A messy ending
People I met here who contributed to, and improved my trip: Julia (
When we got to Shchuchinsk it was already pretty late, so we decided to spend the night in the train station hotel. After checking in, Julia and I bought tickets for our onward journeys to Semey and Almaty, as we wanted to make sure that we got plaskart berths. As it turned out we got some of the last seats, even though we were buying tickets a week in advance.
Just over the road from the station was a small cafe, which we went for Dinner and drinks in.
Back at the hotel Hannes wanted to stand outside and have a cigarette, but it was quite cold so Julia and I went up to the room. Somehow we managed to get into an argument about smoking, as Hannes was saying that there is no such thing as second hand smoke and that there is no proof that smoking actually kills people. I found the whole thing ludicrous, especially as my Grandad died of throat cancer from smoking. I ended up calling Hannes stupid for saying this, at which point he said that he'd only ever travelled with us because it saved him money and that he'd just been using us. I thought that it was a pretty crappy thing to say and they would be the last words that we heard from him. A sad end to what had been a year long friendship – or so i had thought.
The next morning Julia and I caught a bus to Burabay, but somehow we ended up on the wrong one, even though we had told the driver where we wanted to go! After changing to another bus we finally made it to the town, situated on the edge of
