Item From the Past: Irkutsk

September 21, 1994

Irkutsk has a distinctly European feel to it -- broad streets, trees lining those streets, a variety of old, short buildings. Not as much Stalinist concrete as I expected. Double windows seem standard just about everywhere, the better to deal with winter. The place is also as run-down as expected, especially the many wooden structures, which tend to be sagging and lined with character cracks. Enthusiastic rehabbers would love the place, except maybe that it's in Siberia.

Been to a variety of churches and museums, the most interesting among them the Decembrist Museum, once the Trubetskoy and Volkonsky homes, two families of Decembrists who eventually set up fairly comfortable digs in 19th-century Siberia, it seems. One church we didn't get to see was Saint I Forget Who: Our guide pointed to some drab Soviet building and explained that the largest church in Siberia used to be there, until Stalin had it destroyed. Someone asked why he had done that. “Because,” the guide answered, “Stalin was a weird dude.”

At an Irkutsk uni-plex on the 19th we saw Cliffhanger, a Stallone vehicle with some action and colorful death, especially people falling from airplanes and cliffs. It was dubbed into Russian the cheapest possible way, with one male voice reading the script as the story went along. It was a better movie without the English soundtrack, though occasionally it poked through the dubbing. "Gravity's a bitch," I heard one character say as another fell out of an airplane to his death.

Today we made an excursion to Lake Baikal. It's a clear, flat, blue, cold-looking lake, something like Lake Superior on a calm day, but with rolling, fall-foliage hills up against the shoreline. Something like Tennessee in late October, if it had a huge lake somewhere in the middle of the state. Add to that mountains in the distance, on the other side of the lake. Like the Rockies. So it's Lake Superior with Tennessee foliage and Colorado mountains. Had an excellent lunch at the Intourist Baikal Hotel -- lake fish and sour cream, very Russian. The restaurant also has a superb view of the lake.

The boat trip on Lake Baikal didn't take that long, just up and down the lake shore, with a stop near shore that allowed us to take a dip in the water. Of about a dozen of us, only two Australians jumped into the water, already -- always -- very chilly. They didn't stay in long.