Volgograd

A city on the Volga in southern Russia, formerly Stalingrad, reached by an 18-hour train from Moscow. Harry stops here on the way to Elista and describes it as surprisingly beautiful and, in the same breath, as a place that has been left behind — young people are leaving over pay and the economy.

Stalingrad

The reason to come. What Harry sets out, standing in the city:

• Two million people were killed in the battle, which he calls the deadliest in human history — more than Gaza, Iraq or Afghanistan.
• 40,000 died in the first week alone, from bombing.
• Why here: Hitler wanted the Volga as a supply line. The Red Army encircled the German army in the city and defeated it, and the battle turned the war.
• The city was completely destroyed and rebuilt brick by brick.
• The Motherland Calls — at 85 metres, the tallest statue of a woman in Europe, and the monument the whole city is organised around.
• Twinned with Coventry, Harry’s home city, which he uses for the joke that Volgograd actually rebuilt itself.

The trip has a second layer: Harry brought the German creator Leon here deliberately, and says so — to stand a German in Stalingrad.

The city now

• Bombing is current, not historical. The night before Harry left, there were explosions over the city for hours; he is told it was the air defence working, that everything gets shot down, and that after two years nobody reacts to it any more. Flights out were cancelled, which is why he hitched.
• The economy has been hit directly: a man at a bus stop had lost his job when the local oil refinery was destroyed. Harry chose not to show his face.
• Statues of Lenin are everywhere — Harry offers the claim, flagging that he’s been fact-checked on it before, that Lenin is the most-statued person in the world.
• The station is a reunion point. Arrivals are met with flowers by families who haven’t seen each other in a long time, because the work is in Moscow.

Getting here: the Moscow train

An 18-hour run, and Harry’s advice is to travel third class because that is where anything happens. What it’s like:

• Bunks are too short for a tall passenger — you fit across but not along — and the upper berth has a ceiling close over it. There are USB sockets.
• No food is served to the carriage. Bring your own or use the restaurant car; the cleaning is frequent and the carriage is in better condition than he expected.
• The restaurant car is cheap: chicken Kiev at 400 rubles, about $5, on a train with no competing supply.
• Value against home: Harry compares roughly £50 for a one-hour Birmingham–London ticket against roughly the same for 18 hours here, and adds that this train left on time.
• Seat allocation is approximate. Somebody was in theirs, and a further reshuffle by a babushka put them somewhere else again.
• Contact is slow and worth the effort. A fellow passenger shared cognac with them and held a long conversation entirely through Google Translate, typed rather than spoken because there was no signal.

Harry’s tips

• Take third class, not first — see above.
• Buy the food before you board. There’s a bar and restaurant car, but nothing comes to the seat.
• Learn to open with something. Russians here don’t smile at strangers and the conversation has to be earned; the vodka, the cognac and the translate app did more work than any question.
• Don’t rely on flying out. Flights get cancelled at no notice.

Source

• Entering the Side of Russia You Don’t Ever See 🇷🇺 — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OgY_LeUShM8