If it’s your last night in Novosibirsk and it’s also a Friday night, then you might as well make it a big one. Right? Wrong! After a succession of big nights, what I needed most was a booze free early night. As it turned out we had a small night out, which by Russian standards is a big night anywhere else!

Yesterday I found a pub that was nice and quiet, with good food. It had a Bavarian feel to it, not Russian at all. At Kiril’s garage I asked Maga if they wanted to join us there for dinner. The idea being I could walk back to the hostel at any time. When I arrived there was a band on and the place was humming.

We ended up at Misha’s flat, which is very nice. He and Yujin had a couple of different flavoured hookas on the go which were great. I’ll have to get one when I get home. No tobacco, it’s more like dried fruit that smokes over ice cooled water. Very nice.

After that we went out to go bowling but everywhere was closed, so we were taken to a night club. Aside from a Turkish prison, it’s probably the last place I wanted to be right then. Night clubs have never really been my thing. Misha obviously had confections as we sent straight in, jumping the queue.

I was handed a beer and stood motionless watching the world go by, until Yujin took pity on me and asked if I wanted to share a taxi home. It was very generous of Misha to get us in, I almost felt guilty about leaving. Almost!

A relatively early night, I was in bed by 3am. This morning I was up early to cook myself a full English breakfast. It’s not something you see here and I just fancied one. The sausages were a bit too German, but otherwise I reckon I made a reasonable job of it.

On the way out of the city we missed the big sign of Novosibirsk as we took the back streets. I’m hoping to catch something to photograph as a momento, but so far today the road has been very plain.