Tatarstan and the Golden Ring

7.30 am Kazan', Tatarstan, Russia

The provodnitsa (conductor) wakes me up. Still half sleeping I look out the window of the night train I took from Nizhny Novgorod. The train rides over the long Volga bridge, I can see a white walled kremlin with both a huge blue mosque and an Orthodox cathedral inside. I see two flags waving on top of a government building. One Russian flag and one green-white-red Tatar flag. I just arrived in the capital of Tatarstan Republic: Kazan'.

After getting of the train, I walked to the city center, where I found a place to have a breakfast. I continued my way around town to the post office, to use the internet. I called my two contacts in Kazan', Timur from couchsurfing and Danil, through hospitalityclub. At noon, I met Timur, a Korean traveller Joshua and Timur's friend Aleksander. Together we drove around the city and Timur told us a lot about the turbulent history of Kazan' and showed us the kremlin and other interesting landmarks. Driving around Kazan', I noticed that the city is remarkably clean (unlike other Russian cities) and it seemed very prosperous. Actually, Tatarstan is one of the richest regions in Russia, mostly because of the large oil reserves under it's soil. There is a lot of construction going on in the city and the wealth of Tatarstan is shown in its buildings and streets. A very clean city, with expensive cars driving the streets and people wearing expensive clothes. Kazan' is one of Russia's success stories, both economically, but also in sports. Kazan's ice hockey team is one of the best in Russia, Timur was very proud of the Tatarstan basketball team and Rubin Kazan', the local football club was leading the Russian premier league at the time I was there.

Besides Kazan's wealth, the city very much is a meeting point between eastern and western cultures and it definitely is the most exotic place I visited in Russia. Half of the population is ethnically Tatar, who are descendants of Genghis Khan's Golden Horde and religiously Islamic. The main street is blessed with Turkish kebab restaurants and Turkish Efes beer is the main drink here. I saw some restaurants called 'Fata morgana' or 'Fatima' and Kazan's skyline is dominated by a big mosque.

With Timur and Joshua, I ate a Tatar national dish, called Chak-Chak in a local restaurant. Afterwards we continued our tour and I got to know Timur and Joshua a bit better. Timur showed us the impressive kremlin, which is unique in the world, because it has both a mosque and a cathedral inside. Not counting Turkey, the mosque in Kazan' is the largest in Europe and also one of the newest as it was completed just 5 years ago. Furthermore, the kremlin is filled with nice parks and some government buildings, including the palace of Tatarstan's governor. After the kremlin we visited the university, where Lenin studied in his younger years. A statue of 7 year old Lenin is standing in front of main university building.

In the evening we met Danil, my hospitalityclub contact, in who's apartment Joshua and I stayed for the night. Danil also took us around the city, where we met a lot of his friends. We drunk some beers together and I had good opportunities to practise my Russian, as none of them really spoke English. Danil and his friends are really cool people and I was very glad that I met them.

Next day, Joshua left by train. I decided to stay a couple of days more and I walked around the market with Danil's father Isdyl. Later on, I visited the Tatarstan national museum and went with Danil a bit out of town to have a swim in 'Sinnoe Ozero' (Blue Lake). The lake is very special, because the water temperature never changes during the year. It always stays at 4 degrees Celsius. People dip in the lake, because they believe it is very healthy. With 4 degrees, the water is very very cold in summer, but as it the lake never freezes, it is relatively warm in winter. I took a quick dip in the lake, but I got out as fast as possible. After Danil's third swim, we left the lake. A group of fat drunk man came and they were pushing each other in the water.

My last day in Kazan', I just walked around a bit by myself, stopping on the way for a great Adana kebab and a beer on a terrace. Quite remarkably, the waitresses in the cafe where I sipped my Efes, were carrying guns with them. When I asked them about the pistol, they told me it was for protection.... Back in Danil's apartment, I relaxed a bit and went to the train station for a train back to Nizhny Novgorod. Arriving in Nizhny, I hopped on another train further west, to the Golden Ring city of Vladimir.

Also in Vladimir I had a couchsurfing contact, a friendly girl named Yulya. She made some 'pelmeni' (Russian dumplings) for me and we walked around town together. Although is was bit of a rainy day, I enjoyed the sightseeing tour. Vladimir is a provincial town not far from Moscow and it is filled with churches. I visited some churches and went to a viewing point for a view over the countryside. Yulya and I ate in a traditional Russian restaurant and shopped for classical Russian DVDs afterwards.

Next day, I hopped on a bus to a fairytale village called Suzdal. On the bus I met an old woman who gave me some advise on where to go and she showed me the way. The whole day I walked around the town, which is famous for its amount of churches. Suzdal is a village with not more than 12.000 inhabitants, but it has over 30 churches and even its own kremlin. The town is very colorful, because of all the onion domed churches and its colorful wooden houses. It really felt like I was walking in the setting of a fairytale child movie, except for the rainy weather. After eating a 'stolichniy' salad and some bread, I bussed back to Vladimir, where I hopped on another bus to Russia's capital Moscow.

Arriving in Europe's largest city, I got a bit lost the first hour. Luckily I found my way and took a metro to 'Oktyabrskaya Ploshad' (October square), where I met my couchsurfing contact Deric. I just stayed one night in Moscow, because my Russian visa was expiring. Deric made my stay very pleasant however, as his apartment is very nice (Deric is a diplomat working for the Philippines embassy) and I met some other couchsurfers there. I really enjoyed discussing Russian politics with Deric. Like I said he is a diplomat and has so much knowledge about what is going on in the world. It was just for one night though, because I left Moscow the night after.

During the next day, I just stayed in the apartment. As I have been to Moscow before, I didn't feel like walking in the rain that day. In the evening I went to the trainstation, for my train to Rezekne, Latvia. Actually my intention was to travel to Belarus, but because I had to get a visa first, I decided to go to Belarus through Latvia and Lithuania. In the small town of Rezekne, I took a very slow bus to Latvia's second city, Daugavpils, from where I searched for transport to Vilnius (Lithuania). However, there were no busses nor trains going from Daugavpils to Vilnius, which ment I had to hitchhike. It was surprisingly easy to hitchhike in Lithuania (later I found out that it officially is one of the easiest hitchhiking countries in Europe) and with two different rides I arrived in Vilnius.

In the night, I went to a club with some Belgian guys I met in the hostel. Next day I arranged my Belorussian visa through a friendly agency called Viliota. It was really easy to obtain the visa at this agency and the day after I was ready to travel to Belarus. While waiting for my train to Minsk, I walked a bit around Vilnius with an Australian guy, Denis. We played some pool and sipped a cold beer on a terrace. Later on I hopped on a rusty train to the Belorussian capital Minsk.

Along the Amber Road

Friday, June 6th, The Hague, Netherlands
It's 11 am on a sunny Friday morning. Together with three good friends from my hometown, Jurjen, Stephan and Davey, I am staying in a que. We already waited for an hour or two, outside of a small building in the center of The Hague. The time we were waiting already, we spent checking our passport and invitation forms several times. Half an hour or so later, we were in front of the line and the security guard finally let us in the building of the Russian embassy. Inside of the embassy, we completed our visa application forms and queued up for 20 minutes more.
12 am, we're first in line and I submitted our passports, application forms and invitations to the nice-looking girl behind the desk.
'Do you have a receipt of your pre-paid accommodation in Russia?', she asked.
'Why do you need a receipt, we already got the invitation and accommodation vouchers, don't we?', I told her.
'Without a receipt, no visa'.
The security guard escorted us to the exit door. This was our first experience with Russian bureaucracy.
Although the denial of our visa application felt as a defeat, after all our effort to get the invitation stuff, we still managed to obtain a Russian visa after all. We went to a specialized agency the next week.
And with a colorful Russian visa in our passport and a bus ticket to Lithuania, we were ready for the journey through the Baltic States, Russia and Belarus.
The planning for my journey is simple. At first I would travel with Davey, Jurjen and Stephan through Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia towards St.Petersburg. From there my friends would fly home and I'm off alone for Russia and Belarus (for a map of my planned route, see the previous post).
For me it is the first time I travel in a group of four, but it's the second time I'm visiting the Baltic States. Actually, the very first time I traveled solo, back in autumn 2004, was a journey through the Baltics and Poland. It was two weeks before my seventeenth birthday and I pretty well remember that I really enjoyed the historic Baltic capitals, with Vilnius being my favorite.

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Saturday, June 21th, Utrecht, Netherlands

In the early morning we stand at Jaarbeursplein in our beloved city Utrecht, waiting for our bus straight to Kaunas, Lithuania. Soon after, our ramshackle bus arrived and we took seat in a bus full of Russian holidaymakers. Sitting right in front of the television, I was blessed to watch bad Russian soaps during the 26 hour journey. Although the journey was long and I rather saw the television being switched off than watching more soaps, I enjoyed the bus ride. In the bus we met one other Dutchman, Joop, who married a Lithuanian woman and told us a lot of 'cowboy-stories' varying from Soviet corruption and South African politics to all the celebrities he had met in his life. There was one major downside of our bus journey though. During the night our bus stopped at a gas station somewhere in Poland and we went inside to buy some drinks. Inside the gasstation was a television which showed the European football championship. We saw Holland lose against the Russians...

Next morning, we arrived in Kaunas. The city used to be the old capital of Lithuania and now is a pleasant provincial city. We stayed in a church transformed into a hostel and I played some chess with Stephan, who became addicted to the game. After we walked a bit around and settled down for a couple of beers. With some more walking and drinking next morning, we left Kaunas around noon to the Lithuanian capital Vilnius.
Vilnius really is a beautiful city. Back in 2004 I was amazed by the quantity of churches, baroque-buildings and the cozy center of town. And on that journey, I remember that I enjoyed Vilnius most of the three Baltic capitals. This time, I also enjoyed Vilnius a lot. The city has the largest baroque town center in Europe, while the atmosphere is pretty laid back. We stayed in a good hostel, close to both the city center and the railway station, where we cooked a nice spaghetti-meal on the first day. Except for the four of us, there was an other guest from Holland in Vilnius, namely our Queen Beatrix. We haven't seen the Queen ourselves, but there was lots of security all over the city and we could see Dutch flags waving next to the Lithuanian ones.

The three days that we stayed in Vilnius, we spent walking around the town center, climbing some hills for a city view and visiting churches. In the evening we went to a club called 'Broadway', where we met some nice local people.

Quite amazing on the second day was the weather. While at first the day started nice and sunny, there was extremely heavy rainfall in the afternoon. It rained so hard that the streets were under water. Also see the small video.

From Vilnius we took a train straight to the other side of the country, to the harbourcity Klaipeda. The train ride was pretty comfortable and relaxing, with nice views of the Lithuanian countryside. Klaipeda itself is not really pretty, although the center has some nice buildings and picturesque streets. But the main reason we went to Klaipeda was to visit the Curonian spit, a nature park stretching from the Russian exclave Kaliningrad to Klaipeda. Together with Jurjen, we hired bicycles and cycled to the ferry across Curonian Lagoon to a village named Smiltyne. From there we cycled all over the Curonian spit for about 50km. The area is full of forests, sand dunes, picturesque villages and it has nice views over the Baltic Sea. The only negative part of our cycling tour was the presence of a large group of senior nudists who ruined the nice views over the Baltic Sea.
Heading back for Klaipeda, Jurjen's bicycle got a flat tire so we had to share one bike and hold the other one for the last 10km. To make it worse, the weather suddenly changed and there was a huge dark cloud above us. With heavy rain and thunder heading towards us, I drove like a maniac to the ferry port back to Klaipeda. Luckily, we just made it to the ferry before the rain started. In Klaipeda I relaxed a bit in the hostel, talking to a funny American guy and an older Norwegian man, who traveled together with his three kids. We left Lithunia by bus north, along the Amber road (amber is one of the most important export products of the region), to Liepaja, a harbor city in Latvia. In Liepaja, we found a guesthouse to stay in, owned by a friendly woman who only speaks Latvian and Russian. So for me it was an opportunity to practice my Russian a bit.
The town Liepaja actually is not a really nice place. It is a city with lots of abandoned buildings and the city center felt quite depressing. The city serves as one of Latvia's most important ports (together with Ventspils further north), which dominates the atmosphere in the city. In Liepaja, there was visibly a high rate of unemployment combined with alcoholism and the problems which both cause.
The actual reason we visited Liepaja, was to see Karosta, a district north of the city. Karosta used to be an important base of the Soviet military fleet and used to be a restricted area until the late 1990's. Now it is open to visitors and the highlight being a former military prison in the middle of the district. We visited the prison by taking a tour with a funny guide (see its picture), who told us about the history of the prison and the way of living inside.

Besides Karosta's prison, we walked a bit around the district, which now mostly is abandoned. By coincidence later during my journey, I met Lyuda, a girl from Vologda (in Russia) who actually grew up in Karosta, as her father served in the Soviet army. She was quite surprised that I could show her some pictures of the district and she told me some more about the living conditions there in the 1980's.

Summer journey through the Baltic States, Russia and Belarus

On the map here, I drew the intended itinerary for my summer journey. I plan little less than 2 months for visiting Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, European Russia and hopefully Belarus (if I can get a Belorussian visa though....).
I hope you enjoy reading my travel stories on Eastern Europe.