hmm.

My love for Russia has rapidly decreased since leaving Irkutsk. Which will make going home an easier decision. Although I'm still pining for Irkutsk in a way that might be strong enough to convince me to stay.

Train ride was fine, mostly. Our little buryat compartment-mate named Edik was quite nice. And then we had another roommate for about 3 hours in between the hours of 12 and 3 (Moscow time) or 5 and 8 (Irkutsk time). We couldn't figure out why he paid the extra money for a kypee if he was just going to sit for three hours, and not even on the bed. He just put his stuff there and sat in the hallway. Then we got really neurotic that he stole some of our stuff, because we didn't wake up when he came in (well, I think Joseph did, but I certainly didn't and was very confused when I woke up and the compartment door was open). Nothing was missing.

Then all the outlets they have in the hallway don't actually work, which was sad, although not entirely surprising. I watched some Charlie Brown and Snoopy in English, then planned on charging my computer again to watch it in Russian. But my computer battery was low and the outlets didn't work. And I didn't want to run the battery completely out, I think that's bad, right? So I'm just letting it sit with like 15% battery power. and not using it.

Also there were a group of drunk Russian guys like 2 compartments down who were harrassing the girl with the food on the cart as she was coming by. I didn't actually witness this, Joseph did, but it made me very sad. Especially because this isn't exactly surprising in Russia, but would be completely appalling in America. I find myself comparing the two countries more and more as I become more displeased with the first after leaving Irkutsk. Also it was 10 in the morning, who gets drunk at 10 in the morning? That is a rhetorical question, since almost every time I've been in a restaraunt/cafe early in the morning (often now that we're travling, more on that later) there have been people drinking alcohol. I was almost ready to say beer at 8:30 AM is okay, even though it's not. But vodka? completely unacceptable.

So we got to Yekaterinburg and found out that the hotel where we booked a room AND Ivan's Dad booked a room for us didn't actually have our reservation. Then told us we'd have to pay for a single and a double, coming to about $90 a person. And telling us they didn't have cots (I DO NOT beleive that.) So we sad for a long time calling different hotels at 6 in the morning, then Joseph went over to the train station to see if they have places to sleep (often train stations in Russia have beds that you can pay for by the hour). They didn't have actual beds, but a little area where there are comfy(er) chairs and you can sleep there. We figured that would be fine, it's only one night, and we can sleep like 12 hours on the train if we don't get enough sleep. In theory this would have been fine. But didn't really work out that way.

Oh yea, when we got there this guy with a cart thing offered to help us with our bags, which was fine, but then told us when we got to the actual train station (like a 3 minute walk), told us that it would cost 600 rubles ($24) which was completely obscene. Joseph, being my hero at this point, yelled at the guy, and I should have too, but just didn't have the energy. Naturally we should have asked before he took our luggage but still. So we haggled him down a little and left. We should have just given him 100 rubles and walked away. Whatever.

So then we dragged all of our luggage across the street to the hotel (which was SIGNIFICANTLY harder than one would think, as my gigantic suitcase has wheels that don't really work in the snow (seeing as the snow packs itself on them and whatnot and I just have to drag it along), although sort of worked when there wasn't much snow, but I still had that, an addidas bag with everything I'd need for the rest of my stay in Russia (since I'm keeping my bag in the hostel in Moscow so I don't have to drag it everywhere), my gigantic black purse, and a bag of food). Then the hotel fiasco ensued and we dragged all of our stuff back to the train station. But I didn't want to leave everything (mainly my black purse with my laptop, camera, anything of value, etc and my plastic bag of food) so I ended up carrying that around with me always which was more of a pain and much heavier than one would think.

So it was then 7:30 in the morning in downtown Yekaterinburg, where nothing is open, because although this was a big city (like, 1.28 million), almost nothing is open before 9. (Also, for some reason, maybe because I was in Irkutsk, I'm always surprised when other cities are bigger than Irkutsk (other than Moscow and St. Petersburg, of course). There are SO MANY. Like, Yekaterinburg, Kazan, Novosibirsk, Omsk, all of these are bigger than Irkutsk. I feel like I'm some sort of weird Irkutsk enthusiast whose view of the sizes of Russian cities has been completely skewed...anyway). So we finally found this Italian restaraunt with breakfast. I had a badly cooked omlet. We noted that there are a lot of places in Russia that look like maybe they could exist in the US, but then you hear the dance techno remix music and see the guys drinking in the corner at 8 AM and realize that this would not occur anywhere other than in Russia.

So then we did a walking tour of Yekaterinburg and saw a number of interesting churches and monuments. Maybe the most interesting was the Romanov death site. It was weird though, because there was this iron cross symbolizing where they had died, but in the middle of this city with this big road and all kinds of commercial...well, things around it. It was just hard to imagine, seeing as we were in the middle of this modernized city. So then we went to a cafe while we waited for the icon museum to open, went to the icon museum, went to a really cool photography museum, backtracked to the Afganistan/Chechnya war memorial (really quite nice, actually), saw that the military history museum was closed, went to some sort of jewel/stone museum which was cool, went to a pilmeni cafe with not very good pilmeni, went to a fine arts museum which I actually quite enjoyed. Made our way back to the train station, had some soup at this uzbek food place, which was not that good. Bought some cards and decided we'd hang out and play cards, then go to sleep. Played cards for about an hour, and were EXHAUSTED (probably because we woke up at like 4 AM local time, and it was 10 PM local time) so we went to pay to sleep in this little area for 6 hours. Then the women there were VERY concerned because it was only 8 PM moscow time, meaning we'd wake up at 2 AM Moscow time and 4 AM local time. We assured them that this was okay, seeing as our body clocks were all out of whack anyway.

It's very hard to sleep with your feet on the floor. Russians have a THING with shoes on chairs, which I can understand, but I was afraid to take off my boots because I thought someone would steal them (probably a bit of an irrational fear, but not completely). Then it was hard for me to sleep because I was coughing a lot and worrying about my bags. I was sleeping on top of my bag with my laptop, which was quite uncomfortable, actaully. The other bag wasn't really that important, it just had food, but still. After like three hours I finally took off my boots and adjusted myself so that I could sleep comfortably, while still clutching my purse. So then they woke us up at 2 AM Moscow time (4AM local time) so we moved to another sitting room where they just had these metal chairs. I gladly would have paid for another couple of hours, but I guess Joseph and Ivan didn't want to, and I didn't want to be alone. So we relocated and went back to sleep.

Unfortunately we relocated to a place where the most evil woman ever was the hall guard or something. So they had these metal chairs, not really nice or comfortable or anything, but I arranged myself so that I could sleep comfortably and the woman came over and woke me up and yelled at me because my boots were touching some metal pole part of the chair. Okay, I can admit that they were definitely more off the ground than they should have been. So I rearranged myself so that I was sleeping in some sort of ball where my feet were hanging off the edge so that they weren't touching anything (I'd draw a diagram, but I'm not on my computer). So then like a half an hour later she came back and woke me up again to yell at me, but like actually yell at me, to which I responded that my feet weren't actually ON anything or touching anything at all, just hanging off the edge 6 inches from the ground, which made her even more unpleasant. To which I just rolled over into another position and ignored her and went back to sleep. But then I was uncomfortable, so I just took off my shoes and curled up in a ball and slept. So then an hour later (at like 6:30) she woke me up again, telling me that I had slept enough and that it was already morning. She, however, did not wake up and yell at the other 15 people around me sleeping. She also did something, not really sure what, where she woke up two other people and hassled them until they left. Or for one guy she got 2 security guards or something and they pulled him out. This woman was completely ridiculous. However, Joseph said she was completely pleasant to him, although he wasn't next to Ivan and I. So that was pretty much awful and I hated everyone at that point, and wished that my Russian was good enough (or that I was awake enough) to yell at this woman. Actually I was prepared for it if she came back to bother me, but unfortunately enough she didn't, so I didn't get to go off on my carefully formed rant about how she was a ridiculous human being.

So we arrived in downtown Yekaterinburg on the metro at 8 AM, again, and went to this coffee shop. I made the mistake of asking for the check too early, so then it was 9:10 AM and we had nothing to do. The museums we want to see don't open until 11 and the internet cafe didn't open until 10. So we went to a different coffee shop, where we could buy tea for like 10 rubles, and sat and played cards (well, I read Lonely Planet, Joseph and Ivan played cards). And then we came here.

And my internet is going to cut out in like four seconds. So I'll update more later.