SurgutMapMay 22, 2007 This is not a place you would want to spend the weekend. This pictogram at the airport seems to suggest that the arrivals are all thin and scrawny. But don’t get your hopes up: haute cuisine is not one of Surgut’s strong suits. ![]() Mansi mannequins are here to entertain the passengers, because it’s nigh on impossible to bump into actual aboriginals in the city. ![]() The mosaic on the side of the airport building depicts a mother and her infant, who looks like the cat from “Shrek 2”. The fatherless family appears to be looking out through the porthole. ![]() A road called “five American minutes” leads to the city. It’s true, the smooth asphalt ended five minutes later. ![]() The landscape is reminiscent of the view from the balcony of my childhood. The only difference being that there are houses here. ![]() Surgut belongs to Surgutonians: ![]() You’re my cupcake: ![]()
You’re the best Local buildings have an interesting distinguishing feature: a storey-high cellar and a storey-high attic. The attic in Khrushchev-era apartment buildings in Moscw is only about half a metre high. It probably has to do with the freezing temperatures they get here. ![]() What’s also interesting is that here they use the collocation “ground floor”. It’s not the same thing as the first floor (in Russian, the ground floor is the first floor): ![]()
Ground floor Little by little the kiosks are crowding out the bus stops. ![]() Remarkably, the subbotnik (a day of unpaid “voluntary” work introduced by the communists) held thirty years ago has borne fruit — impeccably neat rows of birch trees. Had they known in advance what the end result would be, they’d have probably had an easier time of it. ![]() They’ve started putting up a new kind of demi-phone booth around the city — the yellow “Police” visors, about the size of a baby bath, are there to shield the “police call button”, as big as a rouble coin. There are detailed instructions on the inside, as there should be. ![]() The phone boxes are also worth a look (like in Kazan). It’s possible that they initially set out to create a “T” shape, but then it became all bloated and warped. ![]() I came across some surprising signs. ![]() Police [at the time the Russian police was called militsiya, not politsiya like it says here] Street name signs battling new types of street sign for the right to exist. ![]() The disabled man in Surgut is not like all the others — he’s grown a second arm, bent at the shoulder. ![]() Meanwhile, the Surgut pedestrian has been decorated with lights, rendering the sign completely indecipherable come nighttime. ![]() Newly rebuilt temple gazing out at the austere beauty of Siberia. ![]() Austere Siberian beauty silently dispenses oil. ![]()
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Six months after my trip the “Novi Gorod” newspaper reprinted my photo story in its 221 (2868) issue dated 23 November 2007. It did so under the oh- so original title “Lebedev-Kumach” (Lebedev was a Soviet poet and lyricist; Kumach, a type of red cloth symbolising revolution, is a moniker). Yet the editors forgot to ask for permission to publish, in addition to failing to enquire whether I’d like to be paid a reprint fee. ![]() |
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Surgut
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