FROM SHANGHAI TO LONDON BY TRAIN: Russia: Novosibirsk

As soon as we got off the train we booked out next train, to leave at 7pm the next day, giving us around thirty hours in a very grey dreary-looking Novosibirsk. The ground was covered in a layer of mud and melting snow, which made for pretty slow progress. We had no accommodation lined up so we found the accommodation agency and in the station and eventually settled on a room near the station. Fabio’s Lonely Planet said many people spoke English at the station but in fact nobody spoke a word, not so much as a single “hello”.
Our room was in a nearby apartment ran by a sweet old lady who showed us where everything was, from the shower to the spoons. I had no plan other than to call Maki as today was her birthday but I never thought it would take a total of four hours to be able to make the call. As I bounced from railway station to kiosk to post office to phone exchange, I got more and more frustrated. It seemed impossible to make an international phone call. I was constantly given wrong information and when I eventually got the right 100 roubles card, it gave me a measly eight minutes to call Tokyo. Novosibirsk was a little better than Irkustk although once again everybody still seemed to be walking around with a bottle. After a good meal in a good restaurant, I called Maki and chatted for ninety minutes since she called me back.

The next day brought a different landlady who, like most Russians I saw, couldn’t smile and would only complain. She made noises that suggested we should have checked out by 10am, even though every other place I had ever stayed at was 12pm. When I picked up my bags, having asked her if it was OK to leave them, she told me I was terrible (I recognised the Russian, which sounds something like “blockka”) and asked for a hundred roubles I fled to the station to meet Fabio there, not particularly bothered that my name in Novosibirsk was now forever muddied, just like the streets. Fabio and I developed a mantra to express our understanding of Russia so far:
“In Russia the land is hard, the weather is hard so the people are hard” and it really was true. From day one in Russia we didn’t come across any real warmth in people, just cold moody faces, bitter indifference (if there is such a thing) and icy reluctance to do anything to help us. In terms of providing any kind of service, Russia is similar to China: things will only get done if you beg people to do them, regardless of the fact that you may have paid a lot of money for them to provide the service in the first place. And so my soul sank further as I was met on the platform by an icy pissed-off middle aged woman who seemed to immediately despise me for no apparent reason.
But lo and behold we struck lucky. In our compartment was a beautiful cute English talking young woman who was warm and friendly with a keen sense of humour. She made the journey go much quicker and reassured me that there are some nice people in the ice-hell that is Siberia. Like Japan, Russia is a nation where the men seem to be very different from the women.