Vladivostok: Two Perspectives
When you live in a place as remote as Sakhalin Island, it is interesting to watch how the rather remote viewpoint causes your perspective on the world to change.
To a lot of Europeans, the city of Vladivostok in the Russian Far East represents the most far-flung, isolated, and distant destination imagineable. As this post by Snowsquare informs us, Vladivostok lies 6 days, 9259km, 2 continents, 14 oblasts and 8 time zones away from Moscow at the very end of the Trans-Siberian Railway. Every Muscovite would surely know the final destination of the train, but I wonder how many actually braved the journey to Russia’s wild eastern provinces without having the feeling they are descending into the unknown.  Vladivostok sometimes gets used in English in the same way as Timbuktu, to mean somewhere so distant and remote it might as well be on another planet. Certainly, for most European Russians and Europeans in general, Vladivostok must represent the ends of the earth.
Not so when you live on Sakhalin Island. Rather than being a remote town off in the distant east, it becomes a rather important city not far off in the west. Vladivostok is a much larger town than Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk or indeed Khabarovsk, the nearest sizeable city to Sakhalin. Many materials, items of equipment, and certain services like consular support are only available from Vladivostok, and requent trips must be made to the city when running a large operation in Sakhalin. When my company required two buses for the transportation of labourers and we couldn’t find any on Sakhalin, somebody went to Vladivostok and purchased a couple of secondhand Korean vehicles. Any Sakhalin islander who wants a UK visa must apply through the visa application facility in Vladivostok. In Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, Vladivostok is spoken of in the same way that somebody from Pembrokeshire speaks of Cardiff, or someone from Kuwait speaks of Dubai: a big place where you must go if what you are after is not available locally.
That Vladivostok should serve this purpose to Sakhalin islanders when it is considered to be the ends of the earth by most of Europe serves well to demonstrate just how remote we are living on this rock.
Someone’s getting homesick, no?
Comment by Tatyana — January 26, 2007 @ 2:05 am
[...] White Sun of the Desert offers a Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk perspective on the city of Vladivostok. Veronica Khokhlova [...]
Pingback by Global Voices Online » Blog Archive » Russia: Vladivostok and Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk — January 26, 2007 @ 2:44 am
Are you kidding, Tatyana?!! I’m looking forward to getting off the island for a week next month, but I’m sure as heck not missing the UK or heading in that direction.
By the way, belated congratulations for yesterday.
Comment by Tim Newman — January 26, 2007 @ 3:05 am
[wispering] what happened yesterday? am I missing something?
No, really, other than a heated and altogether unpleasant debate with my online Israeli correspondents re: my lack of ‘blood connection’ and general negativity towards the Orient – nothing of note…
Comment by Tatyana — January 26, 2007 @ 6:54 pm
Vladivostok seems interesting. According to Wikipedia it is terribly polluted though. Have you noticed this? Is Sakhalin Island also really polluted?
Comment by Dusty — January 27, 2007 @ 1:19 am
[wispering] what happened yesterday? am I missing something?
Possibly this?
Comment by Tim Newman — January 27, 2007 @ 2:04 am
Ah, yes, well – I’m not a Christian, not a Russian Orthodox; their saints and saint days carry no importance for me.
On the other hand, it’s as good excuse for celebrating in a bar as anything….
Comment by Tatyana — January 27, 2007 @ 2:15 am
Erm, well….I only discovered it was a saint’s day when I followed the Wikipedia link. I asssumed it was like one of the many other “special days” in Russia and was simply an excuse to congratulate a certain group of people who then get drunk along with those who have congratulated them. At least, that’s how it’s dressed up here.
My mother in law is a Tatiana, and has no religious affiliations whatsoever, but I was ordered on pain of death by her daughter to send a congratulatory message. You should have made the most of it and let everybody buy you drinks all day, once they’ve been gently reminded as to the occasion of course.
Comment by Tim Newman — January 27, 2007 @ 3:14 am
There is always a next year…
Comment by Tatyana — January 28, 2007 @ 9:05 pm
Maybe we should commemorate the spineless sun-baking English surrenders on the sporting fields of gentlemen!! At least they earning there $2,000 GBP per day for all the free press they are generating for England.
Using a childs analogy, “are they here yet”
Mike
Comment by Mike — January 29, 2007 @ 5:50 pm
Quick links…
I was off work sick yesterday, so spent some time catching up on my blog reading. Here is my idiosyncratic pick of the past few days’ blog posts:
Glowing Georgians and Radioactive Russians wins the ‘Best post title of the week awardR…
Trackback by Siberian Light — January 31, 2007 @ 11:39 am
China: Don’t Drink The Water Don’t Breathe The Air, Don’t Eat The Food And Don’t Wear The Shoes…
I hate stories like this. I can remember the first time I went to the Russian Far East. This was around ten years ago. I landed in Vladivostok and was picked up at the airport by a driver who my firm’s Russian paralegal (Oksana Demina, who is still wi…
Trackback by China Law Blog — February 22, 2007 @ 5:15 pm