Irkutsk, Russia – 09/21

(Michelle) Back in Irkusk, TJ went around to check out some Decembrist houses, while I did a little shopping and organized some photos.

That night, Bill and Liz arrived back at the hostel and they brought with them Peter and Kate, the Czech couple who helped to translate for us on our second tour on Olkhon Island. Not that I could probably rank the best days/nights we’ve had on our trip, but this was definitely one of my favorite nights. The 6 of us sat in the kitchen for hours telling stories from our childhood in US, Australia and the Czech Republic. Peter is currently a journalist that works for the Czech version of Public Radio and he is stationed in Moscow (he just interviewed Gorbachev 3 weeks ago… wow!), so he has tons of hilarious Russian stories as well. I will recap a few, although they will be nowhere near as funny as when we were talking about them then.

Kate and Peter told us how of course as children in Eastern Europe, they had to learn Russian and they were taught about how great and perfect life was in Russia. Then one time, some friends of Kate’s family visited from Russia. She remembered thinking about how they brought the family really strange gifts (junk) and she wondered to her parents why the friends were buying so much bread to take home with them.

Peter said that in Moscow he gets the shake down by the cops quite a bit. He has been asked for his passport 8 times. Since he speaks fluent Russian, he finally asked the 8^th cop, “Is there something wrong with me? What about me made you want to ask me for my passport?” The cops reply was “Because you have a criminal face”. I know, it doesn’t sound so funny written down, but they way Peter told the stories, I was almost in tears I was laughing so hard.

The six of us shared the 6 person dorm that night, which was funny because we are all pretty much the same age, but we had laughed so hard that night that by the time we got into our bunks in the room, it felt like we were 8 year old children on a sleepover at camp. We didn’t want to go to bed, but Bill, Liz, TJ and I have to leave for our train at 4:30 in the morning (and it was already about 1am when we went to bed).

(TJ) In addition to being a great band, the Decembrists were a movement of young nobles in Russian (in the 1850’s or 1860’s) that was pushing for reform in Russia. They wanted such absurd things as a parliament, land reform and serf reforms. Needless to say the Czar crushed this movement and instead of executing the perpetrators (they were nobles after all) he exiled them off to Irkutsk. Anyway so these nobles from St. Petersburg ended up building some really nice houses now know as the “Decembrists houses”. They are really cool looking places especially the ones that have been renovated. Basically they are two story log cabin structures that have been mixed with Victorian style gingerbread features.

Another thing that we all were laughing about that night at the hostel was how we all knew a similar story about the nucleur football from being children of the 80s- The Czech, Australian, American version were all surprisingly similar. The opposing president or premier goes everywhere with a man who carries a briefcase that is chained to his wrist. Inside the suitcase is a red button, all the president or premier has to do is push that button and the world is over. We all also had a similar stories on how there was a military base or radar station by our house and if it came to Nuclear war that was going to be one of the first targets hit. Yeah sounds really funny but it was it was good time.

It was also very interesting to here Peter talk about the missile defense shield that “W” wants to have put up to deter nukes from what he says is “Iran”. If any of you have been following this current event- Russia is pissed because it sees the shield as against them, which they may be right about. Anyway Russian and the US have been going back and fourth on ways to get past their differences on it. Since part of the system will be based in the Czech Republic, Peter has been following the story closely. Last summer, as a means to stall the process, Putin suggested having part of the control system based in Russia saying that they already had the state of the art technology at an airbase to support the system. Peter had to go to this old airbase to check out the supposedly modern equipment. He said they took a tour of this dingy airbase and the computer looked strait out of the 60’s and the guy leading the tour fed them total BS. Peter and the other reports said they started asking questions and the General who led them on the tour kept the line that they could track missiles, do this do that etc., etc. After saying all of this he then says to them off the record that there is “no way in hell this will ever work from here”. I asked him if he published what the General said off the record and he said hell yes. I guess that guy is not a general anymore.