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Rupert`s Travels Got a lift to Baikal at 10 am and - to my surprise - a guide. Marina was older than she looked, and a student of Japanese and English at the Institute of Modern Languages. She spoke very good English. The drive took about an hour, but the sight of Baikal was worth the wait, with the first view showing it`s obvious size with the opposite shoreline being below the horizon fifty kilometres away. Apart from the estuary of the river draining it, it`s still frozen to a depth of about half a metre, and we walked out to see the head of the local tour company diving through a hole in the ice. Looking down it, you could see how clear the water was, with the bottom being visible thirty metres down. The ice seemed fairly safe; apparently there`s a Frenchman cycling along it`s length right now- all 1000 kilometres or so. Could be an interesting week off , if I could align the time and money.
Dumped the rucksack at the house in the village I was staying at, and we set out for the local museum, where we spent an hour deciphering the local flora and faunae, plus Baikal`s formation as a result of earthquake activity; must have been one hell of an earthquake! Climbing up to the local observatory past the completed and in progress hotels, I saw a sign that definitely started with "comrades" and finished with an exclamation mark. It looked like political propaganda to me, but Marina told me that it congratulated locals for taking physical exercise rather than staying in at home watching telly. I burst straight into laughter, and told her that in the UK a sign like that would be torn down in a day. Her eyes lit up, and she told me that was what the last Brit she had guided here (a man in his fifties) had said; very different from what Russians thought!
After admiring the view from the top, we walked back down discussing cabbages and kings about our respective countries. Education in Russia seems rather more rigorous than back home, and as political training ended in 1986, much of the grind was removed. Going to school in Bratsk seemed a little hair-raising at times; you could only bunk off in winter when the temperature dropped below -40C! Competition for university education was fierce; she had to wait two years before she could get in the Irkutsk Institute. People in Russia seemed to get married earlier, generally early twenties, but weddings are very different; generally consisting of a week long booze-up (or at least a minimum of two days), and often no honeymoon. They have no equivalent to the stag or hen nights; my descriptions of the former resulted in laughter, while the latter in Russia seem to consist of knitting evenings. She also seemed rather surprised as to why I was perhaps better informed than usual about Russian history (if not the language!). I just told her that I had expected to fight in a war against her country someday, which produced a lot of thoughtful talk about where we saw Russia fighting wars in the future. She was shocked to hear me mention China, but Beijing is much closer to Irkutsk than Moscow.
Later we walked back to the village which sported a Polish church, and as colossal surprise, a Japanese graveyard dating from the second world war. Marina had heard it was here, but wasn`t sure where, but after half an hour of wandering around woods, we found it right next to the Russian one. The inscriptions were a little hard to decipher, but Marina managed a couple. Mostly, all I could think about was how lonely a resting place this must be, if a magnificent one.
The evening was largely spent watching Pulp Fiction, whilst eating raw omul (fish, probably trout). I get the impression that I was supposed to refuse when Marina slyly offered me fish eyes, but they tasted fine, second only to ice cream I assured her (one of her obsessions). The raw fish was OK, but so full of bones eating it was rather a lengthy affair. I also learnt a little more about life at the Institute, in particular how some of the foreign students behave. Marina wasn`t impressed by what she saw as their attitudes; they think the locals are desperate, and that they`ll take anything Western. Marina isn`t exactly ugly, so she presumably got quite a lot of attention. |
