Trans-Siberian Picnic Part 3: Irkutsk & Lake Baikal

Trans-Siberian Picnic – Part 3

Irkutsk

We pulled into the train station during a brilliant purple lightning storm. As a result the train station looked like a refugee shelter. Wet and desperate looking travelers littered the beautiful vaulted halls. Police were combing through the crowd in pairs looking for nefarious characters (of which, in my opinion, there were about 20x too many) and asking to see tickets and documents. Those without propers documentation were escorted out the door and into the waiting arms of the horizontal rain.

I tried to get a “resting room” for the night on the second floor of the train station but was curtly barked at by the fat, purple haired Russian woman behind the desk. After telling me how stupid I was to ask if there was a free room at this hour on this kind of night, she said I could go to the “resting hall”. I told her she could go to hell, in English, then found my way to the “resting hall” which was manned by her twin sister and co-valedictorian of their Soviet Hospitality Institute.

The “resting hall” had pale green and white ornamentation around the windows, doors, ceiling and thresholds. The grand room is lit by dozens of florescent lights blaring down from behind large chandeliers onto 10 or so big, cheap couches that had seen their prime years ago.

I wove together a web of the straps from my three bags, inserted my leg in the middle of it and slept the next 5 hours till sunrise on the least crusty of the couches. A privilege for which I paid about $10.

When I woke I saw on the other side of the hall three Korean smiles attached to giant backpacks. (I met them on the boat from Korea to Vladivostok) They giggled and laughed about their first Russian train experience then we set off to get breakfast and put them on a bus to their next adventure. Sad to seem them go, again. Their positive attitude was a wonderful vacation from what you normally run into.

I checked into the Downtown Irkutsk Hostel, had a thorough and indulgent session of the three S's, then set out to survey the “Paris of Siberia”, as I believe it was once known. (Why does everywhere relatively undesirable have it's own “Paris” or “Venice”?)

All literature and most people warn not to be outside in Irkutsk at night as it gets “a bit seedy” and unsafe. I'd argue strongly that the seediness doesn't only describe the nocturnal hours. It has a world-class percentage of drunks per-capita, even my Mother Russia's vaulted standards.

Drunks aside (usually aside the road) it is a beautifully rugged city with an incongruous architectural composition spanning the past 150 or so years. The most charming and photogenic of which are the wooden houses with lace-like carvings around the shutters and eves. Many more are criminally neglected than not, leaning, folding and chipping away after dozens, if not a hundred, Siberian winters and summers.

I passed my few days wandering the streets and sights with friends I met along the way. I shared a couple sunset (11 pm!!) beers with Vladislov, the middle aged physicist and tour guide, as well as a couple of upbeat Macedonian women traveling and educating themselves abroad. (They even had vague and notions of taking their experience and education back to Macedonia). We sat at a cafe on the bank of the swift and voluminous Angara River (the only one exiting Lake Baikal) and talked about all matter of things as long as they revolved around Slavic cognates.

I had lunch and saw some churches one day with Aleksandra, the young party girl from the train. After she was picked up at the train station by a thuggish looking fellow far too old for her with a look of depravity in his eyes, I figured she needed some positive influence and company...she was also kind enough to buy me a SIM card for my phone, naturally forbidden to foreigners. Especially Americans.

Lake Baikal:

Depressive weather slowed my setting out for Lake Baikal, which is about 70 km from Irkutsk. I bumbled around the grounds of the decaying bus station till I found a front seat in a mini-van navigating the potholes to Baikal.

The nearest town on the lake is called Listvyanka and shares the feel of seedy seasonal beach side towns the world over. The frigid wind off the huge lake (more water than all 5 Great Lakes combined) coupled with the drizzle and lack of shelter made for a pretty uncomfy scene. About the time I thought there was nothing worth doing, having already confirmed the lake is indeed big and wet, an aging and lethargic Soviet passenger hydrofoil arrived to ferry people to a little wooden town only accessible by boat. I hopped on.

“Bolshee Katee” is a tiny town hand made out of wood from the surrounding forest. It was founded during some gold-rush of long ago but now houses visitors wanting a “rough” vacation and locals with an immunity to, or a tolerance for, cabin fever. Of course in the winter when the lake freezes over, it is accessible by dog sled or the big, rugged Soviet vehicles that look like utilitarian monster trucks.

After wandering through the rock and grass streets I made my way back to the dock to find it sagging under the weight of people. It was the last boat for 24 hours and without a spot on it I would have been stuck with nowhere to stay and would have missed my train onward the next day. I was literally the last one on the boat. They pulled up the gangway behind me but there continued a verbal bridge of profanity from the dock to the boat, constructed by the 20 or so suckers who got left behind.

That night, my last in Irkutsk, I laid low and played round after round of “idiot” with a nice Finish couple I met in the hostel.

I spent the morning of the next day unsuccessfully trying to navigate the apathy and laziness of railway booking agents in order to change my ticket. I found out a friend from Peace Corps KZ is living in Novosibirsk and I wanted to change my layover from Yekaterinburg to there. I later decided to just get off the train early instead of changing my ticket, then monkeying around with the last leg to Moscow later on.

As is the endearing tradition here and in KZ, people go to the train station to see friends and family off as a matter of duty. Unexpectedly, Aleksandra met me at the train station to do so. When I thanked her and said how nice it was, she informed me she was bored and had nothing to do anyway...and she only lives a couple of minutes from the station. Ah the warmth!!