Ramblings of a foreigner leaving Russia

[sabotabby]

Had something else I was going to add here. Can't remember what, though.


Friday, April 28
St. Petersburg to Moscow

I'm on a train, beginning my journey home. From Moscow, I'll catch a plane to New York and then back to Toronto.

Both Anya and I are sick, although she's worse off than I am. I'll probably be a mess by the time I get home. [I kind of was. Not physically, which was a surprise.] Neither of us felt like doing much today. A woman Vova knows drove us almost to the train station. I say "almost" because she was driving a Lada and it broke down. Heh.

On the way, Anya and Vova argued about Russian politics. At 40, Vova is nostalgic for the good old days of what he saw as functional socialism. I felt—for once—disinclined to comment. I don't see this country's history as a series of events and upheavals. Much of the authoritarianism that marked the Soviet era was borrowed whole-cloth from the age of tsars. (Even the execution of the Romanovs seemed to have a certain ring of familiarity about it; the royals were always killing people by the family. It isn't enough to just kill your enemies. You have to salt the earth and such.)

Russia's new "freedom" seemed to me to be the freedom to choose between Boss and Prada. Legless veterans and pensioners beg in front of American and European chain stores. The press is still not free. [In a Moscow Times article I read while I was there] Putin claims to be the heir of both tsarist and socialist traditions—United Russia has just named its platform "social conservatism." Political rights can stay suppressed, Russia participates in imperialist wars, but capital, as always, is free.

This place will make you depressed as all hell about politics, I tell you.

I'm glad I came here. I think I'm having the good kind of tired, where I've experienced far too much to process right now. More later, maybe.

[I'm still processing.]


Not the worst toilet in all of Russia. See ru_toilet for how bad it can actually get.


The best piece of graffiti I saw. Anya was astounded—and a bit offended, I think—to see the Romanov emblem everywhere. Someone had the right idea.


My next entry was very short, so I won't bother putting it behind a cut or anything:

Saturday, April 29
New York

Fuck Homeland Security sideways with a rusty tent peg.

[I almost missed my flight home because they insisted on fingerprinting all the Russians, and didn't think that the Moscow Airport's quadruple scanning and searching everyone's baggage was good enough. I suppose it could have been worse—I wasn't strip searched—but on my next intercontinental flight, I'll pay extra if it means I don't need to stop in the U.S.]

New Gaybortion!: Get in your seat!

Comments

[seaya.livejournal.com]

That toilet is an eastern toilet to be sure.

Similar to China.

Shrug :).

You don't have to touch it, which makes it a non-issue ;).

[jaymoh.livejournal.com]

I don't understand that toilet... :/

Very funny Gaybortion!

[frandroid.livejournal.com]

crouch.

[sabotabby]

I've yet to perfect the squat, though. Too much time spent in the decadent West.

My main objection, though, was that toilet paper seldom seems to accompany this sort of toilet.

[sabotabby]

Yep.

[dobrovolets.livejournal.com]

I'll pay extra if it means I don't need to stop in the U.S.

I'm so glad to live in the pariah state of the 21st Century.

[sabotabby]

You know, I don't know if I wrote much about how tourist-unfriendly Russia, and especially Moscow is. I mean, they seem to want to be like Western Europe, but there's incredible amounts of red tape when you're trying to get in the country, no one speaks English (or any language other than Russian), and they charge foreigners twice as much to see anything. This discourages tourists, I'd think.

Still, they don't humiliate you like in the U.S. I think eventually this is going to make a dent in the amount of people who want to visit the country.

[dobrovolets.livejournal.com]

I think eventually this is going to make a dent in the amount of people who want to visit the country.

No doubt. If the current level of repression and bureaucracy at the ports of entry continues to increase in a linear fashion--which I don't expect that it will, but who knows?--by the time I'm old it'll be like Albania in the last days of Enver Hoxha, open only to invited guests. "Ah, you belong to the International Friends of America. Welcome, comrade! Your tour guide will be here shortly, to take you directly from the airport to your exclusive luxury hotel. That is your stretch SUV limo outside. The windows are tinted on the inside and outside!"

[sabotabby]

LOL Hoxha.

Seriously, though. I have the privilege of being white and Canadian, which meant that I wasn't fingerprinted, photographed, or strip-searched. The Russians were white, so they weren't strip-searched. How they can make things more difficult for everyone else—and they keep making it more difficult for everything else—is mindboggling.

That reminds me...

[jordansc.livejournal.com]

Did you ever see the Russian character in Captain Planet who would always yell "capitalists!" at the various eco-villains?

http://www.turner.com/planet/static/linka.html

Re: That reminds me...

[sabotabby]

Sadly, I've never seen Captain Planet. Do I lose geek points for that?

[terry-terrible.livejournal.com]

"Putin claims to be the heir of both tsarist and socialist traditions"

>>>>>> In my American frame of mind, or in other frames of mind, it would be pretty skechy that anyone would want to be the heir of any of those traditions. But on nationalistic Russian terms, I guess it would be a fine thing to claim, harking back to more "glorious" times.

Tell me conserning the Romanov emblem, did you observe it displayed alot around there? Is it kind of weird symbol of national unity like in the old days in Russia now?

[terry-terrible.livejournal.com]

It's kind of funny, I once new a girl who's grandpa was a general in the Albanian Army and thet he right-hand man to Hoxha, she had all sorts of tales about how screwed up he and the people who surrounded him were.

[sabotabby]

It was everywhere: the currency, government buildings, randomly in your face where you'd expect a hammer and sickle. I think they just didn't know what to replace the Communist symbols with so they just grabbed what there'd been before.

Oh, except for the mailboxes. The post office is still totally commie.

[princealberic.livejournal.com]

I've encountered toilets like that in Western Europe. I saw them twice in Italy, once at a bus stop in a tiny village and then at a camping park. It wasn't pretty and I was always afraid that my feet would slip and then I'd have a foot stuck in there. I'm curious and disturbed by the fact that there's a community devoted to Russian toilets.

It took me a while to figure out that was the Romanov emblem, I was looking at it upright so it looked like a bunch of random pieces. Is there really a tsarist movement in Russia? Who would be the tsar if they had their way? I imagine it would be like monarchists over here, who bicker a lot over who would be the heir because there are no direct descendants of the last king, and the most popular candidate comes from a branch of the family that

Russia is so weird to me, politically, because I can't really take sides (unless it's the side of anarchist sailors or generally cool people getting killed for being dissidents) because I'm not sure what I'd pick between tsarist and Stalinist politics. And obviously whatever is happening in Russia right now sounds like a mess. I feel like Russian politics are a bit like Pete Doherty was until recently, a mess and not getting any less messier, and nobody being able to remember when it was otherwise. Actually, this might be true of politics in general, or maybe I'm just jaded.

That doesn't mean it's not a highly fascinating mess, though.