From the Mind of Mark

Finally Sharing Pictures on Flickr!

2007-10-25T23:54:00.001-04:00

I've decided to start publishing most of my pictures on Flickr - actually, I decided that a long time ago, but I take a while to follow through on things. I had previously been posting them all on Facebook, but most of them have broader appeal, so I want to put those on Flickr and keep the "college antics" ones on Facebook. I do eventually want to relocate previous ones, but one step at a time - and so, that first step is a set of pictures from a hiking trip that I went on in mid-June with a bunch of friends from the New Orleans trip.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/marksowul/sets/72157602708557423/

Enjoy!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/marksowul is my Flickr homepage.

PS: Kudos to Microsoft's free Live Suite; Live Photo Gallery lets you publish your pictures straight from the program. That was a big help in actually starting to do this, since I have most of my pictures tagged and captioned here, albeit in Photoshop Elements, and duplicating this effort each time I wanted to upload pictures was a major deterrent to doing so.

Another thumbs-up for Live Writer, which lets you blog entries with ease, including adding pictures, categories, etc. Thumbs half-down for Word 2007, which only offers basic integration with Blogger.com - in particular, no images and no categories. So I have to choose between Word's superior offline feature set (proofing, etc) or Live Writer's online feature set.

Maybe someday Microsoft will stop reinventing the wheel (for example - the Zune doesn't use Windows Media Player, but rather reinvents it with different features, and that means you would need to keep two libraries. Fun! I have to admit though, I am far more impressed with Zune v2, and am also surprised that they are upgrading the features of v1 as well. Maybe I'll write about that another day.)

Flickr Tags: Hiking Trip

<-- Another neat Live Writer feature

9/13/2007 - The Trip to Budapest

2007-10-10T21:06:00.001-04:00

I had been thinking about whether to take the day trips to Budapest and/or Bratislava, and in the end decided to do just the trip to Budapest. If I'd had more time, I'd have gone to Bratislava as well, but I didn't want to spend half of my would-be time in Vienna going elsewhere, since Vienna was so nice. Next time, perhaps. : )

The trip was terrific. It took about two hours to reach Budapest by bus. It was a nice ride, and we passed by the Hungarian city of Tatabánya, which is home to the "Turul" monument, which is the mythical bird of the Magyars' (Hungarian people's) origin myth. It is the largest bird statue in Central Europe, but to me, it was fairly unimpressive from our vantage point.

When we reached Budapest, we had a short bus tour through the city, and then lunch. It was beautiful, though I learned that 70% of it had been leveled during World War II. In contrast to Austria (which had also been widely damaged, evidently), the country was not rich enough to instantly rebuild it, so it was, in many places, still run down.

At lunch it was as though I was back in America; we were eating at a restaurant in a Best Western (Hungarian food though), and I was at a table talking with a couple from California and a woman from Phoenix. We talked about various things, including travel, and then the whole real-estate crisis. Needless to say, I ended up telling my story, and then the couple from California was talking about theirs; they had traveled a lot, and had been to a few different places on this trip, including having taken the day-tour to Prague the previous day. They said they preferred to see things in depth, and so on a two-week vacation they might see only one or two cities, because they wanted to really experience them and remember them and so forth – I didn't quite understand how that philosophy fit together with their taking these one-day trips to Prague and Budapest. The topic shifted to the real-estate stuff in the US, and they said they were not shedding any tears about the realtors, as they went through some of their bad experiences (they've moved seven times), though I kind of lost interest.

After lunch, we subsequently went on a walking tour through the city. There was a Russian couple (living in the US) with whom I chatted briefly; I had heard them ask the guide whether she'd ever been to any of a few ex-Soviet countries they named (Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, etc). Consequently, I wondered whether they were Russian, and then heard them speaking to each other. Another element of Russia that was strange to see here were Russian nesting dolls as souvenirs. I didn't quite understand what they had to do with anything here. Apparently someone else raised a similar question or the guide read my mind, because I overheard her say that they were Hungarian-made, which she imagined might have been the point; she too disagreed with selling them there since they had no relevance to local culture, but admitted that they were popular souvenirs, so it benefits them in the economic sense. Shrug. The ironic thing is that this "traditional symbol of Russia" was actually brought there by the Japanese.

After the walking tour, we then had some free time (two hours or so); I went up to the cupola of St. Stephen's Basilica, offering a great view of the city, and then walked around "Andrassy Street", one of the main pedestrian boulevards. I indeed ended up making it to Budapest after all, although I regretted the almost uselessly short amount of time, although between the walking tour and the free time, I did get to see a lot of the city.

On the way home, I talked at length with a man from Singapore. I hadn't realized English was the native language there, as he did have what I would consider an accent. He was a real estate lawyer who was on a 2-week vacation; he had succeeded where I hadn't, arriving in Italy and seeing two or three cities there (Milan, Venice, and Florence maybe) by train before taking the train to Vienna, playing it by ear. He gave me his card, telling me to let him know if I ended up traveling to Singapore someday. Ironically, earlier in the day, the man from California had said Asia was a lot of fun, except for Singapore. Hm. Guess I'll have to see for myself.

Anyway, he also helpfully reminded me (as have others along the way) that this is an opportunity I won't see again once I start working full time – yeah, I'm acutely aware of that (thus visions of sugarplums and teaching or the Foreign Service dance in my head). Черт знает.

He also was telling me of some of Singapore's draconian laws, among them being caned for vandalism – I have little sympathy for this; vandalism is a crime that benefits no one and is just a big nuisance. Another one is being hanged for drug trafficking. Wow.

We talked about music a bit also. He had ended up buying 20 books (many were thin; it was a few small bags) at a store and remarked at how gloomy and unfriendly the staff was. I remarked at how friendly Vienna seemed, and he agreed, but said he hadn't had the same level of friendliness that I had, encountering some less helpful people in the train station information office, and his first night's hotel.

In Budapest, there is a "6-star" hotel, the Four Seasons. We wondered about this, and then wondered what the point is, since if you're traveling somewhere you're usually only in the hotel for a few hours a day, mainly to sleep – as long as the hotel is nice enough and close enough, why pay thousands a night?

He had bought some food (there was lunch on our trip, but not dinner) and gave me some, as he'd bought too much for himself. It was a slice of pizza with peppers, corn, and other flora non grata embedded in it, so I "saved it for later" and tried to eat around the vegetables before just tossing it. So it goes. I met the first bum/beggar I'd seen as I walked around before returning to my hotel. I was relieved as I pulled out a bit of change (to "feed his dog"), that I had succeeded in not grabbing any full Euro/two-Euro coins. On that note, those Euro coins are a psychological menace, because it's very easy to spend some "spare change" that amounts to several dollars!

10/1/2007 – Scott Adams Predicts the News

2007-10-07T19:06:00.001-04:00

I have in fact come home, but I have been too busy at the moment to catch up with writing entries about my trip. Nevertheless, I saw the following and had to share it:

Scott Adams describing the news (http://dilbertblog.typepad.com/the_dilbert_blog/2007/08/synchronicity.html):

"Indeed, all of the news is nothing but basic stories with randomized features. Watch as I predict tomorrow's headlines today:

EXTREME WEATHER BATTERS SOMEPLACE
IDIOTS KILL INNOCENT PEOPLE
POLITICIAN DOES SOMETHING ILLEGAL
PRIMATE ATTEMPTS INAPPROPRIATE SEX
EXPERTS WARN OF FINANCIAL CALAMITY
BIG COMPANY BUYS ANOTHER BIG COMPANY
FAMOUS PERSON DOES SOMETHING INTERESTING
A SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY MIGHT BE USEFUL IN TEN YEARS
GOVERNMENT FAILS TO ACHIEVE A GOAL"

(NB: Scott Adams proposes that, "As regular readers of [his] blog know, all coincidences are clues that we are holograms programmed by our long dead ancestors before the planet was annihilated.")

This was amusing because the same formula seems to apply internationally as well (I thought it was just the U.S. that had shallow obsessions with irrelevant "newsworthy" figures, but Europe is quite obsessed with Madeleine McCann in the same exact "JonBenet Ramsey" kind of way. And even if there is real news on the case, that's no excuse not to indulge in baseless speculation! Ugh.)

The other day (ok, last week in fact), I went into the city [i.e. Manhattan] to hang out with some of my Stony Brook friends. One might think that, having had to deal with several different foreign subways in other languages, the NYC subway system would be a piece of cake. Nope. It's significantly more complex, even more so than that of Moscow (map). I took an "express" train instead of a "local" and thus missed my stop and had to backtrack, wherein I had to wait nearly twenty minutes for another train (apparently there was construction) since the first one that came did not match the platform. (The express was an A train, the local was a C train – I was waiting at the C platform, but an A train came, and not sure which to believe, I waited for a second train to be sure).

The finicky metro cards are a fairly terrible design. There is always a huge funnel of people trying to go through the turnstiles, and it seems that there's about a one-in-a-million chance of the reader actually working on the first (or even second) swipe. The other subways that had electronic cards sucked in the ticket and spit it back out, which always worked the first time (unless it was invalid). The better of those sucked in the ticket at the front, and then spit it out at the actual turnstile just as you approached it. The voices on the trains were automated (and thus audible), instead of mumbling gibberish, and in many cases there was also a visual indicator of the stops as well as where you were (as with some of the newer subway cars).

Scott Adams describes his experiences here, hilariously as always: http://dilbertblog.typepad.com/the_dilbert_blog/2007/09/new-york-city-s.html

Wilkommen in Wien (Part I)

2007-09-23T11:20:00.000-04:00

I arrived in Vienna to rain. The flight may as well have been domestic; there was no border control or customs on departure or arrival as the flight was within the EU. This time I'd had the novel idea of actually emailing the hotel to ask for directions. This worked out mostly well; I took a shuttle bus to "Südbahnhof" and was then to take a "bim D" train one stop to "Schloss Belvedere." Right. My flight was a late one, leaving Italy at 9:30 and arriving in Vienna after 11. I fortunately made the last shuttle bus - very fortunately, as the next wasn't until early morning (5 or 6 AM). Based on this fact, when I got to Südbahnhof (a train station), I was unsurprised that the public transportation was largely done for the night. I figured I would have to take a cab - ok, at least I'd made it most of the way from the airport so it probably wouldn't be too bad. A taxi sat in the parking lot; I asked the driver how much to get to the hotel. To my great surprise he said it was straight ahead, only a few blocks away, maybe 500 meters or so, and even returned to the car to get a map and showed me how to get there. What a pleasant surprise!

I began to fish my umbrella out of my bag; he came back and said he would take me for 6 or 7 euros. Not particularly keen to walk in the rain and dark, I agreed. As we set out he named the lower price of 6 euros. We reached the hotel, and I was greeted by a very friendly, somewhat eccentric-seeming fellow at the reception desk. I took some tour brochures/maps (something which had of course been absent from the hotel in Rome). Among them were day trips to Bratislava and Budapest (and Prague, incidentally) - maybe I would reach them after all! There looked to be a ton of things to do; I lamented my short stay.

The next day I walked around after breakfast. Oh, what a terrific hotel! Sure, more cornflakes and ham/cheese sandwiches, but the location was marvelous. The room was quite nice too - whereas some of the others I likened to cozy little bedrooms, this was like a cozy master bedroom. It wasn't all that expensive either. Although I was enamored by Vienna, thus far I loathed the weather, which skittered between overcast, rain, and heavy rain. My first stop was a colossal palace, Belvedere, which was quite close to the hotel. There was a WWI monument there too - oh, right, Austria/Hungary used to be an empire not too long ago.

Afterwards, I made my way to the center. On the way, I passed a WWII monument; I thought to myself that it looked very much like a Soviet war memorial. Sure enough, I turned the corner and saw "Август 1945." Who'd have known Russian would follow me everywhere (as well as that damned umbrella song)? I then saw another giant palace, the Habsburg. A door was open and I ambled around inside for a while. Neat. I ended up at city hall, which could easily be mistaken for a large gothic church. I walked around inside there for a while too, both times keeping my door of plausible deniability open by only going through open doors and noting the German word for exit ("Ausgang") as to ask confusedly for it should the need arise.

In contrast to earlier cities, I saw few beggars, and in contrast to my previous stop of Rome, no middle-eastern immigrants running souvenir stands nor blacks selling counterfeit Prada bags nor rowdy youth all over the place. It was overall a very clean, and austere but friendly place. Cars were noticably deferent to pedestrians at crosswalks too. Another neat feature was a city-wide bike system - there were bike stations peppered throughout the city, and you could rent a bike from, and return it to, any station. The first hour was free; thus, if you used it right you could ride through the city entirely for free (well, sans a one-time 1 euro "registration fee" - still). I didn't end up using it, as I prefer to leisurely walk around and see everything; for this reason I didn't buy rollerblades in St. Petersburg last year as Kim had wanted to do, and it also obviously contributes to my massive amount of photography.

I made my way back to the Habsburg on the way to, well, elsewhere; someone was selling tickets to a concert there. (I had heard someone earlier in the day trying to sell tickets but figured I'd worry about it later - the best way to avoid doing things is to decide to "worry about them later" and by then, it's no longer an option, and thus: decision made). I looked at the program and wasn't terribly excited; tickets were 59 euros or 32 euros depending on which section you wanted to sit in. As I thought about it, as I did want to see a concert at some point during my stay, the man said that for students all seats were 25 euros. Sold. I went to dinner nearby, and the waitress was really friendly, which was another reinforcement of that aspect of the city.

I ended up with a nice 2nd row seat next to a couple from Ireland, with whom I chatted. The concert was good, and turned out to be surprisingly entertaining. Some of the songs had singing as well, and one of the singers was quite a jovial fellow - although I couldn't understand him on account of not speaking German, his facial expressions and gesturing made that minor point irrelevant, as it was clear that whatever it was, it was supposed to be funny. There were five singers altogether, each doing various songs before one including all of them. Among these singers were two young Asians, one male and one female. The male especially had a terrific voice; it was unbelievable to match this rich tenor's voice to its owner. The girl also sung well, although her accent was noticable even to me, but a hilarious moment ensued when she was paired with the first guy - they were dancing, and it was obviously some sort of romantic duet, and so at the end he lightly kissed her hands, but then abruptly pulled her in for a strong kiss on the lips, leaving her visibly surprised.

More amusement accompanied the polkas, which already evoked a smile as the musicians (particularly one of the clarinet players) showed their obvious enthusiasm. Except, that is, for one of the two bass players who couldn't have looked grumpier or less enthused throughout the concert if he tried, barely moving his hands when plucking the strings and moving his bow as little as possible, in particular contrast to his neighbor. Anyway, during most of the polkas, there would be some sort of skit by one of the percussionists, usually with the conductor. For example, during one, he played a two-tone whistle at regular intervals during which the music was paused: high, low; high, low; high low, and then: low, high! The music remained stopped as the conductor "glared" at him, and so he stood up, pointed to the sheet music, and shrugged. During another one, he used some kind of whistle, and then started to switch between it and a birdcall, and then during one of the the bird-whistle iterations, he held it for what seemed like minutes, standing up as he blew until his face was nearly purple, earning applause (and laughter) from the audience.

But one of the most entertaining was when they brought out what appeared to be an apparatus fashioned out of a log, and then he put two anvils which he hit with hammers that he took from a knapsack. Of course, as he and the conductor "reviewed" before starting the song, the percussionist would hit them as loud as possible and would try to hit the conductor's fingers as he pointed to which anvil to hit. During the song, the percussionist pulled out a bottle from the knapsack and took a swig, and then he sleighted a Playboy from the conductor's stand and opened it to the orchestra, with the aforementioned clarinet player gesturing to rotate it as to see the centerfold. The percussionist then to turned it to us to reveal - a puppy dressed in a sweater. Then he wagged his finger at us. It was a really delightful concert.

I returned to the hotel on foot - the hotel was really well-located - and the same man who checked me in the previous night greeted me, and remembering me, gave me my key, happily proclaiming, "Ah yes, Mr. Sowul, number 41!" which made me smile even more than I already was. So far I'd had a terrific success rate with friendly, helpful people.

The next day consisted mainly of walking around aimlessly; I walked through "Stadtpark" and then through a good deal of the city on the way to its iconic ferris wheel. I went up near sunset, and then made my way back home. The following day was a day-tour to Budapest.

Arrividerci, Roma (Part III)

2007-09-21T08:14:00.001-04:00

The next day I went throught some more of the city, mainly more parks on the west side of the center, before ending up at St. Peter's again. While I was standing around, a girl came up to me and asked if I went to Stony Brook, indicating my bag. I said yes; we chatted for about 2 seconds (she was from East Islip, and asked where I was from) before she darted off. Hm. Even so, it was the most I'd heard in native English in weeks. I wanted to see if the cupola at St. Peter's was open today, as the notice that I'd seen the previous time I had been there implied that the closing was only that one day (of course). It was, so up I went - 550 stairs (or so) each way. What a terrific view!

Subsequently I was to meet Lidia and have dinner with her family - while I waited to meet her, I saw another student of the "keep going until you hit the car in front/behind you" school of parallel parking. As her mom drove us, we stopped occasionally to see views of the city. Lidia showed me around her apartment a bit; there was a Ukranian woman staying with them for the time being. We had some pizza and spaghetti (and bread), a combination which Lidia said was not usual for them to eat, but so that I could have some of each. Her sister joined us; Lidia said she had made the sauce. We talked some more about language (she speaks nine), and they drove me back to the hotel; on the way we saw some more sights, including the Circus Maximus, now illuminated, and much to my surprise the lights were all different colors. She and I agreed to meet for lunch the next day, and I bid farewell to her mother and sister.

By now I'd seen most of what I wanted in the center, so I bought a day-ticket for the metro and decided to just go around; my first destination was St. Paul's cathedral. This was my first excursion on the "B" line of the metro, and it was quite a contrast to the clean, modern "A" line (which was reminiscent of Prague) - the wagons were old and almost completely covered with graffiti. St. Paul's cathedral was also amazing. Subsequently I stopped at the adjacent "Piramide" station, where there was indeed a pyramid. I looked around there for a few minutes before continuing on and meeting Lidia. We got some pizza and walked to Piazza del Popolo and chatted while we ate there, before heading back for some ice cream and looking in vain for somewhere to sit as my two cups of ice cream begain to melt. Afterwards we headed back to the metro and bid each other farewell; I walked around a little longer before taking the train to the airport, which was a nice ride at sunset, with a rainbow in the distance.

The flight was fairly uncomfortable; fortunately it was only little more than an hour. It was an MD-80 with three seats in each row, and not enough room in the overhead bin to fit my backpack. Coincidentally, the Alitalia inflight magazine also featured St. Petersburg as the cover story.

Oh, and in addition to popped collars, I hate sweaters tied around people's necks.

More in Rome (Part II)

2007-09-18T15:08:00.000-04:00

The next day, I again missed the morning shuttle; I thought it finished at 10:30, but no - that was the last departure from the metro. Arg. Lidia and I were going to meet in the evening and join her friends to watch a Russian movie, so I again explored the city during the day. I saw the Circus Maximus, which was filled with lights for some reason - later I found out that there was a, well, wouldn't you know it, "La Notte Bianca" (White Night) festival throughout the city. I also walked through a lot of the nearby ruins before making my way up to a park near Villa Medici and Piazza del Popolo, whereabouts I later met up with Lidia and we walked around a bit, with the festival now in full force. We took the subway (free now) to her friend's flat, where there were three of her friends, one of which was from Ukraine. Who'd have guessed. While Lidia and I walked to the metro we had talked about various things, including 9/11 (that day was the 10th). Thinking back, it was hard to know exactly how we had all found out (a classmate told us while we were in math class, but I don't know how he himself found out; I think he had seen it on TV in the library), but further, it was hard at first to remember whether I had indeed seen the towers fall live, because of the endless replays on the news throughout that day and the following few days. I remember having read Newsday that morning and noting the date was 911, like the emergency number. Hm. How little I knew how the world would change a few hours later?

Right, so we went to her friend's house, where Vladimir and I cast our votes for Операция "Ы" ("Operation "Y") to which I was introduced in the culturology class. Parts of it involve last-minute preparation for exams, about which we later had to write an essay, "От сессия до сессия студенты живут весело" ("Between exams students are carefree"). I agreed with this in my essay, saying that it was universal, or at least that students in the US and Russia were the same in this respect, and now Lidia was providing evidence for it in Italy, having a few hundred pages of text still to read before her test. I really enjoyed the film and thought it was terrific - just purely funny, good-natured humor. I loved it, and look forward to watching other Shurik films (I had earlier seen one thanks to an assignment for Russian class back home, wherein I had to watch a Russian film and talk about it in class; my roommate and I had watched one where Shurik makes a time machine and ends up switching time periods with Ivan the Terrible. I had really enjoyed it but didn't realize there were other Shurik films. I also learned the actor had a sad life, unsuccessfully trying to avoid being typecast, and then becoming an alcoholic and living in poverty after the welfare system disappeared, before dying of a heart attack.) Shortly after the movie we went home, and as I walked back from the metro (this was about a half-hour trip now that I knew where I was going) I saw a fairly suspicious car fire. Hm.

A Rough Start in Rome

2007-09-17T15:51:00.000-04:00

The next day I took a cab to Kiev's airport (which was about an hour away), as the constantly slow and overcrowded public transport didn't fill me with confidence. The airport was interestingly (read: badly) designed: it was bizarre, confusing and inconvenient - arrivals and departures were mixed, and there was nowhere to sit as customs control was before check-in, and so you had to wait for your flight to be checking in before you were able to pass, so there was of course a colossal crowd standing outside this barrier. After that it wasn't so bad, but somewhat delayed. I worred as I wasn't sure how much time I had for my layover, and I hadn't packed my luggage for contingencies, almost begging for such a fate. Fortunately that worked out. I had a brief stay in Prague airport, and then was off to Rome. Czech airlines has terrific legroom (obviously an important factor when you're 6'+), so the flights were very comfortable. The inflight magazine, coincidentally, had St. Petersburg as the 'cover story.'

Upon arriving in Rome, there was apparently a large Asian plane that had preceded ours, based on the massive queue for immigration, and Lidia had said she'd meet me so I looked around for a while before finding her and her mother. I was worried they'd left or something, but they had hit traffic. She said she'd mixed up the dates of her exams, which were not the 21st as she originally thought, but rather the 12th, so she was going to need to study for the first two days I was there. I assured her that it was fine, and that she should of course do as convenient for her. They drove me to the hotel, with some difficulty as it was far from the center and hard to find. We had to ask for directions a few times. The first time we saw someone standing on the side of the road and slowed down as to pull over - it was a prostitute. We sped back up and mused that she had different questions in mind. We asked police at some point - it was strange to be in the mindset of being able to trust them again. Eventually we made it to the hotel, and I expressed my gratitude as we agreed to meet up again in a few days.

A man and a woman were working at the reception desk. As I was checking in, the man asked if I spoke French. I said no, and half-jokingly offered Russian instead. Ha ha. Well, the woman spoke Russian, so we indeed completed our business in Russian. Who'd have thought. Of course, Lidia and I communicated mainly in Russian as well, and indeed we met in St. Petersburg last year as I introduced myself with my incipient Russian skills. The hotel seemed nice; I was practically in my own little bungalow. Working the lights was mystifying initially. I had to insert my keycard into a slot in the wall. And keep it there, I learned, after the lights went out a few minutes later. There was another airport nearby, so I had the roar of airplanes to lull me to sleep. Right.

Breakfast the next morning was included, so that was nice to have again. Of course, it consisted of the apparently universal ham/cheese sandwich and cornflakes, although there was a satisfying array of desserts here as well. The contrast in wastefulness between Russia/Kiev and here was also apparent, with plastic cups at breakfast, and the daily replacement of my plastic cup in the bathroom as well as the bar of soap I would end up using maybe twice.

The hotel had a free shuttle to the metro, which was fairly far away. The hours were fairly inconvenient: from 8 until 10:30 in the morning, and from 5 to 9 in the evening. So I thought, anyway. I was flummoxed when I got to the metro, as all they had were automatic machines that took coins, and all I had were 10 euro bills. I finally found a cashier and waited in line for about 15 minutes only to find out, sorry, he had no change. I looked around in vain for an internet cafe for which I'd earlier seen a sign, figuring I could get change that way. It seemed to not exist, and I grew very frustrated and angry that I apparently had no way to solve this problem, so I decided to walk, dammit. There were some ruins I explored along the way, and then ended up having to backtrack in lieu of climbing the fence next to the fairly busy road I'd been walking down. I made it to the next metro stop, or rather, a metro stop, and resigned myself to buying a water to break the 10 euro bill, and made damn sure to stockpile coins from that point on.

So I finally made it to the center, and all my frustration evaporated as I walked through the city, seeing all these amazing things from history, ruins mingled with modernity, mixed with monuments. I saw the city from the top of Vittoriano, offering a terrific view, and then went to the Colosseum, which was amazing to see for real! It began to rain while I was there. I had pizza and pasta for dinner, relieved to finally be somewhere where it was natural to eat Italian food all the time. I went to an internet cafe and, due to terrorism laws, had to show my passport. I wondered how that could possibly help unless they monitored you, and then drew the unfortunate conclusion. I wrapped up and returned by 8:30 and called the hotel for the shuttle by payphone, as I'd not succeeded in finding a SIM card yet. The phone was really quiet and the volume button didn't work.

Anyway they informed me that the shuttle stopped at 7. What? (There was an airport shuttle from 9 to 9, and I mixed up the 19:00 posted at the desk). I asked how to get back but couldn't hear and ran out of money. I paced back and forth for a while, hoping for a taxi but not succeeding, and strongly missing gypsy cabs. I asked a few stores/restaurants if I could call a taxi, but they either had no phone or refused outright. Desperate and out of ideas, I decided to walk. That I didn't know where to go did not deter me; the map I had only covered the center, so I was literally wandering the streets, at night, in a foreign country, where I didn't know the language, and tried to head in the direction I thought the hotel was in the vain hope of finding it. Life's full of small challenges. I actually reached the street, but my address was 95 and this only went up to 91; it continued on the other side of the highway which I couldn't cross, so I had to find my way around. I had to backtrack quite a bit, and then overshot when walking around the cloverleaf-esque thing, and found another hotel and asked how to reach my street, but he didn't know (nor did the guests that had just entered), thinking it was somewhere in the center (yeah, I wish). I didn't really have enough money for a cab (those 50 euros went really quick), so I backtracked and continued, and after three hours or so I actually made it; I tried not to entertain the million what-ifs that came to mind throughout. I saw the sign at the desk for the shuttle and it indeed said 19:00, and so I asked how to get back otherwise, and was told to take a cab. Nice. So that meant I had to be back everyday by 7 PM. What crap!

So the next day I overslept and missed the breakfast and the shuttle bus. Nice. There was a map on the wall in the hotel, so I prepared to set out on foot, as I (sort of) knew where I was going this time. (I asked, but they didn't have any maps for me which had the hotel or its surroundings. Nice). A cab arrived as I was leaving, and after it had dropped off its passengers I asked the driver if he could take me to the metro for less than 5 euros, as that was practically all I had - the hotel, of course, conveniently lacked an ATM. He said yes, although it was metered and came to 5.50 or so, so I gave him 6 euros (I had a grand total of 9). So I took the metro and withdrew a lot more money this time as I reached the center, and got a SIM card from a place that had been closed by the time I had reached it the prevous day.

I got some brunch - a small pizza, water, and ice cream. The total: 18.50 euros. What? The small gelati was not 3 euros as I thought (which was still pricey) but rather 8. Whoa. I mean, it was delicious, but $10? Clearly the era of cheap ice cream was over (but it was delicious, so I had more throughout the day). I walked through the city, seeing, among other things, the Pantheon and Castell Sant'angelo on my way to the Vatican to see St. Peter's Basilica. Being there was also unbelievable. It was amazingly big, grand, opulent. I also visited the papal tombs, which included that of John Paul II. It was quite a magnificent church, probably dwarfing every other one I've seen (or close to it). I was irked that all the churches here, especially this one, were turned into tourist traps with little pay-kiosks for information or to turn on the lights or such things, along with large crowds of people just talking loudly and taking pictures and videos; at least in Russia there was some semblance of respect.

I then went up to the cupola, which, due to repairs, was partially closed. I could only go up to the terrace and the inner ring (inside the church) which was still amazing. I wanted to see the Sistine Chapel but it was closed by then, so I got dinner and went home. I just made the last shuttle, the route of which I carefully noted. I had scheduled my follow-up language evaulation for the Russian program for 11 PM that night, so I had several hours to kill and so I listened to music and napped. I was relieved that that had actually worked out (ensuring that reception was aware and was able to forward the call and so forth). This time was far, far easier than the pre-program evaluation, although the line was still extremely noisy as it had been the first time (in spite of assurances that the problem would be fixed this time), so that messed things up a lot. Still, it was very much easier than the first one, so the program (and/or the 10 weeks in Russia in general) had obviously helped a great deal.

No Soviet Pensioner Left Behind

2007-09-17T15:36:00.000-04:00

Two other aspects of Kiev were transportation and beggars. The metro and the bus may have been cheap, but the cost was that of time: the metro, during my travels, came only every five minutes or so (compared to 1 or 2 minutes elsewhere) and sometimes as long as eight minutes elapsed between trains! Consequently the trains were almost always packed. And as for the buses, in busy areas, the bus stops would actually have lines extending down the sidewalk/street.

Most of the beggars I've mentioned outside the churches were not run-of-the-mill bums (on that note, while I was in walking around in Manhattan the night before orientation - nearly three months ago! - one such bum was carrying a sign: "Give me money for drugs, booze and hookers - hey, at least I'm not bull___ing you." This led to many onlookers, of course, and he started yelling, "hey, this isn't a ___ing press conference, where's the ___ing money?"). Anyway, they were not run-of-the-mill bums were rather old babushkas, victims of a world that changed too late for them; when the Soviet Union collapsed and was replaced with new fledgling capitalist societies, it may have opened up the future for coming generations, but it pulled the rug out from under this one. They will probably not live to see a benefit from the change, but rather will eke out their days in poverty, abandoned and sacrificed to the future, their world having simply changed beneath their feet and left them behind through no fault of their own. This was not the case just in Kiev, of course, but elsewhere in Russia as well, as prices rise while "New Russians" prosper (Moscow is the most expensive city in the world), but of course pensions are what they are. Countless others despondently sell fruit or flowers outside metro stations. I think men have largely avoided this problem because they're already dead by this age; in Russia the average male life expectancy hovers around 60.

On a lighter note, I did manage to get Chicken Kiev at the airport - as Anna put it, the equivalent of finding French fries in France!

Chicken Kiev (i.e. Kiev, part II)

2007-09-08T13:43:00.000-04:00

The next day I started out a lot later. The breakfast buffet wasn't included and was a fairly steep $7, and I could see that it was not worth that at all, so I instead went to a cafe. I took a random bus randomly somewhere, and it was so bumpy it could have been a theme park ride: it was a semi-trailer bus, and I was all the way in the back, so the effect was like a catapult vaulting me into the air with every bump. I found my way to the metro and took it to somewhere near the Botanical Gardens, to which I made my way. As I had exited the metro, I saw a police officer, who was guarding the exit, glance down at my bag (my Stony Brook shoulder bag), and was unsurprised when a moment later he asked to check my documents. I didn't know whether they did that, so I was glad I'd been keeping my passport on me.

The bus conductor had been friendly, yelling at length at 2 young girls when they didn't have enough for the fare (but letting them stay on) and also friendly was the attendant at a food stand, literally yelling at me to stand in line when I inquired about a refrigerated Snickers. I decided she could take the Snickers and shove it. The garden was a gigantic park, with a small monastery in it, and I walked around the complex for a long time. While there I saw a strange hummingbird-like insect hanging around the flowers. I tried to take some pictures, and got about one decent one before what looked like a giant yellowjacket (a cicada killer, I think) swooped in on it, and they fell into the brush; I heard some struggling (i.e. lots of buzzing) and needless to say the overgrown bee was the one that emerged. I saw another hummingbird bug and hung around to see if it would be taken down, but no such luck. After the park I made my way to the city center where I hung around for a while before returning to the hotel. As I was going to sleep there were fireworks going off outside (shrug) so I watched that for a while.

While walking through the city the next day, I had seen young military cadets walking through the streets (as had been the case in Russia of course), reminding e of my Russian professor from Kiev, who recounted his schoolchildren days from time to time. He had also had military training growing up, as it was compulsory, and by 8th grade he could disassemble a Kalishnikov in 8 seconds, with reassembly bringing the total up to 25. At one point I stopped in a park, where people were playing chess, backgammon, dominoes, etc at the tables. A backgammon game ended not far from me, and as he collected the kopeeks I was unsurprised when the man sitting there invited me to play. I said I didn't know how, and was further unsurprised when he said that was fine, and named the sum of 15 hrvina. He grew impatient as I hesitated, and as his phone rang, discretion got the best of me as I decided that, although it'd be another cool story about how I learned backgammon from a stranger, in Russian, in a park in Kiev, I decided it wasn't going to be worth the frustration, and when he answered the phone I skedaddled. Later on in another park (well, not quite a park) there was a man practicing with a whip while another looked on. Shrug. I continued on down a hill and, due to reconstruction, a long dirt road which also reminded me of the Wild West (similar to Arkhangelsk). Back on Khreschatik, there were some impressive break dancers (as opposed to in the atrium of Benedict at Stony Brook), and I watched that for a while before taking the metro home, just missing the marshrutka back to the hotel. One might naively expect that the remainder of the day's events involved taking the next one and calling it a night.

Nope. Another old man who also didn't make it on the bus started talking to me. He was, I think, another shoe salesman, but not as well off as the Land Rover-driving Oleg in St. Petersburg, complaining that he'd read in magazines that some sort of shoes were "in" but was having difficulty selling. He showed me a woman's show which he had hanging around his neck, a sort of strange, ogromnoe (huge) necklace, as well as two others in his shoulder bag. He asked me what I thought of them. I said I didn't really have too many opinions on women's shoes, and so he asked the girl standing next to me what she thought; she said she didn't like them all that much. He said that at home, he had thousands of shoes, and that he was trying to open a shoe museum. The girl marveled (nichego cebe!) and asked how long he'd been collecting and he said since the war. He had earlier complained about how much money the USSR had spent in Cuba, Indonesia (or maybe it was Thailand), I think complaining that there was enough need for it in the Soyuz itself. He said he'd written Yuschenko (and others) about his museum but there seemed to be little interest in the idea. He then asked if I had a videocamera, and invited me to film his collection and try to get some news coverage in the US. I explained that I had one more day and said I would try. I wanted to help this 70-year old pensioner at least partially fulfill his dream, but he wasn't home when I called the next morning, so that was that.

So after calling, I went out and ambled around, not knowing what else to see, and at night took a river cruise on the Dnepr. While I waited for launch, another boat passed by, Verka Serdjuchka's "tuk tuk tuk" playing loudly, which made me laugh. Ah, Verka Serdjuchka - a Ukranian singer, who sings in Russian as he cross-dresses as a comical woman. He was going to run for parliament in Ukraine, I heard, pledging not to come to work in costume. I was hooked when I heard "vsyo budyet khorosho (everything will be fine)" and saw its video, and hooked my suitemates at Stony Brook as well. Enjoy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_61_i2M5Zoo.

The boat ride was all right; I'd hoped for more of a "tour" as opposed to a party boat, for for 25 hrvina ($5) it was good enough. I got acquainted with a young couple; the girl asked why I was by myself, and I said I was just a tourist and explained a bit of the story. I wasn't sure whether she, or one of her friends, was getting married imminently, because she was talking about said friend, and then a wedding, and then some imminent travels that she was going on, so I wondered if that meant she was getting married and that was the honeymoon, or what. Oh well. She asked what I thought of Kiev, Ukraine, Ukranians; I said I hadn't had enough time or contact to make much of an opinion, but that owing to the Soviets, probably, I didn't see that much of a difference. I remarked that it was interesting if unfortunate that Russian had become the de facto language, but at the same time, if it hadn't, we'd not be able to talk to each other. She assented, but said she didn't really care, and that language was just communication, a sentiment I'd heard in previous conversations from time to time (often to protest the Russian-only rule during our program). She said even amongst her friends she spoke Russian, as it was just easier. After the Soviet Union's breakup, Ukranian became the official language again. An example I found amusing was at the "Площа Льва Толстого" metro station, where the дь (in Russian it's "Площадь") had simply been removed, its dirty silhouette remaining as evidence.

A different Verka song came on (the infamous "Russia Goodbye" - another "controversy"), and I remarked on that and told the story of how I'd heard on the radio and got hooked, and then hooked my non-Russian-speaking suitemates. I said my Russian professor didn't really like Verka, as he considers that it makes a mockery of Ukraine - much to his chagrin, when he had a project translating songs and showing their videos in class, I had half the class doing various Verka Serdjuchka songs - but she said she didn't mind, and that it was all in fun. The trip ended; we said goodbye and good luck, and I returned to the hotel. The next day was my flight to Rome!

To Kiev!

2007-09-08T13:18:00.000-04:00

The Ukranian woman on the train woke me up about an hour before our arrival in Kiev so I could get ready, but then she apologized as she realized I didn't really have any such need, so we just looked out the window while we waited. One of the Russian women sneezed, and I said "bud'te zdorov'e" (the Russian equivalent to "bless you" - literally "be healthy") and the Ukranian woman asked if that implied that we also said something in English when someone sneezed, and what it meant (since, in Russian, the meaning is clear), so I clumsily tried to explain that, as far as I knew, way back when they thought your soul was trying to escape or something, so it meant something to the effect that "may God grant you that everything is fine" (this was the best I could muster in Russian). She also asked about what kind of trees we had as we watched the forests through the window. I said we had all kinds, but near me it was mainly oak and pine, but that it depends on the region, e.g. in California there are the giant sequoias. As we approached the city, she asked if we had such ogromnie (giant) cities; I said I didn't really know, but that they were probably smaller, but taller, and she was saying something to the effect that it's unhealthy to be living up that high, that there are these vibrations and so forth. Shrug.

We arrived at the station and said our farewells, with the Russians joking that they were looking forward to my book (we'll see). The train had arrived at about 8 or 9 AM, and I took a taxi to the hotel for 60 hrvina ($12). Upon checking in, I was presented with a glass of champagne and a "congratulations." Well alright, cool. (I later learned they were celebrating their 35th anniversary that week). The hotel was nice enough, but still it was so far away. I showered and walked to the city, crossing a long bridge across the Dnepr (yes, the same Dnepr as in Smolensk), with a giant statue of a woman with a sword and shield ("the lady motherland") in the distance, as well as monasteries dotting the hills.

I was hungry as I walked uphill towards the statue (a World War II monument) and its surrounding memorials to WWII and, to my surprise, Afghanistan. Oh, right, I'd forgotten about that (as had, evidentally, the Russians). I ate at a little cafe, which was dirt cheap. Yet another benefit of learning Russian was that I could function here (thanks to the Soviet Union basically making Russian the de facto language during that time). I went into a museum about the war in Afghanistan as well as, evidentally, some other communist interferences and such. It is interesting to note the sympathy felt toward the tragic destruction wrought on the Soviet Union from WWII, which was, let's say, a righteous defense against the Nazis, and then see the other side, i.e. the war of aggression into Afghanistan which also resulted in pointless calamity. I realized that, although we consider recent history more peaceful than earlier, when Europe was seemingly always fighting, it really isn't much better, with it still being a constant series of hellish wars. The war(s) of 1812, the Civil War, WWI, WWII, Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Kosovo, Iraq again (off the top of my head), to say nothing of all the genocides that have happened and are still happening. We really live in a hellish world, it's just that the US itself has been largely insulated from it. I was reminded of a news report I'd seen while watching TV in Murmansk, with these child miners working at soldiers' gunpoint for nothing, as the soldiers would steal everything. These people could barely fit in the caves and were covered with scrapes and worked like hell for nothing. What kind of life is that?

Things remained cheerful as I made my way further to the WWII monuments/museum (though strangely, there were a lot of wedding parties, just like at a statue of a grenadier in Murmansk. Shrug. There were also a lot of schoolchildren in suits). I went here too, seeing more relics of destruction, including a wrecked plane, whose engine was mostly intact and exposed. I marveled at all the complex machinery built and destroyed for war, and at how much money, research, materials, etc, that goes into making things all these instruments of death and destruction, designed solely to kill other people.

I continued walking around the hills, seeing over the wall into a nearby monastery, which I entered later in the day - the "Kiev/caves monastery", and there were indeed a series of underground caves which one navigated with candles, with tombs of, well I don't know whom, but some weren't fully covered and I'd see some shrunken, rotting fingers here and there. There were some altars and other things too here and there in the caves. The whole place was huge. There was a depressing line of beggars along the street outside the monastery as I continued my walk towards the center of the city.

There was another park with a giant arch with two soldiers in the middle, evidently representing Russia and Ukraine. There were some theme park-like attractions as well, and it offered a terrific view across the Dnepr (as did most of these things on these hills). I continued to another monastery, which was somehow related to Stalin's famines and repressions of the 1930s, which were meant to punish Ukranian peasants for their insubordination. I continued on to Khreschatik, the main boulevard of Kiev, which was like Times Square as a colossal block party. I was even angrier that my hotel could have been right here were it not for my stupid credit card company. I walked along, then took the subway (50 kopeeks! i.e. 10 cents) and then a bus (75 kopeeks) - that's right, kopeeks are actually somewhat useful! (A kopeek is 1/100th of a ruble in Russia, or 1/100th of a hrivna in Ukraine. But in Russia, because of inflation, nothing is less than a few rubles and everything costs an even multiple of a ruble, so kopeeks are completely useless. The exception is supermarkets, which will have things cost something like 21 rubles, 20 kopeeks, and so are extremely irritating). The total - 1.25 hrvina - 25 cents. I'd had quite a day, arriving that morning on the train and exploring a huge swath of the city of the course of almost 12 hours walking up and down hills.

Exploring Babel, Part I (On Languages)

2007-09-03T14:49:00.003-04:00

So Julia and I were chatting in the bliny place. "Is Russian harder than Spanish?" she had asked. I answered, as I had to earlier presentations of this question, that each language had its difficulties. I said to Julia that Russian and English were certainly more related to each other than say, to Japanese or Arabic, so it was all relative. Russian may be complex with its cases (nouns change form depending on function - the last vestige of this in English is I/me, he/him, etc), but verbs to me in Russian are easier than Spanish, with two sets of endings in Russian, rather than the dozen or so sets of endings for all the tenses in Spanish. In Russian there are just a pair of verbs, with one set of endings for present and a ridiculously simple set of past-tense endings. I said I imagined it was tough to move in the other direction, to the dozen other tenses in English - in Russian there are, "ya prochitayu, y budu chitat', ya chitayu, ya chital, ya prochital" - which in English are approximately, "I will read, I will be reading, I am reading, I was reading, I have read." You choose between the two verbs based on whether it is a single, completed action or not; in a sense you are focusing on either the result or the process.

Of course, in English are additionally, "I read (present), I read (past), I do read, I did read, I am reading, I was reading, I will be reading, I have been reading, I will have read, I will have been reading, I had been reading, I had read." I think that's all of them. She admitted that it was tricky, but said the upshot was that for almost any given situation there was a tense for it. She said French was even worse, with some tenses only for speaking and others only for writing. Describing texts, she said, was especially fun.

I said I guess you could say the same thing for verbs of motion in Russian, that they are complex but precise (there is no simple "to go," but rather two pairs of verbs: one pair for going under your own power (on foot) and one pair for going in a vehicle. One of each pair is for unidirectional motion and the other for multidirectional. Yeah.) I said that this system was also complex but precise, but sometimes I really wish there was just "I go/I went". It gets especially fun in complicated, multi-step journeys.

Another difficulty of English for Russians is of course that of articles: when to use "the" or "a". My Russian professor said he considered it among the hardest things, with almost every rule you could come up with being broken in some situation.

I said Russian was nice with its heavy use of word roots, as there is a lot of building from stems, especially prefixing verbs. I said spelling was also relatively easy, except reduction of unstressed vowels and consonant assimilation. An example of vowel reduction is "thank you" - spasibo. Although written with an o, the word is stressed on the "ee" sound, and so it is pronounced "spasibah" - this was especially painful when the guy who led off at the Rolling Stones concert said he only knew one word but knew it perfectly, and then proceeded to repeatedly butcher it as "spasiboh." Mick Jagger did pretty well though.

Consonant assimilation is similar in principle to the English rule, "when two vowels go walking, the first one does the talking." I'll admit I don't remember what that means, exactly, but in Russian the rule is, "when consonants go walking, the second one does the talking" or something to that effect. The point is that when you have voiced consonants near unvoiced consonants or vice-versa, they become like whatever the second kind is. Voiced/unvoiced consonants are v/f, z/s, g/k, etc. The only difference between each of those pairs is that in the first, the vocal cords move, in the second they don't. Anyway so if you have something like "v Kieve" (in Kiev), it turns into "f Kieve" since the K mutes the v. Fine. The point is that these two features make it difficult to know how a word is really spelled. Of course, English is far more nightmarish - rough, but through. Knife and phone, have but crave. Etc. I mean, we have spelling competitions (i.e. spelling bees). That is evidence enough of how difficult it is.

We agreed pronunciation-wise, English->Russian was largely easier than the reverse. The difficulty going into Russian is largely consonants, but going into English it's largely vowels, and vowels are a lot harder to fix than consonants. For English-speakers the only real vowel challenge is "ы" (somewhere between i in "bit" and a in "about," I think). Of course in English, we have a huge amount of vowels, but of course one of the difficulties is "sheep/ship" - especially vis-a-vis "sheet" and "beach." Ужас.

We moved on to dialects; she asked me if I'd been able to notice any dialect differences yet in Russian; she said in the north they spoke particularly fast, theorizing that because of the cold they had to conseve their breath. I said I knew of Volga (no vowel reduction) and Moscow (exaggerated reduction of o->a) and of course "hovorit'" like Mikhail Gorbachev, which is almost like Ukranian, but that overall I couldn't tell much yet. I did notice in Moscow that they seemed to say "the doors are closing" much more clearly ("dveri zakriva-yoo-tsya"). I had talked of American regional differences a bit, also with Sveta and Natasha, and said I was surprised that in our group the differences were relatively light. When I exemplified the southern drawl with Sveta and Natasha, Sveta responded with a joking acknowledgement, "the phone was greening so I pinked it up and said, "yellow!"

It was another interesting, unintended consequence of taking Russian (although my list of intended consequences numbers about zero, I think) that I was able to communicate in Kiev. The old man with the shoes said "hovorit" and "zvonit," but still. It was also interesting to somewhat be able to understand Ukranian most of the time, though some sentences I would find almost incomprehensible. Reading was more trying, as there would often be spelling differences that, until I thought it aloud, I didn't realize what it sounded like in Russian. Belorussian seemed farther away speechwise, judging from the train ride to Smolensk, but my other Russian professor had shown me some Belorussian when I visited one time, as she was doing research in it, and it seemed fairly close to written Russian, except that reductions were often written out. For example, in Russian milk is written "moloko" but pronounced "malako", with the stress on the last o, but in Belorussian it is indeed written "malako." This makes it easier to pronounce, but you lose the stems; for example, milk as an adjective is "malochniy" (stress on the o), and so the relationship is clear in Russian (молоко/молочный) but less so with the "o"s turned into "a"s in Belorussian.

So, between my exposure to Russian, some Ukranian, some Czech (trip to Prague), and a bit of Belorussian, it's been interesting to see all these overlaps and differences in these Slavic languages.

Reflections on Russia

2007-09-03T14:49:00.001-04:00

So, after ten weeks in Russia, it was finally time to leave. What a journey it was! Not long ago, I couldn't see myself going to the other side of the world (on a whim, pretty much), especially not to Russia, this strange and unfamiliar place, but of course now I don't regret it for a second (I did for a day). Indeed, last year's trip was my first time abroad. Who could have guessed where it would take me and how many people I'd meet? I met many friends last year in St. Petersburg both from Russia and Europe, as well as the other Stony Brook students whom I met there. After last year's trip, I ended up going to Prague (and Dresden) for New Year's with Alex, Anna and Michelle, who I'd met in St. Petersburg - although Alex didn't quite make it to Germany, but rather Ustí nad Labem, courtesy of forgetting his passport. Then in the spring, I went to New Orleans with Michelle, Anna, and Jenna, as Jenna was one of the main organizers of the trip.

And then, I was able to go back this year, and I was reunited, although briefly, with many of the Russian friends I'd met, though this time conversing mainly in Russian, which had earlier been impossible. I also made several dozen new friends, from the US and from Russia (and beyond). I saw familiar sights in St. Petersburg, many of which had changed in the interim - completing repairs or starting them, perhaps (like the Hermitage) - or even while I was there (like the Lieutenant Schmidt Bridge, which had finished its reconstruction and reopened during my months there). Bus and metro fare had increased by 2 rubles, to 14, and the cheap McDonald's ice cream cones had as well, to 8 rubles. Other things hadn't changed - and other repairs looked like they hadn't made any progress at all. Of course, I also saw many new sights in St. Petersburg (and beyond), and took a few thousand more pictures.

Even more, after the program in St. Petersburg, I traveled around on the Russian railroad (and a single Aeroflot flight, whose plane did not spontaneously lose its wings and drop out of the sky) on my own, spending a cumulative 72 hours / 3 days on the trains, with a new adventure and some new acquaintances almost every time. I traveled to five cities - St. Petersburg, Murmansk, Arkhangelsk, Moscow, and Smolensk - out of the seven I had originally planned (I didn't make it to Vladimir or Nizhniy Novgorod), not including the cruise, which took me additionally to Petrozavodsk, Kizhi, Valaam, and a little village (Svyrstroy). I had grand plans for traveling through Europe on the railroad, hoping to see Kiev, Budapest, Bratislava, Vienna, Munich, Rome, Barcelona, Madrid, and Seville (and whatever else on the way). Although that didn't quite come to fruition, I will still see about half of that (albeit mainly by plane): Kiev, Rome, Vienna, Barcelona, and Bilbao.

I'll miss the simplicity of life in Russia - the gypsy cabs (ie. any passing car) always at your disposal, the low-cost ice cream (and low-cost everything, basically). I won't miss the crooked cops nor the lack of street signs at corners. Nor the strangely ubiquitous mullet. It was very exciting and rewarding this year to actually be able to communicate in Russian (however rudimentary it might have been). And even though I still can't explain my reasons for studying to those who ask (as Natasha pointed out in Moscow, "nobody asks why you're studying English"), I certainly can't complain about the results. I'll be back, one way or another, but for now - счастливо, Россия!

Back to Moscow (and, as Verka Serduchka might say, Russia Goodbye!)

2007-09-03T10:59:00.000-04:00

On the train back to Moscow, in my compartment were a mother and son, who was late 20s / early 30s, and an older man (with characteristic smell of said). It was a relatively short ride (six hours) and so I didn't feel the need to bring food with me. I had breakfast in Smolensk and figured I'd eat lunch upon arriving in Moscow, as I'd have a few hours until the train to Kiev. Towards the end, the woman wordlessly gave me two apples (and insisted), and when I came back from using the bathroom - the only time in the entirety of my train travel, and on the shortest ride - go figure, she had a napkin laid out with some cookies and various other snacks for me. Shortly after this we all started talking. The guy had asked me from what Baltic state I was; confused, I said I was from America, and inevitably I told them my saga. The man was flying to Israel, and the mother/son were also going to Ukraine, but I forget if they were going to Kiev or elsewhere - I know we had compared trains and that we weren't on the same one. The train arrived, and that was that.

I took the subway to Kievskiy Vokzal, and checked my things in the baggage room for a fairly steep 150 rubles, then walked around as it was a really nice area. I had just caught some of the Bourne Supremacy on TV (in Russian) while flipping through the TV in Moscow a few days earlier, and had seen most of the last part of it which takes place in Moscow, with Bourne arriving by train from Berlin at this station; in contrast, I didn't have any spectacular foot and car chases. Anyway, the station is nice, and there is a large fountain/square (Europe Square), plus an elegant glass-enclosed bridge (Rostovsky) overlooking the river, which I crossed, and then took the subway (from Smolenskaya, incidentally), to eat and use the internet cafe. I returned to the station and decided to use the bathroom before the trip to Kiev, and it was the most disgusting thing I'd seen, literally a step above a hole in the ground. You (apparently) sat practically on the floor. I'll leave it at that. Luckily I didn't have to do that, as I just wanted to avoid having to use the bathroom on the train, but the train is actually far better.

I had about 25 minutes and began worrying when I returned to the luggage room and saw the window locked that I'd used earlier, but the door was open a bit farther down, so there was no problem. I walked to my train. I was car 1, so it was either going to be a very short walk or a very long one. My heart sank when I saw the first car: 26. It was going to be a very long walk. A few cars later I looked at my progress and saw "3." Confused, I backtracked, and it turned out 26 was just tacked onto the end. (On the train, the woman next to me said she made it to 8). On the way back a woman was asking for money, apparently to go home on the train. I gave her 20 rubles, and she said she needed 1000 for the ticket (!), so I said, well, that's too bad because I don't even have anywhere near that (since I wasn't going to be needing any rubles soon enough). As the train left there was a great twilight view out the window, with the glowing superstructure of bank towers under construction in the distance looking like something out of a science fiction movie.

In my compartment were 3 women, two Russians (sisters) and a Ukranian woman that lived in Moscow. The one Russian woman said, "давайте познакомиться (let's get aquainted)," just like in the textbooks, and we gave our names, and thus we were acquainted, apparently. We had to fill out migration cards (ugh) and although Russia's paperwork was annoying, at least they'd refined it enough that the migration card fits perfectly within one's passport - the Ukranian one is a bit larger and doesn't fit unless you fold it. Curiously, it has Ukranian and English prompts, but not Russian, so they had a tough time until the Ukranian woman helped out. They asked how I was doing it with no trouble, proposing that I'd done it before and remember, and I said, well, it's in English (the conductor had asked our nationalities when giving out the cards). I told them all about my travels as well, and they said, wow, I should write a book, which I said I'd thought about doing. I joked that I could offer it in English and Russian, maybe. The Ukranian woman was going to Kiev to see her son for a day, and the Russians were vacationing in Odessa, the train's ultimate destination. I went to sleep, and at 3 AM we crossed the Russian border - or something, because Russian border control did their thing, but the Ukranians didn't until we'd traveled another 3 hours, during which time I wondered what was up, whether they'd missed our car, or what, I don't know. After 10 weeks, I had finally left Russia. When we reached Ukranian border control they stamped my passport on the back (past the visas, on the "amendments" page), after flipping through it for a while. Who knows.

Smolensk, Part II

2007-09-03T08:19:00.001-04:00

So I wasted a ton of time at the internet cafe (I would have taken care of the travel stuff later). I returned to the hotel and called the travel agency, giving them the new credit card details. They called right back; AMEX isn't accepted by the hotel in Kiev. Faaan-tastic. I had them cancel the reservation, and then went back to the internet cafe to reserve a new hotel in Kiev. This met with much failure, what with it being a day away, plus, many other hotels also apparently didn't accept AMEX. After a long while I ended up with my last-ditch effort at Expedia: a crappier hotel quite far from the center, which really pissed me off as the original one was right in the center. The new one was cheaper, but that was a small consolation. I was quite angry that I'd wasted most of my one day in Smolensk dealing with this crap. Once I did finally have everything settled it was about 6:30 and evening. It rained lightly, on and off, and I walked to the edge of the city center towards the Dnepr river, where the wall marked the boundary, and crossed the bridge just outside over the river. The sun behind me, there was a fantastically bright rainbow in the dark clouds ahead. In fact it was a double rainbow, as I'd seen last year at Площадь Александра Невского (Alexander Nevsky Square), when the others had gone to see Swan Lake.

As I stood at the bridge taking pictures, a young man asked me whether I was taking them as a художник (artist) or лично (individual). I said just for myself, not wanting to go into nuance, and then he asked if I was a tourist. I said yes (sorry, Joe, not "unfortunately." - One time, my suitemates and I were in Costco buying food for a feast (мало ли почему / don't ask why), and I took a picture of our massive purchase (lots of it candy and such), and the attendant asked whether we were tourists. Joe, being, well, Joe, answered "unfortunately." Having made sense grammatically, it took us a second to realize that it actually made no sense whatsoever. Anyway, the attendant then informed me that they'd have to confiscate my camera if I took anymore pictures. Well ok then.) He asked whether I was going to see (a few things which I don't remember) and I said I was only there until tomorrow. We talked, and he asked whether I'd been to Petersburg and Moscow, and I said yes; he said it was good to have come here as well, as Petersburg was "Europe" and Moscow was "America" and that everyone tended to forget Russia was a big place with many more places besides the capital. That's the gist of it anyway. I agreed and said that was why I was here, in part to see other parts of Russia that weren't so heavily visited by tourists. We talked - well, mostly he - for a long while, maybe an hour or so, with his train of thought stopping at many places, so I can't remember it all in detail - that and I was concentrating on understanding him. He spoke slowly and clearly - not out of deference to my limited skills, as the issue of my origin and study of Russian came up only in the middle of the converstation - but it seemed they just talked slower in general there. Even so, I had a difficult time for vocabulary reasons, but most of the time I got enough of the gist. We exchanged emails - yet another new Russian contact - and he apologized for taking up my time, which I assured him was not a problem at all. I walked around some more and then returned to the hotel for the night after getting some dinner.

The next morning I checked out and got some breakfast; as I was checking out, the receptionist asked if I spoke Russian. I said yes, and she asked if I could explain to them what the guy next to me wanted. He explained to me (in English) that he had a bus to Moscow, and had taken a taxi to the bus station, but that it had taken him to the railway station instead and so he missed the bus, and had to take another the next day, and so he needed to stay another night. I clumsily conveyed this to them; put on the spot, I didn't remember the more precise ways to say these things, which came to mind after the fact, but c'est la vie. I had breakfast and left to the railway station to take the train back to Moscow, and worried a bit as I had a few minutes of unsuccessful attempts to hail a cab, but eventually succeeded. This one was 70 rubles. Wow! The Russians sure seem to have gotten supply and demand down pat. That was even better than what I'd thought the previous night should have been (I figured about 100 rubles). I gave the guy 100 rubles and told him to keep the change. Back to Moscow!

Smolensk

2007-09-02T13:45:00.000-04:00

The new train's ultimate destination was Brest, Belarus. As I stood on the platform, a man asked me if I was from Belarus. Having misheard him, hearing the ending for destination as opposed to origin, and thinking that he was asking whether the train was going there, I answered yes, and when he said "I don't believe it (ни фига!)," I realized and confirmed what he'd asked, and said sorry, no, I was from the US. On the train, a family (evidently from Belarus, based on their talking amongst themselves in what I assume was Belarussian) was asking me something, and when I responded, the daughter asked if I was from Poland. I decided not to delve into the details of my family tree (my grandfather on my father's side is of Polish descent - no way I was going to successfully convey that in Russian succinctly), and simply answered that no, I was from the US. I was surprised that the inevitable follow up, "зачем" (namely, what are you doing on the train to random places?) didn't result in either case, but all the same it was nice to have a rest; the trip was quiet like to Murmansk, though the Belarussian family talked to one another.

This train was not Russian railroad, but Belarussian. Linen wasn't included, which may have explained the price, but I didn't need it anyway (it was a six hour ride to Smolensk). This train had newer cars (though I think they were still Russian, based on the factory name), having readouts of temperature, time, and whether the lavatory was occupied. The beds also had fold out railings to prevent one from falling off, which had crossed my mind the first time to Murmansk. Of course, I merely ended up smashing my elbow on it at one point. We arrived, and I nearly beaned the guy on the adjacent bed as I took my unbalanced suitcase from the top rack. I took a taxi for 200 rubles ($8), which I thought was kind of steep, but figured what the heck, he and his beat up car could use the money more than I.

I settled in; the elevators here were also Russian, but there were three so it didn't matter much. My room was quite nice; it felt like a cozy bedroom. The key was like that of Murmansk, strange and annoying as it was impossible to know how to insert it (the cross-section is a semi-circle, and there was no way to predict which way was going to be up when inserting the key). A lone mosquito kept me up for most of the night as I'd hear it buzz toward me as I dozed off, but would then wake up and swat it away, driving it off for a while to repeat the cycle again.

The next morning, another mediocre breakfast, and I've obviously concluded that the one in Murmansk was just really good (relatively) and not that all the others since are that bad. It still pales compared to that of Prague, which was really fantastic, and I'd say one of the best I've seen anywhere. It spoiled me. I went for a walk, and saw a statue of who I correctly guessed was Karl Marx, and then, whoa, there was the wall of the krepost' (fortress) around the city center which I walked around for a while. There were various war monuments and another wall of hero-cities, and then a museum to World War II (aka the Great Patriotic War) which I explored. I felt bad about using my student Id once I realized it was a 5 ruble difference (20/15) as the 5 rubles were certainly not going to put me in the poorhouse. It was again a grim reminder of the horrors of WWII, which the US never really felt, as most of Europe and Russia had been laid to waste like Pearl Harbor. And for what? What had the Axis accomplished in the end beside pointless destruction and death?

As I continued to walk around the city, I put a bit of money on my phone to get rid of the small amount of debt that would be blocking it. No sooner did I do that, than did the travel agency in Moscow call (through which I'd booked the hotel in Kiev). Seems my credit card company was rearing its ugly, stupid head again. The woman said a lot of things but I boiled it down (what an odd phrase) to "карта не работала? (the card didn't work?)" and she confirmed I'd need another one by tomorrow to hold the reservation. I started panicking a bit, and was irate and started swearing as heavily as I had when my phone was stolen. I was going to Kiev in a day, and now I had no confirmed reservation. I continued walking around but was distracted by anger and worry; I couldn't enjoy the stuff I was seeing as I walked around the city. I needed to go to an internet cafe at some point to get my father's credit card info to give to them, which he'd sent me when I started having problems with mine. Basically internet purchases were not going to go through due to fraud worries, in spite of my instructions that I'd be traveling through Russia until September 1st, and Europe thereafter. I could only use it at physical places unless I gave advance notice (24 hrs) which was effectively impossible. This was terrific. Of course, this was stupid as even though I'd used the credit card at a physical travel agency, it was the hotel in Kiev that was trying to put it through, and thus, я не получился (i.e. no dice). Sure, I said I'd be in Russia until September 1st, and now a hotel in adjacent Ukraine is charging my card a few days before this. Surely the two are unrelated.

I managed to put it out of my mind when I reached the edge of a hill with a terrific view of the valley and more of the city in the distance, with more krepost' wall behind me further up the hill. I climbed my way up there and started walking along the wall, and then there was a tower with an opening to go through, to the other side of the wall, so in I went. But not only that, there was a staircase to go up to the wall (like Peter and Paul's fortress in St. Petersburg). So I did, walking along the wall, practically no one in sight, though there was lots of trash in the stairways and corridors, mostly plastic beer bottles and broken glass ones. The city lay to one side, hills and valleys to the other. This was amazing! I was worried when on the cruise, Natasha (a guide on our staff) had said she'd been to Smolensk but didn't enjoy it. There were two children who came up another stairway and passed me in the other direction. I reached another tower at a corner of the wall, and went inside, which was also incredible. It was a cavernous, open cylinder, though another giant pile of trash lay at the bottom. There was a staircase to get to the very top, and I did. This was real, not some sanitized tourist attraction, just pure history. No guardrails protecting someone from walking out into the center, or off the walls. I reached the end of the wall and went down more stairs; there was a cobblestone road with houses, as I'd seen from above. I eventually ended up back towards the center of the city; there were flowers spelling out "Смоленску - 1143 (Smolensk is 1143 years old)," similar to Moscow, which was "merely" 860.

I made my way back to the hotel, where I inquired as to an internet cafe. I got the number I needed, and made further reservations to Bilbao, and decided to call it quits from there and tried to find a flight home. I ran into trouble, as the flights I found were either problematic or absurdly expensive. There was a (relatively) inexpensive 2-stop flight from Swiss - that was the problematic one, as the first segment (Bilbao to Madrid) was a code-share on "Spanair" and didn't offer e-tickets, so that was out. The remaining ones were about twice the cost. Round trip was significantly less expensive, even including the same flights that I'd found for the one-way. Somehow adding the tickets from the US to Spain made the ensemble cost several hundred dollars less. Shrug. I figured I'd try that but at the end discovered that you had to display the card at the first segment (i.e. leaving NY), and I further discovered that not using earlier segments cancelled subsequent ones. So that wasn't going to work. So after playing around I settled on an Iberia flight to Madrid, and then booked the remainder separately through Swiss. (I looked into staying in Madrid for a few days, but it was more than I was willing to pay). This means it's two distinct flights, so this leaves open a window for problems with the connection that would be my responsibility (though I scheduled the first flight as early as possible), plus my luggage can't be checked all the way through. Oh well. So I'll be back September 25th!

Moscow, Part II

2007-08-31T11:05:00.000-04:00

I had decided not to go to Nizhniy Novgorod, deciding that one day there would be better spent as two extra days in Moscow (which turned out to be a wise choice). Surprisingly I was even able to return the train tickets (minus a 2.20 ruble fee). So the following day Lidia, Natasha and I finally managed to meet up. Lidia was looking for an old Soviet book a library had lent her, having trusted her to guard it with her life, but her dog had eaten (really!). We met later on, and I remarked at the construction that had been taking place in Red Square, building some sort of stage for something related to Moscow's 860th birthday and remarked at Moscow's age; she reminded me that Rome was almost almost 2800 years old. Touché. Also with Natasha arrived Sveta, who I had met last year but whose contact information (or name) I hadn't gotten before I left, so it was good to catch up with her as well. Lidia soon had to leave; she was flying to St. Petersburg the next morning and had plans, so we bid her farewell, and then the remaining 3 of us walked around, went to a coffee house, and then walked around further. I shudder on how much money I've wasted on ice cream and other such indulgences. "I spent all my money on ice cream and junk food. The rest I wasted." The next day I saw Lenin's tomb, which was quite unbelievable. Also buried at the Kremlin wall (among others) were Brezhnev and Stalin. I was amazed to really see Lenin. I didn't know what to expect, maybe just a closed tomb but it was glass and you could actually see him. I wonder how they preserve him (and for how long they will be able to do so - or whether it's really actually him). I had overheard an English-speaking guide the day before mention that this wasn't his idea; he wanted to be buried with his wife in St. Petersburg. A fitting irony that his communist ideology ended up ruining at least his last dreams too. I lingered, but was yelled at, "не остались!" (don't remain!).

Later I went inside the Kremin and saw a bunch of churches and other random things; it was also amazing to really be there. There were some babushkas picking apples in a garden inside. I later saw the church of Christ the Savior, which awe-inspiringly big and actually had two churches, one on the lower level and then the upper. I think St. Isaac's was far more impressive overall though. Outside I got an SMS from St. Petersburg Katya, asking how it was going, and I replied that things were good and that I really liked Moscow, but not to worry, I still loved St. Petersburg. She replied, "don't even think of loving Moscow more than Petersburg!" I then tried to figure out how ot meet both Natasha and Irina on this last day (which I'd thus far managed to avoid), and surprisingly it more-or-less worked; Natasha and I met up at Universitetskaya, and then Irina joined us a bit later.

While I was waiting at Universitetskaya, sitting on a bench, I saw an old guy sitting next to me talking to some teenagers or thereabouts. I couldn't hear them, what with the metro, but somehow, my mind assessed this situation and told me that he was crazy and that they couldn't get away. Sure enough, when they left, he saw presumably saw me writing in English and had me read something about the English king, and said (in English) that no one sat next to him without the permission of him, the English king. Oh boy. Before I could assent to this and flee, he kept going. He spoke to me mainly in English, although it was hard to hear with the trains going back and forth. It was also hard to understand him not because of his English, which he spoke quite well, but rather because half of it was rambling nonsense. He said something about saving Poland form some sort of Soviet invasion in the 80s, and that he'd saved the world and thus was now the English king. Forgive me if I didn't get all the details of that quite right. It was apparent that in spite of his, maybe schizophrenia, that he was otherwise quite learned. In between the nonsense he spoke of, among other things, the upcoming US elections. He figured the next president would be Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama (saying the fact that he was half [n word] made him a strong candidate among blacks...and then something about AIDS and syphilis). He also made a pun about Bill Clinton, saying that Hillary had "убила (ubilla)" him for his tomfoolery in the White House (with which he had no problem, by the way). He asked me whether I had studied technical things or humanities, and I said technical (computers and math). He said humanities was better - people were far more interesting. Indeed. He apparently didn't hear the computer part, because he was saying that he respected only computer science as a technical field as there were enough mathematicians, but computers were the future, and so I clarified that I was a computer science major first. He was a doctor of political science, and he started telling me about his dissertation from 30 years ago; it was something about the traits of capitalist nations, but I couldn't quite hear or understand him, as it seemed he was reciting it (in English). He also said he hoped the Soviet Union could come back (not the same way) and said it was possible.

He spoke English, I'd say fluently, and there were parts where he spoke perfectly sensibly in between the ramblings and gibberish. There was something in French on the first sheet about Chirac, and I wondered if he spoke French as well. I marveled at this man, obviously once sharp and clear, his once-young mind now muddled by dementia. It's amazing and downright scary how one's mind can just disintegrate, e.g. Alzheimer's, with one being helpless to stop it or even being blissfully unaware of it - who knows what goes on inwardly within one's consciousness when the outward signs point to nothing? He eventually left, the episode reminding me of a similar one last year with Anna, where a Russian guy went on about such things about Russians having invented the radio, the television, etc, although that time it was entirely in Russian, in spite of my not understanding him, with Anna translating from time to time. As I walked away I saw Natasha on the train and amazed her by meeting her as she exited it; I tried to convey what she had just missed.

So she and I walked around there at the university, and then met Irina at Vorobyovy Gory (Sparrow hills?) which is a really nice station, with an open view of the river from the Metro. We were unfortunately at the wrong exit (not realizing there was another) and I was unknowingly without cellphone service. We checked upstairs after a while, and found her, and then I got the messages and missed-call notifications that I hadn't known I was missing. We chatted, and the rapport was fairly interesting, as conversation in Russian when meeting people is fairly rapid fire and doesn't elaborate past what is asked (as I'd seen a little bit in lessons, but this was the first time I'd really experienced it). We walked along the embankment for a while and stopped at a cafe. Afterwards, we had difficulty finding a metro, yet again, but Irina hailed a cab to the metro (less than 5 minutes away, of course) and that was that.

The next day was my last in Moscow; I was leaving early afternoon to Smolensk. I went to the internet cafe and made arrangements Vienna (following Rome) and Barcelona. The internet cafe was terribly slow, thanks to a slow proxy server (basically, all web requests were going through one machine). I stayed longer than I wanted, until an hour before the departure, and compounded by other small things - I missed my train. The "baggage check" at the hotel in the morning consisted of leaving it behind the counter in the lobby; when I returned, all the luggage had been moved downstairs to the real luggage room, which was confusing to find (you had to use a specific elevator and press the button to the 6th floor), and then the attendant wasn't there so I had to wait a minute. Of course my luggage was all the way in the back so I had a tough time retrieving it through the jungle of other suitcases. I hurried to the metro; fortunately I exactly made the train - unfortunately, at the transfer, I just missed it, being unable to make my way through the crowd in time. The doors closed right in front of me. At the train station, I only saw a sign for suburb trains (but the long distance onces turned out to be there too), and I rushed around frantically trying to find the track info. I made my way upstairs to the waiting room to see it was exactly 14:06 (my would-be departure time), and saw my train on the board briefly before it disappeared. Блин (equivalent to "fudge").

I swore lightly but didn't worry too much as there would probably (hopefully?) not be much trouble getting another train as Smolensk was on the way to Belarus. I figured out the scheme of the station, and maybe have made the train if I'd known exactly where to go, although I may not have made it to my car on time all the same, as it takes a while if you're far down the track. Oh well. I bought a ticket to the next train for only 380 rubles (about $15) which left in another hour-and-a-half, and settled down. I was surprised to actually be able to return the ticket for the train I just missed, albeit for about 1/4 the cost; still, missing the train had only ended up costing me a net 200 rubles ($8), so off to Smolensk it was.

To Moscow!

2007-08-31T10:39:00.000-04:00

So then, I took the train to Moscow. There was a woman and teenage-ish girl from Ярослав (Yaroslav) (maybe, if memory serves), and then another woman from St. Petersburg going to Moscow, as well as a family from the Caucases going home. We chatted, with the woman from St. Petersburg joking that I was a spy. Although from St. Petersburg, she had no particular love for it, and the older woman having lived, I think, in St. Petersburg and studied in Moscow (or the reverse) chided her lack of patriotism; she herself loved St. Petersburg far more than Moscow, saying that St. Petersburg was the cultural center, and Moscow was simply торгова [commercialized]. She was also fairly racist, not liking Armenians, Georgians, or Blacks. Вот.

I got to Moscow, took the metro to my stop, and then got fairly lost, since there was no way to know which way to go from the metro (left or right). I, of course, picked the wrong way, and this was further complicated by the fact that I expected to cross train tracks, and in fact I did (just not the right ones), even though it was the wrong way. Russia's oft lack of street signs didn't help either, nor did the fact that it was dark, and my map doesn't have all the streets on the overview-of-the-city side. I asked some other people who didn't know (though it was indeed close), and eventually two guys got me a cab for 200 rubles ($8) and had me buy them each a beer as well. Whatever. On the plus side, I'd seen an internet cafe, so I kept that in mind for later. So, much later, exhausted from walking around for maybe an hour with my suitcase and backpack, I reached the hotel, which was fairly annoying. The elevators are Russian-style, like the dorms - i.e. they are frustratingly dysfunctional. I can't take the stairs due to renovations, which, walking to my room from the elevator (from one end of a U to the other) I pass all sorts of construction. The room is frustratingly arranged; the outlets are behind a (small) desk, the bathroom is raised for some reason, so stepping out I pratically fell the first few times, plus there's a few-inch lip on which I stubbed my toes a few times. There's no soap dish in the shower, so I have to go back and forth to the sink. The map to and from the metro that they give is of little help, as half the streets are unmarked, and some are not streets, but you wouldn't know this because the thick red line denoting the routes occludes parts of it. The first few times I found my way back and forth completely by accident.

Anyway, the next day I went to the city center, and finally saw the Kremlin, right there! It was unbelievable to really be there. I walked around all day before meeting my friend Natasha at 5. We went to a traktir, called "rakes" (I've forgotten the Russian), and met up with a friend of hers, who also had apparently been at the New York Institute last year, but I didn't remember him. After dinner, he had to go, and so Natasha and I continued to walk around, but in circles, seemingly unable to escape Red Square. She admitted she didn't really know the city that well herself; her friend had chided her for living there for 23 years and still not knowing it.

The next day at breakfast (also mediocre), I heard my name and turned around, even as I realized how silly it was to respond to my name so far away from anyone who would know me. Well, much to my surprise, it was Lidia (from Italy)! She and her mom happened to be staying in the same hotel, and indeed, two doors down from me. How about that. I walked around the city center for a while, and saw the inside of St. Basil's cathedral (the famous one- the one that you probably think is the Kremlin). Anyway, it was old (15th century?) but wasn't terribly exciting. Shortly thereafter I left and some sort of military parade/demonstration began in Red Square! Neat. Later on I met up with Irina Kazanina, who was now also sporting a mullet. We went to the Tretyakov gallery, and then to ёлки палки (yolki palki), another traktir, with a funny name that, I guess, roughly would be the analog to "fudge" for another word that starts with "f". We then walked around a bit, and we agreed to change into bathingsuits and meet up at 12:15 (pm) with two of her friends (another Tanya and Katya, incidentally) to go to a "foam (soap suds) party." Well yeah, ok, why not. That was obviously interesting; it was basically a giant roller rink turned into a club (theme: 'fire', hence the soapsuds pretending to be fire-extinguisher foam), and indeed, there was a giant soap suds cannon as well as various apparati shooting it from the ceiling. My Москва для вас! (Moscow for you!) map didn't fare too well, especially since I forgot about it and left it in my pocket until the next morning.

The next day I hunted down the internet cafe I'd seen, which I found after a while. I walked around for a while, agreeing to meet with Natasha at 6:30 at Lubyanka (former KGB headquarters). There was a little street game at the Arbat with a bike whose wheel turned opposite the handle. For 100 rubles you could try it 3 times, to win 300 rubles for making it 3 meters, or 500 for 5. I watched for a while but no one succeeded (the attendant could, of course, ride it fine). I continued walking; later on I saw a Bentley/Lamborghini/Maserati/Ferrari dealership (earlier on I'd seen the Rolls-Royce one in passing). I'd seen several Ferraris in the city already. Новые рускии (new Russians).

So then to Lubyanka, outside the former KGB headquarters. I sat and wrote for a while outside the metro station, with a guard coming by every so often, then we walked a (long) while first through some boulevards, seeing a little history "exhibit" for Moscow's 860th (!) birthday, then walked down the embankment of the Moscow river, and got lost trying to find the metro, a trend that had been repeating itself throughout the trip. But eventually we found it, and went home.

More on Petersburg (and economics, incidentally)

2007-08-31T10:14:00.000-04:00

So, while in Petersburg, after my trip to Pavlovsk, I met up with Polly Gannon at Cafe Zoom (where else?). We chatted for a while, obviously about my travels, and also her imminent plans to visit Helsinki, at whicih I mentioned the group on the train from Arkhangelsk. I also talked about how I watched the news much more while I was away in Murmansk, and said I'd also tried to watch it in Russian a bit, and remarked about some of the differences in coverage, for example about a Shanghai Cooperation Organization (group including Russia, China, and several other former Soviet bloc countries) meeting in Bishkek - the western news mentioned some joint military exercises, whereas, as far as I could tell, the Russian news didn't. I also talked about how nice it had been to be divorced from all the trivialities of the west that pollute the news, which had resurfaced again when watching, say CNN.

One thing that was especially nice to be away from was all the market crap. I was in Murmansk just as the "US mortgage crisis" began tumbling the markets around the world. I was bemused at all the finger pointing, and all-around pompous crap, with analysts going on about this and that. All of this хрен has always annoyed me, with rich executives suffering no fallout for any bad decisions, even when they're quite evident to everyone else who doesn't have a golden parachute - the constant sacrifice of long-term opportunities in favor of short-term gains that the market loves, followed by inevitable pain later on is something that constantly repeats itself. Layoffs of thousands solely to boost the stock price for a while, etc. I raised the example of Daimler-Chrysler - when they merged, there were serious questions raised, but hey, who cares, parties were thrown, the execs made truckloads of cash, and certainly they are not paying for the fallout. They're almost always not only insulated from these bad decisions, but practically rewarded for them. It seems to me like just a constant plundering, where people cash in on these short-term gains, and the unlucky end up holding the bag when it all collapses. Then the cycle begins again with something else.

Honestly, I saw this housing bubble coming a mile away; once I heard about home prices leveling off (and some other things), I figured it was all going to come crashing down, since people were buying houses they couldn't afford, waiting for the value to go up so they could sell it and make a profit. And somehow this constituted an economy. Banks were giving absurd mortgages to people with bad credit, no assets, little income, etc, and what do you know, housing prices didn't go up forever, and then things all went to hell, and now everyone's looking for someone to blame. Let's see, I, a simple student with little to no interest or training in economics, saw this coming a mile away from scattered bits of news in passing, as did many others - I read in the Times about an investor who somehow bet/hedged/however that works much of his company on this happening, and now is raking in the dough even as everyone else tries to figure out how this could have happened and who's to blame. How indeed. Where was all the money being made actually coming from? Thin air? Eventually you were going to have people buying houses and not being able to sell them at a profit - obviously that couldn't go on forever (there's a skit on the Simpson's with Disco Stu showing a graph of disco investing that ends at the 1970s, and he says, "if these trends continue...hey!"). But the problem was that the houses were now being sold to people who couldn't afford to keep them, and kaboom. The collapse came from zeal, and not ensuring that people could actually afford what they were getting in to. But of course in the US, nay-sayers are unpatriotic/terrorists/pessimists/hurting America/etc and just otherwise personae non-grata (help me out with the latin?). It was all like the internet bubble; it was all based on thin-air economics, and sure enough, it eventually dried up. It's like a pyramid scheme on a giant scale, and eventually you run out of new people for the bottom and it all comes crashing down. I wonder about Google as well, with its sky-high stock price, seemingly based solely on hype. Who knows.

Anyway, afterwards I met up with Lena, one of Katya's friends from the philological faculty, and we met at some Indian-esque with someone named Oleg who sells shoes, drives a black Land Rover, and flies to Moscow from time to time. Вот. He ordered us a bunch of things, most of which I tried and ate.

The next day, I met up with Julia Vorobiova (one of the staff, who took care of lots of stuff) at Ням Ням, the bliny place next to the dorms. We chatted about things, mostly languages, and then said our farewells, and later on that evening did I meet up with Katya and Tanya, again at Cafe Zoom, then went to Fidel and said our покаs. Until, hopefully, next year!

Arkhangelsk back to St. Petersburg

2007-08-26T06:43:00.000-04:00

One day in Arkhangelsk was sufficient. I walked around a bit in the morning before checking out, and parts felt like the Wild West, as I walked down a large dirt/mud road with bushes growing and wooden planks lining it as sidewalks. It certainly was not a heavily developed city. I then walked along the embankment, seeing a bunch of monuments and maybe the White Sea (Белое Море). It was sort of tough being just on my own.

I took the bus to the train station, and saw that indeed I could have taken the bus from the airport to the hotel and saved myself 290 rubles, but oh well. The train station was interesting; there was no evident way to move between the tracks, which I thought meant that all trains came on the same track next to the platform, but no, I then realized you just crossed the tracks directly and were careful about it.

The train ride itself turned out to be quite interesting as well. The view and sunset were nice, especially as we crossed a large bridge, and then at the next stop the remainder of my compartment filled up (3 more people). The woman next to me asked if I was also going to Finland; confused (and not sure whether I understood correctly) I answered that no, I was from America, much to her surprise. A woman from the next compartment came in and asked if I could switch so they could be together and I said sure. In the next cabin was a woman and two boys, and as it turned out the 7 of them were studying English, with this woman being their teacher. She spoke slowly and deliberately, telling me that they were on their way to Finland as part of a program in order to practice for a week. She told me at length about the program and its virtues; I had thought the boys were studying at a university, but in fact the one was in 8th grade, which again reinforced the quick maturity of Russian youth. In Murmansk, Katya had quoted, "if you want to live two lives, live in Russia." Shortly thereafter, the 4 other women came by so that they could practice. The two boys spoke well, but the women didn't have as easy a time, which was not surprising as children have a far easier time with languages. The teacher's birthday was a few days before, so we celebrated on the train until late at night with some wine ("Bear's Blood" from Bulgaria) and a surprising large amount of food, with seemingly every suitcase and backpack dedicated to bringing food along.

The next day we played some games, like "guess the object" (describe something and everyone else guesses what it is) and "at the party," which consisted of writing down responses to prompts ("name a famous polititician", "name a famous actress", etc) and then took on personae based on those answers, so you were the politician, your wife was the actress (or husband the actor) and so forth. We then had to introduce ourselves to each other, which got repetitive after a short while as each pair did it. Moreover, I had the good fortune of moving into the cabin where the window was the emergency exit and didn't open, and it was damned hot throughout the ride. In any case it was interesting to have the shoe on the other foot, that is, now I needed to speak especially slowly and clearly in order to be understood, and it was still too fast, just like the directors of our program needed to do when speaking Russian when we started. I shared my similar experience and assured them it would get easier eventually as now I could understand normally, however frustrating as it was may have been at the beginning.

I met up with Katya at the stop; she hadn't slept well, due to noisy girls discussing makeup, little dogs and cats in neighboring compartments, a pair of loud women, and various other things. Later on I visited and saw all that she'd described, and then returned and lay down to sleep. When I awoke, there was another batch of guests; 4 more students (a boy and 3 girls) and a fairly old woman. They were another group on the program from another town, with another teacher in an adjoining car. We chatted for a while, and then I joined them in their cabin. The teacher in the first group and the old woman in the second played the classic Russian hosts, stuffing me with food long after I'd had enough. The old woman asked, "Do you want something?" "No thanks," I replied; she proceeds to make a sandwich. "How about a sandwich?" "Well, all right." While I eat she makes another one sandwich, and when I finish that asks if I want another. I say "no thanks," but she says, "just one more," and makes another. She offers me another, which I turn down, and so instead gives me more cheese. She asks if I want tea or coffee, I say "no thanks," so she says she'll give me some coffee; I say tea would be better, and she asks "green or black," so I take some green tea, and she still asks whether I want to have both together, which I turn down. The quantity of food they all brought was astounding. After this, I went back and chatted with Katya for a while, and then we pretty much were arriving in St. Petersburg, so I returned to my car and wished the group well.

I took the bus from the station, which, for a surprisingly convenient change went straight to the station from a stop not far from me (although on the way there when I went to Murmansk I missed the stop as the station was occluded). While I was on the bus home, there were a bunch of cars with people hanging out of the doors and sunroofs, honking and going nuts. I thought it was something to do with football (fine, soccer), but they did it again in the other direction with many more cars, this time stopping in groups and making a mess of traffic, with cars ranging from beat up Lada station wagons to Supras (2 at least). I asked Katya if she knew what it was all about; she said it was хрен (horseradish).

On the way home from the bus stop I saw a woman yelling at and walking away from a car in a short black outfit, and as I passed her she started telling me that he had told her to сайдись ("come sit here") and how it was not right and so on. I assented as we walked and she continued to talk about it, a beer in hand at obviously at least a bit drunk. As we passed a nice Escalade she said something to the effect that she would have at least thought about it if he'd offered, but for a crappy little Lada, no dice. She asked where I was coming from, indicating the suitcase, and I said simply that I had returned from Arkhangelsk, and she said she'd been there. It was somewhat difficult for me to understand her, so I didn't say all that much, and she asked if I understood what she was saying. I said, "more or less," and shortly thereafter she came to the realization, "you're not Russian, are you?" and I said no, I was from America, and she started laughing hysterically. She said to wait while she stopped into a store from some more beer, then our paths parted soon after and she wished me well and to watch out for such jerks, and I continued home.

The next day I walked along the English embankment, where the Leutenant Schmidt bridge was finally done and operating! with some obvious confetti remaining in the streets and the temporary one now closed. The following day I went to Pavlovsk, which was yet another palace, not too extraordinary, but had a nice park. I was sort of disappointed that when I tried to order a ticket for taking pictures, they wanted to charge the foreigner price and all sorts of chaos broke loose until I showed my St. Petersburg student Id, since they didn't know there was a foreigner in the group (thus affecting prices). It's frustrating that it's still (and will always be) so obvious. I understood little of the tour, which was also frustrating. I was surprised to see my hostess coming back home when I returned, who was unhappy about coming back to the city, a sentiment echoed by Katya (life at the dacha is so much calmer than life in the city, obviously). When I came home my hostess asked about the cruise (of which she'd helped plan a great deal), and we looked at my pictures for a while that I took while on the cruise. Tanya and I met up with Katya the next day, and then Katya and I said "poka" (bye), and she quoted someone, that "лето - маленькая жизнь (summer is a small life)," and then the next day it was off to Moscow!

From Murmansk to Arkhangelsk

2007-08-26T06:09:00.000-04:00

I was in Murmansk for only a few days; as I'd feared, it was tough to have to say goodbye every few days; only a few days before our group had dispersed, and now I had to say another goodbye, probably for at least another year or so assuming I come back to Russia again next year (which I hope to do). And every few days would be the same thing, and then I'd just be on my own, as I would be for the day in Arkhangelsk. I took a plane to Arkhangelsk; the airport was far outside the city center so I took a taxi. The driver and I chatted along the way, about little things like what cars people drive (I said mainly family sedans and SUVS), but also about the quality of healthcare in the US/Russia, which happened to be what I wrote about for my final essay in our classes, though I kept jumbling the words for insurance (страхование / strakhovanie) and healthcare (здравоохранение / zdravookhranenie). And typing the transliterations, by the way, is extremely difficult, as my fingers keep trying to use the Russian keyboard layout since they're Russian words, though I'm trying to type them with the Latin alphabet, with a completely different keyboard layout. Similarly, I'm hopelessly unable to write in script in English now, as I keep mixing up the Russian letters that look like English but have different sounds, but I'll get to that.

Anyway, he also asked what I thought about the Russian people, and I've heard this question fairly often when meeting Russians; it seems almost as insecurity. I've given the same response I've already written, that there are differences but not especially big ones, that government conflicts have little bearing to ordinary people, and that in general we all just want to live normal lives and so forth, as I've mentioned already. I do sometimes point out the irony that if our countries' relations were less cool right now, the program that brought me here would probably not have existed and I might not be doing all this other traveling.

At the airport, I couldn't really understand the announcements, which for boarding were repeated in English (and still hard to understand). It was all a simple affair; I checked in, which involved them writing my name on a list and handing me a laminated card which was my boarding pass, put my luggage through (including liquids! Though I understand that will change soon), and waited, and then the plane was sitting on the tarmac. It was a small turboprop (an Antonov 24), and we just walked to it and took any available seat. I stupidly sat next to the engine at first in a seat with a broken tray, and by the time it occurred to me to relocate I couldn't get a seat with any kind of a good view. The flight was fine, but the turboprops vibrated the plane thoughtout the flight, and the food skittered along the tray table. The overhead luggage was a short rack. It was an interesting experience. We landed, and walked out, and left the tarmac not even into an airport but into a parking lot, basically. I looked for a taxi, and the one I asked was fortunately already taken as I might have otherwise left without my suitcase - the luggage pickup was another building consisting of just the luggage carousel. One thing I did appreciate was that they actually match up the ticket to ensure it's your baggage and not another's, which was always crossing my mind during other trips. Arkhangelsk is flat, and the airport was fairly far from the center, and during the ride there was a great view of the sunset across the distance, which I regretted I probably wouldn't see again, since I'd be leaving in a day and buildings began occluding it as we approached the center. There were thunderstorms in the distance, and I could clearly see the lightning strikes, which if not a first is certainly something I've rarely seen, as it was in the distance across flat land, whereas prior to that the storms were either too far away to see or right on top of me. As we approached the center it became clear that the thunderstorms were indeed there. When we reached the hotel it began to pour heavily at the instant we arrived, and the driver and I exchanged "of course"s. After a minute or so it settled down a bit and I disembarked and went into the hotel. The hotel had little English and a дежурная/dezhurnaya who keeps the keys, which contrasted with Murmansk. The hot and cold water were mislabeled, which was quite fun to figure out (at first I thought there was no hot water when I showered the next day).

Uniquely Russian

2007-08-16T04:26:00.000-04:00

For the day we went to the Russian prison, we had hired a bus to take us there. It wasn't too far away, somewhere in the area of Cruiser Aurora, but the coverage of the bus routes isn't really that great (as evidenced by my 35 minute walk to school each morning). But the bus didn't come, and after about an hour of waiting, we started taking gypsy cabs. There were about 20 of us. This in itself was hilarious (well, not at the time; I think we were tired of standing in the sun waiting). So 5 minutes pass; we get one car for 4 people. Another 5 minutes or so, and we get another car. Now there are still about 13 of us left (I know this because I remembered that it was not evenly divisible into car-loads). Eventually a hotel shuttle pulls up (for Pribaltiyskaya, incidentally), and what do you know, he decides to take the rest of us there in the little hotel van, which greatly amused us. Only in Russia!

I forgot to mention what actually prompted our final closing parties the night before the group's flight out. The flight was to leave at about 5:50 in the morning (ouch). But of course, one needs to be at the airport a while before that, let's say around 3 or 4 in the morning (big ouch). That in itself is really tough, but then there's another problem: about half the people on the flight live on Vasilievskiy Island...and the bridges over the Neva are still up at that time...so there would actually be no good way to get to the airport! (Only in Russia). So what we ended up having to do was hire a bus to go to everyone and pick up their luggage, starting in the afternoon, and then all of us would actually meet at a cafe (on the mainland, of course) until it was time to go. Of course, in reality this bus driver too was horribly behind schedule, and so although we were to meet at 11:30, some people didn't make it until well after that. Unfortunately the purse of someone in our group was stolen, which really sucked (but they were not leaving on the flight, so that was one less problem).

Last year in Russia, as I already mentioned, started off with difficulty. One of the reasons for this was the less-than-great bathrooms in the dorms. Well, as one should know, it's foolish to say that there's nothing worse, because sure enough, we were in for a pleasant surprise on the cruise. We opened the bathroom (the foul smell of which was nothing short of incredible), to the left, the sink; the right, the toilet. Well, wait a minute, it seems they forgot the shower. Oh, no they didn't, it's hanging on the wall, attached to the sink, and the shower curtain is in the back by the toilet. That is to say, the entire bathroom was the shower. Efficient, but, well, yeah.

So anyway, I'm having a good time here in Murmansk, with my friend showing me around. It's nice to be in a hotel, with a normal functional bathroom for the first time in about 2 months. The shower at home ("home" being the apartment in St. Petersburg) has a very sketchy water heater which rattles and creaks and decides to stop working at random times; I'm always afraid the thing was going to randomly burst into flames at some point; the large burn mark on the front of it (like that of my outlet in the dorms last year) only increases my confidence. Anyway, when I arrived, my friend asked me if I'd flown here. Nope, I took the train (28 hours). She was in disbelief, and asked if I'd ridden купе (second class). Nope, плацкарт (third/lowest class). Further disbelief. It wasn't too bad, well, relatively speaking. The 30 hour bus ride to and from New Orleans was far worse; whereas I more or less lay down through most of the train ride. Of course, the beds were far too short, and so I would either have my feet hanging off the edge of the bed into the doorway, with people walking into them from time to time (I was on the top bunk), but there was little choice anyway since and there was no room to sit up in the top bunk. They don't have food on the trains, so I brought some things and made myself a sandwich from time to time. A day later, there I was. At the railway station there was no kind of pocket map so I was kind of flustered about what to do, and sort of ambled around outside for a minute, when someone asked me where I wanted to go, and taxied me to the hotel for 100 rubles (like $4). There were maps and guides and things in the hotel, so that was only a temporary problem. So the first day Katya and I walked around, with her showing me around, and of course there is the obligatory Lenin statue on Проспект Ленина ("Lenin street"), the city's main street, and a movie theater named "Родина" (motherland), and she was amused when I guessed these things. There are the obligatory Karl Marx and Komsomol'kaya streets as well. Katya's mother works at a city museum so yesterday we went there, where first Katya guided me around, and then as it was getting close to closing time, her mom gave me a whirlwind tour through some of the rest of it (though of course I understood slightly less at this speed). The city has a population just shy of 400 000, with a great view of the bay, and as it was an important city in WWII there are a lot of monuments, including a large soldier (30 meters or so) on a hill overlooking the bay, as well as various other monuments spread throughout the city. The climate here isn't very well liked, though. As it's above the Arctic Circle, in the summer it's always light (polar days), and in the winter practically always dark (polar nights), and the long summer days and the northern lights just don't make up for the polar nights.

Путешествие (Travels)

2007-08-12T13:16:00.000-04:00

After the program’s end (today, essentially), I will continue to travel around, visiting friends and visiting places of interest. This was really difficult to plan, and once I started digging into planning, at times I just wanted to give up entirely and come home. There are two main issues that make this scheduling difficult. The first is that I plan to travel by train for all of this. When traveling by airplane, one can pretty much take for granted that one can find a flight on any given day to any given place, and get there that same day; this simplifies booking hotels, especially since you can take care of it all online in one step. On the other hand, the train doesn’t necessarily go where you want when you want, and one might not need a hotel depending on the train schedule or the length of the trip, and I can’t just book it all together online (though fortunately, I found train schedules online, which was the biggest step. The second issue is that my visa expires on September 1st. This means I can’t stay as long as I’d like in many places, and coupled with the train issue, makes it very complicated, since, if one is staying in a place for a few days (e.g. 4 or 5), it doesn’t really matter if the arrival or departure is at 8 AM or 8 PM, whereas, because in some places I was planning to stay only one day, there is a big difference between arriving at 8 AM and leaving at 8 PM, as opposed to, for example, arriving at 1 PM and leaving at 3 PM.

My first destination is Murmansk, followed by Arkhangelsk, and then back to St. Petersburg for a few days. One friend from St. Petersburg (Katya Uskova, our friend from last year) was going to be returning from her dacha on the 19th, and another from the US that was with me last year (Tanya) was going to be in St. Petersburg from the 13th to the 24th (which of course meant she would be arriving just as I’d be leaving) and I of course wanted to see both of them. With this in mind, I figured I’d go to Murmansk (about a 28 hour train ride from St. Petersburg) from the 13th to the 16th (visiting a friend I’d met last year at the New York Institute, Katya Shevchuk) and then take the train to Arkhangelsk on the 17th, and leave the 18th to come back the 19th (another day-long train ride). Coincidentally, it turns out that the first Katya was going to be returning from the suburbs of Arkhangelsk, and so if I took that train we would both end up on it. This more-or-less cemented the schedule.

There is no direct train between Murmansk and Arkhangelsk (Murmansk in on a peninsula, and Arkhangelsk is across the sea), so when I tried to actually buy the tickets, it became clear that this wasn’t going to work, because I’d need to transfer at Vologda, and the trip between these two would actually take a full two days, and so I would get into Arkhangelsk just in time to leave again. I looked for a plane ticket on Expedia/Travelocity/etc, but it was $400 (one-way, remember) and connected in St. Petersburg, which bothered me on principle. I was beginning to think I’d scrap Arkhangelsk (which I’d wanted to visit for no good reason), but then I saw on the map in class that there was a ferry between them (which I figured might be the case) but when I started asking about actually getting tickets, it was apparent that there was no way to be sure about doing that, and of course I couldn’t take that chance. But, finally, I found through another site a direct flight between them for about $220, which wasn’t that bad, and was only 2 hours, as opposed to 50, so I decided we were back in the game after all, but the issue was that I couldn’t buy it directly at the site (in the normal sense, of paying online and getting an e-ticket) so I had to go to an office of theirs in the Angleterre hotel (next to Astoria, by St. Isaac’s), so at long last I finally cemented this, and consequently bought the train tickets to Murmansk and from Arkhangelsk and reserved hotels in both cities (since I obviously couldn’t do this knew where I was actually going and how long). Note the length and complexity of this process, which covers less than a week of travel to two other cities. I still had two weeks and four other cities to plan. The final outcome of this is:

8/13 train from St. Petersburg to Murmansk
8/14 arrive in Murmansk
8/17 fly to Arkhangelsk
8/18 train from Arkhangelsk to St. Petersburg
8/19 arrive in St. Petersburg

I planned to stay in St. Petersburg until the 23rd, at which point I’d head down to Moscow for a few days, until the 27th, followed by, in no particular order, Smolensk, Vladimir, and Nizhny Novgorod. The reasoning behind Moscow is obvious, although I will be meeting some friends there from last year, including Lidia, who is from Italy but will happen to be there in this timeframe, as well as another student I met last year, Natasha Ivlieva, and also Irina Kazanina, the sister of Nina Kazanina who taught at the New York Institute both last year and this year. Each Sunday, Polly Gannon (another staff member at St. Petersburg University, who teaches at the New York Institute but has also been part of our program this year) is at Café Zoom with whoever wants to meet her, and I decided to go there after my phone got stolen as I was feeling pretty down, and both of them were there along with Blake and invited me to visit. I’m visiting Smolensk for no good reason, just as Arkhangelsk, and Vladimir and Nizhny Novgorod were recommended to me. Smolensk, Moscow, Vladimir, and Nizhny Novgorod are all in a line from west to east, so I figured I’d try to take day trips between them. This posed similar issues to the first set, in that schedules are really important when one is only in a place for a day. I thought about it a lot and then decided it’d really be a lot easier to eliminate one of the latter two cities (Vladimir/Nizhny Novgorod) and spend one night in each of the remaining, taking a day to travel between them via Moscow. This worked out and so the schedule is:

8/23 train from St. Petersburg to Moscow
8/23 arrive in Moscow
8/27 train from Moscow to Nizhny Novgorod
8/29 train from Nizhny Novgorod to Moscow
8/29 train from Moscow to Smolensk

Now the question was when and where to actually exit the country. The original plan was Kiev, Ukraine, but Minsk, Belarus is right next to Smolensk, so I thought about that but quickly learned that I’d need a visa for that, and moreover, Belarus is kind of unfriendly right now (a clue was the list of places from which you don’t need a visa: North Korea, Iran, Iraq, Cuba, etc). This meant I’d need to go through Moscow, so the schedule became:

8/31 train from Smolensk to Moscow
8/31 train from Moscow to Kiev
9/1 arrive Kiev

And thus is planned the entirety of the Russia trip. Of course, it would be too easy to say everything is all tied up in a bow; before we left on our cruise I tried to take care of all of the remaining train tickets and hotel reservations. The train tickets were fine; I happened to find a cashier right near the Gostiniy Dvor metro station and it all worked out fine, which was great. As for the hotels, it started much more simply since I could do everything online, but I ran into a snag with Smolensk, namely that none of the sites I tried acknowledged its existence. I figure I’ll take care of that at one of the travel places I worked with along the way here (for the Murmansk/Arkhangelsk train/plane tickets I used two different places) once I come back to St. Petersburg. A more serious snag came up on the cruise; in spite of the fact that I told my credit card company when and where I’d be traveling (in general terms, obviously), they decided to block my charges when I started booking the hotels. Fortunately the Murmansk/Arkhangelsk reservations went through (as I’m writing this, I am realizing exactly how incredibly fortunate that is), but the St. Petersburg and Moscow reservations were blocked until I cleared them. I worried that the reservations would be canceled when the charges were denied, and wondered what would happen when they cleared the charges through, and sure enough when I checked the status of these bookings, they were canceled, so hopefully this works out without my being charged twice. On the other hand, I decided to ask my “host mom” as it were, if I could pay some more and stay there for those few days, and she said fine, so that’s one fewer hotel and a lot less money spent.

Cruise

2007-08-12T13:14:00.000-04:00

After our 6 weeks of lessons and lectures, we had a week-long cruise through the Russian north (well, more north than St. Petersburg). This was a great ending to our program, though it’s tough to believe that in less than a day we’ll all be going our separate ways. We had a stop every day:

Мандроги / Mandrogi: this was the first place we stopped, and was pretty disappointing as it is essentially a fake country village solely existing the benefit of tourists. Anna Maslennikova dubbed it a “tourist trap.” One of the first things we saw when disembarking was a large tent, on which was written “Mandrogi: Welcome to Show.” It was just sad. It was good that we got this out of the way first, as it paled compared to all the other stops, but we were worried the rest would be more of the same.

Петрозаводск / Petrozavodsk: a small city, which was nice to see since St. Petersburg is fairly unique with all of its excessive palaces and cultural places. Petrozavodsk had a lot of gift sculptures (from other countries), and halfway through our guided tour we wondered if that was all we were going to see. After that was free time, and I went on a very long exploration through the city, which I can barely begin to recount, but all I can say is that I’m glad I have a good sense of direction (in spite of any counterexamples you may have).

Кижи / Kizhi: an island with an old monastery (not sure if it’s exactly a monastery) with a wooden church that is unmistakably traditional Russian styled. We took a boat ride to some adjacent islands and saw some other interesting places.

Свирьстрой / Cvir’stroy: a Russian derevnya (village) which was also interesting to see in contrast to the cities. A Russian guy had cut his head open while swimming but his friends were on the other side of the lake, so we helped him back to the boat.

Валаам / Valaam: more islands and monasteries, but very different from Kizhi (the first part of the excursion was about a 7 km hike).

This was a great trip, and it was very interesting to see all of these places which are obviously very different than St. Petersburg, which was the only place I’d been in Russia up to this point. Tonight is a farewell party, and then the program is over; it’s tough to believe that the 7 weeks have already come and gone. Another interesting aspect of this program, as opposed to most of what I’ve done so far, is that we are from all over the country; most students from Stony Brook live within an hour or two of it, so last year after our study abroad program, most of us were still able to hang out all the time during the rest of the summer, but that will obviously not be the case this time. Another interesting thing: duck, duck, _____. In Minnesota, it’s not “goose,” but “grey duck.” Вот.

Progress

2007-08-12T13:03:00.000-04:00

Our classes ended Friday, August 3rd, culminating in a large test on all that we’d covered over the 6 weeks of lessons, and then a nice dinner at a Georgian restaurant that evening with all the students and teachers. For me, it only sets in that I’m leaving when I see advertisements for things in the future, which would be impossible to attend even if I wanted to. It’s tough to measure the amount of progress I’ve made along the way, or to say how much I’ve learned; our classes were not the usual style of following through a textbook, learning vocabulary and constructions along the way, but rather we had a different theme each week (first impressions of Russia, problems of youth, university studies, economics, healthcare, and external politics) and each of eight different sections reflected these themes. Each day we had two ninety minute classes.

Mondays were страноведение (country studies), in which the teacher would more-or-less lecture on these topics as they pertained to Russia, and чтение (reading). Tuesdays were phonetics, in which we sang songs that went over some sort of phonetic feature. These songs were great, and we all had them stuck in our heads, but at the same time I feel like it just resulted in repeating the wrong pronunciations as opposed to really nailing how to make the sounds, some of which are notoriously difficult for English speakers and really give away one’s accent, for example ы (a vowel between I and U) and ль (soft L), which were really tough until I learned tricks, each of which took all of 5 minutes and made a huge difference. R still throws me off a lot though, since it takes some time for me to start trilling the R, so доброе утро (dobroe utro) and природа (priroda) feel clumsy to me.

Also on Tuesday was grammar, which got off to a rough start but was really useful once it was fine-tuned with our feedback. There were many things we learned which I thought I already knew, which was startling because it often meant I was doing it wrong all along (for example, “why/because” is distinct from “for what purpose/in order to” although I’d been using the same for both).

On Wednesdays we had културология (culture studies) where we talked in more general terms (as opposed to strictly Russia) about the week’s theme in a more interactive way, as well as разговор (conversation) in which we learned useful conversational constructions and prepared monologues from texts for homework. This was useful, but I wish we could have had more dialog amongst ourselves with aid from the teacher on what we were doing wrong / how it would be more naturally conveyed in Russian. We were supposed to talk to each other only in Russian at all times (though that often broke down after a few days) but often it felt like it wasn’t really helping if we understood each other because of the equivalent English, whereas in real Russian it would be conveyed entirely differently.

Thursdays we had письмо (writing), which was often helpful for exactly the reason I just wrote about for conversation, which was that it was very useful for our writings to be corrected because there were many things that might sound fine in English but were either bad or ungrammatical in Russian. The second half was another instance of разговор.

Finally, Fridays we had аудирование (listening), in which we would prepare for a video segment by building up phrases that would be used, so we could practice speaking and listening to them, followed by actually watching the segment and taking a short test. I didn’t feel like this approach really helped too much, but it’s tough to say because overall my listening greatly improved, but it’s unclear what helped the most. Following this was another grammar class.

Because of the relatively few grammar classes, it felt like progress was slow (in that, the other classes were not necessarily teaching anything new per se but rather either practice or correction). It especially felt like I was making little progress each time I tried in vain to understand one of the lectures in Russian that followed the classes, or of course the incident with the police, but then a funny thing happened. At first it was that I could understand some of the lectures, which I thought was because the speaker was speaking unusually slowly or clearly (as was occasionally the case when we were spoken to in Russian by the staff). But then I noticed that I better understood others, too, such as people’s conversations on the street, or announcements, and so forth. The first week we had films, introduced by Timur (who had done so last year at the New York Institute), but the second, third, and fourth weeks were the New York Institute, and so these films resumed the fifth week of the program. It was amazing to experience the difference between that first week, in which I could barely understand what he said, and the fifth week, when I could follow almost all of what he said (although the films would have been really hard without subtitles). It was as though the entire country had flipped on the “enunciation switch” and that everyone else had changed how they spoke (which of course is silly), and as frustrating as it was until that point, so rewarding was it to finally feel progress. It wasn’t gradual, but more like a leap to the next level, and so until that point it was hopelessly frustrating to converse or transact anything because I could usually convey what I wanted, but would rarely understand what was said back to me. I definitely considered it easier to speak than to understand, because I could use what I knew, whereas what was coming back to me could be anything, and I had no control over it. Now I feel the reverse most of the time, as I feel less confident in the correctness of what I am saying but am finally able to understand much of what is said back to me. Of course, I’m not saying that now I can always understand what’s going on, or what people are saying to me, but it’s much better than it was and I can now at least get the gist most of the time, unless it’s a subject where I have a very bad vocabulary and most of the key words are lost on me. It’s also amazing as I realize all the words and phrases I’ve learned, which is not that surprising, but even so, I didn’t study any vocabulary per se, but I’ve still gained a lot by things that come up often; once I look them up, they just end up reinforcing themselves by use rather than self-repetition. It’s a shame that all this started coming about for me just towards the end of the program, but as I have three more weeks in Russia, there will certainly be plenty more opportunity for practice and hopefully progress.

By the way, Part 2

2007-08-12T12:59:00.000-04:00

Some other things we did through the program that I forgot:

- Tour of some of the metro stops; we were able to take pictures, which is usually not allowed for some reason (which the guide couldn’t explain; in Moscow you can)

- Blues concert on a boat trip through the Neva

Other random things:

I also saw the white Lexus with expired New York license plates again, which I’d seen last year. In addition there were some Massachusetts plates hanging around together. Weird.

One time I was walking in the rain, and two dogs started following me for a while, with one of them hanging out under my umbrella, until I got to the bus stop.

Speaking of umbrellas, I hear the song (now it’s raining more than ever, …) or one of its apparently innumerable derivatives far too often.

The poplar pollen has started flying through the streets again now that the rain has stopped and the weather has gotten warmer.

The times, they are a changing:

Most of our group in on facebook, and we befriended each other before the trip. When we met in person, many of us already recognized each other.

Among the souvenirs I’ve seen are magnets which represent a cameraphone taking a picture of some sort of monument (some kind of monument which would normally be the magnet)

I sometimes see jet skis cruising in the canals

There are a lot of damn car alarms near where I live, and the same one is almost always going off.

всё

Между прочим (By the way)

2007-07-31T09:22:00.000-04:00

Other happenings (now that I've given up on writing every day):

- One of the students fell ill with GI problems and had to fly home about 3 weeks ago; they think it might collitis, in combination with / brought on by / exacerbated by a bacterial infection (I havent heard anything more definite since she went home)

Some other interesting excursions:
- a Russian prison
- a "center of experimental fine arts", ie. pretty much a bunch of artists live here
- Rolling Stones concert - this was awesome, they had a giant stage in the middle of the palace square (which they built in a week), flanked by the Hermitage and Alexander column; unreal. (Side note: the director of the Hermitage really hates these things as it rattles all the paintings; during a previous concert of some sort one even fell!). Pictures and videos will help convey how cool it was
- had a boat trip on the river to see the bridges open in the middle of the night
- Tsarskoye Celo, another place that I'd gone last year but was still nice to see again and remember

And soon (8/5) we'll be leaving on a weeklong cruise to Petrozadovsk a bit further north (as well as a bunch of islands en route there and back).

7/20/07 - Who Watches the Watchers?

2007-07-31T08:34:00.000-04:00

Today was the closing of the New York Institute, its three weeks gone by as though they were days. Unfortunately the participants of our program could only take one seminar (out of the four) and were also unable to participate in most of the other offerings (lectures, films, discussion groups) but many of us met new people all the same, in our classes, and just in and around the university. I ended up hanging out with the group of Stony Brook study abroad students and some Croatian students fairly often, and it was cool to hang out with all the students and teachers together one last time during the closing ceremonies/party.

That night, on the way home (this all lasted until the late night), I had an encounter with the police. A police car pulled up next to me from behind and three policemen got out (Russian side note: although 90% of the time, the verbs of motion are incredibly annoying, in situations where you really do want to be specific, their annoying precision in everyday situations comes in handy, that is: Когда я шел домой, машина милиции подъехала ко мне, и три человека вышли). I still am pretty bad at understanding spoken Russian (though better), so I asked if they wanted to see my documents, which they confirmed. But then they said they were going to search me for drugs. So one was still looking through my passport, another through my wallet, and the third was frisking me, searching my pockets and backpack. I didn't think (or really know how to ask for) their badge numbers or anything like that, plus it was fairly hard to see and I was more-or-less just overwhelmed because they were all going through various things and I was trying to keep track of everything. I was mainly worried about my passport, wallet, and camera, and once they finished, they quickly left in the car and drove away. I thought I had everything, so I (stupidly) didn't make a note of the license plate (which I later realized is only four digits) but quickly after they left, I realized that my cell phone was no longer with me.

I was livid. I felt extremely angry, and betrayed. I swore to myself, cursing them, and this country (the irony of the previous post on politics is not lost on me, but reality tends to interfere with idealism). I decided at that point that I wasn't going to follow through with my plans after the program but rather would just go straight home after it and never come back to this wretched place. I asked, "Why am I here? Why am I here, trying to study their language and culture? So they can rob me?" and further swore to myself all the way home. The next day I was not quite so angry, and was not so sure I was really going to just call off all of my subsequent travels, and of course by now it's all fine. I'm not angry about the money (as should be clear already) and in fact would rather they'd have taken twice the phone's value in cash, because cash has no other value, but losing the phone was a huge inconvenience (though honestly I figured when I left there was about a 50/50 chance that the phone wouldn't be coming back with me). I only today (7/31) have a functional phone (barely: it's terribly designed, with every action requiring the traversal of seemingly a dozen menus, including simply reading or sending a message; it's really awful) and SIM-card again, because getting a new card with the same number was also a pain. I lost a bunch of numbers I had in it, e.g. that I'd just gotten that day, as well as a few others who I'd met in Russia, but all the same, it was a colossal nuisance. But more than that, it's just the fact that it hapened. Up until then, nothing bad had happened (more or less) but this put me back into touch with that inconvenience of reality. It also feels frustrating and helpless at times to still be so bad at communicating in this language.

Still, on the bright side, the phone was the least important of the things that could have been taken, and at least it taught me this lesson of caution here, while I still have the staff to help me (e.g. procure the new SIM card) rather than later on, when I'll be more-or-less completely on my own. Although you can hear stories about the rampant corruption, it really doesn't hit home until you actually have something happen to you. And then who do you turn to if the police itself is so corrupt? On that note, I also learned some new words and sayings, e.g. "Менты - козлы" (literally: cops are goats, but "goat" is slang for asshole.)

4th of July

2007-07-20T07:08:00.000-04:00

Today was of course, Independence Day. In the evening we had a classy little celebration as we took a small cruise on the canals/rivers where we celebrated with champagne and such. This contrasts with last year, when we celebrated by eating at Subway. This is now the second 4th of July in a row that I've celebrated here, and it is sort of funny to think that I'm celebrating it here in this country, with which we were such bitter enemies not that long ago.

Ballet (7/3) and Opera (7/16)

2007-07-20T06:53:00.000-04:00

Up until this trip, I hadn't ever been to any kind of ballet or opera, but I've had the opportunity to do so as part of this trip.

On 7/3 I saw a ballet at the Alexandrinsky Theater, a "modern" ballet based on Chekhov's The Seagull, which I haven't read, and so my understanding was fairly limited, though I got the gist. There was one part where everyone was break dancing to a hip-hop beat--that was fairly entertaining to watch, as it seemed fairly incongruous. For the most part I enjoyed it, but certainly I can live without it.

On 7/16 I saw La Traviata at the Mariinsky. The theater was certainly amazing, and I enjoyed the show, but to the same extent that I did the ballet. It was nice, but I can live without it. It was an amusing situation, that the performers are of course singing in one language I don't understand (Italian) while it is translated into another language I marginally understand (Russian). But I got the gist: Love and Death. Of course, that's simply the basis of pretty much any such drama.

It's hard to say which I liked more; both the ballet and the opera have a different appeal. The ballet is much simpler and concentrated on gracefulness, whereas the opera is a fairly rich, majestic production. I guess it's somewhat similar to the difference between a silent film and one with sound, in that you need to squeeze every bit of symbolism and artistry out of the former, since you don't have the "crutch" of dialog.

Вот.

Нити (threads)

2007-07-19T05:37:00.000-04:00

The other day we visited St. Isaac's Cathedral, which has a majestic collonade overlooking the entire city, offering a fantastic view of the entire skyline (we also visited the interior of the cathedral, which is equally incredible). Anyway, while walking around up on the collonade, the attendant (a guide/guard, who I suppose was there to make sure people who were taking pictures had an appropriate ticket, and to offer help / information to visitors), began chatting with me, asking me where I was from, what I studied, and so forth. He seemed somewhere between 50 or 60, and of Eastern descent (in that I mean: remember that Russia spans all of Asia as well). As we concluded he offered to sell me some playing cards as a souvenir, but I said "no thanks" and continued to amble around.

The previous day at the university, I was chatting with another member of the program. She was asking me about what I was studying back home, and so I had mentioned that I had just finished my degree in computer science / applied math. Naturally, she asked me what I was going to do upon returning home, and I told her the whole story about Microsoft, Applied Visions, and so forth. We didn't get to finish, because we needed to go to a lecture or something of the sort.

I continued to walk around the collonade, and happened to meet up with her again while there. I continued our conversation from yesterday, and asked her of her plans and such. She hadn't been able to make it to the orientation in Manhattan because she was taking her doctoral exams, so I asked her how that went, and was surprised when she said she hadn't passed them. She said she didn't think she would continue and try again with it, but wasn't sure what she wanted to do (she was studying economics). She said although she could find a good job in statistics or something of the like, she didn't know if she really wanted to, but said at this point it was really too hard to change her mind. I disagreed, saying that although it may be harder, it only gets harder still with the passing of time.

At this point, the attendant, who had been walking around, ended up coming by and began chatting with us some more. We learned that he had studied English for 5 years, and German for 12, but had never traveled anywhere to use either. He was working at St. Isaac's for the summer, but come September he would look for a new job, as he had been a coal miner up until this point. I regretted not buying his playing cards.

As I sat in the hotel in New York, debating what to do about Microsoft's offer, the main issue that drove my decision was the flexibility afforded by continuing to work close to home, such that if I decided to change my mind and profession, it was a simple matter of giving notice and saying my goodbyes, without the minor inconvenience of moving back across the country. The day of the flight I called Applied Visions from the hotel, and said I was in: I'm going to stay.

While at the airport, I called Microsoft, with my whole batch of scribbled notes outlining why I had decided as I did. A very effective recruiter, she had my head spinning as she effectively discussed and tried to assuage each of my objections. Of my newfound interest in the State Department: she said that as an international company, Microsoft could offer similar opportunities to travel. Of moving: I said that moving across the country was a somewhat different animal than a closer state. She parried by saying she'd try to set up something in Massachusetts and that we'd talk when I was settled here. Mentioning that I'd agreed to work for Applied Visions had slipped my mind; I was so mixed up at that point she could have had me believing my own mother was a turnip. So we agreed to be in touch.

What ties all this together are the contrasts of choices. I had a difficult time deciding what to do about Microsoft. A few years ago I would certainly have labeled it my dream job. But now I'm not sure what to do: keep programming? Pursue psychology? Foreign service? Math teacher (hence the applied math degree)? Police officer? All of these are opportunities that are reasonably available for me to pursue.

So choosing was difficult, but is it that difficult about choosing among a half dozen paths just out of college, compared to pursuing a Ph.D in a field, but not succeeding, and then deciding maybe you don't want to continue? And what is difficult about either of those situations when one is a coal miner, having studied languages for many years with little opportunity to really use them, when all of us here have a golden ticket to use our (widely varying) Russian skills for which I've paid in the neighborhood of, oh, nothing at all.

I feel spoiled. Either alternative is a relative luxury, and yet how can it be any less difficult than anything else? Even this coal miner's life is a relative luxury compared to those whose lives have been destroyed in New Orleans where we tried to help by a miniscule amount (or the Kansas tornado, the 2004 tsunami, the Iraq war, or any of the other innumerable catastrophes). It's all relative. Everyone just wants a satisfying life: for the less well-off, they might aspire to that which I have already achieved / been given, and would find satisfaction in accomplishing this. But what does that mean for me? That I should just be satisfied? Regret is just as strong as any other emotion, isn't it? I think it comes back to Maslow's hierarchy, wherein you can't satisfy higher needs (emotion, esteem, etc) until the lower ones are met (food, shelter, etc). But all the same, everyone wants to fulfill the entire pyramid. It's just that you are only looking up one level at a time.

So in the end, I finally responded to Microsoft's email. I said that I'd decided to stay on with Applied Visions for the time being, splitting my time between there and working with my psychology professor in her lab, getting experience lest I decide to pursue that direction. And if I decided I really do what to be a programmer, Microsoft will still be around (well, unless everyone keeps buying Macs). I am already having second thoughts about the decision, but I know that either alternative would have resulted in a little regret. So who knows. We'll see what happens.

О политике и президентах (Of Politics and Presidents)

2007-07-18T05:50:00.001-04:00

It has been interesing to discuss the differences and similarities in opinions of politics with Russians here. One part of our class specifically deals with "country studies" and the professor has been talking to us about the situation here before, during and after the Soviet Union. She considers Putin to be a hero, and Gorbachev and Yeltsin to be little more than stupid criminals.

Her negative opinion of Gorbachev was mostly due to the fact that he was still a loyal communist, doing the party's wishes, and that his misguided attempts at perestroika and glasnost' are what caused the breakup of the Soviet Union and the subsequent chaos. Although I obviously can only rely on what little I do know of these times, from what I gathered he was trying to walk a fine line between the hard-line communists, and the reality of the Soviet Union's intractibility. Although in the West he is well regarded, why should the general public care about idealistic things like "winning/losing the cold war" given the extremely tumultous period that followed? I asked her whether she was saying she preferred the Soviet era, but she responded that those and these times are both equally bad.

The effects of privatization during Yeltsin's time, and the extremely poor economy therein, are fairly obvious strikes against Yeltsin. For me, reading of his experiences visiting the West, and his subsequent horror at realizing how bad conditions were for the people in the Soviet Union / Russia, and his thoughts about being President (to paraphrase: "I feel exhausted, as though I've run a race of 10,000 miles, and although I may have made mistakes, it is very easy to criticize and offer advice when you are not the one who has to bear the responsibility."), I feel as though he was doing his best in wildly uncharted territory, and that of course at this point hindsight is 20/20, but then I have the luxury of not having to actually live through it. The professor felt he was an incompetent drunken criminal for the fiasco of privatization that took place.

It is easy to see from her point of view and sympathise with these positions somewhat, when one considers simply the economic situations of the times, and the consequences of Gorbachev's and Yeltsin's actions. She has spoken of her circumstances, of her inability to retire, as her pension would cover maybe half her rent, and certainly although Putin is not loved in the West, why should anyone in Russia care about that? Things are undeniably getting better for Russia under his presidency, so why should anyone care about his opinion outside when they have their own country and circumstances to worry about for now. Moreover, she said that it's very easy for other countries to give advice, but Russia is a unique country with its enormous size and very unbalanced population density, and that it is through Russia's own past experiences that it has learned (the hard way) how to effectively run the country, and that other countries' experiences and advice are appreciated, but not always applicable.

It is interesting to note that it is due in part to the chilly relationship between the US and Russia that we are even here on this program. It's also been interesting to note a lot of similarities between the countries' respective situations, especially with immigration, where there is a similar debate about illegal immigrants who take low-paying jobs and allegedly don't pay their due.

The opinions on Bush have been interesting as well. At a bar one time there were these two wackos who, to summarize, were saying "F Bush, Russia will be ruling the world" and other such silliness. But another time, when I was crossing the street (jaywalking), a police officer was chastising me and asked where I was from, and when I said I was from the US, he said "Ah, George Bush" and basically just told me to get going.

But whatever the political situation, what relevance does it have for us, as the general public? This was a nice discussion I had with two other people at the bar another day. We were commenting on the chilly relations between the US and Russia, but said that it makes no difference to us. We all just want to live in peace, do our work, live our lives, and that regular people just want to be friends with each other regardless of whatever nonsense is going on between governments, which has no bearing on us. What relevance does this scuffle over the missile defense program have to a few regular people chatting in a bar?

Monday, 7/2 - NYI Begins Again

2007-07-17T05:35:00.000-04:00

Today was the first day of the New York Institute program. This was the main program I attended last year, which consists of four seminars, and many lectures, discussions, and film series (this program is in English). This year we are only attending one seminar; I am taking a seminar with John Bailyn on puzzles in Russian syntax. The opening party was in the evening, and I saw many familiar faces, including Blake, a roommate from last year who's been here since February, Katya, the Stony Brook/NYI study-abroad guide, Nina Kazanina, who taught a seminar I took last year, Konstantine Klioutchkine, who taught another seminar last year, and much of the staff as well as a few familiar students, including one we had dubbed "Debra Messing" last year. They said there wasn't enough champagne for everyone but that turned out to be quite far from the truth...

Sunday, 7/1 - Peterhof Redux

2007-07-17T05:24:00.000-04:00

Today we went to Peterhof. Having finally bought an umbrella yesterday (Saturday), the weather has since been perfect. It is a marvelous place, a giant park filled with fountains and a large palace. It was a great trip, but a little sad because it was one of our main excursions at the end of our trip last year and there were a lot of memories. I walked around a bit where we walked on the beach and in the water, and remembered Alex's shoes floating in the water like boats, as they were completely waterproof, and Alex and I skipping rocks (and he got me in the knee with one). Fumiko and Tanya wading in the water, and Fumiko finally falling and getting soaked, and Tanya continuing to facilitate this. Anna taking a dip in the fountain and then hurriedly leaving because she was worried about the would-be fine. Fortunately my new camera has a vastly improved battery life; throughout most of the day trips last year it would die about halfway through. One might guess that, having been to Peterhor last year I wouldn't take too many pictures this year, but no. I took another 100-150 or so I think.

After Peterhof we finally had the excursion from Monday that was canceled. I decided to go even though it was most of the same stuff I'd seen last year, but it ended up being worth it as we went up to Smolny Cathedral which had a nice view (though not as nice as St. Isaac's). I didn't know that the cathedral was never actually used as such; one of the builders committed suicide near the end of its construction. It's now used only as a concert hall.

First week - Saturday 6/30

2007-07-17T05:17:00.000-04:00

For today, there was a choice between a Rock Festival (Окна Открой) and some sort of Medieval Festival in another town a few hours away. The Medieval Festival sounded interesting if only to see the town, but I really didn't want to get up early, and decided to go to the rock festival. This turned out to be more interesting that I expected, as it was interesting to see this part of Russian life and culture. After we left the rock festival (there were 5 of us) we hung out in the park and drank some champagne and such. I reawakened my ice cream gluttony, eating 7 throughout the day. Total cost: oh, about $5. We hung out near the Mosckovskiy metro station (a large monument to Lenin stands there, and there are fountains and such; it was from here that we took a van to Tsarskoe Celo last year). I also checked out the 'monument to the defenders of Leningrad' or whatever it's called, which is a large monument to the 3-year siege of Leningrad during World War II. I was happy to finally see this, as I'd merely gone past it in travels last year.

NB: the mullets are unisex, by the way

First week - Friday, 6/29

2007-07-09T11:39:00.000-04:00

It was decided that on Fridays, in lieu of a lecture, we'd have an "airing of grievances" in English. The best part of this was as follows:

Andrew: "That first lecture, the economics one, that Nikita Maslennikov--"
Anna Maslennikova: "Yes, he is my husband"
Andrew: "--was absolutely great, I enjoyed it a lot!"

This was of course the lecture that I mentioned from Monday which no one really understood very well. After the laughter died down we more seriously discussed the difficulties including grammar, which evidently was a difficulty for all the groups.

After the meeting we had a tour around Peter and Paul Fortress, and inside the Peter and Paul Cathedral, which was nice, as it was something I didn't get to see very much (except insofar as it's a large landmark, visible from most of the city), and after the tour we went to a concert there by a male choir which I enjoyed. It was actually in a room inside the fortress wall (it was moved, to hilarious effect, at the last minute). It was packed, and as I left, they handed out these small laminated placards (the size on the order of a few postage stamps) which read "АНТРАКТ" / "ANTRAKT" in Latin and Cyrillic. I thought this was the name of the choir, until next week when we were at the theater, when I asked someone how to say "intermission," and, you guessed it, it's "antrakt" is Russian, at which point I realized that it was probably a reentrance ticket. Why they felt the need to write the Russian word in the Latin alphabet, rather than giving the English word, is beyond me.

First week - Wednesday, 6/27

2007-07-09T11:31:00.000-04:00

Wednesday
Today we were going to watch a film with Polly Gannon, but the sound wouldn't work. Our cultural excursion of the day was to "watch"/listen to Verdi's Requiem at the philharmonic. I like Mozart's better but I nevertheless enjoyed it; it's very different to listen to music by oneself than to sit and listen to it performed). After that, I walked around a bit near the dorms where I lived last year, eating dinner at the bliny place where the same two guys still worked. It was bittersweet to see the familiar sights/people but being there just by myself.

Random note: the mullet is strangely in style here now

First week - Tuesday, 6/26

2007-07-09T11:08:00.000-04:00

Today we started our Russian-language classes; they run from 9:30 to about 1:15 in two 1:30 sections (пары). My first class was grammar; this went well, as everything was in Russian in spite of the fact that about half the group doesn't know any grammatical terms in Russian. We spent about 10 minutes figuring out that we were talking about adjectives (the teacher doesn't speak English, but rather only Russian and German, so we had to talk around everything that was unclear). I didn't learn much grammar (I'm quite familiar with adjectives by this point) but at least it was good practice in listening and speaking. We were given a handout on participles to read for the next class, so that at least held some promise. Of course, the handout (evidently from a textbook) was only mildly useful, as the excerpt explained everything about participles (types, endings) except when to use which type, which was kind of the important part.

The second class was phonetics, which was fairly interesting. We were given a booklet of songs (Не фонетика - песня! / "Not phonics - songs!"), each of which goes over some sort of phonetic device; this one was called "Shi-Zhi-Zhi". We listened and sang it to the tune of the teacher playing the guitar. The chorus goes "A zhuzhi zhuzhat: zhu zhu zhu zhu zhu" (The beetles are buzzing: zhu zhu zhu...etc) and so on. For me though, the hardest thing is rolling the "r" in various places.

After lunch, John Bailyn gave a lecture on Russian which was fairly interesting, and went over some interesting interactions between various letters vis-a-vis softness/hardness (e.g. in English: due vs. do have soft/hard 'd' sounds), and spelling rules.

After this lecture we watched a film (introduced by Timur, who introduced many films last year), called "Man with a moviecamera" which was a silent film which was sort of about everyday life. When that finished we split off and went to various restaurants; I went with the Sbarro group, not surprisingly.

Writing the English takes enough time, so I'll just skip the Russian journal entries

First week - Monday 6/25

2007-07-09T10:51:00.000-04:00

On Monday we took a placement exam, obviously to determine into which groups we would be divided. Last year's test was a short one, maybe an hour or so (if that), but this one was a fairly grueling 3 hours, with 130 questions, including 3 listening sections (given via short video clips). Participles (причастие) were the last things we looked at (but only briefly) in class at home, but they were the main thing I remember not knowing here; it felt like half the questions involved them. The room was also hot, so all-in-all it was quite exhausting.

After that we had lunch, which was tough because they just brough a soup, salad and main dish (no choice) and I am very picky. This it "бизнесс-ланч" ("business lunch") is offered to us every day after morning classes (пары) but I've stopped bothering and go to another cafeteria in the building.

After lunch, we had a lecture given by Nikita Maslennikov, who had given a lecture last year in English (the "cannonball" lecture, if you were there). This year he gave a lecture on economics. It was in Russian: fast, terse, Russian, with lots of economic terms. This was hopeless for me to understand (and few others had much better luck). I was already sort of worn out from the test, and this didn't help. After that we were to have an excursion around the city but that didn't play out due to rain.

We're "obliged" (recommended) to keep a Russian journal, so here is that rendition of the day's events:
Сегодня мы написали эксамен, который был очень трудный. Вообше я знал мало о причастиях. Я очень устал, но после обеда (который мне не очень понравился, потому что, я, к сожелению - разборчив), у нас была лекция на русском языке по экономике. Этого было очень трудно понимать. Я очень устал. У нас было бы эксурсия, но она не состоялась, потому что, шёл дождь.

To Russia...

2007-07-03T09:25:00.000-04:00

It seemed that once we left the ground at Frankfurt, our group turned on the "Russian switch"; up until that point no one had really been speaking any Russian to each other but from that moment on, we were Russian-only, even among ourselves.

Saturday evening, we arrived at Pulkovo. In contrast to last year, we did indeed have a jetway, as opposed to simply stairs on the tarmac, but there were many familiarities. I missed the exhiliration that I had last year when we were approaching the airport, remarking at the incredible changes that had transpired in the last 10-20 years such that it was even possible to be in this strange land with which we had been enemies for so long. This year seemed more routine.

There was the same familiar 4-note chime followed by announcements over the PA system, but in contrast to last year, the line to customs was shorter and the weather more cool. Anna Maslennikova and Julia Vorobiova, some familiar staff from last year, met us at Pulkovo, although this time it was only in Russian. Те же люди, другой язык. My luggage fortunately made it this time, and rather than the rickety van to some archaic, beat-up dormitory, we had a large coach bus taking the group to the "Petro Sport Hotel" which was pretty luxurious by any standard. Keys were not a problem, no one was living in my spot, the bathrooms weren't repulsive, I didn't need to take dysfunctional elevators; it was all so banal in a way. We had phones this year, either from home or purchased for us, and SIM cards waiting as well so we were all able to call each other (more-or-less) as opposed to banging on iron doors, 9 floors away.

We had dinner at the hotel, and breakfast on Sunday morning (a buffet), and after that we had an orientation (in Russian) and then checked out and met our families. Mine is a single woman, on the young side of middle-aged, with a young daughter who is away for the summer in Moscow. We chatted over some wine (in Russian; she doesn't speak English anyway), and then bought some breakfast for me (cereal) and had some dinner (frozen pizza). Trying to understand all the Russian has been very difficult, as I've had very little practice and have (apparently) a small vocabulary. My room is fairly large and comfortable, having been recently remodeled. I have a sofa/bed. One point of amusement for the Russian speaking among you, is that the bathroom's toilet paper (which exists, by the way), is of the brand "Мягкий знак," the logo of which is indeed "ь".

Last year I lived on Vasilievsky Island, where the university is located, about 20 minutes by bus, the stops for which were conveniently across from the dorm and university. This year I live across the Neva on the mainland (well, actually another small island off the mainland). It's about 35 minutes on foot, as unfortunately the only bus route that goes in the right direction is about 15 minutes away from the apartment and 10 minutes away from the university, so it's not worth doing. The first week saw heavy rain, and I didn't have an umbrella, so that was unpleasant.

I go across the Lieutenant Schmidt bridge, which is still being reconstructed (there is a parallel bridge right next to it, which I think is only temporary, as they can't afford to close the bridge entirely). This is the western bridge, which has four large towers, for those went last year. At first this was really difficult since crossing the streets to reach it was treacherous as there is no traffic stop. Now it's less difficult as I can walk across the bridge that the cars are not driving over.

It's been interesting to see the results of the many constructions that were in progress last year, such as the Neva-facing facade of the Hermitage, and some roadwork on the university embankment, which now has a median which one can walk on or stop on when crossing the street.

It's been very busy, as we have Russian classes each day, plus lectures in Russian, plus other cultural programs, but I'll talk all about all that.

From Manhattan to Frankfurt

2007-06-28T13:20:00.000-04:00

The program began with an orientation in Manhattan on June 23rd, so June 22nd we all arrived (from all over the country) and stayed in the New York Helmsley, which was a fairly nice place. I walked around and explored as, although I live fairly close to Manhattan, I haven't really been there often (and not at night), so I saw Times Square, and all that kind of thing. There was a really fantastic street artist that made cityscapes with spraypaint. That was really amazing to see, especially when he made the buildings; it was difficult to believe even as I watched it with my own eyes. He used a paint scraper vertically to make the vertical edges of the buildings and scraped to the side a little bit in order to make the windows, and all that sort of thing; it's tough to describe.

The flight to Frankfurt on Lufthansa was good, though I mourned the lack of seat-back entertainment a bit. The flight left late from Kennedy, of course, but we had a 3-4 hour layover, so in contrast to last year in London, where leaving an hour late meant the 1:15 layover turned into a 15 minute dash, there was no problem this time. There was a really great flight attendant--we were on a 747 (a giant plane) and so some of us were in a different section (still coach) from the others, and I wanted to go to the back to see some of them. The attendant of that section pretended not to let me, and when he did, I said, "So I don't need to offer you a bribe then?" He asked what "bribe" meant,ra so I explained that it was when you paid someone to bend the rules, and he said "Oh, yes only on the way back." Later on when I returned to my seat, after breakfast he randomly brought me a warmed banana-nut muffin and said it was my "birthday present" (it wasn't my birthday, of course). Later on he brought me some airplane-shaped fruit snacks, saying they were not just for children. The person sitting next to me tried to ask about the frequent flier program, but they were about to serve another round of snacks, and he was apologizing. "I'm sorry, I need to go, they are serving snacks again," he said, and then whispered, "they are so desperate without me" and pointed back where there was indeed another flight attendant motioning hurriedly. Later on some of the people who were sitting in his section told me that he was just as jovial with all of them throughout the flight and was really great.

Introit

2007-06-20T17:32:00.001-04:00

I'm Mark, though I imagine you already know who I am. I'm a recent Stony Brook graduate, about to embark on a trip to Russia and Europe, which will probably span several months. I'll figure I'll give some background:

Our story starts in Fall of 2004, when I took an introductory Russian class. No, I don't have any Russian heritage, and no, I don't really know why I wanted to take Russian. I guess part of it is because I was always into James Bond/spy/action movies, and part of it was wanting to study a language that doesn't use the latin alphabet (I took several years of Spanish) and I always was interested in the weird-looking alphabet (specifically the Я and И which are so often used here for no reason, e.g. TETЯIS - I'll save you the trouble, they're "ya" and "i").

The next semester (Spring 2005) I couldn't continue because of scheduling, but I was satisfied with my little bit of knowledge. In the Spring, someone came into one of my classes and was talking about a study abroad program in Russia for the summer. I was intrigued, but I couldn't see myself actually doing it. I was not much of a traveller (Disney World was mostly it, though I also went to Washington state to visit family one time) and couldn't picture myself going through with such a crazy thing.

Well, fast-forward to the following Spring (2006): my friend Kim is bugging me in computer architecture (just kidding...), but then mentions a study abroad program for Linguistics (her minor) which she really wants to do, which is none other than the program in St. Petersburg I had decided against the previous year. She eventually talks me into at least talking to the professor who runs it (John Bailyn) and filling out the forms. A funny thing happened, though-once I started taking the steps to prepare for it, the inertia of not doing it turned into inertia of inevitably doing it, so once I started filling in the forms, I was pretty much committed. Microsoft had taken an interest in each of us, and Kim started having second thoughts, but I said I was going to Russia regardless of what happened (so Microsoft was postponed to the following year - we'll get to that another day).

So off we went, and the first day or two really sucked! Kim and I took British Airways and had a stopover in London Heathrow. I had a sinus infection, so the flight was miserable and I couldn't sleep. The flight from JFK (a night flight) left late, and so our leisurely 1:15 layover turned into them madly bussing us to the other terminal. We were very worried we'd miss our layover since we didn't have contact info for the person who was to meet us at the airport in Russia. Fortunately we made the flight, so we get to St. Petersburg (now the following afternoon), and of course there is no luggage. Our attempts to handle this situation ourselves didn't meet with success. After probably an hour of waiting/asking for help/etc, we went out and met Katya, who was meeting us, and had her help us out.

(Now, I had been warned of this possibility and told to pack accordingly, such that I could live with only my carry-on luggage if necessary. I thought I packed well enough, but then discovered silly little things that I'd missed, e.g. a toothbrush and toothpaste.)

So we are taken to the dorms where we will be staying. We wait around a while for the lady who takes care of the keys and linens. (I wish I'd known there were linens, as I wasted an entire suitcase on bedding, a pillow, and so on.) My room is on the 18th (top) floor, and I meet my roommate Blake, a fellow participant from Stony Brook. However, it seems the Russian student in my spot hasn't really moved out yet. His stuff is all over the bed, and I can't get a key because he still has it. Terrific. This means I pretty much can't go anywhere without being locked out. Of course at this point, all I want to do is sleep, as I've been up for about 36 hours I think, am still sick, and without my luggage. All the participants' rooms are scattered throughout the building; Kim ended up on the 9th floor. I have no way of contacting anyone short of banging on doors, not that I can leave my room alone since I can't lock or unlock it. The facilities themselves were not what I was used to either, specifically the bathroom, and in the "kitchen," our "suitemates"--actually a family--have taken over the fridge with their food. All-in-all I felt isolated and quite miserable.

The next day at orientation, the director on the Russian side of things, Anna Maslenikova, reassured all of us quite effectively by enumerating all the stuff we were all feeling and assuring us it would pass. The luggage arrived that day too, so that made things better as well. The rest of the month was fantastic, and most of us became great friends. Over this past New Year's, four of us (strangers before the program) went on a vacation to Prague. Over Spring Break, several of us went on a trip to New Orleans to volunteer.

I continued studying Russian in the year following the trip, and had thoughts of going back on the same program. I asked Professor Bailyn about my options, and he told me of another program sponsored by the government that he would be running this year, so I applied to that instead, and was accepted. This program spans a month and a half, and I decided that while there I wanted to visit some of the people I'd met at the program the previous year, so after the program ends I will continue to travel through Russia a bit until the visa expires. I also decided to travel through Europe while I'm "in the neighborhood" so I actually have no idea when I'll be back, but figure around October or so.

So that's most of the backstory!

Word of the day: Россия (Rossiya - Russia)

Real Life and Fantasy Life

2007-06-20T17:29:00.000-04:00

So, very soon I leave for Russia again for a few months, and then I'll be traveling through Europe - I don't know where, nor for how long (I'm planning--to use the term loosely--to travel westward from Russia by train along the southern part of Europe: Kiev, Krakow, Budapest, Vienna, etc, then Rome and Spain). I'm looking forward to it, but of course I've yet to pack. So that's the fantasy life; I'll be gone probably though at least October. Thanks for all your well-wishes!

And then there's the question of what to do when I come back. I am currently working at a software company in Northport, Applied Visions, as an intern. I also took the Suffolk County Police Exam about two weeks ago. But I also have thoughts of pursuing research in psychology, which is an interest I picked up at the study abroad program last year; I took another class afterwards and have been talking a lot with the professor. I also was contemplating teaching Math (I double-majored in Applied Math to hedge my bets in that direction as well).

A few weeks ago I flew out to Seattle to interview with Microsoft (continuing the process from last year). As though I didn't have enough things to worry about (though I use "worry" loosely as well), they (finally) just got back to me with a terrific offer, except it means I would need to move out to Washington (the far one). Do I want to leave everyone I know and pursue a great career opportunity? Such is the real life. I know that it's such a depressing story to have a great job offer, but it's "no bed of roses; no pleasure cruise". I really don't know what to do. On the other hand, if anyone wants to go in with me on large lottery ticket investments, it would sure be nice to just fall into wealth and not have to make a decision.

Word of the day: До Свидания (do svidaniya - goodbye)