Khabarovsk -- Vladivostok

I forgot to tell you another thing about Khabarovsk. Vlad showed us the United Russia (Putin's party) building and it is pink. Pink. Really light, delicate pink, the kind of pink that gets used for frilly dresses and is not remotely terrifying.

Anyway. Our last leg of the Trans-Siberian was the first where we've had other people in our compartment. The Russian woman seemed nice, but saw that we don't really speak Russian and so didn't say much; the Tajik man was a talker, and so didn't much care that we didn't share a common language. Once I found out he was Tajik I thought I would instantly endear myself to him by hacking together the Russian to tell him that I have a friend who is in Tajikistan now learning the language. (She's not actually there right now, but I don't know how to use the future tense in Russian -- close enough.) He seemed uninterested and asked if I was going back to New York after Russia. "No, to Spain," I told him. He looked at me for a minute and then said, in English, "Papa millionaire." Fuck. My first reaction was to be sort of offended. No, I'm not some spoiled rich kid. "No, I work a lot," I said as indignantly as I could in bad Russian. But as I said it I realized that he probably works a lot; he probably works a lot harder than I do, even when I'm not running around the world on vacation. And no matter how hard he works, he'll probably never get to take a three-month vacation to travel around the world; probably not even a two-week vacation. That my trip is self-financed suddenly became sort of tangential. While he complained about us to the Russian woman (who must have felt sort of awkward and mostly just looked out the window), liberal guilt took over and I decided I needed to make things right with this man who probably hated me and with whom I could barely communicate. I thought things got a little better when I asked what he thinks of Moscow (he hates it), but then he wanted to know if Shane and I are married and if I have babies, and was not happy with my replies. (I'd rather not lie about stuff like that, even if it means making people angry, and lying in Russian would have been too complicated anyway.) This man and I were clearly not going to be friends. I made one last half-hearted attempt, saying that the scenery out the window (which happened to be in the direction of the Chinese border) was beautiful. (Most of this leg of the trip runs not far from the border and apparently that's why the trains go at night. According to the guidebook, the blinds used to be locked shut for parts of the trip.) "No," he said firmly and pointed in the opposite direction. "That is beautiful. Russia is beautiful. That," pointing back at the window towards China, "is like Africa." I'm not sure what he even meant, but I was done trying to make nice, anyway.

We finished off the Schweppe's bottle of cognac/moonshine from the mean-looking woman in Irkutsk, closed down the cafe car, and got maybe four hours of sleep before arriving in Vladivostok dizzy and hung over. Our Tajik friend probably didn't approve of that, either.

The Vladfather

A colleague of Shane's used to spend a lot of time in the Soviet Union, back when it existed, and he gave us a list of Russian mathematicians to contact while we're here. We spent our first day in Khabarovsk with Shane's colleague's friend Vladimir. Communication was sort of hard, but I got some Russian practice and we got a very thorough, if a little strange, tour of Khabarovsk. We took a boat ride on the river and saw a bunch of churches and had an odd but good but tiny lunch of scallops wrapped in bacon. Vlad had already confirmed that we eat meat and things like crab ("We eat everything," we tried to explain), but when the dish that he had ordered arrived, he looked confused and sad and disappointedly explained "Meat," pointing to the bacon, and "not meat," pointing to the scallops. I wish I spoke Russian well enough to explain that basically anything wrapped in bacon is good, or to understand what he thought he ordered. Khabarovsk has a huge labyrinth of a city museum where Vlad tried to get us a guided tour in English, but the guides only spoke Russian. Some of the exhibits were self-explanatory enough (like the animal/natural history section) and once in a while I could get the gist of what the guide was saying -- both good, because Vlad kept getting too excited about the exhibits to even bother trying to translate. It was pretty cute.

The Khabarovsk riverfront is really pretty, especially by Russian standards. The other thing about the (Amur) river here is the big bridge (about 4km, I think) that crosses it slightly outside of town. Vlad didn't really need to drive for an hour through tons of traffic just to drive us across the bridge and back, but now we have seen the bridge up close and personal.

In addition to Vlad and the bridge, Khavarobsk has a lot of German-style beer halls. I'm no expert on German sausage, but it seemed pretty good to me, and it was nice to drink beer that's not super light. The Irish music playing was a little off, but their hearts were in the right place.

Ulan Ude - Khabarovsk

This train smells like fish. We are near Lake Baikal still, and Baikal fish is a big deal here, but of all the things to sell in closed train compartments, smoked fish has to be among the worst. Ew.

This is our second and last reeeaaalllly long train ride -- about 50 hours -- taking us out of Siberia and into the Russian Far East. It's hillier and more rivery out here and it's pretty -- the little wooden houses often have cute blue shutters --but this is not scenery that needs to be described in detail. Instead I'll just tell you some things about Asian Russia and the train in general.

Aside from our very first leg out of Moscow, the trains have been fairly empty and the other passengers are all Russians who mostly keep to themselves. The Russians pack tons of food and the cafe car is usually empty except for sometimes us. The cafe cars are generally fairly grungy, but today one of the waitstaff is wearing a see-through shirt, thigh-high fishnet stockings, and a skirt that's not long enough to cover the tops of the stockings. Russian men of all body times and smelliness/hairiness levels go shirtless.

All Russian trains operate on Moscow time. In a country with ten different time zones (we're covering eight of them), I guess it is probably the least confusing way to operate, but also speaks a little to Russia's extreme Moscow-centricity and central planning. I get the impression that the Russians who don't live in Moscow sort of hate it. ("That's not Russia," our friend Yegor from Ekaterinburg said of Moscow, with no trace of irony.)

There are towns out here with names like Perm and Perm-2, and Krasnoyarsk and Krasnoyarsk-26 (not sure about Krasnoyarsk-2 -- Krasnoyarsk-25). You'd think that with a language where it's considered perfectly acceptable to have words as long as several English sentences, they could have given these towns better names.

You're allowed to smoke in between the cars and people do, a lot. As we get farther east (and some people have been on this same showerless train since Moscow), it's a close call as to whether the smoking areas or some of the smellier cars smell worse. Luckily the fishiness of our current car is more benign than either.

Big lake, big Lenin

If you like animals at all, don't ever go to a Siberian zoo. Aside from learning that particular life lesson the hard way, though, today was a good day. Ulan Ude is as close as we'll get to Mongolia. It's kind of dumb to say that the people here are mostly Asian, our being in Asia and all, but you know what I mean. East Asian, I guess. Near Ulan Ude is a Buddhist monastery and on our way there an English-speaking Russian guy named Yegor (not Igor) made friends with us. Holy crap, that almost never happens here. The monastery was full of brightly-colored pagoda-style buildings, which were a welcome change from the many, many Orthodox churches I've seen over the past few months. In particular, it was nice to see pictures of the Dalai Lama instead of huge-foreheaded, demented-looking baby Jesuses. We made it to the monastery in time to watch the 9am prayers; a carful of monks on cell phones squealed in around 8.58, and some others straggled in after the prayers had started. Still, the best part of the monastery for me was the resident puppy who tried to eat my hair. The stray animal situation here is unfortunate, but it does sometimes mean puppies. Anyway, after the monastery, we made our way to our 'hotel,' aka spare room in the apartment of Olga, a French-speaking Mongolian woman, with Yegor in tow. He tried very hard and entirely unsuccessfully to bargain down the cost of our room; in the process he and Olga became friends and hung out talking politics for several hours while Shane and I napped and showered.

The depressing zoo was part of an otherwise interesting ethnography museum; there are a lot of these open-air museums here that show traditional Siberian villages: huts, houses, schools, churches, etc. An exhibit about the native people of this region made me wonder if there's not some perfect storm of genetics (the native people here must (?) be related to the ones who crossed the Bering Strait to become native Americans, who do seem to have some genetic predisposition to alcoholism) plus Russian culture that explains why there are so many drunk people here, even by Russian standards.

Speaking of Russian culture, kind of, Ulan Ude has the world's biggest Lenin head statue. (Maybe the world's biggest head, period, but no one's bothered to do a full census of head statues to confirm that.) It's huge, and a little creepy, and people have wedding photos taken in front of it. Which is also kind of creepy.

You never can tell

The food in Irkutsk has been underwhelming. We did have one good overpriced lunch of little dumplings and toast, but it was followed up by really gamey lamb plus generic fried things; pickled mushrooms that tasted like chemicals plus salad with unannounced, not scrape-offable mayonnaise; and frozen fish that was not supposed to be frozen. Tonight's dinner was a big improvement, although not really because of the food. Not long after we sat down, the meanest looking woman ever (and this is a land of mean-looking people) sat down at the table next to us. Her hair was pulled back so tightly that it almost distorted her eyes, and the corners of her mouth literally pointed down. She looked like the kind of cartoon character that would pick up an annoying cat or crying kid and throw it out the window. After she sat down she gave us this pointed, withering look that was so extreme it almost made me laugh right out loud. But then a few minutes later she turned around and asked where we're from and started telling us in pretty good English how much she loves New York and welcoming us to Irkutsk. Later she wanted to buy us a drink and when we really didn't have time because we had a train to catch, she somehow produced a Schweppes bottle of Irkutsk-ian moonshine. (It tastes a lot better than Baikal vodka. Or any other vodka.) I don't understand this place at all.

The other noteworthy thing about Irkutsk, besides its bad food and proximity to Lake Baikal, is that a lot of the Decembrists were exiled here. In 1825 after Alexander I (of Napoleonic war fame) died, next-in-line Constantine abdicated (he decided to remain in charge of Poland and married to his non-noble Polish wife) in favor of his younger brother Nicholas (I) and the Decembrists, a group of discontented nobles, tried to use the succession 'crisis' as a platform for revolution. (They just wanted to free the serfs, not overthrow the government or anything.) It didn't work, and they ended up in Siberia. They have a mildly cult-like status here now (the wives in particular are given a ton of credit for following their husbands into exile, although I doubt the newly-single but known to be married wife of an exiled criminal would have done so well alone in St. Petersburg at the time), and you can visit the graves and former houses of the more important ones. The Volkonsky house, which we went to, is basically a mansion, with parlours and chandaliers and nice art. Still a downgrade from St. Petersburg, maybe, but the gulag it was not.

No taste, my ass

The super friendly, incredibly fast-talking waiter at the fish restaurant was really pushing the Baikal vodka, but ordering a second carafe of it was almost entirely my idea. Shudder. We sort of had to have at least one vodka night, though, and my hangover could be a lot worse. The hot hilly bus/crowded van ride back to Irkutsk was rough, though.

Anyway, Irkutsk has some nice churches (including a Catholic one) and some hideous Soviet buildings and a lot of wooden houses that were probably once very nice but now look like the big bad wolf could easily huff and puff and blow them down. It also has some strange graffiti and 350-year anniversary signs with a drawing of what looks like a cat holding in its mouth what looks like a dead squirrel. And, a lot of dudes in mesh shirts. Also, about half the cars here have the steering wheel on the right side -- I guess because Japan is relatively close. Also, it is hot as hell here. I'm trying to remain calm, but I'm really sweaty and did not pack the right clothes for 90+ degrees. I guess that's what I get for basing my expectations of summer Siberian weather on winter Siberian weather plus a book I once read about Rasputin.

The Big Lake

Irkutsk (it's on the Risk board) is the closest biggish city to Lake Baikal, which is the world's largest (by volume) and deepest freshwater lake. It has more water than all the Great Lakes combined; take that, HOMES. Fresh off the 50+ hour train ride from Irkutsk (we're halfway across Siberia now!), we bought our next set of train tickets (whine), got in a fight with a taxi driver, and took an hourlong bus/crowded van ride to Listvyanka, which is right on the lake. A rough-ish couple of hours, but entirely worth it. The windows on the bus/crowded van opened, a big upgrade from previous buses/crowded ven I've been on, and as we got closer to the lake the wind got cold, even though it was really hot outside. Listvyanka is hot, but when the wind blows the right way it feels like you're standing in front of a very powerful air conditiner. Not surprisingly, the lake itself is freezing. I whined and shivered and contorted myself just putting my feet in the water, and couldn't keep them in very long because it hurt too much. Also, Lake Baikal has this mist or fog or something that makes it really hard to tell, even on a clear day, where the lake ends and the sky begins; it almost looks like the boats are floating. The bad thing about the area around the lake is the bugs. There are these huge swarming hornet-y bugs that are basically the size of your head, and flies at least twice the size of the deer flies in Michigan that will bite through your shirt. Yikes.

Listvyanka is basically one road that runs along the lake and has some hotels and some fish restaurants. If you walk on the main road past the last fish restaurant you'll be at the edge of town, which is really the quintessential edge of town. There is a big rusty overturned boat on the side of the lake, and car parts strewn about, and abandoned buildings with broken windows and graffiti and unhinged doors. It's exactly the kind of place where you imagine the bad kids go to drink and smoke. Except that I think they can do that basically anywhere here.