Yuzhno, Russia. Summer 2005

Trip Report,

Russia's Far East, Yuzhno. Jul-05

I returned to Yuzhno in the summer for a longer stay this time. The short flight from the US to Tokyo to Seoul and on to Sakhalin was not available so I headed east instead of west and went the long way around. I flew to Frankfurt and on to Moscow where I caught a local carrier to Sakhalin.

I arrived in Moscow safely but had to change from the international terminal to one of the local terminals which was a hour’s drive away. This flight was a last minute arrangement and I had left messages with our local agent hoping to arrange a tour of Moscow or at least a ride to the other terminal. She apparently did not get my messages and I was unmet at the airport. I had a six hour layover so wasn’t too concerned about the schedule, only about getting a ride.

A local man saw me standing around unattended and offered to help me out with transferring between airports and with purchasing by Moscow-Sakhalin ticket. His name was Evgeny and he was a weasley little guy with bad teeth and wearing a shiny suit. He spoke a little English and had a car. I immediately trusted him with my safety and we left the terminal. He called for his cab and as we waited for the car we negotiated the price. He offered a receipt for double the negotiated price but I declined.

His car arrived and the driver got out. He was what you would expect a retired mob goon would look like. He was a little past his prime, big and beefy with slabs of fat where muscles once were. We stowed my luggage in the little car and away we went for a 100 km trip across Moscow. As we drove I was thinking to myself that the two of them could be driving me off into the woods where they could rob me and leave me dead in the bushes. Nobody would ever know.

It turns out my fears were unfounded and we arrived at the correct terminal. There are several terminals in Moscow and we had the right one. Evgeny took in to the terminal to the Aeroflot counter and we purchased my ticket. All I had to do now was find a way to kill four hours while waiting for the plane. You’d think that in Russia of all places there would be a bar in the airport. There is even a little bar in the run-down Yuzhno airport but not in this one.

The flight from Moscow to Yuzhno was another 8 hours in an already long day. I was concerned about my person hygiene having been on the road for so long but sat next to a French guy so didn’t have to worry about smelling worse than him. Aeroflot business class isn’t really much different from economy class, especially in the older planes like the one I was on, so I sat in economy scrunched up between the French guy and a Russian. When I fly I try to zone out and put myself in a happy place but it just wasn’t working on that flight.

I arrived in Yuzhno at noon on Sunday and made it through Immigration without incident this time. It was the Fisherman’s Holiday so the whole town was out enjoying the sunshine. There is a park behind the hotel with kid’s rides, a Ferris wheel and beer tents by the lake. The park was a social center for the town with something for everyone. The soccer field has seen better days. The viewing stands have been looted with the lumber stolen for other projects. There are two swimming pools that haven’t been used in years. A tree grows in the middle of the bigger pool and the smaller wading pool is heavily overgrown.

Throughout the park there are beer kiosks and stands where you can buy shwarmas and shashlyk. The beer tents by the lake each have a seating area with plastic tables, a different color of table for each tent. I favored the yellow tables and would stop there for beer and a snack after work.
Each of the beer tents had a shashlyk grill next to it. The grills were home made metal boxes on rebar legs. The charcoal was local wood and the whole setup was quite simple. The cook would put together small plates with chicken wings or pork chunks on a stick along with slice of bread, ketchup and chopped onions. We were cautioned by one of the locals that we shouldn’t et in the park. We told her that we were OK with the fact that there was no refrigeration for the meat and that the cook pees in the trees, has nowhere to wash his hand and smokes constantly while cooking our food. It was a cheap meal and you get what you pay for.

The summer humidity in Yuzhno is the worst humidity I have ever experienced. The temperature was quite moderate but I would break out into a sweat just by walking outside. We walked back to the hotel most afternoons and would be soaked within fifty yards of leaving. Fortunately, there were beer kiosks all along the street and we had plenty of places to re-hydrate. Public drinking was OK and many people would be drinking beer or vodka as they walked along the sidewalks.

Yuzhno, Sept 2005

My third trip to Russia was starting to be routine. The long flight was uneventful and I arrived at the hotel in one piece. The hotel was starting to feel like home and I even got my old room.
Accommodations in Yuzhno vary considerably. There are a few hotels, mostly small places with 40 or so rooms. There is one or two bigger hotels that are older and more run down but most of the small places are fairly new. Apartment blocks are all Soviet era and are the basic housing for everyone. There are very few single family homes. The apartments are typically 5 stories tall with three or four staircases. The apartments are centered on the stairwells and there are no horizontal hallways connecting the apartments on each floor. Three apartment blocks surround a common area or park where the residents play, park their cars or hang their laundry.

Many locals are fixing up their apartments to Western standards in order to accommodate the influx of international workers on the island. The apartments are rigged up with new appliances and furniture, walls are redone and new electrical is run. A mid-sized investment in pimping out an apartment means double the rents when renting to an expat instead of a local. This causes a lack of affordable housing which is another cause of friction between locals and the foreign visitors.

Many apartments come with a Mama, or housekeeper, as part of the rent. The mama performs housekeeping services, does the cooking and keeps the fridge stocked. Most of the guys were happy with the services provided and the food was always good. You just had to get used to coming home to find a bunch of people in your apartment, maybe watching TV while the mama does the ironing.

We started “Dinner and a Movie” nights at Dave’s place on Friday nights. Dave’s mama would cook on Fridays, usually enough for him for three days, so we would go over and eat it all. The food was always meat and potatoes style of cooking, basic but tasty. If we were really lucky Sanji would bring Indian food that he made himself. We would bring some local beer and maybe a bottle of vodka. There was a small grocery kiosk on the street in front of his apartment so we could easily run out for refills if required. I never saw a case of beer for sale, it was always sold individually.

After dinner we would plug in a DVD and watch a movie. The DVD player was eastern so wouldn’t play most discs purchased in the US. It would, however, play any of the pirated discs that are available in kiosks around the town. John had a bundle of pirated discs that he had purchased in Iraq so we had plenty of entertainment.

At one of these festive occasions, while we were eating some particularly good Indian food, I declared that we ate like kings. Allison, standing behind me, added that we also drank like fish. That became our rallying cry for “Dinner and a Movie” nights… “We eat like kings and we drink like fish!” or as the locals would say… Мы едим как короли и пьём как рыба!

When we weren’t drinking at Dave’s there was always the park. We would stop in at the Yellow Tables for a beer and shishlyk on the way back to the hotel after work. After a few incidents we decided it was better to never go to the Yellow tables alone, it was safer to have a wingman. Mike was a perfect wingman, he would only have a couple of beer but was willing to hang out as long as I wanted. It wasn’t that the Tables were dangerous, the hazard was the friendly locals. They would invite themselves to your table if you were alone and practice their English. After a few drinks out of the vodka bottle under the table the situation would typically sour. They usually had a brother who was unemployed, had lost their apartment to a foreigner or had some other bad experience blamed on the influx of westerners that they wanted to share with us. After a couple of ugly encounters we learned to smile politely, have one drink and then leave.

We were in Yuzhno for the celebration of the 60th anniversary of the end of the war between Russia and Japan. It was a very festive day with a parade, speeches and a wreath laying at the War Memorial. The weather was nice that day, summer was nearly over and fall was around the corner. The park was packed with revelers, ourselves included. There was even a group of veterans decked out in their old uniforms. They were at a nearby table tucking into the vodka pretty briskly for a group of very old guys. Their uniforms were all different, some white, some blue and green. I asked one of our local friends if the uniforms represented different branches of the service and she replied that they were all Cossacks. After a few drinks they started singing their old songs as one of them played his accordion. Nothing says “party” in Russia like an accordion. A good time was had by all.

More Russian hospitality was displayed that evening. We were leaving a restaurant after dinner when we were invited to join a birthday party. The birthday boy had just turned 75. We were introduced and vodka was poured all around. We ducked out after a couple of accordion songs and shots. The dancing was starting and we weren’t having any of that so we left.

We had Sundays off and spent the days wandering around town. On one of my walks I found out that the locals don’t like you taking photos of the prison. The place is really run down, definitely not the kind of place you’d like to be stuck in for a couple of years. There is a wooden fence around the prison with shaky looking guard towers at each corner. I took a couple of pictures and one of the guards came out of his guard house on the tower and started yelling at me. As I was walking away a car came around the corner, stopped right in front of me and two guys in military uniforms got out. I thought they were going to take my camera but it turns out they didn’t even want to talk with me. They were heading into another nearby building.
The prison has a high metal grid along the one side. During more prosperous times they would cover the grid with cloth. It was to hide the view of the mountains from the prison yard. You wouldn’t want your prisoners staring at the mountains all day as they’d never get the license plates made. There was a prison break reported in the weekly newspaper. Two guys. One in jail doing 12 years for car theft, the other guy doing 5 years for rape. They caught one of the rabbits at his mother's huse. The other was reported to be still at large.