Believe it or not we spent much of this morning with a Russian TV News crew. The reporter in the team (Irina) is a friend of Sergey's and she along with a camera man (Roman) and a driver arrived about 10:30 to capture us for the Khabarovsk News section of the Russian National TV News. All in all we spent about 3 hours with the team while they filmed the truck and us from many angles, and interviewed both Nina and I (with Sergey acting as translator). They asked some of the obvious questions such as "what are you doing", and "why", "how are people different here than in the US", how do Russian roads compare to the US and Canada". We hope we did not embarrass ourselves, nor offend our hosts. All of this took place in below freezing temperatures and with light snow falling.

Here is a link to a youtube video of the newscast

After lunch Sergey organized a taxi and a guide (from one of the local museums) to take us on a tour of the city. Again Sergey got the job of translating. Among other things we learned

  • that the current main train station was only completed around 2008

  • that Khabarovsk is named after a man (Yerofey Khabarov) who explored this region in the 1600's

  • Khabarovsk was founded in 1858 as a military post

  • the trans-Siberian railway arrived in Khabarovsk from Vladivostok in 1897

  • that the far east of Russia only became part of Russia in the 1800s

On our way home from the tour the taxi driver stopped (and waited for us) at a super market where we stocked up on a lot of goodies - in fact we went a bit over board as the place had a very good range of products; even the casks of pink zinfandel that Nina buys in the US (though at 3 times the price). We had quite a chat with the taxi driver, he with limited English, us with no Russia, but with a lot of gestures. He gave us a couple of souvenirs and refused to allow us to accidental over pay him when Nina interpreted the price of our taxi ride as 1700 rubbles instead of the actual 750 rubbles (that is about $23 for a 2.5 hour taxi tour).

Now for the next chapter in the visa issue.

This morning I called Elena in Vladivostok (the lady who showed us the way out of Vladivostok on Wednesday last week and who with Yuriy gave us the tour of VVO on our first full day in Russia) and told her about the situation. She immediately offered to help, visited the hotel and arranged to have them (the hotel) prepare a document with the appropriate stamps (we hope). This document (we understand) will be emailed to us by the hotel and Elena will arrange through a friend of hers to have the original delivered to us via train in Khabarovsk. All of this for people she hardly knows. Whether this works or not we are grateful for her effort and assistance.