Notes from above the Urals

Right now I'm about 2 hours into the Moscow to Novosibirsk flight on board the very comfortable A-320 dedicated to Rakhmaninov... I think it's an Airbus. The stewardess just took my food tray away and I have about two hours to indulge into this blog post. The sky outside the window is very clear and I can see the lit-up night cities and amazing stars as I am travelling further and further into Russia's East. My flight meal included a suspicious looking chicken covered in mayo (why is it that Russians just LOVE mayonnaise?... they put it on absolutely everything... I think if there was mayonnaise flavoured ice-cream it'd definitely sell out here), with rice and a very dead looking broccoli. The chicken ended up being very tender and tasty, so despite my increasing stomach-ache (it must be stress or smth) I consumed it in about a second. Oh, and I forgot to mention the highlight - in the tray was a little serving of 'plavlennii sir Drujba' (processed cheese Friendship)... this is the single most favourite thing I remember from the good old soviet days... and I'm sure my Ruski readers will also indulge into nostalgia :) Aaanyway - on to the more interesting happenings....

After spending our first night at the new flat... camping style by the way - on the thermarests and in sleeping bags (for lack of any sort of proper bed arrangement) we met the morning of the first day of spring looking out of our curtain-less windows at the rain outside. We then went next door to our old flat to have a quick shower (for lack thereof in our new flat - hey, it has a loo at least, ok?!) and then returned our keys to the rental flat to our landlady around 10am. Au revoir rental world - and hello to renovated/ing world! Following that we grabbed my 19.8kg red Kathmandu backpack and headed off for a nice breakfast at Quchnia... a cosy cafe on Gendarmenmarkt. It's been raining the whole morning and hurricane Emma was approaching German skies making me slightly worried that my flight will be delayed. But thankfully everything was fine and we took off from Schoenefeld at 14:05.

I got seat number 06F which is the first row just after business class giving me slightly extra leg-room. The seat next to me was empty but the aisle seat was taken by a lovely lady Elizavetta Viktorovna (EV) to whom I spent the entire flight talking. This conversation has certainly been one of the highlights of the trip so far. First we talked in general about this and that - how she just spent two months in Berlin with her sister and nephew, to how I've been from Russia to Australia and to Germany, to the upcoming "elections" and what expensive presents she had to buy for her boss at work. She works at a part of the Russian Finance Ministry... making her a government employee, who gets 2 months leave a year - nice. But the part of the conversation that I'd like to convey here doesn't have anything to do with any politics or finances... it has to do with supernatural and "the world beyond". Just before we struck up conversation I was reading and article in 'Arguements and Facts' (in soviet times a reasonably respectable newspaper - nowadays turned completely sensationalistic lacking any real good journalism) about Voodoo called "Island of Zombies". It wasn't even an article but a three paragraph crap about how Voodoo is evil, evil, evil... One of the strongest arguements that the author brings forth is "Ya teper' znau tochno - VOODOO NASTOYASHEE ZLO" ("I now know for certain - VOODOO IS THE REAL EVIL"). A slight side-note... Russians love anything supernatural and for lack of means for regular medication most resort to some sorts of healers, witchdoctors and DIY treatments. So anyway, as we're talking about this or that EV suddenly asks me whether I think voodoo is real or not. This is a 50-something finance person asking me in all seriousness whether I think voodoo is real... get the picture? :) Anyhoo I said something about the fact that the article was completely information-less and it's very hard to judge. So she then told me a story about a girl at her work who is from Buryatiya (one of the regions in the east near Mongolia that still practices shamanism) who apparently put a curse onto another girl (Marina) at their work in order to get promotions instead of her. Marina has been sick for a whole year (for no apparent reason) and at some point got sent onto a business trip to Buryatiya where she went to the shamans to get advice. The shamans told her that "one of ours has put a curse on you and you're going to die"! One of the phrases that my conversation partner was using a lot was 'durdom' (mental house) indicating something dramatic that was happening. So this is where she said 'durdom' and then said that Marina somehow got better probably because they got more young people at work, so there was more competition for the Buryat-witch. First proof of magic at work! (literally!)

This is not the only story that she treated me with. Her next stumble across the supernatural came in relation to the above-mentioned nephew, who has been seeing some Portuguese girl. This girl Rita is deeply loathed by EV's sister - nephew's Mum. This older lady has also been getting very sick lately and EV seriously tells me that because this article says that voodoo is real, so it's probably because Rita is using voodoo against her - which she apparently practices... being Portuguese and all (???) So then EV tells me how she's going to advise her sister to stay away from the young couple to avoid getting sick any longer. hmmmm... I mean I like to think about the supernatural too, and I had my moments at uni being interested in Wicca, but I certainly haven't been so gullible. I guess here people believe in pretty much anything that can help them explain their misfortunes. Sadly...

The next stage in conversation was EV telling me her theory of the "other worlds"... on which she has her own theory of "seven". This theory is a little difficult to understand, so bear with me... Ok here goes. There are seven colours in the rainbow, seven musical notes... so we have two... and this is where it gets more interesting. There are three states of water - hard, liquid and gas... "but that's only three because scientists haven't discovered the other four!"... then there is fire "of which there also has to be another six states"... and then there are the three dimensions, so we now have six (??)... so yeah - there are seven of everything - she tells me. At this point I find it hard to find any logic and just nod politely and say "yes, well perhaps you're right"... :) One of my most admired psychologists George Kelly (father of constructivism) has said that "man is a scientist, and scientist is man"... which I guess is very true for EV.

This block of conversation followed her saying "it's a real shame that you're married, otherwise I'd introduce you to my nephew... you even look like him!" I wasn't quite sure how to take that last comment - as a complement, or more that I look manly, and just said that I'm very happily married... :) As we were descending to Moscow we exchanged phone numbers "in case you ever need to crash in Moscow", she said. It was a nice part of my trip - at least it went very quickly and made me quietly smile inside.

As we landed it took me a little while finding the transit counters at Sheremet'evo 2 to get to Sheremet'evo 1. But after a while I was successful and to the yell of some "friendly" check-in person of "eshe iz Berlina na Novosibirsk kto-nid' est'??!!!" (Is there still anyone flying from Berlin to Novosibirsk?) got my next boarding card and proceeded to the transit lounge. The said transit lounge was no more than about 10 square meters of space under some stairs... with only about 3 seats available, so most people were left to stand (for hours in case of some unfortunate souls)... I found a little bit of space on some old wooden box hidden in a very far corner and avoiding the rusty nails sticking up from it, got comfortable. While waiting I also ventured into the loo, which typically had no lock... it wasn't just a cubicle that didn't have a lock. This was one of these 'just a room' type arrangement where the door went straight to the outside. As there weren't many women in the lounge I assumed everything will be fine and tried to be done asap... nobody barged in, so all was well.

After some waiting we got packed into a very comfy bus and driven to the other terminal. I had about 2.5 hours left of waiting and spent it reading the rest of the appalling journalism that is 'Arguements and Facts'... about the terrible thing that independence of Kosovo is - an interview with Jirinovski (a notorious head of LDPR - Liberal Democrats) whose arguements against the independence was basically racial slagging off of Muslims about the fact that they have 5-7 kids and the women only know how to procreate, whereas no proper slavic woman will ever stoop down to that level. And how there is gender equality in Russia... and tolerance of other nations. Speaking of which, EV kept on telling me how Moscow is swarmed with 'churki' (a derogatory term for anyone coming from the former Asian republics). I tried arguing that those people actually do all the jobs that Russians don't want to do, but she didn't want to hear it. Another article was a bid to the public to sign a petition so that paedophiles in Russia get the death penalty. Right now there is a moratorium in Russia where death penalty is suspended, so most criminals just get life in prison. But the petition was phrased in such a horribly barbaric way that I wasn't sure what to make of it.

As I was sitting and reading the paper, an American couple came to sit opposite me. The woman started talking very loudly about needing chocolate and proceeded to search her bag and consume a chocolate bar. They then took out some documents and the woman started reading them out loud. It was a form for adoption. They were on their way to some town in order to adopt a Russian kid. This got me curious and I started listening to their conversation. Apparently they've been trying to adopt for a number of years, but were unsuccessful. One of the items on the form was "Why aren't you adopting in your home country?". So they started discussing how best to answer that question. The woman suggested that they need to just answer it truthfully. And their reason was that if they adopt in the States, a child's biological parents may try to find them (for example if the mother gets out of prison), where as it is less likely to happen across the Atlantic. Some other items on the form were "will you be able to love the adopted child as your own?" - something that got the psychologist in me to wonder how one could sign up to something like that in advance. Another question was "Will you tell the child that you're not his/her biological parents?" Somehow their whole conversation made me sad. They didn't make an impression of being terribly good people, and even though they were trying to adopt for a while it seemed that they were reading those forms for the very first time. In case you don't know, unofficial figures say that there are about 3 million homeless kids here... scary scary number.

My time was up and I went to line up for the Novosibirsk flight. Being Russia the funky modern screens above the boarding gates weren't on, which made every second person come up to someone in line and ask where the plane was going to. As we got off the bus in front of the stairs going onto the plane, in true-Ruski style, the stewardess made people go up in groups of about 10 to avoid crowding the stairs. I'm not sure why they always do that - whether it's because they're afraid that increased number of people will make the stairs collapse, or because they just like to make up silly rules and laugh at people who follow them.

my laptop is behaving strangely.. hmm... may be it's having altitude sickness...

Anyway - on this flight I also got seat 06F and it's now about an hour left 'till we get to Novosibirsk. I think I've ranted on for a while and by the time you get this I will probably be at parents... seeing as the country who first sent man into space hasn't put wi-fi into Siberian skies... yet!

oh yeah - and remember - Voodoo is the real evil!!!