Where East Becomes West

* Last winter, Russian Life sent St. Petersburg writer Ilya Stogoff on a two week trip to the Russian Far East. He produced four dispatches from his travels that will run in this and coming issues of the magazine. Stogoff is one of Russia’s most famous travel journalists. His work, known for its no-nonsense, stacatto style of writing, is published in many of the country’s leading glossy magazines and has led to several successful books. But this is the first time his travel writing has appeared in English (translated by Paul Richardson). Stogoff’s anti-romantic views of travel in Russia today are as entertaining as they are eye-opening. 

 

1. 

 

I woke early. It was not even nine. I lay in bed with my eyes closed. 

I washed up, then walked to the store to buy myself some breakfast, but the store was closed. At a stall I bought myself a Choco-Pie.

I kissed my wife and kids, and my wife a second time. Then I went out into the courtyard, which was revoltingly familiar. I crossed it in a few steps.

The end point of my itinerary was Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky. The very edge of Asia. Shore of the Pacific. A place eight thousand kilometers from home.

As I walked through my courtyard in the morning, I realized that there it was already late at night. I don’t have any idea if they sell Choco-Pies in stalls there. Or if there are stalls there at all.

 

 

2.

 

St. Petersburg’s Pulkovo airport was empty.

There were endless rows of chairs. Passengers talked in low voices. Every 10 minutes a loud voice came over the P.A. system to offer some news.

On the wall hung the last available pay phones. I could have picked up a phone and talked with my wife. I had left my cell  phone at home. Even if there were mobile services in the distant regions I was traveling to, roaming charges would be so high that it would be simpler to just keep quiet for awhile.

Check in went without any fuss. Security attentively probed the seams of my clothing. They even leafed through my notebook. Then they wished me a pleasant flight. I did not bother saying “thank you.”

Security was polite but attentive. Everyone on Earth is afraid of terrorists these days. Even when boarding a flight bound for Kamchatka. Personally, I was much less worried about terrorists than about the condition of “Aeroflot technology.”

I remember how, a few years ago, I took a trip to Rome. The flight was, as usual, late. First just a little. Then splendidly so. The Italians tried to revolt. It was explained to them that the plane was not ready, yet they kept on arguing.

In the end, the Aeroflot staffers gave in and let everyone get on board the plane. Then they tried to start up the plane. It vibrated like a broken motorcycle – its entire body quaked and moaned as if it clearly had no interest in starting up.

We sat silently on the airplane for the next four hours.

The quieted Italians were wide-eyed. They no longer had any interest in arguing.

3.

 

The Tu-154 was crowded and I was claustrophobic, smashed in between the window and a fleshy Kamchatkan guy in a fur hat and thick coat. He was almost sitting in my lap. Wisps of hair hung from his nose.

The stewardesses reminded us that cell phones and notebook computers had to be turned off during take-off. My ears plugged up even before we left the ground. I hate that feeling.

The lights were extinguished in the cabin as the plane halted for just a second, then sharply tore away and upward. The clouds engulfed us immediately. In order not to look out the window, I leaned my seat back and closed my eyes. 

I began to think, of course, about how there, where I was flying to, Soviet troops shot down a South Korean Boeing in 1982. Several hundred people died. And, in 1999, a Russian Il-96 thundered straight into a residential district of Irkutsk. Several hundred people died.

Whenever one flies, one’s mind always wanders toward something of this nature. You are squeezed into an aluminum saucepan, suspended at a height of 11 thousand kilometers over a frozen landscape, and you begin to conclude that you have lived your life the wrong way, that you have wasted time on things not worth wasting it on ... 

Then you land. The soles of your feet touch the earth and you cannot believe yourself: “Lord! Was I really thinking about all that nonsense?”

 

 

 

4.

 

Siberia can be divided up into several sections. More exactly, into three large sections. From the Urals to the Yenisey, you have Western Siberia. From the Yenisey to the Lena – Eastern Siberia. And from the Lena to the Pacific is the Far East.

I was flying to the farthest edge of the Far East – to Kamchatka. 

To residents of European Russia, everything beyond the Urals is dull and underpopulated, an indistinctive patch. Siberia. Huge, cold, and entirely uninteresting. An almost uninhabited expanse, frozen solid a kilometer below the surface.

Any reasonable person can understand the difference between Moscow and St. Petersburg. But no one can understand if such differences exist between the separate regions of Siberia. Meanwhile, the territory of almost any Siberian region is large enough to encompass not simply Belgium and France, but all of Europe. The area of a republic like Yakutia is almost half the size of the continental United States.

Meanwhile, basically no one lives there. In the entire Far East, from Alaska to Japan, there are barely one-fourth the number of souls who inhabit the area of St. Petersburg where I live.

 

 

 

5.

 

Since the airplane was flying from West to East, I had the impression that I would arrive only tomorrow. And that, before we landed, we should pass through night.

Of course, for me, night would only be a couple of hours long. Midnight would come, we would descend and it would immediately be noon the following day.

The border between night and day was clearly visible. Night was not black, but violet. If I pressed my cheek to the window and peered forward, then it was still dark there. Behind us was the sun and sunlit clouds.

Sliding down the aisle, the stewardesses merchandised what, on European flights they give out for free. What sold best were old newspapers and crossword puzzle books. 

As we flew over the border of Europe and Asia and began to drop off into our dreams, the stewardesses began to hand out dinner, spoiling everything. I will not spend a lot of time describing the dinner. I will say only that the main course was buckwheat kasha with peas. It is easy enough to imagine such a dish, no?

Alcohol is not allowed on internal flights. Nonetheless, Siberians do not object. They agreed: they themselves knew they could not be trusted.

To fly from Petersburg to Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky takes more than 13 hours. Therefore, the plane must be rested and refueled en route. Five hours after take-off, we began to descend for a stopover in Krasnoyarsk.

The plane window was completely black. Just a few points of light. They seemed to be stars and two electrical lights on the ground. But maybe all four were stars. Or all four electric lights.

Then, below us, a lighted city appeared. I rarely fly at night, and I had never before seen a city from above at night. It was quite a beautiful and unique sight. It was probably least similar of all things to a city at night from above.

Right before we landed, my fleshy neighbor finally took off his fur hat. He was bald.

 

 

 

6.

 

It was -14o C in Krasnoyarsk. The time difference with Petersburg is four hours. In other words, at home it was nearly evening, but here: the depth of night.

The terminal had been built in the middle of a snowy Siberian field. The smoking section was outside. The men put down their bags inside, separated themselves from their children, quickly ran outside to inhale their nicotine and then burrowed back inside.

The inside of the terminal turned out to be not so bad. It was a decent renovation. Soft blue couchettes. On the couch closest to the exit, a huge Siberian guy lay sprawled with a cell phone in one hand and a bottle of Miller beer in the other. For some reason, his pants were undone.

Further on was a bar and a book kiosk with the damnable Harry Potter and women’s paperback detective novels. I was the only person who visited the book kiosk.

There were four tables in the bar. At one, a girl sat, eating ice cream. At the other three, guys were using glasses to empty liter bottles of vodka. Under the sign that read “No Smoking” was a crowd of men with cigarettes. A police officer in uniform stood among them.

The radio was blaring:

I want to love

Someone like Putin: full of strength!

Someone like Putin, who does not drink!

To simply sit in the terminal would have been boring. I decided to buy a bottle of mineral water in the bar.

In line in front of me stood a fellow in camouflage pants.

“Is there juice?”

“There is.”

A long pause. In these parts, hurrying is not approved of.

“And is there apple? I need to sort myself out.”

“There is apple.”

“I need to sort myself out.”

“Pour the juice?” 

“Yes. Juice. Apple. And vodka. 250 grams.”

“250?”

“Can you get 250 in a glass? If not, then just do 200.”

The girl poured the drinks out into old earthenware cups with gnawed edges. The guy did not hurry, but gulped loudly, drinking down the vodka, then took a sip of juice and thought for a long time.

“Something else?”

“I told the guys: ‘I have to fly, you know! On a plane! But there was no stopping them!’”

“Something else?”

“Yes. Juice.”

“How much?”

“A cup. And a bit of vodka.”

“250 again?”

“Does 250 fit in a cup? If not, then do 200.”

The girl poured another 250 grams of vodka into his cup. The guy did not hurry to drink it down. Then he smiled sheepishly, wiped the bridge of his nose, laid his money down and, scraping the soles of his shoes, went outside for a smoke.

 

 

7.

 

The Russians began their Siberian Conquest late. The Spanish had already conquered the New World. The British pirate Sir Francis Drake had already sailed to California. But the Russians were still hunkered down on the shores of the Volga, fearing raids by the Tatars.

The first of the Russians to breach the border with Asia was Yermak. His Cossack troops carried a few ships overland through the Ural mountains and, two years later, were completely annihilated by local tribesmen. Yet a start had been made.

After 1600, detachments of 10-20 Russian soldiers began venturing ever further eastward. If one out of ten who left for Siberia returned alive, that was good. And the one who returned was set up for life.

Spanish conquistadors siphoned gold out of America. The subjugators of Siberia brought back valuable furs from their campaigns. The business was fantastically profitable. Even in 1994, a sable fur fetched more than $100 at Moscow fur auctions. So imagine what it was back then!

The technique for conquering Siberia was simple. Having reached their destination, the Cossacks declared the local population taxpayers of the Moscow autocrat and ordered the payment of tribute in skins, which were more valuable than gold.

Some of the tribes refused to pay and killed the strangers. This was unwise, because new strangers soon replaced the old, and they still ended up having to pay.

The fur fever drove the Russians further and further east. It was staggering how quickly unconquered territory was seized. The Cossacks needed just 40 years to reach the Pacific Ocean from the Urals.

True enough, progress does not stand still. My Tu-154 surmounted this same distance in just 13 hours.

 

 

8.

 

I somehow fell asleep on the plane. I succeeded in sleeping all of 40 minutes. When I woke, there was an unbounded styrofoam surface outside the window. Perhaps tundra, perhaps frozen ocean.

Overtaking the sun halfway through the trip, the plane turned out to be already in tomorrow. Ice stretched on all sides with no visible edge. It shone so brightly that it hurt the eyes. It seemed as if it began a meter below the plane.

I was already sick of the book I brought from home. I began to simply look out the window. It was a bit uncomfortable, however, insofar as my nose was smashed against the back of the seat in front of me.

The stewardesses distributed breakfast. Remembering how dinner looked, I smiled to the girls and said I was not hungry. Truthfully, I did drink some coffee. It was disgusting.

Then, finally, the light went on behind the “No Smoking, Fasten Your Seatbelts” sign. I had the feeling I had left home several years ago. Had I really bought myself the Choco-Pie just this morning?

During the stopover in Krasnoyarsk, the plane’s crew had been changed. The current pilot flew the plane as if it were a motorcycle, sharply banking the curves. He jerked the wheel and the plane shook.

Then we plunged beneath the clouds together. It seemed like it was a very grey, sullen day. I craned my neck and looked downward out the window. Kamchatka seemed to be black and white, like an old television broadcast.

The volcanoes began immediately under where the clouds ended. The earth, like Arnold Schwarzenegger, reddened and strained under pressure, its muscles bulging and hardened. Black trees sprouted from the volcanoes, white with snow.

Beneath the volcanoes began the harbor, where little toy ships puttered.

Volcanoes and the Pacific Ocean. I wondered where they could have possibly squeezed in a landing strip. The airplane tried to hover in the sky, to stand on its wing, turning in the narrowest of possible worlds.

Finally, the plane touched down and, like an airplane landing on an aircraft carrier, came to a sudden stop. Outside were a couple of military planes and some helicopters. 

The stewardesses walked down the aisles, warning:

“Get out your passports. Border control is at the exit of the plane.”

The border control turned out to be rather simple. A fat major of the Border Guard leafed through passports, not even looking at their owners. Soon he tired of this, however, spit on the ground and headed back to the commandant’s building.

 

 

9.

 

There were no indulgences here, like, say, a skyway or a bus to take passengers to the terminal. The airplane was simply driven a close to the exit of the airport, and passengers walked down the stairway and headed toward the city.

I left the same way.

Of course, a crowd of taxi drivers stood about the exit gates, longing to heat themselves up at the expense of befuddled tourists. It is impossible to arrive in an unfamiliar city and not dump into these vultures’ pockets five times what locals pay.

In the square in front of the airport was a huge billboard: “Matches contain fire! Leave them be!”

I did not have any idea where to go, where to find a hotel, or how much to pay for a ride in a local cab. But I was ready to pay.

No one came running up to me. No one took me by the arm or looked me in the eye to ingratiate themselves. The taxisty looked around indifferently, as if there were not averse to me walking off with their money in my pocket. Strange.

I rode into the city in a Korean jeep. A silent Kamchatkan sat behind the wheel. I had asked how much the ride would cost, and he, not even opening his lips, mumbled that it would be $7. We set off.

I was in my second day without sleep. I had endured the previous 14 hours in an uncomfortable airplane seat. My eyes were gummed up. I fumbled for a cigarette.

“Do you allow smoking in your car?”

“Smoke. Me, I quit. But I used to smoke. Time was, at night, I would take refuge in the bathroom and smoke two cigarettes just sitting there reading. So go ahead, smoke!” 

From the airport to the city was about a half-hour ride. The driver bemoaned the fact that there were no longer rich people in the region. In the years of Soviet power, he said, sailors tossed money about, leaving huge tips as they drove girls around.

But now the fleet was being sold to China as scrap metal. Not a single enterprise is functioning. There are no rich people left.

Billboards along the road earnestly proclaimed: 

“Always lunch with us!”

“Buy staples!”

The city itself was grey and single-storied. I told the taxi-driver that I needed an inexpensive hotel. “Inexpensive as in cheap, you understand?” The driver nodded.

He stopped his jeep in front of a grey, windowless box. On the façade was a sign, “Hotel Edelweiss.”

“Wait for me here. I’ll find out how much it costs and come back. Perhaps I won’t like their prices. Then you can take me to another hotel. Good?”

The driver nodded. I got out of the car and rung the Edelweiss’ doorbell for a long time. By a long time, I mean about 10 minutes.

A tall, pretty woman opened the door. She smiled silently.

“I would like a room. Do you have a room?”

A long pause, then:

“Yes.”

“How much is it?”

The woman continued to stand silently. Just when I thought that she simply had no desire to speak to me, she finally began to answer. In time, I understood that such long pauses were the normal order of things here. It is simply that, before opening their mouths, Kamchatkans need to think a bit.

A berth in a general, six-bed room inside the concrete box cost $25 a night. There was a toilet and shower nearby, on the same floor. Hot water was provided with some regularity: twice a day, an hour in the morning, an hour in the evening. For guests, there were pretty girls.

The last sentence was too much. It was pronounced with the same official smile as all the rest. I returned to the car and told the driver to take me to another hotel.

 

 

10.

 

An hour later, I was sitting in the buffet of the Hotel Geyser. The buffet was open, but the service person was gone. I wanted to drink a bit of coffee and simply waited until she returned.

Outside the window lay Avachinsky bay. On the bar shelf were local vodkas in grimy bottles. It was hard to see the bay, but the vodka was clearly visible.

A room in the Geyser cost $18. There was no hot water at all. In return, no one offered me girls.

I had the impression that I was the hotel’s only guest. Shaggy Kamchatkan hounds lounged around the reception counter, paying no attention to humans.

The buffet waitress finally returned.

“I would like a bit of coffee.”

“Oi. We don’t have any coffee.”

“Not any?”

“Oi. Not any.”

“Well, is there somewhere nearby, a café, which sells coffee?”

“Oi. There is a summer café nearby, but it is closed.”

“Closed? When does it open?”

“Oi. It opens in summer! But you know, summer is a rarity here.”

“No coffee. No café with sells coffee. So what do you have?”

“Oi. We have pastries. Korean. They are called ‘Choco-Pie.’” 

Lord, why did I ever leave home?