Journey's end

The 20 month journey, which starter the 19th of September 2005 came to and end where it started: Schiphol Airport, Amsterdam, 18 May 2007. Once I collected my luggage and walked through the arrivals zone I met my family (Father, Mother, Aunt and my two cousins). It was great to see familiar faces after such a long time, and it felt like home straight away.

After some lunch/dinner we were off to home. The roads were overcrowded as anticipated and I see my country more or less as a city state, say Sydney but than a bit bigger...

The last week I used to meet friends who spread throughout the country. Had dinner in Eindhoven, and watched the Champions League Final in the Hague... Tonight it is time for some drinks in Rhenen...

I also start looking for jobs. Hopefully it won't take too long because I would love to do something more usefull with my time.. Although I have to admit after all this travelling I really need a holiday!!

St Petersburg

The last stop on "the long journey home" was St Petersburg. I am very glad to have included this city, both the city itself as well as the people the accompanied us made it a great last couple of days on my trip!

We flew into St Petersburg from Moscow with Aeroflot (I am now a member of the "I flew Aeroflot and survived" community!). We arrived pretty early in the city and went to the hostel which was straight next to the Palace Square and the Hermitage!

After we slept a little (had a rather short night in Moscow) we walked a bit around to get some orientation in the city. After that we met up with Annika who we met in the Moscow hotel, and she proved to be the best tourguide one could wish for the days to come! We finished the Monday with some drinks and dinner.

The second day we visited the Hermitage and again Annie showed us around. The Hermitage is ernormously large, full of masterpieces, including Rembrandt, Van Gogh, Monet and so many others. I was amazed by the beauty of the building itself. St Petersburg is just a city like none else in Russia. The rest of the day we spend walking around the city and be amazed by its beauties.

Wednesday we visited the Isaac cathedral from where we had a great view over the city. Thursday was already the last day and we decided to take it easy with a canal boat tour. At night we met up with Annie and some of her friends to have a drink. That proved to be a memorable event, when it was my turn to shout I bought a bottle of Vodka. Not soon thereafter I was completely off the world and with many thanks to Annie I made it home... Friday started a bit miserable!

After departing St Petersburg I made a brief stop-over in Copenhagen before I finally returned to Amsterdam, after 20 months I was back where it all started: Schiphol Airport. I was very happy to see my parents, aunt and cousins waiting for me at the arrivals area!

Having access to my laptop also means I finally can share my photo's!

Mockba

The capital of the Russian Federation and the powerhouse of the Soviet Union proved to be a very interesting place to visit. There are many interesting historical sites, with the Kremlin and the Red Square as absolute highlights.

Our man with a mission, James, knew all the secret spots and organised a couple of nice rendez-vous' for us. He also managed to save us from the police, who were very eager to fine us for not carrying the "right papers". (Pointing at James: "You OK" to us: You trouble")

We seem to be plagued the whole trip by misfortune in regards to visiting monuments. Mao's tomb was closed for maintenance we missed the Europe-Asia Obelisk because we took a different route and Lenin's tomb was closed because of the victory parade that was held on the Red Square.

However we did cool things ad we really enjoyed the visit. Up to St Petersburg!

Ekaterinburg

Yesterday we arrived in Ekaterinburg, on the border of Asia and Europe. The town which is also famous because of the Czarist family, the Romanov's where killed here by the Bolsheviks. Another prominent local is (or was) Boris Yeltsin.

But before we arrived here we spend 2 days in the train from Irkutsk. In the train from Mongolia we met a British guy named James and he was in this train as well. He was sharing his compartment with two Russians who went to dinner with us. If you go to dinner with two Russians that means you have to drink Vodka, lots of Vodka. After 5 shots I started to see things a bit different, after 6 bottles (between the five of us) my memory was not functioning quite that well, except that Xander became very friendly with Vladimir and Vitali!

A beautiful Irkutsk girl named Anna was sitting with us as well, drinking beer and orange juice, she was still very friendly the day after so nothing too crazy must have happened. We were just sleeping like we were in a coma.

Back in Ekaterinburg we went for dinner with James and met some local Russian girls on the street with whom we went to a Salsa club and had some drinks. Apparantly one of them really liked me (also called Anna) because we go out the two of us tonight as well to watch the fireworks for Victory Day. Unfortunately she doesn't speak English too well and my Russian is not too impressive either.

Time is falling short though because tomorrow we are off to Moscow!

Irkutsk

Finally we entered the Russian Federation, although it took quite a while to enter! We departed from Ulaan Baator at 19h30 and arrived at the Mongolian border town at 4 am, we only noticed when we woke up that we weren't moving anymore, once we got out of the train we were the only cart left, all the other cart were for inner Mongolian travel and the loc had to come from Russia.

After the customs circus we left 10h30 over 6 hours after arriving, only to go for 20 KM to the Russian border town. There we waited for another 4 hours before we finally continued our trip.

In the train we shared our compartment with two other travellers, a Englishman and an Aussie (no talk about cricket though) we were the only four tourist on the train alltogether.

We made a stop of an hour in Ulaan Ude which gave us the chance to visit the largest Lenin head (and statue of a head) in the world. We bought some food and beer in the supermarket and made our dinner in the train.

The next morning we arrived in Irkutsk and left for the Baikal lake straight away. The Baikal lake is the largest in the world, also the deepest and contains the coldest water. It is really beautiful over there and we enjoyed our stay.

Right now we are back in Irkutsk and plan to move on to Ekaterinburg tomorrow (2 day journey). Over there we can walk from Asia into Europe and probably visit the site where the Romanovs were killed.