The Chronicle of "Rock-Line'98"
(eyewitness report by Natasha)
Scene: Planet Earth, Russia, Urals, picturesque outskirts of Kungur.

I like traveling alone. You'll never meet many people if  you are
attached to your company . I pack my bag (all I need is some grub and a
sleeping bag) and make my way to the station. The station is already
crowded with colorful personalities: rowdy scruffy punks, dreamy
hippies, blunted rastafarians and outrageous skinheads. I nod to those I
know and approach those who I see for the first time. I find it
extremely fascinating to meet new people, every person is so unique that
every new acquaintance gives much food for thought and makes me revise
my own view of the world.  Communication is a great value even when it
is just an idle chat. Suddenly the whole hangout darts off. The train
has come. The carriage is packed, we get squashed into the platform like
herrings in a can: a mingled mass of human bodies, bags, and guitars.
Fooling around, strumming the guitar, chatting and gabbling.  When the
train stops on stations we fill our lungs with as much air as possible
and cry out, "There's no room!" Poor folks! They recoil astounded,
having seen such a concentration of queer-looking guys.

Well, here is the camp at last. This year there is no such unity as in
the previous years, the trouble is that in the center of the camp
skinheads have pitched their tents; their nasty jokes, noisy clashes,
constant hollering, and violence have prevented people from camping
nearby. Most of us preferred to inhabit the banks of the river Silva and
the woods. I leave my bag in the camp and go to roam in the hills and
rocks covered with thick forest, to admire the gorgeous evening in the
Urals and to escape the hustle of the camp. A tortuous path leads us up
the rocks. Here we are, sitting cross-legged in a circle on the edge of
a mossy rock. The wind is playing with my hair, a polka dot ladybird is
clambering my finger, I smell the pungent scent of flowers mixed with
the smoke of pot. The pipe with pot starts its way round the circle,
accompanied by the music of two flutes, a mandolin, shaman drums. I'm
beating the rhythm with clappers. The pot, the sacred music, the shaman
singing make its influence felt on me. My consciousness is melting in
the smooth sounds and I have a feeling that I'm flying away on the other
side of the river, and the world is losing its strict boundaries.

Awareness comes to me that all of us are the one: you and me, the man
singing and the river flowing, the dew of the grass and a needle of the
pine – we are parts of one single organism. People! We are the one! So
why should we struggle, kill each other, isn't it as if one hand tried
to cause harm to another one, or one leg tried to kick another one?
Time passes. It goes away on tiptoe. The Sun taps us with its tender
rays, it slowly disappears in the wood painting the river in hues of
red. Now, the Sun doesn't warm us any more, but we don't feel the chill
of the night, our circle is the source of warmness. We warm each other
with our love.

At the foot of the rock there are lots of small lights. The camp winks
us with its many bon-fires, they welcome us to descend.
We move from fire to fire, people are different: tolkienists discussing
the last Game, punks howling the favorite song of Russian punks "All
Goes As It Must be…" by "Civil Defense", rastafarians smoking ganja,
hippies strumming the guitar, even the skinheads have quieted a bit by
the night. All of these people are friendly, they share their food and
spirits, we chat and sing, tired I rest on the shoulder of a lump-like
guy. Pines rustle in the nocturnal stillness and attract to come into
the mysterious darkness. We climb the hill again, fumbling in the thick
feather-grass. We lie on the grass mutely, bottomless sky above us, the
infinity filled with star winks.

At the dawn we come down to the camp, I find shelter in a tent and try
to sleep. In vain. Here you won't have problems with finding a place to
sleep, but it is virtually impossible to go asleep – guitars and drums
play all night long, guys scream and shout and I wonder where they've
got so much energy, I guess they work in shifts to prevent people from
sleeping.

In the morning the festival begins. The scene where the rock-groups are
to perform is on the roof of the hotel "Stalagmite". In the previous
years the scene was pointed at the slope of the ice-cave hill, and the
audience used to sit on the slope and enjoy the music. It turned out
that the slope was covered with a rare species of feather-grass and the
organizers and participants of the festival were accused of trampling it
out. The festival faced firm opposition. Local folks proclaimed that
their hens didn't lay eggs because of the loud music, so we decided to
encourage everyone to bring an egg for the folks to save the festival.
Anyway the festival managed to survive.

This time the audience sits and grooves on the area in front of the
scene. In Western Europe it is not a rare thing to see a punk-like guy or
another strange-looking person. But here, especially in this little
village-like town people just startle and peer at us as if we've dropped
from the moon. It is a real circus: in the center - all our queer
looking and behaving company, shouting and yelling; and around us
bewildered neat-looking folks, staring at us as if we've escaped from an
insane asylum. I see a folk family approaching a group of punks with a
camera; they chose the most picturesque of them; the family encircles
him and the father takes a snapshot. Like in a zoo!
This time, the bugger is that the scene is pointed at the camp, and you
can't hide from the music even when you feel you're going to become deaf
soon.

The tent I slept in belongs to a young couple from South Urals who've
come here by hitchhiking. The girl speaks so melodically, her voice is
so dulcet, she rather sings than speaks, and after communicating with
her for a long time I realize I'm speaking in the same manner. They are
vegetarians and the lad prepares soup with soybean meat, I contribute to
the potluck bringing peas from my bag (I had difficulties with finding
it, 'cause I've forgotten where I left it yesterday). Other guys come,
some of them also put something into the soup: carrots and processed
cheese, corn and all kinds of spices. The soup is heavenly delicious
(probably because we are hungry as bears). Nearby, punks are making
their soup with grasshoppers and earthworms. Crazy fellows…
I walk a lot in the rocks, chat with two bikers arriving from Nizhny
Novgorod, encounter a cheerful company of University students, have a
philosophical talk with a hare-krishna who tries to wash my brains. There
are a lot of people wandering about admiring the beauty of the Urals
nature. A see a group of guys drinking vodka on the edge of the rock,
later they are not able to go down to the camp and have to sit until
their coordination of movements comes back, 'cause the path that leads
down is rather a precipitous one. There are too many drunk and brained
people in the camp I think, 'cause the booze-up never stops. There was a
funny thing when a bombed out guy wasn't able to find the entry into the
tent and crept under the bottom of the tent to sleep.

The cops this time are extremely violent, it seems they try to fulfill
the plan on drugs at the expense of the participants, so they make
searches in some tents and arrest some fellows who have weed by them.
Besides skinheads behave outrageously, they beat hippies just because
they are different, and cops don't pay attention.

My old friends (which I've met by the end of the second day) and me
preferred to go away into the woods up the rock. We roam around in the
darkness searching for strawberries and mushrooms with an electric torch. We
make a bonfire and sleep around it on pine boughs. It is dead cold and I
have to turn round and round to expose my frozen sides to the heat of
the fire.

In the morning we leave the camp. Our way lies through the town of
Kungur. I'm walking in the main street, folks stare at me and point
fingers at my worn jeans which are covered with colourful inscriptions. It's
so stupid. I feel again like I'm in a zoo. To give them more pleasure I
jump, clap my hands, and turn around. Probably they think that my loaf
needs repairing. They don't know how dead funny it is to observe their
reaction!

The amusing thing about that town: it has a street named Freedom St.
which leads straight from the gloomy darkness of the Kungur ice-cave
to the local prison. Is this the local authorities idea of Freedom?

The town is situated on karst caverns, so they don't erect big houses
there, however from time to time the earth swallows some buildings (do
not be terrified, it's not dangerous). Once the earth gaped at the local
'sobering-up' station. The patients having seen darkness outside and
doctors in white smocks decided they are already in heavens surrounded
by angels. People say that after such a shock they've given up drinking
forever!

I return to my city by hitchhiking, I'm fatigued, dirty but happy and
satisfied with my trip.

People who've read this are welcome to E-mail to me.
Tcheburashka@yahoo.com