Goodbye, Lenin!

As we left Irkutsk, effectively ending the Russian lef of our trip, I was feeling pretty good. Pretty, pretty, preeetty good. I wasn't in any pain, for once, having bought a new backpack that afternoon to replace the make-shift one I'd fashioned from the rubbishy remains of my original wheelie-bag after its wheels had broken off two weeks earlier. But at a more cerebral level, I was just generally feeling really happy and content with everything.

I'd gone off on my own little mini-adventure earlier in the day in search of the aforementioned brand new backpack, and it had given me the oppurtunity to explore some less-visited areas of Irkutsk, to interact with the locals a bit more and get a better understanding of how it might have been to grow up there. I had time to think, time to take in the smells and sights of this foreign land. I was really pleased to have done it, and it did me good. Sadly, however, not everyone was in such a free-n-easy state of mind..

It all kicked off a few hours into our Trans-Mongolian journey. Everyone had enjoyed the good old 'Trans-Sib' train ride so much that I thought this would be more of the same. And I suppose it was, to start off with.. we played some cards and read a little, occasionally cracking wise and trading quips. The Pristine Marmott had broken into his Mongolian guide book and was trying to brush up on some basic language and background for what was to be our next destination.

At around 1AM, The Hugless Stone looked up from behind his book and asked if any of us knew how easy it would be for us to get ourselves invited to stay with some local Mongolians in a 'Ger', the traditional tents they live in up in the mountains. "It shouldn't be too difficult", said The Marmott. "Says here most of the youth hostels arrange if for you if you want.." The Stone thanked him for clearing it up, but The Marmott was not finished yet -- oh, no...

"It looks pretty f###ing interesting," he said, slipping into the expletive-ridden dialogue he loved to use to describe things that were really interesting. "Apparently we'll be there at the best time because it's the winter so the nomads are all just chilling out all day". "How ironic..", chimed The Stone, entirely mis-using the word 'ironic' but nonetheless getting a titter or two out of The Hippo and I. "Summer's the worst," continued The Marmott, undeterred by the interruption. "Why?", chipped The Stone with glee, "are they all just nomading around?"

He was clearly pleased with himself for such rapid-fire japery. The Hippo and I were giggling like school-girls but to The Marmott it was no laughing matter. "Are you f###ing shitting me?!" he roared down at The Stone from where he was lying up high on his bunk-bed. "What do you mean?", replied The Stone, confused, and no longer such a barrel of laughs. "What do I mean?!" snarled The Marmott, fuming, before unloading a torrent of frustration on The Stone below.

He had been "trying to spark up an interesting conversation amongst us about Mongolia", he lamented. He'd just wanted us to talk seriously about something for once, maybe get a little intellectual stimulation instead of always just joking around. "And when you're just down there making stupid jokes at my expense", he continued, "it just feels like what I'm trying to say is worthless, like what I'm saying is just something for you to f###ing take a big fat shit on!"

The Marmott was angry that day, my friends. Like an old man trying to send back soup at a deli. We could see that he had a point. But for some reason, The Stone just could not apologise. Everyone could see that he hadn't meant to offend, but he had done, and he owed old Marmy an apology. But it wasn't forthcoming, he just kept on fighting his corner, trying to defend himself. "Just shut up!", screeched The Marmott, taking what had been a pretty intense argument to previously unthought of levels. "You just keep talking and talking and talking like f###ing diahorrea and you don't stop, you never stop!!"

The atmosphere was electric. You could feel the blows hitting deep. This was pent-up anger from long before anyone had mentioned "nomading around". The Stone looked like he was welling up inside and at last he choked out the beginnings of an apology. It was 2AM. The whole ordeal had lasted a full hour.

But it wasn't over yet. Oh, no. Then came the deconstruction. Now that frustrations had been vented, temperatures had cooled and pulse-rates had returned to normal levels, we all set about re-playing every second of the fight: who had said what, and in what order, and why. It was an oppurtunity for all the previously unaired grievances that we'd had to come out, and by the time 4AM rolled around and all had been said that needed to be said, everyone felt better to have said their piece and we bade each other a calm goodnight.

Yes, as we left Irkutsk, effectively ending the Russian lef of our trip, I was feeling pretty good. Pretty, pretty, preeetty good.

The next day passed fairly uneventfully, at least in comparison to what had come the night before. We had a lazy morning followed by a lazy afternoon, capped off with a lazy early evening. All the horror stories we'd heard about how difficult it was going to be to get out of Russia without having to bribe guards and so on turned out to be hogwash. The only border control people we met were friendly Mongolian folk, simple people who were simply delightful.

But that's not to say it was a total breeze, however. The troubles first started around 10PM, when we pulled in to one particular train station for the second of two big border-control stops..

The travel guide had mentioned how boring these stops can be since they can take up to four hours. So, once they'd given back our passports, we did as the Holy Book suggested that dismounted from the motherf###in' train to go buy food and explore the area a little bit. We found some road-side food stands and palmed off great wads of cash to the locals for some home-made dumplings and ready-made meals. Back on the train we tucked in, discovering that the dumplings were exquisite, simply heavenly. Since they'd only cost us the equivalent of a few pennys, I suggested we head back out for more. So, we suited up once again (because it was the coldest we'd encountered so far on the trip, roughly -20 degrees), and headed out to plunder.

The job completed, we headed back to the train sharpish, only to see it pulling away from us into the distance, into the darkness, into the night. There was a moment of 'WTF?!", then The Marmott handed me the bag of dumplings and started sprintting as fast as he could after it, waving his arms furiously and screaming at the top of his lungs. I followed after him, slowed by the fact that my arms were full of dumplings (plus I'm deliciously out of shape), but it was no use. We couldn't catch it. The train was gone.

"Okay, let's think about this for a second..", said The Hippo, trying to keep his head screwed on. The Stone had stayed on the train, so we knew our bags would be safe at least. The Hippo and I both had credit cards on us so we knew we could buy new tickets for a new train if we had to. We were calm. We were collected. It would turn out okay in the end. We just knew it.

We started walking back to the station, since we were outside and as I mentioned earlier, it was f###in' freezin'. We walked in silence. The only sounds were the clangs of the station workers as they worked on the other trains, and the music blasting out of a radio on the platform.

Just then, The Marmott spotted something. "What's that?", he asked, pointing at a light in the distance. We turned to follow his gaze, and I turned on my super-human extra-long-distance vision. "Don't get your hopes up," I said, "but that looks like our train.."

As it pulled closer, all our fears melted away. It was our train! We moved close to the edge of the platform, preparing to rush on as soon as it reached us, when a new song started to play on the station radio that caused The Hippo to stop for a moment and smile:

"Sweet dreams are made of this.."

The words floated out into that cold Mongolian night and we just had to laugh.

When we arrived in Ulaan-Baatar early the next morning, we were met by a very friendly guy from the hostel who had offered to pick us up. "You from England?", he inquired. We told him we were, and he tapped his hat proudly, showing off the England football logo he was wearing. He walked us to his mini-van where he introduced us to his driver. The guy had an unpronouncable name but he had slicked back hair and dressed like a gangster with the attitude to match, so we called him Mr. Infernal Affairs.

We got to the hostel and English Hat Guy showed us around. "Sometimes, there is a lady who sit her, she is know everything!", he told us. "I help her maybe sometimes, she not here so I gonna show you what". He led us to a room with a computer in it. "This is computer, internet is yes. It is not so fast, but it no matter, it is free!"

He did an equally bad job selling us the rest of the town, warning us endlessly that "many people are pickpockets!" and that "they are shit!". He told us how boring Ulaan-Baatar was, whilst extolling the virtues of his two favourite eateries, 'Berlin Burger' and 'Pizza Broadway'. "Do not go traditional Mongolian restaurant," he warned us after we'd asked him for directions, "you will not like".

Surprisingly, we decided to ignore his advice and headed off to explore the city and it's tradtional cuisine. But before we ate, we raced across town to a Buddhist monastary to watch a morning service. It was fascinating, and a whoe new dose of culture-shock reminding me just how far east we'd already come.

The monks were all dressed in brightly coloured robes and had close-shaven heads. Some of them were only young kids, not even in their teens, who giggled at the back and pretended to mouth the words to the various chants. In one corner was a western-looking guy who appeared to be some kind of disillusioned ex-pat. He didn't know the words either but he was wearing all the garb and seemed determined to make this his new life.

It was an amazing ceremony to watch and had me really excited for what still remained for us on this trip. But after about an hour there, my stomach was getting the better of me. I was committing the deadly sin of Hunger, and I was feeling faint as a result. So, we headed back into town, in search of some real Mongolian delicacies.

Instead, we found 'National Mongolian Fast Food', a place that looked like it's name suggests, althought tasted simply sublime. We'd each chosen our meals by pointing at the pictures and hoping for the best, but when mine came I was in no two minds about it: it was the best. It was mutton and vegetables with egg and ride and potatoes, presented to my place still spitting in the pan and mounted on an ornate wooden plate with designs painted around the edges. And in a case of definitely being able to judge a book by its cover, it tasted incredible. "This is the best meal I've ever had," I said, believing every word.

We left the restaurant and headed off to the Mongolian Natural History museum, but that's when things started to go awry..

I first started feeling a little woozy from the moment we walked in the door. In retrospect, I'm very pleased that the guard had ordered us to leave our coats and jumpers in the cloak room, because even in just a t-shirt I was sweating up a storm, truly schvitzing like a chuzzah. Every step became a struggle, and I'm afraid I can't tell you much about the museum itself because with each new room we went in, I just headed straight for the chair in the corner and sat with my head in my hands, hoping desperately that by remaining completely motionless I might somehow vanish away the fever that was taking hold of me by sheer will-power.

But it was not to be. As the afternoon wore on, I was feeling worse and worse, and after we left the museum and headed eastwards to grab a beer at the 'Gengis Club', I wondered if it would be an offence punishable by death in Mongolia for me to vomit all over the sidewalk.

When we got to the club I headed straight for the Men's Room, whilst the others went to get a table. Safely locked in the toilet, I stripped down to my undies, trying desperately to reduce my ever-climbing temperature. I considered 'doing a Borat' and splashing toilet water all over my face, but even in my altered state of mind I realised that wouldn't most likely help me get better in the long run.

Instead, I tried to vomit. I've never enjoyed the old 'two fingers down your throat' technique, surprisingly, but I tried everything else. I threw back my head and then lunged forward, doubling over until my nose was inches from the toilet bowl. I threw myself against the walls. I jumped up and down, my balls flapping from side-to-side like the pendulum of an old grandfather clock gone haywire. I shouted expletives at the top of my lungs, then wretched like I've never wretched before. But there was nothing. Nada. Zip. Diddly-squat. The vom was not forthcoming, and I was only feeling worse.

Eventually, I decided to do the unthinkable. Feeling like a professional bulimic, I put two fingers in my mouth and pressed down. Nothing. I pressed down harder, and let out a gigantic belch. I pressed harder still, and there it was! I let loose a torrent of vomit more volumnous that anything I'd ever produced in such a manner before, a think, chunky concoction riddled with half-digested pieces of mutton, the remains of "best meal I've ever had". Simultaneously I was thrown backwards, like Will Smith in 'Men in Black' after he takes his first shot with the ray-gun. But it was out, and that was all that mattered. I lay there in a crumpled heap on the floor, pondering my next move..

Re-clothed but still a little shaken, I stumbled out of the bathroom to re-join my friends in the bar. I sat down next to them just as the waitress brought over four beers. "Oh yeah, we ordered you a beer," The Marmott told me. I almost laughed.

They could see I was the worse for wear (maybe it was the little flecks of vomit on my jacket that gave it away, I don't know..), but either way they did me a solid and drank up swiftly so we could head back to the hostel. Once back in our room, I made a beeline straight for my bed and crashed out. My head was spinning a little and I sensed that there might still have been some of the evil lurking inside of me, but I was sure that if I could just get to sleep, I'd wake up safely back home in England laughing about what a horrible nightmare it'd all been. "Are you going to be okay?", The Marmott asked me. "Yeah, yeah..", I mumbled, "you guys go do whatever..."

They left me alone, and I spent the next few hours drifting in and out of consciousness like a down-and-out boxed after one too many slip ups in the ring. But as I dozed, dazed, still the evil grew inside of me and with each awakening I felt more and more it threatening to come out. Eventually it grew too much to contain, and though I was too weak to stand, I did my best to make precautions. I reached into the bag of dirty laundry that lay next to my bed, and pulled out two of my old t-shirts. I had just enough time to toss them on top of the covers before the first explosion came. Like a tidal wave, dotted with tiny little sufers in the form of chunks of meat, it poured out of me. Once! Twice! Thrice! And More! I hurled. I spewed. I vommed. I bogged it. I up-chucked and I chucked-up. Again and again I let loose, aiming always with beautiful precision for the make-shift target that lay before me in the form of my t-shirts. Again and again and again until I was truly certain that everything was out of me.

Satisfied at last, I lay back and immediately fell straight to sleep. I was only awoken when The Stone and The Hippo came in to check on me. They turned on the lights and I sat bolt upright. "How are you?", asked The Stone. "There's good news and bad news," I replied. "What's the bad news?", he asked. "That's the bad news..", I responded, pointing at the bad news. "Ah.", he said, succinctly.

"Don't worry about it," I said, "I'll clean it up". He didn't argue, but told me he just had to show The Marmott first. "Sorry..", he added, as an afterthought. "No need to apologise," I told him.

So, The Marmott came in. The good old Pristine Marmott, our resident clean-freak who abhors any less than perfect hygiene. "Don't worry about it," I said, and motioned for him to pass me a plastic bag. He did so, and in one smooth motion I rolled up both t-shirts and dumped them unceremoniously into the bag.

The initial job done, it was now time to change the mattress. An unfortunate casualty of the afternoons events, it seemed my t-shirts had not been able to protect it from getting a little drenched. However, when I stood up, it quicky became clear that even whilst I might have exorcised the beast from within me, I still wasn't fit for active service. That's where my great pals stepped in, coming to my aid. The Marmott, Hippo and Hugless Stone all did their part, helping me into a new bed and outfitting me with a new sick bag and a few bottles of water.

But if only I'd drunk them.. you see, it turns out when you throw up that much, you lose a lot of water from your body. And when you're dehydrated, it can mean only one thing.. diahorrea!

Love it. Love that shit. But I'll spare you the gory details, because (believe it or not) there's some things even I won't dare put pen to paper about. Instead, I'll just say this:

As I lay back, trying to catch a few more winks whilst still maintaining complete control of my bowels, there was only one thing running through my mind.. we were in Mongolia, and it was going to be a whole new experience.

See you next time, folks.

Ewan McGregor is an idiot.

So. The Great Trans-Siberian Express was over. Siberia had been 'Trans'-ed, and we were the ones who had 'Trans'-ed it. We had finally arrived at our destination, a Russian city named Irkutsk, close to the Mongolian border. It's a peculiar place because most people outside of Russian circles will never have heard of it, yet it's population exceeds half a million and it's home (at least in part) to Lake Baikal, the largest freshwater lake in the world, a lake with a surface area greater than most small countries and filled with one-fifth of the world's freshwater supply. A lake covered mostly by a top-layer of ice that's up to ten feet thick, on which trucks can drive and through which men can fish, albeit with great difficulty. It's a mammoth work of nature, certainly worthy of being one of the however-many 'Wonders of the World' (if it's not already considered to be so). But I'm getting ahead of myself, as I seem so easily to do. We were on the No. 10 train that had taken us Trans-Siberian. It was 4AM Moscow-time, although 9AM local time, and we had finally arrived at our destination, a Russian city named Irkutsk, close to the Mongolian border..

One of the benefits of visiting a place like this is that there are fewer tourists stopping by, so you get to enjoy perks like the hostel manager picking you up from your train at 9AM and taking you all the way to your room. Or at least, that's how the hostel had advertised it on their website. I suppose we can't complain really, but I'll admit I was a little heart-broken when the lady who met us as we clamoured off the train told us we'd have to walk to the tram station, then take a tram to the hostel. Perhaps it was selfish of me, but regular readers of this blog may recall that my wheelie-bag suitcase had broken upon our arrival in St. Petersberg, and I'd been carrying the thing on my back since then using straps that were painfully obviously made for hands, not shoulders. To put it simply, I was hurting, and the idea of walking even one more step with that monster on my back sent shivers down my rapidly-compressing spine. But whatever.

The lady who met us to take us to the hostel was a cheery woman who looked strikingly like indie film-maker Ralph Suarez. With her deft aid, we arrived at what was to be our home for the next four days, an eerily quiet place where the only other person we could see was another guy working there, who followed us around with a semi-invisible background presence. You could have slapped some dark lighting and mood music on the place and I'd have believed we'd walked into a Hitchcockian nightmare, but right then that didn't matter one iota. What mattered was the fact that it was Friday, and we'd been on a train since Monday, and this place offered hot showers, free of charge. To put it simply, I got naked faster than Paris Hilton on a hot summer night in L.A. Within minutes, I was enjoying the most refreshing shower I'd had since six months earlier, when I came back from a week of camping on safari in Kenya to stay for one night in a five-star hotel in Nairobi. I was alive again, back in the world of the living. Everything around me felt new and clean, and the pungent odor that had been inexplicably following me around for the past few days had disappeared in an equally inexplicable manner.

I stepped out of the bathroom, now washed and dried and finally in some clean clothes, and saw looking up at me from the kitchen table two smiling angelic faces. "Hey! How are you?", they cooed, almost in unison. They were two Dutch girls we'd briefly over-lapped with at the hostel in Moscow, who by strange co-incidence were taking the same trip as us, right down to the same hostels. We hadn't had much of a chance to meet them back in Moscow, since their last day there was our first, but the little that we had talked, I'd gotten the impression they were rare diamonds in the rough that is the Trans-Sib traveling community.

As my fellow traveling companions took their showers one by one, I got caught up with the two ladies. There was laughter and smiles all around, and every impression I'd had of them from Moscow was confirmed. They were something special.. interesting and funny and not at all pretentious, they were just the kind of people I'd come on this trip to meet. Of course, as The Hugless Stone would later point out, "it doesn't hurt that they're very good looking.."

That horny bastard.

So, anyway, having reunited with the Dutch girls and secured them as 'good people', we parted ways and our gang of four headed off to discover the town. Now, for the most part that meant trying to guess which guys were in the mafia, a game made either very easy or very hard (you decide) by the fact that EVERYONE'S IN THE MAFIA!

"Oooh, don't look behind you right now..", The Disgusting Hippo would mutter to me under his breath at regular intervals during our first meal out, prompting an impressed reaction from the rest of our merry band and leaving me quaking with fear and sincerely regretting my decision to sit with my back facing the rest of the restaurant.

Aside from that, the only thing that really remained to be done was to get our first taste of ice. It was no Lake Baikal, but Irkutsk did have a small river that was partially frozen over in the city centre, so we headed there post-haste. We walked out a little way, until The Disgusting Hippo discovered with alarm that ice cracks, and ice-cold water lurks dangerously closely beneath the surface. Yes, The Hippo fell through, although only on the edge of the river, and only one leg. Naturally, being the disgusting being that he is, he saw no reason to go back to the hostel (which at that point would have been a mere two minutes walk away), electing to stay in his wet clothes and soldier on, albeit now being followed by a queer squelching sound with every successive step he took. Rather off-putting.

Not as off-putting, however, as the bizarre young Russian fellow we met in the super-market later in the day. He worked there, or at least I hope he did, and seemed exceptionally proud of the fact that he spoke English. Well, fair play to him -- my Russian is certainly very limited and on any normal occasion I'd have been delighted to have such a willing and able English-speaker to help us out. It's just the way he helped. It was kind of.. weird. He was always there, just a few inches behind you. The Hugless Stone went off to get some kidney beans.. and Helpful Mike was right behind him. The Pristine Marmott crouched over to pick up a tin of chopped tomatoes from the bottom shelf.. and Helpful Mike had got there first, causing their hands to meet in what might otherwise have seemed like a cheesy moment in a bad romantic comedy. In short, he was just a little too intense for what you'd usually look for in an average super-market experience.

We can't fault him too much, I suppose, since we got all the ingredients we needed, and that evening chowed down on what I'd personally vote to be the best meal of the trip so far, cooked up primarily under the sage guidance and expertise of our resident chef, The Hugless Stone.
I should probably avoid going into too much detail about just how very tasty the meal was, however, given that it makes for slightly less than interesting reading for you folks at home who didn't exactly partake in the eating. So, we'll move on..

The next morning was to be our first day at Lake Baikal, the aforementioned natural wonder that we'd all heard so much about. We woke up bright and early and caught a tram to the bus stop, where we were suddenly hit by the realisation that bus stops have more than one bus at any one time, and we were lacking the crucial knowledge as to which bus was which. However, all was not lost -- we had all learnt to read the Russian Cyrillic alphabet on our first train ride into the country, and so pretty soon we'd figured out what was what and what went where, and we were on track once again.

We really needn't have worried one little bit, however. Before long, as we were waiting for the bus we knew was due to come, we were approached by a small, funny-looking creature with a scratchy high-pitched voice and a massive 'puffa' coat that looked primed for attacking. She was short and moved slowly, shuffling her feet, but with purpose, so that when we caught our first glimpse of her coming our way, we knew we had no choice but to engage..

"Hellowwwwww.....", she crowed, leaning in to the circle we were rapidly trying to form to keep her out. "Baikal Laaaaake???" We answered in the affirmative, and she knew she had us. "What your naaaaaames?", she asked in her bizarre sing-song manner. We told her. "Veryniiiice, veryniiiice..", she replied, smiling a little too much. "Chip?", she said, thrusting a packet of crisps in The Marmott's face obtrusively. "Niet, niet, spasiba..", he responded meekly by means of a response, and we all echoed the sentiment as she offered the snacks around our little group one by one. There was an awkward silence, and she pulled a bottle out of her massive coat and started to drink from it. Then, as if remembering some unknown rule etiquette, she stopped drinking and held the bottle up for us to see. "100% pure yogurt", she told us, beaming with pride. "Good..", I mumbled, as the awkward silence threatened to take over once again and we all tried to avoid making eye-contact with her.

"Howoldareyou?", she asked us one by one, smiling with approval as we each gave our answers and occasionally muttering, "verynice, verynice". We figured we ought to make some effort to be friendly, despite the earliness of the hour and the oddness of the character we faced. "And you?", asked The Marmott. "My howoldareyou?", she replied. "My howoldareyou is 18 years". I paused for a moment and considered whether or not to believe her. She had little baby teeth and fingers that offered no indication of disability, but just rather of someone very much younger than eighteen. But at the same time, there was something about her that made me wonder if maybe she was middle-aged, or even older. It was weird. I decided to give her the benefit of the doubt.

"Have you brothersister?", she asked me, snapping me out of my daze. "Uhh.. yes. Yes. One brother, one sister", I replied. "And brothersister, what their howoldareyou?", she pressed. I furiously re-arranged the words in my head and hedged my bets that I'd understood her correctly. I told her their ages. "Verynice, verynice..", she replied, before proceeding around the group to ask each of us about our respective "brothersister"'s.

The bus arrived, and we piled in. Naturally, she chose to sit next to us, in order that we might carry on our riveting conversation. "Do you speak Chinese?", she asked me. I told her I did not. Undeterred, she continued around the group, until she got to The Hugless Stone, who had sneakily managed to slip in some headphones and was now listening to music. She prodded The Hippo, who was sitting next to him. "Does he speak Chinese?", she asked, pointing to The Stone. "No, he doesn't..", The Hippo replied, shaking his head. "Ask him!", she insisted. He did as he was told, pulling the headphones out of The Stone's ears to confirm with him that he did not, indeed, speak Chinese.

After what seemed like an eternity with the girl, we arrived at our destination, a small fishing village called Listvyanka which is an easy-access point to get to Lake Baikal. So easy, in fact, that by walking out of the bus station and around the corner we found ourselves immediately on the lake.

The rumours were correct. The hearsay was justified. The intelligence we'd gathered had been accurate. It was incredible. The ice was thicker than we'd imagined it could be, and almost as if on cue, we saw a large truck drive past us at high speed, dragging a crate of felled tree-trunks behind it, and causing not even the slightest damage to the ice it drove on. It was incredible. We started walking out. Cautiously at first, and then faster and more confidently as we kept on going. We walked past locals fishing through holes they'd drilled into the surface. We walked past giant rips in the top-layer where shafts of ice stood tall and proud, throwing the glorious sunlight in all directions and leaving shadows below like the marks of an incredible sundial. We walked, and we walked, and we walked, until we were miles from the shore and facing a vast expanse before us that seemed as if it could go on forever. And still we walked. We walked even when we realised that we'd seen no other human beings for hours. Only the occasional eagle would circle overhead, maybe trying to spot a break in the ice through which it might dive and catch a fish, or maybe just waiting for one of us to collapse and die so it could chow down on some decent fresh flesh. It was incredible. I felt like we were the only people left on the earth, like we'd stumbled through some unlikely portal into another universe, another planet, another time. It felt like the pinnacle of the trip had been reached, that this was 'it', whatever 'it' might be. We'd traveled so far and for so long to reach this moment, and it was worth every second. Every hardship, every ache, every penny, every argument, every fight, every everything. It had all been part of the journey to get to that one place, to that one time. And it was finally there. And it was incredible.

But eventually, we realised that maybe we'd come far enough. We'd been hearing strange noises for the past little while, that sounded like explosions beneath the surface. We'd soldiered on to start off with, but as we noticed the sun sitting high in the sky, causing the ice to get slippery as the top started to melt, we considered that those deep explosions we'd heard were probably the unwanted sounds of plates of ice tearing apart at their seams. It was probably not the safest environment we could have been in, and now that the explosions were louder and accompanied by more violent shakes that ever before, we decided to turn back.

So again, we walked. We walked, and walked, and walked. Carefully now, although with an urgency and speed that we'd lacked on our outward journey. At long last we found ourselves nearing civilisation once again. Nearing that little fishing village, with its market and mud-huts and smoked-meat barbeque's. We were safely back in the real world, having enjoyed our first experience of one of the most amazing locations on earth.

But before we climbed back onto land, The Hugless Stone had some experimenting to do. He wanted to know whether the water below the ice really went all the way down to the bottom of the lake, or if there were layers of ice with water in between.

We found one of the ridges of cracked ice where it looked like it might be possible to break through completely, to reach the water beneath. Holding a gigantic slate of ice above his head, he let out a mighty roar, before sending it crashing towards the surface in the hope of smashing through. It barely dented it, but after repeated attacks the first drop of water squeezed its way through a tiny hole in the ice and Stage One was complete.

Stage Two then began. Working with all the precision of a nano-physicist, The Stone delicately worked at the hole, transforming it from the size of pin-head to the size of a football. That done, the final stage was upon us..

The Stone took another piece of ice, this time long and thin. He inserted it into the hole he'd made for himself, and placed his hands on The Hippo's shoulders for support. He then hoisted himself up until he was standing on his weapon, and started gently moving up and down to ease it through the surface to see how far down it would go before it hit the second layer of ice he suspected lay mere feet below. Nothing seemed to be moving, and he started working it harder and harder, desperate to make this thing work. Then, all of a sudden, with a crash and a whoosh, everything happened at once. The prong slid swiftly into the hole, all the way down until it was out of sight. And The Stone, who had been perched atop it, followed swiftly after it. Indeed, had he not been holding onto The Hippo, who grabbed tightly on to him as he fell downwards, he might also have taken a mighty plunge beneath the surface, never to have been seen again. Thankfully, for all parties concerned, that didn't happen, and he survived the ordeal only slightly wet and slightly shaken.

The rest of the day was spent exploring drying pastures, on land. We bought food at the fish market, then went for a walk into the hills behind the village. The Hugless Stone clearly hadn't lost his sense of adventure, climbing not one, not two, but three tall silver birch trees along our route, but nothing came close to the heart-pumping death-defying excitement of his aforementioned 'experiment'.

At long last, it was time to head back home, although the day was far from over. We went to the bus stop to buy our tickets, and ran into none other than our two favourite Dutch angels from our hostel. They'd spent the day at an ice park nearby, which they gave us the directions for since we needed something to do the next day. We all piled onto the bus together, catching up, when we were interrupted by someone. A small little creature with a scratchy, high-pitched voice and a massive coat that looked primed for attacking. It was Yuletide Eileen, our friend from earlier.

She ran the tourist racket well, it seemed, as the Dutch girls also knew her. As we sat down, she stood up, and clapped her hands excitedly. "Welcome to the comedy cluuuub!", she giggled. "My veryniiiice! Haha, you look like Ricky Martin!".. I realised she was talking about me. "Really?", I asked, unsure exactly what the correct response to that assertion might be. "Yess!! And you!", she said, pointing to The Hugless Stone, "you Bill Clinton!! Hahaha!"

And so it continued. For two hours she talked, on and on and on, impressive for a girl with relatively few English phrases. Most of the "comedy club" involved her repeating the same "Howoldareyou, brothersister?" questions, and confirming again and again that I looked like a Latino pop idol, The Stone like that former US president, The Marmott like Harry Potter and The Hippo like Paul McCartney, surprisingly enough. What little information we did manage to get out of her revealed that she was married to an engineer, and that they'd been together for two years. However, mostly it seemed to be a fruitless task.

But that didn't mean her enthusiasm waned, not one little tiny bit. Every time The Hugless Stone tried to slip in one of his headphones, she'd hit it away with a gleeful giggle. And if anyone tried to sleep, they'd soon find themselves awoken to this little tiny girl shrieking, "No sleeping in the comedy club!" in their faces.

No, she preferred to talk, and talk, and talk. And did I mention the kissing? Oh, the kissing! How delighted she became when she successfully managed to plant a big fat slopping wet one on one of our chiseled cheeks..

Thanks, Yuletide Eileen.

At last, safe and sound back at the hostel, the Dutch girls told us it was their last night in Russian. They were heading to Mongolian at 5AM the next morning. We'd be following them shortly, but in the immediate future we prepared to say goodbye. And then we thought, 'F### that.', and we decided to get drunk. We cracked out the vodka, and spent the next seven hours doing shots and playing cards. We gambled with tiny Russian coins that were probably worth less than the metal they were made from, and had a great time doing it.

Such a great time, in fact, that the next day as we ate a late breakfast, nursing hangovers and trying to stave away the vomit that lurked below, I suggested to the gang that those Dutch gals were even more fun than our yankee friend Dennis from Moscow. The suggestion was shot down immediately by the rest of the group, who insisted I had been blinded by beauty, but I was convinced. They were something special alright.

After we'd eaten, we took a minibus back to Lake Baikal with a boring guy called Peter from our hostel. We got out a little before Listvyanka though, so that we could check out the ice park the girls had been to the day before. We got very, very lost initially, but eventually we found it and had a great time riding rubber rings down ice slides, reverting very easily to childhood and finding extreme pleasure in this most simple of activities.

Next on the agenda, we walked for an hour along the shore of the lake, around parts that weren't frozen, enjoying a very different but equally beautiful experience until we reached the village.

As we walked along the final stretch towards the area we'd gotten to know so well the day before, I spotted something untoward going on by the lake up ahead. There was a man standing there looking out at the lake before him, entirely naked. His buttocks were flapping cheerfully in the wind, and it quickly became clear that he was doing some stretches. But although that was more than enough for us to see, he clearly disagreed, as he moved quickly on to going skinny-dipping.

Now, just in case anyone still hasn't grasped this fact, we're talking about Russia. In the middle of winter. In other words.. it's cold. Really, really cold. As he soon discovered, I'll hasten to add. Even a generous estimate might suggest he was in the water for no more than about two seconds, before he scrambled out with all the furious energy of a madman.

We can't be too high and mighty though, I suppose. Only one day earlier, we'd posed for the following photo..

Chilly.

I think I'd better stop writing now. If you've made it this far, I owe you a great debt of gratitude. I've been waffling, I'm sure, but I ask you, can you blame me? I think you'll find the answer is, 'Not really'. To me, this place was what this whole trip has been about. Getting here.. it's been everything. The focus, the goal, the destination. And it was everything I expected, and more. But tonight, we head off on the train for Mongolia, and who knows what that might bring? Could it possibly top this? I hope so. In the mean time, I'll leave you with one final thought:

Ewan McGregor described Lake Baikal as the biggest disappointment of his life. Ewan McGregor is an idiot.

The Trans-Sibirski Expressway

Well, I'm writing to you now after spending nearly five days on a train that took our gang from Moscow to Irkutsk, covering a distance larger than something really, really large and taking us way out into the Russin wild, where snow-covered lakes of ice and incredible clear blue skies battle for the heavyweight title of 'The Most Beautiful Thing I've Ever Seen'. We're in one of the most amazing places in the world, and if predictions ring true it's only going to get more beautiful tomorrow when we visit Lake Baikal, the largest freshwater lake in the world, but for now that's inconsequential. We've spent five days on a train, and I've got stories to tell..

The first person we met on the train was the Portly Porter. She was a larger-than-life kind of woman with a cheery, can-do attitude, the red-tinted hair that's so popular all across Russia, and a smile for everyone any time of the night or day. She'd opened the door to our cabin on the first evening and exclaimed, "Mama-mia, Santa Lucia!" at the sight of these four young men she saw before her*.

* And who could blame her? I'm not going to lie to you here, we're handsome fellas who strike a beautiful picture**.

** When I said I wasn't going to lie to you, I lied. This woman must have been off her meds or something.

Regardless..

We'd all been really looking forward to the journey, and everyone was in high spirits from the first second. We were in a 4-bunk cabin which we had all to ourselves, although that didn't stop the adventures from coming our way. We met a whole band of crazy characters on that train, and none more delightful than 'Snorlax'.

Snorlax was an interesting creature. We first discovered him on the first night of the journey. We'd got on board at around midnight, and after meeting the Portly Porter we were all looking forward to getting our sleepy-time on. We bedded down, but quickly realised that the walls to the cabins were paper-thin. The Pristine Marmott had beaten me in a coin-toss to get first choice of the beds, but his choice turned out to be his downfall as the guy sleeping on the other side of his party-wall was none other than Snorlax, a monumental Russian man with a seedy mustache, a reeking odour and a total inability to maintain nasal silence as he slept. All night long the noises drifted through into our cabin, huge waves of sonic dysfunction that sounded inexplicably like a pig being slaughtered. To put it shortly, the guy had a problem. He snored louder and better than anyone I've ever encountered, and he showed no signs of stopping.

The next day, we had a running joke at his expense, with The Marmott delighting in replicating his noise pollution, doing an uncanny impression of the guy that had us all in hysterics. That is, until we heard a fierce knock-knocking at our door. The Hugless Stone slid it open with all the caution of a fox, and when we saw none other than Mr. Snorlax standing strong and powerful looking over us, a raging fury in his eyes and a quiet humming in his nose as he breathed deeply in and out, you could almost hear the spaghetti western music start to play. We were engaged in a battle of looks with the guy, a Mexican stand-off of epic proportions. At long last, when it seemed the silence could go unbroken no longer, the great man spoke. Slowly, and with a side-to-side rocking motion that suggested he might have been drinking continuously for a great many years, he asked us, "Vodka?"

And there it was. The tension was broken. That old Russian favourite had done it again, and pretty soon he had invited us back to his cabin where the promise of vodka was made good, and where he repeatedly fell asleep with his arm draped around The Disgusting Hippo.

He woke us up bright and early the next morning in an equally unexpected manner. He had brought us a traditional Russian breakfast of bread, cheese and boiled eggs. He spotted our vodka, and although it was only 10AM, the drinking started up again nonetheless. Despite him speaking only Russian, our conversations were riveting. He was a war veteran, travelling home from Moscow to see his family. We played cards with him, and he warned us never to gamble with gypsies. As if that wasn't weird enough, he then proceeded to show us some naked pictures of his wife, her rolls of flab eerily mirroring the rolling of my eyes with each progressing photograph.

AWKARD!

The next time we saw him was in the restaurant cart a few hours later. He was with his friend and cabin-mate, a man who wore drab shorts and sandals with socks, and had referred to himself the previous evening only as 'The Professor'. They both looked and smelt like thet had been drinking continuously since that morning, and it was an image they cultivated with skill and precision as the day wore on: at around 3PM, when Snorlax stumbled into me as he came out of the toilet, reeking of liquor and dribbling like no man I'd ever seen before; at around 7PM, when he stumbled into our cabin without saying a word, sat down next to The Marmott, draped his arm around him, spotted an untouched bottle of vodka on our table, grabbed it and lurched out; and the next morning, when he bid us farewell as we neared his stop, waving his hand to reveal sweat-patches the size of a small African nation and a beer-stained vest that would have never made it past the Chemical Weapons inspectors you find at most Trans-Atlantic airports.

He was Snorlax, and we'll remember him fondly. Especially fondly given the other characters we met aboard the train..

The next new acquaintance of note was a man we'll call Nationalist Joe. He was without a doubt the most disgusting, horrible, pathetic excuse for a human being I've ever met. He was openly and proudly racist, a terrifying misogynist, violently homophobic, brutally quick to turn against you and overall just not the kind of person I'd personally choose to keep alive on this earth if such powers and decisions were placed in my hands.

We'd first encountered him on the penultimate night on the train. The Hugless Stone had been running a mission to the restaurant cart to pick up some supplies for our gang, when he'd been stopped in one of the smoking areas between carriages. These areas aren't properly sealed from the outside so even though they're technically covered by a roof and walls, they're packed full of snow that's blown in and are always freezing cold, as you might expect really given that the temperature outside the train can often be a good dozen degrees below zero at any time of the day or night. Anyway, I don't know if it was the packet of dried noodles The Stone was carrying in his left hand or the MASSIVE BOTTLE OF VODKA HE'D JUST BOUGHT that he had in his right hand but either way, something caught Nationalist Joe's eye as The Stone tried to speed through the bitterly cold smoking areas past him.

The next thing we knew, The Stone was back in our cabin filling us in on his encounter with this guy, and telling us that we had ten minutes before we were supposed to meet him in his cabin for some drinking and all the relevant extras that such activities entail. Well, I was knackered and duly excused myself from the celebrations, but the other three fellas went along and two hours later they returned brimming with tales and soundbites from this despicable excuse for a human being.

I was smug and very pleased with my decision not to have gone along with the other guys to meet NJ, but that auro of happiness would be short-lived. The next night, our final night aboard the train, we were preparing to get to bed early in preparation for the 3AM wake-up we had coming up the next morning when we arrived. The Marmott was making moves to start re-packing his bag, and I was getting deep into my latest reading material, "State of Denial" by Bob Woodward, when there was a knock at the door.

Standing there, in a pose eerily similar to that which Snorlax had adopted upon his entrance into our lives, was a new face we hadn't seen before. He introduced himself and quickly accepted an unspoken and unissued invitation for him to sit down in our cabin. I'll spare you excessive hyperbole and unchecked volumes of description of the guy***

*** Regular readers might wish I spared you such luxuries more often, but hey -- this is my blog, I can wax lyrical about anyone and everyone as much as I choose to, so there.

but anyway, you should get a pretty good idea of him if I tell you that we quickly took to referring to him as Mr. Boring. Seriously, this guy was B-O-R-I-N-G. He and Snorlax would have no doubt made a great team -- this guy was so soporific he would have sent our snoring friend way deep into cloud-cookoo land. We did our very best to make conversation with this boring guy, but everything we tried went no-where. He was a 26-year old business man travelling to Irkustk for business. He had studied business at university in Moscow and his hobbies included business and price-comparisons. He wanted to know what cars we each drove, and how much we'd paid for them. He wanted to know how much the tortilla chips I was eating had cost me, and how much our train tickets had been. He then delighted in writing out charts and tables for us comparing the Russian and British prices for good, and then further comparing Moscow prices with those of a smaller Russian city. Did I mention he was boring?

We were desperately trying to get rid of him, making subtle hints about how late it was getting and how much packing we had to do, but given that he spoke not a word of English nor German, we were having a tough time. Then, just when I thought all hope was lost that we'd ever get him out of there, we heard another knock at the door. 'The Portly Porter!', I thought to myself, 'Maybe she's here to clean the room! That'll get him out of here..'

But we weren't so lucky. We opened the door, to reveal standing before us none other than Nationalist Joe from the night previous. "You.. drink.. now?" he asked us, in his best English. "Not tonight, we have early morning tomorrow..", The Marmott replied. This seemed to have been clear enough, as he turned and stumbled off without another word, leaving us alone with Mr. Boring, once again.

However, this too was not to last forever, as mere minutes later there was another knock at the door. We slid it open, to reveal none other than National Joe, now armed with a dozen chilled beers for us all to crack into. "You.. drink.. now!", he told us. Perhaps somewhat fearing for our lives, we did as he said.

Now, apart from the Breakfast Vodka that Snorlax had forced upon us earlier on in the journey, I'd been tee-total since that fateful night back in St. Petersberg when The Disgusting Hippo went missing. This had been a point of contension within our gang, as The Marmott and The Stone resented the fact that I'd been staying sober, especially since I've never been the biggest drinker to begin with. So I think they might have been smirking a little to see me left with no choice but to join in on the alcoholic festivities with our Nationalist friend, and forced to join in I most certainly was. When we finished our first round, the guy made as if he was going to the toilet, but came back sharpish armed with another armful of beers for us all, which he dumped on the table unceremoniously before announcing that the next two rounds were on us, and after that he'd buy some more. So, the drinking continued, and I finally became truly acquainted with the hollow shell of a man that my travel-mates had grown so fond of the previous evening..

He was a big fan of his generalisations, old Nationalist Joe. He sure loved his stereotypes and was stuck-fast in his opinions of particular races. He had been in the army, and told us that his one greatest regret in life was not having been able to kill a German, after what they'd done to his Mother Russia in the two world wars. He hated Estonians and Lithuanians with a passion, and was intent on his belief in national pride and patriotism. "You.. love English..", he told us, "..and I.. love Russia peoples". "And nobody loves the Jews?", I probed him, prompting him to smile with glee and shake my hand vigorously. "I am a man..", he said, "and if I see any man need helping.. I help. But Jew? He does not help any man.. he love only Jew.." He made a gruesome sneer, and mimed taking a knife to a Jewish throat. We all sat there, dumbfounded, as he smiled contently to himself. I couldn't help but wonder what his reaction would be were we to have told him that I'm Jewish, The Pristine Marmott is German and The Hugless Stone is half-Lithuanian, but wisely, I kept my mouth shut.

After an excrutiating four hours of more of the same, I finally convinced him that we needed to go to sleep. It seemed to have been relatively quick and painless, until it came time to shake his hand to bid him farewell. He was drunk, and seemed to feel it was an appropriate time to tell us what he really thought of us. "You.. are not my friend...", he said to The Marmott, pointing his finger agressively in his face. Over the evening, as we'd grown more and more tired of his company, we'd taken to exploiting his limited English skills by talking about him amongst ourselves using deliberately long words and fast speech to make sure he couldn't understand, and none of us had had more fun doing so than The Marmott. Now, I don't know if he'd been playing along with us and understood more than we'd imagined, or if he'd just sensed the tone of the room might be a general amusement at his expense, but either way he'd cottoned on to the fact that not all was quite right, and for a good few moments it looked like he might make good on his life-long desire to kill a German.

That tension diffused, he then moved on to The Disgusting Hippo, who he was convinced hadn't bought him any beers. "You.. owe.. me.. money..", he told him again and again, until he grew frustrated with The Hippo's steadfastly-maintained look of ignorance and dropped the issue.

Then he turned to me. I'd watched the goodbye's unfold thus far with an unsettling feeling of seeing where this was going, and really hoped it wouldn't get ugly. "You..", he said to me, wagging that same finger inapporpriately close to my face as I tried desperately to read him, to see where this was going. "You.. you are my friend. You are OK."

Sweet Jesus, halleluliah!

So, it was all okay in the end, and we can look back on the whole night with a fond nostalgia already. No-one's quite sure at what point Mr. Boring had left our little gathering, but we can only assume it was in an appropriately boring way. Perhaps most intruiging, we discovered later that he'd left us his business card and circled his telephone number in thick black ink. Presumably he'd been sufficiently stimulated by our conversations that evening and understandably wanted more in the future, although we were left wondering about the logistics of a telephone relationship given that neither party spoke the other's respective language.

The train journey was certainly educational about language across the world and how it works and why. At one point on that first evening, The Marmott had told us that he thought the Portly Porter seemed nice, having just been joking around with her. "I started wiping my boots on the step as I came into the train from having a smoke, and she laughed and told me not to worry about it and to come on in all wet and dirty", he told us. "How the hell do you know she said that?", asked The Hippo. "You don't speak Russian". "Well, I might not understand the actual words, but you can still talk to people if you want to..", The Marmott protested. And we certainly found that to be the case as we met the various different characters you've now heard so much about.

And on the second day, we were in the restaurant cart having a bite to eat when I noticed a movie playing on the TV at the end of the room. It starred rapper-turned-actor Ice Cube and was dubbed into Russian, but even though we couldn't understand a word, we followed the movie flawlessly and frankly, I was thoroughly entertained. The end credits revealed it to have been none other than "xXx2: State of the Union", the kind of movie I'd have previously pre-judged as irredeemable rubbish without a second thought, but which turned out to have been some good, no-brainer fun. I certainly plan to pick up the DVD some day and I learned a lesson I've been learning more and more in recent months, and on that's been reinforced a lot having met other travellers on this trip: people love to be pretentious, to talk about high-art or pretend to be gripped by 'worthy' books than I'm sure are entirely boring. Sometimes it's fun to watch a stupid action movie or read a stupid book. If I'm entertained or kept interested, I'm happy, and to hell with anyone who wants to pretend to be someone they're not, just to look intelligent.

There, rant over. I've got to stop writing now because my stomach's telling me it's long past time for eating, but join me next time to hear about just how great Lake Baikal turns out to be, and see what happens when we hit our first big milestone: one month on the road!

Don't Say the N-Word!

We were in the youth hostel in Moscow at 2AM yesterday morning, hanging with a guy and girl from Kentucky and some dude from Minneapolis. We were enjoying the opportunity to talk about TV and movies and silly things like that, since most of the people you meet on travels like these either fail to scratch the surface of a conversation, or spend the entire time you share together putting up a facade of the ultimate cool.

People seem incredibly scared of being seen as naive or trivial, and many end up coming off as very pretentious as they try to convince the world around them of just how worldly and knowledgeable they are. We had previously thought that these Americans fitted much the same model (the couple from Kentucky were drama students who'd jetted off to Moscow for a week-long spree of theatre and other such indulgences on their university's dime), but on their last night in the city we'd got chatting to them and discovered they were kind of alright.

The hostel we're staying in has a big flat-screen TV in the main living area, surrounded by dozens of unmarked pirate DVDs from the local markets and underground stalls. So, as The Pristine Marmott sat perched on the edge of one sofa, trying movie after movie in the player in search of anything vaguely watchable, we all got to talking. "Hey, do you guys like Dave Chapelle?", I asked them*

* To give a bit of backstory, when we were in Berlin I'd played The Marmott and The Hugless Stone some of Dave Chapelle's stand-up comedy on my iPod. It's pretty bad, as he spends most of the time screeching "I was high!" or "I was drunk!" to unprecedently large rounds of applause from the audience, and since I can do a somewhat credible impression of the guy he became a regular laughing-stock within our merry band of travelers.

So anyway, when I asked the Americans and they told us they thought he was pretty funny, it kicked off a decent discussion. We told them why we thought he was an idiot, and they conceded that maybe he kind of was. But then I reminded The Marmott of a sketch he did that we loved, called "The N##### Family". The Marmott asked if they'd seen it, prompting Kentucky Girl to squeel like a pig on a spit-roast, "Don't say the N-word!"

We looked at each other, my Marmott friend and I, and realised that if they got squeamish at that sketch (which is satirical, not remotely racist), there was only one thing we could do. You see, on our first morning in this hostel, I'd also explored the treasure-trove of pirate DVDs and turned up an almost-watchable copy of 'Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakstan', which we'd proceeded to watch. These Americans had never seen it before, so we felt it was our duty to educate them. We stuck on the movie, and pretty soon they were squirming even more than we'd expected. Two minutes in, between furious laughted and gasping for air, Kentucky Guy whispered guiltily, "I shouldn't be watching this! I have Jewish friends!"

But as the movie went on, they got into the groove. At one point, the guy from Minneapolis who was sitting next to me turned and mused, "I wonder what the f###in' Afghanis think of this movie.. you gotta think that someone snuck it into the country on the back of a f###in' mule or somethin', right?"

I smiled and nodded, unsure of the correct response.

It's funny, there's a few things that seem to have followed us all the way from England, cropping up in each different country when we least expect it. Regular readers of this blog will remember the French Foreign Legion guys we met in Paris, who told us that when they first came out of their boot-camp and went back into society, they didn't ask anyone what had happened about the execution of Saddam Hussein or even why suddenly the Crocodile Hunter guy was dead. The only thing they wanted to know was, "Dude, have you seen this new movie 'Borat'?!"

And last week, when we were with the other American guys in St Petersberg (the same guys who got us drunk and almost got The Disgusting Hippo killed), they couldn't stop talking about this Borat fella. "Did you know that in the movie when he speaks it's actually Hebrew not Kazakstani?", one of them had asked me. I feigned disbelief.

And there's other things, too..

The Disgusting Hippo is a musically gifted man. He can play a mean guitar and his singing voice is like silky perfection to the ears. One of his favourite songs is "Sweet Dreams", by The Eurythmics, a song which we've heard on the radio in every single city we've been in. In Berlin, the youth hostel offered a karaoke night in the midst of our stay, and at the top of the first page of songs available was none other than that sweet, sweet song.

Likewise, last week, we were in a cafe about an hour out of St Petersberg with Frizzly Man and her friend Blondie. They'd offered to show us some out-of-the-way parts of the area that we might not otherwise see, so we'd spent the morning at Catherine Palace, the one-time summer residence of Tsar Nicholas II. It was an interesting piece of history, although not as fun to explore as the snow-covered gardens outside where The Hugless Stone tried his hardest to break through the frozen streams and lakes by jumping up and down on weaker sections. He succeeded and became thoroughly drenched, but that's beside the point. We were in a cute little cafe with the girls, grabbing a bite to eat, when a certain song started playing on the radio. All heads turned to look at The Hippo, who went bright red. Sweet dreams are made of this.

I suppose I should fill you in on the rest of our St. Petersberg experience, although I must warn you there's not a great deal to be filled in on. After The Hippo returned from his night on the streets, we all felt we'd brushed a little too close to disaster for comfort and took things a little easier for the next few days.

Day 21, we went to the Winter Palace in the town centre (once upon a time the site of a bloody massacre), to check out the digs and sneak a peak at some of the art on display inside. On the way there, we ran into our American friends from the night before who expressed a delightfully insincere relief that The Hippo had made it back in one piece. I asked our friend Doofus why he was holding a gigantic pizza in one hand since we were in the middle of the road, and he croaked back "It'sss fer the trrraaaiiinnnn....."

The art gallery inside was nice, packing more big names than we could have possibly expected. Van Gogh, Rembrandt, Picasso, Da Vinci, Monet.... they were all in there. Only Rembrandt lived up to expectations however, the others all provoking a slight "What's the big fuss here?" reaction from our gang, but it was a decent place. We nearly got kicked out at one point when I gave in to temptation and put my hand on the canvas of one of the massive paintings hanging in the main gallery when none of the guards were looking. It turns out they're all protected with lasers, so a piercing alarm went off instantly and suddenly we were the target of the whole gallery's collective gaze. I did my best to portray a sense of innocent confusion about the whole matter, and I can only assume I succeeded since I'm writing this here now nearly a week later having served no jail time.

The next day we went to the aforementioned Catherine Palace with the girls, the invitation being a nice enough gesture in itself, but they continued to out-do themselves as the day progressed, pulling out endless presents for us from their bags when we least expected. We felt bad, and spent a large part of Day 23 looking for something, anything we could get them as a goodbye present, to show our gratitude. They didn't drink, so Vodka was out. Frizzly Man was pretty fat so buying them clothes could only have turned out insulting them in the end. And the last thing they needed was a souvenir of Russia. Eventually we settled on a cake for them (at least we knew that fatty would like it), which we gave to them when we bid them farewell at the train station on our last night in St. Petersberg as we headed off to Moscow using tickets they'd helped us to buy.

So, we ended up in Moscow at 5AM on Friday morning. My suitcase had lost both it's wheels so I resorted to carrying it on my back with crude and mostly ineffective ingenuity. Unsurprisingly, when we finally reached the hostel (which is situation on the top floor of a building at the top of a hill) I was stinking like a good French cheese and jumped at the chance for a hot shower.

I won't recount our Moscow experience for you blow-by-blow, because for the most part our days have been spent visiting tourist-y places that don't make for interesting reporting. Red Square, The Kremlin, Lenin's Mausoleum.. all very nice in their own rights, but basically they're just places we walked to, in order to have an end point to our walking. What's been more interesting to be about Moscow was how different it feels to St Petersberg.

Everyone had told us that St. Petersberg was very European, but I personally felt the stark contrast to our European experience far more when we were there than I have here in Moscow. In St. Petersberg, there was a constant sense of a need to be checking over your shoulder, whether for criminals or the police (both seemed equally threatening). You couldn't walk down a single road without seeing a mafia car driving by, and the streets had a grimy feel. People walked in straight lines looking down at the ground, seemingly wary of getting on the wrong side of the wrong person. It was intimidating, which is why Moscow's been such a relief. We walked around the Kremlin by night on our first evening here, and I was immediately struck by how friendly everyone seemed. The streets are bigger and grander and brighter and more alive. There's a twinkle to every light and smiles on the faces of the people walking by, if you'll excuse a slight Louis Armstrong moment from me there. As we walked along the river, looking out over the city and up at the stars, it reminded me half of London and half of Montreal, where I lived for two months last year. The air smelled cleaner and the world seemed fresher and more full of hope. Maybe it was just by virtue of the fact that Moscow is a capital city, but maybe not. For whatever reason, it just had a great atmosphere.

Last night, we were invited to an 'Irish Pub' by one of the other guys in the hostel, an Englishman who's bizarrely and inexplicably taken on an almost South African accent over the past three years that he's spent traveling away from the motherland. We set off about an hour after him with the intention of meeting him there, but we got thoroughly lost and ended up walking for hours around Moscow, discovering broadways and back-alleys alike. I was really pleased to have done it, because I've often felt like our experiences on this trip so far have been limited to the tourist standards. There's nothing quite like wandering the streets of a city at night to get a true feel for what it's really like.

Philosophical musing aside, we returned back to the hostel after admitting defeat in our quest to find this pub. The Marmott and The Stone cracked open a bottle of vodka, and we invited our American roommate from Minneapolis to join us for some poker, if he wanted to. He did, and what started off as a plan to wind down for the evening turned into one of the greatest nights we've had on the whole trip. As I mentioned earlier, most people you meet on travels like these turn out to be inaccessible or not worth getting to know, but Minneapolis Dennis was not one of those types. He was a big, stocky American with a furry beard and a backwards baseball cap, but he turned out to be everything you wouldn't expect from his appearance. He was tee-total, having been told by his doctor that due to a family history of alcoholism, his first drink would be on his last day sober. He thought just as badly of his fellow Americans as the rest of the world does, and did his best to disassociate himself from them. And most importantly, he had a great sense of humour. He was cracking-wise left and right, all night long the jokes didn't stop coming. He was telling stories and doing impressions and tearing us up and knocking us down and all the while we were in hysterics. He was a sound fella, and when I realised it was 4AM and we had to be up in a few hours, it was with a real sadness that I shook his hand for the last time and told him how great it'd been to meet him.

It's our final evening in Moscow right now, and The Hugless Stone (with the able assistance of The Pristine Marmott) is cooking up a storm next door. I believe it's Chicken Paella on the menu tonight, and it's smelling great. In a few hours time, we hop on our first mega train ride: four days on the trot, which will take us all the way from Moscow to Irkutsk, a city near the Russian border with Mongolia. I'll be back with many more stories when we arrive I hope, but in the mean time stay well, dear readers. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have some paella to eat..

Cheerio!