From Russia with Love

Gently swaying on our feet with our backpacks on, we waited for the train to come to a halt as it pulled into the station at Yekaterinburg. In the heart of the Ural Mountains and situated on the imaginary line separating Asia from Europe, Yekaterinburg has only been open to foreign visitors since 1991 as it was a bastion of Soviet cloak-and-dagger carrying-ons during the Cold War. None of us cared about this though as we took the four steep steps down to the station platform, thankful to be off the train after nearly fifty hours in transit. Yekaterinburg is our second stop in Russia, the first having been Irkutsk in the heart of Siberia. We spent only one night in Irkutsk, with each of us staying with Russian families scattered along the shore of Lake Baikal, the largest (volume-wise) lake in the world. Mike and I were hosted by a Russian lady who didn't speak a word of English, so we got by doing a lot of pointing while smiling widely.

On the train along with us from Irkutsk was another group which was traveling from Irkutsk straight to Moscow, and they were jealous of me as I hopped off in Yekaterinburg as they still had another twenty-four hours or so to go. While most of them felt they were beginning to come down with cabin-fever, one of them said he felt "cabin-comfortable." He did say this while sipping a beer at nine in the morning though, which may have had something to do with his placid comment as he made his way to the space between the carriages for a smoke. Also on the train was a group of young Russian soldiers who had just finished their one-year mandatory military service and who were understandably excited to be heading home. Sittng up late one night drinking vodka with some of the Russian officers and some of the members of the other tour group, one of the Aussies asked Alexander (a Russian Captain) if we could see his side arm. Poking his head around the corner to see if any of his superiors might be walking by, he pulled his pistol from its holster, emptied the clip and handed it around. I thought that was pretty cool until one of the Aussies said that he had gone into the compartment where all the arms were stored and the soldiers had let him mess around with an AK-47. A very different set of safety standards in this part of the world.

We went on a walking tour of Yekaterinburg today with some of the highlights being beer on tap at little sidewalk stands; a Communist Party member ranting away over a loudspeaker at the base of a statue of Lenin in the town square and the numerous pieces of world-renowned architecture lining the wide streets. We also got to see the rocket that shot down the American spy Francis Gary Powers at the height of the Cold War. It is in many ways surreal to come face to face with pieces of history that I am familiar with only from books - so much of what I have seen and touched makes me wish I had an extensive background in history, biology and geography. I pick up snippets of things that I copy down with the intentinon of learning more once I get home, but to have known beforehand would be even better.

Yekaterinburg, named after Peter the Great's wife Catherine, is a beautiful city. The streets are clean and wide and lined with tall trees, and with summer nearly here the trees are almost completely in leaf. The difference in the weather from Irkutsk to Yekaterinburg has been stark: We left with the temperature around 12 C with ice rimming the rivers and hiding in the underbrush, even passing through a snow storm a few hours after departure, and here in Yekaterinburg the grass is green with the temperature in the high twenties. We Canadians in the group have been constantly wearing shorts, but now even the Australians in the group are feeling warm again.