The Amazing Eurasian Odyssey
as told by characters Matthew Garrick and Stephen Williams
Part 11: The Russian Federation, Part 2

The next day we caught a showing of the new Transformers movie. Though dubbed over in Russian, the film was pretty awesome. Walking around Irkutsk we saw our first statues of Lenin and Stalin.

That night, we tried to get tickets for the next leg of the Trans- Siberian to Moscow. All of the third class sleepers were sold out, leaving only second class; however, we could fly with a budget airline significantly cheaper.

After much debate, we decided to fly. I felt I was cheating a bit because the Trans- Siberian line is a staple of backpacker lore and was the basis for planning this trip.

But I was already broke, so cheaper is better. Also, if we took the train we would not have time to go to St. Petersburg later.

The next night we would fly S7 Airlines from Irkutsk to Moscow, ironically exactly 364 days to the day the airline had two accidents: one plane crashed (at Irkutsk!), and one plane initiated an emergency landing due to mechanical issues. We knew their faulty safety record, of which one included an "accidental" mid- air collision with a surface to air missile a few years back.

The next day, we took a bus out to Lake Baikal. Baikal is well known because it is the most voluminous and deep lake in the world. Over 20 percent of the world's unfrozen freshwater is contained here. Of the 2,635 different species and types of animals and plants, over 80 percent of them are endemic; that is, they are found nowhere else in the world.

We ate at a restaurant and had fried omul, an endemic fish and one of the specialties here, and afterwards walked around the lakefront. After coming from noisy Beijing (and spending so much time in polluted Macau the previous semester), the quiet and relatively undisturbed nature was well appreciated.

We headed back in time to catch our flight. The Irkutsk airport was small; in fact, it was temporarily operating from a large townhouse until construction on the main terminal was completed. The plane seemed very old, probably from Soviet times, and I swear there was some duct tape on the wing. I mused that if a wing were to fall off and died in a catastrophic plane crash, it might as well be while flying with a Russian budget airline in Siberia.

However, the flight proceeded without problems, and we arrived in Moscow Domodedovo International Airport in one piece.