Trucking on the M-54 Krasnoyarsk to Kyzyl

The M-54 highway runs from Krasnoyarsk about 850 km through Abakan to Kyzyl in Tuva on the other side of the Sayan Mountain range.  My brother-in-law Valerie trucks coal across those mountains summer and winter.  Tanya and I traveled the road from Abakan to Kyzyl in June 2006 and there was still snow on the high passes.  Beautiful country but not one I would care to drive a semi truck over in mid winter.

Doesn't look far on a map

Valerie's Scania and coal trailer

This is early June 2006, a late spring

The video is the Sayan Mountain road in winter.  Be glad you don't have to drive it for a living.  Valerie is a good driver and makes pretty good money for that part of the world.

The Siberian Banya or Sauna

The banya is a fixture of every home in Siberia.  Apartment dwellers do not have the luxury but then, don't need it in the same sense.  The banya serves as sauna and bathroom for homes that do not have plumbing.  Bathroom as in bathing and washing, not to be confused with the toilet which is out back.

The banya is always in a separate building from the main house, at least partly for fire safety reasons.  Luda and Valerie's banya is just across from their house.  The first door was Luda's kitchen until they got plumbing and she moved it into the house, the old kitchen now serving as summer kitchen and store room.  The second door is to the banya. Theirs is a simple two room banya with a small entry room for dressing and for servicing the firebox (bottom) and the water reservoir (top) which you can see in the picture below. The green paint is over brick or concrete.

The fire in the banya was kept going almost all the time as the reservoir served as a source of hot water for washing clothes and dishes.  In winter, one made a quick dash across a cold yard, to a warm banya for morning washing up and teeth brushing, etc. When it was time for a bath or sauna and bath, the fire was revved up to heat the water, the room and the rocks as hot as you wanted to stand.  In the picture below (which is the back side of the picture above) you can see the construction of Valerie's system.  There is a pipe running from the fire box under the rocks to and through the brick chimney at the back. The rocks get hot.  You dip water from the reservoir and throw it on the rocks where it explodes in a cloud of steam.  Beside  where I was standing to take the picture is a wooden bench to sit or lie on while you steam yourself.

The wooden barrel is for cold water.  Once you are steamed as much as your lungs can stand (and it is a learned process) you take hot water from the reservoir and cool it from the barrel and give yourself a bath, ending with a cold water rinse.  The floor is wooden slats with good gravel drainage under it so splashing water around is not an issue, in fact it is expected.

The banya is wonderful.  You feel cleaner than just a shower but it is not as quick or as handy.  And it is NOT a place for unattended children or clumsy adults.

It certainly is part of Russian tradition though -идти в банё (ydti v banyo - go to the banya) is a polite way of telling someone to go to hell.

Hey, It's Good to be Back Home Again

John Denver knew whereof he sang.  Three weeks and three days between sleeping in our own bed is a long time.  Tanya says we must be getting old.

The trip home was uneventful.  Valerie and Slavik drove us to Krasnoyarsk so we didn't have to ride the bus after all.  Transaero is strict about over weight baggage.  44 kg and we were allowed 40.  Being trusting fools we went and paid the excess charges while our bags sailed on through.  $35.  For 4 kg.  The maddening part was that 1.5 kg was water Tanya packed for the train and 0.5 kg was a bottle of local beer that Valerie snuck into our suitcase for Roman. We could have bought real champagne for $35.

I had a D seat instead of a C seat in the old 737  between Krasnoyarsk and Moscow which meant no where to straighten my right leg.  So I had to get out of my seat and stand every few minutes.  I hate flying.  Some people can work on airplanes.  I just try to survive.  It would be a pleasure if I could afford business class or if they auctioned off the emergency exit seats.

We got to Moscow, took the Metro to our train station, found our platform and train and collapsed onto our bunks.  The rock hard train bunks felt like feather beds we were so tired. There are two main types of sleeping cars - Coupe which is four bunks to a compartment with an end wall and sliding door and Open car which is four bunks to a compartment but no end wall and two more bunks across the aisle.  We prefer Open as they are less stuffy and I can stick my feet out the end of the bed into the aisle. 

Murrmurrs has just blogged about nocturnal emissions and apparently I gassed the entire passenger list in our car during the night.  At least Tanya blamed me.  I was asleep so pleaded innocent. It could have been worse - we could have been in the closed Coupe.

Clearing immigration leaving Russia was no problem.  They didn't even ask for my OVIR document from Khakasia.  Of course, if I hadn't had it...  And clearing Ukrainian customs and immigration was even easier.

We got to Dnipropetrovsk at 8:00 am and grabbed a mini-bus home.  We were inside the house by 11:30 and swore never to leave it again...until next time. 

The dogs were relatively glad to see me though they had not lacked for attention.  Roman had even given them a bath.

Kuchma heard us and came running across the yard.  He must have had a good scrap while we were away.  A nickle size patch of hide and hair was missing from his left cheek and his right ear was punctured in a dozen places and had no hair or hide around the base. Didn't seem to bother him though. We learned he had stolen one of the neighbour's baby rabbits for lunch while we were away.  Our dogs steal his chickens and our cat steals his rabbits.  Not good neighbourliness, is it?

We were amazed at how Tanya's flowers had grown.  They needed work and Tanya of course went into panic mode.  She was up at 5:30 this morning and out watering by 6:00.  Didn't stop for anything but cold water until supper time. Entire flower garden watered, weeded, clipped, pruned and transplanted.  Tomorrow it is the vegetable garden that gets it.

Our car battery was dead.  No surprise after sitting for three weeks.  It died after sitting one week in Crimea last year.  Yuri and Katya who looked after our place while we were away (along with Roman and Lena) came for supper tonight.  He was going to take the battery out and take it home to charge up.  Who knew a Kia battery could be impossible to remove.  Must be a secret formula.  Yuri went home and brought back what appeared to be a WWII vintage charger, about the size of a small fridge. Needed an engineering degree to operate it certainly.  But it worked.  30 minutes and the Kia fired up like nothing had ever happened.

I spent today catching up on emails and other backlogged paperwork.  Tomorrow I have to work on a business plan that needs finishing shortly.

Playing Dress-Up

Saturday we spent the afternoon with Alexii and Luda (Tanya's second cousin, mentioned a few posts back) and their youngest daughter Svetlana.  We had lunch at their apartment and then went to the park for coffee and ice cream.

Doctors run in the family.  Luda is a Psychologist.  Their son Oleg is a Neurologist and Svetlana at age 25 is a Pediatrician.  She recently received her PhD also and is working a month at a time in various hosptials around central Siberia bringing their medical staff up to speed on a new program that Russia has instituted.  She was home for the weekend from Krasnoyarsk and spent the day with four old people which was nice.

Luda and Tanya carried on like two teenagers.  At one point they were flat on their tummies on the sofa bed looking at albums from their school days.  Then Luda, who loves to sew, dug out out some dresses she had made, including some traditional Russian dresses and she and Tanya played dress up.  Tanya is a couple of cans of tomatoes and a plug of chewing tobacco wider than Luda (I like her that way) but all the dresses fit either of them.

The head dress with the devil's horns is traditionally worn by the mother of the groom at the wedding.



Svetlana did NOT wear her mother's dress.



The Eye-full Tower



Svetlana aka Joni Mitchel c 1970



Music Box Dancer

Tanya's niece, Ksenia, Luda and Valerie's youngest, is a 9 year old imp.  A miniature version of her father,  with almond eyes, freckles and a mischevous smile.  Top student in Grade 2 (equivalent of Grade 3 in Ukraine and Grade 4 in Canada) she lives to sing and dance.  I say that her eyes dance all the time and the rest of her just tries to keep up.  There are excellent voice and dance teachers in Belii Yar, something remaining from Soviet times when children and culture were important.  She has voice lessons weekly and dance lessons three times a week, including most of Sunday. Her mom volunteers at the dance school and makes all Ksenia's costumes, one sequin, one bead, one rinestone at a time.  We watched her group at a May 1 recital. They were awesome.

History

Thursday Tanya and I had supper with another school friend, Olga Bengert. Her family were Volga Germans.  When Germany invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, Stalin rounded up all those of German ancestry as he considered them dangerous collaborators, and shipped them in cattle cars to Siberia and Kazakhstan.  Some of them, including Olga's family ended up in Abakan.  Her grandfather was sent to a labour camp near Lake Baikal to cut timber.  He never returned and they have no idea where he died or is buried

Tanya and Olga

I grew up on the east edge of St. Joseph's Colony in west-central Saskatchewan which was settled in 1906 by Volga Germans and other German and German/Polish Catholics. I went to high school in Leipzig and there was a Bengert family in the community as there was a girl in my younger brother's grade.  It would be interesting to know how or if there was any connection or how many other familiar names there are here in Khakasia.

Saturday Afternoon at the Park

What does a well-dressed mother of a two year old wear to the park in Abakan on a Saturday afternoon, you ask?  Well, I have the answer here.

Очен хорошо!

Friends and Family

It has been rainy and cold so we have not done any driving around the country this time. We are here to visit friends and family anyhow. And there are enough of them within a short distance of Belii Yar that it is not a problem to find people to visit. Keeping relationships straight is a challenge as all cousins are referred to as “my brother” or “my sister”, which is nice in a way as it signifies the closeness of families. Tanya is learning for my benefit to say “my cousin” or my second cousin” just so I can figure who is who and how everyone is related.

Thursday last we visited friends of Tanya’s, Pyotr and Natalie, that she had not seen for 15 years. Pyotr was the director of a state farm where Tanya worked for a year after she graduated from University. Pyotr, his son and another man have a 250 sow-farrow to finish pig operation. They slaughter market weight pigs and sell frozen sides of pork. They are renovating rented facilities and building new barns too. Expansion is difficult as they cannot access large loans easily and have to compete with giant corporations which are wired in solidly to the establishment.

Saturday we had supper with our friends Sergei and his wife Tanya. They are in their early 30’s and have two young sons. We have known them since I was first in Abakan in 2006. Sergei was our tour guide and translator for several days when we met with agriculture officials in a number of centres. Both speak fluent English. Sergei did a master’s degree in Boston some years back. He has an English school in Abakan called The Boston Club with seven levels of instruction taking up to 3½ years. It is swamped with students and they do not dare advertise even though he has several staff.

Tanya, Sergei and Al

Sunday I met one of Tanya’s second cousins on her mother’s side of the family. Tanya and Elena have been best friends since they found themselves in the same classroom in Grade 5. Elena’s father and mother are in good health though he is 90 and she 86. Her father is a much decorated war hero, having fought the Japanese in 1938 and the Germans from ‘41 to ‘45. Elena is very happily remarried three years ago to the now retired chief of police of the Raion of Askis or Askiz (pronounced exactly like you think it is, much to the merriment of English speakers).

Viktor was showing me books about the 90 year history of Askis and the militsia as police are called in Russian. There are 150 (should be 200 at full strength) police for 50,000 residents of Askis Raion and 2500 police for about 550,000 people in all of Khakasia (62,000 sq km). That is roughly one policeman for each 200-250 people. There were pictures of them marching carrying fully automatic assault rifles. As one defines crime, so one defines crime prevention, I guess.

Tanya and Elena

Monday, I met another second cousin, this time from Tanya’s father’s side. Luda is a Doctor of Psychology, retired from the university but working with a newly established centre for children who are mentally challenged (right term?). All of the old support institutions collapsed with the end of the FSU and are just now being reestablished. Her husband works in advertising. The four of us went over visit her aunt, Papa’s cousin Tonya, whom I had met two years ago. Tonya's youngest daughter, Valya, husband and two sons were there so I met some more family. They were there working on garden and installing indoor plumbing for Tonya.

Tanya and Tonya

Tanya's second cousin Valya is the slimmest, trimmest mature woman I have seen in Siberia. I asked my Tanya if Valya really was a “Sibirochka”. Why? Well she isn’t  T  H  I  S  wide. Smack! Deserved but worth it.

Time Zones

Visiting in Siberia has made it easier to talk to my kids on Skype because of the time difference.  We are 14 hours ahead of Saskatchewan and Alberta and 15 hours ahead of BC.  I can get up in the morning and call them on Skype at home at night. 

Disregarding Daylight Savings Time, Abakan is GMT+7 hours and Regina is GMT-7 hours, which should put them at or near meridians 105 E and 105 W respectively, roughly equidistant from London.  Except they are not.  I looked it up on MapCrow (though there are several other distance calculators) and Regina (6636) is 900 kms farther from London  than Abakan (5735). 

The map below explains the situation.  Click on it and you can read it easily as the jpg is 5 MB. It shows the meridians and their assigned time zones. The actual time zones of various geographic regions are colour coded so you can see where they match the assigned time zones and where they do not.

Most of Russia seems to be one time zone farther east than it actually is geographically.  Abakan and Krasnoyarsk should be GMT+ 6, not GMT+7.  People who have difficulty with DST should try sorting out the time zones of Asia.  China for example covers 4 time zones but sets one time zone (Beijing time) for the country because, as I was told, several time zones is too complicated to understand.  OK...


http://www.icsm.gov.au/mapping/images/time_zones.jpg



The Living and the Dead

When I was growing up, all my aunts, uncles and cousins, on both sides, lived within an hour’s drive of our place. Tanya’s family was very much the same except lived even closer together. During their working years, a few of the family worked in other parts of the FSU but they all came home when they retired. Consequently, when we come home to visit, we don’t have to travel far to see almost all of the family still living, or visit the graves of the departed.


Last Sunday, Monday and Tuesday, the Orthodox citizens of Russia and Ukraine visit cemeteries to pay their respects to departed loved ones. Before and on those days graves sites are cleaned of grass, weeds and last year’s artificial flowers, fences and so forth painted. On the day of our visit to the two cemeteries here in Belii Yar where members of Tanya’s family are buried, we took new artificial flowers and plastic turf to bring some beauty and colour to a dry prairie landscape.

There were six Tishen sisters; Anna, Yevdokia, Maria (Tanya’s mother) Natalie, Valentina and Vera. Three are gone, buried here in Belii Yar, including Tanya’s Mom who died 10 years ago on March 31. The remaining three sisters are in their late 70’s, early 80’s, old by Russian standards of today. Valya and Vera still live here. When her husband died, Natalie moved to Chelyabinsk to live with her daughter but she wants to come back here to die. Of the six brothers-in-law, Tanya’s Papa is the only one still alive. He will be 80 this summer. Three of the others are buried in Belii Yar.

Of the 11 cousins, four are gone; two including Tanya’s brother Sasha who died of a heart attack three years ago, are buried here. Five including Tanya’s sister Luda still live here. Tanya is the furthest away, then Natalie’s daughter in Chelyabinsk. Yevdokia’s son, Kolya lives in Kyzyl, Tuva , 400 km south through the Cyan mountains. I have met all but Natalie’s daughter. Good people.

The second cousins are beginning to spread out and lose touch of course, but the six sisters and their families were very close knit, possibly because their parents died when they were younger. Tanya may have been five when her grandparents Tishen died; she hardly remembers them. They are buried in the old grave yard in Kalyagino, the nearby village where Tanya grew up that no longer exists. Papa’s brother Victor, who died in his 20’s is buried there also. Vera and her daughter Natalie went out last Sunday to tend to those graves.

Papa’s mother, Tanya’s beloved Babushka, is buried here in Belii Yar. Her husband and his two brothers lie in far flung battlefields of The Great Patriotic War. The locations of the brother’s graves, or at least the places where they were killed, are known but Tanya’s grandfather’s location is not. She had thought Smolensk but has received new information that places his unit in Ukraine so is tracking that down now.

Families are not that close any longer it seems.  My kids' cousins are scattered and so are Tanya's boy's cousins.  Maybe our generation was the last of the close families?

I said OVIR and OVIR and OVIR again*

We wanted to buy a new SIM card for my mobile phone when we arrived in Abakan so we could make local calls. In Ukraine, you can’t walk down the street without someone trying to sell you a SIM card for a new phone company or a new plan. Not so easy here in the land of the double headed eagle (looking east and west).


Tanya and I could not buy one unless we were registered at the local Department of the Interior Office in the location we were staying. The office was closed Monday and Tuesday. Since Tanya held a passport from a country of the FSU, she doesn’t have to bother registering or even getting a visa. Me, on the other hand…

I described in an earlier post about getting a Russian visa. Since Tanya’s sister is a stay at home mom these past couple of years, Valerie, being gainfully employed, had to go to the local Office of the Interior (OVIR) and fill out the forms to get them to issue a letter of invitation for me. Which took a month. Plus courier time as only an original is valid.

So on my arrival, I have three working days for my presence to be duly noted and my passport stamped by said OVIR office. I didn’t have to go, just my passport. Correction – since Valerie invited me, HE and my passport had to go, as Tanya and Luda were informed when they took my passport in while downtown shopping.

Valerie took my passport to the office at 2:00 pm and had to go back at 6:00 pm to get it as it takes 4 hours to do the requisite paperwork. They gave Valerie an original of some piece of the paperwork of which he has to give me a copy so I can leave the country. (No, they couldn’t make the copy, whatever are you thinking?). And when I leave Valerie has to take his original back to the OVIR office and inform them I am indeed gone.

In the mean time, Luda bought our SIM card using her passport. So I better be good or the whole famn damily will end up in the hoosegow.


*with apologies to The Dave Clark Five

Computer and Internet

I figured it was a fair deal.  Lyuda and Valerie put in a real bathroom for me so I bought a computer for them.  Yesterday was the big day.  Of course it has Windows 7 which I had never seen or used and neither had Tanya. We are sticking to XP as long as we can.  And it was in Russian so I was truly flying blind when it came to helping.  I left it in Tanya's capable hands.

Today we got internet.  Sort of high-speed lite which means slow downloads of You Tube videos but low cost for unlimited time and downloads.  I sorted down my emails to less than 100 and answered a few, but have had no time to read blogs but will catch up another time.

People are lined up so I have to get off this thing.  I can't hook my own computer up to the internet yet but hope to tomorrow, maybe.

For late additions to my readership, if you go to the label Abakan Journey on my blog page you can get a good idea of our previous trips and see some of teh landscape and people.

From Abakan to Antalia in 20 Minutes by Edith Bunker

As recounted in two previous blogs, I now have a Russian Visa but no contract yet.  Tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow.  But we edged out our competitor and now just wait for the BIG boss to get back next week late.  ALL power is concentrated at the top of any Russian or Ukrainian organization.  This is a carry-over from Soviet times when there was only one ladder to climb and competition was cut-throat.  If you delegated, you would likely find your desk in the hall some day.

I'm running out of time if I am to get anything done in October so today Tanya checked out train and plane schedules on the computer and on the phone with KiiAvia in Krivii Rih.  Moscow to Abakan flies Monday and Thursday.  No tickets to Abakan on Monday Oct 4th so we would fly 11:30 pm Thursday Oct 7 and arrive 5:30 am on Oct 8 and leave on Monday Oct 18.  Ten days is a nice visit with family but too short to get anything useful done even if the contract was signed.

We could go Oct 4 via Krasnoyarsk and arrive in Abakan Oct 5 after a grueling 8 hour bus ride. I'm all for going anyhow and letting the chips fall, just to visit her family and lay some ground work for the project.  Tanya has the tickets booked and we are driving into Krivii Rih with Andrei and Tanya to pay for them (about $1800 USD).  My Tanya points out that a) she is a bad daughter and doesn't want to go to Abakan and visit her family until next year, b) it is no holiday for her regardless and c) if there are two moons in the sky and the contract is signed, our employer can send their agronomists and we can go in the spring and stay until the project is complete.

Tanya calls the travel agent in Krivii Rih.  Forget Abakan, Siberia.  Do they handle all-inclusives to Antalia, Turkey?  They do.  We are going for two weeks to Kemmer near Antalia, leaving Oct 10.  Cost for the two of us a total of $1100 USD. 

The Russian visa?  Written off by your scribe as education - I need to learn to LISTEN to my wife.

Ancient and Historical Khakasia

The Asian grasslands, which includes much of Kazakhstan, Mongolia and central Siberia were settled long ago and have a very rich archaeological history.  Khakasia is no exception. I always maintain the reason that the Asian steppes were the progenitors of so many modern peoples is that there was nothing to do there but fight and flirt and in winter it was too cold to fight.

When Tanya and I were there in 2006, we did a one day tour of sites with the head of the Archaeology Department from the University, a native Khakasian.   Igor Tashtandinov had been born in Tanya's village of Kalyagino and his mother was best friends with Tanya's mother, though he and Tanya had never met.

Igor and Tanya 2006

Archaeological sites go back 10,000 years at least.  The most  recent peoples were the Kyrgyz who were over run by the Mongolians some 800 years ago and most drifted to modern Kyrgyzstan.  Today's Khkasians are decendants of the Kyrgiz who stayed behind.

10,000 year old rock drawings

More 10,000 year old drawings

Sketches of rock drawings in Abakan Museum

3,000 years old.  Food offerings were poked into the hole in the rock.

Over 200,000 kurgans dot the plains and hills of Khakasia

A large mound kurgan

Kurgan cross section, Abakan museum

Early people of the Steppes

Female fertility stele

Male strength stele

Archaeological dig of a palace, possibly of a Chinese general from the Han dynasty era who defected to the Xiongnu

Model of the 2000 year old palace, Abakan museum

I'll post some landscape pictures next time.

Shushenskoye Museum

Sushenskoye is the village in the Sayan mountains just on the edge of Khakasia where Lenin was exiled from 1897 to 1900. He received an allowance and spent his time hunting and writing seditious literature at which he was never caught. Though his bookshelf was raided by the police, they got bored after the first few shelves and did not look at the remaining two shelves which contained enough illegal books to have warranted very severe punishment.

The village was declared a museum in 1940 and every self respecting Russian visited it.  Even today, it gets a few thousand visitors a year, especially with a new ethnic music festival.  The mountains around it are beautiful and the Sayano-Shushenkaya Dam and Hydro-Electric Station is not far from it.

Tanya took me to visit the village in 2006 when these pictures were taken.

House where Lenin lived

Typical late 19th century Siberian village

Woodworking shop

Hand cranked wood lathe

Wagon typical of those in use in rural villages

Lenin's desk and bookshelves

Lenin and his wife had separate beds which was normal for upper class Russians.

Dry goods shop in the village

Another shot of the dry goods shop

Tavern.  The keg was filled with vodka

Oven/cook stove in a poor cobbler's home

Cobbler's bench with wooden lasts

The biggest house in town: merchant, landowner, gentry of some sort