A giant stone head of Lenin is growing from a block on the sidewalk. We are walking past the statue there and back again, trying to find a store where we can buy a map of Russia. We came to downtown Ulan-Ude to get a map and a data SIM card. Buying a SIM was easy. Buying a map is way harder. No success at the Post Office and a stationary store. It takes us long to find any bookstore whatsoever. There is a couple of faded tourist maps of the Baikal Lake but no map of Russia. Never mind, we will buy one later. We go to a stolovaya, a diner, to buy some borscht and buze instead.
Culture shocks
It took us less than 2 days in Russia to fall in love with the shabby local eateries. They are cheap, not overly fancy, there sometimes is wifi, you can sit in there how long you need and nobody gives a damn about you, there is grumpy staff in aprons just like in the school canteens of our youth, and there always is borscht. There also always are bathrooms with actual toilets and water. A blast of civilization! After a month in Mongolia, we are surprised we suddenly don’t need to ask for water or to look for rivers anymore.
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| Borscht |
Then we go to a grocery store to buy some supplies. A blast of civilization again. There are cheap things that are not meat. In Mongolian local shops, horse cans were usually the only food in packages convenient for traveling; and Korean instant noodles, if we were lucky. If we wanted something else, we would have to find a big store. Now I’m suddenly overwhelmed by choice. There is a plenty of cans of pulses and veggies! And a plenty of fresh veggies! And fruits! Eventually, we buy some bread and cans and pasta, I get a lot of veggies and Vojta gets a lot of sweets.
With sweets, our job in Ulan-Ude is done. We haven’t found any available Couchsurfer here, and Ulan-Ude doesn’t make us want to hang around and look at things much. The city feels grumpy and strictly practical. Except for the head of Lenin, there seems to be nothing unnecessary, such as large bookstores or nice houses. Also, people wear practical clothes. That feels surprising: in Prague, our hometown, you can often tell Russian people by a lot of makeup and jewels, glossy clothes, and inconvenient shoes with high heels regardless of weather and the surface they walk on. I actually ended up thinking this was normal in Russia. So it’s kind of reassuring to see that in fact, people in Russia dress according to weather just like anybody else.
Beauty of the lake Baikal in fall
Our next plan is to go to the lake Baikal. More specifically, to the less crowded part of the shore a bit to the north. It’s 150 km to go; this is nothing in Russia. We cross some fancy suburbs and then go through a thick forest the entire way. Fall is starting and the masses of trees are changing color into all shades of golden.
The wooden village houses on the shore shine with colors too: most of them are decorated with elaborate carvings and are painted in shiny blue or green. Further on, there are mostly holiday resorts. They look simple, just like those I remember from early 90s back in Czechia: rows of beach cabins, some concrete buildings, playgrounds, and volleyball courts. The tourist season seems to be over, so everything is almost completely empty. Only locals drive on the roads. We chat with a truck driver: life is hard, there are no jobs. When he was young back in the USSR days, young people were given jobs. His kids have hard time finding jobs now.
We get out in one of the holiday villages. There is a lot of tourist shops but most of them are closed. Just a grocery store and a newsagent are open. Many of the newspapers and magazines have Putin’s face on the front page. On the cover of a tabloid, he is wearing a swimming suit and sunglasses and the headline says: “The West is jealous – Russia has a healthy, strong president. His short fishing trip became a world sensation!”
The beach is empty too. Old fireplaces and litter show that there were crazy parties in summer. But now all tourists are gone. The shore is lonely and wild, and the lake seems endless. The water is cold as hell. It is fine for a short dip but my feet and hands are freezing when I try to quickly wash my socks. We can make a nice campfire to unfreeze, though. The sun shows us a postcard sunset, and I feel so happy to be here.
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| Lake Baikal |
A long way to go
The next day, we need to start heading west. We have a 1-month tourist visa and 6000 kilometers to cross before we get to Europe. We are confident but such a stretch of globe ahead of us means that we can’t afford roaming in the vast distances of Siberia too much. We still don’t have a paper map, but we have a map in Vojta’s phone. And the idea is pretty clear: we need to follow the Trans-Siberian railway. There is just a couple of cities several hundred kilometers far from each other.
We get a ride from a lively girl. She is more optimistic about life than the yesterday’s driver. I also notice she wears completely normal clothes; that’s still a bit surprising.
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| One of the beautiful carved houses. This one is on the outskirts of Krasnoyarsk. |
We need to go back to Ulan-Ude, cross it, join the Trans-Siberian highway and continue to Irkutsk. Hitching a ride with a truck going that way is very easy. Kolya, the driver, says he is Chuvash and comes from a completely different part of Russia. He travels across the country often, though. Now, he is going from Eastern Siberia back west. On his way there, he also took a hitchhiker, he says. It was a young guy on his way to Magadan. He was looking for traces of his grandfather who had been deported to a gulag in that area and his family had never heard about him anymore. A chill goes down my spine: we knew Siberia had a troubled history, but I haven’t expected to hear about it firsthand so soon.
We also notice Kolya has a map in his cabin. I ask him where we can buy
one.
- “A map of what?” he asks.
- “A map of Russia.”
- “What for?”
- “Well… to get to Mosow and to Europe.”
- “You don’t need a map for that. Just go 4000 kilometers straight. You can buy
your map in Moscow.”
The lake Baikal is so large that we are going along the shore for several hours, even though it is only the southernmost tip. Kolya stops at a market and buys tasty fish for us: it’s called omul and it only lives in this lake.
We camp on the outskirts of Irkutsk and then continue. The next stretch of the road to the next city is over 1000 kilometers. That’s impressive. The distance is not scary, though–the road is so busy we are not afraid of getting stranded. Also, there always is the Trans-Siberian railway somewhere near us, a sign of civilization and a reminder that we are going the right way.
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| A lighthouse on the shore of Baikal |
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| Groceries villagers sell in the city. |
The perks of the life on the road
We soon get used to the monotonous life on the road. It’s easy. We are by far not the only ones who are doing this. Long-distance trucks represent the absolute majority of traffic on the Trans-Siberian. They travel thousands of miles from Vladivostok, Magadan, Khabarovsk, or Chita up to Moscow and back again. Russian even has a single word for drivers who spend days and days on the road: dalnoboyshiki.
Sometimes, we meet hitchhikers like us. And everybody knows what hitchhiking is and understand what we are doing. The Trans-Siberian seems to be equipped exactly for this kind of travel. Every now and then, there are big service stations with everything one might need. Besides parking lots, petrol stations, car repairs, and hotels, there usually also are grocery stores, stolovayas, and banyas–isolated shower rooms. Especially the latter is very convenient. You don’t need to buy an unnecessary stay in a hotel to use a shower: you just pay a few Rubles to take a traditional hot bath. Then, you are free to pitch your tent anywhere in the forest behind the service station. Nobody ever cares.
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| Hitchhikers from Belarus on their way to Cambodia |
Siberia is an endless forest. Most of the time, there are just masses of trees on both sides of the road. Most of them are birch and some bear traces of frequent forest fires. The colors of the forest are always amazing, though. Fall seems to be traveling with us. Rarely, the carpet of trees is interrupted by marches or by lonely towns with colorful wooden houses.
One of these towns is called just “Zima”: winter. Our driver is not
happy with recent winters, though.
“These days, there are no real winters anymore! Imagine: when snow falls in
October, sometimes it melts down before the next snow comes! In the past, the
October snow would never melt down before the next spring.”
We are just nodding: this actually is hard to imagine. in our region of
Czechia, there sometimes is no snow throughout the entire winter anymore.
“Maybe it’s because of people. Maybe the climate is changing,” I say in my
basic Russian.
The driver waves his hand: “Maybe. But the Earth is too big. It will cope with that soon.”
In the middle of the giant forest, this is easy to believe.
Krasnoyarsk: Stolby, a forestry museum, and too much Lenin
In two days, we arrive to the outskirts of the city of Krasnoyarsk. We decide to go downtown in order to see something else than forest. Vojta wants to visit a museum and there also are Krasnoyarskie Stolby, a famous rocky area. The driver who gave us a ride on the city bypass looks grumpy at first and keeps asking us why we hitchhike. We try to keep answering friendly and politely, and eventually he melts. He is a lecturer at the Krasnoyarsk forestry institute and offers us to bring us with him. We accept out of curiosity; the man brings us to a forestry museum at the institute and introduces us to a colleague of his. The lady seems obviously flattered someone is interested in Krasnoyarsk forestry, and decides to take us on a tour of the museum. Then she also invites us for tea. We ask her what’s life like here. She says in Krasnoyarsk it’s fine, but way more difficult in the country. (Just like Arlat in Buryatia, she does not mention the other parts of Russia besides her region.)
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| Our host from the Krasnoyarsk Forestry Institute |
In downtown Krasnoyarsk, there is a huge statue of Lenin just like in Ulan-Ude. This one, though, shows not only his head, but the full body. There also is a regional museum. Although it’s shabby, there is a lot of information about non-Russian native peoples of the Krasnoyarsk krai, such as Evenks, Dolgans, Enets, Nenets, and of the Tunguska event.
We go camping to the hilly area of Stolby. There is a geocache with the last record made by a group of Czech students. The suburb under the hills looks almost like a village. A lady that sees us passing by invites us for tea and cookies. We spend the morning chatting with her in her village house, and then she gives us some apples to go, as if she were our grandmother. Back downtown, I try to buy some postcards of the city for my friends in Czechia, but I only find some with Lenin. They will have to do. We gave up on the map already.
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| This lady from Krasnoyarsk saw us on the street and invited us for tea |
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| Lenin everywhere |
Truck drivers and Russian jokes
We go on west. The beautiful autumn weather keeps traveling with us. Except for some morning frosts, the temperature is mild, it’s hardly ever raining, there are no mosquitoes (even though Siberia is notorious for mosquitoes), and the colors of the trees are stunning every day. September seems to be the best month to be here.
Our life on the road is simple. We eat borscht and pelmeni at the local stolovayas; the places, as well as tastes, are very similar to each other. Usually, there is the same choice of meals for very similar prices, and there always is TV that shows either a series, or Putin. (Usually, it’s Putin.) At night, we buy sausages, roast them over campfire and eat them with horseradish and bread.
We travel long distances with trucks. They stop very rarely during the day. The drivers are usually in a hurry because miles are money, so they try limiting their breaks as much as possible. In China, we were surprised when two drivers made 1000 kilometers in one day almost without stopping. Here, though, we hitch a ride with a driver who has made 4000 km alone with no sleepover. He doesn’t eat and drink so that he doesn’t need to pee. He doesn’t sleep either. By the way, he had a heart attack last month but work can’t wait.
Also, drivers speed. It’s a bit scary because the Trans-Siberian road is bumpy, very narrow and very busy. Sometimes, we can see an overturned truck in the ditch. A pleasant surprise is, though, that the dalnoboyshiki don’t drink and drive.
We practice our Russian in conversations with the drivers. We have plenty of opportunities for that because nobody speaks any other language. I soon learn to say the few introductory sentences correctly and with a bearable accent. The downside is that this makes the drivers think I’m fluent in Russian. When I tell them I’m not they look at me with suspicion and think I’m kidding. And they tell us jokes.
Jokes seem to be a very popular topic for conversation in Russia. You just can’t avoid them. Russian jokes are very long and complicated and it takes time before they get to the punchline. Vojta usually gives up immediately. I usually manage to follow the meaning up to the punchline, and then I get lost too.
Talking politics
Another topic you just can’t avoid is politics. Especially if you come from an Eastern European country. Drivers seem to love talking about politics. They always want to know what we think about Russia. (But tell me honestly!) As we come from Czechia, they also often want to know if we are happier now, or before the independence. This makes this kind of conversations a minefield.
Let me explain why (or just skip this paragraph if you don’t wish to read about political history). Czechia, our country, has had a long and sometimes troubled history with Russia. At the end of World War II, Russia (or more precisely, the USSR) liberated our country (Czechoslovakia at the time) from the Nazi occupation. It won the gratitude of the Czechoslovak people. Also, many Czechoslovaks supported the idea of communism at the time. And the Czechoslovak communist party was under a strong influence of the Soviet communist party. Then, the Czechoslovak communist party won a rigged election and turned Czechoslovakia into a totalitarian state with a government controlled by Moscow. Twenty years later, Czechoslovakia saw a peaceful uprising against the centralization of power. The so-called Prague Spring was crushed by Russian tanks, and a full-scale occupation continued for the next 20 years, until the revolution in Czechoslovakia and the collapse of the Soviet bloc. (The Russian propaganda at the time described the occupation as a brotherly help to an ally against an uprising led by Western agents. Many Russians still believe this today.) After the collapse of the USSR, the relations with Russia strongly improved and then worsened again with Putin’s occupation of parts of Georgia and Ukraine.
I want to give people genuine answers to their questions, but it’s hard to go in more detail in my very basic Russian without offending anyone. (Vojta prefers not to try.) So, I usually just say something like “I like Russian people but I’m afraid of Putin.” Sometimes, it works. Sometimes, it makes questions go deeper: What’s wrong with Putin? You don't need to be afraid, he’s just protecting Russia against the US. Is life in Czechia better now, or before the independence? Why now? Why don’t you guys want your country to be part of a union with Russia? Is it that you don’t like Russia? The ancient Soviet republics also wanted to be independent, and now they are worse off and people from those countries come here for work…
To a certain extent, though, I enjoy these conversations and I find them enriching. For our part, we are curious about peoples’ view of the world and of life in Russia. As to life in Russia, they usually say “normalna”. The word itself seems to mean “noting special” but we have learned that people actually mean “pretty good” by that. Or rather, it’s the most positive thing they ever say. We hardly ever can hear anybody use the word kharasho that actually means “good”. So, for most people, life in Russia is normalna.
Except for Vitya.
“Russia is a big ass!” says Vitya. “And Moscow is the hole!” He bursts out laughing.
There already is one hitchhiker in his truck: her name is Gulnara and she is traveling from the lake Baikal back home to Perm. She found Vitya through a hitchhiking social network.
“In Moscow, there are only assholes!” Vitya continues. “Actually, in the entire western Russia there are assholes. Here in Siberia, people are nice, but I bet you won’t get any ride after Tyumen. You’ll see!”
We hope he's wrong.
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| Vitya and Gulnara. On Vkontakte, the Russian social network, there is a group where hitchhikers can meet truck drivers and agree on a ride, just like in the Turkish facebook hitchhiking group. |
Dark history of Siberia
In most of the cities we drop by, we go to history museums. Little by little, the story of Siberia unfolds before us. It mostly is a story of oppression, deportation and suffering. Many of the Siberian cities were settled by people exiled from the west. The deportations started in the monarchy period, continued when the communists won the civil war, and again after the occupation of the Baltic states.
We seem to track the stories of deported, imprisoned, and murdered people backwards. It started with the story of a grandfather lost in Magadan gulags. In the Tomsk history museum, we learn about the lives of people exiled to the region. In the 19th century, actually, one fifth of the population of the city consisted of people deported in there. The local museum of political repression located in an ancient NKVD prison tells us darker and more recent stories of people tortured and murdered by the Soviet secret police. The museum in Novosibirsk, a major hub on the Trans-Siberian railway, shows us how the deportations were organized and to what places people were exiled in which periods: Novosibirsk would always be their transfer point.
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| The former NKVD jail in Tomsk |
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| Two of the countless victims of the Bolshevik oppression |
Going west
Siberian cities look similar to each other. Except Tomsk. Tomsk is much more beautiful, even though it doesn’t show at first. The park on the outskirts we are camping in looks downright scary: there is a plenty of old syringes, garbage, and we move our tent once because a guy was watching us from behind a bush when we were putting it up. Downtown, though, there are elegant carved historical wooden buildings, streets with cobblestones, and cafés. It feels almost cozy. It’s colorful and there are young people on the streets. The city is as hipstery as a place in Siberia can be. Also, its statue of Lenin isn’t the city’s major highlight and the guide in the Museum of Oppression knows in detail the dark stories that the official history doesn’t mention much. She even shows us a photo of a young student who was tortured in a mental hospital in 1970s for criticizing the occupation of Czechoslovakia.
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| The beautiful buildings of Tomsk |
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| Talking about sad history of Russia and Czechia with an enlightened tour guide in a museum of oppression is better with tea and cookies. |
The further west we get, the trickier the occasional conversations about politics are. In the far East, people mostly cared about their region. More west, people care more about international politics, including our country.
Sergey is an ancient soldier: he used to take part in international
missions.
“Czechia usually sends a hospital abroad,” I say just to make conversation.
“What’s your army doing abroad?” he frowns. “Oh, you’re a member of NATO,
aren’t you?”
“We are.”
“Ewww, enemies!” he grins. I’m not sure if he’s making fun or if he half means
it.
After Novosibirsk, we suddenly lose our hitchhiking luck. There seems to
be no particular reason for that. We are just stuck for many hours at a service
station in the middle of the forest, and then again and again. We proceed at
snail’s pace up to Omsk. Our visa is more than half over and there still are some
places we want to see in the Western part of Russia, so we prefer not to stay
too long. We camp on the outskirts and don’t even go downtown.
When we are eating our breakfast on the street, a lady from a nearby pastry
shop brings us coffee.
“Where are you from?” she asks, curious. We tell her about our journey.
“Molodci, good job you!” Her colleague, a florist from the neighboring
stand, comes too, and we start talking. The florist used to travel a lot in her
youth, she worked on a ship.
“And what do you think about Russia? But honestly!”
“We like the ordinary people we meet but we are afraid of Putin.“
“Oh, really? By we you just mean people in Czechia, or yourself
too?”
“It’s what I think too.”
“Oh, it’s American propaganda,” she gives me a
sympathetic look.
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| The shopkeepers in Omsk |
A marathon in getting stuck
After Omsk, our hitchhiking luck doesn’t really get better. We still proceed very slowly and get stuck often. No need to wait up to Tyumen. I can’t believe Vitya was right, though. Maybe it’s because truck drivers are not allowed to have more than one other person in the cabin, and in the west, they follow the rules more.
Also, it starts raining. The beautiful fall weather that followed us all the way has left us. Sometimes, we stand more than an hour in strong rain. We are really happy for all the waterproof clothes we carry.
Even though we are way slower than before and can’t take many detours anymore, we keep going. Actually, we have never before covered such a long distance in so few weeks. Even though we are traveling by land, we have developed a sort of jetlag for crossing too many time zones in a matter of days.
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| Fake police car in Eastern Siberia. Not sure it helps against speeding. |
Hello Europe
Little by little, we get to Yekaterinburg. Suddenly, we are overwhelmed by civilization. The culture shock is even stronger than when we entered Russia from Mongolia: in Yekaterinburg, there are things like glass towers, billboards, a subway, hobby markets, McDonald’s, and bookstores. (We finally buy a map of Russia.) And there are motorways. A lot of motorways. For the first time in weeks, we can’t just stand anywhere on the road and thumb; once again, we need to actually look for a hitchhiking spot first.
In short, we are back in Europe. It took us 9 months to travel from Europe to Mongolia, and now we made it back in less than one month. I didn’t really see it coming and it feels almost surreal.
However, there still is more than 2000 kilometers of
Russia before us.
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