Vladivostok Looking Ahead?

'What do you think of Vladivostok?'

I hear this question a lot. I've begun my nearly two month trip across Russia's Far East with two weeks in Vladivostok, so I should have an answer. Its name means 'to rule the East,' but it was only meant as a menacing threat to its neighbors from a military sense. The town was closed for most of the Soviet period -- no Russians, no foreigners could get in. Though resources and trade potential loom still, it's had a bumpy start towards the free market. After the fall of the Soviet Union, it was run by corrupt local politicians, locals tell me, who took the new autonomy from the Moscow for their own means. After Moscow grew stronger the past eight years with Putin in power, and now Medvedev, some locals tell me 'it's better -- we don't know what to do with freedom, me neither.'

A lot of talk circulates about Putin's last push as president to bring the APEC summit here in 2012, a plan that involves a supposed Moscow commitment of $6 billion in investment -- to clean the polluted port waters, add a new sewage systems, some roads, some hotels, an entertainment complex ('like Russia Vegas,' one person told me) and, most importantly, a Golden Gate-style bridge to nearby Russky Island, which was a military island solely until recently. When I visited it three years ago, many locals -- including travel agents -- said I couldn't go. I did, and I could, it seemed.

Few locals believe all this. A Korean owner of a British pastry shop said 'Frankly I think if APEC comes all the countries will forget Vladivostok once they go home.' Other note that bridges take eight years to build. One enthusiastic boat guy, who collects mud for spa and fishes shrimp and takes tourists on fishing tours -- and who looks like Morrissey a bit -- says 'I saw bridges made in South Korea -- it takes them five years. I don't think it can be done.'

Walking around Vladivostok's streets it's easy to confuse it with another post-Soviet city. People don't mind trash and debris or graffitti on the streets, some of which have been widened, cutting down trees to do it. The main square is covered in asphalt. The new promenade along Sportivnaya Harbor was made with gray stones -- a poor color choice in an already gray city. When the city built a small pond with a lotus flower and fish on the main ped strip Fokina, someone stole the fish, and filled the pond with emptied beer bottles. 'Usually in summer, people take the flowers out of other garden areas to grow some cabbages.' It can look a little grim.

But getting a view of the scene, from the $1 ferry to Russky Island and back, from atop a San Francisco-style hill reached by a 20-cent funicular train, or by busing to the south point of Vlad and standing on a lookout overlooking the bay, you can see the potential. Few cities have more attractive landscape.

Anyway I like it.

Photo of the Antique Automobile Museum, a collection of Soviet cars and motorcycles: