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[ghostdog]

Can anyone provide any information on what it would be like to live in Samara? I am looking for a relatively quiet place, hopefully with some access to reading materials in English. I am not interested in outdoor sports or in bars/pubs/clubs, etc. Thanks for whatever you can tell me.

[Yosma]

[Larry Paradine]

Not by the remotest stretch of the imagination could Samara be described as "quiet"! I'm sitting at my computer as the time approaches midnight not because I feel no desire to sleep but because sleep is an unattainable dream for any normally noise-sensitive person in this noisiest of Russian cities (I admit I haven't been to every city in Russia and have no statistics to back my claim, but I know Samara very well, more than I would like to, having spent about three of the last five years here.) The present cause of my enforced state of wakefulness is a combination of a successsion of noisy events: a "salyut" (firework display) emanating from the nearby river promenade where somebody is probably celebrating a wedding (on a February night with the thermometer currently registering an outdoor temperature of minus 22!), followed by a cacophany of car horns which may have been connected to the aforementioned nuptials but also may have just been an aural reminder of the anarchical free for all that characterises traffic movements on Samara's dreadful roads, followed, after a rare but unfortunately deceptive interval of silence, by a resumption of the demented chorus of barks and howls from the local pack of stray dogs that had been temporarily cowed by the aforementioned "salyut" (apropos of which, I can report that the innumerable packs of pariah dogs in Samara are becoming increasingly aggressive in their approach to lone bipeds as this abnormally harsh winter reduces their ever precarious food supplies, and I say that as a dog lover myself.)

If it's noisy here in winter, try being here in summer! It isn't just the beach area that abounds in summer cafes, many open till 3 or 4am, frequented by an unsavoury mixture of pampered young New Russians and semi-criminal touts on the make, the whole city gives the impression of being afflicted with mass insomnia. I have a theory why this is so. Samara and it's characterless but also noisy sister city Togliatti are the only sizeable towns along the entire 3,530 km length of the Volga that aren't in the same time zone as Moscow, due to a sharp eastwards bend in the river that puts the two towns close to Kazakhstan. The result is an unnatural prolongation of daylight in the evenings ( as a dedicated watcher of sunsets, I can attest to the truth of the local boast that in June we come very close to the sort of white nights that one normally associates with the North), and mornings so indistinguishable from night that, on the fortunately infrequent days when duty obliges me to rise early in order to take transport to the other side of the city to teach in-company, even the habitual early risers (street cleaners and dvorniki) stare at me suspiciously, wondering why I'm abroad at the unconscionably early hour of 7am.

As to the British Council library: I don't want to carp and criticise, being indebted to them for occasional accretions to my teaching materials and for the opportunity to borrow and read assorted works of modern British fiction that I wouldn't even glance at in any place offering a more representative choice of reading material, but I would advise anyone thinking of spending more than a few weeks here to cram a supplementary supply of books into every spare cubic cemtimetre of rucksack space.

[Larry Paradine]

On reviewing my submission (the canine chorus has been succeeded by a feline duet as two tomcats have a territorial dispute just below my window, thereby ensuring the indefinite prolongation of tonight's insomnia), I realise I didn't summarise the conclusions to be drawn from my theory. They are that: (a) the mental disorientation caused by Samara's position in a time zone that should be relocated several hundred kilometres further east, has fostered a nocturnal mindset and lifestyle inimical to getting a good night's sleep, and (b) anyone foolhardy enough to disregard my warning should reserve a place amongst all the books in the rucksack for a large box of earplugs, wax or foam according to preference (Russian earplugs are made of paper and are about as effective as politicians' promises to improve the lot of the electorate.)

[Yosma]

Well, last time I was there I was out at midnight on a Saturday and there was more life on the moon.

Despite the boisterous dogs etc. it's still a pretty quiet place rock 'n' roll wise and that's what I thought the original post was asking about.

[rogan]

Depends where you live within the city of course.

I was just around the corner from a nightclub (Iceberg) in Camapa but that didn't disturb me.
However the occasional summer storms did have a habit of setting off the alarms in the guarded carpark just across from my 11th floor windows..

Sounds to me Larry as though it's time you made that move to Magadan.

That said, there have been occasional howling dogs in all 5 Russian cities that I have lived in.

I remember the BC opening in the city. It was wonderful to have access to books and videos and the occasional smiling face. As well as a couple of computers with free internet.

It's too easy to criticise when you are feeling down. Imagine what it was like before the BC was there.

[Larry Paradine]

I've just returned to Samara after spending a few blissful days in my beautiful and (comparatively) peaceful Cheboksary, to find that there's a new nocturnal activity captivating the groups of young New Russians who don't allow the unseasonably bitter weather (it's still at least ten degrees colder than it should be at this late stage of the winter) to deter them from outdoor sports. I suppose it could be called fire escape dancing. Two of the revellers climb the metal fire escape on the outer wall of my dom (itself no mean feat. as the ladder ends about two metres from the ground), indulge in what sounds like clog dancing on the roof (I'm on the top floor of an old "Khrushchevka") and then pose for photos and acknowledge raucous applause from their friends, who sit in their cars ululating to the sounds from their boombox stereos: time, 2.45 am....

Okay, I agree, Samara has its good points, and there are many worse cities in Russia, there are even some worse cities on the Volga: Ulyanovsk-Simbirsk, Togliatti, the eponomous Volgograd.... I really enjoy the beach and the riverfront in winter; so do hundreds of other people, such as the local "morzhi" (walruses) who didn't even allow last month's record -35 lunchtime temperature to deter them from bathing. Crossing the river in summer is a boring twenty minute journey on a ferry, but in winter you have a spectrum of transport to choose from: motorcycle with sidecar, "sanii" (horse-drawn sleigh), souped up snowmobile, hovercraft and, of course, a selection of battered old jalopies operating as unlicensed taxis, to say nothing of two independent means of transport: skis and shanks pony. There's a variety of river sports: today, for example, there's an organised meeting of paraplaners, but my award for the most innovative winter riverine activity goes to what I would call bath racing. It's quite simple: take two ordinary household baths, upend them, have two passengers sit on each, run ropes through holes drilled at the tap end, attach the ropes to a van or minibus, and off you go. Literally! The object of the game appears to be not so much to be the team that gets to the finishing point first, as to be the last to fall off. Bonus points are probably awarded for not sustaining any incapacitating injury (one of my students told me he knows someone who broke an arm and an ankle while "playing").

I feel it only right that I should try to make amends for any slight I may have offered to the British Council. Yes, they are very helpful and friendly, and a brownie point is that you can surf the net on their computers (but not check or send e-mails, they've taken the very sensible attitude that they can do without the hordes of homesick foreigners who monopolise computers in some BCs inother countries). Bibliophiles should note that there's a small bookshop called "Brittania" in the same building which has a limited but fairly contemporary choice of English language literature at steep prices; and, of course, there's Chakona, the largest bookshop in Samara (and one of the largest in Russia) which also offers an assortment of books in English.

So, for the benefit of the writer of the original post, I should say that you could make much worse choices than Samara. But don't forget the earplugs!