Russia > Meeting everyone again

Russia - The Jewish synagogue in the Jewish Oblast Birobidzhan

I walk into Birobidzhan. It’s raining. People are doing their shopping under umbrellas. The air is oppressively warm. In Birobidzhan, there are very few Jewish landmarks left. The main one is the synagogue, next to the central park. The gate to the synagogue is open. I walk onto the grounds. A man, apparently the caretaker, explains in fluent Russian that the synagogue itself is closed. It opens at eight o’clock, though I’m not sure if that’s in the morning or evening. It doesn’t really matter. I walk back to the hotel via the train station building. From there, we drive the final two hundred kilometers to Khabarovsk. At a coffee stop, we meet the waitress again from the Japanese restaurant in Blagoveshchensk. She had shared a photo of us on her Facebook page—what a coincidence. In Blagoveshchensk, she couldn’t see the motorcycles or the car; here she can. She is on her way to Vladivostok. We also see Marco again. Our Slovenian friend is at a parking lot talking with two female motorcyclists from Vladivostok. They are headed for Lake Baikal. Just after midday, we enter Khabarovsk. Crossing the large bridge over the Amur River, we arrive in the city center. The motorcyclists stop at the edge of the city at a tire shop to swap their off-road tires for regular ones. We continue on to Hotel Versailles. This luxury hotel is on the edge of the center, and we have a spacious suite with a large seating area and a separate sleeping area. Outside, it’s raining. We decide to walk to the center tomorrow. The rest of the afternoon we take it easy. In the evening, it’s still raining. We cut through the park to the nearest restaurant. Appropriately, it’s called “Regent.” It’s a fine dining restaurant, and we decide it’s worth trying just this once. During dinner, there’s live music and dancing. The bill comes to over two hundred euros.