To the wilderness

A bridge over troubled ... ice.

Over the bridge, away from the city, and to the great Siberian forest as the sun disappears behind the trees.

Cold but cosy!

Siberian forest at night

Omsk railway station

Omsk railway station is a really good effort. And there's something cool about reading the departure board in a train station and seeing Beijing and Moscow as nonchalant neighbours.

Siberian forest at night.

I headed north for 24 hours. The beautiful Siberian forest trundled by, faintly lit by the sepia bulbs in the train with snow jossling around in the foreground. It was too dark to photograph but I had plenty of time to sketch it - see above.

Phantom metro

Perhaps more wierd than going underground and coming up in a different place, is to go underground to a metro station but to come out where you started! Welcome to Omsk where the Metro recently celebrated its 20th birthday, but is yet to Open!

Welcome to ... where you just came from.

Above is a lovely Soviet building, framed by the exit of a Metro station.

Omsk bench redemption

The sun came out and Omsk redeemed itself (with a bench, of course!). Above is the beautiful church in the centre of Omsk on a massive roundabout, with a pair of classic benches sited perfectly to absorb the view.

Omsk also sports a small number of boulevards with shops and cafes, with a good bench population to accompany them. This lady has been waiting since Victorian times for someone to keep her company on the bench. The guy across the road seems hesitant ...

He didn't have an evident name, so we called him Stalin. I say go for it Stalin, she seems nice!

Bleak Omsk

The Russian riviera.

I thought I'd made friends with a taxi driver at Omsk airport. If there's a rule of travel, it's that you've never made friends with a taxi driver at an airport; you just occasionally think that you have. He agreed to help me find an apartment and if that failed, to find a hotel. We agreed on 200 rubles ($6).

He called a friend who arranged to meet us in a reasonable part of town and show me an apartment. It was over priced but it was 'elitnayar' according the esteemed salesman. It wasn't where they said it was; it was dark and gloomy; I didn't think I'd leave there alive. I told the driver what I thought, and he said we should look anyway, and then move along. The esteemed salesman never arrived, so off we went to the hotel. 'Elitnayar', we joked. What a cowboy!

After some entertaining stories about his time in the KGB alpha group in Angola (lots of machine gun impressions) the driver delivered me to the hotel.

      'Here we are. 7,600 rubles please' ($250).

I expressed my shock.

       'forget about the 600, let's go with 7,000',  he said.

       'Who's the cowboy now?' I asked!

After some steely patience, including opening the door as he tried to drive us to the 'police station' to help mediate (he wasn't happy to use the hotel as a mediator), and resisting his friend's efforts on the phone to be a 'dispatcher' and confirm that the price should be precisely 7,600 rubles, I bargained him down to 500 rubles and we parted ways.

       'Can I have another 200 ... pleeeease' he asked.

The trees add character to the already beautiful view.

Nevermind, I thought, I'll take a walk along the riverside. Another epic fail as I found myself thigh deep in powder and a biting wind cut straight through me. I was the only one who fancied a promenade, it seemed.

Welcome to Omsk!

A Swiss bench

If Switzerland is the epitomy of civilization and the bench is a symbol thereof, we should expect find a gem or two in this little neutral mountainous watch-making chocolate-sucking land of cold, punctual people.

It should not come as a surprise then, though it will no doubt still be a delight, to read that I stumbled across this beautiful peach percher in that perculiar alpine state. Sleek lines, half backed and half backless, with real character on the lower half of the bench - quite unusual! - and it lights up at night, too. Thank you Switzerland and I hope we didn't make you late.