May Day in Novosibirsk

I woke up this morning and packed my stuff to take a bus to Tomsk. I repacked my bags and left my big backpack at the hostel because I'll be coming back in three or four days. I'm taking a smaller bag with just some essentials to Tomsk. I knew it was May Day but didn't think much of it. When I got to Red Avenue I quickly found that they were preparing for a May Day Parade. The parade hasn't started yet as of now but groups are assembling on Red Avenue.

I had to pass a certain corner I'm not too crazy about. Often in former communist countries there are barriers along streets dictating where you can go. On this particular corner there are barriers along all four corners of the street. You can cross the street if you go into the metro station underground, but the metro station leads into an underground mall. This particular underground area is fairly byzantine and twisty, and I often come out on the wrong cormer. You immediately have to go the wrong way to cross the street and then through a series of chambers that lead you past storefronts. Also, one of the corner stations is shut down for construction so you just can't come up in that corner at all.

I walked down Red Avenue and watch the various groups assembling for the parade and people getting together by the side of the road to be spectators. As I pull up to a big central square the police are not letting anybody past that point and they pulled me over for a document check and a search. This is not going to be easy now heading to the bus station because a lot of the way there is blocked and I'm going to have to walk a good deal around where I wanted to go. It's too bad that I'm going to miss the May Day Parade though because I have to get to the bus station.

I'm walking around the affected area but constantly finding that there are police blockades so I'm having to walk farther and farther out. I hope I can get back into the bus station without any problems. I left the hostel about two hours before the bus is scheduled to leave and under normal circumstances it would be a half an hour walk to the bus station but now I don't know how long it's going to take.

I walked up to the bus station and saw there was a police blockade right around it. But there was a walkway several meters away that I took and I did not have any problems. So now I'm at the bus station with about half an hour to spare getting ready to take the bus to Tomsk.