tjoekland

Ja we zijn er weer in tjoekland. Het is hier grossi modo hetzelfde gebleven. Evolutie stopte hier :-)
Niet veel tijd, dus gewoon de groeten van Sharm El Sheikh.

Kazan & Tupolev

9 november
Today I did nothing special, just relaxing, some reading, work for egypt and watch a movie.But I saw king arthur! One of the animators from Turkey but nothing further.
10 november
Yana's mother drove us from Naberezhnye Chelny to Kazan, that's a 300km drive on Russian roads.I think about honderd km's a police officer signed us to pull over, so her mum did and she stepped outand went to the police men. After a few minutes I stepped out, because I wanted to make some picturesof the with snow covered fields. At the same moment she finished with the police guy and stepped back in.She told me that she had to give him 500 roebel (about 15 €), if they don't give that money they come to check thecar, and they always find something and then it's even more expensive or you loose your drivers license.Pure maffia! Anyway, we continue but after 500 meters, the same guy in his car followed us and honked usto pull over again.What hapenned: after we left, he suddenly realised that I was making pictures, he tought now that I was makingpictures of the money transaction, the bribe. So he got scared and wanted to know what I was doing.So Natasha explained him that I'm just a dumb tourist making pictures of meaningless fields, and not of them.He believed it and we could continue.After arriving in Kazan, one hour later we went to see a basketball match: Kazan - St. Petersbourg....the cheerleaders were the best thing.Then a meal in the center of Kazan... wich is really a beautifull city. A drink and back home.Tommorow at midday we'll go sightseeïng... more on that later!Greetz...
11 november
At twelve o'clock we (Natasha, Sergey and Tania) went away with the car, to some old monastry. Before we got therewe went to eat chashlik again (I could get used to this). The monastry was imposant, but it resambled much to the churches we haveI was especially surprised when on one of the paintings is saw a triangle with the all seeing eye in it. You know the one that hangsabove the doors at grandma's place. Also all the images of Jesus and so are the same.Then we went to a place somewhere in the forests... the day before Sergey asked me if I wanted to do koepatse (onderdompelen) with himin a river, me with my big mouth I said yes. So now we were there in the midlle of the forest, surrounded by snow and darkness.I was freezing! I first watched him taking his clothes off and jump in the water. I really didn't feel like going in, but I thought I had to do itfor myself and my manhood! So .... I jumped. My god! So cold! But what a kick it gave. Walking back to the car was not easy since I didn't feelmy feet anymore.Later that evening we went to the Kazan Kremlin, a Kremlin is what we call a fortrified building, a place where the people where safe in case of war.In the Kremlin they have some amazing buildings, the building from the Tartar president, a Church and the most beautifull building wasthe Muzelman church called 'cool sjarif'. Another building was the tower of Princess Ciooembeke, it's oblique, just like the tower in Pisa.The legend says that she was the most Beautifull girl in Tartarstan (I think it's Yana) and she had been given an arranged marriage, she was so sad that she could not marry a man she truly loved that she jumped off the building and killed herself.We finished the evening in a small restaurant.
12 november aka shit day!
It started off super, waking up next to Yana. Next thing we went back to the Kremlin so we could see the 'cool sjarif' from the inside.Then we drove to the airport of Kazan... where I had to say goodbye to Yana :-( It's a small airport, but I even had to take of my shoes to pass the control. We stepped into a small tupolev (Urbanus moppen kwamen in me op)and took off. Turbulence, unbelievable, I don't like flying, but now I was terrified for over one hour!Here in Moscow I was so stupied to take a Taxi to the Youth hostel. The guy ripped me off for 100€ and... the youth hostel was not thereanymore... so I went to look for other places, but couldn't find anything. Anyway, during my search I learned how to use the Metro by myself.The staircases here are three four times as long as we know them, and they go trough a small tunnel. It is packed with people, I've never seenso much people together, not even on a concert. So I went as far as possible with the metro back to the airport, last 20 km I had to take a bus.Cost of this trip: 3€ and faster than the car!In the airport I went looking for hotel desks... but everything full. Finally I ended up at a small desk with a friendly girl that spoke verygood English. She kept telling me all the information in miles and pounds... (Must be that my english is quite good).

Anyway, I found a room, and now I'm back home.

8 november

A quite relaxing day, I prepared some things for Egypt and... slept.In the evening we went to a disco. I haven't seen any normal small pubs here, where you just go in, order your beer and that's it.No, here it's all bigger, in the disco we went there was a dance room, r 'n b room, biljart place and a bowling hall.It is a nice place, but why does everything has to be so big. Anyway, I played biljart against a Russian guy... and won three times!Did yo know that there is a Russian version of biljart.... all the balls are white... and you just have to try to make as much pointsas possible, I didn't play that one, that's for another time.When I entered the disco, there was the usual scanning device again. So after I'd given everything my belt beeped.Like a professional i step to the guy and open my arms wide, after wich he lookes me strong in the face and says: "eta njet tcirk!".Wich means so much as... this is not a circus here... strange guys.It's unbelievable how many people work here in each shop or disco. Far too many. A simple place wich could be runned bytwo in Belgium, you can easily find 4 5 or even 6 people working here.Some anekdotes:- I took the taxi two times now: 70 and 55 roebel ==> 2€- tram: 8 roebel ==> 20 eurocent- retired people get 1000 roebel every month (28€)But then on the other hand some things have the same prices like Europe.The 12th I take a plane from Kazan to Moscow, I don't want to take the risk of leaving the 13th from Kazan and face a delay there.That means I sleep one night in Moscow (still have to book a place) and then come back the 13th to Brussels.Tomorrow morning we go to Kazan and we'll stay there. There it's time to do some sightseeing.

Poka!

7 november
This morning we first had to go somewhere to get a piece of paper, don't ask me what the name is of the place,and with that paper we had to go to ovir or something like that. That second place is the place where they do theactual registration, wich is simply a stamp on the migration card that you have to fill out on the plane.Of course they saw there that I wasn't staying in one of the two hotels (one in Moscow, one in Kazan) as indicatedon my invitation, but with a privat person. She said that she was not going to make a problem of it but only this time.So I was happy because the necessary paper to leave the country was ok.Because after tomorrow we go to Kazan and the 12th i'll be in Moscow, we asked her if it was also necessary to do it in those two places. She said that normally it's like that, but she gave me a stamp here until the 15th.Then she made a funny remark, it is to say funny:"he is not black, he is not a nigger, so the police will leave him alone, because of that I can give you the stamp". It was kind of a chaos in all those offices, but within the hour everything was arranged.Then we went to eat to her grandmother, she made triangels... In the afternoon we went bowling, wich I won of course.The new centers, like bowling alley or shops are really modern. But everywhere there is a scanner.So when I entered the bowling alley, the beamer beeped because of my belt. A young guy, but with the face of animportant officer scanned me again in real FBI-style. It's so surreal that you have to smile while he does it.It's very easy to make two kinds of opinions of Russia, you can picture it as an old country where they all come behind30 years compared to Europe, or you can picture it as a country developping very fast. It has a very strange duality.And for the moment it's very cold -8°C in the daytime.In the evening time we went to drink something with Olga & Gulnara and two other girls.Me and 5 girls... I had worse holidays.Greetz... and stay human!

2 - 3 - 4 november, Moscow MacDonalds and train and train and train....

When I arrived in Moscow Yana was waiting for me instead of her imaginary friend Masha. So that was already a good start. Before we had the train to go to Naberejnye Chelny we had 8 hours time to do something.So we went to the "Red Square". Whe we arrived there it was... closed! As far as I understood a few years ago Lenin overthrewthe last tsaar they had here. And because of that they have a holiday here and a parade at the square. But they told us that is was openat 11 o'clock. So we went to the MacDonalds... I've never seen so much people in one MacDonalds! Not normal.Eventually at 11 o'clock we could enter the square and i must say, it's really beautifull.You can feel the history, even though I don't know so much about it.At 1 o'clock at night we stept on the sleeper carriage to Chelny. On the map at home I could see thatthat village was about 1000km from Moscow, so I thought that it was going to take about 10 to 12 hours to get there.I was wrong, I used Belgian velocity of trains... and that's not the same here.It took us 23 hours to get here, 23 hours on one small bed. The train itself was ok, but this must bethe kind of trains they had in Belgium... when they introduced the first trains here.When we arrived here, Yana's mother came to pick us up by car (a Lada) and took us to their home.Don't make jokes here about Lada! As far as I can see it's the number one car here!Cheers mates! See you later.до скорой встречи!

5 november

The registration office, where I have to go, because once in Russia you have to registrate yourselfif you don't do this you can have serious problems leaving the country. Best case scenario if you forgetit is that they give you a fine at the airport. But I don't think I'm willing to take that risk. So normally 7th of november it's openbecause as I told you guys before, they have a holiday here now.Today I also met Yana's father, a friendly guy, only 40 year's old. We spoke perfect Russian with eachother ;-)We had quite a lazy day, but in the evening time we went to a pub where I met Gulnara, one of the girls who also worked with us in Turkey, had some beers, coffee with cognac and went back home.

6 november

I brought an book with me for this holiday, but I read it a bit too fast and it's already finished now, so we went to look for an english book... here... somewhere in Russia... I found... Agatha Christie. So I found nothing, maybe tomorrow in another shop.At twelve o'clock Yana's father came to pick us up (also in a Lada) and drove with us to the countryside. Just imagine a big forest. It lookedvery nice in the snow. We ate somewhere outside 'shashlik' some Tartar dish wich excists out of big pieces of porque meat...and... porque meat and ketchup. But it tastes super. After that he showed us his house he's building. An area totally differentthan the big buildings in the center of the city.Something else, here live about 650.000 people... and it's considered a small town.In the evening her mother Natasha made us something, and she always gives me wodka, "against the cold", she says. And it helps. Tomorrow I go to the registration office, I hope they will not make any difficulties or ask too many questions. Because I'm staying here with friends, and not in a hotel.

More news tomorrow.

берегите себя!

arrived

more news later