Memories of Russia

This was a single trip, but a huge one! The pre-amble to it was the end of the third term (“P3”) of INSEAD in Fontainebleau. I’d decided to spend the summer break travelling across Russia, and had managed to arrange a two-week language course in Moscow, including lodging. I’d also got my flight out booked, and got a visa sorted (although that cost me an arm and a leg, and involved a hasty trip to a rough bit of Paris). I still remember the insane 36 hours I had – I’d stayed at the end of period party, when I hadn’t intended to (but it WAS fun), so woke up, drove back to Avon, stopping at the bakery for fresh pastries, and then had not only to pack my entire existence up, but ALSO work out if it was stuff I should take home to UK and/or that I’d need for Russia, OR that I should put in a box for INSEAD to ship directly to Singapore. This was taxing on my hungover brain and several times I collapsed on the bed, unable to cope, only to urge myself back going again as It Had To Be Done. I think I threw away more than I’d intended, but managed to get the labelled box to campus to be shipped, and then take my overloaded BMW up to Calais to get the tunnel back to UK and up to Yorkshire. No time to relax though, as my flight to Moscow was The Next Day, so a quick unpack, sleep, kisses to the family then on the train back to London where for some reason I stopped in to see my friends who were watching the football in Fulham or somewhere, before getting to Heathrow and flying to Moscow. Flipping heck. Domodedovo airport felt like the Matrix – as you walked around, everyone pretending to be regular people turned into taxi drivers as you approached…but eventually my pick-up arrived and I got to my home for the next two weeks.

Moscow

My time in Moscow consisted of mornings in a language school and afternoons wandering around, visiting art galleries etc. My GCSE Russian flooded back, and I enjoyed learning Russian, it’s a wonderful language. But very strict on words having to agree – it has more discrete cases than German. Some of the bits I remember:

• The glorious hot sunny weather (I was there in July). Plus, I couldn’t not enjoy the general fashion sense of the female populace.
• The drinking culture. There were ice cream-type vans everywhere, selling loads of different beers, especially the different types of “Baltika”. At the end of the workday, lovely to see smartly dressed office girls and boys casually gathered swigging beer from 500ml bottles.
• The architecture. Moscow has a hotch-potch of styles, central bits all of a piece by Stalin, other bits older, and lots much newer. An interesting city. The centre by the Kremlin and near the river had loads of outdoor bars, very festive. Plus some of the metro stations are works of art (but you’re not allowed to take photos, so I didn’t).
• The Tretyakov gallery was great, plus https://vdnh.ru/ was brilliant – like a Soviet throwback style Venice Bienniale (not that I’ve ever been to the Bienniale). The Museum of Victory/the Great Patriotic War was a huge eye-opener – the importance of Russia in beating Hitler is barely appreciated in UK.
• They invented Uber first. I was astonished as some of my friends (including twenty-something attractive girls) would simply flag down a car, get in, agree a quick price, and off we went. These weren’t minicabs, let alone taxis, just people in cars. It worked great, although I can only imagine there are plenty of times when it works out less well. Russian girls are tough (a theme we’ll return to).
• Banya. I love banya. The Sanduny is a high-end establishment, the last of its kind, I think, and I thought it was great. Beer and a bit of food, miming to the waiter “bvcyo?” (everything?) whilst making a whisking motion downwards with my towel to confirm full nudity is the order of the day. The other guys in there looked like gangsters, big heavy serious fellows. I was like a weak child in comparison. Some of the guys were doing mutual thrashing with leafy twigs, and I’m sure would have given me a go, but I didn’t risk it.

While in Moscow I read through the joining instructions for my Siberian work camp, and they were pretty clear about it being a good idea to get vaccinated for Japanese encephalitis. So I popped along to a medical centre, where they at least managed to do the first of the two injections for me.

I spent a fair bit of time in Moscow sorting out onward travel, planning my flights and itinerary in Kamchatka etc. I used a travel agency that had branches across Russia, and I remember the feeling in their office when they said “well, we’ll find out tomorrow” – because of cause Petropavlovsk is 9 timezones east of Moscow! Big country. I also went to ticket offices in train stations quite often, for some reason. The area around the big stations is really unpleasant in Moscow, lots of really pikey little stalls selling fizzy pop and mobile phones. Oh, and I’d decided that my itinerary out of Russia would be flying into Vietnam. It was not straightforward establishing if I needed a visa to get to Vietnam – I remember I went to the Vietnamese embassy, but I don’t think I was patient enough to get to the front of the queue there. I eventually managed to find out I could arrange a visa on arrival fairly easily through an online provider. More on this later!

I’d almost forgotten that while I was in Russia, my friend Áine from INSEAD was passing through, along with her friend (Charlotte?). We had a fine time with some al fresco drinks then dinner in a weird Georgian restaurant (food excellent, but decor kind of like a medieval Georgian theme park).

St Petersburg

My friend Anna, who worked in Moscow, was from St Petersburg so offered to show me around there while I was in Russia. We flew there and back, which went ok. St Petersburg is built on swampland so not only was it hot, but very humid too. Beautiful in a chocolate-box sort of way, a very enjoyable boat ride around parts of the city.

Trans-Siberian, Part 1

The second chunk of the trip was the train ride to Irkutsk. I decided on the “Baikal” service which is quite quick and has very nice trains. It was very quiet on the train though. I think there was a contingent from “Vodka Train” on there, but sadly/fortunately our paths never crossed. Whenever I went to the buffet car, there would only be like one other very intense person there, so not very convival. So I stayed most of the time in my cabin, with my cabin-mate Stirpan, a Russian officer (I want to say Major, but I’m not sure). He had some English, I had a little Russian, so we didn’t talk much. But we did play chess! I am woefully bad at chess – I’d never actually played a game before, except perhaps against Neil in a bar in China, although knew how the pieces moved. Anyway, it provided some diversion for both of us over the 3 days of travel.

I didn’t have long in Irkutsk. It was a dusty place, everything was being dug up. I found an outdoor gear shop and managed to buy some waterproof trousers which would prove to be a Godsend in the jungle! I stayed in a hostel which had a very attractive manager, and she was being very actively courted by someone who turned out to be one of Boris Johnson’s family. He had the textbook hair, and I knew of BoJo even back then in 2006. Can’t remember if he was a nephew or a younger brother, he would have been about 26 or so at the time, I reckon.

Lake Baikal

The middle part of the trip was 2 weeks on the Great Baikal Trail – a project to build and maintain a walking route around Lake Baikal. It seems as much a way of exposing urban Russians to nature and getting some wealth into the local economy as much as it’s about actually ending up with a trail, but still, a nice experience! Some highlights:

• We cooked on campfires, mainly tinned food and porridge, supplemented by locally-caught fish (“omul”). This was all tasty (as we were always hungry, it was quite physical work) but the kasha porridge benefited from tabasco (I brought this – a tip from Bolas & Townend) when savoury and from cinnamon (which the 2 German travellers had brought).
• The main group, including overall leader, were teenage girls. Not quite the fantasy this might sound, but they were nice girls. I remember one, a proper city girl to look at, pedal pushers, flimsy shoes, hoop earrings, was quite comfortable setting up and cooking on a campfire. And the Germans and I had proper gear, whereas the Russians managed in much flimsier attire. I gave my worn boots and air mattress to the local guy at the end.
• There was a ramshackle wood cabin where the local ranger (“Lavar” was his name, I’ve managed to remember!( slept, but most of us were in tents. One night he woke us all up as his dog indicated there was a bear nearby. So we all trooped into the cabin and laid out our sleeping bags under the roof. I remember the ridiculousness of traipsing across the campsite hefting my sleeping bag and fully-inflated air bed.

Ulan-Ude

After the trail camp finished, I carried on east (everyone else headed back west) and I had 24 hours or so in Ulan-Ude before the next train leg. A lovely city, European-feeling, nice bars around, I’m a big fan. I remember hunting down a laundry service to get all my kit washed before heading onwards, and thank Christ, they had it done in time.

Trans-Siberian Part 2

The second part of the train journey was the highlight of the whole trip. I was in a cabin with 3 ladies, one of whom was a couple with a soldier who was in another cabin, with a military colleague too (a helicopter pilot who had good English). I ultimately discovered that, apart from the couple, all were strangers at the start of the trip – but in the 3 days they’d been travelling they had become so friendly I thought for a few days that they were lifelong friends. They accepted me into their group so warmly, it was incredible. One of the women (slightly older, significantly larger) was the matriarch and knew where all the supplies had been stashed around the place. Everything was shared – I made sure I bought some local produce when we stopped at different places. By the time we got to the end, as everyone else was getting off the train, I was really quite sad – I was the only person staying all the way to the final destination. I put on my ipod shuffle with its little speaker and remember the song selection on that last lonesome leg featuring A Little Less Conversation, as we arrived into Vladivostok.

Kamchatka

I really went to Kamchatka for two reasons: to go across Russia as far as it was possible to go and because of Kamchatka on the Risk board. These are not good reasons to go to Kamchatka. Suitable reasons are because you want to see bears, or you want to see volcanoes.

Petropavlovsk, the only town on the peninsula, has a naval presence, and caters to the vulcanologist and ursine fan tourists, but is weirdly spread out in a great long line, so it’s not conducive to walking around. I had a walk and noticed lots of Goths chilling out on the street, and I wound up in a bar in a cinema one afternoon where I was approach by a couple of very nice, Gothy type people who said hello and invited me to a club/party later. I quailed and went home instead – which I don’t regret, but I’m sure it would have been interesting! I went on two trips while here, a helicopter jaunt up to a caldera, looking at geysers then to an outdoor hot spring. Secondly an all-terrain bus drive then trek up a volcano.

In homage to Risk, I bought some toy soldiers and instructed them to defend Kamchatka. What a silly man.

Just before leaving Kamchatka I thought “hey, I wonder if my Vietnam visa is all sorted?” and it turns out, it wasn’t. I’d transferred money, but the reference hadn’t come through properly so the provider didn’t know I’d paid. Anyway, we managed to get that sorted, and it was literally on the last morning at 6am or so in the place I was staying, on their PC loading up hotmail to try and get the visa document to print out. I remember for some unbelievable reason the link wasn’t clickable, so I had to write out the destination URL (which was long and complex), type it back in, and only then view the visa info. Fortunately their printer worked and it got me through the airport, through Vladivostok and into Hanoi, no problem at all.

Photos & Other Blog

I did take lots of photos while I was in Russia, and uploading them to flickr as I went. Sadly, flickr purged them all in 2018 and I didn’t realise until too late. There was a good one of me, Áine and Charlotte in the Georgian restaurant, several of me with Anna in Moscow and St Pete, LOADS of me next to statues of Lenin copying his pose, some good ones on the train (me wearing a Russian army officer hat, the train gang, loads of shots of places that might have been Omsk), one of the Army survival kit (a tobacco tin with various emergency rations) I was given, a nice one of Dasha the riding instructor in Kamchatka, and more besides.

I did maintain a decent blog too: http://cossackken.blogspot.com/2006/07/