Chapter One: Five-day journey to work across a strange land
“Surely you are a
spy?”
“I Russian
policeman. Give me one hundred roubles”
“This is the first
time I have ever met a foreigner”
“I can introduce you
to my right-wing friends. They hate foreigners but they will like you”
“Englishmen never
eat meat off the bone”
“Let’s drink!”
These are but a few
of the things Russians said to me when living in Chita, a Siberian city of some
360,000 inhabitants which stands around 500km north of the Chinese border and
300km from Mongolia. Any foreigner is likely to hear much the same but will
surely be charmed by the genuine warmth and hospitality of a people well able
to smile despite the hardships of Siberian life.
Why, indeed, had I
chosen to spend six months working as an English teacher in Chita? After all, I
had never visited Russia, had no experience or training in the field of
teaching and earned my living in Britain as an IT specialist. The truth is that
for many years I had studied with great fascination the history and culture of
Russia- that vast land upon which centuries of tradition and seventy-plus years
of social experimentation had left an indelible, yet somehow indecipherable
mark.
I had spent my early
twenties working in Nottingham for an American bank and had never been
comfortable with the commuting, nine-to-five lifestyle. For two years I managed
to get the bank to pay for me to attend evening classes in Russian on the
grounds that they may one day want to do business in Russia (though only if
they take leave of their senses). Having tired of corporate politicking and
feeling like a relatively insignificant cog in the big wheel of society, in
2003 I had left my (comfortable, if not exciting) existence at the bank to
spend a memorable year as a postgraduate in Norwich. Here I studied in a
department boasting students from fifty-five different countries, broadening my
horizons and conception of the world in a way I had long craved. Leaving
Norwich at the end of my course was a major wrench, as friends left that fine
city to take up positions around the globe. My Japanese girlfriend left for her
homeland and suddenly I found myself 28 years old, single, jobless and
homeless. Tempting as it was to lament the loss of the lifestyle I had just
left behind, here was a blank canvas of opportunity. During my Masters year I
had studied Russia closely, increasing my desire to actually sample life in
that country whose government, over many years, had behaved in such an opaque,
baffling (and often cruel) manner toward its people. I resolved that my next
adventure would be Russian.
An intriguing family
legend had it that there may have been Russian ancestry on my grandfather’s
side. As he was rather secretive about his family background, he had never
mentioned this but on one occasion when my grandmother was having a séance with
friends, Grandad refusing to participate, a spirit claiming to be a Russian
woman made herself known. My grandfather’s cynical demeanour quickly changed as
he apparently went pale, mumbled something about it being his own grandmother,
and refused to say any more about it. Alas, I have been unable to trace my
grandfather’s family history, but my family believe it may explain something of
my preoccupation with Russia.
Chita…. not a city I
had heard of, admittedly, until my housemate pointed out to me an internet job
advert seeking English teachers for duty in Siberia. Russia being one of the
few countries where formal teaching credentials seemed not to be important, I
sent off a CV. One lengthy phone conversation with a Russian representative of
the American charity that placed the ad later, and I had my long-sought opportunity
to live in Russia.
The charity informed
me that they required an initial deposit as numerous people had agreed to work
in Siberia but had thought better of it when the time came. The deposit was to
be paid back on arrival, and though this promise was to be fulfilled, sending
$200 to a charity about which I knew virtually nothing was an act of faith
inspired by my desire to actually go ahead and push myself into undertaking
this adventure.
In autumn 2004 I
received an official invitation from the university, a mysterious document
written solely in Cyrillic which I initially assumed was a visa. Russian
documents are never so simple, as I was to learn many times over, and it turned
out that I had to use this slip of paper to apply for a visa from the London
Embassy. I painstakingly, carefully filled in and sent off my application and
waited a few weeks until, a fortnight or so before departure, I began to get
jumpy. I repeatedly phoned the Embassy and each time the phone simply rang out,
until one day an indifferent worker bothered to answer and told me that my visa
had been ready for some time. Because I had not enclosed return postage, they
had just left it to gather dust and had not bothered to contact me. I hastily
sent an SAE and a week later, driving back from a temporary job on a pitch
black early January morning, stopped to collect my visa at the post office. I
sat in my car, tired after a twelve-hour shift and rain falling as the town
began its day, elated as I victoriously clutched my visa. The last bureaucratic
hurdle had been cleared.
Having assured
everybody that Chita is nowhere near Chechnya I bade farewell to family,
friends and dog and, with feelings of trepidation finally starting to bite
having lain largely dormant, travelled to Heathrow to catch my flight to
Moscow.
Moscow
What does one expect
of life in Russia? Numerous Western texts and travelogues had given me a
flavour, and those concerning Siberia, whilst interesting, had left only
impressions of cold, remote emptiness and economic desolation. American cyclist
Simon Vickers’ account of an epic bicycle trip across Russia undertaken during
the Soviet Union’s dying days had described a Siberia struggling under the
weight of economic collapse- a region in which buying simple necessities such
as food had proved all but impossible and the team of cyclists had found
themselves reliant upon the kindness of the locals for survival. Chita had not
made a favourable impression upon Vickers. Of course, I was aware that Russia
had experienced some economic growth since its difficult transition to the
market economy, and a bit of poking around the web suggested that such
hardships were now a thing of the past for most Siberians, but nonetheless my
peculiar psychology led me to prepare to accept the worst, and to view anything
better than Vickers’ Siberia as a welcome bonus.
I am ashamed to
admit it but the cynic in me, upon touching down at Moscow’s snow-lashed
Domodedovo airport, looked at the busy Russian baggage handlers scurrying
around the apron and thought to myself that here was first-hand evidence of at
least some economic activity taking place in Russia. Domodedovo is a modern
international airport, busy with travellers of all hues crossing Eurasia, and
until one steps beyond its aseptic bounds then of course the real Russia cannot
be encountered.
I’ve been to London
and I’ve been to New York, and I’ve found myself frustrated by the alienation
and rudeness a stranger can feel in such large cities. The belligerent attitude
of a customer service employee at NY’s Port Authority bus station had long
stayed with me- after all, this person was employed to provide helpful
information to the Big Apple’s many visitors. Moscow provided such attitude in
abundance, with the added bonus of a document-hungry militia and a language
barrier which a couple of years’ evening school Russian did little to help me
overcome. Having established that internal flights were prohibitively costly,
the intriguing prospect of four and a half days on the Trans-Siberian railway
became a daunting reality.
In order to exit the
airport and enter Russia proper it is necessary to fight off offers of
eighty-dollar taxi rides from opportunistic Russians. I was perhaps a little
too forthright in showing my disgust as these chaps tried their luck, even when
one sheepishly tried to undercut his pals by offering to take me to the train
station for thirty, but even though I did not know how far away the station was
and looked more smelly backpacker than businessman, I could tell I was being
viewed as a walking wad of dollars. I hauled my oversize suitcase through the
Moscow underground, which is every bit as ornate as is reputed, its cavernous
chambers built by forced labour and adorned with colourful murals. Commuters
stared as I man-hauled my huge case up long flights of stairs, and with a
little unexpected help from a random English-speaking Azeri, I made it to
Yaroslavsky Station. The station serves as the point of departure for eastbound
trains and from a distance has something of the Disney about its slanting roofs
and spires, but from ground level seems to blend with the intimidating
Stalinist grey of its surrounds. It stands on Moscow’s ‘Three Station Square’,
which also hosts the Leningradskaya and Kazansky rail terminals- a busy hub of
Moscow life. A drizzling rain fell and temperatures were approaching zero and
tolerable given my English winter garb. Winter in Manchester sprang to mind-
Moscow in January was proving warmer than I had hoped. Inevitably, the Azeri
started to tell me his woeful story of homelessness, joblessness and
discrimination, and politely asked for twenty roubles. Reasoning that a) He had
been helpful and polite, and not in the least bit threatening, b) Twenty
roubles is around forty pence and thus was not an outrageous sum to ask- this
chap was no airport taxi driver, and c) I was really unsure of the whole
situation and did not want a refusal to prompt his causing me any trouble…… I
coughed up the cash. The Azeri went politely on his way, openly stating that he
was going to use the roubles to buy vodka to help him forget his plight.
Next task….. buy a
train ticket to Chita, now fairly confident in the knowledge that, contrary to
my naïve expectations, nobody in Moscow appeared to speak any English and that
I would have to conduct the whole transaction in a combination of pidgin
Russian and improvised, frantic sign language.
In England, the
ticket-buying process would simply involve wandering up to the ticket office, a
brief enquiry as to times and prices, and the exchange of cash or card for a
ticket. Job done. Not so in Russia, of course. Having dragged my luggage to the
‘Kassa’ (cashier), a lengthy period of queuing was followed by a
frustrating attempt at using my pidgin to negotiate my passage to Chita. To be
fair to the station staff, none of who spoke any English (and I’m not arguing
that they should have), they tried to help but the process broke down
completely as I naively attempted to use my Visa card as a means of payment. No
chance. Pensively, I withdrew an alarmingly large fist-full of rouble notes
from a cash machine, queued up again and- more by fortune than design- managed
to book a ticket for the midnight train- final destination Khabarovsk, several
days to the east. Russian trains have four classes, the last of which has no
sleeping accommodation. Third class, popularly known by the German moniker platzkart,
has seats which function as beds in much the same manner as European-style
couchettes. Rather than having enclosed compartments, the seats/beds are
crammed together in an open-plan manner. What is lost in privacy is gained in
social interaction. Having no idea of how secure Russian train travel may be,
and being in possession of a fair old quantity of luggage that I’d have found
it awkward to last a few months without, I opted for the more expensive
second-class option, known as ‘kupe’. The enclosed compartments of kupe
each contain four couchettes and can be locked. The one-way ticket cost around
ninety pounds, the journey’s length being 6,204 kilometres.
The next challenge:
place my cases in storage for the five or six hours prior to departure. The
next obstacle: the Russian militia. I was stopped at the kassa hall
entrance by a pug-faced, stocky official that somehow reminded me of a younger
Nikita Khruschev. His universal refrain….. ‘Dokumenti!’ Not being in a
great hurry, and being sure of the validity of my hard-won visa and passport, I
produced the requested documentation calmly and with a deliberately benign
demeanour. Had I been in Russia longer than a couple of hours at that point, I
would not have been surprised, but to my bafflement came forth a fast string of
incomprehensible Russian, the apparent gist of which was that something about
my paperwork was not in order. I repeated, parrot-like, a couple of times the
phrase “Ya Angliski uchitelnitsa. Ya rabotayu v Chita, v Sibiry”, which
I now know translates as a grammatically deficient version of “I am a female
English teacher. I work in Chita, in Siberia”. He seemed to grasp this, as he
corrected my use of ‘uchitelnitsa’ to ‘uchitel’, noticing as he
had that I am in fact male. Then he continued to rant in Russian so fast that I
recognised not one word. It dawned on me that he may well be waiting for me to
offer a subtle cash sweetener to be allowed on my way, but I reasoned that the
best course of action was to stand and gawp innocently and good-naturedly.
After all, I had hours to spare, I was carrying so much luggage that I was
obstructing people coming in and out of the kassa hall, I was not
entirely sure (though quite confident) that offering bribes to coppers would
not result in a little trip to the local cop shop, and- importantly- I did not
want to give this little fascist[1]
any money. After a good twenty minutes of my claiming that, as far as I knew, I
was legal and was innocently proceeding to Chita (the conversation relying upon
means other than the spoken word), the fascist tired of me and waved me on my
way. During this time he had liberally apprehended any slightly non-Russian
looking passers-by with his abrupt “Dokumenti!” catchphrase.
My contact in Chita
was Michael Shipley, an American ex-pat who has lived in Russia for nine years
or so having first visited as one of a group of students driving a van across
what was at the time an impoverished and chaotic country. His emailed advice
about negotiating Yaroslavsky Station included the Russian term for ‘Luggage
Office’. By mispronouncing this to enough people I managed to locate the office
and temporarily ditch my cases. Feeling suddenly much freer and lighter, I
fairly skipped through the Moscow rain and toward a city which I now had a few
hours to explore. I promptly trod in a very deep puddle, completely soaking
through one of my shoes and socks. The temperature as night fell hovered around
zero, so my combination of leather jacket, trainers and garish blue woollen
‘Chesterfield Football Club’ hat was quite warm enough if I kept on the move,
though the sodden foot didn’t help. I had a quick poke around the busy market
adjoining the station, which seemed to sell mainly greasy pastries, beer, music
and porn, and frightened one woman half to death by trying to ask if there was
an internet café nearby. I approached her politely but her silence and
rabbit-in-the-headlights body language suggested that Muscovites are wary of
contact with weird foreigners. Destitute grandmothers stood staring vacantly on
street corners, hands outstretched for a few roubles, and street kids darted
between the gaudy kiosks.
Drawing a blank on
the internet café front, I ventured into the station’s surrounding streets. All
the while, a steady stream of humanity, including a fair few prosperous looking
businessmen, went impassively about its business. As I walked between
forbidding grey Stalin-era blocks, phoning my American contact to let him know
that I was now in Russia and approximately when I would arrive was my quest.
The impossibility of communicating my need for a simple phone card with which
to use a basic street call box led to the fruitless purchase of a couple of
useless cards and, becoming paranoid about being nabbed once more by the
militia, I decided to abandon my reconnaissance of the drab streets around the
station and play safe by sitting out the remaining three hours or so in the
waiting room. By now I was admittedly quite frustrated but did not want to yet
give into the temptation to despairingly conclude that I had simply chosen an
impossibly difficult country to live in. After all, mental stimulation has long
been something I crave in life- this experience was certainly testing my wits
and my ability to think on my feet. I resolved to treat each setback as a
challenge- an attitude without which any traveller unfamiliar with Russia would
soon admit defeat.
At midnight, having
spent a dull period in the waiting room enlivened only by an enormous row
between members of a drunken family and my being told (I think) by a tramp not
to lie on his usual bench (unless he was ticking me off for showing the soles
of my feet to others- one of a long list of apparently taboo gestures in
Russia), I crawled gratefully onto the Khabarovsk train. Having had my ticket
and passport double-checked by the train attendant, I hauled my massive
suitcase down the narrow corridor and into a clean compartment. To my relief,
under the couchette was a place to stow my bags, greatly alleviating my fears
of losing most of my gear before I had even arrived in Chita. I greeted the
silent young Russian chap who shared the compartment, unfurled my sleeping bag,
locked the door and settled down for a peaceful rest. Half an hour later the
train jerked forth, in burst the same attendant, my documents were checked
again and I was ordered to cough up forty roubles for regulation railway
bedding- sleeping bags, it seems, are not acceptable. I was on my way to Chita.
The Trans-Siberian Express
During four and a
half days spent rolling through the winter scenery of a country I had longed to
visit, I often asked myself what I was doing in this strange land, going to a
remote place where I knew nobody to do a job of which I knew nothing. Comparing
the adventure to my previously humdrum office existence convinced me it was an
adventure worth sticking with.
A schoolteacher had
once said to me “Intelligent people should never get bored” and this had become
a maxim I was fond of repeating, though in such a restrictive environment as a
Russian train plodding through empty, frozen territory where I could barely
communicate with fellow travellers, the maxim did not hold too well. Of course
this may have been because I am simply not that intelligent. Snowbound taiga
formed the backdrop for most of the journey, the large unpopulated stretches
being no surprise. Russia is 71 times larger than the UK but has less than
three times the population. Russian villages rolled by, many of the sturdy
wooden constructions no doubt predating the revolution, and many no doubt
changed little since. Towns tended to consist mainly of the regulation concrete
blocks already familiar from travels in Eastern Europe, while cities usually
afforded the luxury of a stop for anything up to half an hour. Still being
unsure of the whole scenario and fearful of misreading the timetable and seeing
the train pull away with all my possessions and without me, I tended to risk
only a quick poke around the stations, taking the opportunity to buy provisions
from the plentiful kiosks. A railway guidebook had advised me not to overload
on Moscow food and drink as it is freely available at the regular stops, and
thankfully for me, the advice was correct. I would typically hop shivering back
up to my carriage as teams of heavily clothed railway workers, plus the odd babushka,
would be hammering away at the icicles which had formed beneath each wagon.
As for the station buildings themselves, they tended to be impressive and
colourful in a robust and intimidating kind of way, having survived the
communist era during which they had been surrounded by the drab, functional
concrete constructions of the ‘workers’ paradise’. Many was the time the train
pulled into a dark station in the early hours of the morning, its jolts waking
me from a light sleep and leading me to peek sleepily out of the curtains at
the illuminated snow of cities I had long dreamed of visiting…… Nizhny Novgorod,
Perm, Yekaterinburg, Tyumen, Omsk, Krasnoyarsk….. the names were poetry to me
though all I saw of some of these places were empty shunting yards.
At Kirov, just west
of the Urals and still inside European Russia, I made a major breakthrough. By
now, I was worried that nobody else in the world knew quite where I was (least
of all Michael, my contact in Chita), I suspected my documents were not in
order (thanks to the Moscow fascist) and I had read that I must register with
the authorities in my place of permanent residence within three days of arrival
in Russia. Chita being further away than this, I had nagging visions of being
hauled straight to the local cop shop moments after arriving in my adopted
city. At Kirov I followed the now-familiar routine of jumping off the train,
running into the frozen station as fast as the icy ground would permit,
examining the public phones, buying a card which seemed to vaguely match their
arcane symbology and then trying to call my contact in Chita. So far, all attempts
had failed miserably though on occasion I had heard Russian speech at the other
end of the line. This time, the Russian greeting was followed by an American
voice saying in English “Frank? If that’s Frank, turn up the volume”.
Frantically, I began pressing buttons on the payphone. To my delight and
surprise, a Russian woman from a nearby kiosk strode brusquely over, pressed
the ‘increase volume’ button a few times and left me to conduct my first
conversation with Michael, Chita’s resident American. Her manner had hardly
been friendly but it was unmistakably an act of kindness toward a total
stranger; something I had not yet experienced in Russia. Mind you, why the
volume is automatically set to zero when you make a payphone call I shall never
know. Michael quickly explained that he would meet my train, my flat was ready
and waiting, that registration with the Chita authorities would present no
problem, and that as far as he was aware my passport and valid visa were
perfectly adequate for travelling across Russia. He suspected, as I did, that
the Moscow militia man had merely sniffed an opportunity to extract a few bucks
from a naïve foreigner. Greatly reassured, I boarded the train and again
settled into a compartment that I now occupied, silent Russian companion having
alighted, alone.
Inside the train,
people dress casually and wander around in slippers as the air is warm, but
opening the doors to pass between carriages is quite a shock to the system as
the freezing air blasts through from outside. Smokers are consigned to the
unheated end compartments of each wagon and have to tog up before venturing
into the freezer for a fag- I was thankful to be a non-smoker. Whereas Russians
do not usually easily communicate with strangers, on trains people quickly get
to know one another and readily share food and tales. After all, the average
Russian train journey is not like our quick British commutes and people are
often stuck in close proximity for days on end. Washing is a challenge in the
tiny (and far from hygienic) bathrooms and I dread to think what some of the
people on my train smelled like by the time they reached Khabarovsk in the Far
East. In each carriage works a provodnitsa, a carriage attendant who
doles out bedding and hot water from the train samovar. A samovar is
a Russian metal urn in which water is boiled and dispensed via a tap-
traditionally having a chimney and heated by coals but taking a much smaller
form on the train. Many travellers would use the hot water to rehydrate
prepared noodle meals, whilst others would drink tea from glasses held in
ornate metal holders. In each compartment was a table on which to eat, drink
and climb into top couchettes, a bottle opener fixed under each in a nod to the
true priorities of many travellers. The surly provodnitsas were a tad
annoying, not just for their curt manners but for the fact that they were
easily the fattest women I saw in my whole time in Russia. Why people so lardy
would choose to work in such a confined space, I’ll never know- as they rumbled
down the narrow carriage, children would scatter before them and adults hold
their breath and press themselves to the carriage walls. Other regular visitors
to the train were sellers of dried fish or semechki (sunflower seeds)
who would hop on and off as the train stopped. The eating of semechki is
a national pastime in Russia, more for the ritual than for the taste or
nutrition. The seed is placed whole in the mouth and the teeth and tongue used
to extract the kernel. The husk is usually spat wherever the muncher happens to
be (football stadiums are knee-deep in semechki husks) though inside a
train people are a touch more careful. One may buy handfuls of semechki from
hawkers for a pittance and at first I ate them whole, Russians looking on
horrified and telling me my appendix would soon burst. Having had my appendix
removed some time ago, I found it fun to continue eating the seeds whole just
to wind up my audience a little.
Wandering along to
the restaurant wagon for my evening meal became a major event during those
monotonous days. I had to rely upon my phrase book and the patience of the
woman supervising the wagon, but each meal followed the rough pattern of my
sitting down, indicating that I needed a little time to decipher the Russian
menu, ordering a dish that took my fancy, waiting fifteen minutes or so, being
presented with a decent plate of fried chicken and fried potatoes (regardless
of what I had ordered) with tea and bread, coughing up around 100 roubles (two
quid or so) and then thanking the supervisor profusely before retiring back to
my compartment. I think it was on the third day that I realised the restaurant
wagon was about to close when I arrived. They served me anyway but I later
twigged that though the Russian train system runs wholly on Moscow time, the
restaurant- quite understandably- was adjusting its opening hours as we crossed
timezones. Chita is six hours ahead of Moscow and I had spent the whole journey
running personally on Moscow time. No wonder it seemed to be getting dark earlier
and earlier. From this point onwards I began to adjust to local time.
At Novosibirsk, the
train now traversing Asian Russia, I hopped off, glanced up at the station
clock which informed me that the temperature was –25C, skittered into the station
and switched on my (English) mobile phone. I had tried this before in other
cities without success but here- bingo! Siberia’s largest city obviously
boasted a mobile communications network to match. A text message from my mother
arrived, asking how I was progressing and, thankfully, showing no signs that
she was as yet alarmed at having heard nothing from me since my leaving for
this unknown land. I responded to the effect that all was fine, albeit
confusing and, feeling better, jogged back to the train through weather that
was the coldest I had yet encountered…… in all my days.
I had recently been
joined in my compartment by a quiet, though no doubt perfectly pleasant,
middle-aged Asian Russian woman. As I came back inside, eyeing my woefully
inadequate thin clothing, she attempted our first conversation. This went
something like (from her), “Holodno?” (“Cold?”) and (from me) “Da-
ochen” (“Yes- very”). She smiled briefly and returned to the crossword
puzzles that seem to be used by many Russians as a means of combating boredom.
We barely conversed until approaching Chita. As she was also alighting there
she was wondering why I was visiting her city, and when I explained she seemed
pleased but slightly baffled as to why I would choose such an outpost as hers
to be my home.
Irkutsk is a city I
had long wished to visit, and the train’s daytime stop there afforded me the
opportunity to risk going beyond the station and to venture briefly into the
city itself. Okay- so this only turned out to be a quick foray into the icy,
bustling, taxi-filled square adjoining the station- but I felt I had bravely
snatched a glimpse of this famed Siberian jewel and lived to tell the tale by
hopping back onto the train before it continued its stately progress.
Even more appealing
than Irkutsk was the prospect of seeing Lake Baikal, the world’s largest body
of fresh water. Over sixty percent of the species populating this deep fissure
in the earth’s surface are found nowhere else on the planet. I could not wait
to catch a glimpse as the train skirted its frozen edge. Unfortunately, the
frozen edge was skirted in the pitch black of night and though I had remained
wakeful in anticipation, the darkness was such that in the end I could see only
a few metres of jagged ice, which was often indistinguishable from the
snowfields forming the lake shore. Not to worry- I was to see Baikal clearly
from the air when flying home a few months later- and Chita was but a day or so
away.
