Kafkaz

Hey folks,

I'm getting on a train tomorrow and taking the 23 hour journey down to Kislovodsk, Caucasus. We've got a heavy schedule of hiking (Mt. Elbrus included), biking, horseback riding, and spa-ing. It looks to be a good time!

That being said, I'm not sure how often I'll be able to comment on the blog for the next week, but it's a sacrifice I'm willing to make!

Apropos nothing, thanks for your patience and for all the wonderful feedback. I know it may not seem like it from my slapdash and haphazard posts, but I do put time and effort (that could be well spent mentally preparing for another night of cultural immersion) into trying to give you guys a small taste of life here in the Motherland. If even one person reading this blog discovers something new about this wonderful country or is convinced to come visit, then I've succeeded in my goal for this blog. So, dobre den!

Chris

October 28th

Well, I just returned from a wonderful evening with some of our Cadet friends. Myself and three other Americans were invited to have dinner and drinks with a Cadet we met in our military class and his girlfriend in their dorm. I’m not going to lie, that isn’t exactly my cup of tea, especially because neither of the Russians spoke any English. But I decided to go, and man was that a good decision. Our Cadet friend, Viktor, brought his girlfriend and her two roommates, Kristina and Katya (from Moldovia). No one spoke each others language, but we managed to make small talk. It was incredible, keeping up conversation amongst strangers is difficult when everyone understands each other, but we managed. It was incredible, practicing good manners, opening wine bottles, making toasts to the host, all things that I didn’t see myself doing for another three years at least. Anyways, the dorm was quite nice, about your average American college dorm (size wise, etc.). We had homemade borsch, salad, and some sort of “pasta” that was spread on black bread. It was all delicious and it just made the atmosphere all the more pleasant. As soon as we’d polished off the wine, we started toasting (something of a Russian obsession, it’s a ritual I go through here almost every night I go out, but this was the first time I’d ever been a guest in someone’s place). We were drinking samogan, or homemade vodka from an unlabled former water bottle. It was 60% alcohol and sure tasted like it. Vitka’s first advice was to not breathe after drinking until the chaser (pickles or juice) had gone down otherwise you’d burn your throat. It was potent stuff, but I stayed well within my limit. I can’t even recall talking about anything legitimate all night, but I think we just told stories in our broken Russian (trust me; between us we have plenty of stories). After dinner (and finishing the bottle of samogan) we headed to another Russian Cadet’s place in the center of town. He’s from Voronezh, so he lives with his parents. He lives in your average Soviet looking apartment, but when you walk inside, it’s like a different world. I’ve seen nice apartments here, but this place was certainly bigger and better furnished in every sense than our house back home. It was incredible. So we played cherades well into the night and then meandered home around 4 AMish. All in all, a wonderful night and a great way to spend an evening!

Almost forgot: We played Russian Twister (can we say good vocab practice? I'll never mix up right hand red and left foot blue ever again...) and danced well into the night. Goodness me...

October 26th

If you click on the photo it enlarges, I believe. This particular photo, I feel, is quite impressive and haunting. It's a statue from the massive war memorial in Volgograd, described earlier.

One of our teachers, Raisa Andreevna, is an older lady who speaks perfect French and Russian (it’s always priceless when she tries to define a word we don’t know in French, as if that will help. Every once in awhile, it’s a cognate, but it’s usually just ridiculous). One day we randomly got on the subject of her family and it turns out she’s got quite a story. She was born in the late 1940’s when her mother was 50 and her father was 54. She was, to quote her, the “whoops” baby. Her older brother had been killed in the war on the drive to Berlin, but it’s her father’s story which is so incredible. He was serving in the Red Army when the Germans came pouring over the border in summer 1941. He was almost immediately captured and sent as a prisoner of war to Buchenwald, the camp better known as a concentration camp for victims of the Holocaust. There he worked as a slave laborer in the fields around the town of Buchenwald. He would tell stories of days when it would rain ash from the nearby crematoriums. Finally, in 1945 the camp was liberated by the horrified Americans and the skeletal Russian POWs who had miraculously survived four years of captivity were sent immediately to American medical facilities behind the front lines. This would prove most unfortunate for Raisa’s dad and his comrades. Comrade Stalin, terrified that those Soviet soldiers who’d a) been cowards enough to surrender in the first place, and b) had seen the decadence beyond the Iron Curtain, decided that those who’d interacted with the Western Powers needed to be “rehabilitated.” So, sure enough, Raisa’s dad, two months out of a German slave labor camp was on his way, on foot, up the Great Siberian Road to another slave labor camp. There he toiled for three years, unable even to let his family know that he was alive. He was eventually released and returned home to Voronezh. It’s these stories, experience nearly first hand by so many of the older generation here that reminds me of why people still feel so passionately about the “Great Patriotic War.” Anyways, while I’m on crazy war stories, the Ambassador’s father’s is another incredible one. This man, an American, was an junior LT in the 82^nd Airborne. He jumped into Normandy and in the ensuing battle, was wounded and captured by the Germans. He was taken to a camp in western Poland and used as slave labor. Miraculously, this man made his escape, but went east to the fast approaching Russians, hoping to be sent back to the front lines with his unit in France. He was indeed sent back to the front lines, only as a Private in the Red Army. The Russians he ran into refused to believe his story and, rather than shoot him as a spy, used him as a rifleman in one of their depleted units. So, not speaking a word of Russian (not uncommon, as the units of the Red Army were filled with the hundreds of minorities from the fringes of the USSR) he fought as a rifleman for four months, taking part in the Battle of Berlin among others. Upon the completion of the war, he was immediately shipped to Moscow and was subjected to intense “questioning” as to his story and background. After several months, he was finally returned to a surprised America who’d thought he was dead for quite some time. Naturally, the current Ambassador to Russia has quite a bit of cache right off the bat simply because his father took part in the drive for Berlin.

October 23rd (sorry it's been so long...)

The picture means nothing... Just a flipped car. No big deal!

Well, I’m procrastinating on doing my homework right now, which involves me reading a text, summarizing it, then memorizing my summary. This would be difficult under normal circumstances, but the Russian language has a knack for making this more difficult than it would be in English… As I was desperately searching for a way to get out of the tedium that is translating a text on different ways newspapers and magazines are distributed (did you know that you can buy newspapers from newspaper racks? Wow… {Ok, I guess I’m selling this a little short, it is interesting that there is no “delivery boy” system here, there is no such thing as the paper on the front step, even the daily papers come by mail}) I realized that I haven’t discoursed on the Russian educational system yet. Essentially, the whole thing is guided by the saying mavterania mat uchenia which means “repetition is the mother of learning.” Rote memorization is king here and we are its devoted servants. I’m still on the fence as to the effectiveness of such a system, but Russians swear by it (of course, they also swear by Stalin so, cum grano salis). One of the groups of Americans here, who are convinced that memorization and repetition is about the stupidest thing ever, tried to formant a revolution against this method. They were soundly defeated by the fact that their teacher (who speaks no English) well, speaks no English and couldn’t understand why they wouldn’t want to memorize texts every night. So that was something of an epic fail… Of course, in the non-foreigner part of the University, classes go a little something like this (this is straight from the horse’s mouth, because this is something of a collage town and usually you can’t swing a dead cat without hitting a student at one of the many Universities and Academies here): the professor lectures straight for about an hour and a half, the students copy down every word he says (there is an introductory class for foreigners that focuses solely on abbreviations that allow to write as fast as someone speaks). You then take this text and memorize it almost word for word, because the test is the professor asking you pertinent questions and you answer with the appropriate patch of text from the lecture. The closer to word for word you are, the better the grade. Odd… Anyways, another difference in the system here is the borderline reverence with which students regard their teachers. When the teacher enters the room, everyone stands and one also must stand to ask a question. And when walking the halls, all the students will greet teachers as they pass. I imagine this wouldn’t be quite so shocking in America, but here the contrast with behavior on the street makes a respectful "hello" about the equivalent gesture to prostration or kao-taoing.

Voronezh Moment of the Day

We were out at one of our favorite bars last night when the call came out for an arm wrestling competition. One broken arm later (I wish I was kidding. I almost got sick watching/hearing it so I’m not going to go into detail here. Actually, that’s a story in and of itself. The injured guy was bellowing for an ambulance which was promptly called. The bar then gave the man an icepack and about 200 ml of vodka. Russian home remedies are the best… Anyways, ironically, the ambulance didn’t arrive for another 2 hours {it’s really uncomfortable to try and enjoy oneself with a guy with a broken arm moaning at the next table}. This is ironic because one of the bar’s signature shots is called skoraya ni uspila or “The ambulance didn’t arrive” {not to be confused with “the ambulance is on the way”} which consists of half a beer into which is dropped a flaming shot of half absinth and half vodka. It tastes like partially digested licorice…) Ok, I’m sorry for my writing style. I’m not huge on the whole “proofreading” thing, or even deciding what I’m going to write beforehand. Thus, these posts are essentially a product of what is going through my mind right now (thus all of the asides in parentheses) and I’m sure reading this can be an often tumultuous and perilous journey, fraught with confusion and chaos (or not, I really just wanted to use the word fraught there). Anyways, while I understand this may be difficult for all/some of you, I am utterly unable (read: unwilling) to change my writing style. Wow, where was I going with all this? Anyways, I think the story I was trying to tell was that one of the drinking games I saw being played was checkers with shots (white pieces: vodka and black pieces: brandy). It was fun to watch (once you managed to drown out the moaning man next to you) and quite an experience. Additionally, forcing yourself in on a game of Russian charades is a great way to improve your vocabulary and make new friends.

October 18th

I was sitting down to write an entry about the lackluster lifespan in Russia when my hozyaika’s daughter came in and asked me if I wanted to go to the forest. I said “Why not? When?” Now was the reply. So I dropped what I was doing and joined the family in their brand new Volkswagen for an excursion to the countryside. We drove about 15 miles outside the city and found ourselves on a dirt road winding through tiny ramshackle dachas on small plots of land. There were all manner of elderly folks out gardening and planting and harvesting their plots. It was explained to me that in 1988 the harvest in Russia had failed, as it had so many times during the communist era. There were no vegetables, cheese, fruit, or milk in the stores and everyone was fending for themselves. Ironically there was no shortage of meat, but it wasn’t enough to feed everyone in a well balanced manner. So, Gorbachev, as part of his perestroika plan decided that those members of society who weren’t contributing directly to the production of goods should be given plots of land with which to feed themselves in order to take pressure off the productive members of society. Thus, all the professors at Russia’s Universities were given small plots of land outside of town. Sure enough, my host dad and mom, both being professors (geophysics and geology respectively), received their plots of land outside the city for free. Of course, now in a market society this land is quite valuable, so it really was a great “investment.” Amusingly, because of the way this land distribution was carried out, as we drove along the streets of this little village, Olga Arkeedevna was pointing out houses saying, “and there lives Professor of Geography So and So, and here is Professor of German So and So digging up her potatoes, etc. etc.” It was really quite an otherworldly experience. I can only imagine all of my college professors tending to their plots of land on the weekend after a long week of lectures. Next to our plot of land was a kalina tree. These red berries are something of a national symbol and also the subject of one of the most popular Russian songs of all time. So, I was given a pair of clippers and a bucket and I began to pick these berries. They smell horrible and apparently taste worse, but as Olga Arkeedevna explained to me, “When I was a child, my father loved these berries. In the 40’s and 50’s, when there was simply no food to be had, his family would have whole meals of only these berries. I can’t stand them myself but I pick them in his memory.” After that we went for a walk in the woods, mostly just to enjoy the weather but also to search for mushrooms, a pastime of Gena’s that I’ve mentioned earlier. Apparently it was a very dry summer so there were no mushrooms to be had, but the forest was very beautiful. It was a birch forest, with the white barked trees reaching to the sky and a layer of leaves and short grass covering the ground. The air was cool and crisp as we wandered through the trees and I was really enjoying myself. I was in the meantime getting a biology and mythology lecture to rival the best of them. I was told about plants that can heal cuts, plants that can bind wounds, how ferns work and how old moss and lichens are. I also found out that a sharpened birch branch can kill a vampire (good to know…). At one point, I came across a large pit in the ground where it looked like a tree had fallen recently. I asked if that was the case and the answer was shocking. I was told that it was the remnants of earthworks from a German defensive position in these woods north of the city during the battle here in 1943. I was skeptical, considering this was a public forest with no indication at all of its historic significance. Five yards further on there was a slit trench and next to it, an identical pit, about three feet deep and six feet across, with a sloped entrance facing away from where the Russian lines would have been. As we continued on, I saw whole defensive positions of these earthworks in almost pristine condition except for the timber coverings which had disappeared in the intervening 65 years. It was frighteningly eerie as I wandered through this silent beautiful forest imagining the huddled German troops waiting for the final assault of the Russians that would begin their long retreat back to Berlin. Apparently, these positions are so plentiful in the battle scarred Russia that this one didn’t even warrant special consideration after the all the bones and weapons had been collected (a recent undertaking here in Voronezh). All in all, a wonderful and enlightening experience.

October 15th

Normally the state of disrepair of this city is merely a minor inconvenience. You eventually get used to having to look at your feet every step of the way so that you don’t die in a chasm in the sidewalk. The women here impress me every day with their seemingly superhuman ability to walk in this veritable jungle gym with five inch stiletto heels. I’ve heard of suffering for fashion, but this takes it to a new level completely. Anyhow, this pitiable state of things here that manages to suffice on a day to day basis has one fatal flaw: rain. Last night it rained for about 5 hours and this city slid into the 13^th Century. I always wondered why so many houses have piles of dirt out front and today I realized why. These giant piles exist to provide the omnipresent mud that coats everything and gets everywhere, running in giant mud rivers down streets or forming giant mud lakes that encompass the entirety of the sidewalk forcing pedestrians onto the road to get splashed with mud from passing cars. It’s fun to see where construction workers covered up their oil spills with sand because after it rains, these sand piles have fun incandescent streams of mud emanating from their core like some sort of demented rainbow. The natives are pro at managing to avoid the mud and I’ve seen people perform virtual miracles of gymnastic ability to avoid getting sucked into the muck. Not that I’m sure muck is the best way to describe it. There’s a huge piece of sidewalk missing on my way to school that’s filled with dirt. In dry weather, it’s annoying at best, in wet weather it’s become a festering pit of quicksandy doom. Have I painted a rosy enough picture yet? But despite all this, the weather continues to be simply lovely. I’m working on exact temperatures, but I’ve yet to master the mental back flips needed to comprehend the Russian numbers and then convert that to some sort of passable Fahrenheit that means anything to me. It’s been warm though, which is especially sweet considering that Germany got 20 cm of snow yesterday and Moscow and St. Petersburg are cold, windy, and rainy. That being said, Sperry Topsiders may easily have constituted the worst shoe choice in the history of poor footwear choices and my Russian shoes have the dubious distinction of being the only pair of shoes in the world that actually draw moisture out of the air and ground and use it to soak my feet while walking. Luckily I have a pair of waterproof shoes from home. To be honest the advertisement for these shoes should just be a picture of Voronezh after a rainstorm with the words, “The world is your playground. Only this playground has a solid coating of oil and mud that’ll ruin your other shoes. Buy Timberlands today: Voronezh is waiting.” I should be in PR.

Voronezh Moment of the Day

Warning: this scene takes place in a McDonald’s bathroom and is just a tiny bit vulgar. I apologize for offending, but this story is simply too illustrative of my time here to be left out. So, I was using the restroom while at McDonald’s and a man came up next to me to use the other urinal. Now, the urinals in this particular bathroom are really close together, like the other man had to squeeze in next to me between the two walls. Uncomfortable. From the get go it’s clear this man is wildly drunk, which, seeing as it was 1:30 PM, was mildly surprising, even for Russia. I can tell because this guy is all over the place, he’s swaying on his feet, missing the urinal and just generally being really drunk. Just as I’m about to leave, this man apparently passes out, falling heavily, spraying urine everywhere, including on a less than thrilled Chris. I lose my cool and storm out to alert the staff of the unconscious exposed man in their bathroom. They could clearly care less and are in fact annoyed at me. Bear in mind (and this may be the subject of another post) but this is a country where the employee is always right and the customer is only right when it suits the employee. Anyways, about two hours and a change of clothes later, I was meeting some of my friends in their apartment. On the stairs about halfway up there’s an old man sleeping head first down about six stairs. The girls freaked out and made me take his pulse, as he’d obviously fallen. He was quite alright, just so inebriated at four in the afternoon that he just had to take a nap right then and there. And you see why a) women are the breadwinners in this society and b) alcoholism kills (literally, a Russian passenger plane just crashed in Perm; cause of crash: pilot was drunk. Criminal).