Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
A
ND YET, FOR
better or worse, Rose and I spent our three years living our daily lives in the
“Moscow” Russia, the world of trendy cafés and fat paychecks. My reporting took me to
speck-on-the-map villages and brought me in touch with people living on the brink. But liv-
ing in central Moscow, socializing in journalism and diplomatic circles, we generally met
Russians who were part of the urban elite, people working as lawyers, bankers, or execut-
ives in energy companies, many of whom benefited from Putin's economy but were out on
the streets protesting his authoritarian leadership style. And that's a paradox you discover
in many younger, more well-off Russians. They are educated, have traveled the world, and
find democratic principles and values appealing. Then again, they're still pulled by the cul-
tural forces in their country that have defined their thinking and who they are. And what's
more, at the end of the day, any complaints they have about the state of Russian society
must be weighed against the fact that they themselves are doing quite well.
And so Rose and I cursed the piles of wealth in Moscow and scoffed at Russians who
loved to strut out of designer boutiques showing off stunningly expensive new fur coats or
order seven-hundred-dollar bottles of champagne just to say they did. And while I'm happy
to say we didn't live in that world, we probably intersected with it more often than we did
with, say, Ivan's existence in his village outside Chelyabinsk. I remember Rose once re-
turning from shopping at one of the fancy grocery stores in Moscow to report that she had
made her “first Russian friend!” She and Natalya met in the checkout line. Natalya, like
Rose, is in her thirties. She speaks flawless English, went to college in the United States,
works for a technology company and is often on the road, shuttling from Moscow to her
home city of Novosibirsk, to spots around Europe, or to the United States. Rose often had
lunch or dinner with Natalya, and she would come to parties with us at the homes of journ-
alists and diplomats. When Rose told Natalya that she was flying into Novosibirsk to meet
me for part of this train trip, she told Rose we had to meet her friend Alexei.
A few hours after Rose lands, she and I walk into a palatial café near Novosibirsk's
train station. Suddenly, nothing says you're in Russia—this could be some trendy hotspot
in London, New York, or Buenos Aires. The walls are artistically-distressed gray stone,
the ceiling is corrugated metal, with rows of bright light bulbs hanging from wires. At a
wooden table near the back, we see the man Natalya described—her friend Alexei Kamerz-
an—waiting for us. He gets up to greet us and shake our hands, a Bluetooth earpiece still
firmly in his left ear, where it would remain planted throughout our conversation. Alexei is
thirty-five, with thinning brown hair and some deliberate style choices: perfectly trimmed
five o'clock shadow and a button-down opened just so to display some chest hair. His story
is a reminder that Russia has produced its share of winners. Alexei's mother worked for a
state carpet company during Soviet times. When the Soviet Union collapsed, many people
who were either smart or lucky—or both—rushed to start private companies in their areas
of expertise. His mother opened Carpet World, which Alexei helps run today, putting his
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