The prolific American writer Ian Frazier , author of ten books and a regular contributor to the New

For most Americans, Siberia is a place for the exiled or the condemned, not the holidaymaker. Its land mass encompasses 1/12 th of the planet's surface area and is chock full of natural resources, but remains mysterious enterprise rental cars and misunderstood.
The prolific American writer Ian Frazier , author of ten books and a regular contributor to the New Yorker , made five trips to Siberia between 1993-2009 and chronicled his adventures in " Travels in Siberia. " His work was recognized as a notable book of the year in the New York Times and made it onto the best books of the year list in the Washington Post , Boston Globe , San Francisco Chronicle , Christian Science Monitor , St. Louis Post-Dispatch , and Kansas City Star .
It was a general fascination with the country. After the fall of the Soviet Union, all of these parts of Russia that were previously enterprise rental cars inaccessible were suddenly open. I wanted to take advantage of that and I had friends who had come from Russia during the Carter enterprise rental cars administration and could suddenly enterprise rental cars go back.
You talked a lot in the book about how beautiful Russian women are and how Americans had this false notion during the Cold War that they were ugly, masculine brutes. You also wrote that John Quincy Adams thought that Russian women were ugly. So did their looks improve or was he just wrong?
I think Adams was wrong. I don't know what he was seeing but he went out of his way to describe grotesque-looking women. The Marquis de Custine , who I think was a much better observer than Adams, wrote a book that came out in 1840 about his trip and he defined the beauty of Russian women in a way that I think is still applicable. He said it's a combination of the beauty of Asian women and the Nordic beauty that is very beguiling in the same way that Russia combines East and West. There is something that is very mysterious and beguiling enterprise rental cars about Russian women.
It was a diesel; it had been a delivery van for dairy products. It was more like a coal-fired vehicle; it felt like a steamboat. It seemed very crude and simple- it kept breaking down, but they kept figuring out how to get it going again, sometimes with parts they found on the road. I think we paid about $4,000 for it. The theory was that we would sell it after the trip. They said I'd get that money back- ha, ha, ha, that never happened. enterprise rental cars As far as I know, it's still sitting in somebody's backyard in the village of Olga on the Pacific Ocean. That's the village where Volodya met a woman he decided to leave his wife for, correct?
Right. enterprise rental cars He met a pharmacist while we were passing through there in 2001, and by the time I returned in 2005, he had left his wife in Sochi and moved all the way across the country, to Vladivostok, to be closer to her. So the trip really changed his life. I tried to find him in 2009, but I couldn't track him down.
You wrote "safety is never the Russian's primary concern" and mentioned that your request to have seat belts put in the Renault was viewed as a bizarre demand. Why do you think Russians have a different attitude towards seat belts and safety in general compared to Americans?
Hard to say. People live really hard and they have total contempt for what we take for granted in terms of safety. If you put your seat belt on people don't even understand why you would want to do that. My request for seat belts was viewed as a real peculiarity. Maybe it's just that they have plenty of other problems to worry about- why care about things like seat belts, smoking, drinking, or the rest?
It was, 'what did you think was going to happen, you were the ones funding these people when they were fighting us and now look what's enterprise rental cars happened.' enterprise rental cars But also there was a great deal of sympathy for Americans as people. It was amazing enterprise rental cars how much sympathy enterprise rental cars and affection there was for us on a personal level. enterprise rental cars People would come up to me and tell me how sorry they were about 9/11. There's still a huge amount of affection for America.
People in other parts of the world live in older buildings and are used to dealing enterprise rental cars with sewage in older ways. We're just used to cleaner bathrooms. Dirty toilets aren't just in Russia. But a really disgusting toilet in a place where the temperature never goes above zero, like an outdoor toilet, enterprise rental cars develops grossness that you can't imagine. You get a stalactite effect; everything freezes and builds up in a kind of tower of filth. Summer or winter, their toilets are disgusting.
I only got close to it, but it looked horrible. We had to roll up the windows; you could smell it from a distance. They make cement and process aluminum. It is the most blighted place I've ever seen in my life. It was horrible even before they got that industry. It's just been a historically awful place. Someone writing in the 19 th century wrote that birds couldn't' even fly over the place because the toxins killed everything within a 50 miles radius.
For a place that had a socialist enterprise rental cars ideal, it's the most every man for himself place I know. There is no concept of the public good. People destroy public spaces very quickly. You go up a hallway in an apartment building, and it'll be filled with cigarette butts and all sorts of trash. And you can't put a light bulb in a hallway because people will steal it. So the hallways have to be completely dark. But inside people's homes, it's all very nice. The distance between order and chaos is just the distance enterprise rental cars of your doorsill.
It's a place of many layers- anything that's visible, there's always something going on behind that. It's a place of incredible street smarts- people know how to solve problems. But I would say that as a general rule of thumb, the higher the level of street smarts in a people, the worse the country. It's like everyone's trying to figure out something for themselves but the country as a whole has been destroyed and abandoned. Some of the nicest towns you can find in America, the people are terrific but they don't have street smarts.
You studied the language as well. I once traveled across Russia without speaking Russian and it was extremely difficult. Did you find that you needed to learn the language after your first trip there?
A lot of Russians speak English, but out in remote areas of Siberia not many people do. I started studying right after my first trip and then worked on it intermittently all the way through. It's not a total disadvantage to have crude language skills enterprise rental cars because it tends to make people feel superior to you, and that's not bad. I ended up talking to a lot of elementary school teachers, because they were patient in speaking to me.
You learned Russian but were still a victim of Russia's dual pricing schemes, where foreigners pay more than locals, right? I think you had a Russian friend try to buy you a ticket for a ballet at the Russian price, but it didn't enterprise rental cars work?
They have these old lady ticket takers- they can tell the difference between a foreigner and a Russian. I thought I could get past them with a ticket for Russians but they spotted me as a foreigner immediately. enterprise rental cars The difference in the ticket prices is huge. I think I paid about 10 times the price locals paid. My Russian friends said, 'oh we'll buy you the ticket,' but it didn't work and it was very embarrassing.
I think Sergei has, but I haven't heard from him in some time. I don't know whether the book insulted enterprise rental cars him or not. It hasn't appeared in Russian yet, and I'm not sure about Volodya. I was impressed with their fortitude and ability. They did a great job. Russians have all kinds of problems, but they're really enterprise rental cars tough people and very smart. They get underestimated all the time in the West. Napolean underestimated enterprise rental cars them. Hitler underestimated them.
Russia has a lot of problems; alcoholism is certainly one of them. Women's life spans are 10-12 years longer. You encounter drunks and have to deal with them. I didn't drink. People enterprise rental cars saw that as totally crazy. I would tell people I had a stomach ulcer and people would accept that, or I'd sketch, and people respected that too.
You need boots with a very good tread because the streets are like polished, hard, deep snow. Russians don't use salt on the streets. So you could easily fall and hurt yourself. It was sometimes 40 below zero and windy, so I had thermal enterprise rental cars underwear, snowmobiling overalls, and an L.L. Bean down coat that was so heavy with down you had to cinch it around the middle. But if you're sitting in a vehicle, and they don't have heat, you're going to freeze your ass off anyway. But people there get used to it. I'd see women in high heels, and if you look on the ground, you see the snow is punctured everywhere with little high heel marks, which look like ski pole points.
Veliki Ustyug at one point was the richest city in Russia during the time when Russia's main export was fur. It was a sort of clearinghouse for sable and other furs coming out of Russia and Siberia. The place is at a strategic river confluence and there are hundreds of churches in the town and when I was there they had just re-gilded enterprise rental cars all the onion domes. And it's on the banks of a river, enterprise rental cars so it's very much a vision of what a 17th century Russian fairy tale city looks like. Like a lot of other places in Siberia, there are also lots of beautiful women there.
On a short trip, you might fly to Moscow, and then connect to Novosibirsk. It's very representative of Siberia- it'll give you an idea of what it's like. There's a hilarious, huge shopping mall out on the taiga. I was there in the winter and there's no light. There are millions and millions of stars- that's the great thing about Siberia. The Trans-Siberian is slow as hell but you can take the train east. To get to Veliki Ustyug, you have to drive; we did it in a two-day drive from St. Petersburg. But that's not Siberia, that's still Russia. You can also fly to Siberia on Korean Air from Anchorage. You change in Seoul, but you're in Vladivostok, which is an amazing place as well.
He may have said it was the most beautiful in Russia. I thought it was a pretty place and it's v