We were travelling to Moscow. Just like in Ilf and Petrov’s The Golden Calf, a white boiled chicken lay spread-eagled on the table, looking tantalising. My colleague climbed down from his bunk and began to eat the chicken greedily; the bird’s cartilage crunched between his teeth, though admittedly, every now and then, as the train wheels shrieked, the sound was drowned out.

Suddenly he stopped chewing and looked out the window – usually alders, birches, some bushes, here and there a spruce. “We have entered Russia,” my colleague announced, “a typical Russian forest.” From my bunk, I had been watching this forest carefully for about eighty kilometres and was ready to bet my little finger that nothing had changed – the trees were the same, the train was moving just as fast, and even the telegraph wires were just as jagged as on the other side. “What are you talking about, can’t you see that this forest is somehow Russian,” my colleague continued his line of thought, “and nothing but Russians all around.” It should be added that he himself was no nationalist or local historian, and not even Latvian, rather Mordvinian. The train attendant passed by and announced in a booze-soaked voice: “Well, you see, we are already inside Russia.” My colleague agreed with her happily: “A hell of a Russian forest, isn’t it?” “Mhm,” the attendant shuffled past with tea. Somewhere further down the carriage came lazy remarks: “Yes, Russia,” “Well, Russian trees,” “Look, the Russians have spruces too,” and so on. I was overcome by a strange sense of alienation because I had noticed no changes at all. A moment later, a burly brute to whom I had lent a newspaper sauntered up and announced happily: “Yes, it’s easier to breathe as soon as you are in Russia!” I wanted to crack him over the head with an empty bottle, because that was something I should have said – after all, I like Russia, as do most people born in the CCCP, in that big and mighty country, which now dwells in one that can be crossed in a couple of hours.

I had a similar adventure when secretly crossing the border of two Arab countries in a rather deserted region. Suddenly we had to get from country Y to country X without paying for visas. When we had been tramping through a sandy clearing for a couple of hours early in the morning, where every so often a bleaching bone (perhaps from previous border-crossers?) or a tuft of grass would loom, my companion Ali Somali said: “Well, look, we’re across, what’s the big deal.” I didn’t feel that we were across anything, and I desperately pressed the buttons on my Global Positioning System, wanting to know if we really were safe. And it turned out – we were.

Now I have also listened to landowners’ stories about how they perceive the boundaries of their real estate, sailors’ tales about how the back of your neck sweats when you suddenly enter water with a different salt content, foresters’ claims that they can tell by the trees if someone walked by last week, and similar nonsense. And, indeed, such skills do rub off. Lately, I have noticed that I very sharply sense the place where Brivibas iela turns into Brivibas gatve.
Article first published in the December 2003 issue of the magazine Rīgas Laiks
Features a photograph by Konsta Punkka