Novosibirsk and Tomsk
Novosibirsk
2003 Population: 1,395,500
Latitude/Longitude: 55.02°N, 82.93°E
Siberia's youngest and biggest city is about halfway between the Ural Mountains and Lake Baikal, straddling the river Ob. Founded in 1893 as Novonikolaevsk, renamed Novosibirsk in 1925, it began growing in the late 1920s when it was built up as an industrial center between the coal fields of the Kuzbass area to the east and the mineral deposits of the Ural region to the west. In the 1930s with the building of the Turk-Siberian railway, which connected Novosibirsk to Almaty in Kazakhstan, the city became a crucial transport link between Russia and Central Asia.
It is a very Soviet city—grey, functional, industrial, and sprawling. The natives are very proud that it has the "biggest" of everything in Siberia: the biggest railway station, the biggest airport, the biggest library, the biggest opera and ballet company, and so on. There are five "big" hotels, 6 "big" restaurants, and two "big" airports (Tolmachevo and Gorodskoi). The train station is really "big": numerous long-distance trains run through Novosibirsk daily, the Trans-Siberian, Trans-Mongolian, Trans-Manchurian, and the Sibiriak. The latter goes from Moscow to Novosibirsk and takes 51 hours. Eastbound there are usually two or three trains a day going as far as Vladivostok (takes four and a half days). Train service to places off the mains trans-Siberian line include daily trains to Barnaul, Biysk, Abakan, Severobaikalsk, and Tynda. On the Turk-Siberian, there is daily service to Almaty (takes 37 hours) and four times weekly to Bishkek and Tashkent.
Transportation
Lufthansa (local tel. 22-71-51) twice a week from Frankfurt.
Transaero (local tel. 69-69-58) daily from Moscow.
Local transportation includes buses, trolleybuses, and subway (Metro). There are also boat rides in the summer that go up and down the Ob river (could be an interesting excursion).
Time: Novosibirsk time is Moscow time plus three hours. Telephone code is 3832.
This being a Communist city, it has no churches. At the time of writing, supposedly three churches are under reconstruction: Chapel of St. Nicholas, Aleksandr Nevsky Cathedral, and the Cathedral of the Ascension. Aleksandr Nevsky Cathedral was the first stone building in Novosibirsk. Built at the end of the 19th century in Bysantine style, Alexandr Nevsky's Cathedral was closed for many years and was re-opened only in 1992, after the visit of Aleksey II, Patriarch of Russia. There is a central park (north of the Opera & Ballet Theater), a Local Studies Museum, two art galleries, a Siberian trade gallery, and a quite famous Russian Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography, well known for its archaeological discoveries in the Altay Mountains (see National Geographic, October 1994: Siberian Mummy Unearthed). There is also an open-air museum of Siberian wooden architecture, which is a part of the Archaeological Institute.
Akademgorodok
A special town (district) built in 1958 by the Siberian branch of the Soviet Academy of Sciences as a think-tank for its scholars and researchers. It is 28 km south of Novosibirsk. This was a highly prestigious place with well-stocked shops and beautiful dachas (country villas) for the Union's top academicians and their families. Presently, it also has suffered from the economic slump and now seems a rather forlorn place.
It has 23 institutes on everything from economics to genetics, which house approximately 65,000 workers and their families. Nothing much to see there; the best part is the setting, wooded and quiet. It's located on the "Ob Sea," a 200 km long reservoir behind a nearby dam on the Ob river.
The place has some good museums; however, it seems that one has to make elaborate arrangements to be admitted. The highlight is the Geological Museum with a dazzling Siberian mineral collection.
You can get there by train (of course), by bus, or (in the summer) by boat.
2003 Population: 485,000
Latitude/Longitude: 56.48°N, 84.98°E
The city lies 270 km northeast of Novosibirsk. It is one of Siberia's oldest cities, founded in 1604. During the Soviet era, it was closed to foreigners because of Tomsk-7, a secret weapons research center, which is 16 km north of the city. Still a stately town with some of the finest examples of Siberian wooden houses with filigree-like decorations and carved fronts. The medical school here was among Russia's earliest.
The city has a couple of fairly decent hotels, fine arts museums, a good library, a botanical garden, and even a Polish Catholic church. Also a small airport.
Since Tomsk was opened to foreigners, events have not exactly encouraged people to visit. In 1993, an explosion at Tomsk-7 scattered radioactivity over an estimated 120 square km area. The radioactivity's spread was limited because snow was falling at the time, and nobody was evacuated. (Click here for team reviews of DOE facilities using Tomsk-7 Lessons Learned.) Then in 1994, Tomsk was the center of a tuberculosis epidemic, which has kept the local medical school very busy to this day.
You can get there by train, bus, and airplane, all from Novosibirsk.