Keep your passports ready! Check you have a visa! Take this GG-drink before you eat anything!  

IFAJ-delegation was thoroughly prepared to travel to Russia. Diane and Phillip Bate were left waving in Savonlinna (they haven´t got the visas – ouh, suspicious people?! – when 32 others started their adventurous trip behind the border on thursday morning at 6.30. Lot of good will was needed while the group arrived in Savonlinna just a couple of hours before.

The custom formalities astonished everybody though this time the Russian custom girls were very formidable. Passport checking four times while entering and also while exiting made sure that we really wanted to go there, but also wanted back.

What was there to be seen? Why to pay thousand marks for one day’s visa as Americans did?

-         It was a great day! Especially the champagne on the border when we got out from Russia, said Dennis Gardner. His wife Sandra said she was shocked. – Yes, that’s the right word, added Dennis. – I was shocked, how poor it was and how they can’t do anything for it. Visiting the shops, where they have almost nothing, was amazing. It is only a hundred miles from here and totally different world.

 
Horses of the state owned farm in Russia.

Coffee in the forest

The first stop after border was in a forest. Purchasing manager Timo Tirronen from Stora Enso company told, how they are harvesting birch pulp, because in Finland there is not enough of it and in Russia they don’t have the industry. Tirronen told that it takes 60 years of a birch to grow to maturity. Somebody asked if Finland grows eucalyptus, but he was informed that in Finland the species are quite rare, mainly birch, pine and spruce.

On hour in a forest makes miracles, especially when there is a camp fire, sausages, beer, coffee and pasties. The pause began in Russian way with snaps, of cause.

Our guide Juha Mikkonen told everything worth to know of Ladogan Carelia and the town Sortavala. We saw former finnish buildings, just a few of them renovated, a hospital, which made us all hope never to get ill, a market place full of spring products. Many of us had problems how to use hundred marks.

Young boys gathered immediadly around the bus, when we stopped, and anyone could get a private guide. Anthony Rosen was worried of the future of these guys.

Going down in ten years

After lunch there were visits to two different farms, first the state owned and then private. The manager of the state owned farm had disappeared, but the economical manager Ljubov Viktorovna promised to answer questions and people could take photos behind the gate of the farm. Lots of big figures: 520 employees, 1250 milking cows, 58 ha potatoes, 6000 ha forest (but no wood selling, only for own needs). Money is the biggest problem, second is the lack of houses to employees. But no problems with diseases or hygienic, assured this lady.

Nikolai Viktorovits, a “fermer” of his own farm, was also sure of the good quality of the milk he produces. He sells the milk privately partly on the street and deliveres it also to schools and children’s daycare home. Viktorovits has been a private farmer for eleven years. – Every year we have more difficulties, but I wait for better future. I’m happy. Viktorovits has six cows and some pigs. He has 30 hectars land, which is the limit for a private farm.

Larry Dreiling from Kansas, USA, felt sad after the visit. – The democracy has not done the good things that it should. Josef Sedlak from Slovakia confirmed. He has been in Russia before and he said that the situation is now much worse than it used to be.

Though the weather was splendid we didn’t join the people who were picking up potatoes on the farmer’s field but headed back to Finland and Savonlinna. On the Finnish border after the last passport checking it was time to open the champagne bottles. Wau, we did it!

Text: Riitta Mustonen
Photos: Veikko Tertsunen, Anita Lampinen

Former Finnish wooden houses rosed nostalgy. The railway lady opened the gates manually.

IFAJ-group celebrated for the homecoming from Russia with champagne.

Some of the old Finnish houses are beautifully renovated.

State owned farm in Haapalampi village in Carelia, Russia.

The fields in Ladogan Carelia in Russia.

Young boys begging in Sortavala.


IFAJ-Journalists interviewing Ljubov Viktorovna in Russia.

Letterio Mintuoli from Sicilia, Italy, writing a story in a Russian forest.

Finnish refreshment in the Russian forest.

Cindy Snyder bought a souvenir from Sortavala.

”Finally, a beer!” said Paul Queck from USA, Indianapolis, in a Russian forest. Finnish grilled sausages, Carelian pasties and hard coffee were also a good thing after travelling several days.

Larry Dreiling interviewed Russian private farmer Nikolai Viktorov.