How foolish it is to make plans for the whole life, since we are not even masters of the next day. (Lucius Annaeus Seneca)

And as it has been shown, sometimes not even of today...

In the morning we took the bus to the airport. We barely arrived when we met the others. A smooth start. :-)

After some minor hassles at the baggage claim (a woman didn't quite believe that we were just picking someone up and that our backpacks didn't come from this plane), we took the bus back to the center of Irkutsk.

After a short walk, a Russian breakfast and another walk through the city, we embarked on a route that took us to Listvjanka. And so, after many thousands of kilometers of travel, we finally arrived at 'the destination': Lake Baikal :-).

The journey on the route, a very dilapidated minibus that has certainly already covered a kilometer or two, was actually an adventure in itself. The ride was very affordable with 850 rubles (just under 12.50 euros) for five people plus luggage, for the 75 kilometer-long route, but it was also an adventure in itself... Well, we somehow survived! :-)

But our luck was about to run out...

There was no one at our planned accommodation for the next seven days. It was clearly too early. The check-in was at 6:00 PM and it was only noon... A 'friendly' woman found us waiting and wondering there, called the landlord of the vacation home and explained to him in a very Russian way that we were standing here in front of the house. In the end, it was clarified that someone would come in two hours and we could already leave our backpacks.

So we took the opportunity to lie down by Lake Baikal and also test the water a bit. Conclusion: Good enough to drink, but simply too cold for swimming.

The man who came two hours later was not exactly friendly... Well, we were able to leave our things and explore the small town a bit, go out to eat, stroll through the fish market, and do some shopping.

When we arrived back at the vacation home, we were somewhat surprised to see the same man again. We understood it as him only letting us in briefly and then the 'real' landlord would come in the evening.

Unfortunately, the cottage was not as nice as expected. Above all, the fact that it was simply quite dirty spoiled our mood... But we didn't even get around to addressing these points. In a really over an hour-long argument, Vero tried to make it clear to the gentleman that we couldn't withdraw enough rubles in town to pay everything in cash. We offered him both to pay with a credit card (which was never a problem with our previous accommodations) and to give him half today and the other half tomorrow. He also rejected payment in half euros / half rubles. All in all, it was a very bizarre situation. He didn't want to let us walk to the allegedly one kilometer away ATM but preferred to take a taxi instead. But when we couldn't get any money there either and in the meantime had lost any desire to stay there, we ended the drama and left the vacation home.

So there we were, five of us, in the evening at Lake Baikal without a place to sleep...

We declined another nearby accommodation, although the people there were pleasantly friendly, it was too expensive and had no kitchen. While searching for an accommodation that we had seen on Booking.com, we wandered through the town and it was slowly getting dark. An older German couple showed us the way to a 'hotel'. After the very bad three-star hotel in Yekaterinburg, I had actually vowed not to visit any three-star hotels in Russia anymore... Now we ended up in a two-star hotel for the night... Of course, at the price of a four-star hotel...

How this hotel looks is truly indescribable... We are now sitting at the 'breakfast' and we will soon look for a new accommodation... Hopefully, we will have more luck...

Greetings from Lake Baikal

Vero & Tim

& 

Norman, Christina & Arved

PS: The pictures will be uploaded as quickly as possible