Ending Point: N43°13 E76°56
Distance Traveled: 5.3 miles
|
Our day started when we wandered into the hostel’s kitchens to find two South Africans cooking a breakfast feast while lamenting that their Rally clothes hadn’t been enough to get them past the strict dress codes of Almaty’s clubs the night before. After a quick run to the shop to contribute ingredients, we sat back and spent the morning in the kitchen swapping stories and eating like royalty. Eventually around noon we decided it was time to hit the road, but one thing first: Chase wanted to check out the Green Bazaar, Almaty’s largest bazaar. Once we reunited with the Elephants and the Lumberyaks it was off to the Bazaar, only to discover that it was closed on Mondays. Luckily for us though there was a little market next door, where Chase was able to purchase the much-coveted traditional Kazakh hats. By the time we left the market (and we watched the Elephants and Lumberyaks get pulled over by Almaty’s finest), it was already after 3PM; rather than hitting the road at such a late hour, we decided to spend the afternoon doing personal admin and then meet with Chase’s friend Aggey in the evening. Right around sunset Aggey arrived at our hostel and offered to take us on a tour of his city. Aggey has spent his entire life living in Almaty and climbing tall peaks around the world; in June he had been in Alaska to climb Denali, and when he met Chase the two decided that they’d have to meet up during the Rally. Aggey’s pride in Almaty and in Kazakhstan in general was obvious as he told us the history of this major city at the crossroads of Central Asia. Well before we rolled into town in our Panda, the Mongols had crossed the Kazakh steppe, the traders of the Silk Road had plied their wares, the Soviet Union annexed Kazakhstan, revolution had led to the world’s longest-serving President in a “democracy,” and rapid development and modernization in a shrinking and increasingly-connected world all proved that Almaty is truly the social, cultural, historical, and financial capital of this interesting country. The highlight of the evening was when Aggey brought us to Kishlak, a traditional Kazakh restaurant in the heart of the city. Like Kazakhs, we drank green tea and fermented mare’s milk while reclining beside the low table that was surrounded by beautiful tapestries on the walls. Aggey explained that a “kishlak” is the name for a large camp when multiple families of traveling nomads all temporarily join together; the perfect symbolic parallel to our convoys all camping together in the Kazakh desert! We feasted on traditional meals ordered by Aggey, and went to bed that night with full stomachs, active imaginations, and a strong desire to make it back to this wonderful city. Starting Point: N43°13 E76°56
Ending Point: N43°13 E76°56 Distance Traveled: 5.3 miles
0 Comments
We woke up at the Local Hostel, which was soon becoming a Mongol Rally Hostel, as the other three members of the Thunderyaks arrived in the night. We swapped stories of the road over a market breakfast in the park just below the hostel and attempted to come up with a plan for the day. Well, planning too much isn’t Rally style, so we decided to go to the Mother Russia statue and take it from there. Many of the buses from our corner go to the statue, but we didn’t get on one of those. Once the bus turned in the wrong direction, we jumped off and then found a taxi nearby. Our German-speaking driver saw no problem with the six of us piling into his Soviet-era Lada, so off we went. We didn’t exactly communicate which historical location we wanted to go to, and so we made a stop at the museum on the Volga River and took in the panorama. From there, we found an underground tram station near the large Lenin statue and finally headed in the right direction. The Mother Russia statue is on the top of a small hill so she can be seen throughout the area. So, to get to her feet (you have to touch the statue or you haven’t really been there), we walked past a couple of reflecting pools and smaller statues and carvings. Then, we passed through a room with an eternal flame to commemorate the Russian soldiers who lost their lives in World War II. From Mother Russia’s feet, we could appreciate the scale of the statue and have a nice view of the city and river below. The journey back from the statue was much easier than the one there; we just had to take the underground tram five stops. We celebrated another good day in Volgograd with a big dinner at a café on the block that the Thunderyaks had found the night before. Dinner turned into drinks with the owner and his friends, who were also trying to help our Italian friends come up with a solution for their car problems. By the end of the night, Vlad (the owner and overall guy in charge) was calling us all brothers; he also thought that since we were coming from Alaska, we were practically Russian-Americans. Just before we left, we shared a bag of coffee from The Grind in Girdwood, Alaska, to cement our friendship. Starting Point: N48°42 E44°30
Ending Point: N48°42 E44°31 Distance Traveled: 0.7 miles Still unaware that we had crossed into another time zone, we had quite a full night’s sleep and woke up to go downstairs to a full breakfast with the girls and Valentina. Shortly after breakfast, we began our day tour with Jenya that the Ganzas had organized. We were more than used to driving our little Panda around cities, but it was quite a treat to be driven around Moscow not only by someone who actually knew where he was going but also by someone driving a nice clean BMW. Valentina put a few sites on the must-see list, and so we went to those places first. As we drove into the city, we passed the Kremlin and headed straight to Red Square. After walking around Red Square and taking the typical tourist photos in front of Saint Basil’s Cathedral and the Kremlin, we went to Gum, one of the largest and nicest shopping malls in the city. From there, we jumped back in the car with Jenya and headed to the Cathedral of Christ the Savior to admire its architecture as well as its great view of the city. Because the Cathedral is located on the bank of the Moskva River, walking from the beautiful church across the bridge nearby (a bridge decorated with love lockets) allowed us to see a lot of the city. Back with Jenya, we cruised around for a while, as he pointed out notable streets and buildings of Moscow. After the driving tour, we decided to go back to the Kremlin to walk around the park and fountains outside, including a countdown clock for the upcoming winter Olympics in Sochi. We ended our day with Jenya at Moscow State University, also located on the river and offering a great view of the city. Our stop was a popular one, as many just-married couples and wedding parties cruised by. From there, we left the heart of the city and went back to the Ganzas for dinner and playtime in the garden. Starting Point: N55°40 E37°19
Ending Point: N55°40 E37°19 Distance Traveled: 0.0 miles There are late starts, and then there are late starts in Poland. We woke up in the hostel in Krakow, had a bit of the continental breakfast left out for our group, and recounted the events of the night before (some of which you can find on the previous post here, some of which are Pandaland jokes that don’t belong on here). Then, we went out to see some of the sights of the city that we had only glimpsed the night before, including walking around the main square and market. After a brief daylight tour of the city, we headed south to the Wieliczka Salt Mine, one of the twelve original UNESCO World Heritage sites. Before and after lunch in the café there, Andrew finangled us press entry with a private tour guide. The tour took us through three levels and down to 150 meters below the surface. Our favorite rooms were St. Kinga’s Chapel and the underground pool where we tossed in a coin with a prayer to get us to Mongolia. We also licked salt straight off the walls! Our tour guide even gave us lumps of rock salt to take on our travels; we won’t run out of salt for a long time now. We left Wieliczka but didn’t make it too far that night, choosing to camp in Nowy Sacz (a small town near the Slovak border) after a few shopping stops. We were the lead car, using paper maps to navigate after some mix-ups with the SatNav (GPS), and so we were happy to find a great spot for us all to stop for the night and make a big dinner. Starting Point: N50°06 E19°93
Ending Point: N49°37 E20°42 Distance Traveled: 70.4 miles For some reason late nights seem to be followed by early mornings, and we got up in time to see the massive Klenová Castle campground strewn with tents, sleeping bodies, and Rally cars everywhere. Breakfast was lacking, the toilets were in poor shape, and the drinking water tanks had run dry; but that’s what happens when the Adventurists invade the ruins of a castle that was built in 1291. While walking around Chase wandered into the camp of the PhilieasFog Reformers, and was quickly reminded that Charla had committed us to going to Poland today. Poland? Well, OK then, Poland it is. About five minutes before departure, the Long Time No Sea girls decided that Poland sounded fun too, and they jumped in their car to convoy. After a day of driving, and a day of GPS giving faulty directions to the lead car, we finally all rolled into Krakow hungry and cranky. After checking into Hostel Barok, it was time to tackle the city. Andrew, one of PhileasFog’s team members was Polish, and he was a great tour guide and translator for the entire group. We went straight to Krakow’s Main Square, the largest medieval town square in Europe, for a delicious dinner. The night started out very relaxed, but Andrew decided that since we were in Poland we needed a traditional Polish evening, so we headed to Do Zjedzenia. Do Zjedzenia is a bar that calls out to Krakow’s past; it’s more commonly just called The Communist Bar. The walls are covered in old newspapers, they have more vodkas than one can imagine, the bartenders are stern and slow-moving old women, and everything costs €1. We were having too much fun at the Communist bar, and we were shushed numerous times, but it was still a great night. Starting Point: N49°19 E13°13
Ending Point: N50°06 E19°93 Distance Traveled: 449.5 miles We started out our day by stopping in Scolfe’s Tea Room in Boreham Street. Charla had been hoping for a proper English cream tea for days, and we had been waiting for the perfect opportunity to enjoy it. Finally, on the last day before the Rally, we found the pleasant little tea room, dating to 1392; we were the youngest people in the tea room by decades, and the chatter around the room was how these two young Americans wandered into this village team room. Oh, and the cream tea was delicious! After tea, it was time to hit the road. The website for our camp spot had said they were 8 kilometers from Bodiam Castle, and the man in the pub had told us we were 12 kilometers from Bodiam, but in reality it took about an hour of driving to get from Boreham Street to Bodiam; from what people tell us, this is a pretty typical experience for driving in the Mongol Rally. When we finally arrived at Bodiam Castle and drove under the giant Mongol Rally arch, reality began to set in: here we are with a couple hundred other small cars, about to drive from this castle in rural England all the way to urban Mongolia. After all the months of dreaming and planning and hard work, here we were with hundreds of other people equally nervous and excited about this grand adventure. First we checked out the registration tent and started stickering our Panda with the official Mongol Rally stickers; from there, it was off to explore, check out the cars, and meet the other teams! We were introduced to so many people the day was a blur of names and faces. There was the big American team from Arkansas in a tinier car than us, there was the Norwegian Mongol Kart team, the two Scottish guys riding on motorbikes, the man dressed as a chicken, the team wearing only Speedos, and tons more. As the day stretched into evening we actually began to connect with other teams, and realized that we were partaking on this adventure with some pretty cool people! Though the dinner was less than exciting, the post dinner shenanigans proved to be fun. We had spent all afternoon parked in a staging area below Bodiam Castle, built in 1385. By the evening time, the organizers moved us all into the castle for an evening of medieval revelry. The castle was full of wenches pouring cups of mead for all who desired, and there were knights running around the castle sword-fighting whenever they could get the crowds’ attention. Juxtaposed to the medieval chaos, an orchestra was also performing lovely music throughout the evening for us in the castle courtyard. By climbing up the turrets, one could get both an amazing view of the surrounding English countryside and a hilarious bird’s-eye view of the party below. We met back up with Team Innocents Abroad from last night, and also met the girls from Team Long Time No Sea; we loved hanging out with the kilt-wearing Scottish brothers from Ulaanbaatartan, and the B-Team seemed to have it all together with a mechanic and a nurse on the team. The Launch Party was a great introduction to the Mongol Rally, and a great way to see what kind of craziness we were about to embark upon!
We left Trieste a little too early in the morning. Luckily, our hotel packed us breakfast to go—the enjoyable part of our journey to the airport after the bus driver freaked out about us not having tickets in advance. Charla’s Italian got us by and earned a stop at a roadside café where she ran inside to buy tickets after the fact from a kind older lady. The journey from Trieste to Milano was short and sweet. There, we met up with Charla’s friend Patrick for coffee and second breakfast. Charla and Patrick met while they were studying together at the University of Bologna in 2007 as students of the Eastern College Consortium between Vassar, Wesleyan, and Wellesley, and they have stayed in touch across the continents, as neither one seems to stay put for too long. Patrick had just made it back to Italy some four months before and had lots to say about the city. Breakfast in Milano felt close to breakfast in Bologna—cappuccini, pastries, and lots of catching up (this time, we had a year and a half to discuss; it used to be the events of the night before at the Cassero). As Patrick left for work, we went for a walk around the city that took us by the Duomo, La Scala opera house, a few notable statues, and the oh-so-not Italian but rather Irish O’Connell’s Country Pub before heading back to the airport. Our last flight until Mongolia! After flying from Milan to London City, we decided the best idea would be to avoid the actual city of London. Tomorrow we’ll be picking up our car in the eastern suburbs, so we decided to head there tonight. After navigating London’s public transit lines (airport to Stratford, Stratford to West Ham, West Ham to Purfleet), we finally walked up to The Royal, our hotel for the evening. We arrived right as it was getting dark, and immediately grabbed some ciders from the Riverbay, the bar in the hotel, to enjoy on the banks of the River Thames with a view of the London skyline as the last bits of daylight were fading from the sky. Once it got completely dark we went back inside the bar and met two of the funniest people we’ve met along the entire trip. There was Wes, the bartender who met his American lady playing Call of Duty, and there was Jake, who had to explain to his wife how he innocently lost two pairs of pants within days of each other. The two of them kept us rolling with laughter late into the evening until we climbed up a couple flights of stairs to collapse into bed and dream about getting a car tomorrow.
Today we spent the afternoon taking in some of Trieste’s history by visiting the Civico Museo del Castello di San Giusto, or the Castle of San Giusto. The castle is built on one of the highest points in the city, not far from the water, and was a strategic point for defending the port. With such a location the walk up and down through the steep hills certainly counted for our cardio for the day. Built over the remains of a previous castle, construction on this castle was started in the 1400s. The views from the castle were amazing looking over the city, and its use as a defensive post was very clear. Furthermore, the castle’s armory was filled with centuries-old swords, guns, and assorted weapons that were fascinating to examine. Our evening began with a look into Trieste’s more recent history, as we attended a performance at the Teatro Verdi--1913 Trieste a Teatro, put on to celebrate a hundred years of opera in Trieste and the opening of the theater’s exhibit at the Civico Museo Teatrale “Carlo Schmidl.” The Teatro Verdi is like a small version of La Scala in Milan, and we were lucky to have great seats with other Joyce School students. After the opera, we met up with everyone involved with the Joyce School for a farewell dinner at L’Antico Panada hosted by Irish ambassador Patrick Hennessy. It was a full Italian dinner of many courses, which provided lots of time for great conversation with our friends from the week.
Trieste is a fascinating place. It feels like no other city in Italy but like them all at the same time. According to legend, it was founded by a friend of Jason and the Argonauts. More recently, in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, it was the main shipping port for the Austro-Hungarian Empire until World War I. Then, in 1918, it was given to Italy. Today, its maritime industry is more important to central Europe than to Italy, which explains why the population of the city remains so diverse. Thanks to the diverse population, there is a surprising amount of local craft beer in Trieste. Needless to say, Italian wine is wonderful throughout the country, though the domestic beer leaves much to be desired. We had sampled a few Slovenian Laškos in Trieste before we found Bire, a brew pub with a nice view of the sea. The Pils and Rossa (Red Ale) we ordered were much better than Peroni or Nastro Azzurro. The "panpizza"/sandwich and toast-shaped meat were good choices as well. The toast-shaped meat was a bit of a surprise order. Charla translated it as "meat in the form of toast," thinking maybe the meat was inserted into the toast, but Chase's guess turned out most accurate: two bread-shaped slices of meat and fries.
Once again while Charla was attending her morning lectures, Chase sought out the unique museums of Trieste. The first one he found was the Museo Ferroviario di Campo Marzio, the museum about the railroad in Trieste. Housed in an old train station, the museum housed four tracks worth of old and interesting trains in the railyard. After spending time in the sun poking around the unique trains, Chase ended up at the Civico Museo del Mare, or the museum of the sea. This museum was focused on Trieste’s maritime history, but was surprising in that it told the entire story using intricately detailed model ships. Following the afternoon Ulysses seminar, Charla met up with Chase to go on a walking tour of Joyce’s Trieste that included the Greek Orthodox Church of Saint Nicholas, the Berlitz School (where both James and Stanislaus worked as English teachers), and one of the many apartments where James Joyce lived with Nora Barnacle in the city. Joyce’s Trieste was surely different from the one we experienced, but a cosmopolitan air persists in this city whose nationality used to change frequently. The windy backstreets of the city seem unchanged from the turn of the century aside from some of the shops and restaurants that populate them. We returned down the alley of Osteria da Marino to find piadine at La Piadíneria. As a student in Bologna, Charla adored these flat bread sandwiches stuffed with veggies and cheese (and meat for those so inclined), and after finding piadine nearby, we made this café a favorite stop in the city.
After piadine, Chase went for a twilight run along the sea wall while Charla attended Michael Longley’s reading at Civico Museo Teatrale “Carlo Schmidl.” The Museo is located right along the small Grand Canal, so the barge bar at Caffé Rossi was an ideal choice for an evening social beverage. |