इरकुत्स्क

07/07/2023 Irkutsk. Of all the Russian cities I visited, whether St. Petersburg, Yekaterinburg, Novosibirsk, Omsk, and some others: this one is my favorite. Here, pedestrians are also recognized as road users, and you don't have to walk 1 km to the nearest pedestrian crossing just to walk back on the other side of the street, just so that the 8-lane traffic can flow freely (I noticed this especially in St. Petersburg). A beautiful river promenade, old wooden houses that are still relatively well-preserved. However, it has also become a fairly wide shopping street. I haven't said anything about the shops yet: in Russia, there are hardly any shop windows, sometimes posters with similar goods adorn the exterior walls, company signs are displayed, but that's about it. That's why it is especially challenging for foreigners like me to look for shops. They are often located in courtyards between the houses. Over time, you develop a trained eye and know that just because there are pictures of fruit on the shopping carts, it doesn't mean that there is also fruit in the hardware store. So you can find a shoe store in an old wooden house. You also develop a trained eye for water points in the cities: they look like fire hydrants, where you can scoop drinking water as you like.

There are computer problems with the car. The workshop appointment is tomorrow, Sunday at 3:15 p.m., how nice. After that, I will head towards Lake Baikal to take the ferry to Shaman Island Olkhon in the evening or on Monday morning and meet the others again. Because after that, I will go to Mongolia.