Glad to be in Vlad - Vladivostok (20th to 22nd December 2008)

Vladivostok is our final destination in Russia and it has to be said one of the happiest that we have been to. It has all the promises of a charmed city but the results are only half measure at the moment and you can see that with some investment and a little TLC the city could be absolutely glorious. Sadly it seems that such investment is a long way down on Moscow’s agenda, in fact we were witness to a couple of days of protests as the government has laid a law that in five years time all cars driven in Russia must be Russian made, which for those as far East as Vladivostok, who get all their cheap cars form Japan, will have a major impact on. As we have been told by an English man we met, who runs an English tea house (that serves the best brownies) the people at this end of Russian are practically seen as foreigners, as their opinions and the way the impact of laws on their lives, are of little interest to the decision makers. That said, it is by far the happiest and most diverse city we have been to, including Moscow and St P. For the first time we saw groups of kids out and about, enjoying dinner together in pizza parlours, we saw comfy relaxed fashions and even a skate boarder! Sounds silly, but immediately you could really sense a difference.

The city is huge, spread around different ports and has what could be a glorious sea front. Sadly it is a right state, the beach huts are all crumbling down, the snack shacks all seemingly shut (though a quick knock on the window might wake the sleeping vendor, behind the blacked out windows and even the major tour attractions, such as the aquarium seem to have done everything they can to look dead and decaying and closed for the season. You get the feeling that things don’t change too much in the summer but it seems that it is almost nothing that a lick of paint wouldn’t solve.

There are a number of military museums in Vladivostok and we visited a couple. The first one beggers belief at how it stays open. Whilst it is a good enough little exhibition (although everything is is Russian) the visitor’s book, which they ask you to sign was only pages thick and the first entry was from 2004. The last entry was from a month earlier than our visit. We were the only ones in there and escorted throughout by a friendly enough security guard. The next museum we went to was on a small submarine, that would have held about 40 seamen and would have gone under the water for just a few days at a time. Again, all in Russian, the exhibits were interesting enough but being in the submarine was fascinating. We had a good talk to the naval recruit who was working in the museum, about the missiles back then and those of today and whilst it was fascinating, it did seem a little odd to be talking about the damage they can do, knowing that any future activity of said missiles wold probably be against either the UK or America. We had also wanted to visit another military museum, which is home to tanks and other machinery and was meant to be the best of the bunch, but after over two hours of searching for the entrance we could see exhibits but couldn’t get in) we gave up and instead headed for some tea and cake to console ourselves.

We had two full days in the city and as well as visiting museums we simply mooched around, strolling along the frozen sea front and ducking in and out of the odd little shopping malls that Russia is home to. We also treated ourselves to some good food (dodgy fast food Mexican aside) as we had about £30 extra Rubles to spend - so ate a delicious Thai dinner and some interesting and yummy Georgian food - best to stuff it in before two days on the ferry!