Monday afternoon, August 20. Hot as blazes!
I am more confused than ever! I suppose you could say that we have been brainwashed in the last few days. Or, have we been brainwashed in the last 75 years since WW II was over.
The cities at least, in Russia are no different than in Canada, the US, Western Europe or in developed countries. Youth is youth, everywhere, they are not hung up on all the stuff that we old-timers have stuck in our brain from decades and decades of being alive and sucking up history as it happens.
All the young people know first hand is what has happened to them in their 18 years or so on this world! This generation is not hung up on WW I or WW II, the atom bomb, or the Berlin Wall. They just want the best cel phone they can get and want to look cool!
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When we were off the train we had a Siberian Welcome of bread and salt with a bevy of Russian dancers before we joined the coach for a city tour of this city located in the geographical centre of Russia in the Western part of Siberia.
To me, this is another large but uninteresting city housing 1,500,000 people who are unfortunately stuck in this place that has not a lot of reasons to live here, except for the fact that you were born here. Apparently Russians are not as mobile as compared to we who live in North America.
Our guide was quite frank with us in explaining the origins of the people living here. She herself is the grandchild of a grandmother who was sent in exile to Siberia in 1941. Her crime was not working in a war machine factory but as a boot-maker and selling her boots for personal profit.
Amongst other things we did and saw was attending an afternoon service of Russian Orthodox Church service. It was interesting that the congregation stands!
The weather was stifling so our guide sought sanctuary, after visiting a farmers market, in a very large Mall and bought us all a coffee as we awaited time to return to the train. The train operates on a very, very exact schedule, arriving or departing on the precise minute of the schedule. We had a quick shower, while still standing in the station, [allowed.] We then had dinner with our NJ friend. She is sharing a cabin with somebody she has never travelled with before who was skipping dinner after a tiring day in the city.
It turns out that neither of them could, or wanted, to be in the upper berth once they saw it, and the ladder! So after two nights of struggling with two strangers in one narrow bed, sleeping heat to foot, one paid a sum and got moved to a single occupancy cabin.
This was a rather different day and a peek into city life in the third largest city in Russia, after Moscow and St. Petersburg.
There are two Russias, one are big-city dwellers, [who look and dress like us], the others are country folk. No sitting in a mall having coffee or strutting along sharply dressed in high heels for country folks. They are the drab, stereotyped heavy-set people that we in the west think of when you say the word 'Russians'. Most of them appear never to have learned how to smile. Mind you, maybe there is not much to smile at.
A good sleep, we are getting used to the movement of the train, and close living!
Dancers did their welcome routine for us at the station.
Paid for by the Train.
This bridge was essential for the building of the Trans Siberian Railway.
Without it there was no way to connect west to east with rail.
Not too bad for Siberia I would say.
I went and thanked the Barista, a 17 year old boy!
Inside the church, photos allowed.
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