| The
land of Catherine the Great dramatically became all the
more fascinating for me after witnessing Bond (a miscast
Timothy Dalton) escape down a snow covered Russian mountain,
tobogganing in Kara Milovy's cello case, with her in one
hand and her Stradivari in the other.
 The
cello playing was tracked down easily enough, as after nearly
a month in Russia I found myself sitting in the Rachmaninov
Conservatorium on my last night in Moscow, listening to
the Kazakhstan National String Quartet. To be honest, this
wily band of Kazaks looked more like brigands from an episode
of 'Monkey Magic' than any Bond girls I've seen, but at
least their program of Beethoven and Shostakovich took care
of the musical element of my quest. The snow covered mountain
wasn't quite as straight forward however ...
Mount
Elbrus is nestled in the Caucasus Mountains, 1300kms south
of Moscow, within view of Stalin's Georgia to the south,
and hardly 200kms from the discontent of Putin's semi-autonomous
Republics of Chechnya and Dagestan. It stands at 5642m above
(Black) sea level, and after a four day expedition, a three
man 'part-time Queensland mountaineering team' stood at
5642m also, having braved a final 8 hour ascent through
ferocious wind, bitter cold and the rusted, decaying litter
of Soviet machinery and human waste that poisoned the icy
slopes. Despite what the French (and many other Western
Europeans) would have you believe, Elbrus is the highest
peak in Europe, which made for a satisfying climb of one
of the Seven Summits, and despite the absence of a cello
case and beautiful blonde spy, a reasonably easy descent.
 The
celebratory vodkas, with the obligatory collection of German
mountaineers (once again showing themselves to be the omnipresent
nation of world travellers) proved however, to be far more
dangerous. Having previously passed through Moscow before
flying to the Caucasus Mountains, I was perhaps inspired
by the Soviet style amusement arcade games which fill Gorky
Park, based predominantly upon sniper shooting, Rocky IV
boxing bags and other physical strength based 'amusements.'
I fear that my application to the KGB may be in jeopardy
now - as brave though I gather my efforts may have been
in the late night arm wrestling, Kara Milovny would probably
have held her vodka, balance and consciousness (even espionage
secrets) better than this would-be agent.
So
after an intelligence leak like that, and when you are ...Spies
Like Us..., you dust your snowy tracks and return to the
anonymity of dark glasses, tinted luxury car windows and
the indecipherable Cyrillic street signs and menus of Moscow.
Russia and its capital in particular are places of 'mixed
tenses', as the Golden Arches famously illuminate the Kremlin,
while austere Soviet concrete facades compete with the gaudy
cupolas of St Basil's Cathedral, built by Ivan the Terrible
to commemorate his successful military campaign against
the Tartar Mongols in 1552 (no mention of who the Kazakhstan
String Quartet sided with in that battle).
 Moscow
also has a slightly uneasy feeling of being one big game
of chance - not only hosting the largest number of casinos
of any capital city (always go black, never red), but also
corrupt police, a history of mafia businesses and the spectre
of recent terrorist strikes. So much like Mick Jagger's
devil, ...I stuck around St. Petersburg, when I saw it was
a time for a change ....... Northwest by train from Moscow,
this former capital of Peter the Great on the Gulf of Finland
lives up to its reputation as one of the most beautiful
cities in Europe. Its centrepiece remains the Hermitage
and Winter Palace, home to the Romanovs until the Bolsheviks
as, again told by Mick Jagger, ...killed the tsar and his
ministers, Anastasia screamed in vain....
 There
is a definite intrigue about this country that Ian Fleming
only hinted at in ...The Living Daylights..., not least
of all its astonishingly beautiful women (...From Russia
with Love..., perhaps). It suffered an experiment with communism
that was so forceful that Stalin even managed to exile God
(churches remained dormant for 70 years) along with Russia's
great writers of the 20th century. It now experiments with
capitalism, flaunts its female tennis players and sadly
has a decreasing population and life expectancy. But this
not-so-undercover spy leaves behind a country that has survived
a history of sieges and repression (from both within and
outside its constantly changing borders), grateful for the
...Living... highlights, not just the ghosts of the past.
|
