extend your life by 25 years.  I doubt it very much because the risk of getting pneumonia or losing fingers through hypothermia is more possible. Another thing I liked about the place is that they give 3 delicious meals a day.  For lunch or dinner they generally prepare Omul (a fish unique to the Baikal region). On one of the days I did a jeep tour to the north of Okhlon Island.  There I met a Spanish guy called Jorge and his girlfriend Steffi.  Jorge reminded me a lot of a Spanish friend of mine also called Jorge, who I met in London.  Both are 100% Spanish with really deep voices, not well spoken, and they even looked like each other physically.  This Jorge has a Spanish soul but a hidden Russian conscience.  He spoke Russian in a Spanish way, a little rudimentary, and showed us how you had to explain everything to Russians 2 or 3 times and hurriedly.  What a great guy. On that tour to the north we saw the great beauty of Baikal, we listened to its Shaman and Buryat legends, we saw rocks in human shapes and I also felt a bit weird seeing the deepest part of the lake.  Steffi told me that many people try to climb the highest mountain of the island which is opposite the deepest part of the lake, but very few people manage to conquer it.  It's a very strange phenomenon, and it's not because it's such a difficult mountain to climb but because it is a place with strong energy (as it's a sacred place to Shamans and Buryats and because it's so close to the centre of the earth) many mountaineers have failed to reach the top. Another day, I went on a boat tour to various really interesting spots along the eastern side of the lake.  Thanks to Jorge for lending me that money and yet again I was amazed at the beauty of the lake. The day I left the lake, feeling very sad, there was a verbal and slightly physical bust up between some Dutch guys and the driver of the van.  The problem was that the 3 Dutch guys were on the last seat and there wasn't much space for a fourth passenger but there was a fourth passenger.  After a lot of shouting, tension and the driver violently placing himself between the guys to show them that 4 people did fit, he then threatened to leave them there (whilst returning the money), the guys agreed to be uncomfortable and the problem was resolved (kind of). I've seen this situation many times and the one who wins is almost always the one with power, either the driver or tourist guide or police officer or whatever.  I ask myself if it's worth fighting or if it's just better to be a sheep that just goes along with anything.  Is it worth fighting for what's just knowing that most of the time we are going to lose and will only get stress.  Changes don't come of weak or gentle attitudes, but many times because of my background I run away from problems and dont' fight for what's right, maybe due to fear, maybe laziness, maybe shame; anyway, no more public reflection. That night I went back to meet up with Elena in Irkutsk and didn't sleep much because I was sad about leaving Russia, a country that entangled me by surprise.  My last day in Russia was spent walking around Irkutsk with Elena, her friend Alisa and 2 Peruvian girls who were also backpacking. I left Russia feeling really sad and went on my way to Mongolia.  On the train I saw Thomas, a German guy I'd met in Baikal.  I spent my proper last day with him watiting for the not very nice immigration police officers to cross the border to the land of Genghis Khan. ps these photos don't do justice to the beauty of Baikal pps this note was written in UB, Mongolia, 3 weeks late

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From Russia with Love

I left Vladimir in the afternoon to go on a train for 46 hours, a train that would take me from Europe to Asia. You’ll ask what there is to do on a train for such a long time. Well, there’s actually a lot to do, like having one-word conversations with Russians you’re sharing your cabin with, going to the first carriage, coming back to the last carriage, getting off at stations on the way and seeing what people are selling, sleeping, reading, writing, and – I almost forgot – looking out of the window. Time goes quickly and I didn’t even listen to music or read the book I brought – that was because on one of my trips to the last carriage I bumped into a couple of provadnitzas who said something and when I couldn’t reply they asked in English and that’s when the fun started.

These two provadnitzas invited me to come in and chat, drink tea and spend time with them. They were very nice and very funny. One of them spoke a bit of English, but the other one only very little, but even still I spent the afternoon with them, laughing and talking a bit about everything. They were really young and came from from a city called Severobaikalsk at the north of Lake Baikal. They were working on the train for the summer and then they were going to start university in September. Interestingly, they have never been to Moscow or many other parts of Russia. At one point they said to me ‘we are village girls’ and burst out laughing. Well actually they have been to Moscow but they were working on the train so didn’t get out of the station. They both had Buryat characteristics (Buryat are the native peoples of Central and Eastern Asia) and told me that in that part of Russia everyone was very mixed so there was no discrimination. These two girls, Alesva and Karina, were the provadnitzas in a third class carriage and they kept slagging off the passengers. After a while I understood why so many had the reputation that they have and it’s because the passengers are hard work. They showed me photos of their friends and family on the phone and I showed them photos. They also listened to loud music in their cabin and turned the passengers’ lights out so they’d go to sleep :)

When I woke up the next day I remembered that the train had already passed through the Ural Mountains and I was officially in Asia, although I didn’t see the mountains because we passed them at night. Then I went to say hi to Alesva and Karina but one was sleeping (the one that had the night shift) and the other one was really busy so I went back to my cabin to eat, read and pass the time. At 4 I heard a knock on my cabin and it was those two crazy girls, and they abducted me back to their carriage and we carried on laughing, chatting, making jokes and messing around. When we got to their carriage they told me they had a present for me and they gave it to me with such honesty and modesty that I felt strange. It was a huge melon that they bought. The only two fruits I don’t like are melon and pineapple but this melon was really good and we enjoyed eating it.

On the third day I finished my train trip and arrived in a city called Novosibirsk which according to a friend is worth seeing to remember how ugly a Soviet city can be. With that description in mind, I decided not to stay there that night but instead leave immediately on another night train towards the Altai region to check out the mountains and Teletskoe Lake. I regretfully said goodbye to my new friends and promised to send them photos that we took together. Unfortunately neither of them has email so I’ll have to rely on the normal post :S

After that I met Eva, another couchsurfer that gave me a mini tour of the city and helped me to buy the tickets, and once again I found myself on another night train for 10 hours. From spending so many hours on trains, travellers start competing with each other. Each one shows off about how much time he/she has spent on the train and how much vodka he/she has drunk. The record is held by a Swiss guy: 106 hours on the train from Moscow to Irkutsk.

I arranged my trip to the village of Artibash on the corner of lake Telektskoe. While I was walking around to try to find a house along the shore, a couple of women asked me something and then we started talking. It was a mother and her daughter from Novosibirsk that were in Altai for the same time period as me. The daughter spoke English as she lived in Israel for a long time and I ended up being half adopted by the family. I stayed in the same hotel and we did different things together for the next two days. We rode horses together, went on a boat on the lake, went to a café to eat (where they translated the menu for me), we watched TV in Russian :S. One day it rained all day, so we decided to cook something so we wouldn’t get so wet. Strangely when we got out of the shop it stopped raining completely, but anyway we still had to cook. I made another Colombian rice which turned out to be nothing special. I blame the rice and cooker but these two women enjoyed it and then had seconds. I also managed to satisfy my curiosity of Soviet times as Rina, the daughter, talked about many different things from that era.

We went back to Novosibirsk, past a village called Bisk where we looked around. In Novosibirsk I met up with Eva again and she lent me her shower :) and then a couple of German girls arrived and we all walked around the city together.

In the evening we went to a bar where one of the waitresses had a badge that said рита. I read it in Spanish and burst into hysterics (as puta means whore). Then Eva read it in Russian to avoid any misunderstandings about the type of bar we’d come to (it said Rita). Rina and I exchanged photos and then she accompanied me to the station. From there I took a train to Irkutsk, my final destination in Russia, in the heart of Siberia, 80km from Lake Baikal.

I am liking Russia more and more, especially the people. I’m falling in love with this place even though it’s a bit difficult to travel around. My experience with the provadnitzas was amazing. I really didn’t expect so much hospitality and simplicity, also from the family that adopted me, with whom I immediately felt comfortable, reading, speaking or just admiring the beauty of the lake.

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Getting into the real Russia

In Vladimir, I met Yulia, another Couchsurfer who was to host me for two nights. Yulia seemed very direct at first and her manner showed a lot of independence and self-confidence. I suppose she is like that as she has lived alone since she was 16. She grew up in Murmansk and speaks Russian, English and German. The day we met she got her diploma in Spanish, which she learned without going to any classes and she has only spent 3 weeks in Spain!!! She spoke Spanish really well and was aggressive in Spanish as well :s

She showed me around the town a bit and then we went to a bar to celebrate her diploma. A load of her friends arrived and things got fun as they made me drink vodka, especially a guy called Aleksi who could drink half a litre of vodka with his meal. After the bar, the party went on in Yulia’s house. We went in one of her friend’s cars; said car was very special – it didn’t have a front seat and they told me that at one time there was only one door so everyone came in and out through the same door in some kind of circus act.

It was a lot of fun inside the car, meant for 4 passengers but fitting 6, so some people had to keep low so the police wouldn’t stop us. I remember those times in Colombia where we put however many people would fit into a car, not like in boring England where people never let in more passengers than what is allowed by law – not even if the ground is burning up around them. In Yulia’s house they got out more vodka and we drank Russian-style, meaning you take a swig of vodka, a few sips of juice and then take a couple of bites of a tomato or cucumber.

I was shocked by how those Russians dance to a load of American pop music that I’d never heard in my life, and their dances were all well choreographed with style and they moved well. . I was not gifted to do any dancing, so I stepped aside and let them carry on with their coreography. I ended up spending the night speaking French (what little I can) with Aleksi, discussing politics, Russia and Colombia.

Yulia recommended a place that is very special to her, a church called Nerl on the outskirts of Vladimir, her favourite place in the whole of Russia. When I arrived I didn’t understand why, but after a while I realised that it’s a very simple but beautiful and peaceful place. A church in the middle of the countryside by a river that reflects the beautiful simplicity of this sacred place.

The next day I left for Suzdal, a village that Tanya had recommended and that the guidebook describes as ‘chickens by the church’ (and you do see chickens, cows and goats walking around everywhere). It’s a really small town where you see dozens of churches!! At one point there was a church for every 8 inhabitants, but many have been destroyed with time. Now it’s the perfect place to walk around, see some church services, admire the typical Russian architecture with many wooden houses (without using nails) with detailed windowpanes. In general it’s great for winding down after the big city.

The following day I went back to Vladimir where I was to take the first of several long distance trains. This train lasted 46 hours from Vladimir to Novosibirsk in eastern Siberia. My stories on this train and in Siberia will be the topic of another post..

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Pineapple Church

That morning didn’t look promising as I arrived cold and tired in Moscow’s Leningradsky Station, a huge Soviet mass surrounded by hundreds of people who were waiting for a train or who had just arrived. I sat down on the floor and prepared to wait four hours for Gustavo to arrive, but after one hour I saw a Japanese guy called Tatsushi (which is not a type of sushi) who I’d shared a room with in Peter, so we started chatting until a more normal hour. It was very interesting to talk to Tatsushi. We talked a bit about everything and I learned different things about Japan’s history. At one point we started talking about shoes and the fact that Russian women wear heals a lot came up. Tatsushi admitted that he hadn’t noticed the fact that they wear them a lot as for Japanese men short women are the more attractive ones!! Like a proper Japanese guy, Tatsushi is really friendly and helpful and waited with me until Gustavo arrived (late like a proper Latin American) and even helped me to make a phonecall as his Russian was much more advanced than mine.

When we were back in Gustavo’s house, I met Olga, his girlfriend, and we prepared to have breakfast of guava bocadillo. They were really happy to be able to have it and I was even happier not to have to carry it any more. As my stay in Moscow was short, we left immediately for the Kremlin. Since I was a child I've had the dream of being able to see the Red Square with its beautiful church. As it had been a wish for such a long time, when I arrived I said to myself, ‘Is that it?’, but after a while of walking around I started to like it. The St Basil church or the pineapple church, as Victorian travellers said, is deceptive as it’s much smaller than it seems and the one in Peter was more impressive in my opinion. We bought tickets for the Kremlin and felt a bit sad because Lenin’s mausoleum was closed (and I had really been looking forward to seeing Lenin’s body) and we went into the Kremlin after an airport security check. I already knew that in the Kremlin they’re really fussy about people breaking ‘the rules’ by a millimetre. If you sit on the floor, that’s bad; if you lean against the wall, that’s bad; if you don’t cross the road in the right place, that’s bad; if you climb the biggest bell in the world that was never rung and split because of its size, that’s bad; if you want to touch the bullets of the largest cannon in the world that was never fired, that’s bad; it was entertaining to see Chinese tourists listening to whistles and looking in all directions as if to say, who is whistling?

One thing, Russian women aren’t asked to have their pictures taken. On the contrary, every photo has to be taken in 5 different poses! This means that all the photo opportunity places are full of Russian tourists having a photo session. I took advantage of this by taking pictures of a few people so they’d hurry up, but it seemed to have the opposite effect.

One interesting thing about the Kremlin is that you see elaborate and highly decorated churches and buildings next to Soviet concrete blocks. This gives the place a special feel..

I would have liked to spend more time inside the Kremlin but time was pressing and my guide had plans for later. From the Kremlin we went to see a park called Tsaritsyno which was like a summer palace with a forest that was really far from the centre but was worth it, if only to see Moscow’s ethnic mix. In Peter you mainly see Russians but in Moscow there’s a mix from Asian Russia with people who have features that are very different from European features.

That evening Gustavo and I chatted with the help of a bit of vodka. He entertained me with stories about Russia, about corruption and the mafia that are destroying people. At one point he said that while in Colombia there’s a popular saying that it’s a country of secretaries and watchmen, in Russia it’s said that it’s a country of only watchmen. I got a chance to see what he meant when that evening we unashamedly handed 200 roubles to the security guard in his building so that he would let me stay!!

The next day Gustavo took me to the exhibition fair, a type of park equipped with huge Soviet constructions. They were enormous, imposing and with a specific type of Soviet architecture, adorned with stars and statues to the people. It was good that we rented bikes because that place was far too big to walk around. We also went to the botanical gardens that were so big they were more like a forest. There was a torrential downpour and we got soaked so had to go home to changed.

The Soviets had the idea that art belongs to the people, and that’s why you can find statues in just any street in just any neighbourhood. Based on this concept, the metro stations were decorated in such a way that they seem like art galleries – so that afternoon while it was raining, we did a tour of the metro.

That evening I met up with a friend that I’d made in Brighton 6 years back. She’s still just as quiet but it was cool to see her again and after dinner we went to have a look at the pineapple church by night :)

In Moscow there are these buildings called the 7 Muscovite sisters which are Stalinist-style towers (like in the shape of a wedding cake). The biggest of these towers is the one which belongs to Moscow State University, but as they’re so similar, every time I saw one I asked Gustavo, ‘Is that the university building?’ ‘No, not that one’. ‘Ah..’ I asked him so many times that on the last day he took me to see it. And of course, it’s another scary Soviet monster and it feels like it’s going to eat you up. According to Gustavo, the student halls have a bad reputation.

From there he took me to see Yuri Gagarin’s statue and then he came with me when I went to get my train. Thanks, Gustavo, for the great tour you gave me and for the great time we had together.

I had been kind of against Moscow. I knew it was huge and a bit aggressive, but actually I liked it a lot and would have liked to spend more time there. With its ubiquitous markets, ethnic mix, people living from what they can rummage, street dogs, and a combination of Soviet and Russian architecture, Moscow has something really special that no other European city has.

My next destination is a city called Vladimir, where I’ll spend a few nights and stop this frantic travel rhythm.

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