Word: sakhaliners
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...Isolated from the rest of Russia, the people of Sakhalin have long made due with a pragmatic ingenuity. At the often snowbound Sakhalin airport a truck equipped with a surplus military jet engine aimed toward the ground clears ice from the runway, the heat and flames quickly vaporizing the fallen snow. The city bus system is made up of discarded Japanese vehicles shipped annually to Russia. Shot glasses for vodka in bars by night double as measuring cups for sunflower seeds in markets...
...amid these Soviet remnants, new buildings are emerging and old ones are undergoing renovation. The Japanese have built a six-story trade center, the Koreans have opened a cultural building and the nearby Sakhalin Center now houses the American trade office and the primary expat hangout, the Pacific CafE. The foreigners are drawn by oil and natural gas. Like California during the gold rush of the 1800s, Sakhalin has attracted the world's prospectors, each hoping to mine its bounty and, in the process, turning parts of the city into a freewheeling frontier town...
...Sakhalin's nightlife, though diverse in its offerings?casinos, discos, cabaret shows and outdoor barbecues abound?is alcohol-driven. This being Russia, the vodka is cheap and plentiful. If you can still walk after the first?or second?bottle, try to get to Yuzhno's popular local brewery in the center of town. Higher-minded pursuits include the Sakhalin regional museum (housed in the Imperial Japanese Government Offices dating from when the Japanese controlled southern Sakhalin from 1905-45), the Russian Orthodox Church, the Chekhov Theater, street markets selling everything from wild berries to furs, and Gagarin Park, complete with...
...morning of my final day in Sakhalin, still reeling from excessive exercise of the liver, I boarded the Eins Soya ferry at Korsakov for the five-and-a-half-hour trip across the Sea of Okhotsk to Wakkanai, Japan. Chekhov, too, intended to take a boat to Japan from Sakhalin, but a raging cholera outbreak on the Japanese side caused the good doctor to cancel his trip. I soon passed out in a deck chair for the duration of the ferry ride?but not before musing that, one day, return journeys to Sakhalin might even be fashionable...
NOUVELLE RUSSIAN Russian food conjures up bland images of black bread, boiled potatoes and cabbage soup. The stereotype often runs true, but on Sakhalin, it's possible to sample what Russian dining can achieve when it exploits what's available locally...