City of Youth
This is officially the furthest East I have ever been - 7 hours ahead of and roughly 8350km due east of Moscow.
Stalin had a brainwave in 1932. Send all the pesky 20 year olds in the Young Communist League who had too much education and with too much time of their hands out to the farthest eastern reaches (but not the coast, right, that would be militarily too risky) of deepest darkest Siberia, to found a new City of Youth on the River Amur.
So here we are, newly arrived in Komsomolsk-na-Amur, where they are brushing things up nicely for the 75th anniversary of this great big social experiment.
For Siberia, it's a really nice place. Huge wide roads, lots of birch trees and of course loads and loads of cement tower blocks. But after 55 hours on the train from Tynda, trawling through mile upon mile of rocks and brush, everything looks good :)
The trip over was actually quite pleasant. We shared our kupe (4 berth sleeper) with a nice unilingual Russian who was very quiet and polite. We taught him how to play the card game Skip-Bo and within three hands was hammering Chris. I have always said that people who live in the lands of loooooong winters make the best card players.
We were briefly joined by a Ukrainian lad who spoke halting English, which was huge excitement for all of us. It was the first lengthy English conversation I have had with someone other than Chris since leaving.
We really went through the back of the back of beyond the last few days. Damn isolated. Even more than the village I grew up in (ha ha ). Funnily enough, though, I felt really at home as it was quite a lot like northern Saskatchewan landscape wise.
Some places looked so poor. And others abandoned, still with the glorious Soviet slogans and murals, crumbling away...
People stared at us wide-eyed tourists like we had unicorn horns. And wearing tutus. But they are generally very nice, unless you want to buy a ticket. The Russian do tend to yell at you and talk really really fast as soon as they see you are a foreigner. And man, these people can spot a foreigner at a half mile.
I continue to be amazed by the women's hair. I have seen dye jobs and 'do's' unlike anything since drag shows. Or the high days of punk. And on women older than me, I might add, so I doubt it's some national nostalgia for late 70s street style.
Our hotel, in a giant grey high rise of course, has a lovely floor lady with white hair cut over pink and gradating down to burgundy. Zowie! By the way, this is a great thing in Russian hotels. Each floor has a very competent dragon lady who cleans, keeps the keys and basically watches everyone. You do feel really secure with them around - I would dread having to mess with them!
Having already scurried around the great Soviet era mosiacs and statues, we are going to leave tomorrow for Khaborovsk. This is a departure in many ways. Firstly, we are finally turning South to China. And, we are taking the boat!
