Dobroye Utro . . . Good Morning

Wednesday 2 August

I attended my second Russian class today and am beginning to get the hang of the letters – they spell words exactly as they sound, you just have to remember the sound for each letter! Not so easy as they have several sounds that we don’t have such as ‘sshchh’ and a rolling R sound that we English find almost impossible, but Scots and Americans and Japanese can do perfectly. About 25 people attended today – 50% more than yesterday – perhaps by the end of the journey the whole train will be there – except Colin and Jim of course, who are adamant they are not going. But Millie and I are progressing – and hope to soon be able to say a few words without referring to our crib sheets.

The city we visited this afternoon was Novosibirsk – at the geographical centre of Russia and rival to Ekateringburg in terms of importance in Russia - a very pleasant and friendly city, with lots of green trees and parks, but also lots of cars and traffic jams. All the guides have been extremely proud of their cities and try to impress you that their’s is the best so that you will return some day in the future.

We visited the railway museum here which Sandy, Adam and Alex would have liked – lots of old engines bought by Russia from Europe and America during the last century. But today they were painting them specially for “Railway Day” tomorrow – reds and greens and blues and black – they reminded me of Thomas the Tank Engine and his friends lined up in their sheds! They were even painting the sleepers white!

We also visited another gem factory – much like the shop in Bluewater, only larger, with a replica of the Kohinoor diamond – I think I have mentioned that everything in this country is a replica – and the Opera House – originally built in 1941, but the war stopped it opening until two years later (I suppose this counts as old here!). The central part of the building resembled the Albert Hall where you walk around before finding your seats in the auditorium. Perhaps the architect had visited London before he designed it.

That’s how the Russian word for station came into being. Wanting to build a railway system and stations in Russia, the planner visited London. He was taken to see Vauxhall Station, near Waterloo, and he thought the English word for station was “Vauxhall”, so the word for station in Russian is their equivalent of “Vauxhall” (Bokcal – the B is said as a ‘V’ and the C is pronounced ‘S’)!!!

We had another delightful evening meal in a restaurant called the Siberian Troiyka. It had a stuffed bear and a boar’s head and things like wolf’s skins lying around. But the food was good - we had “perch pike” a local white fish, a bit like a small plaice. We were in very high class company at our table– a Lord and Lady. He regularly chairs Committees in the House of Lords! – but they are very friendly and interesting people with many after dinner tales to tell.

We are losing yet another hour tonight – we will be 7 hours ahead of England by morning, but we have a day on the train – more Russian classes and perhaps time for some reading, writing postcards to the children or catching up on some sleep.

I must say to Linda that her Angel seems to be working – when we couldn’t connect to the internet, I kept telling the Angel that we needed to make contact and now we have been able to get online – today we have sent emails and posted our blogs! I will keep talking to her, so hopefully will be able to keep connecting. Thank you Linda.

WEATHER REPORT: Blue cloudless skies and very warm – upper 20’s at least. Only down to 18 when we got back to the train tonight.