A Day on the Town

If you want to be an ass about it, I know it's already the next day and this is late. Just relax, there's a time difference or something.

We managed to drag ourselves out of bed and walk around the city, which is pretty small. We started at the end of the Trans-Siberian Railway, what would really be the start for us. There's a decorative locomotive sitting on the platform, and this post with the kilometer marker. It's a long ride to Moscow.

We moved on to mingle amongst a bunch of old people on land for a few hours off their cruise ship (traveling by cruise ship, pff, who does that?), walked past Yul Brynner's birthplace, hung out at a festive section of sea side and rode a funicular up and down a hill.

Funicular.

The San Francisco of Russia

The San Francisco of Russia. That's what the proverbial "they" call Vladivostok. It's the harbor, the hills and the diversity. Really, Vladivostok is apparently one of the most diverse cities in Russia, being so close to other east Asian countries and about half the world away from the extreme racism supposedly found in European Russia.

Last year today we stepped off the ferry and waited our way through customs, bags sniffed by a spectrum of mongrel drug dogs and intimidated by stern women in crisp uniforms who were decidedly unsexy.

This day was also the night of finding ourselves in a sort of speakeasy cinema pub located in an unlit nook behind an unmarked door down a dark alley off an obscure parking lot reached by an unassuming driveway tunnel that we were led to by a waitress-turned-tourguide whom we fortunately over-tipped in our new-country naivete.

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.

The Boat

Adam and I stepped off the boat in Vladivostok about 24 hours after we left Korea. It was a lot more relaxing and comfortable than I thought an overnight ferry would be. The biggest problem was the excessive air conditioning inside.

There weren't a whole lot of people on the boat. Maybe about 40 passengers. There weren't many Koreans, but a fair amount of Russians and a few other Americans.

Adam and I spend the early afternoon hanging out on deck in the sun. As I was going inside to get my camera, Adam called me back with "dolphins!" and I ran back. There were maybe half a dozen right next to the boat, cresting the water by the wake and sometimes shooting out like a spear. Farther off, it seemed like dozens were doing the same thing.

We got talking with a group of 3 American guys about our age who were doing a two-month tour through China, Japan, Russia, and Europe. We had dinner with them, Rob, Alex, and Mark. It was a Korean/Russian buffet, not bad, but not great.

I guess the highlight of our evening was the nightclub. Some Korean man noticed us watching a group of Russian girls walking by and said they were headed to the night club. The American guys had been there the night before, from Japan to Korea. Despite the fact that the boat was almost to capacity then, the club was empty.

It wasn't much better when we showed up. The three Russian girls were dancing alone on the gently swaying dance floor, and a slightly older Russian couple showed up soon after. We got a table and tried not to be too obvious that we were watching them all dance. Eventually we went up and efficiently emptied the floor with our horrendous dancing.

Alex eventually got the girls to come over and sit with us, where they were safe from our dancing. They were students coming back from three months of study in Japan, and all spoke English fairly well. I talked mainly with a blonde girl named Sasha who told Adam and I the things to do and see and where to go in Vladivostok.

The nightclub closed down two hours early, at ten o'clock, and we moved ourselves into the common area on deck three where we were all staying. Adam and I were both starting to catch a cold and he went off to bed earlier than the rest, and I followed him not long after.

The bunks were stacked without a lot of storage room eight to a room, but for sleeping were surprisingly comfortable and cozy. I chugged water before I went to bed and everytime I woke up to piss to fight off the budding cold. I closed my eyes and felt the gentle rocking of the boat and listened to a special playlist I made for the occasion, themed partly for sleeping on a boat:

1. Alizze - J'en Ai Marre


2. Bob Dylan - Lay Lady Lay


3. Christopher Cross - Sailing


4. Duke Ellington - The Star Crossed Lovers


5. ELO - Can't Get It Out My Head


6. Jack Johnson - Symbol In My Driveway


7. Jeffrey Lewis - Roll Bus Roll


8. Jeffrey Lewis - Sea Song

I slept late and showered in the sauna with views of coastal Russia passing through the picture windows and ate peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for breakfast. Everyone stood on deck to watch Vladivostok slowly surround us. It's a city like an industrial Russian San Francisco. The crystal clarity of the rusted boats and naval cranes directly to our sides slowly faded the further you looked in the hazy distance, with smokestacks darkening the sky and massive bridges under construction between the islands and hills.

Adam and I stepped onto Russian soil after waiting for what seemed like a disproportionately long time in customs. I'd hate to wait there if it was a full ship. A massive and shaggily-groomed black Russian dog sniffed for drugs, and when we cleared the first desk, two more dogs of two more breeds sniffed some more. We had no hotel reservations but had a few places to check out, and scored with the first place we looked for, the Hotel Moryak, just around the corner from the port and train station.

Back in Daegu

It's been a week healing, in Daegu again. I spent a night in a guesthouse by Yeungnam University, two nights in the clinic, two nights in the incomparable Herotel, and am currently residing in my friends apartment while she's on vacation. I can walk almost normally now, though I'm still a bit sore where they cut me open. I guess there's a lot Adam can see and do around here, but I mostly want to sleep and read and recover.

I'm yet to start on my epic travel ballad, but that'll happen soon. I just finished reading Kristin's copy of Shakespeare by Bill Bryson in two days, which has kind of put me in an appropriate mood.

I must say, reading his Shakespeare was a joy compared to reading Bryson's In A Sunburned Country/Down Under. In the former book, Bryson mercifully left out the unbearable novelty and cuteness of phrase that he seemed to think was so entertaining to read from the latter. The upshot was I finished Shakespeare because it was interesting and informative, rather than because I felt obliged since I had started it.

My former co-teacher was kind enough to help me arrange ferry tickets to Vladivostok. Adam and I originally planned to leave from Sokcho, but found that leaving from Donghae was half the price on a nicer looking boat. Then we found it was the same price when we actually reserved the tickets, and that I was just looking at prices for children when I was doing my research. In my defense, the browser only allowed me to check that option at the time. And the boat is still nicer.