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Sezin Öney, originally from Turkey, is based in Budapest and Istanbul. She her journalism career as a foreign news reporter in 1999 and she turned into political analysis as a columnist since 2007. Her interest in her main academic subject area of populism was sparked almost decade ago; and now she focuses specifically on populist leadership, and populism in Turkey and Hungary. She studied international relations, nationalism, international law, Jewish history, comparative politics and discourse analysis across Europe.
Vodka, Pine Nuts And Politics: World Cup Fans On A Siberian Train
This is the story of a really "different" road trip.
Anton Troianovski, the Moscow bureau chief of The Washington Post, traveled with World Cup fans from all over the world, boarding a train trailing along across Siberia.
In Troianovski's words, the picture is as follows:
A train from the Pacific coast city of Vladivostok, rumbling through central Siberia in the midst of its seven-day trip to Moscow this week, was carrying babies, veterans, pensioners and construction workers — and World Cup fans from Japan, China, Thailand, Australia and Argentina.
The crowd is made up of completely diverse people, thick fog of smoke piping from cigarettes malingers around, vodka in teacups is passed around, the "quintessential" Russian long-distance travel card game called "durak" (meaning the "fool") is played; this is not exactly the luxurious Orient Express. But as bizarre as it is, this trip seems fun. Imagine "a pipe worker named Alexander" cracking a joke and you get the idea:
"An adviser comes to Putin and says, ‘I have good news and bad news. The good news is that you were elected president. The bad news is that no one voted for you.’ ”There is even a Dmitry Medvedev on board — a veteran paratrooper now helping to build a fish processing plant in the Kuril Islands. And Mr Medvedev poses the following question to Kensuke Utsumi — the Japanese World Cup fan on board:
If this train were to break down in the middle of the taiga, the endless Siberian forest, would the tourists be able to survive? “I think so,” Utsumi answered. “I survived two earthquakes.”
In fact, all the passengers on board seem to be having a survival experience throughout this strange and marvelous Transsiberian trip. All in all, this is just one of the fun articles coming out of the unfolding World Cup saga. There are many others, such as the Peruvians' obsession with this World Cup, travelling in masses to Russia, or the Russian MP telling the nation to "Have sex, make babies" to welcome foreign fans.
