Text: Peter Johansson
Editing: Christer Lundstedt
Photos: Christer Lundstedt, Peter Johansson
Videos: Christer Lundstedt



Monday 17th of July

09.18 I could have had a worse start of the day here at Divs Hotel in Yekaterinburg. First it was a well-deserved rest in bed and then I made a visit to our bathtub. Having a bath in a tub is starting to become a tradition for me when we are travelling. One must take the opportunity when it is offered, especially after the sauna fiasco at our last hotel in Chelyabinsk.

09.26 In addition to the luxury of a bath, we also have a balcony where it is easy to enjoy. In the evening there is a light show from the high buildings on the other side of the river and now in the morning it is a beautiful morning sun to enjoy.

09.50 This place is just fine, even if it was hard to find yesterday. The hotel is a part of the sport palace Divsport here in the city (http://divsport.ru). I am now rested and washed. Now we just need to fill up with food.

10.33 After eating breakfast on the edges of our beds, it´s now time to visit another Russian city. Breakfast today was the remains from the trip here yesterday.

10.42 We have manoeuvred ourselves out of the hotel past all the doors that must be opened with the key card. We shall now wander over the river Iset and then see the city centre. We are actually in Russia's fourth largest city. The city has got its name from the wife of Peter the Great, and was founded in 1723. In the years 1924-1991, during the soviet time, the city's name was Sverdlovsk. The population is about 1,5 million inhabitants.

Morning views from our balcony.

Canoes and high buildings.

The Soviet Union is still mentioned on this building.

Christer is walking on a bridge across Iset river.

More people on the water today.

Russia´s first president, Boris Jeltsin. He was from Yekaterinburg.

11.16 We have been walking on a bridge over the Iset, swung left and got into a neighbourhood with new, expensive and very tall buildings. Some will probably be categorized as skyscrapers. Just now we went past the Ельцин Центр, Yeltsin centre (http://www.yeltsin.ru). It features a museum and various cultural and educational initiatives. Boris has a statue outside the building. After having seen a number of statues of Lenin are here, finally, a leader from the present.

11.25 Here are, beside the Yeltsin centre, in the neighbourhood, some other impressive buildings, such as Hyatt Regency Hotel and the 206 metres high Iset Tower. We have also taken a wide range of photographs in a park near here with fine views along the river towards among others our hotel.

11.37 It is now time for a bench break in the sun glow. We have walked along the dam to the river Iset. On the other side of the pond glitters the onion domes of the Храм-на-Крови (Church on the blood) in the sunshine.

12.15 We´ve been walking through the heart of the city at the Площадь 1905 Года ("the Year 1905 square") and seen beautiful buildings and a lot of traffic. We just reached a shopping mall, Greenwich (http://www.grinvich.com). Here we have sat down at a café in the Coffeeshop Company chain. Should the mall be spelled Greenwich or Grinvich? That is the question. The proper way should be with the Cyrillic letters. Here is smooth and relaxing music being played. Soon we will have coffee.

12.46 Satisfied with coffee and pastries and in addition pleased we shall now continue our city odyssey.

13.08 The first thing we did when we came out was to cross the street and go into the Dendrarij Park. Here in the tall grass are squirrels hopping around. At the crossing point on the way here appeared a young man with bandages around his head and he said something incoherent to Christer. He then tried with the same message to a girl. It is unclear what he wanted and what happened with his head.

Iset Tower is over 200 meters high.

Green musicians on Oktyabrskaya square.

Now we can see Divs Hotel from the other side of the water.

Canoeists and the "Church on the blood".

Traffic chaos in Yekaterinburg.

We found a grater downtown.

13.42 We and many others have been interested in the wildlife in the park. I'm not entirely sure that I managed to take a photo of a squirrel. It may as well be a tree stump or maybe a twig. We are now in any case in the vicinity of the Architecture and Design historical museum at Исторический сквер (Historic town square). We have also come to the realization that we should eat lunch in the near future.

14.03 We have done a photo session in the neighbourhood of where the pent-up water from the river Iset is released again. The place is called Plotinka. Here, it is also a countdown to the FIFA World Cup in the summer of 2018; I wonder where we are when the final is played? You can also see the statues of the city's founder and an old water tower to mention a bit more. Around here the city "was born" in 1723.

14.20 Hunger began to make itself known. To continue to walk around aimlessly would just be idiotic. We have instead gone and sat us at the restaurant Stolle (http://ekb.stolle.ru). We sit between the river and the site where the tsar family Romanov was murdered in 1918. That is where we go after we have finished dinner.

15.17 It was a good lunch with excellent service but we didn't get much peace and quiet. Around us gathered a group of mothers with their toddlers (a mom group?). Such groups are, by their nature, not that quiet.

15.36 Now we have reached yet another "Church on the blood". The official name of the building is as often really long, "Church on the blood" is only the first part of the name. This church was built about 15 years ago, in memory of Tsar Nicholas II, his family and their servants that were killed precisely at this place in 1918. It was more exactly in the night between 16th and 17th of July. We came here on the 99th anniversary of the event. Perhaps we should have come next year instead? Near the church there are portraits of the family.

Bolshoy Zlatoust is the name of this beautiful church.

Christer is being welcomed to the Greenwich (Grinvich) mall.

We are visiting Dendrarij park for some peace and quiet.

Resting with squirrels around you.

Iset is running through central Yekaterinburg.

Kvas-försäljning i vacker miljö. Yekaterinburgs grundare står och spanar högre upp.

15.46 In the park in the vicinity of the church is a statue called "Peter and Fevronia". It refers to an Old Russian tale/legend. Peter and Fevronia were also the patron saints of family and marriage. We think that the statue is similar to some vikings and a viking ship.

16.18 Before going home to the hotel, we shall resupply some drinks for future deeds, Christer begin the shopping while I keep an eye on our small backpacks. We are at the store the apple, "Jabloko". Here in the same building is a hostel (Hostel of the RED) where we actually had intended to stay before we at the last moment changed our minds and booked a room at Divs Hotel.

16.54 It is nice to come home to a clean room. Now it's time to shower, followed by book reading on our balcony.

18.39 I have made a stop in the reading. It has become time to check out if it is possible to make coffee. I have been struck by the coffee thirst.

19.15 It was possible to make coffee in our room. I just had to go out to the small water tank in the hallway, fill two cups with hot water and then stir some instant coffee into the cups.

20.36 We have made a comprehensive visual inspection of a restaurant menu that is here in the room. Now we are going to the restaurant to see what they offer. It is located just outside the hotel at the Dinamo metro station.

The water flows through the dam Plotinka.

Lunch at the restaurant Stolle.

Храм-на-Крови, The church on the blood, built as a memory after the executed tsar family..

A photo of the Romanov family on the spot where they were killed.

Book or coffee? That´s the question.

Christer ordered a mix of Russian sausages.

20.54 A short walk took us to the restaurant Gertz (http://www.gertz-bar.ru). It was a little difficult to know where we were going. There were two floors. In the ground floor was the restaurant and on the second floor was the entertainment place Podruga Druga. We have just places our orders. It is always great with a menu that I can point at the dishes when my Russian fails.

22.12 It took some time but it was tasteful and delicious. It applies to both the food and the beer. Now it will be a moment of relaxing in the room with miscellaneous chores. Christer will cut his hair and after that there will be some balcony beer with the light from the skyscrapers as entertainment.

23.44 After the haircut (a quick story with a machine) and some general lounge should we now enjoy a Russian and an Armenian beer on the balcony. These beers were purchased from the food store Jabloko's abundant supply. We sum up our full day in Yekaterinburg and realize that this is a city we loved to stay even longer in, especially when our hotel is so great.


Tuesday 18th of July

00.24 We experienced a spectacular light show during the consuming of the balcony beers. This took place on the facades of the Yeltsin Centre and the Iset Tower on the other side of the water. This latter building was finished in 2015 and is 206 metres high. That makes it the tallest building in Russia outside Moscow. Construction cost was 22.8 billion rubles. Soon it is time to sleep.

08.35 Good morning again! A new travel day is waiting for us. We will from today travel along the rails which is the "classic" Trans-Siberian railway. After Moscow, we have had a more southerly route than most who ride this rail.

09.36 Christer took the opportunity to take some pictures of some cool paintings before we took the lift downstairs. The artist could be named Mikhail Sazhaev (our translation from the Russian letters). We are normally not very interested in art, but the paintings are something extra, they have their completely own style with lots of strange details. Now we are in house cafe for breakfast. The daughter of one of the staff typed the menu on a mobile and an English translation appeared.

10.01 Breakfast here at Divs Hotel had a wide range of porridge, yoghurt, bread, coffee, fried eggs and sausage. This was a good start of this day. As usual there were big problems with the language. The daughter of one of the staff was here with her mom and used her school English to ease the communication.

10.47 Everything is now in place. We are about to check out. Then it will be a nice walk to the railway station.

A painting by Mikhail Sazhaev.

Peter is having breakfast at Divs Hotel.

It´s time for a few hours on a train again.

Christer is reading a book in our compartment.

We have just arrived to Tyumen.

A monument about the railwaymen during the Second World War.

11.32 It went just fine to go to the station and also to board the train. On the train there is an elderly lady from the Netherlands and her husband. She has a hearing aid and has certainly celebrated her 70th birthday a while ago. She is not the only member of this travelling people on board. We meet the Dutch wherever we travel in the world. They do not seem to be affected by the same ailment that many Swedes who are constantly afraid and do not "dare" to travel to various countries.

12.07 Several kilometres of track will again be laid behind us. More hours shall pass. The cute wagon hostess just gave us our bed linen.

13.05 Familiar views are played up in the window to the world. We see pine trees, birch trees, bushes and oncoming trains. So is the everyday along the Trans Siberian railway. One should not make such a journey and believe that you will see amazing things through the train window. Just as we are doing this summer should all make travelling along the railway line, to split the journey into smaller stages and visit the places that are along the way.

15.09 To not completely disappear into the literary world of the book I am reading, I will go and explore the world we travel in.

15.17 My little walk took me to a bistro car. Such a thing can be good to know if we ever should look for one.

15.37 The carriage attendant and a young man looked in. He, better in English, informed us that the toilets will be locked half an hour upon our arrival to Tyumen. This is because it is a hygiene zone. This means that they don't want people peeing on the track in urban areas.

Our nice room at Hotel Kashirskaya Tyumen Center.

Our hotel is well hidden among old wooden houses and new apartment blocks.

Krupskoy street outside our hotel.

Gorodskoy Park (City park) in Tyumen with its many attractions.

The carousel panda is meeting the people.

Spassky church in Tyumen.

17.00 The train stopped nicely in Tyumen at the right time and allowed us to get off. Now we will go to yet another hotel in this huge country. We had originally planned to stay two nights here but now there will be only one. This was one of the stops we were forced to shorten in order to not remain in Russia longer than the 30 days that the tourist visa allows.

17.14 We ended up just behind a man when we stepped off the train and he walked in front of us all the way to Smolenskaya Street, where we took left. The man who eagerly asked people about how he should go continued straight ahead towards the city centre. Tyumen is a town of about 745 000 residents. It has, perhaps, Russia's highest living standard because of all the oil revenue in the area. Tyumen is also a sports town. Here are some well-known athletes, among others the biathlon siblings Anton Shipulin and Anastasia Kuzmina are born here.

17.27 Hotel Kashirskaya Tyumen Center and room 207 will be our home until tomorrow. Anastasia, not Kuzmina, smoothly checked us in here. The hotel is not easy to find. It is hidden among the old wooden houses and hidden by some of the newly built high-rise buildings. Ahead of us at check in were a few pf the Dutchmen who we also saw at the railway station in Yekaterinburg.

18.13 We have now charged both to ourselves and the mobiles. It is time to familiarize ourselves with a new city, a city in the vicinity of where Grigori Rasputin was born. This has led us to some humming of the old hit "Ra-Ra-Rasputin, lover of the Russian queen..."

18.58 We started with a stroll in Gorodskoy Park, the city park. There were among others a small amusement park and a large panda on which it read "I love carousels". Russian parks always has something to see. In addition to the beautiful environments it tends to often be various attractions of various kinds.

19.20 Yet another of Russia's rivers passes by below us. We are overlooking the river Tura. Along its slopes there are lots of walking trails and viewpoints. It all feels new. On the river pass various boats. One is named Viking, another was called Tyumen, just like the city. Now, it is enough with the sightseeing. We are very hungry, there has not been much food so far today.

Tura is the river you can see in Tyumen.

The new river promenade in Tyumen.

The name of the city on the slopes ny Tura river.

The passenger boat Tyumen can be seen on Tura river.

This evening´s dinner will be at the bar/restaurant Sedlo.

19.54 It has become time for a bench break. We need to figure out where we eat our dinner this evening. We had prepared ourselves for a delicious dinner at a grill restaurant that seems to have ceased to exist. It is not possible to find it despite countless attempts. The restaurant had a website with the menu that we looked at in advance, but without the restaurant there will be no food.

20.23 The planned restaurant is simply lost, or it has moved. Instead, we have gone back to the city park and found Grill & Bar Sedlo (http://sedlo.viprest72.ru). It is a popular place with low average age and many tables. Some eat, others drink beer. The music is high and the mood good. Here, we have ordered beef steaks and beer.

21.25 Good evening, great dinner today as well. Christer is now in the food store Pyateroshka and shop something for the evening but also for the trip tomorrow.

21.49 There will be no evening beer for us this evening. It was, once again, too late in the day to get to buy the beer in the store. However, other useful stuff was bought. Now we are going to take it easy in the room and prepare ourselves for the train journey tomorrow.


Wednesday 19th of July

07.15 The sky seems to be completely free of clouds. We might get nice travel weather today. Soon someone will bring in our breakfasts. Why do we stay only one night at the best hotels? It happens far too often when we travel. We could have stayed one more night here but the question is what would we have during a whole day in Tyumen?

08.29 Our breakfasts were carried into our room on trays. They, the breakfasts that is, were consumed on the sides of our beds. Now it is time to get things going.

08.55 Things didn't get quiet that well for me at the check-out. At first, I hesitated to go and leave the key. I finally moved forward at such a speed that I nearly knocked down one in the hotel management. Next, I took the wrong registration slip and almost forgot to get the receipt. You can't be on top all days.

09.30 Cloudless days are warm days and we sweat. Days when we carry backpacks, are more exhausting. We have been walking to the railway station here in Tyumen. After a little wandering and platform searching, we finally found platform 3 and carriage 9. The platform was the furthest away from the station and it was a long hike to the carriage.

09.56 A small dog, a terrier? have curiously looked into our compartment. The hostess just brought us the towels, pillowcases and sheets. I wonder if someone will laika it if I post a picture of the dog on Facebook?

Our closest neighbours.

The railway station in Tyumen.

Suddenly we received a visit from a dog.

10.31 The thing to go by train in Russia has started to become common nowadays. We easily fall into the rhythm and routines. At first we make our beds, when we find a comfortable position where we recumbent can read in our books and look out through the window. I must admit that we doze off from time to time.

CHANGING TIME ZONE

12.16 There has been yet another change of time and the watches have been set forward one hour. It is now time to lift our feet. The compartment is being cleaned. The sky is a little duller, cloudier. Our journey goes further to the east. We are moving towards the south-east, a bit north of the border between Russia and Kazakhstan.

14.01 Sometimes a touch of the boredom rears its ugly face on our long train journeys. This is such an occasion. However, we can't jump off and cancel everything. It is just to bite the bullet.

15.24 Things and the trip go on. It is becoming dense and we pass a countless number of trees. I shall soon enjoy my packed snack.

16.22 It is not far to Kazakhstan now. We see a number of broken birch trees out on the flat ground. They are broken, some feet up from the ground at exactly the same height. We have been thinking for a while what the cause of this phenomenon may be. They seem to have broken at approximately the height that the snow reach in the winter. A wet rain is falling from the sky.

16.38 The light rain quickly turned into a real storm with intense rain against the train. There might also be some thunder.

Lots of broken birch trees, why?

Our room view today could be one of the worst ever.

This is our room. We are staying at the Russian railway hotel Zheleznodorozhnaya.

This is what a Russian train looks like from above.

The railway station in Omsk.

18.55 We have, after a long slow train ride, finally arrived in Omsk, a city we remember from the Jules Verne's old novel "The courier of the Czar". It was not so easy to find the way out from the station. Now, we are in any case on the way to our hotel which is on the other side of the railway. It seems as if we must pass via a bridge over the track area to get there.

19.31 We are, after a moment's rest in room 1 at the Hotel Zheleznodorozhnaya, now ready to go out and look for food. Our hotel is owned by the Russian rail company, and is ugly on the outside but nice on the inside.

19.56 This was above expectations. Christer had a quick look on the net and found the restaurant Zhili Byli (http://www.zhili-byli.vidgroup.ru). It turns out to be a nice restaurant with a broad menu. Like so many times before in Russia, this restaurant has a 'Russian farm theme" in its interior design. Zhili Byli means something like 'once upon a time". The restaurant is located a bit away from the railway station along the Karla Marksa Prospekt, a very long street that runs through a large part of Omsk.

21.46 At first, this was a fantastic restaurant when we saw the interior, the premises and the menu. However, the service wasn't fast, we didn't get the most culinary and large portions, but it cannot be success every time. After a bit of purchase on the way home at the rail station, we are now back at home in room 1.

23.57 We hear noise from the nearby railway station; it is speaker sounds, train sounds and other. This will not interfere with our night sleep that much.

Peter has placed himself by a table at Zhili Byli restaurant.

Unfiltered beer at the dinner.

An interesting solution.

Hotel Zheleznodorozhnaya, Omsk.


VIDEOS


You can see 89 photos from July 17 in this photoalbum.
You can see 48 photos from July 18 in this photoalbum.
You can see 20 photos from July 19 in this photoalbum.


CONTINUE


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