A Warm Welcome : Siberian Visitors Relish L.A.-Style Winter and Friendliness

Svetlana Alpatov felt silly packing bathing suits and shorts when she and her husband prepared last week for the California vacation of their life. It was the middle of winter, after all, a hard Siberian winter where temperatures hover around 20 below.

But Sergey Alpatov, an eye surgeon, insisted that he was going to swim in the Pacific Ocean when he came to Los Angeles as part of a cultural exchange program.

And swim he did.

On Wednesday, when it was 13 degrees below zero at his southern Siberian home, Alpatov doffed his T-shirt and jeans and dipped into the 60-degree Malibu waves, giggling as water dripped from his mustache and raising his arms in a sign of victory.

Alpatov is one of 24 Siberians participating in a program organized by the Friendship Force, an Atlanta-based group founded in 1977 with the support of Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter. Members are paired with host families in foreign countries who provide housing, meals and an inside view of their home cities.

The group will spend this week in Los Angeles and the next in San Francisco.

Although the Siberian visitors enjoyed local tourist attractions, the everyday wonder of Los Angeles has been the sun and warmth. A summer heat wave in Siberia means about a month of highs in the 60s.

“It will be a great achievement for me to go back to Siberia with a sunburn,” said Victor Kozlov, editor of a small eastern Siberian newspaper, as he took off his flannel shirt before the group began a tour of Universal Studios.

Aside from the weather, the Siberians--including doctors, teachers and engineers--enjoyed pleasures that are hard to find at home: salad bars, shopping malls and Mexican food.

Touring the city with their host families and other local members of the Friendship Force, they visited Beverly Hills, the beach and enormous warehouse department stores.

Few could speak English, but those who did said they admired the clean city streets, modern buildings and advanced technology that is part of everyday life here.

And, the Siberian visitors said, they have found Angelenos to be uncommonly friendly.

“You are all so nice with strangers,” said Svetlana Dimova, an administrator for a cellular telephone company. “It is not quite this way at home.”

With tours through Beverly Hills and pool parties in Hidden Hills, the Siberians’ time in Los Angeles focused on a decidedly rose-colored version of local life.

But Caryl Bigenho, a host from Simi Valley, was determined that her visitor, Olga Lebedeva, would receive a well-rounded view.

On Saturday, Lebedeva will join Bigenho and her husband at their church, where they will help prepare a monthly breakfast for the city’s homeless.

“We’ll take her to see that not everyone lives in a beach house in Malibu,” Bigenho said.

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Out of Siberia

A group of visitors from Irkutsk, Russia, where temperatures are now around 13 degrees below zero, is on a cultural exchange visit this week to Los Angeles and its soaring temperatures.