I have returned from my trip to Siberia. This trip has been alluded to in at least two other threads (here and here thanks Rasa), but I am so filled with self importance that I thought that my return warranted an MPSIMS thread. You know, cause the board isn’t overloaded enough as it is (and I am procrastinating going to work).
The trip was a medical goodwill trip to help out at some clinics at the medical school out there, as well as to set up a computer network at a dormitory. My main job was the computer network.
We left amidst the Houston “Flood of a Lifetime” and 96 hours straight of local news coverage. Oh look! Another Budweiser truck being looted! Oh look! Another family pulled from the grips of 14 foot high water on US-59!
Well, we (the good doctor, 10 Methodist missionaries, and I) made it to the airport and left for London Heathrow only 2 hours late. As a consequence we missed our London Gatwick to Moscow connection, so British Airways kindly stuck us on a plane to Frankfurt, and we ran for our connection to Moscow. We made it and got to the Hotel Rossia by 3 AM.
The Hotel Rossia is across the street from the Kremlin and was built for the good Communists on the way to high level Politburo meetings. The place is 5000 identical rooms which all smell of very stale cigarette smoke. Prostitutes roam the halls knocking on doors with solicitations. We went at 3:30 AM (the sun was already coming up) to Red Square to have a look around.
The next morning, we woke and spent an enjoyable day touring Moscow. At 10 PM, we caught a plane to Tomsk, Siberia. This was a Siberian Airlines Tu-154. Our seats weren’t bolted to the floor. The seat covers were falling apart. They were playing crazy Russian Muzak on the overhead speakers. The lights weren’t turned off over night (it is a 4 hour plane ride over a 4 time zones). Arrived in Tomsk at 6 AM the next morning.
I spent the next week in this Siberian backwater (which was actually a city of 500,000), which turned out to be a really cool city. The missionaries departed for an orphanage in a backwater outside the backwater, so the good doctor and I had a chance to get to know the locals. By “getting to know the locals” of course I mean drinking tremendous amounts of vodka.
I got my computer network set up. This was kind of hairy, but by the day before we left, I had 5 Windows 2000 computers (4 Professional + 1 Server) all speaking on a little domain and all talking to the Internet and sharing a printer. The SMC Barricade router that I brought along was a lifesaver.
We rejoined the missionaries and left Tomsk on perhaps the same Siberian Airlines Tu-154 and flew back to Moscow. We spent another enjoyable day in Moscow, this time minus the Hotel Rossia buying matrushka dolls, lacquer boxes, enamel jewelry, and vodka, and then took a midnight train to St. Petersburg (I’d rather live in his world then live without him in mine). Since the missionaries were “finished doing mission work” we now had license to get to know the Russian railway system. By “getting to know the Russian railway system” I mean of course polishing off a liter of vodka and 9 beers between 4 people. Needless to say, we were in fine form for our arrival in St. Petersburg the next morning.
We spent an enjoyable 2 days and 1 white night in St. Petersburg seeing all thing St. Petersburgian. It is really quite a beautiful city which is undergoing a Budapest- or Prague-like transformation into a major tourist destination. We took the midnight train back to Moscow, this time without Gladys Knight, the Pips, or the vodka. We toured the Kremlin and flew back, uneventfully, to London. We had some fish and chips and a few pints of warm bitter in London, and spent the night at a cute bed and breakfast. The next morning we flew to Houston, uneventfully, except for the Department of Agriculture insisting on washing my shoes because I had spent 16 hours in London. Houston was quite affected by the storm. My school still doesn’t have full power, and was closed from the time that I left until a few days ago (good time to take a vacation, I suppose). Most of the Texas Medical Center around my school has even less functionality – Hermann Hospital (one of the Level 1 Trauma centers) is completely inoperational and there is talk of bulldozing the place. Methodist Hospital has 30 patients right now (from a normal 1200). Things are recovering slowly.
I will now answer any questions about the current state of affairs in Tomsk, Siberia, or anything else you can dredge up.
I’m gonna have to remember that one next time I mean to say “East Buttf*ck”. It sounds so much more remote. It reminds me of an anekdot I read once: