On our way back from a buffet dinner with our Russian hosts our walk back through the center of Yekaterinburg took us past the fantastic Ice Palace located, I assumed, just by the town hall. I reasoned this because of the fact that there was a prominent statue of Lenin beside it.

The Ice Palace consisted of a near labyrinth of shoulder high walls leading through an arch of some feet high, a couple of carved statues (a king and queen; Nicholas II?) and an obvious slope upon which to slide down. Now, being on a young scientist meeting we needed no further excuse to proceed straight to the slippery slope and partake in a few basic physics experiments…

…on our bums, feet, front – anything. It was cold and hard but fun none the less, especially to see how far you could slide compared to others, pushing them off the smoothest patch on the descent tended to give the best results It may have been slightly influenced by the presence of vodka during the meal a few minutes earlier but nevertheless fun was had by all. Some poor locals would have only been able to understand half of the screams that night, disjointed and mottled by a language from half the world away as each urged to other on towards even more ludicrous sliding stunts. In what felt like 5mins but I think was closer to 30, we left our icey recreation area and continued on our way, shivering only slightly but more out of fits of giggles than the cold. We passed the city ‘pond’ – actually a lake formed by the inflow of the river Iset to the north, it flows beneath a bridge of sorts (most probably an HEP) and continues off to the south to end up in the Tobol river in Kazakhstan…there you go, a bit of geography thrown in for free! We got back to the hotel about an hour later, nothing quite like a walk in beyond freezing temperatures to forge new friendships and thats at least one thing I learnt that night. Once in side we followed two basic steps…Step one: vodka? yes. Step two: have you warmed up yet? no – repeat step one until you can’t feel the cold any more! There was a ‘Step three: locate bed’ but I really can’t remember much after repeating step one again. Or was it again and again?