Ships on the Golden Horn Bay
The next day I went out on my own to explore Vladivostok while Liz rested and recovered in bed. The city blew my mind. Who knew there was a San Francisco in the middle of the Russian Far East? It has a population of about 700,000 and lies on a hilly peninsula between a gulf and a bay. The sparkling Golden Horn Bay was still not frozen, but the Amursky Gulf on the other side of the peninsula was frozen white. The hazy Siberian mountains in the background cast a surreal reminder of the desolation not far from the metropolis. Although many of the buildings were kind of ugly and Soviet, the city possessed a definite port town charm. The first thing I wanted to do was walk out on the frozen Amursky Gulf with the ice fisherman. It took me forever to find a way down there.Before I start, I just want to remind you to superimpose upon the following story a mind-bending, painful, numbing cold. It was only minus 25 Celsius, or about minus 12 degrees Fahrenheit, which is bearable with enough layers--unless there happens to be a stiff sea breeze cutting through all those layers, which for most of the day there was. And whenever it’s cold and windy my nose runs, and it ran all day. I had to use my numb, chapped hands to bring soggy toilet paper to my chapped nose at least several million times that day. I couldn’t wear gloves because I had to use my hands all the time, and once I took my gloves off, my hands were immediately too numb to be able to put them back on. I kept them in my pockets as much as possible. Taking pictures was painful, touching things was painful, breathing was painful, and even the locals were complaining about how cold it was. I had a lot of fun that day, but just so you know, it was cold.
I eventually found a way down to the gulf across narrow streets, through people’s yards and down icy steps. I walked among the ice fishermen and saw their drills sitting beside five-inch bores, cold faces surrounded by fur, and baitfish flopping around on the ice. Here there were no windbreaks, and I think walking around on that gulf was the coldest I have ever been in my life. It was frozen as far out as I could see, and I felt kind of like I was standing at the end of the earth. It was spectacular.
After I walked around a little and shuffled back to shore, I tried to walk toward the Regional Museum, but I ended up at the train station on the other end of town. I went into the station to thaw for a few minutes, then I walked around back and looked at the ships on the Bay and the remnants of the Russian Pacific Fleet. I took some pictures of the station, the hills beyond, and the statue of Lenin standing and gesticulating grandly toward Japan as if to say, “Give us your used cars, Russian cars suck!” Or that’s how it happened anyway.
Now that I knew where I was, I walked up Ulitsa Aleutskaya (formerly Ulitsa 25 Oktyabrya) to the Arsenev Regional Museum. It was incredibly painful to grip the huge iron door handles to walk in, but there I was, with swollen white hands and an intense need to urinate. I asked where the bathroom was, and they pointed me to it. I stood in the stall trying to get my pants unbuttoned for a full ten minutes. It’s hard to convey how maddening it was. My hands felt like bloated pieces of painful rubber, and were about as useful. Just as I was contemplating that perhaps it would be easier to use my teeth somehow, the button released, and then so did I. Of course, getting them buttoned again was an equally difficult maneuver, and not nearly as motivated, so I left them undone and pulled my shirt over it to wait until my hands thawed some more.
The animals and rocks and memorabilia in the museum were fairly interesting. The most impressive display was of a giant black bear and a huge Siberian tiger standing upright and locked in a death grip that looked more like a big hug or a waltz of some kind. An elk stood behind them apparently howling at the moon. I stumbled upon a talent show on the third floor featuring middle-aged women in tight baby blue satin dresses singing and swaying while young girls flitted around in hastily-sewn tulle. It made McCurtain, Oklahoma’s annual talent show look like Star Search.
When I tired of that, I regretfully left the warmth of the museum to go see the Town Square. The Square was cheerful and spacious, and it looked out over the Golden Horn Bay. On one end was an impressive Monument to the Fighters for Soviet Power in the Far East facing the home port of the Pacific Fleet. Standing in the middle of the square was a giant Novy God (New Year’s) tree, brightly decorated and with a big red star at the top. Next to the tree, a wide and brightly painted wooden slide had been covered with ice, and it was big enough to accommodate at least ten kids at a time sitting on pieces of cardboard or sliding down on their feet. The ice skating rink on one end of the square was about 35 x 35 feet. Some kids and their parents were sliding around on their shoes, and I joined in for a while. On the other end of the Square, to my never-ending astonishment, was a giant jumbotron playing the music video for the song, “You and me baby ain’t nothing but mammals, so let’s do it like they do on the Discovery Channel.”
After that I wanted to get to the top of one of the big hills around and see the layout of the city and watch the sun set. It didn’t seem easy to climb in the icy weather, and I didn’t know where to go for a good view, so I stuck my hand out and pulled over a car and asked him to take me to the top of a nice hill. It took a while to get that sentiment across in Russian, but he finally understood. We talked as he took me up there. When he found out that I was a student, he said he wouldn’t charge me, and I thanked him. As I got out of the car, the wind took my breath away. I hobbled over to some stairs that seemed to lead up to an overlook.
What I saw took my breath away even more than the horrid wind. The main peninsula of Vladivostok lay between the frozen Amursky Gulf and the bright blue stretch of Golden Horn Bay, which swept far inland surrounded by factories, apartment blocks, ships, and loading docks. On the other side of the peninsula you could barely see the white of the frozen gulf. Across from the end of the main peninsula was a small island, and then more water and hills and the hazy sweep of the Siberian mountains. Just beyond my field of vision lay the Sea of Japan. I stood there captivated for a long time.
When the winds drove me to seek shelter, I found a big square building a little further up and looked for an unlocked door. Inside it looked like some kind of studio, and I could hear faint music from its inner recesses. I followed the music until I found an auditorium full of men in tuxedos, women in evening gowns, and young girls in elaborate and strategically placed lycra and beads and gauzy materials. Soon the evening gowns and tuxes swept out and began a ballroom dance contest that held my attention until it was nearly sunset. Then I went back outside to watch the last vestige of warmth sink below the purple horizon.
I started to walk down the hill and back toward my hotel, and I happened to look up and sound out the word “Funicular” on a building in front of me. I had read about the funicular railway that went up and down the hill for a ruble a ticket, but I hadn’t been able to find it before. I hopped on board for an icy, open-air ride downhill. Then I needed to catch another taxi, but at this point the thought of sticking my bare hand out into the air was so painful that I momentarily contemplated just keeping my hands in my pockets and walking the couple of miles to the hotel. But then reality set in, I flagged down a car, and I was thawing in my hotel room in no time.
Liz had been in bed recovering all this time. Our Conservative American friend had stopped by with a can of chicken soup that day, so Liz hadn’t gone hungry, but I thought it would be nice to go out for a Christmas Eve dinner. Our guidebook mentioned a nearby restaurant, the Nostalgia Café, which looked nice. Liz couldn’t handle walking in the cold wind at all in her state of health, and it was even burning my lungs somewhat, so we caught a quick cab to it. For the third time that day, the short ride was a free gift. It was a nice gesture on a Christmas Eve, especially since it wouldn’t be Christmas Eve in Russia until sometime in January, and it cheered us up.
The restaurant looked kind of like the inside of a big jewelry box with a plush red pile covering the lower half of the walls and a heavy damask papering the upper half. We had a wonderful feast of soup, garlic chicken, mashed potatoes, and vegetables, and then we ordered just about every dessert on the menu. It came to about $9 apiece. We talked as we ate, and one Russian man noticed we were Americans and wished us a Merry Christmas. Later a Chinese gentleman did the same. I was impressed they knew it was our Christmas, because I sure had no idea before I went to Russia that their Christmas was in January.
Back in the hotel we felt safe and warm, and it didn’t seem odd that December 25 was the next day. All that that implied was so far away it didn’t seem relevant. In any case, walking in four layers of clothes in a giant deep-freeze, often on slippery ice, all over a strange city, alone, speaking and trying to understand Russian all day, had left me in a very satisfying total state of exhaustion. I fell asleep without thought or conscience.
More pictures around Vladivostok