The Ryazanskii Prospekt

A Belated Post on Kalmykia

As the title says, I'm about a week and a half late and much of my memory has been wiped clean after a visit to Kazan to see a buddy, Kyle. Anyway, I'll try to hit the high notes.

1. On a 40-hour train ride, bring an excuse: I took the train from Ryazan to Moscow to Elista. Elista is at the very end of the line leading to the Caucasus and I assumed that I would check out the landscape and get some reading done. The landscape from Moscow to Rostov (the first 25 hours) was roughly the same as everywhere else in European Russia and the steppe, upon which Kalmykia is situated (see the brown patch of land leading up to the Caspian Sea) is very telling but also not much to look at.

The main problem, though, was the entertainment factor. I rode in the platskart which, for the uninitiated, consists of 6 cells with 3 pairs of bunk-beds in close proximity. My two-day roommates ended up being two very nice women, a housewife and a lab doctor, a quiet married couple on the side bunk and Evgenii, a soldier. The former brought a series of crossword puzzles to amuse themselves; Evgenii brought only the standard kielbasa and a gigantic knife. As the train ride progressed, it became more and more clear that I was to be Evgenii's entertainment. After he wore out his curiousity about American life, our lady companions' travel plans and his own arsenal of jokes (two, as it was), he turned to desperate measures, including asking for a page by page summary of a novel I was reading and, after commandeering my iPod, the meaning of each song. Worst of all is that he wouldn't elaborate on his mission "to get some guys" in Elista.

2. Fulbright English and Physical Education Teaching Assistantship: The camp was designed to be a two week intensive English learning experience, which is great on one hand but a waste of summer on the other. My role at camp was teaching "American Sports Culture." After a day of a really ill-fated attempt to teach the history of baseball, I decided to take the kids (ages 11-16) outside to play sports. With only two gloves and a bat, our baseball was limited to me lobbing pitches to them. The academic ease of my class, along with my devilish good looks and rapier wit, scored me popularity points with the kids. I like to think that this led to the Kalmyk media frenzy around me, although it was more likely that my nationality and Michelle Kwan guaranteed my new found celebrity.

3. Kalmykia is an enormous fire hazard: Elista is situated on an extremely dry piece of land with sickly green grass. While I was there, the temperature topped out at about 40 Celsius (about 100 Fahrenheit) and the water service is notoriously inconsistent; water is turned off weekly in some homes and dormitories. Also, almost all men smoke and largely use wooden matches rather than lighters. All in all, this seems like a dangerous situation. This is probably why, in a rural town of 100k where roosters crow at 4am in the dead center of town, the fire department has four shining new trucks. I saw them in action, too, when a grass fire started near the school.

4. Michelle Kwan "Win One"[pronounced, "Wan"]: This was the chant that the US State Department English Language Office came up with for the kids to shout at her as she approached. My crowning achievement was vetoing it along the prospect of reading the poem of the previous post. In short, the Kwan thing was a little disappointing. Her speech sounded like a bad college admissions essay. She was also shorter than I thought she would be and, therefore, I dashed my plans to make a move on her. My favorite moment was when she was placed in the same realm as Lincoln, MLK and Putin, among others. (I think Lenin may have been thrown in.)

5. The elusive Iliumzhinov: The main disappointment, though, was not meeting Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, the head of the republic. Kalmykia is growing a really solid cult of personality around Kirsan; almost all the people I talked to said the exact same thing: "Kirsan is as corrupt as any politician, but he's been good for Elista." I have my doubts about the latter, although Elista gets a ton of media recognition and, for its size and location, a robust tourist industry, all of which is based on Iliumzhinov's crazy proclamations and chess fanaticism. Even though I didn't get to shake the man's hand, I did see his famous white Lincoln Towncar at the Akvarium concert on Independence Day.

All in all, Elista was a lot of fun and a lot like the rest of Russia, if you replace Orthodox cathedrals with Buddhist temples. Here are a few pictures for good measure: