The Pan-Eurasian Bike Trip

            As a newcomer in Vladivostok, the first time you see one parked along the street, that out of place foreign car with the steering wheel on the left, you suppose it belongs to an eccentric English adventurer who has driven across Siberia. When you spot another seconds later, you call it a coincidence. And as you view the third confusedly exclaim, “What are all these cars doing here?”
            Like in the United States, Russians drive on the right hand side of the road. The curious fact that all of the cars in Vladivostok are designed for driving on the left, as they do in Britain and Australia, greatly confused me. Like so many aspects of Russia, their presence defied reason.
            Until recently, many foreign cars manufactured in nearby Japan, (where they too drive on the left), were brought to eastern Russia and sold cheaply without import tariffs. A brand new Toyota Corolla could be purchased for a song at around $7,000 USD. Like the books of Jack Kerouac, the availability of these cheap cars once inspired lengthy road trips; many residents of Russia’s Far East would drive Japanese cars cross country to resell them.
            “My friends and I made a lot of money running cars out of Vladivostok,” a young Russian named Aleksey told me. “I drove all over bringing them to clients, often traveling as far as Moscow and St. Petersburg thousands of miles away.”
            Today, the Russian government imposes stricter tariffs on importing foreign cars, making their resell far from Vladivostok no longer profitable. The boom years of the great Russian car trade have ended, burdening Vladivostok with unemployment and an absurd amount of excess cars. There is a saying in Vladivostok that for each of its 600,000 residents, there are two automobiles. Every day tan clouds of smog and gridlocked traffic infesting the would-be quaint streets along the czarist-era buildings of downtown validate this axiom.
            This chaotic reality is not strictly a result of cheap automobiles, but an effect of the relatively recent end of the Soviet Union. During the Soviet era, foreign cars were not available inside the country and most Russians had to undergo a lengthy application process merely to purchase an automobile.
            Enthusiasm to possess foreign goods following the Soviet Union’s collapse in 1991 can still be felt when roaming Vladivostok’s streets, and it looks like mayhem and smells of exhaust.

Early Morning Traffic, Vladivostok

            One afternoon, a law student at the university I attend took me for a spin in his small Toyota. Stalled in a traffic jam, he pointed out a small building to our left. “It burnt down a few years ago,” he explained. “While it was on fire, there were so many cars parked along the streets nearby that the fire trucks could not get close enough to put it out, and many of the office workers jumped from the windows to escape,” he said sorrowfully.
            Navigating Vladivostok by foot is not for the unadventurous. Merely walking from my school to Okeansky Prospekt, the city’s main drag, requires crossing a turbulent intersection across four lanes of maniacal traffic. The cars flow past like a river: constant and unyielding.
            And, oh yeah, there are no traffic lights.
            As a novice Vladivostok pedestrian, I began by waiting until a group of Russians crossed who I could follow, nervously biting my lip. Amazingly, the experience is not as harrowing as it appears; the approaching cars each courteously slow allowing you to pass freely.
           The feeling is extraordinary. Like receiving an offering of peace from a complete stranger.
           Even alone, cars will stop if you are bold enough to cross; it is a bit of Far Eastern Russian etiquette you must be aware of to enjoy Vladivostok on foot.
           After several weeks, I now weave through prongs of moving cars like a natural. The thick traffic of Japanese automobiles decelerates just for me. An action, which makes a young male feel an illusory sense of importance. Despite the swarming surplus of vehicles, I have unceremoniously been endowed with an elusive power normally granted only to super models and flash floods: the ability to stop traffic.

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