Care In The Community

Irkutsk

In hostels there's usually at least one random middle-aged or old guy sat around on his own and acting strangely. The place I've been staying in here is no exception, the only difference from most is that here he's not a German. Last night after some Russian computer geeks had persuaded me to end my temporary booze ban and try some of their local wheat beer, I went to bed at about half one expecting everyone in the room to be asleep. Not so. I found everyone asleep except this old man who had the light on, his portable TV blaring out Russian Pop Idol and some notebooks in front of him on which he was occasionally writing something and mumbling to himself. When I woke up this morning, he was still poring over those bits of paper and chuntering away. What does he think he's doing? Maybe he's a KGB spy.

I just checked out a museum about the Decembrists. They were a bunch of aristocrats sent into exile in these parts for a failed attempt to overthrow the Tsar in 1825. The wooden shack this family stayed in seemed pretty decent for around here although it wasn't a patch on their previous sumptuous lodgings in St Petersburg. It must have been terrible for them, poor things.

I'm off to Ulan Ude tonight, my eighth and last Russian city. I've got to make sure I'm in Mongolia by Monday because my visa here runs out on Tuesday. And as one local said to me yesterday, "in Russia, without papers, you are just an insect."