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From St. Petersburg to the Russian Far East: My Siberian Adventure

February 24th, 2013 kaolse14

Forty-one days. Thousands of kilometers. Ten cities. Seven trains. Seven hostels. Seven Siberian dogs. Three hotels. Three flights. Two Buddhist monks. Two weeks with a sore throat. A Russian banya. Dozens of train conversations with Russian citizens. An unknown number of buses and taxis.  Several layers of winter clothes.  The occasional task of retracing my footsteps after getting lost. One trip to a Siberian hospital. The everyday occurrence of asking myself, “Why are my feet still cold with two thermal socks and a heavy snow boot on each foot?” The irregular opportunity to let my family know that I am alive and well. Minus thirty-six degrees Celsius. One unforgettable experience.

My first academic semester in Moscow came to an end on December 21st, 2012. Up to that point, I had visited three other Russian cities: Suzdal (Vladimir), Kazan, and Volgograd. With the semester coming to a close, I knew that I had to do something unforgettable during my nearly six-week vacation. After both research and contemplation, I came up with three options:

  1. Return home to Los Angeles to spend time with family and friends
  2. Travel around Eastern Europe
  3. Enter the Russian freezer known as Siberia

The first option was quickly dropped from the list. Why? Did I not want to spend Christmas with my family and enjoy some warm weather before returning to Russia in February? The easy answer is “Well, of course.” I missed my family and friends, and the holiday reminders – whether they be Christmas music, lights, or trees – in and around Moscow made me think of them even more. However, if I returned home, I knew that I would quickly regret not taking this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see, explore, and experience new places. Next Christmas, I will appreciate my time with family and friends even more while looking back, with a smile, on my experiences abroad.

That left me with two possibilities. Honestly, I was torn between the second and third options. A part of me wanted to explore the great cities of Eastern Europe: Tallinn, Riga, Kiev, Bucharest, and others. The other part of me wanted to explore the real Russia that lie east of Moscow. Even after much contemplation, I was still undecided about where to spend my winter vacation. It was at this time that I happened to stumbled across a questionnaire that I completed for study abroad, a questionnaire that asked me to describe why I wanted to study abroad in “country x.” I was quickly reminded that my goals for study abroad were to improve my language skills and learn about Russian culture(s). After this, I knew that I had to head east to experience Siberia and the Russian Far East.

Before traveling east, my friend and I decided to celebrate Christmas and New Year’s Eve in beautiful St. Petersburg. As it was my first time in Petersburg, I was like a “little kid in a candy shop;” but instead of a desire to try every piece of candy in the shop, I was eager to visit every landmark in Petersburg. Thankfully, I was able to do this while planning the rest of the winter trip and meeting some great people along the way. On the morning of January 1st, after a long night of celebrating the arrival of the new year in the streets of St. Petersburg, we boarded a flight headed to Vladivostok, Russia.

I can go on for hours and hours about the trip. I met so many great people, improved my Russian language, and learned about the Siberian branch of Russian culture(s). I learned how to ice fish from an elderly Russian ice-fisher named Nikolai in Vladivostok. I received a special “blessing” from a Buddhist monk at a monastery just outside of Chita. I walked on the frozen Lake Baikal and sampled omul, a fish that is endemic to the Russian lake. I went dog sledding in Listvyanka. I “stood in two places at once” upon visiting the Europe-Asia Border Marker outside of Yekaterinburg. I visited the site where the Romanovs were executed in 1918. I also grew out a beard which, unfortunately, neither looked good nor protected my face from the unforgivable Siberian winter. And there were many, many more unforgettable moments.

After the long journey, I settled into my new Moscow apartment and began the process of getting to know my new host mother. Furthermore, I transitioned back into an academic routine at the Russian university. And I did not regret my decision to travel east.  🙂

Cities visited: St. Petersburg, Vladivostok, Khabarovsk, Chita, Irkutsk, Krasnoyarsk, Novosibirsk, Omsk, Yekaterinburg, Ufa

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