Siberia

Well, after walking down an alley that the guidebook instructed me to, I finally found an Internet cafe... so I am able to write a bit before I leave for Lake Baikal to stay in a cottage for two nights.  The upcoming train ride is 36 hours.

 

I arrived in Novosibirsk late last night and after some hassle I finally found a hotel that would accept a foreigner.  As it would turn out, the third try was a charm and it may be the best place I could have gotten.  It was close to everything downtown and the room is a rented on a 24 hour basis... which means after this I go back and checkout (at 8:30 pm).  This allowed me to get a shower after the day of walking around.  More details of the train ride and finding a hotel will be coming in the future... they are typed in my phone, and I may not have Internet access on that until Beijing.

 

So Novosibirsk is considered the capital of Siberia and there is a small church signifying the geographic center of Russia.  As fate would have it, on my one day in the Siberian capital they had a blizzard (or they may just call it a light dusting... but it was something around 18").  When I arrived last night it was sleeting, but overnight the temperature dropped to -10c, and I awoke to massive snowfall that is still continuing at this hour.  I will say that they are increadibly effifienct at dealing with it, as one might expect.  They even have city workers constantly scraping the sidewalks, something I wish Cincinnati had done during my slippery walks to school (Go Bearcats by the way... still a shot at the Big East title and a BCS game).  The storm was bad enough to make the lead story on the news, but that may only be because it was the first major snow of the year... again I have no clue, as I could only watch the pictures and try to decipher what they were talking about.  Needless to say, 5 hours of walking around this city in a blizzard-like conditions certainly did not help the picture taking effort... but pictures of things in a heavy snow storm kind of make sense in a location like this.  I do not think it is supposed to be this cold or snowy in Irkutsk, but I will be checking again after this.

 

You will also be pleased to know that I have not been raped or robbed yet.

 

Well, I am going to do a bit of browsing then my 30 minutes of internet time is up.  Another 1.5 days of eating meat and bread and some mystery cheese on the train awaits.  I will try to find an Internet cafe in Irkutsk before I leave for Mongolia, but that may not be possible so this could be the last update until Ulan-Bator or even Beijing, which is about 10 days away I think.

- The Dues