Sunbathing in Siberia (23 page)

There are many Soviet ruins throughout Krasnoyarsk and the neighbouring dacha territories that are all gradually eroding; disused factories are crumbling to the ground, leaving twisted steel bars reaching out from the rubble like the fingers of some terrible machine buried alive. Any parts of the Soviet machine that are of use have been salvaged: factory walls and roofs have become dacha walls and vegetable dividers. It's as if Russia is a giant recycling plant, only in the process of separating the useful from the rubbish its task is to reconstruct itself at the same time.

When we were tired of the lake we sometimes walked the twenty-minute path to Pugachevo train station on the very edge of the dacha territory. There isn't an actual station, just a small shop next to the tracks. This became one of my favourite pastimes. With the platform at ground level, people using the trains had to climb up and down using a handrail; when I watched them clambering aboard it reminded me of my own journey on the Trans-Siberian – when the train stopped in remote places, like Pugachevo, where if there wasn't a little shop there was nothing at all. On our journey the train sometimes rested in what seemed like the middle of nowhere. In these obscure and remote locations I felt like I was in the middle of some great adventure where anything could happen and everything was possible. Pugachevo train station evoked these feelings in me without my even possessing a train ticket; although, as it was summer, it looked more like a scene from an old spaghetti western than the white winter voyage I had experienced in 2011. Nastya grew tired of my romantic train obsession and I eventually began walking to the station on my own. Sitting on one of the benches just a few feet from the tracks I became addicted to the rush of adrenalin as cargo trains hurtled past. They had strange Russian symbols on them and company logos that were alien to me. Mostly the wagons carried timber to the west, but occasionally I saw rows of Japanese car transports, nuclear waste containers, tanks, helicopters and various other military hardware en route to Moscow. When they careered down the line and out of view, I would wait for the afternoon passenger trains, because these drew people from miles around. I watched as humans in the distance advanced along the tracks, over the hills and through the forests, while carrying with them sacks of vegetables, pets, or dragging their tired children behind them. It was such a colourful and unusual daily spectacle that even when I wasn't there, if I heard a train in the distance from the dacha I couldn't help but stop and picture it. When I was a boy I had been given a train set by my parents for Christmas, however with our house two sizes too small I never got to set it up properly. It became a dream to see it all fully functioning one day, with my dad forever promising to buy me a large board to set it up on. After my teenage years I lost most of it through moving here and there. The engines were boxed up, the wagons misplaced and the little plastic people never even got to travel to the other side of my bedroom. This inability to see my toy trains move is probably partly to blame for my love of Pugachevo train station. I don't care for train serial numbers or wagon listings, but I am in love with the buzz of life the station attracts and the continual sense of movement.

Evenings at the dacha were often filled with watching episodes of
Friends
and
Desperate Housewives
with Nastya, on a small television linked to a karaoke machine that doubled as a DVD player. As I become more of a dachaman, or
dachnik
, Nastya increasingly liked to watch awful American TV serials as a way of escape; she may have been born Siberian but for some reason Nastya never fell in love with the old ways of living, preferring instead the metropolitan life of Krasnoyarsk city. Nastya has never gotten to grips with life without a hot shower or soft expensive mattresses, and as punishment for my insistence on us living at the dacha made me watch TV programmes full of people living the American dream. Often I escaped from this nightmare by writing poetry in a dark corner or reading one of the several translated volumes of Yevtushenko I had brought with me from the UK.

I also spent many evenings outside Dima's dacha, sitting at the table and eating
shashliks
. Marina and Dima usually brought back some chicken or pork with them on their way home from work but it's not unusual in Russia to eat several other types of meat. The rule of thumb seemed to be that if it has more than two legs there is room for it on the barbeque; although we never barbequed horsemeat we did eat it from tins. I thought it strange that a man such as myself, who has spent a considerable chunk of his life in Pentyrch stables tending to the needs of horses, should find himself eating horsemeat in Siberia.

Over the summer, Marina's mother Luda had decided to stay with them. By day she looked out for Semka while Dima and Marina were working, and in the evening they helped prepare food. I didn't fully understand why Luda was staying at Dima's dacha, nor where she had come from but I was thankful because she was quite light-hearted and fun to be around. However, even though Luda was one of the easiest people to be around, as Marina's mother it was clear to see where Marina got her hardness from. Luda gave the impression she was a woman never to be crossed; she had a physical frame a Siberian lynx would be proud of, and I'm sure she had all the same killing abilities to boot.

With Dima's dacha being smaller than Boris's I began to wonder where everyone slept. Semka usually had friends over and they slept on the first floor with him so they could play games, as children do; I therefore assumed that Luda must have slept on the ground floor with Dima and Marina. Their dacha was a very simple design with one main room at the bottom using the stove as a kind of room divider, meaning Luda must have slept only a few feet from her daughter and son-in-law in a toe-to-toe sort of way. This situation was exacerbated when Marina's brother came to stay. Although Vova had a wife and a home to go to, he very often stopped by over the summer to share
shashliks
and beer. Parties got boozy when he was around and lasted well into the early hours as he and Marina bounced off each other like children. It was thanks to Vova that I got to experience the
banya
for the first time. After a night of copious drinking Vova set a fire in the stove of the
banya
, and when it was time, after the stones above the stove had become stupidly hot, he and I went and sat in our pants to sweat our arses off.
Banya
etiquette is another part of Russian life I had to learn. Typically, a fire is set in the stove; this heat then transfers to a number of round boulders in a higher compartment with a bucket of water on top. Inside the bucket are bunches of tied oak, birch or eucalyptus branches that are used to cleanse the skin; it's said that by hitting yourself with these branches circulation is improved. A hat must also be worn to protect from the intense heat, which often reaches 70 °C or more. These hats are usually made from felt and are styled to look like Viking or warrior helmets. With Vova's funny spiked hat, large belly and facial hair he looked a lot like Gerard Depardieu as
Obelix
. Sat in the
banya
in our pants, Vova took it upon himself to show me what the branches were for. He whipped my back several times; with my back already red and sweaty from the searing heat it stung like hell. He wasn't deliberately trying to hurt me, it's normal in Russian
banyas
for people to whip each other's backs and/or any other unreachable parts. To increase the heat Vova used a ladle to throw water on the stones. This caused a build-up of steam that made it absolutely fucking boiling as well as near impossible to breathe. At the point of passing out, Vova motioned for me to follow him to Semka's paddling pool, where the contrast in temperature was heavenly. We lay for a few minutes in the icy cool water before enjoying a sip of beer with everyone on Dima's porch, then repeating the process until we could stand it no longer. Thus my initiation into Russian life was complete, and I became a fully-fledged dachaman. When we finally sat down, tired, whipped and wet, I actually felt really good. My mind was as clear as if I had been for a long run, or eaten a large healthy salad. I could feel all the pistons of my brain firing up and my vision was sharper. This was good because after the
banya
I was expected to last well into the early hours of the morning. Marina, who had enjoyed the spectacle of me running back and forth to Semka's pool asked ‘Michael, Cognac, vodka, or tea?' I said I wanted some of all of them, which caused Marina to say ‘Ah, you are Russian now.' Because of my initiation, Vova, who had been a little unsure of me before, treated me like an old friend and sometimes slapped my back as old friends do when telling a funny anecdote. This would have been fine if he hadn't been whipping it earlier. Still, I didn't mind. We had washed together, and he had beaten me with sticks, which made us friends.

The Invited

We had been married for over a year and yet my family in Wales had not met Nastya or any other member of my Russian family. Getting Nastya to the UK, even on a tourist visa, was impossible and so the options were limited to meeting in central Europe or my parents coming to Russia. The European option would have been needlessly expensive with hotel and travel costs and there was little chance my disabled mother would even make it to a train station, let alone a foreign country. This left us with only one option: inviting my Dad to visit Russia. We sent him a simple text and he accepted immediately; he would come for Christmas. The only problem we faced was where to stick him; our apartment was small and only had one bed, but I didn't like the idea of him staying with Nastya's parents as they couldn't speak English and he didn't speak Russian; it would have been too awkward for all involved. To solve this Boris agreed to find us a sofa bed small enough to fit into our little kitchen, but big enough to be comfortable, and in return we would give him the stools we currently used to sit at our breakfast table. This exchange of furniture occurs regularly among my Siberian family and friends. For instance, back in December a family friend needed a new bed and my mother-in-law had one just the right size, so she gave her that one; Nataliya Petrovna was then short of a bed, so we gave her ours, then someone had another bed that was perfect for us, and it went around, in a big circle, everyone jostling furniture. Then in summer, I was using an old kitchen table as a desk in our new apartment but Boris came and took it as he needed our spare kitchen table; Boris knew Dima had too many desks in his house and not enough beds, so Boris got me a new desk and sorted Dima with a new bed. I had Dima's desk, Dima had Boris's spare bed and Boris had our kitchen table. The concepts of ownership and property are not taken as seriously in Siberia as they are in the West; communist values are still very much alive. Capitalism has obviously made a dent in Russian culture but it's not fully recognised among some of the older folk. In Siberia we share almost everything. We have some of our own personal things but if someone needs something basic, we pull together and find a way so that no one has to suffer or be without. This doesn't mean there is always peace among my family. They are a passionate people, and with passion comes violence of speech, to the point that it sometimes sounds as if they are at war with one another.

By August, I was quite well adjusted to Siberian life. I felt at home. It was the third month that I didn't need to rush anywhere; still, there were things that I missed. Firstly, my friends and family who seemed to have forgotten me. A friend of mine who had lived in Nicaragua for five years before moving back to Wales and eventually settling in Mumbles, told me that when he lived abroad it felt as if he was in exile, even though he had put himself there. He had felt largely ignored by friends and family, to the point that he wondered if anyone remembered him at all. That is exactly how I felt. I emailed people back in Wales, often with lengthy details of what my life was like, but I usually received replies of ‘Yes we're fine here', and not much else. It was as if I had never lived there. I knew it would be difficult living far away and that consequently I would lose touch with some people, but even my best mates and closest family couldn't seem to find time to write back to me, or even Skype for a few minutes.

I should have realised the feeling of exile would envelope me; back in 2006 I had a few friends who left to live in faraway places like Mexico and the US, and to be honest, once they were gone I hadn't thought about them much or contacted them at all. Now it had gone full circle. As well as people, I also missed a great deal of British products. I dearly missed Kellogg's Cornflakes, Rice Krispies and Weetabix. They have similar products in Russia but they are just not the same. I also missed the little, less obvious things like Trebor Extra Strong Mints, Smarties, English mustard, PG Tips, Wine Gums, Oxo gravy granules, and Cornish Pasties; products that are easily taken for granted. The only reminder of home I had was a stuffed cuddly sheep I had brought as a gift for Nastya in March 2011.

When I became visibly sad and homesick Nastya sometimes took me out to eat somewhere nice. Although the majority of contemporary cafés in Siberia didn't agree with me, there were a few that did; especially ones that sold pizza. Yes, who would have thought that Siberians actually knew a lot about pizza? With the inevitable invasion of American fast food chains following the collapse of the USSR, some Russian businesspersons come up with the idea of starting their own fast food chains; and while the majority of these sell poor excuses for food, there are some that do manage to successfully pull off the fast food experience. It's something I wish I had known during my first couple of visits. There are a few other food products made in Russia that were a total surprise. Firstly, they make great ice cream. There was a time in my life I would have said nothing could beat Thayers of Cardiff but – since they appear to have changed their formula – their ice cream is easily eclipsed by their Russian counterpart. Another surprisingly well-made product in Russia is chocolate. Russians are masters at it, and I say this as a self-confessed chocaholic. In any one of the supermarkets and even some of the smaller shops there are shelves upon shelves full to the brim of different types of chocolate bars and candies. There are so many in fact that I have never managed to buy the same one twice; I want to try them all.