Edem Tomsk

Both the guidebook and a Russian friend recommended a stop in Tomsk, so I took the advice and was pleasantly surprised. Tomsk is a Siberian town of about 500,000 people, located about 90 minutes north of the main Trans-Siberain line. It has a large university, a main street with predominantly 19th century European style buildings and quite a few neighbourhoods of traditional Siberian wood houses, some with very intricately ...

Apres Tobolsk, nous avons pris un train pour Omsk ou on avait 3 heures d'attentes avant le train suivant pour Tomsk, juste assez pour sortir de la gare et manger un Hot-Dog puis acheter quelques billets de train supplementaires. Les guichetieres en tout cas ont l'air beaucoup plus comprehensives et helpfull ;-)Il y a beaucoup de neige a Tomsk, au moins encore 50 cm. Le soleil brille encore une fois, du coup la neige commence a fondre un peu. La ville est assez ...

When I offered to show the dean my passport, he called in the specialist on international matters. Oh, that was unforeseen ...

On the evening of January the 4th, a disastrous one for me, I'd worked to show my guest a good time. After all, she'd called ME, saying she wanted to come over to translate into Russian one of my stories about Tomsk, because she'd liked it so much. But, with her new relationship with Pavel secretly in the works, she closed herself off to me in every way. And Pavel, to my surprise, joined her in dishonesty. As I was translating for them the ...

I kept living in my scary house in Tomsk until December 27th. On this day, I wanted to write, but it was too cold in my poorly-heated house to do so. So, I called Pavel, the forty-year-old motorcyclist, who had long since been inviting me to live with him. I went to his apartment that frosty evening, following my final day of work in Tomsk. While in Tomsk, though a bad businessman and never more than a part-time worker, I'd managed to restore my finances to ...

Siberians like to converse an awful lot. Too much, if you ask me. It's a relief when they just sing and dance. In mid-December, they and I danced the Moscovian "kadril", a pretty cool dance. At the "Bal Puteshestnikov" (Travelers' Ball), on the second floor of the train station (above the trains), elegantly-dressed people looked out the window down upon a bustling, snowy, pre-Christmas city plaza. On a Saturday evening, the "kadril" was one of many ...

Although singing isn't one of my favorite things to do (at this time), I was looking forward to the "Enjoy English Songs" competition on December 18th. Tomskunkian high schoolers would be singing; not I, thank god. I would be the "zure" (a judge). And, since we've already established that I'm a statistics-loving dork, and I love competitions, I was perfect for this job. This was another of my great, new ...

Ooh. Ow! Oh. The months of late-October and November, with all the cold snow upon colorful Tomsk and its sidewalks, had gone splendidly for me - in more ways than one. Even so, my playful Thursdays in the rock bar had made the difference between Tomsk being a fully-content place for me and it being a bland one. With no more rock bar nights in my future, I lightly questioned whether I should stay in Tomsk 'til the New Year. Easily, I decided to stay ...

No other Thursday regulars left the rock bar with me. I was disappointed. They could've left with grace in protest. Instead, the hateful and uncompassionate owners became more powerful. But, Russians aren't revolutionaries. They really, really "zaleyut" (spoil with preference/baby) their ego's. Russians, who don't know how to live with great freedom, feel a lack of potency. They accept the belief that they and "God" aren't one. They, naturally after this ...

The last story should've been called, "Two More Walks and a Hop around Tomsk." Now that I'm living in a spacious, wooden house in the center of town, I walk almost everywhere I go. I try to dress sufficiently warmly. A week ago, in fact, I walked for forty minutes home from basketball, with wet hair, and I was perfectly warm. I'd put my hair in a ponytail, covered it with a winter hat, and ...