Ulan-Ude

This must be one of the cities where we've stayed the longest. We arrived on the 18th June, in order to prepare and relax before going to our volunteering "project" in the deep countryside (we will leave tomorrow early morning). So we've had quite a lot of time to spend here. The weather has been everything you can imagine - from 5 degrees rainy almost snowing to over 20 degrees sunny. We have spent quite some time on the Internet (you might have noted a few new posts and photos...), sleeping incredibly late every morning, wandering around the town.... and trying to survive the Russian restaurant- and cafe-food. Our breakfast was different every morning, prepared by our violet-haired landlady, and included fried eggs, hard bread with misterious meat spread and tomatoes, kasha (some kind of Russian cooked cereal - we had the version with about 200g of butter each...), blini (pancakes) and omelette. In cafes it's usually meat with or without something else. Salads are some cooked vegetable with a lot of mayonnaise. Soups are nice but with a lot of grease on top. So, not surprisingly, my stomach started to strike after this mornings 2 portions of omelette (2 portions because I ate Miguel's) and only started digesting several hours later, after a mini-sandwich of herring and a big cup of muesli and yogourt (bought in the supermarket). Let's see how this goes in the deep countryside...
Otherwise, it has been a bit boring but very relaxing to spend a few days here, often not doing much. We still have visited a big buddhist Datsan, a very colorful heap of painted temples and wooden siberian houses. Afterwards we walked a bit in the village, and seeing an interesting-shaped hill we wanted to hike there, but we were stopped by 3 men in a car. We finally understood that we could not go there because it seemed to be a place reserved for men and women were not allowed! So, we went back to the bus stop, on the way passing a drunk guy who apparently wanted to change some Rubles for "Deutsche Mark"....
One day we also decided to visit the History Museum. It was raining and cold, and our landlady really wanted us to go there. So we paid for 2 of the exhibitions, one about Buddhism, the other about Buryat history. Well, some of the exhibits were quite entertaining (especially the ones about Tibetan medicine), but otherwise it was the usual Russian museum experience: underlit rooms, water dripping from the ceiling into buckets, all kinds of objects shown in the same showcase (but there were english descriptions!). Not such a bad place to spend an hour or so.
Tomorrow we'll be off into the "Russian Wild" until the 7th of July. I'm sure we will have stories to tell and pictures to show!

Ulan Ude market

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Originally uploaded by eva_p

This is our first day in Ulan Ude. Raining, cold, windy (it could almost be snowing). This picture was taken at the end of the day, when the market sellers were already preparing to pack up and go.

Train ride with Buddhists

In order to complete our "train marathon" to get to Ulan-Ude in time, we took another 24-hour train trip from Krasnoyarsk to Ulan-Ude. I was already very tired from two bad nights on an uncomfortable couch in a dirty flat and somehow regretted having bought 3rd class tickets again. During one of our last trips we were seated close to a group of young men drinking beer, one of them completely drunk... I was not keen to repeat the experience.
When we entered our wagon, we noticed a bit number of couples and families with children who seemed to know each other. Later we learned that they were all Buddhists travelling from Tomsk to Irkutsk, where an important buddhist meeting was going to take place. We learned this from a man that we had already noticed because he was smiling more than the average russian. He came towards us asking whether he could just talk to us a bit. Of course! So he talked about Buddhism and we about our trip and our impressions about Russia, he thanked us and went back to his group.
I don't know much about Buddhism but I just noticed that hardly anyone in the wagon was drinking alcohol, and nobody had beer for breakfast (and also, the smell was not as bad as usually).
Later in the afternoon, somebody took out a guitar and started singing russian songs. It was very nice and looking out of the window at the Siberian countryside with its green fields, low hills and birch trees while listening to the music was undescribably beautiful.
Close to us was a family with a small blond boy of about 3, who pretended to be driving a car with an imaginary steering wheel every time he walked down the corridor to go to the bathroom. Later on the corridor was transformed into an imaginary motorway for toy cars with his older brother and another small boy.
In the compartment directly next to us, two pre-adolescent brothers occupied mostly by peaceful card games, interrupted about every 2 hours by a friendly but noisy fight.
During this trip we received an sms message saying a hotel room had been reserved for us in Ulan-Ude (arranged by Ayuna, our Moscow friend). When we arrived there, the owner (a lady with violet hair) was already waiting for us at the door. The room is cozy, there's a private bathroom and hot water, and this morning we got each 3 fried eggs for breakfast (poor Miguel...).
So, even if our last train ride was nice, we're taking a break here for a few days before leaving for our Summer School in Buryatia.