Day 53: Khabarovsk

Technology is great for the technologically inclined. I resisted push button phones until they all came that way. My technological limitations started yesterday.

On our boat ride across the Lena, the screen on my iPhone “all of a sudden” started displaying in extra-jumbo-large mode. I didn’t do anything. Used to tell the folks that too. But, obviously I had done something. That I didn’t know is what made it harder to undo.

Trouble was, in extra-jumbo-large mode it was hard to manipulate the screen, i.e., next to impossible. I recharged the batteries after we got back to the hotel and fiddled with the screen problem for a while, but gave up. I figured, well, it’s charged. I’ll go to bed and work on it in the morning.

Morning came at 5:00 as Ka’ren and I made ready for the airports and our separate flights. I thought: I’ll work with this on the plane, or in the airport in Khabarovsk. OK, so far so good. But once in Khabarovsk I discovered that I was down to 28% and still had an extra-jumbo-large screen that I couldn’t do anything with. Of course, had I left it plugged in all night, it would have been higher. But I didn’t, and did I say that I couldn’t shut it off?

The real problem besides the technological one was that my train reservation information for this evening was stored in my email files. I needed to access them somehow in order to know what carriage and compartment I was in. The stewardess on the train would have my other information.

OK. In the Khabarovsk airport, there is no Wi-Fi or Internet cafe. Irkutsk had two! As I mess with my iPhone some more, the power is rapidly draining and I am gaining no substantial ground. I decide to visit the Evrocet Center, sort of like an AT&T store.

“Do you speak English?” I asked in Russian.

No.

“French?”

No.

OK, Houston we have a problem. I am able to explain my basic problem and finish my plea with: “I’m an old man and don’t know how to do this.”

The young salesclerk starts to move the screen with a finger’s touch like I had. No go. Power’s going lower. I ask if we can charge the phone and she says, “Yes.” She keeps working to no avail.

I stand there and keep standing there. In fact, I must have stood there for two solid hours as the phone recharged and she waited on other customers. Finally, I tell her, “If it doesn’t work, I’ll buy a Russian phone with All-Russia service.”

“It’s going to work,” she smiles.

I keep standing there. Nothing else to do; nowhere else to go. And my phone is plugged into the wall behind the counter anyway.

Finally, she tells me, “It’s working” Or, something. She is smiling, so I start smiling, too.

“What did you do?” I asked.

“I tapped the screen two times.”

“Oh. You tapped the screen two times! Well, how much do I owe you?”

“Nothing.”

I flatter her, hopefully, by repeating my “I’m an old man who doesn’t understand technology” speech, adding “but you are a young woman who does.” She smiles a bit more. I thank her profusely and head out the door. “I tapped the screen two times.” Gee, in the old days, with technology I understood, I would have kicked it twice and that would have worked too. But that really was a while back.

I don’t know what time it is for sure. Khabarovsk is an hour ahead of Yakutsk. I think it’s 15:18 (3:18 p.m.), four hours since I arrived. I’ll cool my heels here a while longer before I go to the train station. I think I leave in six hours so I buy another beer before I go. It is the cheapest (50 rubles/$1.65 USD) and seemingly the coldest I’ve had since Estonia: Sibirskaya Korona (Siberian Crown). I’ve had it before, but only 50 rubles for 0.5 L (17 oz.)? Coca-cola is 40 rubles!

I think I need to buy the young lady some flowers before I leave the airport. Have to remember to buy an odd number, though.

The Uspensky Cathedral near the city center of Khabarovsk.

Before arriving at the train station, the cab driver from the Khabarovsk airport suggests an hour tour around town. I’m game. Not only do I have nothing else to do, Khabarovsk is already appearing to be the greenest, cleanest, nicest city I’ve visited yet.

Khabarovsk lies on the banks of the Amur River. Much of the Amur serves as the border between China and Russia, though not here. However, mountains in China can be seen across the river in the distance. Sergei, my driver, tells me that it’s about a one-hour trip.

I’m able to get photos of two cathedrals. I breach protocol at the first one by attempting to turn on my now working iPhone to record the choir’s singing. Vespers is in process. Quickly, I’m called to order by a gentleman standing near the door. Oops! On my way out, I offer my apologies. He smiles and accepts.

Beautiful fountains adorn downtown Khabarovsk.

Of all the cities I’ve visited in this vast land, Khabarovsk appears outwardly the most prosperous. New construction is everywhere, and it’s attractive. Near downtown, there are three fountains, each one forming a lake a little lower than the previous, a gradually sloping cascade over several blocks. In the center lake, people swim and rent paddle boats for recreation. In the middle of another is a restaurant reached by a bridge. All is well kept, as is the rest of the city. In fact, I saw a street-sweeper on the drive in to town: no litter. No graffiti. After choking on the dust of Yakutsk for two days, this is the Emerald City.

Khabarovsk appears set on a series of gently rolling hills overlooking the river. The second cathedral is on a promontory, by a war memorial to the deceased from the Great Patriotic War (WWII) and forward. Of all the more recent conflicts, this region suffered the greatest number of losses in Chechnya, the nation’s latest.

The Amur River, one up in rank in terms of size than the Lena (ninth largest in the world), it forms the border between the Russian Far East and Northeastern China.

There is a Western feel here. And that seems crazy, considering how close the city is to China. There are far more European faces here than Yakutsk. (After Ka’ren and I left, that number decreased appreciably!) Khabarovsk is a young city for Russia, only 152 years old. (Yakutsk is 377.) Their histories are different and they are literally worlds apart.

I say there is a Western feel here, except for the autos. Virtually all of them are right-hand drive. As we progressed further eastward, we noticed more and more “cars with no drivers in them” as Ka’ren said. By Irkutsk it was well over half; in Yakutsk perhaps nine out of ten. They may be right-hand drive cars, yet they are being driven on the right as well.

(Remember, with a right-hand drive car, traffic usually drives on the left, as in Britain, or in Japan where these cars are manufactured. So, this takes some getting used to, if that’s possible. Pulling out into traffic seems a particular challenge, as well as seeing around the big truck in front to pass. I’ll leave that to the cabbies.)

Of course, Khabarovsk is far closer to Japan than to Europe. And it is relatively easy for cars to be purchased in Japan and brought to Russia via ferry at Vladivostok. Import duties are a killer, but other than that, Japanese quality is a winner.

There was discussion about making right-hand drive vehicles illegal, but too many people in this part of the world drive them. The government backed down.

At the train station, I am delighted to find a chapel off of the waiting room. It is dedicated to St. Nicholas. He is far more a patron saint of travelers to the Orthodox than St. Christopher, though we don’t discount him either. I am especially overjoyed to find an icon of St. Innocent of Moscow gracing the opposite side of the iconostasis. It’s another one of those “unexpected joys” that I’ve come to expect and appreciate so much.

I speak to the lady who is taking care of the lavka, the church shop. As best I can, I tell her what I am up to and ask her prayers. She asks for prayers for Leonid. So, please add him to your prayer lists, too.

The train departs at 21:00 (9 p.m.) local time (14:00 Moscow). I’m tired. But I’ve seen a little of this wonderful looking city — I hope that it really is wonderful — and I’m glad that I did.

It’s hard to believe that I’ll wake up tomorrow at the Pacific, this trek across Mother Russia now rapidly drawing to a close. It doesn’t mean that the pilgrimage or the sabbatical is nearing its end, however. This is only transition to the Alaskan phase.

As a side note: St. Herman’s journey to the Pacific was further north. He traveled from Yakutsk over the mountains eastward, by horseback, to the Sea of Okhotsk. As I flew out of Yakutsk this morning, I couldn’t help but appreciate once more how daunting a task that was. Even now, only one road links Yakutsk with the “outside world”, the Road of Bones to Magadan. And it stops at the eastern bank of the River Lena. There is no bridge.

The Road of Bones was built by the Soviets with slave labor, this being one of the gulags. Its name is derived from the many who perished building it. But the road is far from a good one. As I understand it, it’s 600 agonizing miles. As St. Herman did not go to Magadan, I didn’t think it would serve my purpose.

Magadan, Khabarovsk, Vladivostok have all come into being since that summer in 1794 when ten men from western Russia set out to missionize the new land of Alaska. Social institutions and political systems have come and gone. Yet I get a feeling in all this Russian vastness that some things and especially the things of nature haven’t really changed that much.