Far east ... a war veteran dances on Victory Day this year.Credit: Reuters
At the unfashionable end of the Trans-Siberian railway line, Louise Southerden loses all sense of direction.
The locals say it's like San Francisco. And yes, Vladivostok is a hilly port city with trams and sea fog. But anyone who's been to both places would agree: that's where the similarities end. You won't find a Bolshevik Square in San Fran, for one thing, or a Soviet submarine lying like a beached whale on the dock of the bay. Nor will you find sourdough bakeries in Vladivostok, or a lively fisherman's wharf or a suspension bridge across the water to more desirable real estate - although there is one under construction.
Heading to the city centre from the airport, my hopes are high. Forest flanks the highway and, at the harbour, seagulls fly between Soviet-era apartment blocks, housing the city's 800,000 residents. It's my first time in Russia and I'm keen to make the most of my 24-hour stopover.
It begins at Hotel Amursky Zaliv. Because it's built against a hill, the entrance is on the roof. From there, an open staircase descends to level seven, where I find the lobby and a concrete terrace overlooking the windsurfers and yachts on Amur Bay.
I take the lift to my room, on level three, where a curving corridor lit with knee-high halogen bulbs reminds me of an ocean liner. The marine theme continues on the curving walls hung with a dreamlike series of framed prints. There are bay views from every level but breakfast is inexplicably served in a windowless bunker that doubles as a discotheque, judging by its silver wallpaper. Here guests can eat their fill of Fruit Loops, cold toast and eggs and rice-oatmeal to a pumping soundtrack of Russian techno music, even at this early hour. I decide to begin my explorations immediately.
When I say "explorations", I mean aimless wanderings, although I do have one goal: an ATM (the hotel is unable to change money and, because it's Saturday, the banks are closed). Two of the many policemen milling about seem to not understand my request for assistance. Nor can they help me find ul Svetlanskaya, the main street, which you'd think would be fairly obvious. I do accidentally locate a cash machine, however, and a pedestrian mall, where I pop into the Five O'Clock Cafe to spend some of my new roubles before it closes for the day, well before lunchtime.
What's going on? I ask the English-speaking owner, from Manchester. "The president [Dmitry Medvedev] is coming," he says. Sometime today, he adds, though no one knows when. He directs me to the main street where I find GUM, Vladivostok's oldest department store, occupying a once-grand building with high ceilings, tiled floors and mirrors on the stairwells.
GUM's un-airconditioned rooms are stifling in the summer heat but the shopping's not bad - if you're after crossbows (and anything else for hunting and the outdoors) or matryoshka dolls. The latter are particularly plentiful. There are classic, rosy-cheeked peasant-woman matryoshkas, stern-looking Russian Orthodox Mary ones, Beatles ones, even presidential ones. Popular after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the latest version has Medvedev on the outside, encasing his predecessors: Putin, Yeltsin, Gorbachev, Stalin and, finally, a tiny Lenin, father of the USSR.
One floor up, Terranova, a Russian clothing brand, is having a sale. Women rummage through bargain bins. Having just spent two weeks in France, where even the dogs have style, I find Vladivostok's relative lack of it refreshingly creative. It's not that women here don't care what they wear; they clearly do. It's just that Russian fashion, here at least, appears to have no rules. Satin rhinestone-bejewelled pants, frills, boob tubes, leopard-print blouses and perilously high heels can, indeed must, be worn simultaneously. It's the fashion of un-fashion.
Vladivostok isn't short on attractions - including Yul Brynner's house (where the star of The King and I was born in 1920), an aquarium and 130 subterranean forts built between the 1880s and early 1900s to defend the port against Japanese and American forces.
But finding them can be tricky.
Seeking a postcard view of Vladivostok, I head for the funicular to Eagle Hill lookout. No sooner have I stepped off the main drag, however, than I am irretrievably lost in back alleys and building sites. I know getting lost is an ideal way to discover the essence of a city but in the rush to squeeze as much into what little time I have I invariably try to be organised. I can read maps. I match symbols on signs like a Cold War code-breaker. But Vladivostok has other ideas.
I give up on my map and try instead to find something resembling a cable car (temporarily forgetting, in my disoriented state, that funiculars are cable-railways). There's one problem: I have to stop walking to look up, lest I step in a mud puddle. Vladivostok might be a go-ahead city, but here it's all wooden houses, crumbling concrete stairs and planks over bogs. Footpaths become tracks fringed with weeds, or peter out altogether in patches of dandelions.
But it's daytime and I'm not in danger. I try to relax. Walking through a leafy park, I spy a small Russian Orthodox church with a golden onion-dome on top. The young priest standing outside doesn't seem to understand when I ask for directions to the funicular, so I ask if I can go into his church. "Da, da," he says and ushers me inside, pointing to two cardboard boxes overflowing with headscarves and wrap skirts - for making oneself decent if you're female and happen to arrive bare-headed and in jeans, as I do. Dressed like a matryoshka doll myself now, I stand with the rest of the congregation in a candlelit room. A choir sings its glory to God in a language I don't understand but I'm touched all the same.
Just as I'm starting to enjoy being lost, I see what looks to be either the funicular station, or the facade of a high-security prison. Inside, I'm relieved to find a waiting carriage. I pay the surly babushka 10 roubles (about 40¢) and take a seat. There are other passengers, families and couples mostly, but everyone is silent, waiting, stoic.
Finally, with a lurch, the carriage eases out of the station and the views are wonderful - for a minute. That's how long it takes to reach the end of the track, which is not at the top of Eagle Hill where I'd expected it to be. The other passengers seem to know where they're going so I follow them: through a pedestrian tunnel under a freeway in construction, past road workers, along dirt tracks until, 20 minutes after disembarking, we're at the lookout. It's worth the effort and although the sky is grey and the outlook hazy, the harbour is vast and convoluted, like Sydney's without the high-rise buildings.
Now I have my bearings, I have no trouble finding my next destination: the waterfront war memorial and an S-class submarine used during World War II and now lying high and dry beside railway tracks. Inside, all the signs are in Russian but the photos depicting life as a Soviet submariner are interesting; two other foreign tourists and I take turns peering through the periscope like Sean Connery in The Hunt for Red October.
Following the train tracks, I come to Vladivostok's main station. It's elegant but rather modest considering it's the eastern end of the Trans-Siberian Railway, still the longest train line in the world; it takes six days to travel 9289 kilometres from Moscow to here, crossing seven time zones along the way.
It's almost 8.30pm by the time I get back to the hotel and decide to eat in at its Chinese restaurant, which is not as unlikely as it sounds. Vladivostok lies at the southern end of a finger of land with the Sea of Japan (East Sea) to the east and China about 50 kilometres to the west; in the early 1900s, Chinese immigrants outnumbered Russians here.
There's a Saturday-night party vibe in the restaurant, with disco music and people talking loudly above it. A teenage waitress shows me to the only place left, at an empty table for eight, with a lazy susan in the middle. She hands me the English menu but from there it's downhill faster than a funicular. My meal comes in dribs and drabs; the rice is cold before the main arrives and "Atlantic salmon with wasabi" turns out to be still-frozen sashimi arranged ikebana-style on a bowl of ice, but I'm too hungry to complain and it's too late to go elsewhere.
Falling into bed soon after, the only advantage of dining in the hotel restaurant, I fall into a deep sleep. I manage to ignore the moans of love-makers next door, heavy footfalls in the room above and throbbing music from the nightclub downstairs - until I'm woken about midnight by what sounds like exploding shells landing in front of the hotel. Has the Cold War restarted? No, it's only fireworks. The president has arrived at last.
FAST FACTS
Getting there
Korean Air has a fare to Vladivostok for about $2250 low-season return from Sydney and Melbourne, including tax. You fly to Seoul (about 11hr), where you spend the night at the airline's expense, then to Vladivostok (2hr 35min). Australians require a visa for a stay of up to 30 days and you must have an invitation from a registered Russian-approved travel agency.
Staying there
Vladivostok Hotel and Hotel Amursky Zaliv, both at 9-10 Naberezhnaya Street, have rooms with breakfast from $89; see hotels.com. Foreigners must also pay 30 roubles ($1) for paperwork on check-in.
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