Barnaul rest day

Not a great town this, old style Russian, they even still have the warders on each floor of the hotel, just like Moscow 20 years ago. Nobody speaks any English not even in the hotel and at first they all seem very stand offish but actually underneath it all they are friendly they just have this "face" on. We find a sports shop selling tents and eventually I buy a four sleeper that has since been nicknamed "the cathedral" I didn't realise it but the single sleeper tent has been really uncomfortable full marks to Kudu that they've found a space in the truck to take the slightly bigger tent. I could be wrong but I can't help feeling that I could grow to like Russia. I was talking, in very broken English, to one of the border guards yesterday and he was asking me what England was like, I explained that it was tending to go down hill with crime, vandalism etc and said to him that it was happening all over, he said very abruptly "not here". The degeneration of western culture is obviously something they talk about and when you look around this town, although there are some rough boys, you can see that they are largely under control or at least they are policed whereas I look around our streets and don't get the same impression.