Tromsø – Arkhangelsk – Korjazjma – Kotlas – Vatsa park – Solvytchegodsk – Arkhangelsk – Murmansk – Tromsø.
No computer, no internet, no phone: no microblogging. During our week-long trip to tiny Russian towns, I have been blogging in real-time with pen and paper. Here’s an extract.
1. In a bus on kangaroo gas through Arkhangelsk. No seat belts. Woke up in an airplane wrenching in break pains. It is seven in the morning, local time, after the plane from Tromsø was nine hours late. The bus passes by empty industry halls, huge chimneys peacefully puffing out white smoke. Everything smells burnt. We drive alongside an endless train, the gear-box crackles and moans in and out of every crossing. We’re eight metres above the river Dvina.
3. The bus is glowing. Four hours in 45 degrees now, the sunroof howls. We stop to fill gas – all twenty-five out of the bus. The Russians in the group listen to ACDC, The Offspring and the Amelie soundtrack on thin-sounding mobile phone speakers while waiting in the heat. Talking frantically and loudly in Norwegian to the lady in the kiosk, I manage to buy half a litre of kvass, a drink with the same ingredients as bread. It tastes like bread, too. She keeps the change.
6. The only road to Korjazjma has gravel surface, is broad as Dvina itself and long as a bad year. I see empty bus shelters every five minutes, and my hair feels like steel wool. We’ve been driving for ten hours as I see animals for the first time.
7. We’ve arrived Korjazjma and our hotel at Lenin Square, just at the end of Lenin Street. The shower coughs and hawks for five minutes before spewing out a red-brown soup. I dive into it like an animal that has found water in the desert. The toilet doesn’t flush. No Internet, so I call Mamma to get the last news about the attacks in Oslo. The call lasts for 1 minute and 50 seconds and costs €6.
8. Meat balls, barley rice and pancakes for breakfast – I left my vegetarianism at the border. A tiny cup of syrup with tea in it. Everything is decorated with dill, a vegetable that Norwegians will remember for 90′s potato chips. I love it! I’m sharing table with a Russian circus troupe. They don’t speak English, and the acoustics of the room do not allow a conversation as long as one metre anyway.
11. Д = d. б = b. 3 = z. y = o. И = i. Ю = io. Etc.
16. 10PM: A river! For half an hour, I’m drifting slowly with eyes closed in knee-deep water warmer than the air above it. There’s disco from a casette player and the sun sets. If I just could fall asleep and keep floating, I would wake up in the White Sea after a couple of days.
18. We’re in the middle of a tivoli in the city of Kotlas – merrygorounds and sugarfluff and radio cars, but almost no people. The huge open-air stage is made of bricks and look like an oversized outhouse with one of the walls torn down. There’s no sound system, but a voice informs that “we will bring some devices at 2PM”. The sun still burns on white Norse skin.
24. A random man in the street proudly shows us the headrest in his car, neatly hidden under a white blanket: a huge pair of plastic boobs kindly enclosing a stressful Russian driver’s neck. We laugh and move on.
27. I don’t feel the smell anymore! The first thing I noticed when we landed in Arkhangelsk was a stinging, burnt smell like bonfires in sooty grass. Now everything smells of fresh woodwork, cellulose, cow dung and wet paint. The rain is bucketing down as we enter the stage, but all the thirty people watching us are enthustiastic. I write one autograph after the show.
32. The man, an old and grey father, is crying. He tells us the story of the six men from Korjazjma who lost their lives in Sovjet’s war in Afghanistan 25 years ago. His son was one of them. In memory of the dead, we fold paper flowers – one from each participant on the festival, and one from each inhabitant of the city. I try adding a personal twist to my little piece of art, but a steady Russian hand sneaks in from the side and corrects my ‘flaws’. The flower is beautiful in the end.
33. In the airconditioned, cool discobar of the culture house, we order a random pizza and find free internet for the first time. Everything, from Al-Jazeera to BBC, is about Norway, and my favourite podcast, P2′s Søndagsavisa, is extended from its usual 42 megabytes to 104. I understand that people at home have a lot to think and talk about now.
34. The opening ceremony of the Komanda 29 Festival is a mixture between a military parade and a disco ball. Organised in lines and columns in a clearing in the pine forest, the different groups of youths shout out a line each to present themselves. The show hosts, two silver-dressed men of an undefineable age, guide us in Russian through unison eurodisco and trim-hop in sweating red latex costumes. We sing an extended version of Russia’s national anthem, and every time I try to sing along, I get evil eyes from the people around me. I sing anyway.
35. What the! For evening entertainment on the main stage of the youth festival: two night club dancers imported from Arkhangelsk, dressed in body-tight black swimming suits with plenty of holes to sneak in a ruble or two. We’re watching from a safe distance, but can’t help to feel puzzled.
47. As we’re visiting an ancient church in Solvytchegodsk, I get in touch with a girl from Arkhangelsk who instantly recognise my windmill t-shirt. She’s been working together with the Norwegian NU, Nature and Youth, to put a halt to the plans of constructing “fourteen floating nuclear power plants” in the city of Severodvinsk. I have no idea what she’s talking about, but agree that it sounds like a good idea to stop it. She too crosses herself on the way in and out of the church, and keeps her head scarf on.
51. The concert went well, and as we’re about to leave the festival camp, a thick grey cloud drifts in from the trees. Forest fires have been spreading rapidly the last weeks in the whole region, and from a hilltop earlier today I could see the smoke rise in the distance. The festival kids gather unaffected around a campfire, guarded by five firemen who watch every spark. An atonal yet whole-hearted song rises around it. The first song is called “пожар” – fire.
54. Up at four in the morning for the bus back to Arkhangelsk, ready for fifteen hours on the bumpy gravel road again. I’ve had four hours of sleep, Nikolai has been sitting at the stairs of the hotel entrance and tought a couple of Russian girls how to say “you have nice legs” in Norwegian. We drive. Every five minutes, the bus passes a wooden cross or a steering wheel decorated with plastic flowers and after ten hours on the road we are again driving on plain asphalt…for six minutes. I’m sleeping to the sound of German podcasts.
63. Last night in Russia for now: on a nightly walk, our tour leader Odd-Halvdan wants to show us the newly renovated culture palace. At the entrance to the park surrounding it, we meet a couple who smell of both puff and clunk. As Odd-Halvdan’s presentation reaches the unrealised possibilities of 6000-watts theatre bulbs, the couple take a well-known posture at their bench: love in a warm Northrussian white night.
69. At the airport in Murmansk, I spend my last rubles on two gingerbread ducks. Thank you, dear Russia, for a magical week of music, sweat and dill!
