Issue #24/49, October 10 - 22, 1998  

Welcome to the second edition of the Dreary Planet Guide to Russia. Dreary Planet is geared toward the seasoned backpacker who doesn't shy away from difficult terrain, but rather seeks it. Why's that? Because he knows that poverty-stricken countries engender desperate populations, thus making for excellent bargain opportunities, as well as some vital self-esteem adjustments. The Dreary Planet is here to help guide our readers towards those two goals: self-fulfillment at a rock-bottom price, with a dreary backdrop. Unlike our competitors, we shy away from the common world of bars and nightclubs to lead you to the most out-of-the-way churches and monasteries that our team of top-notch dreary writers could find. Because we know that nothing makes you feel more culturally enriched than seeing as many churches as possible in as short as time as possible in towns as inconvenient to reach as possible.

The world financial crisis has been a particular boon for Dreary Planet, as poverty, misery, and super discounts are becoming the norm the world over. Nowhere is this more evident than in Moscow, which collapsed from one of the most expensive, decadent cities on earth into one of the century's great bargains. So follow us into the mysterious, enchanting, dirt-cheap world of post-crisis Moscow. Zip up your backpack, lace up those Timberlands, adjust your his 'n hers wire-rimmed glasses, and let's go!

Meet the authors of the Dreary Planet Guide to Russia

John Lowball
John comes from a perennially dying country that still calls itself Great Britain. He loves to travel to Russia because a few days there is all the medicine he needs to feel proud of his native Newcastle. John sports the single lamest hairdo that our staff of aging hippies has ever seen-part Caesar, part soccer, set off by a scraggly beard-which has led many people to ask him "Has anyone told you you look like Shaggy?" But careful with your Shaggy jokes, because John has a short fuse. If you see him turn beet red and hyperventilating, grab a blunt object and back off! Since John is almost always stoned on someone else's weed, his eyes appear lizard-like and his prose contains a lot of really uninteresting asides that keep our editors working overtime. John's wife, Karen Pfister, turned lesbian a year after their marriage. She tolerates John because he doesn't ask for anything except the channel changer and the right to play his Jackson Browne records at mutually acceptable volume levels. Karen lives in the master bedroom with her lover, Petra, and their pet pit bull, Trish, while John sleeps in the converted basement bedroom. John thinks that his wife and Petra's relationship is a beautiful thing, and besides, it lets him wander back to Mother Rus and her many churches and museums without feeling guilty for leaving his wife alone. As John himself would say, the most important thing is trekking for good bargains, an experience that allows him to deflect his thoughts from pondering a future of growing old with Karen and Petra. And Trish.

Nick Slider
Nick was born and raised in Hoboken, New Jersey, but he asked us to write that he was born and raised in New York City because it sounds better. Nick's PR photo may have you believing that he's a handsome pin-up model, but up-close and in person, we know he looks like a pervert's David Remnick, with a sun-poisoned complexion, and that he measures, when fully erect, a respectable five feet six inches tall-with heels. Moreover, our staff has come to realize that Nick is yet another in a series of self-absorbed East Coast Americans who believes his opinions are profound. He subscribes to George, the New Yorker and Details, although he claims that the latter isn't as good as it used to be. Many of us at the Dreary Planet would rather spend a week locked up in John Lowball's VW van than an afternoon sipping Earl Grey and listening to Slider nonchalantly brag about his life's milestones. He has spent three years traveling around Asia, shagging peach-fuzzed girls and boys in poverty-stricken regions, while denouncing pedophilia in passionate free-lance articles and barroom pick-up banter with Western girls. He now spends most of his time traveling and writing, accompanied by Ki Phan, his nine-year-old Cambodian "valet" who accompanied him in his travels throughout Russia.

George Felch
George was born in California and he wears a goatee. We begged George not to force us to run this photo, but he insisted that it made him appear "writerly" and he described his expression as a "piercing gaze." In reality, this photo hides the fact that his left ear lobe is melted and folded over the ear canal, the result of a traumatic pancake-grill accident from childhood. George has lived in many countries, including California and Texas. His wife, Sandy, had a mastectomy after being misdiagnosed with breast cancer last year. Sandy begged us not to print her private medical history, but we wanted to make light of her because we thought her mastectomy was funny. Her breast, which now resembles the twisty-tip of a freshly wrapped sausage, has been a source of great pain for George, which is why he took this assignment. He requested that we send him as far away from his wife as possible, to a land where he'd heard the girls are beautiful, voluptuous, and hungry, and where, most important of all, all sorts of difficult to locate churches had barely seen a single Westerner.

From the Authors

John Lowball. John would like to thank everybody who helped him and would like to apologize in advance to his wife Karen for accidentally leaving the toilet seat up two Mondays ago. He also wanted to add that Boris Krupin still owes him 55 rubles for the Corona beer he bought him at Propaganda. "When I told him I'd buy him a beer, I figured he'd buy me one, too. Which he didn't, so he owes me. Russians are like that."

Nick Slider. Thanks so much to John Lowball for meeting me at the airport and letting me and Ki Phan spend a few hours alone in the bathroom before trekking out on the town. "Ya tebya lublyu, Rossiyu."

George Felch. Special thanks to Svetlana Vladimirovna for feeding me during that one particularly harsh week. This kind woman offered the flesh of her deceased son while we waited out the cold snap in Ivanovo. Next time I'd suggest going a little easier on the salt, but otherwise, no part of hide was wasted, and I'll never forget your hospitality. I'll pay you the $75 for your son's flesh, as I promised, once I get the expense approved by the Dreary Planet accounting dept.

B>Warning & Request!
Things change-prices go up, train schedules change, food runs out, foreigners get tied up on long ropes, set on fire, and dumped in the Yauza-nothing stays the same. So if you find things better or worse, or if you develop strange diseases or find any really out of the way churches or museums you could tip us off on, drop us a line and let us know. If your letter is super good, we'll give you a free refrigerator magnet in the shape of an "A" with a circle around it. We really are interested in hearing from you, because we're just regular middle-class hippies like yourselves, with romantic dreams of wandering poverty.

Introduction

Much has changed in Russia since our last Dreary Planet Russia Guide was published four months ago. Since then, another 30% of the population is at or near death, more than 275 foreigners have died while trying to swim the Yauza with burning tires smelting into their shoulders, reducing the once-thriving expat community to a mere 29 souls (including six Vietnamese and two African students), and food supplies have been reduced to whatever moves in front of you. Small vermin, birch bark, and snow have become the local delicacies for the man on the street. This doesn't mean that all's bad. In fact, for the intrepid trekker and shrewd bargain-hunter, this could be one of the best times to visit Russia. According to the Communist daily Pravda's English-language editor, Geoff Winestock, there are signs that the Russian economy is finally turning the corner as the effects of the Zyuganov anti-crisis program bear fruit. In a Pravda editorial printed just before this edition's deadline, Winestock, a respected bitter critic of global capitalism, wrote, "Foreign companies must invest money in Russian enterprises without placing profit as their top priority. While it is true that Western companies will freely invest money where profit is most likely to be realized, that is no reason why they should not invest heavily into Russian enterprises."

And speaking of fruit, if you can find any during your stay here, you can trade it for nearly anything you'd like-an apartment, a television, even jewels. Bargains are the word for you Dreary Planet travelers, and bargains there be in Russia as it makes the painful transition from a brutal Western-backed oligarchy into an lawless, feudal wasteland.

This guidebook divides Russia's territory into two parts: Moscow and St. Petersburg, the twin pillars of Russia's mighty empire; and Get Me Outta Here!, which covers the remainder of Russia's vast, majestic territory, from Kaliningrad to Kamchatka, spanning eleven time zones and a significant part of two continents.

Moscow is a really big city and the capital of Russia. The Kremlin is located there. The famous onion-domed church of St. Basil's is next to the Kremlin, but it has been spoiled by an abundance of tourists, and is not as pristine as it was, say, 400 years ago. St. Petersburg is father to the north and has a lot of museums and churches. It has fewer people. There are fewer churches in St. Petersburg, but more museums, so it's still almost as exciting for the Dreary Planet traveler as Moscow.

This is a land of snow and cold and Russian people who speak in a distinct, difficult to understand language. A composite of the extravagant glories of old Russia and the drab legacies of the Soviet era, right up to the heady days of this decade's Western-backed oligarchy and its trademark Turkish architectural style and Georgian largess, Russia is home to the mysteries of the Orthodox Church, millions of crash-dieting peasants, and to the "Newest Russians," the generation who lost everything last August, including their pagers. Its people, in the words of our rivals at Lonely Planet, "love to suffer," and if that's the case, then love is in the air in Ô99. This will be the Winter Of Love all right! Russians also dig partying, can be incredibly hospitable, and are prone to spontaneous mob necklacings of conspicuous foreigners carrying guidebooks (see Warnings).

Moving out of Moscow and St. Petersburg, our Get Me Outta Here! section takes you on a super-quick tour of the rest of Russia. We strongly recommend against touring the rest of Russia except in a high-flying passenger jet. The mouth-watering bargains in places like Tomsk-7 and Chelyabinsk are not worth the risk. Think about Starship Troopers and what those spiders did to the humanoids, and you'll begin to understand what happens to a plump, dentally-endowed foreigner who pops into town with a big smile on his face. Siberia's glorious past as a massive penal colony has been restored thanks to the efforts of Interior Minister Albert Makashov, whose efforts have paid off in a newly revitalized mining sector, which employs cheap Jewish prison labor. Farther to the east is the port city of Vladivostok, the "San Francisco of the East" as it is known to all those who have never left Vladivostok and have never seen San Francisco.

Quick Facts about Moscow and St. Petersburg

HISTORY
The history of Russia begins when a Swede named Rurik, who started out as director of the first Night Flight in Novgorod, creates modern Russia in 800-something. Russia passes through phases of foreign enslavement and unspeakable Mongol atrocities, and finally Russifies when the crown is passed to homeboy Slavs like Ivan the Terrible or Alexei. The horrifying experience of over 200 years under the Tatar yoke inspired the Tsars come up with the brilliant idea on how to build a free Russia: by enslaving practically the entire population by decree in 1675, whereby serfs were bound to their masters' land and made available for sale on the free market. The Tsars go on to butcher and repress their own people, while paradoxically increasing the empire's wealth, enriching a very tiny class of aristocrats and their pampered foreign consultants. Each imperial expansion is accompanied by brutal taxation and suppression of the serfs, who get slaughtered if they so much as raise a peep. The whole 400-year farce ends in 1917, when Bolshevik revolutionaries, fighting to end years of Tsarist oppression and tyranny, wind up... drum roll please... oppressing, enslaving, and terrorizing the native population on a scale never seen before! Finally, in 1991, the Russian people throw off the yoke of Bolshevism, and open their arms to the West, transforming into a capitalist, democratic state with the assistance of pampered foreign advisors whose aim is to free Russia from decades of oppression, poverty and tyranny. But as Chernomyrdin once said, "We wanted make things better, but it all turned out the same." Meaning... envelope please... the masses were once again plunged into unprecedented impoverishment, oppression and anomie. Throughout the 1990s, Russia's masses were enslaved in a wageless existence, and effectively forbidden from moving to the lone island of wealth: Moscow. The Russian race declined at rates not seen in any nation this century. Finally, the entire economy collapsed last August and the "dynamic young reformers" were tossed out, replaced by a left-right coalition who proceeded to further impoverish and oppress the masses, blah blah blah, blah blah blah. Blah blah blah blah. This bedtime story might explain why Russians have not taken to the streets again. In the parlance of our times, they're saying, "Tchya, right. And monkeys might fly out of our butts."

CLIMATE
The climate in Moscow is dreary, gray, and cold. The climate in St. Petersburg is even drearier, grayer, and because it's wet, colder. The climate in the rest of Russia, excepting Sochi, sucks even more.

FLORA AND FAUNA
Birch trees and weeds.

GOVERNMENT
N/A

ECONOMY
N/A

WESTERN AID
International public funding institutions, along with USAID, succeeded in totally destroying the once mighty Soviet economy, then quietly pulled out after the final collapse in August 1998. They claim they will only return when Russia resumes the 1990s-era reform program of destroying what remains of industry.

LIVING STANDARDS
Most live in houses. In Moscow, running water and heat are not completely unheard of, although outside of Moscow, most heat is generated by controlled nuclear plant meltdowns, which heat the surrounding areas.

USEFUL PHRASES

I'm an American!
    Ya A-me-ri-KA-nets!

Hey, did you hear me, bub? I'm an American!
    Ne PON-yal, shto-li? Ya A-me-ri-KA-nets, BLYAD!

No, that's too expensive.
    Nyet, SLISH-kom do-ro-GOI.

No, it's still too expensive.
    Da po-SHYOL ty.

Excuse me, can you tell me where the nearest church is?
    Eh, mu-DAK, gdye zdes khram, blyad?

Why are you trying to necklace me?
    Po-che-MU vy na-de-VA-ye-te shi-NU na men-YA?

FACTS FOR THE VISITOR

Russia is not for everyone, which is why it's so exciting for the dreary planet trekker. Credit cards and travelers checks are no longer accepted. Dollars can be exchanged either at the official exchange rate of 1:1, or the street rate of 48kg of 100 ruble notes per dollar. Since the ruble's black-market value is so low, you essentially pay for the weight in paper. Be careful of cheats. We recommend you bring a fully equipped scale with you when engaging on the black market. Once, our own John Lowball was given a sack of rubles weighing 32 grams under the said rate of 49kg per dollar. That 32 grams could have taken him on the metro for sixty-two Saturn years, or allowed him to spend a dream decade touring the Kremlin Armory. He's still smarting over that one.

When it comes to tipping at restaurants, we recommend that you keep your tip to very miniscule fractions of the price of the bill-say, .05g of ruble notes for every $10 spent. These days, few Russians tip; in fact, most prefer to dine Ôn ditch. If we Westerners begin to tip at our regular rate, we will upset the delicate balance between wages and value. So tip cheaply-deep down, Russians will appreciate it!

Telephones no longer work. Most Russians prefer to communicate by means of smoke signals or simply by screaming.

Visas can be arranged by offering a sandwich to a border guard.

Hotels are extremely expensive, but for a dried fish, even Philipe Chateaux will oblige you with a suite in the Metropol Hotel. For a bottle of Rogaine, Monsieur Chateaux will rent you the entire fourth floor for the summer.

It is highly advised not to fall ill or get injured in Moscow, as health-care services are currently undergoing restructuring.

And now, finally, let's begin the tour!

Moscow
At its heyday before the 1998 crisis, Moscow boasted a population of some 11 million people. Today, that figure is down to 4.8 million, as Russians struggle to make ends meet. Don't let yourself be tempted by the cheap nightlife entertainment at places like the Hungry Duck or Propaganda. Instead, head out for some quality church-trekking.

Dear Readers!
We regret to announce that due to the crisis, all of the churches and museums now charge dollars. We therefore have decided to suppress the guide portion of the Guide until prices return to a level that would not cause John Lowball to turn beet red.

St. Petersburg
Often called the "window to Finland," St. Petersburg is a museum-lover's paradise. One dollar could get you an entire year's worth of passes to every museum in town, while a submarine sandwich might tempt the Hermitage procurator to slip you a Cezanne. Don't bother with the Planetarium discos. Museum-trekking has never been more rewarding.