1 September, GYŐR; NOVOSIBIRSK (airplane)

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Jenő Hartyándi:

10:40 Our plane takes off at Feihegy Airport. The travellers are me and Péter Szabó, a teacher of the photo workshop. It is the 5th day on the Trans-Siberia express for the other seven members of the PASSPORT CONTROL.

After passing two time zones, we arrive in Moscow, where Ica Kiss, the director of the Hungarian Cultural Institute welcomes us with an exotic lunch cooked by her colleague with Central-Asian origin. It proves to be a propriate and tasty prelude of the following days’ adventures.

After lunch we look around in the city looking for a place for the exhibition of Péter Szabó’s photos, which we couldn’t bring here this time, but which there are great expectations for. His photo exhibition „Have you ever been to Budapest?” took place on the Chainbridge last year.

Wandering in the city it turns out, it is the 625th anniversary of Moscow. We wish we had known it earlier and we had been able to stay for another day here. We miss the celebration introducing the old and the modern Russian festal customs and only take part in the anniversary party in its traffic aspects, thus we have to manoeuvre between the object (road-blocking vans) and human (military) obstacles. Moscow has lost a lot from its socialist metropolitan charm for the last few years and has become one of the most expensive cities in the world.

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Ica shows us the new underground exhibiton room of the institute first of all (this place, which was a store-house formerly has really pleasant atmosphere), where we can hold an exhibition out of the products of the PASSPORT CONTROL and the Summer Art Camp, show our films and even cook Hungarian food sometime in the future.

Meanwhile I get an sms from Pusi (Péter Pusker) reporting about their succesful arrival in Novosibirsk and about their plans to have a regenerating party there.

The second exhibiton room we can see is situated in a giant buliding, where the book exhibition will take place too, and where the Hungarian books will get a special, privileged place this year. In front of the building there’s a path popular for the citizens with parks and fountains. The third option is a bridge over the river opposite the railway station, which has been transformed in an exciting way. Its original place was somewhere else, further over the river, so it has been moved here and built round the old structure a new one, covered it with glass, so that the result is an extremely exciting exhibition room for the pedestrians. Péter likes this place, too. Now we only have to get the permissions. I believe we could revive and place on an other base the Hungarian – Russian relationship ruffled by socialism, with the help of a new type of country image. Thus with the help of a lot of exhibitons like this one the obstacles could be destroyed, and those cultural values of both of the two countries which have remained hidden from each other would become invisible at last.

After a rush to the airport, we depart to Novosibirsk at 22.45.