Chronicle Entries

September 16 - Khabarovsk

Cold and rainy morning. Everyone is telling us to expect cold weather soon. Can't wait. There wasn't a whole lot we could do in the morning, so Lisa had some fun scouring the personal ads in "Konkurent" ("The Competitor"), a local Khabarovsk newspaper.

The weather cleared up enough in the afternoon for us to go out and meet some people. One of the themes we want to speak to people about during this trip are the Russian presidential elections scheduled for next June. With no apparent front-runner at this point and a volatile political scene brewing in Moscow, the stage is set for an anything-goes '96 campaign that could potentially change the fate and course of Russia.

Olga, a woman we found feeding birds on a street corner, Grisha and Faya, both retired doctors who have been married for 50 years, and Ivan, a retired driver who now works as a street cleaner to supplement his pension, gave us their differing views on the elections.

September 17 - Khabarovsk

We had hoped to be on the 6:00pm train to Birobidzhan tonight but we didn't finish up our editing in time. It turned out for the better. We had a great dinner with Larisa and her boyfriend Victor who just came into town from St. Petersburg. They put out a spread of sausage, cheese, calamari, vegetables meat and potatoes, followed by a chocolate cake that Lisa and Larisa concocted from a package of "Western Family" brownie mix. Victor poured copious servings American Eagle vodka which I thought was bit ironic drinking vodka from Minnesota here in the country that produces and consumes the most vodka in the world. To prove that it was having no effect on her, Lisa ran through the series of standard sobriety tests given by American police officers. She did fairly well but I don't think any decent cop would have let her get back in the car.

There is a 7:45am train leaving for Birobidzhan in the morning but 12:30pm train is looking a lot more realistic. In any case we should be there by tomorrow evening.

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