A chaotic journey across half the planet by train — where bad planning collides with blind luck and sheer stubbornness keeps the story moving.
Chapter Ten: It Ends in The West
I once watched a speech from a famous Hong Kong based investment guru. He had made mountains of cash betting on Asia. He had a very efficient PR team and was inclined towards hyperbole which put him in high demand on the speaking circuit. In this particular speech he was making the point once again that this will be ‘Asia’s Century’, led of course by China. Asia will be the plutonium fuel rods at the core of the world’s economy. It will innovate more in the future and become something greater than a cheap sweatshop. Brands and intellectual property will increasingly originate in Asia and consumers around the world will start to imitate trends set in Asia, his theory went. North America still had a bit of time left as a flaky leader in meaningless entertainment and might continue pushing the boundaries of digital and other services provided that these didn’t require real engineering skills or need anyone to actually get their hands dirty.
A Swiss banker in the audience raised his hand and in an uncharacteristically timid voice asked “And vat vill become of Europe in zis future vizion of yours”? “Ah” said the investment guru, who was himself of some European origin or another, “Europe will become the world’s largest open air museum. And they will sell most of their tickets to the Chinese.”
If this ever becomes true, St Petersburg will be an E-ticket ride. And it will be well worth the admission price. But you better get there before the Chinese. They are not the best company to share a tour with. If you are partial to irony you might find this future vision amusing. St. Petersburg was, in fact, designed to be a kind of massive amusement park. In European timescales it’s not even that old. Although it had a military and geo-political importance at the very start (providing indirect port access to the Atlantic once the swampy area was secured from the Swedes) its real development quickly became a vanity project for Peter the Great and a string of self-absorbed descendents. It was started only around 1710 but its development really got cooking when Catherine the Great, the ambitious, man eating, power hungry, future role model for Madonna (The Material Girl one spawned in the 1980’s, not the clever one who convinced a gullible husband and at least one of 13 tribes that she somehow got pregnant without having sex with anyone) got hold of the purse strings. Catherine the Great was not only a collector of weak-willed men, she was also a collector of the world’s most expensive art. There are millions of treasures still stashed away in her hermitage, a cozy nook with more than 10 kilometers of rooms and passageways where she could relax and ‘get away from it all’. Individual pieces are worth the cost of a hospital wing, then and now.
Peter & Co.s intent from the start was to create the perfect model of a European style city. It was not intended to be original. It was meant to be a copy of some sort. Catherine even went so far as to create a 1:1 scale replica of Raphael’s Loggias in the Vatican. The paintings were traced onto canvas by highly paid artists over seven years and then brought to the Hermitage. The only modifications were to replace the Vatican Coat of Arms with the Tsar’s Double Headed Eagle and some Pope’s portrait was removed in favor of one of Raphael himself. Russian rulers were sick and tired of messy way that Moscow grew in ever increasing concentric circles emanating from the original Kremlin walls. They apparently had a bit of an inferiority complex when visiting the grand European capitals of the day. So they found the best city planners, hired hundreds of famous European architects and imported thousands of artisans, craftsmen and skilled labor. Hundreds of thousands of serfs were conscripted for the very unskilled labor required to fill in swamps for parks, line the rivers with solid stone embankments, build the canals, lay the foundations of cathedrals and much much more. Tens of thousands died after a miserable existence, perhaps more than died constructing the pyramids 4000 years previously. Not a lot of improvement for humanity during the intervening millennia on that account. The end result was clearly successful. It is a post card perfect, classic old world city. Almost too perfect it sometimes seems. We can imagine snooty visitors from Paris or London arriving in the early 19th century and thinking “What a bunch a pretentious posers these Russians are”. Their views might have been the post-renaissance equivalent of uncharitable comments I have heard about Las Vegas or even Singapore.
It is beautiful and perfect, at least on the outside. Who knows what happens behind the facades. We have come at the best time of the year: the “White Nights” of St Petersburg, two weeks of the year when it never gets completely dark and hotels are twice the price as normal. For the first time we honestly regret not planning a little bit more ahead. Oh well, spontaneity has a price too. We take a river dinner cruise on the first night that starts at 10:30 pm. The sun hasn’t completely set when we disembark more than two hours later. The light as we walk back the hotel has that eerie and guilt ridden glow you see when you emerge from a night club at 6am after one too many vodka red bulls.
Our hotel is awesomely bohemian chic. The Rachimanov is described as an antique arts hotel. It consists of the second and third stories of an 18th century building which seems grand to me but is fairly commonplace around here. The lobby is up a flight of wonderfully pitted and worn stone stairs. Each room has a door painted by well known local artists who were required to listen to Rachmaninov orchestra while painting. If I hadn’t seen a little sign explaining this I could have stayed here a year without realizing that Rachmaninov was a composer. I am such a culture ignoramus. I feel like an imposter here. Most the other guests look like modern day artist-bohemians. They have crazy post-punk haircuts and wear these newly fashionable pants we see around. The crotch area hangs down to the lower thigh, even knee region. The pants look like they are carrying a load of soft turds at all times. I wouldn’t recommend felonious endeavors in these pants. You couldn’t run far from the police. Intended or not, they work well to hobble the guilty, the suspicious and the cluelessly innocent. I guess we will all be wearing a slightly toned version of these in a few years once the trend-spotters at Gucci and FCUK take notice. At least they will be roomy enough to cover our adult diapers. Finally, fashion for the aging!
Everywhere in the world, gorgeous places seem to attract gorgeous people, especially during the high season. St Petersburg is no exception. The women walking around here are stunning. Long-legged, high cheek-boned, model perfect. The carry themselves like they know it too: a little arrogant and a lot pouty. We have no idea where they are produced or manufactured. A sign indicating the way to a pole dancing school in the high rent district offers one clue. The stranger thing is that we cannot figure out where they are disposed of. We haven’t spotted one 40-ish year old woman that looks like a former model. Like Cinderalla’s carriage, there seems to be a magic age when they must turn into pumpkins. Here, a pumpkin is called a babushka. We uncovered another clue that might explain the magic. At a Ukranian styled restaurant we ordered their most popular starter. ‘Salo’ is pure fat. We are presented with lumps of salted lard in a bowl and something that looks like uncooked bacon without any of the red parts. It’s delicious and most certainly a key ingredient to creating Babushkas.
It’s taken us a while to notice but it finally dawns on us that we have seen very few old people of retiring age in any of the big Russian cities we have visited. Reading between the lines of recent history and the anecdotes we have picked up along the way, a theory has been formed. And it’s not a pleasant conclusion. We think they simply cannot afford to live in their own cities anymore. Imagine this: You are 70 years old. Fifty years ago in 1960 you enter the work force. The system is simple: Do your time, conform, don’t question authority too much, and everything will be taken care for you. Forever, cradle to grave…. It’s a socialist paradise after all. Remember, you are not a Bolshevik revolutionary who fought for this system. That happened years ago in your parent’s generation. You inherited this system and its promises. This is all you get. But you do your part anyway.
Then when you around 50 years old the whole system falls apart. Western democracies gloat and rejoice. All the mythical riches of democracy and capitalism are about to rain down upon you. Of course, that never happens. Instead your commune is disbanded, your pension promises (cash or otherwise) disappear and you are on your own. You’re fifty or older. Too old to even steal. Good luck. In the meantime, predatory economic forces extract whatever value is left around you. First the mafia then the government working with the mafia then the government working like the mafia trick you into selling shares of apparently worthless shuttered factory where you worked. Prices for everything rise. If you were lucky enough to be allocated housing ownership in some crumbling apartment block in the city you can at least sell that to some extortionist and move to the impoverished countryside where you will live out your remaining days like a serf. Not dissimilar to the way your great grand parents lived under the Tsars of the 19th Century. There must be a lot of bitter, angry old people living in the countryside. Can you blame them?
It might not be long before we see the same in Europe and the States. The impending collapse of Social Security, healthcare systems and just about every social welfare mechanism put in place in the last century will ensure that. Then the world will be full of pissed off old people. Maybe some geriatric demagogue will emerge like Lenin crawling out of his mausoleum and they will rise to take back what was once theirs from the young and foolish. What a sight that would be. It will be like a Zombie film, maybe even an opportunity for the now slightly crusty Clint Eastwood to play one last role as a leading man-creature.
This makes us appreciate even more the pseudo-libertarian lifestyle we have carved out in the grey area and cracks between national dominions. Nobody has made us any pension promises and we won’t have much of a safety net. But if we end up living like serfs at least we will know it was our own doing. In the meantime, we’ll follow the Investment Guru’s advice and continue placing our big bets on Asia.
