What I Learned In Russia Today (Part I)…

(Composed in the air en route to Russia – 11:00am May 3^rd)

It’s Technically All Downhill

My bags fully packed and four hours till departure, I sat on my bed across from Marc and Eddie. It was one of those bittersweet moments where the inevitable goodbye hangs in the air. We spoke of the week we had had and the pleasure of each other’s company. Eddie asked where my remaining time would take me. “Novosibirsk south into western Mongolia, east to Ulaanbaatar, then south again to Beijing. I guess it’s technically all downhill from here,” I replied. We laughed at the downhill part and as the words hung in the air I kind of grinned. It was in fact true. From Novo it’s all downhill, it’s all south. In fact it’s all Eastbound and Down (Kenny Powers should join me on this final stretch). With that I stood up and the goodbyes commenced. A handshake to Eddie and a hug to Marc. We wished each other happy, prosperous, and long lives. I raised my camera and walked out of room #50. 

Only twice in my life have I intentionally spent the night on an airport terminal bench, and if I ever have to do it again I hope it’s as comfortable as last night in Kazakhstan’s Astana International Airport. Around 1 o’clock I brushed my teeth, chained my bag to my bench, and set the alarm for 7am. As that pretty much brings me up to present, allow me to ramble…

As anyone who knows me well can attest, I’m a pretty sentimental guy. I tell people I love them when sober and suffer the occasional off-season allergy attack right at the moment when close friend walk down the aisle. It also means I get retrospective more often than I probably should. Standing in line on the sunny morning tarmac not two hours, about to take my final step on Kazakh soil, I felt for the first time that this great journey was nearing its conclusion. Even as the hourglass got bottom heavy with countries, I always knew there’d be central Asia and Mongolia to round things out. And now, with exactly thirty-eight day remaining, there is but one giant swathe of Asia to cross. And I truly feel like I’m running down the home stretch, like I’m running down hill. This feeling stems in no small part from the fact that I am literally on the home stretch, but more so from the personal reflections I find myself routinely having on the war chest of experiences accumulated in such a short chunk of life. What’s nine months? In the grand scheme of things nine months is nothing; a hockey season, a pregnancy. But when I reflect back on all that’s transpired, the twists & turns, the highs & lows, the let downs & surprises, I realize I’ve already far exceeded any expectations and fulfilled all aspirations. That’s a feeling which means everything that happens in Russia and Mongolia is nothing more than extra gravy.

It hit me while savoring my final moment on the Kazakh tarmac this morning. It hit me while I repeated the same action and felt the same emotion as on a Vietnamese, Thai, and Nepalese tarmac months earlier. Each time it’s the same…one final toe on the ground to savor the place you come to know…one final breath of foreign air to celebrate the laughter you shared. Then you duck your head into the cabin to start the whole process over again in a new place with new land, new air, and new people.

What ultimately hit me was the comfort that regardless how these next 38 days play out in numbers 13 and 14 I’m already going to be smiling for years to come at how it went down over the first 234 in numbers 1 thru 12.

 

(Remember kids.) 

(So long KZ…)

 (…Greetings RU)

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(Composed on the ground in Tomsk – 9:00pm May 4^rd)

The Great Discovery of the Russian Leg

DISCLAIMER: I’m throwing the word Russian around here in the most general of terms. My observations thus far on the world’s largest country are through the perspective of a provincial Siberian city. You might as well substitute the word Tomsk for Russia, or else it’s like reading a single page of War & Peace and waxing on about the entire novel….or spending 72 hours in Daytona and slamming the whole of America. That said…

Russian women are beautiful.

Russian women have attractive faces.

Russian women have remarkably long legs.

Russian women adhere to a strict uniform of knee-high boots, heels, thigh-high mini-skirts & tight jeans.

If the women of Russia were nuclear warheads the Cold War would have been lost decades ago.

I was undoubtedly a tourist today. I walked out of the Hotel Sputnik (true story) into a brilliant blue, albeit chilly, late Tuesday morning with nothing but a jacket, sunglasses, and camera (not even pants). With a map in one pocket and my crib notes of basic Russian tongue in the other, I set off on foot to see what this little country was all about. What I found quickly and unexpectedly put me on my ass. The women. Not since a weekend in New York or a late Sunday afternoon on the Purple Patio have I witnessed such an overwhelming collection of leggy bombshells. And they’re everywhere! I equate my experience today to taking a Russian male to America and dropping him on Franklin Street in Chapel Hill without any warning of what he might find.

I was cautiously expecting good things from the city of Tomsk based on Lonely Planet’s write up, which is why I grabbed an immediate five hour bus after landing in dreary industrial Novosibirsk. The log cabin-style wooden homes, numerous cathedrals, and meandering Tom River do give Tomsk a warm and inviting appeal, but so far the star attraction has been the plethora of bangs-sporting beauties that seem to float down every street and alleyway. All embellishment aside, every fifth or sixth Russian female strutting these streets wears high-heel boots and flashes a good 6” of skin above the knee cap. And their faces…stunning. From the neck up they all look like the tall blonde baddie from the original Beverly Hills Cop II. Axel Foley would indeed enjoy himself here.

Around 7pm I made my way to the train station where I proudly managed to purchase a ticket to Barnaul. I sat down to decipher my purchase when in walked an early twenties 6’1” knockout rocking jet black short hair, boots, and a black mini skirt not more than a foot long (I know because I measured). In a day of discoveries, she was Tut’s Tomb. I was pleasantly overwhelmed but completely perplexed. All the flesh wouldn’t be so surprising if not for two things: 1). The fact there are no leaves on the trees and chunks of ice still float down the Tom River. Spring is just beginning to rear its head, yet it’s still cold. The trees haven’t begun to bud, the grass is still brown, and a jacket is mandatory. Yet despite this the femme fatales of Tomsk, bless their red little Russian hearts, don’t seem to mind. You know who else doesn’t seem to mind? Me. 2). The fact I’m in western Siberia in the largest country in the world. I mean this isn’t Moscow or St. Petersburg or some European Russian town. This is Siberia. What are the chances of hitting this kind of pay dirt on my first day out? Either Tomsk is an anomaly or Russia might just have the hottest population on Earth.

Either way I look forward to getting to the bottom of this leggy mystery.

(Mickey Rourke?)

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(Composed on the ground in Tomsk – 8:00pm May 5^rd)

!Viva La Puebla! 

Russia scared me from the first moment I laid eyes on it. Breaking through the clouds, the grimness of industrial Novosibirsk from 3,000ft put the fear of God in me. What had I really gotten myself into here? I remember thinking how different I felt flying into Shanghai. I felt a physical superiority to the Chinese which put me at ease from the start. Russia was different though. These people drank vodka, endured endless winter, carried knives, and trained Ivan Drago. The stern immigration officer who boarded and inspected our plane, along with three drug dogs that sniffed my carry on, didn’t help my pulse. So I took a breath and set off to tackle my slightly intimidating To Do list:

• Day 1: Clear immigration, locate bus station, endure five hour bus to Tomsk, secure lodging, and shower. Check, check, check, check, check (twice).
• Day 2: Register visa, secure currency, purchase onward train ticket, secure onward lodging, explore city. Check, check, check, check, check.  
• Day 3: Observe & engage Cold War foe, enjoy authentic Russian meal, solve leggy mystery…

Observe & engage Cold War foe…

• There is a stark contrast on the streets between what I’ll call New Russia and the Soviet Hangover. You have the designer sunglass, spandex legging, and makeup wearing youth on one side, and the hardened faced, conservatively dressed, aging ex-Soviet population on the other. Did I say stark? Stark.

 

• They like their paperwork. I’ve had to stay in two separate hotels already and between registration at both and payment receipts I may have to invest in a Trapper Keeper. 
• The crone at the bottle shop apparently doesn’t celebrate Cinco de Mayo and didn’t think it humorous when I substituted Yo soy Americano, no hablao Ruski for Ya iz America, ya nyet gavaryu pa Ruski. (Christ, I’m like tri-lingual and stuff). I’m yet to find humor or a smile in the older generation.  

Enjoy authentic Russian meal…

I found a gem of a restaurant and after fumbling with the menu scored a huge food victory:

• “Herring under a fur coat” – herring, boiled potato, carrot, beet, egg, onion, lettuce
• Borsch – beef soup with sour cream
• Pelmeni – ravioli dumplings with pork and mushroom

Solve leggy mystery…

I’m not at the bottom of this yet but its clear Tomsk suffers from the Vermont Syndrome. Despite being a tad early and a tad too cold to sensibly embrace spring, you just do because they’ve been trapped inside an Arctic winter since October. As the southeast Asian motto goes…”Russia and Vermont…same same…but different.”

Are the mini-skirts, boots, and heels just a Tuesday thing or is there some sort of promotion? Are the legs bused in daily from some nearby camp or do they live here? Is the rest of Russia like this? Since I can’t ask questions in their native tongue, I did what D. Rose would do and set out first to document this phenomenon. I found a vantage point and set up my lens, like a sniper in bell tower. Some might call it perverted, but I like to call it filmmaking with an eye for talent.

Oh my, what will I learn tomorrow in a 3^rd class overnight Russian train car?