Europe @ 2.4 km/h (6 page)

It is a curious fact that, since the loss of Great Power status — something Putin is determined to reverse — Russia has become one of the only countries in the world with a declining population. The nation’s addiction to vodka is often blamed for this. But now, while I await take-off — delayed because someone forgot to put avgas in the engines, an oversight being rectified after we’ve all boarded — I leaf through this month’s edition of Aeroflot’s in-flight magazine,
Vlast
, and come across the most remarkable article.

Under the headline LIFE IS SHORTER AND SO ARE WE, it reveals that, according to the latest medical research, the height of the average Russian over the past ten years has shrunk by 1.5 cm. By 2097, we are warned, the stature of the Russian people will be down to 150.5 cm, ‘about the average size of today’s Pygmies’.

At last, we take to the air. Before the in-flight drinks trolley appears, it is sobering to think that as Russia disappears beneath our wheels so it does — bit by bit — all around me.

The White Sea shimmers under a lemony sun. As we power ever onwards to the far north-west, that cut-crystal line where ice meets water is plainly visible from my starboard window seat. The water is a glorious deep blue, the white blanket of ice fringed light green. Just over the coast of the Kola peninsula you can see the rivers run free — I will later learn that some of the world’s most prized Atlantic salmon are caught in them — but the lakes are frozen over.

Out of this wilderness looms a city whose survival 69o north of the Equator gives the locals a justified pride in their self-reliance. Murmansk is neither as compact nor as flat as Archangelsk. It is a harder city to get to know and like, but I will have unforeseen help in that regard. Finding a place to stay will, however, prove a headache.

My first choice, Polyarnye Zori, has been booked out by a convention, they tell me. It bills itself as ‘Your Faraway Home’, and is a couple of kilometres from downtown — a term to be taken literally here, as Polyarnye Zori sits on the crest of the steepest rise I’ll have to scale in the entire journey. Half a kilometre uphill, it takes the worst part of an hour to reach. Way down there on Lenin Prospekt, the Soviet-era Hotel Arktika trades on Polyarnye Zori’s ‘faraway’ location by advertising ‘You’re in the Very Centre with Us’.

97 km

Over breakfast in the Moryak Cafe, I see on the television that
Happy Feet
is now screening in Murmansk. Penguins in the Arctic: what next?

105 km

Ekaterina — a twenty-something businesswoman from St Petersburg whom I meet in the Polyarnye Zori’s business centre — is frustrated. Anyone would be at the sight of the airhead-in-charge who, asked by her to send a fax to St Petersburg, removes the paper from the machine and holds a single sheet in the air. We look at each other, doubtless thinking the same thought: How does she imagine the fax is going to get sent this way? And then, after Ekaterina admonishes her, she does it again.

Only a couple of days before I leave the Federation it occurs to me that I’ve found the ideal person to quiz about the ‘folks next door’. Six years ago, Ekaterina tells me, she took a car journey to Sweden, Finland and Norway and was hugely impressed. ‘For me it’s like they are very healthy, easy to connect with, quick-witted and, like, normal people.’

Three years later, she met more Norwegians in a language school, and one of them stayed at her place in St Petersburg. ‘I think the most handsome men on the whole planet are Norwegian,’ she gushes, looking into my beautiful hazel eyes (but Ekaterina is in full flight so I wordlessly excuse her). And here she turns quite earnest, which strikes me as very Russian, too. ‘I think that the Norwegian is a real Viking type, with a strong spirit inside.’ (Surely she doesn’t mean the urge to rape and pillage, I inwardly respond, while thinking it wiser not to give vent to such an outrageous thought.)

But, I say, when you’re in Scandinavia don’t you miss the dynamism, the fast pace, of St Petersburg? Ekaterina pauses for just a moment before voicing her impossible dream. ‘You know, Ken, my ideal would be for St Petersburg to be located in Norway.’

115 km

Ever since I’ve been old enough to read histories of World War II it has struck me that the US and the USSR never seemed to absorb the lesson that neither of them without the other’s support could have defeated Nazi Germany.

North of the city centre, on the right bank of Kola Inlet, stands the massive monument to Alyosha, the archetypal Soviet defender hero from the Great Patriotic War. Towering over the inlet from a lofty cliff, the city and its docks forming a picturesque sight off to the left, Alyosha stands 100 metres tall in tribute to the defenders of the Soviet motherland. A cairn below the statue, placed there by the regional Government, states that a second monument, ‘to the participants of the Allied naval convoys bringing aid to our people during the Second World War … will be erected in Murmansk’. This shows some recognition, if a tad belated, of the British- North American lifeline offered to the Soviet population — and, incidentally, to ‘Uncle Joe’ Stalin during their, and his, darkest hour.

But can governments swallow their historic claims of proud self-sufficiency? That day has not yet dawned: ‘The memorial will be built by the international non-government fund Eternal Memory to Soldiers.’

Up here, on this sunlit May day, I experience — for the first time on this transcontinental trek — one of those sublime moments I hope readers will not think it pretentious of me to call an epiphany. ‘Moment’ is a misleading word, who can say how long this happy state will last? It is timeless, immeasurable, indescribable — yet palpably real. On close inspection it evaporates. The onset of this sense of satisfaction is unpredictable, though beautiful scenery is always a component, and often enough it follows an arduous bout of physical exertion or mental agitation. But let’s not wax too mystical. Call it being at peace with the world.

I notice something else, an odd pairing of opposites. Elements normally in conflict resolve themselves in harmony. In the middle distance, the hills that surround Murmansk are mantled with a smattering of snow. Immediately in front of my eyes, at the feet of Alyosha — the rock-solid soldier standing steadfast for the millions — burns an Eternal Flame.

Perhaps there is a chemical explanation for all this — the release of endorphins or some such phenomenon — but, as long as an epiphany lasts, my critical faculties abandon their normal function, the quest for explanation.

116 km

On the smooth winding descent from Alyosha’s eminence, my wheels roll more freely and I use my hands as brakes less and less. The speedometer now comes into its own, bringing out a daredevil streak in its master. In quick succession I record the three fastest speeds of my four-week-old journey: 20.8 km/h, 20.9 km/h and 22.1 km/h, the last of these attained on a curve. What a buzz. But, strange to say, my joyride is provoking different emotions in the drivers of the oncoming traffic who clearly regard this alien apparition with a mixture of dread and disbelief.

118 km

After two stout patrons had helped me up a few steps, the woman in charge of Murmansk Puppet Theatre motioned me inside free of charge. Later she would refund the payment I insisted on making for a juice she bought for me at interval. Talk about a heart of beaten gold. Once again I have witnessed the big-heartedness of Russians — especially in the North, it has to be said. It’s easy to see why this puppet theatre, Russia’s oldest (founded in 1933), is also its best loved. Children and parents alike laughed heartily at PC Plod’s ineffectual assertion of authority against the little people, the puppets, most of whom appeared to owe their personalities to various vegetables. Pretty Chippolina was called by name and so were others, for all I knew; but to me they will always be Potato Head, Cabbage Head, Marrow Head and their assorted associates from the same patch.

120 km

If a hotel can be a dinosaur, then the Arktika must be
Tyrannosaurus
rex
. Forced out of the uptown Moryak by routine maintenance work on the lift, I moved down to the Arktika with great foreboding.

Every day brought a fresh disaster. The first morning I came down to breakfast, the restaurant was off limits. The lifts were ‘blocked’ from stopping at that level, for reasons never explained, and Olga the receptionist’s promise to get the ‘block’ lifted never looked like being fulfilled. The second day, my laundry was delivered soaking wet inside the bag. By the third morning I’d had enough and headed across the square to the Meridian (probably spelt that way to avoid problems with the Meridien chain, though at these latitudes they should have called it the Parallel Hotel anyway). Upon my mentioning that I’d been staying at the Arktika and — deciding on the candid approach — adding that I’d found it a poor (
plokhoi
) hotel, receptionist Evgenia remarked, ‘Everyone knows this’.

Although the Meridian would normally charge 200 roubles (A$10) a night more than the old behemoth across the way, Evgenia managed to undercut the Arktika’s tariff and throw in a complimentary breakfast (which I could actually take in the restaurant, much to my delight). It’s only taken six days, but at last I’m settled, and this hotel even provides innocent amusement en route to your room. A sign in the lift issues a warning in several languages. In English it says: PLEASE DON’T KEEP THE BUTTONS.

I have made a friend — Osmo Kolu, a 28-year-old Finn who works here as a travel agent. I met him when I went to his office to ask about the bus service to Norway. Later this year he will buy a flat in Murmansk, an act of faith in Russia’s future stability that some outside the country would regard as adventurous, to say the least.

Osmo, who obviously loves this city, has educated me on aspects of its history that had escaped my attention. He tells me it was awarded Hero City status on the strength of withstanding the second longest siege of World War II.

And we find time to sample the city’s culinary delights — which, as a resident here for two years, he knows far better than I. There have been few occasions when I glimpsed Europe while in Russia. Eating Norwegian salmon soup in Murmansk’s Churchill restaurant was undoubtedly one. Another time we ate reindeer meat at the Rvanye Parusa. Just the meat, garnished
à la nouvelle cuisine
with licks of mashed potato. Reindeer? It’s a bit stringy — at least mine was — but with enough beer to wash it down (and the Rvanye Parusa brews its own brand, Pilgrim, on the premises) you really don’t notice.

At a third restaurant I visited one day for lunch — it served specialities from the Caucasus — something unprecedented in my experience of dining out occurred: the proprietor, seeing how much I had enjoyed my meal, refused to take any money for it.

Granted, there was a bumper crowd in the establishment that day, but still … So overwhelmed was I by this magnanimous act — coming not long after Nadezhda’s way-over-the-top generosity at the hotel in Archangelsk and other examples mentioned in this chapter — that I returned to the restaurant with Osmo next day and we paid in full for two more hearty meals.

It was then that he introduced me to the heady delights of snuff, or
snus
, a Scandinavian form of tobacco that is meant to get up your nostrils. Inhale it, and it tingles (they say it also clears) the passages.

I must have taken too much on this first occasion (and judging by Osmo’s chortling he had known I would) because I felt slightly nauseated. Fortunately, we had finished our meals before taking the narcotic. But this was an education, too. Five minutes sufficed to teach me when enough snuff’s enough.

128 km

Sunday morning at St Nicholas Cathedral in the suburbs of Murmansk. Confirming talk of a revival in Russian Orthodoxy, there seems to be a broad cross-section of ages in the incense-wreathed church this morning. It is the Orthodox tradition to stand — pews are not provided — so I’m the only one seated in church today (and I permit myself a quiet chuckle over that). Touchingly, the arthritic babushka on my left places her hand on my wheelchair to steady herself while kneeling for prayer. Only too glad to be of service at the service, which ends with a procession led by the prelate who delivered the sermon.

136 km

And now I’m ready to leave Russia by the back door. Although it is only 6.30 am, the 300 metre trek from my hotel poses a logistical nightmare. I have three bags to get to the bus stop, and the hotel security staff dare not move from their posts even if they wanted to (which — let’s be frank about this — they don’t).

So Osmo, after only five hours’ sleep, has turned up with his best friend, Ilya, in tow. The pair of them are as dependable as a bank but, unlike a bank, refuse money for their services. We wave weary goodbyes in the speckled morning light and, a minute later, as the bus rounds a bridge to the west, I see a road sign: Kirkenes, 213 km.

After four weeks of searching high and low for Europe, I quit Putin’s realm without having found a single Russian who thought it was here. Right, then, it must be somewhere over the horizon.