Tubular Tallinn and Heavenly Helsinki

Last Thursday at 11 p.m. I found myself at Moscow's Leningradsky Station, straight from a long day's copy-editing and after a quick dash to the SOS International Clinic for stomach-infection-conquering antibiotics, meandering down the long departures hall, complete with a bust of Lenin on a tall column in the center, to my overnight train bound for Helsinki. Cabin attendants were stationed at the door to each carriage making for a sight as if from 100 years ago, in long fur-lined coats with gold buttons and a Russian shapka hats with the crest of the October Railway (a reference to the revolution) stitched to the front.

I was going to Helsinki to renew my Russian visa; the regulations stipulate that once your visa has expired you can't get a new one in Moscow, but instead must leave Russia, get a new one at a Russian Embassy abroad, and then return. Kiev costs $500, Riga $400, and Helsinki $250. London is one of the cheapest, at £150 for a visa in one day, but still a £220 plane journey away.




The train ride felt like a ride back to civilization. I was genuinely excited about the European Union: clean, everything works, faultlessly English-speaking, coffee shops, and even now I look back fondly. The concept of Europe has taken on a rosy glow in my head.




After a wonderful train sleep, rocked to sleep in a small, cosy cabin with the gentle clunk-clunk of rails below, I emerged in something of a masterpiece. The station is meant to be the crowning glory of some architect or other; Gotham City-style statues guard the entrance.




I decided to make my visa run into a holiday, and to spend the weekend in Tallinn. The ferry was rammed full of weekenders, and the Baltic Sea, magically, was frozen. It appeared that it would be perfectly possible to walk across Helsinki harbour itself to get to the boat, and on the sea there was a constant shuddering as ice broke apart on the bows. Seals, and their pups, were sat on ice not 100 meters from where we passed. I bought a 6 euro salad (natch, Europe), and for the three-hour journey read the "Da Vinci Code" (I couldn't be a snob about it forever).






Later I met a Latvian girl who was studying philosophy in Helsinki, and we huddled underneath the powerful hot air vent on the side of the funnel on the otherwise bitingly cold, windswept deck, chatting about our favourite French arch-theorists.




Tallinn is said to have the most complete medieval city center in Europe, and it felt to me like a refuge. It's only small, and surrounded by a more modern, perfectly pleasant center, but from Friday night to Monday morning I didn't want to stray outside its limits. It was as if there was a spell there, down its winding, cobbled alleyways, with its rows of crooked buildings and white-plastered churches, boutique coffee ships with rich cakes and coffees and restaurants at every turn, that I didn't want to break. In the evenings, flickering candles were placed outside the door of every restaurant and bar, and spiced almonds were roasted in the street. It was bitterly cold, hovering around zero with patches of snow in the street and ice on the hilly patches lethal, but the sky was pure, rich blue, seagulls cried overhead, the brilliant sun glinted off the meltwater, and tourists sat outside the cafes bundled up, drinking tea, staring up at the buildings around them.









Tallinn was a kind of intoxication for me. I ate so well there, and went to restaurants better than the last every night, all in 15th and 16th century buildings - I learned how much good food can contribute to a sense of wellbeing. Olde Hansa was medieval-themed, and although it sounds tacky now, in the setting of Tallinn it was perfect. The light were low and warm, the interior of massive timber beams, the tables rough hewn, waitresses in medieval getup, even the toilets featured a pot from which you were to ladel water rather than a sink. I was with my roommate in the hostel (below a strip club, but I never accidentally bumped into anyone entering or exiting -- perhaps unfortunately?), the owner of a winery in Oregon who fought in the Vietnam War (it was only a bit like "Apocalypse Now," he said), and we ordered mulled wine and honey beer, and vegetables and fish pickled and spiced, with subtle and multi-layered flavours that were entirely new to me.




A place subtitling itself as "The Embassy of Pure Food" was my secod night, with a Finnish flag hung outside colored green and white instead of the usual blue and white. Inside, serene and draped in plants, there were LCD TVs framed as if they were paintings, showing a slowly rotating selection of famous artworks.






The most magnificent eatery was Balthaser, calling itself a garlic restaurant, on my final night. Every item on the menu contained garlic, and was accompanied by little drawings of one, two or three garlic bulbs, signifying the strength. I of course decided that three was the only way to go, and so first course was garlic soup with roasted slivers of smoked salmon. It was beyond exquisite -- every mouthful burst with warmth and richness, I was actually smiling to myself. I had chili tuna for the main course, and -- in a garlic restaurant, what else -- garlic ice cream in a crushed almond biscuist for dessert. My taste buds had certainly already lost some sensitivity after their blasting from the soup, but still I could tell the ice cream was delicious, a garlic taste that couldn't quite be grasped but was definitely there.

I could write more for that soup, for those days in Tallinn when I wandered in and out of churches and perfectly kept museums, learning about wars long past and virtually forgotten - the Livonian War, various incursions by the then-mighty Swedish empire and counter-invasions by Russia, momentous battles that today earn little more than a footnote in history books. Plagues and beheadings, events so defining then, and more distant every day now.




Unavoidably, I'm remembering everything as being much too perfect. There were moments too when I was lonely, when I was tired of walking around, when I didn't want to go back to my hostel to bed but equally wasn't brave enough to go into a bar on my own. Travelling alone is difficult -- I found it tough for 4 days in Berlin, and it was only a little easier here. Like most people I have an ambiguous relation to my own company anyway: some days I want nothing more than to be reading a good novel (in this case, Coetzee followed Dan Brown) and drinking green tea in a Tallinn-Helsinki-Moscow coffeeshop, and on others I'm fidgety, and need distraction other than sentences.

It's like writing too, that awful oscillation of writing, when some days (or even hours) the words gush, and others everything sounds poorly crafted and naive. It's a question of practice, I hope.

The nationalism in Estonia, with flags outside many houses, especially in the old wooden district - where it had just rained and the whole street smelt of damp timber - was not offensive as it might be elsewhere.








Estonia sees itself as the victim of three occupations in the past 60 years -- the Soviet occupation in 1941, the Nazi occupation for the rest of the Second World War, and then the Soviet occupation from 1945 until 1991. They're not afraid of pulling any punches in lumping these two rulers together, of placing the creators of concentration camps squarely next to the Soviets. This is in the defiant Museum of the Occupation:




The swastika and the red star right next to each other, considered equally offensive and noxious. What a remarkable idea, given the continual glorification of the Second World War victory even now in Russia (just today I saw such a poster in the metro), the evils the Nazis are remembered for.

Estonia always considered itself a natural partner of Finland, and has even proposed a union with it in the past. Their languages are very similar -- neither related at all to the Slavic languages, or indeed any other European language; Finnish and Estonian, and their cousin Hungarian, are linguistic aliens among the Romance and Germanic variants -- have similar (blond, blue-eyed) colouring, and, according to a drunken Estonian I met in a bar at least, have similarly slow-burning and still, icy depths. It takes a lot longer to get closer to an Estonian than it does to a Russian, he said. I think I admire that. My Lonely Planet suggested a certain beach was good for long, reflective, soul-searching walks - "a favourite Estonian pasttime," it suggested.




The Monday-morning ferry to Helsinki was a delight. At 8:15 a.m. I was sat by the window in the sun-washed dining room, eating gravadlax and camembert, as the ship shuddered its way through the ice back to Finland, the occasional clear patch of water plunging the ship into smoothness and silence.




I spent the first day in Suomenlinnen, a fortress built by the Swedes in the 18th century on an island just off the main headland that the city is located on. Winter is not Helsinki's prime tourist season -- I felt a little sad that all the pictures in the tourist brochures were of people sitting in outdoor cafes in the sun and wearing shorts in the main square, as if the city lived for the 3 months when it was actually possible to do so, and was otherwise always awaiting its brief flowering, suspended in a deep wintry sleep -- and so the handful of tourists wandered between the three sites, of 18, that were still open out of season.






Tramping through the snow, I found myself at a frozen beach, guarded over by cannons on the hilltop next to it, and past them old bunkers slumbering under the snow high atop the fortress walls, creating a funny, hilly landscape that looked more than anything like someone had buried giant snooker balls there. I was presented with new and more delightful vistas at every step -- looking out to a white, frozen sea, ringed by snow-covered cliffs, the sun glorious overhead, the wind pummelling me, every stop provoking a smile, I even laughed out loud, couldn't hold back the occasional half-utterance to myself with a broad grin about the majesty and beauty of it all.






Back on the mainland the next day I got my visa -- thank you for permitting me to return, Russian Federation -- and spent my last day at Kiasma, the modern art museum there (oh yes, and I also went to H&M, which we don't have in Moscow. It was fabulous, Tom and Alex, enormous and completely free of crowds). Of all the exhibits that have stayed with me, I loved the room of sinister snowglobes;






the projection onto the floor which showed words randomly moving around and crashing into each other (the three fundamental words were love, hate and lies, which invariably becamse death as they hit one other);




and these paintings, with their painful, moving captions.




This one reads:

"We didn't make plans or talk about the future anymore. The future is only imaginary, a destination you invent to keep yourself going, but a point comes when you realize you're not going to get there."

I arrived back in Moscow last Monday, to the delights of the old Mayakovsaya metro station (see my very first post for the recently built part).

Jeffrey Colins of Burford Trust bank

I’m hoping that a quick blog entry will ease the extreme pain and mental blockage I’m experiencing trying to write this article.

My editor wanted a new angle on the city's elite gyms for the paper's Spring Guide, so he suggested I write about their bars and all the kooky things you can buy there. And it's true, there's some pretty crazy stuff. One place, aside from the obvious pumpkin and celery juice cocktails, offers portions of Burgundy snails. And they all have the requisite hundreds of giant tubs of whey supplements and ampoules of guarana and L-carnitine juice ("these'll keep you going all day!" said the bartender at Reebok).

After three hopeless days of trying to organize official visits with the gyms' PR departments, my editor said I could just go incognito and - check this! - order stuff and then get refunded by the paper. So I dressed up a bit smarter than usual, went in, gave my name as Jeffrey Colins (my dad's first and middle names), my firm as "a small English bank, Burford Trust" (my dad's company), and calmly nodded at the $2,500-per-year membership fee. "I'm here with my firm," I said, "of course, they're paying." Later I discretely scribbled names and prices down in the gyms' bars, and tried some frankly minging fruit juices which didn't seem in the least bit healthy, and also glugged a test tube-full of L-Carnitine walking up the road to my own £3-per-session gym. Effect? I felt a very slight burst of energy. -Very- slight.




I went to my first ever ballet last week -- an open rehearsal of Shostakovich's The Golden Age. I have the same Russian teacher as a ballet critic just over from England, and so Yelena put us in touch. We went to the Bolshoi's New Stage (the old building is currently under renovation as it's about to collapse) at 11:30 p.m. on Saturday, chose our seats in the front row -- there were only a few hundred other audience members there -- and watched as it proceeded with full orchestra. Very excitingly, the head of the troupe kept shouting directions over a microphone. At one point the stage walkie-talkies broke, and the technical director sheepishly came on stage to sort it out. The director was furious - "What's going on?? EXPLAIN!!!" he screamed, terrifyingly.




Of course, I thought ballet was wonderful, and I shall definitely be going again. 'Golden Age' is set in the early days of communism in the 20s, and the characters are wicked capitalists, sinful 'Chicago'-esque nightclubbers or brave Soviet youths. The set style was Constructivist - a visionary communist avant garde that flowered very briefly before being replaced by Stalinism in architecture (which most people love) and Soviet Realism in art (which a lot of people think is quite dull).

We were chaperoned by the husband of the principal ballerina (Anna Antonicheva I think is her full name), and at the interval we all simply wandered where we liked in the working part of the theater. After, Naomi, the critic, interviewed Anna, and I, very poorly, translated. We also went backstage after the curtain fell -- despite seeming enormous on stage, the ballet dancers were mostly only a little taller than me. And all the girls were very thin. Anna, who was lovely, let me take a photo, although I nervously had to ask Naomi beforehand -- is this ever -done- in ballet interviews? Will she think I'm completely daft?




Moscow is all drip-drip-drip at the moment. It's not consistently above freezing, but enough that the dominant sound in the street is the clattering of drops of meltwater onto rooves and pavements, and the occasional enormous crash that makes everyone turn to stop and look as huge pieces of partially melted ice come flying down. The sky is sometimes blue, too.




I'll be on the overnight train to Helsinki this time tomorrow night. I'm going to renew my visa (absurd Russian regulations - for a new visa you have to leave the country and come back, expats call it the "visa run"), but decided to turn it into a little holiday. I think I'll probably catch the ferry to Tallinn, Estonia, as soon as I arrive, hang out there over the weekend as everyone says it's very cool, and go back to Finland for visa and 2 days of sightseeing on Monday.

Am I still writing-blocked? Probably. It it 10:30 at night, have I an article to write, a bag to pack, am I working tomorrow? Yes. Is it pure folly to continue writing this entry? (*click* as Ali closes Internet Explorer).

Caviar, and Poor Olga

Last week was the festival of Maslenitsa, the holiday celebrating the official end of winter. It's marked with a blini-fest, with everyone eating as many pancakes filled with smetana (sour cream), caviar and jam as they can. I've also heard some people burn effigies of old man winter, a bit like Guy Fawke's Night.

And so, at my Russian lesson last Saturday, Yelena, my teacher, told me that while I was revising verbal adverbs, she was going to fry me up some blini. And thus, having successfully figured how to tell people that "while reading, I sat," I was served a fluffy concoction overflowing with hundreds of little salmon eggs.




I was initially concerned, as I didn't think they were kosher. However, Yelena assured me that in Israel people eat this kind of caviar, and that she had in fact been told as much by her brother, who lives in a little village near Tel Aviv. The taste was - interesting. Very very salty and very fishy little balls that pop in your mouth. It wasn't bad exactly, and in fact I'm thinking right now how nice some would be, but it's a taste that definitely needs getting used to.

Russians generally seem to love food that's very salty or very sour. Really popular dishes are pickled mushrooms, the ubiquitous pickled cucumbers and smetana salads. Yelena said it was because the winters are so long here, and you can't get fresh veg, so everything has to be pickled. I don't know how relevant that is today, with Russia more globalised every day, but it's still hard to find anything but the bog standard fruit and veg in the shops mid-winter - you can either buy potatoes, apples and oranges, or a single papaya for £12 (seriously).

Now it's Lent, and my landlady (/flatmate) Olga is not eating meat, fish or bread. This morning she was chucking beetroot and cabbage into a pan - "But you can still eat sugar!" she said cheerfully, although with a manic glint at the corner of her eye.

Temperatures here are much improved.



(The end of January.)


(The beginning of March.)

A Tale of Two Saturdays

(This post has been hanging round my neck like a dead weight for a month. Finally, I've gotten rid of it.)




I had a brilliant day on Saturday [sometime at the beginning of February?]. I stumbled out of bed at 6:30 a.m. and leapt on a metro for the Aeroflot office, to try and take advantage of their famous bi-yearly sales. Last year we got tickets to Azerbaijan for 100 squids, this year we decided on somewhere in Russia. The metro was worryingly busy for 7:30 a.m. on Saturday morning - but, arriving at the Aeroflot office (on Kuznetskiy Most street, above), where in September there'd been a man with a clipboard taking down names and already 20 people queueing, this year there was an empty snow-covered street, Jennie, and a cleaner and a single grumpy night guard inside the office. As more people showed up later, they said there were probably less people as it was so cold. Please, I thought, it's only like -5 and this is RUSSIA. Very kindly, Jennie fetched tea from the local Kofe Haus...




Anyway, 80 pounds later, and we have our tickets to Ekaterinburg, in the Ural Mountains. A few million people live there, and it's where the Romanovs were murdered in 191-something. I don't quite know what to expect: My Russian teacher wasn't overly enthusiastic, but LP waxed on about its many museums (and there's even an "Outside Ekaterinburg" section). Anyway it's only for 4 days, and always good to see new places. The other option was a spa resort called Mineral Waters, but it's close to the Caucasus (i.e. Chechnya) and people say it's dangerous. Esther also booked some tickets to a Siberian city called Perm, of all things.




(See how happy Esther is that she's going to Perm?)

Saturday continued with the now traditional we-got-cheap-ish-Aeroflot-tickets celebration of blini (Russian pancakes covered with cheese, chocolate etc.) at a restaurant called Pirogi, and then I snuck over to Red Square and St. Basil's for a quick peek-a-boo.




(GUM shopping center on left, St. Basil's at back, the Kremlin on the right.)




(St. Basil's.)


At that point, my mechanical device for measuring the passage of time alerted me that the moment had come to meet my friends in Gorky Park for ice skating. Jennie and I decided an 80s/"Fame" look would be absolutely the coolest way to go.




The park is massive, and they flood all the paths with water, which then freezes. So you're skating around through trees, past cafes and fairground-game stalls, rollercoasters and big wheels, people playing ice hockey, an ice-disco set off to one side, a massive coliseum-like racetrack to the other. It's like a small town on ice, and all the while there are hundreds-upon-hundreds of other skaters falling over or (more often) pulling off impressive tricks around you.









(Esther here has, not to put too fine a point on it, fallen flat on her arse.)

It was slightly nightmarish at points though -- the system of getting in and hiring skates is very Russian-poor-planning. An enormous crush of people develops at the single door to the skate-hire room, some half a foot higher on toe-slicing ice skates, and once you get inside the temperature is a sticky 30 degrees warmer than outside. It's wet, slimy and dirty from the muck people track in, and you can barely move for people pulling off their skates or waiting for the cloakrooms (though even clearer sign you're in Russia: choice of different styles of skates).

To make it worse, Jennie lost her key in one of the cloakroom queues as she was trying to retrieve her bag. So there we were, on our knees on this disgusting, filthy floor, surrounded by a forest of skate-clad legs, looking under benches and shovelling around the muddy plastic bags that seemed to accumulate there, sweating like nothing after 2 hours of skating. Anyway, finally, somebody found the key by their foot, and we escaped. We vowed never to return, but actually, I'm going back next week [I went back, my ankles hurt, we left early. However, here's a photo of the miraculously empty hire that day - entirely more pleasant.]





After, 10 or so of us went back to Jennie's for one of her vegetarian-food extravaganzas. She lives near a metro station called 1905 Street - a reference to the attempted revolution. As with most stations in the Moscow metro, its has some pretty cool design features, in particular the signs that let you know what station it is. I think the little sign above the station name is that of a crown being toppled.





Jennie and Mogs cooked at the party, and there was mulled wine, Soviet champagne and general niceness.




Look, Irene and Esther are enjoying the general niceness.




Oh, and Pietro, my flatmate, and I, had a great flatwarming at the end of January - we're Flat 29, Entrance 4, No. 56 Prospekt Mira. The sign is above our local metro station - Prospekt Mira. It means 'Avenue of the World', and it's where the Olympic stadium was built for Moscow 1980.

The flatwarming was already 4 months too late (we moved in October), but nevertheless it needed to take place. We shopped for supplies in an busy outdoor market as it snowed, and where the meat and fish simply lay uncovered and unrefrigerated as the temperature was already way below zero. He and his Italian friend thankfully handled all the cooking (if it was me, the party guests would have gotten pesto pasta).




The party started at 6 p.m. and ended at 11 p.m. as that's when our landlady, Olga returned, and it was in the flat's living room, which also doubles as her bedroom, that the party took place. We had guests from four countries, and an Icelandic viking. Kind of. He's a reenactor, and introduced himself as "Gunn," though it's really Vlad or something.




(Yulia and Alice are having fun at this point. Adela at this point, and only this point, was not.)




(Mogs reenacting a Celtic chin-grab move with Gunn.)