From Irkutsk, With Love : Exchange Program Brings Siberian Visitors to L.A.

Svetlana Alpatov felt silly packing bathing suits and shorts when she and her husband prepared last week for the California vacation of their lifetime. It was the middle of winter--a hard Siberian winter, where temperatures hover in the minus-20s.

But Sergey Alpatov, an eye surgeon, insisted 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 hometown of Irkutsk, 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 beds, meals and an inside view of their home cities. About half of the hosts for the Siberian visitors live in the Valley. The Alpatovs are staying with a Hidden Hills family.

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 this week has been the sun, warmth that was a rare feeling for many. 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 Wednesday of Universal Studios Hollywood. “This is just wonderful.”

Aside from weather, the Siberians--among them doctors, teachers and engineers--enjoyed pleasures hard to find at home: salad bars and 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 clean city streets, modern buildings and the advanced technology that is part of everyday life.

Eleven-year-old Artem Ignatiera, the group’s only child, sat wide-eyed and silent during rides at Universal Studios. Thus far, he has enjoyed American video games more than anything else, he said through an interpreter.

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.”

Other visitors noticed more practical differences between Los Angeles and Siberia.

At one point in her city tour, Raissa Scherbakova, a math teacher, wondered where local electricity comes from--she couldn’t find any rivers in Los Angeles.

Lake Baikal, about 30 miles from Irkutsk, where she also lives, contains about one-fifth of the world’s fresh water, and the rivers that flow into it provide electricity for much of Russia.

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

But Caryl Bigenho, a host from Simi Valley, was determined that her visitor, Olga Lebedeva, 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 homeless residents.

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