The sun just came up ... it must be noon

Excuses, excuses:

So I know I haven't written anything in a while.  Combination of nothing happening at all followed by a period of limited internet access followed by a little too much happening to sit down and write followed by a short period of no excuse at all (that means laziness).

Let me 'splain ... no.  Let me sum up
Since I last wrote, I have moved in to my apartment and taught my first 2 english classes and began to arrange for more. Also I have avoided being victimized by Russia's silent winter assassin,  met new age russian academic types, learned to embrace greedy corporate America (at least for some certain benefits it provides, while remaining aware that such materialism would/will ruin the planet in one way or another if left unchecked), and avoided freezing to death.  I also lived through the end of the world and the shortest day of the year.  I will write about all of this either now or soon. Or I won't.  You know me.


The best laid plans of mice and me
So things don't always go as planned.  In my case they pretty much never do.  I had most things worked out to come to Russia before I left, or so I thought.  I had a place to stay and a plan to work and live.  Well, none of it turned out the way I thought.  The biggest change was that I found out just before I left that I would not be staying where I thought.  After almost abandoning my plans, my good friends Ksenia and Sasha, generous almost beyond belief, offered to help me accomplish everything I had planned and hoped for.  Although, I cannot, at this moment, claim complete success, I can say that things are moving in the right direction.  When I arrived, I stayed with Ksenia and Sasha.  I ended up staying with them for 5 weeks!  Although I felt this was far overstepping the bounds of friendship, they said they knew what to expect and never complained or made me feel unwelcome.

Here is a picture of Sasha and Ksenia and I enjoying an evening at home.  Ok, you can't see us (that is Ksenia's hand behind the glasses) but you get the idea.

Sasha and Ksenia live with Sasha's parents in a small town outside the city (you know this if you've read my adventures trying to return there by bus in an earlier post or seen the pictures of the house).  Although they travel back and forth quite often, this remote location meant that I could not do anything (such as work) unless it fit their schedule.  In order for me to progress and work and be able to visit other friends, I needed to be in the city where I can walk or use public transport.  Also I was suffering from feeling bad about imposing for so long and it was making me uncomfortable.  I needed to get out of there and into the city.

Eventually, Sasha helped me find this little studio apartment in a good location for a somewhat reasonable price.  St. Petersburg is like New York or San Francisco in that somewhat reasonable is probably about the best you can do.  It's a little studio apartment with a bathroom and insufficient kitchen facilities.  The last is somewhat irrelevant as I can not cook anyway.  I will do an "apartment post" soon with pictures and links to maps and things.  For now, just know that I am very happy that I have a place to be where I do not feel bad about imposing on anyone and I can visit other friends in the city when I want.  That particular advantage paid off on my very first day here, but that is a story for another time.

I mean once word leaks out that a pirate has gone soft people begin to disobey him and its nothing but work, work, work all the time. 

Ok, there's nothing about piracy here and it's not really all the time yet, but I have begun my "career" here by being a substitute for two english discussion groups.  This is the easiest money ever (of course it doesn't pay all that well, but still).  The students are upper-intermediate english speakers and speak english quite well.  What these discussion groups are is an opportunity for them to practice their english with a native speaker (the english man and american woman who were already leading the two sessions  I am replacing have gone home for the holidays).  What this means is that I get to sit around with average Russian people and just talk.  Oh we are supposed to follow topics, but the conversation almost always wanders and nobody cares as long as they get a lot of opportunity to practice.  After the new year's holiday, I will have to begin real lessons where I actually teach and all sorts of unpleasant things like that, but I hope I get to have one of these discussion sections of my own.  They are just so much fun.  Oh, I guess maybe I am not talking to exactly average people either.  Let's call them average among people who are pretty well educated (one of my groups pretty much all had masters degrees), have good jobs, and already speak english pretty well.

I also hope to have a different opportunity to teach english after the New Year.   When I visited in May, I met someone who has become a good friend.  Her name is Vera and she is an english teacher at a Military boarding school here in St. Petersburg.  She is very knowledgeable about english (often she knows more about the actual grammar rules than I do) and about America (she knows all the US presidents.  I would recognize them, but I could not name them). I have attended her classes several times as a guest to give her students a chance to speak with a native speaker.  Now they will see if there is a way I can work for them in a conversation class.  I hope so.  I enjoy working with the students and also Vera and another teacher Lena and the other english teachers would be quite pleasant people to have a colleagues.  I will keep you posted.

It only matters, if you have the option ...
So Christmas and New years are kind of switched here.  Most people here see New Year's as a time to spend with their family and Christmas a kind of a party night with more people.  I think people in the US and western Europe feel kind of the opposite.  As a result, many people asked me if I was going to celebrate Christmas.  Even leaving out the fact that I pretty much don't celebrate it at home, I had a hard time explaining that there wasn't much in the way of celebration for me to do here on my own.  For New Years, I have been invited back to Sasha and Ksenia's house where there will be many people.  It is very kind of them, as it means they regard me highly enough to invite me to a family type event.  No matter what, holidays have never been that important to me.  I simply enjoy the chance to have a nice time, so I will be good no matter what.

Happy Holidays!  Happy New Year! Blah Blah Blah!  :)

Stupid American, Go Home!

Prologue:
I had intended to write this post a long time ago.  I was delayed by two issues.  One is that, for a few days, I only had internet access on my phone, and I was not composing this on my phone. The other is that I found inspiration for this post surprisingly hard to come by.  I knew the idea I wanted to convey, which was to share my interest and love for travel and visiting cultures other than mine.  Other than the previous sentence, I had (and really still have) no idea how to accomplish said goal.  Fortunately, I found something else I didn't want to do even more, and so, in an attempt to procrastinate from something else, I am forced to attack this task, inspiration or no.

Re-Introduction:
At the end of my last post I was in the middle of trying to explain to my Russian friends, who don't understand why, since I am an American and can live in America, I would want to be here in Russia.  They kind of think I am stupid or crazy or something for doing so.  While I can not entirely rule out the possibility of crazy, I decided to try to address the issue.  I immediately realized that this was a topic all it's own and decided to do so in a post of it's own.  So I cut myself off and wrote that I would cover that in the next post (this one).  After I stated that intention, I received the following message from someone reading:

I can't tell how much I am looking forward to hearing why you are there and not here! What you describe is certainly not my worst nightmare, but definitely qualifies as a bad dream. But that's just me. 

First, the intent of the message issue.  I am assuming that the word "you" is missing from after the word "tell".  As it currently reads, my correspondant is not sure how much they are interested or not in what I have to say.  If this is the case, some of my point disappears, so I am going with my guessed meaning which is that they are really interested in my view because it is one they do not share.

So I have a question from my Russian friends and my American ones about why I would choose, voluntarily, to live in an environment that is assumed to be more difficult than my home environment. It seems that from either point of view, it is much nicer to be in America.  I am not going to explore that particular point much.  From any of a whole host of objective and semi-objective criteria  it is much nicer to be in America, and particularly California, and particularly the San Francisco Bay Area.

You Won't Find The Answer Here:
Traveling requires one to suffer through a whole host of discomforts.  Depending on your particular biases some can be worse than others:  Food is often different and unpredictable (unless you want to eat american fast food).  Language barriers can be intimidating at best and make some things difficult or impossible.  Cultural differences can lead to all sorts of problems.  I'm sure there are a thousand others that do not immediately spring to my mind.

And yet, in various forms, I have been traveling abroad whenever possible since 1994.  I have experienced the discomforts, disliked them and still come back for more.  If you've managed to read this far (or perhaps you just woke up later and, in a particularly inspired bout of self loathing, decided to finish what you started) you realize that all I have done do far was re-state the topic and add some details.  I have not, in any way, explained my reasons. Yeah, I noticed that, too.  

I am afraid that the answer is that I don't really know why I get fulfillment out of this any more than someone who likes gardening can explain why they derive fulfillment from digging in dirt.  I know that I like to explore.  I know that I get bored easily and so I like to experience new things.  I know that I am always hoping for a better beach.  All of these are contributing factors in my desire to travel and experience different cultures.  However, I am playing with the idea that there is another deeper reason.  I am not even claiming that it is definitely true, yet, but let's see what happens as I type it out, shall we?

I think I am very, very interested in people (that is not to say that I always like people.  Very often, I don't).  I notice that I write or say that I am interested in other cultures a great deal - as opposed to, say, ancient architecture.  When I go to see, for example, the pyramids at Giza, I am almost more interested in the people and the society that built them, than I am in the actual pyramids themselves.  When I go to a new place, I always want to try to live as much like a local as is practical.  To experience life as they experience it.  When I go see thousand year old castles I try to imagine what it was like to try to eat and sleep and bathe and everything else about daily life in this castle on the top of a mountain with out the benefit of modern conveniences.

Yesterday, I was walking out of the metro along with the usual crowd of people rushing off to wherever it is they were in a hurry to get to, and I had a vision of all the other people in all the other metro/subway systems around the world and how they were (or would be whenever the appropriate rush hour occurred in their time zone)  rushing around.  And then all the people using cars, buses, trolleys, trains, boats, bicycles, horses, donkeys, feet, hands and knees or whatever else was afforded to them to just try to make it through life.  I thought about how hard it was to hold in your mind all these people, living on the same planet, but also living in their own small world.

I write as if this were profound or something, but I want you to know that I am fully aware that it is not profound at all.  It is simply the reality of the world we live in.  I mean if you live in Manhattan, you can not possibly be aware of how the lives of other people who live in a different part of Manhattan are, let alone the lives of people in the other boroughs, let alone the lives of people in other countries.  Especially countries with very different cultural or technological backgrounds than yours.  You just don't have the time or the memory capacity to know everything, and if you did, it probably wouldn't help your life that much.

In spite of the reality of the previous paragraph, I seem to desire to know something about everywhere. While it is such an impossibility, it is not even worth discussing, I seem to be quite happy to go out trying.  Maybe it's like someone who loves music trying to learn all the forms, all the instruments  and all the songs that exist or have ever existed.  No chance, but an enjoyable pursuit.

I also like the little personal interactions.  Last night, I had to take the bus home from the city to the little place I am staying in the country.  It was one of those travel stories.  I knew the bus number to take and where I was going, in theory, but I was going alone, in the dark, and i don't speak the language.  So of course, the first thing I see as I exit the metro at the bus station was the bus I need trundling on it's merry way ... without me.  No problem, they are supposed to come every 30 minutes or so.  A little more than an hour and half later another one finally showed up and I piled in with everyone else and settled down to read knowing it was over an hours ride.  I thought I would be ok, because I have been here many times and I was sure I would recognize landmarks.  Well I am sure I would have ... in the daytime.  At night, every snow covered, tree lined country road looks the same.  And the window was frosted up and there weren't really lights, anyway.  Uh oh.  Finally, as the number of passengers thinned out and much time had passed, I realized I was going to have to brave the dreaded "communicate with the distracted driver who isn't really sympathetic to the fact that I don't speak Russian" gauntlet but getting lost would be particularly cataclysmic for me (even ignoring the fact that we just far enough out in the wilderness that I had been advised to watch out for wolves at night).  Gathering my immense Russian vocabulary of about 150 russian words, I asked the passenger next to me if he knew where Анташи  (Antashee) was.  He did.  He tried to tell me.
        "я не панимаю (I don't understand)," I kept saying.  Finally he told the driver and the navigator to tell me when we were at Анташи.  He told me they would tell me (I understood this, although I only understood a few words) and then he got off the bus shortly after.  Sure enough, a while later, the bus stopped and the passenger now next to me, who had moved forward, used all his english (3 words) and told me that we were at Анташи.  Now actually, I stay a little ways past Анташи, so I told them "a little past" and so they started driving again.  And then I saw a car turn where I wanted to stop so I told them,
        "I saw car. left. there."  They drove to the spot.
        "Here?" they asked.
        "Here," I said.  And I got out of the bus and a minutes walk later, I was home.

I love little stories about how nice a random group of strangers can be.  I love to experience it. Is that a reason to brave russian winter, russian bureaucracy,  russian food, russian vodka and who knows what else to spend 6 months teaching english here? (shrug)

The Answer.  If You Can Call It That:
Why Do I do this kind of thing?  Why do I like it?  ... I just do.

Epilogue:
Not satisfied?  I don't blame you.  Send specific questions.  I'll try to answer them.  Unless i don't want to :)

Weak week 3

Life Update

Here I am at the end of week 3 in Russia. I have made progress towards an apartment and a job, but things are happening slow.  New Years here is a very big deal to people and they are gearing up for the holiday.  Not much begins just before New years, so it seems that I can only take small steps at the moment.  As usual, with nothing concrete I will wait to give you any details, but I have spoken to some people and visited others and I hope to have some progress in my life soon.  Other than that, I am working hard at (and struggling with) learning Russian.

Vignettes Of My Life Over The Past Week

A little snow upstairs:

Last Thursday and Friday, it snowed a lot.  Saturday morning, Sasha pulled down the stairs to the attic (which are in my room) to show me that- to my horror, but, interestingly, not to his - quite a lot of snow had blown its way into the attic.  Like anyone would, they use the attic for storage.  So they had a lot of snow covered things.  The upshot of this was that Sasha and I spent the late morning shoveling snow out of the attic through a small window.  I tried to do this with some normal (not warm gloves) and almost froze my fingers off.  Still a california wimp.  Sasha had no such problems (and later that afternoon I saw some neighborhood kids playing in the snow with similar thin gloves and even one with fingerless gloves.  Small kids. California wimp.  What can I say?  The bigger issue to me was the lesson about how people just cope.  I found it insane to have a house where the attic could fill with snow.  The floor of the attic also wasn't insulated.  As I said, Sasha was not worried.  They do the best they can with the resources they have.  We did later go shopping for the material we would need to cover the worst gaps where snow could get in, but were unable to find it locally.  We will have to take a trip to one of the construction warehouse stores (think Home Depot) in the city next time we have time.  In the meantime, if it snows hard enough, we will shovel out the attic.

At least I didn't turn into a pumpkin:

Earlier in the week, I went out to dinner with a friend and then we went to see her new kitten and drink some wine.  It was a very nice evening.  So nice that I didn't leave her apartment quite in time.  The reason I needed to leave her apartment in time was that I was taking the metro back to where I was staying that night and the metro stopps running soon after midnight.  The reason I didn't leave quite in time (even though we both thought I had) was that she doesn't live that close to the metro station and I needed to take a tramvoy (little old russian cable car that I think is cute, but most of my local friends seem to hate because they are a little slow and rickety.  Anyway, I had had no trouble getting there on one, but it turns out they run MUCH less frequently later in the evening.  I had to wait so long that by the time I got to the metro it was very close to closing.  I managed to get on the first leg, but when I tried to transfer to the next train it was too late.  They just closed the system and said everyone go out to the street.  So I had to take a taxi home.  I found a kind of private taxi and called Sasha on the phone to give him directions. Turns out he didn't understand them that well (Sasha later told me that he didn't speak russian all that well either, he was from a neighboring country).  So he got us close and then I had to figure out how to get us the rest of the way.  Luckily I have a good sense of direction, and also luckily I had been taught my directions (right, left, straight etc. this - yes I could have done with hand gestures, but knowing the right words was more satisfying).  When we got close, I recognized some  local landmarks and I was able to direct the driver the rest of the way.  I was not able to negotiate the fare, something I am assured is required here as they always quote too high a price and so I probably overpaid for the ride.  The result being that I am working hard to learn my numbers in russian now :)

Winter-B-Q:

Saturday night, Ksenia and Sasha invited some friends over for dinner.  Nadia and Vanya and their 3 year old daughter Daria as well as Nadia's mother and her new husband.  It was a typical nice russian evening with good food and a fair amount of drink, but nothing excessive.  The interesting part was that Vanya brought some meat to cook for dinner and so we went outside, fired up the bar-b-que and cooked it right up ... in freezing weather.  To them it is just cooking.  Another day we had fish and Ksenia didn't want the kitchen to smell like fish, so she cleaned it up outside ... in the cold.  The meat was great.  The fish was great.  In this climate, you just do what you have to.

Here is a picture of me and Nadia for no reason other than I don't have many pictures this week:

Stupid American, Go Home!

At the moment, the majority of my time is spent with Sasha and Kostya.  Kostya is Sasha's good friend and also his business partner in their Aikido school.  He doesn't speak much english, but can mostly communicate between his english and my few words of russian.  If not, Sasha has to translate.  If that fails, we resort to google translate on our phones.  How did people live in foreign countries before internet enabled smart phones?  Kostya is one of those super nice always cheerful people that everyone likes.  I hate him.  Ok, I like him a lot.  I am just jealous of his easygoing, cheerful nature.  He can talk to anybody and get them to smile.  So anyway, the three of us spend a lot of time together.  We talk about a lot of things and I will miss it when I have my own life and not so much free time.  While we often have things to do - they have classes and we spend time putting up posters advertising their school and they also are trying to secure a better location to be their home base - we have a lot of time to talk.  They are always joking and Sasha is often causing trouble by mistranslating things.  Anyway, one topic that keeps coming up, usually after they have had some especially frustrating experience with russian bureaucracy, is "Ray, you are american.  you can go live america.  what you doing here?  go home where it good!"  It is very difficult for me to respond to this.  I can't argue with their main point.  With all it's faults (and there are many) the US is just better. It has more resources, it is better run, there is more opportunity ... on and on.  It is not my purpose to compare right now, but rather to try to explain why I don't just give up and come home.  Actually, I realize that this should be it's own entry, even if it's a rather short one.  So think of this as a teaser for my next entry ...

Not much ado about nothing

29 November, 2012

Well, here we are at the end of week 2 in Russia.  Really not much is happening so I will catch you up real quick and then share some observations.

Work - I have been in touch with both paces where I will probably work.  One place is working to secure my work visa - but this is Russia, so it is moving glacially.  I will meet with someone at the other place next week.  I have a rough outline of what I might be doing, but everything is rather vague and nebulous right now. I will just keep moving forward as best I can.  

http://www.flickr.com/photos/skemsley/7957760590/

Live - As I wrote, I have been living at my friends house about an hours drive outside the city.  It's not too much of a problem as Ksenia, my hostess works every day in the city, and Alexander (Sasha) also works most days so I can come in whenever I want with them, but the timing depends on their schedule.  The good news is that I think/hope I found a really nice apartment in a good location for a good price. I don't want to count my chickens or jinx anything, so I won't say to much until I actually move in.  It is still being fixed up so it won't be ready for about 3 weeks (or however long a time that means in Russia).

So I spend my time studying Russian on my own, reading, studying aikido with Sasha and working on improving my skills at web design while I wait for some of this to sort itself out.

Here's some pics I took of the house where I am staying for the moment:

 

And here are some pics I took while taking walks in the nearby countryside:

Weather - So, it had been above freezing for quite a while.  Kinda cold and muddy, rather than frozen tundra.  Most of the days were in the 5-7 degree range. That's really not that bad.  I was not wearing my down jacket and even bought some regular shoes because my boots were actually too warm.  A few days ago we had the first snow overnight, but it was not that cold.  Yesterday, it got real (as in WTF was I thinking?  I could be home in San Rafel in a nice 15 degree rainstorm).  The temp dropped 14 degrees to -7 (of course while I was out without my boots or super warm parka) and the snow started falling (pretty gently, though).  It still wasn't too bad and I wasn't outside for all that much time, but we will see how i feel about long walks in the stuff.



Some little things: It is not exactly like California as far as opportunities to get outside and get some exercise, but I am doing my best.  I have been walking around out here whenever possible.  Sasha and I spent some hours shoveling and moving some rocks to make a walking path along the muddy driveway in the picture of the house above.  When I go to the city I usually walk a fair amount.  Especially if I travel by metro, which I do often enough to visit a friend for lunch or talk to one of the prospective job people.  You walk a lot to change trains and then you walk to wherever you are going (as it is not usually right at a metro station.  The metro was also designed to be a bomb shelter.  So it is very deep underground.  The escalator rides up and down are just sooooo long.  I will try to take a picture, but I don't usually carry my nice camera around the city and I doubt my cell phone will capture it.  Never mind.  This is the internet.  Here are 2 sites with pics and if you want to waste 3 minutes of your day, an actual video:

A pic

Some one else's blog with a metro entry

Video

So anyway, I had this idea that I would walk up and down all these escalators as I traveled around the city.  I started doing this and was quite satisfied with the idea (I was even going to call it the St. Petersburg stair master) until I was foiled by yet another quirk of Russian society.  Apparently, the first couple times I tried this, I just did it in very low traffic stations.  In most places with moving pathways of this sort, people who want to stand still stay to one side while leaving the other side open to people who want to walk.  Well Russians do this too ... on the way down, but not on the way up.  Now sometimes it is just too crowded and people need to get on as fast as possible, I get that.  I don't expect this to work in rush hour, but unless there just aren't enough people to block me, I always find people spread out on both sides blocking my way, even if they don't need to be.  I guess they can just not imagine someone walking up for no reason.  Oh well, I still do it as much as I can.

Ok, this got long.  I guess you only get the one story.

This Blog

Hopefully, more interesting things will happen and my writing will improve with practice (like my swimming did).  Otherwise, I fear I might cut my readership in half (down to 2:).  Actually, I don't expect that many people will be interested in reading this, but I do want to reach anybody who is.  I tried to give this blog address to anybody who is interested, but if you know a friend or relative who would want to read this drivel for some reason (the best one I can think of is to say to yourself "damn!  I'm glad I'm not in the cold dark place") please make sure they know about it in case I failed to reach them somehow.

I also would be happy to write more (or maybe less) of what anyone is interested in, so email me (or write it in the comments if you want everyone to know your request) and I will try to expound upon your topic of interest.  I am happy to make this a bit of a conversation with everyone.

Lastly, if you have not done it, I encourage you to sign up for the email notifications for when I publish new posts.  I have no regular schedule in mind and that is the best way to know what is going on.

Russia, Whats not to love?

Welcome

I assume you already know why you are here.  In case you don't, or came to the wrong place.  This my blog about my experiences traveling to Russia to teach English.  It is also a bit about my attempt to move my life forward out of a rut I have been in for years.

I am one of those people with high ability, but relatively low motivation, although when I get motivated, things get done.  It was time to get something done.  That is all the "about me" you are going to get, for the moment.  More details will be added if they become relevant.  Well, here goes.

(Oh wait, one more thing.  This is my blog.  It will reflect my thoughts.  That means you will probably find it offensive at some point or other.  Too bad.  You were warned.  Try to keep your offended comments respectful ;)

November 22, 2012
I have now been here a week.  I am starting to get used to things.  I have visited my two potential employers (there are more if they fall through) and begun the process of arranging work.  (To those going WTF?:  for various reasons, I came here on a tourist visa. I will arrange a work visa while I am here so I can not just jump right in, but it gives me a chance to get acclimated and try to learn some Russian.

I arrived on Thursday the 15th.  I was met at the airport by Sasha (a Russian nickname for either Alexander or Alexandra - and I know one of each, both of whom are called Sasha, so that will probably become confusing for you at some point).  I am staying with Sasha and his wife Ksenia until I arrange a place to stay.  They live in the country side about an hour's drive outside the city.  Both of them work in the city, so it is easy for me to get there on any weekday, but I have to travel on their schedule.

Anyway, Sasha's birthday was Friday, so the 3 of us stayed up until midnight and drank some champagne to celebrate.  Then, on Friday night they had a party with many of their friends and we drank more champagne, rum (that I brought to contribute), cognac, and, of course, vodka.  Then on Saturday, there was another, smaller gathering.  So I basically partied and drank for my first 3 days here.

After that began day to day life of traveling to the city, meeting friends and making work contacts.  I have been here to Saint Petersburg 3 times before so I am comfortable getting around using the metro system, but I don't really like to take buses alone, yet.  The numbers are the same as English, but I don't really read Russian quickly enough to feel really certain about any particular bus.  Fortunately, the metro goes most places I need to be at the moment.  I have also been taking Aikido classes again, since Sasha is an Aikido instructor.  For those who don't know, my father is also an Aikido instructor, so I studied some as a child.  It is actually quite interesting, as I am studying a different branch of Aikido than I leaned before.

In other words, basically nothing has happened, yet, but I am getting settled in and am putting wheels in motion for the future.

Oh, I am sure you want to hear about the weather.  It has been pretty warm since I've been here.  The daytime temperatures have been as high as 8 (all temperatures will be given in celsius.  deal with it) and I have not needed my hat a lot of the time (but happy for it at night).  I have not needed my giant gonzo snow jacket and I even had to buy some lighter shoes because the boots I bought (which are awesome) were too warm. I am assured, that I will need everything warm that I brought in not too long, but for the moment it's mostly like a really cold night in San Francisco. It was raining on the day I arrived, but since then it has mostly just been grey.  And, of course it doesn't really get light until about 10:30AM and gets dark again around 5PM (and the days are still getting shorter).  So far this had not bothered me.  Again, I have been assured that I will be light starved before the winter is over.

So here is the first thing I want to share about Russia, well about Russians, really.  On the street they seem incredibly rude.  And they are.  They can't even seem to figure out that storming the metro door the moment it opens will only result in chaos as the people inside need to exit first so instead the two crowds kind of weave through each other.  They bump into you and don't say anything.  They don't acknowledge you when you are waiting at their counter (assertiveness is very important here!) and often actively ignore you.  BUT if you go to their home, they are incredibly welcoming and make sure every need that they can fulfill, they do.  I am really getting to like that part and I hope I can learn to be as good a host as any Russian.

Cyprus, an apology, and an apology for the apology.

Hello faithful readers (not sure if that should be pluralized as I would then be assuming more than one reader),

So, I promised someone by email that I would try to keep more current updating this blog. I had basically stopped because I was unaware that anybody was interested. 

I wrote a nice post about my first day in Cyprus, complete with pictures, and added an apology for not being more current about my blogging. It was probably my best writing, funniest jokes, most interesting anecdotes.  So, of course, the program crashed and lost all my work.  I was so disheartened by the loss, I didn't write again for some days.

So, first the apology for the apology:
I'm sorry that I lost the apology and you didn't get to read it, but rest assured that it was very eloquent and heart felt.

Next, the apology:
 I am sorry I have not been blogging so much.  I have plenty of pictures and I will try to start working more often to provide you with entertainment.  I have developed a new system that will help me remember things I want to write about. Too bad my trip is over and the new system won't help me for now, but I hope to travel more and make this an ongoing record,so we will see.

Now, Cyprus:
So, I am on Cyprus.  Technically I am here for a wedding.  No, not mine.  Seriously who would marry me.  The wedding of some friends I met in Russia.  Doe to the vagaries of travel, I arrived a day before the rest of the wedding party.  I rented a car and headed over the hill to North Cyprus (the Turkish part - if you are unfamiliar with the Cyprian geopolitical situation, there is a Greek speaking/ethinic Republic of Cyprus on the south of the island and a turkish speaking/ethnic North Cyprus.  Like all silly situations like this one it is due to some weird territorial wars in the past and now they can't just find a way to live together in peace.

Anyway, in one of it's past lives, Cyprus was a British protectorate which means, yes, the don't drive on the right side of the road, but rather the opposite.  They admit this, but like everywhere with this driving peculiarity, they claim that the opposite of 'right' is 'left' when the opposite of 'right' is clearly 'wrong.'  Be that as it may, I had much more trouble finding my way through the city of Nicosa to get to the border.  Of course when I finally stopped to ask where I was, I was 3 blocks from the crossing.  Americans can cross the border easily and I just had to pay 20 euros for car insurance since the insurance I had purchased was not valid.

So I head out towards Kyrenia (or Gyrne as the turkish Cypriots call it - many cities in the North have 2 names this way, it can get a little confusing).  You just drive straight over the mountain (or big, big hill) in the middle of the island and, boom, you're there.

On the way I see a sign for the St. Hilarion castle, which was one of the sights I planned to visit anyway so I pulled over and went to explore.

The St. Hilarion castle is built high up on the mountain and it has a great view of Kirenia/Girne.  Here's me at the lookout.

Ok, that's mostly a bad view of me, but I hope you get the idea.

Anyway it is also supposedly the inspiration for the Disney castle in snow white.  Here is a link to some pictures and I have to say that, personally, I just don't see it.

St Hilarion Castle pictures

In my opinion it is much more likely to be the inspiration for the stairmaster.  After climbing up and down to the many corners of the Castle, I am sure someone realized what a great idea it would be to put all that exercise right in someone's living room instead of having to travel to Cyprus to get it.

Here's two bad pictures of me at the highest point of the castle:

This was good news. I had actually been worried that I was way past my peak.

Anyway, I went on down to Kyrenia/Girne and visited the old town. It was a very neat place with an old harbor and a great waterfront castle at the edge of the harbor.  like this:

I love climbing all over history and you could walk everywhere in this castle (and in fact many of the historical places in Cyprus allow you to walk almost everywhere).  It also had the shipwreck museum which is actually the remains of an old old wooden boat saved from the ocean floor and carefully preserved.  It's seems small and minor until you realize just how old the boat is.

That's all for north Cyprus.  Next I'll get to the Republic and the wedding (that will be a shorter post)

Vilnius, Lithunaia

Spent the last couple of days in Vilnius, the capital city of Lithuania.  It is a nice city built in a pretty area of rolling hills.  I did all the touristy stuff I could stand including a trip to a nearby town with a genuine castle which was cool-but-not-that-cool if you know what I mean.  I found myself in a bit of traveller haze like I was just going through the motions and not really even taking in what I was seeing.  What finally snapped me out of my haze and back into the joy of seeing new places was a visit to the Museum of Genocide Victims that is housed in former KGB headquarters in Vilnius.  The museum is built right into the headquarters.  Many of the rooms have been converted into exhibits, but some of the rooms themselves are exhibits as they have been maintained or recreated as they were during the Russian occupation.  In the basement are the actual cells, interrogation rooms, and yes, execution chamber used at the time.

Sorry no pictures except the funny lady who worked at the hostel who put on this mask, prompting us to watch the movie "V for Vendetta" (not the other way around).

Riga - Jurmala - Riga. Latvia is OK

Last full day in Riga.  I decide to take the train to the seaside town of Jurmala about 30 minutes from Riga.

If your beach experiences are full of Hawaii and California, then, no matter what proud locals tell you, do not expect too much of Latvian beaches on the Baltic.  Actually the town was quite nice.  Small and walkable with lots of pleasant streets and the seaside community feeling not too overwhelmed by tourists and hotels.  The beach was even pretty nice (although I prefer waves and water temperatures warmer than my refrigerator) with soft fine sand and plenty of room for everyone.  While I was here I was able to witness the (not so) famous gerbil children of Jurmala.  I took a video for you:

Back in Riga, I visit the Museum of the Occupation of Latvia.  It is closed, but they have some outside things I can look at.  I have been to the Holocaust Museum's in both Washington and Jerusalem so there is not much more that can shock me, but every time I visit a new country and see how much they suffered I am embarrassed that I need to be reminded again.  I also think how much our leaders fail us when they lead us into war and killing and torture.  I also think how much atrocity is still being committed right now in places on this planet.  The holocaust was terrible and should never be forgotten, but what about all the suffering in Rwanda, for example.  Would we stop another holocaust if we saw it happening?  I guess not.  What the hell are our leaders doing?  Making laws that help corporations get richer - including sometimes from the very wars and conflicts that cause the suffering.  They are not doing what is best for our people or any people.

I am glad I gave Riga a chance.  It is still way down on the list of places i would live, but I am glad I visited.

Riga - it doesn't suck as much as I thought

So I have a full day here.  Not feeling very motivated I waste a lot of the morning and finally I decide I should do something.  I see that one of the attractions is the Riga Auto Museum.  I like cars and also it is way outside of the city center so I will get to see another side of the place.  This proves to be a very good decision.  After figuring out the bus routes and the mysterious ticket buying procedure, I head out to the museum.  After a long wait for the bus (damn it, I would choose a weekend, busses don't run as often) I hop on and the bus ride itself is almost worth the trip.  It's nothing special, but I get a long slow tour of the real Riga.  I pass the outskirts of town and see what that looks like and then hit the suburbs.  The suburbs have that same soviet era look that apartment blocks in Russia have.  You just need to see it, but it proves that strict utilitarianism mixed with poor maintenance can be really soul crushing.  Still I feel that I get to see a bit more about what life is like here.  At least on a weekend.

I get to my stop, get off the bus and look around.  I can't see the museum, so walk around a bit. I must be close because I can tell I am on the outside of a racetrack of some kind and I can hear something - motorcycles? - racing around at high speed, but I can't see in at any point so I decide to just go to the museum.  I walk around and I can't find the museum, so I walk into a place that i think is a cafe or something attached to the racetrack but it turns out to be a little indoor go cart type race track where you can pay to drive around the little track.  I am tempted, but it's way outside my budget (as if budget had any thing to do with this trip) so I just ask for directions.  Turns out I got off the bus one stop too early and I have to walk about 500m up the road.  I find the museum and it's actually really cool.  There are not nearly as many cars as the one I went to in Blackhawk, CA, but there sure are some interesting ones.  Here are some pictures and some comments (if you don't like cars, skip the rest of this post):

Early subcompact car.  Here in europe they have smaller cars and they multipurpose the engines for more things.  for example, the engine in this car was taken from this:

Ok. I made that up, but I swear to god the sewing machine was in the auto museum.

Here's some more pics:

really early motorcycle

BMW with the characteristic sideways cylinders to reduce kidney punishment

Russian 'chaika"

Also, here's where the russian superman changes:

Tallinn to Riga, Latvia. Riga sucks

Tallinn to Riga. Bad day.  Started ok as I woke up in plenty of time, had a nice breakfast and walked out of the old city of Tallinn to the tram stop to catch the tram to the bus station.  At the tram stop I realized i forgot my phone - which I am using as an e-reader while I travel.  I had to run back to the hostel to get it.  Well whatever you call it when you kind of rumble along as fast as you can with your backpack.  Anyway, I managed to get to the bus as it was finishing boarding, hot and sweaty and stressed instead of relaxed and fresh.  Oh well.  The bus ride to Riga was pleasant and relaxing.

Arrived in Riga, Hate it almost from the start.  Something in the air.  Then I change money at the bus station and they have a good rate and no commission.  Maybe Riga is looking up.  Get to the hOstel to find that I've lost the money I've just changed.  My fault.  I put it in the pocket with the directions to the place I was staying instead of where I usually put money where it will be safe.  I'm sure the money just came out and dropped one of the many times I checked the directions.  Not a giant tragedy, it was only about $40/€32. Still I manage to blame the loss on Riga so I hate it even more.  Check into my hostel, settle in and walk out to explore.  Like Tallinn, the tourist industry is centered about an "Old Town"  which is partially a neat cobblestoned are full of old buildings and interesting architecture and partially a crazy bar party area.  I sat down at one place where a nice sounding band was playing and actually ordered a beer.  The beer was bitter and the band stopped playing 2 sips in.  I walked towards the river and I saw this graffiti on the wall in a side street I was passing:

And it got me to thinking.  I mean the basic sentiment can be found almost anywhere.  It's a byproduct of the fact the people with any kind of power typically abuse that power in such a way as to cause serious resentment at the very least.  While I have never heard the sentiment expressed with the leading adjective "curb" before it could just be local or something new or I could just be out of touch; and besides, it clearly was just there for emphasis.  Then I got to thinking about the etymology and history of the word "fuck".  I was taught that it was an ancient word for intercourse at use at one point in the british isles and then when one conqueror or another was waltzing through england they outlawed the language and so the word became a swear word.  The internet does not support that exact story but it also does not know the exact origins except that it pretty much agrees that sexual intercourse is among the main meanings.  Then it struck me what a weird social/psychological phenomenon it is that we use a word meaning sexual intercourse as a swear word.  I'll skip over all the problems it probably causes as far as people's confusing motives and feelings around sex in general.  Just think how silly it sounds to substitute the meanings (even given that fuck is often used as a verb and intercourse is not):  "Go have sexual intercourse with yourself", "Sexual intercourse you", "there's no sexual intercoursing way" etc.

Anyway, the graffiti didn't help me like Riga any more.  I got to the river and watched the sun go down over a pretty bridge and that helped a little.

A Day in Estonia

So today I walked around Tallinn all day. I had breakfast in a place recommended in my Hostel.  Not bad.  Then I walked around an older part of town.  I saw some old battleships, a prison (more on this later) and many soviet era buildings.  It was a real contrast to the newer section of town I saw on the way from the bus stop, in the a modern clean section of town, to where I am staying in the Old Town, which is touristy and historical.  I also walked through the "Russian Market," a weird flea market type place with lots of cheap used clothes and many shops with all sorts of old soviet era stuff from suitcases to pins to military jackets and much much more.  Mostly junk, but some neat stuff.  Especially glassware and other items that might be useful today.  I would definitely shop there for fun once in a while if I lived here.

The upshot of the run down part of town and the russian market was to remind me of this thought I've been having about when governments fail their people.  I plan on posting it sometime in the near future.

So the prison.  Of course I wandered in from a strange direction and ended up in a small alley that dead ended on the wrong side of the prison with no way to get to the entrance.  There I saw a small shrine that said in French and Estonian (ok I assume it was Estonian) something like 'in may 1944, 868 people were deported from this place.  in august only 22 of them were still alive.'  It was a beautiful sunny peaceful day but for a moment I felt a dark shadow from the past reminding me of all the atrocity that we are capable of and have committed and probably will commit in the future as we seem not to be able to learn the lessons we need to respect everyone and give them a chance.  Sorry that seems almost cliched from someone like me, but it's good to be reminded of these things from time to time.

**************************************************************

In reference to my last post, sure enough, Tonya didn't like her picture so I wanted to make it up to her by posting a good picture (to me, that means one without me in it).  Also she didn't like my joke about not knowing what a gulag was.  So to avoid her actually sending me there, I would like to tell all the world that
a) Tonya knows what a gulag is and
b) If you don't hear from me for a while, someone please contact Tonya and ask her what gulag she sent me to and try to get me out.

St. Petersburg - Tallinn - Helsinki - Tallinn

So I left St. Petersburg on tuesday May 22.  Mostly because my visa expired and I didn't want to be thrown in the gulag.  I said that to Tonya (who I was staying with) and she didn't know what I was talking about.  I am still unclear if that's because she didn't know about it, that's not what it was called, or it never existed.  Here's me and Tonya in St. Petersburg:

We both hate this picture.

I took the bus to Tallinn, Estonia.  The only thing I knew about Estonia is that I had a friend in high school whose whole family was absurdly proud of being Estonian.

The border was this ridiculous exercise in getting off the bus.  Gathering your luggage.  Going through Russian border control.  Getting back on the bus.  Driving 500 meters.  Getting off the bus.  Gathering luggage.  Going through Estonian border control.  Back on the bus.  A day later I went from Estonia to Finland to Estonia and nobody even asked to see my passport (they barely asked to see my ticket).  I am starting to feel that all this border control is just to make small officials feel important.  I am pretty sure any real border violations (which would be what? smuggling?) do not happen on the bus line.

Anyway it is such a difference between Russia and Estonia.  Estonia is almost western europe.  Clean and modern.  Russia has just not been well maintained and it looks shoddy and old.  I have a lot of thoughts about this, having experienced it elsewhere in the world.  I hope to share them in a later post.

Then I went to Finland for the day to visit a good friend.  As always, I am so impressed with how clean and well ordered Helsinki is.

Sorry my thoughts are so scattered.

Here's pics of the ferry ride and my friend in Finland.

Speaking of Ferries and Minna, we actually met on a ferry from Haifa, Israel to Cyprus (her) and then Greece (me).  We sailed away the day the shooting started at the Dome of the Rock in 2000 that ended the uneasy peace that had allowed me to travel from Egypt to Jordan and then Israel in the days before. Good timing.

If this blog doesn't get more interesting soon, (and better written) I will be very disappointed in the author.

Starting in the middle

Hello.  Welcome to my travel blog.  It's a little about my travels and mostly about my thoughts that I have while traveling - because you can find out more about the places I am going with a simple internet search than I could type in days and days.

In the old days I maintained an email list (ha that was the old days) and I would send mail to people.  This trip I tried to just post on facebook, but not everybody has facebook (gasp) and it doesn't really allow for  deeper thoughts to be shared (that character limit thing).

So time to try a travel blog.  We'll see how it goes.  If you know me, you know I already have taken a summer trip through Europe and then a year long excursion around the world - mostly designed to keep me in summer weather for an entire year. Essentially you are coming in on the middle of my travels.

I am currently in St. Petersburg, Russia.  Sitting in the soon to be kitchen of my host here (she is fixing up her new flat (that's an apartment, americans) and the kitchen has no appliances except a refrigerator and a 1 burner plug in portable stove which doesn't turn off and needs to be unplugged when not in use. She also has a microwave and we have been able to do fine as far as food preparation.  We do have to clean up in the bathroom as facebook friends will know.  Here's the kitchen for you visually oriented people.

Here is a picture from the opposite angle:

Here's the bathroom picture:

Anyway, i will be here another week and then I will leave for Helsinki finland to basically have dinner with another friend before I hop the baltic on a ferry to Tallinn, Estonia.  Then I will wander down through Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland to Germany where I will stay in a friends house and use that as a base for some European excursions.

I will try to post here enough to make it interesting.  I will try to be interesting enough to be worth reading.  If not, well, it's your time after all ;)