Out of the frying pan and into the fire...

Pick of the day: Spar ‘Gourmet’, Nizhny Novgorod

Ok so this is clearly not the sort of place one plans or envisions needing the loo when one starts the day. This is the type of venue you visit out of pure necessity not choice. When wandering around becomes difficult and your gait is beginning to draw attention.

Style: Metallic western sit

Atmosphere: Chromy

Extras: Hassling little prick outside who couldn’t grasp why the door might be locked

18/02/13 to 25/02/13: Nizhny Novgorod and Perm

We have been in Russia for just over two weeks and have had shifting opinions on the place day by day. Let us start with this. Budget travel in Russia is not a holiday in the same sense that travel is say South East Asia maybe (fingers crossed...).The Russians do ostentatious well, aside from a soviet sized gap in time, keener than anyone else to have the latest phones, cars and clothes and you are expected to flaunt wealth. Travelling through Russia is a fantastic experience but it is constantly a challenge both in the cost of living and attitudes. 

Initially we had found Russians to be blunt and aggressive and this made for depressing days and a wish to move on quickly.However, as we have discussed the past couple of weeks between us we have realised that in fact the vast majority of Russians have been welcoming, friendly and supportive. For every occasion where we have stumbled, particularly when purchasing tickets from staff who move beyond unhelpful to plain obstructive there has always been a local who has helped us to bypass this difficult transaction. This is not a case of not speaking Russian, though our inability is clearly the driver for such problems. The locals who have helped us have never spoken any English, just like those serving us and yet they have clearly had to battle with staff to help us. We have never expected people to speak a word of English, but we can communicate effectively with pointing and a couple of words of Russian if people are willing to spend a little longer communicating. Incidents like this are clearly not rare as the guide book even mentions it. Such events do cloud your experience of a place, but I hope in future we can treat foreigners at home with a little more compassion.

Nizhny, clinging to the past

*Rant over*

We had somehow ended up with 4 days and nights in Nizhny, which was odd seeing as the only reason we had for stopping there was a day river boat trip up the Volga to the town of Gorodets. In hindsight we should perhaps have realised that the river would have been ice bound in February! Never the less we found it was accessible by bus so decided to make it our activity for Nizhny day 2.

We arrived in Nizhny at 2300hr after a 5hr train from Moscow and wandered the short distance to the hostel, which was in the guise of a parole centre/OAP home. We were shown to a 6 bed dorm which to our delight only had a single other occupant, a young girl. Assuming she would be less likely to snore or play computer games all night we thought we had struck lucky. We were wrong. Out of the pan and into the fire. Over the next 4 nights this girl would show us just how creepy a roommate can be. I got off relatively lightly as she seemed to take a shining to Vi, touching her feet when we were on the bed, cooing at her and generally staring longingly. This experience meant the hostel was a no go area aside from sleeping, unfortunately despite being Russia’s ‘third’ city it was remarkably thin on things to do.

Smoke stacks. A common feature of Russia cities. Looking across the river to Nizhny.

On our first day it became obvious that while our hostel was very convenient for the station its 6km distance from the centre of town was less than ideal. Fortunately it proved a pleasant walk and we had the time to kill. We spent the day walking through the old town climbing the hill to the Kremlin and taking in the sights of the frozen River Volga. That evening we treated ourselves to the lonely planet recommended eatery which proved classically intimidating as we were remarkably under dressed! For a smart £25 Ben got 3 tiny pancakes and a sliver of salmon and I got a fistful of rice and a portion of beef stroganoff that took approximately 5 mouthfuls to eat. However the surroundings were very nice with a classically Victorian feel about it and we got a whole dining room to ourselves (I suspect we were hidden from the other guests to shelter them from our hobo-esque appearance).

Team shot from Nizhny's kremlin with the Volga behind

Night one passed fairly uneventfully as we sat in the common area and attempted to converse with the other inmates via the medium of the Russian sailor who occasionally docked in british ports and google translate. Conversations were (as they have always been in Russia) variations on ‘where you from?’ ‘Manchester’ ‘ah, Manchester united!’ ‘yeah, we don’t really watch football’.

A Gorodet street. Pretty Wooden architecture.

Day 2 we decided to head to a town/village upriver called Gorodets. It’s supposed to be accessible via a lovely river cruise in summer but as the Volga was frozen over we got the bus. We had a lovely, sunny wander round this sleepy old town, the old part of which is made up of traditional painted wooden houses which are beautiful. We mooched along the river front and in and out of a few bizarre antique shops before deciding it was time to head back. And so our problems started. We thought we would try and wait for the same bus that we had arrived on but after a while of waiting, no sign of it and getting a bit freaked out by a couple of teenagers walking out of a shop attempting to conceal a handgun decided to find the ticket office. The woman there shouted at us in Russian, wrote 17:30 on a scrap of paper and refused to sell us a ticket. We tried asking a bus driver outside and he pointed to the main road. We went there and waited for a while and then eventually asked a friendly looking woman at a bus stop. By this time we had been trying to get home for over an hour, it was getting dark and very cold and we were very aware that there were no hotels in this town. Thankfully the woman turned out to be a blessing; she took us back to the bus depot, argued with the ticket lady til she sold us tickets home, stood us at the correct bus stop and instructed another lady to make sure we got on the bus to Nizhny and then with a goodbye handshake and smile left us more grateful than we had been in a very long time, and all this without a common word between us.

Where we would have landed had we got the boat.

Gorodets

Night three and crazy girl ran up to us asking ‘where have you been? I have missed you!’ We left here to her own devices.

Day 3 and we re-investigated the Kremlin, spent a very long time in a coffee shop and found an amazing restaurant above a bookshop that did delicious homemade pasta and really good mulled wine. Walking home that night the water froze inside my Nalgene bottle, pretty chilly.

View from Nizhny kremlin with the confluence of the Volga and Oka beyond.

That night we were sat on the bottom bunk (my bed) watching a film and crazy girl repeatedly grabbed and rubbed my feet for a prolonged period of time. I tried tucking them under me but she would inevitably get me again when I stretched out. She then sat on the bed opposite and stared at us for a while. Then she resorted to playing the Titanic theme tune very loudly while staring at us. Thankfully at this point one of the other inmates came in and seemed to point out she was being weird and took her away for a cigarette. Later on as I was going to sleep I rolled over to see her sat on the edge of her bed, in the dark, staring at me. Didn’t sleep after that.

We took the 3^rd class overnight train to Perm which was not bad as trains go. There were a couple of friendly middle aged women on the bunk above us and the journey was pretty chilled apart from a 5am wake up call when just about everyone seemed to get off the train.

Vi chilling 3rd class enroute to Perm

Our hostel in Perm was pretty nice with a decent kitchen and living area although we were in a 16 bed dorm. The only slightly annoying dorm mate we had was a boy next to us who appeared to be nocturnal (2am computering again) and didn’t get out of bed at any point in the 3 days we were there. He smelled a fair bit as a result.

We arrived in the afternoon and had enough time for a quick wander around town where we found that an ice festival was on. There were pretty amazing ice sculptures including life sized ships in full sail, a Toyota car that you could sit in, an ice sculpture competition, a mock life sized ice town and an enormous amphitheatre with 10ft ice slides coming off it. It was aimed mostly at children so we had no qualms about getting involved. Especially funny was the tiny toddler who was too light to make it down the slide and got stuck, limbs waving like a starfish, out of reach of either parent at the top and bottom.

The ice ship captain!

This was a huge ice caved terraced street. Every house had a slide.

No idea what this was, but the local scallies liked punching them.

Orbs. Loved in russia!

Ice clog. Harder to get out than get into...

Life size Toyota land cruiser

The next day we took the bus to the Kungur Ice Caves. Or rather took 3 buses over the course of 3 hours. Having made it we booked onto the next tour and wandered down into the deep. Unfortunately ‘Ice Caves’ is a bit of an overstatement. Only a couple of caves actually have any ice in them. The rest of the caves were apparently geologically fascinating as our guide kept on using her torch to point out different rock formations, though Ben didn’t agree. Since it was entirely in Russian we had no idea what she was talking about and alternatively pretended to be trolls, imagined finding fossilised polar bears or planned escape routes in case the cave turned out to be inhabited by creatures from ‘The Descent’.

Demon ice rabbit in the Kungur ice caves. Or maybe, couldn't tell what the guide was going on about.

After a long train ride home we got a bit of rest and re-supplied in preparation of the 24 hour train ride to Omsk.

Perm station. Next stop Omsk!