ALBANY, N.Y — Blogging every day, or the majority of days in a year, produces an incredible amount of text, a virtual avalanche of verbosity. This year I wrote 180 entries, each with about 600 words (things got longer as the year went on). After mashing on a few buttons on the Windows Calculator application, I can claim to have written 108,000 words on this Web site.
That's a lot to wade through, especially since Blogger is blocked at many places of employment. As an introduction, I've selected a dozen entries which I feel represent the best of what I've written this year and provided links and a short summary below. In the newspaper business, or at least the corner of the newspaper business I used to operate in, this would be called a "Clip 'n' Save" post. Feel free to print it out and send it to your grandmother in Arizona.
"Monika"
"Standing Up to A Bear"
"Do Svidaniya, Russia"
"Please Observe All Signs and Regulations While in the China"
"Straight Outta Ulaanbaatar"
"Two Bombs, One Song"
"Celvin"
"Running the Border"
"Bandages, Thermometers, and a Spider"
"The Ladykillers"
"Man-Meat"
"The Capture of Jiang Zhendong"
Monday, December 31, 2007
The Best of 2007
Sunday, December 30, 2007
Two Plates of Dumplings
ULAN-UDE, Russia — At a dinner party, when a new acquaintance discovers I live in China, they usually smile and rack their brain for the easiest line of inquiry. Inevitably, "How is the food there?" comes out. Then, to show that they've been to college and know a bit about the world, this caveat is tagged on: "Of course, the food is nothing like the Chinese food we have here..."
I stumble to answer this question, regularly not getting much more out than, "it's good," and mumbling something about there being plenty of culinary variety inside China. Sometimes this turns into a total meander, as I start listing off the tell-tale flavors of Cantonese, Sichuan, Fuijian and Heilongjiang schools of cooking. Then my inquirer's eyes begin to glaze over and their feet start shuffling toward the hors d'œuvres table.
The problem is party-goers believe they're asking a simple question, when instead they're stumbling into the complicated field of Chinese food around the world. There are many, many restaurants that serve a over-salted, watered-down version of Chinese food. But at the same time, the constant flow of immigrants from the Old World to the new ensures that more authentic tastes usually aren't hard to find, no matter how far from the Middle Kingdom.
Here in Ulan-Ude both flavors are easily available, and in the spirit of investigation and a rapidly diminishing tolerance for Russian food, I checked them both out.
My visit to the Siberian-Tibetan Temple awakened my hunger for Chinese cuisine, so after getting back into town I went looking for a Chinese restaurant. I didn't need to look far, as I saw Chinese characters on the building just beside the Hotel Udon. I went inside, down three stairs to what I expected to be a dining room. Instead I found a low-grade dance floor, complete with spinning yellow, magenta and blue lights and a tiny Mirrorball. The couple tables remaining were pushed to the side of the room, and were empty. Bad disco music blared from a very loud sound system. A busty woman in a tank-top and too much eyeliner motioned me toward the dance floor. Instead I went for the exit.
I grabbed chips, dried apples and a Coke from a small grocery store and went back to the hotel for a cold dinner. As I passed through the lobby, I saw a sign posted next to the desk. It was in Chinese, and said there was a restaurant on the hotel's top floor. I didn't even bother to drop off my fake dinner before going up there.
The restaurant was heaving with people, all Chinese. The restaurant's dining area wasn't much bigger than my single room, but the owner managed to cram a half-dozen oblong tables inside. Christmas lights and prints ripped off Russian Orthodox calendars hung on the walls. Each table was full, except for a tiny one near the kitchen door, which had a half-eaten bowl of fried rice on top. A waitress, a middle-aged Chinese woman gestured for me to sit down. She then cleared the bowl, wiped the table down with a foul smelling rag and placed a menu entirely in Cyrillic in front of me.
"I'd like to see a Chinese menu," I said, in Chinese.
The waitress did a strange thing: nothing. Didn't blink that I spoke in her native tounge, rather than Russian or my native English. Instead she got a Chinese menu to replace the Russian one.
I ate a very standard Chinese meal: kung pao chicken, fried rice, and a bowl of dumplings in soup. It was all quite tasty, and when the chef came out in the middle of my soup, I complimented him on the food. Were there many people in town, I asked.
Yes, the chef said, quite a few traders. Then he thanked me for coming and asked if I could make way for the next diner.
It was a completely normal Chinese dining expierence. Replace the Russian kitsch on the walls with some posters of Guilin and Lucky Cats, and I could have been in Sichuan Province. There is really is authentic Chinese food outside of the country.
The next day I woke up late, still suffering from a strange form of jet lag caused by my irregular schedule on the Trans-Siberian and the nosy comings and goings of the businessmen and hotel guests on the hall. I started walking the rough sidewalk toward the train tracks and downtown Ulan-Ude, not really sure of a destination. At a corner where I needed to turn right, I saw something that I'd walked by on my previous trips: a mostly-underground shopping plex, a concrete building designed based on what must be stolen blueprints from the Montreal Olympics. It was all gray, irregular slabs, topped off by an ugly cone rising from the entrance. I went inside.
The mall had two largely open levels. Most stores were filled, with music shops and places hawking cheap Chinese clothing. On the bottom level I noticed a small restaurant jutting into the atrium. The restaurant's name was in Cyrillic, but on either side were large Chinese dragons.
It was a mall food court restaurant minus the court. Food was ordered and paid for at the counter, and then customer brought it to an open table. At the counter I was presented with a Cyrillic menu.
"Do you have a Chinese menu?" I asked the woman behind the counter.
This time she stared at me blankly. I studied her features: flat face, pale skin, thick eyebrows. This woman wasn't Chinese, she was a Buryat, and didn't know Chinese from Martian. Thankfully the dishes were being prepared in the front of the stall, and I pointed to a few dumplings and some rice.
My first bite was strange. The dumpling wasn't wrapped in rice, instead it was fried in a thick dough. Inside wasn't pork, but instead a thick beef stew. This was Chinese food for Russian people. All the customers appeared to be citizens of the Federation, a typical Siberian mixture of Buryats and the Rus.
The food wasn't bad, just a bit bland; it was actually hardy in a way that traditional Chinese food is not. The lesson I draw from these back-to-back meals is that the Chinese adapt the menu to suit the audience. Not a terribly profound moral to this tale I know, but it makes a quick and easy answer at a dinner party.
Saturday, December 29, 2007
Sad, Sad Jazz
ULAN-UDE, Russia — I'm a bit homesick.
That can happen during dinner at a place called the Fast Food Café, a Russian establishment that specializes in bringing America to the cold, dark taiga.
I wound up here because I couldn't find any other tasty-looking options in Ulan-Ude's main area - other than a giant Lenin head.
At the Fast Food Café, food is ordered cafeteria-style. The diner takes a tray and pushes it down three parallel metal rods, stopping to take any food that looks edible. On offer are Russo-ifed versions of American favorites, including fried chicken, hamburgers and hot dogs. Healthy dollops of Russia's national condiment and spice, mayonnaise, is sprinkled on top of everything, including the fruit and Caesar Salad. I have to request a custom order, which is difficult when your Lonely Planet Russian Phrasebook is back on the Trans-Siberian, speeding toward Vladivostok.
"Nyet mayo," I say, hoping for cognate. The kitchen worker, about 18 with her hair in a messy ponytail, doesn't get it. I point to a hot dog with three huge kosher pickle slices and a thick squirt of mayo on the top. "Nyet, nyet, nyet," I say. This time she starts to move, although shoots me a look that seems to say that she can't understand why I'd desecrate an American treat by eating it without sauce.
I grab a bag of chips, pay for my food and then go to the bar, where there's Budweiser, Heineken and Baltika on tap. I choose the native brew (#7), and look for an open seat. I find a line of empty stools facing the street windows, and take one in the middle.
The café is obviously a popular weekend hangout for the city's teenagers. And why wouldn't it be? The food is reasonably priced, and minus the mayonaise, pretty tasty, there's bunches of Ikea-knockoff tables in various sizes for small, medium and large groups and friends, and an attached movie theater and video arcade. As I take my third bite of processed pork, the house band starts to play. It's a jazz-quartet of balding middle-aged men in black T-shirts and leather coats.
They play the theme to "Titanic," then "The Bodyguard." The young patrons keep chatting away, but I stop doodling in my brown trip diary. The music choice is mawkish, but it's redeemed by the incredibly tight playing in the group. And here, in this artificially American environment, my mind turns to schmaltz. I'm 9,000 miles from home, in an incredibly foreign city. I haven't had a proper conversation in 10 days. The Internet Café blocked Skype, Gmail and AOL Instant Messenger, so I can't have even an electronic conversation with my friends and relatives. I'm cut-off, on assignment far away from my former life.
Eventually it's time for "Young Hannibal," the third sequel to "The Silence of the Lambs," in the attached movie theater. The film is slow, suspenseful and punctuated by random acts of violence. The atrocities on screen are horrific, . Lecter's enabler is Gong Li, the ravishing Shanghainese actress who made several key Zhang Yimou movies, including "Raise the Red Lantern," "Ju Dou," and "The Curse of the Golden Flower." A key section of the narrative takes place in Kaunaus, Lithuania, a town I passed through just a couple weeks ago. The film is dubbed into Russian, and with no recognizable dialog I stay stuck on the remembrance of things past.
After the film I grab another drink from the Fast Food Café bar. I scribble a few postcards, feigning being excited by my adventures when tonight I'm worn down. The band is between sets and a DJ is spinning songs popular during high school. Aalyiah's "Try Again." Pink's "Lady Marmalade" cover. Eminem's "My Name Is."
In China half the bar would come up to the strange redhead and practice their English. Russia is not China, here they leave the tall man writing in a worn, stained brown notebook alone, and don't ask if he needs help getting home after three beers and an equal number of hot dogs.
It's a cold, uphill two kilometers through half-lit streets back to the Hotel Udon. I don't want to risk riding a bootleg taxi at night in this foreign city, so I pull up the fur lined hood of my down parka and start the trudge. As I walk the jazz music echoes through my head, and eventually the cold is replaced by melancholy for things left behind on the road.
Wednesday, December 26, 2007
Model Minority
ULAN-UDE, Russia — Pity the indigenous Siberian.
Ruled by a government five time zones distant, the native population has had its religion muzzled, culture destroyed and witnessed mass migration of hundreds of thousands of Europeans.
It's hardly unique to the people in Siberia. Native Americans, Outback Aboriginals, and the Incas didn't have so easy, either. But here in the capital of Buryata, one of Siberia's largest ethnic minorities, the population is a taking an interesting turn from the type indigenous tale of woe and mistreatment. I don't want to say this to loudly, but the natives here appear to be doing just fine.
I saw my first Buryat on the Moscow Metro, a young woman with long, skinny legs and a slender frame. Her face was a revelation – a completely new type of visage. She had a long, very flat forehead, a broad nose and very small eyelids. She looked almost Korean, but her skin tone was much lighter, just a shade darker than a pale Russians. At first it seemed to be an impossible look, and I thought that this person must be an Kazakh Albino or just exceptionally light-skinned. But every day I would pass a couple people with the same features, and I realized there wasn't anything unusual about her look, just that there are very few Buryats found outside of Russia.
In Moscow that distinctive face can be dangerous. Right-wing, nationalist street gangs prowl the night, taunting, beating, and sometimes permanently disabling Asian faces in the city. The primary target is illegal migrants from Central Asia, Uzebks and Tajiks who come to Moscow to escape dire living conditions at home – conditions exacerbated by Russia's stranglehold on these countries' economies. There's a jingoistic undercurrent to this violence, and anyone who doesn't look Russian is a possible target.
A Moscow Times story describes what happened to a young Buryat, Yury, coming home to apartment one evening:
"About six teenagers, smaller guys, jumped me on the metro. I managed to throw them off me and it wasn't that serious at first," he recollected during an interview in his dorm room. "Then one of them yelled 'What are you waiting for?' and another stabbed me as they ran out of the car," he said, displaying a three-inch scar near his left kidney. As Yury, who declined to give his last name for this story, staggered around the metro station looking for help and bleeding profusely, the police stopped him for a document check. They helped themselves to all his cash and then decided to call the paramedics.
There are only 5,000 Buryats in a Moscow over 10 million. Here things are different. Buryats make up more than a third of the population, with more than a quarter-million in the Republic. That proportion seems low in the capital, Ulan-Ude, where most people have the distinctive face.
I spent most of the day passing those faces, walking the streets of the city. Ulan-Ude is in the middle of a cold snap, which in the middle of Siberia means it's really, really cold. Temperatures were more than a dozen degrees below zero during the day, and quickly plunge to -40 once the sun is down. There is no humidity in the dry, crisp air, so everyone must cover up to avoid the cold. This makes Buryat spotting quite difficult, as there is little difference in the way the two groups dress outside. Everyone wears a long fur coat, men in dark brown or black, women often in a cream. On the head women wear more fur, usually a peaked hat. Men sport something resembling a thick wool beret, which seems to keep the head warm but I'm not sure offers the ears any protection. Shoes and pants are muted colors, and draw the eye up to the dead animal warming the person above.
Fancy wool coats are a mark of luxury in America, and while they are less expensive and more of an essential here, hopelessly broke people don't own them. And the coats look rather new and well put together.
At the post office, mailing some postcards that say "Moscow" and "Warsaw," I wait in line behind several, uncovered women. The one in front of me is especially attractive, hair recently curved and her pale face covered with a layer of cover up. She wears a fire-engine red shade of lipsticks, and carries a fashionable black handbag. She appears to be off to a party after dropping some bills in the mail.
My winter stroll left me hungry, so I stopped into several restaurants looking for food. I found the offerings too upscale for my taste, including a sushi restaurant in a hotel lobby; a Russian restaurant, located underground and down a steep, winding staircase; and a tapa bar that also served sushi. At each place a dinner would be over $20, but the restaurants were all mostly full, primarily with Buryat customers. These middle-class patrons are served by an almost exclusively Russian wait staff.
Buryats run the convenience stores, the hair salons and the travel agencies. On the pedestrian shopping street, Buryats mingle with rusting Socialist statues celebrating the Double Helix and scientific progress, carrying bags of new clothes from the post-holiday sales. I go to a music store to find cheap, bootleg Siberian music and instead find fancy cell phones and iPod Nanos at nearly double their American price. There is a line at the register.
A consistent theme of Russia journalism in the Western Media is the presence of "Two Russias," Moscow and the poor countryside. Here in Siberia the capital's wealth appears to be spreading, impacting people in provincial cities and historically-repressed minorities. It's amazing and completely unexpected. I wish I had the services of a Russian guide, and could look up at academic at the local Buddhist university. I want to know why things seem O.K. here, and if this model could help the fractious relations in the multi-ethnic republic to the south.
I'm not naive enough to believe things are fine here; life for the Buryats is not easy. The countryside is still very poor, the birthrate is not high, corruption is widespread, costs are increasing for everyday items with the surplus of foreign currency. But these are problems of the entire Russia, not just the minority populations. In this world, that's a real sign of progress.
Tuesday, December 25, 2007
The Arrival
ULAN-UDE, Russia — Daylight comes quickly and painfully. Sergei wakes the rest of the cabin up, and demands that we all look out the window. Outside there is blindingly white nothingness. It is the southern end of Lake Baikal, the deepest lake in the world. Now completely iced over, the lake reflects the bright winter sunshine, ratcheting up the pain of my hangover headache.
It's monotonous and strangely beautiful, a vast, empty expanse. The other side of the train hugs steep mountains, their slopes covered by wispy mounds of snow blown by the wind and then frozen into shape. The scenery is other-worldly, a huge contrast to the endless stubby pine trees and rolling hills that I've seen unceasingly since Moscow.
I begin to gather my belongings, taking back the iPod from Vasily and stuffing the remaining pieces of bread into a pink plastic bag. I find five socks on the end of my bunk, and a sixth on the floor under Olga's mattress. The large rolling suitcase is removed from the storage place and put into the hall, along with my overstuffed blue pack.
As the Baikal fades into the distance, the carriage attendant comes over with my ticket stub. I thank her, but realize that I don't even know her name. She's been two doors down for five days, but I can't say I've learned a single factoid about her life on the rails. It must be incredibly monotonous, slowly rolling from Moscow to Vladivostok endlessly. I suppose this must be a prestigious position in the railroad company, something that requires slaving away on tirgid local lines for several years before getting the assignment. But this endless travel must get boring.
Suddenly I realize that my journey is almost over, and that I probably won't have the luxury again of taking a week out of my life to travel the rails. I feel a deep sense of regret about the things I didn't do: I never went to the restaurant car, took a makeshift train shower with two cups of tea water, spoke with the young family three cars down or bought mittens from the Tuvans selling them compartment to compartment.
Instead my Trans-Siberian is in the tiny compartment. Olga issuing dietary commands. Vasily bopping his head side to side because of hip-hop. Sergei and his expressionless face, not moving.
If this journey was just a three-hour flight or an overnight hop, we would have parted as strangers. Instead the trip went on much, much longer, and they had the opportunity to slowly reveal their personalities.
For them the Trans-Siberian is a means to an end, the most practical way to get to another place. Times are good, but not too good. They can travel, but it takes a long time. They have enough money to visit family (Vasily), to go on a vacation (Olga) or commute to a new job (Sergei), but not much. They don't have to travel third class, platzkart, with its stained sheets and lack of curtains. But there's not enough money to avoid this taxing trip, which seems to carry little novelty for the three of them. On my first day, Olga asked me why I didn't fly to China. I wanted to see Russia, to have an adventure, I said, and then asked her why she didn't fly. "Money," she said, and Vasily, sitting next to her nodded.
For me there was romance on this train. Flying is soulless and uninteresting. The most I can hope for on a flight is a couple hours of banter with someone about their condo in South Florida. Here I got to know three people, somewhat intimately, and all the while I was headed toward somewhere. I wouldn't have taken a plane if it was free.
The Rossiya lost time during the night, and Ulan-Ude is not in sight at the scheduled arrival time of 10:18. The endless taiga returns, with its uniform hills and occasional painted wooden cabin. An hour and a half later, the city finally comes into view. Ulan Ude occupies a wide, bowl-shaped valley. The train snakes around the bowl's lip, hugging a frozen riverbed and a string of rusted, shuttered factories. The city is in a beautiful location, but the skyline looks the same as all the sad Russian towns we passed the last four days.
The train decelerates and stops. I throw my pack on my shoulders and grab the rolling suitcase, and head down the narrow hallway. As I begin the turn around the carriage attendant's cabin, my suitcase bangs the side, just as when I boarded. But this time Sergei is right behind me, and he takes the back and goes around smoothly.
Outside the three stand beside our car in a ragged line. We hug; I hug Olga twice.
"Dasvedanya!" I shout in a Zhivago moment, then I turn my back to the train, walk toward the station and don't turn around, not even once.
Monday, December 24, 2007
Fish Heads and Pinstripes
IRKUTSK, Russia — The Trans-Siberian is meant to be an endurance test, not only a person's mental faculties but also the liver. Russia invented vodka, and they know the best way to consume it is unmixed and to the point of blacking out. And there is no better place to imbibe the national beverage than in a confined space where there's nothing to do the next day or the day after that.
But there's been something strange about this particular voyage on the Rossiya. There's been no vodka on board, not in this cabin or the ones or either side. The carriage attendant hasn't tried to sell us any, neither have the babushkas rail side.
In fact, these past four days I've been in the strange position of being the cabin's lush. Most nights I buy a pint can of Baltika beer and sip it a few hours after dinner. The beer is always ice cold, and comes in a variety of flavors: #0, non-alcoholic; #1, light; #2, pale; #3, classic; #4, original; #5, gold; #6, porter; #7, export; #8, wheat; and #9, extra. I'm trying to drink through the numbers, although #1, 4, and 6 aren't sold out here in Siberia. I'd say #7 is the best, but #3 is also pretty good and about half the price.
My cabin mates seems perplexed by my casual sipping. I'm not sure if the glass of wine after work is really a tradition in Russia, I think here it's drink hard or not at all. Olga doesn't seem to mind, but I get strange looks from the guys when I'm drinking my brew. On the second day, I try to buy Vasily a drink but he refuses.
The fifth, and final, night, aboard is more festive. At an evening stop in Slyudyanka, Sergei sneaks out for a smoke and comes back with a bag of smoked fish. The train is closing in on Lake Baikal, a crescent-shape gash on Siberia that is the world's deepest lake, and that means new food. The fish is omul, about the size of a flounder with sharp, high fins.
Uncharacteristically, the train stops again a couple hours later, and this time I get off as well. I go to the small kiosk to buy my nightly beer, and am surprised to see Vasily behind me. He buys three beers, the first he's bought all trip, and then I decide to buy another.
Back aboard, the three men each crack open a beer, and start doing what men do when they can't talk: play cards. Throughout the journey we've been playing this Russian card game. I don't know the name, the rules or how to win this card game, but we continue to play. The first day I couldn't move without Sergei or Olga saying, "Nyet." But slowly, very slowly I started learning what things weren't allowed, such as playing a three after a seven. Dozens of rounds later, I frankly still don't understand the strategy, but I can get through a round with only one or two nyets.
The rounds start getting longer, as we keep getting distracted. Vasily takes the Russian Phrasebook, and turns to the section on sex. He starts pointing and then saying the dirtiest expressions in the book, including "How much for an hour?" and "Do you like missionary, or some other position?" He stutters them out in English, and then says the Russian translation, much to the delight of Sergei.
The commotion attracts a visitor from the next cabin. It's a man that I've seen several times during the journey. He is almost comically large, several inches taller than me and easily 300 pounds. His hair is lone gone and he's worn a black-and-white horizontally striped wife beater the entire journey from Moscow. He can't speak English at all, but he's friendly and we've had several conversations of my broken Russian and hand gestures on my goings to the bathroom from time to time. Now we invite him inside and offer him a place on the bunk next to me, as Olga is away talking with the carriage attendant.
I soon learn that the Zebra stripes belong to Sasha, destination Chita, about a day to the East. He works in automobile repair and this is not first voyage on the Trans-Siberian. Sasha is giant-sized Vasily, goofy and excitable.
He brings over his own supply of beer, Sergei gets out the smoke fish, and I try once more to finish my supply of chips. After a few brews the Russian men lighten up about their body image and take a crisp. I start speaking nonsense Russian around beer three, combining my studies at the Sweet Moscow Hostel and thumbing through the phrasebook.
"Amerika, da! Russiya, da! Yzumitelno! Yzumitelno, Yzumitelno!" I say.
Sasha starts listening to my iPod, which is almost dead. He another hip-hop fan, and starts bouncing his head in an endearingly awkward way. Vasily mispronounces "condom" and "tampon." Olga comes in and takes a few sips of my beer. I realize that looking ridiculous is absolutely O.K. This is the ultimate guy's night out, where what transpires won't matter or be remembered in the morning. It's a happy, almost transcendent moment.
The crew is up until dawn, bonding. We didn't even need a drop of vodka.
Saturday, December 22, 2007
The King of Herbs
TAISHET, Russia — It's late afternoon, at least by the watches on board that still believe we are in Moscow. The real time is much later, as we've now traveled 2,000 miles to the east and the sun ended its brief mid-winter appearance several hours ago. But on the train at least, there are still a couple hours until dinner, and I am perched on my bed, reading a book.
Vasily, seated on Sergei's lower bunk, interrupts my reading with an offer.
"Jon! Jon! Come look!" he says.
In his hands are several photographs. I sit down next to him as he leaves through the three by five inch images. The first is of a young woman, obvious Russian with dyed-magenta hair and a long, thin nose, approximately the same age as Vasily.
Through hand gestures, his scattered English from grade school and frequent consultation of my Russian-English phrasebook, Vasily manages to explain why he is on the train. He's getting married next month, but before doing so, he's taking a trip home to Khabarovosk, on the Pacific Ocean. His fiancée is staying at home and working, so he is traveling alone.
His trip makes mine resemble an afternoon drive through the countryside. Vasily's home town is just a few hours north of Vladivostok, the last stop on the Trans-Siberian and nearly eight days from Moscow. And he didn't start in the capital, rather Vasily works ("in business") and lives in Astrakhan, a small city on the Caspian Sea. That means it will take 10 days point to point - or almost three weeks round-trip to see the folks. I hope they're appreciative.
Russians are supposed to be too poor and too busy for families, but Vasily will be married before his 23rd birthday. He works a good job (although I'm not really sure what he does) and wants children soon.
He obviously cares for his fiancée, showing his affection by looking at her picture frequently. They speak on the phone at least once a day, using a brand-new cell phone Vasily attaches to one of his belt loops. Vasily figures out ways to bring her into our limited conversations, frequently asking about my current relationship status, former loves and whether I find Russian women attractive. With Olga in the cabin, I decide it's not the best time to talk about the "babushka theory," wherein Russian woman are extremely attractive for their teens and twenties, and then seemingly overnight morph into wrinkled, overweight grandmothers with scarves around their necks. Instead I tell him that Russian women are beautiful.
Family matters aside, Vasily strikes me as a very normal person. He loves hip-hop, and is constantly asking to borrow my iPod to listen to the stray 50 Cent, Jay-Z and T.I. songs scattered among my German electronic music. On the train he wears blue jeans and a couple different sweaters with a white T-shirt underneath. He appears to have spent some time battling acne, and there are still a few pox marks on his cheek.
Vasily is the Slavic equivalent of the name Basil, which means "royal" in Greek. In antiquity Basil was the king of herbs, with a strong flavor prized in Mediterranean cooking. Basil is powerful, but it is also fragile. Dried basil is mostly flavorless, and the herb is usually added at the last second to preserve flavor. I wonder if I am encountering Vasily just as he begins to dry out. Will his marriage, children and the responsibility that comes with it destroy his excitable nature? Perhaps Vasily will have a "babushka moment" of his own, and transform into a crotchety old man with little notice. That would be unfortunate, as dour Russia can be a bit on low people who just want to hang out and listen to 50 Cent.
Friday, December 21, 2007
Dreams of My Office
NOVOSIBIRSK, Russia — Sometimes I fantasize about turning this vacation into an assignment. To that end, I imagine what my imaginary editor in New York would want from my four days on the train. Probably a discussion on how ordinary Russians feel about the seven year presidency of Vladimir Putin.
***
Vasily, 23, is not a temperamental man, he spends most of the day staring out the window. But the young man gets impassioned when questioned about his country's president.
"Putin?" the reporter asks in his limited Russian.
"Da, da." he replies. "Putin good."
But what is so great about Putin? That he revived the economy at a time when the price of oil, a key Russian commodity, has tripled in price? That he keeps the country's various political factions and ethnic minorities in check with a rapidly expanded surveillance bureau? That most people Vasily's age can't afford their own housing, and are forced to live with their parents for decades thanks to spiraling housing prices? Vasily hides behind that simple four-letter English word, and doesn't say more to an outsider.
***
Hmm. It's a little thin, even for a speculative trend story that tries to read the mood of a nation by talking to a few random people.
Perhaps I should leave work out of this vacation.
Thursday, December 20, 2007
Olga's Caramel Treat
KRASNOYARSK, Russia – The Russiya rattles into this Siberian industrial center with plenty of warning, hissing and whining as it slows down. I calculate from the Cyrillic timetable in the hall that I have 26 minutes in this place, in which I must find and locate supplies for the night.
I use these stops as a way to pick up snacks, drinks and things to nibble on late night between our regularly scheduled meals. I buy ice cream cones, which in Russia come unwrapped and in one flavor, vanilla soft serve. There's rolls of digestives, a bland cracker, liter bottles of Sprite, and an occasional beer. I've budgeted $20 each day on the train for food and expenses, but most days I don't even spend $10.
Back at Sweet Moscow Hostel, there's heated debate among guests about how much food is available along the way. Some people describe a Russian feast, with dozens of babushkas rushing to each station to sell soups, sandwiches and fresh meat. Others report being tempted to gnaw on their own hand out of hunger, with food found only one or two stops, and even then only stale bread was for sale.
My journey has seen neither of these extremes. The Russiya makes longer stops - more than 10 minutes - about every six hours. At nearly every station there has been some food for sale, primarily at a kiosk or small store on the side of the track. There's nothing exceptional about these stores, but they are easy to get in and out of and not be stranded by a leaving train.
Krasnoyarsk is different. Olga starts putting in her winter layers several minutes before the train stops rolling, as if she knows that there will be more options this time. Usually she doesn't even get off at stops, as she has enough provisions for a return journey. But here she lead the way off the train and into the Arctic air outside.
Siberian stations are wide and open. The Russiya pulls into a middle track, meaning that passengers must use a long, high staircase to reach the main platform. Nobody bothers. Here the vendors are babushkas, old women with goods in plastic buckets. They appear to be ethnic minorities, with dark, flat faces covered with wrinkles.
People stream off the train and meet the vendors. There's no need for them to yell and hoot, we passengers know they are the only game in town. I stick by Olga, who goes to a woman two cars down. She has a styrofoam cooler stocked with cold drinks and a pile of thick brown sticks.
Olga points to the sticks and says, "Skol'ko?" How much. Then she takes out a crisp 100 ruble notes and in exchange reaches a handful. She gestures towards me and points to the sticks. I understand this, Olga's recommending I buy some.
Olga clearly sees herself as the leader of our ragtag bunch, so much so that for a day or so I believed that she was the older sister of Sergei and Vasily. She decides when it is time to eat, when we turn off the lights and play cards. Her authority isn't overbearing, she simply makes decisions as the oldest and most respected member of our tiny compartment. I'm happy for her advice, because without it, I would be even more clueless than I already am.
I take her advice and purchase four of the mysterious snack. When I have the bag in hand, I can see that the outside is a waffle cone rolled into a long tube, filled with what appears to be caramel. Olga is set in her opinions, even though they aren't always logical. She buys sweets and candies with abandon, yet lectures me when I munch on a few chips after dinner. She asks if America is a dangerous place, yet she just traveled by herself to Moscow, a place with a sinister reputation.
Olga's trip to Moscow was a vacation, her first time to the west. It was wonderful, the Kremlin, the spires and the history all met her expectations. Now she's going back to Vladivostok, where she works as a nurse.
Of the four of us, Olga seems the most content with her life. She doesn't talk about getting rich like Vasily, or running away with Sergei to other countries. The vacation was nice, but Olga accepts that her life is back on the Pacific. She doesn't mention her husband or call him
Olga isn't dour. After we buy the caramel treats, I pull out my camera to get some shots of the station. It's twilight and the sky is clear. Sergei comes out of the cabin and I ask him to the take a shot of Olga and I. She's happy to pose, and makes goofy faces at the camera. Her laugh is strong and vivacious, it rings out in the crisp air.
Back on the train, we quickly break into our stash of caramel treats. They are incredible, probably the best piece of food I've eaten this entire trip. I can see why even Olga, a bit of a health nut, would consider these a must-purchase. There are some things in life that simply must be tasted, calories be damned.
Wednesday, December 19, 2007
Chomp, Chomp, Chomp
TYUMEN, Russia — I'm lying on my bunk, attempting an afternoon snooze, when Olga calls my name.
"Jon. Jon," she says. "Food."
I fumble around for my glasses and then take a look at our compartment's small table below me. Spread across the surface is a feast: big hunks of light yellow cheese, two loaves of dark bread and piles of hard candy.
As I'm getting ready, Olga flips back her mattress and starts fumbling through her luggage. After a moment she brings out a white silver ball, approximately the size of a basketball. She peels back the outer layers, which appear to be paper towels, revealing the main course underneath: an entire rotisserie chicken.
I grabbed a fork and foldable bowl from my pack and scurried down to the table. Thus began the cabin's tradition of eating meals together.
I didn't expect communal dining on board. I've ridden on many trains, and usually don't share more than a bite or two with people in the cabin. Many Chinese eat food bought on the train, as costs are reasonable and fuyuans constantly troll the cars selling fruit and noodles. The trains in Poland didn't even have water, let alone any food to sell.
Yet dining is now our tradition. Olga is the ringleader, she decides when it is time to eat by taking out what remains of the chicken from her suitcase. The two men then rummage through their things and take out whatever they have. The food is placed on the table and eaten as one meal. Sometimes Olga will send me to the provodnista to buy dried noodles, so we all can have a bowl to slurp.
Less popular are the items I brought. I have two shopping bags worth of food, mostly purchased at an elitny supermarket near my hostel in downtown Moscow. The store caters to an upper class contingent, with fruit so expensive that appears to have been imported from Japan with tariff stops in several Euro-Zone countries, and a wine section that covers half of the voluminous basement. For $25, I managed to get some spreadable cheese, two apples, crackers, a couple bags of mysterious candy and a can of sour cream and onion Pringles.
None of this seems particularly appealing to the Russians, who always politely decline my invitation to share. The worst item I brought appears to be the chips, which Olga hates. On our first full day I offer her chips, and in response she sticks out her tongue and places her hands a few inches away from her hips. Chips, it seems, are too fattening.
The fear of a couple round chips seems strange considering our train diet. We eat copious amounts of meat, big hunks of cheese and hardy portions of crusty bread. There are few fruits or vegetables and nothing fresh. We are consuming a high fat, high carbohydrate diet and burning almost no calories each day.
I could care less. Often there is nothing to do on the train besides eat, and these communal meals help bring structure to the day. Upon waking, be it at nine o'clock or two in the afternoon, there will be a small meal. Then several hours later we will have a magnificent feast, and late at night we will chomp away at some leftovers. In between there will be sunflower seeds and endless cups of strawberry tea from the samovar.
The sunflower seeds appear to be a Russian train tradition, I see people in each tiny compartment cracking the black seeds open throughout the day to reveal the tiny brown bite inside. Young and old, seeds are for all. They appear to be a form of entertainment, for instead of reading a book or listening to music sometimes Sergei and Olga will just crack open seeds and stare out the window. Eating food is adequate stimulation, as long as digestion is nearly continuous.
Although these meals are mostly silent, I feel myself integrating into the lives of these three people by eating day after day with them. We are something of a family now, gathering twice a day to break bread and share in our bounty together. And while the conversation isn't quite up to a typical day at home in New York, I must say this – Olga's roast chicken is much better than my mother's.
Tuesday, December 18, 2007
Sergei the Submarine Man
KIROV, Russia — Sergei is the quiet one.
He is pale-skinned and without hair, wears a leather jacket and a pair of brown pants. He is short, just a couple inches over five feet, but well-built, clearly in shape. This sounds menacing, but I've yet to see Sergei get angry or even mildly annoyed. More than anyone else on the train, Sergei has been able to create a Zen-like front on this long journey.
He spends his time doing crossword puzzles and studying the train timetable. He never rushes, never fills in words and changes them. He eats the least and chews the most. The observer of Sergei sees a methodical man, someone who does things only after they have been considered for quite some time.
As befits such a quiet man, I know little about Sergei. He is 26 and single, not in a serious relationship or engaged. He was in Moscow for work, and wouldn't say much more about his trip. His final destination is a military base in Vladivostok, the home of the Russian Pacific Fleet. Sergei works on a submarine.
If you've ever given the Russian Pacific Fleet any thought - and there's not much reason for the average Westerner to waste energy pondering the subject - it's probably been over the division's poor combat record. The Russians were trounced by the Japanese in 1904 (after losing, the Russian Baltic Fleet was dispatched to the Pacific. The Japanese decimated them shortly after arriving in Asia). The unit's poor performance started a series of events that led to the overthrow of the Czar, the rise of the Soviet Union, militarism and expansionism in Japan, and both front of World War II. That's a pretty a heavy weight hanging around the neck of a young naval cadet, but Sergei seems proud of his assignment.
I wish our language skills permitted a more in-depth discussion on the subject. Unfortunately, the Lonely Planet Russian Phrasebook contains none of the vocabulary that would be necessary to talk about life aboard a submerged metal ship. I have to trust Sergei that when he says that he likes being aboard the submarine.
Even if we could chat in the same language, I doubt Sergei would give up anything interesting on the subject. He appears to be a very disciplined man in the very secretive Russian military. I'm sure he wouldn't give up the farm to an inquisitive American reporter.
So on Sergei, the passenger with the most interesting profession and probably the most compelling life story, I have the least the say. If keeping secrets is part of his job, he must be very, very good at it.
Sunday, December 16, 2007
Purgatory
PERM, Russia — The Trans-Siberian is as close an experience to Purgatory as is possible in the Earthly realm.
This is especially true of the middle days in the journey, the ones where there is no arrival nor departure. The day begins and ends on the train. There is nothing in particular to look forward to, everything that exists at the reveille where be there at bedtime, and the day's only marker will be that the destination is now just three days away as opposed to four.
Being stuck on a train for so long means that at some point, the traveler must surrender the idea of the destination. It would be madness to countdown the minutes in an 84 hour journey across the tundra. Instead the train must be accepted as a new way of living.
No longer I am bound by expectations or goals, there is no point to life on the train. The car will move 1,000 miles today whether or not I brush my teeth. I could not move from my bed, and it would still be a successful day. The key to making it to Ulan-Ude is forgetting that there is an Ulan-Ude, and then just be.
My entire existence is a train car, and most of the time there I am confined to the compartment. The four of us are not overly compressed inside, and I am especially fortunate to have a top compartment. This means I have the luxury of returning to my own personal space at any time, where I can lie flat or sit Indian style, face the window or the door. During the day I spend most of my time on the bottom bunk, with doubles as Olga's bed at night. Usually I sit closest to the door, Olga near the table, but sometimes this can be reversed. If Sergei is out sometimes I stretch my feet across the aisle, legs flat. This is my favorite position, it feels like a recliner.
What do I do in these various seating positions? There are first and foremost the distractions I brought aboard. My iPod is best, with its 3,900 songs and 200 Podcasts. I learn about a new digital camera with 10 megapixel resolution from David Pogue of the New York Times, investigate North Korean counterfeiting with a reporter from the BBC, and wonder with the Slate Gabfest crew if Barrack Obama's campaign will fly. There are songs, too, my favorite being from the group Peter, Bjorn and John. It's called "Defects on My Affection." The chorus asks a single, piercing query:
"The question is
Was I more alive than I am now?
I have to happily disagree.
I laugh more often now,
I cry more often now.
I have to disagree."
I play the song twice, but then save the third repetition for inside my head. There's no way to charge the device on board, or at least now way that I can figure out. That means I'll have to make the trip on only one tank. I shift my iPod use to maximize battery life: backlight turned off, no skipping songs, no games, no video. I carefully make playlists and don't deviate from them. Even with careful rationing, the battery looks like it won't make it past day three.
I also brought books. I could see my mother's brow furrow when I decided to bring eight books and an equal number of socks. She tried to convince me that I might not need a book about Eritrea. Combined the books weigh about 15 pounds and take up quite a bit of space in both my suitcase and pack, but I don't care. They're worth every ounce. Today I pounded through this year's Booker Prize Winner, The Inheritance of Loss. I bought this for my sister at Christmas, but after she pounded through the copy I swiped it and brought it out.
The novel centers around several people tied by an estate in the Indian town of Darjeeling. The patriarch lives a lonely existence on the fringes of the Himalaya, content to be alone while the other people pine for Delhi and New York. Although written by an Indian-Englishwomen, the book is Russian in scope, chronicling three generations of despair. These are lonely, desperate people, who live broken lives and yearn for an emotional payoff that never comes. Reinforcing the link to Russian literature is a strange plot detail: the little girl who figures in most of the story is the daughter of Indian astronauts both killed on a mission in the Soviet Union. Since this act sends most people in the book into the pit of misery they will stay stuck for the rest of their lives, it could be said that Russia is these people's undoing.
And that's about it really. Besides reading and listening to music, I eat, go to the bathroom and stare out the window. It sounds terribly boring, and somewhat quixotic. Why go all the way around the world to do something easily accomplished on the couch with a bag of Doritos? But inside today's nothingness there were moments of transcendence, when everything felt all right with the world. Even though I'm not doing anything, it still feels like I am on an adventure, crossing the terra incognito on the map. I may be in purgatory, but I'm strangely alive while serving my time.
Friday, December 14, 2007
Introductions
NIZHY-NORINGRAD, Russia – The carriage attendant is surprisingly friendly as I prepare to bring my monster load abroad. She helps the 70-pound rolling suitcase make over the gap between the platform and the Rossiya. I'm mortified that I can't lift my suitcase for a couple feet, but there's none of that Russian rudeness in the attendant's return expression. She places her hand underneath the bag, and then I'm aboard. My Trans-Siberian odyssey has begun.
I will be traveling from Moscow to Ulan-Ude, 3,000 miles to the east, aboard the Rossiya, the primer train in the fleet. It should take 94 hours, or just under four days. This is the longest transportation ride of my life, and it started with me banging me bag.
Things don't get much better on the train car. The train hallway is quite narrow, and immediately curves to the right at the entrance to avoid the attendant's cabin. My bag bangs the sides of the hallway in several places, and the compartment is so narrow that my pack get stuck. I'm too big for the train.
My cabin light is on. I turn the corner to see a man seated on the bottom left bunk. He is short, with a shaved head and large almond eyes. I can see the outline of tiny hair bristles, which show that although his hairline is receding, if he let his mane grow out he would not be bald. He might be 25, possibly 30.
I panic. Up until this point, my compartment was completely hypothetical. I didn't know if there would be Russians or Czechs or elephants in the place with me. But now with this short man in a green sweater and brown pants, this cabin is real. I will spend the next four and a half days in this cell, with people deposited here by the luck of the ticket machine.
I smile, I don't say anything. For some reason, I don't want to them to know that I am a foreigner. It is preposterous, I'm sure this man knew two seconds after I rounded the corner that I am American, but suddenly I don't want to be the foreigner. I want to know what to do, to fit in on this train. Instead I'm just a klutz, who doesn't know what to do with his voluminous bags.
My rolling suitcase is far too heavy to lift off the ground, so I place it in the main storage space under the bottom bunk. It takes up most of the space, and that's less than half my belongings. I also need to share this place with the person who will sleep on this bunk, who has not yet arrived. Worse, when I go to close the storage area, it won't close. My bag is too tall.
I hem and haw for a couple minutes, trying to force the bag into an area that doesn't fit. Then another person arrives, a young man with a cleft in his chin. He points to the upper bunk opposite mine, and neatly arranges his couple bags where the bald man is sitting. Then he takes his seat opposite me and watches the continuing bag show.
I throw my pack up above the beds in a small crawl space.
A few minutes later the fourth passenger arrives, a woman several large parcels. She will sleep beneath me, and we need to share luggage space. One look at the nearly full baggage compartment and my over-sized rolling suitcase, and she frowns. This isn't going to work, there is simply too much stuff. But somehow this woman makes it fit, moving each piece of luggage as if it is a Jenga piece, and the wrong movie will send the whole tower crashing to the table. Soon each piece has found a position, and the four of us take a seat on the lower beds.
There is silence for some time. I stare at the two men across from me, and occasionally to the woman on my right. The train starts moving without warning, without a whistle or cheers from relatives on the platform. Our journey may be epic, but it begins with a whimper.
A while later, I point to myself and say my name.
"Jon."
Then I do it again. "Jon." I'm pretty sure I'm imitating some horribly racist documentary where an anthropologist goes into deepest Africa and encounters a lost hill tribe.
Thankfully my companions get the idea and soon I'm struggling to learn three names. Chin man is Vasily, Baldy is Sergei and the woman Olga.
But who are Vasily, Sergei and Olga? I'm not too sure. After a couple hours, mostly spent configuring the cabin and establishing our names, Olga reaches for the light switch. It's after midnight, and Vasily and Sergei also unfold the brown comforters at the end of their bunks.
I'm not tired, so I make my bed and then go into the hallway. There are no seats here, unlike on a Chinese train, and so I lean against a small protrusion and stare out of the window. The scenery is limited and unchanging: short, stubby pine trees and undulating hills off the side of the track. There are thousands of miles to go. I'm not sure how I feel about the people in my cabin, they are strangers still.
This is exactly how I imagined it: an adventure unfolding very, very slowly.
Tuesday, December 04, 2007
Babushka With a Side of Fries
MOSCOW — I wanted my dozen or so meals here to be representative of the cuisines and tastes of the Russian Federation. As the capital and largest city, Moscow is in the best position to showcase Russian cooking as more than just smelly borscht. I wanted to go low, high, and find some tasty treats.
Me and my plans. The reality has been that I've been so busy running from one side of the metro station to the other reading Cyrillic and quizzing people on scholarships that food is an afterthought. Moscow on 800 rubles a day leaves no room in the budget for a splurge at a fancy, elitny restaurant. The only oligarchs I spotted on this visit were zooming by in their Black Bentleys as I stumbled around to the nearest subway station. Thankfully I've not gotten so lost in Moscow to run into a place where it's possible to eat out of a tent, although I hear that these "refugee restaurants" exist in some outer ring roads.
No, I've been sticking to meals on demand, and during the day that means blinki (a savory crepe) joints near museums and monuments, and at night, restaurants along the Arbat. I've made it twice to Mu-Mu, the canteen where I had an interesting meal with Helen, once to a Turkish place with a great Donner kebab, and another time to the ultimate Russian restaurant. Perhaps you've heard of it. It's called McDonald's.
I dine at the Golden Arches once in every country visit without apology. There's so much to learn about a culture by seeing how they've refined the ultimate American tradition to suit local conditions. The brutal Russian winter prevented me from visiting the most historically important McDonald's outlet – Pushkin Square – where thousands of Soviets camped out overnight on January 31, 1990, for their first taste of an American made meal. This massive facility, which seats 900 people at once, is a shrine to capitalism's arrival in Russia.
The Arbat outlet is little different. It has recently been remodeled, much like the one in Pushkin Square. The sleek steel counter tops and faux-mahogany wall panels resemble the bridge of the Enterprise more than my McDonald's down the street. There are 17 cash registers, all open during dinner hour visit.
Some McDonald's innovate with different cuisine offerings, spinach curry puffs in India and lobster rolls in Maine, but McDonald's Russia offers a straightforward American burger and fries. While the decor is fancy, it is standard-issue McDonald's Europe, and soon will be found in restaurants from Reykjavik to Istanbul. Uniquely Russian is the attention to the queue management and the flow of people. On entering the restaurant, an attractive young woman assigns diners to a line. On my visit, the line is quite long for a fast food restaurant, and it takes about 15 minutes before I get to the front.
(There's an even crazier feature to this restaurant, which I unfortunately did use: a walk-through window. I know some restaurants in cities have an ice-cream machine on the street, but this is a full-service, two-window affair that resembles the drive-through, except its for people wearing fur coats, not behind the wheel.)
I order, but get only my fries and then am sent to a stool near a window. There are few private tables at this McDonalds. The main door is at the middle of the restaurant, and besides the kitchen and line space the rest is reserved for four eating areas. Most parties mix together, pensioners and young couples, tourists and locals at the large tables and stools without backs. My situation does not seem to be unique: most people seem to be given only part of their meals and pointed to a certain table. I hate to draw an analogy too far, but it seems very centrally-planned. Why can't I sit where I want? Is the number of hamburgers deliberately kept low in order to control where people sit?
At least there's been no attempt to mess with the food. Or maybe there has. The fries are crispy and perfectly salted. The hamburger, when it arrives, seems bigger than normal, and has just the right amount of ketchup and mustard.
McDonald's has an incentive to get it right. As recently as eight years ago, the average Russian ate out just once a year. Thanks to rising oil prices, things are a little better now, but people don't eat out all that often. A meal at a restaurant is special, and McDonald's still counts as a special expierence. So there's extra attention put into the food – and where people sit.
Sunday, December 02, 2007
Monika
MOSCOW – Monika is quarrelsome; I say three things and she finds fault with two.
She's Polish, and winces when I say that I've only visited Warsaw. The capital, she says, echoing a common Polish lament, is so ugly, why didn't you go to the coast, or to Krakow? She doesn't care for all the drinking in the hostel, which spills over nightly from the tiny gathering room into the bedroom she shares with five other guests. It's infurirating that she finds so much to criticise, especially since I'm her roommate.
But if I didn't have Monika at arm's length to complain, I wouldn't be close enough to see the contents of her suitcase, laid across the lumpy top bunk in neat stacks. On top is the Intermediate Mandarian Chinese Reader, and below, several thick grammar texts.
Monika is here en route to Tianjin, a large Chinese city on the coast not far from Beijing. She studied last year at Tianjin University, and received a fellowship from the government to return for another six months. When she uses the common phone to contact a Chinese acquaintance here in Moscow I hear the crispnessness of her tones and instantly know her language level is far above mine.
I compliment her language.
"I speak quite poorly!" she replies, sharply.
I believe her language standards are a little too exacting. Monika will only travel to countries where she knows the languages. Granted, she is a bit of a polyglot, with some knoweldge six languages, but this seems to be a crazy standard. Why must a person spend years in a classroom before they are allowed to step foot in a foreign land?
Too frequently I am fooled by Monika's appearance, which nails every librarian stereotype effortlessly: a big, bunchy earth-toned sweater; dark, round glasses; sensible shoes; an ochre-toned face with little exposure to the sun. This is true, but Monika has no pressed-leaf collection, nor does she aspire to a secretarial job at a local paper facility.
Monika's parents believe that after Christmas, she went to Warsaw and boarded a plane toward China. This is true, but that plane stopped here in Moscow. She got off, and Monika is using funds the Chinese government gave her for a plane ticket to fianance this trip. That means living at the Sweet Moscow Hostel, eating meals from the supermarket, and travelling to Tianjin on the cheapest train, the dreaded platzkart class. Moscow alternative weekly the eXile describes platzkart as "long distance transportation hell," where 54 people are crammed into one train car. Monika gave up a free plane ticket to spend an entire week in this car, where she won't have any money to buy fresh food and will probably be crammed between chain smoking Chinese businessmen and vodka-downing Russian businessmen. Definitely not librarian style.
In tight spaces and cold climates, Monika and I have many opportunities each day for conversation. I find it hard to develop a routine with Monika. Maybe it is her foreigness – although I didn't have this problem with other people I met in Poland – but I keep bumping into sore spots in our relations.
One afternoon she's on the hostel computer. I ask when she will be finished – so I can blog – expecting a mean look. Instead I get an invitation to look at an e-mail she's sending to a friend in China. Monika types to her Chinese friends in pinyin, a romanizined version of Chinese, and claims it's easier to type than characters. I'm curious, so I start to read the message.
Zhe liang tian qian hen shao. These past few days qian is very little.
"What's qian?"
Monika's cheeks rouge. "Oh, it's -- it's personal," she says, and then I turn red when I realize that qian here means money, and this sentence is informing her friend that funds will be tight this semester. I pretend to keep skimming the e-mail, but after a minute forget about blogging.
Sweet Moscow is close to several tourist attractions but there are no obvious clubs on the street. With nighttime temperatures well below zero, most guests come back after dinner and spend the evenings indoors, venturing outdoors only to the small grocery across the street to grab a snack and bottles of Baltika beer. On Monika's final night there are only four people in our bedroom, the other two being a boisterious British pair, Tom and Sam. By the third bottle of beer – well after midnight – Sam is asleep and Tom and I are deep into an argument about whether Putin will step aside at the end of his term next year. Monika is above the conversation, as she sits on her top bunk and studies her Chinese books while we debate the future of the Russian state.
Tom tries to bring her into the conversation, asking her what she believes.
"I'm not sure I have an opinion about the political situation here," she says, her Eastern-European accent making a stronger than normal apperanence in this rebuff.
Feeling miscevious after a few drinks, I decided to press Monika further. What about the Chinese government, what do you think about the lack of elections there?
"I'm not sure I know enough about the situation to have an opinion," she says. Another dodge.
But surely, I ask, things are better in Poland now that there are elections? Monika can remember the first real elections, the rise of Solidarity and the collapse of an imperialist rule based in this very city.
She nods, and silently conceeds the point.
Emboldened, I keep going. I'm troubled by China, I say. I love China and I hate it. I am fascinated by Chinese culture, I have met many interesting Chinese people and inside the country had some of the best conversations of my life. The People's Republic of China has brought more people out of poverty than any government in history, in less time. It's a miracle, yet the state is still run by thugs, and every time I go inside the country, and have my passport stamped, I'm validating the rule of these thugs. So my question is, are you, as someone born into a repressive regime, worried about taking money and sponsorship from another one?
She's quiet for a minute, and then speaks up. "I want to learn the language. I like this university. They gave me the money, so I will go back."
Tom steps in with an ill-informed comment about Tibetan independence. It's not true, but Monika and I are both grateful for him to take the reigns of conversation and rail on about the Chinese for many minutes. I'm afraid that I squashed rather than merely stepped on Monika's toes this time, and make a point of waiting until after I hear her leave the flat for breakfast to get up late the next morning.
We see each other one last time, in the foyer as she is leaving for the train station. Unexpectedly it is Monika who speaks first.
"I think you will be a good journalist," she says. "You ask good questions. And you listen."
Again, I miscalculate Monika's emotions. Whereas I thought my questions came off as probing or meddlesome, to Monika we were exploring our different perspectives on life. We exchange e-mail addresses and phone numbers in China, and I find myself wishing as we hug goodbye that I was on her train to Beijing. I have so many more questions.
