Anna – Page 2 – Waiting for the Train

Yekaterinburg

Yekaterinburg is one of the major stops along the Trans-Siberian and a hub for trains coming from all over Russia but despite its size we found it to be a pretty boring (and not particularly attractive) city. No doubt it was a necessary stop as we were so ready to shower and eat a proper meal after the long train ride from Irkutsk but we certainly don’t feel the need to return.

After great food on Olkhon and in Irkutsk we also ate some terrible meals in Yekaterinburg, which did not do a lot to endear the city to us. We started our first morning off with a dreadful breakfast that included soggy waffles and an utterly undrinkable coffee (in Yekaterinburg’s hippest cafe) and things did not really improve from there. After breakfast we walked across town to Yekaterinburg’s most famous site, the Church of All Saints (also known as the Church on the Blood). Yekaterinburg is most famously known as the town where the last Tsar of Russia, Nicholas II, and his family were executed in 1918. This church, which opened in 2003, is built on the site of the house where they were killed. It’s a somewhat strange place now. It’s located on the main high way that runs through Yekaterinburg and we found the grounds to be almost completely deserted. With no information in English, we poked around for a while, enjoyed our first glimpse of an Eastern Orthdox church and then headed off in search of a second breakfast, hoping that it would be better than the first.

We landed at Mamma’s Big House. We tried the fried cottage cheese cakes that Dan has loved so much throughout our trip and I got a passable coffee. Not great but an improvement at least. Next up, we decided to walk along the Iset River, that runs through the city. It was very green and lined with a few nice old buildings and some public art. We had fun playing at an enormous key board on the side of the river and then walked back to our hostel for a Russian siesta. Somewhat restored, we went in search of lunch. We landed at Khachapuri Dlya Pushkina, a cafe serving traditional Georgian flat breads. The vibe was really nice and cosy and but again the food wasn’t the best. Dan commented that “it was good for bread submerged in cheese”. An accurate review. Sooo cheesy it was overwhelming (Kate, Matt might enjoy this?!).

We continued our walking tour after lunch, before landing at Intouch for what the internet says are the best cocktails in Yekaterinburg for a pre-dinner drink. Our cocktails were comically bad and were followed by dinner at an equally disappointing restaurant. (Hopefully this is the most negative post I write about our trip!).

We woke up in the morning very ready to get on the train to Kazan. Sadly, the train didn’t leave until 6pm so we had the day to fill. It started off better than expected with the best coffee we’d had in a while at Duo. I had mine with a Russian biscuit called kartoshka. It reminded me a lot of hedgehog slice and some research online suggests that they actually have a lot in common. Kartoshka is made with very similar ingredients – cocoa, crushed biscuits, condensed milk. Delicious! And something I hope to recreate in the future. The food options at Duo were pretty insubstantial (hence the kartoshka for breakfast) so we followed up with another forgetful breakfast nearby.

We spent the next couple of hours packing and then went in search of lunch. Thankfully we found a decent meal at Pelmeni Club. I had cabbage pelmeni with a really nice vinegar sauce, Dan had some meet stuffed dumplings and we ended our meal with an enormous piece of very delicious honey cake (our first of the trip and another cake I can’t wait to try making). After lunch we got coffee and then it was finally time to board the train to Kazan! (With a detour for another burger at Burger King, because it might have been the best thing we ate in Yekaterinburg?).

Irkutsk to Yekaterinburg – a very long 56 hours on the train

After arriving back in Irkutsk on Friday afternoon, we headed straight to the railway station to wait for our 5.01pm train to leave for Yekaterinburg, our next stop on the Trans-Mongolian. The journey was to take us 56 hours and cover well over 3,000 kilometres. We also crossed through three time zones, moving back in time as we travelled west. At about 4pm a huge rush of people left the waiting area, including a couple that we recognised from our train ride from Beijing to Ulaanbator. We realised that there was another train leaving for Yekaterinburg an hour before ours and that it would have got us there eight hours quicker than the train we’d booked. Ooooof! We had some serious buyer’s remorse when we realised that our trip was going to be eight hours slower than it needed to be.

For this leg of the journey, we booked second class tickets as all the first class tickets from the Russian rail authority were sold out and to buy them from an agent would have cost a fortune. Second class cabins have four beds, rather than two and I was anxious about sharing a cabin with two strangers for such a long time but it wasn’t so bad in the end. For the first 24 or so hours of our journey we shared with a friendly older Russian man. He didn’t speak much English but proudly told us that he had four grandchildren. He was incredibly organised and seemed to have travelling by train down to a fine art.

We spent our time on the train reading (The Master and Margarita for me) and watching a K drama called Something in the Rain (started of great, went down hill fast) and The Great British Bake Off. The time also passed quickly watching the Russian landscape pass us by. You could see the first hints of autumn in the trees and I imagine that in a couple of weeks the landscape will be wonderfully glowy. On our first morning, we woke up to a beautiful foggy morning. It felt so wintery. Passing brightly painted wooden houses with blooming gardens covered in mist was so lovely.

About 30 hours into our journey our cabin mate got off the train and we were lucky not to have to share with anyone else for most of our second day on board. About 3 hours before we arrived in Yekaterinburg we were joined by a very stern Russian gentleman who did not break a smile or say a word to us for the duration of our shared journey. We’d read that Russians tend to get on board and immediately change into an outfit for the train and this was true for both people that we shared with. Our second companion was not very discreet in making his wardrobe change and whipped off his pants in the middle of our train carriage in order to change into his pyjamas.

Perhaps the worst part about such a long train ride is figuring out what to eat on board. Before getting on the train we stocked up on snacks and they got us through the entirety of our trip (though I never want to see another packet of instant noodles). Apart from lots of instant noodles, we ate Snickers, dried apricots, pistachios, granola, peanut butter on rye, dark chocolate, delicious Russian oat biscuits (that made a pretty good breakfast dunked in coffee) and instant mashed potato. When I was growing up, instant mash (known as Deb in Australia) was often served at school camps etc and thinking about it still makes me shudder. Disgusting is the only word for it. So I was not excited about the possibility of instant Russian mash but it turned out to be quite tasty! Good enough that we both wished we’d bought more. We’d heard from the Australians that the food on board their train from Moscow to Irkutsk was decent and so we planned to eat in the dining cart at least once. As it turned out, the food there looked extremely unappetising and it was expensive so we passed on it and survived on our snacks. We think that the faster, newer trains have much fancier and better equipped dining carts so if we’d booked that speedier train to Yekateriburg, we may well have found a good meal on board.

So, that’s how we passed 56 hours on board – snacks, sleep, television and books. Surprisingly, we didn’t really get cabin fever. It was quite nice to have an excuse to hang out and do not very much for a couple of days. Having said that, by the time we arrived in Yekaterinburg at about 10pm on Sunday night, we were very excited for a shower and a proper meal. We thought the station we’d arrive at was a 15 minute walk from our hostel but we arrived at a completely different station, further out of the city. Exhausted, we sat down in Burger King (Hungry Jacks) for burgers and a chocolate milkshake. I’m not sure fast food ever tasted so good. Some what restored, we got an Uber to our hostel, showered and climbed into bed, very happy to be in a bed that wasn’t moving.

Hanging out in Siberia – a few days on Olkhon Island

On Wednesday morning we were picked up early from our hostel (so sad to leave!) and headed off to Olkhon Island for three days. Olkhon is in Lake Baikal, the largest fresh water lake in the world. Getting there, and particularly getting around the island, is something of a logistical challenge so we joined a small tour, led by a local man called Ivan. We were also joined by a Swiss-Czech Australian couple from Adelaide. Ivan organised everything seamlessly and it was really nice to have someone else make all the decisions for us for a little while. Our tour mates were really fun too so it turned out to a be a great trip.

It’s a 5-6 hour journey to Olkhon from Irkutsk. We started off with a long drive, stopping along the way to look at important local Shamanic spots and to get a glimpse of Lake Baikal. We also stopped at a local cafe for a delicious lunch of fried noodles, a fried pie, a fantastic vegetable noodle soup and posy (a type of dumpling eaten by Buryat people, the indigenous people of the area around Lake Baikal). I am really enjoying Russian food so far and though Buryat food has a lot in common with Mongolian food we’ve found it so much fresher. After a 4 hour drive, we reached the car ferry to Olkhon. We drove straight onto the ferry, zipped across the water in about 15 minutes and then we were on Olkhon!

Olkhon has no paved roads so next up we had a very bumpy, hour long drive to our guest house in Khuzhir (the island’s main village). We were lucky to arrive on a warm, cloudless day with a bright blue sky and amazingly clear and calm water. Photos don’t really do justice to the scale of Olkhon, or its rugged beauty. I’ve never been anywhere else like it. To see it as the seasons change must be really cool too – I imagine it feels totally different in the winter when you can just drive straight over the ice to reach it.

After dropping off our bags at our guest house, we went for a very long walk to some famous spots close to Khuzhir. The water was unbelievably clear, but still pretty cold, and none of us were keen to swim. About 1,700 people live on Olkhon and we enjoyed popping into the local stores too. I think they’re like old fashioned Australian general stores, where you can buy ice cream and lollies as well as fresh fruit and vegetables, cleaning supplies, frozen food and shoes.

It was fun to stay in a guest house, something we haven’t done before. It looked like every house in the village had a guest house in the garden. Ours was pretty basic but spotlessly clean and quiet and the food was good. At 6.30pm we all sat down to dinner together. There’s no menu – a simple meal just arrived at our table. We had cucumbers pickled in vinegar, dill and sesame seeds, vegetable rice and a kind of meatball ish thing with gravy. For dessert there were huge sweet yeasted buns stuffed with curd cheese and topped with crumble. After so many carbs and a long day of driving and walking, we crashed early.

After a breakfast of porridge, cheese toast and fried dough drizzled with condensed milk (a very sweet and heavy start to the day), we spent Thursday driving and walking through the north of Olkhon Island, which is a protected area. We spent the day in a UAZ (a vehicle initially designed for the military). They look old but apparently we were in a 2013 model (it definitely did not feel or look like it from the outside). Parts of the drive were so incredibly bumpy we felt like we were in a washing machine. At points the van looked like it would just tip sideways. The drive was fun but we were looking forward to a paved road by the end of the day. We stopped off at lots of different spots on the coastline, including places of significance for the Buryat people and the site of a former Soviet gulag, where prisoners fished huge quantities of fish from the lake. We were able to walk out along cliffs, which are all completely free of fences or warning signs. (This definitely would not be the case in Australia or the US).

We ate lunch outside. We had soup made with a fish found only in Lake Baikal, called omul, delicious sandwiches (something about Russian bread is really so good), home baked biscuits (cookies for our American readers), candied lemon and orange slices and tea brewed with local herbs (it tasted like liquorice, in a good way!).

We made it back to the guest house at about 5pm and despite having spent much of the day driving, we were exhausted. We napped, had dinner (a potato and vegetable stew with pork, tomato and cucumber salad with lots of garlic and a simple butter cake for dessert), did some more travel planning for our upcoming European adventures and then we crashed early again.

On Friday morning, we enjoyed our last meal at the guest house: potato bake, eggs on toast and crepes with condensed milk (I did not realise how popular condensed milk would be here – it’s everywhere!). Then it was back on the road so that we could get back to Irkutsk in time for our afternoon train to Ykaterinberg.

A few days in Beijing

On Saturday morning we took the high speed rail from Shanghai to Beijing. Organising tickets was a stressful experience but we got there in the end. The fastest high speed trains were sold out but we found seats on one that averaged a measly 300 km per hour. It was great zooming through the Chinese country side although we immediately missed having Chris around to help us. We didn’t have enough time in Shanghai to organise snacks so we tried to buy some on the train. It didn’t go as smoothly as hoped – thanks to language barriers and miscommunications I accidentally ordered Dan an entire braised chicken as a snack. Still, we made it to Beijing in one piece (albeit hungry).

After getting off the train we headed for the subway and were immediately surrounded by the chaos and crush of Beijing. I was totally overwhelmed by the scale of the city. Something that looks like it is next door on the map is miles away. The crowds were intense, the roads were huge, the subways were packed and the passengers definitely didn’t appreciate our backpacks. Although we found some great spots on Beijing, both of us prefer the vibes, the more relaxed pace and the green streets of Shanghai.

So many bikes lined up outside a subway station in Beijing

Anyway, after checking into our hostel we headed out to grab dinner. We went in the direction of Sanlitun, an area that turned out to be full of malls and expats. We didn’t want to fall into an over priced tourist trap so we were a little flummoxed about where to go but we managed to find a great hot pot place called CouCou. Dan had his fill of lamb and I ordered so many vegetables and stuffed myself with watermelon. It was all so welcome after lots of salty packaged snacks on our six hour train ride . I tried to order jasmine tea but our server couldn’t figure out what I wanted. She used a translate app to ask me if I wanted green tea after the rain. How could I say no to something so poetic? What arrived was very different to what I expected – I think it was an iced jasmine tea latte? Not something I would ever order for myself but really tasty and so refreshing against the heat of the chilli packed hot pot. After dinner we had a quick drink at Janes & Hooch and then crashed.

On Sunday morning we headed out to explore Beijing. We started with Peking duck (a Beijing specialty) at a famous spot near our hostel (we had tried to go the previous night but there was a two hour wait!). Duck is not something I seek out as a mostly vegetarian but it was very delicious and the attention to detail was incredible. Everything was so beautifully presented. Even the grapes served with your meal arrived on a plate piled with crushed ice and swirling with dry ice. We ate the duck with the most delicious pancakes, sweet soy, cucumber and pickled vegetables. And I ordered lots of steamed greens to have on the side.

After breakfast we rode to a cluster of hutongs west of our hostel to explore. While wandering in and out of lovely alleys sounded like a lot of fun, we had not anticipated the insane crowds of a Beijing weekend. Walking around tested our patience and stamina. I think we made it out alive thanks to a combination of caffeine (at the beautiful Voyage coffee shop and a mountain of churros and vanilla ice cream topped with a sweet milky syrup called hazelnut milk).

Ever optimistic, we headed towards the Forbidden City and Tian’anmen Square. Of course, it was also eye wateringly busy. We came, we saw, we made our best attempt at admiring the sights and then we admitted defeat and went looking for more coffee and somewhere quiet to read.

We found the much quieter hutong south west of the Forbidden City which was very pleasant to wander along. We looked in at some very chic boutiques and got more coffee and read our books at Berry Beans.

For dinner we headed back to the hutongs where we started our day, thinking it might be quieter at night. Ha! No chance at all. It was still packed. Despite the crowds, we made it to Nina’s, a negroni bar Dan had read about. Not sure what we’d find at an Italian spot in Beijing, it turned out to be great! It seemed to be packed with every Italian person in Beijing. The negronis were delicious and the food was pretty good too, especially the fried pizza.

Monday was our last full day in Beijing before leaving for Mongolia. We started the day by moving to a hotel just by the train station. Our train was leaving at 7.27am on Tuesday morning and we didn’t want to have to deal with public transport or taxis and risk missing our train. It turned out to be a great move as the hotel was a few minutes walk from the station and far more comfortable than our hostel.

After moving we got lunch at Yoshinoya (very much inferior to the Japanese original), coffee (pretty good cold brew from Starbucks) and shortbread from Wagas (excellent!). We needed to stock up on snacks for the train ride so in the afternoon we went to a supermarket – one of my favourite things to do in a foreign city. Errands completed, we went for dinner at another hot pot place. There was a long wait but Beijing makes waiting for a table a big event – restaurants line up chairs on the foot path outside the restaurant and offer snacks and drinks to pass the time. So, we sat and snacked for about an hour until our table was ready. Dinner done (the hot pot was fine, but not as delicious as CouCou), we headed home to pack and sleep ahead of our train journey. Next stop, Mongolia!

Two weeks in Shanghai

we’re just about to wrap up a lovely two weeks in shanghai. we had grand plans to do at least a couple of day trips and spend a while in beijing but chris has been so hospitable and the task of booking inter-city train tickets so daunting, we decided to stay put in shanghai for longer than planned. we’ve been sleeping in and reading books and drinking coffee. it’s been so nice after a pretty frantic few months.

on our first morning in the city, after an epic 10+ hour sleep, we had a lazy morning before going to vegan brunch on the bund. after consuming a crazy amount of carbs in taiwan, it was really nice to have a vege-focused meal. after brunch we picked up coffee at sumerian (perhaps the best coffee i’ve had since leaving australia) and then started wandering and cycling through the very cute streets of the french concession. dan got a snack the spelling of which i can never remember and we had a vegan smoothie pit stop at graze before getting negronis at funkadeli and a scoop of strawberries and cream ice cream at gracie’s. we decided to call it a night and order in dinner and so we cycled home. it was really lovely cycling through the quiet sunday streets of shanghai.

monday and we were on our own without chris to help us. thankfully we’ve done ok. for our first adventure we paid a huge 75 cents for jianbing at a tiny stall near chris’s apartment. it’s a crispy pancake layered with egg, chilli and spring onion which is folded around a crispy fried cracker. so delicious! we’ve been back a couple of times since then and i will miss them when we leave for mongolia.

since then we’ve fallen into a nice rhythm of sleeping in, getting a cheap take away breakfast close to home that we eat with a pot of coffee before chilling our for a couple of hours and then hitting the city. we’ve been making great use of mobikes. they’re so

cheap and convenient and i’ve been shocked by how respectful shanghai drivers are. it’s been so nice cycling everywhere.

other highlights of our time here include:

sleep no more

hanging out at the bar before heading into sleep no more

cabaret at candour
ruby punch at the punch room (edition hotel) – the drinks did not pack any punch at all but the views from the roof top bar over the bund were really stunning.

big bowls of frog noodles at a 24 hour restaurant (that is seemingly always packed!) across the road from chris’s apartment. i didn’t mind the texture of frog – it’s like a delicate shrimp – and the flavour is very mild but the buttery noodles were too much for me.

nervously about to dive into frog noodles

delicious soup dumplings at jia jia (thank you scarlett for the recommendation!)
frozen yogurt at spooon and coffee beans from the delightfully small and particular cafe del volcan
walking along the bund – like most tourist sites it was absolutely packed with people but i’m really glad we came. the view along the river is amazing and the art deco buildings really are incredible
jazz and cocktails at heyday. we went on a thursday night to hear denise sing and she was amazing
sesame noodles (with spicy pork for dan) – sesame paste is one of my favourite things and these noodles were delicious – dressed thickly with sesame paste, soy, chill oil and scallions

delicious lunch from a cantonese place near chris’s apartment when it was raining outside and we didn’t want to leave the apartment – shrimp wanton soup and sticky claypot rice
bar no 3 for perfectly delicate pear cocktails, followed by a delicious anniversary dinner at racines

grilled garlic shoots at a nearby izakaya that chris took us to
sea snail noodles
drinks at speak low – we agreed the drinks were some of the best we’ve ever had (and my pina colada came complete with an umbrella. like, not a cocktail umbrella. a real umbrella)

coffee and cake at cafe on air – one of the most beautiful cafes i’ve ever been too. it’s just off one of shanghai’s busiest shopping streets. as dan led us there i couldn’t imagine we were going to chill in a relaxing space but you head down an alley and through a large wooden door and you’re standing ina gorgeous light filled cafe that overlooks a beautiful garden

western chinese food at yershari
black pineapple ice cream at bonus
pan fried dumplings and turmeric soup at dahuchun

peace out shanghai. you’ve been so swell.

Days 3-5 – Taipei

day three and we jumped on the high speed rail into taipei (only thirty minutes!). we decided to start our trip in taiwan so that we could visit dan’s friends but i left hoping that we’ll be able to get back there soon to do some more exploring. we had a great time wandering around – the food was so good, the people were lovely and it was super easy to get around. the only down side was the intense heat! it was so hot that we didn’t spend push ourselves to see everything and go everywhere.

on our first afternoon we had delicious sesame and peanut noodles from a little store just downstairs from our apartment in da’an. we wandered for a while and then headed back to the apartment to get some relief from the weather. dan ended up taking an (epic!) six hour nap while I made travel plans for barcelona and copenhagen in september (if you have any recommendations, please send them our way!) and watched a movie. after dan woke up from his nap, we headed out for a late dinner, worried that we wouldn’t be able to find much open. thankfully we ended up having a really lovely evening. we found a delightful izakaya on a side street near our apartment and had fresh beer, delicious grilled zucchini and mackerel (for dnna), and beef tongue and chicken cartilage (for dan). i’ve been really surprised by how much Taiwan feels like Japan to me. the streets, the public transport (high speed trains! amazingly punctual and clean subways!) and the izakayas. we really could have been in tokyo sitting in that lovely cozy wood panelled bar. given that Dan was fresh from such a long nap, we kicked on at wa-shu, a cocktail bar not far from our apartment. a negroni for Dan and a yuzu sake cocktail for anna and we thought we’d worn ourselves out enough to sleep through the night. it worked! even dan managed to sleep through the night after his super nap.

our sightseeing in taipei was limited to a morning we spent at the national palace museum. the collection is enormous, and full of very beautiful pieces, but i was unprepared for the crowds of tourists and we got burnt out fast. we decided to head for songshan instead, a hipster pocket of taipei. the streets are cute and tree-lined but again, we were felled by the heat. we found a great spot for noodles and then stopped in for a pineapple cake at sunny hills (sooo good) before heading home to siesta. we watched a huge thunder storm roll over the city from our apartment and waited for the temperature to plummet before we headed out again.

as proof that the world is a very small place, one of dan’s friends (vince) from his jiu jitsu school back in new york is also travelling at the moment and landed in taipei the night before we left for shanghai. we met up for drinks at ounce, a very cool speakeasy with a delicious old fashioned and then had dinner at a nearby izakaya.

our last morning in taipei and we got a very local breakfast nearby our apartment. after packing up we decided to finish up our time in taipei in the most taipei way possible – at din tai fung. the wait for a table was crazy but we got a table with just enough time to inhale some xiao long bao before heading to songshan airport (surely the most conveniently located airport on earth – it was just a few subway spots (and a few dollars) from our apartment).

it was only a quick flight over to shanghai and we breezed into the city on the mrt to chris’s apartment. i was so tired i skipped dinner and headed straight to bed while dan and chris headed out. zzzzzzzz.

Day 2 – Hsinchu and Taichung

Day 2 in Taiwan and we again started the day by going in search of breakfast. Things went slightly less smoothly than yesterday as the cafe we chose had no English menus and required you to write out your own order in Mandarin. Thankfully a young woman took pity on us and wrote out an order for us. I’m not exactly sure what we ate but it was tasty and so cheap and it was fun to eat in such a local spot.

Breakfast done, we headed home to meet Claudia and drive to Taichung, about an hour south of Hsinchu, with plans to visit the National Taichung Theatre and a gallery. We ended up in Taichung before the National Theatre opened so we headed over to a nearby Mitsukoshi for an early lunch. The theatre is a really cool space to walk through and it’s full of cute cafes and local things to buy. It’s totally worth a stop. Next up we made a brief detour for coffee before heading to the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts where we saw an exhibition of works by Taiwanese artists. The Chinese calligraphy was particularly beautiful to see.

An installation inside the National Taichung Theatre

Claudia needed to get back to Hsinchu to pick up her son from school and so Dan and I decided to dash off to the Hsinchu coast line. We’d planned to check out the fish markets and perhaps do a 17 km cycle along the shoreline but we arrived too late to rent bikes and the fish markets were closing up.

We wandered for a while as the sun set and then headed back to a night market we spotted on our way out to the marina. It was my first time at a Taiwanese night market and although we started small, I was totally overwhelmed by choice (and sweat). We tried sticky rice with mushrooms and chickpeas, grilled cumin lamb, tiny fried quail eggs (for Dan), fried sweet potato balls and the most delicious and flakey spring onion pancake. The markets were buzzy and crowded and while the vibe was a+, we were so hot and sweaty we headed home and crashed early (definitely both still jet lagged). Tomorrow, on to Taipei!