I have had little to say because my brain has been mostly concerned with post-China disenchantment. That is not only spoilt and ridiculous, but boring to write about and to read about, so I'll say no more. Today I finally unpacked and started preparing for Russia, whence I leave next Tuesday for a world toilet conference.
This will be my third time in Russia. The first was in 1993, when I spent three months doing Operation Raleigh around Lake Baikal in Siberia. There were 70 volunteers, mostly British, with a couple of Japanese and Singaporeans, and about 20 bewildered Siberians. They were bewildered because most didn't speak much English, and Raleigh didn't do much to alleviate the translation barrier. We were bewildered because we'd spent 4 days on the Transiberian, travelling first class and drinking far too much vodka with and buying the uniforms from the two carriages of Russian conscripts further up the train. Raleigh organises expeditions to enable young people to “do something amazing.” In my case, that involved three weeks doing a geo-chemical survey in Buryatia, gathering mud and water and leaves to help Siberian scientists determine whether a nuclear device the government had exploded underground – without telling anybody – ten years earlier had done any damage. I don't know whether it had or not, because we never heard back from the Siberian academy of sciences. Also, the project finished early, so we spent the remainder of the time building a banya for a nearby farmer. In gratitude, he prepared a feast for us which involved his brother-in-law grabbing a sheep from a passing herd, slitting its chest, putting his hand inside and stopping the heart. Half an hour later, raw liver was being offered as a pre-dinner snack. Dinner was grilled intestines and boiled sheep's brain, still in the head. I am nauseous as I write this, 13 years later.
Siberia was amazing and infuriating. Eventually, we developed the acronym TIR – This is Russia – for whenever anything went wrong. A bus didn't turn up: TIR. A project's funding dried up: TIR. Russians had no idea what the concept of charitable projects was and cared even less: TIR.
But TIR was also: Digging for 500,000 year old frogs' bones near the Selenga River with Margarita, a Buryatian paleontologist who took us home and fed us home-made jam. After 2 months of British Army rations, this was luxury. TIR was Jane managing to make chapattis out of the British Army rations. TIR was hiking through the Sayan mountains for three weeks, and seeing no signs of human habitation anywhere, beyond the odd wooden banya near an icy river. TIR was getting whipped with birch leaves in one of these banyas by two men in tight black Speedos who insisted that whipping was best accompanied by many small glasses of vodka.
It's all here, if you care, including a memorial to Max Ishutin, one of the Siberian volunteers, who died in a house fire in Irkutsk, and who will be remembered for being a funny rascal, and trying to translate a deeply boring and highly technical lecture by Siberian scientists for 70 tired and sweaty people who'd just got off a 4-day train ride and wanted to go to sleep. This was Max, TIR in the flesh:
So. This time I will have no translating rascal, nor will I have the translation and driving and hotel luxury provided by Simon. It'll be me in a cheap hotel whose address is on a highway. It was the cheapest on offer from Elena at Intourist, Russia's official tourist agency which I still asssociate with its description in the Dick Francis novel in which the hero goes to Russia and hangs out with a bloke called Alyosha who wears thick glasses. The other hotels Elena offered were $500 a night. This is $90, and I'm expecting the worst. Its website, however, is pleasingly glossy. It includes pictures of the sauna, which appears to be frequented only by fat middle-aged men. It also has a restaurant complex which boasts 'the best cookery in Moscow.” Also, “Courses of many national cuisines are offered for the breakfast. We experience all the particular qualities of their concoction firsthand. And small wonder. The fact is our chef's teacher is Saudi Arabia king's private cook.”
Excellent.
The last time I went to Moscow, I was writing about Kalina Krasnaya, a talent show for prisoners. It was a very strange week. The photographer and I stayed in Hotel Rossiya, which was the length and size of a whole city district. A historic one, apparently, which was demolished when Nikita Kruschev decided Moscow – and the world – needed a hotel with 3000 rooms. Here is a small picture of a big hotel.
It took half an hour to walk round its perimeter. It took several hours to do things like change your room, because you had to go to several small rooms in several parts of the hotel, and it took half an hour to get to each. Hotel Rossiya nearly drove me insane. Its best feature, which of course I discovered the day before I left, was a cafe on the 11th floor, several doors down from my room, which served excellent borscht and bread, for less than the GDP of a small country, unlike most other dining establishments in Moscow. Hotel Rossiya closed down in January 2006, and the world is well rid. Moscow authorities are planning to build an “entertainment complex” on the site, to resurrect the spirit of the historic Zaradye district which they pulled down to build the Rossiya in the first place.