It is August. The Moscow-Anapa economy class sleeping car is hot. Moms with children, and pot-bellied men are everywhere. Quite a character is in the side seat: a deadlocked hippie girl. That’s a good sign!
So, the Kubana Festival. A fence and the police battalion divide tens of thousands of rock fans into those who can pay the admission fee, and ordinary jerks. All the masses lie in the scorching sun for the whole day. The mayhem lasts from dusk till the morning. When the festival is over, several hundred hippies leave for Utrish, the cradle of freedom from social biases.
The Olympic Sochi is my next destination. The beach has not changed since the soviet times. The same bodies lying in the same attitudes consume the same boiled corn and warm their tender skin in the sun. Three weeks later they’ll go back to Central Russia, the Urals, or Siberia in the same sleeping car.