Snarky Transmissions from the Vodka Plane

Mykolayiv church

2008-08-03T17:10:00.000Z

Funny sign in Dnepropetrovsk

2008-07-30T20:08:00.000Z

Lenin spins In grave

2008-07-27T22:32:00.000Z

Train to Dnipropetrovsk

2008-07-26T17:30:00.001Z

About sixteen miles outside of Dnipropetrovsk, a formerly closed
missile-producing city of 1.2 million, a factory exists that produces
nothing but stuffed animals. Most of them are bigger than they ought
to be and locals hawk them to the passengers of the train I now ride.

The temperature inside this "first class" cabin weebles around 100F,
and seeing a quarter mile of stuffed smiling bears, pink elefinks and
bizarrely colored rabbit-chairs makes one think they're going mad. I
meet with scientists tomorrow from the Institute of Problems of Metal
Physics (yes, that is the real name - awesome!) so hopefully I can put
this image out of my head until dreamtime.

Your humble iPhone reporter. Da zaftra.

Rod

Back in Kyiv

2008-07-16T13:20:00.001Z

Just a snapshot of one of my first meals here in Ukraine. No those
aren't French Fries, they are "Cajun" potato something.

Home

2006-09-19T00:31:00.000Z

Back in the US,
Back in the US,
Back in the USSA.

Sorry but that's the only lame witticism I can muster after 15 hours of airtravel today. My throat is sore from breathing pressurized air and other people's exhaust for that long. But I'm home, got the Cingular simkart in my brand new Russian Razr, washed the car and headed out soon for a burrito.

Then it's lights out. Even superman needs a rest.

Snappage?

2006-09-17T23:18:00.000Z

From my mental diary, Kyiv airport, customs line:

No one around me knows that I am now an assassin. This is my 15th flight in five weeks and my thoughts have now turned homicidal. The dehumanizing crush of yet another Kafkaesque parade of exSoviet inefficiency, my grey craniumpudding has been stripped of boundaries. Having only one hour of sleep, and that only en route from Odessa, I am now a killing machine behind this calm exterior of dumbass grinning. In my sights, I feel an itchy trigger:

The bowbacked Russkie with the pitstained dishwater yellow euroshirt, with man-nipples protuding. Strangled.

The Ukrainian man with the horseteeth, whose baggage has touched the back of my shoes once too many. Decapitated.

The musky babushka with the horizontal elbows and the eight cantaloupes. Skullcracked with hammer.

The plum-colored prunebaby, wailing at 100dB, spraying spit onto my arms. Dropkicked through security.

The Gucci-clad brunetka with the black skirtlet and impossibly high heels. Spared for now, but you are on notice.

Mr. Crewcut in the navy tracksuit yelling Russian into cell phone. Limbs torn asunder.

The person who keeps beerburping behind me. One bullet, bisecting your monobrow.

Mr Weaselface trying to weasel in front of me with his weasily cart of taped up bags. Fed to weasels.

--
I am now in Frankfurt, Germanz and will board the 12 hour flight to San Francisco early tomorrow morning. Not sure how much of an epilog I have in me, it all depends on the degree of snappage this trip.

Tired of Russians

2006-09-15T19:30:00.000Z

I am tired of ...

Their inability to smile in public.
Their knockoff D&G sunglasses and Gucci bags.
The odors of the men and the pools of parfumia on the women.
The ugly pointy shoes that all men proudly wear.
Food tasting only approximately of what it ought.
Their constant smoking, even while eating.
No Mexican food anywhere.
Xenophobia.
Living out of a suitcase and brushing my teeth with "water with gas."

Counting down the days until I can get back to the USSA.

Snarkless Photos from Odessa

2006-09-15T08:17:00.000Z

My Near Aneurysm in Ukraine

2006-09-13T15:02:00.000Z

Ukraine always brings money headaches for me, not in having too little but having my access suddenly choked off in the most malapropos moment. Longtime readers may recall my prior trip to Odessa two years ago, when my ATM card was gnawed up less than an hour before the helltrain through the ultrascary Transdniester Region of Moldova disembarked, leaving me nearly penniless for two souldraining days of border guards and wild dogs. Due to high incidences of fraud in Ukraine, many ATM cards won't even work here, being blocked by the issuing bank or credit union. Fortunately I had gotten prior consent from SESLOC, so I knew I didn't have to tote an overstuffed wallet, something unwise in this city of 1.2 million on the Black Sea. Odessa is always a hustler, sometimes a pickpocket.

After all the tricky places I've maneuvered thus far-- and for crisis' sake I escaped under cover of night from the clutches of Kyrgyzstan -- it seems incomprehensible that I should leave my VISA debit card in the machine at Borispol Airport in Kiev! The digital replay of me realizing this horrifying truth, hours later, would be, I'm sure, hilarious. Running around my hotel room, heart beating visibly out of my throat, looking looking looking over over over in the same three places for my card, my brainstem on autopilot. And in a final shot worthy of Sam Raimi, a camera telescopes through that day's path in ultrafast reverse, the Odessa airport, the scary Yak-20 flight, the customs line, zooming finally back in large magnification to my ATM card, sitting halfway out of the beeping machine.

Sadly, having a PhD does not vaccinate one from stupidity. And now my only artery to money had been cauterized.

Travelling abroad, especially in Eastern Europe, makes seemingly every task more difficult, as in cancelling my card before some Ruski bought a hulking fur chapeau on my dime. You can't just pick up the cell phone and call. First a Ukrainian sim card must be purchased somewhere, which takes longer than it should. Then go somewhere else to purchase credits for said card. Then find an internet cafe to look up SESLOC's number, dial it and have said units evaporate while waiting on hold. Repeat.

Finally, I was able to make the call and get my card cancelled, without any mischief being made! Fortunately I was also able to contact my parents via email, hurray twelve hour time difference!, and now have enough to get back to SLO next week thanks to them and the redheaded ogre at the Western Union office. Whew!

Here's my photo of the day, the famous Potemkin Stairs here in Odessa, site of a worker's uprising and subsequent massacre in 1905.

Make That the Whiskey Plane

2006-09-12T12:46:00.000Z

The once-weekly flight to Kyiv is four and a half long hours, stuffed to the gizzards with aromatic human cargo and fish and fruit masquerading as luggage. Passing through customs is hellish with four screeners and hundreds of disgruntled, pushy passengers trying to wedge their way through. Entire families of eight fly with seemingly every shrinkwrapped belonging they own, children wearing oversized nutpunching backpacks and gum-toothed babushkas assaulting anyone in elbow range. I have yet to master the mathematics of line choosing, always opting for the slowest or the one with the most relatives suddenly appearing from the back. After an hour I make it on board, ten minutes before it is scheduled to depart.

Being in the middle seat in an Airbus 310 is no fun, but Alona, the bleach blonde was determined to make the best of it. After takeoff, as soon as that safety belt gongy bell sounded, her chrome-polished fingernail whipped out of its holster and onto the call button overhead. I probably could have telegraphed what would soon transpire when she ordered an Azil, but since drinks are free on these flights and Russians define beer as a soft drink, I didn't think much of it. Besides it was already 7am.

By the time breakfast came, itself a nightmarish concoction of pungent meat/fish/jelly/bread, she was on her third bottle, two empty ones crammed in that upholstery flap in front of my knees. It was on Alona's fourth attempt that her beer wagon had been shut down, the flight attendant explaining that she was pushing the freebie drink concept. Temporarily thwarted, she tried to engage in nasalvoiced conversation with me and the portly man with the bad haircut in window seat 23K. She said she was a fashionsomething, but, though pretty, she was too old to be a model. An acquaintance in Moscow once told me that Eastern Europeans age in dog years, a mean-spirited and somewhat correct comment. In truth, the multiplier is less than 7 but definitely greater than 1, but again, I haven't worked out the math just yet.

Once the dutyfree cart made its appearance, she was back in business, flicking a $100 bill in the direction of the flight attendant and grabbing a fifth of Jack Daniels. I dozed off for about twenty minutes and awoke to the sight of a quarter empty bottle next to me and a bejewelled, too-tanned hand on my thigh, holding her balance. Each drink followed the same algorithm, ice cubes brashly plunked down into empty plastic cup, followed by Jack then coke then Jack. A laugh followed each drink and then something incomprehensible about life, the world, puppies, godknowswhat.

By the time the bottle hit the halfway mark, it was bathroom time. Passengers awoke from their slumber as the bleachblonde bomber yanked her way seat by seat to the toilet, eyelids drooping, brastraps at half-mast. Her return was even more flamboyant, with her arms mimicking airplane wings as she continued to laugh at her private conversation. Once seated, she returned to her schedule of drinking, slurring, hand on thigh, repeat.

The bottle was exhausted upon landing, her speech now inhuman, her breath subhuman. She needed me and Flattop Monobrowski to help her deplane, gucci bags penduluming back and forth as she teetered on her white high heels.

Unsurprisingly, we were met by her angry husband and two air security goons in the transfer area. I caught a glimpse of her half-smile, which seemed to indicate she thoroughly enjoyed the spectacle she had created, if in fact she even knew where she was.

I am now in Odessa and had my own episode in Kiev, but that will have to wait until my next post.

Last Day in Tashkent

2006-09-10T11:07:00.000Z

Last night I went to a club with a fellow hotel guest, Patrick from Holland. He went to school for, get this, Beer Technology and that's now his business, selling and marketing beer in other countries. You would think someone who actually majored in beer would have a better time handling it but after three Baltikas he was an embarrassment, limbs flailing wildly on the dance floor, kissing nearly every man and woman in sight. The morning ending in a drooly stupor. My accursed supermetabolism kept me from even feeling buzzed, which I desperately needed to handle the antics of this Nederlander.

Tomorrow morning early I head to Odessa on the Black Sea. It's been two years since I've been there and I'm looking forward to it. It's really the only destination on my docket that might somewhat qualify as a traditional vacation spot. Last time a Ukrainian visa was needed but, since the Orange Revolution that I unwittingly started, Westerners can now enter visa-free. I'm worried that the place will be overrun by Europeans but hopefully I'm getting there late enough to miss them.

Three Observations

2006-09-09T06:13:00.000Z

It's Saturday here and the temperature here is 93C and beautiful. I have three observations about Tashkent that will amuse no one but me.

First of all, this money thing is absolutely ridiculous. As I posted earlier, the largest note that the government prints is the 1000 sum note, which is currently less than a dollar. So exchanging even small dollar amounts leaves you with huuuuge wads of money that you must somehow carry around. But that has created a niche market for the young entrepreneur, a man-purse. It's not like the fabled manbag of Seinfeld fame, more like a purse with a gigantic handle. I thought I had snapped a photo of one but all I got was this dude's rear. But all the young wannabe mobsters have them.

Second observation. The Tashkent subway rules. Not only are they cheap at less than $0.20 a ride, the stations themselves are works of art, even more so than Moscow's fabled stations. Since they were also designed as nuclear fallout shelters, taking photos is strictly prohibited, but that didn't stop me.

And lastly, and more tragically, times are hard here in Uzbekistan. Really hard, with average salaries ranging around $25-35 a month. If you walk by the huge statue of Amon Timur most nights you can see one of the most heartbreaking results of this economic hardship, parents selling their daughters off for the night to strangers. I have unfortunately walked right by one of these transactions, in full view of the police. It's enough to make you wish for a crowbar and the fighting skills of Bruce Li.

Lost in Transliteration

2006-09-07T16:14:00.000Z

This will be short and uninteresting because I have loud Uzbek/Turkish/Russian rap/rock worming through my ears, sapping me completely of creativity. It's Thursday night here in the capital of Uzbekistan and it is pretty crazy already. Don't these kids know it's a school night???

I'm starting to go stircrazy here. Usually I can find someone from whatever country to talk to but I haven't been able to find the key. And I haven't come across anyone from the West, much less the USA, which is fine enough I suppose. Speaking Russian for a week straight -- badly -- is starting to get to me. At least it gives me time to focus on my first love, writing children's theatre.

I am here until Monday and, sad to say, I think I'm gonna run out of things to write about. I've seen all the sights (and the sites) and I don't have enough time to get a visa for Tajikistan or Kazakhstan, so I'm gonna have to stir up trouble here somehow. I keep visualizing how one of these Uzbek mobster youths would respond to a fistful of sand in their face. Just kidding, mostly.

Of course there's always Baltika 3, the beer of tsars.

Lost and Found

2006-09-06T16:07:00.000Z

I realized I was lost after ten minutes and my third barren browngrey semi-urban dusty street. My legs, having been thighmastered by the minaret the day before, were sluggish and uncooperative. The packs of passing schoolkids, garbed in shiny black trousers and white shirts, had been replaced by stray dogs and trash heaps. I thought I had been taking a clever shortcut between two major avenues here in Samarkand, but no blue mosques could be seen, only clotheslines, hanging meat from unknown animals, and 70s-style television antennas. I had been following two Russian tourists, eavesdropping on their conversation really, but Russians always walk as if they're in an Olympic race, and soon they were gone. What was I thinking? It's not as if the streets in this 3000 year old city were laid in a Cartesian coordinate system! There was no use backtracking, I stubbornly walked until something familiar became apparent in this Uzbek maze. The sun was tanningbed bright, my sweat glands were on high output and my odor must have been legendary.

My male pride finally succumbed, and since my knowledge of Uzbek rounds to zero, I asked a teenage girl, in Russian, if she knew the way to Ulughbeck Avenue. Her startled look and quick exit were telling as she sprinted up the street. Although I am used to driving off women, this was a little much, and I started to feel dizzy. Behind me came "Hello Senor!" in an uncommonly high voice. I turned around to see a shirtless and impossibly brown boy, maybe ten or eleven years old. He continued "Hello, my name is Arkut, may I help you?". Startled, but on task, I asked him for directions, but he didn't seem to understand. He said "Come", took my hand and tugged on me to walk up the street. He suddenly pushed open a brown creaky door to one of the countless decripit buildings lining the street, revealing a beautiful, green courtyard inside. I suppose I should not have been surprised as this was the Soviet mode of home decor -- ugly, possibly-scary exterior and comfortable, inviting interior.

I didn't really know what was happening. This courtyard was inside the house but seemed like it was outside and I was seated on a wooden bench with extravagant trim and beautiful yellow pillows. Arkut yelled out "We have visitor!". I must have looked as green as I felt because the teenage girl, Guzila, brought a cold cloth for my forehead. But, then again, I had already witnessed the extreme heights of Uzbek hospitality. In a Tashkent restaurant once, I saw a veritable army of male servers approach my bare table and, after a flurry of hands, cloth and utensils, leave with an immaculate six-piece setting.

An older woman, obviously their mother, came out, with three other children creeping behind her, all seemingly comfortable with the foreigner in their midst. As Atkur continued to me in English I realized that's all he could do, speak, and understood no responses back. He was completely aping whatever western culture he had picked up here in Central Uzbekistan. Fortunately his mother spoke Russian, but she kept asking me what kind of meat I wanted. I chokingly said no, trying not to show that patented snarky gnurl of my upper lip when confronted with such thoughts. I knew this was like being at grandmother's house, there was no way to escape without consuming something. I explained that I had just eaten too much watermelon, the only thing that came to mind that second. She countered with drinks and I obliged, juice perhaps.

In two minutes, three glasses of liquid appeared before me; one reddish, one orangish, one brownish. I smiled, drank the lukewarm tomato juice and tried not to grimace. It tasted quite fine but the temperature was not refreshing. Replacing it in my mind with a cool blue frost Gatorade, I downed the brownish one, which might have been something akin to pomegranete, I'm not really sure. All the while I was peppered with Arkut's questions, knowing that I could answer anything and get the same reaction.

Trying to politely wrench myself out of the jaws of hospitality, I asked the mother if she could tell me how to get the big street. She barked something in Uzbek at Arkut, who took me by the hand. I thanked her for her generosity as he tugged me out the door. Perhaps twenty yards up the street, around the corner, there was Ulughbeck Street! I offered the boy a $10 dollar bill, a sizeable sum to these people, and he refused. I insisted and he refused again. Atkur offered "Pleased to meet you, American friend." and ran back home.

Since I'm headed back to Tashkent tomorrow, a mishmash of Samarkand photos:

Towering Above Samarkand

2006-09-05T13:24:00.000Z

I was only halfway up the minaret and my thighs were already burning. Dust from six centuries past filled my hair, nose and eyes and my shoulders could barely wedge through the corkscrew staircase. Small trapezoidal apertures to the outside were the only light sources, letting in increasingly violent gusts of wind. Finally, after forty stories of dustdevils and buttblasting stepclimbing, I peeped my head out the top. Of course, this being nonlitigious Uzbekistan, I could have easily fallen to my undocumented death, but the thrill was intense. The mosques, minarets and plazas of Samarkand splayed out before me and the screaming wind felt as if it would scoop me out of the portal. Trying not to drop my month-old Razr cameraphone, I tremored out some crappy photos, took a breath, and started back down, a task even more difficult than the ascent. I stumbled out, exhausted, and thanked the police guard who I had greased with a $3 bribe and headed for the nearest bench to recover. Exploring the rest of the Registan would have to wait until the lactic acid in my muscles subside.

With its blue mosaic walls, majestic medressas and green spaces, the Registan is a wonderfully shocking sight here in the middle of Uzbekistan. The oldest medressa, finished in 1420 by the great astronomer/ruler Ulughbek, himself the grandson of Amur Timur, is filled with lecture halls where theology, philosophy and mathematics were taught. About a hundred students lived here in the two stories of dormitories nearly 600 years ago.

Further up the road is the Old Town, a habitat dating back to the 5th century BC, where I had my first view of real Uzbekistan. Big cities, like Tashkent and elsewhere, tend to put on a false face, emphasizing not only the best of a culture but also the worst. Small buses crammed with people, meat and dry goods spill out onto the street, the occasional donkeycart with family clopping by. Uzbek boys sell drinks of Fanta and beer, all from the same four glasses, which are busily washed in-between customers. My green eyes and longish black hair make me stand out even more here, where everyone is Tajik or Uzbek, but I don't feel threatened. The throngs of beggars with pupa-like children in arms who throng me is unnerving. Few signs here are in Russian, the only Cyrillic seen in old shops%

Off to Samarkand

2006-09-05T01:48:00.000Z

My previous post didn't show up, unfortunately, because the internet is so incredibly slow at times. Seriously, it takes over five minutes for the google page to come up. Anyways, it is 6:30 am and I'm headed to Samarkand, the oldest of the Central Asian cities. I'm unsure of online access while there but I will be back in Tashkent in a couple of days.

Walking the Money Tightrope

2006-09-03T05:37:00.000Z

With a sprawling population of 2.6 million people, Tashkent is the fourth largest city in the former Soviet Union. Rebuilt as a modern city after the crippling 1966 earthquake that levelled much of the physical foundation and left 300,000 homeless, wide, clean boulevards crisscross emerald parks, enormous fountains serving as backdrops for the newly married. The ethnic mix is fascinating. Mostly comprised of Uzbeks (Sunni Muslims, although about 10% actually practice) and ethnic Russians there are also sizeable populations of Tatars, Kazakhs, Persians and Koreans. Though generally friendly now, the Uzbeks and Russians do not typically intermarry, constrained by religous typing and overtones from harsh conflicts.

After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, bringing with it Uzbekistan's tumultuous independence just 15 years ago this weekend, the large scowling bust of Karl Marx in the main square was replaced by a suitably patriotic statue of neorevisionist hero Amir Timur on horseback. The history buff will remember him as Tamerlane, the very same tyrant who conquered Central Asia and Persia through campaigns of terror, building huge structures of human skulls of the slain to intimidate his enemies. A little further west is Mustaqillik maydoni, also known as Independence Square, which used to sport the USSR's largest Lenin statue. In its place, a larger-than-necessary towering brass globe with garish map of Uzbekistan in neon glow.

Threading the money needle here has been exhausting and ridiculous. At the current exchange rate, 1 dollar equals about 1200 Uzbek som, but the highest printed note is the somewhat rare 1000 som, with the 500 som note being the standard ote. Therefore changing $100 (the only bill acceptable) gives you an enormous stack of money (an Australian gentleman let me snap this photo) and carrying it around safely and discretely becomes impossible. It's the American equivalent of carrying $200 in only dollar bills! The ATM problem is just as bad, as they can be found only in the big hotels and are unsurprisingly nearly always cashless. I have only two credit cards, MasterCard and American Express, neither accepted anywhere. Only Visa. I walked around all day with the equivalent of 17 dollars, taking dirt-cheap taxis from one hotel to the next, only to find empty bankomats. After three hours and one liter of body sweat, I was able to find an apparition between a foot of plexiglas at the Sheraton who could use a terminal to access my SESLOC debit card. The stupid $300 daily limit may squeeze me since I almost certainly have to buy an airline ticket to Kiev by cash and it won't be that cheap. Plus I am trying to squeeze in a trip to Samarkand, one of the world's oldest cities 300 miles away, so the balancing act will be tricky indeed.

Who knew that traveling in Central Asia would be such a problem in logic?

Under Cover of Darkness, Tashkent

2006-09-02T14:42:00.000Z

I can't really go into it just yet but due to some associations I had made in the last 48 hours I was strongly advised to depart the country. I was in no danger except for being held longer than I wanted but no matter. At 5am this morning one of the embassy workers got Kirsten out to London and I followed soon thereafter, taking a double-prop Altyn Air Yak-20 puddle jumper over the mountains and into Uzbekistan. So far Tashkent, the capital, has been pretty impressive, although I have to admit that I slept most of the day in this hotel. After being told to get out within 6 hours, I pulled an all-nighter.

If anyone was really pining for Kyrgyz souvenirs, I apologize, they will have to wait until next time.

Bishkek Smiles in the Day, but ...

2006-08-31T12:27:00.000Z

Five Kyrgyz soldiers, donning camouflage suits, sizeable batons and square-faced grimaces, surround Fatboy's, the British-owned expat hangout where I now sit. Let me put aside the hilarity of me actually being in a cafe with this name -- there are two vegetarian options and, most importantly, Coca Cola Light, apparently the only such vendor in Bishkek. Today is Independence Day, celebrating fifteen tumultuous years of self-governance, the Kyrgyz are out in masses and many families from the rural villages have convoyed in to enjoy the celebration. Last year's partially successful Tulip Revolution, styled after similar successful Color Revolutions that tore through the ex-Soviet satellites Georgia and Ukraine, sought to overthrow President Askar Askaev's increasingly corrupt regime. During the crackdown in which three people were killed, the police and militia were so overwhelmed by angry mobs that they simply went home. The ensuing looting, focused mainly on Turkish and Western owned businesses, was intense. Since then, the police presence in Bishkek has been slight and street crime after dark has spiked. Bishkek smiles in the day but shows its teeth at night. I have already been warned by two embassy workers to not walk alone at night as Kyrgyz men will attack in groups of four, beating foreigners and taking everything, including their clothing. That severely limits the amount of fun to be had by this urban trekker!

I now watch Kyrgyz passersby staring/glaring curiously/suspiciously at the fellow foreigners around me. To my right, a group of Germans blabbering auf Deutsch about their oil investments and the cheapness of life here. On the left is an effete backpacker trio and, judging from their pit-stained tees, chain smoking and noticeable lack of testosterone, they must be French. One of them sports a black nappy-fro (ala Spin Doctors, 1992) and garners titters and stares from every other sidewalk gaper. The two rotund pseudogentlemen in front of me, they who most epitomize the name of this establishment, are naturally American. Texan. I believe that I am the only Spaniard/Portuguese/Italian or whatever they think I am today.

Kirsten, my new journalist friend, suspects that there may be riots in the square tonight, fueled by her conversations with the embassy. The military presence speaks otherwise but they are outnumbered 50 to 1. Her plight has become a bit more bleak as she may face Kyrgyz prison on Monday. An international incident may be blossoming as her situation is apparently being monitored daily by Condoleeza Rice. The New York Times is coming to the hotel to interview here tomorrow. From what I have put together, she interviewed some of the "wrong people" down south in insurgent-infested Osh and now the government wants names. She has so far refused since that would effectively be a death sentence for them. Even though many of us feel that the United States is on the wrong track with respect to its domestic and foreign policy, we must also step back and appreciate and value the legal protections afforded its citizens.

Thousands of jovial Kyrgyz are out and celebration is in the air. When economic disparity and unhappiness mix with cheap and free-flowing beer, the sundown results can be unpredictable and sudden. It's getting dark soon and I will need to thread the needle through the near-infinite police officers looking for bribes to get back to the hotel. Naturally, I plan to watch the fireworks from the Silk Road Lodge patio.

The Elusive Bankomat

2006-08-30T05:00:00.000Z

It has come to be a familiar event for me, after many pratfalls through Eastern Europe, Russia and now Central Asia. A freshly unshoed foot mummified in sweaty, matted sock, making a duct tape sound as it is carefully peeled off, with bits of skin attached. Of the six blisters now on my soles, only one was bleeding, but two others needed lanced. Badly. The sidewalks here are torturous and in awful condition -- uneven, cracked, dusty and pocked. Street lighting is generally nonexistent so, upon the onset of dawn, the ground ahead becomes as black as the hand in front of your face. A daytime inventory of the numerous uncovered manholes is probably mandatory here if one wishes to live to the next year. All this in an effort to procure colored slips of paper printed with funny looking Kyrgyz statesmen.

Although I had read that Bishkek was overwhelmingly a cash economy, I foolishly neglected to research the actual availability of ATMs in this city of 1.1 million. I guess it shouldn't really be a surprise that there are only four ATMs in the city and I, after covering a 4-mile radius on foot, found all of them. Too bad they were all out of service, meaning they had run out of money. My normal operating mode of not carrying much cash on my person, instead hitting the bankomats on a need-to basis, has finally run aground. I arrived on Monday with about 800 Russian rubles (about 32 dollars), exchanging it immediately into 1250 Kyrgyz som. Unfortunately I'm down to 250 som and my only currency right now is my dumbass grin. I've been charging my daily meals of vegetable puree and Siberskaya Korona to my room so I'm not starving, but I am somewhat concerned about not being able to purchase transport into Uzbekistan, the next stop in Rod's stumble-a-thon through Central Asia. Things could be worse, though.

Last night I had dinner and drinks with a fellow guest at the Silk Road Lodge, a journalist from Dallas who is in seriously dire straits. She had been filming a documentary down south in Osh, Kyrgystan's second city and the epicenter of government oppression and Kyrgyz-Uzbek ethnic violence. Apparently her project had been deemed too sensitive for public consumption because she was taken into custody and her passport confiscated, effectively imprisoning her indefinitely since mid-July. On top of that she developed a kidney infection after going three days without adequate water. Fortunately, the embassy got her medical care and set her up with accomodations. She has been threatened with a 3-year sentence for spying and the embassy does not seem to be able to adequately deal with the situation. Her story may break in the media, however, and John McCain called her parents yesterday. So there may be movement afoot. This country is critically dependent on tourism and keeping a blonde American girl a political prisoner would go a long way towards sabotaging their carefully conceived marketing strategies.

Today: Must find a working ATM and a way to Uzbekistan. Things are not bad here, it is friendly here, and I'm enjoying myself despite the sad state my feet are in.

UPDATE: ATM found and withdrew $200 in Kyrgyz som. This is four times the monthly salary of a well-paid job here so I'm kinda nervous, -- already people have been staring at the large wad of bills in my pocket. Like Belarus, this currency has no coinage, it is all paper. Additionally, I bought an airline ticket for Tashkent, but it's not leaving until Saturday morning. So I get to celebrate Independence Day with the Kyrgyz, who will be celebrating 15 years of autonomy from the Soviet Union. I believe the traditional gift for that anniversary is crystal. Somehow I don't think I'll be seeing much of that although broken glass comes in spades.

Made it to Bishkek

2006-08-28T13:50:00.000Z

I'm here, it's hotter than hell, there's dust throughout my hair and eyes, but I made it. Kyrgyzstan is like no other place I've been. The mountains in the backdrop are simply amazing. The plane ride was uneventful but getting through customs was more than a little annoying. The Lonely Planet Guide says you can buy a visa upon arrival, which is ostensibly true. Of course there's no guarantee that the little hermit behind the twelve inches of plexiglas will actually be working there. It took ninety minutes for the little man to show up and bark at me all while visions of Kyrgyz bagslashers, hunkering over my solitary bag on the carousel, danced in my head.

Add to that I was making the independent traveller's biggest gamble: Arriving in a foreign place without preplanning (a) accomodation or (b) a way from the airport to the city. Fortunately I had sent a quick email to Milana, the overly competent russka in the Moscow ISTC office, asking if she could book a hotel/car for me and it all somehow worked out.

The 30 kilometer straight shot to Bishkek city was mind-melting. Windows down, wind whipping, yaks, goats and pyramids of watermelons flying by left and right. The Tien Chuan mountains tower in the horizon, shirtless boys dart back and forth on the road as they dodge taxis and trucks. Dust, dirt and diesel.

I will be exploring the city today and tonight and hope to find a way to Lake Issyk-Kul, the second largest mountain lake in the world, just an hours drive away. August 31 is Kyrgyzstan's Independence Day and I fear that the entire place will shut down completely, effectively locking me in here.

Face-down, Listless in Novosibirsk

2006-08-27T12:53:00.000Z

So my feelings of sickness yesterday were apparently not produced by too much Baltika the night before. Most of today's afternoon has been spent face down, drooling, in my pillow in Room 810 of the Hotel Sibir. I am not redline sick, just listless and dulled, drifting back into another hour of sleep just as I thought I was awaking. The walk to this internet cafe just six blocks away was more difficult than it should've been. The weather grey, the people sullen, my legs muddy. It is unnaturally cold here. Yes, hello, it is Siberia, but an August day is still supposed to be warmish this time of year. I don't really have a frame of reference as this is the deepest in the calendar I've been in Russia. August's monthlong vacation winds down as citizens return to work, to school, to their routines.

My self-diagnosis thus far has me in a superposition of the following states:

[State A] Midwestern allergies reawakened in the plains of Siberia
Evidence: Waking with yellow-crusted eyes and more phlegm than humanly normal

[State B] Mis/malnourishment due to Rod's Eastern Europe diet, devoid of protein (goodbye Clif bars!) and an abundance of slimy potatoes
Evidence: Waking with pinkish, oily blemishes on forehead and nose

[State C] Diet-borne microorganisms in my bloodstream, straining my once impenetrable immune system
Evidence: Unusually colored items in commode

Tomorrow morning I board a 757 bound for Bishkek, the first of my Central Asia stopovers. I carry more dread than usual since I'm not even close to being at 100% and, from my substantial prior experience being hauled around in ex-Soviet flying carriages, the flight will not be pleasant. Humid, creaky cabin, noisy engines, people smacking their meat while licking their fingers, the people pushy and pungent. Once landed, luggage carts will be impossibly loaded with suitcases, boxes and bags, all hermetically sealed with the ubiquitous blue shrinkwrap, half of which will be strategically aimed for the back of my ankles. Put-upon babushkas will elbow their way to the baggage claim, secretly longing for the sweet relief of death's finger. Since my unshaven complexion has paled from brownish to greenish-white, the xenophobic stares will triple and the scaring of Slavonic children will be my only reward.

I am just a little uneasy because Novosibirsk was intended to be the safe, familiar staging area before launching into unknown Kyrgyzstan, but right now I can barely draw the energy to type. For my loved ones, don't worry. As long as I'm not writing or quoting poetry, my superhuman metabolism will win the day.

The 501s

2006-08-26T12:53:00.000Z

Tucked underneath a vaguely French-style deli is Pub 501, Novosibirsk's only cowboy bar. A creaky set of wooden steps, illuminated by the orange glow of incandescent lamps in brass fixtures, opens into a room with nearly a dozen oak tables placed on the right side and a long lacquered mahogany bar on the left. Paraphernalia of the American West dot the ceilings and walls. A portrait of Annie Oakley, arrow-pierced hats, boots, steer horns, Colt 45s and, of course, the obligatory tomahawk and bow-and-arrow. The piped-in mishmash soundrack alternates between 70s AM radio and early 1950s crooners.

Accompanied by Garreth, an English mechanical engineer I had met in the hotel's dilapidated Internet Centre, we struggled in vain to find any open stool, the place already packed at 9 pm. As we conversed in English nearly every head turned, locals undoubtedly playing Spot-The-Foreigner. Despite being Russia's third largest city and unofficial capital of Siberia, not many tourists swing through Novosibirsk and even fewer presumably drop into the 501.

Every Friday and Saturday night, the four-piece house band, named the 501s, takes the three-person stage. The opening electric guitar riff of "Hotel California" reverbed through the pub as the drummer, who played an amazing synthetic drumset, pounded out the beat. There's something quite special about non-English speaking singers belting out Western hits and it was gratifiying to secretly laugh at Russians for a change for mispronouncing our words. The setlist was exquisitely bad, yet somehow brilliant: Genesis' "Turn it On", Michael Jackson's "Beat It", The Looking Glass' "Brandy, You're a Fine Girl", and easily the highlight of the evening, "Ghostbusters Theme". As the band rocked it hard all night, Garreth and I let out a variety of whistles and whoops and, with index and pinky fingers extended, the heavy metal sign was used liberally. The keyboardist, decked out in an Iron Maiden T-shirt, was appreciative, to say the least.

The Baltika-fueled hangover this morning was not nearly as fun.

Vector

2006-08-24T09:57:00.000Z

There's something about the phrase "weaponized viruses" that gives a person pause, particularly when sprinkled together with adjectives like "aerosolized" and "Marburg". This morning, as a lauded and oft-frisked guest of the Vector State Research Institute of Microbiology and Virology, it was my pleasure to witness the very labs used by the Soviets to make such biological weapons. Neither particularly clean or modern, the halls of the third and fourth floors look like submarine passages, one airlock closing behind you as you step into the next. Typical office paraphernalia like dogs on pillows and kitties hanging from branches are placed, presumably unironically, next to shutdown protocols in case of accidental exposure or rupture. All cameras and computers were confiscated before going in and the stern female soldiers in camouflage were lucid reminders that this was a very serious place. The thick fog that blanketed the ground just added to creepy effect, the sun not fully exposed until 2pm in the afternoon.

Today was my last [long] day representing the Department of State. Tomorrow I will move out of the Akademgorodok and into Novosibirsk proper. Soon thereafter the theatre of embarrassment known as Rod's Excellent Uzbek Adventure will begin.

onward to Novosibirsk

2006-08-23T09:01:00.000Z

I have left Armenia and am in the airport now and soon on way to Siberia. Details later. Access to internet uncertain as we are headed to Koltsovo, a closed city.

A Temple for Helios

2006-08-21T16:12:00.000Z

Flanked on three sides by canyon walls, the Garni sun temple is an eerie reminder of how long this part of the world has been populated. Built by King Trdates in the first century AD, the structure was erected in honor of Helios, the Roman god of the sun and was the site of many an animal sacrifice. Though Armenia was the first nation to convert to Christianity (in 303 AD), its pagan roots cannot be ignored -- indeed, just a few meters from the temple are the ruins of an ancient bathhouse where orgiastic partys were thrown as tribute to Emperor Nero.

Oddly enough, just ten kilometers down the dusty road, some of earth's oldest Christian relics still exist in cave-carved chapels and monasteries.

Central Yerevan

2006-08-20T08:28:00.000Z

With Mount Ararat, the reputed landing site of Noah's Ark, prominent in the horizon, Yerevan is sleepy and proud, friendly and vibrant, gentle and modest. A stark contrast to Russians, the people of this ex-Soviet republic pride themselves in being hospitable and smile with no provocation. Though this is a poor country, cafes are omnipresent and the nightlife trails into the wee hours of the morning. The people carry a Persian appearance, with perhaps a bit of Turkish and Russian mixed in, and many are quite stunning. Armenian is the official language while most everyone speaks Russian also, and English is the hip language that is spoken by the under-30 set (as well as many others). Lunille, a smart trilingual Armenian girl who works the front desk at our hotel, informed me that the population wants to forget Russian altogether, hopefully to be replaced by French or Spanish.

The weather here is idyllic, the semi-humid air nearly the same temperature as the skin. Little consistent rainfall in the summer makes for sudden gusts of dust clouds that can sting the eyes, but it is a small price to pay for such a peaceful, welcoming place. Our meals have been very cheap; last night's full Lebanese dinner with felafal, hummus, salad and two beers for $4 each. The people here are so friendly and this city of 1.1 million feels quite safe to stumble home at any time of the day.

Devoted formerly to Lenin, the Soviet-style Republic Square in central Yerevan has been refurbished into something colorful, enormous and majestic. The headless statue of Vladimir lies supine in the fountain and ubiquitous corn-on-the-cob and watermelon stands serve tourists and locals alike.

Although unmistakably serene, I can't shake the sad feeling that this is the high point of many Armenian lives and the abject poverty just ten miles away better reflects the nature of this country.

Syktyvkar

2006-08-19T04:30:00.000Z

Slowly dropping from the sky in our Tupelov-182, the pine green forests of Northern Russia focus as we prepare to land. Two hours north-northeast by plane from Moscow, Syktyvkar is the administrative and financial center of the Komi Republic, sometimes called the Klonkide territory of Russia. The Sysola River ensnakes and cradles this city of 230,000, which is not especially developed for tourism and certainly not visited often by foreigners. I have been traveling with two German expatriates from the USA, both blonde auditors for the Department of Defense, while I represent the Department of State. When checking into our hotel (one of two in town and neither with consistent hot water), advanced word must have spread that Americans were coming because the lobby was sprinkled with more than a couple Russian rubberneckers. Indeed, in our 40 long hours in the region, we routinely received sideways-glances, peeks from around doors and the occasional outright hello as we strolled through the various hallways and sidewalks. Not threatening but not altogether welcoming either.

Far from the fantasyland that is Moscow, now one of the world's most expensive cities, this is real Russia, where a good wage is $40 a day and drinking a nightly bottle of Baltika-3 on the city center's steps is the good life. During Soviet times, this region was the workhorse for the timber industry and heavy industrialization has left the river and soil beds oil-soaked and severely polluted. One of my roles here is to monitor progress on a project development in which a sorbent (pulverized peat moss) is artifically infused with oil-destroying bacteria and fungi, which is then sprayed onto aqueous and subterranean oil spills. The work is quite amazing and I find it very satisfying and somewhat fitting that yesterday's bioweapon experts are spearheading northern Russia's fledgling environmental movement.
--
I am now in Yerevan, Mount Ararat looms in the background, report later.

Slowest baud rate ever

2006-08-17T17:54:00.000Z

I am in Syktyvkar, in the Komi Republic of the Russian Federation, after a long long day of work. Many interviews with ex-weapons scientists, lots of discussions about microbial-fused sorbents being used to attack oil spills. Could this get any better?

I'm in the world's slowest internet cafe. I swear the baud rate here is 14400, so I'm going to have to cut this short. We leave for Armenia tomorrow so hopefully I can gather up enough for a report then to make my fans proud.

First ISTC meeting

2006-08-15T15:01:00.000Z

Nothing too exciting to report today, just interviewed two weapons-trained ex-soviet scientists today who probably know how to kill me with modified fingernail bacteria. Because the jetlag is catching up to me and also that I haven't eaten very well today, I am falling asleep at this internekt cafe. It is humid here but the rain has yet to fall. Alexei, my driver, has been shuttling me and my colleagues around all day, at breakneck speed. St. Basil's cathedral dances and gambols as the sunlight fades to dusk.

MOCKBA once again

2006-08-14T12:17:00.000Z

Sitting next to me on Lufthansa Flight 1283 to Moscow was Igor, the ex-pilot from Rostov-on-Don, currently working as a dealer on the Alaskan route of Princess Cruises and Arnold, the owner of five matress-making factories in Russia and China and, though from Joplin MO, could speak six languages. Lufthansa's policy of free alcoholic drinks to all and one tasty vegan breakfast for me qualifies it for Greatest. Airline. Evar. Plus the bright yellow pillbox hats on the flight attendants totally rule.

Having my name on the little placard as I walked up totally ruled and soon I was taxi-deep in the madness that is Moscow. As I have said before, the test of truly knowing a language is whether you can read it at over 80 mph and, I must say, I was dealing with it pretty well. Of course Alexei insisted on a windows-down policy so I arrived at the soviet-plush Hotel Metropole 45 minutes later looking a little more windswept and red-eyed than normal. My hotel is nestled between the world-famous Bolshoi Theatre and Red Square so I had to knock down a couple of Chinese tourists just to get to the door. The foto at left, btw, was snapped with my brand new black Motorola Razr, which I purchased for cheap -- groovy Cyrillic keypad and ice-queen salesperson attitude provided for free.

I don't know why Moscow feels so familiar to me. It's not like I know where everything really is but perhaps it's because I've bribed more than my share of policemen and stumbled around in the dead of night post-roofie. I can read all the signs, mostly, and I know how to conduct myself in a stare-down. I stay here for two days of business before being sent to Syktyvkar in the Komi region.

Devastating change in Las Vegas

2006-08-13T16:57:00.000Z

Everything was going as planned. I had made it to the Hard Rock casino, dropped my baggage off with the greasy-haired bellboz and had made a beeline to Mr Lucky`s for the world's greatest veggie burgers. Long have I sung the praises of these gifts from the veggie gods, perfectly balanced by four watermelon wedgies and topped with a never-ending supply of diet cola. I must have had that look (most recently seen in The Descent when the buff Latina accidentally slices one of her friends in the neck with a makeshift icepick) -- one half "How could you?" with the other "I'm about to die" -- when I was told that the veggie burger had been taken off the menu just a week earlier. Of course I complained to the manager and to anyone who would listen, I even regaled them with my mostly true story of eating said burger with Rob Zombie poolside at the Hard Rock pool. My mission of harrassment of the Morton Group has only begun my comrades.

Flying out of Santa Maria by Allegiant was only slightly weird (too many cowboy hats and makeshift spittoons) but quite effortless. The $50 price cannot be beat plus the free parking rules (although thanks to Lisa I did not need).

My flight into Frankfurt was delayed by three hours because of a bomb scare in Dallas but I arrived safely and am at the airport hotel as we speak. Tomorrow morning I fly to Moscow and have my first business meeting. I´m not as jetlagged as I thought I´d be, mostly cause I stayed up all night in Vegas and worked out the balance on der flughafen.

On my way with no text-message capabilities

2006-08-11T22:52:00.000Z

I have been more than a little stressed out this week, trying to juggle the State Department preparation and getting my grades finished from summer classes. Like a veritable superbeing, I got everything done by 6pm sans meltdown, just in time to say go out and say goodbye to my good friend Sue, who is starting her own yearlong adventure in Colorado Springs.

Afterwards, still not wanting to go home and pack yet, Big Dave and I went to the Frog and Peach. That's one of my new places because I have a sad, sick obsession with trivia. It was my goal all week to plaster my screen name "Thoth" all over the High Score list, mainly so I could annoy people for the entire month of August without even being here.

Anyways, Dave left and I was finishing up my last game when, while waiting for the National Rankings, I turned and watched the band for about five minutes. When I looked back, my phone had been swiped! Not even out of town and the chaos starts!

Longtime readers will remember that this is the phone I bought in Moscow (after having been roofied by the Kazakhstani) so it had a way cool Cyrillic keypad that made me the envy of all my friends. I went to Cingular to get a replacement -- I pay insurance after all -- but all the little harpy wanted to do was to get me back into a 2-year commitment. Um, anyone who knows me at all knows that I'm not into that word.

I plan to go back to the same groovy phone store on Tverskaya Ul. in Moskva to purchase a new phone. So now I have no way to annoy my friends and family with text messages as I scurry out the country. Tonight I fly into Las Vegas for a ten-hour layover and I dread not having a cell phone to pretend to talk into when the freaks start descending on me.

I will try to update again when I arrive in Frankfurt, Germany. We'll see how much Deutsch I remember..

Три дня до России!

2006-08-08T07:02:00.000Z

I leave for Moscow on Friday evening with a ten-hour layover in Las Vegas. Will arrive in Moscow on Monday morning. Hopefully I can do the ten billion things I need to do in 72 hours!

Back in San Luis Obispo

2005-09-07T17:05:00.000Z

And everything is okay. It still sounds weird to hear English but I'm surviving.

Not sure what my next adventure will be or whether I will be able to climb out of the fishbowl again to do it, but I learned a lot.

Thanks for reading.

Straddling Europe and Asia, Soon Amerika

2005-08-25T18:28:00.000Z

Probably my last sitdown at an internet cafe until I get back to the States. I've seen so much though I've not taken as many pictures as I should have. I'm kinda weak on that point. It will probably take two weeks for me to expel all of this smoke from my lungs --I would like this country so much more if there weren't toxic, noxious smoke everywhere. The sound of that little flint in a lighter being struck is now just about enough to send me over the edge of sanity. Snappage is still so very very close with me. Seriously, the smell alone is bad enough but to actually watch putrid billowing fogbanks spewing out of people's pieholes is absolutely sickmaking. If I had that mind-control superpower, Turkey would have a LOT fewer people in it.

I will probably need to reflect a lot more on my time abroad to assemble something meaningful, which I hope to post as some kind of epilogue. It's safe to say that I have just about experienced the full gamut of emotions available in the menubar (except, thankfully, grief). So many cities have I conquered, um, I mean headquartered-in, all different from the next:

Frankfurt, Germany
Riga, Latvia
Liepaja, Latvia
Vilnius, Lithuania
Minsk, Belarus
Moscow, Russia
Ulan Ude, Buryatia, Russia
Krasnoyarsk, Siberia, Russia
Novosibirsk, Siberia, Russia
Ekaterinburg, Urals, Russia
Kazan, Tatarstan, Russia
Antalya, Turkey
Istanbul, Turkey

and many cool, so-so and dumb places in-between!

I am tired, homesick and desperately in need of a laundromat and, god forbid, a pedicure. I'm not sure I can really find it in me to put these cloven hooves in front of another human being at this point, perhaps I'll just dangle them in a washing machine first. Oh yeah, a burrito, I seriously need one of those.

I thank all those who have read my misadventures, my extended stumbling-with-hands-waving through Eastern Europe Plus. The number of hits per day were staggeringly high somedays! I look forward to seeing all of you soon or at least sharing an email. Hopefully I will have gotten a haircut and gained some weight when we meet again.

Next: Munich, Boston, New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Luis Obispo

Bazaar Mindgames

2005-08-25T14:10:00.000Z

The first blast into the olfactories is the unmistakable odor of cinammon, dancing in between tangs of thyme, turmeric and cardamom. Streams of saffron, wisps of mustard, jets of curry. Istanbul's Spice Bazaar is a staggering, sometimes lachrymose, aggression on the nostrils. And what a sweet assault it is, thousands of odors downsampled simultaneously into the brain. at dizzying bitrates. How could a country that generally smells terrible -- cigarettes, hookahs, cheap-cologne, body odor -- produce an entity so incredibly sensual? .
For the first time in seven weeks I am thankful that the gods of genetics have granted me superhuman smelling abilities. Except, perhaps, for the fragrant bouquet of an elegant perfume gently emanating from a slutty girl's neck, this bazaar is the apex of exquisite aroma on planet earth.

More chaotic and infinitely less pleasant smelling is the world famous Grand Bazaar, several huge blocks worth of shops absolutely jammed with Turkish tiles, fabrics, jewelry, linens, rugs, anything. And the smooth-talking vendors will try their best to bait you into their stores, taking you by the arm and showing you the single most beautiful belt buckle in all of Istanbul, all for very low price. Nothing can quite prepare you for this experience, there is no way to not get lost in the trampling masses -- it is chaotic, big, and fun.

Every street corner in Istanbul has at least one dude hawking something, usually there is a tag team at work. What they desperately seek with each passerby is that code word that will get them to turn around, crack a smile, slow down; because then their chances of a sale spikes tremendously. I like to watch them work the Americans, they are the easiest marks. "You from USA?" And the answer is generally yes with a big smile (Why yes I am from the United States, the best country on the earth, what do you think about that you miserable Turk? <- Reading into body language).

The followup continues: "What state are you from?" "Oh, really, my sister lives in North Dakota too! Please come have some tea, my brother, and look in one of my seven stores! You get special deal!"

When the magpie sees me, he never knows which word to select as his opener. I laugh to myself as I hear his brain whirring before the inevitable "Amigo!" comes flying out. After my blankfaced iron-eyed nonresponse he will cycle through Bonjour!, Italiano?, Guten Tag! and then, finally, Hello! By this time I am wistfully out of reach.

In the Grand Bazaar, I actually wanted to do a little shopping, so I just bit my lip and went in, having to simply endure the slippery salespeople. Even in the USA, if someone comes up and is even the slighest bit too helpful, I will bail. I hate the sleazy sales pitch as do, I think, nearly all Americans. This is why online retail is such a godsend. To make the horrible process more enjoyable for me, I decided to turn the game around on itself and adopt a new persona with each vendor. For each booth/stand/store (there are thousands of them) I would freely offer "Hello!" just to establish the lines of communication. (These Turkish sellers are extremely sophisticated and the best ones know six or seven languages, fluently). When they would ask me where I'm from, I would reply with some other country than the US (they will not bargain as much if they think you are a rich, spoiled American). First Canada, then Australia, New Zealand, South Africa. Very soon I was just getting ridiculous: Iceland, Mexico City, Tunis, Japan, anywhere an English-speaker *might* be from. I'm sure I still got ripped off, but at least I had some fun haggling with them.

In about 12 hours I hop onto Lufthansa Airlines as I slowly wind my way back home. If past patterns hold, I will undoubtedly be wedged between the noisiest snot-filled bawling microbe-infested infant and the embittered man-hating grimacing old woman who hates life and those who choose to live it.

Time to Play Tourist

2005-08-24T11:02:00.000Z

It is really not my nature to play the typical tourist. I don't sign up for the annoying flocks of tour groups, I do not do cruises, I do not stay in the normal safe touristy places, I don't take annoying "Here's me at __" pictures (usually I catch myself thinking that I want to shove those people face first into the ground).

But today, just because my bearings are skewed and I wanted to soak in much of Istanbul quickly, I took one of those look-at-me-I'm-a-scared-Westerner orange double-decker sightseeing buses. I'm glad I did, I'm not sure I would've ever been able to locate cool things like the Byzantine city walls, erected by Theodosius II in the 5th century and stretching for several miles along the Sea of Marmara.

Of course I had to tour Hagia Sophia, once the third largest human construction on the planet (behind the Egyptian pyramids and the Great Wall of China), reconstituted in its present form by Emperor Justinian between 532 and 537. The central dome is absolutely breathtaking, bigger than a building really ought to be, supported by hemispherical concrete ribs -- a true architectural marvel. I'm not sure exactly what CAD software they were able to use way back when, but the wireframe alone must've been several GB of data and taken forever to render.

Of course, one of the world's most famous mosaics, only partly restored, peers down from one of the secondary domes. This is just about the bossest portrait of Jesus from the Dark Ages.

Unfortunately that may be all I've got in me for awhile. I acquired a nasty bug somewhere betwixt Antalya and Istanbul and that, coupled with the 105 degree heat, is grinding me down. Just like in the War of the Worlds, the one thing that ultimately destroys me, not the wild dogs of Romania, the crazy buses of Latvia or the roofies of Moscow, not the bad food of Siberia nor the mosquitos of Antalya. It is the common cold that has taken me down.

Hopefully tonight I'll feel better and get the chance to see some whirling dervishes or hang out with weirdos, the thing I do best when abroad. Or at home.

Multilayered Istanbul

2005-08-23T19:51:00.000Z

The patchwork of browns, greens and blues that came crashing up through the Onur Airlines window was breathtaking, the jaggy roads still exhibiting the random nonrectangular elements of a non-planned, ancient city. I was, for unknown reasons, in shock to see the towering minarets and giant mosques in person, similar to first seeing the onion domes of Russia or the skyscrapers of New York City. Istanbul, Constantinople, Byzantium -- whatever you want to call it -- this city of 12 million and 5000+ years, definitely makes you feel small.

Twice the capital of the world, home to eye-crossing architectural wonders and ankle-breaking hills, truly straddles the continents of Europe and Asia, geographically and historically. I am walking the same cobblestones trod by Byzantines, Greeks, Romans, Arabs, Persians and Ottoman Turks, all of whom have governed this city. The same avenues of historical giants like Constantine, Justinian, Sultan Mehmet, Ataturk. I've never seen so many cultures mishmashed together outside of New York City and, having landed here only ten hours ago, I have heard at least fifteen languages on the streets.

My hotel is sweet, the Blue Mosque in clear gargantuan view from my window and, dare I say, a little too foofy for me. But there's a cat named Kismet, in whose room I am residing, so I'm very happy to have a little black-and-white pink-nosed buddy to sleep with.

Old Antalya

2005-08-22T18:07:00.000Z

I traded in the drunken Russians for drunken Turks, but at least they smile at this new hotel I'm now headquartered at clear on the other side of the bay. When I get more time I will have to tell the story of dragging Elena and Adam, two students from Chechnya, out of my last hotel and into the scary streets of Phaselis where they could use the internet cafe. Ha! These Russians are not so comfortable when it is English that smoothes social interactions.

It is over 100 degrees and I'm sure I've emitted two pounds of sweat today. My internet access is essentially a telephone booth with huffy heavy-breathing Natashas over my shoulder, exasperated with each keystroke. Tomorrow I fly the azure skies with Onur Airlines, whose air distaster rating is thankfully completely unknown to me.

Here are some pictures of Old Antalya and Hadrian's Gate, in honor of his visit to Antalya several million years ago.

Thumbs Atwiddle in Antalya

2005-08-21T08:44:00.000Z

Occupied several thousand years ago and continuously inhabited since the 2nd century BC, Antalya stands now as the unofficial capital of Mediterranean Turkey. Traces of Hittite, Roman, Byzantine, Ottoman and Italian cultures are visible in the architecture and ruins, sandwiched between the hotels and resort centers now serving the flocks of drunken Eastern Europeans who flock like lemmings to this area. Phaselis, the sub-city in which I am staying, known as Lycea to the Greeks, is the home to many interesting ancient structures. This hotel-resort is all-inclusive which means: Unlimited free drinks + Russians everywhere equals a veritiable orgy of vodka, whiskey, vodka, tequila and vodka. It is actually enjoyable - jaw-dropping, really - to watch them suck gallons of ethanol into their gills, only to eject, with satisfying gack-sounds, from the same aperture five hours later. It is all extremely beautiful here, the water blue and creamy, mountains crashing into the Mediterranean sea, half-bikinied Russian and Turkish beauties writhing in 100 degree sunlight.

My programmming must be seriously whacked because I am f'ing bored out of my mind.

Due to my lack of planning -- only partly my fault as I was imprisoned on rails for many days during the torturous junket back to Moscow -- I was essentially locked into some kind of charter flight to Turkey and into this 5* hotel (which, as I've been told and now see as fact, means 3.5* in the USA). It is oh-so-lovely and nearly everyone I know back home would be ecstatic to be lounging around the three pools and sandy beaches watching the beautiful boys and girls scampering about. Right now my melanin has topped out to red-bronze, I have sand in every orifice and my tropical drink quota has redlined. All in one day. And because of the annoying Euro-redneck Formula One Grand Prix that is being staged for the first time ever up in Istanbul, I am unable to book any accomodation whatsoever there, necessarily extending my stay in Antalya for another day.

Across the street I have spotted a shop where I can rent a motorbike for the day. I'm contemplating going into one of the mountain villages to see what kind of trouble I can stir up.

A Disquisition on Mother Russia

2005-08-20T09:19:00.000Z

From my handwritten journal, enroute to Turkey:

My trip to the former Soviet Union was never meant to be a vacation, despite some occasional mind-detours to Aruba here and there, undoubtedly induced by comically low blood sugar. My assignment was to truly absorb this important, complicated and misunderstood culture in all of its richness. And over nine time zones of complexity, from emerald Belarus to Mongolian Russia to the chaotic streets of Moscow, I got it, at least a snapshot. The greens and the greys. The sweat, piss, perfume and dust. Granite and grass. Urban rain and chalky roads. Laughter, confusion, joy, awe, lust, hunger, xenophobia, beauty, numbness. Heartbreak, misery, unbridled potential. Solitude.

Peering out undulating train windows for hours on end, seeing and smelling the tremendousness of Siberia and the Urals, and their unusually happy inhabitants, has made me and my way of being feel small. The pain and the promise of Russia, especially Moscow, has amplified nagging questions, making me perhaps yearn for another model of living life.

I miss my friends and family -- and Mexican food -- but not my fishbowl. Soon, [over]work will again dominate me, snuffing out that which masquerades as a personal life, itself seemingly increasingly open to intrusive and offensive public scrutiny. Missing more bill deadlines because of the crushing ordeal of being an academic flying solo. Inaction delivered under the guise of policy discussions. Inflexibility crushing once promising opportunities.

Restlessness in unbelievably gorgeous Pacific Coast small town America.

Dead Presidents

2005-08-19T07:38:00.000Z

I walked briskly out of my short-term apartment onto Tverskaya Street, one of Russia’s main avenues, ready to meet up with Olga and Vladimir, a pair of music promotors I had met earlier in the day in Moscow. I had remarked to them that I only had 12 hours to exit Russia before my visa expired (extensions are impossible, fines heavy and severe). Olga arranges travel iteniraries for many of Eastern Europe’s biggest and most awful acts (needless to say, entirely unknown back in the USA) and helped me obtain a quick, cheap getaway to Antalya, one of Russia’s pet summer destinations. One of the greatest things about Russia is the ability to purchase inexpensive airplane tickets on the spot, none of the 14-day in-advance nonsense that we Americans accept as free commerce. So, with a phone call and a couple of Metro stops, everything was in order and, though it required me to stay here in Kemer for 4 days as part of a package, I must say that it shockingly nice here. For ex-Soviets, this must be the equivalent of a weeklong orgasm.

As I headed up towards Cafe Pyramid, across the block and in view, I ran into two of Moscow’s finest – the constables in the big red hats and the shiny black guns in hte brown holsters. They demanded my documents – in Russia, they need no presumption or suspicion of guilt to question anybody, everybody – and I complied with my passport.

“Big problem, you must come to polize station. Your documents not in order.” And they weren’t, technically, because Sveta, the brunette babelet I hired to take my visa to be registered (which is required of everyone, within 72 hours of arrival into a city) had not returned. As longtime readers may recall, Sveta is the apartment manager’s assistant, raised on a reindeer farm in Arctic Russia, knows three languages and is as nice as she is beautiful. I called her, she was still ten minutes away on the Metro, so I had to wait for her to rescue me.

Somehow I stalled them for fıfteen excruciating minutes and, soon, red-hatted goons were everywhere, with many greatly concerned onlookers. In the meantime, I tried in vain to explain my situation, that although I had been in Russia for nearly an entire month, I had only been in Moscow less than 36 hours, that I didn’t even need a registration. Of course, their command of the English language conveniently shorted out from time to time and puzzlingly, I still don’t know the Russian words for incompetence and harrassment, so the stalemate continued.

I finally get a text message from Sveta saying that she sees me across the boulevard but cannot help as she herself is an illegal resident in Moscow, not being registered either (for two years!). Finally, I convince her to walk by quickly and, on the busiest street in Moscow, we make a sleight-of-hand pass-off that would have made any grifter or Sidney Bristow proud. I magically produce my registration, stamped. Discussion over.

Not so fast, foreigner, this is Russia after all. “Big problem. You in Moscow 29 days, this registration good, three days.” I explained and re-explained the deal, that I had arrived by train from Kazan just one day earlier, and all the red-crested robins could do was just shake their heads no, no, no. The fine for not being properly registered, incidentally, is roughly $200 and, worse, not being able to re-enter Russia for 5 years, If taken to the statıon, I would be in deep shit and would undoubtedly miss my flight, six hours away. I needed a solution, one that only donned on me as fresh-faced Olga arrived to help, after having phoned me ten minutes earlier.

I asked her, who was now yellıng at the cops, to calm down and please stay put with the authorities -- and my passport -- while I retrieved "extra documentation", namely my train ticket. From earlier run-ins, I knew that I was now in an infinite loop of bureaucratic jabberwocky, that no matter what credentials I produced, there would assuredly be some new “problem". Back int the apartment I so-conspicuously interleaved two crisp $20 bills in-between the train ticket dupes and, back on Tverskaya, handed them back with a wink and a nod to Moscow's most upstanding blue-eyed civil servant.

“Look closely” I said. He slowly opened the tickets, nodded with a smile and said, in Russian: “The best documents are those with American presidents.”

Five minutes later, Olga, Vladimir and I were enjoying Ukrainian beers at the cafe, me full of the euphoria and satisfaction one garners only from successfully bribing a cop, a feat we don't often get treated to back in the States.

Back in Moscow

2005-08-17T14:33:00.000Z

This is just a three sentence placeholder to notify those who care that I'm back in Moscow and it feels good. According to my visa, I have less than 16 hours before I *must* be out of Russia, so I've been working hard on getting that ticket down to Turkey. When I get a chance I will wax poetically on what it's like to spend an entire month in Russia, the largest country in the world.

Update: I made it and am now in Antalya, on the Mediterranean Coast of Turkey. It was difficult going and I had to grease some cop palms to get here, but my exile in Russia has ended. Hopefully my updates will continue but Turkey != Russia and this damned Turkish keyboard is completely crazy.

Blue Minarets and Tatars

2005-08-15T14:47:00.000Z

Nestled on the conflux of the Kazanka and the Volga, Europe's longest river, Kazan feels unlike any other Russian city, instead resembling those further south in ex-Soviet Central Asia. The city was founded in the 11th century by a people called the Volga Bulgars, who built one of this country's most beautiful and famous kremlins. When the terrifying Golden Horde thundered through Old Russia under the direction of the great conqueror Genghis Khan, the people of this region began to be referred to as Tatars (a historical misnomer, since the native people were not, in fact, Mongol). The name stuck, the Tatars were absorbed into the Bulgar populations and the new Kazan Khanate quickly grew as an important trading center in the Mongol empire.

In 1552 the city was smashed by Tsar Ivan the Terrible (who celebrated the victory by having crazyass St Basil's Cathedral in Moscow constructed) and the city was absorbed into Russia's rule. Nowadays Kazan serves as the capital of Tatarstan, one of the republics united, albeit uncomfortably, in the Russian Federation. The city recently celebrated its 1000th birthday by unveiling the reconstructed and stunningly beautiful Kul Sharif, the largest mosque in all of Europe.

Time to get back on the funtrain, this time all the way back to Moscow.

Woo Hoo, Party Train to Kazan!

2005-08-14T14:48:00.000Z

To buy a train ticket to Kazan, I walked into the Sputnik Aviakassa in Ekaterinburg, one of the city's almost-pleasant rail and air ticket offices -- roughly approximating a travel agency, except that all the women are dolled up in that scary-sexy librarian way. My Russian skills, now developed enough to get me to the right room at least, predictably and invariably send me to the wrong Natasha. I was taken by hand to where the trains are negotiated -- there someone would surely help me procure my ticket (which, as it turns out, is equivalent to a sleeping board next to a rolling outhouse in aromatic August). While conversing entirely in Russian, Alexandra, the raven-haired babe with the uncomfortably low-cut white blouse, painstakingly recorded all my requests (well, not all of them) in a well-used hardbound ledger (nothing here is fully computerized, nothing). With her speaking at mach V by phone to a disembodied train expert, the plans were finalized, smiles and spasibo's exchanged, buying of ticket nearly complete.

Not quite, this is Russia after all. Creating a head-scratching level of bureaucracy, no one in this country who sells you something can actually handle the money. All transactions, whether at a restaurant or on the bus or at the drugstore, require at least three persons [the buyer, the seller and the miserable shoot-me-now harpy who runs the register or credit card machine]. Up the dusty stairs, stopping at each floor to ask the ubiquitous and bored security ogre in the red cap about the cashier's office, receiving the appropriately negative grunt. I finally reach floor 4 where I encounter The Beast in the Plexiglas Bunker. Even if she were speaking perfect English I would not be able to hear the hazy heavily-refracted apparition behind the ten inches of solid clear plastic, much less this crazy language that no one will ever be able to master. I could not understand her, could not even see her beyond the little drawer-chute peephole in which she demanded my information and my money. Finally I guess I nodded my head yes and no in the right pre-determined configuration, like unlocking a mysterious easter egg from a video game [yes, yes, no, no, no, yes, yes], and my purchase request was granted.

Back down to Alexandra's desk, all bureaucratic needs filled, the negotiations complete. Opening a steel box which she pulled slowly from under her desk, she plucked out an ivory velvet baggie and unveilled a glimmering, chromium circular stamp, attached to a long black wooden handle. The sign that either I've been in this nutty country way too long or that my nutritional reserves have been exhausted is that this whole procedure seemed in slow-motion and unnecessarily erotic. I felt myself blushing as Alexandra twisted and pressed the stamp firmly into the black ink pad and then wwwhacked it down suddenly onto my receipt with a startling and satisfying clap, cracking a half-smile as several of her body parts jiggled asynchronously. Whew, I was on my way to Kazan, which all of a sudden had a strangely sexy overtone to it.

The crashing, sobering reality came next.

I finally dragged myself off Train 229 in the Russian city of Kazan at 3:17 am this morning, the sun yet to arise, sleep still encrusting my orbs and god-knows-what flourishing in my hair. The one-day, seven-hour trip in the kupe compartment, strategically situated next door to the urinal, was nothing short of miserable. I felt and smelt the vibrations of piss and poop for a full day. To top that I watched in frozen disgust, not able to get far enough away, as my cabinmate choked down a copious trapezoidal flap of flimsy, damp, brownish meat in the most sickening, gut-spilling manner conceivable [swallowing more than he could properly ingest, ejecting part of it back out with a gurgling-gagging sound, then repeating until it was all ingested]. In darkness with a shitty map, I tried in vain to find a hotel room this morning, the search lasting six hours -- so many hotels will not accept foreigners --and, although this city inhabits nearly a million people, a shocking shortage of accomodation remains.

Finally I found a room in Hotel Tatarstan, a typically Soviet monstrosity that specializes in discomfort. Somehow I made it to this internet cafe, purely by accident and, as usual, I'm the only one actually doing anything besides playing ear-crashing games in this humid, hot videodrome.

My mood is suprisingly good, the city looks rather beautiful right now and the Tatarstan air smells delightful, an after-effect perhaps of having my nose wafted with blasting bursts of alcohol-laced urine for the prior 27 hours.

Memorials to the Unmemorialized

2005-08-12T09:55:00.000Z

Shirokorechinskaya Graveyard, just a couple of kilometers from the city center, is curious in that it is devoted to (a)gadflies silenced by Jozef Stalin's purges and (b) casualties in the 1990s Mafioso wars. The postmodern detail seen on each of these tombstones is amazing and eerie, with some of them lithographically posed in James Dean, Bing Crosby or Elvis Presley style. One memorial even potrayed a giant hand dangling an absurdly garguantuan set of BMW keys. Truly unique, though I felt that I may be two seconds from taking a bullet myself for snapping photos with all the thick-necked, sunglassed flatheads shuffling about.

The second notable sight today was a breathtaking memorial here in Ekaterinburg to soldiers killed in Afghanistan, often referred to as Russia's Vietnam. In a country obsessed with the military, especially in its art, the tragic figure shown, his sadness, is simply rare. Perhaps the most human war memorial I've seen, perhaps surpassing our own Vietnam Memorial in its gut-wrenching power. In the back, out of view, is an ancillary memorial to soldiers killed in Chechnya. I watched in awe as two workers prepared to install a new slate of casualty names, a fresh reminder that Russia itself is in the throes of internal conflict and terrorism.

Bloody Ekaterinburg

2005-08-11T07:15:00.000Z

Nestled in the middle Urals, dividing Russian Asia from Europe, Ekaterinburg was founded by Tsar Peter the Great in 1723 and named for his wife, the future Empress Catherine I. The legend says that, a year later, he punished her infidelity by beheading her lover and installing the disembodied bean in a jar on her nightstand. Fitting then, that Ekaterinburg, the city of many names [Ekaterinburg, Yekaterinburg, Sverdlosk], the capital of the Urals, the birthplace of Russian industry, has such a bloody, tumultuous history.

Americans addicted to the History Channel will know Ekaterinburg as the site of the assassination of the Romanovs, the last of the Russian monarchs. At the outbreak of the revolution in February 1917, Nicholas II was arrested and exiled to the Siberian city of Tobolsk. By August 1918, civil war was at a fever pitch, with the Red Army (Bolsheviks) and White Army (Mensheviks) capturing city after another. When the Mensheviks took Ekaterinburg, the Bolsheviks feared that Nicholas would be freed, so they opted to have him and the Romanov lineage eliminated. On July 16, 1918 the entire family - Nicholas, wife Alexandra and their five children Tatiana, Alexei, Maria, Olga and Anastasia - were murdered in Dom Ipatiev, a house in Ekaterinburg.

The disposal of the bodies borders on the tragic, the macabre and the messy. It has since been determined, after years of secrecy, what ghoulish bungling transpired in the aftermath. They were dumped in an abandoned mine 16 kilometers away, followed by a couple of grenades intended to collapse the mine shaft (which didn't). The bodies were yanked back out, and an acids expert was summoned, who transported 200 liters of a sulfuric/nitric acid mixture but, en route, fell off his horse, breaking his leg and rendering him useless. They then opted to distribute the bodies to several smaller mines and pour acid on them but the cart carrying them got trapped in the boggy swamps. Now desperate they opted to bury them on the spot, first trying in vain to burn the bodies, then poured acid on them which instead soaked right into the ground. The remains were finally uncovered 73 years later.

In 1977, then-governer and local hero Boris Yeltsin had Dom Ipatiev destroyed. Today the site is marked by the majestic, powerful Cathedral on the Blood as the Romanovs have now been canonized as saints.

During the Cold War, this was the area where US spy plane pilot Gary Powers was shot down, detained and exhanged for a Soviet spy in 1962. In 1979, an anthrax leak from a biological weapons plant killed 64 civilians in the city.

After being plagued by 1990s Mafia wars, the city now enjoys a major economic and construction boom. The Urals, being one of the oldest mountain ranges on the planet, are not particularly impressive looking but contain some of the most important and valuable minerals on the planet. Indeed, while digging during the construction of the city's Metro system in the 1990s, enough gold was discovered to pay for the entire project.

Siberia in My Rear-View Mirror, Figuratively

2005-08-10T06:59:00.000Z

The trek across Siberia to its Western edge was not particularly painful though I am happy to finally be here in the Urals, in Ekaterinburg. I hope to see some more of this intriguing city before my energy supplies run too low as I'm feeling a bit tapped out at the moment. And dreadfully homesick, for someone to speak English with, for some good music, for my friends and family. For my overworked empty life back home.

Slogging across vast Russia by train invokes a full ophthalmic-olfactive-aural inwardness that I cannot fully untangle. Chugging, rhythmic sounds, gutteral almost sensual, Russians yelling and talking, laughing and cursing. Living. The constancy of motion while nothing in your immediacy moves, save for a swinging baggage strap or a flower tippling in a vase. The greenery and the suburuban post-Soviet blight take turns whipping by the window. The smells, oh yes, the smells, of fish and beer and meat and coal and sweat. Of humanity. There is serious time bending, hours scream by and creep coetaneously. You look down at your watch, or cell phone, and whatever number pops up digitally is both nonsensical and easily swallowed. The mind shifts down into some other brainwave, like being in an isolation tank. Nightmares are more lucid and crazy and, for the first time, I found myself speaking Russian in my dreams.

My cabinmates were Katya, a very sweet twentysomething from Khabarovsk, on her way to a new job in Perm, though what she did I could not fully comphrehend, just nodding Da when there were words close to what I already knew. I taught her some new words in English and she taught me some in Russian (the word for "bat", for example, translates as "flying mouse" -- when the movie Batman came out here, they called it "Flying Mouse-Man", not the fear-inspiring dread that the directors were aiming for).
In Omsk, Yuri the jurist (pronounced "yur-eest") climbed on, took off all his clothes except his boxers (not an uncommon occurence), and told us dirty jokes, cackling loudly, wild hands gesturing. Of course I understood zero but I laughed, partly at the comedy of the situation but mostly because I did not want to endure the stretched out explanation that kills any joke, no matter what the base language. He could speak no English but we did converse in German, badly. Didn't make the jokes any funnier. After two hours he climbed up into his bunk, passed out, never to be heard from again, except for some funny-to-him noctural outbursts about Americans, requiring him to periodically nudge me with his barefoot, for reasons I never understood.

No, Here Ish Yourrr Bill, Sirrr

2005-08-08T10:03:00.000Z

In Eastern Europe, the standard way of arranging accommodation is to pay for the room(s) ahead of time and then cover the balance [minibar, laundry, girls of the night, surgery] when you depart. It's a rather sneaky way of doing business because the consumer has no power, no way to withhold payment if something goes awry. For example, last year, in Bucharest, I was pretty much stuck with the demon flat -- to this day I can just mentally summon the cuisinart-ed fish-shake smell that came gurgling out of the faucets. Comes in handy actually if I need to expunge my stomach contents at a moment's notice.

One would need to travel in Mother Russia to truly understand that Lenin's real legacy here is that there is now no such thing as luxury or comfort in any hotel. If you have your own shower, comrade, you're living regally and if there is hot running water, then shut the hell up Mister Fancypants Foreigner from the USA. You pay ahead of time and you get what you get, all of which is highly variable.

Imagine my surprise, while checking out this morning from overpriced-at-$45-a-night Hotel Siber (but the only thing available to a foreigner who is not part of one of those annoying busloads of tourists), when Natasha, the white-haired thirtysomething dominatrix working the check-out counter, demanded payment for the night. I didn't exactly say "Hello!?! Shuh! I already paid!" [<-- said valley-girl-like for full effect] but my body language sure did. I said, approximately, I think, "No way dude-ette, I paid up yesterday when I dragged myself, my baggage and my intestinal tract back into this place." She said, in broken English, "No, here ish yourrr bill, sirrr." This carried on, back and forth, me demanding that I had paid, Natasha's steel blue eyes unwavering, "No, here ish yourrr bill, sirrr." Um, yes, I think I got that message the seventh time you said that. I believe that I even said, eventually, "Yes, Natasha, now please quit saying that. I mean it."

One of the strategies I've used here in Russia, a country in which the locals joke that everyone is a criminal, is that when I start to sense that I'm being ripped off, I switch from broken Russian into full-board English. That makes people turn around, putting the spotlight on the con-artist-to-be, and I usually get what I want. So I started ripping into this chick, proclaimingly that I was going to call the embassy, that I don't like being ripped off, that American Express was going to be called and their account with them would be terminated (almost no businesses, except the very prestigious, accept American Express here). Loud, big, fast, power-invoking English. Surely this maneuver would gain me the satisfaction that I, the American, richly deserved.

I might've just dashed but, since they had my bag in storage, I had to remain the single non-hooligan in this city. By this time my loud ranting had attracted white-haired Elena, she would be the fourth one I've met here (pronounced, in case you care to hurt yourself or sound like a buffoon -- Ylah-ylah-nyeh, but with a trill here and a muscle cramping y-glide there). Very sweet, speaks better English, and the whole charade is repeated. Yes, I see my bill, thank you, but I have already paid. Is it all the crazy letters that makes you people not able to use a computer correctly for anything? Silicon Revolution anyone? I have to say, I was being quite the jackass, especially as it donned on me midstream, that I in fact had not paid yesterday like I had been arguing so vehemently. I had one of those "I suddenly know that I'm wrong but do I just give in and look like an idiot or keep going out of pride?" moments. You know you're not having the greatest hour of your life if you start debating "Idiot or Asshole, Idiot or Asshole?" As is usually the case, I ended up having to embrace both identities with open arms.

So, I paid up, slunk away and, feeling so bad about my boorish behavior, I tried to make amends by purchasing each of them a bar of dark chocolate from the corner store. Judging from their ebullient O-faced expressions, you would have thought I was Ed-F'ing-McMahon bringing that giant uncashable check to the front door. Ylaylanyeh even blushed -- I could tell because her skin now had a trace of color -- and giggled. These Russian girls are so unaccustomed to men being the slightest bit nice that even the simplest gesture of kindness makes them nutty.

Early tomorrow, I shall wedge myself back into the Trans-Siberian humidor for another 26 hours of blood, sweat, toil, tears and desperate flippage through my shockingly incomplete English-Russian dictionary, as I meander ever so slowly towards Yekaterinburg.

Still looking for those Gatorade bottles.

Update: Probably a good time to be leaving Novosibirsk. Hope I don't share my compartment with any avians.

Thwacked by Lactose Goons

2005-08-07T14:29:00.000Z

Most adults in the world, after the so-called "weaning period", have lost the ability to effectively digest milk sugar as the body produces increasingly less lactase, the enzyme necessary for proper metabolization. Some degree of lactose intolerance, carrying symptoms of excess gas production and diarrhea, will likely be experienced by adults, unless of course one carries that Northern European derived mutation on chromosome-2.

Which. I. Clearly. Do. Not. Have.

Feeling like my small intestines have been wringed tightly around the mangle that once served as my colon, I am desperate for a male version of Pamprin [Manprin?], anything to relieve these sweat-inducing man-cramps that besiege me. So explosive was the result of last night's eating of pizza at il Patio that I could not even make it onto the Yekaterinburg-bound train today, the very image of my clammy carcass spending all day and night on the rolling commode that opens directly to the tracks below making me dither with dread.

The exquisite violence erupting inside my gastrointestinal tract tells me that Yekaterinburg is now one, perhaps two more days away.

Two Elenas, an Olga and a Vlad

2005-08-06T08:52:00.000Z

Growing up in the Midwest, I had experienced my share of gargantuan ear-cracking thunderstorms, howling wind and horizontal rain included, with or without tornado warnings. I nearly got washed down the streets of hot humid Siberia last night when the skies opened up and pounded the city of Novosibirsk with rain, lightning and superscary thunder. I'm sure everyone can relate to the awful feeling of stepping ankle deep into muddy brown urban rapids and having to walk -- make that squeak --back to the hotel almost a mile away. My flimsy umbrella was laughably beaten by the elements but the cooling was welcome, if a little wet-rat making.

Last night Gary, the white Zimbabwean, and I went to the New York Times restaurant and bar. He speaks English like a British person would and its kinda quaint. His profession is very strange -- although a militant and avid non-smoker, he works for the British-American Tobacco Company, supposedly one of the oldest companies in the West, peddling tobacco products to new Russia. The cognitive dissonance he carries is amazing and he sees his job purely from a marketing strategy. This is the kind of capitalistic disconnect I would have only expected from an American!

While drinking some Siberian Coronas we noticed some Russians at the table next door speaking alternatively good and awful English. One of them, Elena (a name that 1 out of 5 Russian females seems to be given) asked in Russian why we were laughing. We tried to back out of it, that we weren't laughing so much as enjoying the mauling of our mother tongue, and she explained that she was an English teacher and they were having class. At the bar! What a country! Soon, Vladimir, Olga and, yep, Elena II, joined us and we were asked if we wouldn't mind conversing with them. All of them lawyers (jurists as they would say here), all of them learning English to advance in New Russia.

They weren't too bad actually, as long as we talked slowly. They could understand Gary much easier because the flavor of English taught in schools here is UK English, not the American kind that I am cursed with. I might add that all of them agreed that American English was prettier and all of them hailed my accent, one of the girls going so far as holding her nose as she spoke (Americans speak through their nose, according to the Russians).

I must admit that Novosibirsk has grown on me greatly. The people here in Siberia are far friendlier than what you see in the western side of Russia. I have even been daydreaming what it would be like for me to move here for a year, perhaps for a sabbatical at the prestigious university in town (the Yale of Russia), and seeing what a real Siberian winter is like...

Headed towards the Urals

2005-08-05T11:16:00.000Z

I bought my ticket today for Ekaterinburg, a full day journey by train, to the birthplace of the Boris Yeltsin. Nothing spectacular to report today, save for the fact that my veganism has yielded to plain old vanilla vegetarianism as I caved in and ate a cheese pizza. There was a time in my life that I could not imagine giving up dairy products but, truthfully, it did not taste good at all. For some reason, probably unknown to scientists everywhere, it tastes like mold. I'm sure the intake of protein will help fuel the gastrointestinal explosion that will occur, oh, about five hours from now.

I'm off to have a drink with my friend Gary, the white Zimbabwean. More on him later.

Novo by Night

2005-08-04T05:19:00.000Z

Novosibirsk, the capital of Siberia, was originally called Novonikolaevsk, after Nicholas II, the last Emperor of Russia. (Interestingly, it was renamed in 1926 "by the demand of the working people" to Novosibirsk, New Siberia, because all the great revolutionary names had already been used up -- Leningrad, Stalingrad, etc). At over two million people, it is the largest city in Russian Asia and either the third or fourth largest city in the country, depending on who you consult.The census is not a national priority as it is in the United States).

Home of a majestic opera and ballet, the largest such building in all of Russia, Novosibirsk is simultaneously laid back and bustling. I attempted to eat at a place called the New York Times, they even had an english menu so that I knew exactly what kind of carnage I could not eat. Settled on a beer and some grilled vegetables and, judging from the clump of hair that came out this morning, its probably high time to find a protein source. Next door, on Vokzalnaya Ulitsa, is the Alpen Grot, a dingy sort of subterranean bar that, for some reason, beckoned me. I walked in just before midnight which means, here and seemingly in all Russian bars, its time for the strip show!

Now, as good as it sounds to watch naked Russians run around on stage, they do it real different over here. The dancers definitely consider themselves artistes over entertainers, the intricate choreography alone gives that away, and to make matters worse, it is always mixed gender. The number of naked men I've seen in Russia will last me a lifetime, thank you. In the United States, there is no way you'd ever see straight men watching male strippers, but here it is very common. And in a country teeming with lovely women, it is strange indeed to observe them watching less beautiful versions prancing around on stage, barely wearing less clothing. What is this, Bizarro World? In that case, bad-bye!

Woo Hoo, Party Train to Novosibirsk!

2005-08-03T04:06:00.000Z

From my handwritten journal:

I always figured that going mad would be accompanied by some cool noise, like a massive mental steamwhistle or a snapping twig. Then, just like when the final bell rang on the last day of school, the ensuing berserking chaos that followed would be expected, permitted, and perhaps even enjoyable. But as I lay on plastic upholstery in a smelly lagoon of my own perspiration on this misery train, transported prisoner-of-war-like to the next camp, I am starting to ponder if said snappage has already occurred. When exactly the flashes of crazy were replaced by flashes of sanity I don't know, but I'm laying here, suddenly cognizant that, with all the fun bikini-filled, tan-skinned, sunny blue-skied vistas I could visit on my summer vacation -- I'm in the middle of motherfucking Siberia!
--
The glossy pamphlets they produce for the Trans-Siberian Railroad are wonderfully appealing. Young, impossibly good-looking and short-skirted nouveau riche Russians, sipping white wine, with toasts and laughter, watching as the vast Russian landscape melts into the sunset through the ultraclean window. What you really get: Two dirty-faced little moppets, one barely this side of comatose, staring blankly at her mangy one-eyed stuffed horse; the other, a seemingly inexhaustible supply of pea green vomit. The evercaring father, he of the beer cologne, passed out lifelessly, face down and shirtless, before the train even leaves the station. To add to the merriment is the toothless, miserable ready-to-die babushka who, when not wiping up the unholy discharge from Linda Blair below, glares unblinkingly and androidlike at me (as I write these very words). For visuals, think of the dinner scene in Annie Hall, when the jew-hating grandmother stares holes through Woody Allen.

So unwilling have I been to climb down from this bunk, imagining that I would drop ankle-deep into one of the puke buckets below, that I, in the blackness of night, with over 95% success rate, vacated my bladder into the contents of an empty two-liter bottle (with a painfully small opening). The unflattering and desperate contortions needed for such a maneuver will assuredly land me on a future episode of KGB's Funniest Thermographic Videos.

Epilogue: My lifelong habit of kicking my shorts off in the middle of the night endeared me to none of the passengers in Compartment 8.

Another Boring Night in Siberia

2005-08-02T10:38:00.000Z

When traveling in a foreign country where the only real distinguishing characteristic is language, it is not that difficult to walk unmarked as a foreigner. Sure I walk a little differently than they do and my shirts are not so tight that they show my man-nipples, but besides that I'm within the two standard deviations of normalcy here. But speaking English out loud is like a bugle to those standing near. A. Foreigner. Has. Been. Spotted.

Coming out of the internet cafe last night, I met Gordon, a [white] South African from Johannesberg who has been teaching English in Moscow for the past two years, and we decided to have a beer together in Krasnoyarsk Plaza. He has been jumping off and on the Trans-Siberian Railway towards Lake Baikal for six weeks, stopping at one little Russian town after another. We were not talking especially loudly, but the number of heads turning was pretty amazing and several drunken college guys came up to try out their bad English on us, apologizing profusely, as only the truly inebriated can do, that they were messing up our language. Soon, two dyevushkas, teetering somehow on the highest of heels introduced themselves, in decent English, as night-students, named Svetlana and Elena, who are majoring in public-relations (whatever that is) while they work days in a telecommunications firm. As I soon found out, there is a fine line between curiousity and hostility towards Westerners, as the drunk guys slowly became embittered and nasty as we received more attention(though hard to tell at first because, well, all Russian guys sound kind of mean). We had to move to another table when our spidey senses were starting to tingle.

The rest of my night was uneventful, just your average Midwesterner-in-Siberia story: a drunken, shirtless gay guy buying me a glass of white wine only to whisk it away bitchily when I refused it (I have learned my lesson!), a drunken coed giving me a wet kiss on the cheek and high-fiving her pals, a drunken teenager giving me (his brother) his Russian Orthodox cross, call girls asking every fifteen minutes if we needed "company", my nice blue Prada shirt getting sprayed by blood, blah blah blah, same old, same old.

In two hours I climb back onto the Trans-Siberian Choo-choo for the 12-hour overnighter to Novosibirsk, the region's de facto capital and another time zone away, where more Siberian hijinx are sure to follow.

When I Find Myself in Times of Trouble

2005-08-01T10:59:00.000Z

The pride of Krasnoyarsk is the "singing bell tower", positioned right outside of my hotel, that not only dongs each hour, quite loudly into the seventh floor I might add, but plays a special tune each day at noon.

It was today, August 1, 2005, that I heard the single worst version of the Beatles "Let it Be", ringing for miles to be heard. It was just not the tower's synth-bell that made it wretched; rather, it was all the drunken townspeople "singing" -- phonetically, of course -- to the song, caring nothing whatsoever about things like pitch, tone, cadence, passion or listenability. It was enough to make both John Lennon *and* Paul McCartney spin wildly in their graves.

What next, "I Can't Get No Satisfaction?"

One thing these mad Russians have got right, though, is how they've livened up the movie going experience. For example, PikaPark, with the faux airplane-crashed-into-wall motif, is a combination movie theatre/bar/nightclub, where you can pass freely between all three. A thick layer of fresh chicken wire is constructed nightly inches in front of the screen, presumably to encourage the whipping of bottles at the bad summer imports from Amyerika. There must have been a real party when Fantastic Four debuted there!

Got the train ticket and I'm on my way to Novosibirsk tomorrow evening, as Rod's Siberian Misadventure continues...

Krasnoyarsk

2005-08-01T04:42:00.000Z

One of the treats that Russia has to offer is the offchance that hot water will be cut off, as I found out today as Krasnoyarsk will have none from August 1 to 14. I have never fully experienced the power of truly cold water like this morning's skull-cracking Siberian shower, and as I tried in vain to contain the inevitable and unmanly yelps, my head undoubtedly shrunk to 90% of its normal size.

Krasnoyarsk is a river city, on the mighty Yenesei, of about one million people, making it the second largest city in Siberia. Approximately 1/4 of Russia's aluminum supply is produced in this region. Mmmm aluminum. The area outside Hotel Krasnoyarsk, where I'm paying $25 a night for the privilege of being glaciated, is full of luminous fountains, intellectuals and cafes, giving it an Italian piazza feel. The people here are quite friendly and, sometimes, when asking directions, they will take you by the hand and lead you there personally. They are genuinely curious about Westerners, and Americans in general, but very few people speak English with any proficiency.

Today I have been desperately trying to buy a train ticket to Siberia's megapolis, Novosibirsk, but so far I have had no luck finding a shortcut. Looks like I have to go to the train station myself and deal with the ogres-behind-plexiglas.

The Trans-Siberian Weight Loss Plan

2005-07-31T07:28:00.000Z

From my handwritten journal:

Having traveled on Russian trains several times before, I knew what to expect for sale: candy bars, cheap beer, mean looks and lukewarm mineral water, inexplicably carbonated and translated as "water with gas." And, oh yes, the ever-important supply of hot water, hawkishly tended to by the cabin prodinitsa (aka, She Who Shall Be Obeyed). Knowing that my total time spent on the Trans-Sib would sum up to be several days, I had planned ahead in Moscow, pillaging the supermarket 5 metro stops away of dry goods. I purchased what I believed to be honest-to-god vegetarian instant soups (they had pictures of carrots and onions, rather than the cartoon pig, chicken or cows, whose minced bits presumably await moistureless within). So confident I was in my preparation, complete with white standard plastic Eurobaggie, that I schlepped it all the way by air to Ulan-Ude. There I augmented the stash with Instant Quaker Oats and trailmix. This, undoubtedly, would make me King of Train #7, Wagon 2, and I walked smugly Saturday morning towards the train, confidant that babushkas and damsels alike would be throwing themselves at me in order to share in my freeze-dried cornucopia. Longtime readers will not be surprised that I, of course, left the bag back at the hotel.

So,instead of arriving as the Prince of Prefab Provisions, I boarded this Russian train, where sharing one's food is part of the social contract, the dejected empty-handed court jester.

My kupe compartment, capacity four, has two inmates already: Sergei, the Gorbachev lookalike sans skin-peninsula, from St Petersburg; and Inna, the grandmother of unknown profession, who was highly adept at the fake-spit-to-ground-while-hand-waving maneuver, ready to yank that move out of the holster at a moment's notice. They had been on the train since Vladivostok, two days prior, giving it a lived-in smell that I shan't soon forget. An odor somewhat reminiscent of an embarcadero or the seafood side of the supermarket. It turns out, luckily for me, that Inna was transporting salted dried fish to Novosibirsk, presumably as "gifts" to all those who had wronged her in the past.

Although assigned one of the better lower bunks, my Midwestern decency dictates that I cannot have elderly Russians falling on me in the middle of the night, so I happily if sheepishly take one of the upper bunks. The second idiotic move of the day came when I tried to enswathe the pillow with the presanitized case (optional, but well worth the 40 rubles). I'm not sure exactly how the cumulus cloud of feathers came about, but the goosey snow sent Sergei and Inna quickly into the hallway. I will likely never get the microfeathers out of those black pants, nor out of my respiratory system. The sneezestorm that followed was epic, a snot-and-tear machine-gun attack like I hadn't produced since a boy in the Ozarks.

So, twenty minutes into my Trans-Siberian shunt and I'm already working on untouchable status.

Soon, however, our train is hugging the banks of the majestic Lake Baikal and it is even more amazing than I had predicted. Incredibly, this otherworldly blue "Pearl of Siberia", the planet's deepest lake, holds 1/5 of the world's freshwater, more than all five Great Lakes combined. We even spot some nerpas, the only freshwater species of seal, happily basking in the sun, not far from some ivory-skinned bikini-clad Russkas, undoubtedly working on their first sunburn/encephalitis combo of the year.

Traveling along the Trans-Siberian is eerie. Everyone's watches are set to Moscow time (for us, 4-5 hours offset), which itself is disorienting, and being couped in the chugging train for so long produces odd behavior in these crazy Russians. Whenever we would make a stop at some town, usually about four hours apart, everyone would pile out and just stand and mill about, looking at the train. Perhaps they were hoping that *this* city would have a convenience stand for soda, beer or something to read, oh god anything that is different. And there is nearly always nothing, save for the enterprising shirtless man selling,you guessed it, dried fish.

Sergei and Inna, more out of pity I think than anything else, insisted on me sharing in of their goodies, though I had nothing but alcohol swabs and a dumpshit grin to furnish. They know, but likely don't fully understand, the word vegetarian, as I am offered many dishes that clearly contain beast, though admittedly a minority component. I do have some hot tea and Inna insists on me taking sugar -- rather, she doesn't ask, she just drops five cubes into the goblet as she enigmatically makes the bicep motion while pointing at me. She also demands that I nibble/consume several beige, biscuitlike spheroids, popped from a bag emblazoned with a cartoon mouse. If I had seen this in the store, I would have surely thought that this was (a) made from mice or, more likely, (b) rat poison. Since rodents are not, from what I understand, drawn to rocklike dry cookies soaked in pure liquid sucrose, I was sure that I would be okay. But that was all I could ingest in the entire day and the sugar rush took me down for three hours.

Krasnoyarsk is only 10 inchworm hours away and, as we penetrate the Siberian night, I hear a thunderstorm arriving. I feel a good sleep coming on.

An alt.johnny.appleseed?

2005-07-29T03:06:00.000Z

The Autonomous Republic of Buryatia is one of the 89 administrative districts that comprise the Russian Federation and is the only one that is predominantly Buddhist. Supposedly the mother of Genghis Khan was born here, but that kind of thing is sort of hard to establish for wandering nomads like the Mongols. It certainly does have that Asian feel to it, whatever that means, save for the ubiquitous hammer-and-sickles that dot the area. Oh yeah, and that big old Lenin head!

Last night I met a nice girl named Marina, who was jamming away in Lenin Plaze on her electric guitar. Her English was not very developed beyond words outside of Nirvana songs, but she could play pretty damn well and it sounded pretty authentic on the cheapo portable Montgomery Ward-style amp she was hooked into. She often treks down to Beijing or Ulaan Bator to play in clubs but her dream is to save enough money for a trip to New York.

One of the things I like to do is bring self-burned CDs into Russia, not of the awful J.Lo/Brittany/Beyonce/Janet/Justin crap that even makes it over here, but of the good stuff that isn't even that well known outside of college stations and underground clubs in the US. I had already given my Flaming Lips CD to a dude in Moscow, and I thought she might like the Pixies, but instead I gave her a Bright Eyes CD, figuring she could make out the lyrics a little bit easier.

Tomorrow morning I leave Ulan-Ude on the Trans-Siberian with the intended departure point of Krasnoyarsk. I should have clear viewing of Lake Baikal but, as my encephalitis shots are not up-to-date and there's a major infestation right now, I'm not getting out of the damn train. Next update may be awhile since the journey lasts more than a day.

Transported to the Emerald City

2005-07-28T10:35:00.000Z

Ulan-Ude is quite lovely and, as I said before, dusty. Wow! The population is a mix of about 25% Mongolian and 50% Russian, with the rest either mixed or miscellaneous. I would venture to guess that I am the only American in this city of 300,000 people as many people are asking where I'm from. The temptation to mess with them is overwhelming since Russians cannot tell a German speaking English from a Frenchman from a South African, but nowadays I just go straight to "California."

I learned last time around that telling people that I'm from Santa Barbara, approximately true since I'm 3/4 of the world away, will cause Russian eyes to light up. Little known in the US, the soap opera of the same name was so popular in this country that the whole nation, from Moscow to Vladivostok, would drop everything to watch "Santa Barbara". Pretty funny.

Now I leave you with Ulan-Ude's greatest claim to fame, watching Oz-like over his eponymous plaza, the largest Lenin head in the world!

Snappage at 50,000 Feet Over Russia?

2005-07-28T02:23:00.000Z

I am here, safe and dusty, in pastoral and quaint Ulan-Ude. I will post more on this soon, but wanted to transcribe some of my handwritten journal entries while flying the friendly skies with Siberia Airlines:
--
With twenty or so Russian and Mongolian elbows nudged firmly in back, I approached the plane towards the Soviet-era Tupelov 154 jet, in that telescopic rolling tunnel that seems to have no name. Suddenly the chunnel heaves and drops five or six inches, causing half of us to fall to the floor and making the little man in the orange vest with the big whistle to raise his hand in the universal "Stop Comrades" gesture. After 10 minutes of one supervisor after anoth nodding and nyetting in bureaucratic pantomime, we are allowed in, silent apprehension transforming into, well, just normal apprehension. Not the most comforting sign to begin a five hour flight to the land of exiles.
--
To fully understand the decor of the airplane, I think one would have to be alive during 1970s USA. The upholstery, a loose term at best, is a pseudoplaid orange on yellow on blue - the kind of patterning you see years afterwards and wonder, head scratching, how some design committee actually settled on THIS design? To complete the 70s feel, the little button overhead transliterates as "stewardess", a term that surely brings fond tingly memories to post-thirty men everywhere. The rickety arm rests are still fashioned with ashtrays, perfectly matching the antiquated smoking/no smoking flash-sign overhead.
--
The take-off is delayed while the cabin reaches sweltering temperatures, these Russians don't seem to mind, as waiting and suffering duel it out for the official national pastime. By the sheer amount of window rubbernecking as the Moscow suburbs disappear below, this is apparently Flight #1 for many of my fellow passengers, and is admittedly more comfortable than the other forms of Russian transit. As the plane levels off, the pop pop pop sounds I hear throughout the plane herald the forty or so cans of cheap beer being opened, which every Russian man seems to have stashed on him somewhere at all times. Judging by the degree of close-talking that's going on, accompanied by wagging heads and spitting laughter, they filled up pre-flight as well. There is no leg room -- even my knees are cramped -- and I can feel those of the passenger in 25D knobbling through the soft back of my seat. Everyone (except,ahem, one idiot) has brought food onto this flight, and the odor of butter and meat, from animals I dare not guess, permeates the cabin, as does the unbearable sounds of finger and thumb slurping.
--
The beverage service cart is nothing more than a tray of wheels with dixie cups and generic juice (to my Chemistry Department colleagues, think of the carts in the D-wing stockroom). You get three choices - orange, tomato or shut the hell up. I choose tomato [pomedoro sok, pa russkie] and the differences from ketchup are purely, and barely, one of texture. The service produces an atmosphere of lip smacking which constructively interfered with the aforementioned digit-licking to produce the sonic hell in which I exist now.
--
Okay, I am starting to wonder, as this pen digs deeper into the page, if this is the event that finally makes me snap? I mean, I really hoped that I would be in front of a classroom or behind the wheel when the inevitable magic mental pixies came a-thumping with their wands.
--
No snappage yet but "dinner" almost did the colorblind vegetarian in. (Really, should I be complaining?, since Siberia Airlines at least serves a meal, unlike flights in the USA where companies now charge for their boxed gruell, all in the name of saving a buck whilst the boards of directors continue to rake in big bonuses). As the eerily and perhaps inappropriately sexy stewardesses (miniskirts, high-heels, berets) make their way down the ailse, bashing every limp armrest in its path, I strain to hear the "hot food" choices so that I can dive into my phrasebook and translate. Just as Snedlana, wide-eyed, smiling toothily but five inches from my face, arrives, I've deciphered the unholy triumverate: chicken, fish or "meat". My brain whirrrs as it tries in vain to calculate the degree of spillage each option might have, in terms of odor, sauce viscosity, and particulates, just in case something salvagable like vegetables or rice might be trapped inside. "Chicken" I weakly respond, voice cracking.

Before me are placed five plastic open-faced minitrays, and one aluminum one apparently stored in the engine, as it is near fusion temperature. Half the tray contents are recognizable to me as some type of food: The vaguely Germanesque pastry shiny thingy, the tray of grapefruit slices laid atop pancake/blintzes, and the seven or eight leafy things surrounding some carrot threads. After testing the temperature of the solar block many times, I finally exhumed the hot dish: Four tendrilly, sinewy cuboids of something brown, ensauced and spread over a bed of gooey french fries. Complete disaster, but at least I've got that yummy fruit plate!

As I sniff the pink slice of grapefruit, out of habit as a quick check of freshness, the dreaded unmistakeable smell of death needles my olfactories. Knocked back in a fog of confusion, I realize that this, this, this grapefruit slice is, in fact, lukewarm fish. WTF?!?! Okay, who eats fish pancakes? Surely this is the twilight zone because, I *clearly* heard fish as one of the three options. Yes, Snedlana, along with my bread and mayonnaise, along with my limp romaine lettuce and my fish flapjacks, well I'd really like to have some more fish.

It's a madhouse! A madhouse! <-- said ala Charlton Heston-like in the Planet of the Apes for full effect.

Outta Here

2005-07-27T13:35:00.000Z

I got the new cell phone, just like my old Motorola model, except less expensive and with the ability to write in cyrillic. Of course that helps me zero with my American friends and family, but what the hell, it's cool. Getting an account with MegaFon.ru is like filling out life insurance with the number of vapid questions that I don't understand.

Tell me how cool this is, especially for you city dwellers. I just checked in my luggage at the metro station and it is being whisked away to Domodedovo Airport as we speak, right onto the airplane. The metro line goes right to the terminal, so no dealing with sharky cab drivers or minibuses that rip you off. Costs about $2 to get to the airport, supposedly the best in all of Europe (as opposed to Shermetevo II, Moscow's other hellish aeroport).

Dasveedanya!

The Trans-Siberian Plan is Hatched

2005-07-26T17:33:00.000Z

To most Americans, the words Irkutsk and Yakutsk are known, if at all, solely from the Parker Brothers game Risk. And, as everyone knows, if you are unfortunate to be allotted these Siberian swaths of earth at the beginning of the game, you will certainly lose (unless you use them as a springboard to Australia).

Very soon, however, I will not only be visiting said regions, but will be using those words as if I know what the hell I'm talking about. Just hours ago I booked myself a $120 flight from Moskva to Ulan-Ude, deep in the heart of Siberia, on the eastern bank of Lake Baikal, close to the Mongolian border. Yes, that's well into Asia, and is a five hour flight on Siberia Airlines -- that's one hour for each time zone I cross. This flight will almost certainly be the true revealer of how little Russian I've learned and I'm already trying to work up more than one variation of the blank "I-dont-know-what-the-hell-youre-saying-to-me" face. I'm thinking that a combination of this and this may do me well.

The idea: Drop into Siberia by plane, visit Lake Baikal for as long as I can stand being outdoors, then take the old Trans-Siberian Railway, salmon-like and against the normal touristy direction, back towards Moskva. From there I whisk down the Volga, hitting as many Russian cities as I can handle, then its off to Turkey. I need to find a way to send the snark via cell phone while in Siberia and on the train -- but I still have 24 hours left in dark, rainy, grey Moscow.

Another close call in Moscow

2005-07-25T13:41:00.000Z

The architectural craziness of St. Basil's Cathedral in Red Square cannot be captured by simple photos, certainly not by my unskilled hand. There are unusual and hypnotic nuances that shadows bring that make the peculiar textured onion domes seem more than three-dimensional, as if they are dynamically changing before your eyes. At noon the cathedral looks entirely different than it does in the morning, or in the evening. To a person with normal color vision I'm sure the imagery is even more spectacular. The cathedral was commissioned by Ivan the Terrible in 1534 to commemorate the slaughtering of the Tatars in the Russian city of Kazan (a city on my agenda, watch for the bouncing ball).

At ninety degrees from St. Basil's is Lenin's tomb, which I stood in line for, again, over an hour. I'm not really sure why I went again this year, perhaps to see if he was less waxy this time. The goons in the tomb were just as mean-looking as before, so I quickly donned my Mr. Stoneface mask as I sauntered in to take another looksee at the most celebrated of the mummified communists. (If anyone out there needs a good band name, there you go!)

Since I was playing tourist, I thought mayhaps I shall take in the famed Moscow Circus, not too far from where I'm staying. And as I waited in line to pay the entrance fee, a thought struck me like lightning, one so horrible that my throat ricocheted off my heart. How could I forget, that entity which is most unholy on earth, so wretched in its existence that even children have the good sense to quiver in horror. And after somnambulating through the streets and subways of a 9 million strong city of crazy people, after having a rohypnol vacation in Muscovian shrubbery, I was about to inadvertantely subject myself to this?

CLOWNS!!!!

To that, I said nyet.

Siberia or Bust

2005-07-25T07:54:00.000Z

I have been telling people for quite some time that this mission to Russia will be incomplete - nay, a failure - if I don't make it to Siberia. Right now I don't know where my passport or credit cards are, there is still residual roofie coursing through my veins, I almost got swept up into a nine-person brawl on the subway last night, I am sans cell phone and my intestines are starting to rebel against my diet. Still ...

Must. Reach. Siberia.

I may have a chance to go to Lake Baikal by air on the cheap, to the city Ulaan Ude, only five time zones away. But first, find that damned passport or I'm stuck in Moskva.

Must. Reach. Siberia.

Why Siberia?

Because.

Update: Passport found! In my roofied state I still had the good sense to hide my dokuments away. It took some searching but now they are found.

Roofied

2005-07-24T11:18:00.000Z

I awoke to droplets splattering on my face amid the unmistakable sounds and smells of a rainshower. My surroundings were alien, but I knew that something was amiss because I was quite definitely outside. It took me more than a minute to recognize that I had wedged myself underneath two bushes and some carefully laid branches and twigs. I was soaking wet, clothing and hair matched in their dampness, and my thought-processes were sluggish. Pulling myself out of this makeshift bunker, I realized that I was in some residential area but I had no idea where. I wasn't even sure if I was still in Moscow or, for that matter, Russia. I stumbled around looking for clues that would tell me where I was and how to get back to my apartment on Tversakaya Street. I was completely lost. This was sometime on Saturday, late morning.

Some of the details of the earlier night began to precipitate out of my soupy mind. On Friday I had gone to an expat bar on the east side called the Boarhouse and had a good time chatting with Russians and foreigners alike. The nightlife in Moscow is considerably later than most American bars, and I looked at my cell phone and was astonished that it was 4:30 am already and the place was still quite full. I was ready to go home, but the subway would not be open until 5:00 am, so I decided to wait it out. I hate trying to negotiate with taxis in Moscow with me not being able to properly pronounce long Russian names to indicate the address. Besides, it would be easy for me to just wait for the Metro to open, just 30 minutes away.

Walking up to the Kurskaya Metro station I noticed a man who was bleeding profusely from his left eye, obviously the victim of a beating. There were a few teenager musicians mulling about, normal looking, who were yelling at the guy but not helping him. I later learned that he was an Armenian ("all are criminals" I was later told) and he had tried to pilfer from their donations cup. Not knowing the background, I tried to help, brought him a napkin and told him to keep pressure on the wound. He quite obviously needed stitches but no one around was thinking of helping him, and the policeman who eventually came plainly pointed the man towards the medical clinic.

At this time, Nikolai the Kazakhstani came into the picture, telling me that the bloody man was a criminal and to leave him be. I reluctantly said okay and Nikolai said, "You're a good man, let us drink a Russian beer." I told him no that I needed to get home, but he insisted and was so excited to meet an American. "We drink Russian beer, to friendship" His English was practically non-existent but I could understand his Russian fairly well. We walked to one of the many convenience stands around the subway terminal (where you point to stuff that you want in the window, but there's only room inside for one, the clerk). He said "We get good Russian beer!" On the way there Nikolai had explained to me that he was in Moscow only to make money for wife and son who were back in Astana, Kazakhstan. I could tell he wanted to impress me with his choice of beer, but it was evident quickly that he did not have money to afford it regularly. But he scanned over the displayed beers with his index finger, all of which unknown to me, and he finally stopped on one that was suitable. The logo was quite familiar to me and I tried in vain to dissuade him from it as he uttered, aloud, "Red Bull -- good Russian beer!"

We talked amiably for awhile in my makeshift Russian, drinking our Red Bull "beers', until I realized that something was going wrong in my system. Nikolai asked me if I was feeling okay and I said yes but I knew that something was amiss. I was completely sober by this time, I had only a few beers that night, the last being several hours ago, and began to realize that I had just been drugged. I had read online about foreigners, usually men, being slipped a sedative and subsequently robbed, but I prided myself on being too aware or observant or street-savvy to have that happen to me. But I could feel the roofie taking effect and I quickly scanned my mental datafile whether I was offered an open drink or not. No, I left the bar over 30 minutes prior and only drunk bottled water before leaving. But wait -- I had looked away, bent over while tying my shoe, that was when Nikolai must have slipped it to me. I did not want him to know that I knew he was trying to rob me, so I quickly excused myself and headed towards the Metro station.

As the mental fog buildt I knew I had to get to a place of safety, a relative term to be sure in Moscow, so I headed towards the subway exit where a large number of people would be mulling about before too long. Only ten minutes or so until the lines would open, perhaps I could thwart robbery or assault by anchoring myself there. That's one of the last of many muddy images I can remember.

I next awoke, between twenty minutes and an hour later, with the police asking me for my dokuments. I make it a practice to never leave the house with my passport, only carrying a photocopy if anything, because that's the worst thing to lose in a different country. They asked me if I had been drinking and I told them that I wasn't drunk but had been drugged. I have no idea what transpired afterwards because they left and Nikolai was there, escorting me to the subway. I surmise now that he had told them that I was his buddy but had too much to drink and that he was helping me home. I was definitely and extremely out of it, the rohypnol was at full peak.

Having a superhuman metabolism is not always a good thing. In college I was often the only one not drunk (or much much less drunk) when the gang would go out on the town. It probably has a lot to do with me being a light-sleeper and with my inability to put on too much weight. But now I am so thankful for it because I don't think there's any way I would have wriggled myself out of this situation. I told Nikolai that I was headed home through the Metro and ran towards the station. Somehow I even had the wits about me to buy two metro tickets from the teller and to go through the turnstiles. Nikolai, of course, followed me. I told him no, you stay here, I will go home. I don't recall what his excuse for coming with me, maybe he said he didn't want me to walk the streets of Moscow drunk, but I was already wise to his plan but I'm not sure that he knew that I was onto him. He seemed irritated that I was still awake and seemingly alert, although I was shutting down rapidly.

I got onto the blue line towards the Tverskaya Station, close to my apartment, five or six metro stops away. I was groggy, could barely stand much less read the cyrillic signs. There was no way I was going to be able to tell when the subway reached my station and each minute that transpired meant another step towards unconsciousness. Stay awake! I told myself as the blur of people and stations flew by. Finally, I saw my opportunity as we made a stop. The train across the room, going the opposite way, was also arriving so I decided to bolt towards it. Mind you, I was moving in slow motion at best, but I quickly jumped out of the car and "ran" towards the other one, barely making it as the doors automatically slammed shut. I looked backwards and saw that Nikolai, thankfully, had been shut out.

Still sure, however, that he was going to try to follow me, I had to make a clean getaway. At the next subway stop (I think) I hopped off and got onto another line entirely and rode somewhere four, five stops away. I don't remember much after that but I did have the good sense to make it into some bushes in a residential area and cover myself up so that no one would see me. I must've slept until the rain awoke me four or five hours later. I made a check of myself: I still had money and ATM card as well as my apartment keys and shoes. No pain in my bottom, no obvious bruises anywhere. All that was missing was my cell phone, which was due to be replaced by Cingular anyway. Whew!

I was still swirling after I awoke, having absolutely no idea where I was. I asked a cop for directions to the nearest Metro station and he courteously pointed it out. I was on the other side of the city, at least ten miles away! I was able to get myself home, finally, and collapsed on my bed on what must have been around noon on Saturday.

When I next awoke a few hours ago, it was 11:30 am Sunday morning. I just got back from eating and I feel pretty good, considering what I went through. Thank god for my superhuman metabolism! Now to go buy a cheap cell phone for the rest of my trip.

Moskva!

2005-07-22T07:25:00.000Z

Compartments on Russian trains come in four classes: 1st class (spalnyy vagon), which is a sleeping compartment for two; 2nd class (kupeyny), a compartment for four; 3rd class (platskartny), which is essentially 54 cots bolted down in one uncompartmentalized wagon; and 4th class (obshchiy), unreserved bench-seating where there may or may not be a place to sit and where there may or may not be livestock. After an uncomfortable experience last year in platskartny, I opted for the 2nd class ticket for the young girl's erotic journey from Milan to Minsk -- except the girl is a guy, not young, not erotic, and from Minsk to Moscow.

Fate seems to always mess with my mind when it comes to transportation. I usually sit there in my nice seat thinking, this one time, I'm going to finally have some leg room or elbow room. The empty seats beside me will taunt me, like a wounded butterfly does a kitten. And I can always see that guy from afar who has been assigned the seat next to me - slothlike and lumbering, noticeably unkempt and unbathed, rocking back and forth as he drags his white plastic bag down the aisle at shoulder level, knocking head after head on his way, slowly every slowly, to the place right next to me.

But not this time! Just two twentysomething secretary/advocate types, Olga and Olya, quite pleasant, who gave me some of their crackers and I gave them some of my beer (which is the custom in Russian trains). They asked me all about America and I asked them easy questions about Moscow and I could understand their Russian much better than I could understand those pesky Belarussians. And I actually ended up sleeping exceedingly well.

I've been walking all day long around Red Square and my feet are absolutely killing me. I write this in the TimeOnline internet cafe, which, with 200 computers running, is supposedly the largest computer cluster in Eastern Europe. And only 60% of them are occupied with annoying teenage boys playing video games.

Final Two Hours in Minsk

2005-07-21T14:17:00.000Z

There's something calming about Minsk. I mean, save for the whole totalitarian feel to the place, it is actually kinda nice here. No one's really smiling or laughing or getting too out of control but I so appreciate the orderliness of the whole place. Trains really do seem to run on time here and there are no rogue social elements that make a place like, say, Moscow, unpredictable, chaotic. And fun.

I guess my final verdict on Minsk is that it is, well, kind of boring, especially in comparison to other ex-Soviet metropolises I have visited, like Moscow, Kiev or Odessa. The kids, for example, congregate at McDonald's, as if it's the cool place to be. Interestingly enough, the drive-thru version here is, you guessed it, McDrive. And I see from the window that they offer the MacFresh, the vegetarian verion of their Big Mac or something. Quite honestly I have not had the nerve to fight the crowds to try one out and I prefer to use the place as god intended, as a non-pay toilet.

Though very few people here speak English, I see it constantly. The cool threads for male younglings to don are T-shirts emblazoned with something in "American" -- it doesn't really matter what it says. It is rather odd to walk by and see hipsters with "PepBoys" or "Lancaster, PA High School Track & Field" or "Louisiana is for Lovers" or any number of random T-shirts that would amount to junk to Americans. Of course the women wear high heels and very short skirts *everywhere*, something that I keep wishing would catch on in the USA.

In two hours, and with some trepidation, I climb aboard the train to Moscow, a skant 11 hour train ride away. I've been told that there is no border patrol or customs between Belarus and the Russian Federation, so I might, perhaps, be able to sleep all the way through. Wait, did I just write that? And as Belarus goes the way of Burma in becoming pariah of the world (due to extensive pressuring by both the European Union and the United States, in light of its poor human rights record and habit of disappearing independently minded journalists), I realize that I'll almost certainly never visit this quaint town again (unless called upon by Condi Rice to do so).

And now I leave you with a McDrive menu, in preparation for your next trip to Minsk.

Novi Shoeskis!!

2005-07-20T14:12:00.000Z

What began as a noble goal -- come back to the United States somewhat fluent in Russian -- is now laughable at best as I try to survive my safari without losing too much weight. There's no way I'm going to master this monstrous language. Of course I've gone about it all wrong as I should have just enrolled in some language school somewhere in the middle of Russia, where I couldn't get into too much trouble, but, as usual, I made it all too complicated. I have finally figured out why I can't understand what the hell these Minsk people are saying -- they are conversing in a mix of Russian and Byelorussian, which only contains 40% or so of the same verbage. So not only have I not made any strides forward, I've regressed, lost all confidence in my language skills and now go completely blank when any of these nutcases talk-yell at me.

However, one thing that someone somewhere might be proud of me for is that I actually got my shoes fixed at a shoe repair shop (pictured, below the "Don Corleone" restaurant, actually inside another store, the Italian shoe shop). Amazingly, I was able to get to the address chickenscratched on the paper by the hotel matriarch, then, somehow, I was able to ask, translated, "bad.shoe.fix?" all the while making the seal slapping noise with the shoe in an overexaggerated fashion. The presence behind the counter muttered something back to me betwixt his baked-bean teeth, and, of course, like the idiot that I am, just replied "Da! Da!" to whatever he was uttering, though it was complete jibberish to me. I could just as easily agreed to having my shoes fixed, polished and shoved squarely up my ass for all I knew. The dark undersized and hobbling man snatched them, and told me to come back, one hour, then disappeared behind the red curtain.

In the meantime, I watched with interest three cops either interrogating two motorists or giving them directions (though from what I understand, these guys are almost exclusively recruited from the countryside and know nothing about Minsk). I'm fairly certain that they took down his address and arranged for a later take-home beating. I'm not sure that they liked me taking their picture, I tried badly to be discrete, and luckily I did not get my ass kicked and skull batoned.

Soon I returned to the repair shop and voila my shoes are better than ever! This dwarfling, this veritable Lilliputian wizard of cobbling, only charged me $7! You gots to love the blue-collared countries.

Further progress was made in that I single-handedly procured a train ticket to Russia, leaving Minsk tomorrow evening and arriving at 8:50 am in Moscow. Readers of my previous wobble through Eastern Europe might remember that the train-ticket purchase is the most feared of all the harrowing social transactions in Russian culture. I had thought briefly about taking a day trip down to Gomel, the one city most adversely affected by the Chernobyl nuclear accident, but I am eager to move on. On to Mother Russia! By the way, visiting Gomel for one week is supposedly the equivalent of receiving a single chest x-ray. After seeing so many traces of radiation sickness last year in Ukraine, I'm not sure at this point I could stomach visiting a nuclear ghost town, still populated by several hundred thousand people. Perhaps next time.

And now, some more pictures showing how obsessed this place is with World War II, in which 1 in 4 people were killed, along with over 1 million Jews, a culture that is now almost entirely absent in modern Belarus.

My Kingdom for Shoe Adhesive!

2005-07-20T06:57:00.000Z

The feeling of a freshly deglued shoe sole, flapping like a dying fish with each new step, making the kind of slappy sound one only hears in the seal tank at Sea World, is the last thing one wants when already a stranger in a strange land. Flap flap flap went the obviously not-from-here dumbshit, as if every eyeball was not scanning him already, now trying desperately to mute the symphony of slappage by sliding his feet instead of stepping, of course to no avail.

My nice Diesel shoes have been rendered useless by the hot, humid Minsk air for perhaps the remainder of my trip (My other pair, the Cruel Shoes, have helped me set my personal record for the number of blisters acquired in one afternoon). Let it be known that I'm no MacGuyver in my own homeland, much less one in a country where I cannot tell cat food from breakfast cereal, so fixing these things out of tree bark and mud is out of the question. Nowhere in my 53 Pimsleur Russian audio CDs did I ever learn the term for shoe glue.

Perhaps these Byelarussians (and Russians also), who look as if they not only read Mademoiselle religiously but also uptake it intraveneously, will think this flaccid sole thing is the new fashion coming out of California? Yeah, me neither.

A Caning in Minsk

2005-07-19T16:23:00.000Z

Perhaps the most famous Minsk resident -- to Americans -- is Lee Harvey Oswald, who lived here in his twenties, after defecting to the Soviet Union, in an apartment overlooking the lovely Svisloch River (Okay, try saying the name of that river fast with a [faux]Russian accent and you know the hell that my lips and tongue are in half the day). Although the view is amazing, the apartment was supposedly quite run down in the day, and extremely bugged by the KGB.

Speaking of said organization, the KGB still exists here in Belarus and, in fact, I had a drink in a little hole-in-the-wall directly opposite their current headquarters. Tell me how simultaneously cool and weird that is! I'm quite sure that I've been [snip] bugged, edited [snip] and [snip] followed this [snip] entire detour into [snip] Byelarussia.

I can't get over how taintless it is here, easily the cleanest city I've visited of this size. While strolling this afternoon through Park Gorkogo , I noticed that even the stumbling russkie dipsomaniacs went out of their way to properly dispose of their Baltika bottles.

One thing that is really bothering me about Belarus is the fact that one US dollar is equal to 2190 Belarussian Roubles and, here's the kicker, they have no coinage. Yes, everything is in bill form and many of them are very close in color and not necessarily even the same sizes. Right now I only have something like $20 on me but the gigantic wad of rubles in my front pocket is so thick that, upon sitting down, it has effectively ensured that I will never be able to have children.

Oh yeah, one more thing, I did see a cop beat a motorist senselessly today. That's something you don't see everyday in the good ole USA.

I wanted to sign off with that, but I had better elaborate, since the story is just too good. Given: Belarus is a dictatorship, as totalitarian as it gets in Europe nowadays, and the police presence is shocking. But their system of pulling over cars is very odd as there are very few patrol cars running around. Today I watched a little cop dude in a big red hat arbitrarly waving his white baton at every 10th or 11th car that went by. What transpired afterwards I don't know, but I assume he was just checking papers or taking bribes, the usual routine.

But one renegade, I guess, decided he wasn't going to stop and throttled it. The little cop bolted -- on foot -- after the car, whose driver was easily six feet tall and 200 pounds. I don't know why the driver decided to pull into a dead end stop, he was probably all a-panic, but the sight of this mini-cop pulling the "criminal" out of the car and caning him six seven eight times in public, with onlookers trying to only half-watch, was a sight I'll never forget.

Two Lifelong Cups of Feculunce

2005-07-18T11:51:00.000Z

One of the most difficult things about my slow-motion wade through Eastern Europe is the whole vegetarian/vegan thing. Getting a decent meal here, besides the glorious Nutella, can be very difficult, but it doesn't stop stupid me from trying.

Today I entered a pizzeria on Karla Marksa vilitsa (Karl Marx Street) and, over the course of twenty minutes, managed to order a somewhat edible vegetarian pizza with no cheese. The lithe and very alert server kept repeating, smilingly, with ever bigger eyes, "Nye Myasa? Nye Sur?" (No meat? No cheese?). Foolishly I continued, such was my quest for something prepared by another human being. Predictably, fewer than five minutes later, the manager came over and counted down my order, in disbelief. Yes, no meat, no cheese, yes on the tomato sauce, yes on the bread, no on the mushrooms, yes on the basil.

The alien presence in the restaurant must have been too much for the other servers, because they stopped being attentive to their tables and had to slow down and gaze at the monstrosity that had managed to slither into their cafe. Soon it was like I was being waited on by five or six young women (to this day I have not seen any man work in any FSU restaurant), and one of them found the courage to ask, "Viy Italianets?" (Are you italian?). I laughed and said nyet. "Viy Espanets?" (Are you spanish?). Of course, being an honorary Spaniard, I felt like saying yes, but behaved myself. Such was the spectacle that other patrons began to chime in. Was I Portuguese, was I Greek, was I Macedonian? Clearly my Russian is too bad for them to ask about any of the ex-Soviet states.

Finally I let on and told them I was an American and, swear to god, one of them put her hand over her mouth and made one of those girly sounds that men cannot make and can barely hear. The pizza soon came, it took me forever to snarf it down, all the while fielding one-word questions from servers zooming past. Caleefornja? Beeverly Heels? Hoolywud? Las Wagus? Each answer, either da or nyet, came with it the same routine -- laughter, looks at one another, then more laughter. After nearly an hour, the bill appears, service here is notoriously slow, and the damage was a hefty 9200 Belarussian rubles (about five dollars).

As I gathered up my things to go, the manager rushed up and said "Gift for the American?" and set down a dainty cup of Italian coffee, with a small vodka accompaniment, in front of me. Now, to say I don't like coffee is perhaps an understatment. I believe it is the most foul taste -- and smell -- on the planet. I do not like coffee flavor in anything, I'm not sure I even like the word. Being the cool American drink that everyone is supposed to like, I have, in prior sittings, tried to drink it, but the fact that it tastes like ass has always gotten in the way. In my lifetime I have consumed a grand total of something like 1.5 cups of coffee. Total.

So there I sat, with eleven or twelve eyes fixed upon me, with the unholy sludge mocking me with its vile aroma. Do I drink or is this the point where I feign a thrashing heart attack and knock it to the floor? Being the recent master of the stoneface, and not wanting to insult these very nice Byelorussians, I quickly planned it out. Put in as much sugar as possible, kill it as fast as I could, then drown it with the cold vodka. At this point I should state that (a) both the coffee and the vodka were at higher temperatures than I had assumed, and (b) I cannot drink hot liquids at all, always ending with the same result: seared mouth flesh.

Needless to say, I didn't pull this off at all, my blank face turning into more of a sniggering/painful one, as the sickly hot ooze poured over my toungue, finding no relief with the lukewarm vodka chaser. Every unused olfactory gland exploded out of protest and my eyes started watering immediately. "Excellent!" I falsely proclaimed, with lips halfcurled from revulsion, voice cracking from abuse.

I quickly took leave, American tail firmly between legs, looking for the kind of relief that only Coca-Cola Light, with lemon, can bring.

Deferring to the Biggest Hat

2005-07-17T14:02:00.000Z

Belarus, known to the locals as Byelorussia, is directly translated as "White Russia." While there is indeed a shocking lack of ethnic diversity here (although no more than most of Eastern Europe), this is not the supposed etymology of the name. If anything it should be called "Green Russia" after the lush, almost fluorescent green, landscape. Of course, this is summer, so perhaps come the snows of winter the actual name is apt.

My bus ride to Minsk was long, uneventful and uncomfortable. I was certain that I had two seats all to myself until, at the last moment, an enormous and -- forgive me for saying so -- smelly Russian plopped down next to me and, in effect, wedging me in for the remainder of the trip. I couldn't properly describe his smell, some mix of cheap cologne, body odor, alcohol, lard and something else intangible. But I would venture to guess that anyone who's been to Russia knows this smell on older men.

Truthfully, I was more than a bit nervous crossing over the border into Belarus, notoriously one of the worst and most bureacratic in the world. What would they think of this American rolling into what Condi Rice called the last dictatorship in Europe? Would they look at my passport, see that I was in Ukraine last year right before their Orange Revolution, put 2 and 2 together and figure out that I was trying to bring down their totalitarian regime singlehandedly? (If the kind government of Lukanshenko is monitoring this blog, please know I'm just trying to bring the funny). They did, of course, give me the once over four times (does that make it a quadrice over?), with each new officer, with hats of increasing size, looking primate-like over my dokuments as if it was the first time they'd ever seen such alien artifacts. The ridiculous pantomime continued with me trying to show zero emotion -- and not smirking is seriously difficult sometimes -- but also trying not to look scared or mean or sleepy. Finally, at 2:30 am, they let the bus through without me even having to bribe anyone (and I had an Andrew Jackson stuck in my passport just in case).

Minsk, a city of 2 million people and almost completely flattened in WWII, is completely built in the Stalinist neoclassical tradition. Huge brownish ornate buildings, expansive boulevards and little-to-no traces of the millenium-old settlements that were in place here. The saying is that Belarus is more Russian than Russia, something I'm going to test in the next few days. I do know that absolutely no one here speaks English, a far cry from what I've found in Moscow, St. Petersburg and Kiev. Speaking Russian is getting easier but so often the words don't come quickly enough - I need to find some way to lance my mental boils.

There are police officers *everywhere* and I hope to hell revolution does not break out while I'm here. I cannot go into Russia proper until Friday, when my 30-day visa kicks in, so I will be somewhere in Belarus until then.

White-knuckler to Klaipedia

2005-07-16T16:18:00.000Z

Ever since my automobile accident in graduate school I have had slightly-beneath-the-surface anxiety about riding in the front seat of fast-moving vehicles (unless, of course, I'm driving!). Certain things, like sudden braking or swerving or seeing a car crash in first-person perspective on television, can trigger a mild panic attack. It's weird what a tiny event - like a head-on collision with a UPS truck - can do to one's neuroprogramming.

As nice as Latvia had been, it was high time for me to sneak away come morning. Minsk was my next target, but I had no interest in going back to Riga AGAIN to catch the bus there. The plan: Take a bus into Lithuania, from Klaipedia to Vilnius (where I now type this report) and then onto Minsk. The minibus to Klaipedia from Liepaja, however, is not exactly built for comfort but at least it goes fast. Very fast.

Eleven of us needed to get to Klaipedia and there were only ten seats, so guess who got to ride up front next to Ivan the Terrible. Latvian drivers are notoriously bad and the country tops Europe in the number of accidents per year, one of those statistics I wish I could have selectively hit the delete button on before boarding. Flying down the highway at rocket speed, Ivan throttled the hellbus as if he was being paid by the number of g's he could hit. I do not know how it was possible but he passed a car that was passing another car - TWICE - on this two-lane highway.

On the outside I'm sure my face was quite expressionless but inside I was screaming like an Edvard Munch painting. As the Lithuanian countryside blew by my window in a forest-green blur, I could feel the blood clotting in my brain by the second, and I knew I would emerge from the minibus as white-haired as Charlton Heston in the Ten Commandments. But now that the joyride is over, I recognize that edging ever close to death on four wheels in a foreign country was kind of fun.

Lithuania is an interesting country, at least from the window of the Nordeka bus, and I found myself passing through many historical cities I'd read about. Vilnius does feel a little bit dangerous, especially in the old town, but it is way cool that there is a statue of Frank Zappa here.

In two hours I leave on a bus for Minsk.

The Greatest Latvian Song of All Time

2005-07-16T15:27:00.000Z

Most Americans are unaware of the stringent requirements we have for our visas for visitors from abroad. The paperwork is enormous and the visa itself peculiarly expensive. In response, many countries have in turn amped up their requirements -- out of spite -- and border guards seem to go out of their way to hassle Americans.

Julija, my Baltic princess and bureaucracy smasher, arranged my 30-day Belaruss visa starting July 16 - but my bus was due to cross into Belarus at 11:30 pm. Yes, that 30 minutes matters and the flatheaded border goons would have certainly flicked me off the bus and into some Latvian haystack. It only took one run-in with a massive group of testerone-charged laddies from England to tell me that I needed to get the hell out of Riga and get back to Liepaja.

Deciding that this 20-hour sunlight was wreaking havoc on the old circadian rhythm disorder, I opted to seek anesthetic in the form of Latvia's national drink, Balzams. Mixed with Blackberry juice, some lemon and a bit of vodka, it is exquisitely good. Liepaja has a giant club called Latvia's First Rock Cafe that is pretty cool and quite beautiful.

I soon befriended two lawyers from Riga, Toms and Patrics (all male names get an "s" tagged on the end for some reason). Toms was wearing a Detroit shirt but had no idea what it meant and I'm not sure he quite understood my explanation. Before long my American accent attracted more curious Latvians and at some point (my internal time gauge is now out of whack, especially in the haze of blackberry Balzams) we all end up downstairs at Pablo's, the danceteria downstairs. The music is entirely American and British and somewhat inappropriate for the glammy atmosphere. Latvian scenesters, dressed in some pretty outlandishly small outfits, dancing to "Achy Breaky Heart", followed soon thereafter by Metallica?! Then three seconds into what sounded like Latvian rap all the girls in the club ran to the center of the dancefloor, embraced in a circle, shook different body parts as the MC counted them down and, at the end, pulled up their tops and flashed all the men in the room.

Memo to myself: Find a copy of this song!!!

Alabaster Sands and Barely Visible Speedos

2005-07-14T12:56:00.000Z

Although we think of Sweden in modern times as being an isolationist, icy, socialist-leaning country (and home of bad 70s disco), for several centuries it was the dominant power in the Baltics. That is, until the Great Northern War (1700-1721), when Denmark, Norway, Prussia, Poland and Russia all ganged up and kicked its ass, after which Russia became the dominant power in the region. And Sweden still cries itself to sleep after its nightly mead.

During this war, Liepaja, a major seaport for the Swedish empire, was decimated and its population was reduced by about half. Numerous touching and visceral statues speckled around town lovingly honor a time when the Swedes were not just blonde sissies. And none of the pictures I took are good enough to put up so too bad.

I spent a couple of hours on the pristine beaches of Liepaja on the Baltic Sea, making my skin a couple shades too dark for this part of the world, and the stinging of the ocean water on my open blisters was exquisite. The sights were simultaneously inspiring and horrific. I have come to the conclusion that, when Latvia was accepted to the European Union, there was such jubilation country-wide that fornication became rampant. That is the only explanation I can muster for the sheer number of baby carriages being shoved and maneuvered around town (although, honestly, I'm not sure there are actually babies in those carraiges. hmmm.)

Tomorrow I go back to Riga, pick up my visas from the goddess Julija and then don my battle armor as I head into Belarus by bus.

I am King, Liepaja be my Dominion

2005-07-13T11:42:00.000Z

Sometimes I feel like Jerry Seinfeld in that episode where Kramer proclaims him to be "Even Steven", because everything pretty much works out for him, neither really gaining but not losing anything either. I've decided that that is me, but I think my lows are a little blacker and my peaks are a bit whiter, evening out to the nice greyscale you all recognize as Rod.

While filing my report this morning in the 90 degree Internets Kafejica, I found myself laughing out loud at some of the responses/emails I've been getting (thank you, and i mean that, no really). I guess my laughter was in English (don't ask me) because the Eastern Eurosecretariat sitting next to me needed something translated for her. Backstory: During the afternoon, internet cafes all across the FSU (former Soviet Union)are filled with women who try to use their beauty to electronikally hook Western gentleman into "sponsorship". It is interesting to watch them juggle ten to twelve men and they are not the least shy about it.

So after helping her out with some idiomatic phrases this dumbass Tennessean was using (like "down on the farm"), she asked me where I was staying. It was early in the morning still and I didn't really want to repeat my detention at the Hotel Brize (which turns out unshockingly to be directly opposite the historical Latvian equivalent of Guantanamo Bay), so I replied that I was probably staying across the street at Hotel Rive. She said "No, I have better place." Being an American and inherently knowing that such offers probably entail me dressing as Little Bo Peep at some point, I verbally hesitated. But she insisted and said "Nice apartment, 20 meters, 15 Lats. Come, I show you."

And it was, and is, literally 20 meters away, a couple of apartments above a DHL delivery/shoe store where she was the manager. She could see the skepticism on my face and said "You nice guy, nice smile, you help me, I help you." So she showed me this beautiful and enormous place, uncharted in any of the touristy documentation I've garnered, with two twiggy cleaning girls vacuuming and dusting, and it was/is magnificent! Air conditioning (hello!), showers that actually drain, a stove/fridge in case I find edible food, towels that actually wrap around, and so close to the internet cafe! Now, because of my above average teeth and propensity to smile like a dumbass when meeting new people, I shall live like royalty, ruling over Liepaja with a velvetty iron glove, for $15/night.

And, as I am now truly drunk with power, I plan to send my minions on a pillaging campaign on Droga's, the nearby drugstore. Anon! Thy king needeth Nutella and foot bandages!

Emaciation has Begun

2005-07-13T06:28:00.000Z

When traveling through an unknown country, even the most commonplace social transactions can be burdensome if you aren't familiar with "the way"; in other words, how things are done in that culture, things we take for granted. In the US, going to a deli and taking a number could be a complicated transaction if one did not speak English or know "the way".

Take my trip to Liepaja, the self-proclaimed hippest city in Latvija, in which I type this report in an internet cafe where all the versions of Windows are inexplicably in French. I borded the bus from Riga with no incident and watched four hours of green greenery pass me by, evoking thoughts of road trips in northern Missouri or across Pennsylvania, although stamped here with unmistakable Soviet relics of industrialized farming. Some of my fellow teenage passengers have apparently not yet learned that annoying and obnoxious blasting popculture mobile ringtones are no longer cool, so any chance of this light sleeper catching any zZz's was out of the question.

Now, in most of my travels through the world, a bus takes you from point A to point B, sometimes stopping at points C or D in between -- but you will definitely get to point B if you wait long enough. This is not "the way" in Latvija. As we get closer to Liepaja (and mind you, I have no idea what this place looks like at all)... Are these scary places that people are getting off at "run down" or is that term even applicable in the wilds of Latvija? So, people are getting off at corner after corner, as if this thing has turned into a local bus all of a sudden. No one speaks English and I ask a tiny college-aged femme, pa-russkie, "Where is the bus station". The chilling answer was that there was none.

Okay, now the question is, where do you jump off? I had made a reservation at the Hotel Brize electronically (thank you god/superman/jesus/santa claus for inventing the internet) but, of course, I had no map in hand. I didn't even know how to tell the grumpy bus driver, throttling and braking simultaneously through the "city" of Liepaja, how to get off. So, I waited until someone else debussed and ran off with them.

First goal/ordeal, find a map so I can get my bearings. After a mini-safari, I get one and the street I need is nowhere to be found on it. Now, I don't want to get all jingoistic, but what is the deal with the Latvian language? It is only spoken in Latvia (and parts of Tobaga, a former Latvian colony -- bet you didn't know that!) and the closest language is Lithuanian, which is similarly linguistically secluded. And these two langauges are unlike anything else on earth and knowledge of Latin or German or Spanish or Swahili or French or Arabic or Japanese or whatever you've got in your toolbox is going to be useless here. And only about half the populace speak Russian, and when they don't, they get bitter at you for trying.

Second goal/ordeal, just find a cab and show him the address and he'll take me to the hotel. But in the meantime I'll just walk north cause I at least remember that the sun sets in the west and hopefully I'll see a cab on my way. Suffice to say that I walk four miles, with the stupid rolling bag bouncing up and down on cobbled streets before I get to a hotel in which I can even ask someone directions. At this time of the year, the Baltic States experience extremely long days, which messes with your mind because you're thinking its 7:30 pm and it's actually 10:30 pm (with the sun setting at about 11:30 pm).

I finally get to the hotel and it looks like a bombed out shelter from the outside, but sorta nice on the inside, but after five miles afoot, three blisters and likely five pounds of body weight, I collapse on the bed and fall asleep. Breakfast will have to be my dinner.

The Spaniard and the Grifter

2005-07-12T08:06:00.000Z

When the three Baltic States declared and obtained indepedence from the Soviet Union, each had the task of producing its own coinage. As the European Union started to take hold, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania each had eyes on joining. The result is that their $2 coins look shocking similar, especially the 2 LAT and the 2 LIT, but they have very different valuations: 2 LATs = $3.50 and 2 LITa = $0.70.

Now, of course I bring this up because I, the guy who has been to Latvia before and ought to know better, got grifted yesterday. A Latvian fellow approached me all distraught and asked me if I could change a 10LAT bill for 5 2 LAT coins, cause he needed it for change for the parking meter. Being the good citizen I obliged and, as you can undoubtedly predict, he gave me 5 2 LITa coins back. As he walked away, I looked down at the coins and they didn't look quite right and then realized that they said Lita on them. Grifted out of $15 dollars or so!

I bring this up because I saw the same twentysomething dude, named Paolo, pulling the same routine on two German teenagers this morning. Being the good samaritan, I walked up and called him out. He was apologetic and claimed innocence, but I told him I didn't want my money back, that I was stupid in the first place and what I really wanted to know was how much money he made at it. He just smiled and, like a master chess player, told me about his strategy. He looked for people who were obviously not Latvian, primarily by their dress, whether they carried a backpack or manbag and if they were significantly overweight (something not seen here in the Baltic States - yet!) I asked him how he pegged me and he replied with a laugh, "Spaniard, you not from Latvia!" And he kept calling me "Spaniard", much to my amusement.

Of course I should have called the cops on him but, unlike Russia, there aren't constables everywhere -- and the one officer I have seen looked like she should be in Cosmopolitan instead of patrolling the streets of Riga. Besides, I'm not always clear on that whole right/wrong thingy especially when fun can be had.

I watched Paolo in action for about twenty minutes, targeting mark after mark, and everyone fell victim to his con. In this time he had made something like 100 LATs ($175), in a country where the average monthly salary is $200! He offered to treat me to a night on the town this evening, with "girls he will provide", but I know better than to trust a grifter and, besides, I must be on my way to Liepaja.

I asked him to at least not target teenagers because money is more scarce for them and he replied, "For you Spaniard, since you no turn me in, I will not do".

Yeah, right.

Nyet to Vilnius, Da to Liepaja

2005-07-11T12:46:00.000Z

The last pagan state of Europe was Lithuania, who didn't convert to Christianity until well into the 14th century. At its height, the Lithuanian empire stretched from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea (or to my fellow provincial Americans, one body of water to another body of water, kinda far away, both of which are on the side of the globe that no one cares about). Vilnius, its capital, is simultaneously beautiful and rugged, retaining somewhat of a wild west feel.

That said, I'm not going.

Julija, the red-haired tetralingual doyenne of quick visas, has waved her magic wand and will obtain my visas to Belarus and Russia in four days. That's longer than I wanted to be here in Latvia, but it's 24 days faster and $100 cheaper than if I had done it in the USA. For those of you who don't know, obtaining a visa to Russia is a royal pain in the ass, and getting it in one of the Baltic states is much easier. Since 9/11, visa requirements TO the United States have gotten more stringent, so places like Russia now make American citizens fill out long, ridiculous parallel documents, primarily out of spite.

So, it will cost me $200 for the two visas for pseudo-next-day service but, since they took my passport to do so, I'm stuck in Latvia for those days. I really love Riga but there are so many annoying Austrians and Germans here that I must take my leave, thank you. Tomorrow I will be headed to Liepaja, the third largest city in Latvia and home of more rock musicians per capita than any other city in Eastern Europe.

Bushwhacked by Morpheus

2005-07-11T06:59:00.000Z

Those of you who know me know well know that I've had a sleeping problem for much of my life. Call it light sleeping, call it hyperactivity, call it snappage-in-slo-mo, but it is unusual for me to sleep more than five hours a night solo. After scoring a room in the Hotel Karavella on the outskirts of Riga (the longest 2 kilometers on the face of the earth), I laid down for a 2 hour nap and woke up 15 hours later, with MTV Russia blaring on the 9" sepiatone TV set. I knew that I did not pack very well this time, but who woulda thought I would have forgotten my drool bucket? The less said about how I looked pre-shower the better.

I waited around a couple of hours for the free breakfast at 7:30 am, ate some of the best watermelon I've ever had (and I've had some award-winning melon right out of my grandpappy's farm in Missouri) and slowly stirred my lifesaving Metrix extreme chocolate protein powder into my chilled water. This mix came from the very pouch that exploded in my bag, giving all my clothes a chalky, chocolatey residue. Good times. "What's that cologne you're wearing?" "Met-RX, made in the good ole U.S.A."

Trying to shake off my extremely disturbing dream about how one of my pchem students discovered the truth about my (accidental) killing of a middle school classmate, I ventured out to get my visa to Russia. Hopefully I'll have it in my shaky, vitamin-deprived hands by the end of the day tomorrow. Then its either to Lithuania or Belarus, all depending on what Julija, the latvian goddess of visas, can do for me.

Lovely Riga

2005-07-10T05:04:00.000Z

During my research for last year's stumble through Eastern Europe, I came across an interesting website called www.sleepinginairports.com. Of course, that's something that I thought only smelly Dutch hippies would do, but I'm here to tell you that (a) I did that last night in Riga International and (b) it wasn't that bad, save for the metal bar jutting in my back half the night. That was fixed by my handy pocket-size Vocab Dictionary.

My flight got into RIX from Frankfurt (which I almost missed despite the 12 hour layover!) at 01:00 am, giving me a ready-to-depart time, after customs and baggage recoup, of about 02:00 am. Now, mind you, my phone doesn't work over here yet, not until I replace the SIM card with a Latvian one, and I certainly did not want to hoof it through the cobblestone roads of old Riga with my dumb little roller bag while the youth of Riga where wilding. Besides, I have always thought that hotels are just about the crappiest value for the dollar going as I generally spend very little time in them.

So, after almost exactly one year, I'm back in Riga, the unofficial capital of the Baltic states. I spent nearly a week here last year so I'm not exactly here for discovery purposes. Just get my visas to Belarus and Russia done and then I'm outty. I do find this to be a great city, quite comfortable for me this year since I know where everything is, although the prices have gone up considerably. I will hold off on my diatribe against the European Union and the spoilers from Great Britain for another time.

It is Sunday, I have no place to stay yet as everything appears booked up by the pillaging Britons, but I don't care because I can always pay the 20 cents to get back to the airport to sleep! If it all works, I may be heading to the coastal town of Jurmala or possibly Liepaja while the visa paperwork goes through.

Zwolf Uhr layover

2005-07-09T13:29:00.000Z

Bicycles everywhere. Cobblestone streets. Metrosexual men sporting square glasses. Cars so tiny youre afraid youll up-end them if you are not careful. Fashion so bad that you want to fall eyeball first into a bed of nails. Yes, damen und herrun, welcome to Germany. En route to Riga, I find myself in Frankfurt, the economic and bellyfat powerhouse of Germany and, hence, the European Union. I have been flying Lufthansa, which serves free beer and wine to all passengers and is therefore the greatest airline in the world.

It took me for-fing-ever to find this internet kafe, mostly because theres little need for them in heavily networked countries like Deutschland. This place is a scream because they are playing late 60s/early 70s country music so old that I'm shocked it ever made it to CD. Think Buck Owens, Marty Robbins, Red Foley and Jerrz Reed (okay, one thing I had forgotten about these damn keyboards in German-speaking countries is that they have the 'y' and 'z' kezs switched!!) Damned annozing.

There is something charming about a culture that is so incredibly uncool that there's really no hope for them, and I think they know it. Even the black dudes and asian girls here are uncool. One interesting thing, I don't think I really need to see Willy Wonka because I've been living it for five hours already. And for someone who was allegedly fluent in German in graduate school, I don't know what the hell these people are saying, with their spit and their crazy verbs at the end of the sentence. Maybe it's because I've been awake for somewhere between 14 and 28 hours (I'm having trouble with the conversions at the moment).

One last funny thing... I've already broken the law in Europe because I've been riding the subway free all day and just realized a little while ago that you're supposed to pay for it beforehand.

These Germans are just too cute with their honor code.

Begin the unthawing of Vladimir Lenin!

2005-06-30T00:58:00.000Z

I am on my way back to Russia...

This is the plan: Get to Riga, Latvia on Saturday to get my visas in order, spend a week in Belarus, take the train to Moscow and spend a week or so there and then head into the depths of Russia! I am due to fly out of Istanbul sometime in late August. This is the plan and I'm quite sure it will go awry many times.

Poka!