Vladivostok

Vladivostok was far more interesting than I thought it would be. I pictured a grimy city built around a network of bays, covered in gray skies and populated by gray people.

The weather was actually sunny and the buildings downtown were beautiful pre-Soviet monsters. Well, not that one above. We arrived Monday and checked into a hotel around the corner from the ferry and train stations, along with Alex, Mark, and Rob.

We all ate at a swanky cafe and restaurant called Belle Bazaar, and not knowing what the deal with tipping in Russia is, left what turned out to be an unnecessarily large tip for our English-speaking waitress. It paid off later in the evening.

Adam and I checked email and ran into the brick wall that are Russian train ticket sellers. Adam asked one of the women if she spoke English, in terrible Russian no doubt, and the woman didn't even look up while she shook her head grimly.

I guess we shouldn't have been surprised after how hard it was to even get into the station. The doors must've weighed 2,000 pounds. We pushed and pulled and thought they were locked until some babushka dropped her bags and nearly tackled one open. At least the Russians standing on the stairs watching us fail were entertained.

We managed to get onward tickets after a nap and writing down the pertinent info in Cyrillic, and getting some help from the lovely ladies at the front desk of our hotel. We felt very accomplished once we knew we were moving on from the city in two days.

We met up with the other Americans again and went back to Belle Bazaar. I said earlier our large tip from lunch paid off, along with the other unnecessary tip we left on our second trip - to keep up appearances since we'd already set the bar so high - because when we finished and asked the same waitress where she would go if she were getting out of work, she came through for us big time.

She mentioned something incoherent about bars and restaurants and cinemas as she was twirling her hair around after I put the question to her. She then told us to wait five minutes until she could bring us herself.

When she and her friend led the five of us out into the drizzly dark, up and over the hill our hotel was on, I thought they were so kind to do that for us. When we turned a corner and found ourselves on a somewhat happening street, I thought things were looking up. But when she turned down a dark tunnel that smelled like piss toward a dimly lit courtyard full of cars, I wasn't so sure.

"Don't worry, it's okay!" she said.

Then we turned a corner or two I figured we were taking a short cut to the opposite side of the block. Turns out we weren't. She stopped in a doorway between a Russian jalopy and a hill of trash, unlit and unsigned, and said, "This is the place," and knocked on the door.

We were all thinking what Rob said: "You're not going to kill us are you?"

I held onto my kidneys and went inside to a warm living room. I was introduced to the proprietor of this place and was told he wouldn't kill us either. Behind a curtain was an underground cinema restaurant pub. Apparently the waitress meant it was all one place when she was explaining earlier.

There were overstuffed chairs and hookahs, "Four Rooms" projected onto a screen and over-dubbed in Russian, draft beer, and exposed brick walls above the dusty worn rugs. Candles were dripping down wax waterfalls in a bashed-out section of the wall.

Needless to say, it was the last thing we expected, and almost surreal as we tried to pick out the English dialog below the dubbing. The other Americans stayed out and got hammered, but Adam and I weren't feeling so hot so we went to sleep.

The next day we went on a roundabout walking tour, around the harbor and above, all while I was chugging water to drown out a cold, and having to piss every 20 minutes. The view at the top of the funicular was particularly impressive.

Wednesday was our last day. We had plans to meet a girl from the ferry. Sasha showed up with her friend who was impressively dressed in a bright blue dress and matching overcoat, and we walked around the city some more, mostly around their university before Irina had to take off and Sasha brought us back to the station and helped me pick up food for the overnight ride that was ahead of us.

It'd been years of thinking about it, but I finally got on the Trans-Siberian. If you can go to Vladivostok, do it. And don't forget to tip generously.