Levi and I walked across Spain about 2 years ago, we walked 800 km on the final day we proceeded to get incredibly bad food poisoning, crippling us for weeks, then 6 months later I traveled to Mexico City to visit Levi, we went on about an 800 km bus trip to southern Mexico, I got a horrible sunburn, Levi got sun poisoning because we were to cheap to get sunblock. Therefore the following story should come as no surprise since our odometer read 800km as of Khabarovsk... You could almost say we overstayed our welcome in Khabarovsk, we were there so long, we did talks, interviews, and sightseeing. We were in no real hurry to get back on the road, we wanted time to ourselves and it took about 4 days before people left us alone. We wound up staying 5 days, "hey we are weeks ahead of schedule, even if we leave here May 1 that was when we were supposed to leave Vladivostok," Lesson # 5 When you are ahead of the game don't dawdle, you never know what might be around the next bend. We also had to get the second half of a vaccine for the extremely rare but dangerous Japanese Encephalitis. Everywhere we went doctors refused to give it to us, "Oh they want that shot? We only give that out until mid April, it is illegal to give it out now, I'm not taking responsibility for that!!" Apparently the second shot weakens your immune system so much that it is extremely dangerous to get bitten by one of the ticks for two weeks after you get it, that's why they only give it out before mid april, when there are no ticks. Also if you encounter anything else, your immune system is weak, so even a cold can become an issue...enter the Idiots. We were just debating the merits of the shot between ourselves when the interpreter said "the shot is ready boys" No turning back now. The doctor asked us if we felt okay had any illnesses or anything we both replied no (why would I have even thought that a mildly upset stomach might count, you almost always have an upset stomach in Russia). A day later we got back out on the open road, crossing into the Jewish Autonomous Region of Russia. Felt great... for a while. Sometime after lunch things started to get rough for me, I let Levi go ahead of me and slowly watched him ride off into the distance as I struggled to push the pedals. Not good. Finally we agreed to quit early for the day, I hoped to feel stronger the next day. We stopped in the small town and asked about a place to spend the night, they directed us to the railway station, which was a huge empty but very clean and fancy Soviet railway station complete with a huge mosaic of workers. The attendant said we could pitch our tents right on the floor, in any other situation it would have been heaven, for me at the time I just needed a place to lie down. My stomach had begun to bother me too, I had an ominous feeling, even more so when I looked at the train station outhouse, "will I be spending a lot of time here?" I wondered. I managed to guarantee myself a multi-trip ticket to the outhouse that night by following a little peace of Russian advice I had received. "If your stomach is ever upset, drink Kefir" Kefir is a weird dairy drink here in Russia, which we have discovered is good with cereal. I went for it and paid for it. Lesson # 6 Not all advice is good advice. I won't go into detail, let us just say that it was an unpleasant night for me. In the morning we took the train back to Khabarovsk, checked into a hotel to rest hoping that would produce a cure. We spent 2 days there. Lesson #7 Never leave a city just "feeling a little better" go to a doctor get cured. We tried riding again, after taking the train back to the small village where I had spent such a unpleasant night ( I shuddered at the sight of the outhouse again). Once again I watched Levi ride off into the sunset while I could barely move the pedals, we did however make it to the Capital of the Jewish Autonomous Region, Birobidzhan that night. Birobidzhan if my memory serves me right at the height of the Jewish Autonomous Regions Jewishness was about 30% Jewish, after the Soviet Union Collapsed most left for Israel, or the west and now the number is much lower. There is still some Hebrew to be seen, and when we stopped our bicycles outside the main square we did meet a nice elderly Jewish man who seemed very excited about the bicycle trip (at the time, quite a bit more so than myself). But for the most part there are few differences between here and any other small Russian city, same buildings, same cafes, same buses, although there are nice little touches here and there, pictures of dradles on the bus stops, and many statues where they have substituted the Red Star, with the Star of David. We ourselves immediately headed to the hospital to get a diagnosis. We got there just as they closed, but because we were Americans they agreed to see us, a doctor in sandals did some mild questioning and stomach prodding and gave me a recommendation not a prescription and advice rather than instructions, I think he recommended the pill equivalent of pepto-bismo, and walked away thinking that Americans couldn't handle Russian Blini. We gave it a try, and I felt rather better the next day, so I ate a big meal in preparation for a big riding day, of course that once again ended badly. Finally on the third day armed with a translator we headed back to the hospital. Now let me say a word about these hospitals, I once went to a hospital in St. Petersburg on the outskirts of the city that was in the middle of an industrial complex and appeared to be about half of a dilapidated apartment complex, you walked up a few sketchy flights of stairs into a dark hallway, it was very scary, I never want to go back to a place like that again. This hospital and most we have seen in these small cities and towns are right downtown, and are clean, on the inside they resemble real hospitals, so fear not. We walked in and again were directed to the sandaled-doctor, who just as casually as before asked some questions, and proceeded to tell the translator ( a very nice English teacher named Svetlana, who was directed to us by the American Consulate in Vladivostok, who I think is spying on us, otherwise I can't imagine how they found out I was ill so quickly) "If he is still sick there is nothing i can do, you must take him to the Infectious Disease Hospital" Now in times like these with people talking crazy about some Pig-Flu that I should be afraid of, I would normally be a bit wary of going to an Infectious disease hospital, but considering I have been having intense stomach trouble for 6 days and I was in Russia, I said "let's take a taxi it will get us there faster!" And so we hoped into a cab. It is a small town more than a city so we could only go so far, we cruised down the main avenue, and promptly took a right, and just like that we were out of the small town and into something that once again resembled an industrial complex, I got that chill in my stomach as the road became more and more bumpy. For a few seconds before we entered the "hospital" grounds we actually left asphalt. We stopped in front of a building that did not look like a dilapidated apartment building but much more like an abandoned factory, in fact I think it even had a working smoke stack (if not that smoke stack was coming from a unnecessarily close factory). Luckily I had been storing up courage for a moment such as this on the trip and didn't even pee my pants as we headed in to the main entrance. Luckily for us, the main entrance (which doubled as an elevator shaft), wasn't our entrance, the infectious disease entrance was on the side of the building behind a big steel door. We went in, it was dark, a big babushka greeted us suspiciously (what have these guys brought from America?!?) She ushered me into a room, told the translator she could come and told Levi to wait outside. "That might have been the worst I've ever seen," Levi said of his five minutes in the hospital. Now it was me, the nurses, and the translator. The room could have been placed in a movie any time in the last 100 or if you subtracted the toilet 200 years and it would have fit perfectly, I wondered from which era my treatment might come. After a few minutes of nurses poking in and out, the Svetlana said "I think they are afraid of you, they don't get many foreigners." THEY ARE AFRAID OF ME?!??!?!?!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I'm not sure if that is a good or bad sign. I won't go through the whole examination, no one wants that, the most difficult thing was that for much of the time Svetlana was not in the room, so I was rather at the mercy of the big babushka, never really sure what was going to happen next or what they were going to use that instrument for. One thing that Svetlana was able to translate was that they wanted me to stay in the hospital for the next 5 days, because they felt that I would be unable to follow the dietary guidelines they were going to give me in the hotel. I looked around the room, with its, for some reason, 7 chamber pots, shabby curtains hiding the smokestack, the towel with a small bloodstain on the corner of it, the jolly giant babushka smiling at me, and said flat out "no, i'll follow the plan at hotel, trust me" They sealed the deal by telling me that it would also cost 1200 roubles a night, like 40 dollars, after what that Babushka had just done to me I would have paid twice that just to get out of there and never see her again. In the end though I got a prescription for antibiotics, a diet to follow, some other pills. It cost me nothing, they felt it was "their international duty". They were very nice and very helpful, things have improved in my stomach department, the antibiotics are helping and tomorrow hopefully we ride. ellski
Okay Who was it?
Did you betray me Borscht?
Certainly not you Russian salad? Even with that beautiful pickle flower?
