Eastbook

This is the eighth time I embark on the London-Perm journey. The first time I chose to be adventurous and travel from the Western tip of Europe to its very Eastern frontier by land, from London to Warsaw by car and from there by train via Moscow. I soon realised this is hugely time-consuming, and now tend to choose the more efficient plane option.

Why do I keep returning? Certainly when I arrived in Perm after a three-day train journey from Warsaw two years ago, I did not think I would be a regular London-Perm traveller. But my year here just made me hungry for more. There’s that, and there’s also the tiny detail that I fell madly in love with a Russian.

Being a frequent customer on the London-Moscow-Perm flights is interesting to say the least. At the check-in desk at London Heathrow, there is often a giggle and the question: “Perm, like the hairstyle?” The worst part of the journey is the transit wait at night in Moscow Domodedovo Airport, where sleeping is virtually impossible due to pounding techno music blasting out from each café. Originally built for long-distance flights across the Soviet Union in the 1960s, the airport still operates largely domestic, east-of-Moscow flights and is a less “impressive” than Moscow Sheremetyevo. Boarding the S-7 two hour flight to Perm with a British passport ensures a longer gaze from security. This time, I had the pleasure to listen to an older Russian man accusing a black guy on the plane of being a terrorist and asking the stewardesses to check his bags as “we want to live”.

 

One can see Perm in all its glory from the plane. Stretching for miles along the Kama River and engulfed by forests, Perm is territorially the third largest city in Russia and the second longest (after Sochi). The Kama is one of Russia’s biggest rivers and in some places one cannot see the other side. The local pride (something that is often repeated to Russian and foreign visitors) is that, in fact, the Volga flows into the Kama, not the other way around. But the Kama does not seem to be as “Russian” as the Volga. It flows through Udmurtia, Tatarstan and the Perm Region, and is often the river of local nationalities, often appearing in Komi, Turkic and Udmurt folklore.

For the romantics, Perm, is the supposed setting of Pasternak’s world-famous act of rebellion against the Soviet regime, “Doctor Zhivago”. One of Stalin’s favourite poets and far too precious to arrest, Boris Pasternak travelled extensively around the Northern Urals during the 1920s – co-existence of emerging industrial giant and traditional Russian life in the Perm region was the basis of many of his short stories. Since the 1990s, there are many places in which the author is remembered in the city, the expensive restaurant “Zhivago” being one of them.

Culturally, after rival city and capital of the Urals Yekaterinburg, Perm is one of the most active cities in Central Russia. Its ballet troop is considered the best in Russia after Moscow’s Bolshoi and Saint Petersburg’s Marinskiy Theatre; this is largely because the latter were evacuated to the Urals during the war. In the artistic sphere, Muscovite art-curator Marat Guelman became director Perm’s Contemporary Art Museum set in an abandoned river station and organised the yearly White Nights Festival.

With this entry, Ola opens the new blog about her Perm adventures.