If you kept up with my last post on my Russian Banya experience, you’ll know that life in Siberia just isn’t what you’d expect. The next major highlight during this Russian tour was our journey to take my friend’s grandfather out to the ‘garage’. Now this Russian ‘garage’ is far far different than what you must be thinking. Let me go a bit further in detail here… First off, this garage is about 2 kilometers from their home. It is a large storage shed area with heavily bolted 2″ thick steel doors. I’m pretty sure it could brush off an RPG attack at 50 feet. But to take it a step further, it’s not simply a place to park your car at night to keep it from the thieves. It is a place to keep tools, households items, extra clothes and as I’ve come to find out, food!
At the storage facility…
When we pulled up outside, little did I know what I was about to get involved in. I entered the garage and was told, in Russian, to pull up the wooden hatch on the dirty oil stained floor. The hatch itself was about 1 meter by 1 meter. Plenty of space to climb down into the opening but a sizable hatch door to pull aside.
Seen earlier that day… a day of randomness..
When I opened it up, the translations started picking up. Her grandfather starting telling me to do stuff a bit more loudly now but I was clueless so she did her best to try to translate to let me know what was needed. I was already down into this basement area under the garage and thought he wanted me to start carrying his jars of vegetables that we brought in the car 2 kilometers from home. I thought it strange enough to want to store vegetables ‘in a garage’ this far from home but who was I to ask questions? I was in Siberia! Maybe this is just the norm?
However, it didn’t stop there. I was told there was yet another hatch to open. What? Really? A basement within a basement? I quickly realized I was standing on this second hatch and after realizing how to move and secure the first ladder I took to get down to this level, I then removed this second, equally as large hatch.
More randomness that night…Russian Cabbage Pie was not what you were thinking….
With both of them still shouting instructions to me in a mix of Russian and English, I realized I was actually supposed to go down into this black void. Of course, there were no lights to be found so far at this point. Only a rusty thin ladder propped up against the wall. I could faintly see that there were at least 6 steps on it but had yet to be able to see the bottom…. “Go on down there”! I was told. Awesome. Nothing like crawling down into a pitch black basement under a basement! This is exactly what I wanted to do today!
The pack of wild dogs that run the storage yard…
As soon as I started to descend, my eyes started adjusting and I noticed a switch on the wall. After hitting it, I realized I still had about 4 more steps to go. This was one seriously deep basement! Was this a bomb shelter? Sweet mango this place was creepy. It was fully encased in brick and seemed a good 150 years old. Maybe it was just the grossness of the place that made me speculate its old age. Or perhaps it was that dingy stagnant air and the cobwebs. 
After getting down there, the fun began. I crawled back up to earth’s level to grab the first batch of jars… pickles and tomatoes. When I got back down, I realized there were two rooms down here. One was the secret lair for the vegetables that would make it through Armageddon while the other held some things that I truly didn’t expect to find. Lets see… a car door and what else… a transmission to a car?!? My initial thought was how the hell that got down here. More importantly was why? I mean, storage is one thing but how the hell is one supposed to shoulder a transmission and climb two rusty ladders to reach the surface of Siberia to get that stuff outta here?
The basement within a basement within a Russian garage…
Well, since flying in to Russia three weeks ago, I have learned NOT to ask questions. Just accept things for what they are. I think traveling does this to you over time. Well at least traveling through Asia will do that to you. Either way, the quicker I hauled down these 25 jars of pickles and tomatoes, the damn quicker I could get the hell out of this dungeon! At least I know now where to go when the bombs drop or when I want to take a break from the freezing Siberian weather! What an experience…
A shelf life of 25 years…
4 Comments... Join the conversation below
You are brave, Rory! what I was wondering who is doing all this food canning. What was the temperature in the dungeon and it does make you wonder if this place was used as a bomb shelter. The stray dogs would make me freak out as well. Roseanne explained to me that some people have to park their cars in the garages to avoid theft.
Haha, if it wasn’t intended as a bomb shelter, it definitely could have! Almost everyone in Russia there seemed to have a garage… and yes, the stray dogs there were a bit freaky. We took her very small dog for a walk through there one night and were surrounded by a pack of about 6-7 wild dogs. Wasn’t fun:) We had to carry it for at least 5 minutes until they backed off… good times
Rory,
It was old kiln to fire ceramics in…perhaps tiles or pottery.
I can tell by the lid you pass to enter, and the bricks contained in the bottom room with the bottled vegetables.
Interesting… I don’t doubt it however. It was definitely used for more than its intended purpose. I’m just glad to have made it out of there. It was more than creepy…two layers below the surface.