Владивосток
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| An attempt at photographing my first sunset of the Pacific Ocean. Although, it turned out to be just a bay, not the ocean. Minor fail. |
It’s 4 am in a kitchen in
Vladivostok: the Asian end of the Russian ‘Eurasian’ dream. I haven’t eaten any
fruit in days, my body clock is dangling between mildly and moderately screwed
and all I have is coffee, cheap pasta and the burdensome company of itinerant
workers who, unfortunately, are really starting to get on my tits. In Russia
most hostels aren’t what we expect in England: a space for young travellers to
gather, consume alcohol and exchange ideas. You’re unlikely to see any drunk
Australian demi-poets talking about the meaning in a Finnish girl’s eyes. You
won’t see that one American girl who thinks that Florence ‘totally changed her
life’. There will be no Columbians eating pie, no French people staring at you
with disdain from a chaise-longue, no Germans with maps and no Brazilians
singing about saudades. You will,
however, probably end up in the natural habitat of a certain breed of Russian
man: the good old Muzhik. The kind of
man who will invite you to drink beer from a plastic bottle, who will end every
sentence in an expletive, who will loudly talk to his wife on skype in the
middle of the night and who will confuse Ireland with Iceland, Finland, Holland
and any other country ending in ‘land’.
Over my Russian voyages in the
last years I have developed a way to cope with such men, the grand frequenters
of hostels and trains from Kiev to Moscow and Novosibirsk to Riga:
1)
Accept one beer. Then pretend to be tired and use the
force of the alcohol to induce sleep as you rock yourself into the foetal
position.
2)
Let them stroke your pride as they tell you how
wonderful your Russian is. Nod slowly and use your most masculine, indifferent
voice to reply ‘ну да’ (well, yes) and ‘понятно’ (I understand).
3)
Do not mention your gayness. It will only confuse them.
They probably won’t hurt you if you are in a train or a hostel, but they might
spin you some story about how homosexuality is illegal in Russia (it’s actually
perfectly legal[1])
or start miming female breasts, cackling and asking why you don’t like them.
Instead you may claim that your penchant for academia means you have no time
for study. This works for me because I have glasses and carry books around, but
it can lead to conversations about how breasts and vaginas are necessary for
life, no matter how many poems you read (see miming mentioned above).
Alternatively, you can invent a fictional girlfriend. Mine is an accountant
called Yulia Petrovna. She enjoys table tennis and good wine. Make sure not to show them a picture of
Yulia, though. Because then they might mime her breasts again.
4)
Do not accept their poor-quality meat. It will give you
cancer. Unless, like me, you’re poor, hungry and an inconsistent vegetarian. In
which case, eat cancer. It goes well with black bread, sugary tea and garlic
sauce from a tube.
5)
At a certain point in the scale of sobriety to the
vodka nirvana, you may just have to sit back and listen to them quote Russian
poetry. That man might work as a lorry driver and know more about fishing for
sturgeon than the finer details of art, but he will recite more delicate poems
off by heart than you will ever learn. #sovieteducation
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| I'm at the bit that says 'владивосток'. I can smell North Korea from here. |
Nonetheless, despite these
provisional tips, you may not be successful in retaining your calm. If so,
remember that all of this will be funny in retrospect. On a cold night in
January 2014 I didn’t enjoy my taxi driver’s advice about women and vodka, but
now it is one of my most memorable quotes. Seeing that I was struggling to
breathe under an unstoppable cough, the nice driver turned to me and told me
that the best solution was to ‘grab a bottle of vodka, shove a red chilli pepper
in the bottom, leave it overnight and go to sleep. Then tomorrow, get up, drink
the bottle and fuck your girlfriend. You’ll be cured.’ Now every time I get
ill, I know exactly what to do.
But I digress. Let’s answer the questions you have been
asking me, dear readers!
1. Richard, Texas: What are you doing in Vladivostok?
Mainly I am failing to understand the concept of time. I’ve
never been jetlagged before, so this is very new. Nonetheless, I am finding it
quite entertaining. There is something about having an unpredictable sleeping
pattern which enhances the sense of adventure: I only make plans for the next
few hours rather than for the next few days, because I have absolutely no
concept of when I will sleep, at what time I will get up and what shall awake
me. I could awake to an empty city in rain, a scorching midday bustle, a
Japanese tourist frantically packing his suitcase, a hysterically chuckling
Uzbek or another Russian man shouting down the telephone to his mother
(conveniently forgetting to end every sentence in ‘whore’ (блядь) like he
normally does).
Otherwise, I am spending almost all of my time alone and in
joy. I have dreamt about coming here for a long time. At the risk of sounding
sentimental, since I started learning Russian about three and a half years ago,
Vladivostok has always seemed like the culmination of my goals: the proof that
mastery of this difficult language will literally take you to the end of the
earth. I call almost smell North Korea from my window sill. *cue Dawson creek
theme music, add extra violins, mood lighting and a dwarf grating cheese*.
I saved a lot of money to get here; I studied vocabulary and
grammar for eight hours a day back in the beginning; I got used to eating
things that look like human waste (‘GRECHKA? WHAT EVEN ARE YOU?’), and I made a
huge effort of mind and soul. As a result, simple things have been leaving me
in hysterical tears of joy. A swing at sunrise? Tears. A bridge over the hills?
Tears. Looking at that huge map of the USSR on the wall? Tears. Discovering
that in this part of the world they sell hot coffee in cans? HYSTERICAL TEARS.
Although, to be fair, the idea of having coffee named ‘LET’S
BE mild’ probably would have reduced me to tears even in England. It sounds
like a Christian advertising campaign for sex in the missionary position.
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| The hot coffee in a can which brought my jetlagged self to hysterical laughter beside a Russian Orthodox church.. |
2. Imaginary question asker #1: How did you get here?
On an 8 hour plane journey from Moscow. I could have gone by
train, but having experienced countless overnight ‘Platzkart’ journeys in
Russia over the last year, the appeal of the Trans-Siberian Railway has
diminished somewhat. The idea of being on a train full of muzhiki for a week with no proper hygiene facilities and a diet
consisting of ready-made pasta, rubbery ham and noodles, makes me want to
inject myself with ebola instead. I’ll wait a few years, find a husband who
speaks no Russian and then take him on the Trans-Siberian with me. Then at
least it will be entertaining. I enjoy laughing at other people’s misfortunes.
It was also the perfect excuse to listen to this terrible
Russian pop song that I discovered when I first began learning Russian. The lyrics of which run:
‘Мне очень жаль, моя любовь. Я улечу
Москва- Владивосток”.
‘I’m very sorry,
my love. But I am flying from Moscow to Vladivostok.’
Initially, however, I had misheard the lyrics as:
“Мне очень жарко, моя любовь. Я улечу
Москва- Владивосток.”
‘I’m very warm,
my love. I am flying from Moscow to Vladivostok’.
I interpreted this as a pretty extreme alternative to
installing air-conditioning.
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| http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TVGsWLGqJ4A |
3. Imaginary question asker #2: What do you plan to do for
the rest of the time?
I plan to barbecue on the Pacific Ocean, eat borscht, take a
train to Khabarovsk and search the Jewish Autonomous Oblast’ for the last
remaining Jew.
4. Lenneke,
Amsterdam: Are people more Asian or European?
Whether Russians are more European or Asian is a good question
for a lifetime of investigation and pondering. Consult Ivan the Terrible, Peter
the Great, Vladimir Putin’s foreign policy advisors and Masha at the cake shop
for the definitive answer. I’ll tackle another question instead.
So far, it seems there is no significant difference between
the Russians in Vladivostok and the Russians in some small town near Moscow or
Saint Petersburg. Perhaps I will be proven wrong with time, but my first
impression at the airport was that I had arrived in just another normal Russian
city: the same fresh May rain, the same Soviet architecture, the same shops,
the same people, the same accent, the same programmes on the television, the
same news of Ukraine and NATO. There are a few more Asians than in the rest of
Russia (despite massive deportations during Soviet times[2]),
more people learning Chinese or going to Japan to buy cars, but this place is
more amazing in its ability to be similar rather than its difference. We are
9000 km and week-long train journey from Moscow and yet most Russians here
still think and act the same.
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| Some art from the conference of Far East Tourism which I attended by accident. |
4. General cry of facebook friends: what have you done so
far?
Apart from crying hysterically at inanimate objects, I have:
a.
Visited an egalitarian Vladivostok sex shop.
b.
Been to a conference about tourism in the Far East,
where I watched Malaysian dancing, wondered at Asian calligraphy and listened
to a woman very persuasively arguing that I should learn Chinese immediately.
c.
Attended an underground bar, where they only open the
door to familiar faces and play alternative films all day long. The woman
behind the counter said she thought I sounded like I came from Moscow and my
heart melted with pride.
d.
Fallen asleep under the sun on a pebble beach.
e.
Danced beside the Pacific Ocean (see bad pop
above).
f.
Prepared a visiting French couple for their train trip
to Moscow with the following advice: ‘It’s going to be terrible, no one on the
train will speak English, you will probably get lost constantly, you may be
forced to eat more sunflower seeds than is humane and proper, and you will be
very, very sweaty because some Russian babushka
will be scared that if you open the window the draught will kill you all. But
you will love the experience and remember it until you die.’
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| The egalitarian sex shop in central Vladivostok. |
5. Inner voice of self-critique: When can we get a proper
blog that isn’t just a silly question and answer section?
Over the last year I have developed an irrational anxiety
disorder related towards writing, meaning that my blog had to stop very
promptly. So even this very basic article is an important step in the road
towards my goal of not fearing the things I love. If you want an explanation of
my psychological complexes, please send me a personal message. I can write you
a small novel of fuck ups with details of all the bends in the mental road.
You’ll probably feel much better about yourself afterwards.
Since my last post, I have visited nudist beaches in
Ukraine, fallen in love in Amsterdam, been shot at by rubber bullets,
travelled to the grand smoke of Magnitogorsk and driven through Italy in the
back of strangers’ cars. None of these experiences have found their voice yet,
but I hope that this little introduction to writing will allow me to slowly
piece together these experiences. In the meantime, this is only a taster. You
may feel free to lick your screens.
Love love,
D.
P.S. Blogs about my recent trips to Moscow, Saint Petersburg
and France may follow soon. The exact date?
Ask the wind.
