Yekaterinburg - I can "tick" the 2 week mark

God I am knackered. Spent last night worrying myself to sleep after I discovered the Ural mountains (and Yekaterinburg) are the tick capital of Russia.... ticks as in the things that bite you and give you tick-borne encephalitis. So even though I am looking forward to seeing the countryside tomorrow, I am freaking out about the ticks. Stupidly I found a research paper written by Defra and the HPA (not that I would believe anything written by these muppets) describing tick prevalence in Siberia etc etc. Very interesting but quite disturbing. 


ANYWAY, back to today. Still in Yekaterinburg (it rained today) but it is a quiet city even though it has shed loads of people living in it. So some background. The city sits between the north and south Ural mountains, and the verified border between Europe and Asia sits about 17km away. You can't get there on the train, and would have to pay a taxi to take you there or organise a tour - min. £70, so I didn't bother. The city was founded in 1723 as a way for Peter the Great (remember him from St Petersburg) to extract the riches from the Ural mountains (oh and how beautiful those riches are - will describe more about them later). Named after 2 Catherines - Peter's wife and Russia's patron saint of mining, in WWII it was an industrial centre (and then called Sverdlovsk) and actually remained closed to outsiders until 1990 as it had a lot of nuclear stuff going on. Probably most famously it is where the Bolsheviks (linked to Lenin) murdered Tsar Nicholas II and his family in 1914. Only recently have they built a Church on the exact sight where the family were murdered (out where their bodies were concealed in the country the Orthodox Church has built a beautiful church and made the mine shaft sacred ground). It was only built in 2007 (I think?) so not massively impressed by it actually.

Another factet is that Boris Yeltsin studied as a civil engineer here in the 70s, rising to become the regional communist party boss. 


So that's about all I can muster on the history side. I decided a much more valuable way to spend my time this morning was trying to find some nail varnish remover. I had painted my toes before I left the UK and forgot to bring anything to remove it or any new varnish to paint them, so they looked utterly minging. So I successfully achieved this task and now have bright pink nails. Lovely. I thought you all should experience a Russian shopping Centre so I took a video but unfortunately the server for this blog is rubbish and you can't see it, unless someone can tell me how... i.e. its too big.

I also made my way to the Ural Geology Museum. Why? I'm not sure really. It cost me 50 rubules and looked like a good way to kill some time. In fact, it was awesome. It is found in the Mining University, you can recognise the University because of increasing number of rocks in the vicinity (see below):

Not thinking I would really be that impressed, I entered the first room (which I deemed the crystal room) and was blown away by the amount and size of the crystals in there. Unfortunately, I was not allowed to take photos. And was not able to steal any, as the lady followed right behind me the whole way around the museum. So I wrote some notes of what I saw, and these consisted of the following: rainbow of rocks, Big lumps of gold, zircon and crystal plates with stone hairs around the base (all colours), brain looking rock (cream), big rock pink inside black outside (beautiful), tree branch with crystals on it, fossils (all sorts), meteors (lots), lava and lava balls from the Russian volcano Koryakski on Kamchatka Peninsula,  Shuiskite, embreyite, crocit, rauquelinite, planetite, pyrophyllite. Tell me that wasn't informative. As I said above, this place sits between the Ural mountains which are called the "stone belt". The stuff in this place was amazing but I can't imagine what has happened to the landscape in order for all these minerals to be extracted..... what unfortunately will probably happen to Mongolia soon.


I had a very funny (dangerous maybe) experience - was checking out a plain looking large lump of rock that had horizontal lines, and vertical lines in it. I was like that's weird, the vertical lines looked like hairs. All the rocks are out on display i.e. no glass cases or anything, so I touch the side of this rock thinking its the cleaners duster fibres or something. Walked away, looked back and was astonished to see a sign above it in the display case saying "Asbest" - BOLLOCKS. So am I right to assume asbestos comes from rocks? and that it safe to be out on display, for innocents like myself to touch? I didn't touch the fibres, just the rock. It must only be toxic when disrupted or something. Oh well!


So then left the museum after about 2 hours of looking at the pretty things and was left alone for a minute so quickly snapped these two objects on the way out of the door - they were both quite big but not as great as the ones upstairs. I felt excited by the place because I know the geologists would have loved it but felt disappointed I couldn't gather more info for you guys. You'll just have to come and see it yourselves - Pete, write in to your fellowship for a trip to Yekaterinburg to see the crystals. It's essential to both your (and UCL's) research and personal development :) Katie, there are rocks from space - that's all NASA needs right? You could combine it with a trip to Moscow to see the doggies.

I then had a subway (which was soooo good) and went back to the hostel to do some washing. Met an English guy (21 year old studying Maths at Bath) - he wasn't interested in the rock stories so I left him to updating his trip itinerary on a spreadsheet. Geek alert! I know, I know.

So tomorrow am off to the country to get bitten by the death ticks, and then tomorrow night (22nd) getting on the train to Irkutsk (3 nights journey away). I arrive on 25th July. So wish me luck, and I'll update you when I can.

I spy with my little eye, something beginning with "I"........