The idea was to establish a first-class tourist destination on Russky Island. Thanks, for instance, to the drawing power of the oceanarium, a futuristic building with a roof in the shape of a gigantic shell, located right on the shores of the Sea of Japan. It has just opened after a four-year delay; many things didn’t go according to plan—they accidentally forgot to build a visitors’ parking lot, and even before the first ticket was sold, so many animals had died under mysterious circumstances (including two walruses named Fanya and Mira, a bottlenose dolphin named Leo, and three beluga whales) that it won’t be long before Greenpeace gets wind and starts making a fuss. But the bridge is solid enough.
UNDERPANTS AND TINFOIL HATS
THE LAST HOST on my travels is named Nikita and hardly speaks a word to me. To balance things out, though, he has a roommate named Igor who talks absolutely too much. I had to change hosts as Yuri, the marine biologist, had already planned to have two other guests for the weekend.
The kitchen and bathroom of the apartment on Tiger Street look as though no new piece of equipment or furniture has been acquired in the last forty years. Had they been better preserved, the washing machine and fridge would make great exhibits in a design museum. The light switch in the kitchen consists of two wires that have to be connected. This is particularly important at night so as not to entangle your head, because the only way to move around is by ducking under the washing lines running from the dining table to the sink. The apartment smells of cheap men’s deodorant, wet laundry, and old chicken meat.
The living room serves as a bedroom. Nikita spends most of his time sprawled out on his double-bed mattress, which, due to the lack of a bed, is on the floor. Igor has the opposite corner, right next to the door to the balcony; a small pillow with a bear pattern on it and a woolen blanket are enough for him, and he sleeps directly on the carpet. The five loudspeakers with the brand names Dialog and Genius, which form a small wall on one side of his “bed,” seem to be more important for his comfort. An Asus Nexus tablet serves as his link to human knowledge, to the latest Ultimate Spiderman series, and to the hip-hop songs of Oxxxymiron and Loc-Dog. Six square feet of your own world.
Reticence and talkativeness are not their only opposite qualities. Nikita has a lot of hair, Igor none. Nikita wears track pants at home, Igor underpants. Nikita reads books, Igor the internet. Nikita sleeps a lot, Igor is awake a lot.
On the first evening Igor and I talk about Russia and the world. Igor thinks President Putin is a criminal. For one reason: because of the bomb attack in Moscow shortly before his inauguration, for which Chechen terrorists were blamed. “There was a journalistic investigation and according to this it was the FSB who were behind it.” Indeed, the case hasn’t been solved yet, and some evidence supports this version of events. A number of investigators carrying out research have been killed; the most famous of them, ex-FSB agent Alexander Litvinenko, died of polonium poisoning. “At that time Yeltsin had to boost his popularity ratings. Nobody knew Putin when he was named as successor. The bombing attack gave them an opportunity to strike against Chechnya; they needed a successful war. For every leader it’s the best way to increase popularity.”
On the second evening the conversation becomes awkward. Igor tries to convince me that there were far fewer deaths during the Holocaust than most people believe. His source of information: an online report of a farmer who had delivered food to Auschwitz and spoke of the relatively civilized conditions. In addition to this, Igor claims that the number who apparently died actually outnumbered the worldwide population of Jews at that time. “You can google it,” he says.
My remarks that you can also google that Hitler is still living in Argentina, that UFOs land every day, and that governments poison their own subjects with gas don’t seem to impress him. The more I listen to him, the more our discussion gets out of control, the more probable it seems that maybe he really does google all of that stuff from time to time.
He thinks that from birth whites are superior to blacks and believes all of Africa to be a realm of chaos in which only “savages” live. You can read about it on the internet and a friend of a friend of a friend has been there. I tell him of my own travels to Ghana, where at no time was I surrounded by half-naked warriors dancing and waving spears. It doesn’t seem to challenge his views. “That was a British colony. Everything that’s civilized there came from the whites.”
So much for Africa; now onto Europe and the refugee crisis. “You’re too liberal, too tolerant,” says Igor. “I’ve read that in London the most common name for newborn babies is Mohammed. In twenty years England will be a caliphate.”
Russia is not suitable for refugees from Arabic countries, according to Igor. “Here you have to work really hard, it’s not as easy to get benefits as it is in your country.” Later, however, he admits that he couldn’t imagine working five days a week; it would be “slavery.” He only works on Wednesdays and Saturdays in the depot of a large distribution company that specializes in flowers. As his rent is low, he has enough to live on.
We discuss the CIA and the Rockefellers; he praises the scientific achievements of the Nazis regarding ethnology and criticizes the European “programming” which considers all people to be equal. He also rails against the dangers in the “black hoods” of New York, although in all his life he has never been outside Russia.
He ignores counterarguments that don’t fit his views of the world. Either the authorities have “hushed something up” or something has been proven because it corresponds to his sense of truth, and on top of this there are google hits. “Unfortunately many people are easy to manipulate,” says Igor, and that may be the truest statement he has made in three days.
Truth No. 21:
People should travel more instead of sitting in front of a computer.
The reality outside the apartment is considerably more pleasing than what Igor thinks is reality, so I decide to make a trip to Russky Island. The 15 bus takes me across the huge bridge; the 29 bus gets me into the wilds. A small parking lot, a gravel path, and then thick forest. Suddenly a fox emerges from the undergrowth and blocks my path. As I have no snacks to offer him, he soon continues on his way.
Russky: it sounds a little like a smaller version of Russia. Maybe the island epitomizes the whole. Forbidding cliffs on the outside, lush forests on the inside. Much untamed nature, low population density, a few hidden military bunkers that you can only recognize if you look really hard. A place searching for new perspectives; to be precise, Russky is gambling on education (the university) and tourism (the bridge and the oceanarium). The concept is not all that clear. Maybe there is no concept.
Once you’re out of the forest, small paths lead along the spectacular coastal cliffs. One false step and you fall into the abyss. I mull over Igor and his perspective of the world, about “savages” in Africa and all the conspiracy theories. There are a number of mistakes that he makes in his online searches for information, but to me one of the most basic ones is that he holds extremes to be the truth and anything normal to be the exception.
At least this is not uncommon. To varying degrees, everybody has preconceptions of other countries because the information we receive on top of what we know already mostly concerns the extraordinary and not the ordinary. Time and again when I arrive at an airport in a new country I’m reminded of my own preconceptions and marvel about how modern everything is. This is because the majority of images I’ve viewed prior to the trip show the traditional aspects of culture and not the modern ones. Market traders, not managers; Ladas, not Toyotas; mountain villages, not shopping malls.