Ekaterinburg

So I'm finally getting the feeling back in my tongue. (haha, that's a weird sentence to start with). The other night I got into Ekaterinburg a little late and wanted to get some food. If you want to get food 24 hrs a day the train station is always a good bet, plus I'd seen a place advertising Uzbek food, so I ventured back to the station to try it out. I didn't know I had ordered soup, but I did. OWWW, burning. That happened to me in Mongolia all of the time. I think they heat up the soup and hand it to you as soon as it's boiling. Plus, I'm pretty sure that the grease and the oil that they put in it actually boils somewhere near thousand degrees. Anyway, it was probably a good thing because the 'pizza' that I had the next night, more like pizza loaf, was pretty interesting. I won't describe it to you but I liked it.

Ekaterinburg is a pretty cool town. Our man Boris Yeltsin grew up in the outskirts and went to the Ural university to attend college. Ekaterinburg is in the Ural area, about 200km from the Ural mountains. So basically it is on the border between Europe and Asia. It's like the third capital of Russia, Moscow being the financial, St. Petersburg the cultural, and Ekaterinburg the industrial capital. They didn't allow foreigners into Ekaterinburg during the communist era so it's not what I would call a very touristy town. I visited some cool stuff though, like the Russian Orthodox church built in memorial of the family Czar Nicholas II. They were the last Russian royal (or Romanov) family. They were all murdered, in 1918, in a house where the church now stands. They were the family with the son Alex who was a hemopheliac, and daughter Anastasia. The one who either escaped, or who others claimed to be so they could claim the fortune deposited in British bank accouns. There is also a monastery about 20 min outside the city that I went to, that has about 7 different small churches built up.

The monastery is built over the mining shafts where the remains of the family were taken. Remember what I said about Russian orthodox churches being very elaborate and decorative, in general? Wrong. These churches are built out of wood, without a single nail. They're basically like one room log cabins with some icons, and candles inside.

I had a guide take me to the churches. She had red hair and kind of looked like my sister's Raggedy-Ann (no idea how to spell that) doll that she had when she was younger. In between the church trips I went to a farmer's market just off of Lenin Street, the main road. There was a guy grilling and his tent said that he was the 'Ural Master' so naturally I went and had some beef from the master. Pretty good. (Not that I could taste it completely because my tongue had melted off the night before, but I guessed that it was pretty good)

One of the more interesting things I saw was a Soviet war monument. I talked a little bit before, in Budapest, about how Soviet monuments are all very similar. Well there were a bunch that fit the standard model in Ekaterinburg, except for one, called the Black Tulip. It does have a soldier, but it's not Zhukov, or Lenin, and instead of raising his machine gun high in the air, he is sitting on the ground dejected. Around the monument are the names of local soldiers, who have died in conflicts since 1945. Definitely a different kind of memorial.

Anyway, I'm on the Trans-Siberian right now. I'll post this when I get to Irkutsk. I got on the train about 36 hours ago... I think. I'm kind of losing track of time. We stopped in Novosibirsk last night and are about 16 hours away from Irkutsk right now. I met 3 other Americans (no, 2 Americans, 1 Canadian) that are about my age. Two guys and a girl. One of the guys and girl are moving from New York City to Kansas and taking a break in between a job at Ernst and Young, and doing a PhD in accounting in Kansas. They started in St. Petersburg and are going to Mongolia for a few days, before Beijing. In Mongolia they're going to stay with a family in a ger, or yurt. They asked me about the food and said that they'd heard horror stories. I don't think my musings about horse milk, and sheep intestine blood sausage allayed any of their concerns. Haha, poor kids. They don't know what's about to hit 'em.

List of conflicts/dates pulled off of the Black Tulip Memorial

Ethiopia '77-'79

Libya '82

Mozambiqe '67-'69, '75-'79

Syria '67-'70,'72-'73,'82

Koba? '62-'89

Yemen '62-'63,'67-'69

Egypt '62-'63, '67-'72,'73-'74,'74-'76

Vietnam '61-'74

Algiers? '62-'64

Laos '60-'63,'64-'68,'69-'70

Korea '50-'53

Bengria? '56

Khalkin-gol (Mongolia?) '39

Japan '45

Spain '36-'39

Khasan? '38

Finland '39-'40

Kitae? '24-'27,'37-'44,'45,'46-'49,'50