Sunbathing in Siberia (9 page)

When we got to the junction a huge, sixteen-wheeled, fully-armed nuclear weapon launcher was negotiating the corner of Leningradsky Avenue. There were three more behind it. During some later research I found that this machine is known as the Topol-M intercontinental ballistic missile launcher, which carries a single warhead with an 800 kiloton yield (as a comparison the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were 15 and 21 kilotons respectively). It is quite simply the Godfather of killing machines, and I was stood 10 ft from a convoy of them.

Easter in the Dacha

On Sunday 24
th
April, the day before we left for Moscow, it was Easter Sunday and there would be no escaping the festivities. In Russia, Easter is celebrated for the same reasons as in Britain – it is a religious holiday, but many people just use it as an excuse to gather with friends and family for a piss-up, much like my family did back in the UK. The snow had receded enough for us to visit the family dacha on the outskirts of the city in the Pugachevo district. Nobody seemed quite sure if I would ever be in Russia again and they wanted me to taste life the old way. Dachas are wooden summerhouses, and our family's dacha was built by Boris and his father-in-law's father, in a district for energy workers only. This was normal practice under the Soviet remuneration system. When someone worked full time in communist Russia, the company you worked for granted you a plot of land on which to build your house and paid certain bills for you.

Each dacha district has a gate, which is usually open, as they aren't much of a deterrent to thieves when all the fences are wire or wooden slats. Almost every dacha in the area had a sticker on it with the year on, showing that they had paid their annual security fee of a few hundred roubles. Every dacha district has in it a small hut where security men spend their whole days waiting for trouble. Paying the security fee is not essential when you own a dacha; however it is such a small price to pay someone to watch over your property. Those who do not pay the fee apparently get broken into more often as the security man is obliged to ignore it. However Nastya told me that everyone suspected that those who didn't pay the fee were broken into by the very security officials paid to protect that area, because they were disgruntled over losing money.

Walking into the dacha felt like walking into the very stereotype of Russia I thought I would have encountered on my first day. With the exception of a few mod cons – sockets, light fittings, a sink and an old fridge-freezer – the dacha fulfilled every preconceived idea I had of Siberian living. When I first sat down and studied my surroundings, what stood out most of all was the large white fridge. Against the dark wood behind, it seemed really out of place. When Boris saw me looking at it, he exclaimed in perfect English ‘Soviet manufacture. Good make.'

Boris had built his dacha well. The ground floor has several rooms including the washroom and dining room, which had been added later as an extension. To enter the heart of the dacha you have first to enter the extension, and then walk through what would have been the original entrance, a very solid and heavy pine door. In the original section of the dacha, the biggest bulk is made of pine trunks, sawn down the length and knitted together. It is the most solid structure I have ever seen. At its centre is a fireplace, which acts as a stove. This is made from brick, and the chimney continues right through the centre of the second floor to the roof. On the ground floor, this stove acts as a natural divide between the lower bedroom and original kitchen/dining area. The upper floor, which has the chimney acting as a pillar in the centre, is the master bedroom. The chimney column is unlike those I have seen in the UK. In order to trap heat, instead of being built vertically, it first snakes around itself before towering up into the ceiling. Even though there are two designated sleeping places, there are seven beds in the dacha. There are so many places to sleep as Russians like to live in their dachas from spring until the end of August and they love to receive guests there and have people stay over. Russian hospitality is almost a hobby in itself. Russians genuinely love having people come to visit them, they love to wine and dine people, and they love to offer their guests warm beds at night, only to cook a big breakfast in the morning, and see their guests off with arms full of food for the way home.

Our Easter celebration resembled more of a medieval feast. There were huge plates and trays covered with pork, beef, deer, chicken and potatoes. Nataliya Petrovna had served several bowls of salad with hard-boiled eggs that had intricate colourful designs on their shells. We were joined by several of Nataliya Petrovna's friends and everyone ate heartily. There were several toasts made to Easter and my marriage to Nastya, using several bottles of vodka and cognac, though nobody got drunk. This is because of what I refer to as Russian vodka etiquette. Firstly, vodka can only be drunk from a small glass named a
stopka
; this is to ensure that the vodka is pure and not dirtied by lesser spirits. True to stereotype most Russians can and do drink enough vodka to kill a dinosaur, but after each shot they eat a slice of cucumber, tomato or a slice of Russian sausage called smoked
kolbasa
. This sausage is nothing like the pink sausage meat I had eaten in Moscow. Smoked
kolbasa
is exceptionally tasty and there are hundreds of variations of it. Because it can last a long time in the open, it's also a good meat to take with you on long-distance trips. If there is no salad or sausage left, Russians will pick at anything after a shot of vodka; a spoonful of soup or a slice of bread all help to neutralise the initial effect of the alcohol. This technique keeps Russians from getting blind drunk. In summertime, instead of cucumbers, Russians like to follow vodka with a slice of melon and can get through several in one evening.

This was the first time I had drunk vodka since I was fifteen. I had actually been dreading it. Back in the early nineties, my sister Mab and I had been close. When my parents were in the beginning stages of their very lengthy and horrendously noisy divorce, Mab left to study English at university, leaving me to fend for myself. On the rare times she visited, we would normally stay up all night and share stories. Knowing I was no stranger to alcohol, during one of her visits, Mab introduced me to vodka. We sat up all night watching the original
Star Wars
films on a small television, doing shots mixed with lemonade. This was great, and I remember it fondly, right up to the point the lemonade ran out. My only memory after that was throwing up my spaghetti hoops. I learned later that Mab had cleaned up after me, though she never mentioned it, ever. Sat in the dacha, looking at the bottles of vodka, knowing I wouldn't be able to refuse, only my sister, thousands of miles away could have possibly understood my trepidation. I followed each shot with half a cucumber, and all was well.

After our meal, Nastya wanted to show me the local lake. Russia is covered with thousands of natural lakes that vary greatly in size. The one nearest the dacha is about the size of a school playing field. To reach it you have to walk down a very steep stony path that is flanked by long blades of grass. Though the lake itself isn't much to look at, it was hard to take my eyes off it. The water was murky, there were reeds all around the edge, and it was covered in water skates; but with the sky mirrored, it was a very welcome patch of blue among the dark green of the trees encompassing it. For just beyond the lake, past a handful of dachas, was the taiga.

Aeroflot Flight SU781. July 20
th
2011.
Moscow – Krasnoyarsk

My family back in Wales hadn't taken the news of my Siberian marriage too badly. Both my mother and father had suspected I was having some sort of clandestine relationship, and I had already told my sisters that I was planning to marry just before I'd left on my first trip. I hadn't mentioned anything of Nastya to my parents beforehand for two very good reasons. Firstly, everything I say I'm going to do I end up not doing. Like the Sahara Desert Marathon I told everyone I was going to run when I reached my twenty-fifth birthday, and the numerous times I said I would quit smoking. If I wanted something to work I had to keep it a secret, otherwise it would be jinxed. When I took up Kung Fu in my early twenties, it was six months before anyone found out. Knowing my tendency to make a hash of things after I'd announced my plans to the world, I had no choice but to keep everyone in the dark over Nastya. The second reason for keeping mum was that I already had a string of failed relationships trailing behind me. I knew exactly what my family would have said if I'd told them ‘I'm seeing a girl in Siberia, it's serious and we're going to marry. Honest.' They would have thought I was crazy or laughed their arses off. Some friends of mine (who I had confessed to before my marriage) had joked that I was buying myself a Russian bride because I couldn't satisfy women in Wales. This was rather hurtful, not to mention offensive to Nastya. So, when I saw my family, and revealed all, I was met with the obvious ‘What are you going to do now?' To which I replied ‘I haven't got a clue.' And I didn't. When making all our plans, Nastya and I hadn't quite reached the part
after
the wedding.

This was quite a difficult time. Nastya and I spoke online most days and discussed options, which was all quite pointless as we didn't have any. We were stuck on a treadmill of the same questions. Could she somehow move to Britain? Could I find a job that paid me £20,000 in a short space of time? Could we possibly move to France? By the end of May I was thoroughly depressed. I spent my days looking for work, pushing for any job I could find, while bunking down each night at one of my parents' places. All the while I was conscious that I had a wife in Siberia, and that we ought to be making plans together. I was in despair at being torn in half by immigration regulations, but at the same time I was happy because I had Nastya and knew that whatever happened, we would be together in the end. By mid-June I had enough money for another tourist visa and a set of return flights. I could have, if I'd wanted, gone to Russia on a longer visa, because I was now part-Russian, but there was a piece of me that was still very much afraid; not only of Russia, but of the massive changes I knew I had to make. Though I was married, my head hadn't caught up with my heart.

I left for Russia on July 19
th
with a suitcase half-full of clothes, half-full of chocolates. Our first month had been expensive with Nastya meeting me in Moscow, taking the Trans-Siberian and then returning to Moscow with me. So this time I had to do it alone. Negotiating Sheremetyevo to catch my connecting flight to Krasnoyarsk had been easy as all the signs are in English as well as Russian.

After our plane had descended to a level that allowed us to see everything well from the windows, we had to circle Krasnoyarsk and the surrounding area due to a queue of planes also ready to land. As the frost evaporated from the glass, I got a bird's-eye-view of the hydroelectric power station.

Two weeks after we were married, when the snow began to melt and the grass started showing, Boris had told us that the roads were clear enough to drive far outside the city to visit the hydroelectric power station, also known as Krasnoyarsk dam. The only pictures I had seen of it were on the back of the ten rouble note and a few postcards. At first I was slightly bemused. I'd seen dams before. Surely once you'd seen one you'd seen them all? But I went along as it was something to do, and I had spent too long in the apartment.

Driving to the dam was slightly scary because we had to travel on roads that had been little used through the winter and were still iced over in places. The road ran through a dense forest area. It looked like bear country because it was their country. At the start of our journey, we had to pass through the south side of Krasnoyarsk, which is much older in appearance than the north. The roads on the south side have more potholes and because trams make up a large percentage of the public transport system, we had to drive across railroad tracks every few minutes. I was amazed at how little the south had progressed compared with the north. There were more factories, and the air seemed thicker. It made me glad that we lived on the other side of the river. So many of the buildings looked as if the Second World War had only finished the week before, however, I knew the German invasion hadn't made it so far east. Arriving at the dam wasn't much better. The giant concrete structure could be seen for miles on the approach. In front of the dam was a large glass-fronted building, similar to the residential apartment blocks. It looked like the factory from the beginning of the
Dr Zhivago
movie, where Alec Guinness is looking for his brother's daughter. Next to this was another slightly smaller one. Although less intimidating in size, the smaller building had a giant picture of Vladimir Lenin's face in red and black on its side; a terrifying 50 ft homage to the Communist Party.

I later learned that this dam and its accompanying buildings were partly built by Gulag slaves during the 1950s and were completed just nine years before I was born. It was impossible to get close to the neighbouring buildings, let alone the dam, as a high perimeter fence surrounded the entire complex. This steel fence had a couple of rows of barbed wire on top. When I walked close to it, Nastya and Boris called out in Russian. I couldn't understand what they were saying but I could tell from their tone that they were trying to warn me. Outside the perimeter fence were a few patches of long grass. The snow had melted sufficiently for the deadly Siberian grass ticks to come back; they were waiting for some stupid Westerner to come close. I backed away from the complex and admired its impenetrability. There were a few other tourists there, speaking Russian. One of them managed to get close enough to touch the fence. At that point an electric voice rang out from speakers I hadn't noticed and the man backed away very quickly. They left soon afterwards; which prompted us to follow.