rezendi | Entries tagged with russia

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What I wouldn't give for a Starbucks.

Russians do love their sugar. Tea and coffee generally comes with three or four thick packets, or sugar cubes 3x Western size, and at a picnic on Olkhon I saw a couple fellow-Russians using a bowl of sugar as a dipping sauce for their vegetables.

Said vegetables are usually tomato and cucumber. My travelling companion M. spent a month in The Stans and reported that as far as he could tell, no other vegetables had yet been discovered there. Here they're at least occasionally leavened with carrot and beet(root¹).

Lake Baikal is home to a whole bunch of unique species, including the very tasty omul fish and nerpa seal subspecies. Presumably they're all well-adapted to the cold; the lake freezes a metre deep in winter, when the ferry to Olkhon is replaced by an ice road. (And there are a few weeks every six months, when the ice is forming or melting, when Olkhon is completely cut off.)

Many places in Omsk, Krasnoyarsk and Irkutsk display credit-card stickers. In our experience, only about half of them actually know how to handle them. ATMs, however, are ubiquitous in the cities, and come with cool "000" buttons for withdrawing thousands of rubles. East of Moscow, Internet cafes charge by the megabyte as well as the minute, so I turn images off. Lots of them have Opera, but this is the only one I've found with Firefox. I have also discovered, the hard way, that ALT-SHIFT switches you from Latin to Cyrillic and back.

Public transit in all Russian cities is frequent, efficient, and cheap, although the rolling stock is often shabby and rusty.

Off to Ulan-Ude tonight. "Ulan" means "Red"; not sure about "Ude." Then across the border to Ulan-Bataar, where I intend to spend a couple of days indulging in traditional Mongolian pursuits such as drinking Czech beer, watching Hollywood movies, and reading the IHT, before hopefully wandering out to the Gobi Desert for a few days.

I'm considering taking the new, ultra-high-altitude, glacier-spanning, pressurized train from Beijing to Lhasa once I reach China. Probably not likely to actually happen, as a) it's a 50-hour trip and I only have ten days in China, and b) iirc Tibet visas are a time-consuming hassle. Interesting notion though. I will, however, definitely be taking Shanghai's magnetic-levitation train to the airport when I fly out.

Meanwhile, back in the real world, I've been given the green light to scrap or shelve Book Four, if I so desire (which I think I do) and start a new one afresh. Of course this was always my call; I mean that agent/UK publisher have said they'll fully support this decision if I make it. It'll be a financial hit, but I have the nagging feeling it's the right move regardless. I know I can rewrite what I've got into a pretty-okay book - but this is not a good time, careerwise, to release something merely pretty-okay.

Also: there's a very nice and thoughtful review of IA in Edmonton's Vue Weekly. I am pleased to note that I sound less like a twit in the quotes. Maybe I'm finally getting the hang of being interviewed, at least by email.

¹for all y'all Brits/Aussies/Kiwis.

I write to you from Irkutsk, Siberia. Yes, it's more than just a territory on the RISK board. (Though incidentally it's considerably further south than in the game. The Trans-Siberian, like the Trans-Canadian, stays fairly close to the country's southern border all along its route.) It's famous for ... er ... not a whole lot, other than being the place of exile for many of the Decemberists aristocrat-revolutionaries, back in the day.

( krasnoyarsk )

Every so often, when travelling, you run into a genuine oasis: remote and laid-back, cheap and comfortable, set amid stunning natural beauty, a haven for cool fellow-travellers from around the world, a genuinely magical spot somehow not yet overrun by tour buses, gap-year teenagers, crowds of hawkers or rows of souvenir stalls.

Oases I have found, over the years: Yangshuo (China). Tetebatu (Indonesia). Kokrobite (Ghana). The Vumba (Zimbabwe). Nepal (all of it). The Daintree (Australia). Dahab (Egypt). Caye Caulker (Belize). Hampi (India). Nungwi (Zanzibar). I wasn't expecting to add to that hallowed list while in Russia - but I am pleased to today append the name Olkhon Island.

( olkhon )

( it's my LJ so I'll indulge if I want to, you would indulge too, if it happened to you )

So this is Moscow.

Eh. You can keep it.

Mostly it's a sprawling labyrinth of concrete towers, shopping complexes, BMWs and construction cranes. My timing probably has something to do with my reaction - the Kremlin is closed to the public this week, the Bolshoi is entirely wrapped in scaffolding and canvas - but I'm confident I'd take St. Petersburg over this town any day of any week.

There are some cool bits. The metro is indeed magnificent (but its grandeur is threadbare, and it's full of barricades that herd people into seething bottlenecks.) GUM, on Red Square, is surely the world's most beautiful shopping mall (but it's still a shopping mall.) The sculpture garden across from Gorky Park is quite cool (but Gorky Park itself is disappointing; most of it is occupied by a tacky amusement park.) The Kremlin, St. Basil's, and the Alexanderovsky Gardens are a bit like having a colossal fantasyland castle in the heart of the city (but sort of throw the gloomy industrial bustle of most of the rest of the place into sharp relief.) The peoplewatching on Arbat is outstanding (though Arbat itself is half souvenir shops and fast-food stores.)

My favourite thing by far, so far, is the Exhibit of the People's Economic Achievements, aka VDNKh, which was once sort of a Soviet Epcot Centre. Its kilometres of boulevards and gardens are decorated by huge statues of heroic Communist figures, massive golden fountains, Soviet space shuttles, a titanium spire that has to be seen to be believed, and gargantuan pavilions, one for every republic of the USSR and others catchily named things like "Pavilion No. 71." Nowadays said pavilions have mostly been converted to stores selling cheap consumer goods, the airplane hangar has become a farmer's market, and bouncy Russopop booms out of speakers hidden in the columns that dot the grounds. It's kind of the utter apotheosis of kitsch.

The occasional frissons of feeling like I'm living in a spy novel are also kind of fun. Stepping off the St. Petersburg train into the Moscow night; walking along the fearsome walls of the Lubyanka, that looming monolith that I think would look menacing even if you didn't know its long and bloody history of dungeons and KGB interrogation chambers; being accosted by a policeman (by the rather unfriendly expedient of coming up behind me and jabbing his finger into my back) who demanded to see my documents - "Passport, visa, Moscow registration!"¹ - " and wasn't satisfied by my attempt to forestall him with a mere photocopy (I'm reluctant to hand out my passport unless it's actually necessary) - "Problem! You come to polizi stationi!" - and, when I gave in and gave him my passport, scanned my registrations minutely for errors before pronouncing "OK!", passing it back, and waving me on.

It's nice to see that some of the old Soviet traditions like random identity checks haven't died off. Two more cops were doing the same thing outside the VDNKh to anyone who looked Caucasian (ie dark-skinned.) I wonder why I looked suspicious. I am very obviously a tourist here; I consider myself relatively nondescript, but almost nobody has confused me for a Russian. Perhaps that's for the best.

eta: also of note: there's a lot of money flooding through this city - luxury brands everywhere, BMWs clogging the street, hordes of women in thousand-dollar outfits, enormous numbers of bahkomats (bank machines) and even more enormous numbers of burly security guards, plus a very-very-cool Fabergé retail store - but you still can't drink the tap water. Also, the public toilets are Porta-Potties manned by babushkas who charge you 5 rubles a go.

I'm a little footsore; in this last week I've probably done more sustained walking than at any time since ... sheesh, probably since trekking around Annapurna in Nepal. But my poor feet will get a couple days of rest soon enough: tomorrow night, we embark on the 38-hour train journey to Omsk. About halfway there, just west of Yekaterinburg, Europe becomes Asia. I wonder if there's a WELCOME TO ASIA POPULATION 4,000,000,000 sign at the border.

¹You're supposed to get your visa paper (not to be confused with your visa) stamped every time you stay at a hotel for three or more days; lack of such stamps will cause great suspicion, apparently, even though it's entirely possible to spend a month in this country without spending three days in one place, particularly if you're taking the Trans-Siberian.

PS: Hermitage pix are up, but no Moscow ones yet - none of the Net cafes here do USB.

I am posting from an Internet cafe inside St. Petersburg's rather staggering Hermitage Museum.

I know, I should probably be looking at art. But one can only walk down so many colossal galleries, passages and corridors, beneath fifty-foot-high ceilings carved and gilded and filigreed and hung with chandeliers the size of Volkswagens, past what seems like half of all the world's classical (ie pre-1920) art, before one needs another breather.

To paraphrase my travelling companion M., one gets the sense that Peter the Great took his chief architect to Versailles and the Louvre, then turned to him and said, "You see? Like that. Only much bigger."

I'll probably upload pictures and expand this into a real post tonight.

eta: OK, pictures tomorrow. Most Russian internet cafes aren't so good at the extra services.

So I could totally live here. I mean, if I spoke Russian. And if it was always summer. It's all monuments and palaces and gardens (not parks) and ornate 19th century buildings, but it's really livable, too, cafes and bars and gathering places, majestic without resorting to the inhuman scale of, say, central Paris. And the blinys - Russian for "crepe" - are great. No Nutella, though, alas.

The whole city is crumbling, of course; and the whole city is being reborn ultramodern at the same time.

It's the little things, as always, that you notice. The massive drainpipes that carry rainwater from roofs down to ankle level, every fifty feet down every side of every block. The security booths in city parks, the wrinkled bureaucratic babushkas stationed as building security, and in virtually every room of the Hermitage, ready to snap at you if, God forbid, you rest your camera on an air conditioner for stability, or in some places if you go the wrong way through a room; relics of the authoritarian mentality. The profusion of marriages. The scarred walls from sixty-four years ago, when this city was victimized by one of the longest and most gruelling battles in history. (Hitler never actually conquered Leningrad, as it was then known, but his forces surrounded it and besieged it for "the 900 days." The only supply route was a winter-only road across a frozen lake. At one point the rations for residents were down to 200 grams (less than half a pound) of sawdust-thickened bread per day. But somehow they held out.)

Of course it's far from idyllic today. Last week a race riot broke out in a small town not too far from here, and the resulting pogrom drove every Caucasian (ironically, here that means "dark-skinned," as opposed to Slav "light-skinned") out of town; street gangs looted, burned, murdered. Homeless alcoholics stagger regularly past, even on glittering Nevsky Prospekt. Also last week, the deputy head of Russia's central bank was assassinated, presumably by mob figures irritated by his attempts to crack down on money laundering.

Still, it's got a definite decaying, skyrocketing, phoenix-like charm. We'll see if it's just St.P. or if it holds through the rest of the country. Tomorrow night to Moscow, in'shallah.

Dump any notion you ever had of Russia as a drab and dowdy place. St. Petersburg is swimming in colour, seething with life. I've only been here a day now, but it's already staking a genuine claim to becoming my favourite European city.

That despite the fact I got pickpocketed in the metro this morning - for the first time ever anywhere - amidst the press of the shoulder-to-sholder crowd. Fear not, all I lost was a day's spending money (R800/US$30); my ID, credit cards, and US$ stash are tucked away rather more securely. And a good thing too.

The puppet theatre where I am staying is, alas, closed for renovations. (Had I known this, I would have stayed elsewhere, but it's comfortable enough in a Stalinist-hostel kind of way. I have my own room; I'm kinda too old for dorm beds nowadays.)

( arrival )

( in a strange land )

( teratology )

Tonight, the local microbrewery (did I mention I'm travelling with a beer fiend?) Tomorrow, the Hermitage, the woolly mammoth, and maybe a run along the Neva, or in one of the local parks.

I flickrd some pictures.

eta: just realized - this is also the farthest north I've ever been. (St. Petersburg is just a handful of latitude-minutes from the Arctic Circle.) How odd.