Last night, we set
the alarm for 5.30am Moscow time (an hour before the train was due to
arrive at our destination), but Kate was awoken just before it went
off by a tap on the arm from our carriage attendant. We climbed down
from our bunks and began packing up and stripping off all of the bed
linen and were calmly sitting on our seats as the train pulled in to
Omsk.
We were met on the
platform by Igor, the mostly Russian-only-speaking representative
from the company that lets out the apartment in which we're staying
tonight. He led us to his car and then drove us to the apartment,
along Omsk's very wide streets – which lack lane markings, giving
it the slightly Wild West feel of a developing world metropolis. Omsk
is a sprawling city of about 1.1 million people situated on the
confluence of the Irtysh and Om rivers, both of which we crossed on
the way to our apartment.
Once there, we
dropped off our bags and Kate chatted on Igor's phone to someone else
from the letting agent who spoke English. Through him, she arranged
for Igor to drive us to a nearby supermarket, where he dropped us
off. We then indulged in one of our favourite pastimes – wandering
around a foreign supermarket admiring the unusual foodstuffs (in
this, case mostly the bizarre dried and smoked fish) and putting
together a menu for the next few days (in this case, a roast chicken
for lunch and dinner and lots and lots of pot noodles for tomorrow's
train journey).
After lunch back at
the apartment (and several loads of washing – we've pretty much
been wearing the same clothes since leaving the UK) we headed out to
explore Omsk, revelling in the glorious weather – paradoxically,
our arrival in Siberia has offered us our first chance to ditch our
coats. We passed a typical Russian church, complete with shiny gold
domes, and a big theatre (you're never far from a theatre in Russia),
and when we reached the main shopping street, we came across a series
of interesting metal statues.
We then crossed the
Om River and then turned off the main road and walked down to the
Irtysh river. I walked back to buy some coffees from a guy with a
machine in the back of a van, who introduced himself as Rashid and
refused payment, saying that the coffees were a present to me. The
stories about the levels of crime and general lawlessness in Russia
that we had read in the media in the months and years preceding our
journey had made both Kate and I a bit nervous about visiting the
country, but this was just one of numerous random acts of kindness
that we've experienced since arriving here. As a general rule, the
anonymous Russians we've met have been a pretty dour, unsmiling,
uncommunicative lot, but on an individual level, we've met numerous
very friendly, helpful and warm people, who've bent over backwards
for us, even when they couldn't communicate with us.
Back at the river,
we sat on the grass and drank our coffees then walked back towards
the apartment on a path along the bank. Stopping for photos at
another sculpture, we fell into conversation with a Russian woman who
had visited Sydney and the Blue Mountains – her ex-boyfriend was
Australia and she had travelled there about a decade ago.
Back at the
apartment, the girls spent a little while playing in the decidedly
idiosyncratic playground adjacent to the block's car park, but even
they found it a bit too hazardous for their tastes and it wasn't long
before they had retreated upstairs to the apartment.
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