Volga River Cruise, Part IV: “All The Ladies, Come Follow Me!”

The next morning we had our usual breakfast on the ship and then all headed outside to get ready to go to Saratov. I was actually pretty interested in Saratov, because Ivan Khomutov, the hockey player that used to play for the Albany River Rats and lived with my friend Beth, was from there. As we were gathering in groups in front of the boat on shore, Kat and I saw Gunter walking by, scanning our group. He had a really disappointed look on his face, and then we realized he was looking for Allie, to no avail. Poor Gunter. As usual the Moscow kids and the St. Pete kids went on different buses, and we headed off to Saratov. Saratov seemed like a typical working class city. There wasn’t actually that much to see, apart from a pack of street dogs, a couple of monuments, and a panorama of the history of Saratov, with parts of churches falling into the sea and mountains having deteriorated to their wood and plaster base. The most interesting part of the panorama was the Beeline ad above it. Beeline is a telephone provider like AT&T in the US, and all their ads feature someone in a black and yellow striped shirt or scarf or dress looking absurdly happy. If you didn’t know Beeline sold phone service you would think they sold contented families or meaningful relationships. I’m not even kidding, there’s not even a phone in any of their ads. This particular ad had a beautiful girl in a black and yellow striped scarf and shirt lying in autumn leaves, grinning like a fool. So there she was, happy it was fall, with the miniature city of Saratov crumbling beneath her.

After we saw the main city area of Saratov, our guide took us to a WWII Memorial more on the outskirts. Allison, Paige, Erika, Julia, and I all sat in the five seats in the back of the bus again, although this time I started to feel funny. My nose kind of burned and my throat got really dry. By the time we got off the bus at the memorial, I felt incredibly dizzy like I was drunk and couldn’t keep my eyes open. I asked Allison if she felt the same way, and she said she did, adding that we had probably gotten slight carbon monoxide poisoning from the exhaust of the bus, which obviously was being filtered back into the vents in the back of the bus. So I swayed all the way to the memorial, which had old Soviet trains and tanks and a really huge, but moving white monument with metal birds on the top, representing all the deaths that occurred in the war. Between war and famine, 40 million people died in Russia around the period of the 1940s and 1950s. That’s insane. From the top of the monument, we got a great view of Saratov (and much needed fresh air, in my case). After the memorial, the guide dropped us off at this marketplace where Jon had told us to buy food for the train ride back tomorrow because we wouldn’t find food anywhere between now and then. By this point, I was super out of it from the bus. I felt like I was really intoxicated and sleepy at the same time, and it was hard to walk in a straight line make sense of what was going on. The marketplace was in this giant one floor building with rows of vendor’s stalls, all next to each other. One row sold cookies and candy, another fruit and vegetables, and one, unfortunately, sold meat. The meat vendors were something out of Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle. The first I recognized of the meat section, was a man cutting up a dead cow with an ax. There were heads and legs hanging everywhere, with flies circling them all, of course. Annabel asked one of the vendors if she could take a picture and the woman held up a pair of cow lips and smiled. And, to remind you, Saratov is an actual larger modern city in Russia. So I don’t even want to know what the remote villages east of the Urals are like. I wasn’t going to buy too much for the train ride back to Moscow, but then Matt came up to me and reminded me that we would be on the train for 19 hours, so that scared me enough to sensibly buy some cheese, crackers, apples, pomegranate, a massive bottle of water (reppin’ the two-liter BonAqua, woot-woot), chocolate monkeys, and I also bought two bottles of champagne for the winning team of the scavenger hunt.

When we got back on the boat, we had lecture again, this time with the history teacher from Vladimir. He was incredibly interesting and had these great visuals he drew himself. He had a really soothing voice, unfortunately so soothing that it put half of the room to sleep. I looked across the room and Mikel was passed out while sitting up, his mouth wide open. To the right of him, one of the St. Pete girls made no pretenses about sleeping and used the edge of the couch as a pillow, with the girl sitting next to her resting her head on her shoulder. After seeing them, I didn’t feel so bad about dozing off every now and then during the lecture. In Samara, the girls had been talking about how beautiful Julia’s dress was that she was wearing and we decided that since it was our last night on the boat, we should make it dress night. I put on my brown and teal dress (now known as the Prostitute dress. See a few blogs back), Kat put on her dress she bought in a Russian shopping mall and Annabel wore this beautiful red Marilyn Monrow-esque dress that was perfect for swing dancing, which was perfect as we were learning Jive in dance class that day. I was absolutely terrible at it. Jan has the patience of a saint. It also didn’t help that I couldn’t see the teacher when she was demonstrating the steps. I definitely elbowed a lot of people in the shoulder and took down blond Nastya more than once. Annabel ended up dancing with one of the Russian deckhands. He was super ripped but also a bit drunk and apparently was supposed to be working because his boss came in towards the end and dragged him out. After dance lessons I gave Julianna from the winning group of the scavenger hunt the bottles of champagne, and she gave me a big hug. It was cute.

For our last night on the boat, a bunch of us just ordered cocktails from the bar. We all wanted to have one last dance party to the terrible keyboard music. The old man came out with a huge grin on his face, knowing he had a built in audience of young drunk Americans. At first he played his usual Michael Jackson opener, and then followed that up with yet another Michael song. By the time he hit Michael Jackson song number three, we were sensing the alarming trend. Allie went up to him and asked if he could play anything more recent, and he replied that he didn’t know anything past 1992. We ended up dancing to 6 Michael Jackson songs in a row, including Thriller. Even the 80s didn’t have that much consecutive Michael Jackson. It was difficult, but us Muscovites are used to making a really lame situation into something fun (VDNKh, anyone?). At the end of his set, we asked the piano man for one more song before he left. Of course it was terrible, but I don’t think he’s had that receptive of an audience since…well since1992. After dancing, we all headed out to the deck. Kat disappeared with Rees, one of the Vladimir boys, so I kept myself entertained by talking to Chris the Marine, also from Vladimir. We had a really intense conversation about the army and the role of politics in the US, and then decided to go looking for the lovebirds. We couldn’t find them, so giving up, I went and joined in on a huge conversation going on by the doors. I sat down on Paige’s lap and realized it was Jon and Nathan arguing intensely with Julia and Rhiannon about the meaning of love. It was a little to much for me at the moment, so I left and found a bunch of Moscow kids lounging on one of the couches on the third floor. They were all interested in where Kat was, with Mikel asking if they were “making kissies.” I replied that I didn’t know, but that I had the room key, so nothing was going down in my room. On the way back to my room, I found Kat and managed to ask her what happened when Rees was in the bathroom. She replied nothing, just a lot of talking. I told her that was super lame, as I had no love life and needed to live vicariously through her, so she better get some action. Then I went to bed, resting up for our last city, Volgograd.

The day before, Carlos had been telling me he was going to “rock my world tomorrow,” to which I either replied “Oh, please,” or “Stop being a creeper, Carlos.” Well, on the last morning, Carlos got up early and gave the morning wake up call and announcements over the PA system that goes into everyone’s room. The funny thing is that I was in the shower when this happened, so I didn’t even hear it. When we were waiting for our last tour bus of the trip, Allie saw Gunter and told him that she needed one last picture with him. He got all excited and waving his arm like a boy scout troop leader said, “All the ladies, come follow me.” He lead Kat, Allie, and I over to where the front of the boat was docked and proceeded to take a picture of us, even though we wanted a picture with him. After he took his picture, Allie explained to him in German and English that she wanted a picture WITH him, so I finally got a picture of Gunter with his favorite American. We returned to where our groups were waiting for the buses, and Gunter wished us safe travels back and good luck in life. I saw a tour group of older people already climbing up the stairs to the buses in the distance and asked Gunter, “Isn’t that your tour group?” Gunter looked over as the tour guide waved the number on the stick she was holding, indicating that Gunter better haul ass to catch up. He replied “Ja, Ja!” and sped walked away to catch up with his fellow elderly.

I didn’t really know what to expect in Volgograd, but it was fantastic! First of all, we had an amazing tour guide. He was an older man, maybe in his late forties or early fifties, with jet black hair and blue eyes. As Julia said, “He wasn’t hot hot, but I mean, if I was his age and his wife, I’d think ‘Man, I really lucked out.” He had on a cream colored leather jacket, a touristy Boston shirt, the kind with the bubble letters filled in by scenes from the city, and white leather pointy shoes that were brown on the tips. Stylish. He brought visual aids with him in a leather portfolio, which seemed super professional to us, seeing as how we were “excursovod” experts by this point. We went and saw the remnants of a tractor/tank factory that survived the battle of Volgograd, the main square of Volgograd, and then we went and saw the craziest war memorial ever. As we got closer to it, we just saw this giant angry stone woman holding a massive sword appear over the hillside. We walked up past a beautiful reflecting pool and went up stairs which had on either side stone walls which had soldiers engraved in them and sayings like “I will fight to the death” and “Glory for the motherland.” As we walked up the stairs, intensely patriotic music was playing along with clips from war speeches and the sound of machine guns. It was like we were in some Soviet war propaganda film. Once we got to the top of the stairs, there was a big statue of a super muscular man holding a machine gun, which (with perspective) looked like he was in front of the giant woman statue on top of the hill. It was supposed to represent a Russian soldier defending Mother Russia. I only know this because there was an English speaking tour group behind us. Next we walked into this gloomy tunnel seemingly carved into the hill and came out into this stunning circular room with had a giant statue of a hand holding a torch in the middle of the room, with a giant flame coming out of the top. There were two Russian soldiers standing on either side of the flame, and you could put flowers on the plaque on the ground in between them, which represented the fallen in the battle of Volgograd. There was a large circular hole in the top of the room, which let in enough light to make the shiny walls sparkle red and yellow. It was incredibly beautiful and it was completely silent except for the solemn music playing over the speakers. All around the circular wall were the names of the Russians who had died in the Battle. We also got to see the changing of the guards, as those who were on duty couldn’t move at all, so I think they switched places relatively frequently. The process was super formal and precise. After we left the memorial, we saw a beautiful stature of a mother holding her dead son. The son’s face was covered t represent that not only Russians died during the battle, but that war kills both sides. Then we walked up to the giant, and I mean giant, statue of Mother Russia. The enormity of it was just absurd. It was kind of like having the Statue of Liberty in the middle of the country side. I bet it was even bigger than the Statue of Liberty, actually. The whole thing gave you an incredibly Russian patriotic feeling, which is impressive considering we were a bunch of Americans.

When we got back to the boat we had to quickly pack up our stuff and put it outside our rooms so the deckhands could bring it to the buses so we could head off to the train station. While I was packing, I noticed someone hovering around the doorway, where I had left the door open. I looked over and realized it was one of the Russian deckhands that Kat and Paige had smoked with during the scavenger hunt. He had a camera in his hand and made a motion like he wanted to take a picture. For a second I was like, WTF? But I figured what the hell and posed, giving two thumbs up. He took my picture and looked at it in the viewer and smiled and left. It was kind of bizarre. Then I saw Allie in the hallway, so I joined her to say goodbye. At the moment, Gunter came by and asked if we were leaving. Allie replied yes and he wished us safe travels again. She said something to him in German and he said the same word back and then he gave her and I a huge bear hug that we definitely a little creepy. When he left, I gave Allie a look of incredulity and asked her why the hell she would ask him for a hug. She laughed and said that all she had said to him in German was goodbye, the hug was of his own accord. She later told me that when she was getting on her tourbus to go to the station, Gunter actually came on the bus to wish her goodbye again and say he would miss her. So we left our slightly creepy German stalker old man on the Academic Grushkov and headed off to the train station.

When I got on the train, I found out that I was sleeping in the same little section as Jon Smith, which was incredibly awkward. But then I found out that all the St. Pete and Vladimir kids were on the next car attached to ours, so that made me happy. I went over into the other car and talked with Allie and finally learned how to play Durak. I gave her one of my extra apples, calling it a friendship apple. She commented that it was a huge apple and I replied that’s because it’s a whole lot of friendship. Around dinner time I went back into my train car and shared dinner with Allison, Rees, and Kat. We had a communal style dinner of cheese, sausage, bread, crackers, and pomegranate, with each of us adding something to the dinner pot. It was getting a little awkward after dinner, with Allison and I quickly becoming the third and fourth wheels to Kat and Rees, so I left that section of the car and went over to talk to Big Ben and Katie and Jan. In the section next to Katie’s, Aleksander Ivanovich, Jon, the dance teacher, and a few other teachers and RDs were drinking a lot and having a good time. In Katie’s section, there was a crabby old woman who apparently had gotten into a fight earlier with Aleksander Ivanovich about his drinking and threatened to call the police on him and get him kicked off the train. Crazy train drama. Aleksander Ivanovich went through our whole train car, making us try this terribly lemony tasting apply fruit that he said he picked from his own garden. He didn’t know what it was called in English and made us try to guess. Finally he made the last kids on the train look up the name for it in the dictionary and it turns out it was quince. Bleh. That night, a lot people wanted to check out the dinner car, and they all came back with stories of the “Medved” (bear). Apparently there was a really drunk 50 year old Russian man in the bar, with his shirt halfway unbuttoned and was growling like a bear. The only reason the students put up with it is that he was so drunk that he was paying for everyone’s drinks. By the time Kat and Rees went into the dinner car to try their luck, he had spent most of his money and told Kat he would only buy her French fries with meat, to which she said no thanks. I actually slept well that night, only waking up once to put on a sweater as it got freakishly cold halfway back to Moscow. When I woke up, I got in line for the bathroom and had to use Jon Smith’s toothpaste as mine was at the bottom of my suitcase. You know you’re finally comfortable with your RD when you borrow their toothpaste. We were all sitting around in my cabin, Jon, Big Ben, Erika, Little Ben, and couple of Russians, when Allie came over and sat down. I offered her another friendship apple, and she said she had some gossip for us. I asked what it was and she said, “Guess who didn’t sleep in their own bed last night?” “Kat!” I said, and Allie explained how she went by Chris the Marine’s section and he put a finger to his lips in a shush symbol and pointed down at the bed below him, where Allie saw a little blond head snuggling with Rees and realized it was Kat. I guess our expressions of surprise were so loud that Jon woke up from his nap and asked what happened and I replied that we were gossiping. Of course, he wanted to know what we were talking about, so finally we made Allie tell him. Jon got all excited and said he was going to go see. He asked is he should bring his camera with him, and we all shouted no! (Jon likes to take creepy pictures of us). He said that he wanted to go into the other wagon and act all concerned and say that he was missing a student and we might need to stop the train to find her. Jon left and came back about 10 minutes later, even more excited than before. “They made a fort!” he said. He explained that when he went to go look, there were sheets and blankets hanging from the top bunk all around them. Jon started making jokes that we should plan their future for them, and he saw a lot of Moscow – Vladimir trips in their future. Erika started naming their first children. Kat would later tell me that it was the worst experience of her life to wake up from spooning with someone to see Jon Smith, the geography teacher, and the director of the program all staring at you from behind a blanket fort, which she, for the record, did not construct. As we rolled into Moscow, Daniel Potts stole my Cosmopolitan magazine in Russian and read it for a good hour, Carlos taught Jon the “Rolling the dice” dance from Knocked Up, and I played one last game of Durak. It was sad to finally arrive at the train station, our amazing vacation over, and back to grey, depressing life in Moscow. We’d seen almost all the way down to the Caspian Sea, witnessed more Lenin and WWII monuments than most people see in a lifetime, and laughed so hard most days that we cried. I’d say all and all it was a great trip.