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This morning, I woke to find my watch stating that it was 6am, and my phone stating it was 5am. Ben woke soon after, and his watch had synced to 4am. The joys of crossing time zones by train. We decided to ensure that everything was set to Yekaterinburg time, and then Ben and I got off at Ishim. Not a lot to see, and only a 10 minutes stop, but it gave us a chance to stretch our legs in the 1C gloom.
The rest of the trip was pretty uneventful; we did go to the dining car for breakfast and had pancakes and coffee, good pancakes, ok coffee. We said ‘das vidanya’ to Maria who seemed legitimately disappointed to see us go, and asked, in some form of Russian/English if we would be back for lunch? After saying no, we left her with a sad look on her face.
On arrival in Yekaterinburg we were met by Ivan. Yes, I know how cliched that sounds. He wasn’t expecting 4 of us, and after traversing the pitfalls of a railway station in preparation of the World Cup in 2018, we had to wait several minutes while he organised another vehicle for us to get to the hotel. As mentioned previosuly, Yekaterinburg is getting ready for the World Cup and this includes improving on the existing infrastructure to cater for the number of tourists that they are expecting for the four games being played here. One of the problems that the city is facing is that it is set up on a rectangular array, all based on the establishment of a dam and there are only 3 bridges across the water. When one of those is out for repairs...
As such, traffic was horrendous, and by all accounts from Ben and Todd, the driving skills, or lack thereof, are compatible with the likes of Beijing or Ulaanbaatar. Our driver, Ivan, wasn’t too bad, and informed us while we were inquiring about the city, that there was a private Military Museum on the outskirts of town if we were interested for later this afternoon. Hmm. Were we interested?
The hotel is a small cosy little place built into, or part of, a larger block. What it lacks from the outside, it certainly caters for inside, and the staff are quite fluent in English, and certainly friendly. They were also willing to book a taxi for us, stating which company and also what the licence plate number and cost would be to get there. The museum is certainly outside of town, and it took us over 45 minutes to get there. However, when we did, we were speechless. Bare in mind that this is a private museum owned by an oligarch who owns his own copper mine and that said individual also sponsored several vehicles for The Great Patriotic War and has been collecting ever since and you get about half of what is here! The place is both immense and amazing. The outside part is free. Yes, completely free. I know of people in Perth who would spend $50 to look at less than half of what we got to see. There were a number of T34 tanks to start with - the tank which won the Russian campaign pretty much during the war. Next to that there was; a Matilda, a Stuart, a Cromwell, a Sherman, a Crocodile, a Lee-Grant, a Pershing, Half-Tracks, a Sturmovich, several Soviet Fighter planes from the 70s through to the 90s, armoured trains, a row of ‘Stalin’s Organs’ or Katyushkas, a huge number of artillery pieces, a Hind class helicopter. There was even a miniature sub and patrol boats!
Then we went inside...
Firstly, of course, we set off the metal detector and got some very odd looks from the security staff for turning up in t-shirts. Then, one of the staff had to explain that we needed to buy a ticket and also no flash photography inside. Luckily, he spoke a fair bit of English. I’ll come back to him later. The first floor shows a number of WWII fighter planes and earlier vehicles, including several BT5 light tanks. As we walked around we even managed to spot an original Hawker Hurricane which had been sent over through the Arctic Ocean from the UK. The second floor held a number of costumes, medals, service ribbons and a lot of paraphernalia from the different conflicts that Russia has been in over the years. It is certainly interesting to get the Russian perspective of the Crimean War, which they consider they lost, and then see a number of replica uniforms from the Napoleonic wars with an inscription of ‘crusade to France’ next to it. There were more planes hanging at this level as well. The third level continued with a collection of personal weapons from shotguns used by the likes of Beria and Brezhnev to the development of the Kalishnikov AK 47 to the AKM and finally the AK 74.
Of course, by this stage it was after 5:30pm and I found the staff member who had spoken to us in English back on the ground floor (yes, we were being tailed) and asked if he knew where we would be able to get a taxi around here to get back to our hotel. “No problem, I ring one.” Yup. No problem, except it was a problem, and quite a big one as he was unable to get through to the taxi company. His colleague who was standing with him also tried, to no avail, and we were left standing for about 10 minutes as both tried to contact the taxi company first. Both failed. Todd and John went downstairs to get John’s coat back and be ready for the taxi if we needed to rush. Ben and I continued to wait for someone to get through to the taxi company. Eventually, one of the guides went off and brought his female colleague, with mobile, to try as well. 10 minutes later, no luck. We were by this stage a focus point of the museum as we stood there trying to talk in Russian/English and finding the situation a little farcical. It was at this point that a slightly elder gentleman approached and asked the guide/security what was happening and then asked us in very good English where we were from.i explained that we were from Australia and we’d heard about the museum from our tour director, but that we were completely blown away by the collection, stating that I’d only ever seen the majority of tanks in pictures and that I was so impressed that they had a KB2 out the front. “Oh yes,” he exclaimed, “it is one of only 2 in the world in working order.” In working order?!? My jaw dropped. The value of this collection must be outstanding when you realise that virtually every item on display is in working order here. I continued talking with him for several minutes while yet another colleague turned up and tried to solve our transport issue. The elder gentleman left. Eventually, they managed to get us and Uber driver to pick us up, and Ben and I, flanked by 4 officials and watched by the remaining museum staff and a number of patrons walked down the stairs to the ground floor. As we saw John and Todd outside we were about to follow our original helper to catch our Uber when we were told to wait. The elder gentleman, who we now assume to be a director came and presented me with a massive book of the museum as a gift! I was speechless but managed to thank the staff numerous times as we were ushered outside to our waiting Uber. Wow.
We then had to deal with rush hour traffic back into Yekaterinburg, a process which took about 90 minutes. The total cost for the drive there and back, plus the museum? 1400 Roubles. About $30. With this in mind, and the fact that it was getting late, we walked from our hotel a whole 2 minutes into a large shopping mall located behind the hotel for dinner, finding a fantastic local Russian/Siberian restaurant where both Todd and Ben found rabbit on the menu. Given that they had both had venison in Listvyanka, I made the snide remark about whether ‘Flower’ was on the menu for tomorrow night. Todd, at least got the reference! A wonderful, unexpected day.
- comments
Tess I hope Ben can remember how to say thank you in Russian, "Spaseeba" sounds as is written.