Novosibirsk – Mariinsk, November 2015

We arrived at Novosibirsk around dusk. Passed passport control, got our luggage and entered waiting hall – thanks to my syster in law for a cheerful welcome and fast delivery of winter cloth 🙂 Also, I met my ex-colleague from Tomsk who arrived from Hong Kong same plane as we. Gave him a aride to bus station and had a chat by the way. Snowfall and transport collapse I missed you so much! We spent 90 minutes driving from airport to city center instead of 25 minutes as usual. There was a real washboard! I think Tomsk had the same when their major was put in the prison and no one was able to rule city. Well I can understand, we are too busy now. The tasks are so huge!! Snow is nothing. It will melt in July..


Surprisingly, I haven’t felt any discomfort about right-hand driving! What else.. Also, it turned out we have so much air polution especially because of diesel gases. May be it was all the time and I just completely forgot about it. May be it is quite recent and appeared because WOF in Russia was technically cancelled. Anyway sometimes it is almost impossible to breath because of big trucks and public transport.

As soon as we left the bus station we drove on Lenin street where I visited bank and reissued my cards I got expired. Also, I bought a new keyboard and LCD-display in PC shop nearby. It was nice to rush at this part of city I used to work, live and walk sometime ago. We were so lucky about the weather: -3 celcium degree is just perfect to get use into winter after warm New Zealand summer.

The last thing I had to do is stop walking left side, stop smiling and say thank you. Otherwise people would treat me as foreigner.
We didn’t have enough time so I shot just a few frames, we sat in a car and drove again.

This time we head to Siberian Mall, to visit Megafon office, reissue my sim-card to be able to make a phone call to relatives and get a dinner before we start another 500 km trip. Sim card was reissued in 15 minutes and first call I got was from bank staff member who was asking for some of my friend who stopped paying credit.

-I beg your pardon but why are you calling me? Am I co-borrower?
-No, your mobile phone was listed as optional contact phone, just in case.
-Perfect! I’m sorry, but I haven’t seem him for 3 years (and this is true) and have no idea where he is in the moment.
-Ok, we will not disturb you anymore.

I think, a waiter in Pechki-Lavochki who served us and heared all that conversation started thinking we’re not gonna pay 🙂
By the way, everything had risen in price, almost two times for last 3 years, but portions reduced in size! They got a few new meals and removed others and also got menu translated into English.

Finally, after long debates we left Novosibirsk and head north to Kemerovo via Zhuravlevo track. Federal track M-53 got too much traffic, ecpecially near the entrance to Novosibirsk. In my opinion R-242 is a way better.

Sometime we had snowfall on the our way, sometime it was black ice so we drove very carefully and slowly, making short stops to breath and become fresh. We arrived Kemerovo at 2.30AM got our car (make a guess which one) fuelled on gas station and then moved again.

The last 160 kilometers we drove half-awake, trying do not fall a sleep completely.
I remember we had even worse when we were coming back Auckland after being stuck Mount Ruapehu for 5 hours.
We entered Mariinsk around 6AM, unloaded luggage and fall asleep like a dead ones. Sorry, no cats for today.

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Ivan Grigoryev's Blog
Living in New Zealand. Blogging about the country, beautiful places, everyday life.
Do a skydive - halfway completed; get 1400 - still working on; reach 300kph - completed by 96.6%