Chita, 4-6.8.2010

Chita turned out to be a place full of, in parts rather costly, ‘extras’ and ‘misunderstandings’ and we did a lot of cultural learning. We stayed two nights in a good, if slightly run down hotel. Funny enough we walked into the wrong place :o) We had intended to walk into Nr 15 and walked into Nr 17 which also was a hotel. It was quite expensive considering our budget because we were charged by number of people not by the room (and hotels in Russia are never cheap in the first place) but we were wrung out after 4 days on the road, desperate for a shower and decided to stay, not to mention the fact that one of us desperately needed to go to the loo and that public toilets in Russia are…, let’s say sub-optimal.
After check in, we wandered the streets in the falling night, admired the ubiquitous Lenin-Statue on the (equally ubiquitous Lenin-) Square which is the focal point of most Russian cities and had piroshky, salad and beer for less than 5 AUDs, at a small eatery obviously not aiming at tourists. We needed to wash our cloths, however, coin-laundries are not common in Russia but hotels offer laundry services. Obviously they charge you so we did T-shirts and underwear ourselves in the room and gave jeans and hoodies to the hotel. They also charge you for ironing, and this one rather big time – and as we found out, you have tell them if you don’t want them to be ironed, otherwise they just do – assuming that was your wish, ‘katching’ there went a heap of money, sigh….
Next day we spend half the day on registering. If you travel Russia you have to register your visa every three days – this happens mainly when you stay at a hotel, they may charge you a small amount for it but you don’t have to do anything. Not so in Chita, because of 8 Rubel (about 30 cents), we had to walk through half the city, wait a veeeeery long time in a bank’s corridor to make the payment and take the payment slip to the hotel.
Later that day we went to a eatery in a tank-park (the old officer’s casino with a large display of tanks) where they offered shashlik, which was really yummy with salad and bread. Turns out, they charge by weight and although it was nice food, it was not an enormous amount but we still paid 800 Rubels which is more than we had paid together for all the food we had consumed in the ten days leading up to Chita – pffft, we were unhappy and really felt ripped off.
Turns out, whenever you ask for a service you just have to be keenly aware of the conditions, the hotel offered us to put the car in the back of the hotel because the road they said was not safe. We drove Melville to the back of the hotel, which was not really a parking lot but the delivery zone. We were very happy about this as this also meant we could fix some things on the wooden drawer in the back. At check-out they the hotel suddenly charged us for it. This is fair enough and in other cities we have parked our car at paid parking, but no one mentioned anything about it when they offered us to put the car there which leaves a not so nice feeling. Anyhoo, Melville was save, we were able to fix the drawer, we managed to do our washing and they had a Russian music channel playing alternative music (and a disturbing amount of Rammstein, sigh!!!). Also, we had heard before that Chita has a reputation as rip-off city, so this is the end of my nagging! This is a time for holidaying not so much for getting worked up over petty annoyances and as I said we learned a bit about how things are run and organized in other places. On a nicer note: Chita has quite a few very beautiful old wooden houses brightening up the city, the pictures shows one of the stunning fronts. Before leaving Chita for Ulan Ude we made a detour to a monastery in a neighbouring city. This city is a major city for Buriat people, inhabiting this area. The temple precinct was very beautiful and serene.