In Which I Spend All Day on a Train: Croatia to Bosnia

​Once we decided to do the Trans-Mongolian instead of the Trans-Siberian (Mongolia and China instead of just lots more Siberia? not a hard decision), we knew we had to line up our dates so that we landed in Mongolia in time for Naadam, the most important festival and event in the Mongolian calendar (I mean it’s the only festival and event in the Mongolian calendar that I know, so I could be wrong about that but I’m probably right). The three-day festival is like the country’s own Olympics, celebrating the Three Sports of Men, or the Three Sports of Chingis (Genghis) Khan, something like that. In our English language pamphlets handed out in the stadium it says “Three Manly Sports” which is hilarious so let’s say it’s that one. Those three exalted sports are wrestling, archery, and horse-racing. Seems straightforward enough, right? Ha!

​Naadam is held from July 11 to July 13, although the closing ceremony occurs on the night of July 12 and stuff still continues the next day or so but don’t worry your pretty little head about that. Naadams are held all over the country like each little town’s and region’s own little special olympics (lowercase for both is really important). But the big deal is in Ulaan Baatar, and it is CROWDED. All the city’s 1.5 million residents seemed to be in that stadium meant for maybe 5,000, plus all the people coming in from the countryside to see it. The three sports of men are a huge deal, apparently.

We got tickets to the opening ceremony, the closing ceremony, and wrestling. A whole lot of wrestling. We would learn that you don’t actually need tickets for the sporting events, so we rocked up to watch a good amount of archery and the Mongolian version of beer pong as well.

The opening ceremony was very exciting — outside, milling about the endless rows of food and drink stalls (mostly selling khuushuur, the meat-filled empanada looking traditional food that is apparently like the official food to eat at Naadam), were TONS of people, and mostly Mongolian people, so there was this strong air of patriotism and excitement and just overall camaraderie – that is, until we went to our seats. We had seats in the so-called ‘tourist section’ because it’s in the shade (bless whoever made that happen), but it was as unorganized and chaotic as you could ever imagine. People were sitting in the wrong seats, in the aisles and on the bases of pillars and on the barriers to the entrance/exit. And I don’t just mean people. Whatever number you are imagining in your head as composing this crowd, multiply it by 10 at least. We had to literally climb over dozens of people to get into the entrance (like a regular stadium gate-by-gate open entrance, but in a stadium from medieval times)and then do the same through the aisles to get to our seats, where tourists were sitting because they don’t know how to read tickets but who even cares when Mongolian and foreign people are just sitting wherever the hell they want with no regard for safety? And there were plenty of stadium staff, volunteers, and police everywhere, so the people you hoped would get things in order – or at least form a path for when people had to exit – didn’t bat an eyelash at the scene. It was a terrifying thought, but we realized during this ceremony/scene of absolute dire chaos how, you know whenever you hear about a terrible accident in a third world country where hundreds or thousands more people die than seems correct or possible for such a building or type of accident? We realized that if anyone at all went wrong in this stadium, there was no way we or anyone could get out. It was really scary, actually. I couldn’t even leave to pee! I mean I tried eventually and stepped on or over 57 people and the only bathroom was halfway around the entire stadium (cool designing, guys) but I waited for so long. I was not eager to return afterwards because what if there was a fire! 

​Luckily, there wasn’t! Thank you Chingis!  Aside from the constant fear and the terrible bladder pain, the opening ceremony was pretty entertaining! The organizers had conscripted literally every single Mongolian child, teenager, and really adult to be a part of it. Every time we thought the performer crowd had reached its limit, another group of 100 people in a different costume would run out onto the field. There aren’t that many Mongolians. I really mean it, every single citizen was either on that field or sitting in my aisle. 

I’m not really sure what story the ceremony told because the voice booming over the speaker system for two hours was of course speaking Mongolian but I’m going to try my best to relate what I saw. First, lots of men in costumes reminiscent of the dolls working for Lord Farquaad in Shrek came out on horseback for celebratory lap around the track. People lost their shit seeing horses gallop, I’m not kidding. I was sitting next to a midwestern American woman who was either on drugs or just simple because every little thing made her squee with glee. She also had the loudest clap I’ve ever heard and like it actually hurt my ears sitting next to her. That’s enough about her. So after the cavalry, 100 tweens dressed in white came out and did some weird modern dancing for a bit before they released doves, which made people lose their shit even more than the horses. I was the only person not screaming my aggressive approval, because that shit is super cruel. How long did you have those doves crammed in your pockets, you little shits? Some of the doves weren’t able to fly out of the stadium because their wings had been so damaged, so for the next two hours there were half a dozen doves just on the field. It was heartbreaking. I’m sharing all of this so the monsters among you reading this who are planning an event and want to release doves decide not to. For those of you reading who would never dream of doing such a bullshit thing and are as sad as I am now, I’m sorry and here is a picture of my doggie:

So then lots more men in hilarious I mean very stately and regal period costumes came onto the field. We’re talking hundreds. As far as I could tell, they were telling the story of how Genghis/Chingis inspired his armies to fight against the Roman legions, and he brought about the fall of Rome. I’m not sure the dates line up for that to be historically accurate, and again I have no idea what was being said so the chances of this being what was actually on display are extremely low, but you try figuring this out. 

​After the Romans were sufficiently vanquished, Chingis and his manly men had to deal with the, um, wizards, and their dragons. Chingis whistled for a giant silver bird to lead his men to victory, and the giant Chingis float and the giant dragon floats moved about slowly and awkwardly but overall impressively until the Mongolians cheered their approval and another round of horse riders took a victory lap around the stadium. The only good part about the frequent horse laps is the group of men who come out behind them with brooms and poop-collecting pans. 

​Then they had to vanquish the um gold alien men? So they called back upon the giant silver bird to help win that battle. Guys I really had to pee. 

​But then it got even more exciting! Somehow they set up a huge stage in the middle of the field and DOZENS of people came out from underneath. How long were they cooped up in those holes!! Oh my god! Much worse than the guy in Ocean’s 11 and I’m sure much hotter. Dayum they just kept coming and coming more and more out from under the stage I feel bad for them but it was kind of hilarious in the pure clown-car aspect of it. BUT IT GETS BETTER. Because guess who Chingis had to fight next?

​THAT’S RIGHT THE DINOSAURS! He didn’t even move from his giant float seat; Chingis was all ‘get out of my kingdom, dinosaurs! Go back to chilling in the Garden of Eden with Adam & Eve like they teach happened at the Creation Museum in Kentucky!’ And Chingis is so powerful and manly that they listened.

​But the hell demons loved the dinosaurs and the dino banishment made them angry! Hellfireeee!

​It’s okay! We will dance the demons back to hell!

​
​But then that damn Roman army returned!

​And again, dancing will be the answer.

To celebrate, the bull and the elephant statues rocked around and then hundreds more people in various costumes danced (how did people remember all this choreography!) and balloons were released (don’t do that either!) and all these medieval-looking army people waved flags and then literally 200 tweens with rainbow umbrellas came out just to stand with their umbrellas around the track for everrrr. It was so hot and boring for them, just standing there. One little boy was not about to waste his time standing still when he was a part of Naadam. He twirled his umbrella, he danced, he did the funniest poses – peace signs, waves, even dap lol. He was my favorite part. He was everyone’s favorite; the whole section was laughing and loving him. It was so funny.

Next, I just still can’t believe. It was the presentation of all Mongolia’s animals. They literally walked oxen, camels, horses, sheep, goats, ibix (what is the plural of that…is that plural?), cows and bulls, freaking yaks, all around the track. Real ones. Those poop scoopers were busy. I thought we were being punked by this point. But it got even better! Just like at the Olympics, small groups of representatives from various organizations paraded around the track, each waving their banners and holding their signs. But instead of it being the athletes from each country, here it was just representatives of the companies sponsoring Naadam. At least I think it was sponsors. It might just have been all the Mongolian companies. Oh my god. Like all the airlines walked by with their flight attendants and pilots in their uniforms, various restaurants. Even Harley Davidson wheeled by, at which I overheard the most nauseating conversation from the old white American men sitting behind me: “You know, the Harley Davidson corporate office is now just a mile from where Julia lives!” “Oh that’s GREAT!” IS IT??? 

​Just when you thought it was over, hundreds of young girls dressed in ice blue costumes came out and danced more.

​Then everyone, all ten thousand participants, danced together and everyone was joyous and we figured that was it.

​But then this guy came out.

​I can’t make up a reason for this guy.

​Okay, on to the Three Manly Sports! First of all, let’s forget about the horse-racing. It takes place 30km or so outside the city, so we weren’t going to see it anyway, but more importantly horse-racing is a cruel and inhumane torture method masquerading as a ‘sport’. Second of all, the three sports of men are really, apparently, four sports, because there’s a pavilion for ankle-bone shooting. What the hell is ankle-bone shooting, you ask? How can you not know? It’s when non-athletic men lounge around and flick sheep’s literal ankle-bones at targets. It is a drinking game from a USA state university gone official.

​As for the two remaining and more legitimate sports. I was super excited. Not that I like wrestling, but it would be interesting to see it in a country that adores it so much. And archery! I liked doing archery at camp. And I like Robin Hood: Men in Tights. It would be just like that, right? Lol no. The rules for the Mongolian versions of these sports are unlike anything you’d have guessed. We’ll start with wrestling.

​We were sitting in our seats in the tourist section of the main stadium (the second day was like a whole different place; no aisle sitting or anything! so much better!), waiting for some matches to start, before we realized…it had started. What looked like men in diapers and boas just wandering around and warming up was actually Mongolian wrestling. See, there is no time limit to their faceoffs, and no boundary limit, and they had multiple pairings going at once! So like 30 Mongolian men were on the field all walking around the entire length and width of it, biding their time before making a quick move that would knock their opponent down. They can go on forever! And it was hard to know who was actually going because there were so many at once. So awkward!

​Every once in a while the crowd would roar and we’d catch the tail end of a brief but exciting bit of actual activity. It was interesting and so unlike any wrestling you’ve seen. Unless you’ve seen Mongolian wrestling. So the English language pamphlet we received says this: “Many foreigners are confused by Mongolian wrestling and may find it boring or too long. On the contrary, wrestling is actually the most interesting and entertaining Naadam sport.” OKAY I GUESS THAT’S THAT THEN.

​All the wrestlers are wearing speedo underwear and a frilly shrug around their shoulders. The goal is to have the biggest bare skin-to-clothing ratio, apparently. The wrestlers also wear important hats – red, with yellow stripes. The yellow stripes signify how high their ranking is. They take the hats off when they are about to actually wrestle, which helps you realize that they actually started the match and aren’t just still standing around. But they still are. Little bursts of action happen every now and then, but despite how long the matches can take and usually do take, the match (is it called a match? squirmish?) ends as soon as someone’s elbow or knee touches the ground. So it’s not like the man-on-man-on-mat type wrestling you may be imagining – it’s mostly just like pushing with hands while standing, and as soon as someone goes down at all, it’s over. And they are allowed to touch anywhere they want – except the head.

​As for archery, we had even less of an idea what was going on. This was mostly due to the hour and a half of interpretive dance (soo weird) that began the archery trials on Day 1. We hurried over in hopes of seeing an arrow or two hit a target, and it was like two hours before they started actually shooting arrows and even longer before we realized that they don’t shoot at targets like we know archery to do. They shoot their arrows in high soft arcs that land in a pit of little red and brown leather jars! And they try to knock them over. It’s like bowling but with archery! It was so ridiculous!

​The archers have 40 shots, which seems like a lot! They have to get their high soft arc to land on the cylinders – any of them, there are no extra points for hitting the red ones in the center, which seems wrong – and push the cylinders away! They don’t get any points unless the arrow pushes cylinders at least eight centimeters away from its starting position! It is SO bowling!

The best part of both of these sports is that there are teams of judges dressed in traditional costume that surround each of the wrestlers, like their little entourage in their corner of the ring. But instead of smacking them and toweling off sweat, they are singing traditional phrases and songs about their performances. And in archery, the Greek chorus of judges stands by the targets and sings and does certain hand signs depending on whether and how many clay jars the arrow hit. HILARIOUS.

​We heard that the champion of wrestling was given a Land Rover, another car, and an APARTMENT. No idea what the archer got.

​Okay, so about that Mongolian version of beer pong, or when boys fold up paper into little paper footballs and shoot them at people during high school. Ankle-bone shooting is a team game, like bowling, so says the pamphlet, though I wanna be like, your archery is the bowling. Anyway, teams are crowded into tiny spaces and everyone is super friendly and sportsmanlike, to the point that no one is allowed to curse or get angry or say anything rude, and instead of disappointment when someone messes up, everyone – you guessed it – SINGS!!!

​As you can see, Naadam was really interesting, overwhelming, and mostly fun. I’m really glad we got to see so much of it. Now I don’t need to go back to Mongolia. Despite how much fun it was to fear for our lives in a poorly constructed and managed stadium and how interesting it was to learn about new sports, my favorite part about Naadam was that one of the stalls had bubble tea. I had a strawberry tea one one day and a mango tea the next. I love bubble tea. I also had this super fun potato tornado!!

​NO OMG my favorite part was this amazing Mongolian baby! He was so cute! I made Z pretend he was taking a picture of me so we could sneak a pic of the baby. Enjoy!

​After the 24 hours on the train that you read about in the previous post, we had crossed the Europe-Asia border and landed in Yekaterinburg, capital of the Urals. The Urals are the mountains that effectively make up the border between the continents, though it’s rough considering it’s all still Russia and kind of nebulous. But it counts! We’re officially in Asia! That means, we’ve crossed into Asia by air (when we flew to Thailand and Cambodia, which I promise I will finally write about after this trip…so…November?), by water (when we took a ferry in Istanbul to the Asian side of the city (which I promise I will finally write about after this trip and after I write about Thailand…so…December?), and now we’ve crossed into Asia by land. So fun! I was so ready to get off that train that my expectations for what kind of city to expect were super low, and I didn’t care. So I was surprised by how much I liked Yekaterinburg, at what a nice place it seemed like, with beautiful vistas and open spaces, good food, and a nice vibe. But, of course, it could just be because of the hotel.

​Because we had just gotten off a 24-hour train journey with questionable hygiene, and because after 24 hours in Yekaterinburg we would be getting on a THREE DAY train to Irkutsk that would change my preconceived notions of how disgusting I myself could be, we booked one night in a fancy hotel instead of a hostel for the first time this whole trip. Treat yo self! The Hotel Renomme was a very charming, clean, lovely little boutique hotel right outside a metro station and a mall. We checked in, apologizing for how disgusting we were in their clean, beautiful space – we were literally Bert’s chimney sweepers when they break into Mr. & Mrs. Banks’s house. Then we were shown to a room that actually made me cry. It was so cute. Nothing out of the ordinary, but mine eyes have seen some shit lately. It was a lovely room, with a big clean oh how clean bed, a little sitting area with adorable chairs and a cute table, a dresser, a closet with a safe and a minibar (I forgot such things could exist!), and a little balcony with French doors that opened onto the loudest street noise you could ever imagine (a bar below played loud music all day and night) but it was still a dream. It was about 10pm, and despite how badly we wanted to shower in that gorgeous, clean, oh so clean bathroom with its actual living breathing shower (no showers on the trains….hell there’s barely sink water) and oh I was gonna wash my haaaaair — that had to wait because it was super late and we were really hungry so had to find food first before things closed. 

​The mall looked promising, open still, so we walked around trying to find something and looked at a few menus before finding literally my new favorite restaurant, Schastye, a Georgian restaurant on the top floor with an incredibly vegan-friendly menu, you can’t even believe. The menu had so many vegetables and interesting preparations too that I wanted to cry for the second time in one hour. We ordered several dishes, including a Georgian specialty green called jonjoli that was a little pickly and sharp and was really good. The menu extolled its nutrient dense properties. Oh the menu itself was hysterical – fashioned like a huge magazine with ‘articles’ on the cover highlighting different Georgian dishes. So fun and so big. The table also had the super weird matrioshka (above) on it, which we were like what. 

​We also had an eggplant rollup dish, with the eggplant filled with a walnut paste. It was really good, and came sprinkled with pomegranate seeds which I love. I had a salad, because I needed fresh vegetables too, and even though it was mostly cucumbers and tomatoes and that’s the only veg we can consistently find and I’m pretty sick of them, I didn’t even care, it was good and fresh and in some kind of great walnut-based dressing I don’t even know. Then, after working out with the waiter which of the fun breads could be veganized, (he was WONDERFUL with the veganness) I got my favorite thing, this roti-like flatbread baked with spinach and other greens inside. It was soo goooood why am I writing this I want that now! 

​While Husband got a traditional dessert that he said was really good, I got a ginger lemonade over crushed ice that was perfectly gingery and burned my throat in that good gingery way. I really liked it even though I had forgotten that we’re not supposed to be drinking the water and the ice may have been made from tap water. It seemed like a nice enough restaurant that they wouldn’t voluntarily poison the customers though.

It was such a great dinner. I love this restaurant! Who has ever found great Georgian vegan food in a random mall? After dinner, we went to the big supermarket in the basement and stocked up on water for the night. And I saw this glorious vision:

After dinner, we dropped all our laundry at the front desk while begging them to do it by the next evening (they were so nice) and then took the longest showers in human history. My hair was so clean. I know this is boring and no one wants to hear about when we showered but we play by my rules here and also this hotel room and the bed and this shower and clean laundry were like the strongest argument I’ve ever known for that whole cleanliness is next to godliness business. 

​The next day, because we only had the one day in Ye old Katerinburg before catching the 3-day train that night, we booked a private tour guide. I knowww I know but we had things we wanted to see and that was the most effective way to do it. And it wasn’t super expensive either, and we both felt afterwards that it was 100% worth it. We booked through UralTerra and our guide Evgenia was excellent. She spoke the best English so far of anyone we’ve met, I think. She arrived with a car and driver and taught us so much about Yekaterinburg. We started by going to a central plaza that commemorates when the town was built, in 1723, and is right near the big city dam that was the most important thing leading to the city’s success. 

​When the dam was constructed, it could generate water-powered, um, power and so Yekaterinburg quickly became an industrial center, with factories all over its jawn. And its success and booming population generally lasted, with it now being one of the four biggest cities in Russia. 

​Next, we drove a few minutes to the Church on the Blood (if a Russian church isn’t about depositing a robe, it’s because it’s on blood), the site where the Romanovs were executed. We saw their tombs in St. Petersburg, and now we saw where they were betrayed and executed. Heart don’t fail me now am I right. They were being hidden on the site for a long time, before Sverdlov, whom the city was named after for a short time because of this, ordered their execution. Apparently, the whole family was taken down to the basement and told it was for their safety, and then lined up in their family order and told it was because they wanted to take a photograph, but then Sverdlov and his team just shot them all, including the children. People are monsters. It gets worse. The girls had jewelry lining their corsets so that if they ever got out they would be able to pawn it to survive, but it meant that the bullets didn’t penetrate and they didn’t die right away so the worthless monsters used bayonets. It’s such a grim history, and later that day we’d learn even more horrific details. What’s really strange, though, is that the entire family was canonized as saints, in an attempt for the country to maybe to try to seek forgiveness for this very dark history. So in this cathedral, where all this terrible evil happened, everyone is praying to the Romanov saints. It is very strange, to make them saints because they suffered a horrible death, and a whole lot stranger for people to base their entire religious fervor on praying to them for the same reason. It just felt very odd. 

​After visiting the cathedral (no pictures allowed inside), we drove back to Europe (hi Europe!) to Ganina Yama (not to be confused with Goitery Yana (or Baba Yagga)), an absolutely stunning monastery with the most peaceful atmosphere and the freshest air I’ve breathed in weeks (no smoking! actually taken seriously!). This land was like a small piece of heaven in a forest, with beautiful wooden cathedrals and smaller churches and lovely pathways and everything so in tune with nature. I felt so calmed and so relaxed, which is a very rare thing. 

​And then I was told why we were at this monastery, and I no longer felt so peaceful. That and because I had to wear a headscarf borrowed from the site’s bag of public I-doubt-ever-washed headscarves and I thought I was getting lice. Um, so this is where, after the Romanovs were executed at the place we just left, their bodies were carted for a mass burial in an abandoned mine shaft (which we saw, pictured below). They were cut up and burned in this mine:

​Some people were tried and executed for the deaths, but by the time it came to light that Sverdlov was the ringleader, politics had changed and instead of punishing him or ruining his name (he was already dead after all), they changed the name of Yekaterinburg to Sverdlovsk. Like…that’s not how you punish murderers, guys. Luckily the name is now back to being for Catherine and not some psycho child murderer. 

​It’s too bad this site is so beautiful, because knowing why it’s consecrated and revered is, again, very strange.

​Aside from all this horror, our guided tour of the area included what’s probably the highlight – the Asia-Europe border! So fun and silly!

​It was so cool to have one foot in Asia and one in Europe! Even if the border line isn’t actually exact, it counts.

The last stop on our tour, after we were briefly shown the new modern Boris Yeltsin Center and strongly urged to visit later for a much longer time (we would have if we had the time), was the Military Museum. It’s a small museum that doesn’t have much to it, but we wanted to go because it has a section about Gary Powers, the American pilot who was shot down in Yekaterinburg in 1960 — you know, the guy causing the trouble in “Bridge of Spies”! The guy traded for Mark Rylance, Greatest Actor of our Generation and Probably Most Others! So the movie/Mark/Hanks connection made me eager to see this. As it stands, it’s just a few pieces of his aircraft that they have displayed, plus some photos and a weird life-size mannequin of Gary in a uniform, sitting in a pilot’s seat. Errmkay! At first, the two people running the museum (no one else was there) told us that the Gary Powers stuff upstairs was ‘closed for renovation’, so we were like okay then peace out, that’s literally all we want in your museum, so then because we weren’t going to buy tickets they changed their minds and let us upstairs. So weird. Apparently most of the remnants of the crash are in Moscow, which we didn’t know, but I guess we saw enough. Made me want to watch a movie though. Three weeks without television so far! Ahh!

​After our tour, we wandered around the city, brought provisions for the 3-day train and bought food and chocolate. We went into this famous candy shop called Alyonka and found some accidentally vegan bars! Yum!

We went into another giant grocery store in another giant mall to get canned beans and produce for the train (they love their big malls and fancy grociers in Yekat!), and I know I already shared a picture of the Alpro nondairy milks from the first store, but I have to share this store’s stock too, BECAUSE WTF IS SOYA FOR PROFESSIONALS??? 

​If anyone knows what they mean by that, please tell me in the comments.

​We also stopped in the famous Uralskiye Pelmeni, a restaurant with a cafeteria style vibe (very common all over Russia) that has amazing pelmeni, or meat dumplings, for husband. Little did I know I’d find some of my favorite food of the whole trip – this stewed (or braised) cabbage dish. Oh my goodness, this was so simple and more delicious than it had any right to be (and incredibly cheap). We fought over the last bites when we should have just gotten more. SO GOOD. I also had a little raw cabbage salad that was merely perfunctory for its rawness and vegness but tasted better than I needed it to. 

So, we had a grand day in Yekaterinburg. Maybe I was just so happy to be clean, short though it lasted. Maybe it was because the hotel was beautiful and they did our laundry for super cheap to apologize for an unrelated mixup. But I think the city itself just exceeded my (admittedly basement-level) expectations. It’s cosmopolitan, it has beautiful open spaces and paths along the river. There are at least two restaurants I would be happy eating at 100 times each. It seems like a nice place to live, at least compared to a lot of what we’ve seen east of the Urals. I think we saw all the things we had to see, in just one day, but it wouldn’t be terrible to spend more time there.