So I recently realized that I had a couple months of open time--fourth year of med school is known for its time off. Second, I noticed that I had built up enough frequent flier miles in my AA/OneWorld account for a free trip to Europe (and rule changes make it harder to keep the miles so I thought I better use them). Third, I noticed a gap in my travels in Central Asia, and fourth, I needed to clear my mind. Putting this together, I decided I should visit Central Asia. Well the furthest thing away that OneWorld considers Europe is Ekaterinburg, Russia. This city is actually just north of Kazakhstan, over the Ural Mountains and so technically in Asia (on the edge of Siberia). This seemed like a reasonable adventure, so I procured Russian and Chinese visas and a digital camera, and arranged a ticket. I stopped in London to visit my cousin and check out Greenwich, which I'm surprised I had not seen yet. At the Prime Meridian there is a large green laser heading north. See the picture...I would be standing in the near east.
(Y)Ekaterinburg is the 4th largest city in Russia (after Novosibirsk). Ben Horne, who had recently visited the region (see http://www.xanga.com/zoomloco as well as The World A La Carte episode on Central Asia) hooked me up with his friend Jeff, a U.S. diplomat type in Ekaterinburg. Here is a street scene from Ekaterinburg, and one of many large historical paintings on the ceiling of the Ekaterinburg train station (note the American flag on a wing, with an American type crashing and burning...).
I spent much of my first day in Russia at the Ekaterinburg train station trying to figure out Russian Cyrilic. Above is an example. Play along with me, this isn't too hard... Note the word next to 835, then consider this: C is pronounced S. B is V. E is E. P is R like rho. That A looking thing is a D, like delta. That n looking thing is like lambda, so it is L. O is O. the Pi looking thing is P. K is K. So the train is going from Sverdlovsk to Perm. Sverdlovsk is the former name of Ekaterinburg (the city was off limits to foreigners until the 90's).
One other thing: all the times correspond to Moscow time, which in Ekaterinburg means 2 hours away. Further east this is 5 or more hours. This all took me the better part of the day to decipher, and I eventually decided to buy a ticket to Omsk, the largest town near where Sasha lives.
Sasha of course is the Russian Ranger from my Philmont training crew in 1994. We has some formative R1 experiences together, like hiking the Ranger marathon, finding the Baldy crash, etc. I had tried halfheartedly to find him while on the TransSiberian in 2000, but I only had a transit visa and not enough time. This time I had not contacted him, and I only had his address from 7 years ago. I imagined that he would have moved, and that the language barrier would make it impossible to find him. It turned out to be quite easy.
After the overnight train to Omsk I caught a two hour train to his town Kalachinsk. I had an english-speaking Russian on the train transcribe Sasha's address into Russian. I showed this translation to a taxi driver outside the train station, and he took me there. A front door was not apparent, but the neighbor was outside. I showed Sasha's name (written in Russian) to the neighbor, and he took me around to the back door and knocked. Sasha appeared and I asked him, "Do you remember who I am?" He did of course. The picture on the left is of a typical home in Kalachinsk, Siberia, on the right is Sasha's home and car, with Sasha and his friend (on the phone) in front .Note that the snow is not five feet high as I presumed it would be in Siberia.
Here is Sasha with two of his friends partaking of Russia's men's faorite pasttime (vodka).They would all pass the Cage screen with flying colors (this is an issue actually). Sorry for the sideways picture. [I could rotate it if I could read Chinese and I had a faster computer right now]. On the table, the purple bowl is some shredded beef dish. They scrambled to find something for me to eat when I arrived; they came up with frying some potatos and carrots in a skillet.
Sasha is now married with children. Here is his wife Oksana and daughter Jana. Of course those are just phonetic spellings of their names. Note Jana pouring herself some coffee. This is the morning routine before work.
This is a picture of Sasha going into his bomb shelter to hide from U.S. nukes. That's a joke, although that is what I thought when I saw him going down there. He keeps jars and boxes of produce such as potatoes and carrots to have food during the long winter. Here is some hanging cabbage. The brush at the bottom is covering dirt, under which is some potatos (to hide them from mice).
Here is another picture of Sasha, with his other daugher Dasha. Next to Sasha is his friend who teaches math in the local school. The picture is taken in the school, which apparently is the swankest school in the region. It was rather nice. It took 18 years to complete due to running out of funds. Anyway, my visit was so interesting, that the language teachers (they teach English and German) put me in front of a few class loads in the library, and told me to talk some English. I inflated my globe and tried talking about geography... I didnt get much response, just alot of Siberian girls taking my picture and video with their cell phones. I responded by taking their picture. I wasn't sure why there are very few boys...
When I realized that they probably didnt understand my English, I tried writing in Russian. On the right is my attempt. Note "Canada" at top and "Denver" in the middle (H is pronounced N). The ? was for them to identify. Geography is great, no? During my brief visit, we also viewed some of Sasha's old Philmont pictures. Who is the Philmont person in Sasha's picture?
Upon leaving Kalachinsk, I cought a 7 hour train to Novosibirsk ("New Siberia", the "capital" of Sibera), spent too much time trying to read train schedules again, then boarded a 2 day train east across Siberia. Of course I had transversed Siberia previously on the Trans-Siberian, but this time I was heading east (instead of west from Beijing), I had a tourist visa (instead of a transit visa) which allowed me disembark as I pleased, I was traveling platz (second class, with many others; as opposed to the private comparment), and Russia had almost doubled in its post-Soviet age.
On the right is a typical scene of a village taken from the Trans-Siberian. Also, below are some typical yahoos who you might have sitting next to you on the train. The one in front is an Azerbaijani from Baku now living in Barnaul. The next one is a soldier stationed in the Tartarstan region (that is a Muslim area east of Moscow, not a place in your teeth). I also met a man from Khabarovsk and the Kamchatka peninsula (close to Alaska). One girl worked for a herbal company that flew her around to promote "Noni." The Russians are quite friendly and eager to relate..I ended up with gifts of a squishy toy model of a noni, some russian soldier patches, and a talisman (crocodile) pendant..in addition to invitations and numbers to call all across Siberia. This was mostly a good thing...only sometimes was it frustrating because it required being on stage constantly (no introvert time). Also, it was difficult to constantly turn down offers of sausage and vodka. Finally, smelling vodka on men's breath gets old...
The other picture above is taken from a bridge on a station platform. It is of two workers shoveling coal from the back of a truck. The cars are heated by coal. To the left is a pic of the engine heading around a bend on Lake Baikal. On the right are women who sell fish on the train platforms, and a dog looking for a treat from a passenger who just bought some fish.
Major stops were in Krasnoyarsk and Irkutsk, and my ticket ended in Ulan Ude. The benefit of being able to get off the train (in Ekaterinburg, Omsk, Ulan Ude) allowed me to see some of Russia. Here a Lenin, there a Stalin. On the right is the world's largest Lenin head in Ulan Ude. (One day there will be similar titles for my likeness.) Note that this head is taller than trees and buildings.
Ulan Ude is actually a unique place, being situated just east of Lake Baikal and north of Mongolia. Here is a map. 30% of the people are buryatia Buddhist (siberian buddhist). They people are ehtnically a mix of east asian and russian. This means tall chinese looking folks, rather striking.
Another curiosity of the border... I came upon people using abacus! For example, to count up the charge on these cheetos. What was I doing buying Cheetos? Nevermind that, the bigger question is how there can be cheetos but no calculator!
Final story for today. I caught a train from Ulan ude to Ulan Battor, the capital of Mongolia. The train stopped at the border for like 10 hours. During this time a bunch of mongolians boarded and shoved a bunch of parcels in the compartment occupied by myself and another (a truck driver from Irkutsk). These mongolians were obvoiusly smuggling something...so we took a look. On the left is the results. I guess that makes us gulity of helping smuggle probably 500 issues of Cosmo Russian into Mongolia...
Next update: mongolia, the new Beijing, Xian, maybe Tibet...
1 comment:
I was a little worried what it would be like for an Indian in Russia, but it seems your experiences were fun. I hope to go there in the future, especially to check out some of the post-Cold War buildings.
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