Volga Voler

Hope you splendid people are not getting tired of all the new input (thank you for the kind replies, it encourages me to continue sharing). It's just that I got to this wonderful home in Volgograd where I found not only an extremely kind host Sergey (Q: "Would you mind if I stay for one more day?" A:"The longer you stay, the better."), but also a workstation to write and the inspiration that it takes. So let's use if for as long as it's here, it's not a given that the road ahead supplies similar conditions any time soon.

Volgograd: a long-stretched city (60K in length!). at the riverbank of the river Volga. Also known as Stalingrad, a name that can still be read on a monument when you enter the city via the M21, but rebranded after glasnost and perestroika. Much is new in Volgograd, although it doesn't look very new anymore. The city was rebuilt after the Second World War, during which it was the pulpit of some of the heaviest fighting that the war brought to the Soviet Union. It changed the city into a battlefield. Hitler had no plans with this city, so he ordered his generals to wipe it off the face of the earth. The maquette that's on display at the panoramic museum for the 'Stalingrad Battle' shows you that they almost managed to do so. Almost, and that's what makes Volgograd a historic turning point. From here onwards the Germans were pushed back, during what must have been a horrible time. A cold winter and hardly any food. Enough corpses lying around though, which made way for cannibalism: a city in ruins and soldiers in despair.

The rebuilding during the years that followed the war seems to have been executed without much plan in mind. The city's vast- and randomness - residential and industrial areas seem to succeed each other haphazardly - alienate you from it when you are there for the first time. Huge flats made of reinforced concrete plates, over ground level tubes, potholes in the crooked pavements: pretty far from cosy. And then there is the omnipresence of war memorials. Example: just opposite the street of Sergey's place there's a jet fighter sticking out of the ground like an enormous steel leave. Most of the art you find in the public space downtown also refers to the 'heroes of the war'. Huge concrete statues express struggle and resistance. Of these Mamaev Kurgan is the most impressive. With 80 metres in height, she towers above the city, holding her sword high up in the air. Follow me.

But once you settle down and find your bearings, you get used to what's lacking esthetically and start to appreciate what is there to be lived. Like yesterday evening, when Sergey took me to one of the traditional banya's (Russian bathhouses) downtown. Cruising in his Japanese jeep, probably the biggest car I've ever sat in, open windows, Dire Straits on the speakers.. Felt like flying.

Banya:

• A spacious changing/relaxing room with benches along its sides and tables and stools in the middle for drinking tea, mineral water, beer, or juice. Decorated with ornaments and plants. Door to the washing room.
  
• A large room with showers, benches made of concrete and decorated with tiles, taps with hot and cold water against the roof-bearing pillars, used to fill tubs in which rods of twigs and flowers are soaked. Wooden buckets with icy water hanging high up against the far wall that can be emptied by pulling the cord that's attached to the rim. Door to the sauna.
• A very hot small room in which Sergey likes to crank up the temperature with 50 degrees at a time, men wearing only felt hats (against the heat), slapping themselves with the rod like it's a virtue. (And it did feel quite good, to be honest.)

3S deluxe, you could say. Don't think I was as clean as last night ever since I left home. Afterwards we visited a small store where they sell freshly brewed beer that expires after a couple of days. Something that doesn't happen 'cause it tastes delicious.

Sergey's also a singer, and when my father was still with us, he played us a song. It's an old Cossacks song about a soldier, who dreams of loosing his hat. When he asks his commander what that might mean, his answer is that the soldier will soon die. Someone who looses his hat in a dream, will loose his head in the real life. An answer that "kills" morale; but that creates a beautiful song.



During one of the nights we saw 'Nebyvalschina', a movie of Sergey Ovcharov, which made a deep impression on me. There's some dialogue in Russian that had to be filled in by Sergey, but most of the movie can be understood by anyone (and I highly recommend 'anyone' to see it). An astonishing motion picture, of which any given still looks like a painting (as illustrated by the cyclebeast with a craving for the sky above, and the felt hat wearing wanderer below).

The OST of EAST is enriched with Mark Knopfler's love potion: music for flying cyclebeasts.