London transit

1:37 am, Radisson Hotel, Stansted Airport, London Outskirts.

Not a bad place to hole up for several hours to wait for my 3am shuttle to Heathrow.

Iceland is behind me, ending with a spectacular weekend trip with Karl around the south coast. The pictures should be up and commented by the time you read this. Thanks, Karl- it was great to see you.

By the time they're awake in NYC, I'll be inbound for Dulles. I'll be at my folks house on Long Island by 5pm.

My trip isn't over. I'll just be in the USA for a while. I think a more internal, introspective phase is due to begin. It will be nice to have a home base.

Around the world. Fuck me.

Iceland is funny

You can buy vibrating cock rings at the grocery store checkout stand (right next to the chewing gum and tabloids), but they don't have knockout combo cold medicine like NyQuil.

Dinner tonight. . .

. . .consisted of smoked puffin breast as an appetizer- followed by two succulent rare minke whale steaks, with a lovely pepper sauce. After a bottle of Spanish Rojia, don't even ask what that cost.

What catches you off guard is the fact that whales are mammals. You expect fishy seafood and wind up with what amounts to super tender, slightly gamey, delicious, floating cow.


Long live the moral management of our oceans' resources.

Iceland

I made it. Much coolness. Heathrow was a bitch.

Went with Karl and his buddies to see Miami Vice. Probably the best looking piece of crap since The Hulk. What a shitty movie.

More later, I'm on Moscow time, still.

This should be interesting

Jeeze. Couldn't they wait just one more month to try to blow up planes?

I'm due into Heathrow on Sunday. I'm due to fly out from Stansted on Monday for Iceland.

I have no idea if my flight is going to go ahead or what the situation will be like at the airport. My chances of finding a room for the night of my layover are also now probably nil from all the people who will be stuck in Lonon. Maybe I can call in a favor from some contacts I have in London-- if I get there.

On the bright side, I'm finding Moscow to be completely pleasant. The tourists have annoyed me away from the otherwise impressive Kremlin area, but the rest of the city and the museums all seem very chill. The subway is by far the best I have ever travelled. Collectively, the system's stations are works of art to rival the tourist traps at the Kremlin. My average wait time for a train is one minute. I've never waited more than three. Classy.

The city is busy and bustley, but it has a nice hushed quality to it. The cars are generally in good repair (the traffic noise is low), and there's plenty of room for everyone. Maybe they're all out in Siberia on vacation.

Correction

On Thursday, July 20 was posted the following statement:

Yesterday ended with a teary farewell between Jen and I as we finally found the proper platform at the Beijing station, after nearly an hour of frantic running around. Saying goodbye wasn't easy, Jen's been my constant companion for over a month now and it's odd not having her easy company around.

Looking back, it seems that the moniker "constant companion" had already been assigned to Isabel on June 27.

With that and with the true nature of our time together in mind, I would like to issue the following correction:

Yesterday ended with a teary farewell between Jen and I as we finally found the proper platform at the Beijing station, after nearly an hour of frantic running around. Saying goodbye wasn't easy, Jen's been my Mongol-Sino flame for over a month now and it's odd not having her easy company around.

The staff at Out and About with Scottley apologise for any misunderstanding.

Русская викторина! Russian Quiz

Привет моий друзыа! Сечас Русская викторина!

Hello, my friends! Time for the Russian Quiz!

I head to Moscow on Tuesday. While I head there, try this:

Describe three characteristics of Russian toilets.

A Roiser Russia

Within an hour after my last post, everything turned around.

I arrived at my homestay to be warmly greeted by Galina and Alec. They're a cheery couple in their mid fifties who own a 3 bedroom house that they rent out. I would be having the whole place to myself. Galina showed me around, while Alec went out past their lovely garden to prepare their баня for me. Many Russian country houses have a banya, or as we would call it back home, a sauna. Rashit, my travel fixer, and my hosts all assured me that a good banya and a home cooked meal would make me feel a lot better. They were right.

After I made myself comfortable, I went down and Alec showed me how to use their banya. He had a hot fire stoked in the oven and the room was already at 48C (115F). He showed me the cold water tank that I could use for a cold water shock and how to add eucalyptus oil to the steam rocks. He also showed me the bundle of leafy birch branches that I could flog myself with "to make me strong". Alec left me to my banya and I alternated between oozing sweat and bracing against the cold water I would pour over myself. The house has no hot water, but that's okay, because you can shower in the banya. A little soap and some water warmed on the oven and you're clean in no time. Of course, it's 50C throughout your shower, so you emerge a bit sweaty, but it's a good clean sweat that dries to make your skin feel soft and fresh.

Leaving the banya at peace, I entered the house at the kitchen to find Galina cooking up a storm. Before me was laid a banquet. Alec and Galina sat and chatted with me as I ate. Every time I paused from my eating for more than a moment to say something, they both chimed in with a gently urging "kushit, kushit" indicating that I should "keep eating". When I was finally too full to continue, I had devoured two omul cutlets (a local delicacy fish, prepared by "babushka"-- Alec's mother), half a roast chicken, a cucumber, half a tomato, two helpings of mashed potatoes, a slice of omul filled pastry, a glass of fortified wine, a slice of cake (also a la babushka), and two lettuce leaves.

Unlike the blokes on the train, I found talking with my hosts to be easy and pleasureable. While the meal wound down, I looked at my watch to see that I'd been having a complete conversation purely in Russian for over an hour. Galina was especially great to talk with, she had great patience as I disjointedly constructed my sentences, letting me speak while occasionally adding a polite correction. When she spoke, she spoke clearly and slowly and took plenty of time to explain words that I didn't understand.

It was about 10pm and my belly and heart were near overflowing with homecooked goodness. I went upstairs and fell promptly to sleep.

The next morning, Galina was there and at the ready to stuff me again over breakfast. Under her steady kushits I packed in 5 blini (wide, thin pancakes served with smetana, sour cream), 2 fried eggs, several slices of salami and cheese, a big bowl of hot kasha (grain porridge, in this case wholemeal barley), topped off with copious cups of black tea.

The extra blini went in a tupperware container as snacks for my trip. After we finished breakfast, I had just enough time to crap out my dinner before Tollik arrived to take me down to the docks.

The boat trip was fun, of course you'll have to wait for the captioned pictures for most of the story. I decided to cut it short after one night, we woke up to steady rain that seemed like it would last for a while. We packed up camp and headed back-- I was happily greeted with yet more food and a cleansing (and core warming) banya. The weather didn't improve until this afternoon, so I'm happy we didn't stay out in the wet for another night.

Tomorrow, I get to hang around here for one more day, waiting for the boat to take me to Irkutsk. I may go swimming, or perhaps go chat with a kindly local artist I met the other day. I'll just hang out.

Irkutsk sounds like a decent town, with lots of fellow travellers and facilities. I don't think I'll linger too long though. I'll have to see what the flight to Moscow situation is when I arrive.

Derailed

I'm sick of the train. I've put in my time, it's all very interesting, but it kills me to see the world rolling by while I go stir crazy and have to have the same monosyllabic conversation with yet another drunk russian miner.

So I'm here in Severobaikalsk, on the banks of the world's deepest lake. I've met a travel agent who can fix me up with a 4 day tour via hiking and sea kayak, a bit pricey but it sounds good. It comes with a guide who follows me in a motor boat and cooks for me and everything. In fact, this guide is sitting right here with me now as I type it. He seems like a good dude, he just brought me doughnuts and a coke.

I have to decide in the morning if I really want to go on this trip. The thing is, being alone with no one to speak with (my guide has really no english), out for four days in the wild sounds depressing right now. My understanding agent agreed that I can call things off in the morning and get my money back, he's being very understanding.

In the meantime, I'm moving this afternoon to a private home that I'll have all to myself in the nearby town of Nizhneangarsk, a small settlement on the north tip of the lake. Tonight a local woman will set up the banya (sauna) for me and cook me dinner. Hopefully some private relaxation tonight will point my way.

Chugging on

Written on 29.07.2006 at 10:55am

Posting from a dial up connection at the train station in Tynda, on the Baikal-Amur Magistral line.

Decided to leave Khabarovsk two nights ago, to take the 31 hour trip onward up here. While I'm gone, Tatiana at the fantastic Dalgeo Tours is looking into apartments and Russian instructors for me back in Khabarovsk. If I see something I like, I may go back.

On the other hand, I just bought my ticket to go tomorrow morning for the 24 hour ride to Seiveralbaikalsk, where there's lots of boat and mountain activities waiting for me. It's possible that something there will tickle my fancy and I'll stick around.

-- just got my email from Tatiana. Khabarovsk will be too expensive to linger in. I guess I'm moving on.

The train trip was easy. I had mixed bouts of contentment and stir-craziness. The 1 year old kid sharing my cabin was both amusing (sometimes), annoying (other times) and unbearably bawly (often enough!)

Arrived last night in the middle of the night. Dodgy place, a train station in the middle of the night. A few stories there. As usual, no time to write them now. The kid's mother, 28 year old Lena, has offered to drive me around today to see Tynda's sights. We're due to meet in 5 minutes.

Ciao.

Wandering Jew Hopes Renew

Got thrown for a loop today. I visited the capital of the Russian Jewish Autonomous Region, Birobidzhan. The Region was set up by the Russian gov't in 1938 as a "homeland for the Jews" before Israel was anywhere close to being founded. The Russian gov't was trying to entice Jews to move to there so that they wouldn't have to deal with pogroms (some of which they had a hand in). It a decent arrangement, as the Jews were allowed to run the local government and establish a relatively untampered life, despite the fact that officially the synagogue and Hebrew schools were closed.

Birobidzhan is a lovely place, lots of trees, a beautiful riverside area and a general tranquility. Of it's 90,000 residents, only about 4,000 Jews remain, some 18,000 having left for Israel after the Soviet Collapse. Still, the main street is named Shalom-Alechem Blvd and all of the food stores in town are called "Tzimmes", written in Hebrew and Hebrew styled Cryrillic letters. The town's mayor is Jewish and the area seems proud (jew and gentile alike) of it's special heritage.

After investigating the city and synagogue, my wonderful tour guide, Galina arranged for me to have a personal meeting with the 81 year old director of the Jewish Society, Lev Gregoryevich Toytman. He shook his fist at me in humourous dissapointment when he told me that if only I had contacted him first, my trip to Harbin would have been VERY different. It turns out I missed everything.

In Harbin, there's a new synagogue. There's an active Jewish museum. There's lots of records. There's many people there who would have been happy to host me and show me around and take care of me as their honoured guest. Lev Gregoryevich is very connected with the Harbin community. Just last week, while I was there, was an international gathering of Jews from Harbin which he attended. All this, right under my nose with no way of knowing.

So I'm stuck. A large part of me wants to return to Harbin to finish what I started. Already here in the Russian far east, I've found a taste of the trail to one of my ancestors. If I go back to Harbin, I feel like I might really find something special-- not to mention the fact that it sounds fun to go there and be the guest of the local community. I could go down there, stay for a bit, then return to the US via Beijing.

On the other hand, this means leaving Russia and I can't return since my visa only allows one entry. That would mean giving up on the language study I've been cultivating for months now. It also means giving up on seeing the rest of the country by rail, stopping to meet Alex in St. Petersburg, and seeing Karl in Iceland this season (of course, I could just as easily fly there from NY after Velma's wedding).

A compromise has popped into my head. If I can rent a flat here in pleasant Khabarovsk for a few weeks and find a Russian teacher, I can stay immersed here, relax and chill out for a while and then go down to Harbin. That way I could get my Russian experience and still get to visit Harbin properly. I'm going down to the travel agent first thing in the morning and see if this is something they can set up.

Other options include a shorter loop on the Trans-Sib (although I don't really see the point), popping off to Sakhalin Island (as suggested by Rich), or maybe even Japan.

Mmmmm, Japan. I could really go for some sushi about now.

Коля в Россие

Sitting in an Internet cafe in Хабаровск (Khabarovsk), waiting for some software to download that can hopefully unformat my camera's memory card which used to contain a months worth of pictures from Mongolia, China and my entry into Russia.

Karl, I know you're going to post a comment asking how I managed to format my memory card. It was a stupid accident on my part-- leave it at that.

Last Saturday, I arrived at the Chinese border town of Suifenhe. Getting off the train, I was trying to get some Russians to help me, but they were all travelling in an organized tour so that they didn't have to worry about things like how to find the border and how to get a bus to Vladivostok.

I was on my way to ask a taxi to take me to the border when I heard, "Excuse me, do you speak English?" Turning around, I met Alex, a Belgian

Thank Gods for Hong Kong Kung-Fu

While on the bus to Beijing, on the train to Harbin, in my hotel room last night and this morning, entertainment salvation in China comes in the form of Hong Kong Kung-Fu movies. You're really lucky if they bother to add English subtitles (we're at about 50-50 at this point).

Doing some research, I've managed to find the titles that I've seen

• "Fong Shi Yu II: Wan fu mo di" or "The Legend 2" -- starring Jet Li in 1993
• "Hak Hap" or "The Black Mask" -- also starring Jet Li in 1996
• "Du shen xu ji" or "God of Gamblers 2" -- starring Chow Yn Fat in 1994

I also saw another awesome one last night, but it didn't have any famous (that I know of) actors for me to search on. I'll keep looking. In the mean time, if you manage to find any of these flicks, check them out, they're great!

Now is sooner than never

Big progress!

With a lot of time to kill here in Harbin, I've managed to finish the audio and captioning on my Bangkok photos. Go take a look!

Harbin

What's left of the former synagogue here is now now the home to a fast food pizza restaurant and a chinese holistic medicine center. The exteriors are impressive, but there seems to be nothing left of the jewish community that once lived here in the first half of the century. If I spoke Chinese, it might be possible to find out a bit more, but Harbin is not Beijing and there's a lot less English going on.

Yesterday ended with a teary farewell between Jen and I as we finally found the proper platform at the Beijing station, after nearly an hour of frantic running around. Saying goodbye wasn't easy, Jen's been my constant companion for over a month now and it's odd not having her easy company around.

As it was, I made it to the train a moment before it cast off. I dashed on board in the wrong compartment and had to wait 10 minutes panting for the train to get fully underway before they opened the doors to my car. Eventually, I found my berth and settled in to what might be the poshest train in China. The "Z15-16: National Youth Model Train" was a big step up from the creaky (but comfortable) train we took down from Ulaanbaatar. It looked like it was on its maiden trip, the interior was modern, electronic and spotless. I stayed in a 4 berth "soft-sleeper" cabin, which I shared with a chinese man and his two travelling teenagers.

Stepping out to use to toilet, a display indicated that we were cruising at 149kph, about 90mph. Not too bad.

My only complaint was that our cabin didn't seem to cool down much through the night, the air conditioner switch may have been broken. Other than that, the service probably spoiled me for the rest of the trip.

I'm leaving Harbin tomorrow night, there's really not much for me here. I'll come back and do China "right" one day, but without Jen to help arrange things here, my head's just not in it.

I booked my train to Suifenhe tomorrow night with the help of "Chris"- a 21 year old Harbin native who's studying English business at the local university. He approached me while I was investigating the synagogue cum pizza shack and offered to take me around. After Haiti and Bangkok, I'm getting really leery of the "local wants to practice English and show good hospitality scheme", but he told me he didn't want any money and he was trying to set up a guide service for the summer. He offered to help me book my train ticket and I accepted. True to his word, we got the ticket sorted in no-time, in time for it to start pouring. We waited out the storm at the nearby beer garden, had a drink and chatted about jazz, The Doors, The Velvet Underground and ideas to promote his business. At the moment, he's sitting next to me at the internet cafe, playing an anime knock off of Mario Kart. The dude seems trustworthy, so if you're in Harbin and looking for a guide or translator, give Yang Gui Xu (Chris) a call at: 13845053457.

I'm about the get kicked off, so let me go. I'll have more time tomorrow to do stuff. Maybe I'll even finish my Bangkok photos. Jeeeze, that was like 6 weeks ago.

Poached in Peking

Third day now in Beijing. Checked out the Great Wall of China today-- very touristy, but also way cool.

Lots happening, but not much interesting to write about. I'm heading to Harbin on Wednesday, I'll have a more detailed report filed from there.

Last post from Mongolia

The train leaves in 4 hours, Jen and I are in the CBD tying up some last business. I have a 3 kilo package to mail home that's going to cost me $45, not too happy about that, it it has to go.

Naadam was interesting. They oversold tickets to the opening ceremony so Jen and I were forced to wait outside for 30 minutes as mobs of angry locals banged on the gates and scuffled with the cops. Just as things looked as they would get out of hand, we snuck in with a tour group of cranky westerners who had paid a lot more than us to come to Mongolia and see the show.

In the end, I felt sorry for them. The ceremony was pleasant, but not terribly exciting or moving. The other events also fell short of grand spectacle. Naadam is essentially a state fair without the rides, cotton candy and hype. It's not designed to be the Olympics or Commonwealth games-- basically, the locals show up to their event, compete without much fanfare and then leave. After the opening ceremony, most of the fans left as the wrestling matches began. It all happened so quietly that we didn't know if they were just warming up or if the competition had started. For us, it was an interesting bookend to our time here, but I was feeling very sorry for the westerners who paid big money to tour operators to come to Mongolia with Naadam as the central focus.

Better was yesterday's horse racing event, held outside the city in a nearby valley. Even though we arrived at te wrong time, between races, there were lots of locals hanging out, picnicing on the hillside and enjoying the country. We walked around, checking out the horseriders and kiteflyers. In the end, we wound up at a ger restaurant serving really tasty, greasy khoshoor (fried meat pancakes stuffed with mutton), chatting to a local guy who had started his own real estate development company. A very pleasant morning.

The train today heads to the border, we arrive tomorrow morning. Then, we cross via taxi into China and spend the whole day hanging around waiting for the plush sleeper bus to take us overnight to Beijing to meet some of Jen's friends who have done us the favor of booking a hostel room already. More updates from there.

Mongolia has be most excellent. I didn't expect to spend a month here, and now I fear that I'll have to cut short some adventures in Russia and Europe, but there's no regrets. Indeed, this is a place that I'd like to come back to, to travel for long distances in the countryside by horse, bike or self-driven 4wd.