Goin' back to cali...

(and totally dating myself with that reference to a 1988 - yes EIGHTY EIGHT - rap song)

So here I am back in good old San Rafael, California in the USA.  It's time to wrap up my journey to Russia, close the book on it, so to speak and start moving towards whatever is next (here's hoping that involves beaches and drinks with umbrellas most of the time)

So when last we left our intrepid hero, he was off to Italy and Switzerland.  I had a great time in both those places.  I met up with my friends, the Thies family, who are insanely traveling around with their children (here's their blog if you just can't get enough of self indulgent travelogs from me:
http://thiesfamilyadventure.blogspot.com/ )

It was really great.  They had everything worked out and I just had to tag along.  I met them in Italy at Lake Como, which is a stunning place where they are industriously trying to milk the tourism for all it's worth and also keep the place a secret from the world so too many people don't come and ruin it.  The latter goal was mostly obliterated when George Clooney bought a villa there and now everybody wants to see where he lives (spoiler alert: you can't really see anything).

Although we were mostly pelted with rain, we did manage to choose the best day to rent a small power boat and zip around the lake for 3 hours seeing so many amazing little places they began to lose their power to make us oh and ah.  For those of you who care we also motored past the villa used to film some of the crappy romance scene from Episode II of the Star Wars movies. (I think it was Episode II.  They were really bad and it all kinda blurs into one giant series of badness, albeit with great special effects and a pretty cool political statement that most people miss because Natalie Portman's clothes seem to keep getting torn into smaller and smaller pieces).

Here's me:

Here's the Thies family enjoying the sun:

Here's just a nice picture of the lake:

Then we drove to Switzerland.  First we went to Lucerne, where I happen to have visited last year and di some of the same things ... including eating chocolate so that turned out ok.  Then we continued on to the Interlaken region.  Now I have been there before and, although it was beautiful, Interlaken is a little touristy.  Fortunately for me, and all of us really, there was nothing available in Interlaken and we ended up in this awesome, huge, nice place in the tiny town of Lauterbrunnen.  Here's a picture I took from the street basically outside our place:

While there we went to this outdoor museum where they had collected actual houses and workshops from previous centuries.  You could walk through them and see how people lived.  But the best part was that they had people doing things live just the way they were done.  We saw people sawing logs with a water wheel powered saw, making bread, spinning yarn, and several other things that were necessities in daily life.  It really makes you appreciate how easy life is today, but also how artificial.  It made us hope that we could incorporate the best of both worlds in our lives someday.

On our last day we took the gondola up to a place even higher in the mountains and had this nice view:

Then I went back to germany to see my friends Kevin and Jessica one more time.  While there I took this nice picture:

And this silly one:

I packed my stuff, enjoyed the time with my friends, and came home.

до свидания РУСИА (Goodbye Russia)

Greetings from Germany,

  That's right.  Germany.  I have left Russia. And they even let me.  Of course I don't know how to say "Good Riddance" in russian so I can't be sure they weren't muttering that as they passed me through customs.

I have many final thoughts, but they won't all be here.

First I need to clear something up.  Sometimes I make things up in this blog for dramatic effect.  I usually think it is very obvious, but I guess that is not always true. So, for the small number of you who thought I actually bought a car that looked as bad as that one, I would like you to know that I did not. And really, what were you thinking?  I mean, be serious, there's no way i could afford a car that nice in russia.

My last days in Russia were nice.  Everyone wanted to see me and say goodbye and they also wanted to know when I would be back.  My class load slowly diminished until I was a tourist again.

Other than a small travel glitch that cost me bout $200 to get a ticket from Saint Petersburg to Moscow and then wait in Domodedovo airport in Moscow for 5 hours that turned into 13 hours with a flight delay (in other words, such a typical travel story that it is barely worth mentioning) it was nice and smooth travelling here to Germany.   I am visiting my friends here for a while

Now, I will go to Italy and Switzerland to visit my friends, the Thies family, who are travelling the world with their children (yes, that means they are way braver than I am, travelwise) for a week and then I will return to the states.

From there I get to examine my life, determine that I need to do something and start all over again, probably.  At any rate, this is not the end.

In fact, it is not even the end of russia.  I have some notes of thoughts I had that I will share as soon as I can.

I will share those soon.  Maybe.

Cheers

February - April (because I'm not a soldier, I skipped March)

Oh look at that.  It's April. I have not written anything here since the end of February.  Don't worry you didn't miss much, so I'll catch you up quickly.

Starting in February, I basically steeled in to a routine.  I had classes all day. I prepared for them in the evenings and, on weekends I tried to do something interesting.  

I guess I am a good english teacher (though it didn't feel like it to me) because I was pretty popular.  But I don't have much to say about it.  Most of the learning depended more on the motivation of the students as far as I was concerned.  I liked almost all my students and the classes I dreaded most were when the students were not motivated, but they were still nice people.  

Almost all my classes were corporate clients.  I would travel to their offices and give them lessons at either the start or end of their work day or, in one lucky case, on their lunch hour.  This meant a lot of awkward downtime and I ended up using up a lot of my day waiting.  For a few weeks I was spending an hour and a half each tuesday in a train station waiting room because it was too much travel time to go home and it was warm there and they had cheap soup in the vending machines.  

I discovered that I am best in one on one situations because I can react to exactly what a student needs work on and skip the stuff they already understand.  I hate the situation where students need different things and I have a whole class so I have to choose between boring the more advanced students or leaving the slowest behind.

Two of my clients were a woman who works for Baltika beer company (now owned by Carlsberg, in case anyone cares) and a man who works for Philip Morris (although it turns out that Philip Morris Europe has almost nothing to do with PM USA anymore).  So basically I am contributing the alcohol and cigarettes distribution in Russia.  Most annoyingly, seeing as how I don't smoke, it was only Phillip Morris that offered me free samples.

Out side of work, only a few interesting things happened, and I suspect that they were more interesting to me in the moment than they will be to you in retrospect so i'll try to make the details short and use pictures.

I went snowboarding again

I went to a professional Hockey playoff game (that was actually quite fun):

I bought a car.  Of course I had to buy a used car, and they are quite expensive here so this was the best I could get:

Sadly, a few days later it was stolen before I ever got to drive it.  I just came outside one morning and it was gone...

Following a tip on the internet, I had the best doughnuts ever:

So far, I have managed not to go back, but my willpower is weakening.

I went to an outdoor celebration of "spring" with my multicultural group.  Notice how warm we all look.  Later we went to Lyuba and Roman's house(they are the couple on the right) for lots of pancakes (the best part of how they celebrate spring here)

I had a party at my apartment to celebrate 3 birthdays: mine and also Dennis from Cuba (far left in picture above) and Cristina from Spain (middle - in orange hat so we don't loose her in a crowd)

A month later, spring finally came.  Well, what passes for spring in Russia.  Now I can wear my "light" jacket, rarely need a hat and the river is almost melted.

Actually, 2 days before I took this picture, people were walking their dogs on the completely frozen over river.  I was stunned at how fast it melted and broke up, but then someone told me that they drive an ice breaker through as soon as the thaw begins so people will not walk on thin ice.  I wish I had been home to see that happen.

Oh, and I met my cousin, Marina, who lives here in St. Petersburg.  My maternal grandmother's family is from here and some faint contact has been maintained, so armed with an old address and phone number and the help of english speaking russian friends, I tracked her down and we met.  She doesn't speak english, so I needed a translator, but it was fun.  We are 3rd cousins. That means we share a great-great grandmother, or, to put it another way, each of our grandmother's shared a grandmother.  Here we are together:

(I got a haircut as soon as possible after I saw this picture)

So, you are caught up.  My visa expires in May so things are coming to a close here.  They like me where I teach and have invited to help me get a new visa and return.  I loved the people, hate the cold.  I will think about it.  In May I go to moscow for a couple days with a friend and from there I will fly to Germany for a visit with some friends.  I also may travel to italy and switzerland to see other frinds.  I'll try to keep this blog updated.  I will back in the USA on May 30th.  And wither then, I cannot say. (bonus points if you know where that line comes from ... sadly, only nerd bonus points).

Babushka Land

Hi,

I have some small things I've been meaning to share.  Just random thoughts I try to write down when I have them (the ones I forget to write down are always much cooler and more interesting than the ones I remember)

Anyway, here, in no particular order (including, thanks to the vagaries of entering some thoughts on my phone and some on the computer, the order I actually had the thoughts) are some random thoughts.

McDonald's and KFC are best companies on earth...unless you actually,you know, eat their food.  It is actually less important to me now that I kind of have a full schedule and lots of places to be, but before, when I was often wandering around the city, I would sometimes find myself in need of a bathroom.  Now there are often places near the metro stops where you can pay about $1, but McDonalds seems to have a policy of trying to take over the world but making sure it offers clean and free bathrooms in compensation.  That might not seem like a good trade, but believe me, it depends on how long you've been ... waiting.  I have also have had good luck in a KFC in this regard.  Anyway, when I travel I try to eat local food.  Not in a save the planet kind of way, in a try the local cuisine kind of way, but I feel no need to sample local waste disposal alternatives when there are free modern choices.

So, I try to keep up with the local news.  I recently read an article about how San Francisco was considering reducing it's regulations on how small an apartment could be so some company could make a fortune selling these little 220 square foot mini apartments.  Well, the politicians say they are trying to ease the housing shortage, but ... well you know.  Anyway, russians already live this way.  Their apartments are small and they get by on what they can.  My apartment here is giant for one person and usually would be occupied by 2 people ... well, with a real kitchen.  I do think these little mini apartments are overkill, but if the world is going to be a fair place, some people are going to need to reduce their needs a bit.  Oh, wait, life isn't fair. ... never mind.

People get their shoes repaired here.  Like they don't throw them away and buy new ones (I mean they do if they can), they just pay someone to fix them.  And there are people who can fix them.  I even got my jacket fixed when I tore the pocket.  Thank god or my right hand would either have been cold for the rest of the winter or I would have received some strange looks.

Ok, everyone here is like my grandmother.  And not in a good way.  "Ray zip up your jacket or you will catch cold." "Here, do want some bread? No? Some fish? no? Ok, here, have some potatoes... and some bread ... and some fish.  Well, you have to eat."  It's like they think I am unaware of my own body temperature and level of hunger (ok this one is sometimes true, but always in the opposite direction, making me eat too much and never too little).  It's amazing,  after one english class I was walking to the metro with one of my students.  It was only the second time I met her and she looked at me as we were walking and asked, "don't you have a scarf?  you're going to get sick."  She doesn't know it yet, but she is not going to pass my class.

Speaking of zipping up your coat, russians have amazing temperature regulation.  The minute I enter, for example, the metro, I need to take off my hat and gloves, unzip my jacket, and try to get some cool air inside my clothes because inside here, even the metro usually, is kept comfortable ... for shorts.  But russians don't notice.  I guess they just don't want to be bothered to take off all their carefully arranged winter clothes, but they just ride the metro all bundled up.  I'd be a dripping ball of sweat in minutes.  I really don't know how they do it.

Actually I can sympathize.  While I am not really a winter person, it's not the cold that bothers me as much as the long process involved in constantly having to take off and put on outside clothes.  It's annoying and tedious.

Old cities like St. Petersburg become more modern the further away you get from the old center of the city.  In the US we just modernize everything, but they don't exactly seem to do that here, so in the center, where I live, there are no large supermarkets, or movie theaters or other trappings of modern life. Actually the theaters are no big loss to me, as, while they show lots of american films here, they dub them all, so I can't watch them anyway.

I'll finish with this joke I keep telling by an '80 russian comedian named Yakov Smirnoff who defected from the Soviet Union:

"... Don't feel bad that you are from Cleveland.  In every country around the world they have a city that they make fun of.  In America it is Cleveland, in Soviet Union ... it is Cleveland"

Stop making sense, making sense

Hello Faithful readers,

uh, let's just dive right in ...

The best way to learn a language is to immerse yourself in the culture
As you all know, or maybe you don't, in addition to teaching english, I was coming here with the intention of learning some language skills of my own.  Of course, it's quite useful, especially if you want to buy anything or talk to anyone, but I also like the feeling of learning a new way to communicate.  It can also help you understand the way people think as it has been postulated that the way we speak is related to the way we think.  (Shrug) Maybe.  Anyway, when I arrived here, I was only able to say a few words, but lately I have had a lot of opportunity to practice and things are starting to stick in my head  little better now than they did before.  I'd sure like to be able to spend more time practicing, but even so, I am pretty proud to say that my spanish is coming along nicely! No, really.  Read on.

Mixed messages

In my last post I mentioned that I had an interesting gathering in my new apartment (Ha, you thought I forgot about that when actually, it ties right in).  Here's the story.  My friend Vera, who speaks english and spanish, as well as russian, has been inviting me to various places when she can.  I went to a cool party for a friend of hers names Daria who just completed her doctorate in linguistics. She speaks many languages (including spanish) and can read sanscrit (she tells me the sanscrit version of Harry Potter is lame because the sanscrit phrase for "he who must not be named" is about 2 pages long so the book just becomes to large and unwieldy to read).

Anyway, Vera and Daria invited me to meet them and some of their friends in a cafe.  What the hell, I said, it sounds cooler than writing a blog entry.  The other friends included Eduard and Dennis, brothers who have a cuban father and russian mother so that they both speak spanish but Eduard was raised here so he speaks russian, while Dennis just moved here recently but does speak some english.  Also there was Cristina, who is Spanish but has been living and teaching here for 5 years so she speaks russian but understand a fair amount of portuguese (helpful to me) and even some english.  Last but not least were Lyuba and her husband Raman who both only speak russian with smatterings of english (actually, it would later turn out that Lyuba understands quite a bit of english but is mostly too shy to speak).

If you have been counting, that's 8 people, 6 speak russian (excepting me and Dennis), 4 speak spanish, 3 speak english, 2 speak some portuguese, and 1 reads sanscrit.  Do the math.  The second most used language was spanish.  I don't really speak spanish, but I know some from trying to learn it long ago.

Vera and Daria were working to help everyone communicate, but I didn't like to make them work all the time (it was a social occasion after all).  So I tried to communicate with Lyuba and Raman in my russian and their english (about a 500 word shared vocabulary - actually amazing what can be conveyed within that limitation) and with Dennis, Eduard and Cristina in spanish.  I totally failed to talk to the guys because they have a cuban accent and I literally couldn't follow it at all.  We ended up using more english because Dennis knew more than he admitted (a common theme).  Speaking with Cristina was the funniest (in a ha ha kind of way) because when I try to speak spanish, I actually speak more portuguese, which only works if, you know, the listener actually understands portuguese.  Turns out that she is from a part of spain that is north west where the dialect is even closer to portuguese than normal spanish and is also close to the northern border with Portugal so she understands quite a bit of portuguese.  Also, she is a spanish teacher, so she is used to people mangling her language and also used to speaking clearly to us.  To add  to the confusion, the brain is a funny thing and sometimes mine would come up with the russian word for something I was trying to say.  The result is that more than once I started a sentence in spanish, took a short detour though russian, found my way to portuguese, and finally resorted to english to get to the period at the end.  That's not what was amazing.  What was amazing was that this mish mash was intelligible to her more often than not.

Oops, I forgot to mention, my brain has some high school french still stuck in there somewhere and all these latin languages are obviously stored near each other in my brain.  Cristina happens to be studying french at the moment so occasionally we resorted to that as well, although I don't remember any 5 language phrases at the moment.  Actually I'm pretty proud of how well I managed to communicate considering I only speak one of those languages well (if you're reading this, and wondering exactly wish language that is, I don't blame you)

In these situations a phone with internet access so you can get to google translate is extremely helpful, and of course all of had Vera and Daria to help if we really got stuck.  Fun fact:  Daria is a pretty common name here in Russia, and the nick name for Daria is Dasha - yes, it saves one easy syllable and no letters - and that's only if you consider the dupthong 'ia' to be 2 syllables.

The upshot was that the next weekend, I invited everyone over to my new apartment to recreate the fun (and get a lot of free food).  Now I have this strange international band of friends and I can't seem to learn any russian.

Oh, by the way ...
A meteor hit this country recently (I didn't even hear it).  More about that next  time ...

Wintertime, and the living is ... normal

It's been a while since I have written.  No excuse except lack of dedication.  What can I say, you are getting your money's worth (the time spent reading, you will never get back). Anyway, here I am.

About 2 weeks ago, I had a serious crisis of intention.  As in what am I doing?  Not really so much what am I doing here in Russia, but what am I doing overall.  Is this what I want to be doing (teaching english, living in strange cities)?  Even if it is should I be doing it somewhere warm with better fruit selections (hello Brasil)?  I was on the verge of packing up and returning home to think about it.  I finally decided that I could think about it just as well here and that by actually doing it for a while longer, I might actually answer some of those questions.  At least if the answer is no, I will have eliminated one possibility.

So, here I am, living in Saint Petersburg, Russia.  I work as an english teacher.  Damn is this glamourous.  One reason I haven't written is because life here is the same as it is anywhere.  Get up, go to work. Go home. Shop for food. Cook. Eat. Do laundry.  If you are reading this and you are alive, I expect you know the drill.

Ok, so I have an apartment in the middle of the city.  The apartment is fine although the kitchen is ridiculously small.  Here are some pictures:

This is the main room.  All the pictures except this one are taken from that door over there on the far left.

This is the same room with a picture taken from that door.  Those windows look out on Fontanki canal (see the map I will link after the pictures) and the entrance to the building is on Kryukova canal, the little canal that meets it at my corner.

Here is the "kitchen".  It's actually something like an entrance hallway.  The front door, which you can't see, is to the right of the door you can see which leads to the bathroom.  Yes, this is the whole kitchen.  The small fridge with the microwave on top is just inside the door.  Just behind the butter you can almost see my stove.  Ok, it's a plug in electrical burner.  It's a damn good thing I can't cook.

The bathroom is just fine.  It has a nice shower and even a washing machine.  You can't really tell, but the washing machine can only be called cute.  It's about 20" deep and has room for about 1.5 changes of clothes. I didn't think you would miss seeing the toilet which is around the corner to the right.  It works.  There is no dryer.  You can kind of see the lines strung from the wall above the washing machine to over the toilet for drying clothes.

Here is a link to a google map showing where it is located:

My place in SPb

If you look at the street view, you should see the corner of the building and you will see the entrance down the right side.  My place actually looks at the big canal.  My windows are down the left side just above and past the door you can see there.  Of course all these pictures were taken in summer.  At the moment there is ice and snow all over the place and the canal is frozen over.

I had an interesting international gathering of friends here last sunday.  I will write about it in the next post.

Ice, Ice, Baby

Cold Blooded
The silent predator looked down from a height upon it's unwary and unaware prey.  Soon ... soon... just a little closer ... wait, not too fast ... the timing has to be just right.  A little droplet of water fell, warning the prey of the danger if only he had been paying attention.

Obliviously, I walked down the snowy sidewalk.  It's an obvious point, but you have less traction for walking when there is snow on the sidewalk.  I have to concentrate to walk smoothly and avoid the occasional patches of slick ice.  If I don't I might fall or run into the many fast moving russians all around.  The snow is slippery, but the ice is deadly.  Well, not deadly in most cases, but you can slip and fall pretty hard.  I didn't pay attention to what was going on above.

Yes, yes, one more step.  One more second of warmth.  One more drop. Now I have you. The predator, released from its bond, swoops down ...

I wasn't looking.  I didn't know it was coming.  It didn't make any noise.  I didn't hear it.  It just fell ... silently.  Swooped down from where it had been attached to eves of the building above.  An icicle, released by the warmer temperature and it's growing weight.  It had slowly built itself up, drop by drop,  into an icicle of damocles and then, as I approached the building where it was attached, the string was cut and it began to fall. Down it dropped and still oblivious I walked.  Completely unaware of the danger.  Unaware until it actually struck, smashing through the head of the pedestrian ahead of me...

OK, nothing like that happened at all.  But I am assured that not only could it happen, but many people die each year from exactly that.  Here in Saint Petersburg, they are pretty good about closing off the sidewalk and knocking them down as soon as they can, but you have to be aware.

Here's a picture of some of these cold blooded predators:

Can you see 'em up there? (you can also see how the sidewalk is closed until they knock them down)

Warm Blooded
So it's pretty warm as I write this.  It's actually raining outside (that means it's like 1 degree above freezing).  But a little while ago, it was so cold that the locals were complaining.  The thermometer said it was -20.  My friend Vera said that she comes from a place where it is regularly -30 in the winter but she assured me that it didn't feel as cold as that days -20.  I am used to being the wimp when it comes to cold around here.  After all I am surrounded by russians who live in this stuff every winter.  In this case I was not that bothered by the cold.  I'm not saying I wouldn't have rather been lying on a beach, but once it's damn cold, it's damn cold and not really any worse.  There are two qualifications I should add here.  One is that we didn't actually have to be outside for all that long.  I walked for about 20 minutes and my face got numb but the rest of me was fine (hat, gloves on, hands in pockets) and then we went inside where it was about 22 and cozy).  The other is that I have a particularly warm parka and my boots are kind of overkill for the city so I may be more resistant to cold based on my artificial insulation.   I don't care.  Not cold is not cold.

Um, there's no other kind of blooded ... 
So as I said the weather has "warmed up".  Is this good?  Not really.  It's still too cold outside to go for a run.  Well actually it's not too cold.  It's actually too warm. See the weather warmed up enough to where the snow melted so there was water all over the ground.  Then it re-froze.  Not as snow, oh no, that would be too easy.  It needs to fall to be snow.  If it's just frozen water, we call that ice.  Yes, the streets of Saint Petersburg basically became a giant ice skating rink.  The first day that happened was the day I had to walk the furthest to get to work.  Then I decided to walk to the next place I was going.  And after that I had to walk home.  It was treacherous.  I didn't fall.  I saw some locals fall.  I quietly gloated to myself.  I'm sure my come uppance is on its way the next slippery day.

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: