Just when I thought I was having a bad day

In Siberia, there are always things to cheer you up when you look around. Sometimes it is a bear, sometimes a nice woodpecker or a flower, and sometimes it is a bunch of helpless guys losing their wheel in a mud puddle. I don't think I ever realized how useless a jack can be in mud. These guys will probably remember their Sunday, and the group of english speaking mountainbikers who passed by making smart comments and taking pictures. That was about all the help we could offer without getting dirt on ourselves, though.

Real bears: scary...

It has been my intent for a long time to publish a post with all the bear seeings I would make in Siberia. I had kept all bear pictures in a separate folder and I thought I would release them all at once so that people would think I live in a really dangerous place. So here we go... Ta daa.



I am not sure these pictures have the intended effect... but they are pretty much all the bears I saw since I came here, with the exception of the ground bear steak I had at the cafeteria on the way to Krasnoiarsk. The 2-D bear was in Sheregesh. The other ones look like the bears from the fairy tale with Goldilocks who eats all their food and drinks their soup and sleeps in their bed... I hope she made it.
I have to confess I am not really doing an effort to look for bears. I am happy with the cats and dogs I see around town already.
Thanks for reading my blog. I know the effort does not always pay...

Deep in Altai

Guess to whom this nice pair of legs belongs to? And guess where they were laying at the time I took this picture? If you think these are my legs facing towards Mongolia, then you are right. Mongolia is just a couple of hundred km behind my feet. I just passed 3 days in Altai, a beautiful region only hours away from Novosibirsk. We were lucky the summer finally decided to show up and we had a nice and sunny week end. Actually, the pair of legs you are looking at with delight now turned redish and the skin is about to peel off.
The people there very much look like asian (Mongol type). There are animals left in the wild pretty much everywhere. The picture below shows horses, but believe me, I also saw cows, sheeps and goats. Simply amazing...
Altai is beautiful, particularly because it is empty and far from everything. Again, that's a feeling that I had not got anywhere in the U.S in the last years. And if I knew how to use my camera, I would have taken beautiful pictures of the sky at night with its thousands of stars.
I plan to go back there in the summer with my bicycle this time...I first need to get back in shape because the nice legs you are staring at lost much of their thrusting power during the cold winter.

A new website about Novosibirsk

For people who are interested in Novosibirsk beyond my small adventures, here is a all new webiste that has lots of goof stuffs in English:
http://novosibirskguide.com/
I thought I'd give them a hand by posting this link in my own blog. I hope their server is up to the task of handling all visitors that will swarm to their site after reading this blogpost.
Now, for the people who still doubt that there are things to do around here, let me quote them (under "Around Novosibirsk"):
"Here is an ordinary picture a traveler may occasionally come across in the Novosibirsk region: fields, birch groves, a brook and a tiny village nearby. Such delightful landscapes can be observed as far as only 10 km away from the city line. If one gazes at the direction of South-East long enough he or she might soon find that some massifs start peeping in the distance. The West, in its turn, is well-known for its salt and mud lakes. [...] Unfortunately, local tourist agencies hardly offer any tours around the region with the only exception of trips to the abovementioned lakes. "

Hmmm...another good one:
"“Apart from significant natural sights, the Novosibirsk region is saturated with industrial landscapes enchanting a viewer with the grandeur of their scales.”

So, book your flight tickets now before prices go up!

Labor day in Siberia

Local Labor day jokes:

-How do you say "Labor day" in Russian?
-Another cold and snowy day...


-What is the traditional wish for the 1st of May in Siberia?
-"I wish I had not put my summer tires back on last week."