Getting out of Irkutsk was fairly tricky since the city is located quite far
from the federal route. I considered several options, but taking the bus going
to Angarsk seemed to be the best one. I got on the bus a little after 14.00
and, knowing that Krasnoyarsk is over 1000km away, I didn't think I could make it
the same day.
When the bus reached the main route I
asked the driver to drop me off at the random bus stop on the side of the
route. And from there I started hitchhiking. My first driver stopped right
away. It was a super nice young guy, going to a small town 30km further. Better that than nothing.
On the way we passed few villages, and
what is worth mentioning is that in Russia, even in the poorest looking
town/village there is always a nice orthodox church, with plenty of golden
elements. It always stands out.
The guy left me at Usolye Sibirskoye, if I remember correctly, and getting a ride there was a little more difficult.
I stayed there for around 20 minutes before a car stopped. It was a lady
from a local bikers's club and she was not even going my direction at all, but
she said that she saw me and she really wanted to give me at least a
short ride. 20 or 30 kilometers later she asked if it's ok if she left me
there because she had to go to work - very Korean style behavior.
Maybe 5 minutes after she left, another car stopped. This time, it was an old black Mercedes with Olga and Kolya
onboard, super nice guys from Moscow who decided to spend their few days off in
Siberia. And they were going to Krasnoyarsk, but they didn't plan to go
overnight, so they made it clear that sooner or later they will stop somewhere
to sleep. And they were my first English speaking drivers. I mean maybe others
did speak English too, I never asked, but with Olga and Kolya after first few
minutes of Russian we switched to English, which was quite refreshing. I didn't't
have any problems with communicating in Russian but it's pretty obvious that in
English I can have a little bit more sophisticated conversation.
It was a very pleasant and enjoyable
ride, when suddenly the engine stopped. Kolya knew right away what happened, we
ran out of fuel... After few tries to restart the engine it was time to hitchhike
with a car - I didn't expect that on my trip. Kolya put on a yellow safety
vest, picked an old tow line from the trunk and we tried to stop passing cars.
We stayed there for 20 to 30 minutes before an old guy in a tiny Chinese truck
stopped to help us. He agreed to tow us to the nearest gas station which turned
out to be 5 to 10 kilometers away. And he was going crazy fast, at some moment
Kolya said, 'I hope he knows what he's doing', but apparently he did and soon
we arrived at the gas station. We filled up the tank and we were back on the
road.
Some time later, they told me that
they changed their mind and they would go to Krasnoyarsk without stopping and asked if I would like to go with them. Awesome! This meant I would arrive to
Krasnoyarsk in the middle of the night but I would have a whole day to see the
city, perfect!
I actually managed to get some sleep
in the car and we arrived to Krasnoyarsk around 4.30-5.00 local time if I remember correctly.
In the meantime I contacted several hosts with my very
late - as usual - couch request and I got a positive response from Rinat. He
claimed that I could come over his place whenever I arrive, even in the
middle of the night, but out of pure decency I decided not to do it and I took
an early morning walk around the city. I had been walking for around an hour or
so when I decided that it was time to head towards Rinat’s place. Krasnoyarsk
was very calm in the morning and I got to see the sun rising over the Yenisei.
It took me another hour or so to finally arrive at
Rinat’s place (again, public transportation is a nightmare in that country if
you’re not a local) and I ended up calling my host at around 7. He let me in,
offered some breakfast, but soon we both went back to sleep.
I woke up at around 12 or 13. Before leaving to see
the city by day, we had some lunch and Rinat helped me to figure out some Jiu
Jitsu possibilities. Seemingly there should be no problem with Jiu Jitsu, since
I found 2 teams in Krasnoyarsk, Team Strela and Team Ludus, but it wasn’t as
easy as I expected. Team Ludus claimed on their website that they train in two
locations, but one turned out to be bullshit – at least no one there has ever
heard about any Jiu Jitsu trainings and when we tried to call the number from
the website, it turned out to be the Moscow number (HQ I guess) but they couldn’t
provide any information about their Krasnoyarsk affiliation. The second option
was team Strela, we also called them, and yes, they were supposed to have a
training at 18.00.
So having all the information about Jiu Jitsu, we went
with Rinat to see the city. On the way to the City Center I experienced first
negative vibes during my trip from locals. In the bus, there were two middle
aged, miserably looking guys, probably not entirely sober, and when they heard us
talking in English, they started talking shit. They told us to speak Russian
and if we want to speak English we should go to America etc. etc. This wasn’t
very pleasant but reaction of one fellow passenger - a 16 or 17 years old girl was
priceless. She turned around almost having tears in her eyes and said to them
that because of jerks like them, Russia has such a negative opinion in the
world and no one wants to visit their country. This was awesome, despite the
negativity of whole situation. And it was the ONLY time during my whole trip,
when I experienced some negative vibes from the locals.
After arriving in the city center we started walking
towards the river. Rinat showed me some of the summer hot spots and some nice places
to hang out. The boulevard along the river is a really cool place during
summer, there is a lot going on there. There are plenty of street food stands
and quite a lot of people. I generally felt that it was a very relaxed place
full of laidback people. It might have been caused by the super-hot weather, but
I really liked the atmosphere in the city.
Around 17.00 Rinat showed me the bus I was supposed to
take to get to the gym and he left to some meeting. On the way to the gym,
I’ve seen an Eiffel tower – and interestingly it’s not the only city in Russia
where they have a little replica of French symbol – I’ve seen them in several
cities. No idea why they put them there.
The gym was located in a shopping mall. And it was a
nice one. I mean it was a fancy fitness club with a very nice mat area. Nothing
spectacular, but it was very clean and spacious. When I arrived I’ve noticed
one guy in a gi, so I approached him right away and introduced myself. His
reaction was awesome – ‘oh you’re that traveler!’. I assume they must have read
my email – I messaged them before coming to Krasnoyarsk. Then he explained,
that team Strela was not training there that day, but there was another team
training - Muhammad Ali Team. It was a no-gi training run by a Kyrgyz purple
belt as I was told – actually the group consisted of almost only Kyrgyz – and most of them
were kids. There were maybe 2 or 3 Russians.
And the training was quite unusual. We started with a
long, intense warm up, with some wrestling elements, which I sucked at… After
warm up, we got 3 or 4 rounds of rolling, then the coach showed 3 techniques
that included rolling triangle from ‘no-gi lasso’, and a nice armbar switch
drill from the guard. And after that we got another two or three rounds of rolling – pretty unusual schedule but I really liked it. I got to roll with all
the big guys and few kids. One of those young beasts gave me a lot of trouble.
He was around 55kg, super flexible, and he had a really good technique, and
moved really well, it was hard to pin him down and submit. And he kept
attacking my legs with straight foot locks, heel hooks and toe holds – actually
they all did. A didn’t have a single fight where I could forget about my legs,
there were constantly under attack. It was a nice experience, since I’m the gi
guy and I’m rarely exposed to all those leg locks.
But all in all it was an awesome training, I had so
much fun there. All the guys were super nice and everyone was very curious
about my trip. The most fun training so far for sure.
As I mentioned, it was a fancy gym so after the
training I got a chance to use Sauna – I never do it after intense training but
it was nice to relax there for few minutes and chat with some of the guys.
After the training, the coach offered to give me a
ride to Rinat’s place. Rinat wasn’t there since he had some business to take
care of, so I went to supermarket to get some stuff to eat. I definitely needed
some carbs so I decided to make pasta. I wanted something simple so I decided
to go with my French cousin’s unorthodox recipe. You cook pasta and when it’s
still hot you mix it with ‘spreadable cheese wedges’ – I have never used this
term before, haha, I just call it cheese. It’s super simple and surprisingly
good. And it’s an amazing source of carbs!!
In the morning I said goodbye to Rinat and I had to
leave towards my next destination, Novosibirsk.
Nice unorthodox one
ReplyDelete