Road to Nowhere

The season of the flying “riffraff” (10 V-24 V)

After almost three weeks in the Federation we tend to generalise, looking for the wider perspective, putting up a card house - our Russia - from the details.

Dierewnia (a village): must be wooden (with some exceptions, like Oblast Kaluska), in the colour of cobalt, golden swords, turquoise, fresh grass, with richly decorated window frames. Spread along one or two roads (tracks). With public wells painted by a self-taught artist, drunk fences, hyperactive dogs, home gardens, goats and sheep feeding around. Some villages are godforsaken, dying settlements, ready to become “ghost towns” soon (7 thousand settlements have become abandoned over the previous decade), in time taken over by the nature spreading in the desert. Others are busy as anthills, with a shop (magazin) in the centre, children running around and babuszkas sitting by their houses, having their headscarves tied - but not in the “pin-up girl” fashion, babuszkas sitting: in the stairs, benches, tires, car seats, stools, simple chairs with crooked backrests.

Gorod (town, not Moscow, not Saint Petersburg, not Kazan, the one in the European part, front, remembering Wermaht). Always the same elements: main Lenin Avenue (or Dzierżyński, Marks, 9th of May, Red Army); the main square with Lenin in the centre of the urban space; remains of Kremlin - some walls, some towers, much ado about nothing; a sobor with a breathtaking iconostasis - Western European baroque looks cheap in comparison; several Orthodox Churches in which the wind is howling; Stalin buildings; endless blocks of flats - “rabbit houses”; hectares of parks; capitalism and social realism, sacral realism and street chaos, urban buzz. The bigger gorod, the higher stage of westernisation, the more money, the more like everywhere.

It doesn’t matter if that’s a town or a village, if there is a million or inhabitants or just three of them; you will always find there: a mound of the immortal, lists of the fallen, monuments of the gold or silver “gieroys”, mortars and planes, howitzers - epic army surplus, corroded but painted over, waiting for getting filled with oil, when the time comes.

The season of the flying and crawling riff-raff has become, it bites, stings, sucks the life-giving forces, injects toxins. It’s the time of: black-flies, flies, horseflies, bumblebees, wasps, and the flying monsters we’re unable to name. It’s the time of the beasts - mosquitoes. Once, a friend asked us: “Are you able to live in such a way that 45 seconds is enough to pack and leave where your eyes take you?” We answer: “Not yet, we’re still not as precise and quick as Roman legionnaires, who put up their fortified Castra before the twilight, but we’re fit enough to limit

the number of the bites to several.”

There is still genius loci over Yasnaya Polyana, the one that Tolstoy fed on like on candy floss. He lived, created and meditated there. We’re wandering from tree to tree and are not surprised, that War and Peace was written. Leo, with his life philosophy, inspired equally the pioneers of kibbutz movements, McCandless’s “Supertramp,” hippie communities, return-to-nature advocates, seekers of truth and Absolute, and he did that to such an extend that at the end of his life he wanted to give up his fortune to the local people (his numerous family did not agree to that), that his monumental statue in Tula each year gets closer to the distillery several dozen kilometres away, that he lies in a grave made of black soil covered with fir branches; and that he used to write “call a spade a spade.” We do that - the journey is puling us up more and more.

Our culinary expectations are finally met. We had to go as far as to The Mari El Republic, famous of powerful shamanism, endless forests, unapproachable natives from the north, speaking one of the Ugro-Finnish languages, but, above all, famous of babooshkas selling home-made products in the stalls built on the roadsided in a hurried manner. We feast on hot dumplings: with “hartoszki”, with fried cabbage, with egg and chive; Volga hot smoked fish with white and delicate meat that melts in the mouth, pickled red garlic, salted tomatoes in barrels. The composition is completed by whey with peach juice and Chuvash kvas.

Dima is 28, he is a Chuvash, a descendant of the proud Sarmatians glittering with gold Scythians, Huns, the children of Attila. The DNA is present in the narrow mouth, triangular jaw, eyes reminding of sunflower seeds. He lives in Czebosary, the vibrant capital of Chuvashia, by the several-kilometre wide Volga. Five years ago Dima performed the obligatory military service in Mari El Republic on the other side of the river. The 12 months turned him into a mental and physical wreck, just like the K-141 Kursk he reached the bottom. He started his searches - yoga, meditations, local shamans and healers. That is how he meets Anton, a 44 year-old former shoemaker who had died several years before. Now, after the resurrection, he lives in a village near the M7 highway connecting Moscow and Kazan, he heals, paints and develops his psychic skills he discovered after his death thanks to his Polish grandmother (who used to be a powerful healer) that has always been inside him.

Today Dima is Anton’s student. Anton learns Dima how to heal himself, live a simple life that is immersed in welfare, close to the nature, drawing cosmic energy spread between heaven and earth. They have sessions every day in forests, by the lakes and in the fields.

We wish to meet Anton. That is, Krzysiek wants that, Iwona is not sure, she dislikes self proclaimed messiahs. On the other hand - there is an opportunity to meet doctor Wilczur, a soulful healer, self-taught storyteller living with the bees.

We leave the town with Dima (eventually, only Krzysiek does), approximately 40 minutes away, we listen to the bard singing about “the ground giving birth to Slavic children,” the orange sun reminding of a dry kumquat melts with a post-glacial, strongly sculptured landscape, the atmosphere is unreal with kitschy undertones. Before we meet Anton, we stop in a small monastery, take baths in freezing water of 4 degrees Celsius (a gas dispatcher we met at the station recommended some moonshine “for health”) that comes from the miraculous spring, and then slowly we walk around the small church on the hill and the place of worship.

And that’s all, basically. The rest is not worth mentioning. Anton turns out an uninteresting interlocutor, who uses common psycho techniques, who talks about the healing power of old coins, his own daubs, but mainly - about a Canadian company selling dreams about the health and the youth. Pity - we expected to meet a person speaking the world’s languages, and we met a dealer of Amway, Herbalife, merino duvets and telemarketing magician.

Dima is pale and he slightly slouches, with often absent eyes, but he feels better, better with each day.

It is about 10 pm, we have 60 kms to Kazan, we are in a wooden (can it be any different? it’s Russia, after all) shack, right on the border between El Mari Republic and The Republic of Tatarstan. We’re brewing coffee, talking, reading, watching fireworks over the forest - the Russian nouveau riche are having fun by the Volga, we’re fiddling with the bikes. In order to miss the craziness on the roads to “the third capital” of Russia, we set on the road at 1 am, lighting our way with narrow beams of light, we’re enjoying the fresh air. We enter the “Stambul by the Volga” at sunrise, with the first rays of the sun and watering cans.

The city is impressive, Tatar petro-rubles are present from its edges. Roads which are 8-10 lines wide, modern blocks, size obsession, mosques and orthodox churches, sports arenas, lawn sprinklers, white SUVs. This is the first time we feel we’re getting away from what is familiar. We are in a miniature park “sheikland”, with a hint of the Black Sea orient and a pinch of Volga greenery.

We fall asleep at 7 am on a bench, in less then an hour we will be woken up by the burning “white sun.”

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“We gave them missiles, they gave us chai” (30 IV-10 V)

On the first days of May the temperature dropped below 0º Celsius, during the days it wasn’t higher than 5-8º. Stiff from the cold and dry Arctic air we were struggling on Lithuanian asphalt, Latvian dirt roads and first Russian kilometres. There were some abnormalities: it was hailing, snowing, and we had to cycle regardless of the weather and the road - no matter if that was a highway to Moscow, 30kms of Lithuanian polygon where the wheels get stuck in sand, and the posts on both sides of the 3-metre forest road set the lines where the shelling ended; or if that was an “old Smoleńsk road”, the one Napoleon had taken with his soldiers, loyal to the death, to march to Moscow in 1812, the one some locals claim does not exist.

On paper (a map) Pribaltic has been in trouble, since the very beginning. Put in between Slavdom and Germania (there’s no time to reflect upon history, Varangians crossing the land, military orders, Poles, Red Army comrades, etc.), it tried to endure. The fate of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia are not uniform, let’s not put Pribaltic together as one, but being between the rock and a hard place is not so bad, and that’s clearly visible. Scandinavian love of nature, simplicity and protestant (without religious meaning) modesty in space management overlap with the Slavic romantic spirit, and the rich colours on wooden houses. Endless forests and lakes, numerous camp-sites and leisure places, nature paths, national parks, it all makes Lithuania and Latvia perfect destination for travelling, and for the non-tourists it gives some balance, and what is most important there is the breathtaking nature and traditional behaviours.

Those who live in the Third Polish Republic like to look at the West and look for inspiration and role models, we say - keep your eyes open.

We sometimes feel less brave in Russia. Wide, smooth Russian highways between endless fields and forests, yellow school buses, trucks with long, straight fronts passing us here and there, massive pick-ups, and limos with darkened windows. Luckily, only sometimes - usually we are passed by Ladas and middle class cars, just like everywhere in Poland, Spain or Hungary.

Imagine: a sky over a “district” town of several thousand inhabitants is covered with storm clouds. There is an ever-living Lenin on the main square, looking at a bright future. Flower beds are dead, although it’s just the beginning of May. The curbs are painted white so it’s hard not to look at them and ignore the patched streets going different ways. The cinema is visited only by the wind and spiders spinning their webs. On the horizon, above the dark lake nearby, there is a brick scarecrow with empty eyes - ages ago that was a factory-Stakhanovite that used to produce 3 times more than expected. There is a boy going from the meadows to the town, he is carrying a jerry-can, fuel squelching inside, he is walking and whistling, burned ground behind him, hundreds of burned ground behind him. It will be soon green again, but we can fell, that there is deathunderneath it.

We’re like children, trying everything out, we’re tasting everything and discussing new flavours. When we were in Lithuania, we were delighted with Lithuanian toasted bread with hard cheese Dzugas, washed down with amber beer - Svyturys Baltijos, herrings, small pieces of cheesecake of various flavours and with chocolate icing, or with a cold beet soup. In Latvia, we were feasting by the shops and in parks, eating cottage cheese with raisins and vanilla. In Russia we’re eating Ms’s Walentyna blintzes stuffed with peach filling, spicy squash “caviar”, cranberries in powdered sugar, we’re drinking tarhun and Russian chai (the so-called Russian chai, one of the myths finally deconstructed by Igor from Smoleńsk - chai is from India: “We gave them missiles, they gave us chai, we gave them planes, they gave us chai, we gave them tanks, they gave us chai”).

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We’re happy to leave Poland (27-29 IV)

Something makes us want to go, the impossibility to stay in the familiar reality, the need to try the new, the interest in new tastes. Before we left Bombla, we had the opportunity to taste morels in cream made by our hosts. Morels, strictly protected, did not bring a lump to our throats, when they freely grow in the garden in Podlasie, they would anyway end up under the mower’s blades. The fungus is really aesthetic, with a fair stem on which you see brains rising from the mother-mycelium, empty, with no hippocampus, filled with air, gossamer and cobwebs. For dessert, we got frozen strawberries with fresh crème and young nuts liqueur.

On the next day wild countries were waiting for us, sparsely marked with human settlements - basin of Biebrza and Augustów Primeval Forest. The nature is seducing us, but we do not understand it, we’re just like the violators of the sacred coming from an urban ant farm, our reactions to forest dub-step and opera accents of a “dark night” are both euphoric and fearful.

Fear hath a hundred eyes, the nature has the face of BBC and the voice of David Attenborough. There’s no need to be smart, we just have to get used to (let ourselves to get used to it) and get back to the trees. This is the first time our wheels get stuck in the sand, and our speed is no different than the speed of a fit hiker or a soldier in full armour. When there is no cars’ humming, the imagination can flourish, the bunkers from the World War II tightly covered with plants are full of babble and preparations for the attack; Hubal’s soldiers in 1940 are still hiding behind the trees preparing another trap, whispering phrases we do not understand (Sorry Poland), like (the inscription found on the Bernardine’s cemetery in Vilnus): “It is easy to talk about Poland, more difficult it is to work for her, much more difficult it is to die for her, the most difficult it is to suffer;” the victims of the July massacre of 1945 are inefficiently escaping their assassins; the labourers are tiresomely digging the fragments of Augustów Canal in the twenties of the 19th century, developing the vision of general Prądzyński, a hero from Berezyna, constantly waving poisonous mosquitoes away and sinking in mud.

North-east from Augustów Primeval Forest there is Sejnenszczyzna. A borderland than belongs to Podlasie, not to Mazury, with culture closer to Grodno or Vilnus, not Warsaw, neither Polish, nor Lithuanian, being on its own and for its own purposes, a microcosm, with claustrophobic and sel-sufficient society, slightly out of the main events of the history, because existing in spite of everything. Its centre is in Sejny. A settlement founded, according to a legend, in the 15th century by three monks (a unique sculpture of Mary is preserved to these days in a basilica), a century later it became a town with irregular development. It flourished in 17th century, when the Dominicans brought there build up an impressive monastery, and, at the same time, invite the Jews to settle down by financing (!) building of the synagogue. Despite the inhabitants’ paranoia, as a cultural anthropologist and our benefactor was convincing us, the town has preserved its previous liveliness: there is an organ festival every year, a Borderland of Arts, Cultures, Nations Centre, best jazzmen have concerts there and a local klezmer band is admired by those who play in Szeroka in Kraków. How can it be surprising that “'The Captive Mind” has liberated itself here. No surprise there. It’s enough to breathe the air of Sejny and look at the green curves softly marked by the Demiurge-moraine: “On the river bank, spread on the grass, Just as long long ago, I’m sailing bark boats.”

We’re happy to leave Poland, because now it will be only more difficult, because the gates when you’re away count (almost) double. 

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“but it's quite far from here” (19-26 IV)

We're gone. Thousand of thoughts. A lot of stuff swimming around in our heads: “We are looking for our great adventure, recklessly riding along into the unknown, au blanc de carte, (…) and although we will not discover neither America, nor even the smallest piece of Earth, as there was already someone everywhere, arriving in a carriage, on a mule, donkey, foot, horse... We will not beat any record and we will not do anything out of ordinary, but we will have an experience of two hotheads and adventures.”

(paraphrase of My boy, motorbike and I”).

8 days, more than 7 voivodeships, several thousand calories and a bunch of observations.

First, through Silesia, Frog Land, towards Czechowice Dziedzice – former capital of matches and the house of Jacek Łaszczok, towards Oświęcim – the kingdom of Carp and the white star, and towards Wadowice. The Beskidy mountains were tempting with their peaks. First two days meant getting

through foothills south from Kraków – Kalwaria Zebrzydowska, Myślenice up to Bochnia. Then through sweet Małopolska with its orchards, Kantor's chair and young spring. Up and down, up and down, we pedal and pedal on, kilometre-long ways up, too short ways down, and that eastern wind, always blowing against us, butter down, “it's blowing, blowing and blowing me down.”

On the first day, on the 70. km., we asked a boy for a way to a village 5 kms from us, he looked, thought and answered: “go straight on, and right... but it is quite far from here.”

North from Bochnia there is Poland of a certain sort: flat, rural, tiny, with triple-row fields, with heavy cumulus clouds, with the silence, with barking dogs, with dogs sleeping in the sun, in the shade, under the fences, seemingly deserted, wilderness, with the church towers just like at Proust's, with painted farms (Zalipie), and the traces of the 1st battlefront (a model cemetery of Austrian and Russian soldiers in Otfinów), marked by rivers, along the wild Vistula river, as far as Sandomierz.

The old mixes with the new, collapsing Poland with Poland repainted and powdered. Iconography - generally the same, differing in detail - Holly Maries and/or crosses, boards of the saint European Union and adverts, adverts, adverts, and on them Wenex, Bramex, Iwex. Pomtex, Roletex, Protex, Limex, etc.

Then down with the Vistula, through the white Kazimierz, as though not Polish, ascetic, visually consistent, a little like a façade, dummy, cepelia, that gets alive with every step of tourists and children that leave buses when on school trips; we went towards Nałęczów, full of visitors, and a green Lublin Upland, again, up and down, up and down, roller-coaster.

Painted by the sun, going along clothes templates, with lips chapped from the wind, with eyes half-closed from the big blue, we look as if we were travelling for months, not just a few days. People do not pay much attention to us, some glance with interest at our saddlebags and loaded bikes - most probably those, who cycle themselves, or maybe the other way round - those who do not cycle and cannot see much sense in it.

Over the Bug there is Poland we haven’t known before, the “Belorussian Poland,”, with wooden houses, blue Orthodox churches, rye moonshine, Orthodox crosses. Poland of Podlesie (literally - Podlesie means “under the woods”), Białowieża, with Hajnówka as its centre; strange, vibrating, chaotic as a bordering town, with Zenek’s graphics - a naive, self-taught painter of an unusual imagination; with “open shutters,” with vibrant and ever-changing Białystok.

The border (borders) is so close, only Warmia and Mazury left, no more than 48 hrs, and we will cross our first, but not really, not literally, we cross one every day.