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| Sochi Train Station |
I spent three days in Sochi, but it is probably one evening that I will remember until my dying delirium. All the elements of madness came flowing together -- by the sea, in the night, beside the palm trees -- and spelt out a kiss on our foreheads: the Chechens, the alcohol, the beautifully-odd hiphop boy, the 'little salad' girl and the empty station at dawn.
It was February and I had decided to come to Sochi in the interval between the end of Olympics and the beginning of the Paralympics: all the hotels and hostels had free spaces, the foreigners had more or less left, and I could find a place to stay. I had been invited to Sochi by my friend, Pasha, a psychologist-in-training from Belarus (I made reference to him in my post about Belarus in March 2013), who was working in the culinary department of one of the many new hotels built in Krasnaya Polyana, the ski resort outside Sochi.
I took a night train and arrived at 5am. I walked out of the station with no fixed direction and only one goal in mind: to get rid of as much fruit as possible as quickly as possible. Before the train ride I had coincidentally bought a huge stock of fruit for the next week (apples, bananas and pears galore) and then, running late, had been unable to bring said fruit home before leaving for Sochi. Now I wouldn't be able to fix my mistake: the fruit was doomed. I knew that before getting on the special service trains (named 'lastochki' or 'swallows') to Krasnaya Polyana or the Olympic Park, I would have to go through security checks equivalent to those at airports. This, of course, would involve throwing out all my food and any liquids. Bananas, Pasha had said, were considered dangerous items. He didn't really know why, but they hadn't let his yellow fruit pass, and that was that. We can safely say that no bananas have ever graced the swallow trains of Sochi. Maybe that's a good thing. Bananas, as comics around the world regularly remind us, are famously slippery and would have been a huge impeding peril to our Olympic athletes. There would have been countless news reports about banana-injured hobbling figure skaters crying in despair at the gates of the Olympic Park. This would have been unacceptable.
I shoved as much fruit as possible down my nutritional trajectories and with great regret threw the rest, with a clang, into a metallic bin. The swallow was waiting.
Pasha and I met just after dawn in Krasnaya Polyana -- the mountains rose before us, half-covered in mist. I was exhausted and erratic in my words. Memories are blurred: my art-inclined mind finds it hard to keep things accurate, scientific and ordered in any circumstance, let alone in such a state of deprivation. Nonetheless, before I move on to describing the evening of madness, I will recount some memories of my brief encounter with an old friend.
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| This is a bit like what Russia looks like. (No relation to the blog. It's just cool.) |
I remember...
climbing up to the hotel village on the furnicular railway. Before us stretched out a range of raw mountains -- sharp, snow-covered peaks and forests, which soon became completely blurred by the rain and dampness, so that almost nothing was visible. As we rose, Pasha handed me a set of post-cards showing the Belarusian city of Mogilev before the War. I took them gladly and fumbled through them, bemused at my attempts to pronounce the Belarusian language on the postcards' descriptions, and whilst commenting on them (in Russian) tried to avoid showing any traces of a foreign accent. Admittedly, this mainly consisted of me being completely silent and limiting my signs of approval to nods and the words 'vot eto da, krasivo' ('Oh, that's pretty, indeed'), but nonetheless, I felt proud. Pasha had told me it was important that our fellow furnicular passengers shouldn't find out that I was a tourist: we hadn't paid the ironically steep visitor fees to go up, because, given that all the tourists had gone home, they just assumed everybody was a worker in the hotel village and didn't check our passports.
I remember...
drinking coffee in Sochi and becoming ever more delirious with tiredness as Pasha told me about his views on Gandhi, Buddhism and Hesse. I resolved once again to make an effort to actually read more about Gandhi, Buddhism and/or Hesse. I like these topics. He reminded me that it was important to aim towards honesty and to follow your own path. For the 70th time, I vowed to write a novel based on these principles. We will see when and how my promises to myself are fulfilled or whether I just keep reading the blurbs on the back of oriental books until my dying day.
I remember...
sleeping like a homeless man on the hard back seats of the bus from Krasnaya Polyana to Sochi. My head rested on my bag and Pasha took pictures. People stared at me. 'They probably thought you were a migrant worker. Worked hard all day, built the Olympics with his bare hands, collapsed on his bag, fell into unconsciousness.'
I remember...
saying goodbye to Pasha as I finally made it dead-eyed and drained to the hostel, ready only for sleep. We promised to meet again, but it didn't happen. He started working, I slept for almost a whole day...
The next memories involve walking alone under the palm trees, getting lost many times, meeting a man who bought me a greasy sandwich, and rushing to the Lastochka. It was 9pm and I was going to Adler (considered a district of Sochi, but really quite far away) to meet someone who claimed to be an artist.
He looked pretty and hopefully hipster on his internet profile. He even seemed to have a bright blue tattoo of a kitten on his arm, he wore bright clothes and he knew how to skate. I thought I'd try to get to know him as I had nothing else to do. His name was V.
We went to a bar that was normally reputed for being 'cool' (his words), but today, unfortunately (once again his words), the locals were out. They were a cataclysmic force, shedding their inhibitions like the old snake scales of the passed Olympics. There were women shouting, and men roaring, and people with sweat all over their anatomies, and people laughing, and really sassy waiters and waitresses who told it like it was and made the kind of quick-witted comments you'd expect in some sort of stereotypical film about independent Afro-American mothers in New York. It was pretty funny. And surreal.
V. sat very close to me on the bar seat, right at my side. I was surprised. He was very 'masculine'-acting and I had expected him to keep a huge distance for the sake of a more safe public persona. But no, it was close, and quite quaint. He told me about his mother: she gets high a lot. He told me about his father: he's a businessman and the reason why V. has lived in many random corners of Russia. Now he lived in St. Petersburg and was working temporarily in Adler.
'When did your parents divorce?' I asked.
'They didn't. They still live together.'
'But you said your dad is very career-minded and hard-working, and your mother just gets high on lots of different drugs a lot.'
'Yeah, he likes her.'
With my prejudice about the feasibility of a relationship between a drug user and a business man exposed, I swiftly changed topic. Actually, no, I didn't. I kept talking about his mother for a long time and then about the effects of magic mushrooms.
V: 'I had a friend who took mushrooms, had a bad trip, and now he's lost his mind. He's sitting in the mental hospital and doesn't know who he is. Or who anyone is.'
'Do you take them?'
V: 'Oh, only a few times every few months.'
'Aren't you afraid you'll also lose your mind?'
'Nope. I don't imagine that happening in the future, so that probably won't happen. I don't think about it.''
'So your friend didn't lose his mind because of the drugs?'
'Nah, it was definitely the mushrooms that drove him insane. It happened just after that time. But no, I don't see that happening in my life.'
It won't affect me, because I just don't see that happening in my life.
Ok, I thought, I'm going to run headfirst into a freight train, because I just don't really see myself dying. It just doesn't feel like my destiny.
Then I'm going to eat 40 kg of pineapples in one sitting, because I don't really see myself getting hives. Hives are not in my fate.
Then I'm going to not eat fruit for 6 years and travel the seven seas on a salty diet, because cholesterol and scurvy are really not for me. I just don't see myself as a scurvy kind of guy.
But I moved on. I like to interview lots of interesting people and he was a friendly, pretty boy. I didn't let myself judge. He'll probably survive the mushrooms.
One of the sweaty-faced local people came up to us. He made us toast to his beer several times. Then, stumbling, he asked a question:
'You're gays, right?'
He stared at us.
We didn't answer.
'Defo queer.'
'I'm bisexual,' V. popped up.
'I respect you.' (A surprising answer. All the memories of the gay-friendly taxi driver came rushing back...)
'You're a couple, right?'
'No we've only just met.'
'Oh, well, your boyfriend is the passive one.'
V. laughed. I felt like I'd like to slip through the floorboards and vanish through the night.
'We've only just met.'
'Come to our party. We won't ask you questions.. about your orientation. We'll just have a fun time. Come, definitely come..'
We didn't go to his party. But we concluded that he definitely hiding some latent homoerotic demons.
Then the alcohol took its blur, our feet created movement and the beach came upon us -- strangely, somehow -- by way of a supermarket.
Along the way to the beach, V. told me about his plans to leave Russia as soon as possible and travel Brazil. I felt a small pang of jealousy, but mainly wonder. After Russia, Brazil will be my next goal and even thinking about other people achieving their adventures through that huge land mass of vibrant cultures makes me tingle.
But I will have to wait for Brazil.
He told me he was a spontaneous man.
'One time I got drunk in Russia and woke up in Barcelona. I didn't have anywhere to stay, so I had to use the internet. I used hornet (a gay social networking app) and I found a man who let me live in his apartment. He was amazingly friendly. We had a great time. He gave me his keys. But then I came home 6 hours late. I thought he had his own copy... But no. He had waited for 6 hours. He didn't like that and he threw me out. Then I found another guy to stay with. But we ended up fighting too. I didn't want sex with him.'
We took a beer in a black bag and sat on the beach, talking. It was grand and beautiful and the colours of the sea, somehow even in nighttime, seemed rich. I was happy to have made a new acquaintance.
But then the Chechens came. One tall, serious man in a taqiyah skullcap, another looking loose and overly friendly. Slyly, they asked for a light. V. gave them one. Or maybe they offered a light. Or maybe they offered a cigarette. I don't know. It was sly, in any case. It later turned out that they were cruising the streets of Adler late on a Friday night, when the locals were drunk and vulnerable, so that they could get them all involved in discussions about their faith. For two hours, they tried to convince V. and me to accept Islam. They kept talking, giving no real natural break to move away. At one point, I changed the topic to at least ask about their lives: what they thought of Chechnya, what they thought of politics, why they had come to Adler. But it always came back to their God and why we should accept his faith.
They told me that I would never know real happiness and calm until I became a muslim.
They told me to look at the night sky, honestly beg to the heavens for truth and that this would reveal -- without doubt -- that Islam was the truth. There would be a sign -- if I 'kept an open heart'.
They told me that they were ready to die for their faith. 'In a second, if I thought it were necessary'.
They told me that they would do anything for a fellow Muslim, that they would give up their lives: that it was an unbreakable community of sacrifice and brotherhood. 'It doesn't matter if he is from Chechnya, Uzbekistan, Nigeria. All that matters is that he loves Islam, and for that we will help him in any circumstance, in any way.'
I asked: 'And what if I'm in a bad situation? Will you do all that you can to help me?'
'Of course..'
'And the second time? Or the third time?'
'You'll have to accept Islam at some point.'
I couldn't understand why V. was more interested in politely listening to the words of the smiling Chechen prophets than walking away and accompanying me to the bus stop as he had promised. I concluded that maybe, after all, as madly creative and spontaneous as he may have seemed: an interesting style, stories of Barcelona, love for some little-known hip hop trend that was governed by an international cohort of 'mamas' (or something along those lines). Despite these things, maybe he didn't have the wildness that I love in creative persons: the willingness to follow their own world and their own path. Maybe he was just a junkie discussing the prophets and Jesus.
I got offended and walked away.
On the way, a girl, who looked about 16, but was wearing spindly grandmother make-up, beckoned to me to sit on a bench and drink her beer. She was talking on a hands-free telephonic device to some sort of bemused man, who was listening intently to her words and responding with warm-hearted laughter. Her voice was a subsonic purr. A bizarre, seductive, tainted, subsonic purr. It sounded like her vocal cords had been put in a foot-spa for several days, gently rubbed in the ashes of cigarettes and then repositioned in her throat. And, for some reason, she kept saying the word 'Salatik'.
For those of you who don't speak Russian, Salat means 'salad'. Yes, the leafy stuff. And by adding the suffix -ik to the word 'salad', she was imbuing the word with a degree of affection, or reducing it to a level of cuteness. It's hard to translate as we don't have direct equivalents in English. But something along the lines of 'my dear, witty-bitty darling salad man'. Okay, maybe that was hyperbolic. Nonetheless, the main point is the following: her term of affection for the man on the other end of the telephone was 'SALAD'. I felt like I had arrived in a bizarre parallel universe where it is normal to see leafy, starch-filled dietary components, renowned for their wrinkly greenness and low-calorie content, as cute (Maybe she really likes salad finger s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3iOROuTuMA )
Her conversation went like this:
"Salad, my darling! A young man has just approached us!...I'm going to give him some beer, salad! Oy, I miss you so, dear Salad! Ukh, Ukh, you're my little salad man!
Nooo, Salad, he's a good man! It was me who invite him to sit with us on the bench, Salad! .. Oh, you're my cute little salad!
Drink up your beer, young man!
Oh, my dear Salad, you're just too good!"
I drank some beer, began to fear it may be mixed with hallucinogenics and bade farewell to little salad woman.
I had nowhere to go, very little idea of where I actually was and absolutely no battery on my phone. Luckily, however, I was wearing a huge coat and in its vacuous pockets I had shoved both a book and my charger. I walked some vaguely familiar streets until I found a 24-hour Japanese cafe, asked the waitress for a seat by the plugs and for 2 hours charged my phone and sat on the internet, recounting the tales of the Chechens and the Salad woman to some British friends who, due to the time difference, had not yet gone to bed.
At 5 am I decided that the first public transport should be running. It was just after the Olympics, after all. I was expecting the infrastructure to cater towards the needs of early Sunday morning drunkards. My map on my phone was too touch-sensitive: if I pressed to zoom in, it would zoom in to show me miniscule details of unnecessary building components. If I gently tried to zoom out, I ended up studying Russia's southern borders. As a result, I just walked in the hope of finding something. A bus stop came across my way. The next service to Sochi was in 45 minutes. It seemed a hopeless wait. I decided to take the approaching bus to the station instead -- there were bound to be regular trains (swallows, remember?). I arrived at the impressively built building (a new Olympic project) which was strongly illuminated, brightening the night, despite being largely deserted. It turned out the next train was in 2 hours. I would have to wait. In my exhausted state, I couldn't even find the waiting room. I sat on a radiator, closed my eyes and gently hated life for approximately 120 minutes.
I got on the train to Sochi, fell asleep and was awoken by a police man on arrival. I was rather startled from my brutal awakening and scared he would arrest me for no reason ( perhaps not a very logical early morning thought). Instead, he just woke me up.
On arrival to the hostel, I was ready to sleep for 4 hours before getting a train to leave Sochi. Instead, opening the door to my room, I was faced with the last event in the chain of surreal circumstances: on my bed there was something I had not expected. A man. A fairly naked man. Sleeping on my bed. Underneath my stuff. Calmly recovering in the world of dreams. Probably drunk. Definitely very much asleep.
I tried to call the hostel staff to try to get somewhere else to stay, but I didn't have money on my phone. The Gods were conspiring in bizarre ways to deprive me of sleep. After 10 minutes the cleaner turned up. I explained the situation.
'That's awful. A disgrace.' she smiled, as if she were my mother comforting me on the loss of a relative.
She was friendly and warm in her outrage. I felt reassured.
'Why don't you take your stuff of the bed? I'll give you a private room for a few hours.'
I took my things from on top of a sleeping man, moved to the private room and fell asleep, finally, in the mix of fluffy pillows and thick blankets that are provided for those guests who pay more. The sun had already risen behind the curtains. I was confused, bemused and content.
Later that day instead of leaving Sochi, I ended up at the house of a cutely-bearded Armenian boy who drew comics for a living. He listened to my story, made me tea and gave me a massage to relax, until I fell asleep, once again in a colony of pillows. He seemed to take less drugs than the first man and took care of me for a day. It was a good end to my Sochi adventure. Many interesting boys, a salad girl and some Chechens.
