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.