Going to Magadan. Part one
(A retro story about a trip that happened in the late nineties. Photo from the Internet, because unfortunately I lost my camera. )
At the meeting, the chief unveiled a business trip plan for the coming period. Three IT people fly to Kuala Lumpur, two PR people to Brussels, a negotiator specialist to Kharkov, and he and his wife, who was our consultant, are forced to fly across the globe to a conference in Honolulu. I had a business trip to Magadan.
At first I was upset and angry. True, after a few days I decided that everything was not so bad. In the end, not everyone gets to get into such an unusual place for free.
But the registration of the business trip was delayed. The boss, who was busy preparing for the conference, ran past and threw: "Get ready. Tomorrow I will give an order to the accounting department to give you travel allowances and order tickets. " But apparently, I forgot. Realizing that everything could go wrong, I myself came to the accounting department and said that the boss asked me to convey his order in words.
And flew away. The flight was long and tedious. And much longer than expected. Due to the strong side wind, Magadan did not accept our plane and we landed at the nearest airport. It was Anadyr. This is approximately 1500 km in a straight line. About the same as from Moscow to Berlin or from Kyiv to Antalya. In those parts, their distances.
So, I spent 3 or 4 days at the main airport in Chukotka. (I can’t say more precisely because of the time difference between Moscow and Magadan and between Magadan and Anadyr).
This is now the air harbor of Anadyr - brand new, foppish and designer airport named after Yuri Rytkheu.
Yury Rytkheu Airport
And then it was a military airfield with a small terminal for civilian passengers. Harsh and harsh. With the uncompromising name "Coal".
"Coal" was something like this
The airport shook me. And there is no irony here. By the time of this business trip, I had already traveled and seen different airports. Good and bad, big and small, new and old. All of them were related by uncomfortability, vanity and exorbitant greed.
“Coal” was not like that. Firstly, the prices. You could eat all sorts of cotelette de Kiev with an elaborate side dish and a pitcher of sake and pay half the average salary, or you could order a plate of chicken noodles or pearl barley porridge with meat and it would cost the price of a pack of cigarettes.
And the men at the buffet asked for a cheese sandwich, which was a regular cheese sandwich for $0.3 and that coffee in a glass for $0.35.
This was the pre-smartphone era. But there were no problems with entertainment. You could rent Tetris. Like this:
It was possible to rent chess and checkers. And you could borrow a book for free, on bail.
I haven't seen anything like this anywhere, and I won't see it now.
It is clear that both the prices for food and the rental of games were determined by the specifics of the place. Non-flying weather could drag on for 10 days, and the Air Force command, which mostly owned Ugolny, simply took care of its pilots. And we, civilians, got a little.
Well, we need to talk about vanity. Despite the fact that people from several flights to Magadan were languishing in a small room, there was no nervousness and tension there. On the contrary, some kind of almost detached calmness.
When a hoarse speaker announced something unusual - "The Aeroflot helicopter is starting to board the route Anadyr - Cross Bay - Providence Bay", solid, restrained Chukchi in beautiful long fur coats, taking their bags, guns, children and dogs, slowly climbed from the floor and walked to the landing.
But there was one exception. On the morning of the second day, it was announced that two military transport aircraft would try to break through to Magadan and they could take on board a certain number of commercial passengers. This is where the trouble began. All sorts of bosses, prosecutors and deputies crowded around the registration desk. They, shaking their crusts, demanded a place in these planes.
Places were allocated for them and they flew away. It became a little freer and you could even sleep on the benches.
After 6 or 7 hours, these planes returned. Magadan never accepted them.
Bloated from the chatter, with green faces, the masters of life returned to Ugolny. They were so miserable that they were given places to lie down.
In the meantime, I decided to take the bus to the city.
To be honest, it was scary, because the temperature was -47 ℃ and from this some processes took place with the eyes and the snow seemed pink.
Anadyr made a depressing impression. Not a single tree. Grey, depressive five-story buildings on stilts. If you squat down, you can see the legs of people walking along the next street. A swift haze engulfed the city and the frail, dim lighting did nothing to help.
Anadyr to Abramovich
After walking for an hour, I drove back to Ugolny, which had already become my home.
Abramovich is a great, wise and worthy man. Even a billionaire. Having become the governor of Chukotka, he did a lot. But for me, his main achievements are that he painted the houses in bright colors and made a wonderful, strong and lively street lighting of Anadyr. The city has become completely different. Joyful and optimistic.
Modern Anadyr
Fortunately, Magadan agreed to accept our Moscow heavy plane and we, to the envy of passengers from short flights from Vladivostok and Komsomolsk-on-Amur, left hospitable Chukotka.
At the Magadan hotel, the administrator asked me to allow me to put one more person in my room. The fact is that due to non-flying weather, hundreds of people got stuck in the city and there were not enough hotels. I agreed. But I made a huge mistake by asking to be seated with a respectable person, and not some rogue.
I was promised to find a worthy roommate. And no sooner had I settled in than my unexpected neighbor knocked on my door.
He was a huge man with the figure of Hagrid and the face of Peter Pettigrew. He was the chief pathologist of some large area. A very controversial career... (I can only compare this with the fate of one of my classmates, who became president of the All-Russian Society of Deceived Depositors. )
At first glance, everything was fine. I noticed some madness in his face, alas, much later.
You can not read further, because dirty tricks and sticky abominations. But what happened, happened.
We bowed to him and went to bed.
Oh, that was a nightmare! He snored, he yelled, he farted. And each of his strokes… Imagine: a biker on a low-revving Harley turns the throttle in neutral to attract the attention of a cool washcloth…
In short, I slept in the corridor on the couch.
In the morning, angry as hell, I went to the regional administration, held some negotiations there in a half-conscious state, and returned to the hotel by three o'clock.
It wasn't easy there. This Barmaley, rubbing his hands, said that he had glued together two complaisant girls and we would have a perky evening.
An hour later, these girls came.
They were dirty, smelly and somehow unkind.
These girls arrived in Magadan from the village of Ust-Nera by bus along the Kolyma highway.
Ust-Nera. Our days
That's all who live in small, cozy, provincial towns, and think that their life is boring, imagine what it's like to drag 900 kilometers from your native Ust-Nera to plunge into the lights and temptations of a charming metropolis. And this metropolis is Magadan.
But everything ended well for me. The girls took a long bath in our bathroom. Were erased. Ironed. And then, saying that they needed to run to the store for snacks, they packed up and left. Absolutely.
What happiness it was. My roommate Hagrid used filthy foul language. I got drunk with bought Champagne. At night, he tripled his soundtrack. And I lay in bed happy and thought of these Ust-Nerchans as pure, innocent and spiritualized Turgenev girls. And I felt good. And I slept soundly.
That's it, I'm tired. Continue here >>>
