guest post series: alex in kamchatka

Every email I get from my readers usually contains something like the following: "I really love your blog!  Reading about life in Russia is so interesting!  I just wish someone else could write it instead, as I  find you quite boorish."   What can I say, my readers are excellent judges of character brutually honest at times.  But let it not be said that I don't listen to will of the people!  Today it is my honor to introduce Alex, who's written the first in a series of guest posts from other Fulbright ETAs around Russia.  To answer your inevitable questions beforehand: yes; no; yes, he's clearly a better writer than me; and no, unfortunately he doesn't write a blog of his own, so you're stuck with me.  Take it away, Alex!

Russia’s contiguous landmass spans an entire eight time zones, from Petrozavodsk to Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, one could say their version of “from sea to shining sea.” While some of the Russian ETAs were lucky enough to find themselves within a day’s train ride of Moscow or St. Petersburg, I found myself in the second largest city in the world without roads or trains leading out of the city period. A nine-hour plane ride separates the gubernatorial seat of the Kamchatka peninsula (or “half-island” as the Russian word for peninsula suggests) from the president’s and prime minister’s comfortable seats in Red Square. Isolated? I’d say.  Exciting?  Depends on what gets you going.

A former nuclear submarine base turned former nuclear submarine base, Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky (henceforth P-K to save my hands from cramping) is set not so delicately on the edge of the world in the middle of the “Ring of Fire.” Four volcanoes, Koryaksy, Avachinsky, Kozyelsky, and Velyuchinsky, provide the backdrop for everyday life here, smoking ominously from time to time and occasionally spilling ash over the city like a clumsy drunk standing too close to the ashtray. The peninsula is chocked full of other more distant volcanoes and mountains, far more precarious than their more urban brothers. And did I mention that Kamchatka is one of the most seismologically active regions in the world? We also get hurricanes and typhoons off of the Pacific that, in the winter months, turn into blizzards that dump snow up to the second story of buildings. Not for nothing is Kamchatka’s tagline something like a Robert Jordan rejected title: “The Land of Fire and Ice.”

The city itself looks as if it was built some time in the 1940s, probably during World War II when obviously there was a shortage of men to thoroughly paint any of the concrete buildings that indeterminable color of light blue that lingers around some fifth-story windows. In deep contrast to the breathtaking views around and outside the city, P-K falls dead last in the category, “Cleanest Cities in Russia.” There is an abundance of shopping malls, each containing most of the same things (cell phone stores, clothing stores, cell phone stores, etc.), night clubs, and one of four Gold’s Gyms in Russia. There are, however, no industries responsible for pouring poisonous waste into the rivers and lakes, nor smokestacks reminiscent of Mordor as seen in other cities in Russia.

P-K has its problems. The other day, my roommate and I, another Fulbrighter from America, discovered a small snowy park in a populated region of the city. We walked along a slippery path, coming to a small wooden staircase over a ditch, some four or five feet deep. We walked behind an old man, dressed in his stereotypically Russian fur hat and walking unsteadily along the icy walkway. When he came to the staircase, he stumbled, teetered to the side, and fell off to the right down into the snow. My roommate and I hurried to where he lay supine with his eyes closed, either dead or drunk. The latter proved to be more correct as we lifted him up, dusted him off, and I placed the dead animal securely on his head. A lady called out, “Hey, give him his beer!” I looked down and saw a plastic bottle of faintly yellow liquid lying beside the outline of his fallen self. I placed it in his bag, dusted the rest of the snow off his 55 year-old shoulders and he mumbled what must have been a thank you and went on his way. This was all around 3 p.m. and is not the first example of rampant alcoholism I have seen.

But P-K also remains truly Russian in more ways than alcohol abuse and a surprisingly large population of bears (Kamchatka is also home to the largest population of brown bears in the world, a.k.a. the really mean ones). Russian hospitality cannot be compared to any other culture’s hospitality, and I’m from the south. I fell sick the same day we encountered the unfortunate old soul above, and I literally could not get out of bed, much less fight the blizzard raging outside in order to get medicine or food. One of my friends here, Ksenia, called to see how I was, and I when I told her I was in bed with a temperature of 101, she immediately stole some mushroom soup from her work, went to the pharmacy to buy medicine and tea, and brought my roommate sushi, just in case he was hungry as well. She never asked for a penny, because money means nothing to Russians. They give from the bottom of their souls. To make someone happy, they will gladly feed you the last bit of food from their refrigerator and share their last drops of vodka just to make sure you’re “O.K.” Their main concern is making sure I leave Kamchatka with “a good impression,” and, for all its negatives, something positive emanates from the hearts of the people here.

For all its paradoxes, for all its mysteries, and mostly for its people, I love living in Russia. Even though Kamchatka feels far away from home (and even far way from the rest of Russia), people live here, work here, and know how to enjoy what they have, and this makes me comfortable here, in a sometimes uncomfortable way. My challenges here have been tremendous, my experiences unforgettable, and the lessons I’ve learned have left an indelible mark on my life. Living abroad in Russia is not to be seen through rosy glasses, nor should it be painted in bleak black and white colors. It has texture, a texture only to be felt through extensive stay and talking to many people about family members lost in World War II, about Russian holidays and traditions, about poetry and literature, or just about themselves. Just make sure you have tea ready at hand.

Huge thanks to Alex!  Stay tuned for more perspectives from around Russia.