Monday, 31 August 2026

 

Start: Hotel Yekaterinburg (RU) 11:00

Arrival: Hotel Yekaterinburg (RU) 14:30

 

Total: ca 5 km walking

 

 

We decided to stay one more day in Yekaterinburg. The perks of being on the road for a long time. There is no "must-soon-get-back-to-work" day looming.

 

In the morning, we went in search for a shop selling postcards. Not as easy a quest as it sounds, in this day and age. At the metro station close to our hotel, there was a gathering of students holding up cardboards. A demo of some sort? There were cryptic abbreviations on their signs - letters and numbers. Today seemed to be the first day of university, we'd noticed groups of students in front of the geological faculty near our hotel too. So maybe just some innocent student-association orientation panels? We later looked it up and, yes!, we'd walked into a freshman orientation rehearsal! Or so AI tells us. It sounds plausible. Reminds me of our student days. Sonia and I had taken a "one-week summer crash class" before uni even started, so as to get a few credit points under our belt right away. I was never again as eager to study as in that first week. Fond memories.

 

 

Anyway, we hunted down a souvenir shop that actually had postcards of Yekat on sale. (Not in this shopping mall, though, where we just found a funny - or sadly literal - statue of a shopaholic burying herself in her purse. To find more money to spend? To pull out her latest purchase? Your guess is as good as mine.)

 

Next up, the postoffice, to get marki. Then to a coffeeshop to write the postcard. The girl in the café was grumpy, bordering on rude. No, she had no change. We rummaged through our purses and produced the exact amount. "Now you have change", I said in Russian to her, smiling. Deadpan stare and no reply. She stuffed the money into her cash register which actually seemed pretty well furnished with all sorts of bills. When she handed me the coffee, I tried again: friendly smile, "spasiba". No reaction, she stared straight ahead, an angry scowl on her face. I gave up. Either she hated me, or she hated the world. Nothing I could do about it either way.

 

 

We were curious when the postcard would arrive at our parents' place. Would it take only a week or two? Or rather months? There are no direct flights between the EU and Russia, so what adventurous detours would our intrepid postcard have to take? Sonia hopped back into the postoffice, the employee double-checked if we'd put the correct amount on it, and stamped it off with a smile. Success! First hurdle taken.

 

Next we headed to the "dendrological park". We supposed that meant a park with trees. But why the pompous name? Before we could find out, we had to make at least five few-hundred-meter detours because of construction works or simply because of a road blocking our progress. This city was getting tiresome. Who designs a park and then cuts huge boulevards through it, without providing the pedestrians with some possibility to get across? The 2-kilometre stroll quickly turned into a meandering 2-hour real-life game of "maze". To put the icing on the cake, it was really cold, windy and dark clouds threatened a downpour. Also, the dendrological park turned out to be a garden-variety park with trees. Talk about window dressing.

 

 

We found a building whose colour scheme would fit nicely into the Kirchberg skyline at home. Probably a bank. Spoiler: no bank, it's the headquarters of the Russian Copper Mining Company. Hence the rusty colour.

 

To the left of the park, the buildings became gradually more chic, until we reached an area that looked like it should sport a "Be loaded or get lost" sign. Instead, they had a pearl embedded in a grass seashell displayed on their lawn. We later looked it up: the apartment complex behind me is a gated community and the smallest 90 m2 apartment goes for more than 700,000 euros.

 

 

By now the clouds had made good on their threats and we had come up to yet another construction fence. We pulled our hoods up and walked as fast as we could to the next red light at the far end of the street. That settled it: scratch what I scribbled down yesterday about being able to imagine living here. Kazan, Nizhny, Moscow - yes. But Yekaterinburg - I'll give it a pass.

 

The rest of the afternoon, I just wanted to bundle up in our room and let the world turn without me for a while.

 

In the evening, we felt up for a bite at "our" Georgian restaurant downstairs. And after a fish steak with potato pancakes and some shoti, I could see myself braving the early-morning gas station queues, followed by a 400-km road-rage rodeo and a late-afternoon inner-city hotel hunt as dessert. New town - same old potholes. Bring it on.