Per aspera ad astra

For all of the love-hate I feel for Russia, it’s always harder to leave than I think it will be. I arrived back in Huntley yesterday evening after about 20 exhausting hours of traveling, waiting in lines, and just plain waiting. But at the same time, I feel like I’m just going to wake up and it’ll be Russia again; I’ll say goodbye to Nina, hop on the bus, head to the AH, etc etc.

But since that’s not true and I’m already missing the place in general, here’s the short-list of things I’m invariably going to miss the most (besides the other teachers, friends, Nina M. and the 140-odd students I’ve had):

1. Banya- first and foremost. Joanna, Molly, and Aaron’s sister/friend went on Tuesday and I was stupid sad about not being able to go again. I did find one in Seattle that I could go to, except I don’t know how I feel about paying $30 to banya it up.
2. Drinking in public. This has its ups and downs. I’m certainly not advocating the kind of drinking that results in men who stumble out of trolleybuses and pee right on the sidewalk. But sometimes it’s nice to sit in the park and drink a glass of wine as the police stroll on by to go catch jaywalkers.

3. Moscow. I loved having the city only a short train ride away. Yes, I know I have Chicago now and I love the city, but I need a car to even get to the train station and it doesn’t have cool Communist architecture everywhere. 

4. Blini and borscht. Both of these I am perfectly capable of making myself, but haven’t quite mastered yet. Also, having borscht with sour cream is just not the same as having it with smetana.

5. Teaching. This is kind of obvious. I told my parents last night that I was surprised at how much I like teaching ESL. I don’t know if it’s something I could do forever (actually, I know it’s not) but it’s the only kind of teaching I think I enjoy doing. 

6. Cheap and effective public transport. This doesn’t really need an explanation. Not having a car makes you really appreciate trolleybuses.

There are more things, but I’m sleepy and can’t think of all of them. That and it makes me kind of sad just trying to. And as someone wise and uncited once said-

Traveling is not just seeing the new, but leaving the old behind.

So… do svidanya for now, Russia and everyone/thing I left behind there. We’ll meet again someday, I hope.

On Monday, in honor of the wonderful weather and our day off, a group of us decided to go outside the city to have a picnic. One awesome thing about most Russian towns is that when you leave the town, you’re actually out of the town, no messy suburbs clinging to the city outskirts, just endless trees and fields. Once you get past this guy, that is.

Okay, so the day before was Carnival in Vladimir and some people dressed up in weird costumes- meaning this guy isn’t completely abnormal. But still. It’s the morning after, dude.

Alex drove us out of town and Tanya called from her taxi, saying that she was en route. We pulled off in the woods and decided to waste a little time by trying out the Mentos and Coke experiment that everyone on YouTube contemplates doing at some point. Here’s the set-up, c/o Molly and Aaron…

And the glorious failure.  c/o the fact that we didn’t have nearly enough Mentos and the fact that we neglected to use diet Coke.

Oh well, that’ll teach us. Always check Wikipedia before you try to make things explode. Tanya showed up and we realized we didn’t have nearly enough food for the six of us, so we crammed back into the car and Tanya took a picture of us all comfy in the backseat of Alex’s Lada.

Dangerous? Let’s just say that the Russian notion of automobile safety ends at “don’t drive into walls”. We drove back to the forest, found a decent spot, went off to pee and found a much better place and set up. Fine, everyone else set up. I just kind of goofed off with the skewers.

Fire started, we (read: everyone else) got to work cutting pieces of meat, skewering and cooking them over the flame. Here’s Tanya, shashlik expert, and the finished result. Yum.

And here we are enjoying the feast.

Check out the fake table that our place came with!

With our shashlik, we had a fine selection of beverages, including wine (3 dollars), water (without gas, thank you), and kvas. Being in Russia for almost a year and a half and having never tried this uniquely strange Russian beverage is practically sacrilege, so I finally gave in.

Decent in an artificial way. As you might have guessed, we completely forgot cups. However, since we’re always classy, we improvised.

3 dollar wine deserves to be drunk out of the finest in recycled olive cans.

Finally, with our banquet over, we were all sleepy and relaxed, which meant it was finally time for me to do something and whip out my amazing masseuse skills (which I’m convinced is the only reason the Russkies keep me around)

Aaron brought his skills along too, but I think he got tired halfway through.

Here’s our triumphant group, post-picnic. We love the Nature!

Eleven days until I’m back in the States and I’ve already packed up my sweaters, donated some books to the American Home, and set up a driver to Sheremetyevo for the wee hours of the morning on the 28th. That’s not bad. Now if only I could make myself concentrate on planning lessons…

Remember my cereal incident from earlier this year? Well, no worries, I have another breakfast misunderstanding to share.

One day a little while ago, Nina M. sliced up some meat and cheese for me. She opened the cabinet where she keeps bread and instead of a giant loaf of white bread, she pulls out a bag of genuine, American-style sliced bread. Now, I’m a breakfast traditionalist and think that sandwiches are strictly a post-noon venture, but she was so happy (and I haven’t had sliced bread in so long) that I couldn’t refuse. Everything went well (besides the fact that she kind of looked at me sideways when I put a second slice of bread on top), until she opened the refrigerator.

“Do you want хрен (khryen) for your sandwich?”

I paused. Now, my Russian is flawed, for sure, but I am pretty fluent in the slangy-curse words category and I believed that my sweet Nina Mikhailovna had just asked me if I wanted some dick on my sandwich.

“What?” I said, getting a little red on the face.

“Хрен, Хренннн.” she repeated more slowly, as she tends to do when she thinks I don’t understand.

“No, thanks.”

“Really? Are you sure?” (again, a common occurrence.) “Well I’ll just take it out and if you want it, it’s there.”

She took a small jar out of the fridge and my heart stopped for about a second, thinking that maybe it wasn’t totally inconceivable for Russians to use all sorts of appendages as food sources. Only after she had left the kitchen did I open the jar hesitantly and peer inside.

Хрен apparently has two meanings, the aforementioned colorful meaning and “horseradish”. Well now I know.

On the last day of conversation class last semester, one of my Olyas asked me how I liked the Golden Gates museum. I told her I’d never been, despite the fact that the Golden Gates are, literally, a three minute walk from the American Home and easily one of the most famous things about Vladimir. We resolved to go after I came back from Egypt and she finally gave me a call last week. Another conversation student, Ivan, came up from Moscow to impart some of his incredibly extensive knowledge of military history and we were off.

Inside the museum is a diorama depicting the Mongol invasion in the 13th century. Basically it’s a model of the gates with some plaster soldiers and some flashing lights (red for fire, white for emphasis), all explained by a mumbling, yet majestic-sounding, Russian narrator. There are some ancient weapons, flags, etc. and then the museum goes through some more modern military history- WWI, WWII (The Great Patriotic War po-russki) and ends with a cosmonaut suit (Cold War 2 in space? Cool.). Look- here it is!

For some reason you need to pay to take pictures (granted, it’s two dollars, but still) and we’re cheap people. Hence the reason this picture looks sort of sneaky and nobody is posing. On the stairs going up to the museum, there was a metal gate that Olya insisted that we take multiple pictures at. Here’s one of the few that didn’t turn out too dark.

We decided to enjoy the day and walk down the main street in Vladimir to Соборная Плошадь (Cathedral Square). Here are the two cathedrals that Vladimir is even more famous for. The first, Успенский Собор (Assumption Cathedral)

The other cathedral is Дмитриевский Собор (St. Demetrius Cathedral) built by Prince Vsevolod of the Big Nest (yep, that’s his title). It’s actually really pretty little cathedral with beautiful and intricate carvings on the outer walls. If you’re super-interested, check out Vladimir’s official site for the longer descriptions about these two and the various other cathedrals around town.

When people in Vladimir get married, they usually go to a place called ЗАГС (pronounced “zaks” and is like our city hall) and have a very small official ceremony. In between the bureaucracy of ЗАКС and the drunken insanity that happens at the reception (think American wedding reception + open bar + Russian alcohol tolerance), they drive around town taking pictures at all of the most popular sites. They usually end up at this little hill that looks over Vladimir and its surrounding forests.

A fountain between the two cathedrals.

Finally, one of my favorite things in Vladimir is this statue. I have no idea what it’s actually called, but the local name for it is Три дурака (The Three Fools). It’s a pretty ridiculous monument, and my favorite fool is this giant guy who is cradling a tractor in his lap. Vladimir used to be huge in the tractor-making business. Now, well, it’s just Vladimir.

We finished off the afternoon by going to Shinok for some quality borscht. All in all, a very satisfying and a very Russian Sunday.

The past few days in Russia have been hot. I know that when spring comes, sometimes 70 degrees feels like 90.  However, this week in Russia, it actually was 90. Around 96, really. You know that haze that you can see reflecting off of the road mid-August? That’s what it felt like when I was walking through in my apartment, on the streets, up the stairs at the AH, etc.
Now, Nina M. is great, but the only beverage I ever get with dinner is tea. Hot, hot tea. So, on my way home from work, I decided to stop in a small shop by my apartment to get something cold to drink. (My original goal was juice, but Russia has this strange aversion to cold juice.) The store was at least 10 degrees warmer than it was outside, but I was desperate and got in line. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, grocery stores have been gradually getting more and more Western. (A US-style store called Grossmart near the AH is a particular favorite.) The major difference between the old stores and the new ones is that at Grossmart, you can take the item you want off the shelf, take it to the cashier and pay for it. At the other stores, you stand in line, ask the disgruntled woman behind the counter for what you want, wait for her to get it and pay for it. Inefficient and annoying for everyone involved? Why, yes! (At first, I assumed this method was a clever way to prevent shoplifting. But most Russian stores also have security guards/bouncers- so much for that one.)
And now that Vladimir is enforcing a law where hard liquor can’t be sold past 11, the 10:30-11:00 rush of teenagers, 30 year olds reliving their youth, and alkie diehards can’t be beat. I got to the store at 10:43 and waited. And waited. I studied the sparse selection in the dying fridge. Three Baltikas (beer), two Klinnskoes (also beer, apparently worse from what I heard in line), a few cans of Coke and a couple of giant Cokes and giant Fantas. I didn’t really want Coke and I certainly didn’t want beer, so I resolved to finally give in to the terrible marketing of Fanta. What’s the worst that could happen?

I feel like nobody in the States drinks these, but they’re everywhere in Russia (and were quite prominent in Egypt). I’ve never tried them, but I was a huge fan of Crush orange soda back in the day and decided that they must be slightly similar. After waiting about twenty minutes sandwiched in line between ignoring a drunk guy who kept saying his birthday was last week and fighting a babushka who kept trying to cut in front of me, I finally got to the aforementioned disgruntled woman (who, due to the heat and endless stream of drunkards, was bordering on surly) and ordered my huge bottle of Fanta. She pressed the unlock button and I walked over to the fridge and retrieved my prize (like I said, stupidly inefficient). After leaving the store-sauna, I opened my prize and took a big gulp.

The verdict’s in. Fanta is terrible. Absolutely awful stuff. After reading the Wikipedia article on it, I realized that it might be revolting because it was originally made from leftovers- apple fiber and whey to be exact (who knew Miss Muffett was eating milk plasma? Yuck.). Or maybe it’s because a Nazi Coke CEO designed it. Now that’s evil in a bottle. Anyway, the whole point of this is to warn you. Don’t drink Fanta. Those girls in the annoying commercials? They only wanted to Fanta because they were paid to look like they weren’t choking on their own bile. The end.
*note: if you have a tendency to get terrible catchy songs stuck in your head, you probably shouldn’t have read this post