Best Eastern Gloria Irkutsk

... only just starting to wake up.<br><br>Irkutsk is probably what you would expect of a Siberian frontier town &#8211; Bleak. With its street lined log cabins, rotting and twisted in their foundations, people shuffled to their destinations with heads down and hands buried deep in their jacket pockets. But their was a friendlier feeling here than in European Russia and after another attempt at catching the trams we finally found someone who ...

... br><br>Anyway over the next few days we met a lot of people, a few travellers,a few nice Russian people and lots of crazy Russian people. But all in all everyone was really friendly.<br><br>We eventually communicated with the Russians in our compartment through drawing pictures , sign language and a phrase book. We became really good friends and ended up sharing each others food. They even left us some cuppa soups when they got off in ...

... to walk around and get a feel for a proper (non-tourist) town in that part of the world.<br><br>I checked into one of the hotels on the lake, U Ozera (great place), settled into my balcony over looking the lake and read my book for a while. Then I headed out to dinner with the guys from the train. And at dinner, everyone agreed that they still felt like they were swaying about after getting off the train.<br><br>When I got home ...

... a drift through a loose sequence of snooze- read - eat- chat - snooze more... Passengers leave and other board, some dour and dismissive, but most of them slowly relaxing into curiosity as to why I am here. One baffled fella, with excellent sign language wonders why I'm on a train when I could have flown?<br><br><br> The majority of passengers are male and half a carriage of young, tatooed, shaven-headed lads in combat gear ...

... br><br>Getting there was an amazing experience. As you know I caught the 'Rossiya' from Moscow, it goes all the way to Vladivostock, 9289 km, but for this leg of my journey, I did a mere 5185 km to Irkutsk. Let me tell you about life on the train :) You might think that being on a train for 4 days would be dull, but not so. I tend to get up when it's light and go to bed when it's dark, because time is a bit weird - each day I crossed at least ...

... see people of all ages with a bottle of beer, including middle aged women and empty cans litter the street. But you do not see that many people actually drunk.<br><br>We now have one night in Irkutsk before an early start tomorrow to catch the train again to Mongolia ( we will have very limited, in no access to internett until Bejing).<br><br>The apartment we are staying tonight is another home stay with a nice lady called Olga. The apartment is a typical Russian two-bed apartment ...

... around 1am. The Australian girls came back about 30 minutes later and we all stayed up and chatted a bit. One thing that&#8217;s fun is no matter where you are, once girls know you&#8217;re gay, they instantly become your best friends. Every country I&#8217;ve been to so far has held this to be true. Must be one of those universal truths. Anyway, the girls are heading to Olkhon tomorrow and I&#8217;ll follow the next day. And with that, I finally crashed out.

We were happy to arrive in Irkutsk, but once dropped at the bus station we were faced with having no guidebook, no map, nowhere to stay and woeful Russian language skills.<br><br>We made a plan: find a tourist; someone with a big backpack or guidebook. They should be able to point us in a helpful direction or show us a map, and at the very least would probably be friendly toward us.<br>Unfortunately, there were no tourists to be found.<br><br ...

... cool trans-siberian train&#8230;KGB providnitsas&#8230;stolen cups&#8230;Suzdal kremlin&#8230;icons&#8230;Moscow&#8230; birthday cake&#8230;Kremlin and red square&#8230;dinner on the boat&#8230;drinks&#8230;St. Petersburg walking tour&#8230;final dinner&#8230;dancers at restaurant&#8230;drinks at spy café&#8230;farewells.<br><br>Thanks for a memorable trip!<br><br>Laura

... laughing and loving. Later on we sat down on a park bench watching people go by as we listened on my headphones to the classics, Louis Armstrong and Etta James. She taught me about Russian culture. I taught her how to pinky swear. She apologized for her poor English. I apologized for my poor English too. <br><br>Things were going great until later that evening, something happened that made her cold and distant. As to what, I have no ...