Entry 8: Dom, Sweet Dom

Finally arriving at Biysk was almost something of an anticlimax... true, we had been traveling for days now and had long been in expectation of the time when we would finally see the place that was to be our home for the next six weeks, but it seemed that, by the time we arrived, we had just started getting used to life on the train: our greasy hair had just gotten to the point where it was making dreadlocks on its own, our bodies had finally adjusted to a steady diet of pirozhki and beer, and showers now seemed like a thing of the past. And, perhaps most importantly, we had all started to really get to know each other and develop something of a rapport. It now seemed extremely strange to have to leave the people we had literally spent 24 hours a day with for the past few days of grueling travel, commiserating and spilling our guts about every detail of our life, every deep secret and embarrassing story.
So, it was not without an admixture of sadness that we deboarded the Trans-Siberian, excited to meet the hosts who were so eagerly awaiting our arrival -- and we found it to be quite a large contingent indeed. Once again, Michael Jensen appeared as we disembarked, dancing past all of us to some vague semblance of "Beat It". Much to my surprise, my hostess, Natalya Mikhailovna, introduced herself immediately, which she explained was due to the fact that she had to spend a good time preparing my documents (including photo IDs), and then we were acquainted to our program coordinator, who then introduced (or, in my case, reintroduced) us to our hosts. We were given local SIM cards to allow us to make calls at/from our new places, and then Natalya Mikhailovna and I abruptly took leave of the group as they went to go purchase tickets for the train ride home (I would be flying separately, due to a glitch in my visa invitation letter that precluded me from staying as long as everyone else).
Biysk turned out to be just about as hot as DC, and we sped off through blazing asphalt streets, exiting the surprisingly colorful city (it reminds me of the last episode of Seinfeld, where George wants to go to Russia, and Elaine tries to dissuade him, arguing that it's bleak. "Not in the summer," George rightly counters. "No place is bleak in the summer.") and heading down roads that bisect vast open fields of potato plants and sunflowers, all set against the backdrop of misty, blue rolling hills. As we approach Altaiskoye, Natalya Mikhailovna explains that it's the longest village in Russia: 17 kilometers long, though only a couple kilometers wide (at its widest part). And indeed, as we make our way through the village, it becomes clear that there's really only one main street that goes almost the entire length of the village (the only paved road, I'm told, although, curiously enough, there's a tiny asphalt factory as you enter the village). I chalk it up to pretty poor planning (imagine if the town were large enough to have traffic!), but it seems that, being situated in a valley between some fairly large hills, the town can really only get so wide before people start having to live in slanted houses.
After a bit of driving down Altaiskoye's main drag -- "Soviet Street", not surprisingly -- we get to Natalya Mikhailovna's apartment -- a fairly spacious loft in a complex of twelve apartments. Natalya Mikhailovna shows me that the apartment is exactly across the street from the dormitory where I was to live, which, in turn, is right next to the technical school where I was to be teaching, which, in turn, is right across from the post office where I would be sending my mail and using the internet -- I would say something about it being a small town if John Mellencamp hadn't already used the phrase enough times for the whole human race to do without ever using it again entirely. Suffice it to say, I had no need to ever leave a one block radius (though Altaiskoye, of course, doesn't have blocks), should I never have the desire to do so.
Altaiskoye looks pretty much as I expected: a somehow fractionally congruent juxtaposition of almost tsarist-era wooden village houses with folk engravings around the windows in combination with entirely featureless grey Soviet-era buildings, with the occasional exuberant half-naked anthropomorphic statue to pay tribute to the beauty of the human form as it labors towards the second coming of Communism (I forgot to note that, on the train, I had recourse to witness such beautifully Soviet slogans as "Glory to labor!" and "In laboring, man is beautiful and worthy of praise!"). It's a village where East meets West and cosmopolitanism comes into direct conflict with simple village life. Sometimes these contrasts manifest themselves in very subtle ways, and other times you almost have to avert your eyes: a boy in a 50 Cent shirt picking wild strawberries miles away from the nearest house, a satellite dish on a house with a thatched roof, or (as in this picture), a herd of cows grazing in front of a gas station, blocking the path of some irate motorists. The most amazing part to me is actually how quickly I've come to feel at home here... I found myself having an almost out-of-body experience today as I realized how completely alien my surroundings and situation would seem even to friends of mine who've spent time in Moscow or St. Petersburg. Yes, Siberia is a unique, entirely idiosyncratic animal, naturally wild, but, nevertheless, not entirely incapable of submitting to domestication.