Three crazy Australians find themselves in the late morning taking turns with the photo opportunity at the mile marker statue on the Vladivostok train platform. We have the place to ourselves and take the time to get a few different photos each. The ritual is complete; the journey is at its formal end. With every passing hour, I feel less and less ready to let it end. I want to find a way to keep going. There is a party tonight with fellow Couchsurfers and then in the morning Lari and I will board a plane for Moscow. As we’re walking across the road from the train station to another pivnaya of the Republic Bar franchise, I notice that the statue of Lenin is particularly heavily covered in pigeon poo. I wonder if it’s ever been cleaned, or left to decay as the monument to an idea that time has passed by.

 

After a few beers we decide to visit the southwest peninsula of the city and soon find ourselves on a marshrutka climbing a hill. We are on our way to the lighthouse on the tip of the mainland that guides boats into the golden horn bay. When we’re halfway there a light drizzling rain begins to gently soak the city. We never actually find the lighthouse we’re looking for, but we do find a small piece of parkland atop a high hill overlooking another bay. There’s a middle aged couple sitting on the park bench with the best view sharing their lunchtime in what seems a tender moment under an umbrella. While Don is taking photos of a small dog sheltering in the rain shadow of a small statue, I receive a message from someone called Andrei. Apparently he’s a friend of Natie’s who’s just arrived from Moscow and is looking to meet some fellow travellers. We agree to meet to find some lunch once we get around to catching a bus back down to the city. We search a little more for the lighthouse and then decide we’re hungry enough to jump on the marshrutka.

As we’re waiting for it to arrive I notice there’s something strange about a part of the apartment block across the road from us. It looks like the small metal building they attach to the ground floor to house the hydronic heating plant. However, it’s been painted and sculptured to look like a full size prime mover emerging from the side of the building at speed. I smile in happy amazement at this fantastic piece of urban art and I wonder how they had permission to do it. Thirty minutes later we’re greeting a young Russian guy beneath the huge trumpeter statue in the main square of Vladivostok.

We explain to him that we’re heading for a Georgian restaurant mentioned in one of our guidebooks to try and have Bozbashi soup one last time. After asking in a couple of hotels on the way where it is exactly, we finally climb the stairs to the third floor and find a middle aged woman sitting in an empty restaurant. She assures us they are open and brings us menus. My last dive into bozbashi soup gloriousness is divine. Accompanied by fresh lavash bread, I savour every mouthful of this grand culinary discovery of my Russian adventure. I want to get some of the Georgian wine, however wisdom prevails and we decide we had better leave very soon to have time to find Natie and get to the meeting.

Andrei heads back to his hostel to change and we meet Natie later at the chinese dumpling café we had visited on our first day. With her is a polish couple, an English guy, Tim, and her best friend Svetlana. The first three have just arrived today and are joining us for tonight’s meetup. Svetlana works with Natie at the men’s magazine, where the two of them are the main writers. As we work through the menu and order an array of different dumplings again, the polish guy places a portable sound recorder in the middle of the table and lets it run for a while to catch the conversations. He is a sound engineer, and certainly looks it since he’s dressed in the uniform black t-shirt, black denim jeans and black long, unkempt hair. He likes to record soundscapes to mix together later as a part of a musical sideproject he’s doing. Capturing the group speaking different languages with the background hum of conversation in a busy café is perfection. I wonder what he will mix together from this madness, but keep being distracted by Svetlana. Another Russian beauty, with brown hair tinged red, cheeky green eyes and cheekbones you just want to touch to feel their line. I manage to resist the urge and the group works their way through the bamboo steamer trays filled with delicious dumplings. They taste so good, they just have to be bad for you – but the tiger beer washes it down neatly.

We emerge onto the main square again and head towards the meetup location. On the way Natie takes us for a distracting walk through some alleys joining two main streets. She wants us to see another side of the city, urban decay set behind the façade of a modern city. One building is three stories high and the bare concrete walls have largely lost the whitewash that once covered them. Some patches remain interspersed with green mould, lending texture to the overall image of a building that nobody cares for anymore. The balconies seem to be slabs of brickwork laid on their side and an array of weeds grow from their edges. They grow nestled into the gaps in the mortar; nature is already reclaiming this ground. A single window has a planter box growing flowers, it seems like some small attempt to reclaim the decay and impose some human order again. It is completely overwhelmed by the random graffiti tags added to most of the concrete surfaces. Someone has taken time to paint a man and woman on each of a pair of doors on the lowest level. They are dressed formally and gaze into each other’s eyes with his arms wrapped around her waist lovingly. The pair are set admist a blue sky background complete with a white cloud above them. I wonder who added this wonderful touch and I marvel at the hopes and dreams that thrive in barren landscapes.

The pathway leads away from this building towards the remnants of on older victim of such neglect. Only the walls of the ground level brickwork remain, along with some higher sections that suggest there used to be at least another floor above it. Weeds flourish within the enclosed section, providing a vibrant green counter to the red bricks. There are two buildings next to it that share the same architecture and I wonder if they were was demolished or collapsed at some point. I decide based on the surrounding area that nobody would have paid to knock it down; they have just let the disintegration happen and it has all returned to the wild. There is actually a half full skip tilted on an angle by the other refuse gathered underneath it. Even the bin has been thrown on the pile of detritus. Ideas of environmental care seem another generation away, but at least the environment is already reclaiming this corner of the city.

I am reminded of a conversation I had with my brother’s father in law about this, he asked me how long I thought it would take for a city to be completely reclaimed by nature. Then he proposed that someone should build one and then desert it to measure how long it takes for the natural world to recover dominance. I think of the myriad of ruined cities already around the world that have been buried in sand, torn apart by tree roots and swallowed by forest. Most of them have been deserted for many hundreds of years or longer, but I think left untended it would happen quite quickly. He thought about fifty years would be the limit without human intervention. I have to agree with his logic; plants always grow wherever they can. Moulds, lichens and then small shrubs break up the concrete first to allow larger ones to thrive. With the plants come animals that dig, burrow and permanently chip away the veneer of engineered construction; turning it into an artificial rockface. They say civilisation is only three square meals away from anarchy; even the largest city is only a generation away from becoming an ancient overgrown temple to money.

As we walk into the Evolution bar I see Lukasz’s smiling face sitting at the end of a long table and Don and I make straight for him.
“Hey Dhugal! What is this? Everywhere I go in Russia you keep turning up?!?”
“Yes, I’m following you…your government pays me well.”
“Do they give you plenty of vodka?”
“Of course, we will find more here I think!”
“Good! …they have good Ukrainian vodka on the menu.”

We settle down and check it out, the place turns out to be another pivnaya, so we order some more of their own beers to wash down the vodka. Don orders something that I think is spinach in a cream sauce, but when it arrives it is an oval shaped green lump in the middle of the plate. Stefan has invited a bunch of people who were on a tour with him that morning, including the tour guide – a middle aged Ukrainian woman. I end up explaining to her all about Couchsurfing and she says she will join in the morning she loves the idea so much. Natie sees me getting a few pictures of people along the table and looks at me with her big brown eyes and mews,
“I can be cute too you know…hold the camera here and take the picture.”
The resultant photo still makes me lose some part of my heart to this lovely lady. Don, Lukasz and I are now picking a random fourth person from the table to join each round of vodka shots. There are now about twenty people along its length and we try to move around a bit, to at least say hello to everyone and share a laugh. Dasha is another local host who turns out to be another awesome troublemaker in all the good ways. She has just been camping for the last few days outside Vladivostok with some other Couchsurfers.
“So is there really only one Russian language across the whole country?” I suddenly remember to ask.
“Well, there’s one language yes. Some of the native people have different ones, but even that’s been discouraged by the government over time.”
“And only one accent?”
“No…no…not at all. People from western Russian accent words differently. They have more of an ‘Oh’ sound in words and we have more of an ‘Ah’.”
I nod slowly, enjoying Dasha’s sagelike status more by the minute. We are busy taking silly photos of the pair of us when Svetlana comes down to join us. She stands under some hanging lights that gives her a strange halo. We decide it must be time to leave the bar and head for tonight’s Russian outdoor café.

Natie, Andrei, Tim (the English guy) and I head for the closest shop for some supplies while Dasha and everyone else stroll to a grassy hill that overlooks the entrance to the golden horn. Natie finally manages to pay for something by distracting me at the right moment.
“You sneaky Russian!” I tell her, laughing.
She agrees and her smile grows even wider. We wander to find the others and discover them sitting along a concrete garden edge enjoying the view. Lukasz has picked a bunch of flowers and put them in his hair for some reason, I’m sure vodka makes everything seem reasonable.

“So what do you think about New Zealand?” I ask Dasha.
“Oh it must be a lovely place! So warm and comfortable”, she says, confirming my worst fears.
“Why do all of you think that? It’s not warm and the weather is severe, you’re describing Australia. Why would you think New Zealand is warm? It’s further south!” I implore.
“But……but everything is warmer when it’s further south!”, she explains, then pauses, thinking about it.
“But it is closer to the South Pole, which is very cold I think”, she continues thinking out loud, “I think we’re just so used to south meaning warm that we think New Zealand must be incredibly warm.”
I stop and blink several times. It makes so much sense. I can’t believe she’s just given me the answer. I give her a hug in my sudden happiness at finding it.
“It’s in textbooks here as well”, I add, remembering Vortex Yulia’s example from Novosibirsk.
“Oh yes…. at school it’s always New Zealand”, Dasha agrees.
“I wonder how many Russians have moved there and discovered the truth”, I ponder aloud before concluding, “Actually, after the Russian winter and government, New Zealand would be a kind of utopia.”

The conversation drifts from being in Russian to English as your attention moves around the group. I am warm and happy sitting on this hill in Vladivostok and the Travelling Wilbury’s tune ‘End of the Line’ is running through my head. We acquire some plastic cups to have some more vodka here and we share many shots with our Russian friends in a farewell gesture. Slowly we lose the locals who have to work in the morning as each one staggers off into the night. Natie pushes us to break up and catch the Russian people’s taxis home. When the four of us arrive back at Natie’s place we are all tired and more than a little pissed. I set up my portable speakers in the kitchen where we’re sitting and put on ‘End of the Line’. We all build our beds one last time and sink into a vodka soaked oblivion.

Morning comes suddenly and without warning. Natie is getting ready for work as I’m furiously finishing the packing I was going to do the day before. I pick out all her presents; an aussie stubbie cooler or two with full colour pictures on them, a pair of shot glasses, little clip on Koalas and a stuffed kangaroo. Lari adds a few cakes of the handmade soap and I also give her the inflatable pillow she liked. We have a brief argument on who is actually cuter; she certainly is, but seems to be suffering some doubt on the topic. I thank her for such a great time in Vladivostok and a great end to my journey across the country. I want to pack her in my case to bring her home; she’s just too good to leave behind like this. She calls for a taxi and then has to leave for work, so I give her one last big hug and tell her she has to come find me soon in Australia to enjoy a real summer. Lari and I shift everything downstairs. I give Don a huge hug and thank him for being a part of the Russian adventure. We will have this to talk about for the rest of our days and both of us vow to return to this addictive country soon. The taxi arrives and we make our way to the airport.

Check-in is quick and painless and I try to find a notebook and a pen in a newsagent I can see. We have a nine hour flight back to Moscow and I want to spend it writing. I find a lovely little notebook with a picture of teddy bear holding a love heart on its cover. I take a moment to write “Россия” inside the heart with a permanent marker before we board the Aeroflot 747 that will carry us back across the country.

I had actually made a point of getting this flight back on Aeroflot to test out the vicious rumours about the quality of aircraft and service they provide. The aircraft is quite new and the service when we first board is much the same as any international airline. It’s not until later in the flight that we return to genuine Russian service. Once lunch is over, it’s impossible to bring anyone with the alert buttons. Lari settles in to try and sleep a little and I spend a few hours writing feverishly, trying to catch this feeling. A few hours pass until I notice that a bunch of people around me are drinking from real glass half bottles of scotch. I decide to see what else they have on board and venture to the back of the plane. I find myself acquiring a half bottle of Glenfiddich 12 year old scotch. Much to the disdain of scotch lovers around the world, I mix it with Pepsi. Well, I would prefer dry ginger ale, but they don’t have any.

Primorskiy kray, Russia

The next morning Lari sends me a message telling me that Don has fallen sick, some kind of flu that makes him feel like lying down for a day or two.  I do still wonder if this is just his natural reaction to a Monday.  I also discover that I will be enjoying the genuine Russian experience of not having any hot water in the apartment.  When I mention it with a smile to Natie as I’m waiting for the kettle to boil, she tells me this is a very normal part of life in Vladivostok.
“You know there’s a famous rhyme about the city?”
She goes on to tell it to me in Russian, before translating.
“It translates as something like ‘If there’s no power from your power points and no water in your pipes, then you’re not far from Vladivostok’.”
I smile then frown at the idea.
“So shortages are that common?”

“Oh yes, we have very bad ones.  One time we didn’t have enough water or power for years because of arguments between politicians and businesses.  They fight and we suffer.  So every local finds ways to use less water and we have to go without heating sometimes in the middle of winter.  I can easily wash my whole body with just one kettle of water and some clever tricks”, she boasts with a wicked grin.
I’m still absorbing the idea of being caught in the Russian winter without heating.
“Really, no heating at all? What do you do?”
“Wear more clothes.  A lot more, everything you can find.”
She stands with her arms and legs splayed and moves awkwardly like a giant sumo wrestler.
“But sometimes it’s hard to sleep, it’s just too cold.  So you drink hot tea and that helps a bit.”
I think it’s something I’m never going to understand without experiencing, but now I’m not nearly as sure about returning in the winter.  It does, however, fill me with more appreciation of how tough the Russians are.  With a climate and government like this, you just have to be.

I leave with Natie and head into the city to find somewhere for some internet access time.  I’ve decided my last days in Russia should be a celebration in decadence to try and snatch some better memories of Moscow before I leave.  With that I open one of the online cheap hotel booking websites and spend far too much money on a room in a very new and luxurious hotel on the south side of central Moscow.  This leads me to an inevitable conclusion; it’s lunchtime.  Lari is on her way in to meet me now, so I walk across the road to an Italian restaurant with a cool sign that’s written on a wine barrel.

Nobody speaks English in there and they don’t have an English menu.  This makes ordering difficult, since it appears to be an unusually upmarket restaurant with a diverse gourmet menu that defeats my attempts at translation.  How they manage to fit the life sized model of Leonardo Da Vinci’s flying machine into the roof space also amazes me.  Strapping that to the ceiling certainly balances off the suits of armour and wagon wheels arranged between the wooden slatted tables covered with red and white check pattern tablecloths.  The waitresses are wearing a wonderfully revealing Italian country style short dress with stockings.  Which means I take even longer to decipher the menu far enough to decide that duck lasagne sounds sufficiently intriguing to order.  Lari arrives and randomly picks one of the ten salads on offer.  We decide the place seems classy (and expensive) enough to ensure anything should be good and order some red Italian wine as well.  I can’t say I’ve ever had a duck lasagne cooked in a cream sauce before.  It is everything it could possibly be, but I suddenly crave a simple beef lasagne to fill my raging insides.  The salad certainly helps an awful lot, since it’s excessive, very fresh and damn good.

We wander out of the restaurant and head towards the fleet supply shop that Natie told us about.  It really is the supply shop for the military here, and certainly not just the navy either.  You can get all kinds of hats, insignias (both sewn and badges), banners, flags, backpacks, wet and cold weather clothing, boots…..well….everything a military kit needs.  I move between the three rooms examining everything and deciding what I need to acquire.  I know my nephew will need some badge insignias and I definitely need the blue and white horizontally striped classic Russian navy shirt and the fur hat that goes with it.  Lari, meanwhile, asks about a bag on display and a guy who is clearly visiting the shop for demonstration purposes shows her how to tie the two long straps together to make it work as a backpack.  It looked so much better on the shelf as the display version, this looks like a lot of work every time you want to open or close it.  I manage to attract the attention of one of the shop assistants and in a cludge of my terrible Russian manage to order a nice little swag of bits and pieces.  I decide I don’t need a normal navy hat with a customised banner around the rim.  I could get it to say “HMS Flying Robot Monkey”, but I figure that would ultimately cause trouble with some humourless officials.

Lari and I then wander aimlessly down the streets for a while deciding if we’re going to do something touristy or just have a beer somewhere.  Natie sends me a message telling me a few people are meeting up in the city after work, so we end up revisiting places from yesterday’s whirlwind tour on the way. Don manages to resurrect himself and finds us a little early at the meetup spot to have something to eat.  He’s still not looking too bright.  The meetup is on the top floor of a shopping centre and has a great view over the harbour, which offsets the very standard western food court style layout inside.  It does have an open bar in the foodcourt with more local beers on tap, so I’m forced to sample a couple of them.  A Belgian guy, Stefan, who will stay in Natie’s aunt’s spare room for the next few nights arrives and settles in quickly.  Then Ivan, who will host Don and Lari tonight, arrives with a girl, Nastya, who is a Russian Couchsurfer.   Ivan has dark, intelligent eyes in a gentle face framed by short dark hair.  He has a genuine and easygoing manner that makes everyone feel relaxed very quickly.  We quickly discover Nastya doesn’t speak much English and is leaving the next day to return to her home town near Khabarovsk.  Ivan works as a lawyer for an American company, I’m still not sure what he does for them exactly, but he enjoys the work and it allows him to travel extensively.  He spends some time telling us about his impending trip to North Korea.
“You can travel there just as a tourist?”,  I ask, more than a little amazed.
“Well, I can, but it’s a strictly guided tour for a couple of weeks”, he explains.
“Oh, so pretty much how foreigners used to visit Russia during soviet times?”, I query.
“Yes, but you would never have been able to visit Vladivostok, not with the pacific navy based here.”
“Oh yeah, I read that somewhere.  I’m glad they’ve opened it up now, though, it’s a beautiful city with some great locals.  To Vladivostok!”,  I toast loudly.

We break up and Natie and I head back to her apartment.  Natie shows me this crazy electric fly swat she found in Vietnam.  It’s in the shape of a squash racket and when you hit an unlucky insect it gets zapped.  I wonder how I can import them to Australia, it would have to become a national sport; finally something to match Russian queuing.  We have an early night and talk more about the plan that was hatched over dinner to go for a swim in the water of Vladivostok.  I tell her about touching the water in the Bay of Finland way back in St Petersburg and swimming in Lake Baikal, so now need to complete the ritual by swimming in the water here.  Natie promises to take us to a local swimming spot tomorrow after work to enjoy it properly.  I drift off pondering that the swim will be one of the two symbolic ends to my journey; the other being photos at the statue at the end of the Trans-Siberian train line.  I think the real reason I didn’t want to take them the morning we arrived was it would mean accepting that this journey is about to finish.  I realise even more strongly that I don’t want to go home at all.  The country and the people have cut out my heart and kept it somewhere.  Maybe that’s what was taken from me at Lake Baikal.

The last three days on the train have left us with an overdose of the mobile village.  It has been a rollercoaster of bright nights and seedy days and now we are happy to be free of the endless passageway and scamming provodnikas.  We arrive in Vladivostok at six in the morning, which is bad enough, but it’s also Sunday morning; which makes it outright terrible.  Our host, Natie, (Nataliya) has amazingly volunteered to come and meet us, so I send her a message as the train rolls through the dozing city in the early morning light.  Vladivostok is nestled in amongst the valleys of a low mountain range.  Apartment buildings spring up on the sides of hills like strange mechanical mushrooms clustered in little groups; huddled together against the cold and the wind from the Pacific Ocean.

The city was founded by the Russian government as a naval base and port in 1859, following the seizure of the area from the Chinese in a treaty signed the year before.  Its name translates more literally as “Rule the East”, but I like the translation “Lord of the East’.  It’s had a history dominated by this naval presence, but was also the home of a number of political dissidents sent here by the last Tsars.  At one point around the turn of the twentieth century it was, perhaps optimistically, described as ‘the Paris of the East’.  It had a history in the performing arts that perhaps lent itself to this title.  During Soviet times it served as the primary base for the Russian Pacific Fleet and at the same time was the primary commercial shipping port in the Russian Far East with the highest freight turnover; although today Nakhodka has surpassed it.  For over sixty years the city was off-limits to foreigners because of its military significance – even Russian citizens needed special permission to visit the region.  In the early nineties it was reopened and I’m now filled with anticipation over what we would find here, discovering what kind of people live in the far eastern reaches of the Russian nation.

Vladivostok station comes almost as an afterthought and we climb the stairs to the bridge that crosses all the tracks and connects the train station directly to the ferry terminal.  Natie messages me to say she has just woken up and is on her way to meet us.  We move to the small group of pavement shops that share space with the taxi rank and buy some water.  The champagne earlier this morning is now taking its toll.  We watch groups of people make their way to the Vladivostok kilometre marker on the Trans-Siberian line.  There is a statue on the platform dedicated to this place and it is a tradition to get your picture with it once you’ve completed (or are starting) your journey.  We are too tired right now to fight with the crowds to have the statue to ourselves.  We agree we’ll return in a few days to claim this trophy of our journey.

Natie asked me to be near the main entrance.  We look around and discover three possibilities of what might constitute the correct spot and dutifully select the wrong one.  After some time she still hasn’t found us, so some sudden phone calls lead to a svelte woman with jet black hair and a Russian-Mediterranean face giving me a hug to welcome me to her city.
“This is the first time I’ve lost someone in the train station!”
“I’m just so happy to see you….and this early in the morning too!”, I exclaim, relieved.
We stroll over to join Don and Lari and, introductory hugs shared; we jump on the marshrutka to take us to her apartment.
“You must call me Natie! …..and you know that you’re not in Siberia anymore?”
“Yes, I read that before”, I begin.
“So where are we now?”  Don demands.
“This is the Russian Far East.”
“Hmmm…sounds even more exotic”, Lari comments.
Don and Lari will stay in a room that Natie’s aunt owns.  I will stay with Natie herself in the apartment she shares with her mother and younger brother.

The walk up three different layers of the hill at the other end of the marshrutka ride convinces me that I will order a taxi the next time I have to move my suitcase.  The slopes would be fine by myself, but carrying twenty-five kilos of luggage as well leaves me red-faced and panting like a dog.  Our arrival at her aunt’s room does come as a surprise.  We enter a fairly normal main apartment door and take our shoes off in the entry area.  Then we walk in past the bathroom to discover Don and Lari are staying in a single empty room that has another thick door with a deadlock and a spyhole to check the corridor for visitors.  There’s another door in the corridor that looks the same.
“There’s two girls renting that room”, Natie tells us happily.
“Just tell them you know me if you see them; they know you’re coming.”
I walk into the room and notice that the single window has a lovely view of the concrete stairway leading up the hill to the next apartment block.
“Will we continue on to your place now?”, I ask Natie meekly.
“Well, we can sleep a little now, or leave your stuff here and continue on to see some of the city this morning”, she replies.
Three tired, hungover and scattered Australians immediately start unrolling sleeping bags and get ready to return to some quiet slumber.  Natie watches me unfold my small portable air mattress with great interest, the idea is new to her. I dive into my sleeping bag and relax immediately into its friendly embrace.  My last memory is seeing Natie’s face droop into sleep as her even breathing matches my own.

We all wake up about five hours later and decide it’s time to get moving to see the city.  Natie calls her mother to give us a lift to her apartment so I can drop off my suitcase.  I silently praise her name to the gods of travellers as we drive around the hills of Vladivostok.  Natie has her own room in the three room apartment with standard small Russian kitchen and bathroom.  I notice she has to unlock her own door and I assume it’s all about having a younger brother.  I will sleep at the foot of her bed for the next four days.  She has a small foam mattress that seems to be a Russian standard, the same type I slept on in Moscow, which augments my air mattress perfectly.  We thank her mother profusely and move quickly to the marshrutka to begin the half hour trip into the city.  Slowly the waves and waves of apartment filled hillsides give way to more commercial buildings.  It’s about one on Sunday afternoon when we cross the river and enter the nightmare traffic of the city centre.  We breast the last hill and get our first real glimpse of the golden horn bay.  It is indeed named in honour of the golden horn in Istanbul and provides a highly protected harbour for the military and merchant varieties of the Russian navy.

Natie takes us to a chinese dumpling café and we have a great selection of dumplings with noodle soups on the side.  We cover the bill despite her energetic protestation.
“You’re already doing so much to help us, this is the very least we can do to try and repay your kindness; to make your life a little easier”, I try to explain.
Our next stop is for some coffee after she shows us through the city’s central commercial buildings and the massive square at the opening of the golden horn.  Unlike the overwhelming majority of Russian cities, this square does not contain a single statue of Lenin.  The square is called “The Square of the Fighters for Soviet Power in the Far East” and contains statues with the same theme.  The most striking one is a trumpeter holding a banner, apparently because the revolutionary army that took the city was led by such a trumpeter.  The taking of the city on the 25th October, 1922 marked the end of the Russian civil war, so perhaps the trumpeter also celebrates the arrival of the new Soviet nation.  Alternatively the residents might have thought a musician was way cooler than another statute of the bald, bearded symbol of Russia’s communist history.  The obligatory statue of Lenin is in a much smaller square across the road from the train station.  I’m sure this provided visiting dignitaries from Moscow the correct first impression.

Natie leads us along the waterfront, pointing out the Navy headquarters buildings and the Vladivostok ГУМ (pronounced ‘Goom’).
“You know this one is unique in Russia because it was already a ГУМ style store before the revolution.  They just changed the name during soviet times and it stuck”, Natie explains.
Inside it is an immense and apparently random collection of small, independently run shops like Gostinny Dvor in St Petersburg.  We come to the war memorial, along with the Russian submarine mounted on the pavement in front of it that serves as a museum for the Russian submarine fleet.  She takes us to the section of the memorial where her ancestor has his name listed among the casualties of war.  We are incidentally quite amused that the eternal flame has been shut down for repairs.  There is a van parked in front of it and a man is doing his best to look busy wrangling the innards of the gas pipeworks.  Boris and Yuri hard at work again.

“What do you mean, ‘eternal flame not work’?”
“It off, did you connect it to the big gas bottle last time?”
“Da. Da da da da da….oh…the big one or the very big one?”
“The very big one.”
“Of course not, I think it make very big flame, burn navy man, we get in trouble and I don’t see Olya that night.”
“Da.  Well, now we fix, quickly, Lena and her friend wait for us now.”
“Just connect to this little bottle and we fix later.”
“When? We in trouble now already.”
“Later.”
“Da…Tochna…Davai!”

 

We pay our fee to enter the submarine and wander past the displays of the past glories and tragedies of the pacific fleet.  There are awards and banners, shrapnel and shattered remains, hats and uniforms laid out in remembrance of days and lives that are now long condemned to the eternal sleep.  We cross through the halfway mark of the submarine and enter the control room.  A cacophony of pipes and tubing lines the wall, coming to an abrupt climax at the control point for these systems.  This consists of an array of valve readouts, dials and handles gathered together for the responsible man to monitor and control the submarine.  I can almost see him absorbed in the instruments and working with the driver to meet the captain’s orders.

There is a booth for the sonar operator to be listening to the outside world in the endless search for obstacles and targets.  About half the size of this booth is the toilet, or ‘head’, which probably sets some kind of record for miniaturisation.  I wonder if Japanese submarines actually have a smaller one and if the Guinness book has the relevant entry.  Natie remembers the periscope is operational and immediately starts following men walking by the waterside.  I turn it to the city side, but find a lovely closeup of the war memorial instead.  I move through the giant porthole that leads to the next section; the galley.  I find Lari sitting at the main table making school ma’am eyes over the top of her glasses.
“Am I in trouble again! Perhaps another spanking is in order, Miss”, I quip.
She laughs and replies,
“Now where have I left my ruler, young man?”

We move through to the sleeping area that features beds hanging from the ceiling on chains.  Hammocks on steroids, providing a level sleeping surface while the submarine navigates the ocean.  At the front are torpedo launching tubes along with the racks necessary to hold the ordnance.  There is also a young man in uniform watching us come through with a bemused smile on his face.  Immediately outside the front end of the submarine is a covered passageway with two men sitting next to low tables covered with naval merchandise.  We look at the badges, banners, hats and postcards with interest, but Natie tells us we can get everything cheaper at the fleet shop later.

That is the shop where everyone in the armed forces goes to acquire their uniforms, hats, insignia and general kit.  Travellers can pickup the same equipment at normal, Russian prices.  Don decides to get an old navy hat anyway; it has the name of the boat the owner served on running around the flat rim.  He puts it on outside and I cannot help but notice he looks a little bit gay.  He responds by singing the alternative lyrics to “In the Navy” whilst folding the bottom of the front of his shirt through the collar as women do on hot days.  Lari immediately dives in for the photo opportunity being the sweet navy girl while Natie and I laugh and take pictures.

We wander up the hill now, past a small church that we step into briefly to check out its icons.  There is a triumphal arch created in 1891 to honour the then Tsarevich Nicholas, who would later become the last Tsar of Russia.  Near it are two large fountains with a nautical theme, but distinctly lacking any form of actual water.  Neptune is looking terribly thirsty with his head dominating an empty pond.  The second is in the shape of two clamshells that you would expect to see a naked Venus standing in.  I point this out to Lari and Natie and ask if they’d care to fill in this obvious omission.  They laugh and decide some pictures inside it would be fun.  Natie surprises us all by taking off her trousers for the posing.  She looks me straight in the eyes and says,

“Oh I’ll do it.”

I wonder how far she will take this as she and Lari pose coquettishly in the fountain together as Don and I take plenty of photographs.  Natie’s long, slender legs seem endless as they disappear into her shirt.  Lari decides that she is finished, but Don and I say we need more with Natie.  I almost ask her to take off the shirt as well, but some sudden veneer of culture and politeness descends over me and I take the safe path.  Considering I only met her this morning, it would be very cheeky to ask such a thing this afternoon.  Especially considering it’s clear she isn’t wearing a bra.  Having captured the day’s soft porn, we walk to the next stop and on the way Natie describes her job.  She is a lead writer for a local men’s magazine.  Not quite a playboy, but more your FHM style publication – pictures of women in bikinis posing suggestively interspersed with various articles that everyone pretends to be interested in.  I instantly regret not trying for that t-shirt.

The next stop is a military museum with a collection of heavy artillery and tanks that we can wander around in for free.  I think Lari manages to wait a few minutes before mounting a cannon and throwing her arms in the air singing ‘If I could turn back time’. We applaud and demand autographs at length.  All that hard work demands some energy refuelling, so we cross the road to ‘The Republic’, a fine local pivnaya or beer cafe.  The beers they make here are a lager, dark ale and red ale.  So I acquire one of each for us and a spare lager for Natie.  Once again I refuse to let her pay for anything and return to the table where we all taste the beers.  That dark ale stands out as one of my top two beers in Russia, the next would be the Novosibirsk microbrewed beer that Vanya found for us.  They all go down very well and we decide to head onwards to the funicular to carry us up to a panoramic view of the city and the golden horn bay.

The wait for the mountain tram isn’t very long and we study it for a few minutes before it’s ready to leave.  All of these are made individually and this particular one relies on two balanced carriages moving against each other. The woman sitting in the tram car is running a close second to the women who sit at the bottom of escalators in the Metro stations for most boring job in the world.  At least this lady gets to actually talk to people occasionally and take money whilst maintaining the same distant, absent look of a soul crushed beyond

reasonable limits.

At the top of the hill, we find the statutes of the monks Cyril and Methodius holding a book and a cross.  The book lists the opening letters of the Cyrillic alphabet, which is probably appropriate since this pair are credited with its invention around 850AD.  To this day, this is the alphabet in which the Slavic languages (including Russian) are written.  It did seem strange that we had to come all the way to the end of the Russian empire to find these statues staring out across the Pacific Ocean.  This pair must have finished their days of conquest with the creation of a written language.  We, however, could see the whole golden horn bay, replete with naval, scientific and merchant boats of all shapes and sizes.  Drydocks dot the length of the shoreline along with an apparently endless array of docks and jetties.  Out to the western side of the city we spot a three masted tall ship anchored in a separate harbour near a large cruise liner.

“What’s the tall ship used for?”,  I ask.
“It’s used as a training boat for young sailors.  Anyone can get a tour on it though and it sails all around the area doing long voyages in summer.”
“Oh cool, we have about four of those in Australia too, all based in different cities.  I know a few people who’ve sailed on them and they all loved the experience.  Have you been on it?”
“No, but I’d like to”, Natie replies wistfully.

Standing here near the end of the peninsula, we can see across the bay to the west, out to the islands to the south of Vladivostok and over the Pacific Ocean to the east; the view is glorious.  There’s nothing to do now, but go home, get changed and head back into the city later to see what Vladivostok’s nightlife holds in store for us.

I wander outside and check the timetable to discover we have a longer stop coming up in half an hour, it will be for about ten minutes. I tell everyone and we agree to go and provision ourselves with cheap beer from a pavement shop at the stop. So we’re all waiting in the passageway with the four people who are leaving the train here. Don and I exit on the beer mission and Lari, David and James are looking for food. There are some women with tables full of produce and cooked meals right at our door, but Don and I have to walk about fifty metres down the platform to find the first shop. By this time it has a fair old queue, so we resign ourselves to a wait; constantly looking at the train and checking our watches. We have less than two minutes to go when we finally hit the front of the line and, as we order, most of the queue disappears from behind us. We exit with armfuls of beer cans and scuttle towards the train. We look despairingly up the platform, then recognise another provodnitsa we’ve said hello to, standing in the door of the wagon we’re next to. We make a beeline for her and she waves us onboard quickly before folding the stairs behind us. The train starts moving before we’re even halfway up the corridor of the wagon. The close call still gives us a light adrenaline rush and we happily make our way back to our wagon with our haul. We’re met at the end of the wagon by a very anxious looking Lari and James who sigh and smile to see the pair of us.
“We thought you’d missed it! We couldn’t see you anywhere when the train started moving and the provodnitsa can’t do anything to stop the train”. We look at each other with renewed relief and hand them some beers.
“That was a close one, but mission accomplished. How did you guys go?”
“Oh we did alright too”, Lari says with a smile.

On our return to David and James’ cabin we discover that they have acquired a new Russian inhabitant at this stop. His name’s Ravil and he’s an engineer who speaks slow but understandable English. He’s quick to show us the pictures of his wife and little baby that he’s now travelling to meet. He’ll only be on the train for a short time, until just before one o’clock in the morning, so about five hours. We share a beer with him along with the haul of home cooked dinners in trays (potato, chicken and a tomato sauce), cakes and piroghi that the other guys had acquired. Ravil stays with us for one beer, then disappears somewhere for a few hours. In the meantime we start prodding James about his new girlfriend. He’d actually managed to talk for a few minutes with Anna, who is the lovely twenty-two year old girl with her family in the next cabin. She speaks no English, but James has been using a phrasebook to try and communicate his deep, unchangeable and undying lust. We’d declared them a couple on his return, much to his consternation. In the meantime another young girl in the wagon, who’s seventeen, has caught David’s attention. He’s working with Don on the problem of whether there’s anything underneath the figure hugging sleeping shirt she’s wearing. Well, parading in, is probably a more accurate word as she’s thoroughly enjoying the attention of all the men in the wagon; something which is annoying her father a lot. He pokes his head out of his cabin every few minutes to check that no-one has abducted his baby girl and uses the moment to scowl a warning at every man in view.

It must have been around eleven thirty when Ravil returns more than a little drunk and with the same look in his eyes we’d found in his namesake on the train into Irkutsk. Without the largely calming influence of Dima the English professor, this Ravil is determined to get Lari alone into the cabin. We’re strung along the corridor watching the lights of towns, stations and crossings coming and going while Lari continues trying to bring some sensibility to James’ world. Ravil grabs Lari’s arm and pulls her violently towards him.
“I want to…talk with you in here…now”, he rasps in drunken, broken English.
“She doesn’t want to”, interjects James as Lari wrenches her wrist free. Don steps between her and Ravil.
“Hey, so what kind of engineer are you exactly?” he asks, looking for a distraction.
“I want to talk to her”, Ravil continues, “to you”, he concludes angrily, fixing his eyes on her with savage intent.
Lari points to the ring on his finger,
“What about her? She is meeting you soon, you can wait an hour for your wife”, she reminds him.
He surges forward, trying to get around Don who makes it very difficult for him. He slips past Don, who slips past him in return, making for a strange dance down the corridor. I step in front of Ravil then turn sideways in the corridor, placing my arms on the rail next to the window to block him completely. Don steps back to look at Alexei who has just come from our wagon.
“I think she’s happier talking out here, what do you want to say?” I ask Ravil, sounding as reasonable as I can.
“She will…I want to….her….talk her”, he manages, grabbing my wrists and trying to pull them from the rail, all the while staring at Lari. He soon realises I’m big enough and strong enough to stop him indefinitely and as I stare into his eyes I can feel him considering whether to start a real fight. He would probably beat the crap out of me, but the police on the train will return the favour at some length and then I’ll be pushing to have him charged with everything under the sun. He seems to make a decision and turns to point at Alexei,
“He’s the bastard, don’t trust him, he’s no good.”
Alexei has no idea what’s said about him in English, but knows the tone and is beginning to get angry as well. Don swarms down the corridor to lead him back into his cabin and away from Ravil.

Ravil then dives into his cabin and tells me to come with him. He sits near the window on one side as I sit near the door on the other. He then lurches forward to slam the door and lock it. I suddenly feel very threatened and nervous. He sits back near the window and tries to form a few sentences, none of which come out right. There’s something about a game and money and I later wonder if he’s been playing cards or something with Alexei and lost some money.
“I want talk Lari”, he repeats more and more desperately.
“It’s not going to happen. She is happy talking to James now. Are you ready to get off the train and meet your wife yet?” I ask. He waves dismissively and I can still feel him wanting to fight with someone.
“Lie down. Rest a while. You want to be ready for your wife”, I advise him as I stand up and unlock the door.
He looks at me opening the door then hangs his head and stares at the floor. I close the door behind me and stand in the passageway controlling his only pathway to Lari. Alexei has returned to his normal, affable self talking with Don, while James has switched straight back into talking to Lari about how enigmatic and mysterious women are. For the next hour we’re all stressed as Ravil returns every fifteen minutes to try again. I think he starts sobering up a little along the way as he becomes more and more reasonable. It’s with some relief that we watch him reunite with his family on the platform as our train rolls off into the Russian Far East.

Lari wants to sleep now, which leaves myself, Don and James wandering the length of the train in search of the provodnitsa in wagon seven. The nightlife on the train is quite a different creature to the day life, another element of the village atmosphere. At night the vodka and beers come out in abundance, the day is often used for sleep and the occasional beer, but at night the party is on and roaming. Our normal strategy is to acquire a bottle of vodka and then walk through wagons until we find a cabin with people awake, talking and drinking. One simple word, “Vodka?” accompanied by the bottle in someone’s hand was enough to guarantee a warm welcome and some seating. I don’t know how many groups of Russians we meet this way, sometimes we would only see them this one time, other times we would keep finding them and enjoy a few fine sessions. Right now we’re still searching for our next bottle, when we stumble on a lone, cute, blonde Russian girl; Tatiana. She turns out to speak pretty good English and the three of us share a cigarette and the obligatory introductory conversations. She informs us that we’re headed into wagon thirteen and perhaps need to consider another direction to find wagon seven. We thank her for her kind advice and disappear into the endless passageway back the way we’d come. The train pulls up for a stop soon afterwards, so we join the swarm of people leaving the train to stand on the platform drinking and smoking. This lets us move quickly up five wagons without having to go through the effort of opening and closing all the doors. I pass by our fascist friends on the way and wave hello as I race to keep up with the other two.

The reason this provodnitsa is so important is that we’ve discovered she has a cache of vodka bottles we can avail ourselves of pretty well twenty-four hours a day. They are not really allowed to do this and the black market price is high for Russia, but not so different from Australian prices. She’s mightily pleased to see us again and I’m sure we paid for all her luxuriues that year. Armed with the fresh bottle we begin the search for the first cabin party still continuing into the night. We’ve passed through a few wagons already during the hunt and we’re surprised at how unsuccessful the standard plan is working for us tonight. Normally we only get one wagon away from our own at almost any time of day to find the next cabin party. Imagine our surprise then, when we walk straight back into Tatiana. This time she’s joined by another guy from her wagon and they’re chatting in Russian when we arrive. By this stage of the night, James has been with us through a bottle of vodka and a few beers, which is about a share of a bottle of vodka and two beers more than he’s used to. So he’s feeling particularly warm and happy; which is probably why he hasn’t noticed that he’s forgotten to wear shoes on the metal floors of the train. The wagons have carpets, but these small smoking places are just bare, cold metal; which is especially cold at this time of night. Tatiana takes pity on the poor man and gives him her sequinned, flat shoes and dives into the wagon to fetch herself another pair. James looks off into the distance and then announces,
“My body feels like it’s floating.”
Naturally, this causes him to open the heavy inter-wagon door and dance with it. Tatiana is greeted with some astonishingly adept pole dancing moves along the edge of the door when her surprised face returns to the room. She laughs and poses with him for some photos.

So we ask if they have some glasses so we can share the vodka. The guy introduces himself as Valentin, finishes his cigarette and disappears into the wagon. Over the next few minutes we’re joined by another girl, an incredibly drunk Russian guy and his friend. Finally Valentin comes back with four glasses. It seems the smoker’s place has just become the next mobile train party. The incredibly drunk man turns out to be holding a Russian sausage, which he passes around as we take shots. The girl has some cucumber and that’s passed around too. We share vodka in true Russian style between us all and laugh and joke our way through a hundred kilometres of the Siberian tundra. We empty the bottle and Tatiana doesn’t want to drink more vodka, she wants beer. So it’s agreed that Tatiana and Don will go to find some more drinks. The other girl says she has to get off the train in a few hours and wants to try and sleep. She’s a nurse and is returning to work after her holiday and she has to be back at work at midday today. The intrepid duo return successfully in record time and just in time for another sausage, more cucumber and some dried fish retrieved by the others.

We stay and chat for a while and a few shots before we end up moving into their cabin in the train to continue the party. This means waking up the poor nurse, who joins us for another couple of rounds anyway. The noise of drunken revelry attracts an angry provodnika who tells everyone to shut up and go to sleep. We all shuffle back to the smoker’s place and continue. James and I find ourselves singing for a while, much to Tatiana’s amusement as she flirts outrageously with all the men.
“I could make good money off all of you to pay for my holiday”, she jokes.
James slowly produces a hundred rouble note,
“What do I get for this?” he asks hopefully.
She kisses him on the cheek and says,
“You will need a lot more than that”, before sighing coquettishly. I reach in my pocket and add another note to the ‘get James some action’ fund. Tatiana giggles and says,
“Maybe I will do you for free you cute English boy.”
James looks unconcerned either way and thrusts the two notes towards her. Don then drops his glass, smashing it into tiny shards on the metal floor. I bend over to help clean it up and manage to smash the glass that I put in my back pocket against the wall. To think I’d put that there for safekeeping. The two of us burst out laughing at the ridiculousness of the situation as James starts poledancing with the door again,
“Your turn now baby…..c’mon Tatiana, show us your moves”, he implores her while grinding against the door.
“I think you are too good for me”, she says shaking her head, “maybe I will give you money instead.”
We’ve finished all the vodka again and Don and I decide we had better get James back to safety before he slashes his feet on the glass. We thank Tatiana for her shoes and tell James to take them off.
“Bring them back tomorrow my sweetie”, she tells him with another gentle kiss and ushers him through the door.
“You look after my English husband”, she advises us sternly, but with a smile.
“Of course we will”, I promise, “You just work on paying his dowry.”
“Isn’t it the woman who has a dowry?” she asks, confused.
“Yes” I reply emphatically and she bursts out laughing before kissing me goodbye.

We shuffle James down the corridor and to his room, advising him to drink a lot of water immediately. He frowns and starts looking for it as we return to sleep while the night is cooling our poor wagon. The air-conditioning in the wagon never recovers during our trip, which is one reason we spend so much time in James and David’s cabin. Don and I say our goodnights and as I shamble back to my cabin I wonder what the next day could possibly hold for us. This is already as long as we had ever spent on the train in a single leg and we’re all beginning to feel cabin fever. David was the worse, since he’s doing the whole week long trip in one run. The experience of being on the train had worn out for him a few thousand kilometres earlier. I find myself wishing I’d had time to make the stop in Khabarovsk. We will pass through there tomorrow afternoon and a stop would be a welcome relief from the train village life. I drink a litre of water before pulling the sheet over me and drift off into weird dreams of Russian prostitutes marrying eccentric English academics.

 

Lari and I find ourselves sharing our cabin with a middle aged couple and Don is by himself in another cabin with an array of Russians.  Leaving Irkutsk comes as a relief and a release from the unseen pressure.  I didn’t realise how much that black cloud was weighing on me until it’s removed.  This doesn’t stop me from wanting to return to Lake Baikal, the feelings at Bolshie Koti was undeniably good, if challenging; the feeling of being checked and tested by something unseen is very unusual.  I’d still like to return there and stay for longer.  Listvyanka is another story, I suspect the problem there is that it only exists for tourists.  As a foreign tourist you become an easy target for enterprising locals with no money and nothing to lose.  During the day you’re fine; the police were permanently on patrol in pairs.  I didn’t, however, have the same feeling that last evening in Listvyanka when the hysteria hit me.

The constant movement of the train with the clicking across the track junctions becomes hypnotic quickly as we return to life in the mobile village.  Our cabin companions are friendly, but speak no English.  I retrieve my Russian dictionary to make things easier and we begin to communicate using it and a lot of charades.  They are both middle aged, he is a fireman and she is a pharmacist; and they are very much in love.  He has rough, worn features and a huge craggy nose; such a Russian man. He seems to balance her finely structured face with an almost porcelain doll complexion.  They spend every moment together, normally touching and they often sleep together on the single bunk.  They feel like a teenage couple meeting secretly away from their parents and you can see they’re enjoying every minute of the experience.  They’re also on their way to Vladivostok for a holiday, so we will be with them for the whole three days.  I wander off to make up a noodle bowl for lunch and run into a curious man at the samovar.  He has a strange animal intensity in his eyes, but he speaks a little English and he says that he’s actually a driver of the very trains we’re on today.  He is also on his summer holiday and is going to Vladivostok with a friend of his.  A middle aged woman joins us as I’m explaining where I’m from and what I’m doing in Russia and the three of us talk for a few minutes as our tea and noodles soak up the hot water.  They are both amazed an Australian is visiting their country and both bid me welcome and ask how I’m enjoying Russia.  A huge smile grows on my face as flashes of memory of the trip flood through my mind.  How can I explain all of that simply?  Where do you even start?

“I love Russia and the Russian people”, I manage to say, in Russian.
They both look suitably proud of their country and are very happy that I love it too.
“I wish our government … love Russian people”, ventures the women in broken English.
The man looks sideways at her as I nod seriously and agree.
“I don’t like the Russian government, only the people and the beautiful country”, I add in equally broken Russian while gesturing at the countryside passing by the windows.
All three of us turn to admire the forest view for a long moment before we break up and return to our cabins.  I finish my lunch as Don and Lari are still talking to our new friends, sharing music and lunch before all of us feel tired and sleep away half the afternoon.

I awake feeling sweat on my body and wander to the toilet to wash my face with cold water to try and cool down.  I discover that the air-conditioner isn’t working very well, if at all, anywhere in our wagon.  My ablutions complete, I stroll down the passageway to find Don sitting on one of the small seats that line the corridor chatting with one of the Russian kids.  Don is teaching him English and as I approach the boy looks up at me, smiles and waves as he greets me,
“Hello.”
“Hello”, I return.
“Hello”, ventures the young boy, waving crazily and I smile and shake his hand.
The three of us chat for a while and I discover his name is Dima, he’s ten years old, only speaks Russian and seems completely baffled that we don’t understand him.  We are so much older than him but he knows so much more than us and enjoys this surprise immensely; it feels like he takes us under his wing.  From the door of a nearby cabin a woman who looks about thirty is watching the scene with a broad smile on her face.  I smile and wave at her and she smiles back before stepping inside again.  I assume it must be his mother and he confirms this as he climbs to stand on the seat to look out of the window more easily.  He reaches to open the narrow top section and I help him to get some cool air inside the wagon.  As if on cue, the provodnitsa appears at the other end of the cabin and starts opening the other windows.  By the time she finishes opening two, everyone in the passageway finishes the job for her and stand with their faces immersed in the cool breeze.

The countryside we’re passing appears to be almost virgin temperate forest with teasing glimpses through the undergrowth of the south edge of Lake Baikal .  We regularly pass villages of log cabins scattered amongst the trees and pass through small train stations and stops along the way.  We are on the Number 2 train, the Rossiya, for the final leg of the journey and we only stop at major towns and cities.  The general quality of the train is high, toilets are clean and working well, nowhere is crowded and most people are happily letting the day roll by drinking and talking while the children play in the passageways.  Lari appears with a dazed look on her face and suggests the dining car might have working air-conditioning.  Don and I quickly agree and the three of us say goodbye to Dima as we make our way down the train hoping for relief from the heat.

We quickly realise we have no idea which way the dining car is on this train and I’ve just chosen a random direction.  This train also appears to have more carriages on it than normal as we pass through four without any sign of a dining car.  Reaching the end of the fifth Don decides it must be the other way, so we return.  After returning to our wagon, we travel five wagons in the other direction before suddenly emerging into a ‘platzcart’.  The open bunks have blankets and sheets strewn in every direction and the people have gathered in groups drinking beer and vodka, playing card games and laughter permeates the room.  If it wasn’t so hot, it’d be a great place to visit.  Most of them are men are wearing only shorts or tracksuit pants and the three of us suddenly feel very out of place.  We look at each other and turn around, deciding that it wouldn’t be the other side of these wagons and we must have been right the first time.  So we march back across ten wagons and find ourselves suddenly following a familiar figure; James the obsessive Englishman is on the train with us.

I pass by him and he doesn’t really look up, I glance over my shoulder and then Don smiles and passes him too.  We both come to a stop in front of him at the next doorway and pretend we can’t open the door.  We don’t turn around and wait for him to notice he isn’t walking anymore.  As he appears ready to say something, Lari taps him on the shoulder and says hello.  He is awoken from his reverie by a woman’s voice, we figure he must be in paradise by now, so Don and I turn around and greet him loudly.
“James mate!  Got a new girlfriend yet?”
“So you are….I thought I saw you in the station…maybe you were…I am…looking here…”, he stumbles, trying to remember how to speak again.
“We’re on the way to the dining car for some air-conditioning, come along”, I invite him earnestly.
He looks baffled for a moment, then decides to join the group and we find the dining car two wagons later.  We settle quickly and Lari asks James how he went in Irkutsk while we wait for some vodka and orange juice to be delivered.

“I stayed at this hostel and this American guy was there and this Dutch girl and she was so beautiful and I wanted to talk to her but I found out she’s on this train too, so I didn’t much and then went outside and these two Russian girls found me and took me on a tour of the city, it was fun”, he rambles in typical style.
“So did you have to pay these women?”, I ask impishly.
“Oh no, they just noticed me and they spoke English and it was fun, we saw stuff and they were so friendly.”
“So did you ask to stay with them that night James?”, Don asks pointedly.
James’ eyes widen in shock at the thought.
“Oh nothing like that, no, no…they were nice…but I wanted to…do you think I should have asked?  What if they said yes?  It could have been good.”
Lari glowers at the two of us as James continues relentlessly.
“..they were beautiful and I think they must have liked me, I could have been in there, but you know, what can I really say to them. ‘Hi, I’m James, let’s go to your place for rampant sex now’.”
The three Australians burst out laughing, much to James’ consternation.

“What? Why do you always laugh at me?  What’s funny? ..there’s nothing funny there, just these beautiful Russian women being nice to me and showing me the city.……What did you do there?” he demands.
We tell him about our experiences and he listens for a short while before drifting into thought again and suddenly asks,
“Should I have taken them to a club or something then? I’d do the dancing thing with them, but whenever I go to a club I jiggle around near a girl I might fancy, then at the end of the night she asks ‘Are you gay?’.”
“Maybe you should just ask her, find out the answer and then you know what she thinks.  Trying to second guess everything is really silly, you’ll never know that way.  You can just ask her”, Lari tries to help him.
“But how do I know when to ask and what to say?  These girls already liked me, so maybe I didn’t have to ask or maybe I do but what would I ask her?”
“You could always ask her for a blowjob?” Don suggests helpfully.
“Or a hummer, that can make a good blowjob better James”, I offer.
“What’s a hummer?” asks James, looking pointedly at Lari.
She puts on her best school teacher look and voice and explains slowly for him.
“It’s where a girl…..hums whilst giving you a blowjob.”
“Oh”.  James looks down and thoughtful for a while as Don pours us all some vodka.
We share a shot, toasting hummers, before he continues.
“Would you really want her blowing raspberries on the end of your JohnThomas?”, he pauses to make a long loud raspberry.
“Does that do it for you, does it?” he challenges.
We all burst out laughing, at least this time he’s actually intending to be funny.
“No James”, Lari begins again in her school teacher voice, “she just hums a tune so her lips and mouth are vibrating gently.”
Don and I on queue both begin staring lovingly out the window into space sighing to ourselves.
“Stop it!”, Lari cautions us.
“What?!” we both exclaim, hurt.
James looks slowly at each of us, knowing something is happening, but not sure what.
“But how would I know if I liked that?” he continues.
“You’ll just have to ask the next girl you meet really nicely”, I suggest as both Don and I look pointedly at Lari.
Sadly he’s not really listening.

“I suppose you could practise on yourself first”, he thinks aloud as Don pours another round.
“I think we’ve found the source of James’ concerns”, I proclaim.
“Indeed, any man that can test that on himself has no real need of women”, Don adds, raising a glass.
“To auto-eroticism!”, he toasts and Lari smirks while finishing the glass.
“So how would I know which girl to ask, I mean I’ve got to like her, but not every woman does it for me and the one’s who talk to me generally aren’t interested”, he continues unabated.
“How do you know if you haven’t asked them?” Lari points out.  
He looks thoughtful for a few moments then thinks aloud again,
“You’re supposed to wait until you’ve got a stiffy don’t you? That’s what I’m doing wrong isn’t it?”  
Don and I laugh like crazed hyenas as Lari tries to keep some kind of composure.
“Well, that would indicate you’re at least interested James”, she advises sagely.
“But…what do you like in a woman James, apart from yourself?” I venture curiously.
“I mean, do you prefer bunny boilers or you like them normal?” Don continues.
“Or maybe you’re a serial killer; you’re the right profile for it, white, middle class, above average intelligence and no idea with women.  Maybe that’s your angle, you just play innocent until she’s your captive and you throw her savagely onto the kitchen table”, I extemporise until Lari kicks me under the table.
“What? Maybe? Is a bunny boiler the crazy ones who ring you ten times every hour?” James wonders aloud.
“Yes, you mean you’ve never called a girl that often? It shows you really care!” I advise.
“It’s true, stalking is the ultimate way to say ‘I love you’”, Don confirms.  
James finally realises we may not be entirely serious and looks Lari up and down before announcing.
“You’re not the serial killer type shag. I don’t want to bend you over the sink or anything.”  
Lari recovers  from laughing just enough to thank him,
“I’m glad I’m not your type James, I think that makes me feel much happier on the train.”
“It’s not real you know!”, he says suddenly before trying to explain,
“the sleazy man in me is Slavic, the gentleman is English”.  

We decide some soup would go well with vodka and I find Georgian Kharcho on the menu and make James get one as well.
“I studied handwriting analysis at university, let me see what you’re writing”, announces James suddenly.  
Lari, curious, finishes the line she’s writing in our shared book and passes it to him.  He looks across and down it, tracing his finger across sections before announcing,
“You’re a creative type, but very controlled, you like boundaries and order as much as fun and parties.  Maybe more.”  
Lari turns her head to the side, considering it.
“Not bad, maybe it’s right.  What are you looking at exactly to say that?”  
James shows her the shape and angles of her lettering, where it crosses lines and where it follows them.
“What about you? Is there something from you in here?” James asks me, holding the book.
“Most of it is me, look at this one”, I take the book and turn to the St Petersburg story I’d written on the train during that long night trip to Moscow.  
He studies it for a while then announces,
“You’re intelligent and directed, but you have a strong dark side”.  
He looks at me with new eyes a few times while deciding this.  I agree with him and wonder how much he’s really getting from the writing and how much is coming from the time he spent with us on the train to Irkutsk.  I always bring some cynicism to anyone claiming to be able to tell personality from one information source.  I’ve always thought most people are more complex than that, but maybe I just want them to be.  James wants an example of Don’s writing, but we dont have any.  We finish the vodka and acquire another bottle to take with us.  James invites us back to his cabin to meet David, another English guy who’s currently travelling the Trans-Siberian in one long seven day journey.

He’s in his early twenties, with short dark hair and an average build.  He has an evil sense of humour and enjoys it every time Don and I prod James for some more madness.  We all sit down and just after introductions a woman pushing a trolley full of beer comes past.  I flag her down and we all acquire some freshly chilled beers to see out the early evening.  Don puts aside the bottle of vodka for later.  James then wanders off to try and find the Dutch girl he’s spoken of and we chat with David for a while.  We mostly sympathise with him having to spend three days around James.  He means well, but his one track mind makes for a monotopic conversation; unless you take our approach of leading him astray.  I decide to head back to our wagon to check on everything and grab the portable charger for my mobile phone.  I want to make sure the phone is always online in case Nataliya, our host in Vladivostok, needs to talk to us.  For most of the length of the Trans-Siberian line we have some signal, it would fade for ten minutes and spring back into life as we pass the next station or town.  On my way back, I notice James in a cabin sitting next to a beautiful woman.  I nod hello and remember where he is so I can go and watch him destroy himself in front of her later.  I think the word is ‘schadenfreude’.

I’m passing a cabin on the way back when a voice calls out.  It’s my train driver friend from the Samovar sitting next to a huge, intense looking man with eyes that seem ready and capable of hating the world.  Across from them in the cabin are a young couple in their early twenties looking a little nervous, but generally comfortable with this pair of imposing guys.  He holds up a bottle of vodka and waves for me to sit down.  I can never resist hospitality like this.  I sit next to the large, intense guy and settle in as the train driver pours a shot for me.  I look at the two of them as I take the glass and know what’s required of me.  I toast our future and down the glass without showing the slightest twitch of expression on my face.  I stay like that for a few seconds then smile and thank them for the vodka.  Both of them immediately nod approvingly at my stoic performance and offer me another shot.  I say it’s their turn, I can’t jump ahead of them and shots were then poured for everyone.  We all toast our health and down it.  The train driver hands me a container with some kind of sliced fish in it and offers a biscuit with it.  
“What is it?”, I ask, in Russian.  
He grins before saying,“Nerpa”.  
I laugh and happily grab some with a biscuit and proclaim,
“Nerpa is delicious”.  
He smiles broadly and hands me the packet and I read that it’s really smoked Omul.  He then has to go to the toilet, leaving me with the large crazy guy.  He looks at me, leans close with his eyes filled with the energy of anger and hate and tells me he’s a fascist.  He has swastika tattoos on his arm, some kind of military tattoo on his chest and on a necklace is a decorated swastika emblem.  He holds it out for me to see, I grab it and turn it over before he snatches it back and pushes my hand away.  I feel my spirits drop and wonder what polite thing I can possibly say to a Russian fascist.  This is another of those situations that guide books tend to neglect in preparing you for.  What I actually do is share one more shot with them after the driver returns, then I leave, explaining that my friends are waiting for me.

I find Don and Lari in the cabin with James and the Dutch girl.  The cabin is filled with people, those sitting along the top bunks are speaking Russian and those on the bottom, English.  We’re passing bottles of vodka in every direction and I waste no time in telling them about our fascist friend.  The look in his eyes is still bothering me, like he essentially hates the world and is quite happy to eliminate everyone and everything in it.  It’s a hate beyond reason, pure and simple.  
“I passed the same guy in the corridor and he sent chills down my spine”, Lari mentions. 
“I’m trying not to speak to them too much either”, Don agrees.  
“That young couple seem to have drawn the short straw in this deal”, I add.  
I know the train driver was largely joking, but the other guy didn’t seem to be in on it.  Lari decides she’s going to go to sleep and have a good day tomorrow on the train.
“I want to get off at one of the longer stops and try the meals the old women serve on the platform”, she explains.  
Don has finished the bottle of vodka now and wanders off soon afterwards to collapse for the evening.  The cabin begins to empty and I find myself a part of the Russian speaking group on the lower bunks as the guys from the upper bunks come down to join us.
One of them reaches into his bag and pulls out a bottle of vodka with an AK-47 branding.  He smiles and asks,
“You would like some? It strong and…..”, he mimes a gun blowing your head off.  
I laugh and reply,
“Da da da da da… Tochna”.  
He loves my Russian and I join the rounds of shots that follow.
Suddenly I’m being escorted down the passageway by a nervous James and two Russian guys wearing only tracksuit pants; one of them is the guy who’d produced the vodka.  I have no idea how I got here, but I know I’m transcendently drunk.  In the moment of clarity I realise I didn’t eat anything for dinner and will now suffer terribly for that poor decision.  We arrive at my cabin door and I lurch forward into the bed as Lari assures James I’ll be fine.  I reach for one of the 1.5 litre bottles of water next to the bed and drain it in one long draught before turning over to collapse into a messy coma.

I only get a few hours sleep before the provodnika warns us that we will arrive in Irkutsk in an hour. I enter a weird hysteria state, thinking we should be aiming to leave our suitcases with Spike and take the hydrofoil up the lake to visit Olkhon island; which is meant to be very beautiful. Don and Lari don’t really care at this stage and we use all our energy just to get everything packed and ready to exit the train. The train begins rolling through the hills just outside town around seven in the morning. The city is nestled in a flat valley, bordered by the river Angara and series of high, green hills. The Angara is a tributary to the Yenisei River, forming the link from Lake Baikal to the greater river. Lake Baikal is the reason we’ve come to stay in this town for a couple of days. It is the largest freshwater lake in the world and with a mile to the bottom; it is the deepest lake of any kind in the world. Technically it’s a rift valley, like the famous one in Africa, but is filled with freshwater; fed by a number of rivers and drained only by the Angara past Irkutsk. Given its placement and history, it is also home to an astonishing number of unique flora and fauna. The most famous two are the Omul fish, and the Nerpa seal. The Omul is a kind of salmon that you can buy fresh, dried or smoked in every market within easy travel distance of the lake. The Nerpa is one of only three entirely freshwater seals in the world and it’s somewhat of a mystery how they came to thrive in a lake so far inland. The lake is also home to a strong shamanic religious tradition, with sacred sites dotting the shoreline, especially on Olkhon island, the largest island in the lake.

It’s far too early for us to be awake, especially after the session the night before. We tumble out of the station and I’m clutching Spike’s address scrawled on a piece of paper. I look up and around us to realise we’ve stepped back in time. There are trams passing right in front of the train station, but they haven’t been upgraded in at least thirty or forty years. There are people selling fresh fruit and vegetables from wooden carts placed by the side of the street. The road is mostly made of cobblestones and suffers from widely varying states of repair. I think even Boris and Yuri haven’t visited here in a couple of hundred years, or perhaps they’re stuck in the hills somewhere drinking vodka. It feels like a market town from centuries ago that has had modern technology planted in it as a weird joke of an alien civilisation. The cars largely date from twenty years previously and I see a significant proportion of Korean and Japanese cars for the first time in Russia. We look up and down the streets and decide a taxi is the answer for us this morning since we don’t have a map that shows us where our host lives.

The taxi is no problem at all for our Russian language skills now and the driver knows the place instantly. We embark on a drive up the hill from the station and we pass quietly along some truly beautiful streets. They are lined by trees with branches that meet in the middle of the road, bearing broad green leaves that create an incredibly peaceful dappled shade. The three of us relax into the view and have to be almost shaken awake five minutes later by the driver telling us we’ve arrived. He parks behind a small two storey apartment block of just six flats and suggests I go to check we’re in the right spot before he leaves. I lurch out of the car and climb a set of stairs to ring the buzzer of what I hope is the right door. It swings open a minute later to reveal a tall, young, well built Russian man standing in his underwear. He’s also wearing a dressing gown, but it is covering only his arms and back. I think there’s some young women missing out on this scene as he smiles and says,
“Dhugal?”
“Yes! Spike?”
“Yes, come in, come in”, he gestures and steps to one side, smiling.
It’s at this moment I notice the bulldog on a leash just inside the door and she isn’t nearly as happy to see a stranger as he is.
“Your friend is here already. He is a funny guy”, he adds as his smile grows broader.
I had almost forgotten Lukash made it here already.
“Oh, I just need to get my suitcase and the other two from the taxi”, I venture.
“Oh okay, see you in a minute”, he says, still smiling and wandering inside, “I’ll make some tea.”
I head downstairs wondering what we’ve landed in, but feeling his effusive smile reassures me at the same time.

We three Australians shift everything upstairs and encounter the bulldog, Lena, more directly. Spike has to hold her aside, stroking and reassuring her as we move everything inside. She accepts us only because he’s there, I’d hate to be a burglar in this flat. Lukash emerges bleary eyed from the kitchen and greets us with his customary huge smile.
“Oh you can drink the water from the tap here”, Spike tells us.
“It’s very good!”, Lukash confirms.
“It all comes from Baikal, so it’s fresh, cool and delicious”, adds Spike.
I try some and it is indeed a refreshingly clean taste after living on bottled water since Moscow. We sit and enjoy the tea; all ideas of jumping the hydrofoil to Olkhon Island have dispersed amidst sheer fatigue. The fatigue doesn’t prevent us from being suitably astonished by the nest of hairless sphinx cats that Spike breeds. There are at least five of them, I’m never really sure ohw many exactly, since they move around singly and in pairs all the time. They feel very strange to the touch, but incredibly warm. You can’t stroke or scratch them like a normal cat; the lack of hair changes everything. They run the house, permanently leaping onto you, the bench, into your meals and generally wherever they please. Spike tends to carelessly brush them aside or remove them if they get too insistent.
“So what do you plan to do in such a short time?” He asks us.
“Well, we need to see Lake Baikal and have to try and swim in it.”
“It’s easy to get to Listvyanka on a boat or a bus, but you should go further to Bolshie Koti. It’s another smaller town further north on the lakeside accessible only by boat.”
Lukash nods agreement and says he’s up for seeing both, we agree and I almost fall asleep in my chair. I can’t last much longer and running on autopilot I have a shower, inflate my air mattress on the floor of the bedroom and dig out the permethrin soaked sleeping bag liner to ward off bed bugs and any other annoying nocturnal blood sucking creatures. I can confirm I don’t see a single tax inspector during the night.

I wake up in the early afternoon to find a sphinx cat perched on my chest with another sniffing my face. There is also a young American guy, Zach. Thankfully, he isn’t doing either of those things, he has dropped by to join us for our first day of wandering around town. He’s been in Russia for a few months already, learning to speak Russian on the fly, and has spent the last month in Irkutsk. When I enter the kitchen again I notice there’s actually another room beyond it for the first time. I also notice that’s where Don, Lari and Lukash had slept on the mattresses Spike had lain out. In my tiredness I’d completely missed all of that. I have a shower and we put together our day packs to head out into a bright, sunny afternoon; tempered only by the sheltering trees that line the street. We decide we’re hungry and Zach takes us to a shop on the next corner.
“This place sells piroghi. It’s stuff wrapped in pastry, you can get potato, mutton and cabbage versions of it and it’s really cheap”, he explains.
We enter the bakery and join the queue, checking out everything on offer. The piroghi seems the best plan and I get one of each kind to see how I go with these Russian pasties. I also get a cold lemonade that helps the remnants of my hangover and cools me on another hot day in Russia. We eat as we walk, or roll in Lukash’s case, and enjoy looking at the view of the city. We are across the river from the city centre and Zach leads us down past the train station and across the massive bridge that spans the Angara river; it must be one or two hundred metres wide at this point.

The shoreline beneath the bridge is a sloped concrete embankment for over a hundred metres on both sides of it. Almost every part of that embankment is covered with an array of Russian graffiti. I try to read what I can and it ranges from a protest about the proposed nuclear reactor to be built in a nearby city to a lengthy inscription I can only understand the first part of; ‘God loves you and Jesus…”. I lose interest in reading the rest somehow. Most of the graffiti appears to be declarations of love for various women; “I love you ”. They vary in size and quality, but the message is always the same. We cross the bridge and begin a couple of hours of random meandering through the city centre, visiting the polish church, a cathedral or two and ending up by a fountain overlooking the river. We pass a man who is lying comatose on the ground next to a heavily vandalised bus stop. Nobody seems bothered by this and he’s breathing deeply and evenly, caught in a black sleep. It seems somehow out of place on such a clear, sunny day. As we get closer, someone bends down to check if he’s alright. His eyes open lazily and I begin to wonder if its heroin causing the lethargy.

There is building going on around town, but not nearly on the same scale as the other cities we’ve visited. You certainly get the feeling that the further away from Moscow you are, the less money you see invested in infrastructure. I wonder what it’s like away from the Trans-Siberian line and suspect there won’t be much funding unless it has military significance. There is something strange and unsettling about this town, I’m not sure what it is, but the feeling never leaves me. It’s like the surface is this bright, open town, but not far beneath something dark and twisted coils itself around the city’s heart. That heart does not beat freely, but nervously with some kind of apprehension. There’s nothing you can point at and attribute this feeling to. In fact the things you can see, the beautiful parks and gardens, the river and the hills, should make you feel very different. But they don’t.

Zach leaves us to check back at his hostel and we make the trek back across the river, having picked up some supplies. Don and I buy some kvas to help us along the way to catching the tram back across with the bags of food. Lari and Lukash want to walk back instead to enjoy more of the scenery. We can’t decide where to get off the tram exactly, but we take a leap of faith a fair way up the hill and find our way back somehow. Spike is there already having finished his work as a language teacher and we make up a bunch of different kinds of pelmeni with different sauces and eat them with fresh tomato.

We can’t quite bring ourselves to buy any cucumbers yet. Lukash and Lari make it back just in time to eat and Zach arrives soon afterwards. I’m still tired after the previous night’s exertions and just want to sleep; Don and Lari aren’t far behind me in that wish. Spike and Zach invite us out on this Tuesday night to experience some of the nightlife.
“He knows everyone and they all love him”, Zach advises us.
Spike looks at the floor a little abashed but looks up soon enough acknowledging there’s some truth in it.
“I won’t be able to stay awake more than another half hour”, I apologise.
Don and Lari do the same and Zach and Spike reluctantly leave. I’m more than a little unhappy about arriving in such a poor state and begin to wish we’d jumped the hydrofoil instead of being such average guests. I curl up and drop off listening to a pair of the bald cats wrestling on Spike’s bed.

Irkutsk Oblast, Russia