Judy and I have left Coffs Harbour for another (I hope) adventure.
The Plan
To fly from Coffs Harbour to Sydney on Friday 27th July. In the evening go to a Celine Dion concert in Sydney. (I have not seen her live for a couple of years).
On Saturday afternoon fly to Milan via Doha. Next is a train to Como on the edge of the lake in Northern Italy.
After a week in Como fly to London and stay a few days with Jeremy and Shirley Hopkins in Wokingham.
The 4 of us will spend a week in Lisbon in mid-August from whence Jeremy and Shirley return home to Wokingham whilst Judy and I fly to St. Petersburg. We then have an 8 day tour in St. Petersburg followed by a 16-day tour on the Trans-Siberian Railway through Mongolia ending in Beijing.
So, that is the plan. It commenced with the Celine Dion concert last Friday evening at the Qudos Stadium in Sydney.
She was on stage singing and reminiscing for the best part of 2 hours. She had a full-sized backing band and 3 singers performing with her. The concert was truly amazing. I think her singing voice is beautiful. The stadium which holds 21,000 people was full to capacity. The laser lighting and its effects were stunning. I saw Celine on stage at the Coliseum theatre at Caesars Palace 2 years ago, that time with Judy. I think this concert in Sydney was more spectacular from a lighting perspective.
Here are a couple of comments from a concert review.
“Celine emerging in the first of many amazing outfits for the night, looking like the world’s gayest matador in an immaculate all-gold suit as she prowled the stage singing her first Australian number one hit, The Power of Love. Instant standing ovation before she’d even sung a note.”
and …
“Next, Her 1996 masterpiece, the Jim Steinman-penned mini-opera It’s All Coming Back To Me Now. You haven’t lived until you’ve heard Celine Dion sing live what are surely some of the most satisfying lyrics in popular music – “THERE WERE NIGHTS OF ENDLESS PLEASURE! / IT WAS MORE THAN ANY LAWS ALLOWED! BABY. BABY. BA-BYYYYY….”
I am in the process of creating a Celine Dion movie and I will let you know when it is ready to see. I took some photos with my phone, a Galaxy 8 – the reviews suggest that it has a high-quality camera system. I would agree with the forward facing lens but the back (selfie) lens less so. I took the second selfie of my life at the concert and the camera has distorted my nose, it looks huge. I must check the internet to see if any other users have had the same distortion problems with this phone. Judy said she thought my nose was just the same but perhaps I am a little more atuned to matters photographic.
As I write this we are 38,000 feet over eastern Turkey on the way to Milan. It never ceases to amaze me that we can leave Sydney, be a third of the way into a 14 hour plus flight, and still be flying over Australia! Earlier I thought that the pilot had made a mistake, we headed for and passed over Adelaide. Of course, I soon came to the conclusion that that was silly, he was probably going to pick someone up in Perth or Bunbury in WA. There were a few empty seats. But I was wrong again, soon he beared right and headed for Doha. I don’t like to complain but I think he took a bit of a long way around.
Since writing that we have arrived at Lake Como. I have created a slide show which you can see to the left.
I hope that you agree that the Lake here at Como is really beautiful. We have taken a hydrofoil and ferry ride on it to see the beautiful gardens shown in the slides and separate images.
On Thursday we took a train to Capolago across the border into Switerland, only 25 minutes away. I was very surprised that we did not see a border post or have our passports checked. Maybe there we hidden cameras and perhaps we did not look like refugees. Does a refugee have to enter a foreign country by boat?
We are just about to leave Lisbon and head off to St. Petersberg where we stay for a week. I have fixed the slide show so it now shows the title and comment.
The only really fun thing that happened here in Lisbon was when I came back from visiting the Moorish castle where I walked about a km to find its entrance (having gone past it twice due to a lack of signs). Anyway, I had walked about 12 kms that day so I indulged in a taxi ride home from the station (Judy, Shirley and Jeremy had decided to miss the castle and left prior). I showed the taxi driver the road of the apartment on the Maps.Me app and he said he could not read it. He struggled until I made it 72 point when he nodded. I reflected it was good that the cars on the road are 72 point or larger.
We arrived in Saint Petersburg last Friday from Lisbon via Helsinki using Finnair. A decent enough trip although we did not have noticeable jet lag we were quite tired after our journey. As I was part of the party going to Lisbon airport we arrived an hour early at 5:10am but to my mind it was better than 1 minute late. On arrival into Russia, we managed to queue at the wrong passport control (we chose “EU” instead of “Others”). This meant we were last to be cleared through passport control and when we found the luggage carousel our two cases were happily going around all on their own. Our driver, Eugin, had not given us up as a “no show” and delivered us speedily to our hotel.
We met Olga Neuymina our guide for the week on Saturday. She has a wealth of knowledge about the many museums, churches and sights we have seen plus great insights into Russian culture and politics. A wonderful guide.
It is great fun doing supermarket shopping here in St Petersburg. Take for example the seaweed I bought for dinner the other night. It was with other recognisable seafood so I thought it was shredded muscles. Olga told us the next day it was “sea grass”. To find the price of an item you do a pattern match with each of the labels attached to the shelf on which the item stands. These are in Cyrillic text as is the label on the item itself. You should also match the weight for an additional check that you have the right price. I think it is cheating to laser scan the item to find the price.
The Russian czars ruled all of Russia from the mid 1500’s until the 1918 when the last Romanov Tsar Nicholas II, his wife Tsarina Alexandra and their five children were murdered in the February Revolution.
The history of the Czars is so fascinating, Olga brings it all to life – there was lots of good done, some mistakes and much intrigue.
It is difficult to single out any attraction but the Hermitage Impressionist collection (the largest outside France) housed across from the Hermitage palaces, in the General Staff Building (formally the Ministry of Finance and Foreign Affairs) deserves a mention, as well as the Fabergé museum.
I had an issue with one of my Debit cards and the ATMs here would not accecpt it. I ended up by phoning the help line in Australia for 10 mins. The operator at this hotel said that the calls to Australia are free. I hope so otherwise I might have to get a second mortgague or pass the hat around to my faithful readers for donations.
Tomorrow, Friday we catch the Sapsan (Perigune Falcon) train to Moscow. It is high spped and does the 650kms journey at an average of 160km per hour. It reaches speeds of over 200km per hour. On Saturday evening at 11:45 we take the Trans-Siberian “Rossiya” train No2 – a high-quality Firmeny train. They are the most modern sleeper trains on the network with the best facilities, services and on-board staff. We arrive at Ekaterinburg at 3:06 am on Monday morning where we spend the rest of the morning in a hotel . The next day Tuesday we see some sights before continuing on Tuesday evening.
Earlier we arrived at Moscow’s Yaroslavsky station in plenty of time to board the train but we were the last to get on our coach. I thought it would be great to take photos of the engine. Our coach was number 15 out 16 at the back of the train. The coaches are long so I had a goodish walk to the front. When I arrived, there was no engine connected, just a shunting engine leaving that had brought the coaches in. Eventually the main engine, with an electric pantograph, arrived and I was rewarded with what I hope to be a good video. I will post it ASAP.
We left on time and after the initial excitement I settled down to a gentle snore (so I have been told). We woke after 7 hours fitful slumber to be about 600kms from Moscow. The next stop was to be 5 and a half hours away at Kirov. The average speed of the train overnight was about 75kms per hour. It was very misty early on but cleared after a while, the scenery is made up of mostly silver birch forests.
As an aside I would like to share with you a little-known Russian fact that Judy and I have learnt. When one visits a Russian supermarket, the total is always in excess of 1,000 rubbles (AUD $20). We have tried to spend less but it does seem impossible. I am convinced that there are trained hypnotists on staff that ensure you put chocolate and crisps in the basket. It’s a good job they only make you buy essential items!
We have just left Balyezino which is 1190 kms from Moscow after another change of engine (again videoed). This engine looks a bit stronger than the last maybe because we will soon climb the Urals. We will soon be on local time of Moscow +2 hours. All along the line are various short platforms at posts showing the distance from Moscow. I have seen the local people waiting at these points as I assume that local trains stop there.
Yekaterinburg is a very modern city at the top of the Ural Mountains. These are not very high only about 840 feet above sea level. We had an interesting experience at the watch menders. My watch stopped just as we entered a shopping centre. Luckily there was a single small kiosk with a young man who did nothing but fix watches. I managed to make him understand that my battery was dead. He had an iPhone and spoke Russian into it. It immediately typed what he said as text in English. Here is the conversation.
Between each question I just had to answer DA – Yes.
Q: I assume your battery is dead?
A: Da (I rubbed two fingers together and make a face like Fagin, meaning “How much?”)
Q: It will cost 500 rubbles. (About AUD $10.00) Is that OK?
A: Da (Nods head)
After 10 minutes of watch-mending action…
Q: The case will not seal – the back is broken.
A: Oh! Dear! (Woe is me.) More watch-mending action and changing of the back-cover gasket…
Q: All done 500 rubbles please (I handed over money and also signed a guarantee.)
Q: The repair is guaranteed for 2 years. If you have trouble in that time I will fix it for nothing. I nod enthusiastically. It was a bit too difficult to explain that I would probably take it to a shop a bit near home in, say, Coffs Harbour, rather than Yekaterinburg. Yekaterinburg or originally Ekaterinburg was named in 1723 after Peter the Great’s wife whom we call Catherine but in Russian is Ekaterina.
We have now completed the next leg of our journey which is to the city of Novosibirsk (New Siberia). It was the town where the Trans-Siberian railway construction was commenced. The railway radiated west to the Ob river and also east to Irkutsk and then a few years later to Moscow. It also boasts a really great open-air railway museum with the steam locomotives of legends with the Russian star on the front. The standout was “The General” built in the mid-fifties just before electric power took over. It reached speeds of 120 mph.
Just outside the city was a purpose build “Academics town” (Akademgorodok). Constructed in the Soviet era, it was built specifically for research scientists. It was completely self-contained. No one outside the town knew of its existence or purpose. Once a scientist was recruited he did not leave town ever (alive that is). But things look quite different these days! It was a wonderfully peaceful atmosphere with many birch trees and green spaces.
One last gem – Judy’s jug fused the whole 220v power supply of our carriage, No10. – she hid the jug before I reported it, which was fun. I tried to explain the loss of power by using mime but I was not very successful. I could not think how to mine “no electricity”. Throat cutting did not work. I made the mistake of showing an Australian plug and it focused the issue in quite the wrong direction. I eventually got the message across by showing my phone without power plugged in to a socket and then with a battery backup (I had two). The light went on in the minds of the staff and in my phone. I am happy to tell you that some 5 hours later when we stopped at Krasnoyarsk and changed engines that the power to the carriage was restored. I was convinced that Judy might have broken the engine and it had to be changed to a new one with the 220v output not broken. Alas we shall never know. I was worried that she would be taken to a Gulag for a few years for “Interference in the power supply of the Great Russian motherland”. Prison visits would be a bit of a trek from Coffs Harbour. I would have to learn how to bake cakes (to hide the files). I am sure my next-door neighbour, Dorie would help!
Now I will hand over to Judy for a chat about trains – Yes! You read it right. Trains.
Barry said the train(s) are modern…well I’d say the carriages are at least 40 years old if not 50 years, but of very sturdy design (German I think) so nothing has broken in that time – it is all solid steel! (ED I am not allowed to say anything.) On the first leg the best thing was that the carriage was clean – the carriage “conductor” vacuumed our cabin twice! We had hand towels, a starter pack of tooth pick and shoe cleaner (for leather shoes) which I have kept as a souvenir, and a bar of chocolate! The second-best thing was a surprise visit by the chef or kitchen staff saying we had bought dinner on our ticket- well the tour people had – we weren’t expecting any food. So, we choose from a menu in English and Russian, and they hand delivered the meal to our cabin (we weren’t expecting that either, but Barry says it is first class we are in after all) – no staff on the train speak any English other than minimal catch phrases, so we are guessing the whole time! The meal was chicken noodle soup and beef Stroganoff with boiled potatoes, both with lots of fresh dill – both were freshly made and similar to home cooking – quite tasty.
We were in the second last carriage which I suspect accounted for the incredible noise from our swaying on the tracks – I must say our first night was very unpleasant. Barry said “we” had 7 hours sleep – well I had about 2! The cabin seats fold down to make a bed that is just wide enough to stop my arms from falling out! We got fresh linen – that was good. The train is heated – a bit too hot for me (might account for the T-shirted man next door) – we asked the conductor to use an Allen key to unlock our little window – it was too noisy to leave open but at least we got some outside air at times.
The other passengers – they are just typical poor Russians – the man next to us wore a T-shirt and boxer shorts the whole time, and no shoes! And talked on his mobile phone at every opportunity! There were 30+ German or Dutch tourists in our and adjacent carriages who appeared to be travelling quite a way before getting off. Possibly at Lake Baikal – a good place to stop for a few days. They infiltrated the dining carriage and stayed there talking loudly and laughing, for hours! Some looked despairingly at their little dish of cheese and biscuits! We stocked up on a few things to make our trip comfortable, such as tomatoes, cucumber, ham and bread rolls – it was a good idea (ED Vodka and Tonic – what else on the Trans-Siberian). The guide book says the food on the train is unpredictable – the country is not very organised really, but the staff seem pleased to have work and are very proud of their train!
Second leg
Well, we’ve had our second train ride for 22 hours this time – we had a lot of daylight on the journey so it was good to look outside. We are old hands at it now! But still got surprises. This time they wanted to give us lunch and not dinner – no one spoke any English, or at least very little! So, we just nodded at everything! Well, at about noon a young lady came in with packaged up salami, sweet biscuits and one lolly! We thought that was lunch. But then about 10 minutes later another older lady brought us a hot meal of pork and buckwheat and some borsch soup and a small bread roll, and some bottled water! It was a huge meal in the end! It was quite amazing, how diligently they did their job without us knowing a thing about it – I guess their work is scrutinized by their manager – we saw an example of that too.
The noise – this time the carriage seemed to have much better suspension and the noise level was quite low – a bit of rocking and rolling in the afternoon, I guess that’s due to the condition of the track. Barry seems to be able to sleep through it all! We haven’t engaged in conversation with anyone yet – they all seem to stick to their cabins – there is just the casual nod. We spend our time watching MAPS.ME to see what town we are passing (it works on GPS) – and reading the very good travel guide Barry bought, which tells us about each town. We passed through the tiny village where Tchaikovsky was born!
There is a Poirot style train – Barry says there is a Tsar’s Gold train – see https://www.luxurytrainclub.com/trains/tsars-gold-trans-siberian/ but it costs about $20,000 per person! Our trip cost less than $9,000 each, and we’ve been very happy with the guides and drivers, and the quality of the three-star hotels – the hotels have really been more like four stars, and the breakfasts have been full buffet – hot and cold food. We have been able to talk to each guide about life in Russia and Russia’s history – they have been surprisingly open although a little cautious at times, understandably.
That is all from me, for now.
The latest news
I would like to share with you our experience with the immigration authorities upon exiting Russia. The train stopped for about 1 hr 50 mins at Naushki on the Russian side of the Russian–Mongolian border
The first immigration officer who came to our compartment was about 17 years old. He wore a smart uniform with a great Russian style peaked cap. I think he had been newly promoted from alien checker (see below) to passport checker, and with it, came the uniform. He had certainly been trained to exude the air of “I am a proud Russian immigration official and I am the BOSS.”” He did things like pointing two fingers into his eyes and then pointing the same two fingers at Judy’s eyes. Definitely “I am watching you lady” just like the best detectives in the movies. He wanted Judy to stand up, take off her glasses, and look into his eyes to check the photo on the passport and then on the visa. He stood in the doorway of the compartment to bar our exit. With the aid of a magnifying glass and ultra violet light, he checked each page, pulled quite a few and checked for torn out pages. He had a portable passport reader which he used to read the encoding on the passport and he also typed heaps into this machine. This passport check was one of 4 that were carried out by 4 different staff.
This was somewhat different to the time I left St. Petersburg in 2002. My driver that time filled out my departure slip with the wrong date so I left a week later that the document said I was going to. That time it took a signed 2-page Russian confession written in and signed in pencil plus an Aus $4.50 bribe. That was at the airport though, maybe the trains have always been more strict.
Officer no. 2 wore a working uniform with a baseball cap. He checked the space under each lower bunk and the storage space above the door, for enemy aliens. The space above the door could easily hold 4 normal sized suitcases or 1 of ours. This athletic alien checker got up the ladder to the upper bunk (we had a 2nd class 4-bunk cabin for the two of us in lieu of 1st class) and proceeded to search it plus the alien bay above the door, with a torch. Of course, he had to jump to the ground from the top step. He landed almost perfectly with a slight bend of the knees but did stand to attention. I gave him 8.7 and Judy slightly more at 8.8. We both clapped out of respect, he nodded his pleasure.
Officer no. 3 was a lady in working uniform who wanted to rummage through the dirty washing in our suitcases. I am not convinced she was with immigration, I think she stole an immigration uniform just to indulge her dirty laundry fetish.
Last was Officer no. 4 who was an Alsatian dog who sniffed a lot, he may have had a cold, poor thing. He had a man with him on the end of his lead. I suppose the dog was the last resort if the alien checker missed one. It is lucky that Alsatians know what aliens smell like.
We appeared to pass all the tests and our poked and prodded passports were returned to us. Far be it for me to criticise but I think there were two flaws in their numerous checks. Nobody asked for the 5 exit slips that proved we left each hotel on the way. We could have still been hiding in a laundry basket. Also, in Judy’s case, nobody seemed to have the details of what has become known as “The wilful fusing of Russian Infrastructure, namely, a Trans-Siberian electric locomotive, belonging to the people of the Russian motherland”. I, of course, was not worried as I had not fused any Russian infrastructure. I was also pleased at this oversight as I did not need to learn how to bake sponge cakes containing files.
Those of you who have read my previous musings will be aware of my long-suffering audiologist Kate. She, you may remember, is the one who shines a light in one ear and waves her hand over the other one to ensure there is something in the way to do with hearing and brain stuff. I must give you some technical hearing knowledge first. The way that Kate explained it to me was that because I was very old and very deaf I needed industrial strength hearing aids with a tube connecting the aid to a mould that filled the ear. The tube is Super-Glued to the mould – My right ear had become unglued in Irkutsk, Eastern Siberia. I bought the only tube of Super-Glue in the Irkutsk station, prior to leaving for Ulan-Bator in Mongolia. The tube had only Cyrillic text on it so I thought I should test that tube did, in fact, contain Russian Super-glue before I became a trainee audiologist and glued the tube to the mould. You will be pleased to know that it was super-glue, I will work out how to separate my thumb and forefinger on my right-hand later. (Not really, that would be a daft thing to do as I am right handed. I, of course, tested it on my left hand)
I dabbed the glue, slid the tube and it stuck fast to the mould, in the right place. I waited a couple of hours before I put it in my ear as I did not want to have to separate my hearing aid from my ear. I used the time profitably trying to separate my thumb and forefinger. Nothing much to audiology is there really. I have proved I can glue tubes to moulds and I could shine lights in people’s ears looking for hearing stuff and brain stuff.
We spent two days in Mongolia, one of which was in a Ger. It is a circular felt covered tent-like home. Luckily for us it had a stove in the centre of the single room and the walls were heated. The second night was in a luxury hotel called “Hotel 9”. We had a two-room suite, that is lounge and bedroom, with a spa in the bathroom. In a first for me, the bathroom had a Japanese made electric powered toilet. The seat was heated, it switched on when pressure was applied to it. I decided to do a test run, so to speak. I did not know what to expect, I supposed there was a few cycles. It turned out that there was first a front wash and next a rear wash. After the two wash cycles I thought there might have been a spin dry so I held my legs up off the floor by clasping my hands behind my knees and was prepared to be spun dry. Luckily this was not the case, the third and last cycle was a blow dry. The only fault I could find was that the aim of the front wash was a bit off. I thought I might make a small adjustment, but unfortunately I did not have the right sized screw driver. My Swiss army knife has three screw-drivers but I needed a forth.
The rail leg from Ulan-Bator to Beijing is the longest one yet (time-wise), 31 hours. There are two long waits of two and five hours. The first is for immigration out of Mongolia. The second, five-hour break, is to change the wheels on all the coaches and for immigration checks into China. The wheel change is achieved by large hydraulic jacks that lift the carriage up while the existing sets of wheels are rolled out and a new set rolled in. The Chinese rail tracks are 3 and a half inches narrower than Russia and Mongolia. In fact, China is on the same gauge as Europe and North America. We also get a Chinese restaurant car and swap a couple of the 19 passenger carriages. We have to completely exit the train with all our luggage for the whole five hours from 9pm until 2am. We stay in a Chinese waiting room – what fun.
The immigration and wheel change were made in 4 hours and we re-boarded the train at 1 am. The immigration check was a complete check of passports and face recognition by officers in booths rather than the manual process out of Russia. I rather think that there is an information sharing agreement between Russia and China. When Judy had her passport checked, she was also fingerprinted electronically. I, on the other hand, was not. Now, of course, I cannot prove anything but I did wonder whether the fusing of Russian motherland train incident had been one of the bits of information shared.
I think this will have to be the last update from us while we are travelling. I will catch up on my photo collection and share some images with you when I return home. We hope you have enjoyed reading about our adventures. Good-bye for now,
Barry & Judy
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