Happy Birthday PASSPORT Magazine !

punches above its weight, due to its
location. The city was founded in
1586 as a fortress outpost against
the raiding nomads. During The
Great Patriotic War the city came to
prominence as the ‘alternative capital’.
It became one of the nation’s
biggest industrial centers as a result
of the evacuation of a number of
engineering and aircraft production
units here from the western
regions. Most of the government
offi ces and diplomatic corps moved
to Samara in 1941, and there was
even an underground bunker built
to accommodate Stalin and his war
command, the Stavka. Stalin never
came, although his daughter was
sent to school in Samara.
Samara’s immediate borders are
with Tatarstan to the north, Saratov
Region to the south, Orenburg in
the east and Ulyanovsk in the northwest.
The Volga water highway links
it to the Black Sea and ultimately the
Mediterranean. It’s a short hop to
Moscow and Kazakhstan. Bulgaria
lies at the northern end of its transport corridor to Ukraine and Belorussia.
The UK and France are in its sights at the western end of an
East West Corridor linking up with Kazakhstan and that country’s
neighbors.
Samara is an example of how the centralized wealth of Russia is rapidly
spreading from the Moscow-St. Petersburg axis. The region is
third in Russia for per capita consumer spending. In the last decade
a host of Moscow retailers have opened here. The streets are lined
with retailers familiar to all Muscovites: 36.6, Sportmaster, M Video,
Perekrostok, Paterson, L’Etoile, Ramstore, Techno Sila, Rostiks, Mc-
Donald’s, Tinkoff and Il Patio. Foreign names have joined them recently.
Metro, the German Cash and Carry and Castorama, the Kingfi
sher owned DIY depot are on the outskirts while Adidas, D&G and
Maxanova jostle with Wild Orchid on Kuibyshev Street. In the land
of the Lada and Zhiguli, billboards for Jaguar and Volvo mark the
four-lane highway from Ufa, approaching the Samara city center.
Samara is renowned for having the most beautiful women in Russia,
and this assetion is supported by a statement made by Russian
Oscar-winning movie director, Alexander Mikhailkov. Polina Borgest,
the young and attractive director of the leading local tourist gift
shop likes to attribute this to the legend that Catherine II exiled all
the beauties of St. Petersburg to Samara to avoid harsh comparison
with her unprepossessing features! More sanguine students of ethnicity
say it is due to the unique mixing of blood and genes from
Samara’s exotic racial mix of 83% Russian, 4% each of Tatars, Mordovans,
Chuvash and Ukrainians, with 2% of Belorussian origin and a
sprinkling of Kazakh, Jews, Germans, Bashkir, Mari and others.
Whatever the reason, it makes lounging on the café lined Volga
embankment a great people watching occupation on a summer
evening; as leggy teens in skimpy outfi ts roller blade between the
tables. And yes, I have to admit, the Samara boys are equally handsome
and clean-cut looking and I am sure many a girl would fi nd
them attractive. The boys strut their stuff up the hill on skateboards
on the vast Slava (Glory) Square in front of the Regional Administration
building.
Samara has been called ”St. Louis-on-the-Volga”, which is quite fi tting,
since Samara and St. Louis are linked by a sister-city relationship
and both serve similar positions of river related commerce. Now it is
10
2007
Travel
15