Irksome Irkutsk

Actually that’s not fair, Irkutsk is not really irksome at all, but it’s a rare alliteration opportunity that I can’t resist. Suddenly we’re an additional 5000km away from what old one nation Tories sat in their gentlemen’s clubs in Pall Mall might call ‘Yurp’, and you can tell. Russia goes Asian might sound like the title of a dubious film, but we’re now in the semi-autonomous region of Siberia in which Russia’s single biggest ethnic minority, the Buryats, hold sway and smiling Mongol faces abound.

I won’t repeat the tales of the Trans Siberian Express that brought us here on this blog as I’ve covered these in this weekend’s forthcoming Observer column (which I’ll obviously post here too). Suffice to say there was vodka, scary tattooed Russian policeman and a LOT of birch forest. You’d have to be a pretty hard hearted tree lover not to be sated by the sight of the thousands upon thousands of miles of birch trees we saw from the train. These create a disturbing sense of circular time, continual déjà vu and utter disbelief as to the scale and similarity of such vast tracts of Russia. It makes the UK look positively perverse in terms of the landscape diversity jammed into one small island – how much is enough?! The sordid variety and range of our hills, plains, crags, valleys, moors, dales, cliffs and beaches reveals the deviancy of our topography. Especially in contrast to the monotonous consistency of birch, birch, birch in Siberia. If Henry Ford had done landscapes his Siberian model would have been available in ‘any colour you like so long as it’s brown’.

The boggy, tundral scrub and birch-fest is occasionally broken by scars of industrial desecration. Concentric rings of grey concrete accommodation blocks surround priapic chimneys, mine heads, power stations and all manner of extractive and smelting activities, hell bent on exploiting the vast mineral wealth of the region. Weirdly these manmade monstrosities are almost comforting reassurances that the train is not simply going to roll off the end of the line into some wilderness abyss of swampy grassland and scraggy trees, but does in fact have a destination.

In our case, this is Irkutsk though we could have stayed on the train for another 4000km if so wished, taking us right over the top of China to Vladivostock. After Moscow we love Irkutsk. A mere 600,000 people strong it has the feel of a large frontier town, laidback, friendly and manageable, if a little seedy. You can stroll across the centre in less than 20 minutes, admire the (de rigeur) statue of Lenin and take in most of the sights.

We learnt about these from our lovely host Svetlana, a fiery red-headed Buryat woman (her particular tone of hair dye could best be described as ‘violent crimson’). She showed us a fantastic set of Soviet era postcards of Irkutsk from 1986. These glorious hand tinted pieces of techni-colour propaganda depicted the hottest of the hot of local tourist attractions; the shopping complex (big grey metal box), the Government owned Hotel Angara (big grey metal and glass box), the new housing developments (series of big grey metal, concrete and glass boxes) the bridge over the Angara river (big concrete thing). They reminded me of the 1970’s postcards of the UK that celebrated our equivalent achievements such as the brilliant urban design of inner Slough.



As temperatures drop to minus 30 here in winter you can see why apparently every young woman in town is currently making the most of the opportunity to don a mini-skirt in the first of the spring sunshine. Russian women’s fashion in general might be politely be described as ‘slut-chic’ or more rudely as looking like it’s pulled straight from the Sunday Sport’s Style supplement. Knee high leather boots, micro-minis and bustier tops are the order of the day…and to think we were expecting to freeze our bits off in Siberia. It’s nearly 20 degrees and almost worryingly warm, though it can top 40 in mid summer.

I blame it on climate change, but if the weather continues the female sartorial trends outlined above I fear that we may be fighting a losing battle to control the carbon emissions of the Russian male.