13 reasons to go to Vladivostok

As a guidebook author for Lonely Planet, I rode the Trans-Siberian Railway to the end of the line – Vladivostok – a couple times. I even got to write an article about Vladivostok for the New York Times one time. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/17/travel/17surfacing.html

As towns go, Vladivostok is gorgeous and weird. From its hilltops, the bays and tram lines make it look more like a Russian San Francisco than one would expect. Locals sometimes go on beach trips in nearby North Korea. The waterfront has parking lots filled with used cars brought in from South Korea and Moscow. They're sold at auctions, then transported by train towards Moscow, seven days' ride west.

Travelers who do take the Trans-Siberian Railway rarely make it to the end of the line, instead dipping south into Mongolias after Lake Baikal in Siberia. Here are 13 reasons to continue on to Vladivostok.

1. There’s a funicular. And any town with a funicular — from Santiago to Dubuque — deserves a valentine from “Travel World” every February 14. Vladivostok’s climbs just 100m every few minutes, on the dot, for a few rubles. From the top you can walk to the nearby Far Eastern State Technical University lookout — just follow the empty beer bottles — and get a huge view of the city.

2. Friendly Oleg. Vladivostok being Russia, it’s very hard booking your ticket from the train station — not impossible, but not easy — but Oleg behind you in line will offer to help, then give his cellphone number in case you get in trouble, then a couple days later as you walk down Aleutskaya St, will lean out of a passing bus window, hold up his phone and yell “Roe-brt, Roe-brt – you call me.” And so you do.

3. Forting. When’s the last time you were in a town with 130 forts? There are 130 surrounding Vladivostok, dating from the Tsar days, all built protect a city named “to rule the east” from its less obedient neighbors. Travel agents can arrange tours. No 7 is the most popular — hard to find on your own — where they make you wear a helmet, hold a bazooka and give the peace sign (and you will comply), and introduce you to a cat in the subterranean tunnels, there “to keep rats out.”

4. “Moscow is far.” That’s the local mantra, of a city that feels a little disdain for its long-time bosses seven time zones east. When Yeltsin suggested banning imports of used vehicles from Japan, locals threatened to secede.

5. ** Yul & His Barber.** Yul was born here into his Swiss family in 1920. I don’t know when Yul Brynner first shaved his head, but he could have done so at the lone shop below his family’s mansion home at 15 Aleutskaya St, a block north of the train station. It’s a barber shop. By the way, the plaque outside his home shows Yul smoking — fitting considering it’s what killed him.

6. “Arbat” dacha. The wee ped lane of Fokhina St in the center is a scrappy “Arbat” (Moscow’s famous pedestrian shopping street). Not long ago, the city put flowers in its concrete flower beds and some locals pulled them out and planted their own vegetables. Whenever I get a little down, I think of this.

7. Deviant Pyschologists. I met two — a husband and wife team — who invited me to coffee, who matter-of-factly noted, “we study deviant behavior and torture.” I paid the bill.

8. The Russian “Staten Island Ferry.” Booking a bay cruise with travel agents is ridiculous — you need to have a group to organize one, or pay something like several hundred dollars to sit in an empty boat for a few hours. There’s another option: the ferry to Russki Island. The cheap 30-minute ride there is fun, and the boat's open decks offer a good look at the harbor.

9. North Korean food. Pyongyang (at ul Verkhneportovaya 68B — south of the train station on bus 60) segregates its diners into two rooms: one for North Koreans, one for everyone else. (I managed a shot of the NK one, and the tops of the heads of out-of-sight North Korean diners; above.) My waitress had come from North Korea only a month before, spoke some shy Russian and was hesitant to answer any questions (eg “what’s good to eat here?”). Very good food, very interesting experience.

10. Gray-haired ladies guarding the Arsenev Regional Museum. You see them all across Russia — the retiree-aged ladies snoozing in a squeaky-floored art museum hall, making sure precious rip-off paintings or yellowed dicta from the Stalin days aren’t seized by foreign vandals. No where are they as nice as here, where you get chatted up, handed photo books that include something you casually mentioned are retrieved, and you’re led to cushioned seats to breeze through their photos of dreamy Jules-Verne versions of Vlad’s past (see bottom of post). When I paused a sec at my favorite taxidermic exhibit — of a Siberian tiger and bear interlocked in a violent dance — one noted my interest and said, “Go ahead” — glancing behind mischievously — “take photo.” And I did.

11. Secret Lookout with Chatty Azerbaijanis. If you take bus 60 south of the train station four stops (to its penultimate stop) there’s a bluff-top park with lovely bay views. There you’ll meet two Azerbaijani couples who will be quite interested in your existence. One will ask to photograph them with you, another will shyly wonder, “In America, do they speak French or English?”

12. Antique Automobile Museum. You have to take two cute trams way east of the center to where the smokestack factories spew their blackened glory into the sunny sky to reach this bizarre collection of Soviet vehicles and beat-Detroit propaganda. I liked the M&M-green 1948 GAZ-20 “Pobeda” (Victory) the second-most — top honors goes to the poster of an acrobat standing atop a moving (Soviet) motorcycle holding a Stalin flag.

13. Nakhodka sidetrip & grape lessons. Vlad actually isn’t as far as you can go by train from Moscow. Press on, if you’re a completist, four hours to this port town, which used to be the tail end of the Trans-Siberian during the days that Vladivostok was closed. It’s actually a gorgeous setting, with a super information center with English-speaking staff (!) and Filipino sailors dropping by with Russian prostitutes for some karaoke (not quite as slimy as it sounds, perhaps the warm grandmotherly hosts make you feel at ease there).

Elsewhere in town a very drunk guy showed me how to eat grapes.