Novosibirsk (New Siberia)

6 July2008- Sunday

Again, we had to advance the clock so breakfast today was going to be from 8:00 – 9:30 a.m. I did go to a lecture Helge Pedersen who is a Dutchman traveling for publicity for Mir Corporation to promote Trans-Siberian travel. He gave a lecture on photography trips and used some pictures he had taken on the trip so far to illustrate what he was talking about. When he asked for questions, I asked him ‘what was the secret of taking pictures through bus windows’ since that’s what a lot of my pictures have had to be. He said that the first thing to do is to knock out the window, but then after laughing, said you’d probably have to get your camera as close to the window as possible to avoid reflection – which I’ve not been too successful at. We had lunch on the train at 12:30 p.m. and arrived at 2:30 at Novosabersk, which translated means New Siberia. Again, the organization worked beautifully in getting off the train on a platform, met by our local guides boarding the bus and taking a trip outside the city to see an academic area which is supposed to be a place for the meeting of the minds and was a sort of secret area. The city itself is over 1.6 million people and is, therefore, the largest in Siberia. While visiting the academic center we also went into the mineralogical museum where there was a stone called Charliot which is a stone found only in this area of Siberia.