Ian Frazier is obsessed with Russia and Siberia and seems to have spent the last several decades researching and traveling. It’s a strange hobby, but one I’m glad he shared with us, as Travels in Siberia is fantastic. Amanda sent this my way after we started War & Peace together and I wanted to learn more about Russian culture and history. (Thanks, AG!)
This is a personal travelogue, with a mix of personal stories along with Russian history. It covers Gengis Kahn, the Decembrists, and gets into the contemporary Russian oil market; my favorite section, though, was Frazier’s road trip with Sergei and Volodya.
This book makes me want to go to Russia. (Any takers?) Frazier is thoughtful, clearly smart, and quite funny. I kept reading lines from Travels aloud to my husband, who couldn’t understand how I could find something as serious as Siberia so hysterical. I’ll let Frazier speak for himself on that and leave you with some of my favorite excerpts below.
Nome does not go out of its way to be ingratiating. To an unromantic eye, the town in certain seasons may look like an expanse of mud with pieces of rusted iron sticking out of it. Trees in Nome are so rare that the town’s official architectural tour features both of them; it is perhaps ungenerous to point out that in other places such landmarks would be considered shrubbery. During stays in Nome, I was usually depressed, in an uninterrupted and satisfying manner I never could have pulled off at home. – page 71
Near where we taxied to a stop sat a Russian car of a particularly Russian version of green. I guess it was apple green but to call it that is to reimagine the apple. It was a bright, bilious, chemical-spill version of apple green. Russian colors sometimes make my gums ache. – page 87
But having read Shto Delat? [What is to be Done?] I can only say that the title is excellent but the book goes downhill from there. – page 305 [SB note: I need to keep this on hand for some books on GoodReads]
By the time I came back, Volodya was sitting in the van’s front seat drinking a large can of malt liquor. He had found the name of a dentist by asking at a hotel, gone to that dentist, presented his passport, sat down in the chair. The dentist yanked the tooth and charged him 135 rubles, about $4.50. The extraction had cheered him up wonderfully. He opened another can of malt liquor and talked about the dental history of his family. As we drove out of Blagoveschchensk in its California evening light, Volodya said he didn’t mind losing teeth and was surprised to have so many of his own still remaining. His father and uncles had lost all their teeth long before they were Volodya’s age. He said losing teeth just ran in the family. – page 316
Soon after Bikin we suddenly entered a weird all-watermelon area. Watermelon sellers crowded both sides of the road under big umbrellas in beach-ball colors among wildly painted wooden signs. Sergei pulled over and bought a watermelon for a ruble, but as we went along, the heaps of them kept growing until melons were spilling into the road and the sellers were giving them away. A man with teeth like a crazy fence hailed us and in high hilarity thrust two watermelons through the passenger-side window. By the time we had emerged at the other end of the watermelon gauntlet, we had a dozen or more in the van. The watermelons were almost spherical, antifreeze green, and slightly smaller than soccer balls. We cut one open – delicious. This was not a part of the world I had previously thought of as a great place for watermelons. – page 325
On the Novosibirsk metro, the station closest to the Mega-Ikea mall is Ploshchad Karla Marksa, Karl Marx Square. – page 461
From the Desk of Judy Dark 