Novosibirsk to Tomsk, Russia

I walked the 3+ km from the Novosibirsk train station to the bus station early that morning (Monday, 14 August). Although Novosibirsk is a large town (1.5 million people) it was very quite early that morning. I bought my ticket for the 5-hour bus ride to Tomsk without too much hassle, but then boarded the wrong bus. Luckily a pretty, university aged girl saw what was going on and helped me onto the right bus (falling down the stairs of the bus in the process), which created quite a scene (I felt) when I had to get my bag back out from the luggage area.

I boarded the correct bus and found my seat. As I thanked the woman sitting next to me in Russian for getting up to allow me to my window seat, she responded "your welcome". I was surprised to hear she spoke english (what a coincidence) and we instantly struck up a conversation. She had seen my whole ordeal with getting onto the wrong bus and I felt a little embarrassed as she said she could tell immediately that I was a foreigner. I found out that Rita was an english teacher at the Tomsk University. What luck! She offered to come to the Tomsk train station with me once we arrived to help me secure my train ticket for the next day. I was very grateful for this offer as buying tickets was never easy for me with the Russian language barrier. A few minutes later in the conversation we were talking about accomodation in Tomsk and she said, "you know, you can stay with me if you like." Wow, I was very greatful for the offer but also didn't want to impose. But I accepted, very appreciative of her generosity. Her husband, Kostia, met us at the bus station. I wondered what he thought of his wife bringing in some stranger off the street to his home?! He spoke broken english but didn't say a lot at this point. I decided to wait until the next day to buy the train ticket so as not to be on a restrictive schedule in Tomsk.