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From “Fonske” <amlozano@iies.es> Date Saturday, July 17, 2004 19:57 To “List of contacts” Subject à bord de le baikal dear all, the far you go east, the wilder russia becomes. if in yekaterinburg we had the close help of veronika, from now on we have the feeling of being alone, more alone than ever. the baikal is full from moscow. russians that walk in the train as if they were at home that free of their t-shirt, eat smoky fish all the time. they travel in the train together with tourist from several nationalities. there is a french family. they have a teenager daughter that looks tired at her parents. she is obviously fed up of the absence of a shower. i bet she sighs for the kind of things the teenagers sigh. she regrets the extravagant choice of her parents for this year's holiday. there are as well two finnish. we just know about them that they are not very good in making equilibrium in the toilet. everytime they use it, gets dirty, painted in shit as in a primitivist painting. in the train. and of course, another two spaniards that for no reason, we ignored. at this moment the three of us feel we don't need any spaniard. there's as well a kid, about two or three years old. blonde and fit, he looks curious among the compartments. his mother is a russian strong and nice. his father is young man, tall and skinny that for breakfast drinks beer and smokes a couple of cigarrettes. the cups and handkerchiefs at baikal are precious, and none of us seem decided to lose the chance to make our kitchens more beauty with those objects. provodnitsas, who probably are fed up with those kind of little robberies, take them half an hour before irkutsk, as diligent waitresses. three days within the train, with billions of station built in stalinist style (what it means that they have no style at all). the stations are crowded. the movement is beautiful. there, they look at us with a naive curiosity while they insist in us to buy all kind of goods. some of these things seems to be taken out from another era, in a delicious out-of-time. it's picturesque all those trains; a lot of them looks no more than shipwrecks. we arrive in irkutsk with a four hours delay. in the morning, when i'm waked up by the first lights, i notice the train is running scorted by broken trees and perfectly combed grass. among the fallen electrical poles, i feel siberia. the grass is high, the landscape wavy. later is when i'm informed by one of the german couples of the seventh compartment that last night was a terrible storm. the area is incommunicated. she smile me/us constantly. am i paranoic? i think she looks at us with a certain intention. we all agree that she has a good ass, that she es a good fortysomething. it was between yekaterinburg and irkutsk where i understood all those things in which i've thought so much. there it was where i understood all those stories about russian officers in the caucasus, making nothing but living and celebrate the life, in cities built first as barracks and where civilization, that here i prefer to call "sophistication" was a a far smoke coming from moscow or st. petersburg, writing poetry in fighting for a reason coming from outsied oneself, but fighting because the struggle is as well the life. that night, at two a.m., moscow time, when we were about to get into baikal, towards irkutsk, i knew, crossing the big extension of bright green grass where your sight can't find an end that like everywhere in the world, the regular is not to live, but to kill the time and that just makes evident how senseless is life and how much effort we make in make life senseful, even crossing asia from one end to the other one. the landscpae is so overwhelming and nature so emphatic that life is confirmed, sharpened, intensified; senses become senseful, sensuality blow up. unacceptable, far from our sleepy, opium-like environment, could become acceptable. we sing as the german couples from the seventh compartment do in the evening, those folk german songs. we sing flamenco-like and make a toast with vodka for this unavoidable trip. the hugs and the kisses, fonske. |
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 Landscape after Ural mountains
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