Travel Reference
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C
ALLING IT
a café is generous.
The parking lot is empty, and the gas pumps haven't worked for years. There is a one-
story wooden building, with a ramshackle outhouse attached. Sergei and I walk inside to find
four wooden tables, no customers, and a woman watching an old TV behind the register.
She and another woman back in the kitchen look up at me and Sergei as if we've arrived
from outer space. Think old Western movie, where a stranger arrives in a dusty town and
walks into a vacant bar, feeling very out of place, fearing a duel at any moment. Except here
there's no sunshine or tumbleweeds, just bitter cold and giant heaps of snow. I try to act nat-
ural, inspecting a pink, creamy salad that's available for purchase in a glass case. Sergei tells
me it's a Russian dish called “herring under a fur coat”—it usually has herring, mayonnaise,
beets, egg yolk, and garlic. The salad is wrapped tightly under plastic wrap. A handwritten
note says, “Don't touch with your hands.” Wouldn't dream of it, actually.
As we are at the counter, the door swings open and two young men walk in, with the cas-
ual, careless strut of guys poised for a fight but wanting to show no fear. One is Ivan, the
other a young man I don't recognize from the day before.
All four of us silently shake hands.
“Ivan, thanks for coming,” I say. Sergei translates. Ivan nods. I ask if everyone wants tea.
Nods all around, and I order four teas from the woman at the counter.
I felt a personal connection with Andrei Gorodilov in Sagra. He is my age, a business-
man, world traveler. There's no natural connection here.
“This is my friend Evgeni. I asked him to come with me.”
“Of course,” I say.
Ivan is wearing jeans and a sweater with thick black-and-white horizontal stripes. He
seems nervous. Evgeni is wearing an all-black coat, zipped up to his chin. He has a menacing
look and snakelike eyes, light-colored with small dark pupils. In fact both of these guys seem
menacing at first glance—and very much like young men across Russia. On the streets in
Moscow and elsewhere, there's a certain look to many young men: strong, tough, intimidat-
ing. I have interviewed some, but only now realize I've shied away from many, feeling no
welcome mat.
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