Birch trees, then more birch trees

We're now in Ulan Bator, capital of Mongolia, where guess what, it's raining. So far 4/5 capital cities have been rainy (Amsterdam, Warsaw, Moscow and Ulan Bator) - it is particularly bad luck in UB as it is supposed to be sunny for 258 days a year....

The Trans-siberian was an experience all right. We arrived and in our four berth carriage was Slavko, a Russian fireman returning to Kirov after a conference. His first action was to offer us a beer, his second to suggest we buy some vodka. Being new to this lark we thought it would be a friendly gesture so went down to the buffet car to buy some - cost was 750 roubles (about GBP 18 which is pretty costly in the land of vodka). He poured, we drank. Russian vodka is drunk in measures of 100ml and so it took less than three rounds to finish the bottle. Then he bought another one. The results were not pretty and took an entire pot of wet wipes to clear up. By lunch time the next day fortunately the carriage smelt more of disinfectant than anything else. It did however have the unfortunate impact of both alienating the guards to us (they kept making some strange clenched fist gesticulation for the next four days! Also when we left the guard insisted on me first giving back the bedding and second counting all of our bedding back whereas the Russian lady we were sharing with had her bedding collected by him!)

Fortunately Slavko left us the next morning - the first thing I saw in the morning was him drinking beer! He even offered us some, believe it or not. After a day lying still we felt a bit better and were able to enjoy the scenery a bit - lots of birch trees.

I wandered off at one stop saying I was going for a bit of air, but happened to meet some australians on the train before I got off it. The train goes without warning and people are often left behind. I stood chatting with the Ozzies for about half an hour during which time the train left and Steve thought I'd been left behind, but at this point he was so ill after the vodka incident that he could only lie there and hope I was still on the train...

The main problem with the train was the lack of ventilation. None of the windows open (air conditioning supposedly) but it means very stale air with smokers in the train. After four days on board we reached Irkutsk. I had acquired a cold, probably from the "air con" and was also finding the ground was moving around under my feet - apparently this phenomenon is usually experienced when you get off boats, but I guess not many people stay on trains for over 4 days non stop! By the end we also couldn't sleep since we were gaining an hour time a day so on the last night on the train we were 5 hours behind Moscow and bedtime felt like 6pm for us. We lay awake for 5 hours.

We had a very pleasant break at Listvyanka on Lake Baikal, it is beautiful with the blue lake surrounded by snow capped mountains. The water is exceptionally clean and can be drunk from the lake directly. It was icy though, only 2 centigrade so no chance of a dip, and out of season very quiet. On one day the weather was about 8 degrees and blowing a gale - very much like english winter weather though the russians laughed when I told them that...!

Must go, we're about to get a city tour of UB.... Any comments / criticisms welcome!

I discovered russian teachers are paid only 10000 roubles a month. This amounts to about 500 pounds sterling - or around 3000 pounds a year.... and this in a country where prices are almost like the UK. An apartment in Moscow costs around 500 pounds sterling minimum per month....

A guide told me the biggest problem in Russia is corruption, no wonder if that's the way the economics pans out.

I hope I have uploaded some photos here... - Steve and I drinking Bavarian beer with Carolyn and Frank, us at the Berlin Wall on our bike tour, St Basil's cathedral, Lenin's tomb, the train ride, and Lake Baikal.

Moscow and the Partisans

So an overnight train from rainy Warsaw dropped us in rainy Moscow.  Our carriage was compact but private with bunk beds and our own sink.  At the station in Warsaw there were no announcements (that we could understand) and the departure boards on the platform were blank even though there was no sign of our train at the appointed time.  We stood in the rain and waited, trying to ask a few Poles what was going on without success - in fact two Polish people tried to ask me what was going on so it was obvious no-one knew.  Anyway it rolled up eventually and we settled in for the journey.  At the border with Belarus the border guards and customs all got on but it was mercifully straightforward, none of them spoke English but we got by with a bit of German.  The customs lady asked me what I had in my bag and I said "Kleidung" (clothing) - the first and only true descriptive word in my vocabulary for what was in the bag.  I think she realised progressing this conversation would be fairly fruitless and fortunately dropped it!

After border control some ladies entered the train selling beer and food. Delighted to find they accepted payment in Euro coins - which would have been otherwise worthless to us.  We had some potato cakes and two beers for 4 euros (about GBP3.50).

Strangely there was no border control at the Russian border - they obviously still consider Belarus part of the same country - they should try telling that to the visa processors in the UK!)

Arrived in rainy, damp, cold Moscow.  I think in another month the weather might be warm but it was still chilly and damp for us.  Were met by Intourist (our organising agent) and driven to our hotel through traffic alternating between static and manic.  Very frightening.  There seem to be no rules of the road - parking is as a matter of course double parking, lane discipline is non existent, red light behaviour is flexible and there certainly seem to be no speed limits.

The hotel is massive - 28 storeys - and very pleasant.  Quite upmarket actually and to my delight I saw there was no plug in the sink so I got to use my halved tennis ball specifically cut in two with the breadknife (sorry Mum and Dad) for this purpose!

Red Square and especially St Basil's Cathedral is stunning, it looks so fresh in both design and construction, it's incredible to think it was built in the 1500s.  The Kremlin is massive and contains several impressive cathedrals, each with gold (real gold perhaps?) painted domes.  Would love to upload photos - but once again no USB port.

There are many British people in the city on account of the Champions League final which we gather Man U won.  Their behaviour, apparently, has been excellent for once.  Bit of a contrast to what happened in Manchester the other week.  Many people seem to speak a smattering of English but it's amazing how much you can communicate with sign language.  We bought cyrillic maps of Russia in a map shop we stumbled across which I am very excited about - maps are my usual souvenir purchase and I know (from the itemising I had to do for the shipping company) that I have over 50 already which are being shipped from NZ.

Travelling on the metro is both challenging and interesting.  All the stations are written only in Cyrillic script, but the main problem is that you can't see the name of the station from the train.  So the only way you know where to get off (unless you can understand the spoken announcement) is by memorising the number of stops from your first station.  This failed the first time, but after that we mostly just followed the crowds.

We are just about to go to Moscow Yaroslavsky Station to board the Trans-Siberian railway to Irkutsk.  We are both excited and pleased to be leaving.  Moscow is impressive but tramping around in the rain for two days is pretty tiring.  I must say though, that Moscow has been refreshingly hassle free.  The metro (barring language problems) is simple to use, we have had no hassle from ticket touts, pickpockets or beggars whatsoever, and many people have helped us out when we needed it.  Our only complaint would be that the KGB museum was closed.  Steve was really looking forward to going and we walked around for an hour looking for it before we discovered that it had closed without warning.

Next stop: Siberia!

Behind the Glass Curtain

The Iron Curtain may have lifted but the contrast between Germany (and the former East Germany at that) and Poland is stark Perhaps it's more of a glass curtain these days - you can see and travel through but the curtain is still there nonetheless. Germany is uber-cool, the third highest gay population in Europe, doner kebabs on every corner, nightclubs so trendy we didn't feel able to go in (actually we were just knackered ;-)) and Poland Warsaw Wschodnia railway station is one of the more depressing places I've been, rivalling Birmingham New Street for its bleakness. The entrance hall consists of a series of small stalls selling everything from Gabriela Sabatini branded perfume to cigarettes at about GBP 1.20 per pack - but no seats.
The cafe is functional but half the items on the menu were unavailable - the girl behind the counter spoke no English but employed the very British technique of repeating what she was saying louder and louder in the hope that somehow I would understand Polish! Anyway we managed to buy a Hot Dog and Pizza for lunch and logged on here for about 1 pound - quite an expensive item for Poland.

Anyway, to backtrack... we're on day 6 of our travels having taken the ferry from Harwich (luxurious and great value at GBP 44 for an overnight journey to Hook of Holland). Steve arrived fully laden with a rucksack bulging and sandals, mosquito net and sleepsack all attached to the outside, plus wobble board in a plastic bag (for rehab of his knee) and another bag of stuff... he could hardly walk!

Were met and treated like royalty by our friends Kirsteen and Alasdair in Amsterdam who showed us around and took us out for a great meal. Amsterdam is brilliant, so relaxed and really fun to cycle round. The red light district was educational - the standard of ladies of the night there is, how can I say it, very high. I understand why all those stag groups go to Amsterdam.

Next day we travelled by excellent trains to the pretty walled town of Neustadt-an-der-Aisch in Bavaria, southern Germany where our friends Carolyn and Frank showed us around the town and kindly drove us around and paid for dinner and drinks (including a proper glass of Bavarian beer in a pottery flagon). I tried out some German, quite successfully.... Carolyn works at Adidas international HQ and showed us around which was really interesting. Adidas employees undoubtedly work hard but as a result get to hang out in tracksuits all day and play tennis and basketball on the staff courts at lunchtime. According to Carolyn showing up in Nike would get you sent home straight away.

Later that day we travelled to Berlin on more excellent trains and successfully booked onward travel to Moscow for the 21st, arriving midday 22nd. The girl was concerned there wouldn't be any tickets until I pointed out we arrived after the champions league final...

Berlin is a fascinating city - its recent history being the most interesting of any city I think I've ever been to. Seeing the actual Berlin Wall sends shivers down your spine. People actually died trying to cross that shabby stretch of insignificant looking concrete. We cycled around on a guided tour all day which was fun although I would have preferred a bit more exercise... the group size was such that you couldn't get any speed up. Still bike is an excellent way to get around Berlin - a very flat city with heaps of cyclists. We would have liked to have spent more time in Berlin but the cycling tour was all we could manage in the time. Found out some interesting things though - during the Berlin Wall years the U-Bahn and S-Bahn (underground and overground trains respectively) used to run across the line of the wall but the stations were closed to prevent people escaping to West Germany without permission - and East German guards patrolled the stations.

So without making this toilet paper as Pete helpfully pointed out I'd better stop. Will try to upload some photos when I get somewhere with a USB port...
Train to Moscow in a couple of hours.... I wonder what delights or shocks will await us there...

In Amsterdam

But in a coffee shop so not very capable of blogging ;-)

Getting the Visas

To do our overland section to China we needed the following visas: Belarussian (transit), Russian, Mongolian, and Chinese. Because we didn't sort ourselves out with our route until about 6 weeks ago that didn't leave enough time for a visa processing company to do the visas for us, unless they charged an exorbitant amount of money. So we decided to do it ourselves and started with the Mongolian visas, which we applied for by post. It took about twice as long as they said they would take but we got them back ok. Next we tried to get the Belarus visas, but they were sent back (3 days after they should have come back) saying because we hadn't got the Russian visa proving we'd be in transit through Belarus we couldn't get that visa yet. By this time it was a week before we were due to leave our house in Bristol and we didn't have time to try any more postal applications - so all of them would have to be in person, at the embassies in London.

It fell to me to do the Russian Visa. We were very concerned that the Champions League Final would be in Moscow the day before we would be there and that I would be competing with 50,000 Chelsea and Man U fans for a visa, so I was determined to go as early as possible. The first day I could go was on Tuesday 6th May as there had been two Russian bank holidays on the 1st and 2nd May and a British one on the 5th. It was £108 on the train from Nottingham so instead I took the 2.45am coach for £18.50.

We had been sent the "voucher" from the Russian hotel we're booked into which you need to apply for the visa. We had also been sent the visa forms from the travel agency which we had duly filled in, signed and affixed photos.

So on the appointed day I set my alarm for 2am. Got up and dressed and was just about to go out and meet the taxi I'd booked when the phone started ringing - it was the automated callback to remind you about the taxi's arrival that I had expressly told them not to make, since it would wake my parents. I told the driver off but it was too late by that point - both my parents were awake. Anyway, I got the 2.45am coach to London. Arrived 7.00 at the embassy but realised I needed cash to pay (£95 each for same day processing so £190 in total) so dashed off to get some... came back and there were more people in the queue but still ok. The guy in front of me said this was unusually quiet.

Got inside at 8.30 and was seen by 9.00. The lady told me I needed to have filled in the form on the website, not fill in the printed out form, which was what the travel agent had instructed us to do. I was very annoyed but dashed off to find an internet cafe. I found one after about 20 minutes and then filled in the form. I'll leave you to work out how I got Steve's signature on the form. I started walking back to the embassy before I realised in my fluster I'd filled in a few details incorrectly. I went back, did it all again, found somewhere selling glue on the third attempt, restuck the photos on the form and went back to the embassy. Fortunately they'd given me a priority pass because the queues were now big. It was now 11.00 and the embassy shuts for applications at 12.00. This time the lady said the form was fine but told me because we were unemployed she would need to see 3 months' bank statements. At this point I got quite upset and said 'of course I'm unemployed, I'm emigrating to New Zealand, as it says on the form and why didn't you tell me this when I was in here before?' But they weren't budging on it so off I went again... thinking I'd have to come back the next day at this point....

I phoned Steve and told him to email me his 3 months' bank statements and meanwhile dashed off to the Halifax to get 3 months' statements from my account. I got a taxi and reached the bank about 11.10. At 11.30 I was still queuing behind all the old codgers who insist on having involved discussions about everything during the day because they can I suppose. Got my statement, called Steve who couldn't remember his online banking details but had managed to get his statements from the bank and was prepared to fax them. We both found fax shops and I waited for the fax to come through - but it came out all black... by this time it was 11.40 and I realised I'd have to go back if I was to stand a chance of getting even my visa that day. Another taxi back and very very luckily I got a different guy behind the counter this time and he didn't look too closely and just processed both forms! So after all that stress I was, eventually, successful. I spent in total around £50 that day excluding the £190 for the same day processing of the visas - used all my phone credit (£15), £20 on taxis, £5 in the internet cafe, £1.30 on the glue, £5 on tube fares... It ended up costing nearly £250 for both visas as a result (normal price would have been about £90).

Steve managed to get the Chinese visa the next day but despite arriving at around 8am didn't get into the office until after 12, so just a lot of queuing. Then he did the Belarussian one, again with very little stress, lucky him. On the whole I think I got the short straw!

We still need a visa for Vietnam but after all this stress have decided to leave it until Beijing. I hope that isn't a bad decision...