It was the fall of 2016. I had just finished driving 11,000 miles across Europe and Asia -- the story I told on the first season of this podcast -- and now my friend Donna had flown out to Eastern Siberia to join me for the trip back, three quarters of the way across the largest country in the world. I’d hardly spent any time in Russia up to this point, so I really had little idea what to expect.
I guess I had these images in my head that Siberia would be a cold, barren, and desolate tundra unlike anywhere I had been before. And I suppose I was attracted by this idea of nothingness and by the unknown. Cause there I was, in a part of the world that few tourists ever go, and I was curious to see what it was like.
In retrospect, I think my hopes were too high, cause Russia turned out to be a lot different than I’d expected.
I didn’t see any tundra on my two week journey, and much of the trip was just long, boring stretches of blacktop through the forests, with occasional cities and industrial vistas that had a sort of post-apocalyptic charm.
Overall, Russia seemed like a really complicated place, and it left me with a ton of questions.
In some ways, it appeared to be very similar to back home. Moscow, in particular, was a modern, bustling city with lots of restaurants, art museums, and even many of the same fast food chains that exist in the United States.
But the longer I spent there, the more I realized that there were also some pretty big cultural and political differences.
photo by Donna Salter
Along my route, I had several conversations and interactions with people in Russia and Kazakhstan that surprised and even baffled me. For example, the longing for the way things used to be in the Soviet Union and the perception that Americans are phony because they smile all the time.
On this episode, I play back some of my conversations for Charles Maynes, an American public radio journalist based in Moscow, to get his reaction and ask for his help to interpret and understand Russian culture.
If you want to hear some of Charles’s reporting, I highly recommend the Spacebridge documentary series he co-produced that ran on PRX’s Showcase podcast.
Until next time, thanks for listening!
Scott
map of my 2 week journey across Russia