My experience in Siberia

My wonderful, extraordinary experiences and impressions into another culture in Tomsk, Russia.

Known as the high developed city in Russia it is also academicly known in other parts of the world. With around 500 thousand inhabitants it is one of the larger cities located in southern Siberia. I traveld there for one and a half month and lived with a wonderful russian family. One of the first and biggest impressions I had there was the overwhelming host friendliness, which everybody had there. In siberian society you are still able to find some socialistic marks in the people's minds of the new empire of capitalism. Infrastructure progresses slowly, but it is a pretty exciting experience to sit in the tram on 50 years old seat heaters and watch out to the frozen streets in winter, where you can find all kinds of street dogs, street art or crazy russian car drivers.

Lenin

At the the Tomsk State University, you will meet some internationals, who are always happy to help because they know it is hard to get over the language barrier. It is known as one of the best Universities in the whole Russian Federation.

Tomsk State University

Once I understood part of how things worked at the city I could easily get around. People have to get used to the fact that the busses are very filled with people who just give their money to anybody in the bus in order to reach the bus driver with it, who simultaneously drives having a phone call, smokes and is collecting the money for the tickets and everything on the frozen streets of Tomsk. Once the busdriver stops to pick you up, it makes a pragmatic fullbreak on the ice, which is planned so that the bus slides smoothly and directly in front of your feets.

Main trainstation Tomsk

When the snow starts melting at the end of march, it will take a while until the amount of one meter is finally melted. During this period are the birds the most noisy part of the city. There are a lot and many kinds because of many green spaces in between the mix out of socialistic and old wood houses, which are stunning, when you look at them.

This part of the world is somehow spiritually still influenced by the slavic mythology, which you can notice in architecture or the habits people follow. There are, for example, some strict rules in order to make the house dwarf happy, which is an important figure from slavic mythology.

One week at the end of winter there is "Masleniza", a big celebration which is now orthodox and signals the beginning of the fasting period in Russia. During the week each day has special and unique activities. The best one is wednesday, when everybody makes sculptures out of pancakes. At the end of the celebrations they burn a puppet in a womans shape. The tradition was developed in slavic history and used to be a hype for the slavic god of underworld, earth, waters, forests, fertility, cattle, pasture, snakes, wolves, medicine, music, and magic: Veles.

Veles

Source

The puppet and the pancakes

In conclusion I would say that I had so many extraordinary experiences in this city that I am still working on them in my mind. For people on adventure it is a must seen, also for people who are looking for good education, nice and cheap sushi or freetime activites that will put you out of your comfort zone, it is in fact an extraordinary wonderful place on earth.

In this area people get married really young and have children early, so if you find your true love in Siberia, you will be probably married soon, if you want it too. Siberian people are unique.

Vesna: goddess of spring and love from the Slavic Mythology. Here a link to more information.

Source

Some tips: watch out where you step in winter because it happens that people get buried under snow if they don't pay attention. Also the icicles on the roofs are very dangerous, they might fall down and break your head.

Afterall just a few more photos to destroy your imagination.

Siberian Flying Squirrel

Siberian White Rabbits

Cars dug in snow

Socialistic and industrial impressions

Jazz in Tomsk

So much snow!

Tea stoves

Beer

At least some things are similar

Thank you, I would love to get some feedback!

Greetings,

Jonas