Blogs from Perm, Urals, Russia, Europe

This time I had two trains, Petersburg – Moscow and Moscow – Kungur, because the direct train from Petersburg to Perm arrived late in the evening, inconvenient for me (a hotel would have to be booked). Instead, I planned the route Kungur – Perm – Izhevsk – Sarapul, with secure time margins for any mishap. I’d have three trains and three buses. I have found Kungur Ice Cave on some Russian tourism web site, and here are my findings. I find no better companion for a 20-hour train journey than a Wodehouse book and, let’s say, a mp-3 player with Dave Clarke’s White Noise techno show. Time flies so quickly and you don’t have to count the kilometers. I should warn the readers that spring is not the best time to travel in many regions of ... read more

Yesterday's train journey felt like my first proper Trans-Siberian experience, the first journey where it had been possible to spend hours looking out of the train window at classic, unbroken Russian forest, lost in thought. It seemed a shame to arrive in Perm, especially as, like a lot of Russian cities, it looked unpromising from the train station, very grey, Soviet and confusing to navigate. But Perm turned out to be fun, a modern, vibrant city very passionate about art, particularly modern art (and it's twinned with Oxford). Dotted around the city are various statues and installations, almost all from the past decade, that feature heavily on postcards and that the inhabitants of Perm seem very proud of. They include a huge Russian letter "P" (for Perm) made from logs, a bronze statue of a bear ... read more

Nick Hogan once asked me, "How's Perm? Brutal enough for you?" I replied that overall life was good, and Perm not at all brutal. This was well before the two -40 days of mid-December and the week in which the temperature bounced between -20 and -30. Up till then, when asked by grinning Russians "so, how do you like Russian winter?" I understood what they wanted me to say. I would reply, however, that, in truth, Russian winter is not so different from Nebraska winter. No colder, just a little bit longer. My Russian questioners would stop grinning. Sveta even claimed my dismissal of Russian winter offended her. "I always knew it was colder," she told me recently. People here are proud of their ability to endure all calamities. Not long ago, Medvedev in a speech ... read more

Fall has begun and everything is more or less in order. Sveta got her new passport -- she's now Svetlana Rasmussen. And I visited the Russian proctologist at long last. I was supposed to go in June, but I had more pressing things to attend to, like sleeping and running the cat around the sofa. The clinic was typical with peeling paint and tired-looking people crammed in the hallways. There’s never a reception desk. You wander until you find your department and then ask those crammed about, “who’s next.” It works, but I’ve found that the best way to get to the doc is to play the part of the dumb foreigner. There are always an old woman there who take pity on such unfortunates and will take them under her wing. This time, however, ... read more

Sveta and I spent my second fourth of July in Perm much like we spent the first: wandering around town. We found a side road that led to an unknown green valley. It was the usual Perm summer scene: industry and village. Ponies, razor wire, and pipes intermixed amid all that green. The overgrowth was the first thing that really struck on the ride home from the airport last year. Perm was covered in weeds, grasses and trees. The city was often hidden, and wooden houses and footpaths nestled in the valleys between apartment blocks. We eventually wandered down to the great new Perm Museum of Contemporary Art. Here's a link to the UK's Daily Telegraph article. The Boris Mikhailov photo series "Salt Lake" really struck me. ... read more