Chapter 11 Vladivostok, Russia, October 2019

          

First Bridge over Golden Bay in Vladivostok.

We arrived in Vladivostok at 7 AM after spending 3 nights and 2 days on the train from Ulan-Ude.  We were both racked as we really did not sleep well.  Monique got little or no sleep.

We were met at the train platform by our Vladivostok guide Juliana.  We unloaded our 4 bags down off the train which stands about 5 feet above the platform down 4 almost vertical steps.  It was a relief for me as this was the last time we would have to schlep our bags off the train.  Vladivostok is our last train station but it was also one of the worst as we had to carry our bags up 4 flights of stairs consisting of about 100 steps! What a country that they cannot install elevators or moving stairways to get up and down in rail stations. I would really think that old or handicapped people would almost not be able to use the rail system as it is now.

We put our bags into a rather dilapidated, right-hand drive car imported used from Japan. We drove to the hotel Azimut and were told that our room would not be available until 2 pm in the afternoon.  Feeling rather grotty after 3 days on the train,  I insisted that the guide make sure we had rooms now so we could wash up and change before doing anything else.  We were sent off to have breakfast and Juliana said she would take care of things. Sure enough, after breakfast, we came back to the lobby and were told that, magically, we could access our rooms now.  Off we went to find that the room that the agency had booked was about the size of the bathroom in some other hotels.  I was in no mood to accept to spend the next 4 days in a room that could hardly hold our trunks let alone ourselves.

I, therefore, marched down to the reception and asked to see the manager, Ivan. I asked him to assign us a bigger room and, at first, he said there were no available other rooms.  I continued to insist and he relented. He said he could provide a small suite room on the business floor for an additional amount of money.  I agreed and paid but the room would only be available by 1 pm.  We used the smaller room to shower and change. Monique decided that she was not feeling up to doing any city tour and stayed in the room while I went off with Juliana to do Vladivostok by day.

What an amazing surprise was Vladivostok! It is a stunningly beautiful city that has a layout that reminded me of San Francisco.  It even has a Golden Bridge which goes across the Golden Bay.  The bridge here is actually very new and much more proactive than the San Francisco bridge.  In fact, there are 3 bridges here all designed by the same French architect.

The city rises up from the ocean with wonderful views of mountains, bays, and bridges in all directions.  This is without a question the most attractive city in Russia. It is a wonderful natural harbor protected from the open Pacific Ocean with deep inlets and bays. It lies at the southern part of a huge body of land near the borders with China and North Korea and to the west of Japan. The map below shows what a wonderful natural harbor this city has,

This city has miles of waterfront and no matter in what direction one goes, one runs into the seaside or waterfront.  There are real hills in this city giving great views in many directions looking out over the ocean or the bay or both.  After weeks of very flat land, except in Krasnoyarsk, it is such a liberating feeling to be able to look out on the ocean and feel the ocean breeze.

Pictures of this stunning city can be seen at:

https://photos.app.goo.gl/UKZD7o79mVREwdkv6

A darker side of this city of about 600,000  is that it has seen some 200,000, mainly young people leave the city for other parts of Russia and other countries.  When communism fell apart here in the early '90s, there was absolute chaos. Inefficient factories that had been held together with string and central funding during the soviet regime were shut and abandoned and thousands lost their sources of income. We traveled outside many of the cities we visited on this trip and the common sight was that of rotting hulks of abandoned factories which serve as reminders of the senseless central planning of the Soviet era.

From stories told, this was a very harsh period when everyone had to fend for him or herself to survive as the state, in fact, did no longer exist.  We had two girls as guides while here and both of them left Russia, one to China for 6 years and the other to New Zealand for 5 years. Both came back for sentimental and family reasons but the majority of those who left will probably never come back as they have established new lives in new places.  This huge gap in the social structure is causing serious problems but the federal government is not addressing the real cause of this exodus which is the lack of opportunities for the young generation.  Instead, the federal government has instituted a program to encourage immigrants from Ukraine and other neighboring countries to come to Vladivostok offering them permanent residence status as well as apartments and other benefits.  This is causing a lot of resentment amongst the local population. Based on a very cursory visit, it would seem that there is little being done to promote local and foreign investment in job-creating enterprises.  One hears only that the bureaucracy is a major hindrance for local entrepreneurs trying to set up small and medium-sized enterprises.

On our second day in Vladivostok, we headed out by car with our guide Juliana to Russki Island.  To reach this huge island one travels about 20 miles over 3 immense bridges which were all designed by the same architects.  They are impressive suspension brides with huge towers supporting hundreds of cables down to the bridge road.  These bridges were installed in the last 10 years. The federal government was about to host the 2012 APEC meeting and decided they needed to have conference facilities for the meeting.  The decision was made to set up such a conference center on Russki Island and the bridges were needed to transport delegates to the conference venue.   The city was transformed by these bridges making it a much more cohesive city around the Golden Bay and giving it access to its hinterland on Russki island.  Subsequently, the federal government, meaning Putin, decided that all universities in Vladivostok should be shut and a new University campus should be built around the conference center.  The result has been that 20,000 students now must travel almost an hour to reach the new campus which is a monstrous complex of some 40  buildings which give one the impression of prison blocks, rather than a university campus, as shown below.

One of the 40 buildings of the new Far Eastern University of Vladivostok.

The complex stretches out only on one side of the road but is at least 3 km long with rows and rows of faculty and dormitory and parking garages strewn helter-skelter. The complex is so big that students must use an internal bus system to get around. There are no facilities for students to buy food or other necessities on this campus and students without cars must rely on city buses to stock up. This trip can take over an hour, at least.  Of course, one of the results of this migration of students out of Vladivostok is that the city is now protected from noisy and protesting students.

It is somewhat similar to what was done in the US when many state universities were set up far from the big cities. The University of Illinois is about 150 miles south of Chicago in the middle of the plains. I used to go there to lecture every year but that place had a real feel of campus as it was built in a circle. It was also self-contained so students could find everything they needed within the campus. I suppose that the idea here was also to keep the students away from the big city so they could concentrate on their studies.

We then decided to visit the Seaquarium which is new on the Island. It is another example of central planning. First, one needs a car to get there or one takes a bus for an hour from town.  Once there, one is met by a huge entrance which looks like the border crossing into East Germany with 2 military dressed guards blocking the entrance to cars. One needs then to walk from the parking lot or the final bus stop, through this menacing gateway and then walk again to await the arrival of a shuttle bus to the Seaquarium.   We did that until we realized that there were so many people waiting for the shuttle bus which comes only every 30 minutes that we would probably not make it on the first bus.  We decided that this was too much and left without going to the seaquarium.

We drove back to the city and had lunch on the top floor of the Meridien hotel which offered magnificent views over the city. We returned later that afternoon to our hotel and called it a day.

On the third day, I arranged for a guide to drive us to a local wildlife refuge about 70 km north of the city. Our new guide, Dina showed up at 9AM  with her right-hand drive used Japanese car. Most cars here in Vladivostok are used Japanese right-hand drive cars that no longer meet specs in Japan and are sold locally. People prefer these cars to local Russian made cars.  The drive to the refuge gave us a chance to see the countryside behind this city. It was a beautiful warm day and the trees here were still green with only a little color showing. The countryside is hilly with large flat areas where there is little farming.

Pictures taken at the refuge can be seen at:


https://photos.app.goo.gl/KFb8Hiw9GXdGvjo5A



This private refuge serves to assist orphaned and injured animals and also as a showcase of local birds and animals which can be found in this part of Russia along the Pacific coast. The most impressive is the Amur tiger which is an enormous animal that is now totally protected in various wildlife refuges set up by the government. These animals almost went instinct from overhunting and poaching but are now well protected and able to maintain their numbers in available wildlife parks that are closed to visitors.  This little park, allows one to see the animals up close and even pet some of them.  It is kept fairly wild so the animals can feel in their natural habitat.

On our return to Vladivostok, we visited the Yul Brynner park and statue. Brynner was born in Vladivostok in 1920. It is quite a handsome sculpture. It is on a pedestal in front of the house where the Brynner family lived.

Today, was the day for me to do some research on my grandfather's operations here in Vladivostok. As I mentioned earlier, in the late 19th century my grandfather started up the first whaling operations based here in Vladivostok.  With a loan from his fellow naval cadet the Tsar, he purchased a few boats which he outfitted for whaling and he set up a whale processing plant at Gadaymak a few miles down the coast from Vladivostok.  He operated the company until 1904 when the Japanese made a surprise attack on Vladivostok and stole all the ships in the harbor including those of my grandfather.

Through a contact that Rock Brynner, son of Yul Brynner, had given me, I had set up an appointment to meet with the deputy director of the Arseniev museum in Vladivostok, Angelika Petruk.  At the appointed time, I entered the museum and asked to see Madame Petruk. Immediately, an armed guard came up to me and indicated that he would accompany me to her office. We climbed three stories and I was met by Angelika's assistant, Vassily.

Angelika received me warmly and showed me 4 pictures of my grandfather's operations which she had found in the museum archives. She then said I should get a book about my grandfather written by Elena Sholovova.  She then phoned around and found a bookstore not far away which confirmed they had the book.  Angelika then had her assistant walk me over to the book store where I was able to buy 2 copies of a 200-page book all about my grandfather. It was quite a feeling to walk into this book store and see a pile of books on the main table with the picture of my paternal grandfather.

The book is in Russian but I will undertake to translate it over the next year as part of my continuing Russian language studies.  The book has a picture of my grandfather on the cover and various family pictures including one of my father's.  It should be fun to read through this well-researched book. A picture of the front cover can be seen below:

It was a successful afternoon and I enjoyed meeting the fine staff of the local museum and very happy I was able to find the book on my grandfather. Sadly, Elena Sholoxova, the lady who wrote the book died, in 2017.

After buying my books, I walked by the Yul Brynner park.  I walked up the hill to our Azimut hotel for our last evening in Russia.

The next morning Julianna picked us up at the hotel and we drove to the Vladivostok airport which is almost an hour out of town.  We checked in for our Aeroflot flight to Narita in Tokyo.