 The city and its river We stroll next door into the Scottish pub and settle down for a beer while we wait for our Russian friends. They arrive a pint and a half later and, true to form for most of the Russian Couchsurfers, they don’t want anything to drink. My three wives along with Supermodel Nastya, Pasha and Sasha are more eager to lead us across the road to the huge office building called ‘Altei’, which apparently has a viewing deck on its roof we can visit for a small fee. It does appear to be one of the tallest buildings in Yekaterinburg, soon to be outdone by another skyscraper that is under construction less than a hundred metres away. The open roof is replete with huge billboards you have to weave around and two viewing platforms on either side of the building. We take turns with other groups of Russians enjoying the view from each side. Seen from above, Yekaterinburg is a surprisingly spread out city, stretching along the river and out to the hills that surround it in neat waves of buildings and parkland.
 The strangest monument looks like an enormous minaret sprouting randomly from the city floor. It is one of the tallest incomplete towers on earth, standing at 220 metres; a little over half the 400 metres intended height of the structure. It was built in the late 1980s as a TV tower that was to feature a restaurant seated high above the city. Uralski Yulia tells me it was stopped when the Soviet Union fell apart in the early nineties and since then has had a checkerboard history of proposed developments that have all amounted to nothing. Apparently it was used by base jumpers for a while, but after some fatal accidents it was closed again. Today it seems to stand as a monument to the rebuilding Russian nation; a work in progress; frozen in time until its moment arrives again. We descend the building again and follow our friends to the restaurant. Elven Nastya arrives and I’m also introduced to Liya and Alexei along the way. Alexei is Uralski Yulia’s boyfriend and Liya is studying at the same university as a few members of the group. We are escorted into a large restaurant, a long, low wooden building with equal size indoor and outdoor sections. The staff are all wearing traditional Ukrainian clothing, which makes the women look exceptionally cute. The large table we are escorted to is in a room designed to look like the inside of a Ukrainian log cabin. Down to the small, simple curtains, fireplace and cotton tablecloth. We sit down and follow our hosts lead on ordering some pelmeni, a spinach soup and some grilled mutton with vegetables….and tomato and cucumber, of course. Pelmeni are delicious small bite sized pastries like won-tons. They can be boiled, steamed or fried and you normally dip them in sour cream or other sauces. We had them quite a few times in different places as an entrée or drinking food – for which they are a perfect accompaniment.
 Princess Irina Princess Irina orders a medovukha and most of the girls follow suit. This is a very traditional Russian drink, most closely related to the mead made in Europe. Honey ferments naturally over a long time; more than twenty years, but the enterprising Slavic people discovered this worked much quicker if the honey was heated. In the 14th century they added distillation to refine the process further, but by the time of Peter the Great at the start of the 18th century, vodka had replaced it as the standard strong liquor of choice. The modern version is delicious with a smooth, rich flavour you can enjoy from the first moment it touches your tongue to a few minutes afterwards as the honey flavours continue to please. It reminds Don and I of the flavour of Glayva, a liqueur made from a blend of Scotch whisky with honey, herbs and spices.
Don and I are sitting at opposite ends of the large table and when the pelmeni arrive, we discover we have ordered two different kinds of these lovely Russian snacks. So I throw one to him, which he catches in his mouth perfectly and pronounces it delicious as the Russians applaud him. Always a showman. We try the Ukrainian red wine we’ve ordered and enjoy its richness with the soup and are forced to order another glass or two later on. Princess Irina and Yana jump up and start a photo session in the corner of the room with the fireplace; these Russian girls are unstoppable. Over the course of dinner quite a few of the women take turns in getting their portfolio pictures in the same corner.
 Photosession We enjoy the warmth of good company and share more stories of Australian and Russian life, before eventually emerging onto the street for the stroll home. As we are passing a building, Supermodel Nastya pulls me aside and shows me a curious piece of art on the wall. Using small, square mirrors, someone has spelled out, in Russian, the phrase ‘You are Unique’. I smile as she translates for me and ask,
“What is this building that it has this written on the side of it?”
“It’s actually graffiti, it hasn’t been there long.”
I stare at it with even more respect, a fantastic piece of real graffiti art; not some moron’s initials scrawled with spray paint. I had already noticed quite a few pieces of good graffiti in the city; this one quickly becomes my favourite. I thank Nastya for showing it to me and as we walk together I ask,
“So what do you study?”
“Oh I’m the only one who isn’t still studying and is actually just working. I work at the same company as Yulia and enjoy it, but it’s only a start to a career.”
We have to split up on the main road and I leave with Elven Nastya for the short walk back to the apartment.
 You are Unique On the way she tells me that I need to be awake with her around two in the morning to walk with her to the train station.
“Are more Couchsurfers coming?”, I wonder aloud.
“No, there’s some friends of mine coming through on the train. I was involved with doing volunteer work with them last year”, she explains.
“Oh what were you doing?”
“I was a camp leader for a group working on the Black Sea clearing rubbish from beaches and surrounding areas.”
I remember the park in St Petersburg and thought they could do with plenty of help cleaning beaches as well. It was for a Russian organisation called World4u that organises volunteer work camps around western Russia during the summer with the aims of promoting social cohesion, multiculturalism and an international youth volunteer community. They have connections with the Alliance of European Voluntary Service Associations (and some international ones) which allows them to place young people from anywhere into the camps as well.
“So you must have enjoyed it then?” I prompt.
“Yes. I loved doing it, the work made me feel good and the people were great. I tried to join a group that would be working outside Russia this summer. But they have a tight limit on Russian citizens joining it.”
“Do you know why?”
“Not really, it just didn’t work out.”
This seemed strange to me, I would have thought volunteers from anywhere would be accepted equally.
We arrive home and go to sleep for a few hours before launching ourselves into the early hours of Wednesday morning. She hands me a sleeping bag and a backpack and advises me it’s my job to carry them. I ask why else I need to be with her as we’re walking and then we round a corner near her place that explains completely. It’s essentially late on Tuesday night and along a stretch of road that runs for a few hundred metres there are young Russians in all states of drunkenness swarming in groups. There are groups sitting against buildings and drinking, groups lining the gutters doing the same. All of the women are wearing very little and all of the men are busily trying to convince them to wear even less. There are a number of cars parked along the side of the road with people inside them talking to women standing on the street.
“Is this normal for a Tuesday night? What’s going on?”
“They are all prostitutes; you can grab one on the way back if you like”, she answers with an evil smile.
“Sounds good, you’ll have to pick me a good one….no a couple, I feel frisky tonight.”
We laugh together as I look along the buildings and find the occasional entrance to a bar or nightclub. I decide it’s an entertainment strip gone crazy, but there are still more of those women leaning into the windows of cars. I decide I don’t really want to know and we make it to the train station without a problem, but plenty of men in pairs and small groups are looking angrily at me. I’m not exactly a small guy and I’m particularly happy about that at this time.
The train is arriving as we approach the main entrance and we meet her friends as they exit the wagon. I hand over the goods and, as she catches up with the group leader, I manage to talk to one of the others to find out more about why we’re here.
“When we caught the train out of Moscow, a large group of Russian soldiers on holiday jumped on and they were already very drunk. They jammed all their belongings onto a row of beds next to us in the platzcart wagon and settled down to keep drinking the vast amount of beer they had brought with them.”
I could easily picture the scene as he described it.
“They had a lot, bottles and even five litre kegs. The provodnitsa warned them about keeping quiet a number of times, but they just didn’t care. The police were waiting for them at a station where we stopped for ten minutes. The police came on the train to take them off and in the chaos the soldiers grabbed every bag they saw and took them all onto the platform.”
“Wow, a bit of excitement for you for the night then”, I commented.
“Da da da da da. When that all finished we noticed we had lost a sleeping bag and half our food. So we called Nastya who promised to help us. And now here you are!”
So I was involved in doing a mercy run to help them out, the backpack is full of noodle bowls, tomato, cucumber and processed meat. The train doesn’t stop long and we walk back home the same way with the street revellers still out in force. I quickly return to sleeping and dream of crazy Russian nightclubs filling that empty TV tower.
 Irina, Don and Yekaterinburg
 Ivan leads us into the crime site Our mission today is to visit Ganina Yama, a huge monastery still being built on the site where the remains of the last Tsar and his family were found. It’s a shallow pit where the Soviet revolutionaries had attempted to dissolve, burn and otherwise erase any evidence of the bodies after the execution. We ring up the local tourist bureau to find out how we can get on a tour there, since we’re feeling a little low in confidence with catching the correct sequence of buses to the site and then on having any idea what is going on there in general. We decide to be normal tourists for once. This ends up costing each of us about a thousand roubles (AUD$50) for a private tour with our own guide that includes transport in a car to and from the monastery. We accept and find our way to their office, where we’re soon greeted by a young Russian university student. His name is Ivan and he’s earning some spare money as a guide. His English is good and it’s clear our driver is a friend of his who is along for the financial benefits of the ride. On the way to the monastery we talk about the assassination of the Tsar’s family, something that I’ve read about previously; but all of us wanted to hear his version. With a delightfully wry smile on his face the entire time he tells us the versions according to the Russian government, the orthodox church and some other theories thrown in for good measure.
 Traditional Russian orthodox wooden church action Ivan’s descriptions complete my conviction that the entire thing had been run by our good friends Boris and Yuri. In this case there were many people involved over the course of time, but they all had that same charming carelessness of this amazing pair of average Russians.
“Another shot Boris?”
“Tochna Yuri, tochna”
“Boris! We have the Tsar’s family here now in our friend Dom Ipatiev’s house, but the White Army keep trying to release them.”
“Da..da…da…Yuri, we must find a way to fix this problem. I know, we just shoot all of them and leave the bodies to rot.”
“Nyet…nyet…Boris, someone will find them and make them saints to rally the Russian people.”
“Da..da…da…So we shoot them all, then we take bodies somewhere and burn them.”
“But Boris, burning will take so long and the bones might not burn, there are so many of them.”
“Da…da…da…Yuri, we take bodies, cover with acid, then we burn them for as long as it takes. So we spend few days in forest with much vodka.”
“Okay, but how do we get them together to shoot them all?”
“We take photograph of them to make people think they still alive, then we kill them all.”
“You are so smart Boris, this plan will work!”
“Da…da…da….tochna!”
So it was that shortly before midnight on July 16th, 1918 the family and some servants were gathered together in the basement for the photo session. The photo taken, the executioners entered and shot them all.
“Boris! This young one won’t die!”
“I know Yuri, this one wont either, she still moans and struggles, I shoot again.”
“I do this, still not work…I use bayonet…what about this dog?”
“I shoot it too, stupid thing, these people won’t die, keep shooting, stab them.”
“Maybe they not meant to die.”
“Of course they are Yuri, enemy of the revolution must die…look they stop moving now, get them on the wagon…we leave soon.”
“What about the Tsar’s sister in law?”
“Oh no…we forget to shoot her…throw her down well…that will fix her…now get bodies on wagon, we go.”
“What about this dog? ..the damn thing bites me!”
“Throw down well too Yuri!”
“It not dead yet!”
“Throw anyway, will be dead very soon when it gets to the bottom.”
Elizabeth, the Tsar’s sister in law survived for two days moaning the well, praying for the souls of her attackers. When Boris and Yuri find out they’re worried.
“Boris! She lives still, maybe this one not meant to die.”
“No Yuri, counter-revolutionary scum must die…We get this poisonous gas from our merchant friend and pump it into well…she dies then.”
“But the villagers know she there, maybe they feel sorry and they pull her out and bury her later.”
“Okay, bring shovels, first gas, then we fill in well.”
“Boris! Then she is buried!”
[laughter]
“So we do good thing for her.”
The bodies of the Tsars’ family and servants were taken to a shallow pit about forty kilometres outside the city to be destroyed.
“Boris! Our man with the acid is stuck in a swamp, what can we do now?”
“We put bodies in pit here and cover with petrol and burn them.”
“Boris! We burn for half the day already and they still there!”
“Throw on more petrol; we will keep burning until there is nothing left.”
“I think we have the acid arrive now, but we are too drunk to pour in pit.”
“Have another vodka first then, Yuri!”
“I will Boris, now we can finish their bones with acid. What will people say about us when we die?”
“We are heroes of revolution, our names will live forever.”
The exact identities of the killers are the subject of a lot of debate. Five people where executed for the crime by the White Army when they took Yekaterinburg. The Bolsheviks at the time accused others of it, but later when they again had control the next year; the responsibility officially sat with Party official Yacob Sverdlovsk. He apparently accepted this responsibility shortly after his death. Yekaterinburg was renamed to Sverdlovsk in his honour and to this day it is listed on Russian train schedules and timetables under that name – causing me no end of confusion while trying to find a train that stopped in Yekaterinburg. We find out from our guide that the huge Russian white and gold cathedral we had heard with strange bells ringing on the day we arrived is in fact built on top of the home of Dom Ipatiev and today marks the spot of the execution. The city has evolved and moved on a long way since this dark time, the construction of the cathedral and monastery is a very recent event, part of a campaign by the government to reclaim Russian national pride. Most locals wish the money had been spent on infrastructure, jobs, education and health care instead. It seems the Russian government’s attitude to the people hasn’t changed much since the time of the Tsars.
“They don’t have to do that”, Ivan explains, “They don’t have to spend so much money on churches and cathedrals across the country and burying the remains they found here back in St Petersburg with the other Tsars. But they do.”
He shrugs with the helpless acceptance of their crazy government that most Russians seem to develop.
 Under Construction... He leads us to the entrance and at the gate warns us that there are dress regulations for the churches within the monastery. Men should wear long pants and women must wear headscarves over their hair. There’s a conveniently placed set of wooden shelves filled with long skirts and headscarves for exactly this purpose. He suggests since I’m wearing shorts I might think about putting on the skirt. There is something in his smile that suggests to me that I’ll wait until a monastery official tells me this. I’m sure he’s enjoying leading foreigners around and wouldn’t hesitate to have some fun with them. Lari grabs a headscarf and puts it on. All of the buildings have been, and are still being, constructed according to traditional Russian principles of religious architecture. They are made only of wood and require no glue or metal fixings to hold them together. I feel lucky to see one of the churches still under construction to find out what is inside those onion domes and how they hold them up. Apparently, one or more churches have actually burned down twice on the monastery site in the last two years, our guide isn’t sure if it was deliberate or not.
 Hot churchy action There is a strange feeling to this place, but not really a bad one. I wonder how well they could know that this really is the location of the execution. Apparently some skulls and human remains were recovered from the site in 1991 and DNA testing later established a link between them and Prince Phillip, the Duke of Edinburgh in England. Tsar Nicholas’s wife’s sister was Phillip’s maternal grandmother, so this established some evidence that the remains are probably royal. They were reburied in 1998 with the other Tsars in St Petersburg inside the SS Peter and Paul Cathedral. In 2000, the Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church canonized the Tsar, which explains the signs around the actual pit naming them the ‘Holy Royal Martyrs’. It seems then that Boris and Yuri never really completed the job of removing all the evidence. was that deliberate? I don’t think anything is with this pair.
“We are finished now Boris!”
“Yuri, what are those skulls there?”
“Boris! They are just rocks, the vodka makes you see funny things.”
“Maybe you’re right, we still have a few more bottles to finish too.”
“Let’s bury the ashes and finish the bottles.”
“Da…da…da…Tochna…then we go back to town for the women.”
“What job will we do next week Boris?”
“Next week we make more stairs for buildings.”
 The Burial Pit The central pit is surrounded by a wooden walkway with pictures of the Tsar and the family taken during their life. There are flowers growing all over the pit as we have arrived the week following the July 16th anniversary of the execution. Apparently there are a number of pictures taken at the site that show spiritual occurences; ghostly shadows, faces that weren’t there. We discover the Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox church had conducted the official ceremony while we were busy having the nightmare transfer from St Petersburg through Moscow. The churches at the site are really architectural artworks in their own right. Inside are beautiful icons, chandeliers and paintings. The smell of the wood is pervasive and you can’t help but love the main logs that form the walls, they exude a kind of natural strength and presence that concrete and steel simply never can. I place my hand on at least a few logs in one wall in each church to establish some contact with it, feeling the bare wood texture underneath my hand and fingertips is somehow reassuring. There is also the kind of peacefulness inside the building that holds you in a natural, comfortable silence whilst inside.
 Lari freaking out because that girl in the right of the frame isn't standing behind her  Shadows of the past We ask our guide what he thinks happened to the Tsar and his family; there are so many amazing stories about their possible survival. Anastasia, the Tsar’s daughter is the best known one, but little evidence supports the idea. It seems more the realm of people spotting Elvis Presley and Jimi Hendrix having a chat at the back of a convenience store late at night. His preferred story is the one of the doppelgangers, that the Bolsheviks never had the real family, just the twin family used to ensure safety on long trips. I was surprised at this, there’s no evidence to support it, in particular you would have expected the former Tsar to be living in exile somewhere – as has happened with so many other regime changes. As soon as the Soviet Union disintegrated, you would have had the descendants trying to claim the throne. There have been a number of claimants to the Russian throne, but none have been proven or established as anything more than a dedicated confidence trick, which makes me discount the theory. The reality is the Romanov family were ruthless, paranoid tyrants who thought nothing of sacrificing vast numbers of their people to starvation, war and work camps. Deportation to Siberian gulags was not a Bolshevik invention; they just continued the Tsar’s idea. I suppose the only question that remains is if anything ever really changed, to which the answer seems to be; not really.
 Proper Russian Orthodox cross replete with nuns  How many domes does a church need anyway? We spend an hour or so slowly moving from building to building through the monastery grounds. We only encounter a few of the actual monks, there aren’t many in residence, but the one who approaches us closest has a very curious demeanour. It’s a kind of vicious intensity of being, a focussed existence burning hard and bright. I don’t know how to react to it; I’ve never felt anything like it before. As he passes by I ask our guide if they’re all like that. He admits that Russian monks are quite intense and he’s never really comfortable around them. As we reach the end of the tour we slide slowly out of the gate and look through the inevitable tourist shops for some appropriate souvenir. I was never asked why I wasn’t wearing a skirt the whole time and noticed a few other Russian local men wearing shorts like mine. I ask our guide why they wanted to build a monastery here. He looks thoughtful for a moment and says,
“This is part of the government’s plan to encourage the Russian people to feel strongly about their country again. The church is much more a part of our lives since the end of the union, but most people don’t really believe.”
I ponder that and consider the curious motivations of the government, if they spent more time actually looking after their own population; the whole country would enter a new age.
 Hot Russian onion dome action On the trip back into town we discover how easy it is to acquire fireworks in Russia and we ask our guide if he can tell us where a good shop is. He takes Don’s guide and marks the spot on the map and says,
“This is the best one; if you go here you will be very happy.”
We begin to laugh and feel elated at the prospect of setting off a vast amount of incendiary devices in the middle of Russia. He further advises us,
“The markets near the fireworks shop are worth a visit, but be warned that most of the beautiful stones there, like malachite, that are turned into jewellery and sculptures are from Africa and not Russian at all.”
With that he drops us in the city next to the geological museum, which turns out to be across the road from the second Scottish theme pub in the city. Same name, Gordon’s, slightly different theme and sadly lacking the midgets in kilts in the window. We fill some time by wandering through the geological museum, which does indeed have an amazing array of minerals on display, many of which can only be found in the Ural Mountains. I ponder on buying something made from one of these rare minerals until I see the cost, pushing them to the precious end of the semi-precious stone marketplace. There are some beautiful carved pieces here, all kinds of animals, even some Faberge eggs, but I just can’t justify the excessive cost for something so purely decorative; even if it is absolutely and uniquely Russian.
 Can you see the bearded man's face? 
Having finished with my nightmarish morning, I sit down at a café and have a drink while I send messages to my missing Australian friends to find out where they are. It turns out that while I was experiencing some first class travelling blues stories, they were sound asleep and only just woke up. I’ll see them in another hour. I spend the time wandering aimlessly through the city again, becoming familiar with its landmarks. I find a ‘Dr Scotch’, Scottish theme pub called “Gordon’s” and giggle as I tell Don about it, since he is half Scottish and shares that surname. I’m impressed that some distant part of his family seems to have made a business here.
 Gordon's Pub at your service... I then find an Irish pub and wander inside to get a photograph of myself in an Irish pub in the middle of Russia. Irish pubs are everywhere nowadays and an Irish friend in Perth had told me about one in Siberia somewhere and that I have to get a picture in it. This is not that pub, but I quickly come to the conclusion that the beer is far too expensive, not terribly good and this has to exist for tourists and very rich locals. Actually, looking around the pub I notice the other people in it for an early lunch are middle aged men, each entertaining a young woman. Feeling suddenly out of place, I get back onto the street and locate the internet café in the central post office.
 ..and that's what the Old Dublin Irish pub looks like.... I’m overjoyed to learn I now have a couchsurfing host in Novosibirsk and she can also host my two friends. This had been the most difficult city to find a host in so far, since there are a huge amount of people travelling there for the Total Solar eclipse. Her name is Yulia as well and she warns me about the pink couch I will have to sleep on and also tells me that she’s just bought a little sausage dog that we’ll be living with. I shall call her the Yulia Vortex, as opposed to Uralski Yulia.
Don and Lari wander in and we decide to go for a stroll around the city to find some lunch sooner rather than later. We consult our guides and discover there is an Uzbek restaurant close by and we head for it. It features waitresses dressed in what we assume to be some kind of national costume designed to reveal their ample cleavage and fantastic legs. Don discovers there is horse meat on the menu and immediately we acquire the horse sausage entrée. We also grab the lakman noodle soup, a spicy chicken noodle number, and the Uzbek style bread they recommend. The bread is an event by itself, arriving looking like an empty pie base, but with some kind of cheese inside the crust. The combination is delicious. So that’s where pizza places got the idea. Having tried the horse sausage I can enjoy the experience, but it’s just too dry, fatty and bitter to work for my taste. I’m sure if you’re riding a horse around the tundra of central Asia, this stuff is probably exactly what you need; but in a city, it seems excessive. The mains are more grilled meat, which is always delicious, with the mandatory tomato and cucumber additions. All up, we decide Uzbek food is great stuff, but still second player to the Georgian cuisine.
We spend the afternoon wandering around more of the city, through parks and past monuments; absorbing the feeling of Yekaterinburg. All of us agree we prefer the relaxed feel of this to Moscow or St Petersburg. We decide to head into the Scottish theme pub so Don can evaluate its authenticity. In the windows of the pub are small mannequins of men in Scottish dress; the Scottish midget pub is born. The spectacle of the young man at the bar wearing a kilt, but speaking Russian is probably worth the visit by itself. The young guy speaks a little English and we acquire some beers to ward off the heat of the afternoon. We’re sitting in a booth next to the window with one of the midget dolls right next to us. We establish the answer to the age old question: What does a Scottish midget in Russia wear underneath their kilt? We now have the definitive answer, but it’s far too shocking to reveal here. Elven Nastya sends us a message inviting us all to her mother’s place in a couple of hours – where we will learn how to make Russian pancakes, ‘blini’. We leave the pub after a few beers to catch a tram heading out to her mother’s apartment.
 Lari comes to terms with what a Scottish midget wears under their kilt... It is lovely, with two bedrooms and loungeroom and a separate kitchen.
“This is Boysa…my mother’s dog. His name means ‘Be afraid of’”, Elven Nastya introduces us, “and this is my mother’s hamster. His name is shashlik.”
Her eyes take on an evil gleam and the three of us laugh at the great name.
“And this is my mother, Lyuda and my sister, Lena”, she introduces Don and Lari as I smile my hellos. We all sit down to a plate of processed meats and salami. These are from the factory Lyuda works for and we mix them with the inevitable tomato and cucumber.
“Do you want some Samogon?’, Elven Nastya asks, standing up and fetching a plastic water bottle.
We look at each other and I ask,
“What’s that exactly?”
“It’s homemade vodka.”
Don and I look at each other smiling, Lari laughs and Lyuda looks concerned.
“You can have cognac instead if you like”, she offers.
“Oh no, we have to try this so we can know what it’s really like”, I explain happily. We’ve all heard some stories of home made vodka before, Lari has had the Serbian version and assures us it’s very rough and will probably cause all sorts of problems for your eyesight, hearing, breathing and liver. Prolonged consumption of low grade spirits can certainly lead to many problems, but given the chance to experience this integral part of Russian culture; we take the risk. In the most surprising twist of fate, it is easily the best vodka we have anywhere in Russia. It’s very smooth and easy to enjoy a few shots with the plate of meat in front of us.
“Only drunks will drink without food”, Elven Nastya advises us of the well known Russian idiom.
Don and I share a look, another shot and some more tomato, cucumber and processed meat.
“Are you sure this is homemade? It’s better than most of the stuff we’ve had in bottles”, I wonder aloud.
“It sure is! This comes from our hometown, which is a few hundred kilometres away from Novosibirsk.”
Once again we three Australians share a look, what is it about Novosibirsk that seems to be the centre of our common Russian experience? We find good people from that area everywhere we go. We finish more shots of Samogon and Lena herds me into her room with the computer so I can start to upload the music she had heard on Friday night. I’m happy for the distraction, because eating more processed meat was not the top of my list tonight after the morning’s pain.
 Lena and Boysa Lyuda then starts getting the pancake mix ready and we all gather around to watch the master chef at work. The mix is simple, but the skill is in her handling of the special blini pan and how to make them thin enough. They are very like a crepe in style and it takes all of us many tries to get anywhere near the casual, thoughtless ease with which she produces them. The constant stream of blini also has us moving to the table to eat them with honey and sour cream; a delicious combination. We take turns in trying to master blini production and perhaps the stream of Samogon is interfering with our chances of real success here. It’s still fun to try and tasty to eat the attempts. We spend some time playing with Boysa when Lari spots a picture of Elven Nastya’s father; she is the spitting image. We don’t directly ask where he is, clearly not anywhere nearby and they don’t really mention him. Elven Nastya approaches with the Samogon again,
“Budyesh?”, she asks, “would you like?’
“Tochna”, I reply emphatically.
She laughs and pours as I explain the word for ‘definitely’ to Don and Lari.
After we finish the pancakes the four of us head into the night to get Don and Lari home. Lena borrows her mother’s car to drop us all off. As I’m having my shower back at Elven Nastya’s apartment I reflect that the day started so very badly and turned into a great night of cooking, music and Samogon. We had completely failed to be normal tourists and I was mostly glad the day was over. I still found a reason to put on a special load of washing before sleeping again. I wasn’t going to worry about the nightmare morning anymore, sometimes the best choice in the midst of a travelling adventure is to simply rest and enjoy your freedom; safe in the knowledge that the next day is always a new start.
 ..and that's how you spell 'kangaroo' in Russian...
We wake up late in the morning and Don and Lari head off home to get changed while I potter around the apartment with Elven Nastya. I ask her,
“What was happening with you yesterday in the park? You looked like you were on a different planet to the rest of us. And when we got back you were pretty strange”. She smiles shyly before speaking with a soft passion,
“This park has been a part of my life since I was a very little girl and it always makes me feel happy and relaxed. The reason I was so determined to get everyone moving early yesterday was so I could enjoy visiting the places that are most special for me.”
“Oh when did you manage that? I would’ve liked to see them too!”, I wish aloud.
“I went in the afternoon by myself when all of you were resting. Maybe next time. It is so much better in winter, so clean and crisp, the ice brings the rocks to life.”
This is at least the third time I’ve had a local tell me winter is very beautiful and it starts to dawn on me that I really will have to come back and experience what they mean. I’m not sure about spending a winter in minus twenty degree temperatures, but it feels like something I have to experience to understand.
 Hard at work making a CS Book Elven Nastya wants me to write down the recipe for the noodles I cooked on Friday night and after I finish writing it she wants somewhere to keep stuff from her Couchsurfing guests. I look around the house and end up spending an hour making it for her from a shoebox and some plastic paddle pop sticks… I write ‘CS Book’, in Russian, on the front of it for good measure. As I’m finishing it, yesterday’s crew arrive for the photo sharing session. Don and Lari are late because they went shopping with their hosts. Don is staring wildly and vowing he will not be eating cucumber and tomato for a year after returning to Australia. They had been looking around in a supermarket for what to get for dinner and they couldn’t find any cucumbers; a strange moment in a Russian supermarket. Then they turn to find their host standing in front of a shopping trolley absolutely packed full of cucumbers – and he’s holding a huge bag of tomatoes. Their host notices them and says kindly,
“Don’t worry about cucumbers; we still have a few kilograms at home.”
The pair of them break into sudden smiles at this very Russian moment. Their host turns away; happy that his guests are reassured by the cucumber situation.
 Natalya the pommy rower  Mehmet the seppo Don’s story reminds Elven Nastya that we have a lot of leftover tomato and cucumber in the fridge, which she produces and everyone except Don immediately has some with bread and ham. I remember I have some more vegemite and offer it to everyone to try with the bread and margarine. Once again almost everyone enjoys it and I’m starting to think it’s because it’s so salty. We all enjoy checking out the vast array of photos and make arrangements for Pasha to give us copies of his collection on a couple of CDs. I’m talking about the summer party culture in Australia and Irina looks at me pointedly,
“You know Pasha wanted to move to Australia last year?”
I turn to look at him and smile broadly.
“No?! Good choice though!… So what happened?”
He looks confused and shy before Irina answers for him.
“He wanted to move there with Yulia, they were a couple then.”
“Oh…Ah….Well, just ask if you need any help moving there anyway”, I volunteer, “you’ll have a fantastic time in sunny Oz!”
 Masha and Pasha We do very little except sit around Elven Nastya’s loungeroom chatting about the world in general. Then I remember that Mehmet and Natasha will leave the next day and I retrieve my family scarf to begin a lengthy photo session with everyone in the room.
After everyone leaves, I ask Elven Nastya,
“How do I say ‘definitely’ in Russian?”
She looks thoughtful for a moment then replies,
“How do you mean definitely?”
“As in, when I’m sitting here and you’re all talking quickly in Russian that I can’t follow at all and you kind of look at me like I should say something. I’d like to say ‘definitely’ to agree with whatever you’re talking about.”
She laughs and says,
“Tochna. That’s the best word.”
“Torchna, To-chnar” I experiment with pronunciation.
“No, ‘Toe-ch-na’”, she confirms.
I practise a few more times until she’s happy with it. Before we sleep she tells me that she only has one key to her apartment, so I must leave with her early in the morning and can’t get back in until she finishes work. That works out fins, since we three Australians have plans to explore the city again during the day. I’m mostly happy just to slip into blissful sleep before ten at night.
 Sasha  Supermodel Nastya I lurch awake to the sounds of a seriously crazy Russian song and the feeling of water being sprayed on my face. I realise this is how I woke up on Saturday morning as well, when Nastya wanted us to leave for Deer Streams as early as possible. A rich baritone voice is singing at me in Russian. There is a fast paced orchestral accompaniment with a driving bassline that gets bigger when the whole choir joins in the song. Not only is it impossible to sleep, but now I need to raise an army and take over the world.
(If you want to hear it, type ‘lenin takoi molodoi’ into youtube. There’s a few there. The real song name is И вновь продолжается бой ‘..and the battle continues again’) I still play this song when I want to give myself some energy. Elven Nastya smiles and tells me I’ve got about fifteen minutes to be ready to go. I leap into the shower and wonder how I will actually take over the world today; the song drives you into this crazy mood when you wake up with it. We decide that cucumbers, tomatoes, processed meat and cheese will make a good breakfast mixed with a little day old bread. I give her a wave goodbye as she heads off to work and I look around and decided to walk through the shade of the garden at the centre of the apartment blocks to make my way towards the city centre to meet Don and Lari.
 The oasis of calm in Yekaterinburg I emerge onto the street and notice for the first time that there seems to be some kind of park directly across the road. It has a lake in it and comes complete with what looks like a small, greek columned temple on an island. I figure there’s a chance for some good photos and cross over the road to search for a gate. The whole park has a high, spiked iron fence around it, which lends a somewhat forbidding presence, but only promises this natural paradise is simply one gate away from where I stand. I finally find the gate and wander in, loving the tree lined pathways that lead me gradually around the lake. I notice there are a couple of people fishing from it and wonder what kind of fish would be growing in this clearly artificial lake right near the very centre of the sprawling metropolis. I wonder if they even have a hook on the fishing line, maybe they just come here to sit and enjoy the oasis of natural calm.
 Relaxing morning time... This is when I first become aware that there’s trouble in paradise. I know in this moment that I have about five minutes to find a toilet, because my intestines are squirming in a way that means a foul brown sludge is on its way out of my body. I look around in nervous urgency. Parks are often good for a toilet in Russia, normally near entrances you’ll find a little building with a person sitting behind a window between two toilet cubicles. They want fifteen roubles for this service and you get to use the generally good facilities. These thoughts crowd my suddenly agitated mind as I scout around for one. There are no exits or toilets to be seen. I start walking faster to the far end of the park and up a gentle hill. The gentle, placid surroundings of aged trees, spreading their leaves in the warm summer light, now become obstacles to my increasingly desperate situation. There’s a couple of small pavement shop buildings. Yes, one is the right size for a toilet, gotta get around in front of it. I start fumbling for money out of my money belt to make a quick transaction and relieve the building pressure.
It’s a shop. My eyes glaze in terror. I turn around and head back into the park and start heading for the only corner I haven’t investigated yet. There’s not many people in the park at this time of the morning and nobody at this end of the park. This is the moment when it becomes apparent that I’m going to be caught short and in the near future I’m going to be adding to the fertilizer for some of the plants. I look around for a sufficiently private spot and wonder what gods of travel I have offended that are punishing me in this way. I was fine yesterday, only on my first day in Moscow did I have this problem before and one of my travelan tablets fixed it in half a day. Even when I left the apartment I was fine, but now my insides have turned suddenly and completely to leave me walking up a gentle grassy slope looking for a nice big tree to hide behind. There aren’t any. I have walked into a small copse that was clearly used by a small group of people as an open air cafe at some point in the last few nights. There are beer cans and plastic bags around here. I’m now looking for any kind of paper products. I normally have a small packet of tissues with me at all times, since most Russian toilets have no paper. Except today, I didn’t put them in my jacket. I can picture exactly where they are, inside my bag locked safely inside the apartment.
I can see the spot, just a few more steps and I’m there. I look around, there is nobody in this corner of the park, I’m spared at least one kind of trouble. Too late. The torrent is unleashed and I realise in the same moment that my boxer shorts are also safely inside the apartment drying after their wash. I feel I must have offended some karmic deity to find myself standing in a park in the middle of Siberia with my shorts rapidly filling with what is a very foul smelling, hot sludgy excrement. I squat automatically and stay that way as my bowels pulsate to rid themselves of whatever offended them so much. I notice a few receipts and pieces of paper within easy reach, I also retrieve a few from my pockets to try and clean the mess from my skin. For some reason I stand up, thinking someone is here. I take a couple of steps forward, looking around. No. There is no one. I return to working through the small pieces of paper and run out of them long before I’ve achieved anything. Which is when I notice someone has left a jumper behind a tuft of grass. I wonder if any normal tourist would consider this an important part of the real experience of living in Russia. There’s something deeply visceral in wiping your poor, quivering behind with the coarse woollen sleeve of someone’s discarded jumper.
 I actually stopped to get a picture of this bear in the middle of this madness... At least it worked in starting the cleaning process. I remain squatting for another minute trying to clear out the inside of my shorts as much as possible and come to the realisation that I’m going to have to put these shorts back on and walk out of this park in search of a real toilet in order to clean up. There is no way I can get back in the apartment to change without explaining to my host what just happened. I just don’t feel I know her well enough to lay THIS little story on her right now. I wonder if I will even tell my two old friends when I meet them in a couple of hours. I decide that it will be more fun to write about this lovely experience later and let them discover it then. I pull my shorts up and immediately walk away from this place wondering where to search for a toilet. It’s barely nine in the morning and a lot of places don’t open until ten. I decide to try and head towards the city centre, there’s bound to be a public convenience, or a pub, or restaurant that I can use to clean up properly. I’m going to have to wear these shorts for the rest of the day and possibly into the night.
 Farewell park of traitorous insides... I drift down streets searching for some sign of an appropriate establishment to help me in my hour of need. There is nothing. Whilst standing at traffic lights waiting to cross with some other people I glance down and notice that trickles have run down both of my legs providing nice little drying brown rivers all the way to my socks. I’m hoping people will assume it’s mud. It must be, the other explanation just doesn’t bear thinking about. I am still walking around town an hour later. Most places just aren’t open. Even a normal public pay toilet is firmly closed. I wonder how long the morning nightmare will continue. I’m walking down a street when I notice a small gazebo style shop that looks somehow familiar. I’ve seen it before and I wonder when. This only lasts a moment before I realise I have somehow managed to circle back to Elven Nastya’s apartment, the gazebo is opposite. Waves of depression pass over me and I turn back down the one street that I know leads to the city centre. After a long walk I see a Russian shopping centre and decide to see if they have a toilet. The security guard at the door tells me in Russian that the shops are closed. I smile at him and walk straight ahead feigning ignorance. It’s just after ten; they should be opening very soon. The nightmare has been going for more than an hour. I spot a glass door with the toilet sign and see a woman sitting at a small table behind it. Ten roubles and this sorry chapter of desperation is over.
I keep walking and glance back at the security guard, he’s watching me still. I turn a corner and stop for a minute. I have no idea why I’m waiting, I’m not doing anything wrong, but in the hysteria of the last hour I just don’t want any attention from anyone. I walk back around the corner and someone is talking to the guard. Relieved I duck into the door and produce a ten rouble note. She tells me in Russian that they are closed. I look at her with desperate, pleading eyes and a mournful face. Please make this experience end. Please help me. She waves me inside and I spend about fifteen minutes washing myself, my shorts, everything using water from the bowl so I don’t have to be outside the safety of the cubicle. She sends in a cleaning guy twice to check up on me. I finally emerge wearing quite wet shorts and a smile of utter relief. I try to hand her the ten rouble note again and she smiles and waves me off. I push it into the money cup, feeling that this is the last thing I must do in order to be released from the morning’s events. I walk back out past the security guard and into the street. I walk almost straight into a Kvas seller on the corner and buy a glass to celebrate the end of the ordeal. Most of the shops have opened now, the city has come to life and I look for somewhere outside, warm and windy to sit for a while and wait for my friends as my shorts dry out. All I can think is that Russian processed meat should carry a label, “Warning: May cause anal leakage”.
 Kvas barrel on the street - a common sight
 Hot Yulia Action My couchsurfing host Elven Nastya receives another message on her phone and herds us all downstairs where we are briefly introduced to a large group of people, fourteen in all, who will be spread across three cars. And so it is that three Australians, an American guy, Mehmet, an English girl, Natasha, and nine Russians begin the endless summer day. I’m put in the front seat of a car with our driver, Igor, and three sisters; Yulia, Irina and Yana fill the back seat. Yulia’s rounded face holds one of the warmest and most welcoming smiles I’ve ever had the fortune to witness. With cheeky soft eyes that glint with fire, short dark hair rounding off a petite, but softly curved face and her wonderfully proportioned figure; she is a genuinely beautiful woman. Her two sisters are actually twins, but not identical. Irina, the princess, has the most striking face with dark eyes holding the kind of passionate intensity I’m more used to seeing in Arabic women. She is very thin in accordance with the current crazy media trend of half starved women, which I’m guessing makes her model material across the world. Yana is the most laid back of the sisters, generally quieter, more thoughtful and observant; leaving the show to Irina and leadership to Yulia. She’s more like Yulia than Irina, with a small, curvaceous figure, but shares the same dark eyes filled with the promise of fire. They say it’s always the quiet ones.
Irina then asks me pointedly which of them is the most beautiful and bats her eyelids at me. After thinking carefully for a moment I say,
“I couldn’t possibly decide. I will have to marry all of you.”
They all burst out laughing as Yulia translates for Igor. Igor wants to know if I’m already married,
“Of course not, I’ve been waiting to meet my wives here in Siberia!” I exclaim. Yulia laughs and then looks concerned,
“This isn’t Siberia, this is the Urals.”
“Okay, I stand corrected”, I say, making a point of remembering.
I’d read before about the distinction between Siberia and the Russian Far East that no foreigner ever makes, but this one was new to me. People from this part of Russia call themselves Uralski, so this is Uralski Yulia. Igor gestures to the road and asks me how much I like the glorious Russian highways. I look outside the car at the series of potholes, ditches and depressions all over the road, then ask,
“There’s a highway here? Where do you keep it?”
He bursts out laughing while nodding and smiling.
 Yana, Irina and Yulia. My three russian wives...
 '...four thousand green bottles making up a wall..'
It’s only nine in the morning when we arrive at the place on the side of the highway about forty kilometres outside Yekaterinburg that marks the line where Europe and Asia meet. There is a sculpted marker here just off the highway itself that makes a lovely photo opportunity. However, the size and presence of the marker itself is completely overwhelmed by the enormous wall of champagne bottles running at ninety degrees to the road. It is about two metres tall and over twenty metres long. A quick averaging count tells me there are over four thousand bottles stacked here. There are at least another few hundred bottles in a big pile next to the wall waiting for someone to continue the apparently endless work.
 Serious Cock Action
 Asia and Europe This is one of the primary locations that couples in the area come on their wedding day to take photographs and this particular spot is also dedicated for drinking a bottle of champagne and spilling some on the marker. There are also vast numbers of small pieces of material tied to trees as wishes made on the wedding day. The overall effect is a riot of colour set against a calm temperate forest. Apparently all of it is about wishes for fertility; the marker is just a cool spot in some lovely forest by the highway. But, I digress; I was talking about a photo opportunity.
I never thought I would say this, but there are a people who take more photos than the Japanese. I know, I know, this just doesn’t seem possible. After all, we’ve all seen how photo and video happy the Japanese are. There isn’t a second that remains uncaptured in some way, preferably on video and in still pictures as well to make sure. Every moment in all its blissful mundaneity is recorded to bore the crap out of unfortunate relatives later. In any case, the Japanese are rank amateurs.
Perhaps they learned it from the Russians somehow, but I would wager that for every 1000 photos on a Japanese camera, there will be 1500-2000 on the Russian camera next to them. On this glorious single endless day of summer, one of our friends managed to take well over 1000 photos. These were largely in big blocks of essentially the same picture. Now, to some degree, this is just part of the digital revolution. Many people take a number of the same picture and then delete the ones that don’t quite work out. But no, all of these will be kept for you to choose your personal favourite of the 30 almost identical shots. This was not a one off accident of youthful exuberance either. At every place we visited that was also full of Russian tourists, the story was the same.
Now the other curious thing about the Russian obsession with photography is all about women. If you would like a Russian woman to pose salaciously; just point a camera at her. Even the shyest girl, who you would swear had never even heard about this thing called sex, will suddenly become a vixen in an instantaneous transition….and then a siren calling you to your doom…and then a cheeky schoolgirl…and then a supermodel. Every one of them has a set of poses they seem to constantly practise by themselves and with friends. They will compare and copy good poses to help each other develop there portfolio. I routinely watched pairs of women disappear to have a photo shoot, because every Russian woman has a portfolio of her favourite poses taken in a number of different places with a variety of clothing. However, be warned! If you should take a shot that she doesn’t deem to be a perfect capturing of her beauty, she will demand that you delete it. It may range from self deprecating pleas to her simply grabbing the camera from your hands and deleting any offending pictures. It is fortunate the average Russian woman is disturbingly beautiful, which goes some way, in my mind, to justifying this rampant narcissism. Keep your camera close; when you see the woman of your dreams, she will show you her fantasies.
 Another photosession...
 Iset river, now with added forest view We arrive at the Deer Streams park and Elven Nastya walks off determinedly to register our names with the rangers at the entrance to the park. We divide everything that has to be carried between us all and Elven Nastya leads us down a dirt track leading into the forest.
The walk takes about three quarters of an hour, with the trail leading us past stunning views of the river Iset passing through the valley. On one side of the river is a high cliff that we are walking along. On the other side, pine forests spread out covering gently rolling hills. At many parts of the riverbank there are coarse sand beaches leading to beds of smooth river rocks. We come to a clear area at the top of the cliff and Uralski Yulia tells us about this statue of an angel that is perched on top of the cliff looking out across the open forests. It was placed there in 2005 by some Swedish people as part of the Unite Hope Project; a global initiative to place the statues in as many countries and places as they can to promote hope, love and compassion around the world. We discover that there is already one in Australia, in Victoria on Mount Buffalo. This becomes, of course, a particularly intensive photo opportunity; the highlight being Sasha sitting in a meditative position right on a small outcropping of the cliff face. If he leaned back slightly he probably would have fallen the thirty metres onto rocks, there is something about the edge of a cliff that does push a man to try his courage.
We trek across timber bridges and down narrow dirt pathways winding along the edge of the valley. The forest is lush with the verdant bloom of summer at its peak. Beneath the rich canopy are an endless array of flowers and blossoms providing a constant flow of colourful shapes and patterns as we follow the track into the wilderness. I stop for a moment to find small bees wafting lazily between the blooming flowers. They’re invisible while I’m moving, but, once I’m still, the movement feels like a gentle massage for your eyes. It’s a perfect scene of white noise for all your senses; the waving flower stalks, scents gently tickling your nose, floating, humming bees and the flicker of the sun on the waves and eddies of the river flowing below us. I reach out to touch the leaves as we pass, to feel the soft flower petals and become immersed in the timeless life of a Russian summer morning.
We zig-zag down the dirt track to finally find ourselves on the riverbank. Elven Nastya points out a huge rock that looks like the head of a horse drinking from the water. I wonder for a moment if the landscape has some empathy with its wildlife.
“Why is this place called ‘Deer Streams’ exactly?” I ask her.
“There are some cave paintings in the area of deer.”
So some ancient denizens of this country have left their mark here as in so many other countries. I remember seeing the map back in the city and I’m just starting to realise just how vast this parkland is, you could spend days wandering in every direction. Elven Nastya has certainly done exactly that many times before, this place is special to her; a kind of sacred site.
 Drinking horse action...
 The drunken robot walk... We round another few corners following the track along the meandering river to reach a wide bend where we apparently need to cross. Everyone takes off their shoes and then adopts an astonishingly pained and awkward gait crossing on the stony river floor. We all look like drunken robots. Between grimaces we are laughing at each other’s crazed walking styles and head for the shade of a huge tree by the riverside. It has been a hot walk and immediately everyone strips down to have a swim. The Russian girls all have slick bikinis, but the Russian guys simply use their underpants…so practical.
I worry that I probably shouldn’t be swimming with my head underwater like this in a foreign country, but the goggles I borrowed from Lari are doing a good job. I emerge from the water near Yulia’s best friend, who is also called Nastya, so I will call her Supermodel Nastya; for reasons that will become obvious. Her long blonde hair frames a sweet, attractive face with eyes that seem far too big to be real. They show a deep intelligence, the kind that keeps you awake at night pondering all manner of problems in the universe and how you can address them. She complains she often thinks too much and is often paralysed into inaction by it. I know the feeling very well and we share a long, warm smile of shared understanding as we stroll up the beach to the group.
All the Russians are laid out like sardines. They are determined to catch as much sun as possible. We three Australians do attempt to explain something about sun cancer, sunscreen, melanoma and how dangerous what they are doing can be. They continue unabated. I suppose the difference is Australia has harsh sunlight for most of the year, with a short winter for a couple of months. Russia has a harsh winter most of the year with a short summer during which the locals need to absorb as much heat and light as possible to get through the rest of the year. Regardless of this, we three cover ourselves and sit in the shade nearby and watch as Pasha and Igor prepare the equipment to cook shashlik.
 Sardines anyone?
 Shashlik is men's work...
 Supermodel Nastya Essentially this is a metal tray on legs that contains hot coals over which they will place a lot of chicken pieces that are sandwiched between two pieces of metal mesh. The chicken is held very tightly and simply turning over the grilling kit cooks it evenly and well. This kind of cooking is men’s work and Igor and Pasha throw themselves into the process of heating the coals enthusiastically. We look across the river to find a beautiful red headed women wearing a flowing white dress with absolutely nothing on underneath it standing in the shallow water as a man with a professional camera photographs her. All the men with us are suddenly extremely interested in the artistic expression photography allows and wonder if she’s going to dive in the water to show us all how beautiful she is through that thin white material. There is a small pile of equipment on the riverbank the photographer keeps looking at and then looking around. He calls out to Supermodel Nastya, who is standing in the water again. She goes over to hold a reflector for. In a moment the three Russian guys with us begin calling out to her in Russian. I can’t follow what they say and turn to Uralski Yulia for help, and between giggling she says,
“They ask her why she is so far away with this strange man and if she will have her picture taken as well”. Supermodel Nastya is looking very shy and embarrassed with all the sudden attention, but does her job admirably.
In the meantime Don has produced the vodka the two of us procured and proceeds to pour some for everyone. I remember I have my portable speakers and mp3 player with me and setup a good Australian music playlist to share it with everyone. Soon a few of the girls are up and dancing. We laugh and joke for a while until the shashlik is ready. We attack the meat, wrap it in bread rolls with tomato, cucumber and mayonnaise and devour it quickly. It really is damn good and I use some of the wondrous adzhika spicy sauce as well. We run out of orange juice for the vodka fairly early in the day, but Igor steps in to solve the problem as the second batch of chicken is cooking. He dives into the forest and returns a minute later with handfuls of flowers and leaves from different plants. He puts them all into a large pot filled with hot water and lets it boil. Soon enough he is pouring the tea for everyone and it is very good, it doesn’t need anything else; it is sweet and tasty just as it is. I am amazed he just knows what to use, so I ask if it’s common to make it. This bush tea is indeed well known, everyone has a preferred blend. I ponder for a minute and decide that despite a long history of camping in Australia, I wouldn’t be able to match this trick.
 Russian bush tea
 Bridge posing for my Russian models... We enjoy the sun for a while longer as the food settles and then Elven Nastya starts getting everyone moving to go for a walk to see more of the park and some caves. Pasha, Uralski Yulia and Masha stay behind to mind the camp area and the rest of us form a moving mess of people following the pathway down the side of the river. We soon come to a suspension bridge spanning the river and the people at the front start crossing it. Irina the princess of Yekaterinburg is behind me and I turn to take a picture of her crossing the bridge, she immediately pauses and poses salaciously. I look at the picture and notice Supermodel Nastya is at the start of the bridge behind her posing as well. I smile to myself and then raise the camera again and both of them immediately pose again slightly differently. We reach the other end of the bridge before noticing Elven Nastya animatedly gesturing at us telling us to come back. We return and follow the narrowing track. I can’t see the group anymore as there is only space for one person at a time to go through a huge field of six foot tall grass in flower.
The land curves up gently away from the river and we follow it as the terrain changes to a thick temperate forest. With the trees shading us, the temperature must be just over twenty degrees and I am in paradise. The lush green undergrowth is a completely untamed natural world. Spider webs glisten with faint dew drops and seem to breathe with the gentle breeze. Someone begins to sing and I join in with them, soon there are a few of us singing our way up the gentle hills through the forest. We can see the course of the river winding through the valley below us into the distance and there is only more forest and gentle hills on either side of the river to the horizon. I have no idea how far we have walked already, but Elven Nastya suddenly announces we have arrived at the cave. We descend a long staircase into the entrance and Sasha and Igor hand out some torches and headlamps they have brought along. The temperature drops suddenly in the mouth of the cave and soon our breath is making clouds in the crisp, damp air. We wind through a broad tunnel and soon the walls and ceiling are covered in ice. Mehmet and Natasha race ahead through the cave system to come first to the deep sinkhole that blocks our path; you would need ropes to continue the exploration. I turn off my torch and surprise half our group with a photograph flashing in the darkness. Sasha is caught looking like the proverbial stunned mullet, but Irina still somehow manages to pose in the darkness. I think she has an extra sense for detecting cameras.
We emerge, blinking and disoriented, back into the light and climb the stairs again. At the top I notice red welts on the backs of all the girls who are still only wearing bikinis. I ask what they’re from and they point at one of the enormous flies that is currently sitting on my leg. It is almost two centimetres long, shaped like a fly and as I regard it, it jabs a sharp, painful proboscis into my leg. It feels worse than a hypodermic needle and I move to slap it, expecting it to fly away. It doesn’t move at all and rolls dead to the ground. For the rest of the forest walk I think I kill one of these behemoth flies every ten minutes, wondering what cool diseases I can catch from them.
 Irina: Nature's Model, Sasha: Nature's Mullet
 Russian Summer Action
 Foody Goodness After hours of what feels like random wandering in the forest we turn back towards the camp. Most of this time we have no real idea where we are or what’s going on exactly, apart from being in the middle of a national park somewhere in Russia. There are moments when I realise I probably wouldn’t know what path to take to get back and I make sure I’m near the group. We arrive back at the camp exhausted. I have no idea what the plan for the day is, but Lari and I could go home and sleep anytime. We have more shashlik and tea and lie back in the late afternoon sun as different smaller groups head off to explore more parts of this incredible park. I think I fall asleep for a while and awake feeling more relaxed and content than I’ve felt in a long time.
Sasha pulls out his guitar and starts singing some Russian songs and then one of his own compositions for us all. Sitting by the river with his soft voice matching the simple guitar melody I drift into a state of deep relaxation. I become aware of my surroundings again as the guitar is passed and Elven Nastya wants us all to sing something international we all know. This turns out to be the Beatles and the impromptu choir forms around the chorus since we strain to remember the verses. Everyone lies back to enjoy the last of the summer day’s light and my trance resumes.
I look up after a while to find Elven Nastya has taken the guitar by the river and is singing by herself now. I can hear snatches of the tune and there is a haunting quality to her voice that I want to hear more closely. I manage to slowly stand and walk over to sit next to her on the log facing the river. She smiles and starts a new song calmly and soulfully in her smooth Russian voice. I ask her what it’s about and she says it’s a traditional folk song about lost love. She sings another song and then asks me for one. I think for a minute and then sing a lullaby I’ve known since primary school. The sound of the melody drifting across the lake suits my trance-like mood perfectly and when I finish there is silence again for a while.
 The river camp with cooking fires buring..
With the group all back together and the time approaching nine o’clock we decide to head out of the park. On the way back we are walking quite quickly and take turns in leading the group through the changing terrain. The sun is low in the sky and the trees cast long shadows across the grassland that glows with a soft golden light. I feel like I’m inside a film, some kind of Russian fantasy world. The relaxed contentedness has given way to a kind of energetic happiness that infects us all. A section of the pathway is paved with round wooden sections cut from the trunk of a tree and everyone jumps, skips and cavorts along it, putting their feet on each slice of log. When we arrive at a huge suspension bridge, the group slows down to cross it sensibly. I can’t hold the energy inside any longer and bound my way across it, causing the whole thing to ripple and wave, throwing everyone into disarray. Some people grab the side supports and others laugh and join the mad rampage. Suddenly I’m running down the pathway, feeling the random exuberance of childhood once again, lost in this moment of pleasure and utterly unaware of the world outside.
We make it back to the carpark, breathless, happy and joyful and thank our new Russian friends. As we top a hill that shows us a glimpse of the city at night, we notice a spray of fireworks above it. The show continues for several minutes and I think Yekaterinburg is putting on one awesome finale for the endless summer day.
 Curious flower..shaped like..ummm
 Sleepytime...
 As the train rolls through the city outskirts we watch the buildings and parks drift past us in the bright morning sun. The city feels palpably different to Moscow and St Petersburg already. No rush and crazed pressure of Moscow, but a different kind of laid back style to St Petersburg. We are now just south of the Urals mountain range and have entered one of the cities at the heart of Russia’s mining industry. Yekaterinburg was founded founded by a couple of likely lads, Vasily Tatishchev and Georg Wilhelm de Gennin; sent there by none other than Peter the Great. It became a mining and industrial centre early on and this task has only grown and evolved since then. Yekaterinburg was the site of the execution of the last Tsar and his family and it was this piece of Russian history that had first drawn me to spend some time in the city. At the time of the Great Patriotic War (World War Two) it became the heartland of Russian industry after the German advance reached Moscow. Without this city, perhaps the outcome of that war would have been quite different. Once again, the hand of Peter is laid heavy on the destiny of the Russian people. More recently it became famous as the home of former president Boris Yeltsin and a transit point on the heroin trade route into Europe. Not that the last two are connected in any way, but the Russian mafia’s presence in Yekaterinburg was well known and publicised. In any case, we arrive at the station late in the morning and have to entertain ourselves for the day while we wait for our hosts to finish work.
 The Gringo Building: Self-destruction; the cycle is complete We find the left luggage storage area and join the crazy long queue to continue developing our skills in the Russian national sport of queuing. This is a good queue for honing our amateur talents and as we approach the end it becomes clear we will have to provide paperwork and money and some information in Russian to leave our bags. I watch the people in front of me and prepare my passport and the right amount of money for the sudden moment of interaction. One man sullenly takes my two bags while the other copies information from my passport onto the piece of paper on which everyone’s identity is stored. I watch with bated breath, enjoying being at the head of the queue for this sport’s triumphant moment. He produces two numbered tags that find their way onto my bags and then asks me for more money than anyone else. I rise to the challenge of the queue and offer the same amount I’ve seen being passed. He counts it and, with the aid of sign language, indicates that I’m leaving two bags – one of which is quite large. I bow to his wisdom and, not wishing to delay the queue more than strictly necessary for sporting endeavour, I dig out the money and retrieve my passport. Was I clear? Had I finished my event? Yes, he looks to Don for his bag and I sail free! I move to stand to the side of the queue in order to pack everything away while Don and Lari stow their baggage. As I watch the man charge both of them the lower rate I realise I had not excelled in the queue this time at all. I had moved aside to allow the queue to continue unabated. This is bad form and none of the Russians before us had done any such thing. I curse my ineptitude and vow to improve my queuing skills in the future.
 Russian Clocktower We drift out of the train station and into the city, trying to decide where to go for the afternoon. Looking down the street it’s impossible not to be struck by the giant clock mounted in the top floors of a most curious office building. Above the giant, but simple, clock face, the building forms a square archway at its summit that seems to contain further offices with the same partially mirrored glass windows. It still stands out in my mind as the only building with this design that I saw in Russia, and certainly the only giant clock face. It’s clear this has to be fairly new and glancing around the city you can’t help but notice the sky cranes scattered around town working on different building sites. This was a common sight and theme across Russia, a country under construction – or reconstruction.
We decide to head for the centre of town and just stop off randomly as we pass interesting things. It’s friday morning and everyone in the city is hard at work Don and I scour guidebook maps to find out what’s interesting and which way the town centre actually is. It’s a warm summer day and we flow with the crowds down the streets and sink into the feeling of the town. Yes, it felt more like a town, so much more laid back than the horror rat race of Moscow. We actually comment that it seems Sasha the Siberian had been exactly right in saying that once we reached this town and beyond, then we would experience real Russian people and cities. There is a pace to life here, but it runs a slower heartbeat than the bigger cities. I wonder if Yekaterinburg will maintain its lazy style for much longer, how long can it hold onto this comfortable pace before disappearing in to the rat-race vortex of cities like Moscow. There comes a point in a city’s growth where it stops being a great local town and starts merging into being a part of the country of money.
We decide some breakfast is in order and that the first café we pass will win our custom. This goes on for almost half an hour as we can’t actually find anywhere that either looks appealing or is even open. Since we have some leftover food from the train, we head for the shelter of the trees in a small a park we’re passing. We sit with the city’s traffic buzzing past us and munch on salami and tomato sandwiches. Other people are using the park as a convenient and picturesque spot for eating as well. The cathedral we can see across the road starts a curious pealing of its bells. The tune is strange and unfamiliar and now set in my mind as belonging to the new and shining white walls and glowing golden onion domes of the building.
 The Musical Cathedral As we sit idly in the park enjoying the beautiful day we become aware of the seemingly endless procession of cars decorated for wedding parties. Stretch limousines and processions of new cars all bearing the streamers and bouquets of a wedding day’s festivities. Sometimes they’re pounding the horn to make sure we all know what’s happening, other times a group of these cars simply slides by us in the heat of the day. As we walk along the river for a while we even notice a small boat decorated in the same way arrive at a large bank of stone steps descending into the water. It arrives to pick up the blushing bride and groom for a spin around the river and yet another photo opportunity on the big day. The Russian tradition for your wedding day is for the wedding party to travel around the city, visiting a number of famous locations as well as the houses of important relatives. We had just discovered this part of the river was definitely one of those places. We agree that if we lived in Russia, we’d want to be married at the height of summer on a day like today as well. Travelling around the city with a big group of your friends seems like a great way to spend some time anyway.
 Lenin's Toothpicks Strolling across the bridge over the river Iset in the middle of Yekaterinburg we feel the last vestiges of the big city weight and pressures evaporate from our shoulders. We then find a strange, huge, red sculpture in the middle of the bridge. At first we’re baffled by this crazy monument, a collection of pointed red spear point shaped objects aimed at the sky. If they launched as surface to air missiles we wouldn’t bat an eyelid. I set about trying to read the Russian inscription and Don checks the guidebook to try to resolve the mystery. With our combined efforts we discover it’s a giant Order of Lenin that had been awarded to the people of the city in recognition of the pivotal role they played in the Great Patriotic War.
We continue into the city, wandering the streets idly looking for an internet café somewhere. We pass buildings and statues, monuments and parklands. Tram lines run in different directions and we consider jumping on one to see where it goes. Hunger changes the discussion quickly and we decide it’s become late enough to venture for some lunch and look around for somewhere appropriate. We find some food and enjoy some beer together in a nicely air-conditioned building; the idea of being so hot in the middle of Russia is still strange. We then start wondering how we will organise the next morning. My host, Nastya, has arranged for us to visit a local national park called ‘Deer Streams’. This will be with a group of other Couchsurfers, locals and travellers, who will all spend the day enjoying summer in beautiful natural surroundings. We receive text messages from both our hosts confirming times to meetup tonight; we need to be back at the train station by six. It’s already past four, so we finish up and begin walking back to the station. I collect money from Don and Lari to help pay for the food tomorrow and then farewell the intrepid duo as they jump on the bus to their host’s house.
 Elven Nastya I meet my host Anastasia, or Nastya, along with two other locals; Irina and Masha. Nastya’s incredibly fine face structure, long blonde hair and tiny, slim body make her look like an Elf from the Lord of the Rings films. Which is probably why I’ll call her Elven Nastya. Lari christens her the crazy fairy the next day because she is crazy in a wonderfully beautiful way that is not quite connected to reality. Masha is a voluptuous redhead, with thick flowing hair cascading around her almost porcelain white face. Irina has something partially Middle Eastern in her looks, but it is the combination with Russian beauty that makes her stunning. And she knows it. And loves it. I christen her ‘Princess’ the next day; much to her delight.
 Irina Elven Nastya takes me to her apartment first to drop off my suitcase before the shopping mission. She lives on the third floor and there are no elevators, so I drag my suitcase up the stairs and arrive at the top with a very red face. We leave my bags there and leave for the shop straight away. As we arrive there I hand over all the money to her and its clear the three of them have established what’s required and set about retrieving everything. Elven Nastya asks me cheekily what we’re having for dinner, since I had promised that I would cook for her during my stay. I smile and grab another basket to go in search of my ingredients. I know she’s mostly vegetarian, or, in her words,
“I try to be a vegetarian but my mother works in the factory that makes processed meats that I like and I keep having them.”
So I set about creating a simple stir fry and ask if she likes chilli and if there’s anything she can’t eat. With a little use of charades I determine she hates cinnamon. Reading spice names in Russian is an amazing challenge, some of them are similar enough that I can understand, others have pictures I can recognise. I end up settling for some kind of curry blend in a packet and some fresh onion, ginger and garlic. And about six different kinds of beer. I’m determined to experience as many different Russian beers as possible while I’m here, since I’d never seen any of them in Australia.
 Masha We leave the shop with a sack of cucumbers, an equal sack of tomatoes and some sundry other bits and pieces. Farewelling Irina and Masha, we return to Elven Nastya’s apartment where I take the moment to have a shower. It’s been a few days since I’ve had one, so I’m sure the smell is getting to a bad place now. Luxuriating in my new found cleanliness, I wonder if I can wash some clothes. I look at the dial on the machine with Russian labels and baffling arrays of numbers then decide this is one machine my male instincts can afford not to conquer. Nastya sorts it out for me. Feeling better every minute after the shower I move to take over the kitchen for a while. She is so amazed at how I quickly I can ginger that she makes me stop so she can film it. With years of practice, I can reduce a sizeable piece of ginger to finely shredded slices quicker than you can say ‘anti-disestablishmentarianistically’. Then she asks if it’s alright if her mother and sister come over to meet me. I tell her she has to invite them over to have some the vegetarian noodle stir fry.
Elven Nastya does not look anything like her mother. Her mother, Lyuda, has a more rounded Russian face with dark hair that curves around her face. Her sister, Lena, is certainly more like her mother, and has her smile, but has Elven Nastya’s long flowing hair. Elven Nastya then makes me come up with a sentence in Russian to prove to them I really have been studying. From somewhere the words come together and I only get the gender of the number one incorrect in the sentence. Not bad for eight months work, only eight more years of work to make it come good. We talk about why I’m travelling in Russia and they are amazed I would actually travel to see an eclipse. I talk a little about Australia and put on some Australian music for them to enjoy. They both like it and make me promise to leave it for them on Elven Nastya’s laptop. I remember I have some more Tim-Tams and dig them up to encourage everyone to try a Tim-Tam slam.
They only drink tea, but I think that will work okay too. I demonstrate with my coffee how to draw the liquid through the biscuit and eat it all at once. The resulting sugar and chocolate dosage makes my eyes shine brighter and puts an even bigger smile on my face. Elven Nastya takes a biscuit and repeats my actions, but only puts half of it in her mouth at the end. I say excitedly she has to finish it all at once, but it’s too late and it dissolves onto her fingers. Everyone laughs as she starts to suck the sticky chocolate paste off and her mother tentatively takes a biscuit to have her turn. She slams it perfectly and enjoys the effect, as does Lena. I decide to have another one and they all follow suit. The smiles on everyone’s faces glow and we laugh together. They soon bid us goodnight and Elven Nastya turns her couch into a bed for me and then moves out to the mattress on the balcony where she sleeps. It is much cooler there, the apartment absorbs heat all day and the breeze of the balcony is needed to be comfortable for sleep. I search my luggage for the battery powered fan I’ve brought with me and set it up to draw the cool air from outside across my body. After another lovely quick shower to cool off I drift off wondering exactly where we are going tomorrow. I have faith in my Elven Nastya and I’m sure it will be glorious. I think I underestimate just how glorious.
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