Stephan Orth: Behind Putin's Curtain: Friendships and Misadventures Inside Russia [aka Couchsurfing in Russia]

The reality outside the apartment is considerably more pleasing than what Igor thinks is reality, so I decide to make a trip to Russky Island. The 15 bus takes me across the huge bridge; the 29 bus gets me into the wilds. A small parking lot, a gravel path, and then thick forest. Suddenly a fox emerges from the undergrowth and blocks my path. As I have no snacks to offer him, he soon continues on his way.

Russky : it sounds a little like a smaller version of Russia. Maybe the island epitomizes the whole. Forbidding cliffs on the outside, lush forests on the inside. Much untamed nature, low population density, a few hidden military bunkers that you can only recognize if you look really hard. A place searching for new perspectives; to be precise, Russky is gambling on education (the university) and tourism (the bridge and the oceanarium). The concept is not all that clear. Maybe there is no concept.

Once you’re out of the forest, small paths lead along the spectacular coastal cliffs. One false step and you fall into the abyss. I mull over Igor and his perspective of the world, about “savages” in Africa and all the conspiracy theories. There are a number of mistakes that he makes in his online searches for information, but to me one of the most basic ones is that he holds extremes to be the truth and anything normal to be the exception.

At least this is not uncommon. To varying degrees, everybody has preconceptions of other countries because the information we receive on top of what we know already mostly concerns the extraordinary and not the ordinary. Time and again when I arrive at an airport in a new country I’m reminded of my own preconceptions and marvel about how modern everything is. This is because the majority of images I’ve viewed prior to the trip show the traditional aspects of culture and not the modern ones. Market traders, not managers; Ladas, not Toyotas; mountain villages, not shopping malls.

And Russia? Onion domes, matryoshka dolls, balalaikas, and prefabs? There are all of those and much more. Russia includes so many microcosms and microcultures that you feel as if you’ve traveled around the globe without ever having left the country. Behind the gruff exterior beats a huge heart. And behind the hostility that some people seem to feel toward the West, there lies a sense of disappointment with the West. Or the idea that the West hates Russia, proof of which is shown every evening on TV. I didn’t bring any hatred with me and in return experienced no ill will. On my travels I got to know at least ninety-nine wonderful people and just one idiot. It certainly wasn’t a representative selection. People offering accommodation to foreign guests belong in all probability to the more likable representatives of their country.

Do I now plan on buying a T-shirt with “I Love Putin” on it? No. But I do understand what makes Putin’s country tick and what his popularity means. And I’ve witnessed how state media can influence the way people think.

I hope that one day soon a Russian journalist will take three months to couchsurf throughout Europe and write a book about his or her experiences. From the Baltic States to Greece, from Spain to Denmark; I’m convinced that a different image of Europe would emerge from that presented every day on Channel One or RT. In Hamburg, of course, there is a couch waiting in my apartment with full board. And once their book is finished, we could go together on a lecture tour from Málaga to Kamchatka.

The island path on Russky goes over gray crags down to the sea all the way out to the tip of Cape Tobizina. Families spread their picnic blankets; a rotund man bears his naked belly to the sun; dogs scamper around. My travels end on the shores of the Sea of Japan, almost six thousand miles east of Moscow and still in the same country.

“From Germany? All alone? Aren’t you frightened?” a cheerful old hiker with a lavish mustache and more gaps in his teeth than teeth asks me.

“If we were all a little less fearful, we would achieve a great deal,” I reply without thinking. I surprise myself with this piece of fortune-cookie wisdom. Then I pull off my boots, roll up my pants, and take a few steps into the water. It’s not as cold as I expected.

I WOULD CORDIALLY LIKEto thank a number of people and creatures; without their inspiration, support, and general greatness this book wouldn’t have been possible. The couch-surfers: Nadya in Novosibirsk, Genrich in Moscow, Vladimir in Moscow, Murad and Ruslan in Grozny, Renat in Makhachkala, Vladimir in Makhachkala, Altana in Elista, Alexei in Astrakhan, Krisia and Sergei in Volgograd, Yuri the cab driver, Alexander in Simferopol, Alisa and Konstantin in Bakhchysarai, Sasha in Sevastopol, Arina in Saint Petersburg, Sveta in Saint Petersburg, Anna in Saint Petersburg, Victoria in Saint Petersburg, Teena and Gleb in Yekaterinburg, Olga in Yekaterinburg, Yevgeni in Novosibirsk, Irina in Ust-Koksa, Chalka in Edigan, Vitalia in Krasnoyarsk, Alex in Zharovsk, Minna in Zharovsk, Yevgeni in Kyzyl, Ayu in Kyzyl, Sergei in Khuzhir, Kirill and Anya and Wanya and Bella in Yakutsk, Marina and Juliya and Igor in Mirny, Yaroslav in Khabarovsk, Natalya in Khabarovsk, Yekaterina in Vladivostok, Yuri in Vladivostok, Nikita and Igor in Vladivostok. And the many other friendly people with whom I talked or who gave me tips or spontaneous Russian lessons on my travels.

Nora Reinhardt, Cathrin Klapp, Anastasiya Izhak, Rebeca Martínez Bermejo, Tonia Sorrentino, Gulliver Theis, Felicitas von Lovenberg, Bettina Feldweg, Verena Pritschov, Vladimir Sevrinovski, Janine Borse, Ben Wadewitz, Anton Krotov, Alexander Fedorov, Petra Eggers, Antje Blinda, Anja Tiedge, Verena Töpper, Stefan Schultz, Natascha Romanova, Mina Esfandiari, Juliya Samus, Alexandra Estrina, Petra Eggers, Florian Harms, Mira Brusch, Gilda Sahebi, Racquel and Nunu from the Casa Diversa on La Gomera, Gizmo the cat, Bernd Ruffer, Theresa Lachner, Hallie Gu, Christina Hebel, Paniz Gholinejad, Mayra Quintanar Helgueros, and Traudl and Uli, my parents.

The following institutions and people had no influence whatsoever on the contents of this book: the CIA, the FBI, Vladimir Putin, the FSB, Angela Merkel, Petro Poroshenko, Sergey Lavrov, Barack Obama, the Bilderberg Group, the World Anti-Doping Agency, and the Illuminati.