Exotic but Sad Siberia

Long lines. A ruined economy. ChernobyI. Everyone knows about the problems of the ex-USSR.

But when I landed in the airport of Kyzyl, a generic town in Siberia, I wasn't exactly prepared.

Actually, Kyzyl is hardly generic. Its Claim to fame is a phallic object commemorating its position as the geographic center of Asia. (Only it isn't; the center is now a couple of miles downstream May be the U.S. had some master plan to blast those crucial points).

If there's one thing I noticed about Siberia, it's that there were a lot of people. It's Not New York, but there seemed to be an infinite number of towns there, each just like Kyzyl, with blank faces in gray clothes. O.K., it sounds like those propaganda movies about what "commies" become.

But everyone had "character." My friend managed to trade a hardened Siberian man a "March for Women's Lives" button for two pears. That was the last fruit we saw for a while.

We ate potatoes, potatoes and, essentially, more potatoes. Except one night when we tried a strange Siberian delicacy: ewe.

Slicing the skull probably wasn't terribly pleasant for my Russian hosts, but it was probably more enjoyable than watching my dinner "partner" attempt to chew the eyeballs. No Joke.

Siberian eyeballs are large and stringy, and they have nerve endings still hanging down. They're too big, in fact, to keep from sliding out of the mouth into the bowl.

If you ever encounter Siberian nomads, I have some advice: Snap a Polaroid photograph of them. I guarantee the ranting about getting out of their country will stop. Instead they'll be singing praises about the fine relationship between the U.S. and Mongolia.

One more tip: Don't accept a free horse ride from a nomad; if you do, you are bound to wed him.

Siberia sounds exotic; I hear they'll soon be establishing a Club Med there. But it is downright depressing. Old men stand silently outside empty stores, beside old propaganda posters. Twenty-year-old women seem to have aged a hundred years.

But the landscape is more beautiful--and eerie--than any place you will ever visit. Where else will you find huge boulders looming out of miles of yellow grass? Or multi-colored cliffs hanging over placid lakes?

You can wax Russian romantic about the scenery, or just imagine what one of those gray people there is doing with a button to protect the right to an abortion twelve time zones away.