Khabarovsk and the Stinkfoot Witchhunt

I got to Khabarovsk on the Trans-Siberian after traveling from Birobidzhan. The train that I took was the first platskarny  (third-class) train I had taken, and my car was packed to the brim with Russian soldiers. It was not bad at all. They were very courteous and treated me well, even though a few of them whispered, "Amerikansky," and burst out laughing, when I first got on the train. But one guy even helped me with my bags on the train; I tried to beg off, but he was insistent. Third-class differs from second-class in that the compartments have no doors and there are more seats on the other side of the aisle, so they can pack more people into the compartment. It was a pleasant ride and many of the soldiers bided their time by playing cards.

Once the train crossed the Amur River, we were out of the Jewish Autonomous Oblast, and into Khabarovsk Krai. Khabarovsk Krai is one of the last remaining habitats for the Siberian Tiger, which makes its home near the Amur River.

When I arrived in Khabarovsk, as soon as I got off the train, it started pouring rain big time. I had looked at the weather before I left Birobidzhan, and it looked like the rain that had been there for the last two days was clearing, and the forecast said no rain. But now the forecast had changed in the meantime. Since I saw that there was apparently going to be no rain, I had packed my umbrella and the rain flap for my backpack away deep in my pack. Big mistake.

I had planned to walk to the hostel.  It was almost 3 kilometers away, which would have been a manageable walk in full gear. But now that it was raining, there was no way; all my stuff would have gotten soaked. So I hailed a cab and scurried to get my stuff in it quickly in the pouring rain. I had the address, and it was easy to find where the hostel was; the only thing was neither the cab driver nor I could find a hostel there. I had to look up the hostel's phone number from the confirmatory email, and then let the cab driver talk to them. Soon a woman peeped her head out of an unmarked door, and I followed her up the steps to the hostel, which was on the second floor.

I was there in the hostel, sitting in the common room, when about a half hour later, another guy checked in. At the front of the hostel, there is a place to leave your shoes. Once the guy checked in and took off his shoes, there was an ungodly stench that permeated the entire common room. I mean, this was some of the worst stinkfoot that I had ever smelled in my life. I was on the verge of retching, and could not even stay in the room any more; I had to go back to my bedroom. After a while, I just went out to explore the city; it had stopped raining and the weather was nice. This made me realize that there are things you can do about sights and sounds you want to block out (earplugs and eye masks have worked pretty well for me), but not much you can do about a putrid smell, except to maybe open the windows or spray some air freshener.

After going around the city for a while, I came back into the hostel, and some guy looked at me accusingly, and said in broken English, "Do you smell something?" in a rehearsed fashion. Oh, shit, I thought.  They think it is me. Probably because I am the most unruly-looking guy there. I couldn't speak well enough  Russian to explain that it was another guy. I just murmured, "Not me," and went straight into my room.

But then I got paranoid and thought that maybe it could be me. I took off my socks and stuffed them in my face and inhaled deeply. Nothing. I couldn't smell any scent, bad or otherwise, at all. And with the putrid smell I had smelled before being so unmistakable, I'm sure I would have smelled something. I smelled my armpits.  OK, a little odor, but not overwhelming, and not any more than you'd expect from your average traveler. Next I had to smell my shoes, but I didn't want to do it in front of everyone. So I went out again, took off my shoes outside, and smelled them....once again, no bad smell.

Anyway, I got back again later, and nobody was saying anything about it to me. Whew. It was just a stinkfoot witchhunt, and I was pretty sure I was now in the clear.

Khabarovsk is definitely the coolest place I have been in Russia. It's a vibrant, big city, and there is lots of open space and a multitude of walking paths. It feels like it wouldn't be out of place in Oregon or Washington. I asked the woman working at the hostel what rents are like here, and it looks like they are in the $250-$350 a month range for the most part.

After walking around for a couple of days, I looked in the Lonely Planet Trans-Siberian guidebook on my Kindle to see if there was anything they could recommend in the city. It turned out that I had already found the main three things they mentioned that I would be interested in; the main boulevard, the walk through the long greenspace park, and the walk along the Amur River. I guess I'm just a magnet for the good shit.

Birobidzhan and the Jewish Autonomous Oblast

I almost feel like I'm getting ready to tell you about "James and the Giant Peach," or "Sigmund and the Sea Monsters" here. But, no, this is about Birobidzhan and the Jewish Autonomous Oblast. Whether or not you can pronounce it. Try it now: Биробиджан, Еврейская автономная област. See, wasn't that easy?

Once upon a time, there were a shitload of Zionists (there still are, but this is relating to their initial quest). This shitload of Zionists wanted to establish a homeland in Palestine in the 20s and 30s, because their whole deal said they were originally there many, many moons ago, and because the shit was really getting ready to hit the fan where a grand bulk of the shitload of Zionists lived. And besides, God.

One day the Mighty Emperor Stalin decided that maybe he could somehow corral the shitload of Zionists. So he offered them, before they even started taking over a chunk of Palestine, a righteous slice of virgin land in the Glorious Kingdom of the Soviet Union, which he was the boss of. He told them they didn't have to take nothin' over; they could just move there and live long and prosper. And he told them that they could speak Yiddish, not Hebrew, which many of them spoke already. And he told them that they didn't even need to be from his Glorious Kingdom that he was the boss of. They could be from anywhere. And they could even be from under the sea if they wanted (OK, he never really said that, but it probably would have been cool).

"Hmmmm", said the shitload of Zionists, in seven-part harmony with phasal diatonics, all stopping on cue (no, not really...there were no harmonies, they didn't all stop to ponder at the same time, and there is no such damned thing as phasal diatonics. Now, PHRASAL diatonics, that's a different story). "Sounds interesting...but can ya sweeten the deal?"

"Sure," said Emperor Stalin of the Glorious Kingdom (even though he would be pissed as shit at referring to the Proletarian Workers' Paradise of the Soviet Union as a fucking 'kingdom'.) I'll throw in private land ownership, and a free pony (no, there was no free pony. People had to wait for Emperor Vermin Supreme to come along for that to happen. But the private land ownership thing was for real).

"Hmmmm," said the shitload of Zionists again, this time in thirteen-part harmony with modified tonal structures relating to ambiguous polyphonous metafiltered structures of fractally limited submetabolic fields of perception (No, not in the least, but whatever). "Tell ya what, Mighty Emperor dude. What if some of us give it a shot and see how it goes?"

"Ok, here is my final offer. I'll throw in no anti-Semitism. There, at least. And, to sweeten the deal, I'll make it an AUTONOMOUS oblast, which doesn't even exist up to this point."

Well, this sounded like a pretty good deal to many of the shitload of Zionists. But not to most of them. A lot thought that this Mighty Emperor dude had a pretty, pretty, pretty spotty record on being cool throughout his Glorious Kingdom. And, God. He wasn't even diddly-squat on God. So most of them went with Plan A, which was the Palestine thing. We all know how that turned out.

But a significant number of people decided to spark up the Jewish Autonomous Oblast. So, in the 1930s, many started moving there. And some Swiss architect dude created The Matrix that they all lived in. But, the deal was, this was a mosquito-infested swamp with bitterly cold winters, even if The Matrix looked super-bitchin'.

So, word got back that this was one harshy buzz. But not until 1948, when tons of people had moved there, which was the height of the Jewish settlement into this God-forsaken frozen hell-swamp (OK, it's not really that bad. Really. I'm there now.). And, coincidentally, that was the same year that most of the shitload of Zionists made an Israel thing out of Palestine. And it was, like, warm there.

So most of the shitload of Zionists slowed down on moving to Биробиджан, and decided to move to the new Israel thing instead. And Биробиджан never again reached what it had been at its peak of Jewish population. But, true to his word, the Mighty Emperor Stalin didn't fuck with them at all there, though he fucked with them just about everywhere else that he could.

Like all Mighty Emperors do, one day the Mighty Emperor Stalin took a shit and died. His deal with Биробиджан, Еврейская автономная област, lived on, but in the 1950s, people pretty much stopped settling there. It picked up a little for a while, but it's been hemorrhaging people, and now only five percent of the people living in Биробиджан are Jewish, though the culture is protected and encouraged. 

So everybody living there is living happily ever after (whatever the fuck that means), though one day they will all take a shit and die. Probably not at the same time. The end.

Two Days On The Train

This is the longest leg of the Trans-Siberian train that I have taken yet.  It is the section from Chita to Birobidzhan, and I am spending two nights on the train. Siberia is big, and this is just a wee slice of it.

This is also the first time I have reserved an upper berth. It is really not too bad. There is a ladder that folds out of the wall to get up there, though originally I wasn't aware of that. There are also all kinds of amazing little secret nooks and crannies to keep your stuff in the upper berth, I guess to make up for the lack of space that you have otherwise. But after taking the Trans-Mongolian train and several legs of the Trans-Siberian, now I'm a train veteran. I know where the outlets are, so I can charge my device. There are only two in the car, in the hallway, and they are in high demand. Or, that is, until I discovered the secret third one by the bathroom that nobody had been competing for.  But now that everybody knows about that one from seeing me there, I bet it will be hard to use that one, too. Quite a contrast from the Trans-Mongolian, which had outlets in every compartment in the car. The provodnitsas and provodnitsas have extra outlets in their compartments, and I hear if you ask them nicely, they will let you charge your device.

I shared a compartment with Tatiana and Ariana, two lawyers from Ulan-Ude with Buryat features, and a Russian guy who wasn't very talkative, but was helpful when he could be. He got off fairly early from the train, so for the rest of the journey, there were only the the of us in the compartment. At least I didn't get put into a compartment with a bunch of vodka-crazed soccer hooligans or nationalists. Tatiana spoke a little bit of English, but her English was heavily broken (but still much better than my Russian). Between her English, my terrible Russian, a little pantomime, and Google Translate getting whipped out occasionally, we managed to communicate pretty well. Both of the lawyers were on the way to Khabarovsk to undertake some further lethal training. Unlike in the US, where lawyers have to take continuing legal education every year, they told me Russian lawyers have to undertake further study every five years. So they were on their way to do that. Tatiana told me her mother was a judge, and was retired, but there was no way she had the resources to travel around the world on the pension she had.

Tatiana asked me if I had been to any of the Buddhist temples in Ulan-Ude. I told her I hadn't.  She said I should go, because it would change my life. She said there were monks there who were herbal healers, and they were better than doctors. She told me about one monk who preserved his body so well that they say he is not dead, but in a state of perpetual meditation. She asked me if people did herbal medicine in the US, I told her that people sometimes did, but mostly on their own. She said she thought that was dangerous. I told her people sometimes consulted herbalists, but didn't often go to folk healers, but some Native Americans did.

The upper berth was really not bad at all. I would definitely prefer the lower berth, but now that I had an upper, it was OK. The only thing was that it got really hot up there. Russian trains are kept furiously hot anyway, and with heat rising to the top, it got insanely toasty up there. Luckily the window in our compartment had not been locked by the provodnik, so I was able to open the window at the top to let the gathered heat out when I needed to.

The train ride was really mesmerizing, even though it was two days long. The scenery was gorgeous, filled with Siberian taiga and steppe, with the occasional horse-riding shepherd or picturesque village filed with log houses and corrals. The restaurant car was a cool place to hang out for a change every once in a while. They didn't seem to mind if people bought anything, but it wasn't the gathering place that it had been previously when I had taken international trains. The domestic trains in Russia are mostly filled with Russians, unlike the trains that cross borders.

The train stopped often for little towns, and they would only let people off the train if they stopped for fifteen minutes or more. Some of the tiny towns only had stops of a minute to five minutes, just long enough for people to get on or off who were scheduled to do so, but there were a good amount of long stops where I was able to get off the train and run around (usually literally) the towns taking pictures, paying careful attention to the time, because the train will definitely take off without you if you aren't back by the time it is scheduled to leave. There was one time I had a little bit of a scare, because I got off the train in one town, crossed several tracks to get to the station, ran around snapping luxuries, but on my way back, another train (a freight train) arrived on one of the tracks between me and the train I needed to board. It was a REALLY long train, too. I saw Tatiana run across the tracks and beat it back to the train, but I was too far away to even consider that.  So I had to wait a long time for it to pass, and I barely hauled ass back to the train before they closed the doors. Whew.

About two hours before I was supposed to get off the train, I had gone to the space at the end of the compartment, because there are windows on both sides and it is a good place to take pics. There were two guys sitting there smoking. They started taking to me in rapid-fire Russian, and all I could do was shake my head, and say, "Ni ponimayu," which means, "I don't understand." Suddenly they realized that I was a rare foreigner on the train, and they asked to take their picture with me (that happens a LOT). I complied, and let them take a bunch of selfies with me. They introduced themselves to me as Sergei and Andrei, and insisted that I accompany them to their compartment for some vodka. My spidey-sense was tingling a little, but what the hell, sure.

We went to the front of the car, and they led me into a compartment that I didn't even know was there before. It was between the provodnik's sleeping compartment and his working compartment. It only had one upper and lower bunk, rather than two of each. Sergei and Andrei were very insistent about the vodka thing. They mixed two bottles of liquid together, one clear, and one tannish, and started pouring drinks. I only drank a couple and then begged off.  But then they wanted to talk about political stuff. They asked me what American people thought about Russian people.  Honestly, I didn't know how to answer that, because I have no idea what most people think, so I told them I didn't really know. They started asking me questions about Barack Obama, to which I just answered vaguely and in a non-committal fashion. Then Sergei and Andrei told me they were both police officers.  I tried to just keep the same expression on my face that I had had before,  and started thinking, "OK, time to start figuring out the exit strategy. "

Then Sergei asked me to trade phone numbers. I was a little hesitant to do that, but did anyway. I gave him my number, one/then the area code/then the number, and he put it into his phone and tried to call me.  It didn't work. I said I really didn't know how international codes worked, and what one needed to dial to get through. He insisted that I enter his number into my phone, and then try to call HIM. So I did. This time it worked. So now he had my number.  He kept saying, "Telefon?" I said, "Da." He asked when, I said,  "Cztery dnia (four days)." Andrei told me he was a boxer, and showed me a bunch of pictures of him in martial arts uniforms and in the ring.  Then he jokingly asked me if I wanted to box and started making sparring gestures.  I smiled and said no, but he kept asking and punching the air. I tried to beg off and leave at this point, because I needed to pack my stuff to get off the train in about a half an hour, but they were very insistent I stick around a little longer. So I did, and they played me a bunch of Russian pop music, asking for my opinion. I made thumbs-up gestures. But now I had to get my stuff together to get off the train....they were getting off a few hours later, as were most on the train. I finally managed to escape back to my compartment, and furiously got my stuff ready to debark. Tatiana told me I must be very careful, because I could be arrested, and I told her, "I know." I got my stuff together, went to the front of the train to get ready to debark, and Sergei and Andrei showed up there again to chat. The provodnik didn't seem to want to have anything to do with them.  I just answered their questions politely, and then when the train stopped, I bid them, "Da Svedaniya" (goodbye), and took off into town of Birobidzhan.