Sunbathing in Siberia Read online

  It was early on in our affair that we decided to marry. Our long-distance courtship was taking its toll on us; I guess all people in these kinds of situations find it hard. Not only that but I couldn’t really say I had a home to go to and because of the global economic crash there was little chance of me finding a regular, decent job in the UK. British immigration law states that I would need full-time employment and a permanent residence in order for Nastya to be allowed to live in the UK. Pigs might fly by the time that happened and so the only option available to us was for me to move to Russia.

  It turns out that finding someone who wants to marry you isn’t the hardest part of getting married. For a British citizen to marry abroad one needs a lot of forms. Firstly you must apply for a Certificate of No Impediment to Marry (CNIM). Once you have this it needs an Apostille (this is a stamp from the Foreign Office based in Milton Keynes). A standard Russian tourist visa at the time had to be applied for forty-five days before the intended travel date which prevented me from booking really cheap flights. Once I applied, I had to wait around two weeks for a decision. This was to allow the FSB (Federal Security Service formally known as the KGB) adequate time to investigate me (the application was very long and asked if I had any ‘special skills’ or military training).

  When I had my passport back, I thought I was in the clear. Research on several Russian travel websites soon informed me that when I arrived in Moscow I would still need to get everything translated and stamped again. Then all my documents, both original and translated, would need to be presented to an International Wedding Court. Worse than this I read that we could only be married a month or two months after application, which would have been impossible with a single month’s visa; although the same websites stated that the wedding courts would likely accept bribes to make it sooner. Determined that we wouldn’t be separated by bureaucracy, or economics, I left for Moscow with a suitcase full of warm clothes, and a rucksack loaded with Jaffa Cakes.

  Trans-Siberian. March 31st 2011. Moscow – Krasnoyarsk

  The doors to all the wagons of the train opened simultaneously, and a number of heavyset, extremely intimidating female guards stepped out in black greatcoats and grey ushankas (classic Russian trapper’s hat). Our passports and papers were checked and we boarded. The engine itself wasn’t anything like I had expected. I had been hoping for some great big steam engine, instead it was a large industrial one. Like a green brick on wheels.

  There are three different classes of tickets on the Trans-Siberian. The first and most expensive is a compartment all of your own. The second is a compartment of four bunks – two lower bunks that convert into beds, and two upper bunks which are always beds – and third class, which I am told is six bunks to a compartment. We had chosen second class. I wasn’t actually aware of the etiquette and so as soon as we entered our compartment I sat on the seat opposite Nastya. This seemed only natural, but not long after I had sat down, a large, muscular Russian man entered and gave me The Look. I was sat in his seat, which would also double as his bed, so I changed sides quickly.

  Sat next to Nastya, with our knees pressed against the tiny table in the centre, it was hard to imagine how anyone could travel third class. But people do, and often. In Russia, because of its size, it’s normal for people to commute to meetings via two, three, four or sometimes eight-day journeys. Our compartment, second class, felt like a sardine tin and for the next three days that sardine tin was home. There was a dining cabin on board the train, although eating there would have required leaving our bags with a complete stranger. Having anticipated this situation, we had bought a picnic – some sausage meat, a large pack of cheese, some Brie, a loaf of bread, a pack of pastrami and a few sachets of herbal tea – from a half decent supermarket we had found earlier that morning, which surprisingly sold a wide selection of Western produce.

  When it was time to prepare our meals, which involved cutting our bread and cheese on the itsy witsy table, our travelling companion, although large and scary, turned out to be the perfect gentleman and would always leave for a walk up and down the train. I regret not learning his name or plucking up the courage to thank him for his good manners and generosity before he left the train for good. The Trans-Siberian is a popular tourist attraction and so it was normal to find a Brit on the train with an extremely poor grasp of the Russian language. Therefore our companion only communicated through Nastya, and only to make polite conversation or to ask if we would like to share his beer. The afternoon was long – from the small window we could only see pines and birches morning and night – except for a few stations, which all looked alike. There was no shower facility and the toilet made a high-pitched sound when flushed that hurt our ears if we weren’t quick enough to cover them. Anyone who takes that train across the whole of Russia is not only going to have severe cramp by the end of their trip, but is likely to smell as bad as a wet dog that has been rolling in his own poop.

  Despite all this, our first day passed without incident. However, as we hadn’t got to know our travelling companion yet, after he procured a 6-inch Bowie knife from his boot to cut his meat in the afternoon, I found it near impossible to sleep that first night. Nastya had brought her own knife to cut meat but it was only an inch long. I knew this would have been of little use in defence against a burly Russian who carried a blade big enough to chop off my head in one fell swoop. Lying there on my bunk above Nastya’s as we were hurtling further into Russia in the dead of night I was struck by fear and panic. With the ceiling of the wagon so close to my head I occasionally reached up, put my palms against it and pressed myself deeper into my bunk, as if this would somehow make me safer. As the hours went by I began to doze slightly, my mind filled with images of Moscow.

  As the plane touched down in Sheremetyevo airport, I could see it was going to be hard to dispel the stereotypical view of Russia I had come to know from Hollywood films. A bleak sky mirrored the dirty snow surrounding the airport; the blanket of grey-white absorbing the airport sign’s blood-red glow without a trace of reflection. I was met at Sheremetyevo by Nastya, who had taken the Trans-Siberian to Moscow three days earlier and had arrived that morning. She had already booked us a double bed in a hostel where we planned to stay for two nights. I had arranged to meet an up-and-coming Russian poet in Red Square the following day and we also needed to get documents translated. To give you an idea of the scale of Moscow, it took nearly four hours to travel from the airport to the other side of the city (it takes four hours to travel from Cardiff to Heathrow Airport, via National Express). Moscow could be a country all of its own. It is a vast maze of roads and underground train stations. I had left the UK on a four hour flight at around 1.15 p.m. GMT and arrived in Moscow at about 8.30 p.m. because of the time difference. After travelling across the capital and checking into our hostel it was close to midnight, so there was little time for anything other than sleep.

  My first day in Moscow had begun with a trip through the underground to a translation office in order to have my CNIM, Apostille and passport translated. We left photocopies of my documents there and went for my first lunch in a Russian café. The food was worse than anything I could have imagined. The jacket potato I ordered was not potato, but Smash, smothered onto a rubbery potato skin. The sausage was not actual meat, but rather some kind of Spam-like meat substitute. The bacon wasn’t actual bacon but a rolled-out Spam-substitute with bacon colouring. I discovered that all the crap you wouldn’t even feed to a stray dog is sold to humans in Russia; not only that, but many of the products available are also out of date. Even the packets of cigarettes I bought should have been binned months earlier. I assumed this was due to the global economic crash of 2007 but Nastya assured me that the decline in quality of products had begun in the late nineties.

  After our delicious Smash potato meal, Nastya lead me through the underground once more to meet the poet Nikitin on Red Square. Evgeny Nikitin is another person I had met online while I was looking to make good connections with R
ussian poets. He was one of the founding members of the Moscow Poetry Club as well as being the newly-appointed editor for the very famous Soviet and Russian poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko. Earlier that day, Nastya and I had visited Red Square so that I could take a few photographs. As we stood around admiring the scenery, we had heard screams. When we turned to see what the commotion was we saw people running. From between two buildings what looked like a white wall of ice – or huge cloud of white dust from a Hollywood movie – came pouring out over the Muscovites. It had taken only a few seconds to reach us. The wall was, in fact, a sudden blizzard made of heavy chunks of snow and hail. We fled like everyone else and took shelter in one of the subways.

  As soon as Nikitin had joined us, we headed straight for a coffee bar of Nikitin’s choosing, in case another storm hit us. Over English tea with milk he told me the story of his first collection of poetry. It was sold in a shop for contemporary books not far from where we were. In previous months, the militia had requested that this shop be closed down because some of the content of the books they stocked were deemed subversive and because it was also a meeting place for modern poets and political thinkers. The shop wasn’t shut down due to some legal technicality; however a week later it was mysteriously set alight by persons unknown, and all published copies of Nikitin’s collection perished. The shop had since been refurbished and so Nikitin offered to take us there. I wish I could remember the address but it’s probably for the best that I cannot. The shop itself was off a main road, down an alleyway, through a side door, up three flights of stairs, along a corridor and on the other side of a large steel door. When we arrived Nikitin couldn’t show me any of the books he had wished to, as there was a meeting of political thinkers and poets who were clearly in the middle of an important debate. We listened for five minutes before deciding that it wasn’t safe to stay there. Had the militia stormed the building, had they asked for my papers and seen I was British visiting on a tourist visa, I could have been arrested, interrogated and/or deported. Instead Nikitin led Nastya and me back to the main street where we parted company and walked in opposite directions. It was already early evening and the cold was beginning to bite. Before going back to our hostel, Nastya and I went to a mini supermarket to get a few things necessary for a light supper. We were both surprised to find the shop almost completely empty, except for a few cans of a red fizzy drink made in the Caucasus and a few large bottles of water. We left with two bottles of the fizzy red stuff only to be disappointed later.

  When we arrived back at our hostel at around 10 p.m. I noticed that there were many militia on our street, an unusually large number of them, and they seemed to be coming from a building across from ours. Nastya informed me that we were actually sleeping across from their headquarters. Militia (pronounced mee-leet-see-ya) are everywhere; they are partly police, partly immigration authority and partly intelligence service. They are the first thing you notice when you step off the plane and they remain omnipresent for the rest of your trip. I had learned from the Russian visa company I used that they have the power to stop and search anyone. It is said that if they find you without your passport and papers to hand, and you do not have sufficient money to bribe them, you can be deported. They are to be avoided at all times. I did not sleep so easy that night knowing there was an army of them across the street.

  We left early the following morning, carrying my luggage which weighed around eleven kilos. When travelling in any foreign country I think it’s always best to travel light in order to avoid any unnecessary delays, plus it’s easier to run away if you get into trouble. After picking up our newly-translated documents in the centre of Moscow and purchasing two tickets for the Trans-Siberian we made our way to Yaroslavsky train station, north east of the city centre. This was actually the most frightening part of my journey. Yaroslavsky station was teaming with all kinds of unsavoury people. They swarm around you under the pretence of wanting to sell you something while they take mental notes of where your money is most likely hidden. Not only that but there were around two hundred militia, standing around like demigods, laughing among themselves, automatic rifles loosely slung over their shoulders like harmless rucksacks; some swinging their weapons around like a child would swing a toy. Never have I heard that little voice inside of me shouting so loud ‘Get out of here! Get out of here now!’ We couldn’t get out of there right away though. We were to wait on the platform while the train had its interior cleaned. I needed a cigarette. I took out my tobacco and papers to make a roll up and was quickly scorned by Nastya, who chose that moment to inform me that nobody in Russia smoked roll ups; people would think I was smoking drugs and would likely inform the militia. I looked around. A few people were watching so I finished my smoke as casually as I could and hoped for the best.

  We hadn’t had to walk through any barriers to get to our platform. Absolutely anyone could come and stand next to the train. Among obvious passengers there were several babushkas (old women) without luggage, just brown parcels in their hands. They approached everyone on the platform and, one by one, begged us to take their parcels for them. Nastya refused bluntly in a very harsh tone. I knew why, of course. Although they seemed to be normal old ladies, who were trying to get a stranger to do them the kindness of delivering a parcel for them because they hadn’t the money for postage, there could have been anything in those packages. With Nastya’s best Siberian ‘Go away or I will get nasty’ tone and a wave of the hand, they left us to bother someone else. This reminded me of a story Nigel, a friend of mine from Cardiff, had told me weeks before I departed. A Russian friend of his who wanted to attend some sort of conference in Bulgaria was only allowed an exit visa if he would agree to deliver a package for the KGB. However that incident was during the Soviet years, and as I wasn’t actually bargaining for anything myself, I’m confident those Yaroslavsky babushkas weren’t working for the secret service. They had a look of desperation on their faces and were dressed in worn-out winter coats, rubber shoes that looked decades old, and head scarves that didn’t appear anywhere near capable of keeping the cold out. Some had even been close to crying.

  By the afternoon of our second day on the train I was too tired to be afraid anymore. I had forgotten to bring a toothbrush and so Nastya asked the wagon guard to bring me a travelling kit. This consisted of a tiny toothbrush, a small sachet of toothpaste, a bar of soap, a tiny folded towel in a sachet, and a pair of paper slippers. On the Trans-Siberian, like anywhere in Russia, it is considered rude and unhygienic not to wear slippers, even if you’re the kind of person who walks in your socks. Regardless of not being a slipper person I was glad of the comforts that were included in the kit and wore my paper slippers every day.

  It should also be noted that while on this extremely exciting and frightening train journey I carried two mobile phones. One, an expensive all-singing all-dancing touch screen thing which had more functions than I can count; and the other, a five pound supermarket mobile, which made calls and sent texts. While travelling through four time zones from Moscow to Krasnoyarsk, my flashy phone went all flashy. It told the wrong time constantly, changed the time as and when it fancied, and in general seemed in a state of panic. However, my cheap mobile updated the time when we broke through into a new time zone, welcomed me to my new destination via text, informed me of the new tariffs and offered numbers for emergencies relevant to that area. This is the phone I still use today. It doesn’t sing or dance, or allow me to check emails, or locate my GPS position, but it doesn’t panic; and while you are travelling through Russia and are likely to panic, you need a phone that will remain calm.

  Every few hundred miles, the train needed to stop, either at a station to pick up and drop off passengers, or at a docking area to refuel, take on water and fresh supplies of food. These stops are crucial for leg stretching and getting some fresh air because the windows in the sleeping compartments don’t open. Even though the large female wagon guards would dress down while the train was in motion, each time it stopp
ed they would always stand tall, just to the side of the wagon entrance, wearing great coats and ushankas, looking official.

  At these stops, some of which seemed miles from anywhere, there were often babushkas that looked no different from those I had seen in the train station, waiting with goods that they hung on strings under their shabby winter coats. I didn’t buy anything from them but was glad and sad each time I saw them. I admired their tenacity and will to keep on going, but was sad that they had to endure what appeared to be a very tough way to make a living. When I awoke on the morning of day three, our travelling companion had vanished. Instead there was a different Russian man on the top bunk opposite mine. This one was much uglier than the first and didn’t seem to care much for our company. Thankfully he got off in the late afternoon in Novosibirsk and wasn’t replaced by anybody. Our next station and final destination was a little less than twelve hours away, and so Nastya and I got to spend the rest of Day Three alone. As I was feeling slightly sick and undernourished we ordered some soup and a plate of chips from the dining cabin, only too happy to take our order and deliver it. When the tiny portions of food were delivered it became clear why they were so happy. It appeared that food from the dining cabin wasn’t any different from café food, in that it was undercooked, and the portions were only fit to keep a starving rat alive a few more hours. However, I was glad for the soup, although it tasted like boiled mayonnaise. Nastya told me this was a throwback from the early 1990s when people added mayo or sour cream to their food to make it seem more than it was.