So, the Panama City Motel had survived. Sadly, its founder had not; Valery Bukhner had died of cancer a few years earlier. Just before leaving the motel complex, I noticed a small plaque next to a rusty flagpole, right in the center of the bungalows. The message was brief:
Unexpectedly, the plaque left me a little choked up. No matter how crazy his goal of bringing Disneyland to Chita might have been, Valery Bukhner was, at the very least, a fantastic dreamer who’d succeeded in bringing a touch of whimsy to deepest Siberia. I suspect that if I’d seen such a plaque twenty years earlier, I’d have laughed at it. Now, pushing into middle age myself, I saw the poignancy in leaving one’s mark, however frivolous it might seem, on the world.
FIVE
Ulan-Ude: Byoorn and Tyoorn
It was late evening when I boarded the train to my next stop, Ulan-Ude. I entered my kupe, and to my dismay, the only other passenger in it was a young man.
Of all the possible passenger combinations in a four-person kupe, I disliked this one the most. When you’re the only passenger, you can just lock the door and reasonably assume nobody will try to break in during the night. When there are multiple passengers—especially if they don’t know each other—it’s less likely that any one person will seriously act out. But when it’s just one man and you, locking the door from the inside won’t help you if he becomes aggressive. And whenever you have to go down the hall to the toilet, he is, unavoidably, alone for a while with your bags.
I knew the chances were slim that this guy would cause me any serious trouble, but he looked rather red-faced, as if he’d been drinking. He said hello, and I nodded, unwilling to speak and reveal by my accent that I wasn’t Russian. As the train began inching out of Chita station, he suddenly stood up, unbuttoned his pants, and pulled them off to reveal boxer briefs. It wasn’t unusual for people to change into sleepwear for the night—but normally, they’ll ask the other people in the kupe, especially those of the opposite sex, to step out first. The fact that this guy had drunkenly yanked his pants down, with me sitting right there, wasn’t a good sign.
He sat across from me in his underwear while I silently made my bunk. Just then, his cell phone rang. “Hello, darling,” he said in a low voice. “I miss you. Yes, yes, my little sun, my heart.” He paused. “My solnyshko, I love you so much. My angel, I miss you. Yes, my darling. I love you, my princess.” He spoke these words in a kind of monotone, barely above a whisper.
I lay down in my bunk and started to read, while across from me, the man continued his litany of endearments as he pulled on sweatpants. If I was worried earlier that he might act inappropriately, now I was worried that I might be crushed by the weight of his affection for his girlfriend. It felt like a parody, this unending slew of sweet nothings, as if the man had memorized a list from a pamphlet, What Women Like to Be Called.
He stayed on the phone for another ten minutes, never once saying anything of consequence, but just reciting every endearment I’d ever heard one person call another. When he finally finished, he asked me politely, “Is it OK if my friend comes in and we drink some beer together?” I nodded. Maybe I was being naïve, but strangely enough, this guy had won me over with his absurd fountain of telephonic sweetness. Within minutes, a male friend of his entered the kupe, and the two of them chatted quietly, drinking beer. I wasn’t sure why, if they knew each other, they hadn’t booked the same kupe, but it wasn’t a great enough mystery to keep me from drifting off to sleep.
In the months leading up to the trip, I’d been nervous about traveling by myself. I had done a lot of solitary traveling in my early twenties, backpacking alone through Pakistan, India, and Malaysia, but back then I was filled with the optimism—and ignorance—of youth; it either never occurred to me that bad things could happen, or I simply chose not to think about it. At age 48, I felt more wary. I’d elected to do this trip alone, unwilling to face the emotional and financial responsibility of bringing along another person. But part of me feared that this had been a shortsighted decision.
During the first few weeks of the trip I locked my valuables into my backpack, then chained the pack to the bed, every time I left my hotel room. There were six items I couldn’t afford to lose—laptop, iPad, iPhone, Russian cell phone, wallet, and passport—and I obsessively checked and rechecked where they were, taking care to touch each one as though afflicted with a special kind of Traveler’s OCD. When walking down the street, I wore my “don’t fuck with me” face: eyes forward, jaw set, stern expression. Of course, this is how Russians generally walk around; they don’t smile, or greet strangers, or even make eye contact. People here mind their own business on the streets, so I aimed to do the same.
This is not a natural attitude for me. I’m one of those people who smiles and says hello to strangers. Walking around with a dour look on my face was wearying, and even a little depressing, but it felt necessary. And then I got to Chita.
Walking down Lenin Street with Sasha was a revelation. We joked and laughed, chattering loudly in English as we strolled along. It was a huge relief not to be alone anymore, and Sasha’s cheery exuberance loosened something I’d been holding tight inside. Her example made me realize that I’d been a bit tightly wound these first few weeks. It also reminded me that, while staying in hotels had the advantage of privacy, staying with Russians in their homes felt safer and more welcoming.
Now, as my train hurtled toward Ulan-Ude, I was looking forward to another warm train station greeting—this time from a couple I’d known now for 20 years, Oleg and Sveta.
By the time Gary and I arrived in Ulan-Ude in early October of 1995, we were not only weary from the trip, we were tired of each other. Traveling with a friend or loved one for weeks on end is difficult enough. Traveling with someone you’ve only just met, while working frantically to find story subjects, write, photograph, edit, and translate everything from Russian to English (and vice versa), was utterly exhausting. We were together every minute of every day, even sharing a bed in most of our Russian hosts’ homes, and our patience with each other had begun to fray.
Oleg and Sveta’s apartment provided a desperately needed respite. Lanky, balding Oleg was a journalist, so he understood the demands and stresses of our project. Sveta, a blonde bank manager with a baby-doll voice and incongruously raucous laugh, was a fantastic cook. The couple had a 12-year-old son, Alyosha, who spent hours playing with his adorable new puppy. And Oleg had a vast collection of jazz albums, a rarity in Russia, so on our first night we were treated not only to Sveta’s homemade pelmeni (traditional Siberian meat dumplings) and as many vodka shots as we cared to consume, but to Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, and Billie Holiday crooning in the background.
