We arrived in
Irkutsk at around 8am this morning. It was cold and there was a light
drizzle falling. Outside the train station it was quite chaotic, with
passengers and taxi drivers milling about in a jostling crowd. As we
weren't entirely sure how to get to our hostel – although we knew
it wasn't far - and the weather was a bit miserable, we decided on
the spur of the moment to get a taxi, and I started to negotiate with
the next driver to approach us. He didn't appear to speak English but
recognised the name of the hostel. When I asked how much, he held up
five fingers and a thumb-and-forefinger O and nodded when I said,
'Fifty?'. That sounded about right, so we put our bags in the back of
his unmarked car (oh-oh), and hopped aboard. Soon enough, we were
outside the hostel and unpacking our bags. But when I pulled out a 50
rouble note and handed it to him he got rather upset. This time, he
held up five fingers and a thumb-and-forefinger O and then did the
thumb-and-forefinger O again – 500. He tried to close the boot with
our bags in the back but we just kept unloading. He then jumped into
the car and parked it further up the road and came steaming back at
me. By then, I had pulled out an extra 100 to see if that would
mollify him. He took the 150 but kept remonstrating with me. I just
laughed and said that there was no way in the world that the little
drive he had just made was worth 500 roubles (indeed, we caught a
taxi to the bus station the next day, a distance far, far in excess
of that travelled today and it cost 145 roubles – I think that 50
was actually spot on). Eventually he gave up, stalked back to his car
and drove off.
While all this was
going on, Kate was checking into the hostel. We were upgraded again –
our third upgrade in a row – from two rooms to a large room with
four single beds. Kate then went to a little supermarket up the road
to buy some ingredients, with which she made us all pancakes for
breakfast.
After grabbing a map
and some directions from reception we then headed into town. Like
most of these big Russian cities, Irkutsk (which has about half a
million inhabitants) is situated on a river – in this case the
Angara River, a tributary of the Yenisei. Before long, we were
crossing the river, which was wide and slow-flowing. At the far end
of the bridge we found a little place for lunch and then wandered
around the various sights, such as they were. We had been pointed
towards an area across town where there were supposed to be lots of
nice cafes, but when we got there, we found one of those 'new-old'
developments – a series of bars, restaurants and cafes that had
been built recently in faux-traditional style, a sort of Irkutskland.
It didn't look appealing at all, but at the end of the development
was a big, shiny new four-storey shopping mall, where we bought some
ice creams and had a quiet rest.
As we hadn't really
seen anything that grabbed us during our meanders, we walked to the
hostel along the river and had our excess pot noodles and a cucumber
and tomato salad for dinner in the kitchen (which has a Playstation,
much to the girls' delight).
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