Wednesday 2^nd April

Dinner (lunch) is a strange affair.  We walk into a really grotty looking portacabin type place which is unbelievably even grottier on the inside than on the outside.  There is a small serving hatch with a decent size queue and just a few areas where small groups of blokes (this is another hang out for them, obviously as it’s almost exclusively blokes eating in here), stood around eating and smoking.  I’ve been told that this is going to be yet another “experience” for me, and first impressions don’t shatter that myth.  I am served up manti which is basically like a very big ravioli.  These are the infamous Siberian dumplings which Nik has been promising me.  Apparently the ones I’ve had to date are only pale imitations of these.  I have “hot sauce” on mine and, despite the grottiness of the place, they do actually taste very good, I’m suitably impressed.

We crack on with the systems, and apart from one narky little laptop which has to be done twice, everything goes smoothly.  It just takes so long to do each system, nothing tricky, just lots of small settings we need to change, updates to download and apply, that sort of thing.

We eat in the hotel again tonight and I have a very nice fish which neither of us know what it is.  My excuse is easy, I can’t speak Russian.  Nik’s is that he doesn’t know the English word for it.  We kind of agree that it’s definitely not salmon but is anything else from a rainbow trout to a pike as I just rattle off fish names and descriptions and Nik just says Yes to each and every one.  What’s more important is that it was tasty and filled a gap.