Around Lake Baikal

There's only time for a short post between trains for now. We've just spent 2 days on the eastern shore of Lake Baikal, staying in an old-fashioned "sanatorium" hotel, enjoying lazy time by the beautiful beach (as shown on the photo) and watching a wonderful sunset. We got back to Ulan-Ude in a minibus on a horrible road, then got on a night train to Irkutsk where we just spent a day which was rich in positive shopping experiences (I finally found a Salewa travel pant to replace my old pant which is completely torn at the legs, as well as 2 english books for travel literature). In 2 hours we will board a train which will take us to the northern tip of Lake Baikal - in 36 hours. It's long because there's no direct connection along the shores of the lake, so the train has to go in a huge loop. Hopefully this will give us some time to relax, sleep and read (especially in our 2nd class compartments - 3rd class was sold out).
More news - and photos - in a few days, hopefully.

Cantina do Sanatorio

Na cantina do sanatorio os nossos colegas de mesa nao fogem a regra. No pequeno almoco de salsicha com massa so comem a salsicham, bebem um pouco de cha e partem. Nao tocam no pao nem na manteiga mas levam a fruta que houver na mesa. O frasco do molho vazio que ontem tinha deitado sobre o meio da mesa continuava la, de pe. Esta vazio ha quatro refeicoes. 

Na mesa ao lado o ritual repete-se. A senhora vem com tupperwares e guarda tudo enquanto os filhos comem uma so garfada do prato.

Os pratos, quentes e frios ja estao colocados na mesa quando chegamos. Imensa comida parece desperdicada. E a logica russa, uma vez mais.

O sanatorio em sim parece-me o Inatel ha uns 25 anos, das primeiras vezes que la fui com a minha avo ou os meus pais. Refeicoes a horas fixas, varios edificios um mais velho que o outro, tudo muito simples e burocratico.

Disse burocratico? Nos tivemos a felicidade de uma senhora, ao ver-nos de mochila, nos acompanhou ao registo de visitantes, fez questao de arranjar alguem ao telefone que falasse ingles e depois com o nosso pedido registado foi connosco as financas onde imprimiram o recibo que levamos em conjunto a contabilidade para pagar. Finalmente com gestos e um pouco de russo explicou onde ficava a cantina, as horas das refeicoes e levou-nos ao nosso quarto, de primeira categoria classe A (renovados). Tudo bonito, apenas faltava pressao na agua quente (que tinha efeito duplo de ser pouca agua muito quente e impossivel de misturar) e o punho (handle) da porta estava arranjado (remont em russo) com uma placa de madeira e 4 parafusos extra grandes para o local, mas deviam ser os 'unicos disponiveis na loja.

East Baikal - Goriashinks and a sanatorium - trip and first impressions

The idea was to go to Ust-Barguzin but there were no more tickets for the only daily scheduled bus. The hostel owners tried to convince us to go by minibus at 6am with an extra fee from him taking us to the station for 100R (public transport would cost 20R). I did not like the idea and after discussing with Eva we decided to go only to Goriashinks, a 3-hour away village from Ulan-Ude in the same direction, instead of 5-hour bus. Without ticket we would try our luck at the bus station at 8am.

At 6am there was already noise of people arriving to the hostel. At 8am we were at the bus station, a minibus was about to leave to Goriashinks. The driver was nice enough to still go with us to the ticket booth but there were only places for the 11 o'clock scheduled bus. Outside the station I see two minibuses going to Barguzin who could leave us on our village. While calling for Eva one of them leaves. The other agrees to take us for 500R each. We knew it was expensive but we did not want to wait 3 hours.

At 8:40 he leaves, half-full. It goes until the train station. Almost no-one seems interested on going to East Baikal. At 9:45 the driver says me something '30 minutes'. With the time passing I thought it would be at 10:30 that we would leave. Nothing happens. There were, meanwhile, people to almost fill-up the 15 places of the 'Hyace' which in my childhood was known to have only 9 or maximum 12 places. The remaining passengers chat or smoke or go to the toilet during all this time. No one asks the driver when he intends to leave, no one seems annoyed to be waiting.

At 11:00 there was order to sit down but, for other 10 minutes, already with the engine on, the driver does nothing. Our backpacks are on the roof, attached by ropes.

The trip begins, he creates a central lane in the city traffic. As soon as the bumps of the road start we feel the need of going to the toilet.

We stand for 2 hours until we stopped at a small restaurant to eat. Stree toilet, a hole-kind one as usual. We eat 'buuzi' and goulash in 5 minutes not to take more time than the others.

The minibus leave us at the crossing to Goriashinks. We walk and ask the way to the sanatorium. As soon we get in a lady - Tatiana I think beeing her name - says 'parlez-vous francais?' when she hear us. We answer that also english and german. She takes us to the reception and we see she want to help us. She asks to call to someone who would speak english. I speak with someone, I say we want 2 nights with breakfast and dinner. And shower. "Supper also?", asks the person after exchanging the phone 2 times with Tatiana. We say yes and we see she understood 'dinner' as lunch. Our dictionary confirms - the translation for dinner is the same that for lunch: обед. Tatiana tells the receptionist our desires and her fills several papers.

With one of the papers and Tatiana we go to the finance department, a room at the end of the corrider where, with the price list and a calculator, they fill another form and prints out a receipt in the computer. We go now to the cash booth and exchange papers and money. It was 5600R, 60E/night full-board. We return to the reception to show that we paid and receive another paper and the room key. Tatiana follow us. She tells us in Russia where the restaurant is, times for the meals. We say our nationalities, jobs, trip. She asks our age and kids. Патом... She leaves us at the renovated room with bad quality furniture. The taps bad attached (if I had pliers...) worked badly.

We walked in the surrounding forest, we found a marked trail which finished abruptly. We like to be surrounded by forest.

For dinner in the disorganized canteen we had a small meal. The russians eat in 10 minutes and we are the last to leave. We go to walk until the lake, impressing. Sandy beach and also river stones. Trails of jeeps which pass time to time. We see the sunset behind the mountaints the other side of the lake and we throw stones to the water.
When we return there is music in the 'club'. The social place of the sanatorium where you can rent everything from balls, bycicles, DVD reader, iron, etc. In one room people dance at 70s music. The dance very bad (like me) and there are no drinks. Before sleep we still go to the bar, the other side of the reserve, drink a bad Bulgarian wine. The price is per 100ml but the glass is 200ml. Russian logic.

P.S. from Eva: I just added the photo of "Bathhouse 2".

Photos!

We are back from our Summer School in Buryatia experience. There are a lot of things to tell, so many new things, a very special experience. We will write posts about it when we have time, and also some individual emails.
Here's the link to my flickr photo page with some pictures:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/photos-eva/sets/72157621025438518/

Three months - equipement review

Lost items:
- Baltic states Guidebook in Kaunas. Replaced by new one in Kaunas.
- Travel towel from Eva in Moscow. Not replaced.
- One sock from Eva. Other one will be used for the mobile phone

Not used items (ready to give away):
- Black cycling polar vest from Miguel
- Jumping rope
- Plug converter (maybe useful in China or Korea)
- vodka shot metal glasses (everyone that gave vodka has glasses)

Given items:
- several reading books
- Poland and Baltic states guidebook

Items replaced:
- couple of Eva's slips

Items to be replaced soon:
- Eva's hiking trousers
- Miguel's orange t-shirt

Items bought (apart of perishable items and books):
- long sleeve t-shirt for Eva
- memory card for Miguel camera's
- USB pen drive for backup of pictures

Buryatia School - Engorboy

Engorboy was only 800 inhabitants, there were no asphalted roads. The village size was more of less the same as Mikhaylovka. Besides the many cows there were also some pigs and horses in the streets. Finally there I had my long running question answered. We were at 1200m above sea level. At our presentation outside the school building with several of the teachers and students, some teachers knew the answer. The sun strikes strong that high and we felt it during those 10 days.

Engorboy had a small centre where the shop, post office, club, library and school were seated around. The shop had few less items than in Mikhaylvoka but more drunk people at the door hoping for bottles of vodka to fall down from the sky. The club and library were in the same style but smaller.

The school, quite old, all wood, was divided in three buildings. It was being fully repainted - chairs, tables, walls, cupboards, floors - as full maintenance of the ensemble. It remembered me of the lighthouses in Portugal. Again it was a school for 6 to 18, where table sizes had to fit all and seemed a bit small for an adult. They had, like in Mikhaylovka, computer and two projectors - one they asked me to diagnose why it did not work. They also had a gym with some basketball baskets and gymnastics material.

The houses were pretty much the same but the gardens were bigger and on each one there was a water pump making less but more frequent the work of getting the water (smaller buckets used).

We were this time living with Ayuna and her grand-mother in a single room, only with small hide-outs around the winter stove. The toilet in this house was further away and the grand-mother as well as the grand-sons living there were peeing just in the garden, not to walk all the way to the hole.

Engorboy was a fully Buryatia people village and people would speak Buryatia language (similar to Mongol) among them. Kids were learning Russian only at school. Ayuna grand-mother was not speaking Russian at all making communication even more difficult.

The mean of transport to go to surrounding fields was horse. There was also a river where I swim once but the water seemed colder than in the other village.

No particular differences in the Sur-Harban festival, just added a disorganized 100 meter race where I participated and was 6 or 7th among 30 (I was representing "my" street).

Because of the school painting and no help of the local administration the first day of school was held half inside half outside (aerobics). We presented ourselves with some history background, then Kate gave an English class and I gave a internet/email class. No kid had email neither notion of the usefullness of internet except that they could chat and play games. The internet was painfully slow (satellite+modem I think), the room was hot and the kids less interested to learn than touching a computer. The class was quite bad. On the second day it was raining and it was after the drunks at night story, so environment was not good. We met few kids at entrance of a school building and Ayuna wanted to give class there, on the edge of the rain. Kids found that we could go to the canteen that they were going to paint. Small english and other languanges classes with not so much attentive kids before that the smell of painting was too strong. We had no place to go, no alternative was proposed but Ayuna wanted to continue. I was tired and out of the game. We get to agree for the library to be open for us the next day (again, help of the kids) and we went all, kids and us, to Ayuna's grand-mother house. She knew it was necessary to discuss among us but she wanted the kids to have more school. We set 20:30 as limit to end the school that day. After we discussed and was clear we had to finish the school earlier, there were no conditions (logistical and mental) to continue. Next day we still had classes in the library - english with drawing; health for alcohol prevention but kids were to young to understand; aerobics/judo and journalist where the kids where completely uninterested to learn. The weather was perfect and we still went by the river.

The day after at 6am we were leaving Engorboy in direction of Ulan-Ude with the local "Schumacher", a crazy driver, for 7hours.

Buryatia Experience Part 2: Teaching the children

The aim of the volunteering project was to teach something to the children in the 2 villages. We were free to choose our subject and teaching method, and once we were there, we soon realized that we had to be VERY flexible. Due to numerous festivals and other activities, the days of actual teaching were numbered, but even outside school we had the chance to be in contact with the kids (swimming in the river for example) so I guess this also counted a bit as "teaching", as most of these children never had been in contact with foreigners.
Our subjects were: English (Kate), Judo (Juergen), Journalism (Ayuna), Children's rights (Miguel), Health (me). The "improvised" subjects were: aerobics (Miguel), games (everybody...).
Ok, there were not as many children as I somehow expected. But those who were there were very motivated. I rarely saw children as open and curious as them. Of course it was easy to spot the brighter ones.... some were able to speak some simple english, or at least to communicate with non-verbal means. They were eager to participate in the painting (for the English class and my health class). On our last day in Mihailovka we organised a treasure hunt, which was very successful. Afterwards, we had a big autograph session, as all the kids wanted our signatures and e-mail addresses.
In the second village, Yengorboy, the children seemed a bit younger and less concentrated for sit-down activities, but it was still fun and we just did a bit more games with them.
I think just the fact that they saw some foreigners for the first time in their life made some of them realize the importance of learning english and going to school and on to higher education, and that other countries exist not only on the world map but also in reality.
We also learned a lot, about their everyday life and culture, and also that there are still very motivated children in the world who are not spoiled by computer games and TV.

One of the strangest nights of my life - Comedy/Terror real story

(translated from Portuguese without much thinking)

With Ayuna the relations continue very tense. Yesterday night she went for a walk telling us "help yourself" at her grandmother place. It was 20:30. At 21:45 I went to uncle's house where only her uncle smoking and Sasha (the oldest -5years- grand-daughter) were present. There were no signs of dinner. At 22:45 Ayuna returns saying that we could cook the rice that was standing there. There was no light in the kitchen and she goes away again. An uncle of hers comes over, a bit drunk and showing us that there is also meat. We say we go to sleep. Five minutes later he returns saying that we can go and eat at the other house (uncle's house) but we refused. It was 23:00.

We fall asleep.

At middle of the night some people start knocking hard at the door and screaming. Ayuna and the grand-mother (we are living/sleeping all in same room) wake up. Ayuna starts crying and the grand-mother to scream to the 2/3 men in the street who try to open the door and knocking also on the windows. There were 5 or 10 minutes of this. When the men leave the grand-mother pees in the bucket she has by her bed.

After a while - 1 or 2 hours, I don't know - another person comes to knock the door and windows, trying to open the door. He calls for the grand-mother in Buryat language. Ayuna does not make noise and the grand-mother gets-up and pees in her bucket. The person gives up quickly. There are lightnings and thunders at 15 and 30 seconds away. Starts to rain. Eva holds me and we can't sleep for a long while.

At 6:30 - I can now see the time - someone knocks the door and screams. The grand-mother in underware get up and opens the door. They speak and the person goes to sleep with the grand-mother. It is a women.

At 9:30 continues to rain, is the time we had set to leave home but every one sleeps. Eva and then me got up to go to the toilet and start the day. At some point Ayuna's aunt appear and then the oncle saying to cook the rice. We try to do it. There is very little electricity and the oncle goes to cut wood and start the wood oven. The grand-mother wakes up and join us, washing the dishes and taking the breakfast with us. Everyone then disappears to the uncle's house.

It's 11:30 and Ayuna gets up and, knowing the time, asks me why I did not wake her up. I think I'm not an alarm clock without being asked but I only say that I thought with the rain we would not go to the "arshan". I ask what happened during the night. She will say after she comes from the toilet, Ayuna says. One hour has passed, it still rains. There is another person in the grand-mother's bed and we don't understand anything what is going on. I ask my self about Jurgen and Kate. It is now 12:30.
---
Later we left to Jurgen and Kate place to tell our adventure. In the evening finally we know from Ayuna that the drunk people wanted "just" to talk with us. She did not listen the second person and we did not ask about the women (her cousin). Both Ayuna and us were scared and did not know what would have happen if they would open the door. Fortunately the event did not repeat and it was, mostly for sure, a side effect of the general drunkness that day after the summer party of the village (sur-harban).

The story of the sheep's head

Those of you who have been on my flickr homepage and seen the photos from our Buryat Summer School experience are probably impatient to hear the story of the sheep's head... :-) so here you go.

Part of our extensive "social program" during the Summer School was to visit some buddhist celebrations called "Surcharban". One of them was quite big, involving several villages. Each village mounted a yurt that was decorated inside, and there was a contest for the most beautiful yurt. Some of them were richly decorated with carpets and had tables almost breaking under a huge quantity of food, others were simpler, showing traditional farming equipment and some simple homemade food.

As foreigners, we were the super special VIP guests there. May sound nice, and IS nice, but also very very tiring, and unusual for all of us, as we really consider ourselves as just ordinary people.

Anyway, one of our "activities" consisted in visiting the other villages yurts, which involved each time sitting down at the table (women on one side, men on the other), being offered food and, of course, vodka (which was ok not to drink, it's mainly a sign of hospitality but a lot of vodka is acually thrown away). In one yurt there was a lot of meat on bones but also soup and bread, in a second yurt the food was very simple (cheese, bread, butter, milk vodka), but in the third yurt we had a special experience. There was no food on the table, but the traditionally dressed up "chief" asked us to sit down at the table. We then learned that we would be offered the highest present that could be offered to guests: a sheep's head. Oh-oh....

So, who is the oldest man among the group? It was Juergen, our austrian friend. He had the honour of receiving the head and then cutting around it in the traditional way. Only the knive didn't cut.... When the "chief" had shown him a few times how to do it but the knive still didn't cut, he went on to the next stage: turning the head around and putting a small spoon into the region of the brain (with a througly disgusting squelching sound). We were then supposed to eat a tiny bit of it (or at least pretend to eat). Juergen pretended, Kate (sitting next to me) was very strong and tasted a bit, but before I could witness this I felt I was going to throw up right there and just went out of the yurt (which caused a bit of confusion with certain people, later I apologized about it but really I'm not used to this kind of thing...) so I didn't see the end of it. I then went for a short walk in the woods and missed the fourth yurt where the rest of the group had to spend about 40 minutes... Finally I wasn't so sad about it, being able to see the end of the horse race and part of the beauty contest.

Buryatian dictionary

Aimed to portuguese readers, some of the words we learnt during the school:
Good night - Han Untugti
Thank you - Han daa
I'm portuguese - Be Portugalia'ha
Good morning - dobro utra (as russia)
I'm full - Sadap
Water - Uhan
Hot tea - Alunze
Grand-mother - Tovi
Hello - San bene
See you - Baierte
Bread - Talhan