Well, here it is, the last installment of the I’m alive report. After a long flight to Moscow, I spent the past couple of days visiting a few places still on the list including the Kremlin where I waved a hello to Mr’s Putin and Medvedev. I flew to Vilnius this afternoon and thus ends the Russian odyssey. It was a long a difficult trip, but fruitful in many ways and now all I have to do is sit down and write about it all.
I’m in Vladivostok, which looks closer to Vancouver than to Europe to me on a map, but I’m not sure as the crow flies. It’s a hilly city, built on huge rock hills that cut off cell reception and forced the city to build their airport 42km from the city (okay, maybe the Soviet had something to do with that decision too). The sun is just coming up and I’ve got one day to explore the city, so I’m off to do that. Tomorrow’s plan is a nine hour flight to Moscow.
I’ve made it to the last time zone; I’m in Komsomolsk Na Amure on the Amur river. This city is all of 70 years old and was built by communist youth, gulag prisoners and japanese POWs as the heart of the military industrial complex supporting the Pacific front. Went on a pretty incredible tour today with a guide from a local travel agency. He calls it the Stalin tour, and when I asked him why he decided to offer such a tour his answer was that this is the only history this city has. Point taken. In effect, it’s like wandering around in an artefact. Heading towards Vladivostok tomorrow.
I’ve made it to Irkutsk. The city is quite different from Krasnoyarsk; where Kras had a certain gritty, industrial edge, Irkutsk has turn of the last century wooden houses with pretty windows and trams. Tommorow I’m heading to Lake Baikal (about 70km from here) for a day trip to dip my toes in the chilly waters of the world’s deepest lake. Then it looks like I’m heading north by bus on some “new” roads (read access roads to oil prospects) to the BAM (Baikal-Amur) railway line (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baikal_Amur_Mainline) which runs parallel to the Trans Sib, and was built to link the new northern cities that popped up when Stalin started really exploiting, er, exploring the north. Mountainous, desolate and Soviet. Just up my alley.
A couple of nights ago I attended the contemporary art Biennale “EXPANSE” at the Krasnoyarsk Museum Centre, a contemporary arts centre housed in the (former) Lenin Museum. This is a cool place, and not just because they had an ice-cream stand. The centre has kept much of the Soviet-era Lenin exhibit intact, and the Biennale exhibits were displayed amidst the museum exhibitions. There were quite a few art pieces taking on Lenin as a topic, including a video projection onto a plaster statue of Lenin and a holographic picture juxtaposing Soviet propaganda with corporate advertising/propaganda. Great stuff, photos to come.
Well, Perm-36 was about what I expected — stark, moving, desolate. I just got off the train, after a 40 hour ride, in Krasnoyarsk. The Yensei river is mighty big and flows through the centre of the city. I’m here looking for traces of my great-grandparents who were exiled here in the mid 1940s. Had a meeting today with Memorial, the most important organization in Russia when dealing with this history. Pretty amazing chapter here in Krasnoyarsk. Their website has a lot of material translated into English; if you’re interested in more, take a look: http://www.memorial.krsk.ru/eng/index.htm
I’ll be here a couple of days and plan to meet with the Lithuanian Society, which is made up of the descendents of deported people who stayed — or were never allowed to leave.
I’m still alive. After a busy four days in Moscow, during which time I visited the Lenin, the Gulag Museum, the Contemporary Russian History Museum, Red Square, the Cold War Museum and other fine attractions, I decided that the best costume for me for Halloween was “passenger on small plane headed to Perm”. It was such a successful costume, that here I am in cold, snowy Perm. It’s not Siberia yet, still technically in Europe but in the foothills of the Ural mountains. Though the Urals are really, really small mountains. Old mountains, but small. I’m glad it’s snowy, however. It’ll add that much more ambiance to Perm-36 Gulag museum which is where I’m headed on Tuesday. Perm-36 is a reconstructed gulag camp/museum. Should be fun.
It was raining when I left Vilnius and it was raining when I landed in Moscow. It’s been raining for a while, and not that cleansing deluge of a rain renews; a steady drizzle of a rain that makes you feel like you’re living in a cloud, inside and out. So maybe this is why the idea of visiting the Cosmonaut Museum tomorrow is so appealing — to get up above the clouds, see things from a different perspective.
And I’m not the only one looking towards the cosmonaut. For those of you on the other side of the pond, I came across this in Russia! magazine first.
The Space pro
ject on at clic gallery: clicgallery.com.
I landed safely in Moscow today. Immigration was a breeze, with an unsmiling lady at the desk stamping my passport with authority. I’m staying in the centre of town in a hostel. Accomodations are really expensive in this city and the people I was supposed to stay with had to bail on me at the last minute becaue of some kind of crisis, so here I am paying 20 bucks a night to sleep with eight people in a dorm room. That said, it’s got a reputation as a safe, quiet hostel. What more can you ask for?
That’s all for now, I’m heading out into the city to see what it has to offer.
avant garde lithuanian poetry in translation: www.dearsir.org/sites_current_issue_writers_1/janusevicius_tribinevicius.html
