The Amazing Ross

SchnuggTrip Days 51 - 52: Ekaterinberg - The Longest 24 Hour Layover EVER

Rolling into Ekaterinberg at 4 am, we were all a little hesitant about the next full day of our trip, as we were not scheduled to leave the city for a full 24 hours after that.  Armed only with our handy Trans-Siberian travel book, we needed to burn those 24 hours without spending too much money or getting into too much trouble.  I would call it a ‘No Agenda Tuesday’, but not getting killed was clearly on the agenda, so we clearly could not go with that.

Ekaterinberg at 4 am was desolate.  Luckily, we were far enough north that the sun rose right around then, otherwise we would be wandering the streets at night, with our backpacks squarely placing a bullseye on us for any enterprising thieves.  We managed to find our way to the main part of town, and stopped at a restaurant aptly called Brunch (one of the only places open, Brunch seemed only to serve Thai food and cold pizzas.  Go figure) so that a few of us could use the restroom facilities and get some coffee.  To the delight of those travelers with devices that could pick up Wi-Fi (everyone but me after getting robbed in Barcelona), there was a connection there, so everyone checked in with their families/girlfriends/wives while we had our coffee.  Also in the restaurant was a very drunk 16 year old named Dima, who spoke little English but adamantly wanted to hang out with the Americans while his buddy was passed out in a booth.

After establishing a few commonalities (he and I both liked music…amazing!) I kindly tried to thank him for his time and move along to a different part of the restaurant, specifically one that didn’t have a creepy drunk kid trying to touch you.  He didn’t pick up on this cue, so he continued to speak with me, and a lesser extent Scout while the rest of my jerk friends surfed the web to their heart’s content.  Only after repeatedly asking if we could leave to the rest of the guys did we take off, saying goodbye to Dima, who had taken to juggling empty beer bottles outside, and smashing the ones that he dropped.

Thankful to be rid of the kid, who was nice but a little too touchy and in your face, we pressed on to McDonalds, our home away from home that we had located with the Wi-Fi at Brunch.  About 5 minutes later, we hear some footsteps running towards us and to my horror, found Dima SPRINTING to catch up with us with a huge smile on his face.  He continued to follow us for a good 20 minutes as we tried every tactic short of physically pushing him away to separate from him.  Luckily, he eventually turned a different direction once he figured out that he wasn’t going to convince us to come drinking with him.

Once again on our own, we made the hike to our American Embassy with the golden arches, where we’d treat ourselves to an Egg McMuffin and all of the Internet that we wanted.  We arrived at about 6:45 AM, and learned that the restaurant opened at 7:00, so we became the consummate American tourists, actually WAITING for McDonalds to open its glorious doors.  Once inside, we treated ourselves to the artery choking goodness of the breakfast meals and all the free wireless that we could handle.

That, however, only got us to about 9 am, so we moved along towards what we figured out were the few sightseeing locations in the city.  This included a canal that cut through the middle of the city, and a lake above it, both surrounded by very pretty parks.  It was at this point we had realized that Ekaterinberg was a really nice city - clean, modern and full of beautiful people.  It was not what we had suspected at all, and were pleasantly surprised to realize.

Tired from a ton of walking, we found a patch of nice grass across from a cafe that we decided to lie down on, which ended up being a nice napping spot amidst a sea of Ekaterinbergians walking about town on a standard work day.  Despite this looking extremely odd, we didn’t get bothered at all and slept for about 90 minutes in the shade.  Moving inside to the cafe once we were hungry, we spent some more time reading and eating before deciding to go to a movie, despite the fact that it was in Russian.

Our strategy for choosing the movie was to find one that relied the most upon special effects and the least upon story, so that we could follow the plot line despite the entire dialogue being in Russian.  Given our options, we unanimously decide that Green Lantern was the right choice, and gorged ourselves on 3D CGI and popcorn.  We ended up being right about following the plot; I think all of us walked out of the theatre knowing exactly what happened in the movie and will most likely never have to see it in English.

With still 8 hours to burn, we decided that dinner would be the best option, followed by just posting ourselves at the train station and reading.  Arriving at the train station around 10:00, we piled our backpacks onto each other and hung out.  Kevin brought out his guitar, which attracted a throng of Russian teenagers who loved American music.  We ended up speaking with the few who spoke a little English, and Kevin and Aaron treated them to a few songs on the train station while everyone else just hung out.  It was a pretty cool scene, and one that summed up our experience in Ekaterinberg well - really nice and safe, and definitely not what we were expecting at all.

After a few hours of napping or reading, we boarded our train to Irkurtsk, getting ready for the longest train ride of our trip followed by a visit to the largest Freshwater lake by volume in the world, Lake Baikal.

Stay tuned for a visit to Lake Baikal, where the gang gets in the biggest pickle of the trip, and unexpectedly picks up sixth member of the gang while camping in the middle of nowhere…