Another Boring Night in Siberia

When traveling in a foreign country where the only real distinguishing characteristic is language, it is not that difficult to walk unmarked as a foreigner. Sure I walk a little differently than they do and my shirts are not so tight that they show my man-nipples, but besides that I'm within the two standard deviations of normalcy here. But speaking English out loud is like a bugle to those standing near. A. Foreigner. Has. Been. Spotted.

Coming out of the internet cafe last night, I met Gordon, a [white] South African from Johannesberg who has been teaching English in Moscow for the past two years, and we decided to have a beer together in Krasnoyarsk Plaza. He has been jumping off and on the Trans-Siberian Railway towards Lake Baikal for six weeks, stopping at one little Russian town after another. We were not talking especially loudly, but the number of heads turning was pretty amazing and several drunken college guys came up to try out their bad English on us, apologizing profusely, as only the truly inebriated can do, that they were messing up our language. Soon, two dyevushkas, teetering somehow on the highest of heels introduced themselves, in decent English, as night-students, named Svetlana and Elena, who are majoring in public-relations (whatever that is) while they work days in a telecommunications firm. As I soon found out, there is a fine line between curiousity and hostility towards Westerners, as the drunk guys slowly became embittered and nasty as we received more attention(though hard to tell at first because, well, all Russian guys sound kind of mean). We had to move to another table when our spidey senses were starting to tingle.

The rest of my night was uneventful, just your average Midwesterner-in-Siberia story: a drunken, shirtless gay guy buying me a glass of white wine only to whisk it away bitchily when I refused it (I have learned my lesson!), a drunken coed giving me a wet kiss on the cheek and high-fiving her pals, a drunken teenager giving me (his brother) his Russian Orthodox cross, call girls asking every fifteen minutes if we needed "company", my nice blue Prada shirt getting sprayed by blood, blah blah blah, same old, same old.

In two hours I climb back onto the Trans-Siberian Choo-choo for the 12-hour overnighter to Novosibirsk, the region's de facto capital and another time zone away, where more Siberian hijinx are sure to follow.