| The train followed the Volga River and the houses in the villages began to look European the like the houses in Germany or Switzerland. |
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Photo : from the train window ..see this small villages has 3 restored churches. The Orthodox Church seems to have a have a lot of money now : big fancy onion domed churches are prominent in every city. Surely during communism they had all their money taken away from them ? I knew the government had given the church the right to import alcohol without tax and they had made a lot of money from that. Ivan said also politicians liked big construction projects cos then they could get a cut of the money. 306 Cheboksary - Chuvasia Republic Tuesday - Instead of rushing to Moscow I decided to stop off in another Republic to see their culture. Unfortunately even tho Cheboksary is the capital once again the city was completely Russian dominated I didn't see any sign of alternative culture just statues of the cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin who was born there. Once again there were really nice beaches on the River Volga and some money seemed to have been spent on around the area. | 
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| (photo : Nice areas around the Volga River : beaches and parks etc)
Bus Confusion Since the town is not on the main trainline I had decided to take a night bus to the next city Nizchny Novgorod. However when I arrived at the 8pm at the bus station everything was all closed up. 4 locals told me told me that there would be no buses until tomorrow. Which seemed strange as I thought there would have been a few buses during the night. So I would have to wait until the morning.
One woman took me to a hotel, but when I arrived it turned out they had no water and they still wanted $50 for a room (see Russia is not cheap). The bus station looked dead so I waited all night across the road where it was safer.
When I woke up at 5am I saw a bus leaving in a side street. And when I went inside the bus terminal building at 6am I saw that the timetable that there had been buses to Novgorod at 10pm, 1am, 3am etc. So the Russians had been wrong they had not known that buses do leave at night from the side street. As ever things are not easy for the traveller in Russia as the only timetable was inside the building which closed at 7.30pm; there was no timetable outside at the place where the bus usually leaves from. So instead of taking a bus at night and arriving in Nizchny Novgorod in the morning I arrived at lunchtime. |