English Teacher X - Vodkaberg: Nine Years in Russia

EASTERN EUROPEAN VISA RUN

I vomited repeatedly and painfully into the filthy zinc-plated toilet, bracing myself precariously against the walls of the bathroom as the train bound for Moscow rocked and shuddered through the night.

So far, my experience in Russia wasnt going smoothly.

Id spent six weeks living in Desolationgrad, an industrial hellhole two hours from Vodkaberg, after being lured to Russia by employers who promised one thing and delivered another.

After numerous disagreements with them, Id been informed with three days notice that I needed to leave that job and the miserable dingy apartment they had provided me, and the country as well.

Fortunately, I had managed to find a job in nearby Vodkaberg. My new employers, Communication Chain, one of the largest franchise schools in Russia, proved to be my unlikely saviors.

I arrived in Vodkaberg during the first week of September, 2000.

Vodkaberg was a big step up from the cheerless grid of Soviet concrete-block buildings and horrible air pollution in Desolationgrad. A city of about a million people on the Volga River, Vodkaberg had old gingerbread wooden houses in the historic center and tree-lined streets. But it was still mostly decrepit and grey, ringed with abandoned factories and dotted with abandoned buildings.

My apartment was in a concrete-block building in an area full of them, but it was comfortable enough, in a central area near an outdoor market and a 20-minute walk from the enormous, beautiful riverside embankment, where seemingly the entire population of the city lounged about drinking beer and dancing on summer evenings, enjoying the view of the expansive Volga and the wilderness of the other side.

At the beginning of September, it was scorching hot.

A week later, you needed a jacket to go out in the evening.

Before I started work, I had to leave the country and get a proper working visa, as the one my former employers in Desolationgrad had gotten me was about to expire. This meant I had to go to Estonia on a visa run. The school translator took me to buy a train ticket to Moscow and then a plane ticket from Moscow to Tallinn, Estonia.