That afternoon before meeting up with the everyone we stopped by Kiril's shop with the bikes to do some maintenance and clean some of Mongolia off them. The Mongolian mud was pretty well caked on to most of my bike but I did manage to get a good amount cleaned off. I did find a few bolts to my boxes loose so cleaning up a bit did help me to see what's going on with the bike.
We met up with the gang at 9:00pm at the brewpub and had a nice time enjoying good food and beer, listening to live music and socializing. The band was playing a lot of English covers even though they didn't speak English - just memorized the songs. After a few hours the band was done for the night so we headed over to Mikhail's for more beer and smoke the hooka pipe. We had a go at the hooka while at Yijin's house the other night as well. Hooka has really become popular in Russia, just as it has in the US. He had lots of flavors of tobacco (or maybe not tobacco - it looks like dried fruit) and mixed up blend that was very nice. It's strange how the smoke doesn't even seem like tobacco - hitting a cigar or pipe tobacco like that would result in a coughing fit. Machail then decided we should all go bowling. It was 1:30am by that point - but hey, why not?
After driving around for a bit we couldn't find one that was open later than 3am - which really wasn't enough time since it was about 2:15am at this point. He was sure there were some that were open until 5, but we had checked two already that were closing at 3. He then decided we should skip the idea of bowling and go to a nightclub - ok, why not? Ken, Mark and I are all dressed like travelers (hobos) with clothes most city clubs would reject - but Mikhail knew the bouncers so we were let in and and also got to skate the cover charge. Mikhail's family used to own and operate a nightclub ( now they just rent out the space) so is he dialed in to the local club scene - and this nightclub was quite the scene. Everyone was dressed up super nice so we (Ken, Mark and I) basically looked like homeless people compared to everyone else there. Oh, well - it was fun watching the pretty girls dance on the tables and bartops which appeared to be perfectly acceptable - probable encouraged. I did feel quite old as everyone in the club appeared to be in their 20's. After a few beers we decided it was time to go and got dropped at the hostel around 4:30am. A bit earlelier than the 5am from the night at the Banya. I think I'm getting too old to rally like this for multiple nights in a row. We have been in Novosibirsk for 5 nights now and we basically went out every night. I want to think things will slow down a bit, but Machial has notified several of his friends between here and Moscow that we are riding through and they are prepared to meet us and show us their cities. I hope my liver can make it through Russia alive - Ugh!
Thanks Mikhail, Yujin, Kiril and all your friends we met in Novosibirsk. You city is wonderful and you are all special people - your hospitality was above and beyond what we could have imagined and I hope you come to the US someday so I can return the gesture.
The nightclub scene.
No comments:
Post a Comment