Meat And Potatoes

Ulan Ude

To celebrate Rayne's birthday (21 again, eh?) and my last night in Russia I decided to treat myself to a meal in a restaurant. I went to one of the better hotels in town (ie. not the one I stayed at), pushed through all the teenagers waiting for the disco to start and sat down at a table. The menu was all in Cyrillic so I just picked a couple of things at random reasoning that whatever I chose it was likely to feature meat and potatoes. Sure enough I got meat and noodle soup followed by pork and potatoes. Russian food gets slagged off and it certainly isn't fancy but I've found it to be very solid and hearty. I think I'll take to eating borscht when I get back home.

Ulan Ude has the world's largest sculpted head. It's of Lenin and dominates the main square in a very sinister way. You never go far in Russia without being reminded of Lenin - every city's main street is named after him and there are statues all over the place. No mention whatsoever of Stalin though, he's been airbrushed out. But then he did kill tens of millions of people so I suppose it's hardly surprising.

And so four weeks after crossing the border at dead of night from Latvia I'm going to leave at dead of night into Mongolia. I've enjoyed it, found the places to be fascinating and the people friendly. It won't be the last visit I make to this great country. But for now next stop is Ulan Bator.