"Transport your pen into some other days. Let us spend a night in Vladivostok, one of the wondrous deadends of Russia." - Ivan Yelagin
I spent part of August 1996 in Vladivostok with Earthwatch, Monitoring the Sea of Japan. You can also read impressions of the project from Ward Hills, a member of the first team.
Vladivostok is on the Far Eastern coast of Russia on the Sea of Japan. This map of the Russian Far East gives you an idea of where I was.
Before, during, and after this trip people on both sides of the Pacific kept asking "Why Russia?". To tell the truth I don't know. I just wanted to go to Russia, especially Vladivostok. Too many adolescent games of Risk burned the strategic importance of the Russian Far East into my brain. Too many Treasure Chest comic books during the Cold War years planted the image of Russia as the evil empire in my childhood imagination. The forbidden breeds curiosity. So I had to go.
I read about Dr. Alexander Tkalin's project in the Earthwatch catalog and knew this was the project for me, combining my interests in oceanography, snorkeling, and ecology.
The route: Seattle -> Anchorage -> Magadan ->
Khabarovsk -> Vladivostok
The first glitch: What's an
ID90?"
In the air at last: My first glimpse of
Alaska
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I took lots of pictures both of the expedition and of Vladivostok in general. I had to choose only a few for the photo album.
One of the best things about this trip for me was the people. From young children on the beach to old women on the tram or in the market, everyone I met was friendly and welcoming. The team, both Dr. Tkalin's staff and the Earthwatch volunteers, was a pleasure to work with.
Principal Investigator: Dr. Alexander Tkalin
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I discovered the photographers on my first real day in Vladivostok. I took a walk on the beach and noticed many odd props arrayed at particularly photogenic spots. There was a life size Charlie Chaplin mannequin, a stuffed Siberian tiger (not a stuffed animal - a real tiger doomed to afterlife as a photographer's prop). There were giant beer bottles, giant champagne bottles, tiny cars, life size gnomes (a little shorter than me - don't know what size gnomes are supposed to be), and most especially live monkeys. For a fee, the photographers would snap a Polaroid of you with his prop and Amur Bay in the background.
Competition among the photographers was fierce. As you read the entries in the daybook, you can see how the competition escalated. When the tiger guy started losing customers to the monkey guy, he got a monkey and dressed it in a striped sailor shirt. On my last day there, the tiger guy tried to get me to pose with the monkey and the stuffed tiger but I declined. By the end of the two weeks I was there, monkeys were the in thing but one guy trumped them all with a live black bear cub. Very few customers were risking the bear cub...
The dolphinarium had its own photographers who would tempt the dolphin with fish then pose the customer with hand extended but no fish to get the dolphin to jump. The photographer would snap his Polaroid at the exact moment the dolphin jumped. Parents were posing their children who were often somewhat reluctant. I was amazed nobody got knocked into the water by an angry dolphin expecting fish.
One of the first things Slava asked about America was whether I watched Santa Barbara. I never saw a single episode. It turns out this series became wildly popular in Russia (as well as other parts of the former Soviet Union). I was asked again and again about. Had I been to Santa Barbara? Is there a museum of the tv show there? What's it like? I was last in Santa Barbara in 1989, which is I think before the soap opera came out. But I gave my best description of the place as I remembered it anyway.
The day I got back I was telling my brother Bobby, who was home on a visit from Bosnia, this story. He laughed and proceeded to tell me about a guy from his construction crew who was stopped for a traffic violation in Khazakstan. It seems the guy was from Santa Barbara. When he showed the Khazaks his California license with his Santa Barbara address they thought he was a celebrity. They gave him a police escort to his destination.
The day I after I got back I attended a family gathering in honor of my brother Bobby. As he was showing me pictures of Bosnia and Croatia I was suddenly aware that I was reading teh Cyrillic on the signs - totally unaware there was any English in the picture! Maybe in another month or so, I would've learned Russian.
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