Days 18, 19 and 20 - The urals and Ekaterinburg, and now off to explore Siberia

local transport

Volchikha – Revda – Yekaterinburg - Omsk

4,119 miles GMT +5 Temp -17

Back safely form the Urals, which was great fun and we rounded it off with snowboarding and falling down a lot.

We returned to Ekaterinburg for the Romanov experience, as it is the city where the Tsar and his family were murdered. For long time the ‘Impatiev House’ was a museum but eventually it become something a shrine and so was demolished. In its place now, something hideous and Disney like, so no I didn’t. Out of the city there is a church complex built where the bodies were discovered. Presumably those who take pilgrimage to this are ok as it’s a trek and a half and nobody can see you . . . . . oh and they don't rip you off.

church of the blood tourist experience

church of the blood forest monastery and chapel

And so ready to move on, Galina made us a picnic for the train, and told me to come back in the summer If I return and she’ll keep me busy in the Dacha garden. I feel sad leaving, I’ve loved being here and shown this side of Russia and everything connected with it. If something else on the trip tops this, it will have to be very special.

Ooh nearly forgot to mention the circus, which we enjoyed yesterday - this is not circus as you know it, this is circus in purpose built building and a big part of Russian social life.  

hedgehog and clowns - a great combination

We’re back on the train now with a 14 hour journey to Omsk. I’ve had my history lesson for today, at this rate I’ll be doing a GSCE when I get back.

Omsk started life as a Cossack outpost in 1716, and by 1824 had replaced Tobolsk as the seat of the Governor General of Siberia. It became a major dumping ground for exiles. These included Dostoyevsky, whose ‘buried alive in Siberia’, which describes the writers wretched Omsk imprisonment 1849-1853, during which he nearly died.

The Soviet government preferred the young Novonikolayevsk, now Novosibirsk, as the administrative centre of Western Siberia, prompting the mass transfer of administrative, cultural and educational functions from Omsk, dampening the city's growth and sparking a rivalry between the two cities that continues to this day. The city received new life as a result of WWII, because it was both far from the fighting and had a well-developed infrastructure, Omsk was a perfect haven for much of the industry evacuated away from the front in 1941. Additionally, contingency plans were made to transfer the provisional Soviet capital to Omsk, in the event of a German victory during the Battle for Moscow. At the end of the war Omsk remained a major industrial centre, and became a leader in Soviet military production, which meant it was closed. Following the collapse of the Soviet era military production was cut drastically and quickly, which led to high unemployment and great social problems in the city, as it did in several cities in Siberia.