Russian Far East 2014 02

Getting out of bed at 4:15am this morning was as difficult as I expected it to be. Although the days are long in mid-summer in Vladivostok, there was no hint of daylight at that early hour. Nonetheless, a hot shower was enough to wake me up, once I had figured out that the blue tap was hot water and the red tap was cold, and I had waited a few minutes for the dark rust-brown, foul smelling water to clear from the pipes.

Everyone in the group was waiting at the doorstep of the hotel, as directed, at 5:00am – except for one person. A 45 minute blind pursuit ensued for the missing gentleman, who was staying in a different hotel and had not attended the previous day’s group meeting. Finally, at 5:45am, the bus (which sported quite unusual seat upholstery) left for the airport, hoping that the missing man had made his own way there without telling anyone. Fortunately, that was precisely what had happened.

Our flight to Magadan was in an Aurora Airlines Airbus A319. Aurora is a recently formed sub-division of Aeroflot following a take-over of Vladivostok Avia and SAT Airlines from Sakhalin Island. The aircraft was in excellent condition, and the flight involved two sectors. First, we flew one hour to the beautiful city of Khabarovsk, located beside the Chinese border. I was sorry not to be able to explore Khabarovsk, as the city had impressed me so much when I visited in 2002. Our planned one hour stopover at Khabarovsk Airport turned into a two hour transit for a reason that no-one seemed to understand or question, and it was followed by a very pleasant two and a quarter hour flight to our destination, Magadan.

Magadan is an hour ahead of Vladivostok, and we arrived in Magadan about 20 minutes behind schedule at 2:40pm. Our luggage finally emerged on the conveyor belt almost an hour after landing.

Flying into Magadan, the snow on the hills around the city told us that the weather would be in stark contrast to Vladivostok’s and Khabarovsk’s warm, sunny conditions,. As we disembarked, we were greeted with a temperature of 10 degrees Celsius and grey skies – such is summer in Magadan.

The drive from the airport into the city took about an hour with just one brief stop, this being at the large monument identifying the name of the city at its northern entry. Although it is the capital city of a large region, Magadan is a much smaller city than either Vladivostok or Khabarovsk. It was first settled in 1929 by government geologists exploring for minerals, a fruitful search that led to the opening of gold mines and tin mines that still provide the backbone of the region’s economy.

Ten years later in 1939, its status was elevated under Stalin’s rule to that of a city with the purpose of being the administrative centre of the gulag system. Nowadays, it is an administrative centre and transport hub with a focus on timber cutting and gold mining. Although the appearance of its residential areas on the outskirts promised little in the way of aesthetic beauty as we drove into Magadan, the city centre proved to be attractive, and in the case of its main street, Lenin Prospekt, quite elegant.

We were originally supposed to stay in the VM-Tsentr Hotel, but as it was under partial renovation, we relocated to the Hotel Magadan, about a hundred metres away. There were some shortcomings – the rooms were small, the bathrooms were miniscule, the narrow bed had a deep sagging depression down the middle, and the promised wi-fi never connected – but more importantly than all these points, the location was superb.

We checked in to the hotel at about 4:30pm. A welcome dinner was being provided for the group that evening, so that allowed two and a half hours to do some exploring of the city. Surprisingly, it was quite dark even though sunset was not until 11:15pm. The reason soon became apparent as the clouds lowered, the temperature fell and steady rainfall commenced.

Of course, that didn’t prevent me exploring the city; it just meant I needed to get a rain jacket on first. My first stop was the large Russian Orthodox church just a few steps along the street where the hotel is located. This huge church opened just two years ago after being under construction for a decade. Churches in Magadan are a fairly new phenomenon, and only began to appear after perestroika in the 1980s/early 1990s. The Cathedral occupies the site of a Soviet-era government office block that had to be demolished because its poor quality of construction was leading to its collapse. With more than a little irony, the new cathedral overlooks what used to be the city’s main square during Soviet times; the large statue of Lenin has been relocated elsewhere in the city.

My second stop was a nearby housing estate where several jet fighters, tanks, a helicopter, weaponry and armoured vehicles were on display – quite an unusual way of decorating a housing estate. At the entrance to the estate, several wings and propeller blades of World War II fighters have been erected to form a monument commemorating the air bridge that linked Magadan with Alaska during World War II. Although somewhat rundown, perhaps because the vehicles and at least one of the jet fighters (the MiG-21) are used by youths and children for climbing and playing, the exhibition was fascinating, and it certainly transformed what would otherwise have been a fairly unremarkable housing estate.

The rest of my exploration was done by walking uphill, southwards along Lenin Prospekt. The main avenue of Magadan, Lenin Prospekt is flanked by trees and lined with many elegant Soviet buildings, interspersed with some beautiful parks and memorials. Even in the rain, they made a pretty sight, although I couldn’t help noticing the extent to which the flowers were struggling to stay alive and grow in the cold conditions that mark summer in Magadan.

The group (which comprises 14 people I think) met as scheduled in the hotel foyer at 7:15 pm, and we took the short walk to the Toro Grill Restaurant for a superb, though very meat-heavy, dinner.

The rain was still falling as I walked back to the hotel at 9:30 pm, but the skies had brightened somewhat compared with earlier in the afternoon. Nonetheless, the low grey clouds covered the sky completely. It was really not worth waiting up until 11:15pm to photograph a spectacular sunset today in Magadan.

Day 2 - Vladivostok to Magadan

Wednesday

2 July 2014

Key to airport codes shown on the map: VVO is Vladivostok, KHV is Khabarovsk and GDX is Magadan.

UPDATE: Just three weeks after I visited Magadan, heavy rains caused flooding which washed away the two high-mounted Sukhoi jet fighters shown in the photo above. Photos and details can be seen at http://englishrussia.com/2014/07/23/the-flood-washes-planes-away-in-magadan/.