Wednesday May 28 - Taipei
In my cabin on the Hiryu early yesterday evening, as the Taiwanese coast loomed in the grey near distance, I packed my bag in my usual way. I go through the same procedure every time I enter a country, even if returning to the UK from a short-break in France.
I lay all my possessions out on the bed, as if a military kit inspection is imminent, and then meticulously check each item, make it as small as possible, pack it in the most appropriate place and then never let my bags out of sight until I am safely in the country.
There is nothing particularly odd about this, you might think. It is a way of making sure that nothing important has been accidentally left in a cupboard or kicked under a chair. It also means that the right things go in the right places and that space is used efficiently. But the main reason I do this is that I have a totally irrational fear that someone has planted a hideously illegal item in my baggage that will be uncovered by customs and guarantee me a long prison sentence.
I have no idea of the origin of this paranoia but it is real. Or rather it was real until I found an article that I’d ripped out of the Observer a few weeks before I left the UK. It was written by the famous travel writer Paul Theroux and I had totally forgotten about it. It was dog-eared and rumpled at the bottom of my small backpack. Mid-way through my packing last night I sat down and read it.
It was a rather pompous article and I found myself objecting out loud to some of Theroux’s statements. For instance, I took his 1975 book, The Great Railway Bazaar, with me on my journey because it includes an account of Theroux’s trip on the Trans-Siberian. I didn’t even get to the relevant chapter because I couldn’t believe that his accounts of experiences and, particularly conversations, were true to life; they were simply too detailed.
I know from my own experience that even if you make copious notes immediately afterwards, the best one can hope to do is recall key points and phrases, not whole conversations. Yet Theroux maintains that there is no fiction in his work; it is a faithful, accurate, verbatim and complete account of what he saw, heard, smelt and felt. My response to this was ‘bollocks!’
Anyway, I gave him the benefit of the doubt – largely because Theroux is regarded as the definitive travel writer by many – and read the article to the end. And I am glad I did because his final thought summed up how my trip has changed me. He wrote: ‘I think travellers are essentially optimists, or else they would never go anywhere.’
It suddenly struck me that the habitual unpacking, checking and packing of my bags before going through customs is an extreme form of pessimism. I have never carried drugs, firearms or endangered species across national borders, nor has anyone planted such things, so why the hell should I worry about it?
And my intense anxieties in the Eastern European leg of the journey, so severe that I very nearly turned for home, were further indication of my innate pessimism. As I tossed and turned in my bunk somewhere in Poland, I imagined that every possible nightmare scenario – from capsizing boats to rampant food poisoning – would afflict me at some point in my journey.
And yet, as I watched the dreary Taiwanese port of Keelung draw ever closer through the porthole of the Hiryu, I realised that my journey had been a breeze from start to finish. It had been plain sailing and everything had clicked beautifully into place. For the whole three weeks, for every one of the 8,500 miles, through the ten time zones and nine countries, nothing had gone wrong.
The most annoying part was undoubtedly getting out of Vladivostock (see day 15) but even that was bearable, thanks to the journalistic value and the great company. But for the rest of the time, the food was plentiful and edible; my health was fine; I didn’t get robbed, bored or arrested; the sea crossings were calm; the people I met were friendly, amusing and inspirational companions; I didn’t run out of money; my credit card was never rejected; and even with my minimal language skills, I managed to communicate effectively.
Some of my good fortune was down to planning, which obviously included meeting up with friends along the way – notably Jeremy and Tracey in Moscow, and Jimmy and Miwa in Tokyo, and of course, doing the Trans-Siberian with Fizle, all of whom assisted me immeasurably in dealing with foreign countries – but I realised that there was also a huge element of fate or positive coincidence, call it what you will.
The gods smiled on me from day one to day 22, and at every crucial step, it was new people that made the difference. Gerhard in Germany; Dimitris, Natalia and spooky Eddie in Eastern Europe; the inspirational Joe Cheng in Russia; Slavic in Siberia; William, Umon and the others on the MV Rus… I met all of these people without any prior planning, and in each case, whether they know it or not, they eased my passage and helped convert me from a pessimist into an optimist.
Final confirmation of the divine blessing of my journey appeared just before I began my paranoid packing on the Hiryu. I really fancied a cup of English tea so, with little hope of success, I dug into my small backpack and pulled out my emergency food bag. All that remained, among the wrappers, was a solitary PG Tips Pyramid tea bag.
Before I left Cardiff, I had grabbed a random handful; I hadn’t counted them and I had not rationed myself on the journey, but there was one left. I cannot begin to explain how elated I felt. This otherwise trivial piece of good fortune epitomised the trip; whenever I hit a barrier and needed something to happen, it did.
As the skipper of the Hiryu captain completed the nimble manoeuvring alongside the dock at Keelung, I screwed up Theroux’s article and tossed it into the rubbish bag. I drained the last of my last cup of PG Tips tea and jammed my plastic travel mug into my backpack. Through my porthole, I saw three hard-hatted Taiwanese dockworkers stub out their cigarettes, slip on their protective gloves and begin to move the walkway into position.
Three weeks earlier, almost to the hour, I was boarding a train from Cardiff to London, a journey I had done a hundred times before. With each subsequent phase of the journey, I went further out of my comfort zone and yet, once I had dealt with the anxieties in Eastern Europe, I felt increasingly comfortable within myself.
The concept of a physical, external ‘home’ – familiar places, faces, smells and language – evaporated and was replaced by an inner safety. No matter what tomorrow brings, I realised that it will be a positive experience and any problems would be surmountable.
The greatest revelation was that nationality is a largely ridiculous idea. National borders are human constructions and never in the whole course of history have they been static. What is permanent, however, is the innate ability of people to get along. My experience on the Cologne to Moscow train, the Trans-Siberian, the MV Rus and the Hiryu showed that, irrespective of the country’s name on the front of the passport, the people I met were, without exception, warm, helpful, compassionate and generous.
Yes, nationalities do look different and cultural differences do exist – the Russians, for example, seem to be rather reserved to begin with and the Japanese tend to be more deferential in comparison to Western Europeans – but, in the last three weeks, the similarities between nationalities far outweighed the differences. In my experience, so long as you can say ‘hello’ and ‘thank you’ in another person’s language, and combine these words with a genuine smile, the door to their heart will open and they will treat you with the same respect as anyone else.
‘Hello’ and ‘thank you’ are just about the only words I know in Chinese, the most impenetrable of any of the languages that I would experience on my trip. As I presented my passport to a lightly-perspiring immigration officer sitting with a colleague behind a glass screened booth in Keelung, I greeted him with a smile and ‘Nin hao, ma?’ He nodded and almost returned the smile.
He noticed that I hadn’t completed the section marked ‘date of departure.’ I explained that I have a two month extendable visa. ‘I might be here for six months,’ I said, ‘so I didn’t know what to write. Can you help me?’
He rubbed his chin, bit his thumbnail and said something in Chinese to his deadpan colleague. They conversed for a moment and then looked at me inquisitively. I smiled. The deadpan face smiled back, said something else in Chinese. In excellent English he then told me that I should take my passport to the Taipei immigration office two weeks before my initial visa expires and they will sort out the extension.
Three weeks ago I would have been infinitely nervous in such a situation. I would have imagined the cataclysm of deportation, probably with a night in a sweaty cell, all because I couldn’t tell the authorities when I’d be leaving. But now, with twenty-two consecutive days of positive coincidences under my belt, and having met numerous helpful, friendly and welcoming people, I just knew that these Taiwanese officials would look at me favourably.
The perspiring officer handed his colleague the official stamp. He then positioned it carefully opposite my visa, paused for a moment and then slapped the palm of his hand downwards. ‘Welcome to Taiwan, Mr Merrill,’ he said. ‘Enjoy your stay.’
I then lugged my bags the short distance to the over-staffed customs X-ray machine. I smiled at the four operatives and the most lethargic told me to put everything on the conveyor belt. As my possessions disappeared into the machine and successfully reappeared on the other side, I went through the body scanner and looked around the terminal at the unreadable signs.
I caught the eye of the most self-important of the customs officials – he with the smartest uniform – and raised an inquisitive eyebrow. ‘OK?,’ I asked as I picked up my backpack. He just waved me towards the exit.
Taiwan represents the end of this journey but it is simply the beginning of the next one. But I am a very different person to the one that left the UK. Although I didn’t know it at the time, I was then a habitual pessimist and, as Theroux noted, that is why I had not done any serious travelling since I spent seven months in the US way back in 1985. For the last 23 years, I much preferred the predictability of the known.
But now, as I walked out into the sticky chaotic streets of early evening Keelung, unable to speak more than a clumsy sentence of the local language, I knew that whatever happens tomorrow, optimistic fatalism will win the day.
Thursday, 29 May 2008
Day 22: Different But in the Same Way
Tuesday May 27 - Onboard the Hiryu, 100 miles from Taiwan
As I write, brown and white sea birds, with sharply-tipped wings, sabre-like beaks and arrogant aerial swaggers, are scooting alongside the boat. Every so often, they bank steeply to starboard and then splash with surprising inelegance into water.
The occasional freighter is in the near distance, slowly gliding north-east toward Japan. The sea is virtually blemish-free; except for the wake of the Hiryu and the sporadic clumsy landings of our escorts, the ocean is an endless expanse of deep sapphire silk, gently ruffled by the tepid breeze.
The Hiryu has docked twice today; once very early this morning, for an hour and 45 minutes, at Miyako Island, and then again at 1015 at Ishigaki Island. In both cases, passengers disembarked and now there are only six of us. I know this because at Ishigaki, we all had to go briefly ashore and pass through Japanese immigration. I was the only Westerner on the Japanese Immigration officer’s tiny list.
I was the last of the half dozen off the boat. I hadn’t heard the announcement on the ship’s PA – nor would I have understood it if I had – because I was listening to my MP3 player. So the purser came to my door and knocked politely yet loudly.
He told me to just bring my passport and guided me into the terminal building. Even though it was a stress-free process, the tiny security guard at the terminal made the most of this weekly event. His dark blue uniform looked like it had been borrowed from someone four sizes larger, but his hat was one size too small. The heavy gold braiding gave him an air of a 1950s cinema usherette and the tight belt merely emphasised the bagginess of his clothes. His trousers were far too long and concertinaed at the knees.
Even so, his misshaped clothes did not prevent him from doing his job correctly. As soon as I passed through the double doors into a sweaty yet spacious waiting area, I nodded and smiled to him. I’m sure that he was on the verge of saluting but simply returned my unspoken greeting. His eyes were fixed in a permanent, wrinkled squint and his stubbled, tanned face, Pacific Islander rather than Japanese, had a porcine sheen. He had collapsed lips which, as he smiled, revealed three rotten teeth and one surprisingly white one.
Once I was through the door, he hitched his trousers, pulled the hem of his jacket down assertively and, looking around for approval, dug in his pocket. He then noisily pulled out a huge bunch of keys, found the right one first time and locked the doors at the top, middle and bottom. Returning to the standing position, he scanned the room with a toothless smile, slowly dropped the keys back in his trouser pocket, adjusted his trousers with a wiggle and stood, licking his thin lips, with his hands behind his back.
The five Japanese travellers were pointed in the direction of the immigration room, where the Hiryu’s chief purser was discharging another of his many duties. Over his shoulder, I could see a uniformed Japanese immigration officer sitting at a makeshift desk in the far corner. An obliging, petite, grey suited woman appeared out of nowhere and told me without emotion that foreigners go last. When it was my turn the chief purser meticulously checked my passport details against those taken when I boarded the ship, just in case anything had changed. Naturally, it hadn’t but this is the Japanese thoroughness in action.
Then I took my passport and my smile to the official. Without a word being spoken, he checked my Taiwanese visa, tore out the Japanese embarkation card, stamped my Japanese visa, returned my passport and within five minutes, I was back in my cabin.
The atmosphere on the ship has now returned to the serenity that followed the departure from Osaka. At Okinawa, the passenger transfer bus made four journeys from the terminal, delivering some sixty people to the Hiryu. Most were Japanese but there were also a handful of Westerners.
I tried to engage one – a young American man called Ken – in a conversation but he seemed elsewhere. He had short reddish hair, freckles and an Abraham Lincoln-style paint-brush beard. He said he was from Colorado and had been working in Osaka for three years. He speaks Japanese and said he enjoyed living in the country yet his eyes darted around incessantly suggesting he was out of his comfort zone.
As we spoke, he asked me the standard questions about my life and journey, but his ‘OK’, ‘Right,’ ‘OK’, ‘Yeah’ answers displayed a lack of connection and interest. We boarded the bus together and as we approached the ship, his concerns became apparent. He had never travelled by boat before and was worried about sharing a cabin.
I told him that they are very civilised quarters and, even if he is with multiple strangers, my experience on the Trans-Siberian suggested that human beings have a innate ability to respect each other’s property, privacy and space, even if they are forced together. ‘Right,’ he said with total detachment. So I decided to add a postscript, just to see if he was listening. ‘Unless, of course, they are mass murderers.’ ‘Right,’ he said with the same tone as if I had told him that Washington DC is the capital of his country.
Also on the bus was a short, dark-haired voluble American man in his mid-twenties, wearing three quarter length cargo pants, a blue polo shirt and flip flops. He had a tiny bag and a huge surfboard. He had sloping shoulders and when he walked, he swung his arms slightly too far from his body in a gun-slinger swagger. When he stopped walking, he planted his feet apart slightly wider than normal and cocked his head combatively to one side.
He was accompanied by another American man – taller, blonder and anonymous - who occasionally said something rather quietly which would be the swaggering guy’s cue to launch into a loud, wise-cracking monologue, to which the swaggerer expected – and got – sycophantic laughter.
The third member of this group was a wide-eyed, soft lipped, slender, verging on anorexic, very westernised Japanese woman. She wore skinny jeans that were still baggy on her stick like legs, strappy, high-heeled sandals, and a white vest top. At first glance it appeared that she had large breasts for her frame, but the bulge was merely an ill-fitting wonderbra. She walked half a step behind her partner, the swaggerer, and said nothing while the male double act performed.
About 45 minutes before the ship was due to depart, three buses draw up on the dockside. They were illuminated within and every seat was occupied by a teenager. Sure enough, within twenty minutes the corridor outside my room was alive with the sound of aimless excitement. From the girls there were squabbles, reasonless screeches, incessant chatter, spontaneous sprints, and hysterical giggling. The boys simply shouted monosyllabically, grunted with their hormones and strutted.
Later in the evening, female noises settle outside my cabin. Then the sound of a hairdryer took over. More voices joined in and competed with the electrical whine which suggested a shortage of electric points in their cabins. I went for a cup of tea and sure enough, a queue had formed. It seemed that every girl in the party had decided to wash their hair and now about 15 Japanese teenage girls were impatiently waiting to use a single hairdryer. Some stood, others squatted, others took photos, others rubbed their hair with towels. But they were all talking, at the same time, and yet none of them, it seemed, were listening.
These were Japanese teenagers, but, as I listened to the tone and speed of their chat, I doubted whether British girls would be any different. I didn’t understand a word, of course, but I would wager that the main subjects of conversation were boys, music, movie stars, fashion, make up, teachers and families, all with a hint of bitchy humour.
Of course each nationality has its own way of doing things. Interaction with alcohol is a good example; the British tend to imbibe with much less restraint than the French, for example. And in my seven years teaching international MA students at Cardiff University, not once did I see a Chinese student have more than two halves of weak beer during social events.
There are also differences between cultures in terms of music, fashion, art and culture; attitudes to authority; relationships with family; courtship; and many other elements of life. But, core principles, seem to be very similar.
This became apparent last week when I was staying with Jim and Miwa. In August, they will be getting married in Hawaii and, while I was at their apartment, they had numerous discussions about the preparations. Jim and Miwa both speak Japanese and English and it was rather entertaining to hear them switch, sometimes mid-sentence, between languages. Sometimes, when they were speaking Japanese, even though I don’t understand a word, I could tell from the tone that there was tension.
On the Friday, Jim took a day off work and he drove me around Tokyo. We started off with a wonderful teppanyaki lunch at a hotel that appeared as a villian’s headquarters in an early James Bond film. The white-overalled chef had the tallest hat I’d ever seen and its height was only matched by his dexterity and mastery of his art.
As he chopped and cooked and described the food with passionate restraint, Jim apologised for the morning’s argument between he and Miwa. It began at 0500 when Jim’s alarm went off at the usual time. He had forgotten to cancel it the night before and Miwa was woken two hours earlier than her normal time.
I told Jim there was no need to apologise but he still felt bad. From that poor start to the day, he and Miwa had heated discussions about various, relatively minor, parts of the wedding preparations. Top of the list was the invitations and whether they should be printed, if so, by whom, and what the wording should be.
As Jim offloaded, I smiled and thought back to the preparations to my first marriage. My wife-to-be and her mother planned, checked and double-checked everything with the precision of military strategists. Nothing was left to chance. I gladly took a backseat and left the women to it, but at times Sarah would ask me for my opinion. Invariably, this would be about a minor issue – for example, the seating plan – but my view was often different to the female’s consensus and a row would ensue.
It might be tempting to suggest that Jim and Miwa have such arguments because he is English and she is Japanese. But, as I said to Jim over another delectable dish, nationality and culture are irrelevant when it comes to weddings. The differences are between men and women.
As he sipped his mineral water, Jim watched the chef perform another dazzling act with his knife. ‘I guess so,’ he said. ‘What is important to me is that I am getting married to Miwa, but she…’ I nodded knowingly and finished his sentence, ‘She wants the day to be perfect.’
Miwa is Japanese but, more importantly, she is a woman too. Women of all cultures want their wedding day to be perfect. Depending on the country, some elements might be more important than others but, irrespective of nationality, the wedding is the most important day of a woman’s life.
This is by no means a chauvinistic statement; in my experience, it also applies to professional, post-feminism, career-minded women who are equal to men in every respect. And no matter how hard Jim or any other man tries, we will never fully appreciate that sorting out the minutiae, usually in partnership the woman’s mother, has a higher status than the act of marriage itself.
Miwa and Jim, the chattering Japanese schoolgirls on the Hiryu and the humble beggar in Tokyo may do their thing slightly differently to their equivalents in the UK. But ultimately, their lives, priorities and issues are the same. These everyday experiences in Japan confirmed to me that there is more that connects us as humans than divides us as nationalities. And on this basis, I have even less respect for racists whose sole argument seems to be that difference equates to inferiority.
As I write, brown and white sea birds, with sharply-tipped wings, sabre-like beaks and arrogant aerial swaggers, are scooting alongside the boat. Every so often, they bank steeply to starboard and then splash with surprising inelegance into water.
The occasional freighter is in the near distance, slowly gliding north-east toward Japan. The sea is virtually blemish-free; except for the wake of the Hiryu and the sporadic clumsy landings of our escorts, the ocean is an endless expanse of deep sapphire silk, gently ruffled by the tepid breeze.
The Hiryu has docked twice today; once very early this morning, for an hour and 45 minutes, at Miyako Island, and then again at 1015 at Ishigaki Island. In both cases, passengers disembarked and now there are only six of us. I know this because at Ishigaki, we all had to go briefly ashore and pass through Japanese immigration. I was the only Westerner on the Japanese Immigration officer’s tiny list.
I was the last of the half dozen off the boat. I hadn’t heard the announcement on the ship’s PA – nor would I have understood it if I had – because I was listening to my MP3 player. So the purser came to my door and knocked politely yet loudly.
He told me to just bring my passport and guided me into the terminal building. Even though it was a stress-free process, the tiny security guard at the terminal made the most of this weekly event. His dark blue uniform looked like it had been borrowed from someone four sizes larger, but his hat was one size too small. The heavy gold braiding gave him an air of a 1950s cinema usherette and the tight belt merely emphasised the bagginess of his clothes. His trousers were far too long and concertinaed at the knees.
Even so, his misshaped clothes did not prevent him from doing his job correctly. As soon as I passed through the double doors into a sweaty yet spacious waiting area, I nodded and smiled to him. I’m sure that he was on the verge of saluting but simply returned my unspoken greeting. His eyes were fixed in a permanent, wrinkled squint and his stubbled, tanned face, Pacific Islander rather than Japanese, had a porcine sheen. He had collapsed lips which, as he smiled, revealed three rotten teeth and one surprisingly white one.
Once I was through the door, he hitched his trousers, pulled the hem of his jacket down assertively and, looking around for approval, dug in his pocket. He then noisily pulled out a huge bunch of keys, found the right one first time and locked the doors at the top, middle and bottom. Returning to the standing position, he scanned the room with a toothless smile, slowly dropped the keys back in his trouser pocket, adjusted his trousers with a wiggle and stood, licking his thin lips, with his hands behind his back.
The five Japanese travellers were pointed in the direction of the immigration room, where the Hiryu’s chief purser was discharging another of his many duties. Over his shoulder, I could see a uniformed Japanese immigration officer sitting at a makeshift desk in the far corner. An obliging, petite, grey suited woman appeared out of nowhere and told me without emotion that foreigners go last. When it was my turn the chief purser meticulously checked my passport details against those taken when I boarded the ship, just in case anything had changed. Naturally, it hadn’t but this is the Japanese thoroughness in action.
Then I took my passport and my smile to the official. Without a word being spoken, he checked my Taiwanese visa, tore out the Japanese embarkation card, stamped my Japanese visa, returned my passport and within five minutes, I was back in my cabin.
The atmosphere on the ship has now returned to the serenity that followed the departure from Osaka. At Okinawa, the passenger transfer bus made four journeys from the terminal, delivering some sixty people to the Hiryu. Most were Japanese but there were also a handful of Westerners.
I tried to engage one – a young American man called Ken – in a conversation but he seemed elsewhere. He had short reddish hair, freckles and an Abraham Lincoln-style paint-brush beard. He said he was from Colorado and had been working in Osaka for three years. He speaks Japanese and said he enjoyed living in the country yet his eyes darted around incessantly suggesting he was out of his comfort zone.
As we spoke, he asked me the standard questions about my life and journey, but his ‘OK’, ‘Right,’ ‘OK’, ‘Yeah’ answers displayed a lack of connection and interest. We boarded the bus together and as we approached the ship, his concerns became apparent. He had never travelled by boat before and was worried about sharing a cabin.
I told him that they are very civilised quarters and, even if he is with multiple strangers, my experience on the Trans-Siberian suggested that human beings have a innate ability to respect each other’s property, privacy and space, even if they are forced together. ‘Right,’ he said with total detachment. So I decided to add a postscript, just to see if he was listening. ‘Unless, of course, they are mass murderers.’ ‘Right,’ he said with the same tone as if I had told him that Washington DC is the capital of his country.
Also on the bus was a short, dark-haired voluble American man in his mid-twenties, wearing three quarter length cargo pants, a blue polo shirt and flip flops. He had a tiny bag and a huge surfboard. He had sloping shoulders and when he walked, he swung his arms slightly too far from his body in a gun-slinger swagger. When he stopped walking, he planted his feet apart slightly wider than normal and cocked his head combatively to one side.
He was accompanied by another American man – taller, blonder and anonymous - who occasionally said something rather quietly which would be the swaggering guy’s cue to launch into a loud, wise-cracking monologue, to which the swaggerer expected – and got – sycophantic laughter.
The third member of this group was a wide-eyed, soft lipped, slender, verging on anorexic, very westernised Japanese woman. She wore skinny jeans that were still baggy on her stick like legs, strappy, high-heeled sandals, and a white vest top. At first glance it appeared that she had large breasts for her frame, but the bulge was merely an ill-fitting wonderbra. She walked half a step behind her partner, the swaggerer, and said nothing while the male double act performed.
About 45 minutes before the ship was due to depart, three buses draw up on the dockside. They were illuminated within and every seat was occupied by a teenager. Sure enough, within twenty minutes the corridor outside my room was alive with the sound of aimless excitement. From the girls there were squabbles, reasonless screeches, incessant chatter, spontaneous sprints, and hysterical giggling. The boys simply shouted monosyllabically, grunted with their hormones and strutted.
Later in the evening, female noises settle outside my cabin. Then the sound of a hairdryer took over. More voices joined in and competed with the electrical whine which suggested a shortage of electric points in their cabins. I went for a cup of tea and sure enough, a queue had formed. It seemed that every girl in the party had decided to wash their hair and now about 15 Japanese teenage girls were impatiently waiting to use a single hairdryer. Some stood, others squatted, others took photos, others rubbed their hair with towels. But they were all talking, at the same time, and yet none of them, it seemed, were listening.
These were Japanese teenagers, but, as I listened to the tone and speed of their chat, I doubted whether British girls would be any different. I didn’t understand a word, of course, but I would wager that the main subjects of conversation were boys, music, movie stars, fashion, make up, teachers and families, all with a hint of bitchy humour.
Of course each nationality has its own way of doing things. Interaction with alcohol is a good example; the British tend to imbibe with much less restraint than the French, for example. And in my seven years teaching international MA students at Cardiff University, not once did I see a Chinese student have more than two halves of weak beer during social events.
There are also differences between cultures in terms of music, fashion, art and culture; attitudes to authority; relationships with family; courtship; and many other elements of life. But, core principles, seem to be very similar.
This became apparent last week when I was staying with Jim and Miwa. In August, they will be getting married in Hawaii and, while I was at their apartment, they had numerous discussions about the preparations. Jim and Miwa both speak Japanese and English and it was rather entertaining to hear them switch, sometimes mid-sentence, between languages. Sometimes, when they were speaking Japanese, even though I don’t understand a word, I could tell from the tone that there was tension.
On the Friday, Jim took a day off work and he drove me around Tokyo. We started off with a wonderful teppanyaki lunch at a hotel that appeared as a villian’s headquarters in an early James Bond film. The white-overalled chef had the tallest hat I’d ever seen and its height was only matched by his dexterity and mastery of his art.
As he chopped and cooked and described the food with passionate restraint, Jim apologised for the morning’s argument between he and Miwa. It began at 0500 when Jim’s alarm went off at the usual time. He had forgotten to cancel it the night before and Miwa was woken two hours earlier than her normal time.
I told Jim there was no need to apologise but he still felt bad. From that poor start to the day, he and Miwa had heated discussions about various, relatively minor, parts of the wedding preparations. Top of the list was the invitations and whether they should be printed, if so, by whom, and what the wording should be.
As Jim offloaded, I smiled and thought back to the preparations to my first marriage. My wife-to-be and her mother planned, checked and double-checked everything with the precision of military strategists. Nothing was left to chance. I gladly took a backseat and left the women to it, but at times Sarah would ask me for my opinion. Invariably, this would be about a minor issue – for example, the seating plan – but my view was often different to the female’s consensus and a row would ensue.
It might be tempting to suggest that Jim and Miwa have such arguments because he is English and she is Japanese. But, as I said to Jim over another delectable dish, nationality and culture are irrelevant when it comes to weddings. The differences are between men and women.
As he sipped his mineral water, Jim watched the chef perform another dazzling act with his knife. ‘I guess so,’ he said. ‘What is important to me is that I am getting married to Miwa, but she…’ I nodded knowingly and finished his sentence, ‘She wants the day to be perfect.’
Miwa is Japanese but, more importantly, she is a woman too. Women of all cultures want their wedding day to be perfect. Depending on the country, some elements might be more important than others but, irrespective of nationality, the wedding is the most important day of a woman’s life.
This is by no means a chauvinistic statement; in my experience, it also applies to professional, post-feminism, career-minded women who are equal to men in every respect. And no matter how hard Jim or any other man tries, we will never fully appreciate that sorting out the minutiae, usually in partnership the woman’s mother, has a higher status than the act of marriage itself.
Miwa and Jim, the chattering Japanese schoolgirls on the Hiryu and the humble beggar in Tokyo may do their thing slightly differently to their equivalents in the UK. But ultimately, their lives, priorities and issues are the same. These everyday experiences in Japan confirmed to me that there is more that connects us as humans than divides us as nationalities. And on this basis, I have even less respect for racists whose sole argument seems to be that difference equates to inferiority.
Wednesday, 28 May 2008
Day 21: Driven to Confusion
Monday May 26 - Okinawa Ferry Passenger Terminal
If someone had asked me to describe the Japanese 24 hours ago, I would have used the following words: polite, deferential, welcoming, punctual, efficient, obliging, intelligent, industrious and meticulously organised.
In addition, I have also noticed that Japanese teenage girls tend to have very large thighs in proportion to the rest of their legs and overall body shape. The difference is so pronounced that I wondered if they are fed spinach every day; the last time I saw such muscular incongruity was on Popeye.
Call me a pervert by all means, but it is hard not to notice when the standard school uniform is a pleated mini-skirt (often tartan) and the girls walk around in groups. The thigh-calf disparity seems to disappear, however, when the girls become women. And, with a very few exceptions, Japanese women are petite and very slender. The men, however, are not so. Some are slim, some are tiny, some are athletic and some are enormous.
Anyway, enough about physique. What about the Japanese character? Well, I had two experiences today that at first confirmed my original thoughts, and then, this afternoon, blew the whole idea of national stereotypes out of the water.
The confirmation began at seven AM when the PA on the ship piped up with a lengthy, officious announcement. It was in Japanese but I knew that it was about our imminent arrival in Okinawa. After all, this was scheduled for 0800. After the first announcement, the purser helped us to wake with a continuous, gentle soundtrack of plinky-plonky Japanese music combined with twittering birdsong. He then reminded us of whatever the information was three or four more times.
I had woken up a few times in the night and could have really used some more sleep. So I read the rather ambiguous written translation of what happens when we reached Okinawa that the purser had given me on day one. I knew that I had to leave the boat at some point and be back at the Naha passenger terminal by 1915, but I still wasn’t sure whether I could leave the boat when I liked, nor indeed if I could return when I liked.
So at around 7.40, I went to the reception desk and asked the deputy purser. He was flustered. The phone was ringing, the walkie-talkie was buzzing and everyone else had packed their bags and was queuing for shore passes. He patiently and politely went through the schedule with me. Yes, I had to leave the ship. Yes, I needed to take my bags with me. Yes, I needed to come back at 1915, not ‘by’ 1915. But when did I have to leave? He got distracted by a more urgent matter, apologised and left the desk.
So I assumed that I could leave the ship any time I liked. I went back to my cabin, picked up my mug and a tea bag and walked back across the reception area to the café for hot water. The deputy purser called out my name: ‘Mr Merrill! Sorry. No tea. You must leave cabin. Eight o’clock.’ If this had been a British ship, I would have protested and asked for special dispensation. But it is no use in Japan. Eight o’clock means seven-fifty nine and sixty seconds.
Back to the cabin and mild panic set in. I hadn’t even packed my bags. Three minutes into this mission and the phone rang. It was the deputy, asking me ever so politely, but in a desperate voice, when I will be leaving my cabin. ‘Two minutes,’ I said as I pushed odd socks into an already crammed backpack.
At 0801 by my watch I left my cabin. One minute later and I was in the reception area. Walkie-talkie in hand, the deputy was apologising and bowing and yet there was a slight hint of annoyance on his face. He ushered me to the escalator and escorted me down to the dock. The horror on his face confirmed that the bus had already gone. Well, he did say 0800 and it was now 0804.
Thankfully, the man was obliging as well as punctual to the extreme. He had a quick word with a humourless dock worker, dressed in belted blue overalls and wearing a white military-style helmet with chin strap, and a lift to the passenger terminal was duly arranged. I thanked the deputy and apologised for the misunderstanding. He too apologised, blaming his poor English. He bowed and trotted back up the gang plank.
I spent much of the rest of the day in Naha, the main city of Okinawa. Desperately in need of a shower, an internet connection to upload my blog and photographic website, send emails and have a rest, I decided to see if I could find a reasonably priced hotel for ten hours. I took a cab to the tourist information office, where a tiny, elegant, grey haired woman with horn-rimmed glasses helped me in her excellent English. She suggested I visit a hot spa just around the corner. It sounded wonderful but it failed on the internet criterion.
So I decided to check out the hotels on the main street. Hunger pangs were biting – in my mad rush, I had forgotten to take my emergency rations out of the cabin’s fridge – and I was desperate for food. And, although Naha was cloaked by high cloud, the sun was tropically savage. Many women were carrying parasols and I decided to grab the first eatery with a shaded, outside table.
The above paragraph is my defence for eating at MacDonalds. OK, OK, I know. But it was the first time since I was in a similar predicament in France three years ago. And, I must report, the egg and sausage breakfast McMuffin was perfect. Two coffees later, I bough some factor 50 sunblock, slapped it on every bit of visible skin above the neckline and went to the nearest hotel.
For 8,500 yen (about £43) I got a spacious, air-conditioned room with broadband internet, a soft bed, a powerful shower and an automatic toilet. This one was less intelligent than Jim’s and all the instructions were in Japanese, so I used manual over-ride.
The hotel was worth every penny. After uploading several blog entries, sending countless emails and resting at pub cellar temperature (18 degrees centigrade), I left my room and spent an hour browsing in the nearby shops and the local market. In my short time in Naha, it struck me that the locals are much more varied in appearance than on the mainland. Some could be mistaken for Filipinos, others for Fijians and some look distinctly semi-European. I guess the large American military presence on the island since 1945 would explain such variety.
There was no way that I could miss the boat, so I grabbed some random snacks and hailed a cab. The driver hopped out and then stood and watched me lift my bags into the trunk. He was short and slight, he had a number four buzzcut with a distant hairline, and a pock-marked face. He wore a light-blue striped cotton shirt, grey polyester slacks, brown shoes and aviator shades. As soon as I sat in the back seat, I had a feeling that my preconceived ideas about universal Japanese efficiency and intelligence were going to be severely challenged.
I knew from the map that the woman at the tourist information office had given me, plus my experience of the taxi ride in the morning, that the destination was about a fifteen minute drive north-west of the starting point. Before we set off, I showed the map to the driver – it was labelled in English and Japanese – and pointed at the passenger terminal at Naha Shinko Port. He mumbled and grabbed the map for a closer look. He removed his aviator shades, held the map just beyond his nose and began to chatter to himself. Then he reached into the glove box and pulled out a spectacle case which he opened slowly while his eyes stayed fixed on the map.
My eyes started rolling. This was all I needed; a cabbie with bad eyesight who doesn’t know his way around his own city. He stared at the destination with incredulity. I read it for him: ‘Naha Shinko.’ He shook his head as if he’d never heard of this place and yet it is clear from the map that it takes up plenty of space in Naha. This morning there were four massive container ships docked there, plus the Hiryu. But judging by his reaction, it was as if he’d never seen a map before, never mind Naha Shinko Port.
Nevertheless, he started driving west. It was a good start but after about five minutes, at a traffic light, he turned around confused and asked me something in Japanese. I assumed that he was still not sure, so I showed him the map. This time, I pointed to our present location and said: ‘We are here.’ Then I traced a suggested route with my finger. Whichever way he went, it would involve turning right at some point.
At the next traffic light, he made a phone call. I heard the words ‘Naha Shinko’ and his tone was distinctly stressed. At the next traffic light, he grabbed the taxi radio and made a similar call to the controller. At the next traffic light, he spun around and beckoned for the map. Then, at the next traffic light, he turned left and looked far too relaxed for comfort.
It was at this point that I knew he’d got it wrong; he was heading south. I looked on the map and found why he was looking so smug: there is another wharf called Naha Port. At the next stop I tapped him on the shoulder. Using animated gestures and fingers I told him that I need to be there at six, in ten minutes’ time. He smiled, held up three fingers and pointed toward a dock in the near distance.
We duly arrived in three minutes. He stopped the car and turned to me with a beaming smile. ‘This is not it!,’ I said, map in hand. I pointed at Naha Port on the map and then at the floor of the taxi. ‘We are here and I want to be there…’ pointing to the north of the map. ‘Look,’ I said tracing the route from here to there, ‘it is near the fish market, over the bridge.’ He took off his shades and the smile evaporated. In desperation, I pointed to the icon of a passenger ship near the terminal with the destinations listed below. ‘I am going to Taiwan.’
A look of horror smacked all self-satisfaction from his face. ‘Taiwan!? Ah, Taiwan!’ He had finally got it. So he started up the car again, did a U-turn redolent of a 1970s gangster movie and headed north at a reckless rate. For the rest of the journey, he guiltily shook his head. At red lights, he turned to me and muttered apologies in Japanese, gesticulating with sweaty hands.
But that was not the end. We passed the fish market – I thought the trawlers and stacks of boxes were a bit of a give away – and hammered over the raised bridge. He then turned left prematurely and a huge container ship loomed before us. He stopped again and raised a hopeful eyebrow as he looked at me in the rearview mirror. ‘No! Look at the map! I want to be here,’ I said pointing at the building marked ‘passenger terminal’ in Japanese and English. He looked totally lost and I began to feel sorry for him. ‘It’s over there, mate,’ I said, pointing with a weary, conciliatory finger.
Finally, we arrived, at six-o-three to be precise. The driver looked shell-shocked as he opened the trunk. He tapped his heart repeatedly, rolled his eyes, shook his head and exhaled as if he was blowing out birthday cake candles. I smiled and told him not to worry. Despite his culpability, he still didn’t help me with my bags.
I asked how much and he wrote ‘1,000’ on a scrap of paper, the same as I’d paid this morning. Jim told me the other day that Japan does not have a tipping culture. But I decided to buck protocol and gave this cabby something that will hopefully change his life and bring him infinite wealth: a map of his city.
If someone had asked me to describe the Japanese 24 hours ago, I would have used the following words: polite, deferential, welcoming, punctual, efficient, obliging, intelligent, industrious and meticulously organised.
In addition, I have also noticed that Japanese teenage girls tend to have very large thighs in proportion to the rest of their legs and overall body shape. The difference is so pronounced that I wondered if they are fed spinach every day; the last time I saw such muscular incongruity was on Popeye.
Call me a pervert by all means, but it is hard not to notice when the standard school uniform is a pleated mini-skirt (often tartan) and the girls walk around in groups. The thigh-calf disparity seems to disappear, however, when the girls become women. And, with a very few exceptions, Japanese women are petite and very slender. The men, however, are not so. Some are slim, some are tiny, some are athletic and some are enormous.
Anyway, enough about physique. What about the Japanese character? Well, I had two experiences today that at first confirmed my original thoughts, and then, this afternoon, blew the whole idea of national stereotypes out of the water.
The confirmation began at seven AM when the PA on the ship piped up with a lengthy, officious announcement. It was in Japanese but I knew that it was about our imminent arrival in Okinawa. After all, this was scheduled for 0800. After the first announcement, the purser helped us to wake with a continuous, gentle soundtrack of plinky-plonky Japanese music combined with twittering birdsong. He then reminded us of whatever the information was three or four more times.
I had woken up a few times in the night and could have really used some more sleep. So I read the rather ambiguous written translation of what happens when we reached Okinawa that the purser had given me on day one. I knew that I had to leave the boat at some point and be back at the Naha passenger terminal by 1915, but I still wasn’t sure whether I could leave the boat when I liked, nor indeed if I could return when I liked.
So at around 7.40, I went to the reception desk and asked the deputy purser. He was flustered. The phone was ringing, the walkie-talkie was buzzing and everyone else had packed their bags and was queuing for shore passes. He patiently and politely went through the schedule with me. Yes, I had to leave the ship. Yes, I needed to take my bags with me. Yes, I needed to come back at 1915, not ‘by’ 1915. But when did I have to leave? He got distracted by a more urgent matter, apologised and left the desk.
So I assumed that I could leave the ship any time I liked. I went back to my cabin, picked up my mug and a tea bag and walked back across the reception area to the café for hot water. The deputy purser called out my name: ‘Mr Merrill! Sorry. No tea. You must leave cabin. Eight o’clock.’ If this had been a British ship, I would have protested and asked for special dispensation. But it is no use in Japan. Eight o’clock means seven-fifty nine and sixty seconds.
Back to the cabin and mild panic set in. I hadn’t even packed my bags. Three minutes into this mission and the phone rang. It was the deputy, asking me ever so politely, but in a desperate voice, when I will be leaving my cabin. ‘Two minutes,’ I said as I pushed odd socks into an already crammed backpack.
At 0801 by my watch I left my cabin. One minute later and I was in the reception area. Walkie-talkie in hand, the deputy was apologising and bowing and yet there was a slight hint of annoyance on his face. He ushered me to the escalator and escorted me down to the dock. The horror on his face confirmed that the bus had already gone. Well, he did say 0800 and it was now 0804.
Thankfully, the man was obliging as well as punctual to the extreme. He had a quick word with a humourless dock worker, dressed in belted blue overalls and wearing a white military-style helmet with chin strap, and a lift to the passenger terminal was duly arranged. I thanked the deputy and apologised for the misunderstanding. He too apologised, blaming his poor English. He bowed and trotted back up the gang plank.
I spent much of the rest of the day in Naha, the main city of Okinawa. Desperately in need of a shower, an internet connection to upload my blog and photographic website, send emails and have a rest, I decided to see if I could find a reasonably priced hotel for ten hours. I took a cab to the tourist information office, where a tiny, elegant, grey haired woman with horn-rimmed glasses helped me in her excellent English. She suggested I visit a hot spa just around the corner. It sounded wonderful but it failed on the internet criterion.
So I decided to check out the hotels on the main street. Hunger pangs were biting – in my mad rush, I had forgotten to take my emergency rations out of the cabin’s fridge – and I was desperate for food. And, although Naha was cloaked by high cloud, the sun was tropically savage. Many women were carrying parasols and I decided to grab the first eatery with a shaded, outside table.
The above paragraph is my defence for eating at MacDonalds. OK, OK, I know. But it was the first time since I was in a similar predicament in France three years ago. And, I must report, the egg and sausage breakfast McMuffin was perfect. Two coffees later, I bough some factor 50 sunblock, slapped it on every bit of visible skin above the neckline and went to the nearest hotel.
For 8,500 yen (about £43) I got a spacious, air-conditioned room with broadband internet, a soft bed, a powerful shower and an automatic toilet. This one was less intelligent than Jim’s and all the instructions were in Japanese, so I used manual over-ride.
The hotel was worth every penny. After uploading several blog entries, sending countless emails and resting at pub cellar temperature (18 degrees centigrade), I left my room and spent an hour browsing in the nearby shops and the local market. In my short time in Naha, it struck me that the locals are much more varied in appearance than on the mainland. Some could be mistaken for Filipinos, others for Fijians and some look distinctly semi-European. I guess the large American military presence on the island since 1945 would explain such variety.
There was no way that I could miss the boat, so I grabbed some random snacks and hailed a cab. The driver hopped out and then stood and watched me lift my bags into the trunk. He was short and slight, he had a number four buzzcut with a distant hairline, and a pock-marked face. He wore a light-blue striped cotton shirt, grey polyester slacks, brown shoes and aviator shades. As soon as I sat in the back seat, I had a feeling that my preconceived ideas about universal Japanese efficiency and intelligence were going to be severely challenged.
I knew from the map that the woman at the tourist information office had given me, plus my experience of the taxi ride in the morning, that the destination was about a fifteen minute drive north-west of the starting point. Before we set off, I showed the map to the driver – it was labelled in English and Japanese – and pointed at the passenger terminal at Naha Shinko Port. He mumbled and grabbed the map for a closer look. He removed his aviator shades, held the map just beyond his nose and began to chatter to himself. Then he reached into the glove box and pulled out a spectacle case which he opened slowly while his eyes stayed fixed on the map.
My eyes started rolling. This was all I needed; a cabbie with bad eyesight who doesn’t know his way around his own city. He stared at the destination with incredulity. I read it for him: ‘Naha Shinko.’ He shook his head as if he’d never heard of this place and yet it is clear from the map that it takes up plenty of space in Naha. This morning there were four massive container ships docked there, plus the Hiryu. But judging by his reaction, it was as if he’d never seen a map before, never mind Naha Shinko Port.
Nevertheless, he started driving west. It was a good start but after about five minutes, at a traffic light, he turned around confused and asked me something in Japanese. I assumed that he was still not sure, so I showed him the map. This time, I pointed to our present location and said: ‘We are here.’ Then I traced a suggested route with my finger. Whichever way he went, it would involve turning right at some point.
At the next traffic light, he made a phone call. I heard the words ‘Naha Shinko’ and his tone was distinctly stressed. At the next traffic light, he grabbed the taxi radio and made a similar call to the controller. At the next traffic light, he spun around and beckoned for the map. Then, at the next traffic light, he turned left and looked far too relaxed for comfort.
It was at this point that I knew he’d got it wrong; he was heading south. I looked on the map and found why he was looking so smug: there is another wharf called Naha Port. At the next stop I tapped him on the shoulder. Using animated gestures and fingers I told him that I need to be there at six, in ten minutes’ time. He smiled, held up three fingers and pointed toward a dock in the near distance.
We duly arrived in three minutes. He stopped the car and turned to me with a beaming smile. ‘This is not it!,’ I said, map in hand. I pointed at Naha Port on the map and then at the floor of the taxi. ‘We are here and I want to be there…’ pointing to the north of the map. ‘Look,’ I said tracing the route from here to there, ‘it is near the fish market, over the bridge.’ He took off his shades and the smile evaporated. In desperation, I pointed to the icon of a passenger ship near the terminal with the destinations listed below. ‘I am going to Taiwan.’
A look of horror smacked all self-satisfaction from his face. ‘Taiwan!? Ah, Taiwan!’ He had finally got it. So he started up the car again, did a U-turn redolent of a 1970s gangster movie and headed north at a reckless rate. For the rest of the journey, he guiltily shook his head. At red lights, he turned to me and muttered apologies in Japanese, gesticulating with sweaty hands.
But that was not the end. We passed the fish market – I thought the trawlers and stacks of boxes were a bit of a give away – and hammered over the raised bridge. He then turned left prematurely and a huge container ship loomed before us. He stopped again and raised a hopeful eyebrow as he looked at me in the rearview mirror. ‘No! Look at the map! I want to be here,’ I said pointing at the building marked ‘passenger terminal’ in Japanese and English. He looked totally lost and I began to feel sorry for him. ‘It’s over there, mate,’ I said, pointing with a weary, conciliatory finger.
Finally, we arrived, at six-o-three to be precise. The driver looked shell-shocked as he opened the trunk. He tapped his heart repeatedly, rolled his eyes, shook his head and exhaled as if he was blowing out birthday cake candles. I smiled and told him not to worry. Despite his culpability, he still didn’t help me with my bags.
I asked how much and he wrote ‘1,000’ on a scrap of paper, the same as I’d paid this morning. Jim told me the other day that Japan does not have a tipping culture. But I decided to buck protocol and gave this cabby something that will hopefully change his life and bring him infinite wealth: a map of his city.
Day 20: Bunged Up and Sailing By
Sunday May 25 - Onboard the Hiryu, en route to Okinawa
My greatest concern when walking up the steps of the Hiryu last night was the weather. In Osaka, the rain persisted down. There was no wind but I wondered if the shelter of the harbour was masking something more ominous out at sea.
My mind was put at rest to an extent when I saw the inside of the ship. It is a much more modern vessel than the MV Rus – launched in 1995, to be precise – so I guessed that it would cope well with the sea conditions around Japan. Navigation systems, weather detection and avoidance and attention to general passenger comfort must surely have improved over the years, I reasoned.
The spacious reception area was akin to an ambitious hotel with a fake polished, checked floor and a huge, amorphous nautical, fibreglass sculpture, like a mis-shaped totem pole, covered with shells and a spiralling sea-serpent, disappearing up a hole in the middle of the room. At the desk, a courteous purser welcomed me, took my boarding card and directed me to cabin 115. ‘First class,’ he said with a smile. ‘Outside cabin, sea view.’
The cabin was fine. The dominant colour was a calming pale green. Plenty of cupboard space (not that any passenger would ever use it all), a large porthole, a small TV, fridge, en suite bathroom, four bunks and a sofa that could also be used as a berth. Wearing shoes in a house is against Japanese domestic protocol, even so I was surprised to see two pairs of slippers. They were not in my style, size or colour so, dumping my bags, I opted to go bare foot.
With so few people in the terminal, I expected to be the only occupant of the cabin. Sure enough, as the boat started to move just before one AM, no one else had joined me. I walked on deck, watched the boat nudge its way around the harbour and said sayonara to mainland Japan.
After a few hours writing, I took to my berth and my fears about a rough voyage began to grow. This was not, after all, a short-hop on a cross Channel ferry, nor a journey across the largely-enclosed Sea of Japan. We were in the far west of the Pacific Ocean.
The cupboards creaked as the ship swayed and bucked, gently at first, but then more convincingly. I consoled myself that it is just like a train’s movement, but a ship’s rocking is much less rhythmic and it can be much more dramatic. My sub-conscious doom-monger pictured images from TV of the Atlantic convoys in WWII battling the massive swell and bow-crashing waves. The movement of the Hiryu was nowhere near as pronounced, nor were we in the sights of U-boats, so I finally fell asleep just as the first morning light began filtering through the curtains.
A few hours later, I awoke and the ship was lurching with greater conviction. I bravely opened the curtains and expected to see a menacing swell in the near distance, several metres higher than the ship. But, rather disappointingly, it was relatively calm and way below the level of the porthole. There were no waves to speak of and only a gentle swell. Feeling rather foolish at having my anxieties disproved for the umpteenth time since leaving the UK, I went back to sleep.
Later, looking at the map, and remembering the route chart at the sea terminal, I guessed that the first part of the journey would be the worst because we were traversing the east coast of Japan, with the full might of the Pacific to the port side. The route would then take us to the west of the Ryukyu Islands and into the East China Sea which, hopefully, means that we are protected from the enormity of the Pacific. But there again, what do I know about the effect of topography on sea travel?
I do know, however, that the view from my porthole will be pretty mundane until the early hours of tomorrow, when we dock at Naha in Okinawa. We stop for twelve hours and, according to the schedule, all passengers are requested to go ashore and pass through customs. I am not sure how this works precisely but when we leave Okinawa at 2000 on Monday, the next port of call is Keelung in Taiwan, so I guess I will have my visa stamped and this will mark my official departure from Japan.
I only spent five days in the country but this was enough time to get a flavour of the place. Flavour is the operative word because the most striking memory is the food. Every meal I had was excellent and I ate many things for the first time. Even so, for the first time on this trip, I have used some medication – my laxatives.
I am not sure exactly why I am bunged up; maybe it is the copious amounts of sticky, white rice that I’ve consumed (as opposed to the brown rice I religiously ate every day in the UK) or maybe it’s the raw fish, or perhaps the relative lack of vegetables and roughage. Whatever the cause, the taste and variety of the food in Japan made up for the mild discomfort of waiting for peristalsis to complete its mission.
While mentally encouraging nature to take its course, this afternoon I spent half an hour on deck taking photos and video footage of the ship and the view to the west of the island of, I think, Kyusyu. This is the southernmost of the large islands of Japan. Whichever island it is, it was difficult to photograph because the haze made it an insipid subject. Still, it was a pleasant afternoon; a gentle breeze, an even gentler sea, high, innocuous clouds, and a very calm atmosphere on the ship.
The Hiryu seems to run on a shoestring. I have only seen four crew members – the head purser; his deputy; a very young, nervous underling who speaks no English at all and keeps nodding and apologising to me; and a guy with a permanent smile who works in the dining room. There is no bar, only drinks machines, and the sparsely stocked shop is looked after by the pursers. Maybe the four of them sail and maintain the vessel, too.
The ship certainly doesn’t have many passengers and I doubt if it makes much of a profit. Earlier, a handful of people were sitting in wicker armchairs looking aimlessly east across the Pacific Ocean. Up on deck I saw a Japanese guy sitting cross legged playing a wooden flute. He had his hair tied in a loose knot on the back of his head, a goatie beard, a blue long-sleeved t-shirt, white shades and the sort of deeply creased face that I associate with old-school hippies. We saw each other, smiled and waved. Maybe he noticed my deeply-creased face as well.
A few other people are milling around but there were only three of us at lunch. Meals operate under a rather bizarre system by which the purser calls people to the desk over the PA at 1000 precisely with reminders every 15 minutes until 1100. You choose one of eight dishes from the menu – typically priced around 800 yen (£4) – receive a meal voucher marked with your choice and then go to the dining room between 1200 and 1230. The smiling man – the fourth crew member - takes your voucher and, minutes later, brings a tray to your table.
I ordered beef curry today. It came with an iced tea, a small bowl of lettuce, tomato and shredded cabbage with a vinegary dressing. The curry itself had a sizeable portion of sticky rice and tasted fine. The chunks were, however, ninety percent potato and I could only find four tiny pieces of beef.
I am certainly the only Westerner on board and the other passengers, who all look Japanese rather than Taiwanese/Chinese, either nod and smile when I walk by or just ignore me. Before I came to Asia, people back home said that I would be stared at, or natives would approach me in the hope that I would help them practice their English. In Japan and on board, neither has happened. I am simply accepted as just another person, which suits me fine.
With air travel so cheap and fast these days, it makes sense that the Hiryu is quiet. It is marketed as a ‘cruise ferry’ so I wonder if it is busier in the summer. There are several function rooms on board – all of which are locked – which suggest that it is (or perhaps was) a proper cruise ship. On the aft deck, there are about twenty vehicles so maybe – like the MV Rus – it earns its keep as a cargo ship.
Whatever the reason for the quietness, it is a very enjoyable voyage so far. Last night’s choppy ocean has given way to gentle undulation and the benign weather is comforting. That said, conditions at sea can change with alarming rapidity so I am not counting any nautical chickens until we dock at Keelung in two days’ time.
After dinner this evening – a very large meal of miso soup, beef and vegetable stir-fry, sticky rice, a tiny bowl of slimy, stringy seaweed and an even smaller pot of ice cream, all for 900 yen (£4.50) - I joined four other photographers on the upper deck for the sunset. We were passing between two islands and the sun was very obligingly falling behind the one in the west.
Three of us snapped away incessantly. A third man – young with a white hoody tight against his head, wearing glasses and a focused scowl – squatted, camera in hand and waited for the perfect moment. I am not sure if it arrived because he only lifted the camera to his eye once, didn’t click the shutter and quickly returned to his scowl.
One of the men was the guy with large ears and bald patch whom I saw in the terminal. After the sun had set, I saw him tracing our route with his finger on the nautical chart near the dining room. His head was tilted back and he was mumbling to himself as he read through the bottom half of his glasses.
I asked him if he could tell me where we were. I used sign language – pointing at the floor to denote ‘here’, for example – but I needn’t have worried about his comprehension; he spoke excellent English and pointed to the two islands that we had just bisected. At midnight, he said, we will pass another large island, then bisect two more at 0400 and then arrive at Okinawa at 0800 tomorrow. I thanked him for his help, using one of my limited number of Japanese words, and he bowed slightly.
Until I came to Japan, the idea of bowing really offended me. But now, I see it in a different light. I guess I’d seen it in an English context; it is what commoners – like me – are expected to do to show deference to royalty and other noble people. I have never met a lord or a knight of the realm but if I did, I would be determined not to bow, curtsey, avoid eye contact or walk out of the room backwards, or whatever else protocol demands. I was brought up to believe that we are all equals and I intend to stick to that principle, even if it means offending a supposedly superior being.
In Japan, however, the bow seems to have a subtly different role. No doubt people would bend lower to the emperor, prime minister or the chief executive of Toyota, but it is amazing how many people bow to others. The security guards at Jim’s apartment; the police outside government buildings; and office workers bidding goodnight to their drinking partners, all bowed to some extent. On the Shinkansen from Tokyo to Osaka, the blue uniformed carriage attendants bowed as soon as they entered and just before they left the carriage, even if no one was watching.
And on Friday evening on our way to dinner, I experienced bowing for myself. Jim and Miwa were in the bookshop at the foot of their apartment building. I had bought a phrase book and was waiting for them outside, leaning on a wall, smoking and watching people meander in the still, warm evening. Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted a diminutive, shuffling white haired man with a carelessly trimmed short beard and a blue plastic carrier bag. He was wearing flip flops, rolled up jeans, a white V-neck sweater and a pained expression. He edged toward me with hopeful eyes.
He stopped and then very deliberately bowed, so low that I could see his balding crown. He returned to his normal position and said something pitiful in Japanese. Then, with pleading eyes and a rub of his tummy, he said: ‘Hungry. Please. Hungry.’ Something about his approach really touched me. Maybe it was his manners, or the bow, or perhaps his attempt to speak English, but I smiled and dug in my pocket.
I gave him a 500 yen piece (£2.50) and he thanked me, bowing repetitively. I felt a little mean so I then gave him a handful of smaller change. More shallow bowing followed and I began to feel uneasy; I dislike being the object of deference as much as I loathe being deferential. He might be down on his luck and hungry but we are still equals. So I told him it was OK. He asked if I was American. ‘No, English,’ I replied. He smiled and, after more gentle bowing, he shuffled away, counting his money.
My greatest concern when walking up the steps of the Hiryu last night was the weather. In Osaka, the rain persisted down. There was no wind but I wondered if the shelter of the harbour was masking something more ominous out at sea.
My mind was put at rest to an extent when I saw the inside of the ship. It is a much more modern vessel than the MV Rus – launched in 1995, to be precise – so I guessed that it would cope well with the sea conditions around Japan. Navigation systems, weather detection and avoidance and attention to general passenger comfort must surely have improved over the years, I reasoned.
The spacious reception area was akin to an ambitious hotel with a fake polished, checked floor and a huge, amorphous nautical, fibreglass sculpture, like a mis-shaped totem pole, covered with shells and a spiralling sea-serpent, disappearing up a hole in the middle of the room. At the desk, a courteous purser welcomed me, took my boarding card and directed me to cabin 115. ‘First class,’ he said with a smile. ‘Outside cabin, sea view.’
The cabin was fine. The dominant colour was a calming pale green. Plenty of cupboard space (not that any passenger would ever use it all), a large porthole, a small TV, fridge, en suite bathroom, four bunks and a sofa that could also be used as a berth. Wearing shoes in a house is against Japanese domestic protocol, even so I was surprised to see two pairs of slippers. They were not in my style, size or colour so, dumping my bags, I opted to go bare foot.
With so few people in the terminal, I expected to be the only occupant of the cabin. Sure enough, as the boat started to move just before one AM, no one else had joined me. I walked on deck, watched the boat nudge its way around the harbour and said sayonara to mainland Japan.
After a few hours writing, I took to my berth and my fears about a rough voyage began to grow. This was not, after all, a short-hop on a cross Channel ferry, nor a journey across the largely-enclosed Sea of Japan. We were in the far west of the Pacific Ocean.
The cupboards creaked as the ship swayed and bucked, gently at first, but then more convincingly. I consoled myself that it is just like a train’s movement, but a ship’s rocking is much less rhythmic and it can be much more dramatic. My sub-conscious doom-monger pictured images from TV of the Atlantic convoys in WWII battling the massive swell and bow-crashing waves. The movement of the Hiryu was nowhere near as pronounced, nor were we in the sights of U-boats, so I finally fell asleep just as the first morning light began filtering through the curtains.
A few hours later, I awoke and the ship was lurching with greater conviction. I bravely opened the curtains and expected to see a menacing swell in the near distance, several metres higher than the ship. But, rather disappointingly, it was relatively calm and way below the level of the porthole. There were no waves to speak of and only a gentle swell. Feeling rather foolish at having my anxieties disproved for the umpteenth time since leaving the UK, I went back to sleep.
Later, looking at the map, and remembering the route chart at the sea terminal, I guessed that the first part of the journey would be the worst because we were traversing the east coast of Japan, with the full might of the Pacific to the port side. The route would then take us to the west of the Ryukyu Islands and into the East China Sea which, hopefully, means that we are protected from the enormity of the Pacific. But there again, what do I know about the effect of topography on sea travel?
I do know, however, that the view from my porthole will be pretty mundane until the early hours of tomorrow, when we dock at Naha in Okinawa. We stop for twelve hours and, according to the schedule, all passengers are requested to go ashore and pass through customs. I am not sure how this works precisely but when we leave Okinawa at 2000 on Monday, the next port of call is Keelung in Taiwan, so I guess I will have my visa stamped and this will mark my official departure from Japan.
I only spent five days in the country but this was enough time to get a flavour of the place. Flavour is the operative word because the most striking memory is the food. Every meal I had was excellent and I ate many things for the first time. Even so, for the first time on this trip, I have used some medication – my laxatives.
I am not sure exactly why I am bunged up; maybe it is the copious amounts of sticky, white rice that I’ve consumed (as opposed to the brown rice I religiously ate every day in the UK) or maybe it’s the raw fish, or perhaps the relative lack of vegetables and roughage. Whatever the cause, the taste and variety of the food in Japan made up for the mild discomfort of waiting for peristalsis to complete its mission.
While mentally encouraging nature to take its course, this afternoon I spent half an hour on deck taking photos and video footage of the ship and the view to the west of the island of, I think, Kyusyu. This is the southernmost of the large islands of Japan. Whichever island it is, it was difficult to photograph because the haze made it an insipid subject. Still, it was a pleasant afternoon; a gentle breeze, an even gentler sea, high, innocuous clouds, and a very calm atmosphere on the ship.
The Hiryu seems to run on a shoestring. I have only seen four crew members – the head purser; his deputy; a very young, nervous underling who speaks no English at all and keeps nodding and apologising to me; and a guy with a permanent smile who works in the dining room. There is no bar, only drinks machines, and the sparsely stocked shop is looked after by the pursers. Maybe the four of them sail and maintain the vessel, too.
The ship certainly doesn’t have many passengers and I doubt if it makes much of a profit. Earlier, a handful of people were sitting in wicker armchairs looking aimlessly east across the Pacific Ocean. Up on deck I saw a Japanese guy sitting cross legged playing a wooden flute. He had his hair tied in a loose knot on the back of his head, a goatie beard, a blue long-sleeved t-shirt, white shades and the sort of deeply creased face that I associate with old-school hippies. We saw each other, smiled and waved. Maybe he noticed my deeply-creased face as well.
A few other people are milling around but there were only three of us at lunch. Meals operate under a rather bizarre system by which the purser calls people to the desk over the PA at 1000 precisely with reminders every 15 minutes until 1100. You choose one of eight dishes from the menu – typically priced around 800 yen (£4) – receive a meal voucher marked with your choice and then go to the dining room between 1200 and 1230. The smiling man – the fourth crew member - takes your voucher and, minutes later, brings a tray to your table.
I ordered beef curry today. It came with an iced tea, a small bowl of lettuce, tomato and shredded cabbage with a vinegary dressing. The curry itself had a sizeable portion of sticky rice and tasted fine. The chunks were, however, ninety percent potato and I could only find four tiny pieces of beef.
I am certainly the only Westerner on board and the other passengers, who all look Japanese rather than Taiwanese/Chinese, either nod and smile when I walk by or just ignore me. Before I came to Asia, people back home said that I would be stared at, or natives would approach me in the hope that I would help them practice their English. In Japan and on board, neither has happened. I am simply accepted as just another person, which suits me fine.
With air travel so cheap and fast these days, it makes sense that the Hiryu is quiet. It is marketed as a ‘cruise ferry’ so I wonder if it is busier in the summer. There are several function rooms on board – all of which are locked – which suggest that it is (or perhaps was) a proper cruise ship. On the aft deck, there are about twenty vehicles so maybe – like the MV Rus – it earns its keep as a cargo ship.
Whatever the reason for the quietness, it is a very enjoyable voyage so far. Last night’s choppy ocean has given way to gentle undulation and the benign weather is comforting. That said, conditions at sea can change with alarming rapidity so I am not counting any nautical chickens until we dock at Keelung in two days’ time.
After dinner this evening – a very large meal of miso soup, beef and vegetable stir-fry, sticky rice, a tiny bowl of slimy, stringy seaweed and an even smaller pot of ice cream, all for 900 yen (£4.50) - I joined four other photographers on the upper deck for the sunset. We were passing between two islands and the sun was very obligingly falling behind the one in the west.
Three of us snapped away incessantly. A third man – young with a white hoody tight against his head, wearing glasses and a focused scowl – squatted, camera in hand and waited for the perfect moment. I am not sure if it arrived because he only lifted the camera to his eye once, didn’t click the shutter and quickly returned to his scowl.
One of the men was the guy with large ears and bald patch whom I saw in the terminal. After the sun had set, I saw him tracing our route with his finger on the nautical chart near the dining room. His head was tilted back and he was mumbling to himself as he read through the bottom half of his glasses.
I asked him if he could tell me where we were. I used sign language – pointing at the floor to denote ‘here’, for example – but I needn’t have worried about his comprehension; he spoke excellent English and pointed to the two islands that we had just bisected. At midnight, he said, we will pass another large island, then bisect two more at 0400 and then arrive at Okinawa at 0800 tomorrow. I thanked him for his help, using one of my limited number of Japanese words, and he bowed slightly.
Until I came to Japan, the idea of bowing really offended me. But now, I see it in a different light. I guess I’d seen it in an English context; it is what commoners – like me – are expected to do to show deference to royalty and other noble people. I have never met a lord or a knight of the realm but if I did, I would be determined not to bow, curtsey, avoid eye contact or walk out of the room backwards, or whatever else protocol demands. I was brought up to believe that we are all equals and I intend to stick to that principle, even if it means offending a supposedly superior being.
In Japan, however, the bow seems to have a subtly different role. No doubt people would bend lower to the emperor, prime minister or the chief executive of Toyota, but it is amazing how many people bow to others. The security guards at Jim’s apartment; the police outside government buildings; and office workers bidding goodnight to their drinking partners, all bowed to some extent. On the Shinkansen from Tokyo to Osaka, the blue uniformed carriage attendants bowed as soon as they entered and just before they left the carriage, even if no one was watching.
And on Friday evening on our way to dinner, I experienced bowing for myself. Jim and Miwa were in the bookshop at the foot of their apartment building. I had bought a phrase book and was waiting for them outside, leaning on a wall, smoking and watching people meander in the still, warm evening. Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted a diminutive, shuffling white haired man with a carelessly trimmed short beard and a blue plastic carrier bag. He was wearing flip flops, rolled up jeans, a white V-neck sweater and a pained expression. He edged toward me with hopeful eyes.
He stopped and then very deliberately bowed, so low that I could see his balding crown. He returned to his normal position and said something pitiful in Japanese. Then, with pleading eyes and a rub of his tummy, he said: ‘Hungry. Please. Hungry.’ Something about his approach really touched me. Maybe it was his manners, or the bow, or perhaps his attempt to speak English, but I smiled and dug in my pocket.
I gave him a 500 yen piece (£2.50) and he thanked me, bowing repetitively. I felt a little mean so I then gave him a handful of smaller change. More shallow bowing followed and I began to feel uneasy; I dislike being the object of deference as much as I loathe being deferential. He might be down on his luck and hungry but we are still equals. So I told him it was OK. He asked if I was American. ‘No, English,’ I replied. He smiled and, after more gentle bowing, he shuffled away, counting his money.
Day 19: Ships in the Night
Saturday May 24 - On board the Hiryu, Osaka Port
At nine-thirty PM this evening, I was sitting on the back of nine rows of mustard coloured plastic chairs in Osaka Ferry Terminal. The room was just like any other ferry waiting room anywhere else in the developed world; there were signs, photographs of ships, timetables, vending machines and a flat screen TV showing a programme that features beautiful people having avoidable dramas to sugary music. Naturally, it wasn’t quite like Vladivostock ferry terminal; that place was similar but it didn’t have the timetables or signs.
There were four counters in the room and all had their roller-shutters closed. The only other person in the room was a young Japanese man in blue dungarees, with a tight headscarf, flip flops, a blue bicycle with small wheels and three panniers, and a wooden musical instrument case. He was also sitting on the back row. The man was noticeably darker-skinned than other Japanese, had a goatie beard twisted into a small point and feathery sideburns that finished half-way down his cheeks.
Soon after I arrived, I approached him and asked if he spoke English. He said no. We shook hands anyway. His was warm and soft. He said his name is Yosikawa. I grabbed my Japanese phrase book and, unfolding my map of the world, I showed him my journey using exaggerated sign language. His eyes widened, he shook his head in disbelief and he exclaimed in Japanese.
Yosikawa is 25 years old. I found the word ‘job’ in the phrase book and he nodded while using his fingers to snip an imaginary flower in the air. I inquisitively pointed at ‘garden’ and he said ‘Hai!’ Using the map, speaking in Japanese and employing sign language and sound effects, he showed me that he had travelled by ferry from Okinawa and bicycled and camped around the southernmost of the large Japanese islands, Kyusyu. I asked him how far. Over two weeks, he had covered 1,300 kilometres. I flexed my muscles in comic style, he beamed a toothy smile and humbly shook his head.
I asked if I could see his instrument. He nodded excitedly and opened the case. It was a caramel-brown, eight-stringed mandolin with a small flower transfer on the sound box. He started to talk in Japanese and I passed him the phrase book. He pointed at the word ‘difficult’ and then to the instrument. I mimed playing it and nodded. I retook the phrase book and managed to ask how old is the instrument. Seventy years, came the reply, and it was made in Germany.
Two more men arrived in the waiting room, each pulling suitcases on wheels. One was about fifty and had black trousers, a pair of glasses hanging out of the top pocket of his blue shirt and a light brown jacket. He had little hair at the back and large ears, and idly paced the room and read every notice in sight. The other man was younger and wearing combat pants, a fawn shirt and a blue baseball cap. He just slumped in a chair and watched TV.
I went for a cigarette and stared at the rain pounding on the terminal car park. Two lorries without trailers pulled up and the drivers, dressed in rubber boots and yellow oilskins, ran inside. I nodded and they nodded back.
When I returned to my seat, Yosikawa came over and gesticulated for the phrase book. While he flicked through, I dug in my bag and found two cans of beer. I offered one to him. He looked startled but quickly accepted. ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘Kampai!,’ I replied as I pulled the ring and clinked my can with his. He looked delighted that I at least knew the Japanese word for 'cheers!'
He continued looking through the phrase book and finally found the word ‘taikutsu.’ He acted out a yawn. I agreed, ‘Yes, waiting is boring.’ I dug in my bag again and found a random snack that I’d bought at Osaka station. It was a soft, unidentified, log-shaped white roll about 10 cm long. I ripped open the plastic packet, broke it in half and offered some to Yosikawa. He made an exclamation of appreciation and accepted. As I chewed, I asked him what it was. He flicked through the phrase book, couldn’t find the word and asked for paper and a pen.
He then drew a triangle with several wiggly lines coming from the base. Looking puzzled, I took the phrase book and pointed at ‘mushroom’. He shook his head and wrote the word ‘ika’ next to it. I was still baffled. Then out of nowhere he said ‘octopus.’ I laughed loudly, took the pen and drew a cartoon octopus, with a big, round head, eight long legs and a smile. He giggled and nodded his head. I then wrote ‘English octopus’ next to my drawing. Yosikawa laughed again, pointed at his drawing and said: ‘Japanese octopus.’ He asked if we ate octopus in England. I said no, but wondered why we don’t; it is very tasty.
I said that his octopus looked like a rocket. ‘Ah, rokketo,’ he said with a nod and a smile. He took the pen and paper and studiously drew an elaborate mushroom, some exploding fireworks and a three dimensional rocket. He is quite an artist, but octopi are not his strong point.
Returning from another cigarette, Yosikawa met me before I sat down. He had a piece of carefully folded newspaper in the palm of his hand. ‘For you,’ he said as he opened it. Inside were three tiny seashells, the largest no bigger than a pea. One was pearl-colour, another white with black spots and the third was dotted in brown. ‘From Okinawa. For friends,’ he looked at me and we both smiled.
I was touched. There are billions of similar seashells on the beaches of his island, each one has no intrinsic value and yet the fact that he presented them to me as a symbol of friendship meant more than if he’d given me a million yen. Desperate to return the gesture, I dug in my pockets and found some small change. I gave him three euro coins to match the three shells. He exclaimed approval and inspected them carefully. Seeing that one had a tree on the reverse side, his eyes lit up. ‘A tree for a gardener,’ I said. ‘Hai! Hai! Thank you, Gary-san.’
By now, the time was 1100. The booking desk had opened at ten – just as the sign had said – and the few passengers, including myself, had checked in and received boarding cards. In half an hour, we would be boarding the ship, the Hiryu, which we could see brooding in the orange dock-side floodlights, through the rain streaked window.
A group of six teenage girls, each with orange tints in their carefully styled hair, sat in the two rows in front of my seat. They took endless photos of each other on tiny cameras and mobile phones. As soon as one camera clicked, they all demanded to see the result with the subject animatedly gesturing that it wasn’t good enough.
Then three women, one carrying a moon-faced, heavy headed baby with a yellow dummy, and a man with a red and white striped shirt, jeans pulled up to his middle and a very long umbrella walked into the hall. One of the girls jumped up excitedly, greeted them and waved to the others to take photos. They were happy to oblige. I couldn’t resist and snapped a couple of shots too. The group noticed, pointed at me and laughed. ‘A beautiful baby,’ I said with a smile. ‘Yes,’ said one of the women, ‘She is a very beautiful baby. Good photo.’
As the clock approached eleven thirty, the man with the large ears stood up, stretched and reached for the handle of his bag. Sure enough, within seconds, the PA sprung into action and the other passengers rose wearily from their seats and started to move toward the door. I picked up my bags, looked over to Yosikawa and nodded inquisitively toward the exit. He shook his head, said something in Japanese and pointed to his bike. I guessed that he needed to put it in the cargo hold, so I saluted, he waved and I trudged out into the orange rain of the quayside toward the Hiryu.
At nine-thirty PM this evening, I was sitting on the back of nine rows of mustard coloured plastic chairs in Osaka Ferry Terminal. The room was just like any other ferry waiting room anywhere else in the developed world; there were signs, photographs of ships, timetables, vending machines and a flat screen TV showing a programme that features beautiful people having avoidable dramas to sugary music. Naturally, it wasn’t quite like Vladivostock ferry terminal; that place was similar but it didn’t have the timetables or signs.
There were four counters in the room and all had their roller-shutters closed. The only other person in the room was a young Japanese man in blue dungarees, with a tight headscarf, flip flops, a blue bicycle with small wheels and three panniers, and a wooden musical instrument case. He was also sitting on the back row. The man was noticeably darker-skinned than other Japanese, had a goatie beard twisted into a small point and feathery sideburns that finished half-way down his cheeks.
Soon after I arrived, I approached him and asked if he spoke English. He said no. We shook hands anyway. His was warm and soft. He said his name is Yosikawa. I grabbed my Japanese phrase book and, unfolding my map of the world, I showed him my journey using exaggerated sign language. His eyes widened, he shook his head in disbelief and he exclaimed in Japanese.
Yosikawa is 25 years old. I found the word ‘job’ in the phrase book and he nodded while using his fingers to snip an imaginary flower in the air. I inquisitively pointed at ‘garden’ and he said ‘Hai!’ Using the map, speaking in Japanese and employing sign language and sound effects, he showed me that he had travelled by ferry from Okinawa and bicycled and camped around the southernmost of the large Japanese islands, Kyusyu. I asked him how far. Over two weeks, he had covered 1,300 kilometres. I flexed my muscles in comic style, he beamed a toothy smile and humbly shook his head.
I asked if I could see his instrument. He nodded excitedly and opened the case. It was a caramel-brown, eight-stringed mandolin with a small flower transfer on the sound box. He started to talk in Japanese and I passed him the phrase book. He pointed at the word ‘difficult’ and then to the instrument. I mimed playing it and nodded. I retook the phrase book and managed to ask how old is the instrument. Seventy years, came the reply, and it was made in Germany.
Two more men arrived in the waiting room, each pulling suitcases on wheels. One was about fifty and had black trousers, a pair of glasses hanging out of the top pocket of his blue shirt and a light brown jacket. He had little hair at the back and large ears, and idly paced the room and read every notice in sight. The other man was younger and wearing combat pants, a fawn shirt and a blue baseball cap. He just slumped in a chair and watched TV.
I went for a cigarette and stared at the rain pounding on the terminal car park. Two lorries without trailers pulled up and the drivers, dressed in rubber boots and yellow oilskins, ran inside. I nodded and they nodded back.
When I returned to my seat, Yosikawa came over and gesticulated for the phrase book. While he flicked through, I dug in my bag and found two cans of beer. I offered one to him. He looked startled but quickly accepted. ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘Kampai!,’ I replied as I pulled the ring and clinked my can with his. He looked delighted that I at least knew the Japanese word for 'cheers!'
He continued looking through the phrase book and finally found the word ‘taikutsu.’ He acted out a yawn. I agreed, ‘Yes, waiting is boring.’ I dug in my bag again and found a random snack that I’d bought at Osaka station. It was a soft, unidentified, log-shaped white roll about 10 cm long. I ripped open the plastic packet, broke it in half and offered some to Yosikawa. He made an exclamation of appreciation and accepted. As I chewed, I asked him what it was. He flicked through the phrase book, couldn’t find the word and asked for paper and a pen.
He then drew a triangle with several wiggly lines coming from the base. Looking puzzled, I took the phrase book and pointed at ‘mushroom’. He shook his head and wrote the word ‘ika’ next to it. I was still baffled. Then out of nowhere he said ‘octopus.’ I laughed loudly, took the pen and drew a cartoon octopus, with a big, round head, eight long legs and a smile. He giggled and nodded his head. I then wrote ‘English octopus’ next to my drawing. Yosikawa laughed again, pointed at his drawing and said: ‘Japanese octopus.’ He asked if we ate octopus in England. I said no, but wondered why we don’t; it is very tasty.
I said that his octopus looked like a rocket. ‘Ah, rokketo,’ he said with a nod and a smile. He took the pen and paper and studiously drew an elaborate mushroom, some exploding fireworks and a three dimensional rocket. He is quite an artist, but octopi are not his strong point.
Returning from another cigarette, Yosikawa met me before I sat down. He had a piece of carefully folded newspaper in the palm of his hand. ‘For you,’ he said as he opened it. Inside were three tiny seashells, the largest no bigger than a pea. One was pearl-colour, another white with black spots and the third was dotted in brown. ‘From Okinawa. For friends,’ he looked at me and we both smiled.
I was touched. There are billions of similar seashells on the beaches of his island, each one has no intrinsic value and yet the fact that he presented them to me as a symbol of friendship meant more than if he’d given me a million yen. Desperate to return the gesture, I dug in my pockets and found some small change. I gave him three euro coins to match the three shells. He exclaimed approval and inspected them carefully. Seeing that one had a tree on the reverse side, his eyes lit up. ‘A tree for a gardener,’ I said. ‘Hai! Hai! Thank you, Gary-san.’
By now, the time was 1100. The booking desk had opened at ten – just as the sign had said – and the few passengers, including myself, had checked in and received boarding cards. In half an hour, we would be boarding the ship, the Hiryu, which we could see brooding in the orange dock-side floodlights, through the rain streaked window.
A group of six teenage girls, each with orange tints in their carefully styled hair, sat in the two rows in front of my seat. They took endless photos of each other on tiny cameras and mobile phones. As soon as one camera clicked, they all demanded to see the result with the subject animatedly gesturing that it wasn’t good enough.
Then three women, one carrying a moon-faced, heavy headed baby with a yellow dummy, and a man with a red and white striped shirt, jeans pulled up to his middle and a very long umbrella walked into the hall. One of the girls jumped up excitedly, greeted them and waved to the others to take photos. They were happy to oblige. I couldn’t resist and snapped a couple of shots too. The group noticed, pointed at me and laughed. ‘A beautiful baby,’ I said with a smile. ‘Yes,’ said one of the women, ‘She is a very beautiful baby. Good photo.’
As the clock approached eleven thirty, the man with the large ears stood up, stretched and reached for the handle of his bag. Sure enough, within seconds, the PA sprung into action and the other passengers rose wearily from their seats and started to move toward the door. I picked up my bags, looked over to Yosikawa and nodded inquisitively toward the exit. He shook his head, said something in Japanese and pointed to his bike. I guessed that he needed to put it in the cargo hold, so I saluted, he waved and I trudged out into the orange rain of the quayside toward the Hiryu.
Day 18: Dense and Intense
Friday May 23 - Roppongi Hills, Tokyo
There were two train journeys on Wednesday. The first was on a standard Japanese Rail train which put even the best British train to shame. Naturally, it arrived and departed bang on time. The sleek, silent white and red-striped beast sped through the flat coastal plain of Western Japan, past hundreds of perfectly rectangular paddy fields with just a few centimetres of green shoots, in geometrically precise rows, sprouting above water level. Some fields were no larger than British allotments, others were many acres in size, all were painstakingly maintained.
After about an hour, what looked like mis-shaped, pointed white clouds in the distance turned out to be the last remnants of the winter snow in the ravines and peaks of mountains. The bases of the mountains were the same colour as the sky which played a cruel trick on the eye. The summits seemed to be suspended in mid-air.
As we headed inland, the scenery changed. The paddy fields gave way to steep, wooded slopes and the train passed through numerous long tunnels. The terrain made the achievements of Japanese railway engineers even more impressive.
We arrived at Echigo-yuzawa and had just ten minutes to change platform and find the Shinkansen (Bullet Train) to Tokyo. It was four o’clock and the station was busy. But Dominic and I managed to find the platform, and even had time to grab a snack. True to his British roots, he grabbed a ham and egg sandwich. I took pot luck and chose a soft, rectangular item wrapped in clear plastic and a can of Asahi beer.
The Shinsanken drew into the platform and we found seats. The rectangular snack turned out to be rice with tuna in the middle, wrapped in a sheet of dried seaweed. It was the perfect compliment to the beer.
An hour and ten minutes later, we pulled into Tokyo Central, found the right exit and waited for Jim. He arrived on time, suited with a backpack slung over his shoulder and mobile phone pressed to his ear. We shook hands, I introduced him to Dominic. Before Dom and I wished each other bon voyage, Jim took us to a Citibank ATM – which definitely accepted MasterCard – and Dom withdrew some cash.
As we watched Dominic head down the steps of the subway station, I hoped that his luck would continue on the rest of his journey to visit his sister in Australia. There were times over the previous ten days when I shuddered at his lack of organisation and wondered how he had made it this far without a major crisis. He had no money belt or folder for his vital documents, merely a nylon duffel bag into which he would thrust a hopeful hand whenever he needed money, passport or an important piece of paper.
Dominic is a bright lad and good company but he plays the travel game fast and loose. Yet somehow, I am sure he will be fine; he has that rare combination of cheek and charm that will get him out of many a sticky situation.
Jim flagged down a cab and pointed out Tokyo landmarks on the way to his apartment. As we sped through the surprisingly fast-moving rush hour traffic, it struck me how well I know him and yet how long it has been since I spent any time with him. We met 28 years ago when we were doing our A levels. At the time, he was more interested in drinking, smoking and sport than studying and yet, even after messing up his education, he has become very successful in his career in the finance industry.
Jim has lived in Tokyo for 10 years, speaks excellent Japanese, has a Japanese partner, Miwa, and is a manager in equities at Mitsubishi Bank. His apartment and lifestyle is testament to his success and yet he remains as much a faithful, witty, hospitable and engaging friend as he was in our late teens. He no longer smokes or drinks, and he is much calmer than I remember him, but he is very much the same lad I met all those years ago. Indeed, I enjoyed his company even more than I did in the past. I just hope that I have matured as well as he has.
On Wednesday evening he took me out for a Korean meal, and we were joined by one of his friends, Mio, a diminutive, charming and attractive Japanese woman in her mid-thirties who speaks excellent English. Mio doesn’t drink alcohol; she is an enthusiastic yoga practitioner and exudes that serene, spiritual dignity that, in my experience, is so common among Asian women and so rare in their British counterparts.
We discussed cultural differences over delicate slithers of tongue cooked on a table-top barbeque, pickled radish and other Korean delights. Mio remained diplomatically non-judgemental throughout the conversation. This is another Asian trait that I admire immensely. I am not sure what Mio’s romantic status is but there is a very lucky guy out there who, one day, will capture her heart and, hopefully, not try to change her.
Thursday was a day of rest. I bumbled around Jim and Miwa’s apartment, wrote my blog, caught up on emails and slept some more. I sporadically leaned over the rail on the balcony, cigarette in one hand, coffee in the other, and tried to make sense of Tokyo.
It is an incredibly densely-packed city; modern, high rise buildings as far as the eye can see with not a square metre wasted. Compared to other capital cities, notably London and Paris, there is little evidence of history or open spaces. The reason is that the city was mercilessly fire-bombed by 300 B29s of the US on March 9th and 10th 1945 and all of Tokyo's traditional wooden buildings - and an estimated 100,000 civilian lives - were lost in the inferno.
Post-war rebuilding was very utilitarian and the rapid industrial expansion that followed made use of every available piece of ground, much in the same way that farmers can seemingly make rice paddies out of postage-stamp sized patches of land. Cities on the east coast just blend into each other. Yet somehow, in this human zoo, Tokyo is a peaceful place. Crime is very low and the atmosphere on the streets is non-threatening, even after dark.
This was evident on Thursday night when Jim, Miwa and I took a short subway journey to meet some of my ex-students – Mari, Jinmi and Kohei - for dinner. I smiled when I saw that Mari had booked a table at an Italian restaurant and then suggested we went to an English pub for a drink afterwards. But the lack of Japanese food and drink was irrelevant. It was great to see graduates earning a good wage and happy in their work, although none of them have yet got jobs in journalism.
At around midnight, Jim took me on a stroll through the harsh lights of downtown Tokyo on the way home and I was struck by how many people had obviously gone straight out from work. Suited office workers, mostly men, many carrying briefcases, were still going strong without the rampant drunkenness that characterises British cities. The staying power of the Japanese office worker is even more impressive when one considers that many people commute for an hour or so to get to work, and the start time is often seven or eight in the morning.
Many shops were also open at midnight. After dinner, very late on Wednesday night, for example, I bought a network cable for my laptop from a narrow-aisled, multi-storied and very busy shop called Don Quixote, which sold everything from cosmetics to televisions. Some, including the bookshop at the foot of Jim and Miwa’s apartment block, are open 24 hours.
Tokyo, like New York, is a city that never sleeps. This may suit some people but for an insomniac like me, who also needs space and appreciates peace and quiet, Tokyo is too intense. I can see the attraction for people like Jim and Miwa who enjoy the endless choices of shops, restaurants and experiences, and the city's incessant vibrancy, but I much prefer the sedate atmosphere and clean air of a small city like, erm, Cardiff.
There were two train journeys on Wednesday. The first was on a standard Japanese Rail train which put even the best British train to shame. Naturally, it arrived and departed bang on time. The sleek, silent white and red-striped beast sped through the flat coastal plain of Western Japan, past hundreds of perfectly rectangular paddy fields with just a few centimetres of green shoots, in geometrically precise rows, sprouting above water level. Some fields were no larger than British allotments, others were many acres in size, all were painstakingly maintained.
After about an hour, what looked like mis-shaped, pointed white clouds in the distance turned out to be the last remnants of the winter snow in the ravines and peaks of mountains. The bases of the mountains were the same colour as the sky which played a cruel trick on the eye. The summits seemed to be suspended in mid-air.
As we headed inland, the scenery changed. The paddy fields gave way to steep, wooded slopes and the train passed through numerous long tunnels. The terrain made the achievements of Japanese railway engineers even more impressive.
We arrived at Echigo-yuzawa and had just ten minutes to change platform and find the Shinkansen (Bullet Train) to Tokyo. It was four o’clock and the station was busy. But Dominic and I managed to find the platform, and even had time to grab a snack. True to his British roots, he grabbed a ham and egg sandwich. I took pot luck and chose a soft, rectangular item wrapped in clear plastic and a can of Asahi beer.
The Shinsanken drew into the platform and we found seats. The rectangular snack turned out to be rice with tuna in the middle, wrapped in a sheet of dried seaweed. It was the perfect compliment to the beer.
An hour and ten minutes later, we pulled into Tokyo Central, found the right exit and waited for Jim. He arrived on time, suited with a backpack slung over his shoulder and mobile phone pressed to his ear. We shook hands, I introduced him to Dominic. Before Dom and I wished each other bon voyage, Jim took us to a Citibank ATM – which definitely accepted MasterCard – and Dom withdrew some cash.
As we watched Dominic head down the steps of the subway station, I hoped that his luck would continue on the rest of his journey to visit his sister in Australia. There were times over the previous ten days when I shuddered at his lack of organisation and wondered how he had made it this far without a major crisis. He had no money belt or folder for his vital documents, merely a nylon duffel bag into which he would thrust a hopeful hand whenever he needed money, passport or an important piece of paper.
Dominic is a bright lad and good company but he plays the travel game fast and loose. Yet somehow, I am sure he will be fine; he has that rare combination of cheek and charm that will get him out of many a sticky situation.
Jim flagged down a cab and pointed out Tokyo landmarks on the way to his apartment. As we sped through the surprisingly fast-moving rush hour traffic, it struck me how well I know him and yet how long it has been since I spent any time with him. We met 28 years ago when we were doing our A levels. At the time, he was more interested in drinking, smoking and sport than studying and yet, even after messing up his education, he has become very successful in his career in the finance industry.
Jim has lived in Tokyo for 10 years, speaks excellent Japanese, has a Japanese partner, Miwa, and is a manager in equities at Mitsubishi Bank. His apartment and lifestyle is testament to his success and yet he remains as much a faithful, witty, hospitable and engaging friend as he was in our late teens. He no longer smokes or drinks, and he is much calmer than I remember him, but he is very much the same lad I met all those years ago. Indeed, I enjoyed his company even more than I did in the past. I just hope that I have matured as well as he has.
On Wednesday evening he took me out for a Korean meal, and we were joined by one of his friends, Mio, a diminutive, charming and attractive Japanese woman in her mid-thirties who speaks excellent English. Mio doesn’t drink alcohol; she is an enthusiastic yoga practitioner and exudes that serene, spiritual dignity that, in my experience, is so common among Asian women and so rare in their British counterparts.
We discussed cultural differences over delicate slithers of tongue cooked on a table-top barbeque, pickled radish and other Korean delights. Mio remained diplomatically non-judgemental throughout the conversation. This is another Asian trait that I admire immensely. I am not sure what Mio’s romantic status is but there is a very lucky guy out there who, one day, will capture her heart and, hopefully, not try to change her.
Thursday was a day of rest. I bumbled around Jim and Miwa’s apartment, wrote my blog, caught up on emails and slept some more. I sporadically leaned over the rail on the balcony, cigarette in one hand, coffee in the other, and tried to make sense of Tokyo.
It is an incredibly densely-packed city; modern, high rise buildings as far as the eye can see with not a square metre wasted. Compared to other capital cities, notably London and Paris, there is little evidence of history or open spaces. The reason is that the city was mercilessly fire-bombed by 300 B29s of the US on March 9th and 10th 1945 and all of Tokyo's traditional wooden buildings - and an estimated 100,000 civilian lives - were lost in the inferno.
Post-war rebuilding was very utilitarian and the rapid industrial expansion that followed made use of every available piece of ground, much in the same way that farmers can seemingly make rice paddies out of postage-stamp sized patches of land. Cities on the east coast just blend into each other. Yet somehow, in this human zoo, Tokyo is a peaceful place. Crime is very low and the atmosphere on the streets is non-threatening, even after dark.
This was evident on Thursday night when Jim, Miwa and I took a short subway journey to meet some of my ex-students – Mari, Jinmi and Kohei - for dinner. I smiled when I saw that Mari had booked a table at an Italian restaurant and then suggested we went to an English pub for a drink afterwards. But the lack of Japanese food and drink was irrelevant. It was great to see graduates earning a good wage and happy in their work, although none of them have yet got jobs in journalism.
At around midnight, Jim took me on a stroll through the harsh lights of downtown Tokyo on the way home and I was struck by how many people had obviously gone straight out from work. Suited office workers, mostly men, many carrying briefcases, were still going strong without the rampant drunkenness that characterises British cities. The staying power of the Japanese office worker is even more impressive when one considers that many people commute for an hour or so to get to work, and the start time is often seven or eight in the morning.
Many shops were also open at midnight. After dinner, very late on Wednesday night, for example, I bought a network cable for my laptop from a narrow-aisled, multi-storied and very busy shop called Don Quixote, which sold everything from cosmetics to televisions. Some, including the bookshop at the foot of Jim and Miwa’s apartment block, are open 24 hours.
Tokyo, like New York, is a city that never sleeps. This may suit some people but for an insomniac like me, who also needs space and appreciates peace and quiet, Tokyo is too intense. I can see the attraction for people like Jim and Miwa who enjoy the endless choices of shops, restaurants and experiences, and the city's incessant vibrancy, but I much prefer the sedate atmosphere and clean air of a small city like, erm, Cardiff.
Sunday, 25 May 2008
Day 17: Japanese Haze
Thursday May 22 - Roppongi Hills, Tokyo
Travelling by train and boat is exhausting. And today, I had a much needed break. I am currently the guest of an old friend, Jimmy Muir, and his fiancé, Miwa. I am writing late at night on the balcony of their 16th floor apartment, looking out over downtown Tokyo.
In the near distance, the Tokyo Tower – made famous by Godzilla – dominates the view and glows like a cross between the Eiffel Tower and an orange and yellow-striped electric popsicle. Behind it, countless skyscrapers loom in the darkness, with their red-lights blinking like hyperactive cherries demanding to be picked first.
Jim met me at Tokyo railway station yesterday at 1730. He brought me straight back to the apartment in a taxi. His and Miwa’s home is spacious, stylish and modern, with everything one might expect to find in a contemporary Japanese home. Technology is everywhere and the highlight was the intelligent toilet complete with a discrete wall-mounted control box.
Jim has set it to automatic, so when you stand next to it, the lid and the seat lift and the pan is gently illuminated. Once you have performed your duty, the toilet flushes itself and the seat and lid return to the start position.
It does much more, depending on the settings. I asked if it can detect the gender of the user and, hence, decide whether to lift the seat or not. Or, indeed, if the toilet can tell what type of action one needs to perform, or how much toilet paper should be dispensed. Apparently, these functions are not available but I am sure scientists are working on them.
Jim and Miwa’s home is a far cry from life on the MV Rus. The two days crossing the Sea of Japan from Vladivostock were pleasant enough but the surroundings were distinctly last century. The journey itself was a breeze: the sea was largely calm with only a minimal swell and the weather was benign. But the décor, the service, the food, and even the appearance of the Russian crew and passengers were dated to the extreme.
Apparently, this was the boat’s first voyage since a major update and I can only assume that the focus was the nuts and bolts rather than the interior. The latter reminded me of elderly relatives’ homes circa 1970.
Even so, time passed very pleasantly. I spent most of Tuesday in my quarters, writing and editing my photos. I slept in the afternoon and then joined Marc and Carsten for dinner. As with lunch – and the other meals (naturally I missed both breakfasts) – I was a little late and the food was delivered tepid to the table. There were always three courses but never a dessert. The starter was (intentionally) cold, followed by a watery soup, and then a main course that centred around chewy meat.
Meal times were the only part of the schedule, from pre-departure to arrival in Fushiki, which stuck to a timetable. Rather like British seaside guest houses, breakfast, lunch and dinner are served at precise times (nine, one and seven respectively) and the restaurant was open for an hour only. The food was delivered by mini-skirted, white shirted waitresses in their thirties, with smiles but little humour. There was no choice of food or table (even though the cavernous restaurant had plenty of empty seats) and drinks had to be bought by the diner from the bar.
The highlight of the sea trip was undoubtedly the company. I was determined not to drink too much on the second and last night because I wanted to be fresh and alert for the trip from Fushiki to Tokyo. But at ten thirty, I left my cabin and joined the others in the bar. I spotted them easily, a group of eight in the half-light, sitting on stainless steel chairs around a low glass-topped table.
The bar was otherwise empty, apart from small groups of large Russian men and a couple of Japanese who were idly watching a Russian comedy show on bar-top TV. A pair of huge loudspeakers insisted on spreading the slapstick humour throughout the bar. William, the seventy-five year old Dutchman, decided to make the atmosphere more conducive to conversation and mischievously disconnected the cable from the back of the speaker furthest from the bar. None of the Russians noticed.
William’s and his partner, Anne-Marie, worked their way through a litre-and-a-half flagon of Californian white wine that they had bought on the previous night. It had been parked in my cabin’s fridge for most of Monday but it was still too warm to be classed as anything other than disgusting.
Marc, Carsten, Dominic and I drank Asahi beer and, when the bar’s fridge was empty, we had Sapporo. Dominic’s slightly-built, pony-tailed, boyishly handsome and rather reserved Japanese room-mate, Umon, was on the warm saki. He was sitting next to a new recruit to our party, the demure Mao, a Japanese woman in her early twenties who had been working in Russia but was returning to her studies at home.
The other person was Rosalind, a sixtyish-year old mother, farmer and follower of Zen Buddhism from Switzerland. She had travelled alone, in a third class dormitory carriage on the Trans-Siberian with the lowliest of Russian conscripts.
Of all the people I met on this part of my trip, she was the one I most admired and the person that I unfortunately spoke to the least. Her mission was spiritual – she will be visiting Buddhist centres in Japan and then India – and, apart from one flight, her journey to Asia and back is by train and ship. The final leg involves a cabin on a container ship from India to Italy.
Carsten, Dominic, William and I got involved in a heated discussion about geo-politics. The accumulated wisdom of William was in sharp contrast to the youthful simplicity of Dominic’s point of view.
William knows all about war and conflict. As a child, he spent four years in an internment camp in Indonesia after the Japanese invasion. Over the next sixty years, he saw the end of major conflict in Europe (with the exception of the Balkans in the 1990s) for the first time in two thousand years and, unsurprisingly, he is a committed believer in jaw-jaw rather than war-war.
He, Carsten and I were arguing in favour of the European Union, or indeed, any non-military form of politics because, quite simply, the last sixty years have demonstrated that this approach is much more effective than bloody warfare.
Dominic, on the other hand, believes that the nuclear deterrent is the reason that Britain has not been involved in conflict with its European neighbours since 1945. His arguments were unconvincing but he presented them with conviction. At times, his frustration was palpable and he occasionally gripped the short hair around his temples and growled. He simply didn’t have the words or the facts to support his case.
We listened patiently to Dominic’s views on Europe, terrorism and immigration, and we politely tried to convince him that they had little basis in reality. Carsten put his case calmly, with a measured tone and well chosen words. Had I not known he was an airline pilot, I could have guessed.
William was more passionate and demonstrative, sitting cross legged, leaning forward into the debate. He used his left hand to emphasise his points while his right hand held a Gauloise that was, more often than not, unlit.
At a little after one AM, I wished everyone good-night and retired for the evening. The schedule said that the boat would arrive at Fushiki at nine AM but, given our experiences so far, we had no reason to believe this.
Sure enough, the next morning at about nine, the boat stopped with the Japanese coast just visible through the morning haze. The PA rang out with the tinny, rising four-tone prefix and then a message: breakfast is being served. I slept on. Further messages followed, mostly in Russian but occasionally in English. The latter were asking individuals to come to the information desk. But there was no general announcement about where we were, what we needed to do or what might happen next.
Around an hour later, I felt the boat starting to move again. I got up and went to the information desk. I saw William and Anne-Marie and they told me that I needed to fill in customs and immigration forms, which I collected from the desk. I returned to my cabin and completed them. Unlike their Russian equivalents, they were in English.
Another 30 minutes passed. More PA announcements in Russian but still no general news on what we need to do or when. I went to Dominic and Umon’s cabin. Dom was crashed out on his bed and the room was a mess. I asked what we needed to do. Dom said we had to wait for Japanese customs to visit our room.
So I returned to my cabin and waited. Around thirty minutes later, there was a knock at the door. I opened it to two Japanese men; a skinny, young guy in a blue boiler suit and an older, fatter man in an official-looking khaki uniform. I invited them in and gave them my passport and customs form. The senior man sat on the sofa and scanned the room as if he might be interested in buying it. The junior partner read the form meticulously. The man on the sofa asked me a few basic questions in broken English, nodding his head sagely as I answered, and the junior loudly counted my three bags.
It seemed that they were just passing time. Just as I was running out of small talk, the junior partner asked if he could see inside my bags. I opened my small backpack and invited him to have a look. He pulled out my video camera, some cables and adaptors and then the mini-disc recorder and microphone that the BBC had loaned to me.
He stared at them, said something to his colleague in Japanese and they both started laughing. I was bemused. The boiler-suited guy said: ‘This is very old technology. You should upgrade in Japan.’ I agreed with a smile. At that point, they realised that I was no threat to the Japanese state, they bid me well and went on to the next cabin.
Shortly, another announcement came on the PA. It was in Russian as usual but there was something in the tone that made me think it was important. Sure enough, I heard doors opening and footsteps in the corridor. My fellow passengers were moving out so I followed them.
Again, I saw William by the reception desk and he said we needed to queue outside the ballroom to go through immigration. He also told me that Japanese time was two hours behind Vladivostock, which meant that the boat pretty much arrived on time.
I adjusted my watch, took my place in line and waited to be called. There were about fifteen Japanese immigration officials in the ballroom, some standing around and supervising, others sitting at tables with computers. When it was my turn, one of the ship’s crew gave me my passport and I took it to a wide, bespectacled, white shirted young man with a big smile and gelled hair. He went through my form and asked me to fill in the exact address of where I’d be staying. The Russian guy at the information desk said that ‘Tokyo’ would suffice. He was wrong.
Once he was happy with this, he took electronic fingerprints of my index fingers, and a photograph. He stuck a Japanese visa in my passport, smiled and wished me well. This procedure was infinitely more efficient and convincing than the Russian system in the UK that involved a seven day wait, ninety pounds and careful answers to questions on the lengthy form. Getting into Japan also took about a quarter of the time needed to get out of Russia.
The boat was now in dock but we nine companions decided to have a final lunch before setting foot on Japanese soil. As with every other meal on the MV Rus, it was underwhelming. We then picked up our bags, walked down treacherously steep stairs – with no signs, of course – and made it to the gloomy car deck. We headed toward the bright sun that beamed through the massive open doors, and at just after noon, we took our first steps in Japan.
The strong sunshine was a marked contrast to Vladivostock. The temperature was around fifteen degrees higher and the air was still. We walked across the dock and showed our passports to a uniformed guard. It was at this point that we thanked fate for giving us Umon. He asked directions to the railway station and we dutifully followed, dragging our cases and humping our backpacks, and bemoaning the inefficiencies of the Russians.
Fushiki seemed to be having a siesta. Bemused locals showed only passing interest in this rag-bag band of itinerant foreigners. The only shop that seemed to be open was a fishmonger. A tiny old woman was chatting to the owner next to an open refrigerated cabinet of anonymous creatures of the deep. They briefly glanced at us and returned to their gossip.
The station was tiny and deserted, save for a few taxi cabs and their drivers. One of them spoke to Umon and he reported that the station was closed because of essential maintenance on the track. So we divided into threes and took taxis to the mainline station of Takaoka.
The cabs were old, box shaped and modest. The driver wore ties and white shirts and, as soon as the doors were closed, donned peaked caps with white covers. Marc sat in the front and I shared the back seat with Anne-Marie. She dug her camera out of her bag and took some snaps of the dainty lace covers on the seats.
Fifteen minutes later, we arrived in Takaoka. Umon ordered our tickets, deciphered the timetables and then, when he was satisfied that we were all pointing in the right direction, took his own train. The rest of us stood under a shelter out of the midday sun and chatted as we absorbed the scene.
It was at this point that two facts about Japan came painfully to light. First, none of us could get signals on our mobile phones. They had worked perfectly well in Russia but, contrary to what Orange had told me before I left the UK, mine could not find a signal. Jim and my Japanese friends had warned me that Japan uses a different network type to the rest of the world, but I assumed that my mobile company knew the facts. I was wrong.
The other is that not many places in Japan take MasterCard. The habitually badly organised Dominic found this the hard way when he tried to buy his rail ticket. I paid for him with my Visa card and then he and Carsten, accompanied by Umon, fruitlessly tried to get cash from every bank in Takaoka.
As the rest of us waited, we watched suited smokers make calls on their mobiles, excited schoolgirls in pseudo-sailor uniforms, effeminate teenage schoolboys with feathery haircuts and the occasional, diminutive, shuffling old person come and go. Our banter was light-hearted but we knew that the time was fast approaching when we too would go our separate ways.
The first to depart were Anne-Marie and William who took another cab to pick up their hire car. Rosalind was next, then Mao caught her bus, Marc and Carsten got their train to Kyoto and, finally, Dominic and I went through the barrier and boarded the train to Echigo-yuzawa.
Travelling by train and boat is exhausting. And today, I had a much needed break. I am currently the guest of an old friend, Jimmy Muir, and his fiancé, Miwa. I am writing late at night on the balcony of their 16th floor apartment, looking out over downtown Tokyo.
In the near distance, the Tokyo Tower – made famous by Godzilla – dominates the view and glows like a cross between the Eiffel Tower and an orange and yellow-striped electric popsicle. Behind it, countless skyscrapers loom in the darkness, with their red-lights blinking like hyperactive cherries demanding to be picked first.
Jim met me at Tokyo railway station yesterday at 1730. He brought me straight back to the apartment in a taxi. His and Miwa’s home is spacious, stylish and modern, with everything one might expect to find in a contemporary Japanese home. Technology is everywhere and the highlight was the intelligent toilet complete with a discrete wall-mounted control box.
Jim has set it to automatic, so when you stand next to it, the lid and the seat lift and the pan is gently illuminated. Once you have performed your duty, the toilet flushes itself and the seat and lid return to the start position.
It does much more, depending on the settings. I asked if it can detect the gender of the user and, hence, decide whether to lift the seat or not. Or, indeed, if the toilet can tell what type of action one needs to perform, or how much toilet paper should be dispensed. Apparently, these functions are not available but I am sure scientists are working on them.
Jim and Miwa’s home is a far cry from life on the MV Rus. The two days crossing the Sea of Japan from Vladivostock were pleasant enough but the surroundings were distinctly last century. The journey itself was a breeze: the sea was largely calm with only a minimal swell and the weather was benign. But the décor, the service, the food, and even the appearance of the Russian crew and passengers were dated to the extreme.
Apparently, this was the boat’s first voyage since a major update and I can only assume that the focus was the nuts and bolts rather than the interior. The latter reminded me of elderly relatives’ homes circa 1970.
Even so, time passed very pleasantly. I spent most of Tuesday in my quarters, writing and editing my photos. I slept in the afternoon and then joined Marc and Carsten for dinner. As with lunch – and the other meals (naturally I missed both breakfasts) – I was a little late and the food was delivered tepid to the table. There were always three courses but never a dessert. The starter was (intentionally) cold, followed by a watery soup, and then a main course that centred around chewy meat.
Meal times were the only part of the schedule, from pre-departure to arrival in Fushiki, which stuck to a timetable. Rather like British seaside guest houses, breakfast, lunch and dinner are served at precise times (nine, one and seven respectively) and the restaurant was open for an hour only. The food was delivered by mini-skirted, white shirted waitresses in their thirties, with smiles but little humour. There was no choice of food or table (even though the cavernous restaurant had plenty of empty seats) and drinks had to be bought by the diner from the bar.
The highlight of the sea trip was undoubtedly the company. I was determined not to drink too much on the second and last night because I wanted to be fresh and alert for the trip from Fushiki to Tokyo. But at ten thirty, I left my cabin and joined the others in the bar. I spotted them easily, a group of eight in the half-light, sitting on stainless steel chairs around a low glass-topped table.
The bar was otherwise empty, apart from small groups of large Russian men and a couple of Japanese who were idly watching a Russian comedy show on bar-top TV. A pair of huge loudspeakers insisted on spreading the slapstick humour throughout the bar. William, the seventy-five year old Dutchman, decided to make the atmosphere more conducive to conversation and mischievously disconnected the cable from the back of the speaker furthest from the bar. None of the Russians noticed.
William’s and his partner, Anne-Marie, worked their way through a litre-and-a-half flagon of Californian white wine that they had bought on the previous night. It had been parked in my cabin’s fridge for most of Monday but it was still too warm to be classed as anything other than disgusting.
Marc, Carsten, Dominic and I drank Asahi beer and, when the bar’s fridge was empty, we had Sapporo. Dominic’s slightly-built, pony-tailed, boyishly handsome and rather reserved Japanese room-mate, Umon, was on the warm saki. He was sitting next to a new recruit to our party, the demure Mao, a Japanese woman in her early twenties who had been working in Russia but was returning to her studies at home.
The other person was Rosalind, a sixtyish-year old mother, farmer and follower of Zen Buddhism from Switzerland. She had travelled alone, in a third class dormitory carriage on the Trans-Siberian with the lowliest of Russian conscripts.
Of all the people I met on this part of my trip, she was the one I most admired and the person that I unfortunately spoke to the least. Her mission was spiritual – she will be visiting Buddhist centres in Japan and then India – and, apart from one flight, her journey to Asia and back is by train and ship. The final leg involves a cabin on a container ship from India to Italy.
Carsten, Dominic, William and I got involved in a heated discussion about geo-politics. The accumulated wisdom of William was in sharp contrast to the youthful simplicity of Dominic’s point of view.
William knows all about war and conflict. As a child, he spent four years in an internment camp in Indonesia after the Japanese invasion. Over the next sixty years, he saw the end of major conflict in Europe (with the exception of the Balkans in the 1990s) for the first time in two thousand years and, unsurprisingly, he is a committed believer in jaw-jaw rather than war-war.
He, Carsten and I were arguing in favour of the European Union, or indeed, any non-military form of politics because, quite simply, the last sixty years have demonstrated that this approach is much more effective than bloody warfare.
Dominic, on the other hand, believes that the nuclear deterrent is the reason that Britain has not been involved in conflict with its European neighbours since 1945. His arguments were unconvincing but he presented them with conviction. At times, his frustration was palpable and he occasionally gripped the short hair around his temples and growled. He simply didn’t have the words or the facts to support his case.
We listened patiently to Dominic’s views on Europe, terrorism and immigration, and we politely tried to convince him that they had little basis in reality. Carsten put his case calmly, with a measured tone and well chosen words. Had I not known he was an airline pilot, I could have guessed.
William was more passionate and demonstrative, sitting cross legged, leaning forward into the debate. He used his left hand to emphasise his points while his right hand held a Gauloise that was, more often than not, unlit.
At a little after one AM, I wished everyone good-night and retired for the evening. The schedule said that the boat would arrive at Fushiki at nine AM but, given our experiences so far, we had no reason to believe this.
Sure enough, the next morning at about nine, the boat stopped with the Japanese coast just visible through the morning haze. The PA rang out with the tinny, rising four-tone prefix and then a message: breakfast is being served. I slept on. Further messages followed, mostly in Russian but occasionally in English. The latter were asking individuals to come to the information desk. But there was no general announcement about where we were, what we needed to do or what might happen next.
Around an hour later, I felt the boat starting to move again. I got up and went to the information desk. I saw William and Anne-Marie and they told me that I needed to fill in customs and immigration forms, which I collected from the desk. I returned to my cabin and completed them. Unlike their Russian equivalents, they were in English.
Another 30 minutes passed. More PA announcements in Russian but still no general news on what we need to do or when. I went to Dominic and Umon’s cabin. Dom was crashed out on his bed and the room was a mess. I asked what we needed to do. Dom said we had to wait for Japanese customs to visit our room.
So I returned to my cabin and waited. Around thirty minutes later, there was a knock at the door. I opened it to two Japanese men; a skinny, young guy in a blue boiler suit and an older, fatter man in an official-looking khaki uniform. I invited them in and gave them my passport and customs form. The senior man sat on the sofa and scanned the room as if he might be interested in buying it. The junior partner read the form meticulously. The man on the sofa asked me a few basic questions in broken English, nodding his head sagely as I answered, and the junior loudly counted my three bags.
It seemed that they were just passing time. Just as I was running out of small talk, the junior partner asked if he could see inside my bags. I opened my small backpack and invited him to have a look. He pulled out my video camera, some cables and adaptors and then the mini-disc recorder and microphone that the BBC had loaned to me.
He stared at them, said something to his colleague in Japanese and they both started laughing. I was bemused. The boiler-suited guy said: ‘This is very old technology. You should upgrade in Japan.’ I agreed with a smile. At that point, they realised that I was no threat to the Japanese state, they bid me well and went on to the next cabin.
Shortly, another announcement came on the PA. It was in Russian as usual but there was something in the tone that made me think it was important. Sure enough, I heard doors opening and footsteps in the corridor. My fellow passengers were moving out so I followed them.
Again, I saw William by the reception desk and he said we needed to queue outside the ballroom to go through immigration. He also told me that Japanese time was two hours behind Vladivostock, which meant that the boat pretty much arrived on time.
I adjusted my watch, took my place in line and waited to be called. There were about fifteen Japanese immigration officials in the ballroom, some standing around and supervising, others sitting at tables with computers. When it was my turn, one of the ship’s crew gave me my passport and I took it to a wide, bespectacled, white shirted young man with a big smile and gelled hair. He went through my form and asked me to fill in the exact address of where I’d be staying. The Russian guy at the information desk said that ‘Tokyo’ would suffice. He was wrong.
Once he was happy with this, he took electronic fingerprints of my index fingers, and a photograph. He stuck a Japanese visa in my passport, smiled and wished me well. This procedure was infinitely more efficient and convincing than the Russian system in the UK that involved a seven day wait, ninety pounds and careful answers to questions on the lengthy form. Getting into Japan also took about a quarter of the time needed to get out of Russia.
The boat was now in dock but we nine companions decided to have a final lunch before setting foot on Japanese soil. As with every other meal on the MV Rus, it was underwhelming. We then picked up our bags, walked down treacherously steep stairs – with no signs, of course – and made it to the gloomy car deck. We headed toward the bright sun that beamed through the massive open doors, and at just after noon, we took our first steps in Japan.
The strong sunshine was a marked contrast to Vladivostock. The temperature was around fifteen degrees higher and the air was still. We walked across the dock and showed our passports to a uniformed guard. It was at this point that we thanked fate for giving us Umon. He asked directions to the railway station and we dutifully followed, dragging our cases and humping our backpacks, and bemoaning the inefficiencies of the Russians.
Fushiki seemed to be having a siesta. Bemused locals showed only passing interest in this rag-bag band of itinerant foreigners. The only shop that seemed to be open was a fishmonger. A tiny old woman was chatting to the owner next to an open refrigerated cabinet of anonymous creatures of the deep. They briefly glanced at us and returned to their gossip.
The station was tiny and deserted, save for a few taxi cabs and their drivers. One of them spoke to Umon and he reported that the station was closed because of essential maintenance on the track. So we divided into threes and took taxis to the mainline station of Takaoka.
The cabs were old, box shaped and modest. The driver wore ties and white shirts and, as soon as the doors were closed, donned peaked caps with white covers. Marc sat in the front and I shared the back seat with Anne-Marie. She dug her camera out of her bag and took some snaps of the dainty lace covers on the seats.
Fifteen minutes later, we arrived in Takaoka. Umon ordered our tickets, deciphered the timetables and then, when he was satisfied that we were all pointing in the right direction, took his own train. The rest of us stood under a shelter out of the midday sun and chatted as we absorbed the scene.
It was at this point that two facts about Japan came painfully to light. First, none of us could get signals on our mobile phones. They had worked perfectly well in Russia but, contrary to what Orange had told me before I left the UK, mine could not find a signal. Jim and my Japanese friends had warned me that Japan uses a different network type to the rest of the world, but I assumed that my mobile company knew the facts. I was wrong.
The other is that not many places in Japan take MasterCard. The habitually badly organised Dominic found this the hard way when he tried to buy his rail ticket. I paid for him with my Visa card and then he and Carsten, accompanied by Umon, fruitlessly tried to get cash from every bank in Takaoka.
As the rest of us waited, we watched suited smokers make calls on their mobiles, excited schoolgirls in pseudo-sailor uniforms, effeminate teenage schoolboys with feathery haircuts and the occasional, diminutive, shuffling old person come and go. Our banter was light-hearted but we knew that the time was fast approaching when we too would go our separate ways.
The first to depart were Anne-Marie and William who took another cab to pick up their hire car. Rosalind was next, then Mao caught her bus, Marc and Carsten got their train to Kyoto and, finally, Dominic and I went through the barrier and boarded the train to Echigo-yuzawa.
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.
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.
Day 14: Oppression and Un-information
Monday May 19 - MV Rus, Vladivostock Harbour
Finally we have boarded the ship and in a few minutes we will set sail for Japan. It has been a long, long day.
After saying farewell to Fizle and hugging her twice on the drizzled door step of the hotel, and seeing her safely into an unmarked taxi cab (she was told by the hotel receptionist to look for a certain licence plate number), I returned to the room and phoned the local travel agency.
The ticket which they had issued for the boat trip was extremely short on detail. Apart from the date of departure, the boat name, the route and the cabin number, there was nothing. No check in time, no details of where or how to check in, not even a departure time.
The travel agency is based in Vladivostock and yet the phone line sounded like it stretched to Africa, in the 1940s. I could just about hear the woman's meagre guidance: ‘Go to the sea station… at 1800… and look for office.’ But what time do I check in? ‘Go early.’ How early? She didn’t know. What time does the boat leave? ‘At about 10 pm.’ 'About?' I said that the schedule said six. ‘Maybe,’ she said.
This boat only makes one journey to Japan a week and the last thing I wanted was to spend another seven days in the grey, misty twilight zone of Vladivostock, with its pitted pavements, anarchic roads (people drive on the right but have right-hand drive cars imported from Japan) and marauding military police.
Even though Russia is nominally a democracy, uniforms are everywhere. The standard police look rather innocuous with their over-sized hats with red bands but the others are menacing. Some wear tight-belted leather jerkins, like U-Boat captains, with long truncheons hanging out the back, baseball-style peakd caps, and combat pants tucked into calf-length boots.
Others wear grey-black-blue-white camouflage and permanent sneers. And then there are those in olive green who seem to be a cut above the others. I am not sure which group has what responsibility but I have seen them stop people in the street, typically anyone who looks distinctly non-Russian (Chinese, Japanese, dark skinned, etc.) and inspect their passports with icy indifference.
This was more noticeable in Vladivostock than in Moscow, I guess because the latter is a tourist destination but also because of the former’s military importance, and because Vladivostock was, until 1991, a closed city. This meant that even Russians from other regions could not enter without a permit.
Even though there is an air of authoritarianism in Russia, I didn’t see a single CCTV camera. The UK, of course, has more than any other country so you could argue it is just as oppressive as Russia. At least Russia has the balls to be personally oppressive.
The bureaucracy is also oppressive at times. If you stay at the same place for three days or more, you have to register your stay with the authorities. Thankfully, the train didn’t count, and we only stayed at the Hotel Versailles for one night. I could have gladly stayed for another, just to readjust my body clock and to catch up on sleep, but I had a boat to catch. I just wished that I knew where and when and how to catch it.
Finally we have boarded the ship and in a few minutes we will set sail for Japan. It has been a long, long day.
After saying farewell to Fizle and hugging her twice on the drizzled door step of the hotel, and seeing her safely into an unmarked taxi cab (she was told by the hotel receptionist to look for a certain licence plate number), I returned to the room and phoned the local travel agency.
The ticket which they had issued for the boat trip was extremely short on detail. Apart from the date of departure, the boat name, the route and the cabin number, there was nothing. No check in time, no details of where or how to check in, not even a departure time.
The travel agency is based in Vladivostock and yet the phone line sounded like it stretched to Africa, in the 1940s. I could just about hear the woman's meagre guidance: ‘Go to the sea station… at 1800… and look for office.’ But what time do I check in? ‘Go early.’ How early? She didn’t know. What time does the boat leave? ‘At about 10 pm.’ 'About?' I said that the schedule said six. ‘Maybe,’ she said.
This boat only makes one journey to Japan a week and the last thing I wanted was to spend another seven days in the grey, misty twilight zone of Vladivostock, with its pitted pavements, anarchic roads (people drive on the right but have right-hand drive cars imported from Japan) and marauding military police.
Even though Russia is nominally a democracy, uniforms are everywhere. The standard police look rather innocuous with their over-sized hats with red bands but the others are menacing. Some wear tight-belted leather jerkins, like U-Boat captains, with long truncheons hanging out the back, baseball-style peakd caps, and combat pants tucked into calf-length boots.
Others wear grey-black-blue-white camouflage and permanent sneers. And then there are those in olive green who seem to be a cut above the others. I am not sure which group has what responsibility but I have seen them stop people in the street, typically anyone who looks distinctly non-Russian (Chinese, Japanese, dark skinned, etc.) and inspect their passports with icy indifference.
This was more noticeable in Vladivostock than in Moscow, I guess because the latter is a tourist destination but also because of the former’s military importance, and because Vladivostock was, until 1991, a closed city. This meant that even Russians from other regions could not enter without a permit.
Even though there is an air of authoritarianism in Russia, I didn’t see a single CCTV camera. The UK, of course, has more than any other country so you could argue it is just as oppressive as Russia. At least Russia has the balls to be personally oppressive.
The bureaucracy is also oppressive at times. If you stay at the same place for three days or more, you have to register your stay with the authorities. Thankfully, the train didn’t count, and we only stayed at the Hotel Versailles for one night. I could have gladly stayed for another, just to readjust my body clock and to catch up on sleep, but I had a boat to catch. I just wished that I knew where and when and how to catch it.
Friday, 23 May 2008
Day 13: The End of a Continent
Sunday May 18 - Hotel Versailles, Vladivostock
We arrived in Vladivostock early this morning. I was awoken in my bed in carriage nine of the Trans-Siberian Express by a prod from my travelling partner, Fizle. The meagre light and a watch that read 0545 suggested that it was a mistake – we were due to arrive at 0915 – but, on removing my earplugs, she told me that Natalia, the stony-faced carriage attendant, had demanded her bedding a few minutes earlier and said that the train will be stopping in half an hour.
The time zones have completely screwed my body clock. Vladivostock is nine hours ahead of BST, which means six in front of Moscow time. But this difference still doesn’t explain the three hour discrepancy between my watch, which I had meticulously checked at every stage of the journey, and the timetable of the Trans-Siberian Express. The latter – and the ‘camp commandant’ as she became known over the last seven days – are, I decided, immovable objects. So, in a fatigued haze, I packed my bags, stripped my bed and, miraculously, was ready just as the train pulled into the station.
Natalia and the night-time carriage attendant, the immense and equally unapproachable Snowplough, were standing at the foot of the carriage steps. I attempted one last try at breaking the ice by smiling broadly and nodding my head, but they looked at me with near contempt and quickly shifted their gaze to the middle distance.
In the early morning chill, Fizle and I humped our bags over the footbridge and made our way to the Hotel Versailles. First impressions of Vladivostock were clouded by our tiredness and the grey cloak of nothingness that hung over the city. But even if we’d had bright sunshine, I suspect the distinctly early 20th century European architecture, substantial and proud, would still be tainted by the city’s indelible character.
Vladivostock is, like Portsmouth in the UK, first and foremost a port and a naval base. Like its British cousin, it also has a menacing, tatty and seedy feel that reeks of drunkenness, prostitution and petty crime that is somehow kept under control by tacit force.
The Russian navy ships in the harbour, the sailors in uniform on the streets and the military buildings are the obvious signs of its connection with combat and sea. But the place also has an atmosphere that is distinctly edgy. It is, after all, the last major city on the Russian mainland. It is on the edge of Eurasia and the next stop eastwards, some 800 km through the motionless mist that blurs sky and sea, is Japan.
I thought about this next stage of my journey as I dropped off to sleep this morning in the hotel room. Some of the anxiety that had gripped me one week ago in Moscow returned: the 40 hour boat trip across the Sea of Japan is another step into the unknown. Then there is a train ride from the port of Fushiki to Tokyo, where I will hook up with an old friend, Jimmy Muir, which includes two changes of train, no command of the Japanese language and, unlike the Trans-Siberian leg, no translator or travelling companion. From 1800 on Monday, when I board the good ship Rus, until early evening on Wednesday when I meet up with Jimmy, I will be travelling solo again.
But unlike last week, I am nervous/excited rather than anxious/panicking. Seven days ago I was within millimetres of turning tail and heading back to the UK. The cultural shock of the Cologne to Moscow train, the inability to communicate freely with my fellow passengers, the unpredictability of food and sleep, the brutally unfamiliar surroundings, and countless other unidentifiable factors freaked me out so much that I very nearly quit my journey.
But thanks to the supporting words of Fiz and Jeremy – and, of course, my own internal critic that said the pain of return (and having to concoct a credible explanation that preserved my ego) would be greater than any stress from completing the mission – I took those crucial steps out of Jeremy’s Moscow apartment into the balmy evening sunshine of Sunday May 11, and got on the train.
The story of the last seven days – and the 9,300 km from Moscow - confirms that I made the right decision. As for the next eight days of this 22 day mission, only fate can decide.
We arrived in Vladivostock early this morning. I was awoken in my bed in carriage nine of the Trans-Siberian Express by a prod from my travelling partner, Fizle. The meagre light and a watch that read 0545 suggested that it was a mistake – we were due to arrive at 0915 – but, on removing my earplugs, she told me that Natalia, the stony-faced carriage attendant, had demanded her bedding a few minutes earlier and said that the train will be stopping in half an hour.
The time zones have completely screwed my body clock. Vladivostock is nine hours ahead of BST, which means six in front of Moscow time. But this difference still doesn’t explain the three hour discrepancy between my watch, which I had meticulously checked at every stage of the journey, and the timetable of the Trans-Siberian Express. The latter – and the ‘camp commandant’ as she became known over the last seven days – are, I decided, immovable objects. So, in a fatigued haze, I packed my bags, stripped my bed and, miraculously, was ready just as the train pulled into the station.
Natalia and the night-time carriage attendant, the immense and equally unapproachable Snowplough, were standing at the foot of the carriage steps. I attempted one last try at breaking the ice by smiling broadly and nodding my head, but they looked at me with near contempt and quickly shifted their gaze to the middle distance.
In the early morning chill, Fizle and I humped our bags over the footbridge and made our way to the Hotel Versailles. First impressions of Vladivostock were clouded by our tiredness and the grey cloak of nothingness that hung over the city. But even if we’d had bright sunshine, I suspect the distinctly early 20th century European architecture, substantial and proud, would still be tainted by the city’s indelible character.
Vladivostock is, like Portsmouth in the UK, first and foremost a port and a naval base. Like its British cousin, it also has a menacing, tatty and seedy feel that reeks of drunkenness, prostitution and petty crime that is somehow kept under control by tacit force.
The Russian navy ships in the harbour, the sailors in uniform on the streets and the military buildings are the obvious signs of its connection with combat and sea. But the place also has an atmosphere that is distinctly edgy. It is, after all, the last major city on the Russian mainland. It is on the edge of Eurasia and the next stop eastwards, some 800 km through the motionless mist that blurs sky and sea, is Japan.
I thought about this next stage of my journey as I dropped off to sleep this morning in the hotel room. Some of the anxiety that had gripped me one week ago in Moscow returned: the 40 hour boat trip across the Sea of Japan is another step into the unknown. Then there is a train ride from the port of Fushiki to Tokyo, where I will hook up with an old friend, Jimmy Muir, which includes two changes of train, no command of the Japanese language and, unlike the Trans-Siberian leg, no translator or travelling companion. From 1800 on Monday, when I board the good ship Rus, until early evening on Wednesday when I meet up with Jimmy, I will be travelling solo again.
But unlike last week, I am nervous/excited rather than anxious/panicking. Seven days ago I was within millimetres of turning tail and heading back to the UK. The cultural shock of the Cologne to Moscow train, the inability to communicate freely with my fellow passengers, the unpredictability of food and sleep, the brutally unfamiliar surroundings, and countless other unidentifiable factors freaked me out so much that I very nearly quit my journey.
But thanks to the supporting words of Fiz and Jeremy – and, of course, my own internal critic that said the pain of return (and having to concoct a credible explanation that preserved my ego) would be greater than any stress from completing the mission – I took those crucial steps out of Jeremy’s Moscow apartment into the balmy evening sunshine of Sunday May 11, and got on the train.
The story of the last seven days – and the 9,300 km from Moscow - confirms that I made the right decision. As for the next eight days of this 22 day mission, only fate can decide.
Day 12: Dignity and Desecration
Saturday May 17 - North of Manchuria
After travelling through sparsely wooded valleys, in which the trees sprout like whiskers, and following shallow icy rivers, we had a twenty minute stop late yesterday morning at an anonymous Siberian town. Fiz spotted and headed straight for a vibrantly coloured war memorial that had the years 1941 and 1945 carved in stones about three metres high, either side of the red Soviet emblem. Beneath the logo, were huge bouquets of bright flowers. And at the corners of the memorial were two artillery shells, painted red, green and silver and two oversized helmets.
The memorial was a rare splash of colour and celebration in an otherwise insipid town. While editing my photographs later, I said to Fiz that I intuitively want to increase the colour saturation. ‘It just wouldn’t be right,’ she said. ‘It wouldn’t be Russia.’ She was right.
The sky is permanently ash grey, the soil is duller than sombre mud, the omnipresent silver birch and fir trees do little to increase the greenery and the houses are solemn, silent witnesses to their monochromatic world. The train – in its red and blue livery – the labels of the products on sale at the platform side shops, and the garish outfits worn by the Russian passengers offered the only vibrancy to the scene.
For the last few days, I had been wearing a bright blue, round neck shirt and a pair of long trekking shorts. As we walked back to the train from the war memorial, Fiz said jokingly: ‘You look like an Aussie tourist.’ I know that she is not keen on Aussies, so I took it as a mild insult. But with a camera, a telephoto lens and a video camera in hand, I suddenly felt foolishly conspicuous.
Back on the train, I changed into jeans. It was piercingly cold on that platform and, as we continued our journey, we could see ice floes on the river and large patches of snow in clearings in the forests. The month of May is halfway through, but it is still freezing in Eastern Siberia. The nature of real winter here is beyond my comprehension.
I spent much of the day editing photos while Fiz sat opposite, sketching me and trying to capture my concentration scowl. She did pretty well; her sketches looked like me and scared me with the accuracy of my lines and wrinkles.
Among my photos, there were some evocative shots of people – traders, passengers, and random loiterers - on the platform that I had zapped with my telephoto lens. They are pretty good but I always feel intrusive when snapping people without their permission, especially with a telephoto lens, even more so if I then try to sell them. I’d never make a paparazzo.
But there again, how can I catch people in their natural state if I need to warn them in advance? I guess every people photographer with a heart and soul has faced this dilemma. I just need to deal with it in some way and my chosen answer at present is to convert them into black and white, thereby turning humans into monochromatic art. One could say, this merely dehumanises people but that is another debate.
We made a further short stop late in the afternoon. It was only for two minutes so there was no time to get off the train. The carriage attendant stood in the door way in her winter coat, surveying the platform and blocking the progress of any passenger who dared try to venture out. It was too cold anyway, so people just leaned on the railing in the corridor and idly scanned the dreary scene.
The only person in view was an old man on the opposite platform. He was bent double with arthritis, with two walking sticks, a beard, and tatty hair sticking out from his black woollen hat. He looked like the archetypal Russian peasant. As soon as our train stopped, he slowly but deliberately climbed down from the platform and hobbled across the track. The bovine German man, Klaus, was standing next to me, excitedly pointed him out to me and then swung his camera into action through the open window.
I’d seen the man at the same time as Klaus and my initial reaction was the same. I switched on my camera and pushed it out of the window but something stopped me from focussing and clicking. My conscience said I couldn’t photograph a person in such a state, as if they were a distressed zoo animal. I hesitated as he crossed the track. Klaus craned his meaty neck through the narrow window and snapped away. I felt repulsed by his actions but still, much to my shame, I took one photo before the man went out of view.
Seconds later the man was below our window, holding his filthy hands up, and straightening his back as best he could. His eyes begged for money, his mouth moved but said nothing. No doubt he does this every time a train passes through his shabby town and yet the mere act must be excruciating.
The lack of dignity was intense but his need was greater. Klaus dug in his pocket and threw some roubles. I was frozen with confusion and felt the train lurch. Just in time, I dropped a handful of coins and my last sight of the man was him bending to the gravel to collect his pitiful charity.
In the evening, I shared several cigarette moments with Slavic. He will be getting off the train in an hour or so and I wanted to somehow make him feel a little better about going back to his unit. He usually smokes long, thin, mild cigarettes so I introduced him to Golden Virginia. He told me about a brand of cigarette that soldiers smoked in the Great War, called Prima. They are still available – at five roubles (or about 10p) a pack. He described them by comically holding his throat, choking and spitting out imaginary, loose tobacco.
As a token gesture of friendship, I gave Slavic the half smoked pack of tobacco and the papers. He was suffering from a headache too, so I dug three sachets of Lemsip from the under-bed locker and told him to take one every four hours. Small gifts of little value, but somehow they cemented our bond.
The respective plights of the old man and Slavic put my anxieties into brutal perspective. The cripple is hanging onto dignity in a way that I cannot fathom. If I was in his position, instead of crossing the track to scoop up tiny change from the gravel, I would surely put my head on the track the next time a train arrived and hope for a better deal in heaven.
And if I was in Slavic’s position, about to begin another six months of uninterrupted service as a scout on the Chinese border, unable to see or even contact my lover or family, I would surely desert, or maybe even consider a terminal ending.
I am always hesitant to stereotype nationalities, either positively or negatively, because in my idealism, I like to believe that we are all human beings and, hence, we are all made of the same stuff.
But when I see women standing patiently and without drama on the platform, with a few pounds’ worth of food spread before them, hoping to sell enough to keep their household going, it makes me wonder if the Russians are a different breed. Would a British woman ever do this, even if times were really hard?
It is this stoicism, this ability that Russian people seem to have to face up to and deal with hardship that has made such an impact on me. I have seen countless documentaries about Russian suffering in the Second World War, but it is not until you hear stories like Slavic’s, see the dignified industry of the platform sellers, and encounter the real unfortunates like the old cripple, that you realise Hitler never had a prayer. He really was insane to invade this country. Its size, geography and climate are significant barriers in their own right, but its people are impermeable.
After travelling through sparsely wooded valleys, in which the trees sprout like whiskers, and following shallow icy rivers, we had a twenty minute stop late yesterday morning at an anonymous Siberian town. Fiz spotted and headed straight for a vibrantly coloured war memorial that had the years 1941 and 1945 carved in stones about three metres high, either side of the red Soviet emblem. Beneath the logo, were huge bouquets of bright flowers. And at the corners of the memorial were two artillery shells, painted red, green and silver and two oversized helmets.
The memorial was a rare splash of colour and celebration in an otherwise insipid town. While editing my photographs later, I said to Fiz that I intuitively want to increase the colour saturation. ‘It just wouldn’t be right,’ she said. ‘It wouldn’t be Russia.’ She was right.
The sky is permanently ash grey, the soil is duller than sombre mud, the omnipresent silver birch and fir trees do little to increase the greenery and the houses are solemn, silent witnesses to their monochromatic world. The train – in its red and blue livery – the labels of the products on sale at the platform side shops, and the garish outfits worn by the Russian passengers offered the only vibrancy to the scene.
For the last few days, I had been wearing a bright blue, round neck shirt and a pair of long trekking shorts. As we walked back to the train from the war memorial, Fiz said jokingly: ‘You look like an Aussie tourist.’ I know that she is not keen on Aussies, so I took it as a mild insult. But with a camera, a telephoto lens and a video camera in hand, I suddenly felt foolishly conspicuous.
Back on the train, I changed into jeans. It was piercingly cold on that platform and, as we continued our journey, we could see ice floes on the river and large patches of snow in clearings in the forests. The month of May is halfway through, but it is still freezing in Eastern Siberia. The nature of real winter here is beyond my comprehension.
I spent much of the day editing photos while Fiz sat opposite, sketching me and trying to capture my concentration scowl. She did pretty well; her sketches looked like me and scared me with the accuracy of my lines and wrinkles.
Among my photos, there were some evocative shots of people – traders, passengers, and random loiterers - on the platform that I had zapped with my telephoto lens. They are pretty good but I always feel intrusive when snapping people without their permission, especially with a telephoto lens, even more so if I then try to sell them. I’d never make a paparazzo.
But there again, how can I catch people in their natural state if I need to warn them in advance? I guess every people photographer with a heart and soul has faced this dilemma. I just need to deal with it in some way and my chosen answer at present is to convert them into black and white, thereby turning humans into monochromatic art. One could say, this merely dehumanises people but that is another debate.
We made a further short stop late in the afternoon. It was only for two minutes so there was no time to get off the train. The carriage attendant stood in the door way in her winter coat, surveying the platform and blocking the progress of any passenger who dared try to venture out. It was too cold anyway, so people just leaned on the railing in the corridor and idly scanned the dreary scene.
The only person in view was an old man on the opposite platform. He was bent double with arthritis, with two walking sticks, a beard, and tatty hair sticking out from his black woollen hat. He looked like the archetypal Russian peasant. As soon as our train stopped, he slowly but deliberately climbed down from the platform and hobbled across the track. The bovine German man, Klaus, was standing next to me, excitedly pointed him out to me and then swung his camera into action through the open window.
I’d seen the man at the same time as Klaus and my initial reaction was the same. I switched on my camera and pushed it out of the window but something stopped me from focussing and clicking. My conscience said I couldn’t photograph a person in such a state, as if they were a distressed zoo animal. I hesitated as he crossed the track. Klaus craned his meaty neck through the narrow window and snapped away. I felt repulsed by his actions but still, much to my shame, I took one photo before the man went out of view.
Seconds later the man was below our window, holding his filthy hands up, and straightening his back as best he could. His eyes begged for money, his mouth moved but said nothing. No doubt he does this every time a train passes through his shabby town and yet the mere act must be excruciating.
The lack of dignity was intense but his need was greater. Klaus dug in his pocket and threw some roubles. I was frozen with confusion and felt the train lurch. Just in time, I dropped a handful of coins and my last sight of the man was him bending to the gravel to collect his pitiful charity.
In the evening, I shared several cigarette moments with Slavic. He will be getting off the train in an hour or so and I wanted to somehow make him feel a little better about going back to his unit. He usually smokes long, thin, mild cigarettes so I introduced him to Golden Virginia. He told me about a brand of cigarette that soldiers smoked in the Great War, called Prima. They are still available – at five roubles (or about 10p) a pack. He described them by comically holding his throat, choking and spitting out imaginary, loose tobacco.
As a token gesture of friendship, I gave Slavic the half smoked pack of tobacco and the papers. He was suffering from a headache too, so I dug three sachets of Lemsip from the under-bed locker and told him to take one every four hours. Small gifts of little value, but somehow they cemented our bond.
The respective plights of the old man and Slavic put my anxieties into brutal perspective. The cripple is hanging onto dignity in a way that I cannot fathom. If I was in his position, instead of crossing the track to scoop up tiny change from the gravel, I would surely put my head on the track the next time a train arrived and hope for a better deal in heaven.
And if I was in Slavic’s position, about to begin another six months of uninterrupted service as a scout on the Chinese border, unable to see or even contact my lover or family, I would surely desert, or maybe even consider a terminal ending.
I am always hesitant to stereotype nationalities, either positively or negatively, because in my idealism, I like to believe that we are all human beings and, hence, we are all made of the same stuff.
But when I see women standing patiently and without drama on the platform, with a few pounds’ worth of food spread before them, hoping to sell enough to keep their household going, it makes me wonder if the Russians are a different breed. Would a British woman ever do this, even if times were really hard?
It is this stoicism, this ability that Russian people seem to have to face up to and deal with hardship that has made such an impact on me. I have seen countless documentaries about Russian suffering in the Second World War, but it is not until you hear stories like Slavic’s, see the dignified industry of the platform sellers, and encounter the real unfortunates like the old cripple, that you realise Hitler never had a prayer. He really was insane to invade this country. Its size, geography and climate are significant barriers in their own right, but its people are impermeable.
Day 11: All Change on the Eastern Front
Friday May 16 - Beyond Ulan Ude
The scenery changed overnight. For the first three days, the view from the window was mundane: endless acres of leggy silver birch, speckled with conifers and the occasional scattering of primroses; steeped roofed wooden houses; dusty roads with sporadic Ladas; and massive, anonymous skies. At the station stops, the still heat of the Russian interior burned the skin within seconds and the silence echoed.
Then as we approached Irtkusk during the early hours, through a cloak of mist, slopes appeared, the birches succumbed to conifers and the roofs of the houses changed to a more ambitious pitch. A wider selection of cars, more brick buildings and supermarkets replaced an economy that seemed to be based on haphazard agriculture.
I had hoped to get up early to say farewell to those travellers who were getting off at Irtkusk. Joe, Ken and Pam, the Irish boys, the tour party lead by Johanna and the German father and son team, were all leaving the train, some to take the Trans-Mongolian, others to spend time by Lake Baikal. Ironically, I got up an hour too early and by the time their stop came, I was asleep again.
At eleven thirty, I finally awoke. I had used my earplugs for the first time and they had given me a very peaceful sleep. By the time I had got my arse in gear, the next major stop – Ulan Ude – was imminent. Fiz and I got off the train and it became apparent how the climate had changed with the altitude. I also suspect the absence of travel buddies added to the slight chill.
We bought some supplies: a circular, soft loaf with an off-centre, decorative flower; a tub of oily, chilli-enhanced herring pieces; some salami; pate; and a packet of plastic cheese. My heart jumped a little as I left the platform-top shop and saw a lack of milling passengers. Only the train attendants remained and I was sure that the train would soon depart. We made it but Fizle’s camera almost didn’t. Natalia saved the day and brought it to our compartment, playfully hiding it under her jacket, and flicking a smile before giving it back to the appreciative Fizle.
For the rest of the day, I bumbled about. I took a cup of hot water to the WC and bathed. I grabbed some random, abstract video shots for the film, charged up the electrical devices, and even tidied my quarter of the space. Fiz and I chatted about art, and books, and family, and partners, and music, and the Beatles and nothing in particular.
We laid out the supplies that we’d bought earlier and had a compartmental picnic, with Fiz filming my culinary assessment. She told me about a distant family member, Uncle Jim (I had at least four uncle Jims and this was a new one to me) who never ate hot food. And she meant ‘never.’ Apparently, his wife would cook the usual hot dinners on a coal-fired range and he would wait for it to go cold before dining. He used to justify his choice if challenged by saying: ‘Lions and tigers are the strongest animals in the world and they never eat hot food.’
I began to miss the people I had met on the train but I realised that it is a silly emotion. They have gone their way and we are going ours. I need to enjoy the time we had together and move on to the next adventure. I said to Fiz that the mood of the train had changed. But she, rightly, said that it was just my perception because ‘All of you play mates have gone.’ Even so, fewer people were leaning on the rail in the corridor, looking at the views, no one sat on the pull down seats reading today, and most of the compartment doors were closed all day.
The only time I saw Slavic was once in the late afternoon in smokers’ corner. He came in bleary eyed and I asked if he had been sleeping. He nodded and took a position by the opposite window. I wished I had my camera at hand to capture his silhouetted solitude. He then turned, beckoned me over and said: ‘Look, fire!’
In the near distance, a thin line of orange flames was creeping up a wooded slope. This is not uncommon and seems to be a method of forestry control. No doubt Slavic had seen it many more times than I, but he still seemed transfixed. We watched the flickering and billowing of smoke in silent unison. A few minutes later, when he had extinguished his Winston Slim, he turned and went back to his cabin without saying a word.
In the early evening, Fiz and I went to the restaurant car. She ordered her second bottle of wine of the journey. Dima, the maitre d, stored it in the fridge and, at an average of two glasses a night, this will keep her going for the rest of the trip. I fancied red wine and Dima showed me two bottles of French. Both were ‘melange’ and I politely turned them down in favour of beer which, for the first time, I received with a chunky mug.
Dima and the other three restaurant staff were happily idle when we arrived. They were sitting at two tables, enjoying the respite from the three hectic days when the English speakers had been able to understand and order from the menu. I noticed on the way through to the restaurant that the three huge bags of potatoes which had begun the journey had dwindled to a mere panful.
I asked Fiz to ask Dima if I could photograph him and the others in their natural state. They agreed but seemed to interpret this as a request to not smile rather than simply act as they were before being asked.
The man with a broken face and neatly cropped beard is called Viktor who, according to Fizle, looks like an early 20th century French dandy. He posed light-heartedly with a tin opener by his ear and then a bottle of Martini clutched to his heart and a faraway look in his eye. Oleg the chef, who walks as if he is just about to get a kick up the arse, looked straight at the camera as if he had been arrested, and, Natalia, the woman with heavy breasts, a savage haircut and a deeper voice than any man on the train, scuttled off to the kitchen.
Despite the poor light and the constant swaying of the train, I got some good shots. Later, I cropped and converted them into black and white. Somehow they captured some of the essence of their lazy, chaotic team spirit.
The photos that I really want to take are of the soldiers in smoker’s corner. I asked two of the guys in our carriage yesterday but they said, with their minimal English, that it is OK for privates to be photographed with cigarettes but not officers. They showed me their ID cards to prove their status. I never doubted it but it seemed odd given that we get along fine.
The Russian psyche, if there is such a thing, seems to be defined with initial frosty indifference followed by surprising warmth that appears out of nowhere and then remains. There are several examples – Slavic last night with the cognac, the people in the restaurant car, the two officers in smoker’s corner and, even, Natalia the carriage attendant, whose iceberg thawed a little when she returned Fiz’s camera. Even the Snowplough, the huge bumbling, moustachioed man who does to night shift as carriage attendant, raised a smile and made a joke last night when Joe asked Slavic to ask him if he could take a photograph.
That said, the Snowplough still barges past me when I sit on the pull-down seats at night in the corridor, typing my words, without even a grunt of warning or apology. He is so wide that he can almost polish both sides of the corridor with his hips.
Our resident love birds fit the pattern of indifference followed by warmth too. Whenever they sit down for food, Viktor, who had all but ignored us for the first half day, invites us to join them. We don’t chat much because of his constant erotic adherence to Olga, and the language barrier – and when we do talk, he still insists on German. But we four are very comfortable in each other’s company, even when the two of them are snogging on the top bunk while Fiz and I chat below.
I said to Fiz earlier that the whole liaison is so effortless and natural that I’m sure they’ve done it many times before. It is little things that make me think this. For example, the way that Olga’s silver-ringed toes find the door handle first time, every time, and wrap around its irregular shape, as she climbs to the upper bunk. The two of them also manage to move from two bunks to one with the grace of Bolshoi ballerinas, snog in silence and she even massages his naked back without producing the usual sounds.
And last night, they appeared to carry out an illusion that would elicit gasps of admiration from even the most sceptical of audiences. When I came to bed at about 0200, I am sure I saw Olga’s ample butt move in the bunk above Fiz. After all, it is difficult to ignore something of such curvy magnitude.
About twenty minutes later, Viktor climbed down from the bunk above me and left the compartment. Thirty minutes later, I am wondering where the hell he might be. And ten minutes after that, the two of them crept back into the compartment.
‘How did they do that?’ I thought. My eyes sprang open with involuntary bemusement. Right in my line of sight, no more than a nose and a half away, was the hem of Olga’s pink and green, towelling robe. It ended just below her modesty and I could tell by her position that she was just about to climb into her bunk. I tried desperately to close my eyes but the adventurer, the discoverer, the journalist and the man in me, forced me to keep them open. I can faithfully report that the view had low aesthetic value but, thankfully, Olga was wearing pants.
The scenery changed overnight. For the first three days, the view from the window was mundane: endless acres of leggy silver birch, speckled with conifers and the occasional scattering of primroses; steeped roofed wooden houses; dusty roads with sporadic Ladas; and massive, anonymous skies. At the station stops, the still heat of the Russian interior burned the skin within seconds and the silence echoed.
Then as we approached Irtkusk during the early hours, through a cloak of mist, slopes appeared, the birches succumbed to conifers and the roofs of the houses changed to a more ambitious pitch. A wider selection of cars, more brick buildings and supermarkets replaced an economy that seemed to be based on haphazard agriculture.
I had hoped to get up early to say farewell to those travellers who were getting off at Irtkusk. Joe, Ken and Pam, the Irish boys, the tour party lead by Johanna and the German father and son team, were all leaving the train, some to take the Trans-Mongolian, others to spend time by Lake Baikal. Ironically, I got up an hour too early and by the time their stop came, I was asleep again.
At eleven thirty, I finally awoke. I had used my earplugs for the first time and they had given me a very peaceful sleep. By the time I had got my arse in gear, the next major stop – Ulan Ude – was imminent. Fiz and I got off the train and it became apparent how the climate had changed with the altitude. I also suspect the absence of travel buddies added to the slight chill.
We bought some supplies: a circular, soft loaf with an off-centre, decorative flower; a tub of oily, chilli-enhanced herring pieces; some salami; pate; and a packet of plastic cheese. My heart jumped a little as I left the platform-top shop and saw a lack of milling passengers. Only the train attendants remained and I was sure that the train would soon depart. We made it but Fizle’s camera almost didn’t. Natalia saved the day and brought it to our compartment, playfully hiding it under her jacket, and flicking a smile before giving it back to the appreciative Fizle.
For the rest of the day, I bumbled about. I took a cup of hot water to the WC and bathed. I grabbed some random, abstract video shots for the film, charged up the electrical devices, and even tidied my quarter of the space. Fiz and I chatted about art, and books, and family, and partners, and music, and the Beatles and nothing in particular.
We laid out the supplies that we’d bought earlier and had a compartmental picnic, with Fiz filming my culinary assessment. She told me about a distant family member, Uncle Jim (I had at least four uncle Jims and this was a new one to me) who never ate hot food. And she meant ‘never.’ Apparently, his wife would cook the usual hot dinners on a coal-fired range and he would wait for it to go cold before dining. He used to justify his choice if challenged by saying: ‘Lions and tigers are the strongest animals in the world and they never eat hot food.’
I began to miss the people I had met on the train but I realised that it is a silly emotion. They have gone their way and we are going ours. I need to enjoy the time we had together and move on to the next adventure. I said to Fiz that the mood of the train had changed. But she, rightly, said that it was just my perception because ‘All of you play mates have gone.’ Even so, fewer people were leaning on the rail in the corridor, looking at the views, no one sat on the pull down seats reading today, and most of the compartment doors were closed all day.
The only time I saw Slavic was once in the late afternoon in smokers’ corner. He came in bleary eyed and I asked if he had been sleeping. He nodded and took a position by the opposite window. I wished I had my camera at hand to capture his silhouetted solitude. He then turned, beckoned me over and said: ‘Look, fire!’
In the near distance, a thin line of orange flames was creeping up a wooded slope. This is not uncommon and seems to be a method of forestry control. No doubt Slavic had seen it many more times than I, but he still seemed transfixed. We watched the flickering and billowing of smoke in silent unison. A few minutes later, when he had extinguished his Winston Slim, he turned and went back to his cabin without saying a word.
In the early evening, Fiz and I went to the restaurant car. She ordered her second bottle of wine of the journey. Dima, the maitre d, stored it in the fridge and, at an average of two glasses a night, this will keep her going for the rest of the trip. I fancied red wine and Dima showed me two bottles of French. Both were ‘melange’ and I politely turned them down in favour of beer which, for the first time, I received with a chunky mug.
Dima and the other three restaurant staff were happily idle when we arrived. They were sitting at two tables, enjoying the respite from the three hectic days when the English speakers had been able to understand and order from the menu. I noticed on the way through to the restaurant that the three huge bags of potatoes which had begun the journey had dwindled to a mere panful.
I asked Fiz to ask Dima if I could photograph him and the others in their natural state. They agreed but seemed to interpret this as a request to not smile rather than simply act as they were before being asked.
The man with a broken face and neatly cropped beard is called Viktor who, according to Fizle, looks like an early 20th century French dandy. He posed light-heartedly with a tin opener by his ear and then a bottle of Martini clutched to his heart and a faraway look in his eye. Oleg the chef, who walks as if he is just about to get a kick up the arse, looked straight at the camera as if he had been arrested, and, Natalia, the woman with heavy breasts, a savage haircut and a deeper voice than any man on the train, scuttled off to the kitchen.
Despite the poor light and the constant swaying of the train, I got some good shots. Later, I cropped and converted them into black and white. Somehow they captured some of the essence of their lazy, chaotic team spirit.
The photos that I really want to take are of the soldiers in smoker’s corner. I asked two of the guys in our carriage yesterday but they said, with their minimal English, that it is OK for privates to be photographed with cigarettes but not officers. They showed me their ID cards to prove their status. I never doubted it but it seemed odd given that we get along fine.
The Russian psyche, if there is such a thing, seems to be defined with initial frosty indifference followed by surprising warmth that appears out of nowhere and then remains. There are several examples – Slavic last night with the cognac, the people in the restaurant car, the two officers in smoker’s corner and, even, Natalia the carriage attendant, whose iceberg thawed a little when she returned Fiz’s camera. Even the Snowplough, the huge bumbling, moustachioed man who does to night shift as carriage attendant, raised a smile and made a joke last night when Joe asked Slavic to ask him if he could take a photograph.
That said, the Snowplough still barges past me when I sit on the pull-down seats at night in the corridor, typing my words, without even a grunt of warning or apology. He is so wide that he can almost polish both sides of the corridor with his hips.
Our resident love birds fit the pattern of indifference followed by warmth too. Whenever they sit down for food, Viktor, who had all but ignored us for the first half day, invites us to join them. We don’t chat much because of his constant erotic adherence to Olga, and the language barrier – and when we do talk, he still insists on German. But we four are very comfortable in each other’s company, even when the two of them are snogging on the top bunk while Fiz and I chat below.
I said to Fiz earlier that the whole liaison is so effortless and natural that I’m sure they’ve done it many times before. It is little things that make me think this. For example, the way that Olga’s silver-ringed toes find the door handle first time, every time, and wrap around its irregular shape, as she climbs to the upper bunk. The two of them also manage to move from two bunks to one with the grace of Bolshoi ballerinas, snog in silence and she even massages his naked back without producing the usual sounds.
And last night, they appeared to carry out an illusion that would elicit gasps of admiration from even the most sceptical of audiences. When I came to bed at about 0200, I am sure I saw Olga’s ample butt move in the bunk above Fiz. After all, it is difficult to ignore something of such curvy magnitude.
About twenty minutes later, Viktor climbed down from the bunk above me and left the compartment. Thirty minutes later, I am wondering where the hell he might be. And ten minutes after that, the two of them crept back into the compartment.
‘How did they do that?’ I thought. My eyes sprang open with involuntary bemusement. Right in my line of sight, no more than a nose and a half away, was the hem of Olga’s pink and green, towelling robe. It ended just below her modesty and I could tell by her position that she was just about to climb into her bunk. I tried desperately to close my eyes but the adventurer, the discoverer, the journalist and the man in me, forced me to keep them open. I can faithfully report that the view had low aesthetic value but, thankfully, Olga was wearing pants.
Thursday, 22 May 2008
Day 10: Soldier of Misfortune
Thursday May 15 - approaching Irtkusk
On the first day on the train, I had bumped into Slavic in the mugginess of smoker’s corner. From then onwards, he was usually leaning on the bars at the closed window, cigarette in one hand, staring at his mobile phone in the other. Other times, he was just standing expressionless, hands in pocket.
I always nodded and smiled but never gained a response other than a blank look. Then one time he approached me as I took out my Marlboros. He gestured towards the pack and I offered him one. He took a cigarette but not a light. I guessed that Slavic was a soldier reluctantly returning to base. Whatever the purpose of his journey, he was a man with a lot on his mind.
For the first three days, he wore the same outfit of white baggy vest, half length blue-checked summer pants and flip flops. I never saw him smile but he was a handsome guy. Short hair, full lips, a symmetrical, quite podgy face and a distinctly south Russian appearance. With a small scar on his cheek, he would make a great James Bond villain.
Last night, Joe and I were sitting in the compartment. Fiz was reclining on her bed and we were talking about technology. Or, more precisely, we were discussing how Joe uses technology when other, more traditional solutions are often better. Within minutes, we had a chance to test the theory.
Slavic suddenly appeared at the door. In his hand was a slender bottle. ‘Erm. Excuse me…,’ he said softly in broken English. ‘We have a drink. Best men have a drink.’ He pushed the bottle into the room and followed gingerly. Joe made room for him and I took a look at the bottle. ‘Cognac,’ Slavic announced. ‘Cognac from Caucauses.’
My skull immediately twinged. I get a terrible headache from even the most modest amounts of even the best brandy and the last thing I needed was heavy drinking session on Caucasian brandy. Jeremy had also given me some key advice before we left Moscow. ‘Don’t drink spirits with Russians because you will never win.’
Thankfully, there was a lack of cups. I suggested using the cap of the bottle but Slavic dismissed the idea. We finally found drinking vessels and Slavic poured us all small measures. He also showed us how to drink, Caucasian style. The cognac goes down in one, you exhale deeply, and then you eat a piece of chocolate. We all followed his lead and, surprisingly, it worked a treat. The brandy was smooth and warming and the chocolate gave the experience a sweet end.
Fiz asked what Slavic meant by ‘best men.’ ‘Are you getting married?’ Slavic didn’t understand. Fiz reached for her dictionary and Joe for his electronic translator. Slavic typed in the phrase in Russian. The answer it offered was ‘persisting men.’ Fizle’s answer was intuitively more accurate. ‘Real men … macho.’ She explained to Slavic and, for the first time since I saw him, a genuine smile appeared.
He told us that he was returning to his unit in eastern Siberia after a week or so back home. He said his job in the army was too boring to describe. He is much older than his official age of 23: he is a thoughtful, sensitive and intelligent man, unlike many of the other soldiers on the train. He had learned a little English at school and wants to be an economist when his service was done.
As we chatted, Slavic tried hard to find the English words. His vocabulary was limited but his accent was good. Throughout our conversation, he would say half a sentence, stop, and then mumble a few words in Russian while looking to the ceiling for inspiration. His right index finger would invariably be gently resting on the corner of his mouth. Often, he would not find the word, but his calm and thoughtful dedication to communicating with three native English speakers was touching.
As well as testing Slavic’s English and Fizle’s Russian, the conversation presented a huge challenge to Joe’s electronic translator. It tried its best but it didn’t have the personal touch. We reeled in laughter at more context-free, confusing and contradictory translations. Joe persisted and then confessed that it has serious limitations. He demonstrated with a Spanish translation. ‘Look, if you get mugged in El Salvador, you can type in ‘Please take my money, not my life.’ Joe's fingers whizzed over the tiny keyboard, and he pressed enter. ‘And if you translate the answer from Spanish back into English, it says: ‘Please take my life, not my money.’
We had a few more brandies, deep exhalations and sweet, gooey pieces of chocolate. The chat was, it seems, just what Slavic needed. He became open, amusing and for the first time since the journey began, he went 20 minutes without looking at his mobile phone.
I was writing late last night in my usual position on one of the pull down seats in the corridor. At about midnight, I went for a cigarette and passed Slavic by the toilet. He was leaning on the bars of the window, looking into the ink black night, talking softly on his mobile phone. We were the only people awake in the carriage.
An hour or so later, I went for another cigarette. Slavic was in the same spot, with the same posture, on, I assumed, the same phone call. Then, just before bed, I used the toilet. Again, he was there, but this time he was using the phone direct from the mains supply.
This afternoon, we shared a smoker’s moment and he told me that his girlfriend is also in the army, on the other side of the country to him. ‘The last time I kissed my woman… 12 months,’ he said without emotion. As we walked back along the corridor, he asked me if I wanted to see some photos of his home town.
So I powered up my laptop and put in his CD. Slavic leaned over my shoulder and pointed at the relevant icons. The first one was an error – it brought up his porno directory – but the second was a random collection of shots that included a rather austere, red brick apartment block, in a characterless town with the Caspian Sea in the background. ‘My home,’ he announced.
I flicked through snapshots of mountains in the summer, beaches, winter scenes, a crashed helicopter, off shore oil rigs, sunsets, cats and several of a comical dog with pointy ears and an expectant face. ‘My dog,’ said Slavic slowly. ‘He’s dead now.’ The date on the photo was 2004.
There were the obligatory photos of friends, mostly swarthy looking youths in various states of drunkenness. Some showed the boys bare-chested and flashing their immature muscles like body-builders. Slavic and I both laughed.
At the end of the CD were photographs of the countryside, including several very well framed shots of white and red wild flowers. He had obviously put some thought into their composition. And then, as I got to the end, he motioned for me to go back to the middle of the list and pointed at four photos of a blonde haired, smiling woman. ‘She my girlfriend,’ he said rather mournfully. ‘When I leave army, she be my wife.’
I clicked on the first photograph of his girlfriend. ‘Yes, she is very pretty,’ I said. And without wanting to increase his longing, I waited a moment and then closed the directory. He took the CD and I plugged in the charger of my laptop. I looked over my shoulder and Slavic had gone.
About half an hour later, I passed his compartment and Slavic was lying on his belly on his top bunk, mobile phone in hands, writing a text message. A single tear clung stubbornly on his cheek. Even so, he seemed at peace. He looked at me, smiled briefly and returned to his phone.
On the first day on the train, I had bumped into Slavic in the mugginess of smoker’s corner. From then onwards, he was usually leaning on the bars at the closed window, cigarette in one hand, staring at his mobile phone in the other. Other times, he was just standing expressionless, hands in pocket.
I always nodded and smiled but never gained a response other than a blank look. Then one time he approached me as I took out my Marlboros. He gestured towards the pack and I offered him one. He took a cigarette but not a light. I guessed that Slavic was a soldier reluctantly returning to base. Whatever the purpose of his journey, he was a man with a lot on his mind.
For the first three days, he wore the same outfit of white baggy vest, half length blue-checked summer pants and flip flops. I never saw him smile but he was a handsome guy. Short hair, full lips, a symmetrical, quite podgy face and a distinctly south Russian appearance. With a small scar on his cheek, he would make a great James Bond villain.
Last night, Joe and I were sitting in the compartment. Fiz was reclining on her bed and we were talking about technology. Or, more precisely, we were discussing how Joe uses technology when other, more traditional solutions are often better. Within minutes, we had a chance to test the theory.
Slavic suddenly appeared at the door. In his hand was a slender bottle. ‘Erm. Excuse me…,’ he said softly in broken English. ‘We have a drink. Best men have a drink.’ He pushed the bottle into the room and followed gingerly. Joe made room for him and I took a look at the bottle. ‘Cognac,’ Slavic announced. ‘Cognac from Caucauses.’
My skull immediately twinged. I get a terrible headache from even the most modest amounts of even the best brandy and the last thing I needed was heavy drinking session on Caucasian brandy. Jeremy had also given me some key advice before we left Moscow. ‘Don’t drink spirits with Russians because you will never win.’
Thankfully, there was a lack of cups. I suggested using the cap of the bottle but Slavic dismissed the idea. We finally found drinking vessels and Slavic poured us all small measures. He also showed us how to drink, Caucasian style. The cognac goes down in one, you exhale deeply, and then you eat a piece of chocolate. We all followed his lead and, surprisingly, it worked a treat. The brandy was smooth and warming and the chocolate gave the experience a sweet end.
Fiz asked what Slavic meant by ‘best men.’ ‘Are you getting married?’ Slavic didn’t understand. Fiz reached for her dictionary and Joe for his electronic translator. Slavic typed in the phrase in Russian. The answer it offered was ‘persisting men.’ Fizle’s answer was intuitively more accurate. ‘Real men … macho.’ She explained to Slavic and, for the first time since I saw him, a genuine smile appeared.
He told us that he was returning to his unit in eastern Siberia after a week or so back home. He said his job in the army was too boring to describe. He is much older than his official age of 23: he is a thoughtful, sensitive and intelligent man, unlike many of the other soldiers on the train. He had learned a little English at school and wants to be an economist when his service was done.
As we chatted, Slavic tried hard to find the English words. His vocabulary was limited but his accent was good. Throughout our conversation, he would say half a sentence, stop, and then mumble a few words in Russian while looking to the ceiling for inspiration. His right index finger would invariably be gently resting on the corner of his mouth. Often, he would not find the word, but his calm and thoughtful dedication to communicating with three native English speakers was touching.
As well as testing Slavic’s English and Fizle’s Russian, the conversation presented a huge challenge to Joe’s electronic translator. It tried its best but it didn’t have the personal touch. We reeled in laughter at more context-free, confusing and contradictory translations. Joe persisted and then confessed that it has serious limitations. He demonstrated with a Spanish translation. ‘Look, if you get mugged in El Salvador, you can type in ‘Please take my money, not my life.’ Joe's fingers whizzed over the tiny keyboard, and he pressed enter. ‘And if you translate the answer from Spanish back into English, it says: ‘Please take my life, not my money.’
We had a few more brandies, deep exhalations and sweet, gooey pieces of chocolate. The chat was, it seems, just what Slavic needed. He became open, amusing and for the first time since the journey began, he went 20 minutes without looking at his mobile phone.
I was writing late last night in my usual position on one of the pull down seats in the corridor. At about midnight, I went for a cigarette and passed Slavic by the toilet. He was leaning on the bars of the window, looking into the ink black night, talking softly on his mobile phone. We were the only people awake in the carriage.
An hour or so later, I went for another cigarette. Slavic was in the same spot, with the same posture, on, I assumed, the same phone call. Then, just before bed, I used the toilet. Again, he was there, but this time he was using the phone direct from the mains supply.
This afternoon, we shared a smoker’s moment and he told me that his girlfriend is also in the army, on the other side of the country to him. ‘The last time I kissed my woman… 12 months,’ he said without emotion. As we walked back along the corridor, he asked me if I wanted to see some photos of his home town.
So I powered up my laptop and put in his CD. Slavic leaned over my shoulder and pointed at the relevant icons. The first one was an error – it brought up his porno directory – but the second was a random collection of shots that included a rather austere, red brick apartment block, in a characterless town with the Caspian Sea in the background. ‘My home,’ he announced.
I flicked through snapshots of mountains in the summer, beaches, winter scenes, a crashed helicopter, off shore oil rigs, sunsets, cats and several of a comical dog with pointy ears and an expectant face. ‘My dog,’ said Slavic slowly. ‘He’s dead now.’ The date on the photo was 2004.
There were the obligatory photos of friends, mostly swarthy looking youths in various states of drunkenness. Some showed the boys bare-chested and flashing their immature muscles like body-builders. Slavic and I both laughed.
At the end of the CD were photographs of the countryside, including several very well framed shots of white and red wild flowers. He had obviously put some thought into their composition. And then, as I got to the end, he motioned for me to go back to the middle of the list and pointed at four photos of a blonde haired, smiling woman. ‘She my girlfriend,’ he said rather mournfully. ‘When I leave army, she be my wife.’
I clicked on the first photograph of his girlfriend. ‘Yes, she is very pretty,’ I said. And without wanting to increase his longing, I waited a moment and then closed the directory. He took the CD and I plugged in the charger of my laptop. I looked over my shoulder and Slavic had gone.
About half an hour later, I passed his compartment and Slavic was lying on his belly on his top bunk, mobile phone in hands, writing a text message. A single tear clung stubbornly on his cheek. Even so, he seemed at peace. He looked at me, smiled briefly and returned to his phone.
Wednesday, 21 May 2008
Day 9: The Love Birds Have Landed
Wednesday May 14 - ever deeper into Siberia
I didn’t sleep well last night. Two cups of black tea while writing my blog, passing thru two time zones and an excited mind, conspired to keep me awake until sunrise. A few hours into uneasy slumber, the door opened and through my sleep-deprived eyes, I saw a shape muscling a pair of bags into the compartment. Thanks to the motion of the train, the carrier nudged my head. ‘Hey! Watch it!,’ I said. The culprit said something apologetic in Russian and then added: ‘Entschuldigung, bitte.’
Our new room-mate had arrived. This was a pity because we had hoped that we would have a four person room to ourselves for the duration of the trip. This was not to be, but it was no surprise. But what was surprising, and rather annoying, is that people often assume that I am German. Maybe it’s my accent, maybe it’s my appearance but on this occasion, in the half light of a cramped railway compartment, with a sheet pulled up to my neck, and having spoken just three words, it is impossible to know how the newcomer could get it so wrong.
Later, while sharing smoker’s corner, in between the restaurant carriage and the open plan dormitory carriage where most of the Russians sleep, I was chatting to three Russian national servicemen. They were young, spoke only a handful of English words and swaying with too much vodka. I smiled as I entered the muggy space and offered them each a cigarette. One accepted, one glared and the other just gazed benignly through unfocussed, heavily lidded eyes.
I pointed to myself and said: ‘Gary.’ I looked and nodded at the most intelligent and least drunk looking youth. ‘Dimitris,’ he said. The slightly-built, blonde-haired man, who had previously glared, lightened up and said proudly ‘Alexander.’ The wasted lad, dark-haired and spotty, just swayed and mumbled. The other two laughed.
Then Dimitris asked a long-winded question in Russian. I shrugged my shoulders and offered an apologetic face. He then pointed at me and said ‘Germanski!’ Not again, I thought. Twice in a day. I assumed he spoke some German so I said, foolishly, ‘Ich bin nicht Deutsch. Ich bin Englisch.’ I licked my finger and attempted to draw a Union Jack on the thick grey paint of the wall. ‘Ah. Da. Da,’ he finally got it.
Later still, the carriage attendant, Natalia, pushed the snout of her vacuum cleaner into our compartment and managed to nudge my bare foot. ‘Entschuldigung.’ I shook my head in disbelief. I had spoken to this woman on several occasions, each time in English and yet she still thinks I am German.
This doesn’t worry me per se. It could be worse, I could be mistaken as French. But it does concern me that Russians think I am of the same nationality that perpetrated such atrocities on their forbears. Especially where Natalia is concerned, I worry that she has a deep seated hatred for all things Teutonic. This would explain her perpetual frostiness toward me.
Anyway, our new room mate is called Viktor and he is going all the way to Vladivostock. Yesterday, after he dumped his bags, he changed out of his well pressed jeans, casual jacket and blue striped polo shirt into a blue T shirt, black pyjama-style pants and flip flops. At mid-day, I finally got up and went to the loo. Viktor was sitting on one of the pull down seats in the corridor, cross legged, slowly reading a thin blue book. He looked up briefly, I nodded and smiled. He almost replied in kind. I was struck by how much he looked like Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez.
Viktor is man of few words. Fizle found out his name and destination but that was about it. She also wondered if we would have a fourth person in the compartment. He said we would; a woman would be getting on the train later that day. Fizle assumed that Viktor, being a man who likes to keep himself to himself, had spoken to the carriage attendant in the hope that we three would remain three.
For the rest of the day, Viktor alternated between the pull-down chair and his book, his upper bunk for brief naps, and the mirror on the back of the door, in which he regularly checked his hair. And then in the early evening, the train pulled into Novosibirsk for twenty minutes or so.
I went for a walk on the platform. There were no traders, so I simply enjoyed the air, the feel of terra firma and the casual banter of my travel buddies. We were ushered back on board by Natalia, as usual, five minutes before the train departed. I meandered along the corridor and was met mid way by an animated Fizle, eyes agog, energy to the fore. ‘It’s his girlfriend!,’ she announced in the loudest whisper this side of the Urals.
‘Who? What are you talking about? Who is whose girlfriend?’
‘The woman in our compartment is Viktor’s girlfriend...’ Fiz nodded her head backwards.
I looked along the corridor and saw two bodies standing entwined by the window. The centre of gravity was the hip. They embraced with the casual passion of two long term lovers thought something suggested that it was a little staged.
The woman had chin length, loosely curled, blonde hair. She wore slightly too short jeans; diamante slightly heeled, strappy shoes; a grey and pink top that was slightly too tight and too short; and a kink-legged stance that exuded sex. By the way that she was tossing her head and giggling, she was obviously enjoying Viktor’s affections.
Viktor – the man of few words – was speaking volumes with his stance. As I got closer, I could see that his right hand was gently stroking the many moles on her right, bare hip. His groin was pushed against her left hip bone and his face was aglow with restrained desire. Chavez was turning on the charm and the woman was lapping it up.
I wanted to introduce myself there and then but I thought it best to leave them to it. A little later, I returned to the compartment and they were about to sit at the table and eat. I hesitated but Viktor beckoned me in. ‘Gary,’ he said, gesturing with a Swiss Army style knife, ‘Eat.’ I gladly joined them and saw the woman’s front for the first time. I held out my hand and said, ‘Hi. I’m Gary.’
‘Olga,’ said Viktor as he sat and began hacking into some raw fish.
Olga looked up at me with a cosmetic face and a well versed smile. Her hand was soft and limp but highly convincing. She had white but gappy teeth, a random mole, large eyes, outlined by mascara, and carefully chaotic curls that framed her wide angle face. She had an ersatz Monroe appeal, albeit rather downmarket, adipose and enforced. Her fragrance was indefinable, heavy and heavily discounted.
Olga was in her mid-thirties but she dressed fifteen years younger. As she sat, I noticed just how tight her jeans were. She had naturally broad hips and her doughy tummy bulged over the waistband.
Fiz joined us as Viktor poured, and Olga handed, me a very frothy beer. Viktor then gave me small plate with a palm-sized piece of very bony, and unscaled fish. It looked raw but it smelt smoked. Viktor confirmed that it was both, if that is possible, and that it came from a huge inlet in Northern Ruissa. Fiz couldn’t find the name of the fish in the dictionary and I wondered if it was a new species, created by a nuclear accident. It seemed to be glowing, but it tasted like sushi and I ate it.
After a few minutes, I decided to leave the love birds to it. I thanked them for the food and drink and they got back to their romantic dinner. Later that night, Olga had changed into a tight pink, velour track suit that made her butt and tummy look even larger. The pants were so tight that you could see the lace of her pants and the dimples of her cellulite. Only the diamante-trimmed sandals could take the eye away.
Wherever I saw them after that, irrespective of outfit, time or location, Viktor’s arm seemed magnetically locked to her waist. Olga’s hip bone was never further than a centimetre from his groin and their libidos were joined in unholy harmony. It was, agreed Fiz and I, only a matter of time before their connection became carnal.
And they have plenty of time; it’s still three days and four nights before Vladivostock. Fiz and I each hoped that, if they can’t resist the urge, it would happen in the bunk above the other’s bed. The combined weight of this rutting pair would do some serious damage.
I didn’t sleep well last night. Two cups of black tea while writing my blog, passing thru two time zones and an excited mind, conspired to keep me awake until sunrise. A few hours into uneasy slumber, the door opened and through my sleep-deprived eyes, I saw a shape muscling a pair of bags into the compartment. Thanks to the motion of the train, the carrier nudged my head. ‘Hey! Watch it!,’ I said. The culprit said something apologetic in Russian and then added: ‘Entschuldigung, bitte.’
Our new room-mate had arrived. This was a pity because we had hoped that we would have a four person room to ourselves for the duration of the trip. This was not to be, but it was no surprise. But what was surprising, and rather annoying, is that people often assume that I am German. Maybe it’s my accent, maybe it’s my appearance but on this occasion, in the half light of a cramped railway compartment, with a sheet pulled up to my neck, and having spoken just three words, it is impossible to know how the newcomer could get it so wrong.
Later, while sharing smoker’s corner, in between the restaurant carriage and the open plan dormitory carriage where most of the Russians sleep, I was chatting to three Russian national servicemen. They were young, spoke only a handful of English words and swaying with too much vodka. I smiled as I entered the muggy space and offered them each a cigarette. One accepted, one glared and the other just gazed benignly through unfocussed, heavily lidded eyes.
I pointed to myself and said: ‘Gary.’ I looked and nodded at the most intelligent and least drunk looking youth. ‘Dimitris,’ he said. The slightly-built, blonde-haired man, who had previously glared, lightened up and said proudly ‘Alexander.’ The wasted lad, dark-haired and spotty, just swayed and mumbled. The other two laughed.
Then Dimitris asked a long-winded question in Russian. I shrugged my shoulders and offered an apologetic face. He then pointed at me and said ‘Germanski!’ Not again, I thought. Twice in a day. I assumed he spoke some German so I said, foolishly, ‘Ich bin nicht Deutsch. Ich bin Englisch.’ I licked my finger and attempted to draw a Union Jack on the thick grey paint of the wall. ‘Ah. Da. Da,’ he finally got it.
Later still, the carriage attendant, Natalia, pushed the snout of her vacuum cleaner into our compartment and managed to nudge my bare foot. ‘Entschuldigung.’ I shook my head in disbelief. I had spoken to this woman on several occasions, each time in English and yet she still thinks I am German.
This doesn’t worry me per se. It could be worse, I could be mistaken as French. But it does concern me that Russians think I am of the same nationality that perpetrated such atrocities on their forbears. Especially where Natalia is concerned, I worry that she has a deep seated hatred for all things Teutonic. This would explain her perpetual frostiness toward me.
Anyway, our new room mate is called Viktor and he is going all the way to Vladivostock. Yesterday, after he dumped his bags, he changed out of his well pressed jeans, casual jacket and blue striped polo shirt into a blue T shirt, black pyjama-style pants and flip flops. At mid-day, I finally got up and went to the loo. Viktor was sitting on one of the pull down seats in the corridor, cross legged, slowly reading a thin blue book. He looked up briefly, I nodded and smiled. He almost replied in kind. I was struck by how much he looked like Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez.
Viktor is man of few words. Fizle found out his name and destination but that was about it. She also wondered if we would have a fourth person in the compartment. He said we would; a woman would be getting on the train later that day. Fizle assumed that Viktor, being a man who likes to keep himself to himself, had spoken to the carriage attendant in the hope that we three would remain three.
For the rest of the day, Viktor alternated between the pull-down chair and his book, his upper bunk for brief naps, and the mirror on the back of the door, in which he regularly checked his hair. And then in the early evening, the train pulled into Novosibirsk for twenty minutes or so.
I went for a walk on the platform. There were no traders, so I simply enjoyed the air, the feel of terra firma and the casual banter of my travel buddies. We were ushered back on board by Natalia, as usual, five minutes before the train departed. I meandered along the corridor and was met mid way by an animated Fizle, eyes agog, energy to the fore. ‘It’s his girlfriend!,’ she announced in the loudest whisper this side of the Urals.
‘Who? What are you talking about? Who is whose girlfriend?’
‘The woman in our compartment is Viktor’s girlfriend...’ Fiz nodded her head backwards.
I looked along the corridor and saw two bodies standing entwined by the window. The centre of gravity was the hip. They embraced with the casual passion of two long term lovers thought something suggested that it was a little staged.
The woman had chin length, loosely curled, blonde hair. She wore slightly too short jeans; diamante slightly heeled, strappy shoes; a grey and pink top that was slightly too tight and too short; and a kink-legged stance that exuded sex. By the way that she was tossing her head and giggling, she was obviously enjoying Viktor’s affections.
Viktor – the man of few words – was speaking volumes with his stance. As I got closer, I could see that his right hand was gently stroking the many moles on her right, bare hip. His groin was pushed against her left hip bone and his face was aglow with restrained desire. Chavez was turning on the charm and the woman was lapping it up.
I wanted to introduce myself there and then but I thought it best to leave them to it. A little later, I returned to the compartment and they were about to sit at the table and eat. I hesitated but Viktor beckoned me in. ‘Gary,’ he said, gesturing with a Swiss Army style knife, ‘Eat.’ I gladly joined them and saw the woman’s front for the first time. I held out my hand and said, ‘Hi. I’m Gary.’
‘Olga,’ said Viktor as he sat and began hacking into some raw fish.
Olga looked up at me with a cosmetic face and a well versed smile. Her hand was soft and limp but highly convincing. She had white but gappy teeth, a random mole, large eyes, outlined by mascara, and carefully chaotic curls that framed her wide angle face. She had an ersatz Monroe appeal, albeit rather downmarket, adipose and enforced. Her fragrance was indefinable, heavy and heavily discounted.
Olga was in her mid-thirties but she dressed fifteen years younger. As she sat, I noticed just how tight her jeans were. She had naturally broad hips and her doughy tummy bulged over the waistband.
Fiz joined us as Viktor poured, and Olga handed, me a very frothy beer. Viktor then gave me small plate with a palm-sized piece of very bony, and unscaled fish. It looked raw but it smelt smoked. Viktor confirmed that it was both, if that is possible, and that it came from a huge inlet in Northern Ruissa. Fiz couldn’t find the name of the fish in the dictionary and I wondered if it was a new species, created by a nuclear accident. It seemed to be glowing, but it tasted like sushi and I ate it.
After a few minutes, I decided to leave the love birds to it. I thanked them for the food and drink and they got back to their romantic dinner. Later that night, Olga had changed into a tight pink, velour track suit that made her butt and tummy look even larger. The pants were so tight that you could see the lace of her pants and the dimples of her cellulite. Only the diamante-trimmed sandals could take the eye away.
Wherever I saw them after that, irrespective of outfit, time or location, Viktor’s arm seemed magnetically locked to her waist. Olga’s hip bone was never further than a centimetre from his groin and their libidos were joined in unholy harmony. It was, agreed Fiz and I, only a matter of time before their connection became carnal.
And they have plenty of time; it’s still three days and four nights before Vladivostock. Fiz and I each hoped that, if they can’t resist the urge, it would happen in the bunk above the other’s bed. The combined weight of this rutting pair would do some serious damage.
Day 8: Eat Those Words
Tuesday May 13 - deep in Siberia
The staff in the restaurant car are still reeling from yesterday’s public service gesture by Fizle. It began when she was reading the menu and I was asking her to translate every item. I said: ‘Hey, you could do all the English-speakers on the train a huge favour if you did a written translation.’ She agreed but said she would ask the restaurant manager first. She did, he agreed and she went to get her dictionary.
Fizle ploughed through the three pages of the menu for the next hour or so. She rubbed her head, pulled her face, looked for inspiration out of the window and flicked through dictionary pages, juggling words, context and meaning. Some items defied coherent conversion and some translations were baffling – ‘Coffee Three in One’, for example – but in the end, the job was done. ‘Right,’ said Fiz, pushing her notes towards me, ‘This was your idea. You can write it out neatly.’
So I took my A4 pad and went through the list, making sure that the subheads – cold courses, hot courses, side dishes, etc. – corresponded with the Cyrillic equivalents on the opposite page. The first item was ‘sandwich with butter’ and although subsequent direct translations were a little more appealing, it was unlikely that the diners would be enticed by the poetry of the descriptions.
I suggested jazzing up the items. Boiled tongue, smoked chicken, and steak needed something more. We laughed at the idea of ‘medallions of salmon, in a jus of Siberian crème with parfait potatoes’ but decided that it was inappropriate. Fiz did, however, urge me to add a qualifying statement to avoid law suits, so I wrote ‘All translations are approximations’ at the top of each page. Safety in brevity seemed to be the order of the day.
The manager, Dima, came over and seemed agitated. He pointed to the fruit section, took one of the large red-orange apples from the table and pretended to cut it in half. ‘Oh,’ said Fiz translating, ‘It says ‘apple’ on the menu but you only get a half apple.’ She checked with Dima that the same principle applies to other items. He nodded emphatically. So I added another disclaimer to the effect that the prices quoted are for the portions quoted on the Russian menu.
With everyone happy, I slid the three sheets of A4 into the plastic wallet, opposite the corresponding pages of the original menu. Joe, Fiz and I were the first to order – she went for a plain omelette, we opted for beef stroganoff and fried potatoes. Other English-speakers came into the carriage and we told them about the new translation. Word quickly spread.
The Irish boys arrived and ordered. Next, Jan and Jaroslav, the German father of Czech extraction and his basketball-playing son, who at one metre ninety eight is the second shortest in his team. Then, Paul and Helen, the young farmers from Oxfordshire. The restaurant hadn’t been so busy since we left Moscow. Dima was in a state of perpetual motion. The kitchen was clanging, banging and occasionally sending out plates of food.
Our stroganoffs arrived – a handful of fried potatoes, some salad (with the ubiquitously gouged out tomatoes) and a meagre spoonful of meat and sauce. The taste was fine but the quantity was puny. As Fizle looked in vain toward the kitchen for her omelette, other meals started to appear. Fergal had his steak kebab which turned out to be a simple pork steak and Shane had pork escalope. Both said they were fine.
More people arrived, read and ordered from the new English menu. Dima took orders and the kitchen soldiered on. Joe and I finished our meals quickly (not hard considering their size) and Fizle finally gave up on her omelette and returned to her cabin. ‘You would have thought Dima would have given you preferential service considering the favour you have done him,’ I said. ‘Maybe that’s why I am not getting fed,’ said Fiz. ‘They used to have a nice quiet life until the menu was in English.’
I stayed in the restaurant until it closed at midnight, playing backgammon and talking nonsense with the Irish guys. Just before we left, the hook-nosed, bespectacled chef appeared out of the kitchen. He wore an exhausted and stained apron in front of an open, baggy, sweat-laden blue checked shirt. His three-quarter length striped cotton pants, short socks and flip flops had all seen better days and infinitely better sartorial combinations. His face is not a naturally happy one, but never before had its cheekbones sagged so much, eyelids been so heavy and hair so convincingly slicked back over his bald patch.
As he staggered in sympathy with the rocking train, it was hard to imagine any sport that his body would excel at, even if it were half its age. With apron strings dangling, he slumped into the nearest seat with the force of a meteorite. His flabby arms dropped to his sides, his cheeks flopped, mouth flapped open and his legs splayed inelegantly. He was beat.
The chef, Dima and a rather savage looking woman, dressed in tight black lycra, with a pneumatic waist and gelatinous butt, who sporadically barks masculine orders at the men, sat in unified silence. One might expect them to be happy with such a busy night but they seemed numb. As we passed them on the way back to the sleeping cars, Fergal said: ‘I bet that English menu has disappeared by tomorrow morning. The last thing they want is another busy night. That chef looked totally bollocksed.’
The staff in the restaurant car are still reeling from yesterday’s public service gesture by Fizle. It began when she was reading the menu and I was asking her to translate every item. I said: ‘Hey, you could do all the English-speakers on the train a huge favour if you did a written translation.’ She agreed but said she would ask the restaurant manager first. She did, he agreed and she went to get her dictionary.
Fizle ploughed through the three pages of the menu for the next hour or so. She rubbed her head, pulled her face, looked for inspiration out of the window and flicked through dictionary pages, juggling words, context and meaning. Some items defied coherent conversion and some translations were baffling – ‘Coffee Three in One’, for example – but in the end, the job was done. ‘Right,’ said Fiz, pushing her notes towards me, ‘This was your idea. You can write it out neatly.’
So I took my A4 pad and went through the list, making sure that the subheads – cold courses, hot courses, side dishes, etc. – corresponded with the Cyrillic equivalents on the opposite page. The first item was ‘sandwich with butter’ and although subsequent direct translations were a little more appealing, it was unlikely that the diners would be enticed by the poetry of the descriptions.
I suggested jazzing up the items. Boiled tongue, smoked chicken, and steak needed something more. We laughed at the idea of ‘medallions of salmon, in a jus of Siberian crème with parfait potatoes’ but decided that it was inappropriate. Fiz did, however, urge me to add a qualifying statement to avoid law suits, so I wrote ‘All translations are approximations’ at the top of each page. Safety in brevity seemed to be the order of the day.
The manager, Dima, came over and seemed agitated. He pointed to the fruit section, took one of the large red-orange apples from the table and pretended to cut it in half. ‘Oh,’ said Fiz translating, ‘It says ‘apple’ on the menu but you only get a half apple.’ She checked with Dima that the same principle applies to other items. He nodded emphatically. So I added another disclaimer to the effect that the prices quoted are for the portions quoted on the Russian menu.
With everyone happy, I slid the three sheets of A4 into the plastic wallet, opposite the corresponding pages of the original menu. Joe, Fiz and I were the first to order – she went for a plain omelette, we opted for beef stroganoff and fried potatoes. Other English-speakers came into the carriage and we told them about the new translation. Word quickly spread.
The Irish boys arrived and ordered. Next, Jan and Jaroslav, the German father of Czech extraction and his basketball-playing son, who at one metre ninety eight is the second shortest in his team. Then, Paul and Helen, the young farmers from Oxfordshire. The restaurant hadn’t been so busy since we left Moscow. Dima was in a state of perpetual motion. The kitchen was clanging, banging and occasionally sending out plates of food.
Our stroganoffs arrived – a handful of fried potatoes, some salad (with the ubiquitously gouged out tomatoes) and a meagre spoonful of meat and sauce. The taste was fine but the quantity was puny. As Fizle looked in vain toward the kitchen for her omelette, other meals started to appear. Fergal had his steak kebab which turned out to be a simple pork steak and Shane had pork escalope. Both said they were fine.
More people arrived, read and ordered from the new English menu. Dima took orders and the kitchen soldiered on. Joe and I finished our meals quickly (not hard considering their size) and Fizle finally gave up on her omelette and returned to her cabin. ‘You would have thought Dima would have given you preferential service considering the favour you have done him,’ I said. ‘Maybe that’s why I am not getting fed,’ said Fiz. ‘They used to have a nice quiet life until the menu was in English.’
I stayed in the restaurant until it closed at midnight, playing backgammon and talking nonsense with the Irish guys. Just before we left, the hook-nosed, bespectacled chef appeared out of the kitchen. He wore an exhausted and stained apron in front of an open, baggy, sweat-laden blue checked shirt. His three-quarter length striped cotton pants, short socks and flip flops had all seen better days and infinitely better sartorial combinations. His face is not a naturally happy one, but never before had its cheekbones sagged so much, eyelids been so heavy and hair so convincingly slicked back over his bald patch.
As he staggered in sympathy with the rocking train, it was hard to imagine any sport that his body would excel at, even if it were half its age. With apron strings dangling, he slumped into the nearest seat with the force of a meteorite. His flabby arms dropped to his sides, his cheeks flopped, mouth flapped open and his legs splayed inelegantly. He was beat.
The chef, Dima and a rather savage looking woman, dressed in tight black lycra, with a pneumatic waist and gelatinous butt, who sporadically barks masculine orders at the men, sat in unified silence. One might expect them to be happy with such a busy night but they seemed numb. As we passed them on the way back to the sleeping cars, Fergal said: ‘I bet that English menu has disappeared by tomorrow morning. The last thing they want is another busy night. That chef looked totally bollocksed.’
Sunday, 18 May 2008
Day 7: The Moonlit Mission
Monday May 12 - near Jekaterinburg
I am sitting on one of the fold-down seats in the corridor of carriage nine with the laptop on my knee, a cup of black tea on the orange striped carpet, chatting to Joe Cheng about the time to the next stop. I am confused. His watch is set to Moscow time and, apparently, we are two hours ahead here.
Joe is a 25 year old New Yorker of Hong Kong parents. He loves his technology and is an intrepid, solo traveller who has taken a one month break from his IT job to see Europe and Russia. Joe wears glasses, has a permanently optimistic face and the slightest hint of a moustache.
Joe’s a bright guy but he has his moments of confusion. I taught him backgammon earlier in the restaurant car and he beat me first time. But then, as I began typing in the corridor, he stood next to me in his checked pyjama pants, flicked through the guide book and said that he wants to get out of the train at the next stop to take some photos of the churches. ‘It stops for 23 minutes,’ said Joe. ‘So I could walk to the centre of the city, take some photos and get back before the train leaves.’
‘How far is the centre to the station?,’ I ask.
‘Around 300 metres,’ he says, pushing the guide book toward my laptop, finger pointing at the map. ‘That’s not far at all… only about 100 yards.’
I stop my typing and fix him with a puzzled face. ‘Erm, no. A yard is about the same as a metre. So that’s about a quarter of a mile. It’s not that far but we stop for 23 minutes only. Imagine if you take the wrong turn, get lost or delayed and the train leaves without you. Then you’re screwed just for a few more pix of a few more churches.’
Joe disagrees with my conversion of metric to imperial. But he’s an American; what do they know about metric? Undaunted, he hops onto the heating unit by the nearest open window and pushes his head into the cool, dark night air. A few minutes later, he comes back and tells me that the stars are amazing. ‘I guess you don’t see too many in New York, with all the light pollution….’ I look up for an answer, but he has gone again, head out of the window, craning his neck east, toward the churches of Yekaterinburg.
When I first saw Joe, he was stumbling along the corridor, just minutes before the train left Moscow. He had a backpack, a heavy case on wheels and, in his hand, a tilted plastic plate of food covered by cling film. I had just come out of our compartment and I offered to help. ‘No thanks,’ he said without looking at me. ‘I have been ripped off enough times already this week.’
I was taken aback. ‘No, I will help you free of charge…’
A few hours later, I was chatting to the four Irish guys who were playing cards and drinking vodka. Joe showed up on his way to brush his teeth. He was wearing his checked pyjamas a baggy T-shirt and, conspicuously, a pair of white towelling slippers with the Marriot Hotel logo on the toes.
‘Hey, I like your slippers,’ I said. ‘Yeah, they’re pretty cool,’ said Joe with a non-committal smile. ‘I got them from the hotel in Moscow.’
‘I hope you didn’t pay for them, did you?,’ I said. The Irish guys got the cruel jibe, but Joe didn’t. ‘No, they were complementary… but at six hundred bucks a night for a room, you’d hope for a few freebies.’
The Irish lads and I erupted in unison. ‘Six hundred dollars?!!’ ‘Yes, which is why I said I’d had enough of being ripped off before,’ he said looking at me. He had misunderstood my offer of help and thought I said something about ten roubles.
After a few minutes, Joe bid us goodnight and the five of us shook our heads at his naivety. ‘He is gonna get ripped off a hundred times more before he gets back to the States,’ said one of the lads.
But today, I saw a different side to Joe. He maybe a little gullible and too trusting for his own good, but he is fearless. He has travelled in Central America, South East Asia and across Europe, always alone and without the aid of guides or travel agents. He prefers trains and buses and only speaks English. He has lots of travel stories that he tells with not even a hint of ego. And tonight he created another.
As the subdued lights and unforgiving architecture of Yekaterinburg approached, Joe seemed to hang further out of the window. The toilets are locked a few minutes before a stop so I turned off the laptop and headed down the corridor. In the train attendant’s room, the light seemed duller than normal. The reason was the night-time attendant was getting changed into his uniform. The guy is enormous.
As I passed by, he was putting on his shoes. Bending over, the waist band of his trousers gripped the middle of his butt and a massive expanse of apologetically grey boxer shorts filled my view. When he walks down the corridor, his hips nearly brush the walls. His bulk pushed everything to the edge of the path. There is no need for words - his looming presence does the work. This is why I call him The Snowplough.
When I returned from the loo, the attendant was standing outside, fully uniformed, key in one hand, peaked cap in the other and a stern look gripped his downbeat moustache. I smiled but his robustness was impermeable. His steel-grey hair, menacing bulk and blunt manner would not yield, particularly as the train was due for a stop. He is even more impermeable than Natalia.
The Irish guys, Joe and I were some of the few passengers to hop off the train for the 23 minute stop. In the chilly night air, there was little to see. Fergal pulled out the cigarillos and the other three eagerly took one. With nothing to photograph or buy, we talked nonsense and then suddenly, Shane pointed and said; ‘Look, he’s off!’
We turned towards the station building and sure enough, Joe was running across the track, camera in hand to the nearest door. ‘He’s insane,’ said Fergal. ‘He is not even going the right way.’ He pointed at the door that everyone else was using. ‘That’s the exit!’
Earlier Joe said he was going to do the mission no matter what we said. ‘Well, if you do, make sure you take your passport and some money,’ I said, joking. ‘Yeah, that’s a good idea. I’ll take my electronic translator just in case I get left behind,’ he said with not even a hint of latent doom.
The people filed out of the exits, a few passengers boarded, the minutes ticked by and the station fell into silence. The Snowplough looked at his watch with increasing regularity. The Irish boys stubbed out their cigars and we all scanned the doors. There was no sign of Joe. The train attendant clapped his hands, said something authoritarian in Russian and we shuffled toward the train.
Just as we reached the steps, we heard a gentle panting behind us. It was Joe, wide-eyed and thrilled. ‘Hey, I got some cool photos. Look!’ He thrust his camera under my nose and with rapid fingers, flicked through his night’s work. There were 20, maybe 30, shots of 19th century murals depicting noble peasants, and out of focus photos of heavy chandeliers. ‘It was a real bummer,’ said Joe. ‘I couldn’t find the churches on foot. I was gonna get in a cab but there weren’t any. And then I saw these paintings in the station building.’
As far as Joe was concerned, it was a failed mission. Back on the train, he lamented the lost opportunity. He re-read the guide book and said; ‘Man, one of the churches was built on the site of a house where there was a massacre in the 19th century. Damn! It would’ve been cool to get a shot of that.’
‘You managed to get back on the train in time, Joe, that’s the main thing.’ He looked a little puzzled. ‘I had loads of time to spare. Maybe I coulda made it if I had sprinted.’
Joe’s attitude to travel and adventure is carefree to the extreme. Somehow he knows that he will be OK, no matter how hair-brained his ideas. He is not at all streetwise and he will get ripped off by countless street-level charlatans and board-level bullies in a way that I never would. And yet he has a youthful sense of discovery and wonderment that is way off my scale. Today, I learned a lot from the 25 year old New Yorker with the towelling slippers.
As I hunched over my laptop, reflected on the night’s events and sipped a final St John’s Wort tea, I noticed Joe reading his guidebook again. ‘Hey, Gary!’ he said with renewed enthusiasm, ‘A little further down the line is one of the last refuges of the Siberian Tiger.’ He peered into the jet black night as if half-expecting to see one reveal itself.
‘If we have a long enough stop, maybe I will get to see one,’ said Joe. I stared at him for a moment, shook my head in disbelief and smiled a tribute to a true traveller and a person who has prompted me to redefine the word ‘optimistic.’
I am sitting on one of the fold-down seats in the corridor of carriage nine with the laptop on my knee, a cup of black tea on the orange striped carpet, chatting to Joe Cheng about the time to the next stop. I am confused. His watch is set to Moscow time and, apparently, we are two hours ahead here.
Joe is a 25 year old New Yorker of Hong Kong parents. He loves his technology and is an intrepid, solo traveller who has taken a one month break from his IT job to see Europe and Russia. Joe wears glasses, has a permanently optimistic face and the slightest hint of a moustache.
Joe’s a bright guy but he has his moments of confusion. I taught him backgammon earlier in the restaurant car and he beat me first time. But then, as I began typing in the corridor, he stood next to me in his checked pyjama pants, flicked through the guide book and said that he wants to get out of the train at the next stop to take some photos of the churches. ‘It stops for 23 minutes,’ said Joe. ‘So I could walk to the centre of the city, take some photos and get back before the train leaves.’
‘How far is the centre to the station?,’ I ask.
‘Around 300 metres,’ he says, pushing the guide book toward my laptop, finger pointing at the map. ‘That’s not far at all… only about 100 yards.’
I stop my typing and fix him with a puzzled face. ‘Erm, no. A yard is about the same as a metre. So that’s about a quarter of a mile. It’s not that far but we stop for 23 minutes only. Imagine if you take the wrong turn, get lost or delayed and the train leaves without you. Then you’re screwed just for a few more pix of a few more churches.’
Joe disagrees with my conversion of metric to imperial. But he’s an American; what do they know about metric? Undaunted, he hops onto the heating unit by the nearest open window and pushes his head into the cool, dark night air. A few minutes later, he comes back and tells me that the stars are amazing. ‘I guess you don’t see too many in New York, with all the light pollution….’ I look up for an answer, but he has gone again, head out of the window, craning his neck east, toward the churches of Yekaterinburg.
When I first saw Joe, he was stumbling along the corridor, just minutes before the train left Moscow. He had a backpack, a heavy case on wheels and, in his hand, a tilted plastic plate of food covered by cling film. I had just come out of our compartment and I offered to help. ‘No thanks,’ he said without looking at me. ‘I have been ripped off enough times already this week.’
I was taken aback. ‘No, I will help you free of charge…’
A few hours later, I was chatting to the four Irish guys who were playing cards and drinking vodka. Joe showed up on his way to brush his teeth. He was wearing his checked pyjamas a baggy T-shirt and, conspicuously, a pair of white towelling slippers with the Marriot Hotel logo on the toes.
‘Hey, I like your slippers,’ I said. ‘Yeah, they’re pretty cool,’ said Joe with a non-committal smile. ‘I got them from the hotel in Moscow.’
‘I hope you didn’t pay for them, did you?,’ I said. The Irish guys got the cruel jibe, but Joe didn’t. ‘No, they were complementary… but at six hundred bucks a night for a room, you’d hope for a few freebies.’
The Irish lads and I erupted in unison. ‘Six hundred dollars?!!’ ‘Yes, which is why I said I’d had enough of being ripped off before,’ he said looking at me. He had misunderstood my offer of help and thought I said something about ten roubles.
After a few minutes, Joe bid us goodnight and the five of us shook our heads at his naivety. ‘He is gonna get ripped off a hundred times more before he gets back to the States,’ said one of the lads.
But today, I saw a different side to Joe. He maybe a little gullible and too trusting for his own good, but he is fearless. He has travelled in Central America, South East Asia and across Europe, always alone and without the aid of guides or travel agents. He prefers trains and buses and only speaks English. He has lots of travel stories that he tells with not even a hint of ego. And tonight he created another.
As the subdued lights and unforgiving architecture of Yekaterinburg approached, Joe seemed to hang further out of the window. The toilets are locked a few minutes before a stop so I turned off the laptop and headed down the corridor. In the train attendant’s room, the light seemed duller than normal. The reason was the night-time attendant was getting changed into his uniform. The guy is enormous.
As I passed by, he was putting on his shoes. Bending over, the waist band of his trousers gripped the middle of his butt and a massive expanse of apologetically grey boxer shorts filled my view. When he walks down the corridor, his hips nearly brush the walls. His bulk pushed everything to the edge of the path. There is no need for words - his looming presence does the work. This is why I call him The Snowplough.
When I returned from the loo, the attendant was standing outside, fully uniformed, key in one hand, peaked cap in the other and a stern look gripped his downbeat moustache. I smiled but his robustness was impermeable. His steel-grey hair, menacing bulk and blunt manner would not yield, particularly as the train was due for a stop. He is even more impermeable than Natalia.
The Irish guys, Joe and I were some of the few passengers to hop off the train for the 23 minute stop. In the chilly night air, there was little to see. Fergal pulled out the cigarillos and the other three eagerly took one. With nothing to photograph or buy, we talked nonsense and then suddenly, Shane pointed and said; ‘Look, he’s off!’
We turned towards the station building and sure enough, Joe was running across the track, camera in hand to the nearest door. ‘He’s insane,’ said Fergal. ‘He is not even going the right way.’ He pointed at the door that everyone else was using. ‘That’s the exit!’
Earlier Joe said he was going to do the mission no matter what we said. ‘Well, if you do, make sure you take your passport and some money,’ I said, joking. ‘Yeah, that’s a good idea. I’ll take my electronic translator just in case I get left behind,’ he said with not even a hint of latent doom.
The people filed out of the exits, a few passengers boarded, the minutes ticked by and the station fell into silence. The Snowplough looked at his watch with increasing regularity. The Irish boys stubbed out their cigars and we all scanned the doors. There was no sign of Joe. The train attendant clapped his hands, said something authoritarian in Russian and we shuffled toward the train.
Just as we reached the steps, we heard a gentle panting behind us. It was Joe, wide-eyed and thrilled. ‘Hey, I got some cool photos. Look!’ He thrust his camera under my nose and with rapid fingers, flicked through his night’s work. There were 20, maybe 30, shots of 19th century murals depicting noble peasants, and out of focus photos of heavy chandeliers. ‘It was a real bummer,’ said Joe. ‘I couldn’t find the churches on foot. I was gonna get in a cab but there weren’t any. And then I saw these paintings in the station building.’
As far as Joe was concerned, it was a failed mission. Back on the train, he lamented the lost opportunity. He re-read the guide book and said; ‘Man, one of the churches was built on the site of a house where there was a massacre in the 19th century. Damn! It would’ve been cool to get a shot of that.’
‘You managed to get back on the train in time, Joe, that’s the main thing.’ He looked a little puzzled. ‘I had loads of time to spare. Maybe I coulda made it if I had sprinted.’
Joe’s attitude to travel and adventure is carefree to the extreme. Somehow he knows that he will be OK, no matter how hair-brained his ideas. He is not at all streetwise and he will get ripped off by countless street-level charlatans and board-level bullies in a way that I never would. And yet he has a youthful sense of discovery and wonderment that is way off my scale. Today, I learned a lot from the 25 year old New Yorker with the towelling slippers.
As I hunched over my laptop, reflected on the night’s events and sipped a final St John’s Wort tea, I noticed Joe reading his guidebook again. ‘Hey, Gary!’ he said with renewed enthusiasm, ‘A little further down the line is one of the last refuges of the Siberian Tiger.’ He peered into the jet black night as if half-expecting to see one reveal itself.
‘If we have a long enough stop, maybe I will get to see one,’ said Joe. I stared at him for a moment, shook my head in disbelief and smiled a tribute to a true traveller and a person who has prompted me to redefine the word ‘optimistic.’
Day 6: A Room on Rails
Sunday May 11 - Moscow
At around 8.00 pm, we arrived at Yaroslavskya station. After staring at signs, timetables and anything else with writing on it, Fizle - my second cousin, travelling partner for this leg of the journey, and rusty Russian speaker - said we are in the right place.
At the end of platform three, small, diverse groups of people gathered. Neat, carefully dressed Western Europeans in defensive circles around their bags. Russian families with huge blue striped bags – perhaps one metre cubes – sitting in lines as their children danced and cavorted in front of them.
Sole, expressionless young men, stared at anyone who dared look too hard, one hand in the pocket, the other clamping a cigarette. And a group of about twenty, teenage female Russian athletes, perhaps gymnasts, mostly blonde, all with pony tails, moved and bounced with straight backed disciplined in matching red, white and blue tracksuits.
The train suddenly curved into view. The locomotive was unassuming, ancient, abstract and humble. It barely looked up to the task of getting the red and blue carriages to the platform, never mind across a continent. As soon as the brakes screeched to a halt, the people began their farewells, grabbed their bags and waddled in search of their carriages.
We bid our goodbye to, Jeremy, and old school friend and our host for our short time in Moscow. He was as gentlemanly and unperturbed as ever, and reciprocated my firm handshake and Fizle's gentle hug. The next port of call for he and his family, after five years in Moscow, is a teaching post in Cambodia. That would be a gargantuan step for me, but to Jeremy, Tracey and their kids, it is merely another place on a limitless map. Nothing phases that guy.
We found carriage nine and we found Natalia Alexandriov, our carriage attendant. She had the obligatory everything: the blue uniform, the thick ankles and the unapproachable face that said ‘you may have paid for your ticket but this sure as hell is my carriage.’ Natalia checked our tickets and cross-referenced them with our passports. She told Fizle that she was in bed 23 and I was in 21. She seemed intent. Any 'unofficial' swopping, I felt, would be dealt with severely.
We found our four-bed compartment and it seemed that we would not be sharing. Only two beds – the upper bunks - were laid out. Four people for seven days in such a small room would be tough, especially if the other two were the average sized Russian. We touched wood, crossed fingers and said silent prayers to the god of space.
The train left two minutes early by my watch, at 9.23pm. We spent the late evening sorting out our beds, stashing our stuff and repeating our hopes that we would be alone for the duration of this epic journey. No matter how optimistic we were, deep down we knew that the room for two would soon be a little more crowded.
At around 8.00 pm, we arrived at Yaroslavskya station. After staring at signs, timetables and anything else with writing on it, Fizle - my second cousin, travelling partner for this leg of the journey, and rusty Russian speaker - said we are in the right place.
At the end of platform three, small, diverse groups of people gathered. Neat, carefully dressed Western Europeans in defensive circles around their bags. Russian families with huge blue striped bags – perhaps one metre cubes – sitting in lines as their children danced and cavorted in front of them.
Sole, expressionless young men, stared at anyone who dared look too hard, one hand in the pocket, the other clamping a cigarette. And a group of about twenty, teenage female Russian athletes, perhaps gymnasts, mostly blonde, all with pony tails, moved and bounced with straight backed disciplined in matching red, white and blue tracksuits.
The train suddenly curved into view. The locomotive was unassuming, ancient, abstract and humble. It barely looked up to the task of getting the red and blue carriages to the platform, never mind across a continent. As soon as the brakes screeched to a halt, the people began their farewells, grabbed their bags and waddled in search of their carriages.
We bid our goodbye to, Jeremy, and old school friend and our host for our short time in Moscow. He was as gentlemanly and unperturbed as ever, and reciprocated my firm handshake and Fizle's gentle hug. The next port of call for he and his family, after five years in Moscow, is a teaching post in Cambodia. That would be a gargantuan step for me, but to Jeremy, Tracey and their kids, it is merely another place on a limitless map. Nothing phases that guy.
We found carriage nine and we found Natalia Alexandriov, our carriage attendant. She had the obligatory everything: the blue uniform, the thick ankles and the unapproachable face that said ‘you may have paid for your ticket but this sure as hell is my carriage.’ Natalia checked our tickets and cross-referenced them with our passports. She told Fizle that she was in bed 23 and I was in 21. She seemed intent. Any 'unofficial' swopping, I felt, would be dealt with severely.
We found our four-bed compartment and it seemed that we would not be sharing. Only two beds – the upper bunks - were laid out. Four people for seven days in such a small room would be tough, especially if the other two were the average sized Russian. We touched wood, crossed fingers and said silent prayers to the god of space.
The train left two minutes early by my watch, at 9.23pm. We spent the late evening sorting out our beds, stashing our stuff and repeating our hopes that we would be alone for the duration of this epic journey. No matter how optimistic we were, deep down we knew that the room for two would soon be a little more crowded.
Sunday, 11 May 2008
Day 4: Goodbye Comfort Zone, Hello Eastern Europe
For most of Thursday, all of Friday and half of yesterday, I have been on the rails. First was a two hour journey from Brussels to Cologne and then, after a two hour break, a thirty six hour journey (including two nights) on a sleeper to Moscow.
The Brussels to Cologne train was excellent. Spacious, clean, quiet, fast, excellent décor and a restaurant carriage that served fantastic cuisine and a wide choice of German beers in real glasses. It was a delight to lean on the oval table and watch Belgium fly by.
I asked the man opposite to help me film a piece to camera. His name was Pieter and I could tell from the moment I saw him that he was a technical geek. As soon as arrived in the restaurant car, he unloaded his gadgets from his bag. Blackberry, iPhone, camera, and his bag obviously contained a laptop. His archaic pony tail and carelessly chosen clothes were complemented by his know-it-all facial expression.
Anyway, he was helpful and made a pretty good job of the task. Another guy joined us straight afterwards and was intrigued by the film. Gerhardt was artistically dressed in black, about 55, grey haired and, like Pieter, spoke exceptional English. We shared weissbier and banter for the next two hours. We whined about the British railways, politics, the madness of privatisation, and gave our perspectives on cultural differences, the amazing advances in technology and, of course, travel.
Gerhardt was changing trains at Koln and then going to Bonn, but he offered to show me a little of the city. Gerhardt asked me what I wanted and I said ‘something typically German.’ So he took me to a very busy restaurant called Fruh (or ‘early’, in English.)
Gerhardt attracted the attention of a swaggering, stumpy-legged, dark haired waiter. He thrust a menu at me, which I passed straight to Gerhardt. As he pondered, another waiter arrived carrying a round tray of slender beer glasses. Two were put in front of us and Gerhardt explained that you will get a replacement unless you say otherwise. They were only 200 ml and rather weak, so there was no fear of getting sufficiently drunk to miss my train.
Dinner was meatloaf with fried potatoes and onions, and ham hock with mashed potatoes and sauerkraut. The balmy evening and the good natured hubbub of the outdoor restaurant was the perfect complement to Gerhardt’s hospitality and company. He had the breadth of knowledge that only writers have. Interested in everything, and totally engaging, it was a real pity to say goodbye. He walked me back to the station, to the platform and he even found which part of the platform I should stand to get on the carriage to Moscow. As the train arrived, we shook hands and vowed to stay in touch.
Finding my sleeping compartment killed my elation. The train would be divided at some point in the night; some sleeping carriages would go to Prague, some to Copenhagen and some east to Russia. There was a huge difference in the standard of accommodation, and guess who got the very short straw?
It began chaotically. I pushed my way along the corridor as a succession of very large Russians pushed in the opposite direction. I suspect they had carried luggage onto the train for family members and we now desperate to get off before the train left.
I found berth 35 in a compartment of about three metres by two metres. Nothing wrong with the size and the décor was redolent of British Rail circa 1960s. I expected to be sharing with one other person and one person, a Luxembourger called Janos dressed in denim and a striped shirt, casually came into the compartment. We introduced each other and seem comfortable that we would be room mates.
Immediately, two Russian women appeared, waving tickets, pointing at us both and pushing bags into the limited space. The younger woman had two massive warts, one on the right side of her nose and the other on her chin. She also had a moustache. But apart from these blemishes, she was rather attractive. The older woman was shorter, rounder and had no warts. Then a young boy of about 11 appeared and then the surly, short train attendant.
They all spoke frantic Russian at Janos and I, and neither of us understood a word. The woman with the warts – Natalia – translated for us. Her boy is booked in this room which either means there will be three of us, there are three bunks, or Janos or I are in the wrong place. The attendant looked at all the tickets, pointed at Janos, said something officious in Russian and flicked up five fingers twice. Natalia confirmed; ‘You are in room 55 and my boy sleeps with the bald man.’
Natalia moved in two huge bags and I decided to get on the right side of her by hositing them onto the luggage rack. It turned out that Eddie – the boy – speaks some English, albeit in a Borat-style accent. His standard response to a question from me is ‘Ye-airrr-ss.’ He was OK as a room mate. He translated if someone pops their head around the door, and he obligingly hung up my jacket and showed me how everything worked. Not that there were many things to work. The 1950s style switch with a speaker showing musical notes didn't work; the sink seemed to drain water but the tap merely dribbled and the temperature switch appeared to make no difference whatsoever. The thermometer said 40 degrees.
Eddie told me that he, his mum and grandma have been to Paris and they went to Disneyland. He is obsessed by the Pirates of the Caribbean movie and had an annoying habit of droning on about the plot of the film. He did it three times over the course of the next 36 hours and each time, I politely stopped him and suggested he go see how mum and granny are. Thankfully he did. He also freaked me out a little because he looked like the boy from the Adams Family and has his mother’s moustache.
I climbed into my bunk at around midnight and was suddenly struck by the enormity of what I am doing. The single ticket, the twenty one day journey, travelling through countries I have never visited before, the tedium and claustrophobia of trains, being with strangers, not being at home, having no job and having no idea of what happens when I get to Taiwan.
I became very anxious. I tossed and turned and sweated, even though the compartment was not hot. I eventually got to sleep at, I guess at around three-ish. My comfort zone was being severely stretched but, as I reminded myself the next morning, that is one of the reasons I am doing this trip.
The Brussels to Cologne train was excellent. Spacious, clean, quiet, fast, excellent décor and a restaurant carriage that served fantastic cuisine and a wide choice of German beers in real glasses. It was a delight to lean on the oval table and watch Belgium fly by.
I asked the man opposite to help me film a piece to camera. His name was Pieter and I could tell from the moment I saw him that he was a technical geek. As soon as arrived in the restaurant car, he unloaded his gadgets from his bag. Blackberry, iPhone, camera, and his bag obviously contained a laptop. His archaic pony tail and carelessly chosen clothes were complemented by his know-it-all facial expression.
Anyway, he was helpful and made a pretty good job of the task. Another guy joined us straight afterwards and was intrigued by the film. Gerhardt was artistically dressed in black, about 55, grey haired and, like Pieter, spoke exceptional English. We shared weissbier and banter for the next two hours. We whined about the British railways, politics, the madness of privatisation, and gave our perspectives on cultural differences, the amazing advances in technology and, of course, travel.
Gerhardt was changing trains at Koln and then going to Bonn, but he offered to show me a little of the city. Gerhardt asked me what I wanted and I said ‘something typically German.’ So he took me to a very busy restaurant called Fruh (or ‘early’, in English.)
Gerhardt attracted the attention of a swaggering, stumpy-legged, dark haired waiter. He thrust a menu at me, which I passed straight to Gerhardt. As he pondered, another waiter arrived carrying a round tray of slender beer glasses. Two were put in front of us and Gerhardt explained that you will get a replacement unless you say otherwise. They were only 200 ml and rather weak, so there was no fear of getting sufficiently drunk to miss my train.
Dinner was meatloaf with fried potatoes and onions, and ham hock with mashed potatoes and sauerkraut. The balmy evening and the good natured hubbub of the outdoor restaurant was the perfect complement to Gerhardt’s hospitality and company. He had the breadth of knowledge that only writers have. Interested in everything, and totally engaging, it was a real pity to say goodbye. He walked me back to the station, to the platform and he even found which part of the platform I should stand to get on the carriage to Moscow. As the train arrived, we shook hands and vowed to stay in touch.
Finding my sleeping compartment killed my elation. The train would be divided at some point in the night; some sleeping carriages would go to Prague, some to Copenhagen and some east to Russia. There was a huge difference in the standard of accommodation, and guess who got the very short straw?
It began chaotically. I pushed my way along the corridor as a succession of very large Russians pushed in the opposite direction. I suspect they had carried luggage onto the train for family members and we now desperate to get off before the train left.
I found berth 35 in a compartment of about three metres by two metres. Nothing wrong with the size and the décor was redolent of British Rail circa 1960s. I expected to be sharing with one other person and one person, a Luxembourger called Janos dressed in denim and a striped shirt, casually came into the compartment. We introduced each other and seem comfortable that we would be room mates.
Immediately, two Russian women appeared, waving tickets, pointing at us both and pushing bags into the limited space. The younger woman had two massive warts, one on the right side of her nose and the other on her chin. She also had a moustache. But apart from these blemishes, she was rather attractive. The older woman was shorter, rounder and had no warts. Then a young boy of about 11 appeared and then the surly, short train attendant.
They all spoke frantic Russian at Janos and I, and neither of us understood a word. The woman with the warts – Natalia – translated for us. Her boy is booked in this room which either means there will be three of us, there are three bunks, or Janos or I are in the wrong place. The attendant looked at all the tickets, pointed at Janos, said something officious in Russian and flicked up five fingers twice. Natalia confirmed; ‘You are in room 55 and my boy sleeps with the bald man.’
Natalia moved in two huge bags and I decided to get on the right side of her by hositing them onto the luggage rack. It turned out that Eddie – the boy – speaks some English, albeit in a Borat-style accent. His standard response to a question from me is ‘Ye-airrr-ss.’ He was OK as a room mate. He translated if someone pops their head around the door, and he obligingly hung up my jacket and showed me how everything worked. Not that there were many things to work. The 1950s style switch with a speaker showing musical notes didn't work; the sink seemed to drain water but the tap merely dribbled and the temperature switch appeared to make no difference whatsoever. The thermometer said 40 degrees.
Eddie told me that he, his mum and grandma have been to Paris and they went to Disneyland. He is obsessed by the Pirates of the Caribbean movie and had an annoying habit of droning on about the plot of the film. He did it three times over the course of the next 36 hours and each time, I politely stopped him and suggested he go see how mum and granny are. Thankfully he did. He also freaked me out a little because he looked like the boy from the Adams Family and has his mother’s moustache.
I climbed into my bunk at around midnight and was suddenly struck by the enormity of what I am doing. The single ticket, the twenty one day journey, travelling through countries I have never visited before, the tedium and claustrophobia of trains, being with strangers, not being at home, having no job and having no idea of what happens when I get to Taiwan.
I became very anxious. I tossed and turned and sweated, even though the compartment was not hot. I eventually got to sleep at, I guess at around three-ish. My comfort zone was being severely stretched but, as I reminded myself the next morning, that is one of the reasons I am doing this trip.
Thursday, 8 May 2008
Day 3: Europe 1, GJM 0
I will never understand how, in French-speaking countries, people seem to know immediately that I am English. I don’t wear a Union Jack shirt, a bowler hat or whistle the national anthem. OK, so I guess I am obviously northern European by appearance but why is it that waiters, shop keepers and ticket sellers automatically speak English to me?
Arriving at Brussels Midi railway station yesterday at 5.30pm, the first thing I needed was a shower and a nap. I needed to find a hotel. So I asked the guy at the metro ticket booth for ‘Un billett a Hotel de Monnaies.’
Before I had even finished my tiny sentence, he smiled disappointedly, shook his head slightly and said ‘Here you go… one ticket to Hotel de Monnaies.’ Then, speaking slowly, slightly louder than normal and using hand signals, he said, in near perfect English. ‘It’s TWO stops on the ORANGE line.’ I knew that. I might not be able to speak French very well, but I am not senile, nor hard of hearing and I can count.
At the hotel, the desk clerk looked like an extra in an Aussie soap. He was perfectly groomed, tall, with highlighted spiked hair and a gentle fake tan. He greeted me with ‘Bonsoir…’ and then, before I could reply, ‘Good evening. How are you, sir?’ I didn’t even bother asking for ‘une chambre pour une nuit.’ I just thanked him, paid for the room and heaved my bags into the lift, wondering if I will ever use my very limited French.
A few hours later, and I had no reason to insult the beautiful language. I had arranged to meet Fabiana, an ex-student who now has lived in Brussels for the last 18 months. She is Italian and is a true multi-linguist. In her early twenties, she worked as an au pair with a French family for three summers. She studied her MA in English and keeps her Spanish fluent by speaking it every day to her flat mate. After a stint working for the European Commission, she now works for a company that does copywriting for various EU-related bodies. As we sit down for paella al fresco, she mentions, almost as an aside, that she also speaks Portuguese.
The whole notion of nationality is redefined in Brussels and Fabiana is the personification of Europeaness. She sees herself as Italian but she does not have the classic Latin looks. She is very slightly built, her skin is relatively fair and her hair is light brown. If I had never met her before, I would guess that she was French.
Fabiana also objects to the expectations that Italian culture still places on women. She tells me that her family think she is selfish because she is putting her career first, outside of Italy. In her late twenties, she ought, they say, to be close to the family, married to a local man and building the next generation. ‘There is a big difference between what I am, and what my family expect me to be,’ she says. Her defiance is palpable.
It seems the family will never understand. She is intent on developing her career first, building solid financial and professional foundations before she thinks about marriage and nest building. And when this happens, it will be in a place that suits her and her partner. It will not necessarily be in Italy and it may not even be in Europe. In this respect, she is no different to any other modern woman, trying to satisfy her need for a fulfilling career while also leaving enough time to raise children while still relatively young.
As we walk back, waiters are beginning to clear the tables and stacking chairs from outside the countless restaurants around the Grand Place. Restaurant owners oversee the operation and alternate between shouting orders to their underlings and exchanging boisterous bonhomie with their neighbouring rivals. Some diners linger, having a final joke and drink before retiring for the evening. Every European language is audible. Rather embarrassingly, the English-speaking diners are the loudest and the most uncouth.
‘Can you imagine this in Cardiff?,’ I ask Fabiana. ‘Hundreds of street cafes, with people enjoying late night drinks without getting hideously drunk?’ She laughs at the ridiculousness of the concept. I then ask her what she misses about Cardiff. ‘Some of the people I met while I was there,’ she replies. ‘Anything else?,’ I enquire in the hope that there is something in British culture that is on a par with her broad European experiences. ‘Not really,’ she says.
We walk past the imposing Palace of Justice, encased in thousands of scaffolding poles, and I ask if she remembers the word she often used to describe British people on a night on the town. She stops for a moment, and ponders. ‘Ah yes…barbarians!’ This may seem a little harsh to patriotic Brits but, in contrast to night scenes across Europe, it is horribly accurate.
I try desperately to find a positive angle. All I can muster is a dig at a certain group of the British family. ‘Well, I think one of your predecessors had the right idea, Fabiana. Julius Cesar conquered our islands but he drew a line and built a wall at Scotland. Now they really are barbaric!’
We stop at a night shop for water and cigarettes. I ask for ‘Marlboro rouge, s'il vous plait?’ and the man behind the counter says: ‘That’s four euros forty, please.’ Fabiana giggles, the man smiles and I sheepishly hand over a ten euro note.
Arriving at Brussels Midi railway station yesterday at 5.30pm, the first thing I needed was a shower and a nap. I needed to find a hotel. So I asked the guy at the metro ticket booth for ‘Un billett a Hotel de Monnaies.’
Before I had even finished my tiny sentence, he smiled disappointedly, shook his head slightly and said ‘Here you go… one ticket to Hotel de Monnaies.’ Then, speaking slowly, slightly louder than normal and using hand signals, he said, in near perfect English. ‘It’s TWO stops on the ORANGE line.’ I knew that. I might not be able to speak French very well, but I am not senile, nor hard of hearing and I can count.
At the hotel, the desk clerk looked like an extra in an Aussie soap. He was perfectly groomed, tall, with highlighted spiked hair and a gentle fake tan. He greeted me with ‘Bonsoir…’ and then, before I could reply, ‘Good evening. How are you, sir?’ I didn’t even bother asking for ‘une chambre pour une nuit.’ I just thanked him, paid for the room and heaved my bags into the lift, wondering if I will ever use my very limited French.
A few hours later, and I had no reason to insult the beautiful language. I had arranged to meet Fabiana, an ex-student who now has lived in Brussels for the last 18 months. She is Italian and is a true multi-linguist. In her early twenties, she worked as an au pair with a French family for three summers. She studied her MA in English and keeps her Spanish fluent by speaking it every day to her flat mate. After a stint working for the European Commission, she now works for a company that does copywriting for various EU-related bodies. As we sit down for paella al fresco, she mentions, almost as an aside, that she also speaks Portuguese.
The whole notion of nationality is redefined in Brussels and Fabiana is the personification of Europeaness. She sees herself as Italian but she does not have the classic Latin looks. She is very slightly built, her skin is relatively fair and her hair is light brown. If I had never met her before, I would guess that she was French.
Fabiana also objects to the expectations that Italian culture still places on women. She tells me that her family think she is selfish because she is putting her career first, outside of Italy. In her late twenties, she ought, they say, to be close to the family, married to a local man and building the next generation. ‘There is a big difference between what I am, and what my family expect me to be,’ she says. Her defiance is palpable.
It seems the family will never understand. She is intent on developing her career first, building solid financial and professional foundations before she thinks about marriage and nest building. And when this happens, it will be in a place that suits her and her partner. It will not necessarily be in Italy and it may not even be in Europe. In this respect, she is no different to any other modern woman, trying to satisfy her need for a fulfilling career while also leaving enough time to raise children while still relatively young.
As we walk back, waiters are beginning to clear the tables and stacking chairs from outside the countless restaurants around the Grand Place. Restaurant owners oversee the operation and alternate between shouting orders to their underlings and exchanging boisterous bonhomie with their neighbouring rivals. Some diners linger, having a final joke and drink before retiring for the evening. Every European language is audible. Rather embarrassingly, the English-speaking diners are the loudest and the most uncouth.
‘Can you imagine this in Cardiff?,’ I ask Fabiana. ‘Hundreds of street cafes, with people enjoying late night drinks without getting hideously drunk?’ She laughs at the ridiculousness of the concept. I then ask her what she misses about Cardiff. ‘Some of the people I met while I was there,’ she replies. ‘Anything else?,’ I enquire in the hope that there is something in British culture that is on a par with her broad European experiences. ‘Not really,’ she says.
We walk past the imposing Palace of Justice, encased in thousands of scaffolding poles, and I ask if she remembers the word she often used to describe British people on a night on the town. She stops for a moment, and ponders. ‘Ah yes…barbarians!’ This may seem a little harsh to patriotic Brits but, in contrast to night scenes across Europe, it is horribly accurate.
I try desperately to find a positive angle. All I can muster is a dig at a certain group of the British family. ‘Well, I think one of your predecessors had the right idea, Fabiana. Julius Cesar conquered our islands but he drew a line and built a wall at Scotland. Now they really are barbaric!’
We stop at a night shop for water and cigarettes. I ask for ‘Marlboro rouge, s'il vous plait?’ and the man behind the counter says: ‘That’s four euros forty, please.’ Fabiana giggles, the man smiles and I sheepishly hand over a ten euro note.
Wednesday, 7 May 2008
Day 1 and 2: Greek and Unique
One thing to make clear from the outset is that I am not doing this journey as a penance. I am avoiding hardship, unnecessary discomfort and overtly unhygienic travelling companions. However, nor am I travelling business class. You might say I am going middle class.
Well, that’s not strictly true. For the first leg of my journey – Cardiff to London – I bought a first class ticket. My excuse is simple; because I booked the rest of the trip well in advance, I decided to book my UK ticket at the same time.
There is no such thing as a standard price for a British train ticket these days. Prices are now determined by a baffling, secret algorithm that pumps out seemingly random amounts. Sometimes you can pay 15 quid for a standard return to London, other times it is closer to a hundred. But it can also work in the traveller’s favour.
Usually a first class ticket is over 100 pounds, but because I bought in advance, it’s 30 quid one way. I must confess to liking first class. The seats are wider, and leather. The carriages are never overcrowded and even the idiots are a cut above the ones in standard class.
The tables are broader and there are electrical sockets for laptops etc. You also get unlimited free coffee, tea and biscuits. Well, that’s the theory but Melissa, a former media studies teacher in the seat across the gangway, tells me that they don’t deliver to your table anymore. ‘You have to go to the buffet car yourself and ask for it,’ she said.
The train arrived, predictably, late at Paddington. I reached Elena's place at 1945 and after a farewell meal (Greek-style, of course) and a few pints at the Golden Lion, awoke on her sofa at 0700. Lay there dozing for the next two hours with the perpetual motion on the Great North Road outside and the leaden-footed owner of the flat upstairs providing the soundtrack.
It is virtually impossible to find quiet in London. Even in the parks there is always some man-made noise. I guess all big cities are like this but London is an extreme. And it is one of several reasons that I don’t really care for the place.
Another is the ability that London dwellers have to isolate themselves behind newspapers, iPods and emotionless eyes. The silence on tube trains is almost deafening at times. People crammed together, invading each other’s space and, bizarrely, pretending that no one else is there.
When I used to travel to London a lot on business, I often tried to spark up a conversation with someone on the tube. By the looks I received in return, you’d think that I’d stolen their children. So I would return to my crossword and wait impatiently to get on the train out of the city.
This is not to say that Londoners are inherently unfriendly; they are perfectly sociable to their friends. But even in pubs, arguably the greatest British invention, there is rarely the chaotic, magical mixing that you see elsewhere in the UK. People are wary of strangers and tend not to mingle with unknown quantities. This is ironic when you consider that the city is full of foreigners and short of space.
But when you do get to know a Londoner, you have a friend for life. Elena is the classic example. We met three years ago and she is now one of the few people on the planet that I would trust with my life. Not only does she feed and house me if I am ever in town, but she is also supportive, non-judgemental, compassionate and infinitely patient.
But now, I must go. I need to collect my passport from the Taiwanese Consulate and then take a final tube journey to St Pancras to catch the Eurostar to Brussels. Stage two of my journey beckons. London will not be missed. But Elena certainly will.
Well, that’s not strictly true. For the first leg of my journey – Cardiff to London – I bought a first class ticket. My excuse is simple; because I booked the rest of the trip well in advance, I decided to book my UK ticket at the same time.
There is no such thing as a standard price for a British train ticket these days. Prices are now determined by a baffling, secret algorithm that pumps out seemingly random amounts. Sometimes you can pay 15 quid for a standard return to London, other times it is closer to a hundred. But it can also work in the traveller’s favour.
Usually a first class ticket is over 100 pounds, but because I bought in advance, it’s 30 quid one way. I must confess to liking first class. The seats are wider, and leather. The carriages are never overcrowded and even the idiots are a cut above the ones in standard class.
The tables are broader and there are electrical sockets for laptops etc. You also get unlimited free coffee, tea and biscuits. Well, that’s the theory but Melissa, a former media studies teacher in the seat across the gangway, tells me that they don’t deliver to your table anymore. ‘You have to go to the buffet car yourself and ask for it,’ she said.
The train arrived, predictably, late at Paddington. I reached Elena's place at 1945 and after a farewell meal (Greek-style, of course) and a few pints at the Golden Lion, awoke on her sofa at 0700. Lay there dozing for the next two hours with the perpetual motion on the Great North Road outside and the leaden-footed owner of the flat upstairs providing the soundtrack.
It is virtually impossible to find quiet in London. Even in the parks there is always some man-made noise. I guess all big cities are like this but London is an extreme. And it is one of several reasons that I don’t really care for the place.
Another is the ability that London dwellers have to isolate themselves behind newspapers, iPods and emotionless eyes. The silence on tube trains is almost deafening at times. People crammed together, invading each other’s space and, bizarrely, pretending that no one else is there.
When I used to travel to London a lot on business, I often tried to spark up a conversation with someone on the tube. By the looks I received in return, you’d think that I’d stolen their children. So I would return to my crossword and wait impatiently to get on the train out of the city.
This is not to say that Londoners are inherently unfriendly; they are perfectly sociable to their friends. But even in pubs, arguably the greatest British invention, there is rarely the chaotic, magical mixing that you see elsewhere in the UK. People are wary of strangers and tend not to mingle with unknown quantities. This is ironic when you consider that the city is full of foreigners and short of space.
But when you do get to know a Londoner, you have a friend for life. Elena is the classic example. We met three years ago and she is now one of the few people on the planet that I would trust with my life. Not only does she feed and house me if I am ever in town, but she is also supportive, non-judgemental, compassionate and infinitely patient.
But now, I must go. I need to collect my passport from the Taiwanese Consulate and then take a final tube journey to St Pancras to catch the Eurostar to Brussels. Stage two of my journey beckons. London will not be missed. But Elena certainly will.
Monday, 5 May 2008
Diolch Diff
The clock has ticked and my time in Cardiff is nearly over. The first leg of my journey begins with a bus ride to Cardiff Central on Tuesday afternoon. Once I get on the London-bound train, I don't know when I will be back. It might even be 'if I will be back...'
I gave up predicting my future a long time ago. One thing that life has demonstrated time and time again is that accidents and coincidences change trajectories. For example, I started teaching in Cardiff because I met a man in a pub who asked me in passing if I had ever taught business journalism. I said I had. 'Do you want to teach international MA students?,' he asked. As it happened, I was rather jaded with my freelance career - that is why I had gone out for a few pints - so I said, 'Why not?'
The man was a teacher at the university and his boss had asked him to ask around. Lo and behold, I happened to be in the right pub, at the right time, in the right mood. That was in January 2001 and I gave my first class two weeks later.
For the first two and a half years, I travelled to Cardiff once a week. With every trip over the Severn Bridge, I loved teaching more and more. Then, in September 2003, I moved to Cardiff and was given a full time contract. I quit the freelancing and academia changed my life.
Ironically, academia has now drive me back to freelancing. I have read so many books, been exposed to so many new ideas, had so many discussions with energetic, passionate people from all over the world, that I really need to do some serious journalism again. My Cardiff experience has rekindled my fire.
So I will always be grateful to the city and the people I have met here. Another irony is that I have felt more at home over the last few months than at any time since I arrived. But maybe that is the final confirmation that it's time to move on. Being in an emotionally safe environment has many benefits but it is... well... safe. I need an adventure. I need to step out of the comfort zone and see what coincidences and accidental meetings lie in wait.
I have a feeling that the next quantum leap in my unpredictable life will involve meeting another random person in another random pub. Whether the pub is in Brussels, Moscow, Vladivostock, Tokyo or Taipei, my future is out there somewhere. All I need to do is go and find it.
I gave up predicting my future a long time ago. One thing that life has demonstrated time and time again is that accidents and coincidences change trajectories. For example, I started teaching in Cardiff because I met a man in a pub who asked me in passing if I had ever taught business journalism. I said I had. 'Do you want to teach international MA students?,' he asked. As it happened, I was rather jaded with my freelance career - that is why I had gone out for a few pints - so I said, 'Why not?'
The man was a teacher at the university and his boss had asked him to ask around. Lo and behold, I happened to be in the right pub, at the right time, in the right mood. That was in January 2001 and I gave my first class two weeks later.
For the first two and a half years, I travelled to Cardiff once a week. With every trip over the Severn Bridge, I loved teaching more and more. Then, in September 2003, I moved to Cardiff and was given a full time contract. I quit the freelancing and academia changed my life.
Ironically, academia has now drive me back to freelancing. I have read so many books, been exposed to so many new ideas, had so many discussions with energetic, passionate people from all over the world, that I really need to do some serious journalism again. My Cardiff experience has rekindled my fire.
So I will always be grateful to the city and the people I have met here. Another irony is that I have felt more at home over the last few months than at any time since I arrived. But maybe that is the final confirmation that it's time to move on. Being in an emotionally safe environment has many benefits but it is... well... safe. I need an adventure. I need to step out of the comfort zone and see what coincidences and accidental meetings lie in wait.
I have a feeling that the next quantum leap in my unpredictable life will involve meeting another random person in another random pub. Whether the pub is in Brussels, Moscow, Vladivostock, Tokyo or Taipei, my future is out there somewhere. All I need to do is go and find it.
Saturday, 3 May 2008
Possessed, Consumed and Hungover
Packing up my possessions, transporting them across Cardiff and putting them into storage has made me wonder how much I actually need them. I don't have a lot of bulky items - furniture, etc. - but I still have enough to fill half a garage from floor to ceiling. It's a heck of a lot of stuff.
For the next six months, I will survive on the contents of one back pack. OK, I will buy some new clothes when I get to Taiwan but I don't really need anything more. This is quite a liberating thought. In fact it makes me feel incredibly smug because it proves that I am a failed consumer.
For a moment, a few weeks ago, I even thought about shredding all my possessions, like Michael Landy did in 2001. But the idea quickly evaporated when I realised that I would have to include all my books, my computer, my leather jacket, tailor-made suits, photographs and plants. These things are, in fact, very important to me. So I am not totally anti-consumerism and I am partially defined by what I own.
This blog post is fast turning into a philosophical mess, so I will go back to my Saturday chores. First on the list is dealing with the hangover from last night's leaving party at the Cayo Arms. It was a good night and, judging by the contents of my pockets this morning, I only bought one drink. My head and liver tell me that I consumed many more.
For the next six months, I will survive on the contents of one back pack. OK, I will buy some new clothes when I get to Taiwan but I don't really need anything more. This is quite a liberating thought. In fact it makes me feel incredibly smug because it proves that I am a failed consumer.
For a moment, a few weeks ago, I even thought about shredding all my possessions, like Michael Landy did in 2001. But the idea quickly evaporated when I realised that I would have to include all my books, my computer, my leather jacket, tailor-made suits, photographs and plants. These things are, in fact, very important to me. So I am not totally anti-consumerism and I am partially defined by what I own.
This blog post is fast turning into a philosophical mess, so I will go back to my Saturday chores. First on the list is dealing with the hangover from last night's leaving party at the Cayo Arms. It was a good night and, judging by the contents of my pockets this morning, I only bought one drink. My head and liver tell me that I consumed many more.
Friday, 2 May 2008
Time Waits for Nomad
Much as time seems to speed up the older you become, so my departure date is galloping towards me. It doesn't look like I have time to do everything before I leave, but my intuition says it will all click together like a finely-crafted Swiss watch.
On Tuesday May 6, I will heave my backpack onto the 1625 from Cardiff Central to London Paddington. This is the first part of a journey that will cover some 8,500 miles, take 21 days to complete, cross eight time zones and pass through seven countries.
The end destination is Taiwan and I will get there without stepping onto an aeroplane. Instead, there will be six train journeys and two boat trips.
This is a huge step into the unknown. I have never been further east than Germany and although I can just about make myself understood in French and German, my linguistic skills are minimal.
But surprisingly, the language barrier is not my greatest concern. I am more worried about food. I love trying different foods but I try to avoid certain things. Wheat and dairy, for example, make me feel bllluurrrgh. I also need plenty of calories and I wonder if I will be able to get sufficient fuel on my travels without having to eat stuff that makes me feel crap. I could really do without being constipated in Siberia.
Anyway, there is only one way to find out and I am committed. The tickets are booked, my wallet is bulging with four currencies, the visas are sorted and my possessions are (almost) all boxed up and sitting in storage.
The standard question from friends over the last few weeks is: 'are you excited?' Well, I haven't really had time to be excited, or scared or anything other than busy. I guess the adrenaline will really start pumping on Tuesday when it is just me, my backpack, my tickets and my hopes getting on the train to London.
And I will certainly have plenty of time between then and May 27 (when I arrive in Taiwan) to decide whether this trip is the greatest adventure or the most foolish mistake I have ever made.
Either way, I am going. But now, time to do some more packing...
On Tuesday May 6, I will heave my backpack onto the 1625 from Cardiff Central to London Paddington. This is the first part of a journey that will cover some 8,500 miles, take 21 days to complete, cross eight time zones and pass through seven countries.
The end destination is Taiwan and I will get there without stepping onto an aeroplane. Instead, there will be six train journeys and two boat trips.
This is a huge step into the unknown. I have never been further east than Germany and although I can just about make myself understood in French and German, my linguistic skills are minimal.
But surprisingly, the language barrier is not my greatest concern. I am more worried about food. I love trying different foods but I try to avoid certain things. Wheat and dairy, for example, make me feel bllluurrrgh. I also need plenty of calories and I wonder if I will be able to get sufficient fuel on my travels without having to eat stuff that makes me feel crap. I could really do without being constipated in Siberia.
Anyway, there is only one way to find out and I am committed. The tickets are booked, my wallet is bulging with four currencies, the visas are sorted and my possessions are (almost) all boxed up and sitting in storage.
The standard question from friends over the last few weeks is: 'are you excited?' Well, I haven't really had time to be excited, or scared or anything other than busy. I guess the adrenaline will really start pumping on Tuesday when it is just me, my backpack, my tickets and my hopes getting on the train to London.
And I will certainly have plenty of time between then and May 27 (when I arrive in Taiwan) to decide whether this trip is the greatest adventure or the most foolish mistake I have ever made.
Either way, I am going. But now, time to do some more packing...
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