Sausage, bred, beer, and a smoked chicken
If you have visited Russia once, you will either love it or hate it, but in any case it won't let you unaffected. Due to my liability to the extreme I fell in love at once, because in Russia the extreme seems to have its home. If you want to convince yourself of that, I advise you to get on a trip in the Transsib, and if possible share a cabin with Russians.
On my journey to Irkutsk, to the winter camp of 1999/2000, I have this special pleasure. The wagon is remarkably neat and well heated. Smoking is only allowed in the unheated passage leading to the next wagon. I get to know Pavel Grigoryevitch Tchumatchenko, a miner from Yakutia, and a travelling salesman for permafrost soil drills. The two men, who have boarded in Novosibirsk, notice pretty fast that I am German and attack me with sausage, bred, vodka, beer, and a smoked chicken. With every beer and every vodka my Russian improves, and we have an interesting conversation about life in Russia, especially in Yakutia, where they have, according to Pavel, the most beautiful autumn in the world, phenomenal mushrooms in even more phenomenal forests, and a bitterly cold winter. When the two men buy new drinks at a train station, they just wear a tee-shirt... It's not really cold here. Obviously, they are ashamed of the poverty in their country, but I explain them that lots of stomachs might be empty here, in Germany however far too many hearts and brains are empty. We agree: the World War, Chechenya, Kosovo, etc. are the guilt of bad, greedy subjects like politicians and such. Meanwhile, the train is driving through the endless and snow covered Siberia, further and further towards the East. In-between the train stations forests until the horizon. The environmental mess, which unquestionably has been made and still is made here, is relativised by this infinity time to think about what we destroy by our dissipation...
We want to celebrate the turn of the year in Angasolka, a little village on the lakefront of Lake Baikal. Arriving there it becomes clear to me why Lake Baikal is also called the Siberian Sea. It reaches up to the horizon, the whole day it is steaming into the perfect blue sky, it is magical, ancient, and knowing, some would call it a place of power, it is a deity, which lords it over weather, well-being and sorrow of huge estates, and which is better not to be enraged.
We are thirty or forty people, accommodated in a frame house on whose floor the snow doesn't melt from the felt boots, and where the temperatures in the upper level of the bunk beds are almost tropical. The heater just wants our best. The members of the club Arabika are young folks, barely older than twenty, the fewest are smokers, nobody gets drunk before New Year's Eve. You can notice that Sascha takes rigourous steps, which is necessary every now and then in order to coordinate the tumultuous bunch with some orders.
We greet the new year on the lakefront of Lake Baikal, the sparkling wine freezes in bottles and cups, we hug, wish, and drink, the few lights stay on and the catastrophe confirmed by oath stays out.
While our heads are filled with all kinds of pictures and experiences, which would fill the programme of a whole evening, the parting of Lake Baikal, of Irkutsk, of Russia approaches. I am absolutely determined to come back here.
When it is dark again, we are already back in Germany, and now I know what the meaning of the word cultural shock is. How easy and comfortable everything is here, everything's regular and tidy, how small are our anxieties in comparison with those who have to survive a hard and long winter in remote Siberia. My train is packed, which is a reason for many people to complain. I have settled down on the floor, it is soft and clean, the train is heated and even moving. What else do these people want?
A text by Steffen Kundt.
