I’ve done a bit of research and can reassure you that according to rigorous scientific studies, no harm has so far been detected from soy sauce consumption.
Internalizing the don’t-trust-any-information mantra leads shrewd people to be even more persistent about searching for sources and to make use of their power of judgment, honed over years of making assessments.
Less astute or lazier people make things easy for the populists. With so much uncertainty, isn’t it far easier when some charismatic guy has already sifted out what’s true and false? How comforting to only have to believe this one opinion maker, who can sort all new pieces of information into a frame that he’s created. How much more satisfying it is to hold the certainty that soy sauce feminizes men (no more Chinese food for me, then) than to express the less sensational position: “There’s a high probability that it doesn’t, but we can’t definitively prove the opposite.”
I look up from my mobile phone and out of the train window.
Truth No. 11:
In Siberia there are a hell of a lot of birch trees; that can be said with certainty.
MY OWN DACHA
YEVGENI, DRESSED ONLY in orange boxer shorts, greets me on the eighth floor of a high-rise in the new housing development area of Krasnoobsk. “Sorry, I’m just working out at the moment,” says the IT engineer. He puts on his cycling gloves and does ten pull-ups on a bar fitted to the door frame with no visible sign of effort. He has short, spiky hair, a healthy-looking tan unusual for those in his profession, and eyes sparkling with enthusiasm.
“Do you eat everything?” he asks on returning to the kitchen. Yes, I do. “Good.” Everything looks new and clean in the apartment. He puts some eggs into a pan and sits at the table to slice tomatoes, placing a cucumber in front of me to chop. “Unfortunately, there’s been a change of plan,” he says. “I wasn’t expecting it, but I have to go to work tomorrow at six AM and I’m out of Novosibirsk until late in the evening.”
“Okay, shall I get up with you and spend the day in the city?”
“No, you can stay in my dacha, then you’re independent. Mayonnaise or sour cream with your salad?”
He goes back into the hall and with brisk, practiced movements does another twelve pull-ups. Then we eat and talk about traveling in Russia. Last year he went hiking with two visitors from Latvia and one from Germany on Olkhon Island in Lake Baikal. “It was fantastic. Actually, there are too many Chinese on the island, but they don’t go hiking with their rolling suitcases.” I make a mental note to add Olkhon to my itinerary. “But one thing was funny: the parents of the German girl were panic-stricken when she told them she was planning to visit Russia. People have real funny notions because they only know Russia from TV.”
“Some Russians have funny notions about Europe because they only know it from TV,” I reply.
“Now, be honest, if you had the choice who would you want to conquer Europe—Russians or radical Muslims?”
“I would prefer not to be conquered at all.”
“In Russia a wide range of people and cultures live together, respecting each other. There’s no reason to be afraid of such a country.”
“How advanced are the plans for conquering Europe?”
“Forget it! It was just a thought. Have you got a headlamp?”
We carry my luggage to two bikes in front of the house and pedal off. After a few minutes on the asphalt roads of the residential area we enter a birch forest. The path is not particularly good and we have to ride slowly because of the roots and uneven ground. It smells of fresh herbs and the ground crackles from the fallen foliage.
I have only known Yevgeni for about an hour and we’re riding off into the darkness through a wilderness which is only visible ten yards ahead in the lamplight. Maybe this would be a good time to become a bit mistrustful. My gut instinct after eleven years of couchsurfing training says: No need to worry. The only challenge will be finding my way back in daylight, as we’ve made quite a number of turns.
After about ten minutes we reach a metal gate with the words Tichie Sori—“peaceful sunrise”—above it. We pull up at house number eighty-six on lane number six. A yapping gray-white terrier circles me.
“That’s Knoppa, she loves people with backpacks because she thinks we’re about to set off on a journey,” says Yevgeni.
In the darkness I can make out a house and a garden with tomatoes and cucumbers. This is not the place for arachnophobes; there are two fat spiders just above the entrance. There is a kitchenette, a bedroom, unconventionally laid electricity cables, and an attic that can only be reached by a homemade ladder from outside—“That’s where I prefer sleeping.” After a little tour of the house, Yevgeni departs, saying “Make yourself at home” before pedaling off into the night. I now have my own dacha. With a dog.
After many weeks of sharing other people’s living space, my own realm suits me fine. Couchsurfing is not a relaxing way of spending vacations, regardless of how nice the hosts are. You always have to adjust to someone else’s plans, to be thankful for everything, to comply with their wishes. When you arrive at the tenth or fifteenth host, it’s less exciting than it was at the beginning; the getting-acquainted small talk starts to feel like an imitation of previous introductions and the fifth uncomfortable bed causes more backaches than the first. By the same token, it would be highly unfair to take out my occasional travel fatigue on those who aren’t to blame for it and who do me a huge favor by inviting me.
I’m often asked what the hosts get out of it. Yevgeni wrote in his profile that he wanted to give something back after being so well looked after on his own travels. Murad, in Grozny, told me that foreign visitors are like a breath of fresh air as the daily grind brings only frustration, and on top of that he has been able to improve his English enormously thanks to the practice. I have had more than a hundred guests and even when working a forty-hour week, have always been happy to feel like I’m in travel mode when people tell me about their adventures. On top of this, I visit places in Hamburg with guests that alone I never would have explored, and have come to appreciate my own city all the more. Some friendships are ongoing; sometimes we arrange return visits. Sometimes a guest is a mismatch, always going on about how he is only interested in saving money and behaving as if he were in a hotel. But with time you develop an instinct about who is likely to be a pleasant guest, using hints either from their initial email or from reading their profile.
The next day I just stay in my little summerhouse and watch green, yellow, and red tomatoes grow. I do nothing other than sit around, stroke Knoppa, and enjoy the view from my favorite place, at the entrance to the attic on the top of the homemade ladder.
In the garden diagonally opposite, an elderly lady in a kind of leopard-patterned negligee, blue rubber gloves, and a hairnet rakes away at a flowerbed. A couple of houses away, someone is listening to Russian electro-pop songs. Knoppa snoozes in the grass, crickets chirp, birds twitter; on the horizon there is smoke from the chimneys of a power station. Russian country life, just outside the city limits. The houses of the dacha settlement have pointed gables and spacious attics. The sun is scorching and it’s already ninety degrees at midday. You need no down jacket in Siberia if you visit in summer.