Sunbathing in Siberia by M. A. Oliver-Semenov

otherwise it would be jinxed. When I took up Kung Fu in my early twenties, it was six months before anyone found out. Knowing my tendency to make a hash of things after I’d announced my plans to the world, I had no choice but to keep everyone in the dark over Nastya. The second reason for keeping mum was that I already had a string of failed relationships trailing behind me. I knew exactly what my family would have said if I’d told them ‘I’m seeing a girl in Siberia, it’s serious and we’re going to marry. Honest.’ They would have thought I was crazy or laughed their arses off. Some friends of mine (who I had confessed to before my marriage) had joked that I was buying myself a Russian bride because I couldn’t satisfy women in Wales. This was rather hurtful, not to mention offensive to Nastya. So, when I saw my family, and revealed all, I was met with the obvious ‘What are you going to do now?’ To which I replied ‘I haven’t got a clue.’ And I didn’t. When making all our plans, Nastya and I hadn’t quite reached the part after the wedding.
    This was quite a difficult time. Nastya and I spoke online most days and discussed options, which was all quite pointless as we didn’t have any. We were stuck on a treadmill of the same questions. Could she somehow move to Britain? Could I find a job that paid me £20,000 in a short space of time? Could we possibly move to France? By the end of May I was thoroughly depressed. I spent my days looking for work, pushing for any job I could find, while bunking down each night at one of my parents’ places. All the while I was conscious that I had a wife in Siberia, and that we ought to be making plans together. I was in despair at being torn in half by immigration regulations, but at the same time I was happy because I had Nastya and knew that whatever happened, we would be together in the end. By mid-June I had enough money for another tourist visa and a set of return flights. I could have, if I’d wanted, gone to Russia on a longer visa, because I was now part-Russian, but there was a piece of me that was still very much afraid; not only of Russia, but of the massive changes I knew I had to make. Though I was married, my head hadn’t caught up with my heart.
    I left for Russia on July 19 th with a suitcase half-full of clothes, half-full of chocolates. Our first month had been expensive with Nastya meeting me in Moscow, taking the Trans-Siberian and then returning to Moscow with me. So this time I had to do it alone. Negotiating Sheremetyevo to catch my connecting flight to Krasnoyarsk had been easy as all the signs are in English as well as Russian.
    After our plane had descended to a level that allowed us to see everything well from the windows, we had to circle Krasnoyarsk and the surrounding area due to a queue of planes also ready to land. As the frost evaporated from the glass, I got a bird’s-eye-view of the hydroelectric power station.
    Two weeks after we were married, when the snow began to melt and the grass started showing, Boris had told us that the roads were clear enough to drive far outside the city to visit the hydroelectric power station, also known as Krasnoyarsk dam. The only pictures I had seen of it were on the back of the ten rouble note and a few postcards. At first I was slightly bemused. I’d seen dams before. Surely once you’d seen one you’d seen them all? But I went along as it was something to do, and I had spent too long in the apartment.
    Driving to the dam was slightly scary because we had to travel on roads that had been little used through the winter and were still iced over in places. The road ran through a dense forest area. It looked like bear country because it was their country. At the start of our journey, we had to pass through the south side of Krasnoyarsk, which is much older in appearance than the north. The roads on the south side have more