Novosibirsk

We were dirty, tired, and we had 9 hours to Novosibirsk. We didn’t visit Omsk at all. We just drive to get early to Novosibirsk and take some rest.

The road was cold and very windy. We saw some trucks accidents.

 

Hit the road, Jack

Novosibirsk is the third biggest city in Russia, with 1,5 million people. It looks like typical soviet city: big avenues, big grey buildings and statues everywhere. Lenin Street and Karl Marx Street are the main streets in the city, not a surprise in Russia.

 

Workers monument with Lenin Monument

Once we arrived, we met our guests, Marina and her godmother live together. They just arrived from their trip from India. The surprise, the godmother speaks Spanish, she works as a English and Spanish teacher, so we share some histories in Spanish language. On the next morning, she had a Spanish class and David helped her with some talking with the student.

The sleeping room

Our energies were back and we decided to go to Barnaul, to meet some Ilja relatives.

Omsk: the day of broken rules

The way from Yekaterinburg to Omsk is about 1.005 km. More or less, 14 hours driving in bad conditions.

That day, we broke all the rules of this kind of trips:

We were fast: so we had a fine from the police: 30 minutes talking in English with one police officer who only speaks Russian. That was completely useless. The only solution was offer him 50 € to get back our car documents.

 

DPS (Police) office

We didn’t rest: only stop, to re-fuel, and take one single picture

Random Lenin Statue

We drove at night: bad idea in this road conditions, low visibility, slippery surface, kamikaze truck drivers without lights, and so on…

The road at night

 

We slept in the car: at -8º C outside, we had to turn on the engine to get some heating in the car. The comfort was inexistent.

Please, don’t do it.