Siberia. Gulp.

I have to admit when I first read that I was going to Siberia I felt dismay.  I don't know why it hadn't occurred to me that I'd be anywhere in Russia other than Moscow or St. Petersburg.  I felt like the missionary from Book of Mormon who upon finding out that he was being sent to Uganda, can barely contain his fear and discontent.  "Uganda? Cool" he croaks.

This was how I felt six weeks ago when I first found out that I'd be traveling to Bernaul, Sibera.  I pictured the Gulags and the Endless Steppes about which I'd read as a teenager.  I held back my tears.  I hearkened back to my freshman year at Duke in North Carolina when he weather turned frigid, I didn't know what to do with myself.  I am a California girl to the tips of my sandaled toes and don't know what to make of a destination so cold, so faraway and so frankly unknown.  I wallowed in pity for a few days and then something clicked.

This is an adventure.  I don't know of one other person who I know who has ventured to Siberia.  I will be it.  True, I was the girl who went to India by myself because I  couldn't imagine waiting just one more year for the stars to align.  But everyone in Los Angeles eventually makes it to India.  No one makes it to Sibera.  How cool is this?  How exciting?  What adventures awaits 14 time zones away?

As the Ukrainian conflict has heated up, I've become positively protective of my Siberia, or at least the concept of it.  I desperately want to be there in discovery.  When we first started hearing of American travel warnings, I prayed that my trip would not be jeopardized.  Gentle reader: it appears  a go.  My Russian domestic flight itinerary arrived on Friday.  Next week I will be in Moscow.  The following in Barnaul, Siberia.  And I can't wait to see it all.  

A street corner somewhere in Barnaul, Siberia.