September 16 - Khabarovsk
Cold and rainy morning. Everyone is telling us to expect cold weather
soon. Can't wait. There wasn't a whole lot we could do in the morning, so Lisa had some fun
scouring the personal ads in "Konkurent" ("The
Competitor"), a local Khabarovsk newspaper.
The weather cleared up
enough in the afternoon for us to go out and meet some people. One of the themes we want to
speak to people about during this trip are the Russian presidential elections scheduled for
next June. With no apparent front-runner at this point and a volatile political scene
brewing in Moscow, the stage is set for an anything-goes '96 campaign that could potentially
change the fate and course of Russia.
Olga, a woman we found feeding birds on a street corner, Grisha and Faya, both retired doctors who have been married for 50
years, and Ivan, a retired driver who now works as a street cleaner
to supplement his pension, gave us their differing views on the elections.
September 17 - Khabarovsk
We had hoped to be on the 6:00pm train to Birobidzhan tonight but we didn't finish up our
editing in time. It turned out for the better. We had a great dinner with Larisa and her
boyfriend Victor who just came into town from St. Petersburg. They put out a spread of
sausage, cheese, calamari, vegetables meat and potatoes, followed by a chocolate cake that
Lisa and Larisa concocted from a package of "Western Family" brownie mix. Victor poured
copious servings American Eagle vodka which I thought was bit ironic drinking vodka from
Minnesota here in the country that produces and consumes the most vodka in the world. To
prove that it was having no effect on her, Lisa ran through the series of standard sobriety
tests given by American police officers. She did fairly well but I don't think any decent
cop would have let her get back in the car.
There is a 7:45am train leaving for Birobidzhan in the morning but 12:30pm train is looking
a lot more realistic. In any case we should be there by tomorrow evening.
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