| ABOUT KAZAN
Kazan, my preferite town in the whole travel, it's the
capital of the Tatarstan, a russian republic characterized
by a strong presence of Turkish. This republic placed on the Volga
river bank in the middle way between Moscow and the Urals, in the
1990 tried unsuccessfully to get rid of the central control of Moscow
declaring its independence. Still nowadays the relationship with
the russian government is very delicate and the tatar nationalism
is quite spread. For instance in Kazan you can see the tatar
flag flapping at the top of the main buildings or the name of the
streets both in russian and in tatar language.
The developing change of the town was quite evident from the
renovation of the old abandoned buildings that dominated the center.
I think many things'll be quite different in few years; the same
"wind of change" that it's blowing in a large part of
the european Russia.
We found a nice accomodation in a hotel nearby the station
paying 1200 rubl (33 euro (12/2003)) for a double, even if the employers
were as moron as usually, especially in the restaurant were one
evening they literally kicked us out saying they couldn't cook anything.
Regarding kindness, to buy the train ticket was an adventure
even more than usual, read the story.
My best memories of Kazan were the colorful trams sliding on
the snow throughout the town, the typical outdoor market, the immense
frozen Volga and the completely iced sidewalks, making of Kazan
a kind of huge ice rink.
The market was quite big with different kind of stalls, but
a typical scene was a middle aged serious woman with thick clothes
cover by an hoarfrost layer standing patiently in front of her goods
placed over some wooden boxes. Some sold just two or three rotten
pomegranate, or some khakies, while others had a bunch of frozen
fishes: life can be very tough here.
Just I saw it I couldn't avoid of walking on the frozen Volga reaching
a big boat stuck in the ice and a group of fishermen who were holding
the fishrod over their small hole drilled through the
ice. Other than the sound of the cold wind sweeping the flat
ice, it was silence: the fishermen didn't speak each other, but
were immobilized, like being surrounded by hundreds of km
of nothingness.
ABOUT
SAMARA
Being
one of the military production centre during the cold war, Samara
was one of the cities closed to the strangers till the 1990. Definitely
it's not considered one of the main tourist highlight in Russia,
but maybe right for such reason it turned out really worthwhile
to stop there a bunch of days to visit this interesting slice of
Russia.
Samara lies on the Volga that,
like in Nizhny Novgorod and Kazan, in winter becomes an endless
iced plateau. In certain points, signed by some wooden branches
stuck in the ice, it's even possible to cross all the Volga just
walking on the frozen water. Running along the Volga there's a beach
and a nice promenade, where Russian play football (even with -10
C!!!), cross country ski, bike (on the snow!!!), push down hill
the kids on the sledges or just drink, drink, drink.
As in Kazan and Nizhny Novgorod
there were many buildings being renewed, but what was quite peculiar
were the abandoned wooden houses spread everywhere also in the centre;
it seems such houses were one of the last signs of the recent far
past in Samara.
One of the reasons that led
me to enjoy the town was the kindness of the Russians I found here.
Coming from Yekaterinburg, where I'm really sorry to say that I
met almost just impolite and unhelpful people, here in Samara I
got stroke by the normality, that to me seemed abnormal kindness,
in the approach of everybody, even at the ticket office of the train
station, the woman smiled to me; no way!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
It's right the super modern
train station one of the things that surprised me in Samara. It's
a huge glass-aluminium structure with a sort of tower ten floors
high with every kind of service inside, rooms and showers included,
but nothing like an english ticket office, of course.
In addition if you love drinking
lots of litres of beer, the kiosk outside the Ziguli' beer factory
in Samara is your place. In fact here you can refill your tanks
paying the beer 0.3 euro for litre. It was funny to see the Russians
filling the trunk with transparent tanks full of beer that at the
first glance seemed petrol.
The drawbacks of stopping
in Samara is that definitely it's not easy to find a cheap accommodation.
The cheapest we found was a central very crap place with a doubles
for 1300 rubls (38 euro (12/03)), but it was so bad we didn't sleep
there.
Finally
coming back to Moscow we got a train from central Asia (Tashkent-
Moscow), and this 21 hours travel, so different from the others
on national russian trains, turned out to be a real adventure. First
of all no more pravadnitsa (the efficient russian woman in charge
of controlling the sleeping car), but an indifferent and not-cleaning
uzbek man, then we slept in the compartment with two very nice Kazaks;
they settled down playing BADDAMON all the day and eating a whole
chicken for breakfast. In addition the train was literally falling
apart: holes in the walls and burnt lights in the compartment. In
short less cleaning, less control, but more smiles: what we lived
was a sample of central Asia or, even better, a sample of another
travel.
ABOUT
YEKATERINBURG
Buying
the train ticket to get to Yekaterinburg it's not that easy, since
somehow you must guess the name of its train station is Sverdlovsk
and by the serious woman beyond the window don't expect any answer
(in russian of course) different that: "There's no station
named Yekaterinburg! I can't issue any ticket". But surely
you'll have experienced the same if are coming from Nizhny Novgorod,
whose train station is named Gor'kij, so it won't get you so unprepared.
I got a little bit disappointed
by this big city, where the centre is not so defined as it's in
N.Novgorod, Kazan or Samara; so even if there're nice places in
the town, wandering around can turn out quite disorienting, or maybe
just because it was the only town I visited not on the bank of a
big river like the Volga, that in the others for me became a sort
of charming reference. From a certain point of view I found Yekaterinburg
less russian than I expected, despite being so far eastwards from
Moscow. On the opposite the town is quite european and even in the
people there's not that much of asiatic.
Nevertheless there was one
the funniest attraction I saw in this travel: it was a kind of entertainment park
for kids where by huge ice bricks were built slides (a big one
7-8 meters high), a labyrinth, a small theatre, statues. maybe some
years ago I would have spent days sliding down, but now I'm too
lazy to freeze my bum, so I enjoyed just watching :-)
As concerns the accommodation
in Yekaterinburg I don't have so nice memories; in fact we arrived
by train in the heart of a cold and windy night and we asked for
a room in the hotel right in front of the station (800 rubls, 24
euro for a double). A man took us to see the room of this big abandoned-like
concrete building, walking in the semi-darkness of the long desolated
corridors full of old beds, sinks, toilets, pieces of cupboards.
that seemed have been tossed there several years before. The room
was even gloomier than the corridor, that we preferred to face the
coldness and the wind of night.
We started walking to the
centre through the empty city looking for another accommodation
till the 8.30 am, when we found a sort of mini-apartment for 1600
rubls in a soviet style hotel (read the story).
Unfortunately I must say I
got very disappointed by the attitude of the people I met in Yekaterinburg.
I hardly remember about somebody who has not been impolite or rough
with us: from the woman of the ticket office at the train station
and the employers of the hotel to the young girl waiting for the
bus. Once we wanted to buy a ticket at the bus station and while
I was trying to understand why the woman beyond the glass was yelling,
the people in line behind started aggressively teasing me
aloud and at the end I had to quit. Maybe we have been just unlucky,
but in three days we met a lot of people. On the opposite in Samara
Russians appeared to have a really better attitude towards us, in
fact in two days I never argued with anybody; I know generalising
is meaningless, but these were the facts!
Anyway
getting to Yekaterinburg turned out to be worthwhile, especially
because it let us to do a very interesting day trip in a cute small
town 50 km northwards called Revda, where I fell
in love for the russian colourful wooden houses
covered of snow with their smoking chimneys.
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