Balshaya Siberia

Siberia has quite a few extra-large cities, we found on our way. After Ulan-Ude and Irkutsk we pushed our Lada further west. Raving reviews about Tomsk made this city our logical next stop. Not entirely our cup of tea. Admittedly, the place does get quite lively after a Sunday afternoon football match, and also the card-eating habits of the local ATM machine added to the excitement. Still, we prefer the stylish chic of Krasnoyarsk, where old ladies proudly show us around in yet another house of art (switching on the lights as we walk to the next room, dusting off the artefacts) and where the girls are so pretty it mixes well with the paintings of Russian wanderers. Anyway, a nice place. Next pleasant surprise (especially after spending two nights folded up in our Lada at local truckstops) was Tobolsk, the former Siberian capital with a pittoresque kremlin, the last exile home of the last tsar before his trip to execution in Yekatarinburg, large merchant homes and Amstel beer.

On the way (well, not quite, but with a few hours detour as we got lost in the countryside) we visited a monastery-turned into gulag-but now monastery again, where locals splashed around in the holy waters (sorry, no pictures of that part). Intereshna.

But the highlight so far has to be Yekatarinburg in the Ural, with it’s bloody history of Romanov killings and maffia wars, our funky Soviet towerblock hotel in the shape of a hammer and sickle (visible from the sky), war memorials and military exposure dotted around, and an endless stream of Irish pubs. Uchin intereshna.

Tomorrow we head towards Perm to visit the former labour camp Perm-36 and then it’s still a long trip (crossing the Asia-Europe border) to get to Riga in Latvia…