Sunbathing in Siberia (2 page)

My sister Mab, who was born Michelle Anastasia Oliver, had suffered the same identity crisis as me; she was after all another M.A.O. After running through every stage of the education system with flying colours she had gone to live in Japan in 2001, to make a living teaching English while learning the fine art of karaoke.

In March 2006, after years of drudgery, self-loathing, boredom and despair caused by working in a bank, I received a phone call from the pub next to work. It was Mab. I left the office early and told my boss I would have a very long lunch. My sister looked confident; she had brighter eyes and was a shadow of the self-doubting person I had known in previous years. After a few pints she pronounced she was going to be a famous writer and poet, and asked if I would care to be her warm up act. Soon after that I quit my job and started writing full time, taking on a few menial jobs to keep the wolves from the door. Three years later, Mab prepared a show named D-Day and invited me to take part in it, alongside a small army of other poets and writers. As an anti-nationalist she had the idea that we would read to a bilingual Welsh/English audience on St David's Day while ridiculing nationalism. Many years earlier, while explaining to a friend of a friend my frustration at having failed my Welsh A-level, and how hard it was to integrate with the fluent Welsh-speaking society, she had joked that I may as well have learned Russian; in preparing for the D-Day show I remembered her words and considered them further. I decided to deliver my entire performance in Russian.

Using a series of social networking sites I was able to identify many people who had the words ‘Russian translator' as part of their history or interests. After looking at a few candidates and not having the slightest clue who to go for, I thought best to choose one entirely at random. After a brief introduction and some begging, Anastasia Semenova, a telecommunications engineer with a background in literature and translation agreed to translate my poem for free. Not only had I found a translator but I had also found my future wife.

Every day after work I would switch on my computer just to speak to Anastasia (Nastya to her friends) on Facebook Chat. Nastya, being in Krasnoyarsk, Siberia, was seven hours ahead; when it was 5 p.m. for me it was midnight for her. We never had much time to talk but we cherished every minute. At first we found friendship in the fact we had both recently come out of difficult relationships. I had dated a woman from 2006 to 2008, and this union had ended badly. Nastya had lived through a similar relationship, in almost the same time frame. So we confided in each other about how we felt, which felt easier than talking to our other friends because of the very fact that we were two people who hardly knew each other. We were entirely different from one another – perfect opposites – however our friendship strengthened as we were both heartbroken, very lonely, and yet very determined in a pact to steer ourselves away from our past lives and live as independently as we could. This seemed like a fine idea, only the more we talked of independence the more we drew together; and the more we designed our own way in the world the more our desires collided. Although neither of us wanted to be romantically involved with someone else, we couldn't help but forge a romantic bond. Exchanges of personal philosophies led to an exchange of photographs. Exchanges of photos led to exchanges of feelings. At twenty four, Nastya looked very much like a young Sophie Marceau, and although I was four years older, I still had a brilliant head of
Dirty Harry
hair to speak for me. Plus I was a cyclist with a cyclist's frame. Though we had few things in common, besides our ruined love affairs, our fondness for one another grew to the point we couldn't pass a day without a phone call. By Christmas time, we were in love, although I had also become unemployed, couch-surfing the living rooms and kindnesses of friends and relatives.

We had known each other for nearly a year and yet we hadn't actually met face-to-face. In November, to pay for our first meeting I took a part-time job working early hours in a supermarket. Nastya decided that our first encounter would be in Paris in the New Year, on January 7
th
, which just happened to be Russian Christmas Day. As it was winter and a particularly harsh one at that, the snow and ice had limited the Eurostar travel to only two trains a day. News coverage reported hourly how so many hundreds of people were stranded in St Pancras, London, and it was advised not to travel if you didn't have to. On the morning of the 7
th
, I left Cardiff for London on the National Express. An hour after we had crossed the Severn Bridge, it was closed due to falling ice. When I arrived at St Pancras, it was heaving, the queue of people went from the ticket office, through ten bendy queue-dividers, right down to the end of the building. I waited for hours and was the last-but-one to board the only train that afternoon.

I arrived in Gare Du Nord at about 8 p.m. Paris time. My French was terrible (still is), and I couldn't find Nastya anywhere. When I asked a police officer where the main exit was he simply shrugged his shoulders and mumbled something French. Nastya and I phoned each other in desperation, each claiming the other was by the exit of the building, which of course wasn't true; I was by a small, little-used exit for smokers. After much panic Nastya found me and gave me a huge hug, her big brown eyes full of tears. She had arrived in Paris a few hours earlier and had already studied the underground system. She led me to Line 4 where we took the train all the way to Porte d'Orléans, Montrouge, at the end of the line on the South Bank. She had booked us a double bed for the weekend at the hotel Ibis. Needless to say we didn't see much of Paris, although we did venture out once or twice to see the Eiffel tower; because it was winter, and an unusually cold one, there was snow everywhere which made it more romantic. It was as if Nastya had brought Siberia with her.

Paris became our meeting point throughout 2010 as Nastya couldn't enter Britain by any means. In order to obtain even a simple British tourist visa Nastya would have needed to make the equivalent of 30,000 roubles (around £600) a month. At this time she made around 17,500 roubles (£350) a month. I on the other hand was prepared to visit Russia but didn't have the money. It is ironic that while Nastya held a well-respected job as an IT technician, was reasonably well paid where Russia is concerned, was qualified as a translator and engineer and was a trained pianist, her movements were restricted by global politics and the economics of the day. Whereas I, a poorly-trained unofficial nobody and self-appointed poet, could travel anywhere, provided I had some dosh. Even a full-time, minimum-wage job would have afforded me enough money to visit Russia. However, in 2010, the hotel Ibis in Montrouge, Paris, was our second home on occasional weekends. By our next romantic getaway in Paris we even had our own favourite restaurant, which although we don't remember its name
can
be found by taking the underground to Boulevard St Michel and walking two streets in from the river in the direction of the Eiffel tower. At the point you are completely lost, the restaurant is on the left.

It was early on in our affair that we decided to marry. Our long-distance courtship was taking its toll on us; I guess all people in these kinds of situations find it hard. Not only that but I couldn't really say I had a home to go to and because of the global economic crash there was little chance of me finding a regular, decent job in the UK. British immigration law states that I would need full-time employment and a permanent residence in order for Nastya to be allowed to live in the UK. Pigs might fly by the time that happened and so the only option available to us was for me to move to Russia.

It turns out that finding someone who wants to marry you isn't the hardest part of getting married. For a British citizen to marry abroad one needs a lot of forms. Firstly you must apply for a Certificate of No Impediment to Marry (CNIM). Once you have this it needs an Apostille (this is a stamp from the Foreign Office based in Milton Keynes). A standard Russian tourist visa at the time had to be applied for forty-five days before the intended travel date which prevented me from booking really cheap flights. Once I applied, I had to wait around two weeks for a decision. This was to allow the FSB (Federal Security Service formally known as the KGB) adequate time to investigate me (the application was very long and asked if I had any ‘special skills' or military training).

When I had my passport back, I thought I was in the clear. Research on several Russian travel websites soon informed me that when I arrived in Moscow I would still need to get everything translated and stamped again. Then all my documents, both original and translated, would need to be presented to an International Wedding Court. Worse than this I read that we could only be married a month or two months after application, which would have been impossible with a single month's visa; although the same websites stated that the wedding courts would likely accept bribes to make it sooner. Determined that we wouldn't be separated by bureaucracy, or economics, I left for Moscow with a suitcase full of warm clothes, and a rucksack loaded with Jaffa Cakes.

Trans-Siberian. March 31
st
2011. Moscow –
Krasnoyarsk

The doors to all the wagons of the train opened simultaneously, and a number of heavyset, extremely intimidating female guards stepped out in black greatcoats and grey ushankas (classic Russian trapper's hat). Our passports and papers were checked and we boarded. The engine itself wasn't anything like I had expected. I had been hoping for some great big steam engine, instead it was a large industrial one. Like a green brick on wheels.

There are three different classes of tickets on the Trans-Siberian. The first and most expensive is a compartment all of your own. The second is a compartment of four bunks – two lower bunks that convert into beds, and two upper bunks which are always beds – and third class, which I am told is six bunks to a compartment. We had chosen second class. I wasn't actually aware of the etiquette and so as soon as we entered our compartment I sat on the seat opposite Nastya. This seemed only natural, but not long after I had sat down, a large, muscular Russian man entered and gave me The Look. I was sat in his seat, which would also double as his bed, so I changed sides quickly.

Sat next to Nastya, with our knees pressed against the tiny table in the centre, it was hard to imagine how anyone could travel third class. But people do, and often. In Russia, because of its size, it's normal for people to commute to meetings via two, three, four or sometimes eight-day journeys. Our compartment, second class, felt like a sardine tin and for the next three days that sardine tin was home. There was a dining cabin on board the train, although eating there would have required leaving our bags with a complete stranger. Having anticipated this situation, we had bought a picnic – some sausage meat, a large pack of cheese, some Brie, a loaf of bread, a pack of pastrami and a few sachets of herbal tea – from a half decent supermarket we had found earlier that morning, which surprisingly sold a wide selection of Western produce.

When it was time to prepare our meals, which involved cutting our bread and cheese on the
itsy witsy
table, our travelling companion, although large and scary, turned out to be the perfect gentleman and would always leave for a walk up and down the train. I regret not learning his name or plucking up the courage to thank him for his good manners and generosity before he left the train for good. The Trans-Siberian is a popular tourist attraction and so it was normal to find a Brit on the train with an extremely poor grasp of the Russian language. Therefore our companion only communicated through Nastya, and only to make polite conversation or to ask if we would like to share his beer. The afternoon was long – from the small window we could only see pines and birches morning and night – except for a few stations, which all looked alike. There was no shower facility and the toilet made a high-pitched sound when flushed that hurt our ears if we weren't quick enough to cover them. Anyone who takes that train across the whole of Russia is not only going to have severe cramp by the end of their trip, but is likely to smell as bad as a wet dog that has been rolling in his own poop.

Despite all this, our first day passed without incident. However, as we hadn't got to know our travelling companion yet, after he procured a 6-inch Bowie knife from his boot to cut his meat in the afternoon, I found it near impossible to sleep that first night. Nastya had brought her own knife to cut meat but it was only an inch long. I knew this would have been of little use in defence against a burly Russian who carried a blade big enough to chop off my head in one fell swoop. Lying there on my bunk above Nastya's as we were hurtling further into Russia in the dead of night I was struck by fear and panic. With the ceiling of the wagon so close to my head I occasionally reached up, put my palms against it and pressed myself deeper into my bunk, as if this would somehow make me safer. As the hours went by I began to doze slightly, my mind filled with images of Moscow.

As the plane touched down in Sheremetyevo airport, I could see it was going to be hard to dispel the stereotypical view of Russia I had come to know from Hollywood films. A bleak sky mirrored the dirty snow surrounding the airport; the blanket of grey-white absorbing the airport sign's blood-red glow without a trace of reflection. I was met at Sheremetyevo by Nastya, who had taken the Trans-Siberian to Moscow three days earlier and had arrived that morning. She had already booked us a double bed in a hostel where we planned to stay for two nights. I had arranged to meet an up-and-coming Russian poet in Red Square the following day and we also needed to get documents translated. To give you an idea of the scale of Moscow, it took nearly four hours to travel from the airport to the other side of the city (it takes four hours to travel from Cardiff to Heathrow Airport, via National Express). Moscow could be a country all of its own. It is a vast maze of roads and underground train stations. I had left the UK on a four hour flight at around 1.15 p.m. GMT and arrived in Moscow at about 8.30 p.m. because of the time difference. After travelling across the capital and checking into our hostel it was close to midnight, so there was little time for anything other than sleep.