Finally, the news that I’ve been waiting for! Today I found out
that I can get a multi-entry visa; I’m going home! I’d been waiting for news
all last week, but only over the past two days had it begun to hit me that I
might actually be unable to get back for the funeral. The weekend had been busy
but even that wasn’t enough to take my mind off it and get me out of my funk. On
Saturday I was exhausted from the night before and would have spent the whole
day wallowing in my room had it not been for the shopping trip I took with
Alexia, which provided a welcome distraction.
We’d planned to go to the big Вернисаж shopping centre on the outskirts of town to get Alexia a
thick winter coat, which she would definitely need soon, judging by the sudden
change in the weather. We were quite pleased with ourselves when we managed to
find and get on the right bus, but suspected something was up when we noticed
we were getting further and further into the Russian countryside – otherwise
known as the middle of nowhere. When we came to the end of the line we asked
the conductor where on earth this shopping centre was, at which point she and
the driver fell about in fits of laughter. We had got the right bus – just in
completely the wrong direction.
Luckily for us, we’d managed to entertain the bus staff so
much that they offered to drive us back the other way for no extra charge. We imagined
their dinner-time conversations that night, telling their families about some
stupid English girls who’d gone out into the sticks to find a shopping centre. As
it was getting late, we didn’t want to risk making any more mistakes (which we
surely would) by carrying on all the way to the Вернисаж, so
jumped off at the other shopping centre, Рио,
which was on the route back. We didn’t manage to find any coats there but
did meet a slightly overly-friendly Russian guy called Dennis (who ended up asking
us to play table hockey and offering us a lift home) and I got to experience
all the different branches under the Zara
franchise.
Unfortunately, the happiness provided by the purchase of a
new pair of jeans is notoriously transient and the next day I woke up in the
same dark mood, still exhausted because, as usual, I hadn’t slept through the
night – and the 8am alarm didn’t help. At 9am I met Beth, Sean and Alexia by
the university and we took the trolleybus to the central train station, where
we were meant to be catching a 9.40 bus to Kostroma with another group. However,
it turned out that the bus didn’t go from there at all, so we had to get the элекропоезд (electric train), which wasn't leaving until 12.40. Having
already bought tickets and not wanting to waste the day, we whiled away the
next two hours in the McDonald’s across the street.
When we finally got to Kostroma at 2.30 that afternoon, the
sun had gone in and the sky was dark. Nevertheless, we made our way into the
centre of town (on a trolleybus that cost only 12r – 4r less than in
Yaroslavl!) then took a маршрут to the
famous monastery. There, all the girls were told we had to put on a headscarf
to cover our hair, and a strange wrap-around skirt over our jeans. We toured
the monastery in true babushka style and saw the Romanov exhibit and beautiful
cathedral. We headed over to Kostroma’s other main attraction, the wooden
architecture museum, under a heavy downpour but managed to see the majority of
the strange outdoor exhibition, showcasing wooden buildings and carvings of the
Soviet era. Then it was time to make our way back into town, where we grabbed a
quick pizza before taking the train home.
On the journey home, our loud English voices made us the
main attraction and soon the Russian passengers were taking it in turns to come
over and talk to us. The first guy was the closest I’ve seen to a Russian chav,
a rapper who played us recordings he had made and told us about a Russian
rapper who had gone to Oxford and made his fortune in Knightsbridge. The next
was a break-dancer, who couldn’t wait to show us his videos of him dancing, and
the next was a guy Alexia and Joe had met the other night in Cocktail Bar. When
he told us the return train was three hours and not two, we couldn’t hold back
our outrage and the whole train broke down in fits of laughter at us. It was a relief
when I finally got back home and collapsed into bed, and even though it had
been a bit of a disaster I was glad I’d stuck the day out and not given up when
we’d missed the first bus. I’d got to see another town on the Golden Ring and
spent some time with my mates, and what was there to regret about that?
No comments:
Post a Comment