From Russia with Love

Siberian Adventure

With my last class on December 22nd and plane ticket out of the country on the 25th of January, I was left with some time on my hands in the land of snow, ice, and vodka. While my tenure in Moscow was filled with the third element of this holy Slavic trinity, the city’s temperature and weather left something to be desired. Moscow’s Indian summer (or as they say in Russian, ‘bab’e leto’ – butterfly summer) lasted well into November and even in the late weeks of December, the coldest it got was –15 C. In my first two years of college, I romanticized Russia into a place where one suffers just to survive. My semester in a Russian university was full of struggles but of the personal kind: abusive professors, disinterested and cold students. I had prepared myself for a harsh climate and the cold, anonymous city; these were obstacles I could surmount. Apathetic and, by western standards, rude people (including my hostess, Tatiana Nikolaenva, who, over a New Years day dinner, told me that she thought my Russian had actually gotten worse and encouraged me to just ‘not open my mouth’ for the duration of the meal. Said before we lifted one spoonful, this comment made for an awkward and painful dinner, in which I continually took shots of vodka while she wasn’t looking to ease the pain of the last five months.) were not part of the contract I had written in my mind when I signed my first semester away on the dotted line. With a precious month left, I had experienced the depression that masterpieces of Russian literature have immortalized, but I had no tangible measure for these hurdles. I imagined my homecoming and telling everyone that ‘On a scale of 1 to 10, the disposition of the Russian people was a negative 9.’ While this would obviously make for a witty anecdote, it couldn’t sufficiently describe the coldness with which many Russians met me. In order to get a more concrete measurement of this cultural frigidity, I bought a ticket to Siberia, where if nothing else, the temperatures would get a rise out of my friends and family back home.
In all honesty, I had better reasons for buying the tickets. My good friend, Liza (check out her blog! See link to right of screen.) chose to spend her time abroad in Irkutsk, a real, live city in Siberia, nestled just north of Lake Baikal. At many points in the semester, our conversations, back and forth messaging and sharing of experiences via our blogs was one of the only things that kept me going. She had been a good friend to me during our 2.5 years of Russian together and gave me a good excuse to visit Siberia in the middle of January (obviously, she’s a great friend; why else would anyone want to go to Siberia in the middle of winter?). I was interested to see her life first hand, to see how my time in Russia may have been different, easier or most of all better if I had chosen Middlebury’s school in Irkutsk and not Moscow. That, and by in large, I thought that Siberia could show me what Russia really was. It’s common knowledge among Russians and most foreigners that Moscow and St. Petersburg are not Russia. They are their own entity, much as New York City is not representative of the rest of the country. Moscow had strangled me for the last four months; I was ready for the clear air and natural beauty of Irkutsk, the Paris of Siberia.
My flight on Aeroflot, now called ‘Russian Airlines’ but once, the one and only way to fly in the Soviet Union, arrived in Irkutsk at 5:20 in the morning. My body was still on Moscow time, thinking it was only twenty past midnight, but my head was fried from my first experience in a Russian Airport. I practiced my haggling speech for the cab drivers the entire flight, vowing to pay no more than 150 rubles, 200 if absolutely necessary. Unfortunately, my jet lag and red eyes made me a less than convincing client and I paid 250 anyway. At the hotel, I had to ask what F.I.O. on the registration form meant (Familia, Imya, Ochechestvo – or last name, first name and patronymic). This brought an annoyed expression to the face of the woman behind the counter, who obviously had little patience for stupid foreigners before 7 am. She took my passport and form and proceeded to fill out a new one herself. While I was embarrassed, I was relieved to have the burden of government forms lifted from my shoulders so early in the morning. I found my room and laid down to sleep thinking that, so far, Siberians quite resembled Muscovites: cold, terse and not particularly friendly to foreigners.
I woke up five hours later to the sound of my cell phone. Liza was ready to start our Siberian honeymoon and quickly made it to the hotel (I would later find out that the hotel she recommended for me was less than a two minute walk from her house). After I gave her the gifts I had been dragging around since October, we went back to her house for some breakfast. That morning was when I had the honor to meet Mama Mila for the first time.
Mama Mila, a.k.a. Liudmila Danelovna, is Liza’s host mother. I was nervous to meet her in the way boyfriends are nervous to meet their girlfriends’ parents; even though there’s nothing romantic between Liza and me, Mama Mila decided there was as soon as I bought my tickets (she even suggested that Liza buy some skimpy lingerie in honor of my visit!). From the moment I walked in the door, Mama Mila called me Mishenka, the sweetest of diminutives for Mikhail, which in my five months in Moscow, my own hostess never once called me. I was sold; she had me from “Good morning, Mishenka!” There was a huge table waiting for us, filled to the edges with cakes, bliny (Russian pancakes/crêpe things), and tea. I had never seen such an schmorgesbourg and couldn’t imagine that we’d ever eat it all…at least not in the next four hours.
We did our best though; well, actually, I did my best. In Russia, one’s worth is not judged by their intellect or the content of their character, but often by the size of their stomach. Needing to make a good impression, I ate as though Middlebury had me starving on the streets in Moscow or something. I was surprised that Liza wasn’t eating her fair share, especially since the food was so good. Apparently, Liza was experiencing some stomach problems the week before I came, and they hadn’t subsided. I saw this as an excuse to not ‘eat well’ (khorosho kusat’) and took it upon myself to pile food on her plate, knowing full well that American students, not used to eating so much at any meal, often make up lies or excuses for why they can’t eat as much as their hosts often want them to. Mama Mila gave her smiling approval, “Pravil’no, Mishenka, pravil’no (that’s right, Mikey-poo, that’s right). You see how badly my Lizenka eats? It’s horrible; I just don’t know what to do with her.” She said this with frown while shaking her head in the way an American mother would upon finding out that her teenage daughter got knocked up. I crossed my brow, pinched my lips together and gave my sincere, nonverbal condolences; along with my eating rampage, that gesture of, ‘Yeah, Mila, we’ve all been there…kids these days!’ definitely got me some bonus points with my future babushka in-law.


Liza and I with Mama Mila

Mama Mila excused herself to ‘make more tea’ in the kitchen (an excuse she always used to do the dishes when Liza continually offered to do them herself. In Russia, it’s a sin for a guest to raise even a finger in one’s house. Liza was by no means a guest; she was living in the house for a year, and ‘fights’ often broke out between the two of them over these matters as guests are requited to help out in the State. More important than her questionable status as a guest was her definite status as a young American woman, which, when translated into Russian, sounds something like, “She’s a walking train wreck, KEEP HER OUT OF THE KITCHEN!”). I took this opportunity to ask Liza one small question that had been bugging me the entire meal, namely, “Do you guys eat like this all the time?”
“Yeah, of course. Mama Mila loves to cook.”
“No, I mean at a table, all together. Does this happen a lot?”
“You mean eating together at one table?” she asked a little bewildered. I nodded.
“Well, yeah. Why? Do you not with your babushka?”
I explained that I had eaten together with my hostess only twice in my semester: once when my parents came to visit and once on New Years Day, and I wouldn’t called either of those occasions ‘pleasant’. Liza was shocked and wrote off this cultural difference within the same country to Tatiana Nikolaevna’s big city mentality. I thought it was more due to the fact that Tatiana just didn’t like me, or at least didn’t like me sleeping in her house. Either way, it became clearer that Middlebury’s hosts in Irkutsk were a little more ‘inviting’ than those in Moscow.
After some post-brunch tea, Liza and I set off to take a tour of the city. My scarf wasn’t halfway on before Mila began expressing her disappointment at my clothing:
“Lizenka, didn’t you tell your friend what the weather would be like?”
Well, of course she had; it was Siberia for Christ’s sake! I knew full well it would be cold, frigid even. I brought my long underwear, multiple sweaters, my warmest socks and my winter coat, made of leather, which had served me quite well in Moscow. Mama Mila would have nothing of it and immediately gave me a warm hat and down parka (over the course of my stay, I was given a whole new, cold-weather wardrobe, donated by not less than three complete strangers, including two down parkas, a warm hat and fur-lined, leather shoes, since my waterproof, Merrell hiking shoes were obviously not up to par). Looking a little more Siberian and resembling a man trapped by layers of down feathers, we took our leave of Mama Mila and had a freezing walk around downtown Irkutsk, decorated by ice ‘gorki’ (think igloo slides), walking fur menageries and starfish children so bundled up that their arms couldn’t drop to their sides. Another Midd, Colleen, friend joined us and gave us a wonderful tour of the cities churches and monastery (Colleen was the only one who had actually been on a tour of Irkutsk, so she was full of useful and interesting information).



The next few days were spent accumulating more warm clothing, arranging a trip to Lake Baikal, and seeing the Decembrists’ museum. It wasn’t so much a museum as it was a house that some Decembrists lived in, but I enjoyed it a lot nonetheless. Liza wrote a paper on the Decembrists earlier that semester, so I got a free tour! For a good portion of my visit, it was too cold to go outside (apparently ‘too cold’ for Siberians is somewhere between –27 and –35 C), so Liza and I stayed with Mama Mila, watching movies and taking some visitors, mostly other Middlebury students studying in Irkutsk.
The Thursday before Russian Christmas (January 7th), Liza, Sara, Matty (two other Middkids), and I boarded a train for Baikal on which we’d spend the next three days touring the southern tip of the world’s deepest and largest fresh water lake (Lake Baikal is visible from space, holds one fifth of the world’s fresh water and is home to countless species of flora and fauna found only in its mystic wilderness!). Baikal was another big reason to see Irkutsk; Liza has made me jealous with her pictures of Baikal for some months now, and I wanted the chance to see it myself with my own two eyes. The train had an average of two or three excursions to scenic vista and through famous train tunnels a day. When we were too tired or otherwise incapacitated to take the cold walks with chipper Siberian teenagers, we just enjoyed each others company inside the train or made our own trips to take silly and breathtaking pictures (during one missed excursion through a 2km tunnel, I made my way down to the lake’s shore and gathered some of the world’s freshest water myself. It was by far the most delicious water I’ve tasted in my whole life).



More interesting than the guides’ anecdotes and tidbits of Baikal trivia were the people on our train. One always meets interesting people on the train, and our ‘Kruglobaikalskii’ Express was no exception. Being in the holiday season (which lasts from December 31st- approx. January 13th in Russia – essentially two weeks of national holiday), everyone was friendly and ready to meet new people. By coincidence, Colleen’s host sister, Tanya, was on the train with her boyfriend, Alyosha, who was visit over the holidays from St. Petersburg. They were great friends and even better guides through the world of Russian trains, making sure we made it back the to train before it continued on its way after a stop, met the standards of train etiquette and kept us out of trouble in times of gross intoxication (a common occurrence. I once had a Russian tell me, “Of course you should drink on the trains – what else is there to do?”). The people I met of the train made my trip to Siberia worth the cold and frostbite; they were the first Russians I had ever met that were genuinely interested in meeting Americans. For many of them, I was the first American they had ever met, which, besides being a great responsibility, was a great honor. I experienced true human contact just shooting the shit with my new Siberian friends, talking about Russian and American music, movies and anything else that bridges young people of different cultures.



One of my sputniki (traveling companions), Misha, was from the Russian Caucuses and grew up close to the Chenen border. He was interested in hearing my thoughts on the Chechen War(s), a particularly touchy subject for Russians (see previous post “Problems”). I tried my best to be diplomatic, explaining that since the States was a colony of Britain at one time, most Americans are sympathetic to need some peoples have for their own freedom and independence. Although his rebuttal was harsh and, for the most part, racist, it was a treat to hear a Russian’s opinion on the matter, especially since he grew up so close to the conflict itself.
The most interesting character I met on the train was, however, Viktor Lediaev, a well-traveled native son of Irkutsk in his seventies. Our first night on the train, he went from cabin to cabin asking if anyone could sight-sing (or at the very least, read music by notes). I told him that I could, and he continued to announce a small contest he was having over the course of our three-day train ride. He had written his own lyrics to a well-known Soviet tango called ‘Drops (or Bubbles) of Champaign’. The first person on the train that could sing him his song would win a bottle of Sovietskoe Champaignskoe. As luck would have it, I was that person, and after singing his song with him, we opened the bottle of Champaign and had a pleasant conversation in which he shared with all of us his essays, ranging from topics of physics to philosophy, photographs from his travels (from all over Europe and the Middle East), and his stories, accumulated over a lifetime. He was a kind man with an easy, welcoming way about him whom I won’t soon forget.



Our three-day adventure on the train was also a much-needed Middkid powwow. Matty, Sara, Liza and I struggled through 2.5 grueling years of Russian language/culture at Middlebury together, and it was a great relief to finally share and compare our impressions and experiences in the Motherland. I had friends in Moscow who were also foreign students, some of which also came from Middlebury, but for some reason, I felt as though I had really come home in Siberia. Sharing our stories made me look back on my semester in Moscow with new eyes, which was much needed. I found that I acquired some perspective on my experience and was truly be able to see the good in all the bad times I had.
After the train ride, I had thirty-six hours left in Siberia, which I spent (of course) with Mama Mila and my friends. All the Middkids, along with Tanya, went to the banya together to clean our backs and our souls, and I left early the next morning completely satisfied with my visit. I wouldn’t give up my time in Moscow for anything, but in retrospect, if I had to do it all again, I think I would have gone to Irkutsk. Gossiping hostesses and sub-zero temperatures aside, it was a wonderful place that would have left me with a more ‘Russian’ experience to take home. Who knows; maybe I would have come back to the States with a little piece of that Russian soul as a souvenir.


Middkids in the banya!

posted by Misha Molodoi @ 3:04 PM