Abstrakkt Travels

A Sheep in Wolf's Clothing

2011-03-09T22:04:00.020+02:00

If all had gone according to plan when I was getting my Russian visa last May, I would have arrived in Moscow June 1st and left March 1st. But, luckily, things didn't go according to plan; my trip was delayed, and my departure date is now March 15th. I say "luckily" because I got to participate in my first Maslenitsa festivities in Russia on Sunday the 6th. Maslenitsa is roughly the same as Carnival or Mardi Gras, which all mark the week of celebrations before lent. But Maslenitsa, Mardi Gras, etc. have their roots in pre-Christian pagan holidays celebrating the beginning of spring.

Sunday was the last day of Maslenitsa week here in Russia and I joined my roommate and another friend for a festival of games and blini (or traditional Russian pancakes, the sun-like symbols of Maslenitsa) in Istra, a town an hour or so outside of Moscow.

We were greeted with shots of vodka:

And different games/activities, such as jumping rope and walking on stilts:

You may have noticed that it doesn't look particularly spring-like in the pictures. In fact, it looks a lot like the dead of winter. It's no optical illusion. It was very very cold and I wasn't fully prepared. There was a half an hour or so when I was preoccupied with worries of frostbite. I thought that my feet, in particular, were in danger of permanent damage after my shoes got wet and the temperature seemed to steadily decrease...

But then we found the bonfire, cognac, and fake gypsies and everything got better. A LOT better.

For the first time I experienced hard liquor dulling the pain of cold weather. Perhaps not coincidentally it was also the first time that hard liquor has ever gone down so painlessly. Liquor and bonfire are the perfect pair. Whenever my feet started to feel cold again, I would just stick them fearlessly into the fire pit.

But it wasn't all liquor and fire. We enjoyed some more traditional Maslenitsa activities as well. Most importantly was the consumption of homemade blini (look in my left hand for the pancake and at my face for the excitement).

And the event that marks the end of Maslenitsa: the burning of a scarecrow (here a rather large one):

I think that the first week of March may be a wee bit early to legitimately declare the onset of spring in the middle of Russia. But, in the end, I can't say that I mind the farce all that much. We'll just say that for whatever reason the sheep (spring) feels comfortable wearing the wolf's (winter's) clothing for a little while.

Blog Lapse

2011-03-05T14:27:00.003+02:00

I haven't found the time to blog for a couple of weeks now. Things have just been too hectic. But I promise I'll get out at least one more real blog before I leave on March 15th.

In the meantime here are a few pictures of Kazan, which I just visited. My last Russian excursion for a while.

The new mosque in the old kremlin --

Inside the mosque --

Two official languages: Russian & Tatar --

The Old Tatar settlement on the bank of the frozen canal --

Winter is long and I am short...

2011-02-14T10:42:00.017+02:00

...on time.

Thirty days from yesterday I'm coming home! I'm really looking forward to seeing family, friends, and a certain furry little monster very soon! And I won't lie, I'm also looking forward to some creature comforts and everyday things; here are five of them:

Coffee. (Is anyone surprised about this?!)
Pizza. Russian pizza is gross. There, I said it. Eastern Europeans don't get pizza. Sorry, but it's true.
Clothes dryers. Many people have washing machines in their apartments, but dryers are a rarity. Apparently they're considered a luxury. Well, call me a princess, I don't care. I'd be happy if I never had to hang another piece of wet clothing over a drying rack ever ever again in my life.
Lines. I miss American etiquette for standing in line. Dear Russians, Please wait behind me if I'm standing in line and don't pretend to be clever and slip in front of me, even if you are an 80-year-old grandmother. And please don't stand so close to me. That extra inch of space won't actually get you to the front of the line any faster, it just forces us to stand agonizingly close to one another while we wait.
Recycling. Capitalism brought a whole lot of garbage to Russia. And I'm not talking about the absolute worst of American culture that made its way here. (Speaking of which, have I told you about the Russian Married with Children and Everybody Loves Raymond knock-offs?) I'm talking about the excessive material waste and ill-fated attempts to recycle. Russia's really done a 180 in this respect. People used to re-use things to a painstaking degree (largely out of necessity) and many Russians of the older generations still do (I had a house mother who sifted through my trash when I was on a study abroad program here several years ago). But Russian youth are more like 1980's Americans. All consumption all the time.

This isn't to say there aren't things about Russia that I'll miss. One of these things is the Russian Orthodox church. This probably seems odd to you, considering how unreligious I am. But it's not the rituals of the church or any religious beliefs that I'll miss, but rather the form of the church itself. I like the way it punctuates the landscape - whether it be urban Moscow or rural Russia - adding a bit of history, peace, and mystery. The churches are especially nice complements to a white and wintry Russia. (A winter which is beginning to feel everlasting. Like a gobstopper.)

I've also grown to appreciate Russian icons. Say hello to Orthodox Jesus:

A note on Russian orthodoxy. It is part of Eastern Christianity. Western Christianity (i.e. Catholicism) and Eastern Christianity split off from one another in the year 1054 because the East would not recognize the primacy of the pope (and because of some disagreements over unleavened bread and a few other things). Russians aren't the only Orthodox Christians, the Greeks were first. Now there are Georgian, Serbian, Bulgarian, etc. Orthodox Churches.

People of other faiths reside in Russia, for example Muslims and Jews, but the country itself is steadfastly pravoslavny or Orthodox Christian. While I haven't been inspired to convert, I'll miss admiring the churches and icons. But I definitely won't miss the pizza.

At the grocery store

2011-02-06T19:07:00.008+02:00

The supermarket chain Ashan is sort of like the Russian version of WalMart (except that Ashan is French-owned).

Let's take a little tour and see what we find...

Milk! Un-refrigerated! In bags!!

Russians do pretty much everything they can with dairy products. In this picture there are three different kinds of "sour milk" products: kefir (which you may have heard of), ryazhenka, and prostokvashino. I'm still working out what each of these is, exactly, and stick to kefir and yogurt for the most part.

Every type of grain you'd ever want... and more. I've learned new words for grains in English after living in Russia. One meal where all of these grains typically appear is Russian breakfast, specifically in porridge. In the US we have oatmeal and that's about it (well, there is also Cream of Wheat but I'm not sure what that is.. wait, yes I do, it's wheat porridge!). The word kasha means porridge in Russian. There's ovsyanaya kasha = oat porridge, grechnevaya kasha = buckwheat porridge, pshennaya kasha = millet porridge, mannaya kasha = semolina porridge, wheat porridge, rye porridge, rice porridge, etc. I like buckwheat and semolina the best.

Now, I don't want to be too cliché about Russia, but there is an entire vodka aisle at Ashan...

Moving on to the frozen foods section we have a popular brand of pelmeni, or little meat dumplings, sort of ravioli-esque.

And meat-filled blini, or pancakes/crepes.

And let's not forget about dessert! For special occasions, there's cake.

But for everyday tea-time, candy's just dandy (I know, I know, grooooaan).

It's a big, a really big city

2011-02-02T20:17:00.010+02:00

Moscow, my friends, is big. I don't think people realize just how big. It's huge. Dare I say it is the most sprawling city I've ever been to. Maybe rivaled by LA, but Moscow sprawls densely. Some compare Moscow to New York City. I don't see it. NYC is geographically constrained; Moscow has no natural boundaries. It just keeps growing and growing, turning once independent neighboring towns into measly suburbs.

People continue streaming to Moscow year after year. In Russia, there is nowhere but Moscow that Russians can move to find work and make a decent living for themselves. (Well, to be fair, a small handful of other cities, such as St. Petersburg, are staying afloat, but none of them offer the same breadth and scope opportunities as Moscow.)

And not just "ethnic" Russians, but also people from the Caucasus and CIS countries stream into Moscow. (FYI -- CIS means "Commonwealth of Independent States," or many of the countries that used to be part of the Soviet Union.) People from Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, the Caucasus, parts of Ukraine, and so on. Different groups assimilate differently and are perceived differently. In this process a labor divide has arisen; many of the immigrants from the south now do the dirty work Muscovites won't do. (Reminiscent of anything closer to home?)

This is more or less the current CIS (sans Georgia):

I'm not going to comment on the terrorist attack on Monday, January 24th at Moscow's Domodedovo airport; I just want to say that this is a big, complex, changing city with lots of complicated problems. This is not to say that the terrorist attacks are a Moscow-specific problem, the problem is bigger. But Moscow is a frequent locus of such tragedies.

I said that Moscow sprawls densely. Big cities almost always have a lot of big buildings, but Moscow feels particularly packed with them. Not only are there big buildings in the center, where political and financial goings-on go on, but high-rises continue out beyond the center into the outskirts of the city. Most of these multi-story complexes are apartment buildings. Apartment buildings packed with people, like this one that I'm currently packed into ☺:

Among the high-rises of Moscow I always find Stalin's Seven Sisters (or Stalin's vysotki 'high-rises') to be an interesting sight. This one is the Ministry of Foreign Affairs:

And this one is now a Radisson hotel:

And last, but not least among my photo collection, is Moscow State University's main building:

Making the Most of January

2011-01-23T22:45:00.007+02:00

I happened to read that it was a bitterly cold -31 degrees Fahrenheit in Grayling, Michigan last night (Grayling is my hometown, by the way). In the last month here in Moscow it has barely reached zero degrees Fahrenheit and more often hovers around 20 degrees, so I'm feeling pretty lucky. At least as far as Russian winters go, this isn't so bad.

Nevertheless, the Russian winter has been a bit of a novelty for me after living in the Bay Area for many years. Some of my new favorite activities are ice skating and jogging in parks. While Russians aren't so keen on jogging (and when I'm out they often offer me unsolicited advice, chastise me, or less frequently praise me), many of them do make the most out of winter. A fair number of people cross-country ski and the city is full of ice-skating rinks, which themselves are full of people. I find all of these activities to be a nice, wholesome counterweight to Moscow nightlife.

My first ice skating adventure was on the rink on Red Square.

I fell twice. Please refer to exhibit A: the snow residue on my jeans. (You're lucky I'm posting this picture, because it's pretty awful, but it's the only one of me ice skating so far.)

I fared far better yesterday at a different rink. These were my ice-skating companions:

Perhaps the mulled wine helped. (Refer to exhibit B: mulled wine stand on ice skating rink.) Ice skating doesn't have to be entirely wholesome, I suppose!

I too am hoping to make the most out of this winter. For example, I am bound and determined to go on a horse-drawn sleigh ride. (That was the original plan for yesterday, actually, but there were complications... The horses, apparently, got cold and so the rides stopped at 3 instead of 6 and we found this out around 3:30. This sort of thing is extremely typical for Russia...) But at least we got to go ice skating and spend a little time strolling outside of the city in Izmailovsky Park.

Moving Mayhem

2011-01-16T21:30:00.004+02:00

My newest "adventure" features, yet again, my suitcase. When I first arrived in Europe from the US, my large blue suitcase was burdensome because its hugeness precluded me from transporting it easily from the Berlin airport to my 2-month residence in Leipzig, Germany. So I rented a Fiat. But last week the heaviness of the suitcase was burdensome for an entirely different reason: it led me to believe I could leave it unattended on the street for five minutes. Who would steal a 100-pound suitcase??!?! (You can probably see where this is going.)

When I moved into my new apartment on Saturday, I called a cab to come and transport me, my very large suitcase, and my other things (mainly books) to the new place. A few minutes before he arrived I decided to take my suitcase out to the courtyard to save some time. I didn't think twice about leaving the suitcase there unattended for less than five minutes (allow me to remind you, again, that it is very large and very heavy). When I returned to the courtyard with more of my things the driver had arrived and my suitcase was not where I had left it. I assumed the driver had already loaded it into the car, and asked him as much, and he looked puzzled, clearly not having seen any suitcase.

That's when the hot pursuit of the large navy blue suitcase began. First -- on foot.

At every dumpster on the street there was at least one homeless person sifting through the trash, including the dumpster by my apartment building. I had never noticed this in the past.

I asked one dumpster diver - a woman around 50 - if she had seen my suitcase and she started screaming profanities at me. So that wasn't going to lead anywhere. Then I asked a group of young-ish men in the adjacent courtyard if they had seen my suitcase and one said yes, he saw someone wheeling it into the courtyard and behind the building. But it was clear that he was lying, which was confirmed by wheel tracks leading in a completely different direction.

Tracing the wheel tracks was the cab driver's idea. He really stepped up to the plate for the occasion, turning out to be a real suitcase sleuth.

We continued the pursuit from the cab, hot on the trail of my suitcase tracks. But at the end of my very long block we came to a dead end. Traffic at the intersection obscured the suitcase tracks. The cab driver ran across the street, actually a large boulevard, to see if he could continue tracing the tracks or see any sign of my suitcase, but to no avail. When he returned to the car, it became clear that my suitcase was gone for good. Just as I was about to completely resign myself to the loss of the great majority of my clothing, shoes, my back-up hard drive... I looked across the boulevard one more time and...

There it was! I spotted my enormous navy blue suitcase being wheeled around by some man on the other side of the large road. It was unmistakably my suitcase: I could even see the pink luggage tag flipping back and forth as the man spun the suitcase around.

The cab driver ran and retrieved my suitcase (the man said he "found" it by a dumpster; he relinquished control of it fairly easily, saying "you're welcome" as he walked away), I made it to my new apartment with all of my things in tact, I tipped the cab driver very generously, and that was the end of my move.

Perhaps out of excitement for the move, or out of the frantic-ness that inevitably accompanies all of my moves, or because I was starting to develop an ever so faint warm and fuzzy feeling toward Moscow... anyway, whatever the reason, for the second time in Moscow I came frighteningly close to losing a major possession. You may recall the Starbucks incident in September.

I don't think this, or the Starbucks incident, necessarily reflects poorly upon Russia or Moscow. I do think it's necessary to be much more careful than I would ever be in the US about watching my personal possessions. Petty theft just seems much more rampant than it is at home. The last time I remember being a victim of theft was in 6th grade when I forgot to lock my locker and a girl stole my gym shoes and then wore them to school the next day. (It seems that I have quite the streak of dumb luck when it comes to this sort of thing.)

It's very nice to be in my new place. No longer sandwiched between two large, loud streets; no longer next to a dirty train station. Since I moved, things have been much more peaceful and I've been able to get a lot of work done. Sure, I flooded the bathroom and broke the toilet (unrelated incidents... and I actually don't think the toilet is my fault), but all in all, it's been very peaceful and uneventful.

View from my new 13th floor apartment (the park's in the other direction):

Winter Wonderland

2011-01-09T20:45:00.012+02:00

Happy New Year!

It's been a crazy month. I worked very hard. Then I played very hard. (I got help on that last bit thanks to a visit by Alicia!**)

The new year finds me in a new apartment. While it's been a rewarding experience living with a family, it's also been a strain on my work productivity, so I've relocated to a more work-conducive flat in a quieter region of Moscow. I'll report some more on my new pad once I get settled in.

The holidays, my move, and most of all Alicia's visit re-opened my eyes to what Moscow can be. And it's not all bad. The city is fast-paced and crazy, in areas it's gray and dingy, but there are pockets with really amazing treasures, things you just can't see anywhere else, such as a gorgeous Russian orthodox church alongside a Stalin-era skyscraper; or the embalmed father of the USSR directly across an ice-skating rink... and me in the middle:

I also started to see the forests and the trees. This huge city is packed with parks full of beautiful trees covered in fluffy white snow. I just wasn't living anywhere near one of these parks in my old apartment. But I am now.

(Technically, the park above, or rather the former tsarist estate Kolomenskoye, is nowhere near my new apartment, but you get the idea. Here are links for more winter pictures of Moscow and St. Petersburg, if you haven't already seen them on FB.)

Moscow was impressing me so much that I started to let my guard down a bit. That's when Moscow reminded me that it cannot be taken too lightly. But the story of how my 100-pound suitcase was stolen... and then recovered... during my move yesterday requires its own blog entry. I hope that one of your New Year's resolutions is to exercise patience ☺

**I dedicate this blog to one of my very best friends, Alicia, who has managed to visit me in every place I have lived for more than a month (Dallas, Italy, Czech Republic/Eastern Europe, California, and Russia! For Russia, Alicia even learned how to read Cyrillic!) and who is an A++ traveling companion. I swear that next time she gets to pick the locale! Oh, and Alicia also took many (most?) of the pictures in this blog and in the new Moscow & St. Pete albums.

Guessing game / Post office / New Year's resolution

2010-11-28T23:34:00.004+02:00

When people hear my accent in Russian, they often ask where I'm from. My favorite response is, "where would you guess I'm from?" I don't have an official tally, but the most frequent responses are Germany and Poland. Sometimes I get the Baltics. England has been the closest guess, since I don't think anyone's ever said the US. But last week I got the most interesting response so far: Iceland. I decided to make friends with the respondent ☺

//

Odd as it might seem, I was beginning to think that the post office in Russia was a lot friendlier than in the US. (US post offices are one of my least favorite places on earth. On many occasions I have been barked at, a couple times lectured, and once or twice screamed at, for... well, I don't know what for... I would stop doing whatever it is I'm doing if only I knew what it is I'm doing...) So, I went to pick up a package yesterday at my neighborhood Russian post office with a copy of my passport, but not the real passport, because the copy usually suffices. The post office employee wouldn't accept my copied passport and when I tried to urge her to rethink her decision, saying that the copy had been accepted in the past, she started screeching at me and told me it was toilet paper and she wouldn't accept toilet paper. A profanity may have slipped out as I backed away from the counter. Yep, post offices are the same everywhere.

//

My energy for blogging, along with my energy for just about everything, has vanished. As a result I've been writing a lot of unenthusiastic blogs. So, I've decided to take a break for the rest of the year, the month of December, and pick up blogging again in 2011 with newfound blog-writing energy, a more positive (or at least interested) outlook, and pictures. Surely I'll have my camera back by January.

That is my New Year's resolution. (At least it's one of them.)

Happy New Year! S novym godom! Feliz año nuevo! Šťastný nový rok! Ein glückliches neues Jahr! Etc.

Better Left Unblogged?

2010-11-21T18:05:00.013+02:00

I hesitate as I write this blog. The idea came to me several weeks ago, but I've debated to myself whether or not it's really a bloggable topic. I've finally decided to just go ahead with it. This is partly because no other ideas have descended upon me. It's also because I'm still separated from my camera. We've been apart since Halloween. It's possible that all of November will pass un-photographed.

Now time for the disclaimer: this blog is about bathrooms, mainly public, in Russia.

A few differences in restroom culture are immediately apparent upon arriving in Russia from the US (many of these differences also apply to Europe more broadly and other areas of the world as well, but I'll only talk about Russia).

First off, most public bathrooms charge a fee. If you patronize a restaurant or cafe, you don't pay for the toilet, but otherwise, you'll probably have to shell out 15-30 rubles (50¢ - $1) to use rather uninspiring facilities. Here's the entrance to a public toilet in downtown Moscow:

But there's actually something unique about this public toilet. Zooming in on the sign, one can see that below the section reporting the hours of operation is a section announcing that it's a "free public restroom." I still almost can't believe what I read, and am tempted to go back to this bathroom to see if perhaps I had momentarily stepped into in a rip in the space-time continuum.

Of course there are ways around paying for public toilets, such as finding a nearby McDonalds or Starbucks.

The biggest bathroom shocker for me was the stand-up toilet. I've been told these are quite common in (parts of?) Asia, but I came across them for the first time in Russia.

Many of these are pay toilets. They're particularly expensive and unsavory at train stations.

However, when there is a toilet seat, standing is frowned upon:

Most toilets place the flusher on top of the water tank, not on the front side like we're used to in the US.

I took the last picture because of the mildly amusing pun in the brand name of the toilet paper. If you speak Russian you get the pun right away and if you don't speak Russian it would probably be the most unexciting thing you've ever heard, so I won't bother explaining it☺

Speaking of toilet paper, it is a big no-no to flush it in public restrooms. I can't remember the last time I was in a stall that didn't have a sign respectfully requesting that I not flush the toilet paper down the toilet. I find the practice rather foul and try not to think about it.

And with that I'll close my first and (so help me God) last blog on toilets.

Read no further

2010-11-15T00:56:00.004+02:00

Seriously, read no further. Because there's no blog today. But I promise something magnificent and thought-provoking next week. Well, at least I can promise that there will be some pictures!

November is the Cruelest Month

2010-11-07T20:47:00.006+02:00

Over the last week I've lost my credit card, hat, gloves, a metro card, and my dignity (OK, that last one's a little harder to prove).

I've convinced myself that I hate Moscow, Russian food, and Russian people, including the ones I live with.

I've whined and complained to everyone who will listen (or feign to listen) to me. To my Russian tutor, to my expat friends, to friends back home over Skype, and to my mom, who I called in a frenzy at 9 AM on Wednesday (I usually wake up at 10... or later☺) because I was convinced that I needed to move out of my current apartment and into my own flat. Stat.

What has led me to these extremes of glass-half-emptiness? What is making November so cruel? It's not the weather, which has been hovering around a surprisingly pleasant and rain-free 40-45˚ F. No, it's not the weather -- it's the cruel academic job search.

I have written so many drafts of postdoc grant proposals and job cover letters (a genre I particularly loathe), that I'm beginning to feel like my own pen and keystrokes are turning against me, making me into a fool, exposing me as an imposter.

For "fun" and in my "free time" I've found myself obsessively reading about higher education in the news and following online gossip columns about job & postdoc searches. News stories, that is: horror stories, report on the Crisis of the Humanities - how the earth is about to open up and swallow humanities departments whole (which is not an exaggeration in some cases) - and the flooded job market, where there are 300, 400... 600 applicants for every postdoc job advertisement [postdocs are TEMPORARY (1-4 year) jobs!!!]. So much for academics in their ivory towers. The economic crisis affects the academic sector as well. (I don't mean to sound insensitive here, I'm just trying to say I empathize.)

This is why I have been a bad blogger lately. And this is also why my Halloween costume was a flop. I'm still without my camera, so I'll just tell you that I had some sort of hybrid costume that I think coincided most closely with a roller derby girl outfit. I had a green polyester dress, a pink glitter cowboy hat, and some shapes painted on my face... but no roller skates.

And so, with November and all its cruelness getting me down, I decided to take a trip back to October today, that is, to the Red October (Krasnyj Oktiabr' ) factory. It's where they used to make Red October brand chocolate, but it now houses galleries, clubs, restaurants, boutique stores, etc. I was especially in the mood for some photography (maybe due to separation anxiety from my camera?), and that's what I got. Here's a view of the cool factory complex:

photo courtesy of http://www.extra-m.ru

I suppose I don't hate Moscow so much when I'm actually in it.

I might turn into a pumpkin

2010-10-31T23:30:00.000+02:00

Happy Halloween!!

OK, don't be mad (or sad!) but I'm not writing a real blog today. I offer two excuses for my poor behavior:

1) I have a crazy scary job deadline tomorrow

2) I left my camera with Halloween photos at a friend's apartment, and I can think of no good reason to blog about Halloween without visuals

The costume I finally settled on was...

To Be Continued

Fluffy Blue Marshmallow

2010-10-24T22:32:00.002+03:00

A fluffy blue marshmallow is what I feel like in my winter coat. I'm having trouble getting used to the fact that in October I need to wear my winter coat. Russia's a serious place, yes it is.

I can't write much more today because I am drowning in work and exhausted. A whole slew of job and postdoc deadlines are rapidly approaching and I'm falling more and more behind with each word I type in this blog...

And I also need to figure out how to register to vote by absentee ballot before tomorrow's deadline. I must do my part to ensure that tea party wackos aren't running the government when I am back in the US.

I'm dreaming of a white... Halloween?

2010-10-17T11:26:00.005+03:00

It snowed twice this week. Allow me to remind you that no fewer than two months ago -- mid August -- we were in the throes of a record-breaking heat wave in Central Russia. Now, this:

(This week's single blog photo is sort of a cop-out; it's recycled from a facebook posting.)

The snow's not sticking yet. But I'm anticipating a white Halloween.

Meanwhile I've been plugging away on job applications (mostly for postdocs) and remaining bits and pieces of my dissertation. But this is a frightfully boring topic to blog about, so I'll write about something else I did today: drive around Moscow! Yes, that's right, I was behind the wheel of my hosts' car, which is a stick shift without power steering. I managed to transport four of us, including the two kids (who, ahem, were not wearing seatbelts), to a botanical garden and back unscathed. Was this legal? Who knows. Was it scary? Sort of, but also quite an adventure. But more on driving in Moscow, including weird laws and other behaviors, in another blog. Right now I'm rather exhausted.

Speaking of Halloween, I'm bound and determined to celebrate on October 31st this year, contrary to my usual apathy for the holiday, and also despite the fact that Halloween is not such a big holiday here in Russia (it seems to be more of a tradition in English-speaking countries).

I am now taking suggestions for Halloween costumes. A prize will be awarded to most creative, economical and weather-appropriate suggestion!

Happy St. Petersbirthday!

2010-10-10T22:13:00.008+03:00

I spent my birthday in St. Petersburg, Piter affectionately in Russian. Here are some of the photo highlights.

Things that are round...

Wedding festivities continue into October...

**CRASH**

It rains so much in St. Pete that even fire hydrants wear rain ponchos:

And so do dogs:

But it didn't rain on me! I had a couple of colorful autumn days. Leaf bouquets were all the rage, among old and young alike:

I was sort of disappointed with the accommodations...

OK, you caught me there. That's a prison cell from a museum in the Peter & Paul Fortress.

Other highlights were ballet, pumpkin soup, french-style pastries... And these guys singing in the fortress cathedral:

But now, back in Moscow and back to work.

Winter soon.

Kids in the Kvartira

2010-10-03T15:57:00.005+03:00

As you know, I'm living in an apartment (kvartira po-russki) in Moscow with a family, including two young children. Russian kids, as far as I can tell, are the same as kids everywhere. But in Russian culture (or at least in our kvartira) I've noticed some quirks in the way kids are raised.

My observations include: (1) They drink a lot of milk. Are kids really supposed to drink so much milk? I don't think American kids drink quite this much milk. (2) The kids are not allowed to eat or drink anything cold, because it will (supposedly) give them a sore throat. That means no ice cream. Ever. Really? Even when it was 100 degrees and muggy in Moscow over the summer?? Nope, never.** (3) Kids are, however, allowed to drink tea. But no alcohol. Nope, no vodka, pivo or wine for the little 'uns.

Hmmm... non-food-related stuff is harder, since kids' lives seem to revolve around eating and sleeping and running around the apartment screaming at the top of their lungs.

One interesting thing is that school doesn't start here until kids are about 7 years old. Seven!! Kindergarten is not mandatory and is not at all like it is in the US, where kindergarten is our first year of school. Russian kindergarten is more like our daycare and kids can go there from about age two until they start school. My kids (that is, the kids I live with) are about 3 and 4 and a half years old and they don't go to kindergarten. Instead they have a nanny that takes care of them during the day while their parents are at work. In the US, I always associate nannies with posh rich people, but here nannies seem to be more common. I mean, the family I live with is definitely not posh and rich (though smart and nice!). Olya, their nanny, is also really nice and cool, but I'll blog about her some other time.

Olya usually takes Tanya and Gosha outside in the middle of the day to play in a playground for a few hours, except when it's raining. Just a few weeks ago they also started going to lessons in things like drawing, singing, and dancing. At home they play with toys, ride around on a little bike or scooter, and watch a lot of cartoons.

Toys here seem to be the same as in the US. Russians also socialize their kids early on with "gender appropriate" toys -- guns and trucks for boys, dolls and mini household items for girls -- and behaviors pattern accordingly. So Gosha, the little boy, is fascinated with trains and other vehicles and Tanya, the little girl, dresses in pink and wants to be pretty. (Yes, yes, I'm hinting at a lot more than just toys☺)

It's interesting to live with kids -- not just Russian kids but kids in general -- because of all the things I never realized before about children. For example, I didn't know that kids cry so often. I think they cry every day. They cry when they're tired. They cry when they don't get to eat what they want or play with what they want. They wake up crying in the middle of the night. One minute they're laughing and happy and the next minute they're crying for no apparent reason. It's a roller coaster ride of emotions!

I also never realized the many things kids need to be taught how to do that they can't just do automatically. Like holding a fork. Or coloring. I didn't realize how hard it is to color within the lines. But as I watched Tanya and Gosha painstakingly attempt to color a simple tree and sun I understood that coloring in the lines is a skill that takes time to learn.

I often have difficulty understanding Tanya and Gosha when they talk. Sometimes it's because they say things that are so non sequitur to my mind that I can't even place the sounds with any kind of potential meaning. Another problem for me is kids' pronunciation. Neither Tanya nor Gosha seem to be able to pronounce a certain set of sounds (a subset of fricatives), such as "sh" -- similar to English ship -- and "zh" -- sort of like the sound we make in English when pronouncing the "g" in mirage. These sounds are in a lot of Russian words and I have to ask them to repeat what they say over and over again since they'll often pronounce, for example, 'car': masina and not mashina, or 'yellow': zolty and not zholty, and so on.

And those are my impressions of Russian kids so far. Well, at least of two of them.

** I bet you're wondering how they drink all that milk then, eh?

The Starbucks Incident

2010-09-26T18:40:00.005+03:00

A Moscow Starbucks. Not the scene of the incident:

This story is embarrassing on a number of levels. For one, I'd like to hide from you exactly how much time I spend in coffeeshops in Moscow. And two, I'd like to be able to claim that at least I'm spending time in cute boutique cafes. But as the title gives away, I've recently broken my no-Starbucks pact and occasionally started patronizing the Seattle coffee giant. This is because (1) the coffee tastes good (mind you, my taste buds have probably eroded after many months in lands with nasty brown liquids posing as coffee) and (2) it gives me an injection of American culture that makes me feel oh so warm and cozy...

Which leads to the next level of embarrassment -- my inappropriately naive behavior of late.

So the deal is that I spend a lot of time in coffeeshops because I can productively work in them. I tote my computer and some files and maybe a book to one of many caffeinated locales and sit for hours, usually without scrutiny, and work on my dissertation or job applications or something of that sort. I also work in libraries, but they don't serve coffee (well, actually they do, but I'm convinced that eating in the state library cafeteria is how I've gotten food poisoning twice here).

On Thursday, I planted myself in a Starbucks for several hours. I purchased a very overpriced medium (I will not use Starbucks terminology) coffee. I diligently edited Chapter 4 of my dissertation. I started to revise part of my essay for a postdoc application. Then after an appropriate amount of time I had to use the facilities. I knew I would be quick, and my stuff seemed secure in an upstairs corner of the coffeeshop, so I grabbed my wallet (maybe I'd indulge in a cupcake...) and headed downstairs. I did, in fact, decide to indulge in a cupcake, and while I was waiting in a short line I noticed the girl from a table near mine upstairs push her way through to the cash register and say something to the Starbucks employee. My gaze followed her as she turned and ran over to her boyfriend, who was holding MY computer in his hands. I was suddenly standing before them. They told me that some man had tried to run off with my computer and they recognized right away that he was stealing it (because he wasn't me -- that is, the person who had been sitting behind said computer for the last two hours). I didn't see the perpetrator myself and I don't know how the boy caught the thief or got my computer back from him. I was in a state of shock and relief. I must have said "thank you so much" thirty times to the couple. They told me I really shouldn't leave my computer unattended. (A no-brainer that I apparently hadn't wrapped my brain around.) When I returned to my little table (sans cupcake, avec computer), the couple -- my guardian angels -- packed up to leave. I wanted to give them something or do something for them, but all I could do was say "thank you" a few more times. And then I sat there feeling naive, stupid, but most of all insanely LUCKY.

I never thought of myself as the Ivan-Durak type. Ivan-Durak or 'Ivan the fool' is a Russian fairy tale character, who is a naive and simple fool who nevertheless always has amazingly good things happen to him. Anyway, there I was, an American Ivan-Durak in a Moscow Starbucks.

Wow, let's hope I've learned my lesson. And let's also hope that many other Muscovites are as kind and amazing as the young couple that saved my computer. Wherever you two are right now: SPASIBO!!!!!!!!

Wedding Season Wanes

2010-09-19T11:18:00.015+03:00

My dear friend Melissa Marsack got married last weekend in Michigan. I was sad miss the ceremony, which I heard was lovely, as well as the chance to be there for such a pivotal event in her life. Since I couldn't attend Melissa's wedding, I decided to crash some local weddings instead. Well, I didn't actually crash anyone's wedding (at least not à la Owen Wilson & Vince Vaughn), but I did briefly glom on to some wedding parties in a park and snap a few photos.

The wedding tradition here, a Russian acquaintance tells me, is roughly as follows: (1) go to ZAGS, the government office, for the official exchanging of vows (this is very brief), (2) tour parks and historical sites with the wedding party and take lots of photos, (3) have a big wedding party/feast that goes on for two or more days. I've never officially been invited to a Russian wedding, so the only part I've witnessed is (2) -- walking around sites and snapping photos.

Wedding wheels:

Here's a wedding from early August in Novgorod with some of the wedding party in traditional garb:

A cute wedding tradition that's cropped up in recent years is the love padlock, where couples write their names or initials on a padlock (often heart-shaped, awwwww) and lock it to a bridge. Apparently the custom was inspired by an Italian book & film and is now hugely popular in Europe and beyond. (I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that there's a Wikipedia page describing the tradition...) Many Russian bridges - especially pretty and prominent ones - are now covered in padlocks. One bridge in the center of Moscow - Luzhkov bridge - is lined with so-called "trees of love," which were placed there specially for love padlocks:

But wedding season is winding down now that it's September, so I won't be crashing any (many?) more weddings this year. And hopefully when my next friend gets married I won't be on the other side of the world.

Sick Day

2010-09-12T15:43:00.002+03:00

I'm calling in sick. No blog (no real blog) today. Some kind of a stomach something-or-other. I won't go into details. Blech. 2nd time since I've been here. Perhaps my metaphorical sickness for "home" is manifesting itself in concrete ways. Anyway, until next week.

So Long, and Thanks for All the Coffee

2010-09-05T20:15:00.010+03:00

I'm in no state to be blogging, but I'm doing it anyway. For the last four days I've been attending an inspiring, if a bit intense, conference in Vilnius, Lithuania and it has left me pretty zonked. (Though I was kept very alert during the conference by two delicious coffee breaks and delicious lunchtime coffee service.) I'm already headed back to Moscow tomorrow morning.

I can't say that I'm incredibly excited about this.

Vilnius -- besides being a fantastic and adorable historic town -- also knows what food and coffee should taste like (something I'd have trouble saying about Moscow). I was actually a bit surprised I like it here so much, because two years ago when I visited as part of my Baltic Backpacking Bonanza, I wasn't such a fan. I don't know what I was thinking back then. The only reason I can come up with is that I was tired and cranky and took it out on poor Vilnius. I mean, how could one not like a town where achoo means 'thank you'?? (Actually spelled: ačiū in Lithuanian but pronounced sort of like achoo, just with the stress on the first syllable.)

Well, at least I won't be arriving back in Moscow quickly. My travel itinerary has me on buses and trains (well, a bus and a train) for almost 24 hours. This was also how long it took me to get to Vilnius from Moscow.

What?!?!?!? (You might be thinking.) Well, I decided not to fly because the prices shot up at the last minute, but secretly I wanted to take the train anyway. However, I couldn't take the train directly from Moscow to Vilnius because that train goes through Belarus and Belarus hates Americans and would have charged me $177 for a transit visa. Soooo... I took a train from Moscow to Riga, Latvia (transit time: 16 hours), then waited a few hours in Riga, then got on a bus from Riga to Vilnius (transit time: 4.5 hours). On the map the green letters are the train stops and the red arrow is the bus part.

I quite enjoyed the traveling. And I'm looking forward to the return trip tomorrow (aside from the "leaving Vilnius" part). I thought this was because I'd developed a romantic perspective on Russian train travel having to do with more closely aligning the the passage of space and time and staying connected to the land. Then today I realized that I was fooling myself with all of this. The real reason I wanted to take the train (+bus) was to get out of Moscow for as long as possible.

But on Tuesday morning I'll arrive back in Moscow. And that's where I'll remain for six straight months.

Well, so long Vilnius, and thanks for all the coffee!

August 27th - August 27th

2010-08-29T10:04:00.008+03:00

I haven't blogged much about where and with whom I'm living. All the fires and heat and archaeological expeditions have been taking center stage. So let me bring you up to speed. My Russian family has two parents: Yulya and Andrei, two kids: Tanya (4 & 1/2) and Gosha (almost 3), and until Friday one other American, Emily. But my Russian family is now less one member. Emily just returned to the US after being in Moscow for exactly 1 year: August 27th, 2009 - August 27th, 2010.

We had a small going away dinner for her on Thursday evening. Guess which one is the American? (Hint: she's over 5 and under 30 and smiles wider than everyone else):

The kids - Tanya and Gosha - were very excited about the party:

Now that Emily is gone, here are the remaining members of the family for the year:

You might be thinking -- because I'm sure thinking this - that the picture would be great if it weren't for my hair, which is starting to resemble a mop. I'm growing it out (out of laziness). It's at that stage where I can wear it down and it looks like this, or I can wear it in pigtails and I look... well, sort of like 4-yr-old Tanya (she was really excited the day I wore pigtails because we matched). But that's enough about my hair for now.

Now back to our regularly scheduled program

2010-08-22T20:29:00.004+03:00

Summer, quite suddenly, is over. The temperature has dropped. Russians are no longer bathing in fountains. The fires are extinguished. Moscow is no longer blanketed in smoke.

Relics of summer lurk around. Such as jars of pickles from the garden at the dacha.

Yep, everything's more or less back to normal. I'm in Moscow. I go back and forth between the library and/or cafes, working diligently on my dissertation. And so I'm also going to get back into posting blogs on Sundays. A promise I'll probably break in two weeks when I go to a conference in Vilnius, Lithuania. Modification: I'll try to get back into posting blogs on Sundays.

Julia Unplugged

2010-08-18T21:07:00.008+03:00

The last time I blogged I was fleeing Moscow for greener pastures in northwestern Russia. My goals were to find a place to think, move, and breathe without smog, smoke, and chaos (in essence, the opposite of late July's Moscow). Well, I got what I asked for. I spent six days in Staraya Ladoga and was without internet access the entire time. Four of the days I also spent without a cell phone signal. And the last day, after the severe thunderstorm, I was without power altogether.

Of course I searched for an internet connection, but to no avail. Neither Staraya Ladoga, nor the towns neighboring it to the north and south had an internet cafe or a place with wi-fi. So I decided to embrace my temporarily unplugged existence. I got a lot of writing and reading done. (I did have my computer with me so I wasn't completely "unplugged"). And I also got to leisurely explore local attractions in the historical town, including the old kremlin, monasteries, churches, and - my favorite - prehistoric pagan burial mounds. (I've been know to track down traces of Eastern European pagan culture in the past; looking at that post makes me realize I used to write much shorter entries... hmm...)

Unfortunately the mounds (called kurgans or sopki or long barrows, depending on the shape and the prehistoric ethnic group their attributed to) don't make for such interesting photos, but I'll put some up anyway:

I know they just look like big mounds of dirt or little hills. But on the inside there's supposed to be buried human remains and relics from the 8th to 10th centuries. And if you stand with your back to the sopki, you get to take in this peaceful view:

It's hard to say if all the peace and contemplation was good for me or not. I picked up some odd habits, like carrying around cat food and feeding local strays whenever I got the chance (there are a lot of stray or semi-stray cats in the area, as there were in Novgorod).

One thing I can say is that people are really nice up there. Locals started striking up conversations with me from almost the moment I stepped off the train. Interesting story, actually. I arrived by train from Moscow to the town Volkhov, which is the town closest to Staraya Ladoga with a train station (remember, I was out in the boonies), at 3 AM. The first bus to Staraya Ladoga was around 5 AM, so I hung out in the waiting room at the train station and made friends with a resident cat. I also made friends with a woman working at the train station who took a particular interest in me as an American female traveling alone in this relatively remote area of Russia. She helped me figure out the right bus to take to Staraya Ladoga and as I left she gave me her phone number, just in case something went wrong.

Yeah, it was good to get out of the city for a bit.

Moscow Burning

2010-08-10T22:26:00.008+03:00

I trained back to Moscow on Sunday morning and was greeted by the infamous smog. I suppose I didn't really have to come back to Moscow, but I wanted to pick up some of my stuff. I was also a wee bit curious about how bad things are here. And there may have been another reason or two for coming back...

Whatever my reasons, I can now say firsthand that Moscow is not pretty. Case in point:

I am now entering self-declared pseudo-refugee status and fleeing Moscow tomorrow afternoon. Where to? Back north, but this time to a small historical city, often touted as Russia's first capital. A little place called Staraya Ladoga. I seek cooler temperatures, cleaner air, peace, and some points of historical interest.

I am also now declaring a blog-writing hiatus. It may not be for long, but I need a little break as I've recently been finding it difficult to post weekly and my new refugee status is upping the ante on this. I know, I know, I haven't even blogged properly about Novgorod yet. But you get the idea: archaeology, linguistics, old stuff, etc. etc.

Oh, all right -- here, I'm adding a couple more pictures from another excavation site I visited last week in settlement a bit south of Novgorod called Gorodische. I didn't dig there, but I still thought it was cool to observe and visit. And this group is more hard core than the Novgorod crew: they live in tents during the dig, whereas the Novgorod archaeological team gets to live in a dormitory (how posh!☺).

You know what, I'll up the ante on you here for a moment. I'll make a little game for you. If you guess what inspired the title of my blog I'll post again in a week. And while I'm sure there's lots of things "Moscow Burning" could have been based on, I had just one in mind. And it's not even necessarily related to the content of the blog or anything, just what I was thinking of when I typed the words. Go for it. (I'm only doing this because I assume that both a) no one really wants to bother figuring it out and b) no one will guess anyway... but allow me to stand corrected!)

Novgorod the Great

2010-08-03T13:46:00.005+03:00

A view of the charming Novgorod Kremlin from my balcony:

I've been feeling a bit guilty, because... (well, because I'm good at feeling guilty), but really, because I had been getting pretty down on Moscow and Russia in the last few weeks, which certainly crept into this here blog. My observations have been a bit severe and mean-spirited. But in my defense, an "eyes wide open" stance can be tough here in Russia.

But, Novgorod has saved me (if you'll allow me to dramatize a bit). The town is simply lovely and I've thoroughly enjoyed exploring its history and delving more into aspects of my research that up to now have remained vague or opaque. I plan to write more about all of this next time, including details of my participation in an archaeological dig (!!) and decoding of 800-yr-old documents written on birch bark (!!).

For now, I'm still a bit busy with various things going on here so I'll cut this entry a bit short and leave you with a few teaser photos...

Inside the Novgorod Kremlin: the famous 11th century St. Sophia cathedral and a monument to, uhhh... the Millennium of Russia (thanks Wikipedia!).

...Hey, cool -- this is the same view that's on the 5 Ruble note! (which is about 16 cents; it's no longer in circulation, replaced entirely by a coin, I think).

Here's me digging for buried treasure at the excavation site in Novgorod:

Last, but not least: buried treasure itself -- a letter written on birchbark from the 13th century (or earlier!):

Bathing Beauties

2010-07-26T13:33:00.007+03:00

It's time to turn the camera lens on Russian men. And I've gotta say, it's not a pretty time to do it.

The heat has persisted and so it's not unusual to see men in speedos, or often more accurately: their skivvies. I wish I could say that the average age of the men in this apparel was under 50.

And the skivvy-sightings aren't just from this beach in the center of Novgorod...

(I escaped to Novgorod from Moscow for a few days, well actually for 2 weeks).

Before leaving Moscow I managed to snap a shot of a not-infrequent sight: fountain-bathing.

You can't really tell from this picture, but there was a musical fountain show going on when this guy stripped, dove in, and cooled off in the spray.

But I can't say that I blame them right now. It's still really f@#$@ing hot.

I've felt my will to live partially return after arriving in Novgorod. Moscow's heat and city-ness were driving me a bit batty, which I didn't fully realize until the night train from Moscow dropped me off at 6 AM in Novgorod. While it's still really hot and humid here, I'm at least getting some relief from traffic and concrete in a beautiful historical city. The cool monuments and buildings also help (more on these later).

I'm melting! Melting!

2010-07-18T21:48:00.005+03:00

Russian summers usually aren't this hot. The temperature's been over 30 degrees Celsius for a couple of weeks now (something like over 85 degrees Fahrenheit). It got even worse this last week: 90 to 95 Fahrenheit every day. And it's humid. And I'm in the middle of a lot of concrete and blacktop. All of Europe is boiling, apparently. I might be complaining even more if I were still in Germany, where the temps have been as high as 100 degrees Fahrenheit. Hrmph.

This is my favorite quote about the heat wave:

"Russians sweltered yesterday in the hottest weather since the Stalin era as droughts caused crop devastation across the country and hundreds drowned in bathing accidents often influenced by alcohol."

Meanwhile, we don't have hot water. Moscow has the tradition of shutting off hot water in each region of the city, one after the other, for two-week-at-a-time intervals during the summer (actually it might not be just Moscow, but all Russian cities that do this...). I'm not sure why they do it. To conserve or to clean the pipes or something like that. We actually have a little heater thing in the shower that the water runs through to heat it up and then drizzle it back out in a very weak stream. So we don't have to take cold showers, there's just very little water pressure. (And, actually, I sort of want to take cold showers in this weather).

Since it's too hot for me to form any more coherent prose right now, I'm going to pull the ol' Russian blogger trick and wow you with some onion domes.

Here's St. Basil's Cathedral on Red Square:

And here's a church on the Arkhangelskoe estate outside of Moscow where I went swimming on Friday:

The High-Heeled Brigade

2010-07-12T00:12:00.007+03:00

The women of Moscow, that is. They wear the highest of high-heeled shoes to work, out on dates, or, you know, on a leisurely stroll in the park or grocery shopping.

I've collected some sample specimens from the city. But I have to emphasize that these pictures hardly capture the scope - or the color palette - of what I've witnessed. My camera wasn't ready, for example, when Miss Matching Turquoise (4-inch) Heels and Hot Pants got on the metro. Or at other times I just felt sorta creepy aiming my camera at women's feet.

But hopefully these pics will give you some idea of what I see every day.

I mean, you never know when you might meet Prince Charming. Perhaps on Red Square...

Outside the library...

Or waiting for the metro...

Those are shoes I'd rather not walk a mile in. And trust me, she DOES walk miles in them!

Here's a few more for good measure:

Some other favorites that didn't make it onto my camera were the red heels with matching red sports socks (really?) and lots of metal spikes, which could surely double as a weapon in case of imminent danger.

Unexpecting the expected

2010-07-04T21:20:00.004+03:00

I recently decided to blog once a week on Sundays. Now here I am on Sunday and I'm not sure what to write. It's not that I don't have anything to blog about. I'm just not sure that I have the right words today.

I actually came up with a gimmick for a fun entry last week (which is now postponed), but then came Friday. I went for a jog around 9 PM (it stays light until about 10:30 PM these summer days). I was planning on laying low for the evening. Reading. Maybe watching a movie. I made salad for dinner with the other American, Emma (who is living here until August). Yulya, my hostess, and the two kids - Tanya and Gosha - had already gone to bed.

Then Yulya woke up to use the bathroom and fainted. The subsequent events led to a call to the Moscow paramedics.

I don't want to go into too much detail because 1) it's an invasion of Yulya's privacy and 2) I really just don't feel like recounting the whole evening. But there are nevertheless a few bloggable details.

But first, I should say that Yulya is fine. Whatever happened was a combination of stress, fatigue, and either food poisoning or some kind of stomach bug. The combination of factors just didn't mesh well together Friday night.

I now have an interesting inside perspective on Russian paramedics and medical practices. In Russia you dial 03 for an ambulance or skoraya pomosch 'speedy help'. Well, the 'speedy help' isn't so speedy. They arrived about 40 minutes after receiving the phone call. And it isn't actually an ambulance in the sense we're familiar with, that is: a vehicle that transports sick people to the hospital. Instead people come to treat you in your home (and presumably take you to the hospital if it's severe).

So, about forty minutes after we called 'speedy help', two guys arrived who looked - I kid you not - like mechanics. They strutted in speaking gruff, slang-y Russian (from what I could understand, which is less than I care to admit...), wearing slightly tattered dark blue scrub-like uniforms and plopped down in my room where Yulya was laying on the couch. They proceeded to simultaneously ask questions about Yulya's condition and marvel at the strange Americans in the apartment. I really felt like a bear in a zoo the way they stared at us and asked questions and made inappropriate jokes while poking and prodding at Yulya. I managed to get some questions in myself amidst the barrage of questions directed at us Americans. I found out that Russian paramedics have training at a level between that of doctors and nurses. There's a special designation for them: feldsher, which is borrowed from German and translates as something like 'doctor's assistant' or 'male nurse' (which, in typical Russian fashion, ranks higher than a "female" nurse). The paramedics were here for maybe an hour and in the end prescribed Yulya a series of medications (out of which I only recognized one).

Yulya told us later that the service was stellar in comparison to what is typical for Russian paramedics. Apparently they were putting on a show for the Americans.

So, it wasn't the most pleasant Friday evening, but everything turned out OK, and now I know a bit more about what to expect if there's ever another emergency. Which I hope there's not.

My plan to have an "eyes wide open" frame of mind here in Russia is proving difficult... and necessary.

Clean and dirty, old and new: late June in Moscow

2010-06-27T10:57:00.012+03:00

I've been remiss about portraying some of the real sights in Moscow, so I thought I'd start rectifying this with some pics today.

A lot of people here think think the church above with the huge gilded domes -- The Cathedral of Christ the Saviour -- is ugly. It's practically brand new: it was rebuilt in the 90's after the break-up of the Soviet Union (the Soviets dynamited its predecessor in 1931). Whether or not you think it's ugly, it's striking. And hard to ignore. Oh, and it's also directly across the street from the institute where I'm working.

But there's still plenty of stuff left from the Soviet era. For example, in the foreground of this picture is the back of a statue to Friedrich Engels (of Marx and Engels... you know, the great communist thinkers ;). I know it's beyond cliché to say this, but Moscow really is a place of opposites. The religious and secular. The old and the new. The rich and the poor. The clean and the dirty. The big and the... well still bigger (it's hard to find anything small in Moscow).

You'll get pics of the Kremlin next time, but here's another important building in the center of Moscow: The Bolshoy Theater (or in Russian: The Big Theater).

They've done a lot of restoration on the building over the last few years, and I think it's looking quite nice (except for the box-thing covering up the horses on the the top).

Oh, and I promised depressing, suicide-provoking pictures from the inside of the newly opened Dostoevsky metro station. The first thing you see upon entering the station is Dostoevsky himself:

And here's a mural for his novel Crime and Punishment. In the top left-hand corner you can see a man with an axe preparing to chop up a woman. This is from the scene where Raskolnikov kills his landlady for her money. It's one of the images that caused controversy in the press. I don't know. It doesn't make me want to kill myself, but I'm not Russian.

And I apologize if my entry this week is sort of blah. It's really hot here. It has been about 88 degrees Fahrenheit and muggy every day for a week. I've been feeling slightly ill for several days, which might be because of the dense city heat & dirt, or maybe because I'm still not used to my new Russian diet. Anyway. I hope to have more inspired things to say next time☺

Is it disrespectful to jog in a cemetery?

2010-06-20T19:24:00.004+03:00

My first week in Russia has been relatively uneventful. I think this is good. I'd rather it be uneventful than be robbed and thrown over a bridge, have a leopard maul me, or be crushed by an elevator. Even though these would make great stories (if I lived to tell them, that is).

Instead, since I've been here I've been preoccupied with finding spaces to do things. For as big as Moscow is, I'm having a bit of trouble finding good places to (for example) get work done. I don't have an office or designated space at the Institute of the Russian Language, where I'll be doing most of my research, and while the institute has a small library where I can work, its hours are sporadic and limited. I won't have access to larger state libraries until later next week, so in the meantime I'm trying out different coffee shops. I've found a few that pass muster, and I'll be exploring some more in the coming days.

Next, and perhaps more challenging, is finding a place to jog. I came very close to jogging in a cemetery the other day, since it was the only place at all park-like nearby my apartment. Then I found a mediocre park across the street (hidden behind a strange red brick building). And today, further away, I found a nice park with lots of paths and even a pond.

Yes, there are children trapped in large transparent balls in the middle of the pond. It appears to be intentional.

While I may be having trouble finding the right places to do things, there will be no problem getting to the places once I find them. That is because public transportation here is great. I especially love the Moscow metro. In fact, Moscow's 181st station opened this weekend -- a station devoted to Dostoevsky. Its opening was delayed because of complaints about the violent imagery and themes that could provoke suicide or depression. Seriously. Read about it.

I went to the station today (it's not too far from where I live) but I didn't need to ride anywhere so I didn't go past the point where you have to pay, thus didn't get to see the murals. But here's the shiny new passageway to the station:

I'll be sure to post depressing pictures of Dostoevsky and Raskolnikov once I actually enter the station.

Eyes Wide Open

2010-06-13T23:01:00.005+03:00

I won't lie. Over the last few weeks I haven’t been looking forward to coming to Russia very much. What I felt was more like dread. But I decided eventually that I need to approach this trip – and Russia and Moscow – with eyes wide open. That is, to just take things in, with as little judgment as possible.

Now, a few things have made maintaining this attitude somewhat challenging. In particular, my luggage was mis-directed by the cheap, crappy discount airline Germanwings (anti-advertisement: Don’t fly Germanwings!!). My itinerary was: Leipzig-Stuttgart-Moscow. My baggage’s itinerary was: Leipzig-Köln-???

Then, as I was trying to get money from the ATM (which turned out not to be an ATM, so I shouldn’t have even been there), a mother carrying a small vomiting child raced past me, and the vomit sprayed onto me and my backpack. Well, I’m exaggerating a bit. It didn’t really spray all over me, but there were some bits that landed on me. Could it have been worse? Yes. Was it nauseating nevertheless? Yes.

Anyway, things are coming around. My luggage finally arrived in Moscow and I picked it up today. That’s right. I picked it up. Germanwings doesn’t deliver lost luggage. But I had an interesting conversation with the taxi driver on my way back in to Moscow, so it wasn’t a complete loss of time and money (reminder to self: eyes wide open).

And I was greeted by very friendly hosts – I am living with a family of a man and woman in their early forties and two small children (whom I haven’t met yet: they were asleep when I arrived and the family is at the dacha = summer cabin all weekend). The hostess – also Julia (Yulya) – felt badly that my luggage was lost and rushed out to get me a toothbrush, pajamas, and some other things I might need immediately. Another American graduate student is also living here until early August and she has been very helpful with some logistical things involved with settling in.

I'll leave you with a picture of the building where I’m living on Novoslobodskaya street (the apartment is on the other side of the building)...

And the train and metro station Savyolovskaya close to the apartment:

Where the Slavic Speakers Are

2010-06-08T14:27:00.009+03:00

First off, I'm not in Russia yet. I have my visa in hand, but can't leave until Friday, June 11th because of some kind of paperwork that needs to get approved in the US. Sorry for the vagueness. I had to stop paying attention to details to preserve my sanity.

However, I did make it to some other Slavic-speaking areas in the last week. I took a day trip last Wednesday to the Slavic-speaking enclaves in Germany. You see, only about an hour by train from Leipzig are areas where the Slavic languages Upper and Lower Sorbian are spoken by an ever dwindling number of populations.

I visited two towns: Bautzen and Cottbus, which are home to the Upper and Lower Sorbian cultural centers, respectively. In Bautzen, in particular, there is a lot of Sorbian language presence.

Here is the Bautzen train station with the sign written in German (top) and Upper Sorbian (bottom):

And this sign from Cottbus reads "Train station road" in German (top) and Lower Sorbian (bottom):

Bautzen seems to be much cuter and is more "gung ho" about Sorbian culture than Cottbus (from what I could tell in the short amount of time I spent in both places). Here are some pictures of Bautzen being cute:

Then over the weekend I finally made it back to the Czech Republic. I was in Brno (in Moravia, in the eastern part of the Czech republic) where I visited a Berkeley friend and some other acquaintances/friends. It was quite fun -- my last hurrah in Central Europe before 9 months in Russia -- but I failed to take a single picture. So just trust that I was too busy to take any pictures. At some point I might tell you more about it, including the story of the 45 minute walk home through a pitch black forest on a muddy path at 5 am, but for now: Nazdar!

Overwhelmed

2010-05-27T23:10:00.017+03:00

I have done enough in the last week and a half to write about ten blog entries, but that's not going to happen, so I'll try to squish things into just this one measly (but VERY LONG) entry. First, here's a summary of my "state of being" right now:

I am ELATED because I successfully submitted my Russian visa application this morning and will be issued a visa on June 7th and can fly to Moscow on June 8th. There was only one minor glitch - the consulate official made me fill out an additional application in German (exactly the same as my application in English, but with German questions, hmmm...) and submit both applications. I was happy to do it. In fact, I was so desperate to get the visa that I probably would have licked his shoes if he had asked me to.

I am EXHAUSTED from all the traveling. I was in 4 different new places over the course of ~8 days and am wiped out from all the movement. I was beginning to feel like I'm too old for this kind of travel (yuck, I hate pulling the age card), but I think the real reason for the excessive exhaustion is that the travel was mostly "work"-related and not my usual touristing.

I am SICK, which is no surprise because of all the travel and sleep deprivation (and perhaps some alcohol-drinking :). What pushed me over the edge was that on my first day back in Leipzig (Tuesday) I couldn't resist an invitation to pub quiz night at McCormack's, which got me drunk and kept me out late. But I won a Guinness t-shirt, so it was definitely worth it. For the next three days you will find me in bed in said t-shirt.

But most of all, I am OVERWHELMED by all of the things I've done and seen in the last week and a half, the new places I've been, but mostly by the new people I've met and the new information they've given me, especially regarding future research/career directions. I'll be processing this information for some time to come.

Now for pictures from my travels. Each place really deserves its own blog write-up, but I can only muster up mini-blurbs for now.

First, Italia. You can find Bologna in the center of Italy, in the northern part of the country.

Bologna is a bustling Italian city with lots to see, but I spent most of my time in a monastery on a mountaintop perched above Bologna. This is because the course on culture and genomics was held in a building that is part of a former monastery.

Here's a view from atop the mountain:

And a fresco in the monastery church:

And here's proof that I was in the center of Bologna for a bit. The main piazza during the day...

and at night:

While I got to indulge in scrumptious pasta, gelato, and wine, it was mostly a "work" trip. Lots of networking and thinking about solving interdisciplinary problems in genetics and linguistics.

From Bologna I flew to the Netherlands to visit the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in Nijmegen. Besides meeting cool people with whom I conjured up new research ideas, I don't have much to report and even less to show (that is, no pictures -- sorry). But I can at least show you where Nijmegen is on a map (it's in the east, close to the German border).

On Friday afternoon I took a train from Nijmegen to Amsterdam. Amsterdam is full of bikes, tourists, and canals. I was only there for about 12 hours, but I tried to make the most of it by renting a bike at the train station and biking around the city, stopping briefly near the Red Light District for this photo:

There was no time for scandalous activities during my 12 hours in Amsterdam. Not that I'd blog about it, if there were :)

Finally, I ended up in Mainz and the surrounding areas of Rhineland for the weekend (via train from Amsterdam to Mainz Saturday morning). You can find Mainz on the map near the little airplane by Frankfurt, in the southwestern corner of the country.

In Mainz, I visited my friend Verena, who I met traveling in 2008. Verena, her fiancé and her parents were absolutely amazing hosts. They took me to local wineries in Rhineland (Germany's wine country), on a tour of Mainz (which is one of the oldest cities in Germany, settled initially by the Romans!), and on a hike + boat ride in the Rhine gorge area.

In Mainz:

At the Gröhl winery:

Excursion around the Rhine Gorge near Rüdesheim:

OK, am I allowed to rest for a few days now?

en route to Bologna

2010-05-16T17:56:00.003+03:00

Right now I’m sitting on the floor by the doors of train on my way to the Frankfurt airport. I failed to make a seat reservation on the train (a gamble which hasn’t left me seat-less until today). Anyway, it’s not so bad because it’s one of the fancy intercity express trains (=clean).

Yesterday I had to deal with credit card fraud – unpleasant no matter what, but particularly unpleasant from abroad. The funny part is that the illicit activity was for charges at the iTunes store in the amounts of $39, $1, and $1. Now, if you were commiting credit card fraud, wouldn’t you try for something bigger? At least a couple hundred dollars in iTunes purchases?

Anyway, I’m headed to Italy for the first time since 2001. Hard to believe it’s been that long. I’m going somewhere I’ve never been before – Bologna. Sadly my summer of Italian lessons back in 2001 didn’t stick and I couldn’t even remember how to say, “Do you speak English?” until I looked it up on Wikitravel (Parla inglese?). I’m going there for a short course in Genomic and Cultural Evolution of Humans. Then I’ll go to the Max Planck Institute in Nijmegen (Netherlands) Wednesday evening to give a presentation on Thursday, then I’ll be in Amsterdam Friday, then Mainz (Germany) Saturday through Monday, and finally back to Leipzig Monday evening. No need to get back on Sunday: Monday is one of the many German holidays in May… Whitsun-something-or-other.

I’ll try to blog and upload some pics of new places this week, but it depends on my access to the Internets.

For now, here’s a picture of something else that’s returning to Italy after a long hiatus: my trusty backpack. Some of you might remember it from trips we’ve taken abroad together. It’s hard to believe I still use it after all these years.

p.s. Just after writing this the train got really really full with lots of people like me who didn't have seat reservations and so I got to sit curled up in a ball on the floor for 3 hours on the way to the airport... but I survived! ;)

p.p.s. What I'm actually doing right now is sitting in a cafe in the Frankfurt airport. My flight to Bologna was canceled, so I have some extra time. Don't freak out, they re-routed me on another flight that leaves 45 minutes later than the canceled flight. Now I'm connecting in Rome Fiumicino. I might just get nostalgic...

p.p.p.s. The flight was not canceled because of Iceland's volcano. There was some sort of plane malfunction.

Please remind me: why do I want to go to Russia?

2010-05-12T13:36:00.007+03:00

For a Kafka-esque experience in the 21st century, just visit a Russian consulate. (If you're a little rusty on Kafka references, basically Kafka's work described situations that are the epitome of endless mazes of pointless and futile bureaucracy; in other words: a Russian embassy.)

I was initially very pleased to find out that there is a Russian consulate in Leipzig, which means that I don't have to travel to the Russian embassy in Berlin to take care of my Russian visa. But I should have know that things wouldn't be so easy. I've already visited the consulate here in Leipzig twice, and have made zero headway in getting my visa to go to Russia on June 1st. And things aren't getting any easier. Here, let me try to describe my unfathomably convoluted situation. I'll do so by way of a list of the mistakes that I have made, which somehow seems the most appropriate format.

Mistake #1: I am an American (try really hard not to be an American if you want to visit Russia)

Mistake #2: I am an American trying to get a Russian visa in Germany, a country where I don't have residency

Mistake #3: I do not have an official residency permit to reside in Germany in my passport (because Americans do not NEED a residency permit to stay in Germany less than 3 months)

Mistake #4: I made plans to go to Italy and then the Netherlands next week, which requires that I have my passport for traveling (and thus cannot leave it with the office here in Leipzig to get registered in Germany until May 25th... why May 25th? See mistake #5)

Mistake #5: I am visiting Germany in May, which is jam-packed full of German holidays that cause government offices to be closed not just on the holiday itself, but sometimes also on days surrounding the holiday. Therefore I have to wait to get my passport invitation on a day when I am both in Germany AND it is not a holiday -- a pair of circumstances which do not cosmically align until May 25th...

Could you follow all of this? No? Well good, because neither could I, apparently.

So, enough with the details, what's the bottom line?

I'm not going to make it to Russia by June 1st.

There's almost no way this will be possible. I cannot even start my visa process until May 25th at the absolute earliest. And if all goes well on that date, it will be a minimum of 1 week before I actually obtain the visa. It's a good thing haven't bought a plane ticket yet. I suspected there would be complications even earlier, which is not insubstantially related to the fact that I did not receive my invitation to even start the Russian visa process until last Wednesday.

It's worth mentioning here (though not particularly comforting to me) that the process for entering the US can be just as complicated (if not more so, depending on where you are from), which some of the people I've met here have told me.

Sorry, no pictures in this post.

My Week, in Reverse

2010-05-09T22:52:00.011+03:00

Saturday, May 8th: Dresden

Yesterday I was a slacker tourist in the lovely town of Dresden. I had no guidebook, no map – not even a sense of what one would want to see in Dresden – when I arrived at Dresden’s main station around 2 pm. Since it was a pleasant, sunny but not-too-hot Saturday, I took the opportunity to wander around an unfamiliar city.

This cute little map from a 2006 NY Times article depicts quite nicely how Dresden makes me feel.

By far the most memorable landmark is the church Frauenkirche (rebuilt after being destroyed for the most part in the war):

But my favorite part of Dresden is off the map – a neighborhood up in the NE corner called Äußere Neustadt (“Outer New City”) which is the seemingly trendiest part of the city. I happened upon such fun finds as the Kunsthof Passage – a series of connecting courtyards designed by artists and occupied by cute boutiques and restaurants - and Alaunpark, where I rested and observed picnicking, Frisbee-playing, and Bachelorette-partying. And where I also tried to take an artsy picture:

Wednesday, May 5th: My Talk on Linguistics & Genetics

For me the big, defining event of last week was my presentation on the research I came to the Max Planck Institute to do. While the presentation itself went well and I got fairly good feedback, I was nevertheless exhausted after the stress of preparing and delivering a talk to an intimidating audience.

Oh, and what work did I present on? Well, as a Slavic linguist I’ve been especially interested in a few particular questions, such as: how did the Slavic languages come to be spoken over most of Eastern Europe? And, how and why did the Slavic languages change in the course of their expansion? I’ve relied mostly on linguistic, as well as some cultural historical, information to explore these problems. But recently I’ve started looking at how genetics research can help improve our understanding of the history of human populations. I myself don’t do the genetics research, but I’m instead trying to understand the field as best as possible to develop future research collaborations.

But I won’t bore you with any more details about this. At least for now. ☺

Sunday, May 2nd: Artists’ Colony in Leipzig

Wow. Leipzig is home to some nifty modern art movements that I am not qualified to say much about. What I can say is that I was blown away by the sheer size of the “artists’ colony” at the old cotton mill, or Spinnerei, on the western edge of the city.

As I said, an old cotton mill – no smaller than a city block – was converted into dozens of artists’ studios and workspaces. I was lucky enough to be here during their open house weekend on May 1st-2nd, where I was overwhelmed by the art and the interest in art here in Leipzig.

Here are some pictures of modern art & citizens interested in modern art:

A Very Hamburger Weekend

2010-05-02T23:32:00.009+03:00

A week has already passed since I was in Hamburg, so it's high time I blogged about it. To answer the question I know is eating away at you -- yes, the American [ahem] delicacy hamburger has its origins in Hamburg. Well, at least the city is its namesake. Hamburger in German is either a noun or adjective meaning someone or something from Hamburg, and seems to have entered English (according to OED) from a dish called hamburger steak, which was shortened to hamburger and refers to what is now a very American and not very German culinary item.

But enough about hamburgers, since I didn't eat any in Hamburg anyway.

Some of Hamburg's more notable attractions include the harbor on the river Elbe. It's one of the biggest ports in Europe and keeps Hamburg a big, busy, and economically prosperous place.

The up-and-coming Warehouse District (Speicherstadt) is further evidence of Hamburg's prosperity:

But Hamburg's not just business. It knows how to have fun too. A Saturday night out in Reeperbahn - Hamburg's red light district - confirmed this for me (though no pictures survived the night that I am willing to post in this blog... mainly because they are very very blurry...)

But my hands-down favorite part of the city was the Sternschanze area. It reminds me a bit of the nice parts of the Mission in San Francisco. Lots of cute places to eat and get coffee. And a big park, sort of like Dolores Park, where people sit outside with their dogs and tattoos and enjoy the sunny weather.

My camera was on some funny setting so Rike and I look a bit like angels, but here we are in the park:

Since returning from Hamburg I've mostly been either working on my presentation for Wednesday or procrastinating. So back to work for a few more days, then... I'll update you on my impending trips to Bologna, Nijmegen (Netherlands), and more!

No More Cake

2010-04-27T18:15:00.003+03:00

Warning: this is a really poor excuse for a blog entry. But I feel like I have to post something so that you know I'm still here. I was away in Hamburg last weekend (which I'll blog about soon) and have otherwise been busy with stuff at the institute (including preparations for my upcoming presentation on May 5th - eek!). I'll bring you up to speed on all of this (I know -- promises, promises) very soon.

Oh, and why the title No More Cake? Because I'm officially, publicly, with YOU as my witness, renouncing Central European pastries, especially cake-like delicacies. They are tasty, they are seductive, and they are EVERYWHERE. I could eat them for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and as snacks in between. But I'm not going to, because from now on (well, at least while I'm in Europe) my new mantra is "no more cake."

Farewell my fond, fluffy, sweet, delicious friend.

It’s Springtime for Julia in Germany

2010-04-18T11:04:00.013+03:00

The sun is here – hoorah!

Yeah, sure, volcanic ash from Iceland has swept over Europe causing flights to be canceled for three days straight so far, but I’m not flying anywhere, so it’s not affecting me! And, no, I haven’t noticed any traces of the volcanic ash in the air here, as you can see from these pictures I just took from the window of my apartment:

By the way, I declare this the most unpronounceable natural disaster in history: the name of the volcano is Eyjafjallajoekull.

But back to my more mundane European existence -- the emergence of the sun has allowed me to explore Leipzig a bit more.

I found the farmers' market in the town center on Friday. Well, I don’t know if it can actually be called a farmers' market – last I checked mangos don’t grow in Germany – but a market nevertheless.

Veggies:

Dairy:

Pastry stand popular with the pensioner crowd:

Last week my new anglophone friends from German class introduced me to Südvorstadt or ‘South Suburb’, which is not really a suburb but rather just a separate quarter or neighborhood of Leipzig. It’s the area where the cool kids live and though it may hard to tell from these pictures, it makes my neighborhood look like the ghetto and my building like a Communist tenement. Well… I may be exaggerating a bit, but the two areas really are like night and day (I swear the sky grew more ominous as I approached my building on Oststraße…). If I were living here any longer than two months, I’d definitely move, but for this short visit it’s not worth the trouble (and it’s really not so bad on Ostraße).

Südvorstadt - street shot:

Südvorstadt - an über-hip store & cafe:

Now I'm off to get started on my museum-ing, so you'll get to hear all about Bach and the new Bach museum in Leipzig... or the Neo Rauch exhibit in the art museum that's opening today... or both... in the next blog!

And if you’re getting sick of hearing about Leipzig, and I hope you’re not, but if you are, I’m probably traveling to Hamburg next weekend so I’ll have a new place to blog about. My friend from Czech summer school in 2008, Rike, is coming here on Wednesday for a few days, then it's Hamburg for the weekend. Yay, new adventures!

A Case of the Mondays

2010-04-13T17:06:00.008+03:00

It’s been a bit blah here for the last few days. Well, at least Saturday through Monday. The weather was decidedly un-spring-like and got me feeling rather un-spring-like as well. After an exploratory jog around my area of Leipzig on Saturday, I spent most of the rest of the weekend doing not much of anything. I had high hopes for myself: visiting art galleries and checking out a museum or two, maybe even an out-of-town excursion. But, alas, the best I did was get as far as the outsides of such places. Part of it was poor timing – I tried to venture to one place on Sunday, when absolutely everything is closed in Germany (except for bakeries!) . Part of it may also have been that I wasn’t feeling quite up for a lot of adventure after staying out rather late on Thursday night with some acquaintances from my German class (offered for free by the Max Planck Institute – thanks, Max!).

Anywhere, here are the outsides of building that contain some things I fully intend to see in the near future:

The building in the first picture – the Spinnerei [pronounced roughly shpinner-eye in German] – is a place I will definitely return to. Formerly a cotton mill, it now houses a number of art galleries and other fun artsy things. I learned about it back in January from the New York Times article “The 31 Places to Go in 2010,” where Leipzig is featured as #10 (yay, Leipzig!). The article also discusses some of the other cool things going on in my temporary residence, such as various tributes to Bach and Schumann and an underground music scene worth exploring.

So just be patient and I’ll report on cool culture-y things soon enough…

But in closing, I have some sad news. I just found out that my friend Rachael’s grandfather Vincent Caudy passed away yesterday (Monday, April 12, 2010). I only met him once, when I was about 11 or 12, in Grayling, but in the past few years we have periodically corresponded over e-mail about Czech things. As a heritage speaker of Czech he was very interested in Czech culture and developed relationships with many of his distant family members in the Czech Republic. When I went to the Czech Republic in November-December of 2008 to do some research, Vince put me in touch with many of his Czech friends and relatives. They were Czechs who not only helped me with my research (by allowing me to record their speech), but many of them also warmly welcomed me into their homes: they fed me, gave me gifts and souvenirs, set aside valuable time to speak to me (despite my broken Czech), and often provided me with a place to sleep. Without Vince, I never would have had these invaluable experiences (many of which I’ve written about in this blog).

During that visit Vince’s relatives gave me some of their moonshine (specifically, slivovice ‘plum brandy’), which I smuggled back to the US and sent to him. Here are pictures he e-mailed of him drinking it:

Leipzig Old and New

2010-04-08T10:28:00.013+03:00

The Old: The Easter Market

Since I wrote earlier this week, I’ve had some time to explore Leipzig a bit more. The Monday after Easter (April 5th) was a holiday and a big event in town was the Easter market. It was as if from an era long gone (please don’t ask which era) with stands set up in the central town square selling handmade tchotchkes and traditional food and drink. Here is a picture of a stand with a pig roast and another with a manual Ferris wheel:

Look closely at the first picture and you can actually see the pig on the spit. (Mom – this reminds me of those neighbors that had a pig roast every summer in Grayling… it’s the only other time I’ve seen a pig on a spit, I think.) You’ll also notice the old-fashioned costumes. Everyone working at the market was dressed up in a similarly old-fashioned way, whether they were vendors or actors or musicians. For example, here are some musicians playing drums and bagpipe-like instruments:

And I’m not sure what to say about this “fire woman” who chased around small children… :

But don’t start thinking that Germany is all old-fashioned and quaint. Any inklings of this notion were certainly wiped out of my mind on Tuesday when I started my stint at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.

The New: Max Planck Institutes

The Max Planck Institute where I’m working was established in only 1997, which is evident from the ultra-modern building. Here’s a view from the outside:

And another couple of shots from high up in the inside of the building, looking down on the atrium.

This place is like Julia-topia. It has all the academic perks of Berkeley: eminent scholars, interesting talks and classes, nice library; and all the logistical perks of the NRC: free copies and office supplies, my own computer set-up in a semi-private office, nice facilities. They’re going to have to drag me out of here kicking and screaming when it’s time to leave on June 1st.

Me in Julia-topia:

A small side note -- I said this Max Planck institute, because it’s not the only one, not by a long shot. In Leipzig alone there are 3 Max Plancks:

- Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig (<-- this is where I am)
- Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Leipzig
- Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in the Sciences, Leipzig

So if you had any doubts about modernization in former East Germany, rest assured it’s shaping up quite nicely. At least it seems to be here in Leipzig – smack dab in the middle of the former GDR. Though apparently in rural areas of former East Germany there is still a good deal of economic struggle.

Julia’s Leipzig/Germany/Central Europe adventure continues next week! What sort of things are in store? ... Classes in Upper Sorbian – an obscure Slavic language spoken completely within the borders of Germany – at the University of Leipzig … Visits to various art, music and ethnographic museums in the area … a potential trip to Dresden, or even Wrocław, Poland … Perhaps even an explanation of what exactly I’m doing here! … Check back soon for details!

The Little Fiat That Could (or: The Bane of Bulky Baggage)

2010-04-05T13:05:00.012+03:00

I'm here! Where's here? Leipzig, Germany. Where's Leipzig? Check the map below (also on the right). It's a bit south of Berlin.

To get from Berlin to Leipzig it takes about 1.5 hours by car. I know firsthand because I drove it Friday. Why on earth, you may ask, did I drive from Berlin to Leipzig when there is an amazingly efficient train system all throughout Germany? Well, I have so much luggage that I was seriously concerned that I couldn't lug it from the Berlin Tegel airport to the Berlin Hauptbahnhof (main train station), then onto the train, then off of the train, then to my apartment in Leipzig. You see, I had two suitcases and one backpack. And one of the suitcases weighed 70 lbs. And the other was full of books and probably weighed 45 lbs. Not to mention the large-ish backpack full of books… (I'm a graduate student, I'm addicted to books).

So I rented this little Fiat to get me and my luggage that probably weighed more than me from Berlin to Leipzig.

In this picture, the Fiat Punto is parked in front of my new apartment on Oststraße 48 (the full address is Oststraße 48 #19, 04317 Leipzig-Reudnitz, Germany, in case you’d like to send mail, hint hint ☺)

I arrived in Germany at sort of a weird time. As you may know, Easter is Sunday, April 4, and Easter is a national holiday in Germany. Stores and cafes have been sporadically open since I’ve been here (I’m thankful they’ve been open at all!). Despite the fact that I didn’t train it from Berlin to Leipzig, I’ve been spending a lot of time at the train station the last few days. Below the station there’s a mall with lots of stores and, crucially, Internet access. There’s also lots of Easter cheer at the Hauptbahnhof, as you can see from this stand selling Easter goodies:

The Leipzig center is very cute, as far as I can tell so far. My apartment is less cute. Well, it’s not so bad: decent-sized for a one room (with a full bath & kitchen), good location, big windows… It’s just that there’s a mysterious smell that I’m not too excited about. I’ll spare you the details, and just say that I’ve purchased a number of candles and baking soda since I’ve been here. This required figuring out how to say baking soda and matches in German, since these words were not part of my German 1 vocabulary… (baking soda = das Natron, match = die Streichholz).

Don't be shocked, but I actually went to church on Easter Sunday. What?! Well, after the masses there was a Bach concert in the historic Thomaskirche in the city center. Here's Thomaskirche around 7:30 pm, before the 8 pm concert:

I start "work" tomorrow at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in the Comparative Population Linguistics Group. What is all of this? Well, let me explain more later after I've actually been there...

That's all folks

2008-12-22T05:49:00.005+02:00

I'm back stateside. No more blog this year. Probably no more blog for a while, since I'm going to try to make some real progress on my dissertation this coming semester/year, and travel isn't so conducive to writing (though I've learned that I'm able to simultaneously travel & research!)

My last blog was actually my last "real" trip blog. What I did after that day of interviews was pack, sleep, and go to the airport. I continued to use some Czech on the trip home - with the passport control agent for about 5 seconds, then a few short exchanges with the woman sitting next to me on the plane (I hope I gave her the correct information to write on her customs declaration form... I'm not sure it's such a good idea for me to be giving advice in Czech to a foreigner on how to fill those things out since I can barely fill them out for myself).

A few last pictures of Prague are in order. Here is the Christmas market in the center of Old Town, in the Old Town Square:

And what better way to end than with gilded swan faucets from the Cafe Imperial women's restroom?

Back (and forth) in Prague

2008-12-18T00:01:00.007+02:00

I had a marathon-session of interviewing today. Figuratively and also sort of literally, since I had to go from one end of central Prague to the other and back to meet with people this afternoon/evening. All of my contacts fell into place today and the appointments were back to back in various (and not always adjacent) parts of the city. I met mainly with students from Charles University here in Prague, plus one other Czech guy from the website expats.cz (I found him in the section for language exchanges or tandems; you see, I recorded an interview with him, then he got to practice his English with me for an hour).

I originally intended to pay the students from Charles University. That’s how I thought I had recruited five students – by enticing them with cash. The contacts were through my summer school teacher, who I had been e-mailing back and forth with about my research for a few weeks. In the end, I thought she had gotten volunteers for me by telling them I would pay 100 crowns (about $5) for an interview. However, after the first two people refused the money in a slightly shocked manner, I stopped trying to pay. So… I used the money to buy Christmas presents for my nieces instead.

My grand total is 26 interviews. This may not seem like much, but it’s a beautiful, precious, glorious number to me… that is, considering both my low expectations for the research and my low estimation of my fieldwork skills. And I’m pleased that I was able to record Czechs of widely varying ages and levels of education, in addition to finding people from opposite ends of the Czech Republic. And now I have a much better idea of how to recruit research participants, as well as how I would go about organizing this kind of research in the future. In short, a successful pilot research trip.

Since all of these interviews were scheduled for today, I was able to do things aside from “work” yesterday. I’m proud to report that I finally made it to the opera. It was the very same opera - Don Giovanni - that premiered in Prague in 1787. It was even in the very same theater - the Estates Theater - where it premiered. I was not disappointed with Mozart's work. My entertainment was largely facilitated by the subtitles (or rather, supertitles, since they were above the stage) in English and Czech (since it was sung in the original Italian).

This is the outside of the Stavovské Divadlo, the Estates Theater:

Here’s my view of the stage when I was leaning back in my seat:

When I leaned forward, I could see the orchestra pit:

The world is coming to an end?

2008-12-16T11:35:00.005+02:00

I thought I would come to the Czech Republic and get a quick dose of an idyllic Christmas season, which of course includes some snow. I got Christmas markets, trees, some generic Christmas cheer, I suppose, but no snow. Actually, I think I did see snow once – off in the countryside from the window of a bus. It rained in Brno last week. But no snow. Not in any of the places that I’ve been.

My mom just sent me pictures from Las Vegas, and believe it or not, it’s snowing there. It’s not snowing in Prague. But it’s snowing in the desert. There can be no other explanation: the world is coming to an end.

It’s not my only experience with “opposites” this week. Over the weekend I was in Olomouc, which is the town where I studied over the summer. The quaint, quiet, practically people-less, historic town in the center of Moravia. (My pictures from the summer can attest to this.) This is the town where the summer school students seemed like the only patrons of the local bars; the same patrons who closed the bars down… at the wee hour of (ahem) 11 pm.

So you can imagine that it came as quite a shock to me to see the Christmas market in the town square full of people (who were not summer school students, you know, because it’s December).

I was even more shocked to find bars full of native Czech speakers (and, again, not just summer school students). But the biggest shock of all was to find myself stumbling out of a packed club around 5 AM. The sleepy little Olomouc I met over the summer has certainly woken up for the winter. Isn’t this reverse hibernation? Is this allowed?

(These were my hosts for the weekend: on the left is a fellow Berkeley grad student who also studied in Olomouc over the summer and on the right is his Slovak/Hungarian boyfriend.)

The rest of my weekend involved a mix of the odd & unbelievable in forms I never would have expected from Olomouc. This is turning out to be a theme with me & the Czech republic. Once I think I’ve got some aspect of it figured out – the language, the people, the history – something happens to make me realize I understand nothing at all. Well, Olomouc, I’m sorry I underestimated you.

Moravian hospitality

2008-12-13T11:00:00.011+02:00

I arrived in Brno on Tuesday. Brno is in the eastern half of the Czech Republic, called Moravia (in contrast to the western half, called Bohemia). It is the second biggest city in the Czech Republic, but this doesn’t mean that it’s all that big. I'm really a fan of Brno. It's big enough so that there are things to do and see, but not so big that it's unmanageable. It's also less touristy and international than Prague, which means that it feels more Czech. My new friend, Aleš, from Masaryk University was extremely helpful and showed me around the university, library, etc. on Tuesday and Wednesday, then I met with some other students from the university to do my dialect recordings (and also just to get to know some more people who study in Brno).

Just like Prague, Germany, etc. there is a Christmas market in the main square of Brno. Here are some pictures:

The market goes on well into the night, as late as 10 pm. In this picture, some young girls were dancing on a stage in the market. It may be hard to tell in the picture, but they are wearing devil costumes. It's all part of the Christmas tradition here, which I don't quite understand (even after I had someone explain it to me).

Here are some things for sale (mugs):

Then on Thursday I traveled to Suchov, the village where my friend Rachael's grandfather (Vincent) has ancestors. The village is very close to the Czech-Slovak border, and the dialects people speak there are quite different from standard Czech. The dialects can also be quite different from each other. They told me that sometimes villages 5 kilometers apart will have completely different styles of speech. Here's Suchov with respect to Brno (roughly 2 hours by train + bus southeast of Brno):

View Larger Map

To get to the village I took a train to a nearby town called Veselí nad Moravou, then transferred to a bus, since there is no train station in Suchov. I was quite proud of myself for quickly locating the right bus stop for the bus to Suchov (as was indicated on the bus schedule posted at the bus stop). Then an older Czech woman randomly asked me where I was going. I said, "Suchov," and she pointed to a nearby bus stop with a bus that people were already boarding. I said, probably with some exasperation, "but the Suchov bus is supposed to stop here." She shrugged her shoulders and said that Suchov was posted on the bus so I should ask the driver. It turned out she was completely right. I don't really even know why she asked me where I was going in the first place. All I can think is that she was my guardian angel.

About 20 minutes later I arrived in Suchov. The entire village (home to roughly 500 residents) is on this one road:

Jana Svrčková, who is not actually related to Vincent, but rather the wife of his relative (the son of a cousin?), was my host. She was just like my host Marie in Chodov - extremely welcoming. I only stayed there for about one day, which I later realized was not quite enough time to really meet people and learn about the place. Unfortunately, I didn't even get to meet Jarek Svrček, Jana's husband. Their children - 16 and 17 years old - were a little too caught up in their own existence (as is the case with teenagers everywhere) to be interested in the strange, semi-Czech speaking American that had come to visit (though of course they were nice to me).

The most fun was probably when we went to the town's only pub (which apparently fills up with young Suchovians on the weekends - it's a shame I was there on a Thursday!). Here's a picture of Jana, her cousin Helena, and Helena's boyfriend Roman:

This is Jan Zemčik from an old Suchov family. His accent was so thick I could barely understand a word he spoke!

For more pictures of Suchov and Brno click here.

As appears to be the case with all Czech mothers and grandmothers, Jana would not let me leave without gifts and provisions. These included homemade Slivovice (liquor made from plums that's stronger than vodka), a book about the history of Suchov, a bottle of water, and snacks.

Who's up for a taste of some homemade Czech alcohol when I get back to the States?

From Regensburg to Passau to Regensburg to Prague to Brno

2008-12-09T21:10:00.004+02:00

If you’re confused by my heading, well so am I. Or at least I’m in a bit of a whirlwind from all this train & bus travel in the last few days.

First of all, on Sunday I went to Passau (also in Bavaria, about an hour by train from Regensburg) to see a summer school friend who studies there (a German who also studies Czech). Then I went back to Regensburg for the night. Then the next morning I left for Prague. I was actually supposed to make one more stop (in Plzen, Czech Republic) to meet with some other summer school friends, but it didn’t pan out (probably for the best, judging by my schedule!). I stayed in Prague last night, then I arrived in Brno around noon today. I am in Brno for a few days, thankfully!

The only place I’ve managed to take pictures in the last few days is Passau. Here are some of my favorites:

I realized that at some point I have to explain to those of you reading my blog what exactly it is that I’m doing here in the Czech Republic (besides drinking beer).

Well, I wrote a proposal back in February to undertake some pilot research on Czech dialects related to my dissertation topic. At that time, the topic of my dissertation was still rather cursory, thus so was my proposal for this research trip. As a matter of fact, I wrote the proposal the night before it was due with absolutely no expectation of getting the grant. Well, I got it, and so I am here now, doing some research that is rather peripherally related to my dissertation.

What I proposed to do was come to the Czech Republic to get recordings of speakers of different Czech dialects. I’m not just recording random speech, but rather I’m having them describe some children’s pictures to get them to speak using certain grammatical constructions. This is all with the ultimate goal of testing the frequency and range of usage of these constructions in Czech across different dialects and different demographic groups.

It turns out that it’s really hard to do field research. It’s difficult on two levels, actually. First, it’s time consuming to recruit participants. It rarely takes just ten minutes to do a ten-minute interview. First there’s some small talk. Then you try to get to know one another, even if just a little bit. Then there are the questions about why I speak (some) Czech, and why I am studying Slavic languages in general. And usually after doing the recording you end up going out to get a beer or lunch or dinner with the person. A ten-minute interview really requires making a new friend. I’m not saying that any of this is bad, it’s just not exactly what I expected and takes a lot of time.

The second level of difficulty is in the research itself. The original hypothesis of what I could investigate was rather sketchy to begin with, and this makes it difficult to carry out the research because I’m not quite getting the information I expected to get, even though I’m finding out other things that are equally as interesting. I guess this is why there is such a thing as pilot research – because as experimental researchers we need to figure out how exactly to investigate different topics, including what does and doesn’t work for obtaining the desired information. In my previous research I’ve worked almost exclusively with historical data or non-verbal written communication, so this kind of experimental work is a real eye-opening experience for me.

Having written all of this, I must say that this “pilot research” has been interesting and fun in unexpected ways. I am speaking A LOT of Czech with "real" Czechs, as opposed to other students of the language (as was the case over the summer). At the conference in Regensburg I met a graduate student who studies here in Brno. We met today and he showed me around the department a bit, and also the library. Tomorrow I am going to listen to him give a lecture on phonology in Czech (I’ve never been to a lecture for real Czech university students).

Overall, I’m quite impressed with how helpful and friendly he and other Czechs I’ve met have been. On that note, I think I’ll end this long blog entry! ☺

It’s Christmas time in Bavaria

2008-12-06T20:58:00.003+02:00

I’ve been immersed in Slavic diachronic syntax for two days (don’t bother asking, it’s just what I do), so I haven’t had much time to explore the quaint and historic Bavarian town of Regensburg.

But it doesn't take much exploring to notice the abundance of Christmas cheer. I really think that the Germans might even have us Americans beat in this respect. Here are photos of medieval streets with Christmas decorations and a Christmas market.

For me, being in Germany is a lot like being at home -- that is, besides the language, and the food, and the currency, and a few other things… but otherwise, yep, just like home! What I mean, I guess, is that in crossing the border between the Czech Republic and Germany (especially into what used to be capitalist West Germany), the change is stark. The houses look somehow more livable, there’s not the same relics of Soviet anti-charm, and people are just plain friendlier. I am, of course, in Bavaria, which many Germans claim isn’t real Germany, but its own entity entirely. Either way, Eastern Europe stops abruptly at the German border.

The downside to all this prosperity is that Germany is more expensive, and, well, a bit more boring than the Czech Republic. I like it here, don’t get me wrong; in fact I have welcomed the respite from an intense trip to the Czech Republic (though, admittedly, it only recently became intense ;). But it’s nice to study Czech and Russian, where there’s more foreign-ness in the culture from my perspective as an American.

As a side note, I was just on the New York Times web site and did a double take at the side bar of advertisements… which were in German. I mean, I know that Google automatically registers your IP address and knows which country you are in and so adjusts accordingly (which is quite irritating, actually, in countries where I don’t speak the language!), but I never noticed ads on an American newspaper site being linked that way… the amazing and spooky world of the internet, sigh.

My new Czech family

2008-12-04T18:12:00.015+02:00

For the last two and a half days I was visiting with Czech relatives. Not my Czech relatives, mind you, but rather my friend Rachael’s distant Czech relatives. You see, a month or so ago Rachael’s grandfather Vincent gave me contact information for their relatives that live in the Czech Republic. So before leaving California I sent them letters saying that I would be in the Czech Republic and that I’d like to visit them. Most of them live in a village in the far southeast, near Slovakia, called Suchov. But the Navratilovs live in the far west of the Czech Republic – close to Germany – in a town called Chodov (pronounced roughly: HOE-dove; dove as in dove into the water, not the bird), and that’s where I’ve been.

Chodov is very close (~25 minutes by bus) to the posh tourist resort Karlovy Vary, which interestingly enough has been overrun by Russians in the last ten years. Chodov itself is anything but posh, though it has a cute town square and church.

Most of Chodov’s 15-20,000 residents live in large soviet apartment buildings called paneláky, including the Navratilov family. Here are some paneláky:

Marie Navratilova and her granddaughter Sylva met me at the train station around 3 pm on Tuesday and took me back to their apartment, where I was immersed in Czech for no less than 8 hours. I was sitting in roughly this position for almost the whole time while I met and chatted with (=listened to... mostly!) different family members who stopped by. Marie is on the left, I’m in the middle (obviously) and Sylva is on the right.

I was repeatedly fed (with no chance of turning anything down!) everything from fried chicken – that’s right, not just an American treat! – to open-faced sandwiches and cookies. The food was all very Czech, very Slavic, so not quite like it is at home. There’s a lot more butter, more fried food, more mayonnaise. But it’s good in its own way!

I’m not sure if all the family members stopped by just to see the American (me!) or whether they always stop by, but they were all interested in talking to me, even though I speak slow and broken Czech and sometimes understand very little of the conversation, especially when they spoke quickly or used slang. I had to explain repeatedly that no, I was not a relative, but rather an old friend of Vincent’s granddaughter. Despite not being related, they all treated me like family!

I was proud of myself for following the conversations most of the night, and realized that family-style immersion would be the way to really learn the language fluently. The grandmother, Marie or Maruška, especially enjoyed talking to me. After she convinced (coerced…) me into staying another night, I realized that she must have really enjoyed the new company, or else enjoyed the novelty of speaking Czech with a foreigner whose speech she could correct and who she could tell stories to. And I’m a great listener in Czech, because I can’t speak very well, so that probably made it all the more fun for her! She wanted me to stay even longer, but I had to leave for my conference in Germany, so it was not possible.

The day after I arrived (Wednesday) I went to Karlovy Vary (the neighboring posh resort town) with Marie and her oldest daughter Pavla (Marie also has twins – Sylva, the mother of younger Sylva, and a son whose name I cannot remember). We first went to the glass factory Moser in Karlovy Vary, where older Sylva works. Unfortunately, Sylva was not there because she had to go to the doctor from injuring her finger on the job (as far as I understood), but her friend (boyfriend?) Radik was working and got us a tour for free. I even got to go up in the work area and blow glass. Here’s proof – I’m in the middle (doing a terrible job ☺) and Radik is on the right.

Then we went to the main promenade of Karlovy Vary, which has a series of hot springs (prameny), which are supposed to be good for your health to drink. Marie made sure I tried each one of the springs. Here are Pavla and Marie at the largest spring.

Karlovy Vary is quite a pretty town, and though photos don't really capture it I have to show you at least a few (for even more pictures, click here):

Marie and Pavla absolutely would not let me pay for anything all day, from the bus ticket to food to the little souvenir cup for tasting the hot spring water. I was glad that I at least brought a gift for them when I arrived so I wasn’t a complete freeloader!! Being with Marie was reminiscent of spending time with my own grandmother – constantly feeding me, giving me small presents, talking to me about her past, her youth, her hometown, worrying about me traveling alone and talking to me a lot in general. It was nice to get a dose of the Slavic grandmother treatment since I haven’t had my own for almost ten years now.

I left this morning for Regensburg, Germany where I’m attending a linguistics conference all weekend. But don’t worry, my Czech “family” adventures are not over. I’m planning to go to the village Suchov in the far southeast to visit my other non-relatives. The Navratilovs’ called and told them I was coming. They are expecting me next Wednesday. I’ll let you know how it goes!

Thanksgiving? What Thanksgiving?

2008-11-29T11:33:00.006+02:00

I really wish I were a better liar and could tell you about all the sophisticated cultural activities I’ve been engaged in since I’ve been here. How I’ve taken advantage of the theater, the symphony; perhaps I ignored Thanksgiving, but I expanded my knowledge of Czech history, art, and architecture. All in addition to making significant progress with my research. But I’m really not such a good liar, and so I have to confess what I’ve really been doing – café-hopping, text messaging, and beer drinking (in this picture with my summer school friend Betine from Norway):

But then, who decides what’s culturally important? And, honestly, I’ve been learning a lot of useful Czech phrases from texting and spending time at bars. How useful this is to my research is another question, though there is a camp of linguists that tout the benefits of doing linguistic research in bars, where you can hear how languages are “really” spoken. Well, there might be something to this.

On my way to cafés and bars, I take time to photograph monuments, such as this tribute to writer/artist Josef Čapek, brother of the more famous author Karel Čapek, who (alert! interesting Czech cultural tidbit) coined the word “robot” in his book R.U.R. ‘Rossum’s Universal Robots’ (1920). In Czech it means ‘forced labor’; it is related to the root for work or labor in other Slavic languages, e.g. rabota ‘work’ in Russian.

Now I have the problem that all of the clothes I brought - except my pajamas - reek of smoke. Cigarette and marijuana smoke, I might add, since people smoke weed pretty openly in (some) bars here. Here’s the a picture of the show at the bar/music club I went to on Thursday, or Thanksgiving (which I unpatriotically ignored ;). Although the show was like little piece of Detroit in Prague (but performed by a French group…)

Oh, Prague, you're so charming in November

2008-11-26T11:34:00.008+02:00

I made it to Prague! This means, lucky you, that I’m back to blogging. Despite not really being ready for this trip (my research is only half-planned and my conference paper for December 5 in Regensburg is only half-written), it’s awesome** to be back. It’s also nice to use blogging as a procrastination tool. Since I’ve been back, I’ve found Czechs to be friendlier and more laid back. Maybe it’s the upcoming holiday season. Or maybe it’s the noticeable decrease in tourists contaminating the picturesque streets and cafes. Or maybe my expectations are just lower.

My big accomplishments so far have been purchasing a mobile phone (entirely in Czech) and arranging a visit to Rachael’s distant relatives (also in Czech) in a town called Chodov, ~3 hours from Prague. I’ve been exchanging e-mails with 16-year Sylva, who is the granddaughter of Rachael's grandfather's second cousin Marie. Got that? Basically, distant relatives of Rachael's family, who have kindly invited me to stay with them for a night next Tuesday. (N.B. Rachael is my friend from Grayling.)

Here's a map showing the path from Prague to Chodov for reference:

View Larger Map

Aside from getting “research” done this week, I also hope to explore Prague a little more, as it’s quite charming on the verge of winter. At this time of year signs of the holiday season randomly pop up, much like little patches of snow, in unexpected corners of the city (and sometimes in expected corners, such as stores). I’m not sure if photos can convey any of this, but I’ll post some anyway.

Proof of Christmas cheer at Náměstí Míru, not far from my pension:

Christmas kiosks and Czechs shopping, also at Náměstí Míru:

And the famous Kavárna Slavia (Café Slavia), where the great Czech intellectuals used to meet (Prague Castle is looking ominous across the river in the background)…

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**This “awesome” goes out to Carolyn Gardner ;) (Cf. No More Mess)

Leaving on a Jet Plane

2008-08-25T19:05:00.005+03:00

I flew home yesterday after spending one last day in Prague. The weather threatened to rain on me, but never actually did, so I got to enjoy my last 24 hours in Eastern Europe.

Also, in case this wasn't clear, Prague is not in Czechoslovakia, because Czechoslovakia no longer exists. What used to be Czechoslovakia is now two countries - The Czech Republic and Slovakia. The capital of the Czech Republic is Prague, and the capital of Slovakia is Bratislava. I didn't make it to Bratislava or Slovakia this summer (unless you count the train I took from Budapest to Prague that passed through Slovakia).

One of thing I noticed on my last day might be considered a “dark side” to Czech drinking culture. When I was leaving Olomouc yesterday to go to Prague (on their new fast train - the Pendolino), I saw three different men on three different occasions purchasing beer before 9 AM. One couldn’t have been older than 18. Then while I was waiting for the airport bus at 6:30 AM this morning I saw the three men in the picture buying beer at the kiosk behind them, probably while they were on their way to work:

But I still think that drinking and drunkenness aren’t as pronounced in the Czech Republic as in, for example, Russia or Poland, since beer isn’t as potent as vodka.

Something else new for me is vending machine beer:

You must swipe an ID to prove that you are at least 18 (the legal drinking age in the Czech Republic) to purchase the beer. My passport didn’t work in the machine, so I guess you have to have a Czech (or European) ID to make the machine happy.

Something that Alicia and I noticed earlier in the summer that differs from the US is the culture surrounding kids and families. In the US, it often seems like having kids requires you to turn your life inside out. At the very least, society seems to expect a certain number and type of changes. In contrast, Czech and other European families seem to go on living pretty much the same as they did before kids. They walk around town and run errands with their small children, go to gatherings with friends, take them on the buses, the trains, etc. and it’s all completely normal. Children’s presence in society is not an annoyance to adults, but instead a normal and perhaps even welcome addition. I think that’s cool. And, Christine, I’m glad you’ve been doing your part to bring this more European family style to the middle of the US.

Here are a few more pictures from my last day. This is the old Jewish cemetery in Josefov (through a small window, since the cemetery was closed):

And some other areas of the Old Town:

Well, this is my last blog. Thanks for reading! And thank you, Prague & Eastern Europe, for having me - it's been an adventure!

89 Days in Eastern Europe

2008-08-22T20:22:00.007+03:00

Sunday will be my 89th day in Eastern Europe. Americans are allowed to travel in the EU with their passports (without a visa) for a maximum of 90 days. As you can see, I’m cutting it pretty close.

On one hand, I’m happy to go home, but, on the other hand, I’m also sad to leave Eastern Europe.

Some things I’m looking forward to in the US:

Seeing friends and family, of course!! (Well, I’ll see at least some of you!)
Oh, Geronimo, how I miss you too! (I hope my cat remembers who I am.)
Food & drink in Berkeley: Peet's coffee, Cheeseboard pizza, a variety of fresh fruits and vegetables (that include more than just cucumbers & tomatos!), Alvin’s dinner parties, Peet's coffee (oops, did I mention that already?)
Elevators and washing machines that do not frighten me

But I’ll definitely miss some things here in the Czech Republic and Eastern Europe:

Languages!! It is, after all, fun to practice the languages you are studying in situ.
Being able to travel just a couple of hours by train or bus to a different country that speaks a different language and has different customs, food, etc.
Beer. It is cheap & tasty. It is also easy to find drinking buddies.
Some food here is pretty good, though usually gluttonously so. The pierogies in Poland are delicious. So is the fried cheese here in the Czech Republic. On the other hand it will be nice to avoid the temptation of these culinary devils.
The fact that it is SO easy to meet new people when traveling & studying in the summer. Hostels and summer language school are great places to meet interesting people and make new friends.

I was in Kraków again last weekend. That was, sadly, my last weekend excursion of the summer. Going back gave me a better feel for the city. Now I really understand its appeal as the artsy and intellectual counterpart to the bustling and busy business center of Warsaw.

The only downer of the weekend was when I witnessed some callous tourist intentionally kick a pigeon in the Kraków town square. I know that pigeons can be annoying, but is annoying behavior deserving of abuse? I may have been particularly sensitive that evening, having spent the entire day touring a Nazi death camp, that is, Auschwitz-Birkenau. Many people don't realize how close Auschwitz is to Kraków - one and a half hours by train. I guess that seeing cruelty to any living being was just too much for me to handle after that trip.

As a side note, you may have noticed that I decided to rename my blog. This may seem odd to you, since my travels end in less than two days, but I can't help it. I only came up with this name a couple of days ago. In any case, it's likely that "Abstrakkt" will travel again!

Summer language school is like elementary school

2008-08-11T23:04:00.005+03:00

I seem to be running out of blog-writing energy. But that’s OK, because the summer is running out of days. I have less than two weeks left in Eastern Europe before heading back to the US.

The problem isn't that I have nothing to write about - I've visited a few new places and seen some interesting things. However, what I’ve been doing is rather specific to this region of the Czech Republic and, furthermore, my activities have started resembling elementary school field trips.

Let me give you a rundown of my schedule last weekend to elucidate this point:

Saturday

Excursion 1) Left Olomouc early to go to Bouzov Castle (organized by summer school); this castle was completely rebuilt, i.e. fake – not original, thus had a Disneyland feel to it.

Excursion 2) Cheese factory (organized by summer school); the Olomouc region is (relatively) famous for manufacturing a particularly smelly cheese called Olomoucké tvarůžky. Lucky us got to tour the strange cheese museum. The terrible tour didn't even end with a cheese sample (perhaps this was for the best).

Excursion 3) Olomouc Zoo; this last-minute “excursion” with two other summer school students was the best trip of the day. The zoo impressed me – it was more like a zoo + a nature park, which turned out to be the perfect afternoon getaway. Here’s a picture of me failing to charm the goats in the petting zoo area:

Sunday

Excursion 4) Kroměříž (an historic town in the neighboring county); this small town turned out to be bigger and more interesting than we had anticipated, thus requiring more schlepping around than expected (but was still fun).

After touring the palace, the flower gardens, and town square in Kroměříž, we returned to Olomouc just in time for the soccer game at the stadium right across the street from our dorm.

Excursion 5) Football (=soccer) game: Olomouc vs. Plzeň; The drunk and screaming Olomouc fans were almost more entertaining than the game itself; Olomouc won, which was also exciting.

After the game we went out to dinner.

Then I came home and fell asleep almost immediately.

Now I understand why schools organize these kind of trips for kids: because the kids are exhausted afterward and fall asleep easily, thus making parents happy.

Staying busy all weekend allowed me to avoid the news, which has been reporting some depressing events in this part of the world. On Friday there was a train accident in the Czech Republic, which had seven fatalities. The train crash was on the route from Krakow to Prague – the same route & the same night train that I took in late June when I first came to Prague. And as I'm sure you know, there is now a war between Russia & Georgia, an "accidental" war, according to the Financial Times.

Sorry for that downer. To end less seriously, look back at the picture of the petting zoo goats rejecting me on Saturday. That perks things up, eh?

Viennese coffees and cakes, oh my!

2008-08-05T16:45:00.003+03:00

Vienna (Wien to the locals) is certainly a place of culinary pleasure, ecstasy if you will, and I didn't even scratch the surface of its wonders. Vienna is known for a few items in particular: coffee -- "Viennese coffee" features a large dollop of whipped cream immersed in strong coffee; a chocolate cake called Sachertorte; apple or ricotta strudel; and other sweet delights. I also discovered a tasty white wine - Grüner Veltliner, which Wikipedia just told me is also available in the Czech Republic... I'll have to look into this. Of course there's also Wiener schnitzel (Wiener because it's named after Wien), which I didn't get to try in Vienna, but it's no big loss because schnitzel is also popular here in the Czech Republic, just under a different name, smažený řízek (which is harder to pronounce than the German version, as is the case for almost everything in Czech). I also enjoyed the atmosphere of the cafes and konditoreis, or cake shops. The chain Aida is one of my favorites. It has a 50's soda shop feel to it.

Aside from food and drink there is plenty of history and culture to explore in Vienna. I was traveling with two Germans, which helped a bit, since they knew some of the history of the city and of course speak German, so it was like I had my own personal translators! In one and a half days I was able to see a lot of the main attractions. Since Vienna was the capital of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, it was, and still is, well-equipped with gorgeous palaces. In the middle of the city is the Hofburg Palace or winter residence of the monarchy:

A few kilometers outside the city center (about 6 metro stops, or 15 minutes away) is the Schloß Schönbrunn (Schönbrunn Palace) - the summer residence of the Hapsburgs:

However, my favorite part of the city is the more modern Museum Quartier. I only made it to the Modern Art Museum, but the museum cluster & courtyard is a hip place to hang out, whether or not you go inside the museums:

For my unedited collection of pictures, click here. There are a lot of duplicates, unnecessary shots of my feet, boring pictures of statues or insides of domes, etc. but if you have a burning desire to see more of Vienna, it might just be your lucky day. If not, please just skim through them for the interesting stuff. And thank you for not being annoyed. It's easier for me than creating two albums (one for you, one for the people I was traveling with).

The sleepy streets of Olomouc

2008-08-01T16:52:00.006+03:00

It's Friday night and the streets of Olomouc are empty. But don't be fooled. The locals are out, but you have to look in the "hospody" or Czech taverns to find them. This is where Czechs gather - sometimes every night - for beer, food, more beer, and sometimes wine. Also, the streets may be emptier than usual because, as I've been told, Olomouc is particularly quiet in the summer. It's a college town and most of the students are gone.

Here's a relatively people-less street.

And here's a row of bars/restaurants where you can actually find some people. I was at the one on the end in front of the yellow building until about 3 am last night (this morning). It's part of my studies - I'm trying to immerse myself in Czech culture!

I could bend the truth a bit and tell you that I've been really busy in summer school - practicing Czech, studying hard, etc. But this program isn't so demanding (especially compared to Russian school at Middlebury), so I've been able to take it easy, for better or for worse. If you are on Facebook, you may have noticed pictures of me at the pool or the pub. These are my regular hangouts after class. But remember that they placed me in one of the advanced Czech classes so I am definitely learning something.

Most of the other students in the program are in Prague for the weekend, but a couple of us are headed to Vienna instead. An American I met in Riga is studying in Vienna for the summer and has graciously offered to let us stay with her, so I just had to pay for the slightly expensive, but relatively short train ride (~$30 and 3 hours from Olomouc, one way). You will probably be as surprised as I was a few weeks ago to discover that Vienna is actually further east than Prague, and so it is actually closer to Moravia (eastern Czech Republic, where Olomouc is located), than it is to Prague & Bohemia. Here's a map to prove it:

I'm eager to report back about the coffee, schnitzel and strudel in Vienna... OH, and about the culture and history and all that too!

Strč prst skrz krk

2008-07-27T15:54:00.006+03:00

"Strč prst skrz krk" is a real sentence in Czech. Wikipedia (yes - it has its own Wikipedia entry, but then doesn't everything nowadays?) translates it as "stick your finger through your neck." It's probably the most famous Czech tongue twister because, as you may have noticed, it doesn't contain a single vowel. Yeah, Czech is a rather hard language to learn. In addition to its lack of preoccupation with vowels, it has some other sounds that are rather difficult to pronounce, like the ř, which requires you to pronounce a rolled "r" and a "zh" at the same time ("zh" sounds like the "g" in mirage).

As far as Czech culture is concerned, I've found Moravians to be extremely nice and I have multiple examples to prove it. For example, I went to the grocery store after class last week, forgetting that I only had about 50 crowns on me (a little over $3). My total came to 88 crowns and as I reached in my wallet I realized that I did not have enough to cover my purchase. I confessed to the cashier that I did not have enough money and was ready to just turn around and run out of the shop, but without even blinking she asked me what I really wanted and proceeded to help me sort through my items: granola, a pear, a banana, bread, and a cucumber to determine what exactly I could afford with what turned out to be 59 crowns. Afterward I apologized profusely to the woman who had been waiting behind me, and she responded with something along the lines of "there's nothing to apologize for." What could have been quite embarrassing actually turned out to be quite a pleasant experience.

My next nice Moravian story occurred as I was headed back to Brno this weekend for a concert in the launderette (yes, you read this correctly and I will say more about it below). From the dorm I had to take a local bus & a trolleybus to get to the intercity bus station. On the bus I was studying the town map because I was having a little trouble figuring out where to transfer to the trolleybus. An older woman on the bus saw me poring over my map and asked if I needed help. I asked her how to get to the train station, and she told me to come with her and she would show me the right trolleybus to transfer to. As she showed me the stop, I realized that I had told her train station when I really needed the bus station so I corrected myself and she led me - cane and all - to the other side of the street where I needed to be. She even translated the tram number into German for me (despite the fact that I don't speak German, though I did catch sieben). As she was walking away she stopped, turned around, walked back toward me, pulled two small apples out of her bag and gave them to me for my trip.

Now it gets embarrassing. Shortly after arriving in Brno I had to use a payphone to call the friends I was staying with, at which time I realized that I did not have my wallet! I wasn't even worried about losing money so much as my passport, not to mention credit cards, ATM card, etc. I was frantic because I really didn't know where I had left/lost it - on the bus from Olomouc? At McDonalds? (I used the McDonalds bathroom after arriving.) Since the bus was long gone, my best bet at that point was to check McDonalds. I raced back over there and as I was about to ask the girl working at the cash register if a missing wallet had turned up, a young Czech man walked up to me and asked me if I had lost my passport (in English). I thank my lucky stars that he and his friend had found my wallet and that they waited in McDonalds to return it to me. Everything was still in it as I had left it. The crazy part is that I didn't even buy anything at McDonalds (I try to never buy anything there; I only use the bathroom), but had just briefly sat at a table to dig something out of my bag and in the process had left my wallet on a table. Yes mom, I guess I do live a charmed life.

Since we're on the topic of embarrassing things I did last week, I might as well add something unrelated to nice Moravians or Czech culture. As I was shifting furniture around in my dorm room in Olomouc, I accidentally ripped the plug to my computer out of the wall and one of the prongs remained stuck in the socket. I was very annoyed and decided to try to dislodge it so that I could try to put it back together somehow. So without thinking I grabbed metal tweezers and attempted to dislodge the prong. You can imagine what happened next. Yes, it's true - I electrocuted myself. A sharp current ran through my right arm and then I yelled and dropped the tweezers and it was over. Maybe I fried my brain a little and that's why I almost lost my passport in Brno.

I'm beginning to think that maybe you guys shouldn't be letting me travel alone. Or maybe I've just been traveling for too long and now I am getting sloppy.

Last but not least, the concert in the launderette. Well, that's all there really is to say. The expats who own a laundry have a band with some local gypsy children (I'm completely serious) and they had a small concert at their shop today. They played well and it was very entertaining. But then, my expectations were pretty low since it was a concert in a laundromat.

Who knew a Dutch guy could sing "Billie Jean" so well. (They had some of their own songs too.)

Cities in the Czech Republic that aren’t Prague

2008-07-26T02:30:00.004+03:00

I have now been to three non-Prague cities in the Czech Republic: Plzeň, Brno, and Olomouc. You may remember that the main reason I've been traveling this summer is the month and a half of “free time” I had between the conference I attended in Tartu, Estonia (at the end of May) and summer school, which I just started this week in the town Olomouc in the Czech Republic.

Here’s a map of the Czech Republic again. Plzeň is southwest of Prague. Brno & Olomouc are much further east – in Moravia. Brno is the second biggest city in the Czech Republic after Prague, and Olomouc is well known for having a historical and prestigious university (where I have summer school!).

Before coming to Olomouc, I spent a few days in Brno. It’s a fun town. I met some locals… well sort of locals. Actually I met a few expats from western Europe, an American student, and a handful of Czechs. The expats own a launderette in Brno and after I washed my clothes, they showed me some Brno night life. It was a good time… until the next day when I was quite hung over. But Brno is pretty and if I hadn’t been so hung over I’m sure I could have seen all the main sights in a day.

I stopped drinking for a day or two when I came to Olomouc last Sunday for Czech summer school at Palacky University. Even though I don’t know Czech very well (yet!) they placed me in an advanced class (Russian helps me do well on Czech grammar tests… Russian unfortunately doesn’t help me much with speaking Czech!).

This is the sign for the main square in Olomouc. It means something like 'upper square' & not what you might be thinking!

I quite like visiting smaller Czech cities after my time in Prague. Though Prague is fun to explore, the summer tourists were really starting to get on my nerves. Here in Olomouc I have a purpose again (as a student and not just a traveler) and am finally seeing more of Czech - not tourist - culture and life.

I’m slowly easing into summer school mode. We have about four hours of morning classes, but (thankfully!) not too much homework. There are a lot of cultural lectures after classes on topics such as Czech history, film, literature, etc. I haven’t fully explored the city yet because of summer school, so I don’t have too many pictures yet. But you can catch a glimpse of me in the following clip from the Czech Tuesday night news. They came to our class and interviewed a couple of us – one American (not me - I managed to avoid being interviewed), a Norwegian girl and a Bulgarian girl. In the clip you can also see my teacher (the man with glasses) and I'm sitting behind him on the left side of the screen. I’m in a few other shots too - look for the brown short-sleeved shirt.

Czechs say beer is food, and I do too!

2008-07-19T22:38:00.008+03:00

For Alicia’s blog, please scroll down to the next entry - thanks!

I have so much and so little to say at the same time. I took it easy the last week I spent in Prague (+ one overnight visit to Plzeň, the birthplace of Pilsener – thank you Plzeň!). However, I’ve collected some interesting stories about strange hostel people and had some adventures related to the everyday (though still exciting to me) world of food & drink in the Czech Republic.

Regarding hostel residents, I’ll just say that whether Wikitravel.com is a reliable source or not, I’m 120% ready to believe what it says about Brits in Prague. That is, “more than half of all fights reported to Prague police in 2005 involved people from the UK!" I got about 3 hours of sleep the night before last thanks to a "gang" of them staying in my hostel room. Oh well, Czech beer cures all ails (didn’t you know?). The British are also notorious for having their stag or bachelor parties in Prague. I witnessed one where a group of guys were dressed as a male police officers, except for the groom-to-be who was dressed as female police officer. Here’s a picture of a pub, but not with the fake British police guys, just some regular Czechs.

The same night that I saw the stag party (last Saturday), I unfortunately also saw what happens when you’re caught without a valid metro ticket. You see, the system in Prague (as well as in Berlin & Budapest) is sort of an honor system, because you have to validate your ticket in a little yellow box when entering the metro (or tram or bus), but there is no machine or person actually controlling who enters the metro. I often bought a 24-hour ticket, which I would validate once to "activate" it, but then I usually wouldn’t even take it out again during the next 24 hours of metro travel. A couple of people from the hostel apparently did not understand the validation system and thought that just buying the ticket was enough to make them legitimate metro passengers (it is not). Occasionally metro police stop people at exits to check their tickets, and this happened to us on Saturday night. Two of them had tickets, but had not validated them, which as it states on the ticket (in Czech & English) is basically the same as not having a ticket. Anyway, they were fined 700 crowns each (~$47). This sucked to see, obviously, but at least it was not as scary as being stopped by the Militia in Moscow.

The rest of my week was spent eating, drinking, some sleeping, and also taking Czech language lessons for an hour a day (see! I wasn’t completely unproductive!). I’ve gotten so serious about Czech beer that I even made a special trip to Plzeň (again, the birthplace of Pilsener beer), to go to the Pilsener Urquell brewery. Well, I also went there to get out of Prague for a bit, but in the end it was really just a beer excursion. I can’t remember much since they kept feeding me beer all day, so please wait until I upload the pictures for more details.

I also went on a strudel excursion in Prague, which was no less of an adventure than my trip to Plzeň. You see, a couple of months ago I downloaded a Travel Channel show about Prague on iTunes (I don’t recommend the show, the host is irritating), but it did lead me to an amazing strudel place in a practically untouristed part of the city. The attraction is not just the deliciousness of the strudel, but also the sheer size of it. See below – it was as big as my forearm! Mmm… warm apple strudel. That’s a legitimate activity & meal for a day, yes?

Here’s the strudel stand – practically hidden in a residential neighborhood:

And here’s the strudel, pre-consumption:

Here it is again after the first bite:

And here’s what was left of the strudel after my first attempt at eating it (pretty impressive, eh?):

Now I’m in Brno (check the map). It’s in Moravia – the eastern half of the Czech Republic. Prague is in Bohemia, the western half. And yes, this is the same Bohemia that gave birth to the English word bohemian. OED says "ORIGIN: mid 19th cent.: from French bohémien ‘gypsy’ (because gypsies were thought to come from Bohemia, or because they perhaps entered the West through Bohemia)." Plzeň is also in Bohemia.

On Sunday I start summer school in Olomouc, which is in Moravia, not Bohemia. More on Moravia later.

Eastern Europe: the real story Guest blog by Alicia

2008-07-16T12:03:00.006+03:00

Bad news: my feet hurt days one through 14. At times the pain made me nauseous and once I felt the lights going out on me. The low point was when I cried in a Budapest metro station. Julia said it best, what I really needed was the air sandal.

Good news: Julia and I are dreamy travel partners. We made very good use of the term “party machen!” [NB: machen is German for 'to make', we were basically bastardizing German for our own amusement! - JM.] without annoying each other and at the same time we’d find ourselves singing “When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie…” in front of a romantic view. We were always hungry and tired together.

We also struggled with languages together (Julia mostly with English). The standout mistake was when I ordered “one father, please” (ein Vater, bitte) at a German pretzel stand instead of water (Wasser).

Prague: is smaller than any European city I know. It has an older population and a quiet, conservative culture. Most importantly, their language is absurd. Just crazy. Vowels are apparently very expensive. I’m certain this is a Czech word: Pnlzrdemtcs. You can make your own word, too. Try it. But, Prague is beautiful! There aren’t many places in the States where you’ll find yourselves sitting in a Shakespearean courtyard in the summertime, talking as late into the night as you like, without mosquitoes. Or watching the European football finals alone in a private room of a Greek restaurant being served like V.I.P.!

Highlight: On our way back to Prague, on a train from Budapest, we met real life Praguer, Tomas(h). He took us for a walking tour around Old Town Square, after which we went to a restaurant with his friends. While Julia got to know Tomas(h) better, I had the pleasure of talking with his pal Pawel. Pawel is from an eastern Czech village with a population of 1,200. No, I didn’t leave out any zeros. He is so proud of the fact that he has a Civil Engineering degree, is a “Senior” “Project” “Manager” at his firm and has to wear a suit. He plans to work in Prague until he is 40 or 50 years-old and then return to his village retired with more money than God. He was so sweet and it was so refreshing to meet someone as easily pleased with the world as he is. I miss Pawel.

Berlin: Julia and I arrived by train to Berlin late on a Friday night and were like giddy little school girls once we realized we could drink beer everywhere! The town was festive because Germany had made it to the football championship and everyone was drinking beers in the U-Bahn, in the streets. It felt really good.

We saw Fidelio (Beethoven’s only opera) at the Staatsoper which, apparently, is very difficult to perform. Julia and I were duly impressed. The opera culture in Berlin is different from that of the States. For one, the orchestra pit was hoppin’! It looked like a jam band was down there because the musicians were so physical. The crowd was much more casual and comfortable, yet very interested. There were furrowed brows, excited whispers and people slouching as far forward in their seats as possible.

Julia and me, proof that I really was really there (our reflection in the column at the Reichstag or German Legislature):

Highlight: Waiting at a bus stop at 2AM, beers in hand, on our way to a club, I saw a lone man with a fanny pack stomping toward us. He was picking things up off the street and throwing them back down. He then went over to a fence, grabbed it with both hands and very angrily shook it with his entire body! (Coincidentally, this is exactly how Jane Goodall describes alpha male chimpanzees’ behavior when showing their strength and power: dragging logs, shaking trees, throwing rocks…). As he came closer he yelled something in German at us, when that didn’t work he tried Russian: Pivo! This means beer and is the lone Slavic word Julia taught me that I remember. I shook my bottle upside down letting him know I was empty. But Julia kept sipping on what was left of hers. A foot away from Julia, fanny pack and all, fresh from fence-shaking, he says to her “Pivo?!” I couldn’t believe my ears when she said nein to this guy. To this alpha male she would not give her backwash beer! I was nervous because it was late and not many cars or people were passing by, so I put the neck of my empty beer bottle in my sweaty, shaky palm so I could use it club-like on his face if I had to. Instead, his posture crumbled and he said in a whiny voice, like he was starving: Pivvoooo? She looked him straight in the eye and said nein again, then took another drink. Defeated, he looked at the bus map and asked if we knew how to get to where he was going. He then skipped over to the other side of the street to catch his bus while Julia finished her beer. Oh, how I miss Julia.

I could go on about Berlin, but to keep it short I’ll say this: it’s amazing, and you never feel far from the wall or forget for a second where you are. It’s a liberal, safe, friendly place and I had a few discussions with myself about the possibility of living there some day.

Budapest: is a beautiful, beautiful city. The Hungarian people have done a fine, fine job of maintaining and organizing their history. This is quite a feat considering it’s a less than peaceful history. Yet, Budapest has some of the most amazing, well-maintained museums I’ve ever seen. Helping already good matters, our hostel was as centrally located as a hostel can get (thanks, Andrea!).

The Plague Column outside of Matthias church:

Highlight: Julia and I went to two different baths. The first being the outdoor Szechenyi Baths which are surrounded by the most beautiful buildings. One of the pools had foot-massage jets, body-massage bubble jets, AND a circular track thing with a current inside that pulls you round and round. Getting in and out of the circular current was difficult and, therefore, funny. I felt like I was seven years-old.

We also went to the indoor Gellert Baths. For 20 USD, you get access to a women’s side: two thermal pools, a eucalyptus infused steam room and an ice bath which you can’t be in for more than 10 seconds or you’ll die. The unisex (?) section had a beautiful sparkling pool with bubble jets and lion head statues along the edge spouting water so that you could sit underneath for a fabulous shoulder massage. Our skin never looked better; we were literally glowing walking out of the baths.

In conclusion, there really is nothing like leaving your own continent for two weeks to really bounce you back. I’m hoping Julia and I can do it again, and this time, in much less than seven years. Click here for my personal gallery. [NB: towards the end there are pictures with actual people ;) - JM.]

Party Machen!
Alicia

Different views of Prague

2008-07-11T19:15:00.003+03:00

Prague is replete with beautiful views of… Prague. The city is surrounded by hills (mountains) and from both above & below there are gorgueous views of Prague’s center, the Vltava river, Prague Castle, etc. etc. Here's the Old Town Square & Týn Church from the top of the Old Town Hall:

One of these views is from my current (and second) Prague residence, a dormitory on Petřin hill. Though the views from Petřin, the funicular ride to get here, and the rose gardens nearby are all great, the dorm itself is a bit depressing. What’s getting me down isn’t so much the dorm’s bare minumum Soviet style or the lack of a social area to meet people (aided by my minimal Czech language skills to meet people), as it is the lack of wireless internet. Like I said, the view & funicular ride are great, but all this makes it a pain to get to other parts of town (read: cafes with free WiFi).

The dorms are near the Eiffel tower-like structure sticking out from the top of the hill (Petřin tower):

And my dorm is the last in this row of depressing buildings:

Anyway, I’m moving to a new location tomorrow, at which point I’ll have resided in three neighborhoods of Prague.

My first hostel - Hostel u Melounu (Hostel at the Melon), where Alicia and I stayed before, was a cute little place with a courtyard (which was perfect, except for 50% of the time when it was raining). But I couldn’t get a reservation there after Alicia left and so moved up to Petřin hill on the recommendation of a Czech guy we met on the train back from Budapest. This place is super cheap and I have a private room, but, well… I already told you about its disadvantages.

We went out with the Czech guy from the train (Tomáš) and his friends the night before Alicia left, which was interesting (as it is always interesting to meet locals). We learned that Czechs have a quiet culture and don't really appreciate loud tourists who come to Prague without much knowledge of its history, language etc. I haven't heard from Tomáš since we went out that night, so perhaps we overwhelmed him with our loud, post-beer drinking, American tourist nature. It's like the Budapest shrug, I may never know.

Despite my perhaps bland presentation, Prague really is a nice place to visit. The beer is free flowing (Czechs reportedly drink the most beer per capita in the world), and Moravian wine is free-flowing too. The people are in general friendly (and not just the tourists, who seem to make up 1 in 3 of its July population). Perhaps why I’m having a bit of trouble putting together sparkling prose about the city is because there has been dreary weather for a few days (though today was nice), and I’ve also lost my traveling partner, Alicia, so I’m getting used to backpacking/traveling alone again.

More pictures of me and Alicia and our travels should be coming soon (at least they have been promised!) For now check out my Prague gallery. Also stay tuned as I attempt to get pictures of certain "actor" types requested by blog readers. However, I must point out that getting pictures of random men on the street is a lot easier to demand than to deliver. I don't think it's so easy to get a good picture of a person without him knowing. Yesterday I tried to take a picture of a group of what I thought were Czechs, which led to 1) them seeing me trying to take the picture and 2) me discovering they were not in fact Czech, but rather British. In other words, be patient!

Oh, and last, but not least - here is a map of the Czech Republic for reference:

My guidebook hates me, but Budapest is GREAT!

2008-07-05T22:32:00.007+03:00

There were minor battles with my Let’s Go Eastern Europe guidebook earlier in the summer. For example, it told me that my hostel in Vilnius was located in the center of town, only to find out that the hostel was actually located very close to the bus station where I had arrived (this, of course, was after lugging my suitcase & backpack through Vilnius’ winding cobblestone streets). But in Budapest, war has broken out with the guidebook. The Budapest section must have been written by someone who was high, or drunk, or both. It lists restaurants at grossly incorrect addresses, has the tourist information centers marked on streets that I have confirmed are not home to anything tourist-friendly, and other annoying inaccuracies.

Crappy tourist book aside, we are really enjoying Budapest. Our hostel is cute and fun and centrally located. We have indulged in the extravagant Széchenyi public baths (even prettier on the inside!):

…taken the funicular to the castle district on the Buda side of the city (Buda & Pest used to be separate towns on either side of the Danube but they merged to form one city):

…eaten some tasty Hungarian food (highlights for me were cold sour cherry soup, garlicky potatoes, and crepes; Alicia liked the goulash), and more. There’s also plenty of architecture to admire here. One of my favorite buildings houses the Hungarian Parliament:

Any linguistic knowledge that may have aided me in other countries is useless here in Budapest. Hungarian is a difficult language, unrelated to most other languages in Europe, and though the people are in general nice, there are some interesting behaviors that we've found difficult to interpret. For example, on more than one occasion we've asked questions and gotten a weird, disinterested shrug as a response. E.g. at the liquor store: “Do you have any cold wine?” // Response: weird shrug. Or at the metro station: “Do I need to purchase another metro ticket or is this one valid for a transfer?” // Response: weird shrug. If only I spoke some Hungarian I could perhaps uncover the mystery of the shrug.

On a more serious note, today there is a gay pride parade in town, which has apparently been crashed (vandalized?) by gay-bashers. I heard this from other hostel guests, but suspected as much when I saw a long line of police cars with sirens zooming past an hour or so ago. I may try to see what is going on from afar, but I’m a bit wary since Budapest isn’t known to be a gay-friendly city like Berlin (for example), and I don’t want to get caught in the middle of any hate crimes.

Lastly, I discovered that Barack is potable in Budapest. For fans, here’s proof:

This is no gimmick! It's really a local liquor! Barack means peach in Hungarian.

From Prague to Berlin

2008-07-01T14:32:00.003+03:00

Upon arriving in Berlin it’s clear that we’re no longer in Eastern Europe. Despite the fact that Berlin is practically due north of Prague and thus not any further west, and despite the additional fact that a large part of Berlin and all of its surrounding area was formerly Eastern Germany, it’s still clear to me that we’re now in the West.

That’s not to say that Berlin isn’t an interesting and unique place, which it is. Pieces of the former wall decorate the city center, which seems to complement, rather than contrast with shiny modern buildings that have sprung up since 1989.

This is also the first city that I’ve been to, in which I really feel that its history has played a part in my own. The fall of the Berlin wall and the subsequent fall of the Soviet Union were probably the first major global events that I remember living through. It’s somehow both eerie and satisfying to be in such a place.

Since Alicia and I have been in Berlin we’ve been doing some fun things besides visiting museums and Berlin wall monuments. We arrived around midnight on Friday after a gorgeous train ride along the Elbe from Prague to Germany; who knew Bohemia - the western part of the Czech Republic – and the Dresden area of Germany were so beautiful!? We went to the opera – Beethoven’s Fidelio - the next night for a taste of Berlin high culture...

...and last night we watched the European championship football (=soccer) game for some non-high culture. Germany played Spain in the final game and, unfortunately, Germany lost 0-1, but it was still interesting to see the fans and the city during such a big game. (Like the World Cup, the European Championship is played only every four years.)

Our Berlin luck ran out when we tried to go out to a club after the game, which turned out to be closed, but because it was so hidden kept us wandering and guessing before we were fully cognizant of the fact that it was, in fact, closed. Today I’m recovering from a night of beer-drinking, football-watching, and club-wandering adventures.

But we’ve really had more good luck than bad. We are lucky enough to not have to stay in a hostel since a friend from Berkeley (Alvin’s boyfriend Ryan) is studying here in Berlin at the Goethe Institute, and so we’ve had a nice, centrally located apartment to crash in. This is especially helpful, since the dollar is currently VERY weak against the Euro.

Also, I’m not ignoring Prague, but rather feel that I can’t do it blog justice yet. But don’t worry, I’m returning there and will try to render it to you in all its glory soon! For now, here’s some pics of Berlin.

Julia attends mass, slays dragon

2008-06-25T14:15:00.003+03:00

Well, at least the first part is true. I attended a Catholic service… in Polish! And it was hot and humid enough in Kraków to make me feel like I needed to slay the dragon that was breathing on me (until the hail storm, at least). And I’m not just pulling this dragon stuff out of the far corners of my imagination. There is a legend in Kraków of a dragon that wreaked havoc by constantly devouring people’s sheep. Then a clever person tricked the dragon into eating a sheep stuffed with gunpowder, and the dragon subsequently exploded. (I may be fudging some of the details of this legend, but isn’t that part of the beauty of legends?) I visited the dragon’s purported lair, which also used to house a Kraków pub. Now it just scares small children.

The Dragon's Den is in a cave beneath Wawel (pronounced Vavel), the beloved castle of Kraków.

Oh, but back to mass. It was nice, though I only made out a few words here and there and I had to stand the whole time because the place was packed and I gave up my seat to an older woman (it seemed like the right thing to do, considering I was in a church). The church itself was pretty impressive – big, high ceilings, interesting decorations & architecture on the inside (can’t say what style exactly… Gothic?). But I only managed to get a picture of the church from the outside:

My favorite part of Kraków, however, is the old Jewish quarter, Kazimierz. Despite its depressing history it’s become a hip and stylish part of town that is paying plenty of attention to its past with museums, art, monuments and even this menorah fence:

But I only saved 2 days for Kraków, perhaps not enough, so I might return later this summer. We’ll see. For now I’m ready to devour Prague. I'll have to do this alone for one more day since Alicia missed her flight out of DC and so is arriving tomorrow, not today. I'm not blogging about this to bring shame to Alicia, but rather to prove that I'm not the only one who misses planes (though I may have been notorious for doing this in the past).

Adventures in Family History, Part 2 By train, by bus, by foot, by thumb…

2008-06-23T22:08:00.006+03:00

On Friday morning I woke up at 5:30 AM to catch my 7 AM train from Warsaw to Toruń. Toruń is the closest major city to the village of Wąpielsk, where the Kotwickis are from. As it turns out, Torun is also a beautiful town. I didn’t have much time to enjoy Toruń when I arrived around 10 AM, though, because my main task was to try to get to Wąpielsk. The young woman at the Tourist Information Center (TIC) was extremely helpful in helping me find a way to Wąpielsk (though she had never heard of the village herself – bad sign? Hmmm…). The trip would take about 1.5-2 hours by bus and I could leave at 2 or 4 PM, but it appeared that there was no way I could catch a bus back to Toruń that night. Since there were no listed accomodations in Wąpielsk, the TIC woman found a hotel for me in a town near Wąpielsk (the town is Golub-Dobrzyn). And the hotel was in a castle!

I spent some time walking around Toruń until it started raining and I decided to find a restaurant. The restaurant was quite crowded and I ended up sharing a table with a Polish woman and her granddaughter. I had my first pseudo-full conversation in Polish, which was quite difficult, though I managed to at least find out that she was from Toruń and that she had a colleague from Wąpielsk, but had never been there herself (she also made sure I wasn’t planning to stay there, since she didn’t think there was much in the town – another bad sign? Hmmm…). In any case, they were very nice to try to speak with me!

At 2 I headed to Wąpielsk. About 2 hours later, I was the last one on the bus and the driver dropped me off at a bus stop on an intersection of two roads and not much else. I managed to confirm with him that another bus should be able to take me back to Golub-Dobrzyn (to the castle!) around 6:20 PM. Another bus would also come by at 9:30 PM, but after a quick glance at the so-called “village” of Wąpielsk, I was pretty sure I wanted to leave for the castle earlier, rather than later.

As best as I can tell, Wąpielsk is an intersection with 3 stores, a post office, some kind of government buiding, and, ummm…. that’s all. Surrounding the intersection are farms, mostly, plus one small Soviet-style apartment building, and a few more modern-looking houses. I walked a bit in each direction from the intersection, looking for signs of life. I found some life - people and cows. The people seemed to being doing one of two things – going to one of the stores by foot, bike or car for beer (or bread), or else standing in doorways chatting. Some other people were working on their farms, but it was difficult to get good pictures and not look like a spy. Here’s a picture of the "downtown":

You can see more of the wonders of Wąpielsk in the photo album. It’s basically just a farming area, and I don’t think there is much else. I suppose that if our young ancestors, the Kotwicki children, didn’t inherit a farm, they probably couldn’t have done much in this town. Thus they set off to live with relatives in the new world.

By 6 PM I was very ready to go to the castle. I went to the bus stop early to wait, but got a bit bored waiting so I took out my iPod and computer to charge it and load some more songs. Then, at 6:05 – 15 minutes earlier than the time I had gotten from the TIC woman – the bus came. I saw it, was in shock for a split second, then waved to him and started packing my things as quickly as possible to hop on the bus. But he drove away. I raced after him, dragging my half-packed things behind me, but he did not stop. Then I wandered back to the bus stop in a daze and sat in shock. Maybe it was the wrong bus? Why had it come so early? What if I missed my bus? What would I do?

Then maybe 5 minutes later, before I even managed finish packing up my things, I saw another bus. It was coming from a different direction, so I stood up and squinted to read the sign for where it was going. It was going to Golub-Dobrzyń, to the castle! I finished packing my things very quickly and just as I started to run over to catch the bus, it had already turned the corner and was gone. That’s right. I missed TWO buses to the castle. Mind you, it was still only about 6:10/6:15, so, I thought, maybe neither of those buses were right and there will be another bus at 6:20, like I had written down. I waited quite alertly, all packed and everything (!) at the intersection, ready to jump on ANY bus that came from ANY direction. But by 6:30 I knew that those had been my last chances. I had missed my bus(es).

The thought of waiting there three more hours to potentially miss another bus was enough to make me want to run all the way to the castle. Suddenly I had an overwhelming feeling of being totally and completely trapped. I was in this tiny village that wasn’t even really a village, but an intersection. There was not even one restaurant, where I could sit for while, if I waited.

So I had one more option - to hitchhike. Why not? These people all seemed pretty nice. Maybe somewhat reserved, but nice. So I began walking in the direction toward Golub-Dobrzyń and got ready to try hitchhiking.

But no cars were coming in the direction I was walking. I had the sense that I was re-performing the exodus of our ancestors 100 years ago. I know, a bit dramatic, but I was overwhelmed with the need to get out of that place. That must be why I found this sign to be so symbolic:

I walked for an hour and 10 cars passed going in my direction. Not one stopped. One even had a taxi sign on it. Couldn’t the taxi have picked up one more desperate passenger? My shoes were not the right choice for the trek, sort of like business casual short boots (my only covered shoes for this trip). I was determined to throw them away if I ever made it to my destination. Fortunately I had left my suitcase in a locker in Warsaw, which I would pick up on my way to Krakow the next day, and so only had a backpack and purse. Based on what I knew from the trip out there I tried to calculate how far Golub-Dobrzyń was from Wąpielsk in my head. At the very best I estimated 10 miles, which is walkable, but certainly no fun.

Then I approached a fork in the road, and before the fork was a man in front of a house. He was closing the gate in front of the house and I noticed he had a car parked outside of the gate. In my wretched Polish I asked him how far it was to Golub-Dobrzyń. He said maybe 20 km (12 miles) more. Remember, I had already been walking for an hour. I was so disappointed, I think it must have been obvious. Then I asked if he maybe was headed in that direction. He said something about the bus, and I tried to explain that it came earlier than expected and so I missed it. After a few more exchanges, he agreed to drive me about halfway there - to another bus stop where I could try to catch a different bus. I was so relieved to have any help that I quickly agreed.

This extremely nice man was named Andrzej. He ended up driving me all the way to the castle. I think he decided to drive me the whole way after I explained that I went to Wąpielsk because my great grandmother was born there a century ago. He is from Wąpielsk himself (but now lives in the neighboring village). He said that there are no longer any Kotwickis in Wąpielsk, but the name sounded familiar to him – people long ago had the name, but they had likely all moved since then, or else there were only women left with the name and they would have lost their name when they married.

So I failed at hitchhiking, but I did get a ride with a stranger to the castle. I know, I know. This was unsafe. I shouldn’t have tried to hitchhike and I shouldn’t have begged a stranger for a ride. But don’t you see that I was desperate? And it was really interesting to meet and speak with someone local, especially someone from Wąpielsk.

Both the castle and town of Golub were beautiful. Here’s the castle where I slept:

And a here's the view of the town from the lookout area of the castle:

I was also relieved because the guy at the reception desk spoke some English, so I could finally stop pretending to speak Polish (until I went to town to buy myself a much deserved beer).

Here’s to Poland!

Adventures in Family History, Part 1 Background Research

2008-06-22T20:38:00.005+03:00

I grew up believing a legend about my Polish ancestors. The story was that my great grandparents (parents of my maternal grandmother) were both Polish orphans who met on the boat coming over to America. Only a bit of this is true. My uncle (well, my mom’s cousin) Craig La Clair’s research tells quite a different story. Both great grandparents were Polish, but they did not immigrate to the US on the same boat. Josephine Chudy née Kotwicki immigrated at the turn of the 20th century, and Frank Chudy arrived later, in 1906. They met and married in Michigan.

Warning: the rest of this blog entry is long-ish & contains detailed information about our Polish family history, thus it may be boring to non-relatives. See below for a more user-friendly blog on Warsaw, and check back soon for the most exciting blog to date!

Craig La Clair compiled a book reporting his research and I used this book as the basis for my own research last week. His book contains much more information about my great grandmother’s family, the Kotwickis, than it does about my great grandfather, so I decided to try to find out more about the Kotwickis and maybe visit the area where they came from.

At first I was stumped, because Craig wrote that the Kotwickis were from a small town in Poland named "Wocupielsk." However, a Google search for "Wocupielsk" returned zero results. I fared no better when trying to decipher the town name from the original documents he had in his book, so I turned to Ancestry.com and found the 1901 boat manifest shown below. This manifest shows that Franciszek (Frank) Kotwicki, age 17, and Józefa (Josephine) Kotwicki, age 9, emigrated from Poland (part of the Russian Empire at that time) to the US via Antwerp, Belgium on the ship “Southwark.” (Note that this Frank is Josephine’s older brother, not her husband-to-be.) On this manifest, the Kotwickis home town is listed as “Wompielsk,” Poland. Wompielsk is probably also what is written on the paperwork in Craig’s book, but it’s just difficult to decipher the handwriting.

I’m fairly certain these are the right people, because the manifest also reports that they are were immigrating to Alpena, Michigan to meet up with their older brother John Kotwicki (which conforms to other information in Craig’s book). These names are compatible with our family members and we also know that they ended up, at least temporarily, in Alpena.

Wompielsk is not a town in Poland, but another Google search revealed that this is how the town Wąpielsk was written on other immigration documents (probably because the spelling Wompielsk is close to the pronunciation of Wąpielsk). This town is not located exactly where Craig placed “Wocupielsk” on the map in his book, but it is not too far from it. The closest major town to Wąpielsk is Toruń (supposedly where Copernicus was born!). Here's a map showing Toruń with respect to Warsaw:

View Larger Map

Looking back at the documents in Craig’s book, it seems clear that Wąpielsk is the right town because, first of all, one of these documents lists the county (or “powiat” in Polish) as “Rupin,” which corresponds pretty closely to Rypin county where the town of Wąpielsk is located. Second of all, Craig reports that Josephine’s aunt (her mother’s sister) Teresa Hoppe née Kotwicki married her husband in Toruń and her husband was from the nearby town of Bydgoszcz (which is just further evidence that Kowickis resided in this general area).

The boat manifest is incongruous with some of the information Craig received. He wrote that Josephine left Poland immediately upon her mother’s death in 1895 when she was 6 years old. However, Josephine was not 6 years old in 1895 since she was born in 1891 (or 1892). Thus she would have been only 3 or 4 years old when her mother died. What appears to have happened is that Josephine did not leave Poland immediately after her mother’s death, but rather stayed in Poland and emigrated later, in 1901, with her 17-year old brother Frank.

Evidence that Josephine was born in 1891 comes from her age on the boat manifest (9 years old in 1901) and also from her age in the 1930 US Census form below (39 years old). (On this census form she reports immigrating to the US in 1899, not 1901, but it is likely that she is estimating this date, having been only 9 years old when she immigrated.)

I decided to try and visit the village of Wąpielsk to see where our ancestors are from. I'll report the real adventure in the next blog.

Also, just for fun, here’s a pronunciation guide to how names of family members & towns are pronounced (roughly) in Polish:

Warszawa ≈ Var + SHAH + vah
Toruń ≈ TOE + rune (the “n” is soft like the first “n” of onion)
Wąpielsk ≈ VAWM + pyelsk (the ą is nasalized, like some French vowels)
Chudy ≈ WHO + dih (dih like in dip)
Kotwicki ≈ Ko + TVI + tski (or maybe Ko + TVI + chki)
Franciszek ≈ Fran + CHI + shek (CHI like in chicken; became “Frank” in the US)
Józefa ≈ You + ZEF + uh (became “Josephine” in the US)

Pretending to speak Polish

2008-06-21T18:12:00.007+03:00

I thought I'd forgotten everything from the Polish class I took about 5 years ago, but I’ve managed to recall enough to get by in basic speaking situations (and as it turns out, slightly more complicated situations too - but you’ll have to wait until my next blog for the hitchhiking story). At first I just used English in Warsaw, but after I noticed that the people at the front desk of my hotel were rather unfriendly when I spoke English, I decided to speak Polish as much as possible. Once I started speaking Polish to them, they suddenly became quite friendly and helpful. Only a few people switched to English when I started in Polish (and these few were very fluent English speakers). I get the sense that Poles in Warsaw don’t like it when foreigners have the upper hand – linguistically or otherwise – in their own country. This seems logical enough (even without taking their history into account). And so I pretend to speak Polish. It ends up being a hybrid language of Polish, Russian and Czech, and probably sounds something like this:

Me: “Want me one coffee please.”
Pole: “Small or large?”
Me: “Don’t understand”
Pole: “Small or large?”
Me: “Oh. Uh yes one small.”
Pole: “Black or with milk?”
Me: “Milk yes. Please thank you.”
Pole: “Here you go.”

Warsaw has turned out to be a great place. I don’t really understand why it’s got a bad rap or why a lot of backpackers/travelers skip it. Sure it was largely destroyed in WWII (I’ll spare you the details of German & Soviet occupation, the Warsaw uprising, bombing of the city, etc. etc.), but the old city center was rebuilt so closely to its original state that UNESCO declared it a world heritage site (despite usually reserving this honor for sites that are mostly original). Outside the old city center is a vast, sprawling metropolis with wide streets full of people, big buildings (sometimes soviet-style), and spacious parks.

This is the biggest and most difficult to avoid building in the city:

It is an example of Socialist Realist architecture (Stalin era). View from the top of this building:

Despite its size, Warsaw is easy to navigate using buses, trams, and the metro. I automatically feel affection towards any city that has an efficient, easy to use, and comprehensive public transport system, and Warsaw’s system won me over quickly.

I’ve also been pleased with Polish food here, though the following universal principle applies: eat where locals eat. I had the most delicious cabbage & mushroom pierogies EVER at a deli where I was the only foreigner, but then had only so-so pierogies the next day at a more touristy place. And the traditional Polish foods here are similar to Polish food at home – pierogies, pączki (filled donuts), potatoes, meat cutlets, soup, etc.

I could go on and on about Warsaw, but I’ll edit myself and let pictures say the rest.

Saved by 5 złoty

2008-06-16T10:12:00.004+03:00

Złoty is the currency of Poland, of which I had none when I arrived in Warsaw this morning on the overnight bus from Vilnius. This was a problem because I could not find a single functioning ATM at the bus station and I needed money to purchase another bus ticket to get into the center of Warsaw (since I was deposited at the bus station outside of the center of town). Then I realized that I did in fact have złoty - a 5 złote coin to be exact (this is about $2). A backpacker I met in Riga had given it to me since she didn't need it and knew I was headed to Poland. This coin was enough for me to purchase a bus ticket to another train/bus station in the center of town. It was around 6 AM and I can't check into my hostel until 2 PM, so I stored my suitcase in a locker and headed to the city to explore... for 8 hours. I like Warsaw so far. It reminds me a bit of Moscow - large, sprawling, with big buildings and wide streets. Pictures and more on the city to come. For now, here's a map of Poland.

p.s. the ł in złoty is pronounced like w in English; Polish w sounds like our v.

I haven't written much about Vilnius because I'm not sure what to say (maybe it's a city that's easier to show in pictures than describe in words). I really wanted to like the city, but didn't find it to be a particularly welcoming place. It was practically impossible to get service at restaurants and bars in English, and only slightly easier when speaking Russian. In all fairness, I only spent about three days there and did mostly touristy things, so perhaps I didn't get a real sense of the place. The Vilnius KGB museum did make an impression on me. It chronicles not only the devastation by the Nazis (who killed hundreds of thousands of Jews in Lithuania), but also the subsequent 50-year occupation by the Soviet Union. During Soviet occupation, many Lithuanians died either as part of resistance movements or when deported to labor camps in Siberia. Sorry about all this depressing stuff, but it's very relevant to the Baltics & Eastern Europe and a bit difficult to avoid.

As far as links to their more distant past, I found only a bit more (possible) evidence of pagan traditions alive today. The girls in the picture were at some sort of ceremony or festival near a church in the Old Town wearing elaborate, clearly hand-made dresses. I couldn't understand what was going on, but guess that it was somehow related to the upcoming summer solstice. So no, the persisting pagan traditions in Lithuania don't include anything scary like animal sacrifice, but rather include the celebration of old holidays, dancing, and probably singing too. I don't think that any of this is seen as incompatible with their religion - Catholicism.

“Pagan and proud of it”

2008-06-12T23:21:00.009+03:00

So says my travel guide (Let’s Go Eastern Europe) about the history of Lithuania. And I agree that the country seems to embrace its pagan past, which I’ve deduced primarily from the Hill of Witches in Juodkrantė, and also because they were the last European country to convert to Christianity. The Hill of Witches is a fairly long nature path decorated with carved wooden statues of witches, goblins, dragons, etc. representing different aspects of Lithuanian folklore. It’s a neat exhibit, particularly popular among Lithuanians on Midsummer’s Night/summer solstice (also a relic of their pagan past). One thing missing from the statues is any sort of identification of the figures or tales they came from, but I found a book in English on Lithuanian folklore to enlighten myself. One statue did have a name – Pasakorius, so I’ll read up on him first. I liked the sculptures so much I took a lot of pictures. Here’s Pasakorius:

My hostel was in Klaipėda, but I spent most of my time across the Curonian Lagoon in Juodkrantė. This area is along the Baltic coast of Lithuania. Though Lithuania has much shorter coastline than Latvia, it’s quite a unique place. In particular it’s characterized by the Curonian Spit (yes, I did mean to write “Spit”!) - a long thin peninsula of sorts that runs parallel to the Lithuanian coast and is full of natural wonders like sand dunes, as well as man-made wonders like the Hill of Witches and modern art statues (see the Klaipėda & Juodkrantė album for a picture of stone “sheep”). It’s easier to see how this is all laid out on a map, so here’s a map of Lithuania (Klaipėda is marked, but Juodkrantė across the lagoon is not):

Now I’m in Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania, which as you can see from the map is inland from Klaipėda, quite close to Belarus. So far my only news from Vilnius is that I managed to do laundry and eat. But I consider doing laundry an accomplishment. And with the terrible service I got at dinner, perhaps eating was an accomplishment too.

Trapped in Liepāja

2008-06-10T12:47:00.005+03:00

I'm trapped in Liepāja. Where is Liepāja? It's on the western coast of Latvia, on the Baltic sea (check the map I posted below). We (me and my new German friend Verena, who I met in Riga) came here for a night and tried to leave this morning, but it turns out that the only bus to our next destination (Klaipėda, Lithuania - also on the sea) is at 7:40 PM. So I'm not actually trapped here, but here longer than planned.

The town is all right. The real attraction, though, is the beach. A beautiful white sand beach:

(Beach fully equipped with older men in speedos.)

The town might be more interesting on the weekend when tourists arrive and there is more activity at the bars and clubs. But on Monday night the town was quite empty as you can see from third story of the The Rock - the bar/restaurant where we had dinner:

Have I found anything else that makes Latvia unique? Well, this seems to be the most expensive country of the Baltics. I think I already said that its Russian population is larger than in Estonia or Lithuania, so it's quite useful to know Russian here. Once I get to Lithuania (if I EVER get to Lithuania) I'll have more points for comparison.

3 days in Riga

2008-06-08T17:42:00.001+03:00

Czechs apparently cannot distinguish Latvia from Lithuania. Tsk tsk. But can we really blame them? I mean, do I really know the difference between the two? I've decided to make one of my travel tasks finding out some easy and memorable ways to distinguish Estonia's southern Baltic sisters from one another. Estonia doesn't seem to have this problem, probably because it doesn't start with an "L" and the Estonian language is quite different from Latvian and Lithuanian (which are both Baltic languages). Here's a map of Latvia for reference:

The capital city Riga is one thing that is unique to Latvia. It's the biggest city in the Baltics and also has a reputation as a party city. I've been in Riga since Thursday night, so almost 3 days. My reaction was lukewarm at first, but I'm warming up to the city. Perhaps my initially lukewarm reception was in part because I transitioned to true backpacker mode here, that is, staying in a hostel with 8-10 beds in a room and absolutely NO privacy. But these are good places to meet other travelers and be social.

Among the interesting things here in Riga is one of the largest indoor markets in Europe. The roof of the building was recycled from old Zeppelin hangars from western Latvia. It's HUGE!

A lot more Russians live here than in Estonia, and there seems to be less national pride than in Estonia. They chronicle their complicated history of Soviet and German occupation in the Occupation Museum behind this very Soviet-looking statue:

And yes, the night life. It's actually a bit hard to not go out. The popular beer is Cēsu (the diacritic over the"e" means that you pronounce the vowel longer). There is also a local liquor called balzams, which is very strong and sort of tastes like cough syrup. I'm sticking with the Cēsu:

Pärnu in full color

2008-06-06T00:05:00.003+03:00

As promised, I uploaded my pictures of Pärnu.

Blogging on the bus to Riga

2008-06-05T20:32:00.004+03:00

How cool is it that I have WiFi on the bus from Pärnu to Riga?! I deliberately chose this bus because I read that it is the luxury line with internet (+outlets to plug in your computer) and coffee machines. So I blog on the bus with coffee in hand. There are no pictures for this blog, but not because I couldn't find an adapter in Pärnu (I found one!) but because I left the cord to upload pictures in my suitcase, which is currently stowed under the bus. I decided to do a quick blog anyway, because - how cool is it to blog on a bus?!?! (Can you tell that I think this is really cool?) You may or may not have noticed that all my travel in Estonia has been by bus, not by train. It seems that travel here, and perhaps all over the Baltics is better and more convenient by bus.

I'm leaving Pärnu, which is Estonia's vacation/resort town. A tourist brochure declared it "Estonia's summer capital," since Estonians flock to its beaches and spas during summer months. Well, it's still early for vacationers, so the town was a bit quiet yesterday and today, but still nice. This is one place, I must say, where I was glad to speak Russian. On more than a couple of occasions I encountered people who spoke very little or no English and it certainly made it easier to speak Russian. I guess that contrary to what I wrote before, it seems that not everyone here speaks Estonian, Russian and English fluently, but rather the older generations speak Russian (they were required to take it for many years in school) but not necessarily English, and most of the younger people speak English, but not necessarily Russian. There is also a sizable population of Russians (in Tallinn, mostly) who often don't speak Estonian that fluently (since there are Russian schools, they don't really have to learn it).

I took a lot of pictures in Pärnu, so stay tuned for odd sculptures, Estonian food, the beach, the market, and buildings that are not pink.

Saunas & Mud Baths

2008-06-03T21:56:00.005+03:00

All work and no play makes for a dull trip. Not that I don't like linguistics talks, but it is nice to be done with the conference (and post-conference lectures I've been occupied with for the last two days). My chosen play remedy includes Estonian saunas and mud baths. I already went to the sauna during our post-conference excursion in the countryside of Tartu county. After museums, churches and a picnic, the sauna was very relaxing (as well as a nice escape from mosquitos!) It was pretty much like a Russian banya, which is just a steamy, hot room where you can beat yourself with birch branches if you so desire. I so desired. It wasn't even that weird to share the sauna with a few linguistics professors. Thankfully, though, we split into groups of females & males.

Here's me after the sauna in front of Lake Peipus (very big lake between Estonia & Russia - shown on map below):

Part 2 of R&R Estonian style involves mud baths in the town Pärnu (check map again). I leave tomorrow morning for my afternoon appointment at the Tervis spa, where I plan to be covered in the healing mud of Ermistu Lake. I'll let you know how it goes, but there will be no pictures because: 1) why would you want pictures? and 2) my camera battery is dead and I haven't been able to find an adapter for my charger here (I thought it would be easy for some reason...). Hopefully pictures will return in Latvia!

Linguistics in Tartu

2008-05-31T22:24:00.003+03:00

Well, I've been at a Linguistics conference for three days and I will finally give my presentation tomorrow (at 9:30 am, yuck!). Note that I'm writing a blog tonight, right before my presentation, which some of you might recognize as my old habit of procrastination. Anyway, not much to say travel-wise as I have been listening to linguistics talks for most of my visit. I do like Tartu so far, more than Tallinn actually. It's a college town and I clearly have an affinity for college towns, so that may be part of what I like.

Hmmm.... what can I say... Well, for all those with interests in morbid things, I witnessed a car-motorcycle accident yesterday. As I walked out of my hostel around 9 pm I saw a car spinning after hitting a motorcycle about a half-block from me. At the end of the street I could see the poor motorcycle driver lying flat on the ground. He had apparently flown off his bike. I'm not sure exactly what happened, though. And sorry, no pictures.

After our conference dinner tonight my new physicist friends from the conference (yes, I managed to befriend the only non-linguists at a linguistics conference) showed me a crooked building in the town square. I'm standing in front of the building in the picture. I also took a few more pictures of Tartu when I managed to slip away from the conference.

From Tallinn to Tartu

2008-05-29T11:06:00.006+03:00

Now I am in Tartu, Estonia for a linguistics conference. I left Tallinn yesterday evening by bus. It only took about 2 and a half hours to get here. Here's a map of Estonia so you can see Tartu with respect to Tallinn (the capital):

Before I left I walked around Tallinn some more: click here for more pictures. Mostly with another American I met in the hostel. He is an expat living in Denmark, who makes a living giving lectures on random topics that he has developed expertise in (but he's not a professor). He gave his latest lecture on crop circles in St. Petersburg, Russia, and was traveling through Tallinn on his way back to Denmark. (NB: Denmark is the smallish country sticking off the top of Germany on the left side of my Eastern Europe map - it's unmarked.) Mom, since you expressed interest in crop circles, he gave me these sites for you to look at:

- What is apparently the best site on crop circles
- The guy's own site on crop circles

Otherwise I just walked around, saw the Gulf of Finland, tried a piece of elk meat at the market in town, and also found out what Estonian recycling receptacles look like:

But now I am in Tartu skipping the first half day of my conference. I'm going in after lunch to see a professor from Middlebury give a talk, but the stuff I really want to go to starts tomorrow (plus I really wanted to sleep in this morning!).

Not much to say about Tartu yet, except that my hostel is nice. I have my own room with a bathroom and a kitchenette. I also have an ethernet connection to the internet and a TV. Now I'm going to get back to drinking my Nescafe, which is just coffee-flavored water, as far as I can tell.

I made it to Europe!

2008-05-27T19:52:00.002+03:00

...to the far northeast corner of Europe, at that! And yes, Estonia is in Europe, since it is in the EU (even if they don't use the Euro yet; they still have their own currency, the "kroon").

I arrived in Tallinn around 3 pm local time after connecting in Amsterdam. I didn't go through passport control, customs, or anything here in Estonia, maybe because I had to do this in Amsterdam (?). I was mildly disappointed about this since I wanted a little Estonia passport stamp on my freshly renewed passport - oh well! I quickly found the bus that runs from the airport to the historical city center (where I am staying) and got off at the correct stop without even asking because I actually understood when the driver called out the very Estonian-sounding street name! (I had heard one other person pronounce it, which helped.) I was - and am - pretty groggy, but I've managed to stay awake this afternoon/evening to walk around town in daylight (which there are 17+ hours of this time of year).

The town is a bit quiet as far as I can tell, but it was also drizzling this afternoon so maybe people stayed inside. I've found it interesting how many Russians and/or Russian-speakers there are here. I spoke with the desk clerk at my hostel in English, but then ordered coffee in Russian an hour later. And there are people walking around speaking Russian all over town. I never cease to be amazed at cultures like the one here that speak the national language (Estonian), the language of an old dominating power (Russian) AND the language of a new dominating power (English). And most speak all three quite fluently!

I took some random pictures around the Old Town today - just to give an idea of what it looks like. I'll only be here for another day, then I'm headed to Tartu in southern Estonia for a conference.

Summer in Eastern Europe

2008-05-25T11:00:00.000+03:00

Here's a map of Eastern Europe to accompany my blog.

My rough plan is:
1) Fly into Tallinn, Estonia on May 27th
2) Travel to Tartu, Estonia for this conference: CFP Conference from May 29th - June 2nd or 3rd
3) Travel in Eastern & Central Europe for the remainder of June & beginning of July; this (potentially) includes: Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Ukraine, Czech Republic, Germany, Hungary, Slovakia, Austria... (I may have to shorten this list...)
4) On July 20th go to Olomouc, Czech Republic where I will study Czech at Univerzita Palackého until the end of August
5) Fly back to US from Prague on August 24th