Category: Russia

We arrived in Saint Petersburg in the evening, after a zippy four hour trip, and walked over to our fantastic hotel. It was immediately clear that Saint Petersburg had a very different vibe to Moscow. Although parts of Moscow felt much more European than we expected, it still had a very visible Soviet presence. We saw almost none of that in Saint Petersburg. No doubt as you get further away from the old centre things modernise, but just about every pocket of the city that we went to felt like it hadn’t changed since the revolution. And it’s beautiful! Like Venice but without the grittiness and tourists. Still, clearly the food has changed – we spent our first evening at a restaurant that served only hotdogs and champagne (presumably not a Soviet era staple). We had both hotdogs and champagne, with a side of fantastic sweet potato fries, and then ended our evening with an excellent night cap at the rather austere Orthodox.

On our first morning in the city we started with a great breakfast at Bonce. Dan had a proper English breakfast, I had oatmeal (which was served with a spoonful of melted butter on top) and we shared some more fried curd cheesecakes (sirniki). I think these were my favourite yet. They were so delicate and came with a delicious berry and cherry sauce. The coffee was also great. After breakfast we walked and walked along Saint Petersburg’s very charming canals, past the Church of Savior on the Spilled Blood, St Isaac’s Cathedral (where we had planned to go up to the colonnade but it was closed for the duration of our visit), and Kazan Cathedral.

Mid-afternoon we hopped on the subway and made our way to the State Museum of Political History of Russia. The Museum was excellent. We spent hours here and left only when we were very much in need of sustenance and a chair. The museum carefully described the gradual and then very hasty demise of the Romanovs and life in Soviet Russia (things came to a hard stop at Putin). It was interesting to get a glimpse of how Russians view the last 100 years or so of their history and I was particularly surprised by how critical of Stalin the museum’s commentary was (though perhaps I wouldn’t have been if I knew more about modern Russian history).

From the museum we walked through the very trendy Petrogradsky where we had an extremely late lunch / early dinner at an Italian restaurant (aptly named Italy). Is there anything better than a big bowl of pasta to lift spirits? I don’t think so. Somewhat refreshed, we made our way back to our cute hotel room to rest for a few hours before a late dinner nearby at Pelmenya, an inexpensive dumpling place packed with Russian speakers. We tried an interesting beer and a Georgian wine and dove into a variety of dumplings. They were good but (never thought I’d write these words) not as good as Yekaterinburg!

On Thursday morning we started our day by getting completely saturated in a rain shower on our way to breakfast. We pressed on, thinking it would be just a brief shower (it wasn’t in the forecast!), and it just poured and poured. By the time we arrived at Coffee 22 we were soaked through. Despite our sogginess (and probably to the dismay of the cafe staff), we sat down to breakfast (and dried out relatively quickly in the warm cafe). Dan tried another interpretation of smoked salmon and zucchini pancakes and I had a Spanish tortilla and salad (excellent). For breakfast dessert we shared more sirniki or Russian fried cheese cakes (this time with some lemon in them and served with jam and honey).

From breakfast we went to do some shopping in the hip area around Kazan Cathedral and then we walked over the Palace Bridge to the Peter and Paul Fortress. We walked around the walls of the fortress and then headed into the Peter and Paul Cathedral. I’d been curious about the church after seeing the tall spire from a distance (still the tallest structure in Saint Petersburg and also the oldest landmark) but didn’t realise until going in that it was the burial place for Russian royalty starting with Peter the Great (even the Romanovs have since been buried there after their bodies were discovered). What was more surprising to me was the fact that the tombs were above the ground scattered around the interior of the church. No doubt the result of my heathen tendencies, but Russian churches are confounding to me. Apparently services are still held there – something I cannot imagine given the presence of the tombs.

We ate lunch at a nearby restaurant called Koryushka where we decided once and for all that herring is definitely not as delicious as mackerel or anchovies and that Georgian food is too cheesy. We did however enjoy the view across to the Hermitage Museum and the Winter Palace and the other diners were good fun. It was obviously a business restaurant and we sat opposite a table of men who lived up to Russian vodka drinking stereotypes. They offered to buy us a round of shots but we declined (I think we’d need to spend some more time in Russia to truly appreciate the value of a mid-week lunch time vodka shot).

We took a long walk home via Bonce (to pick up some of their honey cake – delicious!) to chill out and get ready for our evening plans. On Thursday night we went to see Cinderella at the Marinksy Theatre (Dan’s first time going to the ballet!). The theatre itself was incredibly beautiful and the ballet was enjoyable, although I do prefer the more athletic and modern style of the New York City Ballet. Cinderella was a bit naff! They’re obviously trying to bring ballet into the digital age as they used a combination of traditional sets and projections but it was all pretty out of date so it ended up looking very 1990s clip art. After the ballet we wanted something quick and close by to eat so we ended up at an Irish pub called Molly Shelter. The food was fine (the hot chips were amazing) and the negroni was good too (impressively good given that we were in an Irish pub in Russia).

On our last morning in the city we started slow with lots of donuts from Пышечная (Pyshechnaya), a St Petersburg institution and their veeeeeery sweet coffee. The donuts were good, and such a bargain at only 20 cents each, but we later discovered that they are much better fresh from the fryer (we went back for a second round which we inhaled in the cafe). We combined old and new Russia, pairing our cheap donuts with third wave coffee from Skuratov (certainly much more expensive but so worth it in comparison to the sweetened instant coffee from the donut shop).

On Friday afternoon we headed to the Hermitage. As to be expected, the crowds of people were huge, although we climbed to the top of the Winter Palace and enjoyed going through the much quieter collections of Iranian and Turkish art, ceramics and textiles. Having housed Russian royalty for so long, I was hoping that the museum would include a lot more social history than it did. Even with an audio guide, many of the exhibits went unexplained and there was certainly no context.  The Hermitage collection is contained in five buildings (the Winter Palace is the main and most famous). We couldn’t get to all of them so after a couple of hours in the Winter Palace we opted to head to the General Staff building, which houses the Hermitage’s modern art collection. I’m so glad that we came here. The collection was interesting and the building itself was beautiful and light.

On our last night in Moscow we had dinner at Mayak, a typical Soviet style bar (so the patrons told us). The staff spoke no English but warmly recruited some young guests to help us. They pointed us to their favourite meals and told us which vodkas to order. The food was acceptable (the herrings in particular were nice) and incredibly cheap and we loved soaking up the vibe. It was a very cosy and suitably Russian end to our Trans-Siberian experience.

Our trip from Kazan to Moscow was a very fast 12 hours. We shared our cabin with a lovely older woman who boarded the train with a big basket of apples (she kindly shared them with us). We arrived early in the morning and took the metro to our hostel. The Moscow metro stations are amazing; it’s worth riding the subway just to see them.

We had hours to occupy ourselves before we would be able to check into our room so we went to get breakfast at the aptly named Breakfast Cafe and then walked to Patriach’s Ponds. The opening scenes of The Master and Margarita, one of Dan’s favourite books, take place at the Ponds and this spot was one of Dan’s must see places in Moscow. Although the Ponds and the surrounding parks have been dramatically reduced in size since The Master and Margarita was written, the space is still really nice and we enjoyed people watching in the sun.

After sitting and wandering we headed over to David B for coffee. The coffee was fine, nothing special, but the croissant was excellent. We walked further still and then sat down at Pinch for a second breakfast. We’d seen a crowd of people outside Pinch earlier and it definitely looked like the place to be. Our food was really lovely (porridge for me and amazing coconut chia mango pudding for Dan) but it was really expensive and the servings were teeny! It was a far cry from our favourite Kazan canteen.

After our second breakfast we headed back to our hostel to check in and nap. In the evening we walked over to a street called Bol’shaya Nikitskaya Ulitsa to have a drink and a snack at Apartment 44. The street looks like one of the hippest in Moscow, with tonnes of people out drinking cocktails and eating at very sleek Japanese restaurants. Apartment 44 was lovely and cosy and made a decent negroni. We figured we might as well go all in on Moscow restaurants and so we headed to Cafe Pushkin for dinner.  We sat at the bar to wait for a table, having been told it would only be a few minutes. Half an hour later and starving, we still hadn’t been seated. We decided dining with Russian businessmen and nobility probably wasn’t our scene anyway and decided to walk over to an Australian restaurant called Glenuill. This was an excellent call. Of course I’m biased, but the food was so good and a very welcome change from the nice but relatively unchanging Russian food we’d had over the past couple of weeks. Sated and happy we headed home to sleep.

On Sunday we set out to see the major sights of Moscow. We started by going to Table, an excellent but definitely off the beaten track cafe for breakfast. The coffee was great, Dan was able to get his fill of cheese pancakes and I was thrilled to have a (vegan!) breakfast of roasted vegetables and hummus.  From breakfast, we caught the subway to central Moscow, where we started by walking through the elaborate Metropole, a famous hotel that is also frequently mentioned in The Master and Margarita. Next up, we headed for GUM, an incredibly intricate and extravagant department store that opens onto the Red Square.

We left the store and walked through to the Red Square, where we bought tickets to Saint Basil’s Cathedral. I enjoyed this stop so much. We were lucky enough to hear a quartet singing and I’d never walked through a church which is constructed like this one before. Rather than a single alter and rows of seats facing it, the cathedral was made of lots of smaller chapels, each containing a single large alter, without seating. I’m not sure how Orthdox services are conducted given that there is no space for a congregation to sit. I also loved the decoration inside, which felt more to me like a lot of Middle Eastern design, rather than the churches I’m more familiar with.

From Saint Basil’s, we walked over to Zaryadye Park. The park, which was designed by the same architects who did New York’s High Line, was somewhere I really wanted to visit after reading about the incredible spaces it includes which jut out over the roads below towards the Moscow River. It did indeed look amazing but the crowds were insane. We needed a break and headed to a hip, quiet area which had a few shops we’d been wanting to check out. We had beer in a quiet leafy square and then it was home to get ready for our most extravagant meal in Russia (by faaaaar!).

White Rabbit is often included on lists of the world’s best restaurants, and with a rooftop overlooking the Moscow sky line, we decided it would be worth the stop. The walk there took us past the incredibly imposing Russian Foreign Ministry. The Ministry is one of the “Seven Sisters”, a collection of enormous skyscrapers built at the behest of Stalin in the 40s and 50s. The Ministry is full of Soviet symbolism, including workers towering over you, and I found the size and proportions of the buildings unsettling. (You can see another one from Zaryadye Park; and here are some photos of the Moscow State University).

We went with a 10 course tasting menu which, while not our usual style, was a cool experience. The highlight was a cabbage wedge served with champagne caviar sauce (three types of caviar!) and tiny red tomatoes. The desserts were also great. They included a caramelised milk sauce with mousse, burnt hazelnut and vodka and a black bread, milk ice cream and black garlic dish. Strange, but really good.

We woke up on Monday morning to gloomy weather and the sense that colds were coming for us. We took it easy, heading to a hip area for a late breakfast in a very sleek cafe. We had great coffee and I loved my tempeh sandwich (tempeh! in Moscow!). After wandering through the streets and spending some time at a nearby mall, we walked to an Australian cafe called One Teaspoon. The walk was lovely – the parks that run down the middle of Moscow’s streets are so nice. And One Teaspoon was great! I love the cherries that show up in so many Russian desserts and I had a delicious cherry tart while Dan went savoury with a salmon rocket pasta and a bottle of Russian pear cider.

For dinner we took a long walk over to my favourite part of the city, the streets around Patriarch’s Ponds. We ate at a very cosy Russian spot. And then it was home to pack for our fast train to Saint Petersburg the next day.

Before I start just wanted to mention the change to the layout of the blog, I wanted all the words and photos to spill out on from the very front page.

Kazan is the capital of the Tartarstan state of Russia, more than a thousand years old it’s one of Russia’s oldest cities and a legacy of Ivan the Terrible’s conquests.

The city was only an overnight train ride from Yekaterinburg, having left at just after six, we arrived at the crack of dawn in Kazan at just past five.  Compared to experiences on a red eye flight, we were very much refreshed after our sleep on the train.

Kazan isn’t a standard destination on the Trans Siberian, in fact it’s not part of it at all, but from our research Kazan seemed fascinating, and seemed to be recommended by locals everywhere.

After hosteling most of our way, we ended up staying at the Double Tree in Kazan, a welcome upgrade, and also a hotel happy to give us our room keys 6 hours before check in.  After some warm showers, and some research we were back on the street in search of a hot breakfast which would lead us to a place we would frequent over and over during our time in the city.

Добрая столовая (Dobra Stolovaya), which in english translates simply to “Good Dining Room”, is an awesome cafeteria we found that is serving eager customers from early in the morning until the evening.  The food was delicious and a meal between the two of us would usually be less than $3.  There was so much variety that we came back over and over never running out of new things to try.  Anna’s favorite dish ended up being this sweet cottage cheese cake in a shortbread crust (Sochnik), mine was a sort of meat pie with cabbage.  Delicious.

We spent the rest of the day walking about the city, eventually taking a long bus ride into the middle of nowhere to see the Temple of All Religions, an unfinished religious site made by an eccentric man who wanted to honor all the “great” religions of the world in one place, the man died a few years ago, but his disciples continue to work on the building (construction continued as we walked about the site).  Anna thought the place was very creepy, it seemed fine during the day, but I suppose I wouldn’t want to be running around the place at night.  Seems like a place where the occult may take place.

After a long public bus ride back, we headed to Kazan Kremlin, built by Ivan the Terrible in 1500 interestingly has both a Eastern Orthodox Church and Mosque on site, a symbol of the two religions coexisting peacefully in Kazan for half a millenia.  Both sites required Anna to wear head scarf, because a woman exposing her hair is clearly indecent.

We were allowed to climb to the top of the mosque where we had a view down on the prayer room.  We then walked over to the church just in time for the 4pm bells.  If you’ve never heard an east Orthodox bell ringing ceremony, I would describe as quite… creepy.  The bells are rung unmelodious, near cacophony, almost like a clock gone haywire.  I actually loved it.  The church (which we were not allowed to photograph) had a very gilded, but dark and sombre tone and the bells matched perfectly.

After walking the rest of the grounds (some of it still being used for active government) we headed back to the cafeteria for dinner.  Little did we know we had basically saw all of Kazan before we spent even our first night.

That wasn’t so bad though, the rest of our time in Kazan was spent eating great food and the excellent coffee, two of our favorite things to do!

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?).

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.  

After hopping off the bus in the centre of Irkutsk, we headed to our hostel, Rolling Stones. We had a terrible hostel experience in Beijing and were a bit nervous about staying in a hostel again but Rolling Stones turned out to be a true gem. It was the best! Super comfortable rooms, perfect location, great staff and we enjoyed chatting to the other guests too.

We were in Irkutsk for three days. The train from Irkutsk to Yekaterinburg (our next stop) only runs a couple of times each week so we had to choose between stopping for two days or for five. We chose to stop for five days (three in Irkutsk and then two nights on Olkhon Island) but I was worried we’d be bored. Those worries turned out to be totally unnecessary as Irkutsk / Lake Baikal was my favourite stop along the Trans-Mongolian and there was more than enough to keep us occupied. The food in particular was SO good in Irkutsk.

Our first meal was at Antricot. The food was fine, with a very American vibe, and a funny menu (sausages, burgers, fancy iced teas). It also doubles as a hookah bar? Heading out from Antricot we wandered around the city for a while and stopped to watch people dancing by the river. The city is so charming, full of old wooden buildings that are painted so colourfully and as we were there in high summer it was spectacularly green with flowers blooming everywhere.

After resting for a while, we had an excellent dinner at Bierhaus, one of many Belgian beer spots in Irkutsk. It was great German food, a bit pricier but by no means expensive.  Dan tried a Baikal vodka that was infused with pine nut, which was really yummy. We also had excellent fried fish, crispy potato pancakes with local cured fish, dill and onions and grilled vegetables.

We took it easy over the next few days, alternating between going out to eat, reading, making travel plans (so time consuming!) and wandering around Irkutsk, which has a really charming vibe.

We had fantastic coffee at a cafe called White Crow and a wonderful dinner at Rassolnik, which staff at Rolling Stones recommended to us. Highlights included a Georgian wine and a delicious rye and cherry cake. I would really love to find a book about Russian baking, as we have tried so many interesting and delicious cakes and biscuits along the way. We also had crepes and condensed milk for the first time (a Russian staple, it seems) and tried lots of types of Russian dumplings (pelmeni, varenyky and chebureki). We tried a sweet varenyky (recommended to us by a waiter at the local dumpling place) which was stuffed with a cream or cottage cheese and served with sour cream and strawberry sauce.

True to form, I also loved exploring Russian supermarkets. I think honey must be a local speciality as there were rows of different types of honey. There were also lots of different types of grapes and tiny, bright orange apricots. We tried cheesecake bars for the first time (a skinny bar of cheesecake coated in chocolate that is apparently a popular breakfast food). Dan also discovered Zhigulevskoye beer – delicious and cheap at 60 roubles.

So all in all, we had a really chilled and enjoyable time in Irkutsk doing not that much. We left Irkutsk rested and relaxed and looking forward to three days on Olkhon Island.

(Written by Anna)