During my transiberian experience, I decided to somewhat randomly choose stopping points along the way, to catch my breath, and of course experience a bit of that good old Russian culture. Ekaterinburg seemed to be a logical decision, although I honestly knew very little about the city, and nobody seemed to have exciting things to say about it. I showed up with low expectations, and ended up hopping off the train into a pleasantly exciting city. Of course there was that burning question in my mind, that I hadn't managed to discern from my neighbor on the train with my horrible Russian. As we shopped in what could have been any supermarket in the US, I asked my friend, hardly containing myself: "Are we in Europe or Asia??" He shrugged and said, "Well, the border is technically 14 kilometers west from here....so I guess we're in Asia." He laughed, somewhat embarrassed by my sudden outbreak of glee in the supermarket, jumping up and down. I'm in Asia, for the first time!! And yet, looking at my friend Alex, with his red head, I could tell, that this wasn't quite the Asia I had read about in books...
Although Ekaterinburg is as industrial as people complain it to be, there's still a surprising bit of charm to it. Firstly, if you ignore all of the crazy city construction and modern charmless buildings, you come across some gorgeous architecture, and some really incredible history, that you never would have expected.
What really amazed me, was that for once, I went to a museum, and actually loved it! Inside, I wandered alone in the historical science museum, discovering more and more about the ancient peoples of the Ural Mountains, when all of the sudden, I came across an incredible sight: there, alone in its own special room, stood a towering impressive monolith. An ancient wooden idol, carved by humans over 3000 years ago, the oldest wooden carving ever discovered in the world. I stared in awe, completely amazed that such ancient things could be so beautiful.
If that wasn't impressive enough, I made my way over to the most modern church I had seen in Russia....built only a handful of years ago, it was to memorialize the family of Nicolai II, the last of the czars, who was murdered....in Ekaterinburg. When my friend Alex took me to the place where the family's bodies were thrown into a mining shaft, far out of the city limits, I was awestruck. There, in a peaceful, brand new monastery, were tiny churches, each one for a family member that was killed by the Red army during the revolution. Sadly, nobody could officially announce the deaths of the family and discover exactly what had happened to them until the fall of the Soviet Union, and they weren't memorialized until the 1990s. As I stood in the silence of the forest, staring at the place where they found the bones of the children, I felt sad, humbled, and forever overcome with the power of history. This is Russia, I thought, as the sun set, and Orthodox choir sang their somber mass. I looked at the forest beyond, realizing I had much further to go.
