In the morning after coming back to the capital, it was time to prepare for the trip to Russia. We were getting ready and ate breakfast made by Marla’s mother. It tasted very good and we were a bit late, due to other activities, but it should have been fine.
Beginning of the trip
I drove through the traffic downtown and it was bad as always.
Marla had to renew her ID card, so I drove them to the government building.
When arriving, I wanted to find a parking spot, but the ones I wanted to take were not okay based on what the mother said.
I drove closer to the government building, still nothing free there. Her mother decided to jump out of the car with Marla and let me alone find a parking spot, without me knowing the region where parking spots were and had no chance of contacting them. They left their phone in the car and I would have no internet on my phone.
I was very pissed, because it was very rude behavior and super egoistic. I am also often egoistic, but in this situation it is a nogo, especially for me who does not know anything there.
My mood was bad, I still tried to find the two. Sadly they were not there, where they left, which is the place I would have expected them. I was walking inside of buildings in order to hope to be in the right one.
It took some while and a lot of courage to make it happen. Such an uncomfortable situation I was in.
Escalation
Marla tried to find me, at least something, and I was pissed, which she knew before I told it to her. She couldn’t understand it herself, why it happens like that. The funny part of the story, they forgot their phones in the car and needed them to pay, but couldn’t find me, because they left me in this situation.
When I saw her mother, I told her that it was a super shit move from her and that it was stupid and shit to just leave me by myself without me knowing what was going on.
Like expected she didn’t know what she was doing wrong, so I could not deescalate and wanted just my stuff and go away. After Marla was able to pay, we went to the car, where I went faster than them.
At the car, I just took my backpack and everything needed for the trip and left in the direction I needed to go.
She complained a lot about me to Marla, which was also to expect and now we are in a bad situation, but I don’t feel like I am the one who should apologize first. I did something wrong, by getting a bit loud, but still I think it was something which can not happen the way it happened.
She wanted to save 5min and ruined the whole day and lasted over 30 min.
Start driving to Russia
The planned shopping before Russia didn’t work anymore, but that was fine.
We had an amazing comfortable car with six other people. I expected a super shit car, but the car we drove was modern and had the function to use a monitor to watch music videos while driving.
The situation with Marla and myself sadly escalated as well. The tension from her mother and me was in the air and things were easy to escalate. I will not go into detail here, because before writing this, things are not solved and talked about, so it would be wrong to only share my side of the story.
Time isn’t flying at all, also at the stop for eating I had nothing which is keeping my energy level low, nothing good, but due to my mental shit always surrounding me, I do things which are obviously not good for me. Well that is a different problem and story.
The road we drove was a road I knew already, because we drove it twice already. Still it is nice to drive, without me actually driving it myself.
Border
At the border we had to wait for the border to actually open and the people in the car were not so excited to have me in the car. They knew that it would take longer just because of me. Well what a bummer, still they were friendly.
On the Mongolian side, it did not take so long, it was just some passport checkings.
The Russian border was different. Even though I had my e-visa, they wanted to look a little bit closer at me. They took my passport and sent me with an officer to a different building.
I was the only one being interviewed. They put me in a room and had me waiting.
The boss of the border came to me and asked me some questions, he was actually super nice. After a few questions, he told me to wait for another 15-20 min. During this time I almost fell asleep, to kind of calm myself down. He wanted to ask me more questions, so I was thinking about what questions it could have been.
Actually I never was interviewed like that, I wasn’t thinking that I would be rejected. I had in mind that they might put me in jail. After the 15 minutes he came back and wished me good luck and no further questions asked, such a nice guy and experience.
The people in the car were waiting in the car, but honestly I also had not the best time to be fair.
Welcome to Russia
I finally was allowed to enter my 95th country and I was quite excited to be fair.
We stopped at the nearest gas station and I was excited to check out everything.
It was interesting to see all the products, almost knowing everything there, being confused about the sanctions. I thought it might be just, because of being near the border, but in the cities it was exactly the same, but to this later more.
We couldn’t pay for anything, due to them not accepting the credit card, but luckily the driver was accepting us paying him Mongolian money. We didn’t receive the best exchange rate, but at least we had cash which was needed.
The roads at the beginning of Russia were honestly amazing! I had the feeling it wouldn’t stay that way, which ended up being true. Still the section in which the streets were good, it was honestly premium!
We drove through the night and saw the bright lights from the other cars. With the lights you could light up the whole forest, it was crazy.
Arriving in Ulan Ude
It was roughly one in the morning when we arrived at the train station of Ulan Ude.
We had no internet and not much cash, so the first thing was getting a sim card!
In Russia it seems to be like that you can only get a sim card with your Russian document, but the lady in the store was friendly and used her ID card and activated a sim card for us, which helped a lot by being in the country.
We also got some snacks for the night and the next day.
If you read my blog sometimes you know what obviously happened that night.
We were sleeping in the train station and it was a very good decision.
The train station was very clean and also very protected by security.
We put up the air mattress and rested for a few hours, before we were departing the train in order to go to Irkutsk.
I wasn’t expecting the train station to be as nice, but it is always nice to be a positive surprise.
What is up next?
Next week you will read about how this trip continued and also how the trans siberian train is in reality, so stay tuned!
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