Two Elenas, an Olga and a Vlad

Growing up in the Midwest, I had experienced my share of gargantuan ear-cracking thunderstorms, howling wind and horizontal rain included, with or without tornado warnings. I nearly got washed down the streets of hot humid Siberia last night when the skies opened up and pounded the city of Novosibirsk with rain, lightning and superscary thunder. I'm sure everyone can relate to the awful feeling of stepping ankle deep into muddy brown urban rapids and having to walk -- make that squeak --back to the hotel almost a mile away. My flimsy umbrella was laughably beaten by the elements but the cooling was welcome, if a little wet-rat making.

Last night Gary, the white Zimbabwean, and I went to the New York Times restaurant and bar. He speaks English like a British person would and its kinda quaint. His profession is very strange -- although a militant and avid non-smoker, he works for the British-American Tobacco Company, supposedly one of the oldest companies in the West, peddling tobacco products to new Russia. The cognitive dissonance he carries is amazing and he sees his job purely from a marketing strategy. This is the kind of capitalistic disconnect I would have only expected from an American!

While drinking some Siberian Coronas we noticed some Russians at the table next door speaking alternatively good and awful English. One of them, Elena (a name that 1 out of 5 Russian females seems to be given) asked in Russian why we were laughing. We tried to back out of it, that we weren't laughing so much as enjoying the mauling of our mother tongue, and she explained that she was an English teacher and they were having class. At the bar! What a country! Soon, Vladimir, Olga and, yep, Elena II, joined us and we were asked if we wouldn't mind conversing with them. All of them lawyers (jurists as they would say here), all of them learning English to advance in New Russia.

They weren't too bad actually, as long as we talked slowly. They could understand Gary much easier because the flavor of English taught in schools here is UK English, not the American kind that I am cursed with. I might add that all of them agreed that American English was prettier and all of them hailed my accent, one of the girls going so far as holding her nose as she spoke (Americans speak through their nose, according to the Russians).

I must admit that Novosibirsk has grown on me greatly. The people here in Siberia are far friendlier than what you see in the western side of Russia. I have even been daydreaming what it would be like for me to move here for a year, perhaps for a sabbatical at the prestigious university in town (the Yale of Russia), and seeing what a real Siberian winter is like...

Headed towards the Urals

I bought my ticket today for Ekaterinburg, a full day journey by train, to the birthplace of the Boris Yeltsin. Nothing spectacular to report today, save for the fact that my veganism has yielded to plain old vanilla vegetarianism as I caved in and ate a cheese pizza. There was a time in my life that I could not imagine giving up dairy products but, truthfully, it did not taste good at all. For some reason, probably unknown to scientists everywhere, it tastes like mold. I'm sure the intake of protein will help fuel the gastrointestinal explosion that will occur, oh, about five hours from now.

I'm off to have a drink with my friend Gary, the white Zimbabwean. More on him later.

Novo by Night

Novosibirsk, the capital of Siberia, was originally called Novonikolaevsk, after Nicholas II, the last Emperor of Russia. (Interestingly, it was renamed in 1926 "by the demand of the working people" to Novosibirsk, New Siberia, because all the great revolutionary names had already been used up -- Leningrad, Stalingrad, etc). At over two million people, it is the largest city in Russian Asia and either the third or fourth largest city in the country, depending on who you consult.The census is not a national priority as it is in the United States).

Home of a majestic opera and ballet, the largest such building in all of Russia, Novosibirsk is simultaneously laid back and bustling. I attempted to eat at a place called the New York Times, they even had an english menu so that I knew exactly what kind of carnage I could not eat. Settled on a beer and some grilled vegetables and, judging from the clump of hair that came out this morning, its probably high time to find a protein source. Next door, on Vokzalnaya Ulitsa, is the Alpen Grot, a dingy sort of subterranean bar that, for some reason, beckoned me. I walked in just before midnight which means, here and seemingly in all Russian bars, its time for the strip show!

Now, as good as it sounds to watch naked Russians run around on stage, they do it real different over here. The dancers definitely consider themselves artistes over entertainers, the intricate choreography alone gives that away, and to make matters worse, it is always mixed gender. The number of naked men I've seen in Russia will last me a lifetime, thank you. In the United States, there is no way you'd ever see straight men watching male strippers, but here it is very common. And in a country teeming with lovely women, it is strange indeed to observe them watching less beautiful versions prancing around on stage, barely wearing less clothing. What is this, Bizarro World? In that case, bad-bye!

Woo Hoo, Party Train to Novosibirsk!

From my handwritten journal:

I always figured that going mad would be accompanied by some cool noise, like a massive mental steamwhistle or a snapping twig. Then, just like when the final bell rang on the last day of school, the ensuing berserking chaos that followed would be expected, permitted, and perhaps even enjoyable. But as I lay on plastic upholstery in a smelly lagoon of my own perspiration on this misery train, transported prisoner-of-war-like to the next camp, I am starting to ponder if said snappage has already occurred. When exactly the flashes of crazy were replaced by flashes of sanity I don't know, but I'm laying here, suddenly cognizant that, with all the fun bikini-filled, tan-skinned, sunny blue-skied vistas I could visit on my summer vacation -- I'm in the middle of motherfucking Siberia!
--
The glossy pamphlets they produce for the Trans-Siberian Railroad are wonderfully appealing. Young, impossibly good-looking and short-skirted nouveau riche Russians, sipping white wine, with toasts and laughter, watching as the vast Russian landscape melts into the sunset through the ultraclean window. What you really get: Two dirty-faced little moppets, one barely this side of comatose, staring blankly at her mangy one-eyed stuffed horse; the other, a seemingly inexhaustible supply of pea green vomit. The evercaring father, he of the beer cologne, passed out lifelessly, face down and shirtless, before the train even leaves the station. To add to the merriment is the toothless, miserable ready-to-die babushka who, when not wiping up the unholy discharge from Linda Blair below, glares unblinkingly and androidlike at me (as I write these very words). For visuals, think of the dinner scene in Annie Hall, when the jew-hating grandmother stares holes through Woody Allen.

So unwilling have I been to climb down from this bunk, imagining that I would drop ankle-deep into one of the puke buckets below, that I, in the blackness of night, with over 95% success rate, vacated my bladder into the contents of an empty two-liter bottle (with a painfully small opening). The unflattering and desperate contortions needed for such a maneuver will assuredly land me on a future episode of KGB's Funniest Thermographic Videos.

Epilogue: My lifelong habit of kicking my shorts off in the middle of the night endeared me to none of the passengers in Compartment 8.

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.

When I Find Myself in Times of Trouble

The pride of Krasnoyarsk is the "singing bell tower", positioned right outside of my hotel, that not only dongs each hour, quite loudly into the seventh floor I might add, but plays a special tune each day at noon.

It was today, August 1, 2005, that I heard the single worst version of the Beatles "Let it Be", ringing for miles to be heard. It was just not the tower's synth-bell that made it wretched; rather, it was all the drunken townspeople "singing" -- phonetically, of course -- to the song, caring nothing whatsoever about things like pitch, tone, cadence, passion or listenability. It was enough to make both John Lennon *and* Paul McCartney spin wildly in their graves.

What next, "I Can't Get No Satisfaction?"

One thing these mad Russians have got right, though, is how they've livened up the movie going experience. For example, PikaPark, with the faux airplane-crashed-into-wall motif, is a combination movie theatre/bar/nightclub, where you can pass freely between all three. A thick layer of fresh chicken wire is constructed nightly inches in front of the screen, presumably to encourage the whipping of bottles at the bad summer imports from Amyerika. There must have been a real party when Fantastic Four debuted there!

Got the train ticket and I'm on my way to Novosibirsk tomorrow evening, as Rod's Siberian Misadventure continues...

Krasnoyarsk

One of the treats that Russia has to offer is the offchance that hot water will be cut off, as I found out today as Krasnoyarsk will have none from August 1 to 14. I have never fully experienced the power of truly cold water like this morning's skull-cracking Siberian shower, and as I tried in vain to contain the inevitable and unmanly yelps, my head undoubtedly shrunk to 90% of its normal size.

Krasnoyarsk is a river city, on the mighty Yenesei, of about one million people, making it the second largest city in Siberia. Approximately 1/4 of Russia's aluminum supply is produced in this region. Mmmm aluminum. The area outside Hotel Krasnoyarsk, where I'm paying $25 a night for the privilege of being glaciated, is full of luminous fountains, intellectuals and cafes, giving it an Italian piazza feel. The people here are quite friendly and, sometimes, when asking directions, they will take you by the hand and lead you there personally. They are genuinely curious about Westerners, and Americans in general, but very few people speak English with any proficiency.

Today I have been desperately trying to buy a train ticket to Siberia's megapolis, Novosibirsk, but so far I have had no luck finding a shortcut. Looks like I have to go to the train station myself and deal with the ogres-behind-plexiglas.

The Trans-Siberian Weight Loss Plan

From my handwritten journal:

Having traveled on Russian trains several times before, I knew what to expect for sale: candy bars, cheap beer, mean looks and lukewarm mineral water, inexplicably carbonated and translated as "water with gas." And, oh yes, the ever-important supply of hot water, hawkishly tended to by the cabin prodinitsa (aka, She Who Shall Be Obeyed). Knowing that my total time spent on the Trans-Sib would sum up to be several days, I had planned ahead in Moscow, pillaging the supermarket 5 metro stops away of dry goods. I purchased what I believed to be honest-to-god vegetarian instant soups (they had pictures of carrots and onions, rather than the cartoon pig, chicken or cows, whose minced bits presumably await moistureless within). So confident I was in my preparation, complete with white standard plastic Eurobaggie, that I schlepped it all the way by air to Ulan-Ude. There I augmented the stash with Instant Quaker Oats and trailmix. This, undoubtedly, would make me King of Train #7, Wagon 2, and I walked smugly Saturday morning towards the train, confidant that babushkas and damsels alike would be throwing themselves at me in order to share in my freeze-dried cornucopia. Longtime readers will not be surprised that I, of course, left the bag back at the hotel.

So,instead of arriving as the Prince of Prefab Provisions, I boarded this Russian train, where sharing one's food is part of the social contract, the dejected empty-handed court jester.

My kupe compartment, capacity four, has two inmates already: Sergei, the Gorbachev lookalike sans skin-peninsula, from St Petersburg; and Inna, the grandmother of unknown profession, who was highly adept at the fake-spit-to-ground-while-hand-waving maneuver, ready to yank that move out of the holster at a moment's notice. They had been on the train since Vladivostok, two days prior, giving it a lived-in smell that I shan't soon forget. An odor somewhat reminiscent of an embarcadero or the seafood side of the supermarket. It turns out, luckily for me, that Inna was transporting salted dried fish to Novosibirsk, presumably as "gifts" to all those who had wronged her in the past.

Although assigned one of the better lower bunks, my Midwestern decency dictates that I cannot have elderly Russians falling on me in the middle of the night, so I happily if sheepishly take one of the upper bunks. The second idiotic move of the day came when I tried to enswathe the pillow with the presanitized case (optional, but well worth the 40 rubles). I'm not sure exactly how the cumulus cloud of feathers came about, but the goosey snow sent Sergei and Inna quickly into the hallway. I will likely never get the microfeathers out of those black pants, nor out of my respiratory system. The sneezestorm that followed was epic, a snot-and-tear machine-gun attack like I hadn't produced since a boy in the Ozarks.

So, twenty minutes into my Trans-Siberian shunt and I'm already working on untouchable status.

Soon, however, our train is hugging the banks of the majestic Lake Baikal and it is even more amazing than I had predicted. Incredibly, this otherworldly blue "Pearl of Siberia", the planet's deepest lake, holds 1/5 of the world's freshwater, more than all five Great Lakes combined. We even spot some nerpas, the only freshwater species of seal, happily basking in the sun, not far from some ivory-skinned bikini-clad Russkas, undoubtedly working on their first sunburn/encephalitis combo of the year.

Traveling along the Trans-Siberian is eerie. Everyone's watches are set to Moscow time (for us, 4-5 hours offset), which itself is disorienting, and being couped in the chugging train for so long produces odd behavior in these crazy Russians. Whenever we would make a stop at some town, usually about four hours apart, everyone would pile out and just stand and mill about, looking at the train. Perhaps they were hoping that *this* city would have a convenience stand for soda, beer or something to read, oh god anything that is different. And there is nearly always nothing, save for the enterprising shirtless man selling,you guessed it, dried fish.

Sergei and Inna, more out of pity I think than anything else, insisted on me sharing in of their goodies, though I had nothing but alcohol swabs and a dumpshit grin to furnish. They know, but likely don't fully understand, the word vegetarian, as I am offered many dishes that clearly contain beast, though admittedly a minority component. I do have some hot tea and Inna insists on me taking sugar -- rather, she doesn't ask, she just drops five cubes into the goblet as she enigmatically makes the bicep motion while pointing at me. She also demands that I nibble/consume several beige, biscuitlike spheroids, popped from a bag emblazoned with a cartoon mouse. If I had seen this in the store, I would have surely thought that this was (a) made from mice or, more likely, (b) rat poison. Since rodents are not, from what I understand, drawn to rocklike dry cookies soaked in pure liquid sucrose, I was sure that I would be okay. But that was all I could ingest in the entire day and the sugar rush took me down for three hours.

Krasnoyarsk is only 10 inchworm hours away and, as we penetrate the Siberian night, I hear a thunderstorm arriving. I feel a good sleep coming on.