ohb

.....if you use Rightguard

Hands up if you've got a sore ass from sliding down an ice 'slide' on a frozen cow-skin. It's absolutely my own fault, to be honest it's the best craic I've had in ages, I went there yesterday too. Deborah is leaving on Tuesday. We were supposed to go to this museum of traditional wooden architecture called Tellsee, well that's what I call it anyway, but D decided not to come and well, that's where the adventure began. Though I lingered around the flat for a while I was determined not to spend another day in Irkutsk, there would be loads of things to do here had I the right people to do them with, but there's no point in complaining, unless it inspires some of ye to come over and join me.
Anyway off I went to the bus station which is a trip in itself, I don't know if I've ever told ye about Marshrutkas, I've figured out where all those people who trained as Kamikaze pilots ended up. Marshrutkas (though of course that is not the correct transliteration and people still laugh when I say it, especially considering that I used to get it mixed up with the word moroshena, meaning ice-cream) some of them are similar to Dan R's fleet though for some reason the words Harrington and Castletownbere aren't emblazoned on the side, others are like the good old Hi-aces, with seats. Guide books always describe them as 'route taxis', a description which I rejected for a long time but I suppose it could be ascribed to them. The word route is questionable though. I shouldn't have started about transport, i'll never get to the ice and dead cows. But if you're reading you obviously have little else to do, so it's your own 'tough banger' as mal would say.
When I got here first I had major problems with the buses, presuming, (I later learnt that this is a very dangerous thing to do in Russia) that buses did a sort of loop route whereby if you got a bus on one side of the road to go in a certain direction you could cross the road and go back. No way Jose. One night, I think perhaps it was one of my fruitless attempts to meet up with Rory, (I was always late, due to said problem), I ended up on a 'trolley bus' we don't have them, not in Castletown anyway, they are attached to overhead wires, though attached is a bit of a strong word to use in the case of the Irkutsk fleet. The drivers spend most of their working day scaling the ladder at the back wrangling with ropes and cables. this particular trolley bus was on its way back to the depot it took me a while to grasp this fact. I just thought the woman was another in the line of rude and unfriendly service personnel, not uncommon in Russia, When I finally understood that she wasn't trying to kick me off the bus just for the sake of it, I realised that I was in somewhat of a quandary as the other buses had finished running. Having managed to find a smile somewhere beneath the layers of make up she suggested bringing me back to the depot and figuring something out from there. Now had I known Irkutsk better at this stage I would have realised that the depot was literally around the corner from the hostel I was living in at the time. I was a bit of a novelty in the depot. In Irkutsk all the tram and trolley bus drivers are women, I asked one of my students one day if she knew why this was and she said, plain and simply that it would be too boring a job for men. Such is the mentality here, but that is a compilation of other stories and is more complicated than that, nothing is plain and simple here. Anyway back to the depot, it felt a bit like the changing rooms after a football match, people in various states of undress and that indescribable smell that haunts such places. So there was a mini-conference complete with whispers (its not like I could understand anyway!) and pointing and in my opinion not quite enough nodding. So after waiting for the stragglers, those conductors stuck with either the less agile or newer drivers who hadn't yet perfected the skills necessary to reattach their lines so that they would actually stay there, we were off. To where was still unclear. That is until we left the smothering heat that is characteristic of all buildings in Russia and I saw what Patrick once got from Santa "The Big Red Fun Bus" . I think this bus is probably used for training new drivers, its big and its red and all these ladies were more than happy to be going home. so having sat in wow, this is getting very long and even more boring, its all a long time ago, i'll put it up, read it if you want, and maybe tomorrow i'll start writing about real life.

posted by orlagh @ 7:56 am