Novosibirsk

As we will probably only be in Novosibirsk once in our lives, we decided to visit the city and the train station today. The 1065 bus takes us through the confusion of traffic in the city. It too is the spawn of ugliness. No wonder, as the metropolis on the banks of the Ob has developed into the main industrial center in southern Siberia since the Second World War, when many industrial companies were relocated here from the war zones in the European part of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). Mining equipment, turbines, textiles, chemical products and machinery of all kinds are just some of the products. The chimneys smoke and spew their exhaust fumes over the people living here. Rusty fences, barbed wire and barriers keep unauthorized persons out. For those who can afford it, there are opera and ballet ensembles and the privileged can study at the university, which was founded in 1959, and then perhaps find work at the scientific research center.

After driving past countless prefabricated buildings, we reach the train station and the city center. An unsightly, dilapidated building in the shape of an oversized matchbox towers over the square in front of the station. It is a twenty-story hotel. We walk across the spacious area in front of the handsome-looking station building of the former station of the famous Trans-Siberian Railway, which was founded in 1893. Today we are greeted by a very modern station with electronic display boards. Exotic-sounding names such as Moscow, Omsk, Krasnoyarsk, Irkutsk and Vladivostok shine in bright red lettering and convey a sense of wanderlust. Hundreds of people are waiting for their trains in an oversized, pleasantly heated waiting hall. We stroll past many pictures of the stops and look at what they looked like 100 years ago. Wilderness, a few wooden huts, hard-working people and ancient steam locomotives bear witness to a life of privation in which the early settlers of Siberia often did not grow old.

Outside on the platform, the heavy smell of coal fires wafts across the tracks. Some of the wagons are apparently still heated with coal. People stand on the embankment and cry, others wave after a departing train. Even though we are currently exploring Mother Russia on our bikes, the desire to see this country from the perspective of a pleasantly heated wagon and thus reach Vladivostok on the Sea of Japan is creeping up on me again for once in my life.