Vladivostok - Russia on the Pacific!

What had started as a very nice introduction to Russia, with all sorts of reminders of Russian generosity flooding back, continued once we reached Vladivostok; after a bit of uncertainty about our couchsurfing hosts, we were picked up by our hosts, Olga and Efim, and taken out of town to a local beach and fed a meal of Uzbeki and Russian food overlooking the water. It was lovely, but a big change in weather! For the first time (outside of various over-airconditioned trains and buildings) we shivered and were wrapped up in blankets provided by the kiosk owner.

Evening on the beach

Niamh sweats it out in the sweltering Russian spring

In my teens and early twenties I had a very strong interest in Russia and based my first overseas trip around visiting Russia, so after a year and a half of labouring, set off as a callow 19 year old to the recently opened Eastern Bloc. Over three year-long trips to Europe in my twenties, I spent about five months in Russia, in 1992 and 1996, so I have a lot of memories of life back then.
Well, it's certainly changed! Life in the '90s was hard in Russia - not only had the IMF-led 'recovery' impoverished the country and provoked spiralling hyper-inflation, but people's psyche's had taken a big hit after the rapid disintegration of the Soviet world; there was both a loss of certainty and familiarity, as well as a discovery, despite what Soviet propaganda had said, that Russian life and domestic technology lagged well behind the west. The first time I was there, there were queues for everything, shortages of basics like cooking oil and milk that might last weeks, people not getting paid wages for months and a great deal of uncertainty.
Now, life seems much more stable, there are few queues, people can afford to go out to eat (and there are places to go out to! - when I was here there was an almost total absence of cafes and bars, except ghastly barren places with awful food staffed by uninterested staff, usually more cafeteria than cafe!) and ... well, the biggest change is that people smile and are friendly. It makes me realise what stress the population as a whole must have been under at the time.
There have been some other changes that have stood out as well: -

  • The disappearance of the abacus - the Russian abacus was the primary adding machine when I was here and faster than a traditional cash register. It's now nowhere to be seen and people in late twenties I spoke to only dimly remember it from their childhood
  • Vodka - it's early days, but here at least, drinking vodka seems fairly rare. Everyone except non-drinkers drank vodka by the shot when I was here; now many of the people we've met rarely drink and when they do it's cocktails or beer. I suspect as we head out of cosmopolitan Vladivostok things might be different.

And yes, cosmopolitan Vladivostok. It had long been a dream of mine to come to Vladivostok, mostly because the idea of Russia on the beloved Pacific intrigued me and because I like seeing out of the way places. But, I suspected it would be more interesting than pleasant, a grimy military city on a big, bland harbour. The reality is far different - it's a lovely city set in hills around the water, with a pleasant city centre with nice restaurants and bars and friendly people.
It'd take to long to enunerate everything we've seen and done, but it's all been lovely, with lovely Russian guides we've met through couchsurfing - our hosts Olga and Efim in whose one-room apartment we stayed four nights and Kate, who took us all around Vladivostok for a few days.

With our couchsurfer hosts Olga and Efim (on right) and Olga's brother Ilya (centre) in the cafe where Efim works (and incidentally makes very, very good coffee!)

Our Vladivostok guide Kate, who showed us all over Vladivostok!

As mentioned above, we spend the first evening eating by the beach; the next day we met up with another couchsurfer, Kate, who took us all around Vladivostok that day and the next. We walked into town, went to a lookout above the funicular, then a ride on it down to the city, wandering through the city, eating various types of delicious Russian food (I'd forgotten how lovely it is - it's hard to describe how good soup and dumplings and rye bread can be, but it's true!), going to the train station, out to the lighthouse and the surrounding hills and generally answering all our various questions and queries.

So, all in all, continuing on from a great visit to China, our first three days in Russia have been fantastic.

It's great to be back!

We are here today (Saturday), leaving just before midday tomorrow. Tomorrow starts the big adventure to a newer obsession - Yakutsk in northern central Siberia, starting with 30 hours on the legendary Trans-Siberian train no. 001 "Rossiya".

Vladivostok photos


There were too many photos to embed in the main body of this post, so I created a flickr album. To see notes on each photo click on the link to the album, otherwise just scroll through the photos above