Day 15: Terminal Boredom

Tuesday May 20 - MV Rus - Halfway across The Sea of Japan

Yesterday was the longest day of my life and what follows is the longest blog entry of the journey. This is not because yesterday was particularly interesting. On the contrary, it was tiresome to the extreme. But if the point of good journalism and, by extension, good travel writing is to convey the reality of one’s experiences, then I must fulfil this duty. And you, dear reader, must share my pain.

I awoke late this morning with a slight hangover, somewhere in the Sea of Japan. I spent the early hours of the morning with five other travellers, drinking Japanese Asahi beer and exchanging banter, travel stories and details of our lives. I finally got to bed at about five AM and slept like a baby.

I had no time to write yesterday for reasons that will become clear. But my recollections of the day are eerily vivid, not because anything exciting or traumatic happened, but because the day was exceptionally tedious and illustrative of a country that is, in my mind, uniquely enigmatic and frustrating.

I checked out of the Hotel Versailles just after two and decided to try for some lunch before I left the building. The short-haired, blonde head waitress, with the surprised eyebrows and slender calves, who had greeted us to breakfast on Sunday, showed me to a table in the cavernous dining room. While I puzzled over a Daily Telegraph book of cryptic crosswords, the only other diners were a group of rotund Japanese men, with a middle-aged, plump Russian woman, and, in the far corner, two Russian men who spoke raucously to each other in between echoing slurps on their beer and taking animated calls on their mobile phones.

For a starter I had raw herring with boiled egg and salad. Main course was lamb with vegetables served on a skillet, and a bowl of sticky rice. The lamb was chewy but otherwise, the meal was perfectly edible. With a beer, I paid 710 roubles (around £15), a little steep, I guess, but I used my VISA debit card, so it didn’t really count. I tipped the dark haired, chubby faced, short-skirted waitress 100 roubles. She was wide-eyed and speechless, though I am not sure if it was because I had insulted her with my meanness or amazed her with my generosity.

I humped my bags down the street to the ‘sea station’ which I knew was behind the railway station. I’d noticed that the ship, the MV Rus, was in port the day before, so I knew the check in desk must be close. But in the sea station, there were no signs in English, no logos of the shipping company, no noticeable information desk and no obvious officials to ask. There was, however, a noisy, ball-shaped, stainless steel fountain in the middle of the hall and gift shops, newsagent’s kiosks, food stores, and plenty of uniforms milling around.

By now it was 3.30 pm. I needed to find the office of the shipping company. Finding nothing in the main building, I tried the one next door, which stood behind the Rus. I climbed the stairs and entered a hectic, open plan office. People looked up at me, looked through me and then returned to their computer screens. I saw eight construction hard hats on the wall, and guessed that this was not a shipping company. Undeterred, I asked out loud if anyone spoke English. After a lot of mumbling, a scrawny young man came over, I showed him my ticket, he rolled his eyes, took me back downstairs and pointed me back to the sea station.

After another hike around this building, I spotted a sign in English - ‘Customs Hall’ – above a doorway that led down some stairs. I followed them and found an austere room with a few signs in Cyrillic only and countless sheets of densely typed A4 paper behind plexiglass panels on the wall. It was obviously a waiting room of some description because there were rows of red plastic seats and four people. Three were idly watching a tiny TV with poor reception and the fourth, a fat-bellied Russian man, was laid out across four seats at the back of the room.

I asked an intelligent-looking, tall young man with neat hair and a green tie if he could help. I showed him my ticket and asked if I was in the right place. He immediately announced that he spoke good English. I smiled and asked him again. He looked infinitely puzzled. So I used sign language and spoke very slowly. More confused expressions. I tried one last time. He just apologised.

Reasoning that I couldn’t be too far from my point of embarkation, I went outside for a break. The fresh yet damp air and the view of four navy destroyers and a rusty hospital ship across the harbour was strangely uplifiting. I was alone on the edge of a continent, with no command of the local language, no access to the information I needed and no guarantee that I would make it to Japan. And yet somehow I was coping. I just knew that it would turn out fine.

The next minute, I heard a stuttering ‘excuse me’ over my shoulder. It was the man from the customs hall. ‘You want know if you in right place…’ He had just figured out what my question was. ‘Yes, I am leaving on that boat tonight,’ I said with a smile, pointing at the Rus. ‘Excuse me?,’ he said with a totally baffled look. ‘That boat,’ I said, ‘I,’ pointing at myself… he finally got the drift.

‘Ah yes,’ he said. ‘You wait down the stair.’ Phew! At last. I thanked him and asked his name. ‘Excuse me?,’ he said with another, even more baffled look. ‘OK,’ I said, trying to be calm, ‘I am called Gary.’ I pointed at myself and repeated my name. ‘And you are?’ I held out my hand. ‘Ah, yes. My name is Sergei.’

For the next ten minutes, this pattern was repeated. I tried to engage Sergei in the type of conversation that appears in the first couple of chapters of the most basic high school language text book – names, families, where you live, jobs, etc. – and, after countless, slow repetitions, I finally found out that he is a student who lives just outside Vladivostock, he will be joining the navy as a trainee navigator in September and that his sister visited London last year.

Although I was indebted to him, conversing with Segei was exhausting and I was relieved when he said he had to go. He was not a passenger on the Rus so I still don’t know why he was vacantly watching the red-speckled TV in the customs hall.

Now that I knew where I would have to wait, I redoubled my efforts to find the shipping company office. In the entrance hall to the sea station, I saw a small window, at which a bedraggled man dressed all in denim, and a piece of paper in his hand, was pushing a button. The window suddenly slid open and a red-lipped woman with black hair and an ashen face dipped her head to hear the man’s question.

When it was my turn, I showed her my ticket, which she inspected carefully. ‘Where do I go?,’ I asked. She didn’t understand. I shortened the question to ‘Where?’ She rattled out some words in Russian and pointed upwards and then showed me three fingers. I guessed that meant go up three flights of stairs.

I lugged my bags to the top of the building and saw a line of perhaps 15 miserable faces sitting below a huge photo of the Rus. Finally, I had found the office but the door was closed. I looked at the first man in the seated queue and pointed at the door. He nodded and held five fingers up. I pointed at my watch and raised my eyebrows inquisitively. He nodded. It was four o’clock and my heart sank another notch. I had another hour to wait.

But at least I had found the office. So I went back downstairs, bought a bottle of beer for 26 roubles (about 60p), took it outside and spent the next hour watching male pigeons puffing their breasts and strutting in circles around unimpressed females.

I returned to the office just before five. This time, the queue had doubled. There were empty-faced people clutching passports sitting on the stairs and leaning on the walls. Progress, it seemed, was backward. So I found a step to sit on and waited. And waited. And waited. Then a pair of men walked up the stairs and went straight into the office. It was open! I hadn’t checked the door because I’d assumed that it wouldn’t open until five.

I followed them and headed for the closest person behind a desk, an arrogantly attractive blonde woman. I asked if she spoke English. ‘A leetle,’ she replied without expression. I explained what I wanted to do and asked what happens next. ‘Go to the customs hall at seven thirty.’ Did I need to fill in any forms? She checked my ticket and said I didn’t. And when will the boat depart? She shrugged her slender shoulders, pulled her face and said: ‘Maybe at ten.’

Maybe. The only definites in this whole process were the lack of signs and notices, the vagueness of answers and the tenuous connection between the timetable and reality. But at least I knew that the boat would be leaving at some point in the evening and that I was in the right place with the right documents. All I had to do was wait.

There was no café or bar at the sea station, so I sat outside, and alternated between smoking, staring out to sea, chewing gum, humming, watching the pigeons and meditating. The rain joined in so I went back to the concourse, bought some bread, smoked salmon, plastic cheese and another bottle of beer and noticed that a succession of people with bags were heading down the stairs to the customs hall. It was seven o’clock and I decided to join them.

The hall now housed about fifty people, their luggage and several bicycles. There were about four women and the rest were men dressed casually, some in baseball caps, some talking on mobiles, some just gazing emptily at the tiny, wall mounted TV. I had read somewhere that the only reason this ferry still exists is that it’s the car import route from Japan to Russia. I guessed that the many of the men were second-hand car dealers. They certainly looked like their British equivalents.

Relieved to be in the right place at, apparently, the right time, I was about to sit down when two familiar faces appeared, an old couple whom I’d seen on the train from Moscow. They were definitely Western European and they’d been in the same carriage as us but I had not introduced myself, so I knew nothing more about them. A younger Russian man was helping them carry their bags into the customs hall and, while the old man was thanking him, I said hello to his travelling companion.

She remembered my face and I felt heartened to be on the same boat as two friendly people in the same position as I. Anne-Marie and William had travelled from Amsterdam by train with a few stop-offs on the way. White-haired, bespectacled, and slightly built, William was in his early seventies, and Anne-Marie maybe ten years younger. They both had a sparkling energy of which a person half their age would be proud. As with every Dutch person I have ever met, they spoke excellent English. We found some seats and, shaking our heads and rolling our eyes, we exchanged our views on the dearth of information and poor organisation at the sea terminal.

Every time I had seen William on the train, he seemed to be asleep in his seat, mouth open, head slumped forward on his chest. Other times he was coughing worryingly. He reminded me a little of Stephen Hawking and I wondered if he was ill. But I now began to see him in a different light. He has a deep, raspy voice that would suit an American radio announcer, possibly on a blues station. The deep lines on his face suggest a long life of laughter and accumulated wisdom. He listened intently to my words, occasionally cracking an appreciative smile, and responding with wit and insight.

William told me that he had done this same journey – the Trans-Siberian and then the boat to Japan – in the days of Communism, twenty four years ago to be precise. ‘What has changed?,’ I asked. ‘Not much,’ he said. ‘The organisation is just as bad. And the food is worse, more expensive and the portions are smaller.’

We chatted for an hour or so and more people arrived in the room. Then, another familiar face. It was Dominic, the 23 year old from Croydon, whom I’d also met on the train. From his startled look, it was clear that he’d only just made it. Fiz and I had seen him shortly after we’d got off the train on Sunday morning in Vladivostock. Dom had intended to take the boat but he said he was going to the post office to see if he could find an internet connection and, hence, a flight to Tokyo. We wished him luck and told him where we were staying if he needed help, but we didn’t expect to see him again.

Dom took off his huge backpack, propped it next to mine against the wall and told me that flights were ridiculously expensive. He also couldn’t have got out of Russia before his visa expired, and he would have had to spend a few more nights in a hotel in Vladivostock which he couldn’t afford. He had been travelling for nearly a month and every chapter of his story confirmed that his planning and foresight had been minimal.

For example, during the stops on the Trans-Siberian, he was constantly looking for an ATM because he didn’t have much cash. He had left his mobile phone at home and lost his camera in Helsinki. And today, like William, Anne-Marie and I, he had trouble finding the office and tickets, but he hadn’t arrived at the sea station until the eleventh hour. But somehow, the god of good fortune had smiled on him all the way.

The clock ticked past seven thirty, but there was no sign of any movement. Dom was told that the boat was due to leave at ten. His was the most recent update so we wanted to believe it. Dom, William and I had two trips outside for cigarettes. Dom said he had quit smoking over the last few days and was using nicotine patches. But he accepted a Marlboro from me all the same. The source of William’s rasping voice became apparent when he took out a pack of unfiltered Gauloise and tapped one out into his hand.

Each time we returned, the hall had filled with more people. At around 8.30, an official came out of the unmarked double doors around which people had been congregating. The only information we had were the two words ‘Inspection Hall’ above the door, although it was not clear what would be inspected, or how. Around 200 expectant eyes looked in his direction. He simply pushed his way through the crowd and disappeared. With no information screen and no announcements, we could do nothing other than wait.

We went for another cigarette and saw a group of six customs officials chatting in a loose circle, their green jackets open, hands in pockets, kicking the ground and adding to the pile of cigarette butts by their feet. They had no sense of urgency but I wondered if it was an encouraging sign; one last cigarette before work begins, perhaps?

My theory seemed to hold true. Shortly after we got back to the hall, at around nine, the mood changed. A squat, humourless customs official pushed open one of the unmarked double doors and let four people into the mysterious inspection hall. The haphazard queue shuffled in the same general direction. Every so often, the official would open the door again and usher through one, two and sometimes four people. Progress was painfully slow. We remained in our seats and wondered what sort of Orwellian nightmare lurked behind the unmarked double doors.

Fatigued and hungry, I reached in my bag and made a smoked salmon sandwich. I offered the bread and fish to the others. Dom declined but William, Anne-Marie and another West European who had joined us, Rosalind from Switzerland, accepted. I am pretty sure they enjoyed the salmon because William handed me back an empty packet. Normally this might have annoyed me but I thought my generosity was insignificant considering that fate had blessed on me four travelling companions whose presence had infinitely dampened my anxiety.

By nine-thirty, the amorphous queue had barely diminished; people were joining the end as soon as others had gone through the doors. Another cigarette break followed. But by ten o’clock, I said I was going to join the line. The others followed and half an hour later, it was my turn. The squat official swung open the door and pointed me at a hatless, expressionless colleague who was slumped in a seat behind a bare desk.

His long legs protruded from under the desk in abstract angles and he fixed me with a cynical sneer. Eager to avoid a grilling, I apologised with words and facial expression and gave him my passport, ticket and a customs form that I’d filled in when I entered Russia.

His eyes scanned the documents with one hand in his pocket. I was rather nervous because of my track record at customs and because William had told me that the Russian authorities don't let you take roubles out of the country. He had also said that if you have changed any currency within Russia, you must keep the receipts. I had changed $150 in Moscow and didn’t have a receipt. My fears were unfounded. The disinterested official just tossed my documents back at me and waved me toward immigration and passport control.

I went through a metal detector and was then met by a short, round-faced female customs official with a large black dog on a lead. He was squared jawed, bearded, long legged, woolly and rather comical. Its handler had a long pony tail all the way down her back. She pointed me to a glass fronted cubicle on the left which housed a studious-looking woman, in civilian clothes, with half moon glasses and a refreshing smile. She could have been a librarian. This was immigration and I was particularly apprehensive because my Russian visa had not been stamped on entry.

She noticed this with a sceptical eyebrow. I explained that I had arrived via Belarus and I had a form, and a Belarus visa, to prove it. I also showed her my train tickets to demonstrate that I am a bona fide traveller. She inspected them meticulously as the comical dog momentarily sniffed my butt. I found this rather invasive as I was not concealing any drugs or explosives. What’s more, I had showered and changed my pants that morning. The dog quickly moved on but, from behind the counter, another sceptical eyebrow was raised.

The official pointed to my entry/departure form. I had written the number of the Belarus visa in the box that asked for the Russian visa number. I apologised but thought it an understandable mistake given that the form did not specify which visa was required. The woman slowly crossed out the wrong number and wrote the correct one beneath it.

She re-read all my documents. And then she flicked through my passport, re-read the documents again and reached forward in her cubicle. ‘Grab your stamping machine!,’ I said silently. ‘Go on!’ But her hand returned to my tickets and her eyes scanned them yet again. She then propped her chin on the heel of her hand as if settling down for a good read. ‘For goodness sakes! Just stamp my bloody passport!’ And suddenly, she smiled, took the stamping machine, positioned it carefully on the page and, bang, done.

But there was still another line of defence to negotiate. A line of four cubicles stood to the right and the dog handler told me to wait behind two other people by cubicle number two. As I took my place, the first person presented her passport to the woman behind the glass screen. The man in front of me shuffled forward, his toes crossing the red line that was about a metre from the cubicle. The dog handler said something very direct in Russian and he dutifully moved back.

Ten minutes later, it was his turn. I could see only the top half of the passport controller’s head; the counter was at nose level and beneath it, her hands and eyes moved left and right, back to centre and then right and left. She occasionally looked at the man and he offered monosyllabic answers. I looked at my watch. It was eleven o’clock and I realised that I had been in this building for eight hours. But I was almost there. A wave of impending achievement shot through my body.

A few minutes later and the sound of a stamped passport signalled my turn. I shuffled into the tiny space opposite the woman. She looked at me and sighed with mild annoyance. I smiled back and said hello. I passed her my passport and ticket and they disappeared beneath the counter. Her eyes darted from left to right to centre to me. She typed something, she checked a list, she typed something more. She furrowed her brow, she typed, she looked at me, she wrote something by hand. She rested her chin on both hands and read intently with her thin lips moving. She looked puzzled, she typed. And so it went on without a word being spoken.

For all I know she could have been playing a computer game beneath the counter. Or perhaps it was sudoku. Or maybe she was reading a gossip magazine. My idle levity and speculation were silenced when she suddenly exhaled, shook her head and reached for the red telephone on top of the counter. She looked at me with eyes of pity and punched in a four digit number. My heart wanted to sink through the floor but my innocence held it back. She muttered something silently into the receiver, listened to the answer, looked down at her desk, asked another question, looked at me, waited for what seemed a lifetime and finally replaced the receiver.

Another few minutes of reading, typing, writing and looking followed. And then, finally, she reached far to the right, looked down intently, and bang, bang. Two more stamps and my precious passport was returned without emotion. I was finally free to leave Russia.

On the other side of passport control was a heavily depleted duty free shop. It seemed that the second-hand car salesmen had cleaned it out of all beer apart from six cans of Miller, and all cigarettes except Winston Lights. I wanted to get rid of my roubles, so I bought a carton of cigarettes for about £12. I was tempted to buy a bottle of vodka but I never touch the stuff; and I certainly didn’t want to start now.

My travelling companions finally filtered through the cubicles and we were joined by two more Western Europeans; Marc and Carsten. I introduced myself to Marc as we walked along a poorly lit harbour-side toward the boat. With straight, shaggy natural blonde hair and a scruffy goatie, he looked like a surf bum. But as I later found out, this Dutchman and his dark-haired German companion with pure, pale green eyes, were Lufthansa pilots. They wanted a holiday without flying and, like the rest of us, had taken a train from Europe.

We climbed the walkway onto the ship and were greeted at the top by four uniformed and uniformly ugly Russian female attendants. Each wore a skirt far too short for their legs and ages. The closest to me took my ticket and passport and gave it to a seated woman. She handed my ticket stub and a key with an oversized, pale blue, wooden key ring to a tall, broad shouldered attendant with dyed red hair kept tight to her head with clips and lacquer, narrow eyes and threatening lips. She marched off down the corridor and I obediently followed.

I asked if she spoke English. She said she did and then proceeded to speak rapidly and incessantly in Russian. We reached my room she unlocked the door, pointed at everything of note, gave a running commentary and did all this without saying a word in English. She handed me a laminated A4 card with times of meals. This was written in English and it struck me that the times were so precise, given that boarding and every other part of the process was so vague.

I asked her name and she pointed at her badge. It was written in Cyrillic but she said ‘Elena.’ I thanked her in Russian, she smiled spookily, swivelled on her heel and left in search of her next victim.

My room was actually three. The walls were decorated in mustard yellow, slightly flecked wall paper. There was a sitting room with a double, seaview window; a large coffee table; two low chairs and a matching three person sofa with curved arm rests and muted green striped cloth. A tasteless oil painting of a 19th century Alpine scene, complete with log cabin and goat, dominated the sitting room.

On the wall closest to the door there was a massive dark brown wardrobe next to a huge, grey fridge/freezer, on top of which was a glass, fronted, double-doored cabinet with neatly laid out crockery and cutlery. A large Sanyo TV squatted near the window and, in the corner, a pale beech unit with a modern Japanese dispenser of warm water beneath an archaic, pale green telephone, with an off-centre dial and heavy receiver. It looked like it had been sourced at a government surplus sale when the Kremlin was renovated in the late 1960s.

Drawing back a floor length, brown-striped curtain revealed room two and a double bed with two Ikea, half moon uplighters (mounted upside down) on either side. A large mirror and a PA box with a clunky mechanical switch completed the incongruous décor.

The bathroom had a bath, a toilet that desperately needed a clean and a sink with a permanently dripping tap, but no plug. The cabinet above the sink had a tarnished mirror and creaky doors.

My quarters were certainly large – as one would expect in the ‘semi-deluxe’ category – but, like the rest of the ship, they lacked style. The Rus reminded me of the first cross channel ferry that I travelled on in 1978, on a school trip to Germany.

In many ways the Rus is a metaphor for Russia. It is an outdated vessel whose schedule is a mystery to all who sail on her. She is loaded with badly dressed, heavy drinking, unhealthy men with bulging wallets and tarty women who could be very attractive if they applied a little more thought to their wardrobes.

The passengers and crew appear humourless but, after a few drinks, they seem to warm to strangers. But it will take many years, and several refits, before the good ship Russia is a truly modern, European country. It has too many bad habits that are throwbacks to Soviet age.

The lack of information; the mindless, excessive bureaucracy; and the overt presence of authoritarianism are lingering reminders that money does not bring freedom. In my eight days in Russia, my experience suggests it simply brings vulgarity with a hint of lingering oppression.

As midnight approached, we finally began our journey east with a lurch. I unpacked my bags, cracked open a beer and recharged my batteries. The PA system piped up with amazing clarity; first in Russian and then in English. ‘Dinner is now being served in the dining room. Bon apetit.’ It was just after midnight.

I saw Carsten and Marc in the middle distance of the distastefully decorated dining hall and joined them. We ploughed through our three course meal of sea food salad, followed by a bowl of solyanka, and then some kind of rubbery schnitzel that the thin steel knife refused to cut. They asked what I did for a living and I involuntarily hesitated. Marc spotted this and said in semi-jest: ‘It’s OK. We are probably outside of Russian waters now. Your secret is safe with us.’

It suddenly struck me that for all my time in Russia, I had only told a select few people that I am a journalist. Marc and Carsten seemed trustworthy and yet my intuition prevented me from saying my profession in public. I relaxed and told them about my travek articles for the Guardian, my blog, the film and the VBlog for the BBC. They were surprisingly impressed and I felt an enormous relief that finally, I can give my card that says ‘journalist’ to people I meet.

A little later in the bar, I was chatting to William who, as I heard him say on at least five occasions, had done the same route 24 years ago. His take on how the country has changed was scary in its insightful simplicity: ‘The Russian people are like animals who have been caged for years,’ he said. ‘The cage has been removed but they act as if it were still there.’

I had been in the country for a mere week and yet I had unwittingly succumbed to the same type of self-censorship. I had hidden my voice recording equipment in the base of my backpack before I went through Russian customs; I did my VBlog reports for the BBC in the toilet of the train; and I lied about my true profession, even to Western Europeans, in case I attracted attention from the authorities.

I may not have had my passport checked in the streets of Vladivostock by emotionless state agents but I too had been oppressed. The fact that it was my own visceral decision chilled my bones and made me infinitely relieved that the longest day of the most surreal week of my life was finally over. I was glad to meet Russian people, like Slavic, Dima and Oleg the chef with filthy fingernails, but I was equally pleased to be out of Russia.