The ultra-necessity when visiting a foreign country is to return with near tacky but still quite nice gifts for friends and family. Souvenirs, more often than not they are the very things friends and family expect you to bring back for them! So, I wanted something Russian, sort of touristy but not too camp in that way, after a few moments deliberating a group of us went searching for Russian dolls – or matryoshka (mat-roo-sh-kar) as they are known in Russia.

We found an open market selling the usual touristy things; trinkets on strings or chains, humorous t-shirt designs, the odd hat or two and rather unfortunate looking paintings (it wasn’t that the art-work was in any way poor, just that the subject matter was, well, not the best taste in the world). It was a strange conglomeration of Portabello Road and midwinter eastern country; it may have been pushing -10C that day but that didn’t stop the stalls coming out. What struck me as pretty odd though is February probably isn’t the time of year when tourists are likely to descend on the city so the revenue from a stall this time of year can’t have been that great…I guess its a show to the strength and determination of characters you get in the town. After just 10mins our feet were begining to feel the cold, its ok when you’re walking around but standing still or just meandering along allows the chill from the ground time to penetrate through the soles in your shoes and chill your feet in a most uncomfortable way… We managed to get our dolls and grabbed a drink – which hadn’t been in the fridge so we improvised in the only way we could, a good use for all the snow after all! Also picked up a couple of bottled of good vodka; Russian Standard…that’ll keep us warm at night back home

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?

[cont. from previous] …from the Church on the Blood we piled back into the bus and choked off again on our mystery tour, complete with interesting facts on why to be considered beautiful, Russian women used to be on the rather large side. The story goes that larger women can weather the harsh conditions and do the work around the house better than those given perhaps less ‘insulation’. The thinner women to make themselves more attractive wore several layers of coats to make them appear larger but the men had sussed this trick out and carried long pins with them to check! nice. Just shows how tastes have changed I guess.

We arrived at our destination after 20 or so minutes and were surrounded by dense forest comprised of very tall thin trees – pine and birch – held in a carpet of power-soft snow. Although each tree was quite narrow they were packed together pretty closely so that very little light reached the ground.

This is a strange area indeed, in the middle of almost nowhere there used to exist a mine shaft, this was where the royals’ bodies were placed on 18th July 1918.

the notice reads:

“After July 18, 1918 near this mine 7 of the bodies of the Holy Royal Martyrs of Russia were burned with the use of petrol and then destroyed with sulphuric acid”

Around the shaft 7 chapels have been built, or rather will be built, there was still some construction work going on to complete the job. Again this follows the same lines as the Church on the Blood, people couldn’t do anything about the death of the royals until quite recently so its almost a catch-up history-in-the-making sort of thing going on. Each church is dedicated to a member of the killed royal family and around the shaft itself is a walkway holding images of the Tsar from the early 20th century and the long overdue ceremony when the family were transported to St Petersburg and interred 1998. The sun came out creating some fantastic shadows and lines in the landscape, the muffeling effect of the snow and the surrounding trees gave a very calm feeling to the place.

Inside the chapels were huge metallic water containers people were filling up from to take home as ‘Holy water’. The theory being the chapel bells vibrate the water in a ‘good way’ and this makes the drinkers of it happy…this perhaps didn’t sink in too much being a group of scientists but if people want to believe the story then who are we to stop them? There were also cakes and things being delivered about the place…yum!

The wood from the forest is used to make the buildings so allow them to blend together…

And yes, just a reminder; it was still pretty freezing outside

Today we were off on an excursion out of the town – no one had any idea before we left where to so I took the opportunity to get out early and try and catch a bit of the sunrise in the park around the hotel. The sun rose through the trees and walk-ways at near on 9:30 as I hoped. Its a completely different world here, long cold nights and days in which the sun barely rises high enough to warm it. The sun’s low arc throwing sideways light for most of the day – great for that lovely golden light photographers seek in most landscapes but confirmation of how much further north we were than the UK.

You wouldn’t get chased off these park benches in a hurry!

We set off through the town in a bus that I suspected used part of its exhaust to heat the inside, each time the engine rev’ed I got a fresh waft of diesel fumes. Great idea, poor execution [unless execution really was your idea...]. Yekaterinburg is an industrial town, famous in the area for its ‘plants’, one such plant was so vast it took us a good 10mins to drive the length of one side of it – on the inside it has its own tramway system. I’m pretty sure this was the factory that build other factories but I could be wrong.

Our first port of call was the aforementioned Church on the Blood, it was build in the area of the building that the Russian Royal family was shot in during the early hours of 17th July 1918, the royal line ended as Lenin’s revolution took hold. For 80 odd years the political climate prevented any such monuments to be built but with the fall of communism the dormant history could be commemorated appropriately. There are many features of the church that echo the past, a statue of the royal family stands beneath a cross, in the arms of Nicholas II is Alexei (his only son) who suffered from haemophilia (a disease carried in the royal blood from Queen Victoria, Alexei’s great-grandmother) – who was treated by the well known, and perhaps infamous, Rasputin who gained the trust of the royal family but perhaps damaged the image of the royals by becoming more of an advisor than a priest/healer. His life is somewhat muddled in places, especially his death…
Around the statue are 23 steps leading from the lower level of the church to the upper level, this holds two representations; firstly the number of steps leading down to the basement in which the royals were shot and secondly the number of years Nicholas II was on the throne.

to be continued…

Up early to be at the talks being given today starting at nine, the sun rises around 9:30 and its not fully light until then but I was able to scrub enough ice off the window to see what lay opposite our hotel. Buildings previously hidden by low, snow laden clouds, revealed themselves. A burnt-out shell a little way off, windows blackened, lay under a dawning sky…a pink glow above us as we walk out of the hotel.

It’s a clear day with no clouds overhead, chimney stacks in the distance painted white and red pumping out fumes like great strings of cotton wool, expanding as they grow. Estimated temperature is -17C, just as last night but there doesn’t seem to be as much wind as we get going, though judging by the chimneys there is a breeze above the buildings. More people shoveling ice and snow from the pavement, bend-double, shoving with all their might against spades and scraping boards – a chunk breaks off and skids my way as one shoveler fails to notice us coming along. We round the corner of a block and get hit with a stiff breeze that sucks the breath out of you…a familiar sensation. In moments we duck inside to begin the day’s talks. An epic 17 of them! Did find a huge ice clearing machine though during the lunch break, a cut above your average shovel and scraper board to clear the snow.

…we finish the day with our hosts laying on a fantastic spread, and again with the vodka!, lots of salted vegetables and meats as well as some very tasty sweet foods. Russian food really isn’t bad at all and we were made very welcome being fed a fair amount of it. Clearly the thinking is that the extra ‘layer’ will help keep everyone warm…I was only happy to oblige!