May Day in Irkutsk

We left in the bus to get back to Irkutsk (1.5 hours) where we had a few hours to look around. We headed down Lenin St to look at his statue then stopped to look at the May Day demo - numerous speeches by political types, Lenin/hammer and sickle flags plus various workplace representatives with other flags. Not more than 200 and just about as many police. It was hot and sunny with lots of people about in family groups, in holiday mood.

Lunch was in what had been a house - or like a 1970s cafe- frames with cassettes inside, picture of Gagarin. Old teapots, graffiti in the loo. Soup rassolnik with a deep crust and filled with soup - thin tomato base, barley, meat, carrot etc. Supposedly the crust was eaten after the soup but it was totally hard like a bit of pasty the kids had played with for days.

We had another hour before the bus to the station so we wandered to the church on the hill. It was only about150 years old as most of the old town had been destroyed in a fire and rebuilt in 1880. There was a small demo with you people chanting, holding placards, dancing etc. One of the performers with a mic noticed us and said for the information of visitors it was an unofficial demo, about love and peace. One person had a placard saying 1998 Put In, 2018 Put Out. There were anti police banners (“filth”) and anti religion ones as Alex said there’s a law to protect religion and it can’t be criticised so people say they have been discriminated against on religious grounds. This annoys the students. The police have targets to meet and the easiest way to achieve them is to plant substances on young people who can then be imprisoned for years hence the anti police banners. Then we had a quick walk to the river before getting on the train for 5pm

The bad news is that our 48 hours to Ekaterinburg is going to be 56 hours. Instead of the Trans Siberian Express, we are on the Siberian milk train!