Tim Tams in Moscow

We arrive back in Moscow and I’m suddenly tired and beyond caring about anything.  I decide I’m getting a taxi to my hotel and give Lari a lift into the city.  A man approaches me to offer a taxi and I give him the destination.  He gives me the price, 2500 roubles, assigns a driver to me and follows us to the car.  I sit in the seat and the driver tells me, in Russian, to give the money to the man.  I’m not sure about that idea and ask him if he’s sure and that I’m not paying any more later.  The guy looks in the window expectantly and I hand him the money.  Everyone’s happy; I’m now worried about this situation and ten minutes into the journey we are stuck in backed up traffic.  We go nowhere for five minutes and the driver asks if we would like to go another way.  I agree, but point out I don’t have any more money.“No problem, fixed price”, he explains.  I relax into the seat and let the journey drift past me.  We are making a huge detour away from all the freeways and I’m very happy we’re on a fixed price trip.  As we follow the river for a while we see traffic on the freeways completely stopped for kilometres.  It’s early Thursday afternoon here and this can’t be normal.  Our driver embarks on a commentary, in Russian, that I manage to understand parts of.
“Only in Moscow! Everything stops! In England and America, they make this work, but here in Moscow…look at it”, he gestures hopelessly with his hand, “Our government cannot make simple things work.  No wonder we are all poor…Only in Moscow!”
He continues the monologue with only a few short breaks all the way along the forty minute trip to the hotel. I let it wash over me, I dont like Moscow and he is giving me more reasons.

Moscow sunset over the river

Amazing view

We exit happily and he waves us goodbye.  As we approach it, I realise I’m staying in a building I saw seven weeks earlier, the one that looks like a flying saucer has landed on the roof.  That flying saucer is a restaurant with an astonishing view of Moscow and I decide to have a nightcap there. I check-in and find my room is new, enormous and also has an astonishing view.  I’m facing the river and on the 14th floor, which places me above almost every other building in the city.  My shower is the pinnacle of the madness.  There is a huge thirty centimetre shower head that sprays onto an open stone floor next to the bath itself; as well as a standard hand held shower nozzle fitted on the bath.  I immediately jump in and use both showers at once just to see what true decadence feels like.  It seems a fitting celebration of the end of my journey across Russia.  There is an automatic espresso machine in my room and we start making coffee to have with it.  I feel exhausted, drained.  I know I have to leave the country in two days, but I want some reason, some excuse not to.  I know Alisha is arriving to meet us in the morning and she will Couchsurf in my hotel room, since she doesn’t know so many people in Moscow.  Lari pulls out her streetmaps to get oriented and to find how to get to the hostel she will stay in.  I tell her again she can just stay here, but she wants to stay separately after spending six weeks living in each other’s pockets.  I bid her farewell and draw all the curtains before enjoying an incredibly blissful sleep.

In the morning, I arrive in good time to meet Alisha at the train station.  She sends a message twenty minutes before arriving and then disappears.  I wait for twenty minutes after she arrives and there’s no sign of her on any of the trains.  Her phone is now switched off, so I’m assuming she’s run out of battery life at the worst possible moment.  I walk around the train station looking for her, but there’s no sign.  I walk back out the front and suddenly think I’m at the wrong station.  I ask a taxi driver where the station is and he laughs and points behind me.  I’ve been waiting at the wrong one.  I rush inside to find Alisha standing inside the door looking stressed.

Doing the Tim Tam Slam

Lari's afternoon action

“My beautiful Georgian man!”  I give her a big hug and apologise for my stupidity
Alisha looks tired and hasn’t slept much on the train overnight.
“I wasn’t so happy in St Petersburg before you visit me”, she tells us.
“But from August the 1st, everything changed.  I meet good people and good friends and now I think that life has got better.”
“That was the day of the eclipse”, I remind her.
“Yes, I know.  That’s why I had to tell you.  I think it changed something for me too.  It’s so good now.”
We share a long look in silence as we eat cheesecake and drink our coffee.  Lari and I decide to go souvenir shopping on Old Arbat St and let Alisha sleep for the afternoon.

It’s a fun mission and I collect gifts for my family and memorabilia for myself.  I come away with lacquer boxes, furry hats, matrioshka (the wooden Russian dolls that fit inside each other), t-shirts and postcards.  When I’m trying to pick the right matrioshka for my brother’s family I ask the shopkeeper,
“So what makes a good matrioshka?  If I was from a Russian family, what would I be looking for?”
She laughs at first, then says,
“They probably wouldn’t be looking for one so much.  But they used to be used to represent the family.  The outside layers would be the oldest members and with each new addition to the family another one would be made to fit inside.  The picture on the front would be a kind of cartoon portrait of the person.”
“So you’d have to change them over time?”
“I suppose so”.  She looks thoughtful for a minute, so I continue.
“So why are these ones only women looking much the same?”
“Well this one just traces the women in the family, the direct maternal line for as far back as you want to go.”

Back in Arbatskaya

Hot graffiti action..

I look at the other versions in different sizes and with a vast array of different combinations of picture style and content.  There’s one with more than twenty nested dolls, but it’s far too large and expensive.  Having satisfied my consumer drive, we return to the hotel.  On the way to the Smolenskaya Metro, I notice a young guy with a pet rat on his shoulder.  When he sees me taking a picture he puts his hand out for money with a smile on his face.  I know I won’t really need Russian money anymore, so I reach into my pocket and had him change and some notes,
“Buy beer for your friends”, I advise him in Russian.
He looks amused and confused, but thanks me with a smile and asks if I want to hold the rat.  I smile and wave goodbye.

I’ve told the Moscow Couchsurfers I’m back in town again and some of them come to meet us in a café-bar in the north of the city.  We arrive fashionably late and I apologise to Sasha the Siberian a lot.  I’m mostly in a daze.  I want someone to grab me and tell me I can just stay in Russia.  I want someone to make it possible, or even just suggest I do it and worry about consequences later.  I talk to Sasha about my visit to Novosibirsk and he’s very happy I tried the local beer they sell from kegs in the shops,
“When I first arrived in Moscow I looked for these shops for a month, but I can’t find them, they’re not here.  I want to go back to Novosibirsk again; I think I will move at the end of this year.”
I nod slowly in my daze.
“I want to go back there too”, I admit, “Right now would be good.”
I look deep into his eyes for a moment,
“You really love Russia don’t you?” he observes quizzically.

I don’t know how to answer that, it’s so fundamentally true as to defy explanation.

Lari and Ludmilla kicking it

“I think it was a man in Novosibirsk who caught the style of the people the best.  The rest of the world must get by with a dour face; devoid of expression.  A smile is only for your friends.”
Sasha the Siberian smiles at the thought.
“I think he’s right”, he says thoughtfully with a growing smile.
“The people, the place have taken my heart.  In everyone there is love, hate, mistrust, but somehow still an overwhelming friendliness.  I don’t know how else to say it.  The government I hate as much as any Russian, but the people are wonderful and so Australian.  Especially the Siberians!”
He turns his head sideways and considers this before smiling again,
“Maybe we are, I’m happy to be like Australians.”

Dealing with the heat

Alisha in her normal habitat

Alisha heads home early, not entirely comfortable with all the new people and the bustle of the bar, but I stay to talk with the other Couchsurfers until around midnight.  Lari changes trains on the way and I find myself suddenly saying goodbye to her in the middle of a crowded train station.
“See you in Australia then Lari….or maybe China next year.”
“I don’t know if I’ll make it to China, but let me know when you’re in town next and we’ll go for some vodkas.”
“Da da da da da, Tochna!”, I promise with a laugh.
She smiles and waves as she disappears into the crowd.

So I’m sitting atop one of the tallest buildings in the city admiring the night view and drinking a bottle of Dom Perignon with my beautiful Georgian man.  I’ve almost come to accept I must leave, so I’m now determined to remember my last night as being particularly amazing.  We talk about so many things, life in Russia, parts of the journey, where she will travel next and how to face your fears head-on.  They finally announce the bar is closing and we return to the room where I enjoy another double shower before packing my suitcase for the last time.
“Tell me I have to stay and miss my flight”, I ask Alisha, “My visa is still good for another two weeks, I could stay and….”
I don’t know how to finish the sentence and Alisha has no response either.  She wants to order some seafood from room service and I tell her to just do it.  I fall asleep quickly and awake early enough to make it to the airport.  Alisha has disappeared, she told me had to meet someone early, so I check out and let them arrange a car for me.

I somehow manage to go to the business class check-in counter where the woman isn’t doing anything, but she helps me anyway.
“Is there any chance I can have an aisle seat on a row in the centre at the back of the plane”, I venture hopefully.
She consults her computer for a minute and then replies,
“No problem, would you like me to block off the other seats in the row so you can lie down?”
“You would make this a perfect day if you can do that!” I exclaim.
She does indeed manage to get me a row all the way back to Australia.

Passing through passport control I’m worried they will pull me aside over something; probably for not being registered everywhere.  The woman looks at me, looks at the passport, types something into the computer then stamps the Russian visa page and hands it back to me with a smile.  I’m filled with relief that the problems with registration haven’t amounted to anything and I immediately message Don and Lari telling them the news. I’m sitting drinking a coffee an hour before my flight when I send a message to all my hosts and new friends across the country telling them I’m about to leave and thanking them for their part in making my Russian adventure the unforgettable time that it was.  I also add an open invitation to ask for my help should any of them want to visit Australia anytime. Up until I board the plane I wonder how soon I can manage to return to visit them all.  I still don’t want to leave, but I’ve switched to thinking about how soon I can return and spend more time here.  The flight is uneventful and I manage to sleep for a lot of it on my economy bed.

Arriving back in Australia  it seems to be a foreign country to me now.  The signs are in English, but I keep reading them as being Russian and get confused.

I don’t think my universe will ever be the same again.

This is the end

The end of the line: Vladivostok station

Three crazy Australians find themselves in the late morning taking turns with the photo opportunity at the mile marker statue on the Vladivostok train platform. We have the place to ourselves and take the time to get a few different photos each. The ritual is complete; the journey is at its formal end. With every passing hour, I feel less and less ready to let it end. I want to find a way to keep going. There is a party tonight with fellow Couchsurfers and then in the morning Lari and I will board a plane for Moscow. As we’re walking across the road from the train station to another pivnaya of the Republic Bar franchise, I notice that the statue of Lenin is particularly heavily covered in pigeon poo. I wonder if it’s ever been cleaned, or left to decay as the monument to an idea that time has passed by.

Vladivostok is for lovers...

After a few beers we decide to visit the southwest peninsula of the city and soon find ourselves on a marshrutka climbing a hill. We are on our way to the lighthouse on the tip of the mainland that guides boats into the golden horn bay. When we’re halfway there a light drizzling rain begins to gently soak the city. We never actually find the lighthouse we’re looking for, but we do find a small piece of parkland atop a high hill overlooking another bay. There’s a middle aged couple sitting on the park bench with the best view sharing their lunchtime in what seems a tender moment under an umbrella. While Don is taking photos of a small dog sheltering in the rain shadow of a small statue, I receive a message from someone called Andrei. Apparently he’s a friend of Natie’s who’s just arrived from Moscow and is looking to meet some fellow travellers. We agree to meet to find some lunch once we get around to catching a bus back down to the city. We search a little more for the lighthouse and then decide we’re hungry enough to jump on the marshrutka.

Woops! I didn't see that building there!

As we’re waiting for it to arrive I notice there’s something strange about a part of the apartment block across the road from us. It looks like the small metal building they attach to the ground floor to house the hydronic heating plant. However, it’s been painted and sculptured to look like a full size prime mover emerging from the side of the building at speed. I smile in happy amazement at this fantastic piece of urban art and I wonder how they had permission to do it. Thirty minutes later we’re greeting a young Russian guy beneath the huge trumpeter statue in the main square of Vladivostok.

We explain to him that we’re heading for a Georgian restaurant mentioned in one of our guidebooks to try and have Bozbashi soup one last time. After asking in a couple of hotels on the way where it is exactly, we finally climb the stairs to the third floor and find a middle aged woman sitting in an empty restaurant. She assures us they are open and brings us menus. My last dive into bozbashi soup gloriousness is divine. Accompanied by fresh lavash bread, I savour every mouthful of this grand culinary discovery of my Russian adventure. I want to get some of the Georgian wine, however wisdom prevails and we decide we had better leave very soon to have time to find Natie and get to the meeting.

Lenin's Pigeon

Andrei heads back to his hostel to change and we meet Natie later at the chinese dumpling café we had visited on our first day. With her is a polish couple, an English guy, Tim, and her best friend Svetlana. The first three have just arrived today and are joining us for tonight’s meetup. Svetlana works with Natie at the men’s magazine, where the two of them are the main writers. As we work through the menu and order an array of different dumplings again, the polish guy places a portable sound recorder in the middle of the table and lets it run for a while to catch the conversations. He is a sound engineer, and certainly looks it since he’s dressed in the uniform black t-shirt, black denim jeans and black long, unkempt hair. He likes to record soundscapes to mix together later as a part of a musical sideproject he’s doing. Capturing the group speaking different languages with the background hum of conversation in a busy café is perfection. I wonder what he will mix together from this madness, but keep being distracted by Svetlana. Another Russian beauty, with brown hair tinged red, cheeky green eyes and cheekbones you just want to touch to feel their line. I manage to resist the urge and the group works their way through the bamboo steamer trays filled with delicious dumplings. They taste so good, they just have to be bad for you – but the tiger beer washes it down neatly.

Urban decay

We emerge onto the main square again and head towards the meetup location. On the way Natie takes us for a distracting walk through some alleys joining two main streets. She wants us to see another side of the city, urban decay set behind the façade of a modern city. One building is three stories high and the bare concrete walls have largely lost the whitewash that once covered them. Some patches remain interspersed with green mould, lending texture to the overall image of a building that nobody cares for anymore. The balconies seem to be slabs of brickwork laid on their side and an array of weeds grow from their edges. They grow nestled into the gaps in the mortar; nature is already reclaiming this ground. A single window has a planter box growing flowers, it seems like some small attempt to reclaim the decay and impose some human order again. It is completely overwhelmed by the random graffiti tags added to most of the concrete surfaces. Someone has taken time to paint a man and woman on each of a pair of doors on the lowest level. They are dressed formally and gaze into each other’s eyes with his arms wrapped around her waist lovingly. The pair are set admist a blue sky background complete with a white cloud above them. I wonder who added this wonderful touch and I marvel at the hopes and dreams that thrive in barren landscapes.

The pathway leads away from this building towards the remnants of on older victim of such neglect. Only the walls of the ground level brickwork remain, along with some higher sections that suggest there used to be at least another floor above it. Weeds flourish within the enclosed section, providing a vibrant green counter to the red bricks. There are two buildings next to it that share the same architecture and I wonder if they were was demolished or collapsed at some point. I decide based on the surrounding area that nobody would have paid to knock it down; they have just let the disintegration happen and it has all returned to the wild. There is actually a half full skip tilted on an angle by the other refuse gathered underneath it. Even the bin has been thrown on the pile of detritus. Ideas of environmental care seem another generation away, but at least the environment is already reclaiming this corner of the city.

Vladivostok in Decay

Alien snot for dinner...

I am reminded of a conversation I had with my brother’s father in law about this, he asked me how long I thought it would take for a city to be completely reclaimed by nature. Then he proposed that someone should build one and then desert it to measure how long it takes for the natural world to recover dominance. I think of the myriad of ruined cities already around the world that have been buried in sand, torn apart by tree roots and swallowed by forest. Most of them have been deserted for many hundreds of years or longer, but I think left untended it would happen quite quickly. He thought about fifty years would be the limit without human intervention. I have to agree with his logic; plants always grow wherever they can. Moulds, lichens and then small shrubs break up the concrete first to allow larger ones to thrive. With the plants come animals that dig, burrow and permanently chip away the veneer of engineered construction; turning it into an artificial rockface. They say civilisation is only three square meals away from anarchy; even the largest city is only a generation away from becoming an ancient overgrown temple to money.

Polish sound engineer at work..

As we walk into the Evolution bar I see Lukasz’s smiling face sitting at the end of a long table and Don and I make straight for him.
“Hey Dhugal! What is this? Everywhere I go in Russia you keep turning up?!?”
“Yes, I’m following you…your government pays me well.”
“Do they give you plenty of vodka?”
“Of course, we will find more here I think!”
“Good! …they have good Ukrainian vodka on the menu.”

Natie being unfeasibly cute

We settle down and check it out, the place turns out to be another pivnaya, so we order some more of their own beers to wash down the vodka. Don orders something that I think is spinach in a cream sauce, but when it arrives it is an oval shaped green lump in the middle of the plate. Stefan has invited a bunch of people who were on a tour with him that morning, including the tour guide – a middle aged Ukrainian woman. I end up explaining to her all about Couchsurfing and she says she will join in the morning she loves the idea so much. Natie sees me getting a few pictures of people along the table and looks at me with her big brown eyes and mews,
“I can be cute too you know…hold the camera here and take the picture.”
The resultant photo still makes me lose some part of my heart to this lovely lady. Don, Lukasz and I are now picking a random fourth person from the table to join each round of vodka shots. There are now about twenty people along its length and we try to move around a bit, to at least say hello to everyone and share a laugh. Dasha is another local host who turns out to be another awesome troublemaker in all the good ways. She has just been camping for the last few days outside Vladivostok with some other Couchsurfers.
“So is there really only one Russian language across the whole country?” I suddenly remember to ask.
“Well, there’s one language yes. Some of the native people have different ones, but even that’s been discouraged by the government over time.”
“And only one accent?”
“No…no…not at all. People from western Russian accent words differently. They have more of an ‘Oh’ sound in words and we have more of an ‘Ah’.”
I nod slowly, enjoying Dasha’s sagelike status more by the minute. We are busy taking silly photos of the pair of us when Svetlana comes down to join us. She stands under some hanging lights that gives her a strange halo. We decide it must be time to leave the bar and head for tonight’s Russian outdoor café.

Natie and Sveta starting their modelling career

Natie, Andrei, Tim (the English guy) and I head for the closest shop for some supplies while Dasha and everyone else stroll to a grassy hill that overlooks the entrance to the golden horn. Natie finally manages to pay for something by distracting me at the right moment.
“You sneaky Russian!” I tell her, laughing.
She agrees and her smile grows even wider. We wander to find the others and discover them sitting along a concrete garden edge enjoying the view. Lukasz has picked a bunch of flowers and put them in his hair for some reason, I’m sure vodka makes everything seem reasonable.

Dhugal and Dasha in their natural habitat

“So what do you think about New Zealand?” I ask Dasha.
“Oh it must be a lovely place! So warm and comfortable”, she says, confirming my worst fears.
“Why do all of you think that? It’s not warm and the weather is severe, you’re describing Australia. Why would you think New Zealand is warm? It’s further south!” I implore.
“But……but everything is warmer when it’s further south!”, she explains, then pauses, thinking about it.
“But it is closer to the South Pole, which is very cold I think”, she continues thinking out loud, “I think we’re just so used to south meaning warm that we think New Zealand must be incredibly warm.”
I stop and blink several times. It makes so much sense. I can’t believe she’s just given me the answer. I give her a hug in my sudden happiness at finding it.
“It’s in textbooks here as well”, I add, remembering Vortex Yulia’s example from Novosibirsk.
“Oh yes…. at school it’s always New Zealand”, Dasha agrees.
“I wonder how many Russians have moved there and discovered the truth”, I ponder aloud before concluding, “Actually, after the Russian winter and government, New Zealand would be a kind of utopia.”

The conversation drifts from being in Russian to English as your attention moves around the group. I am warm and happy sitting on this hill in Vladivostok and the Travelling Wilbury’s tune ‘End of the Line’ is running through my head. We acquire some plastic cups to have some more vodka here and we share many shots with our Russian friends in a farewell gesture. Slowly we lose the locals who have to work in the morning as each one staggers off into the night. Natie pushes us to break up and catch the Russian people’s taxis home. When the four of us arrive back at Natie’s place we are all tired and more than a little pissed. I set up my portable speakers in the kitchen where we’re sitting and put on ‘End of the Line’. We all build our beds one last time and sink into a vodka soaked oblivion.

Lukash gets closer to nature...

Morning comes suddenly and without warning. Natie is getting ready for work as I’m furiously finishing the packing I was going to do the day before. I pick out all her presents; an aussie stubbie cooler or two with full colour pictures on them, a pair of shot glasses, little clip on Koalas and a stuffed kangaroo. Lari adds a few cakes of the handmade soap and I also give her the inflatable pillow she liked. We have a brief argument on who is actually cuter; she certainly is, but seems to be suffering some doubt on the topic. I thank her for such a great time in Vladivostok and a great end to my journey across the country. I want to pack her in my case to bring her home; she’s just too good to leave behind like this. She calls for a taxi and then has to leave for work, so I give her one last big hug and tell her she has to come find me soon in Australia to enjoy a real summer. Lari and I shift everything downstairs. I give Don a huge hug and thank him for being a part of the Russian adventure. We will have this to talk about for the rest of our days and both of us vow to return to this addictive country soon. The taxi arrives and we make our way to the airport.

Check-in is quick and painless and I try to find a notebook and a pen in a newsagent I can see. We have a nine hour flight back to Moscow and I want to spend it writing. I find a lovely little notebook with a picture of teddy bear holding a love heart on its cover. I take a moment to write “Россия” inside the heart with a permanent marker before we board the Aeroflot 747 that will carry us back across the country.

I had actually made a point of getting this flight back on Aeroflot to test out the vicious rumours about the quality of aircraft and service they provide. The aircraft is quite new and the service when we first board is much the same as any international airline. It’s not until later in the flight that we return to genuine Russian service. Once lunch is over, it’s impossible to bring anyone with the alert buttons. Lari settles in to try and sleep a little and I spend a few hours writing feverishly, trying to catch this feeling. A few hours pass until I notice that a bunch of people around me are drinking from real glass half bottles of scotch. I decide to see what else they have on board and venture to the back of the plane. I find myself acquiring a half bottle of Glenfiddich 12 year old scotch. Much to the disdain of scotch lovers around the world, I mix it with Pepsi. Well, I would prefer dry ginger ale, but they don’t have any.

Don tries to look inconspicuous

Natie puts on her bikini in the morning to be ready for the swim and reminds me I have to remember to wear something appropriate.  Don is still sick and stays asleep so Lari and I decide to stroll around the hilly streets of Vladivostok making random turns at corners to see what’s out there.  Lari remembers she needs to send some postcards and despite my protesting that she’ll never manage it, she heads into the post office.  I find a large, soft chair and sink into it listening to music while she lines up.  Just forty-five minutes later she makes it to be served and a lengthy discussion is had by every staff member in the room over whether the stamp covering a part of the writing is acceptable or not.  Even after Lari tells them repeatedly she doesn’t mind, they do; the person wont be able to read it easily.  She mimes and fumes and finally they accept the cards.

It’s been a while since we dealt with officials like this and I spend my time considering how they must have achieved this level of dysfunction.  I can only assume they build customer service interfaces to strict guidelines:

• The process must be lengthy and particularly complicated.

• It must require discussion with at least one other person about how to navigate the minefield of forms and approvals.

• Extra points awarded if you can involve everyone in the room in the discussion, so nobody else gets served.

• It must involve long pauses where it isn’t clear to anyone what on earth is going on.

• It should have no more than a 50% chance of success.

• To be more efficient would clearly encourage people to make use of the service, which must be avoided at all costs.

• If the customer is happy to make a decision to make it easier, they must be talked out of it at all costs.

If the process does not meet these requirements, I’m absolutely positive that the form to approve it would not be stamped by the disinterested wage slave hunched over a decaying desk in some ancient building buried in the heart of Moscow.

Lari looking inconspicuous outside a beauty salon...

The afternoon otherwise passes pleasantly during the walk and I receive a message from Natie telling us to meet in the same food court before our swim.  Don makes it in again and is looking a lot better, far more awake and alive. So it ends up being the three Australians, Natie and Stefan heading for a Vladivostok beach party.  We catch a normal bus most of the way and acquire a few beers at a pavement shop to enjoy on the beach.
“That room is so strange to sleep in”, Stefan says while we’re storing the beers in our backpacks.
“I know what you mean.  You feel very…ummm….isolated up there”, Lari agrees.
“Especially by yourself in a strange city”, Stefan adds.
Natie looks curious and is struggling to comprehend.
“It’s just a room.  Did you see the girls in the next room at all?”, she shrugs and asks.
“I haven’t seen anyone”, Stefan says blankly and Don and Lari agree.

Lari swims past her boat...

As we’re strolling down the hill we begin to see that our mental picture of a ‘beach’ and the reality are at some odds with each other.  Train tracks run within twenty metres of the shoreline and next to them are a series of metal sheds.  It reminds me of the small wooden beach shacks they have on some beaches around Melbourne that are generally owned by wealthy locals as a status symbol.  I’m not entirely sure what purpose these ones serve, but they look the part.  The beach is also made solely from largish smoothed rocks rather than sand, but there are a bunch of locals here sitting on towels, swimming and otherwise enjoying the beach atmosphere.

This is the very bay the tall ship is anchored in and I keep looking out to it across the water.  In so many ways I want to swim to it and continue my journey on the boat, to wherever it will take me.  The cold water does slow me down for a moment, but I’m still the first person to dive in.  I adopt the Australian standard position; sitting and clutching Amur lager in my hand.  The Amur is the river we crossed on the way into Khabarovsk and Natie also tells us this is the Amur bay.  I just enjoy drinking Amur in Amur near the outlet of the Amur.
“After our swim in Lake Baikal, this is a warm bath, Don”, I remind my shivering friend.

Dhugal being Australian

Natie discovers the water is fairly cool..

He looks at me in the water, then turns to include everyone else and says,
“I think that no matter how cold any water that we swim in for the rest of our lives actually is; we will be able to knowingly scratch our chin and say, ‘It’s not as cold as Lake Baikal’.”
Lari and I smile and laugh in agreement as Natie wonders,
“So you all really swam in the Lake?”
“Yes.  We did it to add twenty-five years to our life”, Lari tells her.
“Twenty-five?  I haven’t heard that one, but I know the lake is very cold.  Not so much like this water”, she replies.
The look on Natie’s face as she brings her lithe, bikini clad figure knee deep in the water tells a different story.  I think she may be about to suffer some combination of hypothermia, a heart attack and a seizure all at once.
“Have one of the beers”, I offer, “It’s working a charm on warming me up.”
She returns to shore where Lari hands her one before she forces herself to plunge in.

After some swimming distractions in the water we decide the light rainfall is probably suggesting we should head off.  I don’t want to leave the water; this really is the beginning of the end.  10,000 kilometres ago I dipped my hand in the bay of Finland and here I am the last to leave the cool ministrations of the Bay of Amur.  As we are putting shoes back on and getting ready to leave we find ourselves talking to a middle aged Russian man who is determined to demonstrate his diving abilities from the end of a nearby wooden jetty.  He runs along its length, flies into a somersault and hits the water straight.  We applaud appreciatively and he repeats the stunt a little higher and faster.  You can tell his wife isn’t terribly impressed with him showing off for the two beautiful women with us, but she doesn’t really want to stop him either.  He comes up to talk with us and all I can see is that his eyes are two different colours; blue and yellow.  As we walk back to the bus stop, I ask if anyone else noticed and Lari laughs saying she couldn’t look at anything else either.

Dhugal wins the man boobs competition!!

On the journey back to the city Natie tells us about the two rivers that run through Vladivostok.
“Both of them are quite short and so are their names.  First River and ….Second River.”
I burst out laughing
“First River is simply further to the south, the direction the first explorers arrived from by boat”, Natie continues.
“They should be in Australia somewhere with names like that”, I reply.
I tell her about the Australian fetish with stupid names and placenames and this leads me to tell her about my theory of Russians and Australians being surprisingly similar.
“…I’ve certainly felt at home with the Russians for the last seven weeks”, I finish.
“I agree! I loved the two Australians I’ve already hosted; they just seem to fit into life here so easily and you are all the same.”
We decide to have dinner and a quiet night in preparation for tomorrow’s party.  Then we completely fail to do so.

The restaurant we land in is good, apart from the distinct lack of any beer on the menu and staff who prefer to chat amongst themselves rather than do anything.  Ivan arrives with his American boss and that livens things up quite a bit.  They have been enjoying beers somewhere else and are also horrified to discover the terrible deficiency in the menu.  It’s a beer free zone that desperately needs to be fixed.  The solution is obvious and they order a round of vodka, which also arrives with all the speed and reckless pace of a glacier.  By this time Natie really wants to go home, we all know tomorrow will be a big one and a long sleep tonight is a good idea.  Lukasz is arriving tomorrow as well; I’m so happy to be spending my last night here with our mad polish friend.  We finally extricate ourselves from the restaurant after eleven and make use of the Russian people’s taxi service to get everyone home in a few passing cars.

When we get home Natie and I are both ready for sleep and I move my mattress setup a little to try and centre the top mattress on the air mattress underneath.  It should make it even more comfortable, but becomes something quite unexpected.  I wake up sometime later to the sound of something tapping on wood repeatedly.  I can’t figure out what it is and fall asleep again, only to be woken up by the same sound again.  I look around and try to figure out what it could be and end up drifting off to be woken up once again by this repetitive tapping sound.  I suddenly realise it is my foot twitching just as I’m about to fall into deep sleep and catching on the corner of the desk drawer.  I have managed to move just close enough to it for this to be possible.  Just as this is dawning on me I hear Natie’s voice in the darkness ask me, in Russian,
“What ARE you doing??”
I know what the answer is, but I’m close enough to real sleep to make it impossible for me to actually speak.  I just can’t wake up enough to move my lips.  Now it dawns on me what she is probably thinking about what some guy lying on the floor of her room might be up to in the middle of the night.  Something that would cause noises like that.  I move the mattress and somehow go back to sleep.  Then I completely fail to bring it up in the morning.  I try to imagine how that conversation might progress,
“So Natie, last night, when my foot was banging your drawers….”
“Umm…yes…I…wondered about that.”
“You see, it was just that your legs twitch when you’re going to sleep, it happens to everyone and I kept waking up because of it…”
“Ummm….right…your legs….twitch?”
“Yes, of course, nothing more than that, it’s not like I was….”
“Oh of course, I’m sure you weren’t.”
“I mean that’d be demented….I mean…”
“Yes. It was.”
“But…when you sleep…your legs…I couldn’t wake up…”
“And I’m sure your hand just fell between your legs awkwardly.”
“Do you have a good strong rope handy?“
“Why, does that get you off as well? Maybe you want me to tie you up and whip you with a piece of celery….freak!”
“No…I’m just going to nip outside and hang myself, it seems easier somehow”
“Oh, no worries, here’s a good one…you do know that your…..legs…. will probably ….twitch again when you hang yourself.”
“True enough, but I won’t be around to notice.”

Okay, so there’s virtually no chance that it would go like that.  But it’s moments like these that I’m sure aren’t covered in any book of daily manners and politeness.  If only some middle aged woman could just write a book with chapters titled ‘How to explain why things aren’t what they seem when you look like a complete deviant’ or ‘Acceptable excuses for unacceptable behaviour’.  Actually, I think the line ‘I have a condition’ would probably solve a lot of dodgy moments, but then you’d have to explain what it is and what you’re doing about it.  Like the guy who had an orgasm every time he sneezed.  I think he was taking pepper for that.

Vladivostok train station..so that's how you spell the word in Russian

The next morning Lari sends me a message telling me that Don has fallen sick, some kind of flu that makes him feel like lying down for a day or two.  I do still wonder if this is just his natural reaction to a Monday.  I also discover that I will be enjoying the genuine Russian experience of not having any hot water in the apartment.  When I mention it with a smile to Natie as I’m waiting for the kettle to boil, she tells me this is a very normal part of life in Vladivostok.
“You know there’s a famous rhyme about the city?”
She goes on to tell it to me in Russian, before translating.
“It translates as something like ‘If there’s no power from your power points and no water in your pipes, then you’re not far from Vladivostok’.”
I smile then frown at the idea.
“So shortages are that common?”

Vladivostok Shopping Action

“Oh yes, we have very bad ones.  One time we didn’t have enough water or power for years because of arguments between politicians and businesses.  They fight and we suffer.  So every local finds ways to use less water and we have to go without heating sometimes in the middle of winter.  I can easily wash my whole body with just one kettle of water and some clever tricks”, she boasts with a wicked grin.
I’m still absorbing the idea of being caught in the Russian winter without heating.
“Really, no heating at all? What do you do?”
“Wear more clothes.  A lot more, everything you can find.”
She stands with her arms and legs splayed and moves awkwardly like a giant sumo wrestler.
“But sometimes it’s hard to sleep, it’s just too cold.  So you drink hot tea and that helps a bit.”
I think it’s something I’m never going to understand without experiencing, but now I’m not nearly as sure about returning in the winter.  It does, however, fill me with more appreciation of how tough the Russians are.  With a climate and government like this, you just have to be.

I leave with Natie and head into the city to find somewhere for some internet access time.  I’ve decided my last days in Russia should be a celebration in decadence to try and snatch some better memories of Moscow before I leave.  With that I open one of the online cheap hotel booking websites and spend far too much money on a room in a very new and luxurious hotel on the south side of central Moscow.  This leads me to an inevitable conclusion; it’s lunchtime.  Lari is on her way in to meet me now, so I walk across the road to an Italian restaurant with a cool sign that’s written on a wine barrel.

Leonardo's Machines...now with Roman armour!

Nobody speaks English in there and they don’t have an English menu.  This makes ordering difficult, since it appears to be an unusually upmarket restaurant with a diverse gourmet menu that defeats my attempts at translation.  How they manage to fit the life sized model of Leonardo Da Vinci’s flying machine into the roof space also amazes me.  Strapping that to the ceiling certainly balances off the suits of armour and wagon wheels arranged between the wooden slatted tables covered with red and white check pattern tablecloths.  The waitresses are wearing a wonderfully revealing Italian country style short dress with stockings.  Which means I take even longer to decipher the menu far enough to decide that duck lasagne sounds sufficiently intriguing to order.  Lari arrives and randomly picks one of the ten salads on offer.  We decide the place seems classy (and expensive) enough to ensure anything should be good and order some red Italian wine as well.  I can’t say I’ve ever had a duck lasagne cooked in a cream sauce before.  It is everything it could possibly be, but I suddenly crave a simple beef lasagne to fill my raging insides.  The salad certainly helps an awful lot, since it’s excessive, very fresh and damn good.

Mad shop action

We wander out of the restaurant and head towards the fleet supply shop that Natie told us about.  It really is the supply shop for the military here, and certainly not just the navy either.  You can get all kinds of hats, insignias (both sewn and badges), banners, flags, backpacks, wet and cold weather clothing, boots…..well….everything a military kit needs.  I move between the three rooms examining everything and deciding what I need to acquire.  I know my nephew will need some badge insignias and I definitely need the blue and white horizontally striped classic Russian navy shirt and the fur hat that goes with it.  Lari, meanwhile, asks about a bag on display and a guy who is clearly visiting the shop for demonstration purposes shows her how to tie the two long straps together to make it work as a backpack.  It looked so much better on the shelf as the display version, this looks like a lot of work every time you want to open or close it.  I manage to attract the attention of one of the shop assistants and in a cludge of my terrible Russian manage to order a nice little swag of bits and pieces.  I decide I don’t need a normal navy hat with a customised banner around the rim.  I could get it to say “HMS Flying Robot Monkey”, but I figure that would ultimately cause trouble with some humourless officials.

Larius Photographius

Lari and I then wander aimlessly down the streets for a while deciding if we’re going to do something touristy or just have a beer somewhere.  Natie sends me a message telling me a few people are meeting up in the city after work, so we end up revisiting places from yesterday’s whirlwind tour on the way. Don manages to resurrect himself and finds us a little early at the meetup spot to have something to eat.  He’s still not looking too bright.  The meetup is on the top floor of a shopping centre and has a great view over the harbour, which offsets the very standard western food court style layout inside.  It does have an open bar in the foodcourt with more local beers on tap, so I’m forced to sample a couple of them.  A Belgian guy, Stefan, who will stay in Natie’s aunt’s spare room for the next few nights arrives and settles in quickly.  Then Ivan, who will host Don and Lari tonight, arrives with a girl, Nastya, who is a Russian Couchsurfer.   Ivan has dark, intelligent eyes in a gentle face framed by short dark hair.  He has a genuine and easygoing manner that makes everyone feel relaxed very quickly.  We quickly discover Nastya doesn’t speak much English and is leaving the next day to return to her home town near Khabarovsk.  Ivan works as a lawyer for an American company, I’m still not sure what he does for them exactly, but he enjoys the work and it allows him to travel extensively.  He spends some time telling us about his impending trip to North Korea.
“You can travel there just as a tourist?”,  I ask, more than a little amazed.
“Well, I can, but it’s a strictly guided tour for a couple of weeks”, he explains.
“Oh, so pretty much how foreigners used to visit Russia during soviet times?”, I query.
“Yes, but you would never have been able to visit Vladivostok, not with the pacific navy based here.”
“Oh yeah, I read that somewhere.  I’m glad they’ve opened it up now, though, it’s a beautiful city with some great locals.  To Vladivostok!”,  I toast loudly.

Vladigraffiti

We break up and Natie and I head back to her apartment.  Natie shows me this crazy electric fly swat she found in Vietnam.  It’s in the shape of a squash racket and when you hit an unlucky insect it gets zapped.  I wonder how I can import them to Australia, it would have to become a national sport; finally something to match Russian queuing.  We have an early night and talk more about the plan that was hatched over dinner to go for a swim in the water of Vladivostok.  I tell her about touching the water in the Bay of Finland way back in St Petersburg and swimming in Lake Baikal, so now need to complete the ritual by swimming in the water here.  Natie promises to take us to a local swimming spot tomorrow after work to enjoy it properly.  I drift off pondering that the swim will be one of the two symbolic ends to my journey; the other being photos at the statue at the end of the Trans-Siberian train line.  I think the real reason I didn’t want to take them the morning we arrived was it would mean accepting that this journey is about to finish.  I realise even more strongly that I don’t want to go home at all.  The country and the people have cut out my heart and kept it somewhere.  Maybe that’s what was taken from me at Lake Baikal.

The endless queue for not enough buses...

Vladivostok - Golden Horn Bay

Don and Lari head back to their room and Natie and I to her apartment. When I emerge from my shower, she doesn’t look so well.
“I’m not feeling 100%. I’ve been sick last week and I’m still recovering. I might stay home instead”.
“But we need you to enjoy the night properly! It won’t be the same without the Venus of Vladivostok!”, I implore.
She smiles and replies,
“I’ll have a shower and think about that”.
While I’m pottering around deciding what shirt to wear, she appears holding a Russian army hat.
“I heard of your crazy hat collection and I want to present you with this real Russian Army hat to add to it.”
I’m overjoyed and accept gratefully.
“I really wanted to find one of these, but to have you give it to me is particularly perfect. I know where I’ll keep it in my collection already”.
It still adorns the top of my huge hatstand at home.
“Try it on!” I suggest playfully.
I’m not at all prepared for the onslaught of hormones this causes. Natie’s amber-brown eyes peering out from under the black peaked rim are irresistable.
“You look seriously beautiful. Uniforms don’t normally do much for me. But you. In that hat.”
I really am lost for words and I try to find some quickly as she isn’t talking either.
“Will you get away with wearing it in a nightclub?”
She looks confused and thoughtful then decides they probably wouldn’t accept it. They take the military a lot more seriously here than in Australia I think.
“Oh I have a great shirt I bought in Vietnam that will be perfect instead”, she says and bustles off to get changed.
“We should probably get a taxi to make it in time to meet Don and Lari”, I suggest.
She calls one for us and then says,
“There will be another girl coming as well”.
So in the space of one hour we’ve leaped from zero to two beautiful Russian women showing us around Vladivostok. This should be good fun, I think, as a particularly vast smile takes over my face.

I expect that we will meet her friend in town and ask if we will pick her up somewhere. Natie smiles and says,
“Oh no, she’s a bit younger than me, but still old enough to come out with us.”
With that, she walks out of her bedroom and returns with a beautiful blonde girl sporting a cheeky smile.
“This is Olya”, she explains, enjoying my surprise.
I shake her hand and say hello in a confused way. It baffles me that I have just spent the last two or so hours in this three room apartment and completely failed to find any sign of Olya’s presence. Apparently she’s the daughter of an old and good university friend of Natie’s mother.
“She learned English for ten years, like everyone else here, but she doesn’t really speak it – also like everyone else here. She will understand you and once she stops being shy, she will be able to talk as well.”
Olya smiles and agrees with this summary. I find she can indeed understand me if I speak at a calm, even pace. On the way into the city I discover she’s only just moved into Vladivostok to start university after finishing school. She’s met Natie quite a few times before and is mostly happy to be living in the city now. We arrive at the club’s entrance to find Don and Lari across the road eating some doner kebabs that they acquired from the pavement shops. Introductions completed, we throw ourselves into the world of the Vladivostok nightclub they call ‘Dance House’.

It’s a relatively small place, with room for maybe one to two hundred people on two floors and sharing one main dance floor on the ground in the centre of the club. The music is a solid style of techno popular in the UK around eight years ago at the turn of the millenia. It provides the rises in intensity and speed required to properly engage in a little extra-chemicular activity. Don and I acquire some vodka shots with orange juice chasers and we chat with our two new Russian friends. In the middle of the dancefloor are two large, square columns holding up the roof, that are each covered in full length mirrors. Arranged around them are dancers watching themselves in the mirrors as they groove along with the music. A little narcissism certainly, but it does seem to make their style a lot more interesting to watch.
“Is the mirror trick a Vladivostok standard?” Don asks, enjoying the idea.
“It’s in a few places around town”, Natie says happily.
We start talking about our craziest fun dance moves and in no time we’re taking turns to lay down some particularly silly moves of our own.

Natie shows us a whole series of moves based around the process of planting, raising and harvesting a Russian potato like plant. She proves to be a truly inspirational performance artist, so I’m forced to show her the funky Macbeth; whereby you stir a cauldron in both directions with a huge spoon using both hands and your hips. This leads inevitably to the shopping trolley, motorbike, sprinkler and the window climb. In this you mime opening a window and climbing through it criminally to move around the dancefloor. Then we have to lay down the ‘big fish, little fish, box it’ that Melbourne people love so much. I have no idea how long this madness continues with everyone inventing new moves as inspiration strikes, but eventually the music takes over again. I think this is the best DJ set we heard across Russia.

This can only mean one thing. More vodka! Don and I share a few more shots, offering them to everyone with us. He then tries to find another local Couchsurfer who was meant to meet us outside. I alternate between the dancefloor and chatting as the music becomes more or less interesting. Then, after a long absence, Don suddenly reappears looking a little intense. He couldn’t find anyone, but had received a message that the person in question was inside the club and out of mobile range. So now we’re all keeping an eye out for ‘someone who looks like a Couchsurfer’. We laugh at the idea and keep an eye out as we take turns trying to look the most like a Couchsurfer.

It’s past one in the morning when some fairly drunk girl wearing vicious high heels spears Natie’s foot whilst staggering backwards. Natie shoves her roughly aside in a sudden fury which the drunken girl hardly seems to notice. We agree it must be time to leave and follow Natie outside as blood wells from between her two little toes and stains the dancefloor. I’m sure there’s a song in that somewhere. She calls two taxis for all of us and we wait outside for them to arrive. We three Australians conference during the wait and decide that our first day in Vladivostok has been enormous and very diverse and that Natie is an utter angel. I check her foot when we get home; it’s only a cut with mild bruising. I think the point of the stiletto must have bounced over most of Natie’s toe and I’m happy there’s no deeper damage. I offer her some antiseptic I still have left after my blistering joy and she says she already has a powder for it. After I have a quick shower, she’s already in bed.
“The party I was arranging while you’re in town is going to be delayed until Wednesday night, since some local couchsurfers are out of town and some more travellers are coming through”.
“That sounds perfect, it will be Lari’s and my last night in Vladivostok!”
I curl up on the mattress at the foot of her bed and drift of feeling grateful after such an amazing introduction to the Lord of the East.