russia: khabarovsk

The train ride from Vladivostok to Khabarovsk was long, about 12 hours. Thankfully I love night trains, and the girls tolerate them because they're so convenient.

Wikipedia tells me Khabarovsk is bigger than Vladivostok, but the number of residents given is smaller than the number for Vladivostok, so I don't know. Wikipedia says Khabarovsk has a bit over 575,000 people.

Though there was habitation (mostly military forts with their soldiers,) in the area as early as the 17^th century, the official founding date of the city is 1858.

 That date doesn't seem to acknowledge that the area was part of China for centuries before, so the history seems rather confusing to me.

When Claire booked our accomodation she booked a place on the backside of the train station. Before realizing that we walked out the front and took a team photo with the statue of Khabarov, after whom the city is named. (Duh.)

Khabarov was a Russian entrepreneur and adventurer, one of the early explorers of the area, he did his best to claim it for Russia.

Getting to the hostel was interesting, I'm not sure anyone there had seen a foreigner previously. They seemed dumbfounded to have us there, both in the hostel itself, as well as in the city in general.

It was easy enough to walk back to the pedestrian bridge over the train station, to get to the city center. It was a warm day, we were all in short sleeves. (Little did we know this would be the last warm day of our trip.)

With the nice weather we decided to get ice cream. There were a few ice cream stands around, we chose a random one. When you buy food in Russia there is usually a serving size listed in addition to the price. They don't usually weigh the ice cream, but this lady did. Serving size was 50 grams, but her scoops were nearly 100 grams, and we paid accordingly. 

I hate that, I'd rather have smaller scoops, but I didn't feel like it was an option to tell her to put some back.

In a park area through which we walked we saw a bunch of zodiac sign statues. It was fun to look at each of them and figure out which one it was. I'm terrible at zodiac anything, I failed miserably at this game.

The main city square is called Lenin Square, but the statue of the man is actually on the sidewalk across the street on one side of the platz. Rather difficult to get a decent team photo. On another side was the city duma, a boring building as usual.

There was a fountain in the middle of the platz, the spritzing water felt really good. If we could've carried it with us I would've been happy.

As we walked down another street I noticed we were walking past a cupcake shop, it seemed like a good place to stop. Who am I to turn down cupcakes? The frosting wasn't all that good, but the flavours were exactly what they should've been. Yum.

We found Komsomol Square next, it wasn't much of a platz. 

A tall monument stands in one corner, there is a church in another corner, and a small gathering of souvenir stalls near the monument. The outside of the church was pretty, the inside felt smaller than I'd expected. Tall ceilings, but a narrow room.

On the other side of the church was a city of military glory stelae. I'd love to see all of these around the country, but I don't think that's possible. Taking a good photo of this one wasn't possible as it was backlit by the sun. That being said, we didn't find it worth coming back at a different time of day to get better photos. 

Our next sight was the regional history museum. A typical museum, we've seen a number of these all over the country. I have to admit I don't pay much attention to the geologic sections, nor the flora and fauna exhibits. I definitely prefer the sections with pictures and dioramas of human life from the past century or two.

The museum was pretty big. It was spread out over two buildings, on two floors in each building. There was no English, but plenty of exhibits, so we were happy.

Hands down the best part of this museum was a temporary exhibit of carpets. CARPETS! 

More than one of them had faces of Stalin and/or Lenin, as well as other people important in Russian history. We loved them all. The ones that stick in my head are a tractor going through a field of wheat, andone with a whole bunch of sailors.

After the museum we walked toward the river, to see what the city had done with the embankment. As we got there we realized a water tanker plane was making loops in the area. Picking up water, flying over to the woods, dumping the water on the fire, repeat. Really impressive.

The beach area down by the river was not great. I can usually handle any beach, but I wouldn't want to spend time on this one.

After walking for a bit, we followed a big set of stairs to get back up to the city. I'm way out of shape, we stopped more than once for me to catch my breath.

Next up was dessert. Totally unnecessary, but quite tasty. After that we were tired, so we figured out where to catch a bus back to our room. Thankfully there was a supermarket nearby, so we were able to get dinner supplies. I wanted and found frozen vegetables.

The next morning we followed our routine of waking up slowly, packing up and checking out. We walked back to the train station to drop our bags, then headed in the same direction as the day before.

Almost immediately we realized the fire we'd seen the day before was having massive effects on the air quality that day. Everything was hazy, though there were no clouds to be seen. There was also a slight smell of fire everywhere we went. We didn't know whether the first was still going strong, or if all the water from the plane the day before had done what it was supposed to. Khabarovsk is also built on a few hills, we had to go down and up to get to the first thing we wanted to see, a church. The church sits on one side of a big platz, it's a nice view of the whole building. It looked pretty new, with a white exterior and gold domes. 

The inside was rather plain, not much in the way of frescoes.

On another side of the platz was a big war memorial. Very big. Impossible to get the whole thing in a single picture frame. There were tall 'pages' with names, as well as an eternal flame. Quite impressive, and definitely worth a few minutes of silence. Over history Russia has sacrificed so many of its people in various wars.

We walked down the hill, and found our way back to the embankment we'd walked yesterday. Not too far along we found the same steps we'd climbed yesterday, we climbed them again. 

This time we stepped off on one of the side trails, and followed it to a statue of Nikolai Muravyov-Amursky, who is on one side of the 5000 ruble note.

Muravyov-Amursky was a Russian general and diplomat, quite important in the early exploration of the region, he was a part of expanding the Russian empire to the Amur basin. Perfect for a team photo, of course.

Since we hadn't spent much money in Khabarovsk, and didn't think we'd be spending much for the next couple stops, we decided to splurge a bit on dinner. We went to a place called Meetmeat, a steak place. I have to admit, it was nice to have good food, a comfortable place to sit, and a nice atmosphere.

From dinner it was easy to catch a bus to the train station, stocking up on snacks at a nearby store. We picked up our bags, boarded our train, and took off.

I doubt I'll come back to Khabarovsk, though there is an airport there, so it might be convenient as a launching point for other spots further north and northeast.