Yes, I am staying in the city with some of the rudest inhabitants of any country I have ever been to. Luckily for me, the Lonely Plant's Russian phrasebook includes a very useful page on swearing in Russian and has indispensable phonetic transcriptions to tell someone how to go forth and multiply or that their mother has a face like the rear end of an ancient 1950s Zil bus.
So where to start? I suppose the post office is as good a place as any. I wanted stamps, so it's a general rule that post offices sell them. Not here. Every counter seemed to be the wrong one and every person behind the counter was busy with something: untying the knots on a lumpy parcel; texting their friends; talking to the woman opposite; staring into space... After fifteen minutes in a queue and thus confirming my long-held belief that, whichever queue I join, it is always the slowest, I gave up and went out. There's only so many times you can get snapped at for asking for stamps and I thought I had a good chance of getting some IN A BLOODY POST OFFICE. As a last resort I tried the woman who ran the little kiosk in the space under the stairs. She sold nuclear-looking luminous birthday cards and magazines and not only did she provide me with two stamps, she even stuck them on the postcards for me. When I said thank you she almost - not quite, but almost - smiled.
For the length of time I am here, I am staying at the Hotel Volgograd, a square stone Soviet shithole. Actually the hotel itself isn't too bad, it's the reception staff who are the trouble and we have taken a mutual dislike to each other, so much so that now I see the security guy to let me in instead of reporting to the front desk. When I arrived they were supposed to book me in for six nights but the dozy, wet-behind-the-ears clerk only put me in for two. On the Monday I had to deal with someone different - whose name I have added to my list of people I will, one day, get (this still includes my Junior Four teacher, Denis Lee and Freda Cooper, and having a name badge in Cyrillic is no hiding place) - who practically called me a liar, told me there were no rooms available and, as I attempted to argue, answered the phone as I was in mid-sentence. It took an hour of haranguing and complaining to get a - more expensive - room for another night. Then on the Tuesday the same thing happened again. The flame-haired queen bitch reappeared and this is where I thought I'd get kicked out, but after some discussion, a room was - oh! - found, and I was told that I should be eternally grateful for all the efforts the staff had gone to on my behalf. Using my signal-less mobile phone to clock her one would have been more satisfying but I resisted the urge...
The hotel has several attractions although I haven't yet ventured down to the club 'Paris Night' nor have I been tempted by the bar on the second floor which is open 'around the clock - from 11 - 02' (call me petty but isn't 'around the clock' supposed to be 24 hour?) and where 'the DJs blow up the air with the most modern of music'. Instead I have been spending ages leaning out of my window watching the people in the yard at work. In Russia this seems to consist of an awful lot of standing around, some time spent scratching, plenty more time spent smoking and the rest in gratuitous texting. It has also put me off visiting the Grand Cafe as all the waitresses and chefs stand out by the back door either tabbing it, or stroking the scabby cat that limps around the yard looking for scraps and not, from what I can spy from my little window, washing their hands when they go back in. Tut tut.
The city itself is nothing special, probably due to the fact it was levelled to the ground in 1942-3 and now only one building remains as a reminder. A big wide boulevard - Prospekt Lenin - is the main street, with traffic screaming past on either side of a Spanish rambla-style park in the middle. Another, smaller park-street runs down to the river - flooded beaches here too - and you can sit and watch the boats chug along the river, or walk along the prom. Those bits that aren't underwater of course. I also met my first policeman, who stepped out of the shadows of a beer kiosk, pointed his grey and black stick at me and with a wave, 'invited' me over to show my docyumenti. He asked if I spoke Russian and I said no - as I find it always pays to be awkward with the police, in some self-satisfying, childish way - and then he thumbed ever so slowly through my passport. He spent a long time at the photo page, maybe trying to work out if St Helens was a town, a person or a type of nylon, and then even longer at the registration page - not, however, noticing the gap in the dates where I had failed to register in Moscow - and visa. Eventually, after what seemed like ten very long minutes, he snapped my passport shut and with a flourish, handed it back to me. I wandered off in relief, and saw him again later, having a crafty ciggie behind a van.
Volgograd is the place where, on Hill 102, over a million Russians and Germans died. The History Channel can help with more details. The hill now is a monument to those who died - whether it is to all, or just to the Russians isn't clear - and is topped by a 250 foot statue of Mother Russia, who carried a big long sword and who is shouting, screaming almost, at something. Probably someone in a post office. It is, apart from the Statue of Liberty, the single most humungous statue I have ever seen. It is huge, made entirely from stone, and if it ever fell over - sometimes I think of these things and they seem important - there'd be some surprised expressions in the Duma. To reach this point, you have to climb several flights of steps, then pass through a line of trees where red flags fluttered in the breeze. Walk past the granite statue of the musclebound soldier by the pond, through the mural to commemorate the fallen - where authentic noises of planes and explosions are played over a loudspeaker, interspersed with extracts of speeches. The screams of the wounded and dieing seem to have been edited out. This passage brings you to a huge square statue of Mother's Grief, a woman holds her dieing son, and then the building that houses the eternal flame. It is only after this that you climb up to the top to stand by the statue of Mother Russia and can squint in the afternoon rain across the Volga to the southern steppe, and on other sides to the blocks of flats that stand like dominoes all along the horizon. I was hoping to supplement this visit with one to the Battle of Stalingrad museum, but workmen had decided to dig up the path in front of the doors and the museum was closed. The panorama gallery, which gives a 360 degree view of how the battle went on, had a sign on one door saying use the next door and an arrow pointing the way. The next door had the same sign on. The third - and final - door - had the same sign but with the arrow pointing the opposite way. All the doors were locked as I tried, and I even followed someone else round to make sure when they tried as well I could laugh at them. I had to make do with a few tanks, some armoured cars (most with flat tyres), and three planes that looked like they'd been assembled by seven-year old kids with only the slightest grasp of aerodynamics. I mean, should the propellor of the plane touch the ground? And should there be a crack in the fuselage underneath where the driver sits?
So my time in Russia is almost ended. I have to take a train on Friday at 8am to Rostov-on-Don, and from there across the frontier into Ukraine, with Simferopol my destination. Unfortunately, there were no second class sleeper beds available for this trip on any date, so I have had to go into third class and will have to mix with the proletariat. I still have no train clothes. One final word to the traveller - and to manufacturers - M&S cotton-rich ankle socks are crap. I've only had this pair for four weeks and already the heel and toes have holes in. My Asda George ones are still going strong, so let that be a lesson to anyone thinking of wearing socks for a month at a time. Ok, off to Ukraine and the autonomous republic of Crimea...
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