Tsars and Mafia
Trip Start
Aug 11, 2006
1
14
27
Trip End
Nov 19, 2006
Ekaterinburg,
Russia
Monday, October 9, 2006
Again, I'd organised to stay with a girl called Oksana through Hospitality Club. Much to my surprise, walking through the station, there's a teenage boy holding a card with my name on - turns out he's Oksana's brother, Ilya, come to take me to Oksana's apartment!
Oksana lives in the centre of Yekaterinburg, in a gorgeously decorated flat (lots of hand decorated bits and bobs that she's done, and some amazing photography) with a finger-nibbling frog. She took out for a walk to show me some parts of Ekaterinburg - we saw lots of statues, she pointed out some pretty architecture, and some nasty soviet architecture, the order of Lenin (A nasty pointy red statue with a medal on it, given to the city for doing things in WWII - I think there were lots of factories here, making planes and tanks and stuff.), a place for breakfast (150ruble all-you-can-eat buffet
01 - The Romanaov's memorial statue
. I stuffed myself completely the next day!), a coffee shop where we had yummy yummy melty chocolate drink, and then we went to see a movie. The films here are all dubbed into Russia, but it was an easy film to understand (The Devil Wears Prada - girl gets job, changes, falls out with boy, quits, gets back with boy), so it's all good! The next night her and Ilya took me up to a viewpoint and told me about all the buildings, and the abandoned TV tower that's too wonky to use! Again, although it's a big city, the centre is quite small, so I could easily wander round it all in a day., There's not a great deal to "do", but I saw the Afgan war memorial - Russian war memorials are usually huge things commemorating the glory of the USSR, but this one was very different. Instead of a triumphant soldier (which they obviously couldn't use!) its' a soldier sitting crosslegged, looking utterly dejected. A lot more powerful than the standard type. It's not far from there to the point where the Tsar and his family were killed. The house they were being held in has been destroyed, and there's now a decadent church dedicated to them on the spot. The whole family have been made saints, which I find a bit weird, as they were just people, although people who met an unpleasant end. The church itself is rather over the top, but behind it is an interesting statue. The family were led down into the cellar, being told that a photograph was going to be taken, but instead they were all shot - the Tsar, the Tsarina and their 4 children. The statue is of them all going downstairs, and although it's really ugly, it was quite moving. The kids look much younger than they were (they were all late teens, early twenties, but the statue looks like 10 year olds), and the Tsarina looks like she's trying to poke her eyes out, but I think she's supposed to be crossing herself. It was quite sad really.
Ekaterinberg is more of a wandering city than a "doing things" city. There's a lot of little streets, old houses, statues, a nice park with a lake and bits of machinery from the factories that founded the town. I had a good afternoon just walking about, stumbling into things (including the oddest Pushkin statue I've ever seen!). I only had a day there really, and it would have been nice to have at least one more, but I had a great time with Oksana and Ilya. Again, I was amazed by their kindness and hospitality, and had a much better time than if I'd stayed in a hotel.
