Syktyvkar

Slowly dropping from the sky in our Tupelov-182, the pine green forests of Northern Russia focus as we prepare to land. Two hours north-northeast by plane from Moscow, Syktyvkar is the administrative and financial center of the Komi Republic, sometimes called the Klonkide territory of Russia. The Sysola River ensnakes and cradles this city of 230,000, which is not especially developed for tourism and certainly not visited often by foreigners. I have been traveling with two German expatriates from the USA, both blonde auditors for the Department of Defense, while I represent the Department of State. When checking into our hotel (one of two in town and neither with consistent hot water), advanced word must have spread that Americans were coming because the lobby was sprinkled with more than a couple Russian rubberneckers. Indeed, in our 40 long hours in the region, we routinely received sideways-glances, peeks from around doors and the occasional outright hello as we strolled through the various hallways and sidewalks. Not threatening but not altogether welcoming either.

Far from the fantasyland that is Moscow, now one of the world's most expensive cities, this is real Russia, where a good wage is $40 a day and drinking a nightly bottle of Baltika-3 on the city center's steps is the good life. During Soviet times, this region was the workhorse for the timber industry and heavy industrialization has left the river and soil beds oil-soaked and severely polluted. One of my roles here is to monitor progress on a project development in which a sorbent (pulverized peat moss) is artifically infused with oil-destroying bacteria and fungi, which is then sprayed onto aqueous and subterranean oil spills. The work is quite amazing and I find it very satisfying and somewhat fitting that yesterday's bioweapon experts are spearheading northern Russia's fledgling environmental movement.
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I am now in Yerevan, Mount Ararat looms in the background, report later.