| MONEY: ALL AND IMMEDIATELY! We arrived in
Yekaterinburg in the heart of a cold and windy night. At first we thought to sleep on the
benches of the waiting room, but there was no way to stay there without having a valid
ticket for a train, in fact we were kicked out by the guards at the entrance not available
at all to do exceptions. After having discarded a super gloomy room in the scaring huge
concrete building of the hotel in front of the station, we began walking to the center
looking for an accommodation. It took some hours to find the place of one among those
indicated by the Lonely Planet, but with big disappointment we found just an under
construction building. Then after wandering a while, finally at 8.30 a.m. we found a room
at hotel Bolshoy Ural. Despite not being cheap (1600 rubls = 46 euros (12/03), it was
quite big and we were so tired and frozen that we decided to fix it for two nights. A the
beginning the woman at the reception had been rough and impolite, as usual in Russia, but
nothing compared to what she became when we said her we had to change the money to pay to
the second night. Given she was freaking out I reassured her it was just a matter of few
hours for her to get such money. I could see the anger burning in her eyes, while she
confiscated one of our passports yelling we would have got it back just we when we had
paid. I still don't understand such behavior towards a foreign customer who in the early
morning has to change to pay the night next to the one he has already paid and still not
slept. Anyway we went in the room to rest and unfreeze till the afternoon, but some hours
later two guys knocked at the door. They were two guards who come to take us to the
nearest bank to change to money. So it was, and half of hour later the bitch had her money
and we got our passport back!
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THE ADVENTURE OF
BUYING A TRAIN TICKET
We
entered in the ticket office at the station in Kazan, hoping to manage to buy quickly and
painlessly the ticket to Yekaterinburg. Unluckily we hadn't a clue of how tough it'd have
been. Remember you need to indicate the train number to the woman of the box office, so
first of all you need to translate the schedule in order to identify it. The train
schedule was a huge panel, at least 7 meters high, indicating all the trains passing,
leaving and arriving at the station using always the Moscow time. While it's not so
difficult to figure out which are the trains to your destination and at what time they
leave, it's not easy to understand in which days they run. In fact there was the note
section in the schedule specifying if the trains were in the even or odd days but were
also indicated a lot of other numbers. After a while meditating about the different
possibilities we chose more options and started queuing. In the hall there were many
queues apparently not so long, but they turned out to be very slow. One hour later I was
still standing more or less in the same place, when I group of militaries entered and
skipping the queue crowded in front of the window. This made me freaked up and I started
complained, but people around me explained they had the priority. Several time the police
entered to kicked out the drunks sat on the benches hoping in a shelter from the outdoor
coldness. The police was very determined shouting and pushing them out around the other
indifferent Russians, I guess that situation wasn't something new for them.
Trying to communicate with the people around me I knew an english speaker guy, no
way!!!!! Taking him in front of the train schedule I immediately asked explanation. He
peered it, thought a little bit and then said he didn't understand what it meant.
Shit!!!!Then finally my turn came and the mess started. The woman of the ticket office,
among a lot of things I didn't understand, said my train there wasn't, but I could get
another, but that in third class was full.. while I sked her to write the train numbers on
a piece of paper trying to pass her it through the hole of the window.
It took a while and at the end I got a ticket for a train that arrived at my
destination in the middle of the night. At first I thought:" who minds, I've the
ticket, that is important", I didn't know it would have been the longest night of the
whole travel.
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