Alexey and his wife Thania hosted me in Omsk. Alexey is one of the most interesting personalities I met in my trip. He is a professional online poker player and he makes enough money to make a living out of it. In fact he makes quite a lot of money, 10 times more than what a normal Russian worker make. Free of tax!
Surfing the couch in Omsk
I watched him working and I learned a lot about his “business”. He login on several gambling websites and wait for “the fish”. The fish is the newbie poker player that plays emotionally, doesn’t care about losing some bucks or just doesn’t really understand the game. Alexey waits and waits for the fish while checking the ratings of other players. The gambling sites have databases with all the stadistics about their users. The databases are accesible for anybody willing to pay for them. Alexey uses one of those databases to see the the statistics of the his opponents. On the numbers displayed on screen was the complete gambling history of the other player. Alexey created some software to do a bit of data crunching on those numbers and rank the users by some simple parameters and numbers. Aggresivenes, Bluffiness, money lost, money earned… Online proffesional poker players know everything about you before you even accept a game.
The EU dream
Once he make enough money he want to move to Czech Republic. Czech Republic have a special inmigration policy that allow Russian people to get a permanent visa if they have an address in the country or if they open a business there. You only need to buy a small house or a small flat somewhere within Czech borders to get a European passport. It was not a surprise for me, in this trip I met quite a lot of people that want to leave Russia as soon as possible and all of them dream of moving to the EU.
The dacha
After the call Alexey bring me to his dacha to help him with some work. Here I was, surfing a Couch in exchange of some physical work. We moved a mountain of sand from one corner of the dacha to another. After this job we had tea with his parents, teachers at the local university. They lived the fall of the URSS from the classrooms and described me what happened during those years. Now they can only accept the injustice that if they were professors in Germany instead of Russia their salary would be 10 times bigger.
After the tea we picked up Tanya and we went for a walk in the city. I was really keen of visiting the man in the hole. The man in the hole was the reason I make a stop in this place in first place. Why? because a couple of years ago in Bratislava I met another man in the hole and I took some funny pictures with him. I wanted to do the same with ‘the man in the hole’ in Omsk! Do you know if there is any other similar statue in the world?.
Speaking with the man in the hole in Omsk
At night I cook a Spanish omelette for my hosts. While cooking I discovered that the Russian potatoes are awesome. Much better than Spanish potatoes. I think it is because in Russia what you buy in the supermarkets products came directly from local farmers.
After dinner I got onto my next train. This time I was seated with a funny family from Ulan Ude that were extremely interested in me. Dad was totally fascinated with Spain. He knows more about Spanish soccer teams and players than I do!. However this time I didn’t sit on the correct bench. After some minutes the provoditzna yelled something at me in Russian, took my hand and guide me to my correct bench. Next to a Russian guy with face of not having any friend.
Because he ate all of them long time ago.
Hovewer after showing him my amazing Russian lenguage skills he opened his hearth. A bit. He was probably thinking “Where are you going alone little boy?” Well, I knew the answer this time, my next stop was Novosivirk.
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