From a naked Russian man stabbing a picture of Lenin with a pirate flag to a taxi driver spending his entire day in his bathroom with Ramsay washing and ironing dry our 20kgs of dirty clothes, to pulling a robber down by the leg from the roof of the truck in the middle of the night as he tried to steal our bicycle, to the ‘Grand Palace Cappuccino Café’ where I am now sitting sipping miso soup in downright aristocratic atmosphere…no matter how hard I try I cannot see any patterns or logic to anything about Russia, anything at all, or perhaps only the fact that nothing is supposed to make sens after all. Why shouldn’t Russia simply be just another allegory to the Absurd? After all, Russia is big, ancient and powerful enough to move to the beat of its own drum.
Outside the café, Omsk is a huge mud-cake baking in downright tropical heat.
Grime-blanketed cars and buses jostle in plumes of dust, the sunlight tinged yellow by heavy skeins of pollution. In a pee-scented doorway next to a trendy department store an ancient babushka in flowered scarf is selling two bunches of wild flowers.
We have journeyed 5000kms now and it is amazing to think that we have come that far. Many well informed people, often Russian themselves had told us before we left that we would never even make it across the border. We were warned of three million different horrible scenarios that would most certainly befall us the moment we approached the border. Corrupted police would stripped us of all our meagre possessions and send us back to Holland in our underwear, we would be mugged and robbed by road pirates, we would get impossibly lost in a country where even deciphering simple road signs takes half an hour of feverish dictionary searching through a maze of impossible looking letters, we would get bitten by poisonous ticks, eaten by bears, bled by mosquitoes, etc. What we were definitely not prepared for, however, was the overwhelming gentleness and generosity of the Russian people, their openness of mind and purity of spirit.
Foggy from lack of sleep and too many conflicting information, my mind is bereft in a sea of nonsensical, tragic or tragi-comic images.
Two nights ago in Kargan, a largish town on the edge of South Western Siberia, as we hopped and bumped on the pot-holed, garbage littered streets in search of a place to wash our clothes, a middle-age man in a sailors’ cap driving a brand new Toyota without a number plate almost rammed himself into us as he tried to attract our attention.
Before any one of us managed to make any sens of what was happening, Ramsay was whisked into the ‘sailor’s’ car and disappeared in a cloud of dirt around the next corner. Had Ramsay just been abducted by a mad Siberian pirate? The old man had something about him that just didn’t seem to fit with the regular Russian we had met so far. If our man looked suspect in his open shirt displaying a shaved chest and an assortment of gold chains he however fortunately didn’t turn out to be an abductor. He and Ramsay re-apeared a little while longer in a symphony of screeching brakes and skidding tyres.
‘Hey guys we’re all invited to this man’s dasha for a banya! Let’s go!’
Hooting with joy we all scrambled into the truck and followed our mad driver guide through the town towards the river, stopping on the way to pick up some honey beer that our host insisted to buy for us. On the way Ramsay, rolling his eyes in astonishment described between fits of giggles how he had held on tight to his seat as the ‘Russian Sailor’ darted through the backstreets towards the river and the rows of dashas (Russian’s home away from home where many people who live in town will spend the summer weekends and grow some vegetables and fruit for the winter).
‘I really thought I was being abducted by the Russian mafia!’ said Ramsay. Struggling to keep up with our guide’s car.
‘then we drove trough these tiny streets with wooden houses everywhere and finally got to his house. There was a big gate and Venis, that’s the sailor’s name, ran out to get his girl-friend to open the gate for us. I couldn’t believe my eyes! The girl was this totally hot blonde absolutely stark naked! You should have seen the foxy way she looked me up and down!’
‘What? Stark naked?’ We all looked at each other in total disbelief.
‘Why do you think he is inviting us to his house?’ we asked, almost beside ourselves with laughter. What was Ramsay getting us into?
The prospect of a banya, which is the typical Russian sauna, followed by a luxurious dip in the river was too impossible to resist though. We were filthy, tired, not sure how to find our way out of town as darkness set in and could be hours away from finding a quiet field to set up camp for the night.
‘We’ll be OK’ assured Ramsay. ‘These two seem a bit unusual but I don’t think they are dangerous at all. Let’s just check it out and if we don’t like it we can always leave.’
Venis’s dasha was hidden behind a tall timber fence capped with dangerous looking barb-wires. Behind the gate was a hidden summer paradise. A tiny timber house decorated with freshly painted timber trimmings in blue and green, typical of old Russian architecture sat in the middle of a garden bordered with a generous vegetable beds, apple trees and pink poppies growing in the long grass. Under a vine a table was set next to television sitting in a garden bed, a fire burnt in an empty washing-machine drum near a cluster of low chairs and cushions, a wooden staircase ran through the woods toward the river, where a rickety timber jetty had been built over the shallows. In the far corner of the garden a little hut with a veranda and a blazing chimney indicated that the banya was ready. Inside Ramsay, Marc and our host were already stripping off, ready to enter the steaming, pine-scented room.
Venis’s beautiful girl-friend Veka gave us some towel and Inge, Isa and I were soon cramming into the sauna alongside the others. Nothing in Venis or Veka’s behaviour indicated any kind of lecherousness. These two seemed the most incredibly pure and innocent darling couple ever. If they moved around completely naked with the greatest ease, this was in no ways alarming. Nudity was nothing to make us dart for cover either. All was well in the world. Honey beer was passed around, the banya was positively searing hot, the river deliciously cool..heaven was a Russian dasha.
But more surprises were waiting for us. Venis and Veka, giggling and muttering incomprehensible words to each other, suggested that we all watched a DVD of their holidays in the Ukraine. Still perfectly naked, they set up my laptop and a few chairs near the fireplace and the show reel started… I almost fell off my chair when among pictures of birds and pretty mountains erupted close ups of naked fannies and Veka in the bath with two soldier under the benevolent look of Venis. This and more of the same. We all erupted in a fit of giggles and threw a few discreet glances at each other. Marc rolled his eyes, Inge stared ahead with the corners of her mouth twitching madly, I lit my cigarette at the wrong end and Ramsay’s chair collapsed in the sand.
Meanwhile Venis and Veka sat and watched without the slightest trace of embarrassment. They shared a completely natural laugh every time another porn picture came on and commented in Russian very professionally about details of the photography. We were utterly dumbfounded.
The show-reel went on for much, much longer as after our initial surprise we struggled to stay awake. Isa and Mark were invited to stay in the little house (were there was fortunately no signs of foul play whatsoever to be had), while Ramz, Inge and I went back to the truck for a night a very perplexed dreams.
The next day was an assortment of hilarious scenes of Venis and Veka doing their gardening in the nude, ending in an incredible finale where Venice in a grass skirt savagely attacked a picture of Lenin with the massive pirate flag we had given him as a present for his incredible hospitality. In spite of their very unusual openness and great sexual energy, Venis and Veka were the sweetest, most generous people we could ever have imagined. The whole stay was one giant fit of giggles. As Ramsay explained later Venis had spent 8 years in a gulag and was probably in a rush to enjoy as much of the freedom he had yearned for his entire life before it was too late.
Later that morning, as we farewelled the happy couple and once again got under way direction Omsk and other adventures, we could not help but feel that, about Russia, as with many other things in general, the more we learnt the less we knew.
To be continued…
Outside the café, Omsk is a huge mud-cake baking in downright tropical heat.
Grime-blanketed cars and buses jostle in plumes of dust, the sunlight tinged yellow by heavy skeins of pollution. In a pee-scented doorway next to a trendy department store an ancient babushka in flowered scarf is selling two bunches of wild flowers.
We have journeyed 5000kms now and it is amazing to think that we have come that far. Many well informed people, often Russian themselves had told us before we left that we would never even make it across the border. We were warned of three million different horrible scenarios that would most certainly befall us the moment we approached the border. Corrupted police would stripped us of all our meagre possessions and send us back to Holland in our underwear, we would be mugged and robbed by road pirates, we would get impossibly lost in a country where even deciphering simple road signs takes half an hour of feverish dictionary searching through a maze of impossible looking letters, we would get bitten by poisonous ticks, eaten by bears, bled by mosquitoes, etc. What we were definitely not prepared for, however, was the overwhelming gentleness and generosity of the Russian people, their openness of mind and purity of spirit.
Foggy from lack of sleep and too many conflicting information, my mind is bereft in a sea of nonsensical, tragic or tragi-comic images.
Two nights ago in Kargan, a largish town on the edge of South Western Siberia, as we hopped and bumped on the pot-holed, garbage littered streets in search of a place to wash our clothes, a middle-age man in a sailors’ cap driving a brand new Toyota without a number plate almost rammed himself into us as he tried to attract our attention.
Before any one of us managed to make any sens of what was happening, Ramsay was whisked into the ‘sailor’s’ car and disappeared in a cloud of dirt around the next corner. Had Ramsay just been abducted by a mad Siberian pirate? The old man had something about him that just didn’t seem to fit with the regular Russian we had met so far. If our man looked suspect in his open shirt displaying a shaved chest and an assortment of gold chains he however fortunately didn’t turn out to be an abductor. He and Ramsay re-apeared a little while longer in a symphony of screeching brakes and skidding tyres.
‘Hey guys we’re all invited to this man’s dasha for a banya! Let’s go!’
Hooting with joy we all scrambled into the truck and followed our mad driver guide through the town towards the river, stopping on the way to pick up some honey beer that our host insisted to buy for us. On the way Ramsay, rolling his eyes in astonishment described between fits of giggles how he had held on tight to his seat as the ‘Russian Sailor’ darted through the backstreets towards the river and the rows of dashas (Russian’s home away from home where many people who live in town will spend the summer weekends and grow some vegetables and fruit for the winter).
‘I really thought I was being abducted by the Russian mafia!’ said Ramsay. Struggling to keep up with our guide’s car.
‘then we drove trough these tiny streets with wooden houses everywhere and finally got to his house. There was a big gate and Venis, that’s the sailor’s name, ran out to get his girl-friend to open the gate for us. I couldn’t believe my eyes! The girl was this totally hot blonde absolutely stark naked! You should have seen the foxy way she looked me up and down!’
‘What? Stark naked?’ We all looked at each other in total disbelief.
‘Why do you think he is inviting us to his house?’ we asked, almost beside ourselves with laughter. What was Ramsay getting us into?
The prospect of a banya, which is the typical Russian sauna, followed by a luxurious dip in the river was too impossible to resist though. We were filthy, tired, not sure how to find our way out of town as darkness set in and could be hours away from finding a quiet field to set up camp for the night.
‘We’ll be OK’ assured Ramsay. ‘These two seem a bit unusual but I don’t think they are dangerous at all. Let’s just check it out and if we don’t like it we can always leave.’
Venis’s dasha was hidden behind a tall timber fence capped with dangerous looking barb-wires. Behind the gate was a hidden summer paradise. A tiny timber house decorated with freshly painted timber trimmings in blue and green, typical of old Russian architecture sat in the middle of a garden bordered with a generous vegetable beds, apple trees and pink poppies growing in the long grass. Under a vine a table was set next to television sitting in a garden bed, a fire burnt in an empty washing-machine drum near a cluster of low chairs and cushions, a wooden staircase ran through the woods toward the river, where a rickety timber jetty had been built over the shallows. In the far corner of the garden a little hut with a veranda and a blazing chimney indicated that the banya was ready. Inside Ramsay, Marc and our host were already stripping off, ready to enter the steaming, pine-scented room.
Venis’s beautiful girl-friend Veka gave us some towel and Inge, Isa and I were soon cramming into the sauna alongside the others. Nothing in Venis or Veka’s behaviour indicated any kind of lecherousness. These two seemed the most incredibly pure and innocent darling couple ever. If they moved around completely naked with the greatest ease, this was in no ways alarming. Nudity was nothing to make us dart for cover either. All was well in the world. Honey beer was passed around, the banya was positively searing hot, the river deliciously cool..heaven was a Russian dasha.
But more surprises were waiting for us. Venis and Veka, giggling and muttering incomprehensible words to each other, suggested that we all watched a DVD of their holidays in the Ukraine. Still perfectly naked, they set up my laptop and a few chairs near the fireplace and the show reel started… I almost fell off my chair when among pictures of birds and pretty mountains erupted close ups of naked fannies and Veka in the bath with two soldier under the benevolent look of Venis. This and more of the same. We all erupted in a fit of giggles and threw a few discreet glances at each other. Marc rolled his eyes, Inge stared ahead with the corners of her mouth twitching madly, I lit my cigarette at the wrong end and Ramsay’s chair collapsed in the sand.
Meanwhile Venis and Veka sat and watched without the slightest trace of embarrassment. They shared a completely natural laugh every time another porn picture came on and commented in Russian very professionally about details of the photography. We were utterly dumbfounded.
The show-reel went on for much, much longer as after our initial surprise we struggled to stay awake. Isa and Mark were invited to stay in the little house (were there was fortunately no signs of foul play whatsoever to be had), while Ramz, Inge and I went back to the truck for a night a very perplexed dreams.
The next day was an assortment of hilarious scenes of Venis and Veka doing their gardening in the nude, ending in an incredible finale where Venice in a grass skirt savagely attacked a picture of Lenin with the massive pirate flag we had given him as a present for his incredible hospitality. In spite of their very unusual openness and great sexual energy, Venis and Veka were the sweetest, most generous people we could ever have imagined. The whole stay was one giant fit of giggles. As Ramsay explained later Venis had spent 8 years in a gulag and was probably in a rush to enjoy as much of the freedom he had yearned for his entire life before it was too late.
Later that morning, as we farewelled the happy couple and once again got under way direction Omsk and other adventures, we could not help but feel that, about Russia, as with many other things in general, the more we learnt the less we knew.
To be continued…
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