Cheapest Price Zolpidem Buy Valium 5Mg Online Uk Cheap Xanax Necklace Order Adipex Weight Loss Pills Order Prescription Phentermine Online Cheap Generic Soma

Irkutsk, Siberia: Short Stay In A Whatever Town

0
Share

Picture

After the three days of train of the last post, during which I went just a little batty (silly spoiled me judging the Russian trains so harshly so the universe decided to teach me a lesson because I had NO idea what was coming with the Chinese trains), we landed in Irkutsk. We were truly in the heart of Siberia now, spending one day in Irkutsk before bussing up to Olkhon Island on Lake Baikal, promised to be an idyllic, beautiful site and the time we get to relax. Lol. 

IRKUTSK
Picture

guess who
We were so antsy from our long train that we just wanted to walk around the city all day. Well, shower, and then walk around the city all day. We walked to our hostel, Baikaler, which was about 30 minutes walk, which seemed fine when we were deciding to do it, but then after like 10 minutes in the heat with our packs and not having slept well for 3 nights, well it wasn’t the greatest idea we ever had. The Baikaler hostel was a little hard to find, with the door around the back of the street in like an alley, and then up three flights of stairs. It’s a tiny place, with only like 10 beds and one private room (ours thank goodness), and no real common area. There was a tiny couch right at the front door, but that whole front area was the size of a bathroom and filled with everyone’s shoes and all the luggage being left by people checking out that day so it was cramped. Also, there was only one toilet and one shower for the whole place. Luckily we got to shower within the hour because we’ve never been so disgusting. But a toilet line at night is not my idea of fun.
Picture

don’t know what anything is
After we were clean, we went out into the city and immediately got dirty again because the air quality is much, much worse. Walking around Irkutsk, I actually had trouble breathing, like I had asthma. It was really bad, probably because the cars are all of lower quality and producing the most incredibly toxic emissions you’ve ever seen. All over Siberia we noticed this, how obviously awful the air pollution was. Sucks. We went into the very first cafe we saw for First Real Meal in Days, called Baikal Love Sit & Eat Cafe. They were out of the things on the menu that seemed vegetarian but the lady was nice and made me a (nother) tomato and cucumber salad as well as a plate of rice and peas that was quite good. I didn’t take pictures because I was just so excited to eat, even though it was my approximately one millionth cucumber tomato salad. 
Picture

Touristing in Irkutsk
​After fooding, we walked to see two Decembrists house museums. The Decembrists were a group who made an uprising in Russian government in 1825 and were so successful that they became a pretty popular indie rock band. See, we didn’t really learn much about them because, despite two museums here and more we saw later in other places, every exhibit on Decembrists refuses to talk about what they actually did politically. All they talk about instead is how they dealt with their exile to Siberia and what they made of their lives in exile with families and stuff. Seriously, it’s almost like they aren’t allowed to talk about it? It’s so obvious that they are all missing a huge part of the story and like, that can’t be an accident. So I looked it up. They were protesting Tsar Nicholas I’s assumption to the throne after his elder brother removed himself from succession. I mean it sounds like that’s perfectly fine; if you are accepting monarchy and bloodlines of men who you give the power to rule you then why wouldn’t the younger brother get to go if the older brother says nah? Isn’t Harry going to be my King if Wills turns it down? Oh no that little pistol George goes before Harry now! But he’s a baby! He can’t even read! I don’t want a King who can’t even read!
The two museums operated on a joint ticket that gave a slight discount so we did both – the Trubetskoy and the Volkonsky Museum. I think I liked the Volkonsky one better but it could be because we went there first when I still had the mental ability to lie to myself about having any semblance of energy. That ended quickly. We weren’t sure if we could take pictures – the museum attendant literally followed us room to room and guided us into the next when we seemed done with each one (soo awkward, and more of that to come, we learned) but we snuck a few pictures:
Picture

one of the house museums, Volkonsky I think
Picture

old prince volkonsky is crazy
Picture

and mary is plain
Picture

andrey’s family
Picture

totally messed up
Picture

And Balaga’s just for fun!

PictureBALAGA’S JUST FOR FUN!

​We magically walked by a cafe afterwards that had fresh juices and smoothies. I totally wanted a watermelon juice! I watched as the girl picked up a small whole watermelon and cut it and put some of it in a blender and I was like yesss it’s just watermelon this is amaaazing. I loved it! I didn’t take a picture but I got a picture of the menu. Such a lucky find as I started crashing. It didn’t help a great deal (it’s mostly water!) but at least was yummy. They had smoothies and milkshakes too, so Husband got a milkshake. They had chocolate, banana, and ‘plain’, and we asked ‘so is plain just vanilla?’ and the staffers looked at us like we had 3 heads and were like ‘…no, it means it’s plain…’ Husband ordered it and I was like of course it just means it will be vanilla, we just don’t know the right word for it? But no it wasn’t vanilla. It was plain. Unidentifiable but unmistakable just ‘plain’ flavor. 

​For the next few hours, we walked around Irkutsk’s main street, which is pretty whatever, trying to decide what to do. I couldn’t contribute to the conversation because I was so tired. No, I wasn’t just tired, not just that sleepy feeling you get late at night when you’re like oh I could really sleep right now! Not that. I wasn’t just tired, I was exhausted. I wasn’t like oh I need sleep, I was like oh my body is breaking down worse than Trina in “Falsettos” in the one part of “Falsettos” that I completely enjoyed. I was that kind of exhausted that celebrities pretend they have when they end up in the hospital. My everything hurt. I could feel that my heart was tired and was like pleeeease sleeeep dumb person whose body I’m in! But there was no sleep to be had. (No sleep till London in October, I fear. At least not the kind I need.) 
Picture

one nice building in Irkutsk
​There was a decent 24-yaca supermarket on the main road that we went to for supplies. Oh I don’t think I’ve shared this yet: Everything that is open 24 hours says on its awning “24 yaca” well it doesn’t say yaca it says the Russian word for hours that pretty much looks like that, and is pronounced chassa. It ends in an ‘a’ only because 24 ends in 4 and you use the ‘a’ ending for numbers ending in 2,3, and 4, and a different ending for ‘1’s and a different ending for numbers ending in numbers 5 and up. ISN’T RUSSIAN FUN. Anyway, in St. Petersburg and Moscow, we would get excited every time we would see a ’24 yaca’ sign thinking it was a minimarket or bodega where we could get a bottle of water, because that seemed like what most of the ’24 yaca’ places were. But guess what, they are mostly banks. THERE ARE SO MANY BANKS, in every city, and they are all 24 yaca! You can’t give me water! But guess what even more? In St. Pete’s and Moscow, the MOST prevalent 24 yaca places were FLOWER SHOPS. Every corner had more all night flower sellers than they had markets, coffee shops, even banks. It was ridiculous! Who is buying all these flowers at 4am?? My god.

Anyway anyway, the supermarket in Irkutsk that we went to had more carrot and yuba (tofu skin) salad, so I got some of that for the next day. Soo yummy. I’m sad I won’t find any more of that for a while. We stocked up on some beans, bread, and peanut butter (yassss finally) and of course waters before searching for a dinner place, kind of early so we could go the hell to sleep. We looked around at a few lackluster menus before deciding on an Italian place called Prego (Prego mille!). We actually weren’t looking for a change from Russian food, but for such a small boring city it was weirdly international and it was super hard to find just a Russian restaurant. In a 20 minute review of the main street, we found a Belgian place, a Japanese, a Chinese, another Japanese, two Italian, an Indian restaurant, 18 ice cream carts, 4 coffee shops, 3 Subways (they’re everywhere, still don’t want it), and one Russian cafeteria that looked suuuper dodgy. At Prego, they had a decent looking green salad (with lettuce! not just cucumber and tomato – though of course they were in it too), and a very good little plate of eggplant caponata. The best part was that the salad came on big pieces of flatbread, lol. My favorite combo! 

So, our time in Irkutsk was pretty tame. A few small-scale meals, a few tourist attractions, a lot of crankiness. We would be back at the end of the week for another afternoon, during which we pretty much just ate and bought more water at the supermarket; I’ll include that meal at the end of my next post. It’s a small town, and people really only go because they need a break on the Trans-Siberian and Irkutsk is the jumping off point (to start negotiations) to get to little villages on Lake Baikal. The next morning, we would leave for one of the most lauded of these villages (and one of the hardest to reach), Olkhon Island. We considered its remoteness at first romantic, promising some solitary, far-from-other-people peace and tranquility and beauty. And with that, I give you my final LOL of this post. 
Related Posts
Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *