Wonderings and Wanderings...

Endings and Beginnings (To Know this Place for the First Time)

2008-08-14T09:18:00.001-07:00

August 10, 2008
Littledoe Lake, Algonquin ParkT

Time present and time past

Are both present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable…
~ T. S. Eliot

I’ve imagined myself here many times before. Sitting on this rock, this small piece of the Canadian Shield; watching this water lap against this shore; raising my eyes to the far shore, a tree line of pine, spruce, birch, maple, cedar; the smells of all of the above wafting by on a gentle breeze; the sun intermittently shining between clouds of white cotton candy. No, it wasn’t this particular rock, for I’ve never seen this rock before. Yet it was this rock, this landscape, with this pen in this hand drawing meaning onto this blank page. I imagined myself here, I suppose, as this place has been the beginning, the end, and the midway point of so many journeys. A constant in a circle. While it has rained at times, this has always been a place of calm, of clarity, openness of mind, of peace—home. As I’ve imagined it, I should be sitting here in a moment of revelation, self-reflection, epiphany. This was to be a moment in which I would dispel of all my uncertainties for the upcoming year, make sense of the frustrations of the past year, finding meaning in chaos, and be ready to move forward, renewed, more assured of where I am going and why, more settled in where I have been. I have been imagining this moment, this image, this landscape and me in it, for this is something that I want, that I need, a moment where I can finally, once again, be still.

I write this way, describing an imagined scene, because when I first sat down here I was doubtful, unhopeful that this sought-for moment would be found. I was ready to describe the scene, and how however hard it was sought, it still remained slightly out of reach. I was going to write, admit, finally, my self-frustration, and in doing so perhaps beginning to move beyond the anxieties, the second-guessing, the feelings of worthlessness, pessimism, ambivalence, and in this round-about way bring myself to the same point that I had been imagining, yet had not yet found.

But as I write like this, describing a hypothetical response to an imagined scene, I write myself back to here. To this rock. To this water. To these horizons, gentle winds, and hesitantly sunny skies. To this place that never fails to remind me that the universe is alive. Living, breathing, singing. Full of joy and wonder, for those who seek her. У земля есть музыка для тех, который ее слышит. I remember, here, now, what it is to be in awe, most of all this time because I did not completely expect that I could still be moved in this way. Perhaps there is no revelation to be found, there is just to be. No epiphany, but to recognize the beauty of the present. No moment to be sought, but now. And I’m here, now. As I’ve been before, both beginning and ending, and where I will be again. Where, on one level or another, I will always be. Here. And Now.

Time past and time future
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
~ T. S. Eliot

Beautiful British Columbia

2008-06-20T15:53:00.000-07:00

June 8-16, 2008

After adventures in Beijing Airport's terminal 3 and a trans-Pacific crossing, we arrived to Vancouver safely and were greeted by a dear high school friend. The last week was spent adjusting, relaxing, and soaking in the magnificent place that is British Columbia. After the countless cities, mountains, lakes and rivers we have encountered this year, I say with utmost humility that these Canadian landscapes remain among the most beautiful I have ever seen. And, although I am still thousands of kilometres from the lands of my birth, the smell of pine, cedar, spruce, maple, fresh air and running water is enough to know that I am home. BC has most definately lived up to its slogan: Beautiful British Columbia. Here are some images.

Oddities and Observations in My Home and Native Land

2008-06-10T08:53:00.001-07:00

June 10, 2008

People around me are speaking English. Feist is playing in the coffee shop. People buy coffee (real coffee!) in travel mugs and drink it on their way to work. They smile as they walk. They say sorry when you bump into them. I am reading the Globe and Mail. Controversy of Hockey Night in Canada’s theme song is the biggest story of the day. Cars stop to let pedestrians pass—an old man pulling out of his driveway smiles and nods as he waits for me to go by.

Another man, restocking shelves, asks me without prompting if I need help, then tells me the exact placing on the shelf of a specific aisle where I can find peanut butter. I go there and find at least a dozen varieties, at normal prices. Other grocery store luxuries include: soy milk, humus, pita bread, thai sauce, donuts, fresh coffee beans, maple syrup, etc. (all in one place!). I take money out of an ATM with ease, and no conversion fees (though I find myself now converting the other way, multiplying by 23 into roubles or 7 into yuan, or 1150 into Mongolian turigs). Wilfrid Laurier, Queen Elizabeth and a pair of polar bears are back in my wallet. I pay for something that costs $20.69 with $40 and the cashier doesn’t blink, counting out my change with a smile on his face (the grocery store across the street even has an automatic change dispenser).

Black people, brown people, white people, Asian people, different people walk the streets. They all have passports like me, with blue covers and a bilingual message from the Queen. That is, if they carry passports—it is not a requirement here. I am no longer a minority, a representative by default of my native land. Though strangely I still feel like a foreigner. People seem so friendly that I find myself searching for ulterior motives, I am confused and skeptical of their politeness. I wonder if this is how new immigrants feel, overwhelmed by the cleanliness, orderliness, politeness of things. I seem to have developed an irrational case of paranoia (or at least here it seems irrational, where elsewhere it was necessary). I wonder if this is indeed where I am from, the land of my origin. It is new and strange and unpredictable. Though perhaps it is just my body, wandering the streets at 6am, thinking it is 11pm at night. Perhaps when I remember how to sleep at normal hours, I will remember how to live in this country again, to communicate in English, to not labour over counting out exact change. To trust strangers. To eat peanut butter and drink coffee and get riled up about hockey theme songs. To not be surprised when people who aren’t white speak flawless English (or French), because they’ve lived in this country longer than I have. To pay $2.50 for public transit without outrage and cross the street without fearing for my life. To be Canadian, to be at home.

Homeward Bound

2008-06-10T08:52:00.000-07:00

June 8, 2008

I am some 33 000 feet above land. Somewhere, probably by now, over eastern Russia. There are few words, metaphors, comparisons that could be used to describe the strange feeling in my gut. It’s not quite excitement or anxiety, sadness or fear, ambivalence or uncertainty, though I think it maybe be a combination of all of the above. If I had to make a statement, however, it would be to say that I’m not sure that I’m ready to return home, wherever and whatever that may be, quite yet. I’m not yet ready to bring to a close the adventures of this past year, the highs and lows that it has entailed, the discoveries and lessons (sometimes hard) that have been found, the landscapes the have been explored, the freedom, relatively speaking, to wander as I please. I am comforted, however, in knowing that, although I can’t quite express this emotion, it is perhaps not so uncommon, as I myself, and I’m sure many a traveler, have known it before.

If you have been following this blog since it’s beginning, you may be familiar with the origins of its title. If not, briefly, it grew out of a series of correspondences with a friend about the idea of wanderlust, and the cyclical nature of the relationship between wonder and wander. One of these correspondences included the reading of one of my friend’s essays, written during her graduate student years. As timing would have it, I read this essay while nearing the end of a month leading canoe trip in Algonquin, just a few weeks before I left Canada. Among other things, in this essay she argues that wonder should be seen as both a cause and effect—the cause of curiosity, wandering, etc., yet also the effect of wandering, and muses: “Can two parts which define each other ever be separated.” The following is a letter to her, and some other wandering things, written after I head read her essay. Although these words were written from a very different place, they express an emotion I’m encountering again (especially the last part), and so I include them here.

* * * * *

Day XV, Hogan Lake

I set out tonight to have a conversation with your thoughts, or at least the thoughts of a former you, so, pen and journal in hand, I took to my canoe and paddled out toward the sun making its evening descent towards the horizon. I paddled out until I could no longer hear anything then began to read. Lost in this world of words and ideas, reading intensely and writing fervently, I sat up only to stretch an aching muscle in my back. With my head no longer in the page, I laughed to myself—at myself—for having lost myself in thoughts. And then I just sat in the silence and the stillness of the lake at sunset, awed by the simple beauty of these wild northern places. Silent save for the lonely cry of the loon. I sat for awhile, trying to think of a way to soak in the stillness of this place, to bottle it up, to be able to take it back with me, to sustain me amidst the concrete of the city—of civilization. And I return to your words, the idea of wonder, the mystery of how to make this wonder the fuel of one’s life…and the incessant challenge of turning this wonder into scholarship. And the even greater challenge of reconciling the “world” of academia with the stillness of this place. I ask myself if it is possible to inhabit both worlds…

For those of you that travel, let this be a warning. The large skies and stark beauty of these northern places can move and challenge you as gently, as insistently, as completely as the warmest and most profound of lovers. It truly becomes possible to have a love affair with the land. As for us, we all had a difficult time returning, and part of each of us probably never will. ~Jesse Ford~

Day XVI, Little Crow Lake

…And while I sat in this question of inhabiting both worlds for long enough, the distinction between the two began to fade until they were no longer separate. Until I could see the faces of every nation reflected in the subtle ripples of the lake at dusk. Until the trees and the sky melted into each other, the same way a city skyline dissolves into the heavens as the setting sun reflects off of skyscraper windows. Until the cry of the loon became the cry of a hurting species, of all those who suffer, and all those who rejoice. Until I could feel that the water that carried me ran to bigger lakes and rivers until it met the sea, where all of the water of this earth goes, and I could feel the collective journey of the water molecules beneath me to this place. And the silence and stillness of this place became not just the state of this lake at this hour but the state of my soul. And I realized that the awe, the astonishment, the wonder with which this place fills me is, as you say, both the cause and the effect of my wanderlust, and this wanderlust leads me not only to the places of rocks, lakes and trees, but to downtown Istanbul, the suburbs of Siberia, the far corners of foreign libraries, the ideas of poets, mystics, essayists, theorists and everything in between. For intrinsic to this wonder is a love of life, of discovering, questioning, connecting, creating, seeing, loving…

…and yet I’m not sure if I’m ready to leave this world, to return to lands of cars and condos and traffic lights and electricity. While I began this trip counting down the days with anticipation, I find myself now counting down with sadness, with a bit of fear and hesitation, for I feel as I’ve only just found a home here, in the rhythm of packing, paddling, portaging, and watching the sun come and go from beyond the horizon. I’m not quite sure how I will be able to return, not yet ready to face the changes this time among wild things has had on me. Not yet ready to face the many tasks of preparing to leave Waterloo, to say goodbye to a certain chapter of my life.

Beijing by Flying Pigeon

2008-06-10T08:51:00.000-07:00

May 30-June 1

It’s Sunday night and we’re breezing by the Forbidden City on a pair of Flying Pigeons—a brand of bike iconic of the Cultural Revolution, graciously lent to us by our CouchSurfing host. We’re heading north after an evening of Chinese Acrobatics, winding our way through green tree-lined boulevards, magically lit in the hours between evening and night. We make our way rather effortlessly now, finally accustomed to bike-riding etiquette in Beijing (i.e. follow the crowds, not the traffic lights, swerve to the left around bikers going the wrong way down the street, use your bell liberally). We move to the right to let motorized vehicles pass, glide through intersections, then finally stop to consult our map.

Much of the day has consisted of the same routine: maneuvering between stopping buses and overloaded bicycles (carrying everything from dogs and birds to mattresses and half a grocery store), taking in the scenery (and surprising greenery—though we are told it remains green by diverting water from surrounding villages) of Beijing, stopping to gain our bearings, the continuing in a similar fashion.

Monday. We set out again for the Temple of Heaven. We head south, pray for the thunderclouds to roll past us, and arrive at our destination. After a few hours taking in the sites, we are ready to get back on our bikes. Our next planned destination: the pearl and silk markets. We head north, then east, along the old city wall. We stop to play at a Chinese exercise station and Mark is cajoled into a game of Chinese hackie sack (this “hackie sack” consisting of a group of colourful features weighted with rubber and washers). We cycle past the old city wall, and are carried by the road south, the opposite direction that we want to go in. We wind our way along a highway and a canal to the nearest underpass, head back north, follow a line of cars into what seems like a railway yard, carry our bikes through and underpass, stop to buy some street foot, cross a tiny foot bridge, and end up on “Alien’s Street” surrounded by Cyrillic shop names and wondering if we’ve accidentally returned to Russia (this are of Beijing is, apparently, the one area where, if visibly not Chinese, you’ll first be addressed in Russian, not English). By now too much time has passed and we abandon our market destination. Instead we wander into an unexpected park, balanced and stunning in design. We get lost in rock formations and greenery, then hop back on our bikes to head towards home.

The sun is setting as we head northeast, through the financial district. We wind around a round-about, and our attention is directed to the clanging of cymbals and the beating of drums across the street. There, in front of a gargantuan Bank of China building, a group of middle-aged and older women are dancing with fans. We join the crowd of older Chinese men that has gathered to watch. Strange, we think, that they’ve chosen this location. Perhaps they are all bank employees, Mark muses. We continue along are way, and go no more than a block and a half before we hear the same clanking and beating, and then see the familiar colourful flags dancing by. We slow down and an older man motions to Mark to get of his bike. He hands him a flag and pushes him into the line-up of dancing women. I, along with the other ageing Chinese spectators, are amused to watch this rather rhythm-less white man attempt to imitate his fellow dancers. He makes it once through the circuit and is ready to go, to the winking of Chinese women as he passes.

It is dark now, as yesterday. We approach the Forbidden City from the east this time, though the misty-lit streets begin to fade into one another. We stop and consult our map once again, then wind our way home.

Encouraged by the rain, on Tuesday we take a break from our now beloved Flying Pigeons, and race downtown to pay a visit to the beloved Chairman Mao. We reach Tiananmen Square 15 minutes before the Mausoleum closes, sprint around to the entrance, and are herded through in less than 5 minutes, catching only a quick glimpse of an eerily lit barely-human looking figure enclosed in glass. From the south-west corner of Tiananmen we see a strange looking pavilion with a large “British Colombia Canada” sign hanging above. Curious, we pay the entrance fee (which used to be free for Canadians, but is no longer), head inside and are greeted by 2 Mounties. At their sight, Mark and I start laughing, and they immediately remark that we must be Canadian. We start chatting and discover that they are, in fact, real Mounties, one from Newmarket and the other a graduate of the University of Waterloo. Small world, indeed.

Wednesday. We bike north towards the Olympic Village. The reason, in many ways, that this city is so clean and new looking, lies in this quickly approaching event, and the anticipation is tangible in the air, heavy like smog (which has, at least slightly, temporarily subsided from Beijing’s skies). We see the Bird’s Nest (as Olympic Stadium is known) and the Aqua Cube (the Aquatics Centre) from a distance, though construction is still underway and we can’t actually bike down the main strip. Instead, we circle the outside of the complex, a sprawling complex of hotels, venues, parking lots, parks. We happen upon what we later find out is the “Ethnic Minorities Park”—an amusement park like complex that is supposed to honour China’s minorities. A mosque-looking shopping centre, with mini-skirt clad waitresses, confuses more than anything else.

Thursday. We leave the bikes home once again and set out early to the Great Wall. We somehow manage to get there using a combination of public transit and bartering skills. We hike 12km from Jinshaling to Simatai, a section of the wall that hasn’t been restored. Crumbling stairways and steep climbs tire us out, though the view is breathtaking. Mark falls asleep at 7pm and sleeps until morning.

Saturday. Today we give our Flying Pigeons their biggest test, as we set out to bike to the Summer Palace, 12km outside the city. We get off to a rocky start, as our early route leads us past an exhibition centre where various highways seem to converge, and bike lanes suddenly disappear. We find ourselves in a chaotic mass of pedestrians catching buses and cars set on getting past them, and a few other bikers who’ve also found themselves suddenly without a lane. We make it through, carry our bikes over an overpass, and are happy to be cycling along a relatively quiet canal. We pass the 2^nd, 3^rd and 4^th ring roads, and, after 1h15, we arrive at the Palace. Unfortunately, no bikes are allowed inside, so we continue on foot to explore this massive summer complex of Chinese emperors past. After 3 hours on foot, stunning scenery and incredible views, we are happy to be back on our bikes, heading back into the city. We detour to Jingshan Park, behind the Forbidden City, endure one last uphill climb, and take in one last view of the city.

We return our bikes for the last time, with some sadness, to their lot in the parking garage. Things bikes have been, no doubt, a key shaper of our Beijing experience. They have allowed us into streets and hutongs, unexpected corners of the city, places unreachable by public transit or on foot. They have given us a glimpse of Beijing as seen by many local commuters, as perhaps still the most popular means of transit, allowing us to appreciate the order in the chaos of Beijing traffic. They have been vehicles (both literally and figuratively) into the life of this city, a city of surprises and contradictions, a city that the world is soon to know a little bit better.

Mongolian Lamas Drive SUVs

2008-06-10T08:49:00.000-07:00

May 28, 2008

It is a dark blue Nissan Pathfinder, I think, the colour a nice contrast to the deep red and orange of his robes. He is weaving through crowds of people and vendors, one the fringe of Ulaanbaatar’s “Black Market.” “What would Buddha drive,” Mark muses. In a country with almost no paved roads, however, the SUV is not completely ridiculous. And although such lamas were somewhat mythical creatures to me before, in this city they are just about as common as men in suits in Toronto. And, similarly, they drive home in SUVs and change into jeans and t-shirts. The everydayness of this occurrence reminds me of where I am. A country where, although brutally repressed by the communists, Buddhism is a way of life for many, and lamas driving SUVs don’t turn heads.

From Strangers’ Vans to Sand Dunes: Snapshots of Mongolia

2008-05-29T01:27:00.000-07:00

May 17-29, 2008

We arrived in Mongolia in a stranger’s van. This was not our plan—when we reached the Russian border town of Naushki, there were not tickets left for the border-crossing leg of our journey. We luckily saw a rusty old bus out the station window, jumped on in faith of the driver who told us he was going “closer” to the border, and were then corralled from his bus into a stranger’s van, standing in line at the border gates. This van was one of many in a caravan crossing the border—carrying foreigners, cigarettes, and other such small-profit goods. After a good 2-3 hour wait, we made it out of Russia (the hard part) and into Mongolia. Here we transferred to another stranger’s car, who drove us to Sukh Baatar, where we got on the same train we’d been on earlier. After a short night’s sleep, we arrived in Ulaanbaatar.

We didn’t plan to come to Mongolia in a stranger’s van, though both the van and the unexpectedness of this border crossing were indicative of what was to come of our time in Mongolia more generally. We came to Mongolia to get to China—in order to get visas, and as the most direct route from Irkutsk to Beijing. After a morning running between ticket booths and consulates, however, we have unexpectedly found ourselves in a stranger’s van once again, on a roadtrip of sorts through the Gobi. Our van mates are also an unexpectedly mixed crew: our Mongolian guide and driver, a 31-year old American teacher from Colorado, a 36-year old tour guide/kickbox/belly-dancing instructor from New Jersey, and a 35-year old German pilot. And it is with this group of people that this unexpected travel turned into a week of wonderful memories, and the van transformed from that of a stranger’s to that of a friend.

In the few hours that remain before we board a train to Beijing, I don’t have time to even scratch the surface of the adventures of the past week. Instead, I offer a potpourri of unexpected Mongolian discoveries, images, and memories, and will let the pictures speak for themselves.

* While “Gobi” simply means “desert” in Mongolian, Mongolians differentiate between 33 types of desert. Indeed, we have never spent more than 3 hours driving before the landscape changes—from green mountains to wind blown rocks, to sand dunes, gravel fields, purple-flower spotted hills, to wide open plains, the Gobi is anything but uniform.

* A ger, the traditional transportable Mongolian dwelling, can be constructed in about an hour, and makes for quite a cozy, homey place to live

* It is possible that modern technology has reached every possible place on earth.

* For a nation that once controlled a significant portion of the planet, Mongolians today number very few—there are only 6 million Mongols worldwide, and only 2.5 million living in Mongolia. Their nomadic lifestyle, however, requires vast, seemingly uninhabited stretches of land in which to roam as herds graze and move from place to place.

* The camel is a truly practical, if quirky, means of transit, especially in a country of almost no paved roads.

* Sand dunes are simply a miracle.

* Vegetarianism is even more of a foregone impossibility in Mongolia than it is in Russia. Horse and camel are among the favourite foods of Mongols, as well as airag (fermented mare’s milk). Contrary to certain vegetarian sentiments, however, Mongols probably respect animals more than any other people I know—from cashmere and camel-hair sweaters and the felt that lines
their gers, to meat, dairy products and transportation, as herders, the livelihood of many Mongols cannot be separated from the lives of their animals

* 5 foreigners + 2 Mongolians + a couple of bottles of Chinggis vodka + a plastic bag + a night on the flour of a canteen-ger = hours of endless entertainment

* From moonrises to sunsets, ice gorges to sand dunes, strangers’ vans and back again, Mongolia is one beautiful place.

Farewell to Russia from the Circum-Baikal

2008-05-28T22:26:00.000-07:00

May 10, 2008

The mind has more space to breathe.

I was reading over Mark’s shoulder the other day and read the above line, written by a friend of his who’s currently living in the Yukon. I suppose there are many similarities between here and there—isolation, snow, highly variable hours of daylight—but most striking perhaps of all is the elicitation of this sentiment, born of space, pace, stunning landscapes, and the clearer experience of one’s own breath.

And it is fitting to be in one of such places now, a week before leaving this country, before ending this Russian odyssey and beginning our wandering journey home. The sun disappeared behind the mountains awhile ago, though the sky has just begun to change, turning the water a soft pink with striking pockets of aqua-turquoise that follow the remaining pieces of ice on their last journey to water. A colony of nesting gulls provides the soundtrack to an otherwise still evening, silent save for the crackling of campfire burning and the soothing lapping of water on shoreline and ice. This is Lake Baikal at dusk. The pearl of Sibera. And she is even more beautiful, more humbling and comforting after a day’s labour.

We began today by taking a winding 2.5 hour electrichka ride through the mountains to Temnaya Pad. At first overwhelmed by the crowd of other campers with similar ideas on a long weekend, the pack soon thinned out and we found ourselves hiking alone, the lake on our right, cliffs to our left, and rail beneath our feet; rails that are no long really functional however, as after the Angara was flooded in the 1950s, this stretch of the trans-Siberian—the Circum-Baikal Railway—was unconnected from Irkutsk and the main line. How did we end up here? After plotting for some time about how to take a train through the route—85km from Bort Baikal to Kultuk—we finally ended up deciding it would be cheaper, not to mention more interesting, to rent a tent and walk this stretch of architectural marvel. And so we are here, one day, 20km departed, soaking in the sounds and smells and stillness of this lake one last time. And it is, I think, exactly what I needed—time and space to breathe, to reflect, to take stock of where we’ve been, what we’ve seen and learned, to let it all wink in before a winding adventure home.

May 12, 2008

Words usually come more easily to me in settings like this, spurred on by the higher awareness of both my physical and mental being, encouraged by the gentle lapping of waves on rock and the fluttering of campfire smoke to the heavens. So too, in these settings, is strengthened an impulse towards romance—strangely so, as there’s little romantic about the blisters on my feet, the soot and dirt coating my hands, the rips in my pants and the aching of my back and feet. Indeed, it is a test o will to sit up long enough to write these words. But they are words that must be written.

We’ve walked close to 50km since yesterday, confirming in my a long expected hunch—I am a canoeist at heart, who will venture of land with a canoe overhead when portages so require, but will never enjoy backpacking in quite the same way. I’ve found myself too lost watching my next step—over railway tie and gravel—to enjoy the stunning scenery, whereas in a canoe one is required to look far ahead to guide the boat in the appropriate direction. Nevertheless, I will try and soak in as much of this place before the day slips into night. Indeed, I just read a passage of Dostoevsky’s The Idiot, when the main character, Prince Myshkin, is recounting the description of a man sentenced to be killed, only to be pardoned a minute before the guillotine dropped. In the 5 minutes before his death, the man sets aside 2 for thinking, and his thoughts lead back to fantasizing about life, about how he would count every minute, appreciate every moment, if only he were spared. It was this very passage that motivated me to move my aching body from the campfire to the shore of the lake, to put into words a few final meandering thoughts.

Yet still I know not where or how to begin—or end. This year has been, I suppose, a lot like the last three days trekking along the railway. It has, in many ways, revolved around train travel, and everything that such travel in Russia brings with it—snowy landscapes, heavy drinking, an unspoken camaraderie with fellow passengers, connected to each other in their transience. As my constant concentration on my next step, the year has also involved a lot of similar getting on, moving along one day at a time, at what sometimes felt like a snail’s pace, yet nevertheless one step ahead. There have ben many a long, dark, cold tunnel, as in this journey, though each with a light of sorts at the end. And then there have been the moments where my breath is caught in the back of my throat at the stunning landscapes and beauty in which I find myself—standing a top a mounting in the Caucuses, or the bell tower of St. Isaac’s Cathedral, watching the sun set behind shamanka on Olkhon Island, trekking along a mountain stream in the Sayan, stumbling across Buryatian lamas making a mandala, watching the sunset (even if at 4pm) in downtown Yekaterinburg, sitting atop a snowy hill with Mark and Guzial, taking in the monstrosity that is MMK on the eve of the New Year. These images, like that o the water of Lake Baikal—the heart of Siberia—are the ones that will stick for a lifetime, while the darkness of the tunnels will slowly fade from view. And, in the romance of such times and places, I think they will be enough—enough to sustain an infatuation with this enormous, mysterious country,a country that Churchill once described as “a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma,” a love for exploring the unknown, for wandering just for the sake of doing so, and, above all, and immaculate sense of this wonder for this fragile, wondrous earth which we call home.

Thoughts on the (De)Feats of Soviet Architecture

2008-05-28T22:23:00.000-07:00

May 8, 2008

To give credit where credit is due, the Soviets were good at something: building things quickly. Well, maybe not so much quickly as cheaply. Actually, I don’t really know about their time or cost efficiency, but at least they were good at building things uniformly. True, it is possible to distinguish the imposing, gargantuan neo-classical buildings built by Stalin from the 5-storey apartments built by Khrushchev and the 8+-storey ones built by Brezhnev (who sprung for elevators). But, for the most part, apartment buildings, much like street names—from Petersburg to Vladivostok—left to us by the Soviets look the same.

This sometimes quirky aspect of life in the USSR was perhaps best parodied by the 1970s film Ironiya Sudbi (The Irony of Fate), where an unfortunate intoxicated young man ends up in an apartment that is identical to his own in all features but one: the city in which it’s located. Well he lives at dom 23, ulitsa Stroitelyey in Moscow, the fates have it that he awake in a drunken stupor in dom 23, ulitsa Stroitelyey. As everything about the apartment, from layout to furniture to wallpaper looks like his, he does not realize he is not at home until the pretty blonde resident of the apartment returns, a prolonged and comical argument ensues, she finally realizes what’s going on and convinces him that he is, in fact, in Leningrad.

While much could be written about the feats of Soviet architecture in general, I wish to focus on one particular type of dwelling, the one with which I am the most familiar: the obschezhitiye. While this word is most often translated as a “student residence/dormitory,” it does not really resemble in the least the residences of most North American campuses. Most basically, they are most often even located anywhere near the universities where their students study. Secondly, not only students live in these buildings; they are also home to grad students, teachers, and their families (I shared a kitchen in Yekaterinburg with 3 international students, a young couple and their baby, a middle-aged woman and son, and always-the-lady’s-man Artyom). Indeed, a recent Russki Reporter map reported that 1% of the total Russian population currently lives in an obschezhitiye. That works out to something like 1.5 million people. By the end of this reflection, perhaps you will understand why I find this a worrisome figure.

Obshchezhitiye (from the words obshche, meaning “general/common/mutual” and zhitiye “life/existence”) look pretty much like most other Russian apartment buildings. That is, they generally come in 5-story/no elevator (as here in Irktusk) or 8+ storey with elevator form (as the building I lived in in Yekaterinburg). The corridors and common rooms are most often painted white on top and green/blue on the bottom. Anyone who’s lived in one knows that leaning against such walls leaves a coat of white powder on whatever you may be wearing. (Mark and I figured out the cause for this while trying to do some painting on Olkhon Island—the basic white wash used in this country is a limestone based chalk-water substance that sticks to clothes better than walls.)

What’s wrong with a little white paint on your clothes, you may ask? If this were the worst of the structural problems of most obshags (as they are colloquially known), an entry such as this would not be warranted. You see, these buildings were never meant to be permanent. Built after the Great Patriotic War, these buildings were supposed to last twenty years until the Soviets could come up with a better solution to their housing crisis. Half a century later, these buildings are still kicking, though often crumbling, literally, beneath the feet of their occupants. In the first week after we moved to Irkutsk, we saw two segments on the news about this particular problem. The first showed the wall of an obschezhitiye that, based on outward appearance, could have been our own. There were large gaping holes in the side of the building where bricks had fallen or crumbled away. The second report showed the tragic story of an elderly woman who had fallen to her death after her balcony fell out beneath her. The next shot was off the landlord’s solution to the problem—he was shown nailing closed the balcony doors of another apartment, reprimanding the tenants for even harbouring ideas of stepping outside (why try and fix the problem when a bolt through a door will stave off certain death?).

Structural challenges aside, in Russia modern plumbing seems to have been put on the backburner in favour of launching satellites into space. While I eventually got used to the machine-gun like sound of water going through the hot water pipes in Yekaterinburg, having any water at all, let alone hot water, in our 5^th floor kitchen and bathroom in Irkutsk is no more than a weekly occurrence. We were told that this is due to the face that the water gets used up by the people on the floors below us before it can reach us way up on the 5^th floor, though I have my doubts. Our neighbour Anastasia has told us that the repair man has come on numerous occasions to assess our situation, always noting “trudno, ochen trudno” (difficult, very difficult). In other words, we’re not going to put in the time to fix this problem, it can’t be solved by nailing a bolt through a door. A Belgian student once got fed up with this answer, exclaiming “it’s not difficult in Belgium, it’s not difficult in France, in not difficult anywhere else in Europe, why is it difficult here?” The answer to this seems to lie not in a lack of technical knowledge, but in a lack of will to fix things for other people, especially in buildings whose life expectancy has long passed.

Some time has passed since I began this entry, I have survived an alternating hot-and-cold (but never at the right time) year of central heating, I am not longer phased by the mold in the stairwell, and the pieces of ceiling that fall from our recently renovated ceiling. You probably get the idea anyway. All I have left to say is this. Putin (or Medvedev), the state of housing in your country is appalling. It’s time to use some of your oil revenue, get out the wrecking ball, and build your country some new homes. If uniformity is efficient, be my guest, but quality should not be sacrificed for quantity: this time build some houses that are meant to be lived in. While you may not have created this problem, this is the country you’ve inherited, and it is your job to make it a better place for the citizens who live in it, despite your new market economy. Food, water, shelter. This is where you need to begin.

У земли есть музыка для тех, кто ее слышит

2008-04-28T02:05:00.000-07:00

April 23, 2008

(On the earth there is music for those who listen to her)

the sounds of a village waking:
clucking hens
barking dogs
the occasional car roaring to life
my stomach calling for food
gulls, ravens, crows,
singing to the morning.

intermittent silence. stillness.
or, music of another sort.

underneath, a pulse. a steady percussion.
drum beat, heart beat.
the island breathing
ice shifting with the earth’s exhalation.

the rise of a conductor’s baton
sky a soft blush fading into pale blue.
enter violins
crimson, scarlet, then firey orange
as the sun crests the distant mountain line
patches of open water turn
a reddish-gold in the finally-daybreak light
orange begins to fade to yellow,
crimson to blush to baby blue to sky
as that firey ball that gives us life makes her ascent
through wispy dawn clouds

a symphony of colour, sounds, stillness
capitulates towards its close—not
a grand finale
but rather calm as it began.
measured.
steady.
contemplative.

fading now into a chorus
alive
gulls and barking dogs
cars and other early morning risers

a village—an island waking
morning

life to a new day

Of Tortoise Shells and the Russian Soul

2008-04-28T01:53:00.000-07:00

April 18-25, 2008

There is a story I know. Or, at least, thanks to Native American story teller, writer and scholar Thomas King, it is a story I’ve heard (see Thomas King, The Truth About Stories: A Native Narrative).. It’s a story about how the earth came to be. The story begins with a woman—King names her Charm—who lives on another planet. She is having strange cravings, but doesn’t know for what. Another animal on this other planet tells her she must be pregnant, and recommends a certain fern for her to eat. The woman digs and digs around a tree to find this fern, and, as you may be able to predict, ends up digging right through the planet and falls into space—or, rather, towards what is to be the earth. At this time, however, there is no earth, only water. In the waver live animals and creatures one expects to find in water—otters, ducks, dolphins, turtles and the like. Somehow they notice that there is a woman hurtling towards them and, to avoid one massive tidal wave, they decide they better do something about it. A group of birds fly up to meet her and break her fall, but, when they ease her down into their water world, they don’t know what to do with her. In the end, they decide to put her on the back of the turtle.

Charm lives happily on the back of the turtle for awhile, until it becomes clear that she is in fact going to have a baby. As the turtle shell isn’t big enough for two, the animals begin to worry. Charm suggests a game. The animals readily oblige, as she challenges them to dive down to the bottom of the water and bring back some made. While not really knowing what “mud” is, they each successively try—and fail—to reach the bottom and bring back this mystery substance. Just when they’ve almost given up, it’s otter’s turn. She dives down and down and down, and the animals wait and wait and wait, and nothing. The animals begin to fear they’ve lost otter when they see her body bobbing in the water. In her tiny paw is a lump of mud. Luckily, it turns out that otter is just really tired. Charm takes the mud, and, placing it on the back of the turtle, creates earth, a lumpy muddy earth.

There’s not enough room for the animals to stay in the water, so some of them decide to live on the land. Then, before too long, Charm has her baby. Babies, in fact, twins. One boy, one girl. Ond dark, one ligh. One left-handed, one right. The right handed-twin flattens the mud into prairies, just in time for the left-handed on to come by and turn it into mountains. The right handed-one makes straight flowing rivers. The left-handed one makes them crooked, and throws in some rapids and waterfalls and unpredictable currents. One creates sunshine, the other shadow. One roses, the other thorns. One fruit and nuts, the other dense forests. One creates summer, the other winter. The animals suggest creating some more humans, and the twins oblige. When all is said and done, the animals and the humans look around and admire the beautiful world they’ve created. And so the earth and its inhabitants come to be.

And what remains at the core is a turtle. What’ under this turtle, you may wonder? Another turtle. And under this turtle? Well, another turtle of course. And under that? It’s turtles all the way down.

* * * * *

I tell this story for a few reasons. First, because Thomas King gives this story to his audience, challenge them (us) to do with it what we will. More importantly, however, I tell it because it is this images of turtles, earth, lumpy muddy worlds and the beginnings of the earth that was one of the first coherent thoughts—probably even the first—that came to mind when I first stepped foot onto this island. And it’s the story and the image that’s grown in intensity and relevance the more I explore and get to know this place. Let me tell you about Olkhon Island.

To begin, Olkhon is a Buryat name meaning something along the lines of “dry wind.” An apt name for a place of toitoise-shell like landscapes, of rounded treeless sandy hills and tortoise-shell groove valleys—Charm’s mud-lump world perhaps dried out and worn down with the passing of time. The rocky outposts are perhaps remnants of turtle claws, the northern peninsula, Khoboy, his head. There are other historical facts to support this hypothesis. Baikal is, after all, the oldest and deepest lake in the world, making Olkhon one of the oldest islands. Who’s to say it’s not turtles all the way down? Perhaps the Angara—the only river that flows out of the lake—is the very handy-work of the right-handed twin, and the 333 meandering inflowing rivers the doing of the left-handed one. The island certainly knows both winter and summer, sunshine and shadows, forests and deep plains. Standing in the stunning silence and grandour of these banks, overlooking the “earth palace” Shamanka, it is hard to believe one is anywhere but exactly where the earth began.

view from Khoboy

sBut beyond turtles, the longer I am here, the more fitting this story seems, the more plausible this creation tale (and I use “tale” not the least in a diminutive fashion). For here live dark faces and light—Buryats and Slavs (mind you, the former have been here for a lot longer). The original inhabitants of this place, Western Buryats, understand the world in quite a similar way to the early tellers of Charm’s story: they recognize that the trees and hills and foxes and ravens have spirits of their own, and that survival depends on cooperation and communication. Outside my window is one of the holiest sites of shamanism in the world. Beyond the nearest hill is a tiny, new, Orthodox church. Though it is not imposing as such a church could be. It simply is, sitting on a hill overlooking Lake Baikal. Sergei, who is fulfilling a dream by building a house behind this church, a house with a spectacular view, says not many people come, this is not their custom, but some come when they choose. And here, while the water may be clean and deep (or perhaps precisely because of this), it doesn’t run from taps, but is instead a precious resource. As is the wood which makes up these walls and heats the room. And, if further proof is needed, this village is a village that survives not through hierarchy, competition, bureaucracy, the acquisition of wealth and the rapacious use of resources, but through cooperation, mutuality, a measured pace of life, and respect for the land, this turtle world on which we stand.

* * * * *

I came to Russia captivated by the idea of the “Russian Soul.” I have, by and large, been extremely disappointed with what I have found. There is, in my somewhat embittered and hardened opinion, little soul to be found in the clinking of stilettos down asphalt, in the rat race to the top of a new capitalist economy, in billboards blatantly proclaiming “schastye mojno kupit” (“happiness can be bought”… looking an awful lot like a frying pan), in the layers upon layers of irrelevant bureaucracy, fear to walk the streets at night, imitation instant coffee and poorly dubbed Hollywood blockbusters. If I had left Russia a week ago, it would have been a cold leaving, void of much fondness or longing.

Drying off after one of many banya sessions this week, I had a revelation. Everything that is normally associated with “Russian culture” largely comes from the Russian village. Today, in fact, I have eaten kasha, blini, borscht, shashlik, and Omul (a very tasty fish found only in lake Baikal). On Saturday night I enjoyed the music of local voices and a garmon (a Russian accordion) singing traditional folk songs—songs about valenki (felt boots), winter, birch trees, and the like. I have come to appreciate the cleansing function of the banya (and, in lieu of running water, her necessity). I’ve drinken vodka with the same man who played the garmon, spent a day in a root cellar among potatoes, beets, cabbages and potatoes, swerved around cows on the road, walked in a birch and pine forest, sat in an Orthodox Church and shared numerous conversations that have gone beyond the weather. The only thing I’ve missed is drinking from a samovar, though they do decorate the courtyard outside our wooden home. While such experience reek of tourist trappings, the strangest thing about them has been that they have been completely natural, every-day occurrences of life in the village.

And these encounters have, just in time, perhaps, re-oriented my feelings towards this great big country. Being in this place has warmed them, like the breaking ice of Lake Baikal. Let in a little light, a little genuine spirit, a little hope. For, if ever there was, or is, or will be a “Russian soul,” then surely this is her home. These people are her keeper, their songs her memory. The meetings of east and west her reality. The foundations of labour camps in her midst a reminder of the sorrow she has known, a promise of her resilience. The contours of the rocks and the brilliance of these waters her reflection, the steady wind her breath. This tortoise shell on which we stand her everlasting foundation.

shamanka

A Podushka Crossing

2008-04-28T01:47:00.000-07:00

April 18, 2008

We depart Irkutsk at 11am sharp, and head north towards Ust-Ordinski Autonomous region before heading east towards the lake. The first leg of our journey takes us through rolling farm fields—a rarity in Siberia—but, beyond Ust-Ordinski, the road begins to rise and wind as the landscape opens into mountains, trees, skies. It is somewhere along this road, which alternates between gravel and asphalt, that our driver and fellow passengers begin making plans to cross the ice. Two or three to a car is best, they say, not too much weight. No way we’re crossing in this marshrutka. But, oh, we have foreigners today. No cars for them, they need something safer (or, perhaps, no one wants to responsible for plunging a foreigner into an icy Lake Baikal…though I doubt we are even meant to understand anything they are saying). Maybe they should go by foot? We—Mark, I, and two Polish students—look from one to the next, fearing we may be left to our own devices to cross the straight between the shore and our destination: Olkhon Island. After an extended bumpy period, during which the rattling of the vehicle on gravel that barely qualifies as road prevents any negotiations, we round the corner, crest a hill, and the lake comes into view. With this gland the decision is made quickly; the ice in on the straight has already broken, open water whips through the narrow channel between hilly shores. No one will be driving across anymore this spring. Instead, we await the podushka (literally, a “pillow”) which ferries us across in two shifts to meet another vehicle on the far shore. In later conversation with a local villager, we learn that the hovercraft has only been working for the last two years. Before that, for a month in the spring in the fall, the island was almost completely inaccessible, except for those with the will to drag a fishing boat across the ice, row it across the open water, and drag it once more the remainder of the way. In any case, evidenced by the fact that I’m alive to document this account, we’ve made it from the mainland to the shore, to the sand and skies and mountains and views of Olkhon Island.

A Buryatian Buddhist Encounter

2008-04-13T21:35:00.000-07:00

April 12, 2008

Thursday evening Mark and I jumped on a quick overnight train to Ulan-Ude, to spend Friday wandering the capital of the Republic of Buryatia. After a short and uncomfortable street, we stepped out into the (very cold) early morning, took a stroll through the mostly still deserted streets, made a brief stop to admire the immensity of Lenin’s head (Ulan-Ude is the proud home of the largest Lenin-head in the world), and waited for a café to open so we could get out of the cold. The opening working hours of the earliest opening café we could find (8am) came and went, and went some more, and still we were wandering the cold streets. We finally found a place to get a bit to eat and briefly warm up, took a stroll down the sandy/concrete shore of the Selanga and Uda rivers to the bus station. We hopped into a marshrutka that took us north of the city to an Ethnographic Museum. The Museum spanned a couple of kilometers, and featured re-creations or relocated dwellings of the various inhabitants of the region, from Buryats to Decembrists to Old Believers, camels, bears and tigers. After spending a few hours wandering the grounds of the museum, we set out down the road, following a Lonely Planet tip (and our noses) to a strange yurt-palace complex serving Buryat food. We had a smaller yurt dining room to ourselves, and Mark decided to order a traditional drink made of sour milk of an unknown animal. After taking one sip, Mark, who has problems with regular cow’s milk, lost his curiosity for new flavours and enlisted me with the task of finishing this strange brew. After a quiet and generally pleasant (even if overpoweringly sour) meal, we set out hiking down the road to a Buddhist temple we’d past earlier in the morning.

After a couple of kilometers through rolling hills and greening forests (and, thankfully, warmer weather), we arrived at our destination. We had noticed this place in the morning for the colourful flags tied to nearly every upright object on the property, including a large wooded area behind the main temples. We have happened upon a datsan, of Buddhist temple complex. While Buryats west of Lake Baikal practice various shamanistic traditions, those east of the lake practice Vajrayana Buddhism, the same form of Buddhism as practiced in Tibet. The complex consists of three temples, a dozen or so smaller wooden buildings, and a forest more wooden buildings are being constructed. Not sure of the protocol for entering the temples, Mark and I wander towards the forest, a forest where prayer flags grow on trees more frequently then leaves. Mark remarks that he feels a little uncomfortable, not sure what we should be doing here, until we stumble into the middle of a soccer game, between a dozen or so young boys. A monk in amber robes, coat and toque watches from the sidelines. We sit down and relax a moment in the forest, tired from the walking of the day, while the wishes of thousands of flutter in the breeze.

Restored, we decide to venture into one of the temples. As we climb the stairs, an elderly woman and 3-year old in a pink snow suit exit, setting us at ease. We quietly push the door open and slip inside. A group of four monks are sitting under a raised canopied area to our left. One of them glances up from his work, gives me a gentle look, then returns to what he is doing. I notice then that they are all wearing face masks. They are sitting in a square, or a circle of four, two facing each other, hunched over something we can not yet see. The music of their instruments draws me in closer. It isn’t a music I’ve heard before, and the closer I get, the sooner I realize that it is not an intentional music. The music, instead, is being produced by the sound of metal rods rubbing on long metal cone-like tubes, the pitch of each varying with the size of the instrument. I realize, then, what they are doing—creating a mandala! I’ve heard of this practice, seen pictures or images in films, but never thought I’d witness it first hand. Briefly, a mandala is a circular, geometric creation of spiritual symbol and meaning that is created by Vajrayana monks entirely out of grains of sand. The creation takes months to complete and then is ceremoniously destroyed, sent to the wind as a reminder of the impermanent nature of things. This particular mandala is about a third completed. The cone-tube instruments the monks are using are for sand of varying fineness and colour. As they rub the rod up and down the grated outside of these instruments, the brightly coloured sand slowly drops into place. The face masks, I guess, are to protect the infinitely fragile creation from their own breathing. I am astounded by the patience and commitment that such work must take, mesmerized simultaneously by the rhythmic sound, minuteness of the sand, and steady hands and breathe of those at work. I walk with the rhythm of their work around the perimeter of the temple’s interior. A number of statues of the Buddha, gold and blue, sit at the front, while a framed picture of a smiling Dalai Lama sits off to the right. In the centre of the temple are two rows of padded seats facing each other, cymbals and sacred texts sitting on cushioned tables in front awaiting use. In the next temple we find a similar set-up, though at the front, behind a large Buddha statue, sit 450 smaller statues (Mark counted), organized into a dozen or so rows. We are instructed by a woman on our way out to walk clockwise through the interior, and never to turn our back to the Buddha. We do this carefully, then make our way quietly to the nearby stolovaya. We sit down to digest our experience (and some tasty blini and noodle soup). In conversation with the girls working in side, we find out that this is one of the smaller complexes of its kind in the area. The largest one is an hour to the northwest, set in a river valley, and home to the body of a famous lama who corpse remains in the same condition as when he died.

We get back into a marshrutka to head back into town, humming and hawing about whether or not to change our train tickets and stay an extra day to go to this larger datsan. In the end, we decide it’s probably cheaper to come home and come back another day. Exhausted from the walking of the day, I fall asleep almost instantaneously to dreams of yurts and prayer flags, and don’t wake up until the sun is rising over the Angara River out the train window. We’ve made it home, home to Irkutsk.

Requiem for a Russian Babushka

2008-04-03T17:16:00.000-07:00

April 3, 2008

I came home today to find Mark with a butcher knife in hand, hunched over a pile of fish heads and gallbladders, the fruit of his labour a plateful of 2cm x 2cm fish fillets. “I bought them for 20 roubles from a babushka on the street!” he explains, as if his elderly merchant justifies this seemingly ridiculous purchase. But I can picture him walking down the streets, lured in by the eccentric wares peddled by this elderly woman. He eyes the fish from a few feet away, and then is called in closer. A grandmotherly voice assures him that they are “horoshaya riba” (good fish). He asks the price and is then unable to turn away, and, before he knows it, is walking home with a plastic bag full of fish that look more like bait than dinner. What struck me enough to begin this piece, however, was not the fish but the idea of the woman who sold it to him. And so I begin a long-overdo exposition on a subject that is at times tender or quirky, at times hostile, and at other times still a strange mix of all of these: the Russian babushka.

One of the first words I learned in Russian, probably without even knowing it was Russian, was the word “babushka.” I vaguely recall a schoolmate or two who referred to their grandmothers by this name. I remember one friend, I think her name was Kristen, who also told me the word simultaneously meant “head kerchief.” I’ve found no basis for this alleged second meaning in my Russian endeavours since, but the story is fitting, as you usually don’t find the former without the latter. The wrinkled old women, kerchief tied neatly under her chin, dressed in an ankle-length dress, wool vest, and either rubber boots or valenki (one-size-fits-all knee-high felt boots), depending on the season, is a familiar and at times endearing character in Russia, both past in present. From heroines of ancient literature, to red-kerchief clad women of Soviet propaganda posters, and finally to the woman who sold Mark his fishy dinner, babushki are everywhere, a symbol of Russia through the ages. Everyone has or knows a babushka (a word that literally means “old woman,” but throw a possessive pronoun out front and then you’ve got somebody’s grandmother), and, if not, you don’t have to look far to find out. She is the keeper of raspberry jam and hand-knit wear, moral guardian of the streets (if you do something wrong, you are sure to hear about it quickly from an always-present babushka’s eye), and, in many ways, she is the memory of the nation. She holds the past in a way that is distinct among their fellow Russians, for they have lived through multiple wars, famines, regime changes and pension plans. What’s more, unlike most of her male cohorts, she has survived. She has made it beyond the age of 55 and is still kicking (though it is a distinct possibility that she is 15 year younger than her face suggests).

Perhaps I paint an inaccurate picture in my use of a singular pronoun. Russian babushkas are, after all, a varied lot. While kerchiefs may be almost universal, their livelihoods are not. Some distribute free copies of Pravda in front of Communist demonstrations, still active promoters of KPRF, despite tiring faces. Others have returned to churches, where they can be found selling candles behind musky desks, or feebly prostrating before dimly lit icons of Mary, the suffering Mother of God. Some work as dejournayas, keeping a moral eye and a strict hand on the nation’s student population. They are often spotted labouriously boarding public transit, sometimes to be given a seat, but often not. Some, however, prefer the warmth of metro stations, and are known to belt out their lungs with various instruments in hand, a hat for loose change laid out for passers-by. Others still peddle their wares street side, hand-knit mittens and scarves in winter, raspberry and strawberry jam, underwear, nuts, seeds, cabbage, house plants, potatoes, home-made pickles, fish etc. year round. These sales are illegal; they have no commercial licenses, but take this risk as an alternative to begging. Many of their kind are found doing just that: begging. I have the image of one particular woman seared deeply into my mind, as she sat in the same spot outside of Ural State University every day, come rain, hail, sleet, or snow, constantly rocking back and forth and crossing herself. Tin cans and plastic cups are, sadly, not uncommon accessories, as government pensions (currently around 1000roubles/month, I’m told) are not nearly enough to cover one’s living expenses. When begging doesn’t bring in the necessary funds, garbage bins are a last resort. Some have, luckily, married well, married husbands who’ve lived past 50 by some minor miracle, and who’ve benefited from Russia’s experiments with capitalism. These women often still ride public transit, though in fur coats, with painted lips tightly pursed and leather purses are similarly clutched. A married woman at this age is about as frequent an occurrence as a compassionate Russian politician (she’s probably married to a politician of some sorts anyway).

As this description hints, being a Russian babushka is not an enviable position. Though most Russians may smile with fondness at thoughts of their own babushki, it’s hard to say that being a babushka is a position that is even respected. More often than not, it is a position that is viewed with sadness, pity tinged with a small sense of guilt, or at least bitterness towards the government’s inability to care for this forgotten generation. While in better times she may have been looked upon as a source of wisdom, guidance, support, today she is more often a reminder of yesteryear in a country all too eager to forget about its past (unless, of course, to remember its glory). She, in all her forms, is a symbol of the many transitions Russia has undergone, and continues to undergo. She, in her frequent poverty, is a reminder of everything that’s gone wrong, of what has most definitely NOT worked in Russia’s experiments with “democracy” and capitalism, as she becomes the mascot of the under-classes, the forgotten classes of the New Russia. While her existence seems to be daily threatened with extinction, for now she refuses to let go, to let the country forget and move on. If she were to disappear, what would happen? Would the economy suffer? Except for a drop in the country’s raspberry jam supply, no. Would children everywhere lose their sources of wisdom and guidance? Some may, but many would be to busy looking elsewhere to notice. Would anyone really notice? Or, perhaps the more pertinent question, would anyone even care? I hope my lived-in-Russia-for-seven-months pessimism hunch on this one is wrong. I hope these are superfluous, redundant question, born of a naïve foreign view of this country. For the sake of these old women, I hope this is the case. For the extinction of this cohort would mean much more than a dried-up jam and sunflower seed market. It would mean the extinction of the soul of this country. Without her babushki, Russia would simply not be, for a nation without its memory ceases to exist.

Siberian Spring has Sprung!

2008-04-03T17:09:00.000-07:00

April 3, 2008

April. The first real warm day of the year—the kind of warm in which you can finally walk outside, with a little courage, without a coat. The streets are crowded with people doing just that, walking here and there in jeans and dress shirts, or in even shorter skirts and slightly lighter leather boots (let’s not forget we are in Russia), kicking around soccer balls and hackey sacks, or sipping beer and licking ice cream cones (those these happens all year round). I decided to walk to school today, taking a roundabout sort of route to have a better view of the river. I ended up on a dirt road lined by quaint—though often dilapidated—wooden houses, dogs sunning themselves, and babushkas stripped down to wool vests sitting on stools by the side of the road. Though still criss-crossed by streams of melted snow, the dirt was relatively dry, baked by a few days of sunny skies. The river, too, is changing. The border of ice on its edges is shrinking, breaking off and floating downstream with the rapid spring current, mini icebergs finally set free. The recently thawed water is a cols, clear turquoise-emerald, like the water that flows under metres of Baikal ice, and is visible at this depths for its purity. Though Russians like to congratulate each other with the beginning of spring on the first of March (I don’t know how by any calculations, especially in Russia, the first of March marks the beginning of spring), I feel for the first time as if, at long last, it has finally arrived. Goodbye wool coat! So long long johns and extra socks! Siberian spring has sprung!

This is Where I Live: Irkutsk Edition

2008-04-03T17:01:00.000-07:00

March 31, 2008

It’s 8am Sunday morning and I am awake of my own volition, my body finally adapted to the routine of early morning classes. Sun illuminates the far bank of the Angara, still visible though slightly obscured by streaks of water condensation dancing down the window. I turn on my computer, which tells that it is in fact 9am. I’m slightly disheartened, as this means it will be dark once again when I awake for my 8am class tomorrow (now more like 7am). On the bright side (literally), our daylight hours will stretch even farther into the evening, extending the already lengthening hours of evening light. A sure sign that spring has indeed arrived.

Although we arrived in Irkutsk two and a half weeks ago, for some reason I haven’t had the time or energy to sit down and write. Perhaps because much of my energy has been focused towards thinking about what lies beyond this city—we bought plane tickets home last week (from Beijing to Vancouver on June 8, and from Calgary to K-W on June 17), we’ve investigated Mongolian and Chinese visas and train tickets, and I think I have almost come to a conclusion about grad school. As this little adventure, which has somehow turned into a circumnavigation of the globe, now has a definite end, it has become harder and harder to sit and remember where I am right now. And so, this is just what I will attempt to do here.

Komnata 500, Obshezhitiye No. 6 (again!), 136 ulitsa Baikalskaya, Irkutsk, Siberia, Russia. This is where I’m sitting as I tap out these words. Smells of Chinese cooking drift down the corridor from the kitchen we share with 8 young Chinese girls. 300m out my 5th floor window is the Angara River, one of Russia’s major waterways. In between here and there is a lovely (read ‘covered in garbage and graffiti’), home to frequent dog fights and nighttime tom-foolery to which we have a front row seat from our balcony. Upstream is the GES damn, and beyond it the Baikal water basin. Travel 65km down this water basin and you will end up in Lake Baikal. Downstream you will float through downtown Irkutsk, a quaint little downtown full of parks, minimal Stalinist architecture and a whole lot of wooden houses. Our new university—Irkutskskii Gosudarstveni Lingvisticheskii Universitet (Irkutsk State Linguistic University, or IGLU for short)—is located on one corner or Skver Kirova, the main city square. It’s a building that looks and feels more like a high school than a university, but we have so far generally been pleased with our classes. From the university it’s a 20 walk to one of the craziest markets I’ve been to in my life—what begins as a typical looking produce market quickly turns into an unending labyrinth of jeans, shoes, thermoses, cookware, brooms, electronics, etc., a maze in which you’re more likely to hear Chinese than Russian, haggled to buy things in a strange blend of Russian and English. See below for a picture of what can be purchased with 500 roubles (about $20).

Well, it’s been a few days since I started this entry and although my body has not even begun to adjust to waking an hour earlier, it is enjoying the extra hour of sunlight in the evening. This enjoyment is currently being dampened by the music blaring out of our neighbours windows, from speakers he has so thoughtfully turned to face OUTWARDS into the courtyard (why wouldn’t the 300 people and pack of dogs who share a view of this courtyard want to listen to his music?!?!?!). Mark is talking about demonstrative pronouns in subordinating clauses and I am about ready to sleep after a frustrating day (we bought bus passes for the month of April the other day, only to find out when trying to ride the bus that they are only valid on municipal buses, which comprise about 20% of the buses on the street—I guess it was too much to assume that public transit was indeed public and not commercially organized). The internet in the library, however, has started working and tomorrow I hope to take advantage of it tomorrow and finally post this entry. The following are some shots from our trip last week to Listvyanka (a little town on the coast of Lake Baikal).

Siberia Bound At Last

2008-03-15T01:57:00.000-07:00

March 11

The wandering thoughts of an non-navigable mind are briefly reined in by the predictability of birch, snow, cedar, birch, snow pine and the clinking of our train lumbering faithfully eastward, deeper and deeper into this enchanted land: Siberia. After 3.5 weeks of movement, transfers, time changes, newness, it’s hard to believe that tomorrow, for awhile at least, our wanderings will end. We will reach our long-awaited destination: Irkutsk. Less than a day left. 15 hours to be precise. An evening, a night, a morning (local time anyway—my body begs to differ, not sure what to do about the six time zones we’ve crossed over land since last Thursday night). And then we will be there.

Lots has happened since I penned my last words from the Black Sea coast. We spent four days in Odessa, wandering the city’s pretty streets, parks and coastline (and, briefly, part of the 4000-km of catacombs that wind beneath the city’s surface). We explored, awaiting news of our invitations’ arrival—and we did, along with some other news: my Commonwealth Scholarship application was successful. We climbed on another train and headed towards Kyiv.

We arrived Monday morning, made some phone calls, arranged to meet the friend of a friend to whom our invitations had been sent at the metro nearest the consulate. By some miracle, we met this stranger without too much trouble, and headed towards the Russian consulate, 1 hour left in the 3 hour window (10-1) that applications may be submitted. We are greeted by a sign on the door that reads: March 3rd, The Consular Department is closed due to technical reasons. We stand, too tired to do anything but laugh at our bad luck. Still standing, contemplating our next move, we see someone push through the supposedly closed door. We tentatively follow behind. A man asks us if we’re here to get VISAs. We hurriedly nod yes, and he says we should wait for the commandant to see if he will allow us in. He returns, asks us the same question, then confirms that all our papers are in order and sends us inside. A friendly woman receives our documents and asks us when we’d like them to be ready. We look at the price list and decide Thursday—and luckily so, for when we reach the cashier we count out all of our remaining hrivna (or grivna, depending on your language preference). The woman jokes with Mark, as the transliteration of his last name in Russian closely resembles “hooligan”. She hands us our receipt and pick-up slip and we are out the door, no more than ten minutes leater than we’d entered. We look at each other, a little stunned. Were we just in the Russian consulate?? Where were the lines? Where were the people senselessly reprimanding us? The nonsensical inefficiency? We muse over this experience, by far the most pleasant of Russian bureaucracy we (I’d even bet ANYONE) has ever had.

We buy a map of Kyiv and roughly plan the afternoon’s adventures. We begin at St. Sofia’s Cathedral (one of the oldest Orthodox cathedrals in Rus), then seek out an Indian restaurant mentioned in a guide book (unfortunately also closed—and actually not working—for “technical reasons”), and by the end of the day end up on the top of a hill with a very large sword-wielding Soviet woman (her sword was, apparently, lopped off so that it would be shorter than nearby monastery cathedrals). Evening comes. We meet our CouchSurfing hosts—and French Canadian CouchSurfing roommate—eat, drink and collapse for the night.

Tuesday we head to the train station. After hours of being sent from window to window, being told one thing at one place and having it contradicted at the next, we learn a hard lesson: there is something harder than buying Russian train tickets—buying Russian train tickets in the Ukraine. We return home exhausted, with tickets as far as Yekaterinburg, to a Quebecois dinner of crepes, ham, cheese, asparagus and maple syrup. Wednesday we return to the Kievsko-Pecherskoe Lavra—a monastery famous for its network of underground caves, dug out by monks seeking even greater solitude. We get lost in the underground tunnels, and find ourselves in the middle of a subterranean orthodox service, lit by beeswax candles and the untrained voices of fellow cave-goers. On our way home we happen on the closest thing to a soup kitchen we’ve seen yet—a couple serving tea and kasha from the back of their car. We enjoy the food sitting on a curb, pleasantly surprised by our find—social welfare of any form is something we’d given up on finding in the lands of the former USSR. When Mark offers them money they tell him that the government pays for this; every once in a while, volunteers drive cars to different parts of the city and feed whoever’s hungry.

Thursday we take our bags to the train station, wander around a park on the banks of the Dnepr, buy pickles from (and give them away to) an old lady on the street, eat pelmeni and borscht, and catch our train. Somewhere in the middle of this, I check my e-mail to find some more news: I’d been accepted to Notre Dame. In the wee hours of Friday morning, we cross back into Russia.

Friday morning we step into the streets outside of Moscow’s Kievskii Vokzal and are inundated by an unusual sight. Swarms of people are bustling about, in the way only Russian crowds can bustle, but doing something unusual—they are all buying (or selling) flowers. Men with hundreds of red roses cross the parking lot, others carry tulips or carnations, a few women also wander through with bouquets, both gifted and purchased. Overwhelmed by the crowd (and the sight) Mark and I pause before wading through the sea of flowery-people and Moscow slush. Tired after a night of constant wakings by border control officials, we break down and stop at the first refuge of calm and the promise of warm seats (and reasonably priced coffee): McDonald’s.

Why the flowers, you may wonder? March 8 is International Women’s Day. In Russia, the holiday is a strange hybrid of Valentine’s Day, Mothers Day, and the festivities of the coming of spring. Men give women flowers, accompanied by knight-in-shining-armour speeches about a given woman’s exceptional beauty, intelligence, etc. Considering the holiday’s women’s-lib roots, I find this a strange custom, almost ironic; Post-Soviet Russian women, on the whole, aren’t afraid to voice their strong dislike of that other “F-word” (i.e. feminism) and this flower-giving wreaks of old patriarchy. Or, as an ex-pat writer of an Editorial in the Moscow Times notes, a better way to celebrate women, men, would be to forego the chocolate and take out the trash. But so be it. Who am I to judge?

Over McDonald’s coffee, we flip through a free issue o the Moscow Times. There’s an article about the election. The author notes that while the results were all-but-unpredictable, no one really knows how the constitutional quirks in this transfer of power will work themselves out? Medvedev is, after all, the first elected President to take over the presidency. Will Medvedev as President have to fire himself as Prime Minister? May it be a conflict of interest that he also currently heads Gazprom? I flip the page to another article: a record 87 Russians have made the Forbes list this year. After the US, here are more billionaires living in Russia than any other country. And this isn’t old money. The chart shows that most of Russia’s elite have doubled or tripled in worth since last year. And still old women sitting in wool socks they probably knit themselves sit on just about every street corner with outstretched plastic cups. As Russians like to say of themselves—Russia has always been (and will always be?) a country of extremes. After buying the last 2 tickets from Yekaterinburg to Irkutsk, we spend our layover in Moscow wandering muddy streets, St. Basil's interior, and eventually end up in the Canada Club at the Canadian embassy. We play a few rounds of pool before returning to the train station.

After 30 hours sharing a train compartment with an alcoholic Latvian (he had Mark drinking vodka at 8am on Sunday, and was already drinking beer from a 5L bottle when we got off in Yekaterinburg at 5:50am), we arrive one last time at Sverdlovsk Pass. Vokzal. We catch up on some sleep at Tugrul’s then head out to meet Guzial. Together we wander into some festivities of Maslanitsa—a spring festival with strong pagan undertones, that simultaneously marks the beginning of spring and Orthodox lent. We watch a glorified wrestling/king of the castle match, enjoy the traditional singing, join a circle dancing around a fire and hurl some snow into the flames, then decide to go home and make blini to celebrate the occasion (think Pancake Tuesday). We walk once more down the banks of the Iset (our usual route only slightly altered to account for spring water levels) to the obshezhitiye. We enjoy one last meal with old friends, then head back to Tugrul’s to wait for our 4am train.

And that brings me to here—a few hours east of Krasnoyarsk, watching the sun et over the Siberian steppe, pondering both what lies behind and ahead. My thoughts wander from Irkutsk to England to Indiana and back, to the decisions already made and yet to be made, to the anxiety and excitement caused by such situations—uncertainty and anticipation. These thoughts have occupied my mind for the last 4 days, causing restless nights and careful excitement. As they should. This decision will guide the next year (or two) of my life, and probably shape what happens beyond. It should not be taken lightly, though also shouldn’t cause too much unrest—could I really make a wrong decision? But for the brief time between beginning this entry and now, these thoughts escaped my mind, and I am overcome by the rare feeling of being exactly where I should be in the present moment. I was here, on this train, romanced by the open rails ahead, in the present, in Russia. And for now, this is where I should be.

Kaleidoscope, Here and There

2008-03-01T06:16:00.000-08:00

February 22-28, 2008

There are beads of sweat forming on the shaved head of the man sitting in the bunk below and across fro me. It’s mid-February at the 60^th parallel, but the conditions of this train are equatorial. The sign at the end of the car flashes: Wagon #2, Toilet Occupied. 21:35. 27°. We have just recently departed St. Petersburg and are somewhere along the tracks to Sochi, a city on the Black Sea Coast where the Caucasian Mountains begin. It’s a Friday night and our bunk mates have long ago begun celebrating—tomorrow is Defender’s of the Fatherland Day, or, with the rise in popularity of Women’s Day on the 8^th of the March, tomorrow’s holiday has more popularly become celebrated simply as “Men’s Day.” Whatever the holiday they are celebrating, the medium is alcohol, and based on the tenor of the conversation our other bunk friend had with his mother, I am anticipating a long and loud train journey…

Back up a few hours. We are standing a top the main dome of St. Isaac’s Cathedral. Wind from the Neva is shipping my coat and hair around, making it hard to see. Then we are running through the Hermitage, then through a dreary St. Petersburg evening to have dinner with Len and Mary, wonderfully warm and familiar faces in a sea of transition.

Two hours later: We are trekking our bags to the train stations. The subway doors open, we wait for people to get off before we start boarding. I make my way to the opposite wall of the car. Mark seems to be caught up in a mob trying to push its way off. They are wearing black, slightly intoxicated, and pushing out, Mark’s trying to climb in, a woman is pushed to the ground. I think nothing of it until it doesn’t stop. The pushing continues, they are yelling for the guy in the backpack to get off, then Mark is yelling that someone’s taken his wallet, intend him up against the door and wished into his pockets while he is confused and defenseless. The mob rushes off just as the doors close. Mark keeps repeating in a stunned English that his wallet is gone. There’s no way we can go after them. We take stock of what’s missing: cash, bank cars, student cards, VISA registration. There’s nothing we can do but continue to the train, shaken, and rush to make some calls before we board the train.

Early this morning: we are saying goodbye to our Moldovian CouchSuring host, who has graciously offered us a room in her home—a room also briefly shared with a journalist from Shanghai.

Three days earlier: We are wandering the streets of Moscow: Red Square, St. Basil’s, Arbat, drinking Starbucks and kvass, stumbling across the gargantuous MGU in all its nighttime glory.

Back to the train: Men’s day has gone off without too much trouble. We joined in some of the drinking and initiated a Canada-Russia durak showdown. We lost our ultra-male bunk mates (Dima’s biceps are almost the size of my waist; the skin between his jaw and neck has been stitched back together; he’s just given us Russian Army hints on how to open a bottle of beer or can of tuna with the minimal of supplies) to the dining car and the lights have turned from on to dim, soon to be off. Tomorrow we will be in Sochi.

I write like this, forwards and backwards, here and there, because in the transfers, time changes, trains, buses and boats of the last two weeks, it’s hard to remember what’s what, what’s where and when, and the memories curl themselves into a kaleidoscope of scattered images that shift and transform as the angle from which they’re viewed change.

Now I write while looking out across the Port of Odessa to the Black Sea. This is the third time I’ve viewed the Black Sea in the last 4 days. The first was from the Russian side, as we took the train to Sochi, following the coast from Tuapse, then wandering the palm-tree lined coast from Sochi to Adler as the sun slowly. The second was as we crossed from Port Kavkaz to Kerch, from Russia to the Ukraine—this time the view slightly overshadowed by the stress of crossing an international border, of sleeping on a bus, of not knowing how to get from one place to another (I’m happy to report, however, that after a train from Adler to Krasnodar, a bus to Port Kavkaz, a ferry to Kerch with only minimal border hold-ups, a half-day exploration of this half ghost town, a bus to Mikalaev and another to Odessa, we did manage to arrive, only slightly bus-lagged/legged and drowsy). And I find myself again now staring out across the Black Sea, from a third vantage, wondering at how the water looks both familiar and new, the same and different, as so many other things on this journey have.

For now, however, I have run out of words, so will let these images speak for themselves.

Sochi train station

Sochi wildlife

On top of the world! (or the Caucasus, near Krasnaya Polyana)

Ukraine ho!

Orthodox Monks Drink Starbucks

2008-02-19T06:38:00.000-08:00

Well, actually, he’s drinking Tropicana Tomato Juice and eating a tuna sub. But, clothed head to toe in long black attire, holding a cloth and wooden-bead rosary after just crossing himself, right to left in the Orthodox manner, he is sitting across from me in Starbucks. Though I’m still in Russia, the last two days wondering the streets of Moscow have been a sharp reminder of the incredible diversity that can exist within one country (and, as Muscovites would tell me, I’ve been living in “the provinces”). I feel as if I’m in a foreign country. And it’s not just the Starbucks. It’s the clothes people are wearing, the accents they are speaking with (and the dozens and dozens I’ve heard speaking English), it’s the way cashiers smile and people pass you on the street. The stalitsa (capital), as it’s often called, has been a refreshing break from the dreariness of Yekaterinburg. But like Yekaterinburg, and much of the rest of this country, it remains a mix of old and new, Russian and foreign. And, perhaps to remind me of where I am, men in black dresses are dining at Starbucks.

Goodbyes and Hellos

2008-02-19T06:17:00.001-08:00

February 17, 2008

13.54 MOSCOW time. I awake to a slipping mattress and a descending sun beaming through the train’s west-facing window, illuminating pine bows and rooftops heavy with snow. We ourselves, like the sun, are westward bound, more or less, somewhere mid-way between Yekaterinburg and Moscow. We have left Yekaterinburg (almost) for good, and yet it feels as if we’re just going on a little trip, away for the weekend. But we’ve gone, leaving behind friends and, however frustrating at times, familiarity. In the chaos of packing, last-minute planning, etc., I think I postponed feeling any emotion about our new reality; I put of thinking about what leaving really means, the complete uncertainty of the upcoming weeks. And so now, I am gripped for the first time with feelings of doubt and regret—was this the right decision? Why did we ever want to leave the friends and familiarity of Yekaterinburg? Should we have just stuck it out? Especially since we don’t know if what lies ahead will be any more fulfilling? Where are we going, anyway?

And yet with the clinking of iron rails beneath me, the steady rock of this train and the sun-kissed white fields beyond, I feel a feeling creeping back into my chest, and excited tightness that has been absent for far too long. It is perhaps a feeling elicited most readily by the open road (or iron rails), for the physical movement of traveling demands that our minds work through where we are, where we’re going, where we’ve been. It is a feeling fueled by the simultaneous fear and excitement that comes with embarking into the unknown. A feeling that has accompanied me through long portages and long essays and many other things in between. A feeling that inspired me to get up out of my Waterloo bed, pack my life into a LowAlpine bag and head across the ocean. A feelin that is the natural and necessary companions for all of us who wander, whether we know where we’re going or not: wonder. I am moved, for the first time in months, by birch and snow and wide open skies back to this calmly anxious, quietly questioning, curiously excited state. And with the returning of this, I am comforted in knowing that this decision to leave was not necessarily right or wrong, but nonetheless a good decision.

Yet before I am too many rails away, I would like to give voice to some of what we’ve left behind. While I won’t miss being woken to the water blasting through our pipes, chips of ceiling falling to the floor, the bureaucracy of the obschezhitie, the mediocrity of the university, trying to get anywhere on public transit between 9am and 8pm, etc, there are certainly things—views, people, smells (well, maybe not smells), sounds, daily rituals, that I will miss. Things like: the glint of the setting sun on windows lining Prospekt Lenina, before it disappears behind the; trekking out to Shartash Lake bright and early every morning to ski with Varya and assorted guests; cheap stolovoya pastries; discussing life in the business world, life as an 11-year old in Soviet Russia, and everything in between with Yan and Ivan (and hopefully helping them improve their English through all of this); Defri (and Defri’s zharni ris/nasi goring/fried rice); listening to Jenny and Josefina’s lively conversations through our bedroom wall; evenings of ice cream, beer and durak (a Russian card game) with Paul, Mark and Guilherme; waiting for the water to boil in the corner of our desperately tiny choir rehearsal room, then drinking tea and eating cookies waiting for rehearsals to begin; happening past Trinity Cathedral or the Church on the Blood when the bells are chiming; the one person whose goodbye brought me to tears: Guzial. These, among other things, I will miss.

Now two days departed, sitting in Starbucks on Arbat St. in Moscow (pretending for a brief minute that I’m back in North America), although I know I will miss these things, I am further glad for the adventures and new experiences that the coming weeks and months are sure to bring. Excited for the chance to explore once again, to see knew things, to meet new people, to dig deeper (and farther east) into this great big country. And so I bid a (slightly) bitter- (but mostly) sweet farewell to Yekaterinburg, though not to its memories, to friends, but not to their friendship, and say hello to the wonderous adventures that are yet to come.

A Russian Wedding, Turkish Style

2008-02-19T06:03:00.000-08:00

Our last day in Yekaterinburg proved to be quite a memorable one, as we spent the afternoon and evening celebrating Aycan and Olya's wedding. It was my first Russian wedding with ecclectic Turkish flavouring, and an all around enjoyable evening (and, owing to the caterers oversight that 1/3 of the guests were Muslim, plenty of meat and alcohol) Here are some pictures

Presidential Elections, Russian Style

2008-02-15T19:59:00.000-08:00

Even on the other side of the ocean, I've been relatively aware that the United States is gearing up for a presidential election. In between primaries, debates, election forecasts and more primaries (all of this still over half a year to the real elections), I've come to appreciate the efficiency of not having set election dates. Russia, like the US, has 4-year presidential terms with defined expiration dates, and, as is probably also well known, Putin's term is nearly up. In fact, the country will be going to the polls in just two weeks to "elect" a new president. After the colourful and sometimes witty election posters that went up during the duma election in November, I was expecting something of the same this time around. I was beginning to lose hope of courting any more federal propoganda, until the following signs went up on the street outside the obshezhitiye. These posters, however, leave something to be desired. They are not, as one may expect during a presidential campaign, posters soliciting support for one candidate or another. The candidates, I am told, are the same as always. Zhirinovsky (as in the last 3 elections) will run for LDPR (the party with nationalist tendencies), Zyuganov will run for the communist party (as he's done twice before) and, new this year, Bogdanov will run for the Western-leaning "Democratic Party of Russia". Actually, I had to just look up these names on Wikipedia, for the only person anyone is really talking about is Dmitri Medvedev, the current vice Prime Minister, supported by Yedinaya Rossiya (United Russia) and Spravedlivaya Rossiya (Fair Russia), who together occupy 75% of the Duma, and, more importantly, Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin. With this backing, it's not wonder I haven't seen a poster with a candidate's name on it: the results are already a foregone conclusion. The real "elections" happened months ago, when Putin announced Medvedev as his successor. (I still remember the first time I heard his name--one of our teachers started talking about him, and Mark thought she was being witty by calling him a "bear," as "medved" in Russian means bear. Side note: she was explaining that Medvedev was a suitable candidate because he has hair--from Lenin to Putin, Russia's strongmen have alternated between being bald and having full heads of hair) So, in lieu of candidate-supporting posters, these posters have gone up, posters that bare a suspicious resemblance to the Yedinaya Rossiya posters of the Duma elections, and the double-entendre tag "elections of the President of Russia March 2" (vote for president of vote for the president?). And while Russians are fond of criticizing America as a poor model of democracy (often warranted criticism), and while I too wonder how efficient a system can be if it takes 2 years of a 4 year term to choose a leader, if I had to choose between these two extremes, I would choose the system where citizens actually have a say. Are Russians outraged by these events? Not at all. As the duma elections illustrated (whether completely fair or not), Russians, by and large, support their president, and, by extension, will stand behind the new president as well.

"Be in the know--vote for the future"

"Bring your neighbours with you"

"10 Minutes of your time for the future of our children"

"For the continuation of the State's social policies"

An Addition from the Capital:
Contrary to what I wrote above, since arriving in Moscow I have found a poster backing a specific presidential candidate (well, not in so many words, but the picture speaks for itself). This poster, have a building tall, is supremelely located just outside the Kremlin walls. I will let you come to conclusions yourself. The caption reads "Together victorious." If you don't know the face of the man on the right, I can assure you you will soon.

Why Russia? Mid-year reflections and disillusionment…

2008-02-15T19:56:00.000-08:00

Friday night. We find ourselves, not untypically, lounging on Mark and Defri’s floor, digesting dinner, aided by Bochkaryev. Katia and Dorotoa, Italian and Polish teachers respectively, have just returned from holidays back home, and the conversation falls to how they are finding being back in Russia. Katia’s face is longer than normal, perhaps still jet-lagged, or, as she tells us, not yet adjusted to being back in Russia. It is not that she is a stranger here—she’s already spent close to 2 years in the country—but that she is finding it increasingly difficult to go back and forth between Italy and Russia. “I want out,” she tells us, “I can’t stay in Russia any longer.” Every time she returns, she tells us, it is just a little bit harder to fit in at home, to converse with old friends and family, to feel normal. She tells us that it as if there is this dark side of her that none of her friends quite understand, and that she can’t really express anyway. “And I feel as if it is either now or never: I need to decide whether I want to stay here, to start a family, build a career—or, get out while I still can.”

Katia’s remarks resonate with many in the room. We are nearing 6 months in this country. Others have been here over a year or two or three, but we all know what she means. Living in Russia is no vacation. And the days where I feel like giving up and running home are not infrequent—if anything, they are becoming more frequent. It is not just the cold, or the dark, both which are now subsiding every slow slightly, or the cold faces on the street, or the eternally frustrating bureaucracy of the government, the university, hell, even the obshezhitiye. Most disturbing is the subtle way in which the culmination of these combined frustrations slowly begin to change the way that we, as foreigners, speak and think, act towards others, and towards ourselves. We have learned to blend in with the stoic faces, to wear black coats (and maybe even fur), to eat meat and mayonnaise, to speak shortly and confrontationally (as this is the only way to accomplish anything), we’ve become short-tempered (or at least easier-to-anger), or, as Katia said, we’ve developed a “darker side.” Is it merely survival instinct—when in Rome, as the adage goes? A chameleon response? Or have we really grown easier-to-anger, embittered by the challenges of being foreign in Russia?

Whatever the case, our commiseration (note the etymology of this word—co + misery) leads back to the question: what are we doing here anyway? Why Russia? The question is directed to Katia, where this conversation began. She, like many of us, began studying Russian in her undergraduate, more on a whim than for any practical or planned purpose. She fell in love with the language, came to St. Petersburg to study for 6 months, and fell in love with the place. In retrospect, the tells us that she thinks she fell in love more with the city than the country, St. Petersburg being as European as Russia gets. Russia, then, she tells us, became sort of a life mission for her. She returned to Italy to do a Master’s in Eastern European Studies (a year of which she completed in Yekaterinburg), focusing on Russian nationalism. Understanding Russia, helping Russia to be better even, became a driving force, direction. But what of this former enthusiasm now? Perhaps it was naïve, believing that Russia could be helped, that Russia was heading for better times (read “democracy, openness, prosperity, stability, free speech,” etc.), especially by a foreigner. Or perhaps it is frustration with the seeming backward step Russian seems to have taken in these areas. Or perhaps it is homesickness catching up with her. Or, perhaps more simply, it is the simple fact that Russia cannot be half of your life. You either here or your not. “I can’t keep going back and forth,” she tells us, “studying Russia is an all-or-nothing affair.”

“What drew you to Russia,” someone asks Mark. I know Mark’s story—he read Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago a few year’s ago, was fascinated by the extremes of Russia’s history, the multiple concentrated attempts to control people, to shape society, and began studying Russia. Mark replies, “it has something to do with the search for real emotions. I understood emotions in Russia to be strong, to be real—even if these emotions are more often than not related to suffering. So much of my life in Canada seemed superficial. I guess I was searching in a way for a stronger, more real emotion.” I am a little surprised by this response, coming from someone warned me before that if you study sadness, you will find sadness, but I understand it nonetheless. For I, too, was drawn to something similar. Beyond a love for the language, I was fascinated by the “idea” of Russia—the wide open, seemingly limitless geography, the idea “wandering” which has figured into Russian history and is seen as a typically Russian characteristic, and the contemplative nature that comes with this, Russia’s rich literary tradition, the competing extremes that define that elusive so-called “Russian soul.” Somewhere between landing in Sheremetyevo II two and a half years ago, reading Dostoyevsky and studying Russian in Canada, and deciding to come back, I fell in love with the “idea” of Russia. Perhaps my disillusionment is a simple result of how little this “idea,” whether legitimately formed or not, fails to match up to the reality. Yes, Russians, on the whole, are well-versed in their literary past and proud of their literary heroes. Yes, there is truth to the “cold on the street, warm in the home” image of Russian person-to-person relations. Perhaps they know a little more about suffering too. But, on the flip-side, it is hard to describe the crudeness of the capitalism that is sweeping the country. Women talk unabashedly about finding husbands with nice cars and money, are shameless in their public application of make-up, their love of fine clothing, stilettos, and tight jeans, etc., and are unforgiving when they share of their dislike for “feminism.” Men stare back in return, approvingly grabbing buttocks here and there. Stores and restaurants are flooded with bad English pop music, despite the fact that no one knows what the songs are about (they are probably better off for it). The streets are lined with barefaced advertisements; the IKEA mall is the newest hangout. “Honour” and “honesty” seem as foreign as concepts can be—university walls are lined with advertisements of where you can buy theses, exams, etc. (when Jenny told the language institute she was too busy writing her thesis to teach this term, they replied “we can ‘help’ you with that”). Contrary to Mark’s expectations, superficiality is alive and well—thriving even—in Russia. Russian capitalism has a crude and unforgiving face. Individualism (in so much as this equals self-interest) is in, communal, shared responsibility is out.

(one week later)

…but did I not just spend the evening surrounded by friends, real friends, both foreign and Russian? And were they not laughing, joking, smiling, tearfully saying goodbye? From this sample, everything I’ve just written seems irrelevant. Is it merely self-flattery to say that my Russian friends are atypical, that I mix with a crowd that is somehow above the rest? Perhaps. But are they not just as human, in their faults as we? Is there really anything that separates us at all? Who am I to judge, to know anything about a country, a people, at all? How can I ever know, I, a wayward goldfish always looking through an invisible (though sometimes acutely visible) wall?

Images of the Steppe (Adventures in Magnitagorsk Part III)

2008-02-11T12:55:00.000-08:00

I realize this post is now a month and a half overdue, but better late than never, right? (Plus I now have a super speedy wifi connection in the dorm, only 5 months later than expected) Sometime way back when we were in Magnitagorsk, we took a day trip to a mountain in neighbouring Bashkartostan, and instead of the ski lift, we used our legs to get to the top. Despite foggy weather on the way up, the sun did make an appearance, illuminating the steppe below. Here are some images...

King (and Queen) of the Hill

Contrary to popular belief, the Urals actually are mountains

Of Балеш and Ёлки (Adventures in Magnitagorsk Part II)

2008-01-23T09:36:00.000-08:00

December 31, 2007-January 1, 2008

New Year’s Eve. We awake as yesterday morning to a breakfast spread fit for royalty, followed by tea and sweets (we’ve come to realize that offers of “tea” really mean “tea and jam and cookies and bread and45 minutes of conversation). We eat and converse then suit up for an afternoon exploring the “left bank” (i.e. the factory side). Our journeys lead us past an even bigger Lenin and the main square of MMK (Guzial forbids picture taking here), a long desolate street (where Guzial guesses we are the first foreigners to walk), a tank monument that proudly proclaims that 1 in 3 tanks during the Great Patriotic War were made from steel from MMK (this tank, ironically, stands directly facing a monument of a contemplative and hurried Pushkin).

We hope in a marshrutka and head over to the rights side to see two of the latest building additions to the city—a church and a mosque. Another oddity of this city—whereas the centre of most Russian cities and towns is an Orthodox Church, constructed as it was during the 1930s, the church and mosque are fairly out of the way and less than a decade old. We visit the church first which, like all recently renovated Orthodox cathedrals, is ornately stunning and clean. We head past the newly built hockey arena (home of the national champions—the Magnitagorsk Metallurgs) and up Prospket Lenina to the mosque.

While the church is built atop an acropolis, visible for miles around, Guzial laments that the mosque’s real estate is less than ideal—it is located in the middle of an auto market. Guzial tells us she’s been here once before, as she’s lived in Yekaterinburg since the mosque was completed. We enter the building and take off our shoes. Guzial and I make our way to the women’s hall and Mark heads upstairs to the men’s. We eventually make our way upstairs as well, and sit for awhile in the sunlight filtering through an abundance of windows—the decorations here are sparse, but the natural light makes up for this. A man approaches Mark and asks him he is, and, owing to Mark’s beard, the man wonders if he is perhaps Ingush (i.e. from Ingushetia, a Republic in the Caucasus). Mark explains that he is Canadian, and the man proceeds to ask him if he is Muslim, or Catholic, or Lutheran, etc. When Mark replies that he is “bez organisatsiya” (without organization), the man tells him that the mosque is a sacred space. Mark excuses himself and we head back downstairs. As we are about to leave, another man asks us if we want to sit and drink some tea. When Guzial responds that we’re already out the door, the man asks how the weather in Canada is—news certainly travels fast!

We head back to Guzial’s home to prepare for the evening’s celebrations. Guzial’s father has bought a Christmas tree (or, in Russian “yolka”) and we are enlisted to decorate it, as he engineers a flashing “2008” sign to hang above the tree. We move from tree decorating to salad and other dinner preparations, and then decide to bake an apple cake. As Mark and I peel apples, Guzial is rifling through old film strips and vinyl records, recounting stories of New Years gone by, while her father lovingly laments the disorder she is causing to the living room floor. The following hours continue in a similar manner, full of conversation, wonderful smells, and the type of excited anticipation I’m used to at Christmas.

Before long someone remarks that it is almost 10pm and we should start eating. The table spread consists of a number of traditional Russian salads—most containing beets, potatoes, and, Mark’s favourite, mayonnaise—and, the highlight of the evening, balesh, a traditional Tatar pie. To our surprise, Miriam’s friend has brought a gift of champagne for the evening’s celebrations. (Mark and I refrained from buying alcohol, knowing of Guzial’s objections and assuming that, as Muslims, her family did not drink). Though Guzial laments this New Year’s tradition, her mother giddily describes to us her enjoyment of a glass of midnight champagne. We finally sit down to a meal fit for twice our numbers and share in one last candlelight dinner. We are told that for now, we are not celebrating the coming New Year, but bidding farewell to the old one.

We eat and drink until someone remarks that it is almost midnight and we turn on the TV to watch what all Russians are watching tonight (mind you, broadcast 11 different times as each of Russia’s time zones greets the new year)—the Presidential address. A slightly less stern than usual (though equally pasty) Putin appears onto the screen, his figure superimposed in front of a night-time Kremlin scene, the Russian flag flapping proudly at the top of the screen. Putin congratulates his compatriots with their achievements of the rapidly disappearing year, saying that together they have become stronger. He reflects that the coming year will see him end his term as President, though by this time most in the room have lost interest and are busy preparing sparklers. Putin’s speech comes to a close, the Kremlin clock begins to dong, and Miriam rushes to light our sparkles and pour more glasses of champagne. The clock strikes twelve, the national anthem begins to play, and we welcome the New Year with minor indoor fireworks. When the flames have died down, Guzial’s mom is quick to propose a game. She brings out costumes and encourages us to all dress up, and before we know what’s going on, we are holding hands and dancing around the yolka singing to the beloved holiday tree. When the dancing is over, Guzial runs out of the room and returns with the large Pochta Rossiya (Russian Poste) bag she purchased today, full of gifts. In a theatrical demonstration, she bestows an array of very practical gifts to everyone in the room—soap, shoelaces, a broom and dustpan, etc. More gift giving follows, and the evening turns to more fun and games—involving flour, candies, the recitation of poetry, the singing of some more songs (somehow “Land of the Silver Birch” makes it into the mix…), and other similar activities. When we have sufficiently tired ourselves out with these activities, we decide to venture down the road, guided by the new candle lantern Guzial received from Miriam, to the tobogganing hill. We suit up and head out into the crisp new 2008 winter, sleigh in hand. We pause at the top of the hill for a moment to take in the glory of the factory at night. From the dark fog that is the factory erupts a red glow. Mark, startled, asks Guzial what’s going on. She replies that they are simply pouring the steel, though the event, combined with the perpetual flame atop smoke stacks is reminiscent of a scene out of the Lord of the Rings (think Sauron’s Eye and the Pit of Mordor).

After some sledding and a good long observation of the factory we retreat back to the warmth of Guzial’s home. Her parents have just gone to bed, though she remains set on watching the multfilms of her childhood. She arranges the projector to display the slides on the pink wallpaper of the living room, and we fall asleep to her reading the narratives from the bottom of each slide. I vaguely remember moving beds in-between stories, though when I next open my eyes the sun has already risen, the first sun, the first daylight of 2008.

When Yek-burg Freezes Over

2008-01-22T11:08:00.000-08:00

Into Magnet Mountain (Adventures in Magnitagorsk Part I)

2008-01-13T23:29:00.000-08:00

December 29, 2007

We are on a rickety bus somewhere south of Chelyabinsk, heading south to the Kazakh border. Mark and Guzial have decided to pass the time with Mark’s new magnetic chess board. I try to read the book I received for Christmas—Anna Politkovskaya’s “Dirty War,” a collection of her writings about the most recent Chechen war, reporting for which she was recently murdered—though the poorly-maintained roads, bumping bus, and dim lighting make this task difficult. The woman in front of Guzial tends to the cat she has tucked into her purse—all things go when traveling in Russia.

We are traveling to Magnitagorsk, Guzial’s hometown, to “vstretit” (greet/meet) the New Year with Guzial and her family. When we first met Guzial and found out she was from Magnitagorsk, Mark immediately recounted a book he’d read on the city and Guzial was instantly endeared to him, perhaps the sole Canadian who’d ever heard of this strange city on the Kazakh steppe. Guzial simultaneously laughs and is slightly confused as she reads my Lonely Planet Guide’s description of the city which reports that Magnitagorsk is a “Frankenstein” of a city with “magnificently ugly” panoramas of a factory that “belches dense curtains of smoke in fearfully multifarious colours.” Over the course of the next week, we are to find that “Frankenstein” is quite an apt description.

Evening sets in and Guzial tells us we will soon arrive. It’s hard to make out our surroundings through the frosted windows, though Guzial explains that we will cross from the left bank to the right of the Ural river—from Europe into Asia, or it is the other way around, she wonders—and arrive at the avtovokzal. After some more winding and bumping we arrive. Stepping out of the bus after a long ride we are happy for the fresh air, though the air here is heavy and pungent. We turn up Prospekt Lenina—described by Lonely Planet as “the spine of a re-animated Stalinist city—towards the tram stop. We hope in a marshrutka and begin the journey to Guzial’s family’s home, back across the river into Asia. Although it is dark, through the windows we can vaguely make out our strange surroundings—3/4 of the landscapes of this drive are made up of smoke stacks of the sprawling MMK (Magnitagorskiy Metalurgicheskiy Kombinat), the steel factory for which this city was made and which currently employs upwards of 80% of the city’s residents.

We arrive at our stop and again step out into the night air. There are few lights in the residential area that lies down the hill in front of us. What lies in front of us looks more like a village, comprised of small wooden and stone houses, than a city, Guzial points to a hill in the near distance and tells us that her grandfather built his house by that hill. She tells us that her grandfather, at the age of 18, was sent here along with his father in 1931 to “build the city.” ‘Sent” is, however, too soft a word—they, along with many other Tatars and “represirovaniye” were forcibly relocated here under Stalin after sizeable iron and coal deposits were discovered under “Magnitskaya Gora” (Magnet Mountain). Although a thousand kilometers from Tatarstan, Tatars comprise a sizeable percentage of the city’s population and, as we are to discover, feel at home in this city that their not-to-distant ancestors built with their own hands. In the quiet of the mid-evening and the quaintness of this village-like settlement, Mark remarks that this is quite a beautiful city. “All cities can be beautiful at night,” Guzial responds in English.

A petit man in a fur hat is walking towards us. “I think that is my father,” Guzial says, judging by his figure and his gait. “Ati,” she calls to him, and to us explains that ati is Tatar for “father.” We draw nearer and they embrace. He, like Guzial, is a bubbly and energetic man who eagerly shakes our hands (both of our hands, not just Mark’s, a rare occurrence when meeting men in Russia) and introduces himself, telling us that we can call him abi (Tatar for uncle). As we venture farther up the hill, he warmly welcomes us to their city with an encompassing sweep of his arm. From the top of the hill we have quite a view of the factory at night. He points out the flames coming from the highest smoke stack, and explains with a hint of pride that it is always burning, a symbol of life. Indeed, were that flame to go out, the city would have more than one reason to despair.

We arrive at their family’s home, a small brick bungalow enclosed by an iron fence. Inside Guzial’s mother enthusiastically greets us, encouraging us to take off our coats and sit down at the table to eat. She is the tiniest and most sprightly family member yet—at 5’2’’, Guzial is the tallest in her family—and enthusiastically serves us fresh soup, self-canned cabbage and carrot salad, bread and tea. We welcome a warm and tasty dinner and her friendly motherly chatter. We pass the remainder of the evening chatting, drinking tea, playing the piano—something both Guzial and I have dearly missed—reading, playing chess, and warm

ing to our new surroundings. When it comes time to go to bed, our offers to sleep on the floor or in the smallest room are firmly rejected (even when Guzial tries to persuade them), and Mark is given the double divan while Guzial’s parents sleep instead on the smaller fold-out chairs. Though Mark is a little uncomfortable with this royal treatment, Guzial assures him that her mother would rather not sleep than sleep knowing a guest was uncomfortable. She is the hostess, she
tells us, and we shall abide by her wishes.

December 30, 2007

We awake late Sunday morning, tired from bus travel and the evening’s activities. Guzial has already gone out for a run with her father, and her mother is busy preparing us breakfast. When they return, we sit down to a breakfast of kasha and eggs, then dress for a day of wondering the cold streets. I am persuaded to wear Ramis’ boots, and extra sweater and a borrowed scarf. Guzial’s mother will not let us leave the house under-dressed, and, greeted by a cold wind, we are grateful for her stubborn persistence.

The city looks new as we see at for the first time in daylight. Mark ogles over the expanse of the factory both as we walk to the transit stop and drive into the town. We get out at the “Palatka” monument, a reconstruction of the tents the early builders of the city lived in. The first stanza of a famous poem “mi zhili v palatke” (we lived in tents) decorates the bottom of the monument. To the left is a large banner with the inscription “Slava Stroitelyam Magnitagorska” (Glory to the Builders of Magnitagorsk!). In between the banner and the tent is a view that is, literally, quite breathtaking—over the trees and across the river stands MMK in all its magnificently ugly glory, the sky above an unearthly hue somewhere between orange, brown and green. Short of a picture, the best I can say is to picture Hamilton Harbour multiplied by about 100 plus a few more variants environmentally
-disastrous gaseous waste.

We walk from the monument through a downtown of wide, freakishly straight boulevards lined with typical, 5-storey apartment blocks. The city is noticeably shorter than Yekaterinburg (more than 5-storeys would have required the installation of an elevator), and, even more noticeably, it is ordered in a way comparable to the artificially designed cities of computer games. We greet Lenin in front of the university, an icy Dyed Moroz (the Russian equivalent of Santa Claus) and Snegurachka (his niece and helper) and happen upon a monument to the Komsomols (young Communists) who built the city. Guzial points out the error in this statue, noting that exiled Tatars should be more to thank.

Nearing the river, we come upon the Palace of Culture, watched over by Ordzhonikidze –although most monuments of Stalin no longer exist, Ordzhonikidze, who Mark tells me was Stalin’s best buddy, remains. Beside the Palace is a monument to the soldiers of the front during the “Great Patriotic War” (what we know as WWII). Guzial tells us that her grandfather was not allowed to go to the front as he was a “represirovat.” Mark asks Guzial why he would have wanted to serve the army of a government under whom he’d been repressed, and Guzial is perplexed. “Why would this influence his decision,” she responds. Mark presses further, as confused by Guzial’s response as she by his question, trying to explain why he doesn’t understand why anyone who’d been deported and forced to live in tents while building a city would want to fight for the very people who’d done this to him. How could he forgive them their misdeeds? Guzial’s response is simple yet telling of an attitude shared by many of this city: “Things were bad for lots of people, not just my grandfather. The goal was bigger than just the government—they were fighting for peace in the world” (or, in the Russian double-entendre, “mir miru,” “peace to the world”). “He didn’t want or need to forgive them, just forget and move on.”

We continue along the river’s bank for awhile, taking in an unobstructed view of the factory that is really the heart and pride of this city—it was, after all, the biggest factory in the world at the time of its construction, and continues to produce 20% of all of Russia’s metal products. It is a particularly clear day, and Guzial tells us the smoke stacks are emitting a special colour today, just for us. We make our way past fountains, parks, and a giant sports and recreation complex and I feel as if I’ve stepped into a Soviet propaganda poster. Eventually we arrive at our destination—the enormous 83-tonne Til Front monument, that stands 15m high. The monument is one of three of a kind—the others are located in Berlin and Stalingrad (now Volgograd). This particular monument is of a steel worker handing a sword to a soldier. Here is the Soviet dream depicted. Through industrious hard working labourers is born a factory and a city, the fruits of this labour are in turn used to defend the reigning ideology, to bring peace to the world.

We spend some time taking in the enormity of the statue before us and watching a car doing donuts on the frozen river, then head back towards the bus station to meet Guzial’s sister who’s due to be arriving soon. We meet her at the bus station and head home for an evening of baking, conversing, and Russian multfilms (cartoons), and easily fall asleep after a day that will take many more to digest.

A Christmas to Remember

2007-12-28T21:56:00.000-08:00

I know you are probably all anxious to know how Christmas was spent by a Canadian in Russia, away from home for the first time during the holiday season... Rest assured there will be quite a story told here shortly. For now, let it suffice to say that our Christmas began with mashed potatoes, stuffing and homemade egg nog a la Paul (the American astrophysicist) and, also thanks to Paul, the viewing of the 1960s Rudolph-the-Red-Nosed-Reindeer Classic...then progressed to Glintvein and appetizers with various other foreigners in the city, then digressed into an extended argument with the Soviet-morality minded dejournaya, a 3am pepper-spray incident and open windows in -25 degree weather, and concluded with chicken hot dogs and beer. It was, not a typical or even merry Christmas but it was, without a doubt, a Christmas to remember. We're headed to Magnitagorsk today to meet the New Year with Guzial's family, then may wonder back to Yekaterinburg via Ufa (in Bashkirostan), though I hope to have some more details up here soon. Until then, I wish you all a Happy New Year!

Walking in a Winter Wonderland...

2007-12-26T10:34:00.001-08:00

Holiday Greetings

2007-12-25T00:32:00.000-08:00

When I began this letter a month ago today, my intention was to mail it to all of you along with some Christmas cards, though I kept getting lost in other thoughts and did not finish it in time. It is still not really done, but I think it may never be, and I've decided to post it here for you all now. Especially today, Christmas Day, I need to feel that I still have some connection with all of you over there on the other side of the Atlantic, and in sending this wondering thoughts out into the world I feel just a little bit more like I am not an island in this vast sea.

November 25, 2007

Greetings dear friends and family!
As I begin this letter, I am staring out through a slightly foggy window at a stand of pine trees heavy with November snow. The forest floor in which they find root is a clean white blanket sprinkled only with pine needles, the soft footprints of birds, and the occasional heavier trail of a person who has ventured to spend time with these trees. Between here and the forest grow a variety of now leafless trees with which I am unfamiliar, though have come to be my favourite for the eternally-ripe red berries that decorate their bows like ornaments on a Christmas tree, regardless of the layer of snow and ice that now cover each cluster. While the sky is overcast now, last night it was lit brightly by the full moon. As we moved from the retreat centre to the shashlik (shishkabob) fire to the banya and back again, the Big Dipper--or Medvyeditsa (she-bear) as its called in Russian--seemed to travel almost half the sky. Though the nights are long and the winter consetellations travel, I am comforted in knowing that I am looking at the same big sky lit by the same full moon as all of you, even if from a different angle.

One of my modest goals for this year was to use my free time to write, though now approaching December I feel as if I have failed miserably in this task. I have written to some of you periodically, to others of you even less, and for myself even less still. I hope to partially remedy this silence with this letter. I remember my parents receiving Christmas Newsletters from various friends in various countries, MCC alumni and relatives, always complete with a family photograph. The letters were usually addressed to "Peter and Cath" and sometimes "and children" or "Christina, Jodie and Steven" in smaller letters and I always found the tradition of receiving a yearly update on the lives of people I'd never met, or knew only in passing, a bit odd. Now sitting here in a forest in the Urals, however, I'm starting to understand this practice, this desire for contact with the familiar, the impulse to share, to let far away friends into my foreign life. And so I write to you, both for you and for me, to fulfill this need to narrate the experiences of this far-away and close-at-hand life, to remain connected to a social sphere now half a world away, and to let you all in, to give you a picture, to perhaps insight you reflection or day-dreams or itchy feet or wonder and gratitude for the by-chance incidents and intentional experiences, the conversations and landscapes and wandering ideas that make up this life. How does one begin to describe the experiences of four months of transitions and new things, the frustrations and revelations that come with this, and the every day particularities of life in between? I'm not really sure, though I am still driven to try, in stories, pictures, anecdotes--with words.

And so I will begin at the beginning. August 13, 2007, Mark and I boarded a plane in the Hamilton Airpot bound for the Doncaster/Sheffield airport in England. After a bizarre encounter with an immigration official, we headed to Manchester, where we spent a few days wandering the city and checking out the university where I have since applied to do a Master's program. From here we headed to Oxford, then on to London. From London we flew to Hamburg, then took a train to Bremen where we spent some time with Kosntantin, the German exchange student who lived with my parents this year. From Bremen we went to Kiel to visit an old high school friend, then took a bus to Strasbourg and a train to Mulhouse where we were met by an old friend of my families and taken to his wonderful farm near the border of Alsace, Franche-Compte and Switzerland. We returned to Bremen, then flew out of Hamburg to Moscow, then caught a train to Yekaterinburg. A whirl-wind tour of Europe, to say the least, and thinking back on it now I am surprised by the peculiar memories and images that have remained in my mind. Memories like falling alseep to the music coming from the jazz club across the street from our Manchester hostel, or watching rowers glide down the river while we enjoyed a dinner of peanuts and avacado from the shore. Or happening upon an international youth orchestra performance in Christchurch Cathedral in Oxford, and enjoying a locally-brewed beer in one of the college pubs with our physicist Philipino doctoral student host. Or being excited by the selling of fresh hazelnuts from the Turkish store under the apartment where we stayed in Dalston (London) with a fellow Canadian friend-of-a-friend. Or taking a rest on the banks of the Thames after wandering the Tate Modern for hours, watching a Muslim man quietly perform his prayers to the backdrop of St. Paul's Cathedral. Or the Kurdish man who we befriended on the airport shuttle in Hamburg, who bought our train ticket to Bremen. Or watching the kites and the wind-surfers against a blue sky on a sandy Baltic beach just north of the Kiel canal. Or the relief of jumping in the water of an over-crowded public French swimming pool, just across the street from the EU Parliament. Or breakfasts of fresh milk and honey with Cephas' uncle Henri in the 150+ year-old farm kitchen. Or wandering a Swiss mountain immune to the turrential rain and cold for the adventure and the company of the moment. Or cooking way too much curry for the street festival outside Konsti's house. Or sharing a coffee in the Hamburg airport before beginning the last let of our journey. Or the feeling of utter frustration and exhaustion born of not being able to find an ATM in Moscow and the complete unhelpfulness of the train ticket sales person. Or the copious amounts of food--bread, cheese, meat, eggs, vegetables from his grandma's garden--shared by our kupe-mate on the train from Moscow. Or the surprise at finding Defri at the train station, sent in Jenny's place after an early morning mugging. Or the ineffably strange feeling of returning to a place that was once home though is still completely foreign...

December 2, 2007

It’s three months to the day since we arrived in this country, and I find myself once again on a train headed east towards Yekaterinburg. We are returning from a weekend in Kazan, the capital of Tatarstan, with Guzial, a Tatarian friend who sings in the same choral ensemble as I. We’ve just spent two days wandering the clean winter streets of a city where the likes of Lenin and Tolstoy studied, located at the crossroads of the Volga and Kazanka rivers, a city which is also the meeting place of languages and cultures (Russian and Tatarian) at the heart of which is a UNESCO protected kremlin that houses both an Orthodox Cathedral and one of the most stunning recently reconstructed mosques I’ve ever seen. And now, once again, we are east-ward bound, heading home to the Urals, past the same forests, fields and track-side villages as when this adventure began. The scenery has changed—the fileds are not blank white canvases that beckon newness and creativity as this clean page waiting to be villed with words. The trees are heavy under winter’s dress, the conifers fully outfitted while the birch and poplar among them hold snow like floured baking hands, their bare branches upturned fingers asking—or praising—something from above. And it is now, in transition once again, neither here nor there, that I am able to put my thoughts to paper, to document the ups and downs, wonderings and wanderings of the last three months.

And it’s been three months of just that—ups and downs, in every possible sense of these words, and in all areas of life. I will begin with the most obvious "up." I have also found the process of learning a language somewhat akin to that of climbing a seemingly never-ending spiral staircase with very wide platforms between steps. There are long periods of time where it feels as if you are making no progress, as you slowly progress across one plateau, and then steep intervals of upward movement, where upon arriving at a higher level you have the brief privilege of seeing the distance you’ve traveled. This moment is, however, fleeting, as you once again begin to make your way across the next plateau and the only thing visible to you is the long distance yet to be traveled. There are days—many of them—where I feel completely inadequate at expressing myself, lost in a language that I feel I will never understand, frustrated by my lack of ability to speak and understand clearly, inhibited from fully experiencing this country because of my linguistic deficiencies. Yet then there are also days, conversations, moments, when I will be pleasantly aware, satisfactorily conscious of the progress I’ve made—moments like, for example, laughing at the subtle dry humour of our choir director because I actually understand and not just because everyone else is laughing, or understanding the nurse as he instructed me to roll over, inhale and exhale, and puff up my stomach as he did an ultrasound to determine the source of my stomach woes (mayonnaise and cabbage is my own diagnosis…), or suddenly realizing that I now have a passive understanding of the conversations going on around me on a crowded trolleybus making its way through traffic, or here on the train now, or no longer being conscious of switching between languages as I spent time with Mark, Guzial and her cousins this weekend as my thought processes have become integrated, or being able to sit and write a small essay in class on the moral character of Pechorin, Lermantov’s "Hero of our Time." And while there remain days where I do not even have the energy to open my mouth, this language learning continues to be a humbling process, a process that has led me to a fuller appreciation of the potentials of literacy and communication skills, a learning endeavour that daily reminds me of my limitations, a process that continues to deepen my respect for all those people who live daily in foreign languages—either by choice or external circumstance. And, above all, this is a process that continues to deepen my love of language, an infatuation with words, for understanding their relationship to each other, to their environmental surroundings, to their historical and contemporary significance, for the entry they provide into understanding how a people think and live, ….

December 14, 2007

A few more weeks and no more words have passed since I last tried to write this letter, and I've resigned myself to accepting that it will not reach you before the New Year. I'm sitting in the library at school, after a mid-day walk along the misty Iset River that cuts through the downtown. It's been awhile since I've taken the detour to walk along the river, and I was pleasantly surprised by how fresh, clean and new the city looks under a layer of snow. I stopped for a moment to take a full breath of -15 degree winter air and to appreciate the cold beauty and stillness of this small oasis in the middle of a busy city, and was then once again overcome with the urge to write. It seems that the only time I am filled with this impulse is surrounded by the blankness of snow, a newness that calls forth creativity. The result of this is that, as you may have noticed a trend, you are getting a lot of descriptions of snowy landscapes, but little of substance in between. I am currently reading Orhan Pamuk's "My Name is Red," and I just read a passage written in the voice of the colour red, who described the phenomenon of being used by artists in all varieties of purpose, and for the remainder of the day all I could see around me was red. Today, as I think about the creative evocation of snow, it is white--the white of the slightly drawn curtains, the light socket, the inner pages of books lying on their spines on the shelves, the industrial ceiling, or papered signs on the wall. I wonder briefly how long I will be able to keep your attention with these descriptions, though I trust if you've made it this far, you will continuing reading on, and perhaps be able to find some meaning inbetween these lines, in the honesty of my wandering thoughts, in the snow-white of the paper on which they are written.

My plan was to continue on with the stair metaphor as a means of describing this city and my life in it to you. I was going to write that if learning a language is like climbing stairs, then coming to know a city, a country, a people, is like slowly descending a parallel staircase, each step down one step closer to the heart of things, to the cold and comfort and dirty that comes with descending into the earth. I was going to write about the obshezhitiye and the university as the top of the staircase, about my life living with an American, a Korean, a Swede, a Brazilian, and Indonesian, and studying with a host of disillusioned Chinese students. I was going to make poignant comments about how this was perhaps a strange entry into Russia, a slightly foggy window through which to watch this world, and I was probably going to mention how studying in this hopelessly unorganized university has made me fully appreciate the value of my Canadian education. I was then going to say that the next step down included my attempts to break into the not-for-profit world of this city--a trip to an orphanage with a group of Russian students, evenings spent in the bunker-like Yekaterinburg headquarters of "Memorial" flipping through their endless collection of records of victims of Stalinist repression and talking about what significance remembering these victims has for today. And then maybe I would have mentioned my recent entry into the working world, the English-class I'm teaching twice a week or how I'm becoming an expert in Russia's steal industry grace a a job tutoring the head managers of a steal company. I would have maybe peppered this brilliantly written description with word-paintings of the city, mentioning the way the sun that never makes it more than 30 degrees above the horizon glints off of windows of newly constructed sky-scrapers, or the ice-village they are building next to Lenin in 1905 Square, or the little ice-fishing tents that now dot the city pond, the shadows cast by the steeple of the city duma in the red-orange sunset sky every day (at 4:30pm!), or perhaps the the way the hazel of the eyes of the babushka, who sits diligently every day with a cup in her hand on the graffitied wall of the bookstore beside the university, matches her wool boots.

December 14-25, 2007

This is what I was going to write about, and I was going to leave you with a wonderful view of a foreign city that I am making my home. As I sit now in my bedroom, wrapped in three layers of clothes--or, as Guzial likes to say, "dressed like a kapusta" (cabbage)--pondering how I've survived the oppressive wallpaper and cold for this long, I am again lost for a place to begin. The truth of the matter is that I have spent the last week taking a hard look at why it is that I came here in the first place, what it is that I am doing here now, and whether or not I actually want to stay. I would like to say that this room has become my home, yet I cannot. I would like to say that I belong in this city, but I feel as foreign as ever, perhaps even more so the longer I stay here and become more familiarized with the subtle differences of this place, the endlessly frustrating bureaucracy, not to mention the cold (current temperature: -27). But, what can I do but try and make the best of where I am? Am I not the one who brought myself here in the first place? I am living the consequences of my own decisions. Perhaps that is enough, to know that I am writing my life. Yet, like many a Russian literary hero, perhaps my belief that I am in control, that I am the master of my own fate, is both my greatest strength and weakness. And what I need is not resignation to less than ideal situations, but acceptance and welcome of the learning that comes through such challenges. And this I believe has always been there, somewhere in the back of my mind, somewhere in initial impulse to come to this big cold country. What begins with wonder, though this wonder may at times be blackened out, shall, I hope, return to wonder, return to a sense of awe for the beauty in the strangeness that surrounds me. And wonder, awe and gratitute may perhaps mingle once again and I will find joy in both happiness and trial... or, as Rumi says...

THE GUEST HOUSE
This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they're a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honourably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.
Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

Images of Kazan

2007-12-09T09:43:00.000-08:00

Last weekend Mark and I with our friend Guzial hopped on a train and spent the weekend in Kazan, the capital of Tatarstan that just recently celebrated its 1000th anniversary. We caught the train Friday afternoon, arrived in a snowy Kazan at precisely 5:44am, were greeted by some of Guzial's relatives, and spent the day wandering the beautifully clean and white streets of a city where minarets and bell towers stand side by side, where the likes of Lenin and Tolstoy spent some of their student days (however brief they were!) After a whole lot of walking and not too much sleep, on Sunday afternoon we got back on the train and headed home. Total cost of our train tickets: 980 roubles ($37). Total time spent on the train: 35 hours. Result: An unforgettable weekend. Here are some images of our adventures...

3 hours to sunrise

Happy 1000th Birthday Kazan!

The Kremlin--A UNESCO Protected World Heritage Site

Oh, Dairy-Oh: An Ode to the Dairy Products of Russia

2007-11-17T09:26:00.000-08:00

The price of milk jumped about 20% this week, from around 25p a carton to 30p. As I enjoy the ease of cereal in the morning, and have accepted that veganism is a foregone impossibility in this country (is there even a word for "soy" in Russian?), I sucked up this jump in price an bought my carton of 0.5% Parmalat milk anyway. I am not sure what precipitated this jump in price. My Swedish roommate said she heard it was related to a cutback in subsidies to EU dairy farmers, though apparently this happened in the beginning of the year so doesn't explain the jump in price this week. The cost of produce has been steadily rising, as winter approaches and vegetables are no longer in season, though as far as I knew, the milking patterns of cows were not affected by the cold. My best guess, in lieu of an official reason, is that perhaps the cows' milking patterns have been confused by the time change, and it is not the cold but the increasingly incessant darkness that makes milking more difficult. Or, perhaps dairy farmers assume that if people will pay more for peppers and tomatoes, or maybe because they can no longer afford these things, they will be willing to pay more for their morning cereal as well. While wandering the dairy aisle, pondering the multiple forms of milk packaging and the cheapest way to continue drinking milk, I was forced to pause and appreciate the diversity of choice in front of me--a plethora of not merely milk packaging, but the exotic nature of dairy products in general. Though most of these products have tragically lept beyond what my food budget allows, I offer you the following literary tour of the contents of the dairy aisle of my local supermarket.

Milk: Let's begin with the obvious. Or not so obvious. Even if I regularly drank milk in Canada, I would have not arrived to this country with an adequate knowledge of milk to navigate this section of the grocery story. The milk section is so volumunious that it spills from the dairy aisle into the central aisle across from the deli and frozen foods section. Why? Well, if you thought "skim" 1% and 2% was choice, guess again. Milk in Russia is available in fat-quantities at intervals of 0.5% ranging from 0.5% to 7.0% (and we aren't talking about cream yet, people). Most Russians don't know what to do with anything less than 3%, so the section is dominated by 3.5%, 4% and 4.5%, multiplied by about 7 brands then multiplied by another 3 ways of packaging. The standard cartons of milk are found in the aisle facing the deli, while the slightly cheaper though more combersome bags of milk are found interpersed with the rest of the dairy products. At first I thought these bags a rather strange phenomenon--they look like flattened cartons minus most of the stability of cardboard--until my American roommate informed me that Canadians were weird for buying milk in bags. While the Russian cardboard-like vacuum sealed bag of milk does not resemble the transparent Canadian bag in the least, I have thus since reformed my view of these bags of milk from strange to possible practical, though, lacking a milk jug, I have stuck to buying the carton.

Cream: Neighbouring the milk in the milk aisle is cream. The cream section is comprised of everything to thick to be considered milk (i.e. liquid dairy products ranging from 7.5% to 40% fat). You cannot, however, purchase whipped cream. For pumpkin pie lovers, this delicacy comes at the price of good ol' fashioned elbow grease (or some sugar, a fork, two hours of foresight, a steady mixing hand and a whole lot of patience).

Yoghurt: Yoghurt marks the beginning of the actual dairy aisle, taking up approximately 8 shelves (I'm not kidding). This section is populated mostly by single yoghurt cups (to my dismay, as much as Russians love dairy, you cannot buy 1L tubs of yoghurt), including plain yoghurt, fruit-flavoured yoghurt, yoghurt with fruits and nuts, vanilla yoghurt, chocolate yoghurt, caramel yoghurt, yoghurt with active bacteria culture, and, for the particularly extravant taste, yoghurt with crunchy chocolate balls.

Yoghurt Drinks: Hopefully this category is fairly self-explanatory, even if odd to Canadian eyes. If you like yoghurt, why shouldn't it be available in drinkable form? Who needs spoons anyway? For 25-30p a bottle, yoghurt drinks are a healthy and popular purchase for Russians on the run, or who's tastes have wandered from the traditional Russian yoghurt-like drink: kefir.

Kefir: Somewhere between milk, yoghurt and sour cream in taste and texture is kefir. If you can't imagine what it could possibly be from that description, you may be out of luck, unless, perhaps, you are familiar with the Middle Eastern drink ayran. Kefir is the Russian equivalent (though, in my opinion, less tasty) of this drink, a thick drink similar to drinkable yoghurt, minus the flavour or sugar. Heated with a bit of honey or sugar, and in the right mood, this can be a pleasant snack. Under no circumstances, however, will it quench your thirst, or leave you feeling light and healthy and sound in stomach.

Tvorog: Like kefir, tvorog is something difficult to conceive of until tasted. Somewhere between cottage cheese and cream cheese in taste, and feta and cottage cheese in texture, tvorog is most often used as an ingredient in baked goods, as the topping on cookies, or, as it is sold at our favourite croissant stand, baked into a croissant with spinach. Tvorog is sold muh like butter, squarely wrapped in waxed paper. As I recently discovered, tvorog is also available in a sladkaya (sweet) form, and sometimes mixed with raisins. In this form, I've been told, tvorog is best enjoyed with tea, added in the same manner as sugar or cream.

Smetana: I am not sure why I chose to refer to this product in its Russian form, for smetana is something I knew before venturing to the motherland, i.e. sour cream. Perhaps this linguistic choice is due to the fact that one of it is one of the first words I learned in Russian (more specifically, in the phrase "sup bez smetani, pozhaulsta" or "soup without sour cream, please"). More likely, however, is the fact that sour cream consumption in Russia is in such a league of its own that the very product cannot be adequately rendered by its English equivalent. Plus it just doesn't taste quite like it does at home, probably due to a higher fat content. In any case, smetana is a favoured condiment (or primary ingredient) for such varied dishes as: borscht, blini, pelmeni, vereneki, various salads, bread, cookies, smetanichka (a very taste cookie-cake like dessert whose name is derived from its main ingredient), or, if there is nothing else in the kitchen cupboard, smetana can be enjoyed eaten straight out of the container with a spoon.

Mayonnaise: Mayonnaise is not technically part of the dairy aisle--in fact, it has its own aisle--but it warrants mention here as a dairy-based product near and dear to the citizens of Yekaterinburg. I am told, after all, that we are living in the mayonnaise capital of the world. I place it after smetana as it is often consumed in the same way, though to an even greater extent. 98% of Russian "salads" have mayonnaise at their base, and, now that I think of it, I do not think I have ever been to a Russian-prepared meal where mayonnaise was not featured prominently. It can be purchased in large tubs, small tubs, tubes, or squeezable bag-like containers.

Sirok: I was introduced to this sweet snack by Guilherme when we stopped at a grocery store on the way to Shartash the other week. Although sirok typically costs between 4 and 7 rubles, I ended up spending 20 minutes and 100 rubles at the store when the cashier gave me change as if I'd given her a smaller bill and when I corrected her began a process of counting all of the money in the till, while Mark and Guilherme stood outside eating their sirok and laughing at me. When her manager came and started the process over and refused to answer when I asked how long it would be, I decided my time wasn't worth the 65 rubles difference. Despite this unpleasant first encounter, sirok is perhaps the best dairy find of this trip--it is a small, chocolate coated slightly frozen product with a filling somewhere close to that of cheese cake, mixed, if your heart desires, with an assortment of different fruity options. Mark has been plotting to mail some of these tasty treats home to a cheese-cake loving sister, though we've yet to figure out how to keep them from melting on the trans-Atlantic journey.

Butter: Margarine hasn't caught on in Russia quite has it has in North America (though it is available sometimes), to the result that the butter section occupies a sizeable portion of the aisle.
Butter of all qualities and grades (ranging from 25 rubles/200g up to 60 or 70 rubles), and in all sizes is available, for any taste, appetite and purpose. I don't think I have ever purchased butter in Canada, though in an effort to make brownies I was forced to stare down this section of the aisle. In various other baking adventures since, I now know exactly where to go to avoid the overwhelming feeling that everything around me is going to melt into unindentifiable mounds of yellowy creaminess...

Cheese: Despite being slightly lactose intolerant and having vegan aspirations, cheese is the one and only dairy product that I have always loved. And Russia offers much for the cheese lover. In this section you can find speciatly foreign cheese products such as small cream cheese packets similar to La vache qui rit and feta, mozerella and cheddar, as well as a wide assortment of cheeses that I have given up trying to translate. Tragically, this week these cheeses jumped in price to cost as much as mozerella. The only cheese still affordable to me has become "kolbasnaya sir," or "sausage" cheese--a smoked cheese packaged in much the same way as sausage (i.e. in some strange waxy-like coating in the shape of a large sausage).

Ice Cream: Rounding out the dairy aisle is the dairy freezer. Actually, there are multiple freezers, and they are interpersed along the front of the store...Come to think of it, with these freezers in the front, the mayonnaise aisle up the left, the milk spilling over into the deli section, and the dairy aisle itself, dairy products indeed form a ring around the entire store. But back to ice cream. Ice cream comes in many shapes and forms, from vanilla packaged in tubes, to plastic tubs, frozen ice cream bars, and to a product that Len introduced us to the first time we walked a Russian street with him: the 4 rouble ice cream cone (well, it was 4 roubles 2 years ago, the cheapest you can find them today is 7 or 8). This ice cream cone comes in a transparent plastic wrapper, and, while it tastes like ice cream, I have my doubts as to the purity of the ingredients. Len was a fan of buying 3 or 4 of these little cones at once, and putting the extras in his pocket or briefcase for later consumption. Strangely, they seemed to keep just fine, even on a September street.

Well, a few weeks have gone by since I began this entry, the temperature has dropped 15-20 degrees, there are 4 inches of snow on the ground, an hour less daylight, and milk has somehow returned to 25 roubles a carton. Alas, my projections of cow milking patterns seem to have been proved incorrect, the price of dairy products instead dictated by the whims of the market. And now thrown into the cold and the dark that is to be this winter, and the fatigue that comes with this weather, the dairy consumption of Russians is seeming a little less odd. I have been instructed daily by one particular teacher to eat more calories--butter and smetana were her specific instructions--in order to keep myself warm. This logic still seems a bit bizarre to me, though in a country of seemingly anorexic women and a population who've survived these winters for centuries, I'm coming to believe that perhaps they've discovered some secret in dairy consumption that we have missed, something glanced over in the drive towards low-fat, low-calorie products. Something that would no doubt be the envy of Ontario dairy farmers. Whatever it is, I am going to take advantage of the opportunity of sirok, havarti, ice cream, tvorog, smetana, etc. being considered essential to my healthy survival of winter in the Urals. Bring on the dairy-oh!

Coming soon: A Survival Guide to Winter Cooking in the Urals (or, 101 ways to cook cabbage and potatoes)

A Russian Ramadan

2007-10-28T02:41:00.001-07:00

Friday, October 12, 2007

Although I've already been awake for over an hour, there is no sign of the sun as Defri and I exit the obshezhitiye into the brisk pre-dawn. We round the obshezhitiye towards Ulitsa Vosmova Marta, walking carefully across the rubble that is now Ulitsa Stepana Razina. I comment to Defri that between the dark and the upturned street it looks as if we're walking through a war zone. We make our way up a slowly waking-up city towards the metro stop. Along the way, Defri nostalgically describes to me what his family is doing to celebrate this day, a day that has already arrived in Indonesia.In Russian, today is Ramazan Bayram. This day is more familiar to me as Eid, the festival that marks the end of the month of fasting in the Muslim calendar. We are on our way to meet some friends in the Uralmash district of the city, then head north to a small town that is home to what Defri tells me is the nicest mosque near Yekaterinburg. We make our way to the subway, passing quickly through the usually packed turnstiles and onto the train before morning rush hour really begins. I am struck by the abnormally high percentage of men onboard, the morning shift of the metallurgical factory we are currently travelling under.

We travel the 5 stops to the end of the subway line (despite the intricate subway plans displayed in the trains and stations, we have indeed just travelled the entirety of Yekaterinburg's metro system) and meet Rinda, another Indonesian friend at the station. We resurface to darkness and, after working through some changed travel plans, we begin to look for the bus stop. The streets are slowly coming alive, and the bus stop is considerably more crowded than the subway lines. A tram pulls up and a group of 40 or so gypsie--90% of the passengers--pour out of the doors. I have seen these people in various parts of the city before, and have already had some not-so-pleasant encounters, and, despite the warnings and stories of friends, I am trying not to let my attitude towards them be soured. This particularly group is comprised entirely of women with covored heads and children in colourful dress. Half the women have children on their hips, the other half are watching the rest of the pre-pubescent crowd who seem to wander automatically with outstretched, upturned palms and puppy eyes to all those who pass them by. As I ponder the demographics of this group I realzie that have never seen a man, or a boy over the age of 8 for that matter, amid their ranks. Begging, perhaps, is women's work.

Our bus pulls up and some of the children rush to climb on. The konductor--the woman who collects the fares--starts yelling, telling them they cannot get on this bus. When these warnings fall on deaf ears, she physically starts pushing the children down the steps onto the street. I am frozen where I stand, simultaneously horrified and unphased in my fatigue by this strange incident. Defri starts to board inbetween the children with Rinda following behind, though they are met with strong words from the konductor. " You cannot ride on this bus," she says, this time obviously directed at Rinda, with her covered hair and darker skin. Defri tells her that Rinda is with him, but she repeats this command and when Rinda continues up the stairs she is pushed backwards towards the street. Rinda does not react, but calmly begins climbing the stairs again. "She is with me, not with them," Defri repeats. The konductor continues to object, though I am now standing behind Rinda so she cannot be pushed off. Defri pushes his way onto the bus and the doors close. The konductor comes to collect our fares and I hand her the usual 9 rubles. She yells something I don't understand, until Defri interjects with the name of the stop where we are getting off. She tells me that if this is indeed where I am going, then I need to pay 16 rubles. I pay the difference and Defri and Rinda do the same, ready to do anything for this woman to leave us alone. Once she leaves, Rinda leans over to me and whispers in a level English "that was so racist." I, who was not assaulted in the least, am near tears, though I sense that this episode was tragically not out of the ordinary for Rinda.

The bus rattles through the increasingly congested streets as Rinda, Defri and I converse with our eyes. At the next stop a man with a black beard, wearing the traditional loose, long cotton dress and white prayer cap boards the bus. The konductor comes to collect his fare and he pays her 9 rubles. Defri asks him where he is going, and when he confirms that he too is going to the mosque Defri asks why he only had to pay 9 rubles. The konductor overhears this exchange and tells us that we have to get off at the next stop. This bus will not be going to the mosque today. When Defri tries to ask why we had to pay 16 rubles and why she didn't tell us this when we first boarded he is met with a cold silence. Once she leaves, our new travel companion extends a hand to Defri and offers quietly "s praznikom," the generic Russian holiday greeting. Defri returns the greeting and his eyes show the relief of knowing he is among friends. We get off the bus at the next stop and make our way across the street to another bus stop where we meet a dozen or so other men who are also heading to the mosque. I smile to myself, as this increasing concentration of Muslim men on the side of the street reminds me of walking down Erb St. on a Friday afternoon. The horizon is beginning to brighten, washing the skyline of tired smoke stacks and steeples in a late autumn light. As it is already approaching 8 o'clock, the start time of the service, our bearded friend tries to flag down a car. A marshrut with a Muslim driver finally pulls over, and we pile inside. Rinda climbs into the front, and I find myself the sole woman in the back of the overcrowded van. The men shift around to make room for me on the back bench. I'm drawn to the smile and laugh of a young man in a colourful prayer cap facing backwards. He has kind eyes that smile along with his mouth as he converses with his neighbour. I guess that most of these travellers are of Tajik origin, though I've generally lost faith in my ability to distinguish Central Asian ethnicities. They have the faces of the manual labourers that I pass on street corners doing the seemingly endless work of laying brick sidewalks. They have the faces of the women who wash the floors of the university. They are the faces of a sizeable underclass of workers--legal and illegal--who are not always well liked by government officials. For now they are among friends--brothers--as we make our way to the mosque.

We arrive as the sun has just appeared over the horizon. I don't have much time to check out my surroudings--we are late and are bustled inside. I awkwardly try and cover myself with the perfume-scented scarf Jenny has lent me for the occasion. Rinda and I along with another young woman are led through the basement, full of men, up some stairs to the main floor, also full of men, then up a further set of stairs to a balcony. At the far end of the balcony is a row of elderly women, sitting on a bench to ease feeble knees. One of them motions for me to sit beside her in the remaining space on the bench, and Rinda takes a seat on the floor beside me. I finally have a chance to look at where we are. The mosque is stunning--the walls are decorated with a careful calligraphy and windows inlayed with geometric designs, and ceiling above us opens into a dome of elaborate design. I settle into the sturdy voice of the man leading the prayers. After a few more minutes of studying my surroundigns I realize that we and the elderly women beside us are the only women in the mosque, while there are probably 250-300 men. Another man delivers a message of sorts, and I begin to feel the effects of an early morning and our unpredictable travel. Rinda gently lays her head against my right leg, and I know I am not alone in my fatigue. The message comes to an end, and the final prayers begin. A number of other younger women have gethered behind us, and I move to the back to make room for them to pray. One of the woman keeps asking Rinda for instructions, explaining that she doesn't know how this particular prayer works. I watch silently as the 300 congregants of the mosque rise and prostrate in unison, save for the old women who remain on their bench. The prayer finishes and Rinda gives me a confused look. "I don't think they did it right," she whispers. Sure enough, 10 seconds later the cantor appologizes for not doing the correct holiday prayer, and the cycle begins again.

When the service ends, Rinda begins talking with some of the women around us. One of the women, dressed in a long brown skirt and scarf, continues to ask Rinda to explain what is going on. They ask about where she is from, where I am from, and comment on Rinda's beautifully embroidered white full length dress. She explains that all women in the mosque in Indonesia wear such dress, and we continue to chat while we wait for the men to clear out. Rinda whispers to me that it is strange that these women are so unfamiliar with what is going on. She tells me, however, that very few Muslim women in this city leave the house. She is the only woman I have seen in the city who covers her head, and she confirms that she is definately the only student at the university. I am intrigued by this phenomenon, as it seems a complete reversal of the men-women ratio in the Orthodox churches that I have frequented. When most of the men have cleared out of the basement, we head downstairs to collect our shoes. Rinda can only find one of her shoes, and we spend another 10 minutes searching the corners and shelves for the other one. We exit the mosque to a crowd of people gathered around the corpse of a cow (still visibly in the form of a cow), that is being cut apart with an ax for people to take home. We head around the corner and up the stairs towards the bus stop. Part of the gypsy crowd we met before seems to have made its way here as well, instinctively knowing where they will find a crowd, perhaps even a crowd in a generous mood. We take a few pictures, then board the bus.

In full daylight, I am better able to see where we have come. We drive through a village of sorts of dilapitated wooden buildings, with quaint painted windows and fenced yards, interpersed with 5-storey Soviet apartment blocks. We pass two more mosques, one is small and made of wood, the other closer in size to the one we have just come from, though less well kept. Outside of both mosques, people are smoking meat and conversing. This village--part of the 905 belt of Yekaterinburg--is home to many of the Central Asian residents of the city, and explains why the downtown remains relatively white.

We make our way back to the metro stop, then take the subway back to the circus. I mention that I am hungry, and Defri's face lights up. "Let's go to Kupets to eat" he exclaims, "we need to celebrate." We enter Greenvich, a newly renovated mega-shopping centre, and head upstairs to the food court. I order soup from the Uzbek booth, Rinda orders pizza, and Defri blini (a traditional crepe-like Russian dish) with strawberries and whipped cream--I realize that they have ordered probably the only two meals that do not contain meat. Tired and hungry, we enjoy together the first day-light meal Rinda and Defri have had in a month. "S praznikom" we say, clinking our mugs of tea, and I laugh to myself at the unusuallness of the morning, brought to an end with an equally unusual meal, a Canadian and two Indonesians in Russia, eating pizza and blini to celebrate the end of Ramadan. Perhaps, however, it is not the food, but the act of eating together, the act of communally partaking in the nourishment of our bodies, that is at the heart of the holiday feast.

Home, I Said (Or, Everything is Illuminated)

2007-10-28T02:38:00.000-07:00

October 9, 2007

Overture to the Commencement of a Very Rigid Search
Taking advantage of no longer having classes on Fridays, Mark, Guilherme and I set out to find Shartash, a lake at the edge of the city that we always talk about going to but never seem to find the time. With no more than a rough idea of where in the city the lake was located, we hopped on a tram (at first, the wrong one), and set out. The following is a photographic documentation of our adventure… If you do not understand the sub-titles (and for an illustration of why I have re-entered the world of omnivorous human beings), I highly recommend watching the movie by the same name as this title (Everything is Illuminated).

Commencement of a Very Rigid Search

A Very Rigid Search

Illumination

Finally at the shore of the lake, I flip open my Mary Oliver book and happen upon this poem.

The River
~ Mary Oliver

Just because I was born
precisely here or there,
in some cold city or another,
don’t think I don’t remember
how I came along like a grain
carried by the flood

on one of the weedy threads that pour
toward a muddy lighting,
surging east, past
monkeys and parrots, past
trees with their branches in the clouds, until
I was spilled forth

and slept under the blue lung
of the Carribbean.

Nobody
told me this. But little by little
the smell of mud and leaves returned to me,
and in dreams I began to turn,
to sense the current

Do dreams lie? Once I was a fish
crying for my sisters in the sprawling
crossroads of the delta.
Once among the reeds I found
a boat, as thin and lonely
as a dead young tree. Nearby
the forest sizzled with the afternoon rain.

Home, I said.
In every language there is a word for it.
In the body itself, climbing
those walls of white thunder, past those green
temples, there is also
a word for it.
I said, home.

I sit for a moment, in the clear and cold and light of the shore of the lake, in the circular nature of life, in the awe and silence that only sitting beside water illicits. For lack of other words, I will include here a piece I wrote while living in Riviere-du-Loup this summer.

Ode to the Saint Laurence (and all other wondrous lakes, rivers, seas and oceans of the world)

Et je situerai l’homme où naît mon harmonie

Ma langue est d’Amérique
Je suis né de ce paysage
J’ai pris souffle dans le limon du fleuve
Je suis la terre et je suis la parole
Le soleil s’endort sous ma tête
Mes bras sont deux océans le long de mon corps
Le monde entier vient frapper à mes flancs
J’entends le monde battre dans mon sang

Je creuse des images dans la terre
Je cherche une ressemblance première

~ Gatien Lapointe, extrait d’Ode au Saint-Laurent ~

I have a friend who was born in the lush green mountains off the Turkish coast of the Black Sea. He told me once that he could not live without water. An obvious declaration, perhaps—without water, we would die of thirst—but he was not talking about the water that we drink. We were on a boat, crossing the Bosphorus, a river that was the centre of the great capital of the Ottoman Empire—Istanbul; a river that is at the centre of the soul of the city and all the inhabitants of this wondrous place. He was describing the water of our souls. He was speaking of his need to live near water because without it, he does not feel himself complete. Although we were on the other side of the world, I understood this sentiment, as it is a feeling that I also know well, a feeling that I have known many times in my life—beside many rivers lakes and oceans that render me incapable of explanation, lost for words to describe the stilling of the soul that this water incites—but a sentiment that, although I know it well, I still do not understand.

Now, on this side of the Atlantic, I descend the hill on my bike, a light salty wind cleans my face. I have just arrived, finally, to the banks of the river. I stop, momentarily, because the river—this river here, the Saint Laurence—renders me mute. This is a phenomenon that belongs to all of the wondrous lakes, rivers and oceans of the world. I search for words again, but there are none. What is it that pulls us towards water, that draws us in with gentle, confidant arms? What is it that forces us to stop for a moment, to pause, to breath, to reflect on our lives past and future? What is it that renders me mute, lost for words? Perhaps it’s the freedom of the wind as it carries a light salted air from the ocean towards the setting sun. Perhaps it is the soft pink of the dusk sky that fades to orange, then violet and finally towards night and a blanket of stars? Perhaps it is the gentle tide lulling against the rocky shore—rocks that have been formed by centuries and millenniums of running water. Perhaps it is the endless expanse of sky, clouds, sun, mountains and the horizon that rolls without end and incites the soul to journey farther, deeper.

Perhaps it is the simple beauty that I have just here described. But I think it is also an understanding of the historic significance of these rivers. The Bosporus was—and remains—the spine of a city that was the centre of an Empire. This river was crossed by sultans and emperors for centuries, and Istanbul’s current form and location is owed to the existence of this mighty river. And the same is true for the Saint Laurence, a river that was once called—and for good reason—“The Grand River of Canada” because it was by means of this river that our country was colonized in the way that we know today. When we feel the weight and historical significance of these rivers, their importance for our lives today and the social form of our world, it is impossible not to be filled with a sense of awe.

This indescribable phenomenon of sitting near water is probably the result of a combination of the sheer beauty of their landscapes and the weight of their histories. There is something, however, beyond this. I think that perhaps it is because we are like the water to which we are drawn. We need stability and consistency in our lives—like the mountains and the rocks and the sky and the riverbed. But we also need, like water, constant movement. We need to constantly be growing, learning, exploring, like the current of a river or the tide of an ocean. Perhaps that is what draws us towards water: it is our perfect companion, a companionship in which we are completely at home. This river, that constantly changes just as I, that is the sum of innumerable parts—rocks, sun, rain, history and the unpredictable actions of countless individuals—just as I. And like me and the rest of our wondrous species, this river will join the ocean, where it will disappear into another body, where it will join the beauty of all the other wondrous rivers, lakes, seas and oceans of the world. Where, as Lapointe writes, we will search for—and find—our ressemblance première .

Золотая осень

2007-10-28T02:21:00.000-07:00

Zolotaya osyen. It’s Thursday night and Mark, Guilherme, Jenny and I are celebrating the approaching weekend with a trip to the local brewery/pub—Tinkhoff’s. Jenny offers to pay the difference between a pitcher of Tinkhoff’s standard brew and the seasonal special, zolotaya osyen, or, “golden autumn.” The beer that comes to our table is not golden as the name implies, but the amber of leaves that have already fallen, browning as they become more brittle. “Isn’t that the name of a painting?” I ask. Shishkin or Levitan, perhaps? Or is it “Zolotaya Rozh” (Golden Rye). This one Jenny and I agree on, though I can still picture another painting in my head, a painting on the bottom right hand corner of my textbook, a river and cutting through the lower right, autumn-coloured birch trees flanking the left shore.

October 2, 2007
It is Tuesday afternoon and I have a few hours to kill between class and choir rehearsal. I check out the shoe store next to the university, then decide to wander down a street where I think I may find a vendor selling pumpkins. I turn accidentally a street too early, but decide to continue and see where it goes. I walk past some familiar looking stairs, and find myself at the back entrance to Ascension Cathedral, one of the oldest remaining cathedrals in the city, that is now paled by the Church-of-the-Blood that stands across the street. Just beyond the stairs is the corner of what looks to be a park. I walk closer, and beyond the iron-post fence I see an endless golden blanket of birch leaves scattered on the forest floor, floating on the surface of the water, and dancing their way from the tree tops to the ground. I have seen pictures of this place—of the Romanesque pavilion on the small island of the pond—and always wondered where in the city it was, and am excited to have finally stumbled upon it. I follow the iron fence half-way around the perimeter of the park until I finally find an open gate. I wander the main paths for awhile, then allow myself the pleasure of trampling through the drying leaves, enjoying the familiar crackling underfoot, until I finally make my way to the bank of the pond. I follow a small set or stairs down from the bridge and sit beside the water. The sun is shining, and bouncing off the water and the yellowing willow tree under which I am sitting, this small corner of the pond is bathed in an incandescent shade of gold—zolotaya osyen.

For the first time since we arrived in this city, I can breath.
More to come... not quite finished

This is Where I Live

2007-10-07T11:08:00.000-07:00

September 23, sometime in the wee hours of the morning

I haven’t been able to write lately. Not for lack of time or new faces and experiences, but more out of that feeling with which I am sometimes overtaken—the feeling that I have nothing worthwhile to say. And while I’ve been searching for something significant, prophetic, awe-inspiring, I have been missing what is right here in front of me. Trying to wait out the copious amounts of caffeine Jenny and I consumed today, I stumbled across the blog of Betsy, the American who lived on the other side of this wall last year. I read her final entry, her farewell to this place, if you will, and was transported in a way I do not know if I have experienced before. Transported away from here, into the mind of someone I have never met, into the stories and experiences of a stranger, and yet as I read her words I was brought squarely back to here, to this “fading-Soviet dorm” as she called it, to the white and blue walls of our kitchen, to the machine gun-like sounds and vibrations of the hot water pipes, to the blaring techno music so kindly broadcast to our windows, to the idiosyncrasies of our neighbours who frequent the blue-and-white-walled kitchen, to the efforts of the sun to break through the grey sky, to this modest corner of the Urals that is to be my home for the upcoming year.

And so I will write about this, my home: 16a, ulitsa Chapaeva, Obschezhitiye No. 6, Komnata 207, Yekaterinburg, Russia. This is what it looks like on paper. An address—a street name, a room number, a city, a country. This is where I sit as I write these words. It is, as Betsy so aptly described, a fading Soviet dorm. Built sometime in the 1960s, it is a 9 story red-brick building, with an elevator that does not go past the 6^th floor, or hold more than 4 partly starved people. I live, though my room-number does not suggest, on the third floor, with a window overlooking the main entrance. This means I have a wonderful view of the comings and goings of the residents of this building—and a front-row seat (wanted or unwanted), to the drunken foolery that goes on every night. Beyond the main entrance there is a garden, with flowers that should survive another week before giving in to the approaching winter. Behind this there is another “garden,” or at least in Russian it is, the detski sad, or “Children’s Garden” (playground). The children may outlast the flowers by a week or two, until nimble fingers will no longer be able to hold the metal bars of the swing and the space will most likely be overtaken by wild dogs. To the right of the playground is a pile of garbage—mostly old furniture, but also some dumpsters. There is a swastika painted on the shed next to these, and, in English, the word “skinhead.” On the dumpsters to the other side of the playground are scrawled the words stolovaya (cafeteria), kukhniye (kitchen), bufet (buffet), and restoran (restaurant). I am never quite sure what to make of this spray-painted statement, not sure if the artist was naming what these dumpsters were for him (I doubt this, however, as most of the people who frequent these dumpsters are women), or if he was just making a quiet observation, a jest, or something in between. This is what I see through my window, my window to Russia. This is where I live.

Mediating this view is a window, a window that I wake up to every morning. In the window sill now sit two candles that I inherited from Josefina, a birch-tree wall hanging I inherited from Tugrul, a lamp shade I inherited from Midori (the Japanese girl who lived here last year) a picture of two geese, a plant I bought last week, some grammar books I borrowed from Jenny, and what remains of yesterday’s baking experiment. On the window hangs a small Lawren Harris print, a Gandhi quotation, and my favourite picture—three canoes at sunset on Little Crow Lake, the gunwales of the canoes illuminated by the remaining light of the sun before it slips behind the horizon. Things from others’ homes, things to remind me of home, things to make this feel like home. One level back are my curtains, red and white curtains that Josefina put up when she lived here last year, and for which I am eternally grateful. In front of these stands my bed, a hammock-like piece of furniture to which I have added to planks of wood—boards that Betsy used last year. My pillow-case is louder than the curtains—a pattern of pink and orange and red that Jenny bought at the recently-opened IKEA and donated to this pillow to hold its wayward feathers in. It is out of place among the grey and brown standard issue bedding of the residence, but it is, for now, mine. Next to this is my night stand, then my desk, and against the other wall, those of my roommate. Yoon Ka Hye is from Seoul, here, like me, to study Russian for the year, though for the time being we really have no common language. Her Russian is more basic than mine, and her English about the same. At night, I listen to her speak Korean with the characters of her dreams. During the day, we speak in gestures and offerings—coffee, chocolate, yoghurt, baked goods, smiles. For now, this is enough. We share this room, this corner of the Urals. This is where we live.

Beyond my room is a small foyer, littered with shoes, boots, coats for all seasons, a small fridge and an even smaller washing machine. On one end of this corridor is our shower, a place I do not really want to talk about, and on the other a small room with a toilet and another with a sink. We share this with Jenny and Josefina, the American-missionary from Minnesota and the aspiring-Swedish writer who inhabit the room next door. There room is more lived in than ours—Jenny has been here for 5 years, and Josefina for 2, though she has just recently moved from this side of the wall to the bed where Betsy slept last year. This room is home to such luxuries as a real dresser, a working TV, an espresso-machine, and a library of English and Russian literature. Most importantly, it is home to an old friend and a new friend who will be an integral part of my Russia experience, who will help me keep my sanity, who will share this corner o the Urals. This is where we live.

Our small apartment is enclosed by a large green steel door of sorts, with a lock that looks like it was welded in after the original door was made. It is a finicky lock—it will only lock or unlock from the outside if it is set at a specific angle, a lesson I learned quickly after being locked out, and probably locking someone else out. On the other side of this door is a small foyer and entrances to two other apartments. In one live a woman and her young adolescent son, the other is shared by a young couple and a baby, and another young man. These are our neighbours. At our end of the foyer is the entrance to the kitchen that we share—yes, this is Soviet architecture at its finest. The kitchen has two small stoves, an oven with a precariously attached door, two sinks, a purring fridge, a clothesline, a table, and some makeshift shelves. The windows are decorated with flowers, snowmen, and Napoleon Dynamite window-clingers, and in an uncharacteristically nationalist mood, Jenny and I hung our flags (and a small Swedish flag that I made out of construction paper) on the clothesline—a reminder of where we come from and a little life to distract from the grease stains and flaking paint. Jenny has been wary of the reactions she would get by hanging her flag, and I’ve decided to make it my mission this year to allow her to be comfortable in her Americanism. Our neighbours rarely use this room anyway—only to smoke and occasionally bake, so we have decided to make it our own. This is where we live.

Beyond this room is a building populated by Russians—teachers and their families, students—as well as all of the foreign students of the university (approximately 30 Chinese students, 20 Koreans, and 15 others). Guilherme, Mark and Defri live on the other side of the building on the top floor, in the room where the Turks lived two years ago, two floors above my old apartment. This section of the building is guarded by a dejournaya, a (usually) elderly woman who sits in a glass box and regulates who comes and goes to the upper floors. If you are not a resident of these floors, you are officially supposed to leave your documents, though a few of these women recognize me from before, and I’ve discovered that if I turn the corner and continue up the stairs with enough conviction and a small (or no eye contact at all, depending who is there), then I can get away without this layer of bureaucracy. If I want to sleep in my own bed, however, I must respect the 1am curfew, when the door between the 6^th and 7^th floor is locked, along with the main entrance. This entrance, too, is guarded by a usually elderly woman sitting in a glass box, a metal turnstile, and usually two younger guys in camo security gear who watch the comings and goings of the residents. We must show our ID when we enter, and leave our ID when we have guests. As hard as I try, I will never understand this security, this remnant of Soviet bureaucracy, and although I find myself frequently committing small acts of rebellion, I know that I must follow the rules, because this is where I live.

Nearly a week has passed since I began this entry, and, like Betsy, I am now writing in our kitchen, the tapping of the keyboard and the humming of our fridge, the rustling fall leaves and Russian pop drifting through the window combining in an odd musical way, making this space seem less empty and cold than it is. For now it is a comfortable temperature—they turned the heat on this week, and since we have no control over how much heat comes out of the heaters (an amount that won’t change until it’s turned off next spring), most of the windows of the building have been opened wide to air out the now sauna-like temperatures of the rooms. The leaves outside the window have turned and are starting to fall, and it is strange to think that I will watch these trees shed their dress to be greeted by bows heavy with snow, then to springtime buds and new leaves. Like the leaves, I will watch the city live through the seasons, the short days and long nights of winter near the 60^th parallel, the cold wind of the Urals, the dirty melting of the snow, and then the excitement of spring. It has been a hard week, in many ways, as I try and find my place in this building, in this city, in this country, as I struggle with what it is I should be doing with my time here, combined with the ongoing fatigue of living in a language that I only half understand. But sitting here watching the yellow lives whipped up by the wind, I find a quiet excitement at the prospect of living through the cycles of the year in this place, of discovering this city, this country, of testing my own emotional and intellectual limits, of developing friendships with those who also call this place home, of actually turning this place into a home. For better or worse, in sickness and in health, ‘till next summer does us apart, this is where I live.

Mushrooms After the Rain

2007-09-09T23:12:00.000-07:00

Saturday, September 8, 2007
As many a time so far on this trip, it is raining. We are packed inside a marshrut, a mini-van like form of public transit, heading north of the city centre to the “kitayski rinok” (Chinese market). We’ve come in search of bulk rice, cheap produce and cheap products. We follow the river north for awhile, past the imposing, crisp-white-and-shiny Church-on-the-Blood, the newly constructed shrine to the Romanov family who were killed at this location by the Bolsheviks. Past the church, we turn to a less impressive part of the city, where drab Soviet apartment blocks stand diligently row-on-row, though they appear to be tiring after years of such stringent conformist obedience. These buildings seem not quite sure of how to keep up with the roads that flank their sides, the ballooning number of billboards that are sprouting on their shoulders, and, especially, with the changing goals and aspirations of the passengers of the ever-increasing number of cars that travel these roads every day.

We come to an abrupt stop and clamber out of one of these cars into the light rain. Defri directs us across the road, through a small fruit market and under the new highway underpass. The people here are visibly different—not necessarily Chinese as the name of the market implies, but not as white as those you find in the downtown. I notice especially a group of women in colourful dresses and head scarves crossing the road nearby. Their skin is the colour of coffee with a dollop of cream, though I cannot place where they are from. They remind me of gypsy characters in a Hollywood film, dark and mysterious and colourfully dressed, and I guess that they are probably of Central Asian descent, Tajik or perhaps Uzbek. But I do not to look too hard; I do not want to stare or gawk or gape, and I focus my gaze instead on the opened-air market unfolding ahead of us. Unless you have seen such a market, it is hard to imagine. The best I can do is to say that it is a zoo of people hassling you to make a sale (they especially seem to like calling out devushka or “young woman”), rows upon rows of merchandise—fur coats and hats, boots, shoes, pots and pans, sheets and towels, shoelaces and sweaters—followed by rows of food vendors and the glorious smell of smoked meat dampened by the rain, interspersed with strange mall-like buildings that are almost as zoo-like as their outdoor equivalent. We wander up and down the rows, past merchandise that seems to repeat itself fairly often, trying not to look too obviously foreign, Mark buys some towels and Guilerme and I find winter coats, and Defri leads us to a place to eat. We sit for a moment away from the chaos and then head back towards the bus stop. As we leave the market, we pass again the place of the people with the light chocolate coloured skin. It is still raining and cold enough that I’ve put on my new coat, but despite the damp cold, one of these women is sitting on the curb nursing a child. As I try not to stare, we are approached by another child. His body is the size of a 3 or 4 year old, though his face is older and his eyes are those of someone who has already seen too much. He is colourfully dressed like his mother, and he approaches us with an outstretched arm carrying a dilapidated tin cup. There is dirt under the fingernails that clutch this meager begging bowl, and snot or juice—I can’t decide which—caked between his upper lip and his nose. He is joined by a friend, or perhaps a younger brother. No one around us seems to take notice of them, and I force myself to do the same. We pass under the highway once again, leaving these children behind us, but it is too late: his dark brown eyes have already seared a hole in my heart, and I know that as long as I live I will never forget his face.

We return to the dormitory just in time for me to meet a Russian friend with whom I’ve kept in contact over the last two years. We decide to walk downtown to grab a coffee and catch up. He asks how I’m finding being back in Yekaterinburg. As we walk past construction site after construction site, I tell him that I sometimes barely recognize where I am and am amazed at the number of new buildings. He tells me that he too felt the same way after being gone for only a month in the summer. He tells me that Yekaterinburg will be host to the 2009 Asia-Pacific summit convention, and much of the construction is part of a project to make-over the city in time for this event. We reach the coffee shop, “Mamma’s Biscuit House” on Prospekt Lenina, and I debate between an over-priced “Kafe-Amerikana,” “Mega-Kapucino,” or “Mokka.” I wonder if Lenin, who still stands in the main cit square just outside the café, would still be smiling if he could see us here now. I order the “Mokka” and my friend the “Lattey.” As the rain continues outside, we enjoy our warm drinks and he tells me of his work, his school, his family. He is tired, he says, tired of the stress of his job and studies—he is, at age 23, halfway through his PhD, teaching 20 hours of lectures a week, and about to publish a textbook—and also tired of being here. Tired of being in a country where his sexuality is taboo, where he is not free to publicly love who he wants to love. On our walk back to the dorm, we fall back into our discussion of the construction that has overtaken the city. As we pass a new Silvercity-like cinema complex, he tells me that soon Yekaterinburg will be very beautiful. Yes, in 5 years, he says, it will be very beautiful. He tells me that in Russia they say that this construction boom is “like mushrooms after the rain.” After the rain, you know, the wild mushrooms grow unhindered across the fertile forest floor.

Mushrooms after the rain… I can’t get the image out of my head for the rest of the day. It is an ironic image in a way that I cannot yet pinpoint. Mushroom collecting, like dachas, banyas and vegetable gardens, is a deeply entrenched and much loved Russian custom—part of the Russian psyche, or the illusive Russian soul. On a warm summer day, Russians love to head into the forest with their baskets and collect wild mushrooms. A section of my Russian textbook was even devoted to the identification of different types of mushrooms, to the result that I know the names of more types of mushrooms in Russian than I do in English. I immediately recognize this metaphor of mushrooms after the rain as a deeply Russian metaphor. And yet I am not sure exactly what these metaphorical mushrooms or this metaphorical rain really mean. Capitalism has hit Russia as a tropical storm, leaving little recognizable—save some deteriorating Soviet apartment blocks—in its wake. It has been a fertile rain for some, no doubt, and the city seems awash in new money, the buildings mushrooming from the ground testament to this wealth. Yet while it has been fertile for some, it has flooded others out; for those who don’t know how to swim, it has meant a return to make-shift houses on the side of an unpredictable, eroding riverbank. This is unbridled free-market capitalism at its best—or its worst. You can either jump in the rainy river and try to follow the rampant current to the top, or be thrown in and left to drown unless you learn quickly to swim, or at least to float with the current. And while this river has watered the mushrooms, it is hard as of yet to identify which ones are okay to eat, which will make good soup and which will send you to the back of a line at an overcrowded hospital, or to a street corner with a tin cup or a baby on your breast. And so perhaps the metaphor is not ironic after all, but perfect as a metaphor could be. Or perhaps it is perfect in its irony, in the strange tension and contradictions that it depicts. Russia has, I suppose, long been a country of contradictions, of extremes, of high highs and low lows. Why, then, should we expect this New Russia to be any different? Perhaps we will only find out when the rain slows and the sun manages to break through the clouds, casting new shadows across a new forest floor.

Очередь: n, turn, queue; Стоять в очереди: vi, to wait in line

2007-09-09T23:09:00.000-07:00

Friday, September 7, 2007

Well, after 4 nights sleeping in my new bed in our residence in Yekaterinburg, this place is slowly beginning to feel like home again, and I am settling into the idea of making it that place. It has been difficult at times to be in this place again, as some things here are exactly the same, while others are completely different, and I’ve found myself longing for the good old days of 2005 while also knowing that this year cannot be like before. Nevertheless, w are almost through the worst of the bureaucratic hoops that we need to jump, we all have beds and roommates (and hopefully soon desks and keys and sheets and healthy digestive systems) and are in good spirits despite the chronic inefficiency and disorder (or at least to foreign eyes) that seems to be Russia. Let me tell you a bit about our first three days here…

Day 1: At 6:30am we pulled in to the Sverdlovsk train station, expecting Jenny to meet us on the platform. I had told her our car number, so expected to find her quickly, but she was no where to be found. We walked the length of the train with no success, and decided to head into the main station. We rounded the corner to go down the stairs leading under the tracks at just the same time that Defri, an Indonesian student we spent some time with last time I was here, happened to be climbing the stairs. I was surprised to see him, to say the least, and even more surprised to hear why he was there—Jenny had called him in a panic at about 5am after she had been mugged walking to the train station (mom, disregard this last line, we will be safe, don’t worry). So we hopped on the subway and then the tram to make our way to the residence. Defri informed us that Mark would be living with him in Tugrul’s old room, and I would be living in the room beside Jenny, possibly with a yet-to-be-determined roommate. Mark and Defri immediately went to sleep, while unpacked and tried to sleep, though something was not agreeing very well with my stomach. Jenny came by, and I had my first encounter with the commandant—the boss of the residence—and got my pass that I must show every time I enter the building. By the time Defri and Mark woke up mid-afternoon to go to the university, I was finally ready to sleep. When they returned we did a little grocery shopping and Mark prepared dinner. While they were at the university, Defri had also been informed that they may be getting another roommate, and just as Mark was finishing making our dinner, he—Guilherme from Brazil—arrived. Guilherme had actually arrived at the airport quite a bit earlier in the day, but no one had come to pick him up. Luckily his Russian is good enough that he somehow found his own way to the residence. Guilherme is a jovial young man, with curly brown hair and a passion for languages and Brazilian dancing, and we over dinner we commiserated about our lack of knowledge about what we were supposed to be doing here. We went to bed with our stomachs full, and, although Guilherme had to sleep on the floor for lack of enough beds in the room, spirits high.

Day 2: We woke up bright and early Wednesday morning to beat the lines at the hospital where we had to be tested for tuberculosis by means of chest x-ray. This test is a mandatory annual test for everyone—Russians and foreigners—who live in Russia (or at least in housing somehow supported by the government). I’d been through this ordeal before, so at least kind of knew what to expect, though the experience of waiting in line for an extended period of time, stripping down in front of a stranger (still not sure why this is necessary), and pressing yourself up against a cold metal x-ray machine is never something one looks forward too. We made it through here in about 2.5 hours, and then headed towards the lice check place. We managed to beat the crowd here, so were in and out very quickly. Next came the university. Here we were introduced to some of teachers, the dean for the faculty of Russian for foreigners, and given a brief run-down on the types of classes we would need to take. We handed over our passports for registration, and somehow Jenny talked them into not making us pay until we get our passports back—not that we would have been able to before, as we must pay in cash and can only withdraw 10 000 rubles a day. After the university we went and had some photographs taken—we need 4 for the residence and 2 for the university—and then I did a terrible thing: bought a cell phone. I’ve never owned a cell phone before, but land lines don’t really exist here and I thus have really no other way to communicate with anyone. Alas, when in Rome… Mark and I wandered the rainy streets for awhile, then headed home to a meal prepared by Guilherme. After dinner Defri’s (Russian) girlfriend came over, and wanted us to tell her Canadian folk stories, so Mark, in his very poor Russian, told some crazy story about voyageurs giving their souls to the devil for a night with their wives. Guilherme then gave us all Brazilian dancing lessons, though I spent most of the time doubled over laughing at the site of Guilherme dancing with Mark, who loves to dance but who doesn’t have a lot of grace or the greatest rhythmic sensibilities. When we first arrived I had some trouble being in this room, room 820, Obshshezhitiye No. 6, because some of the happiest memories of my life were made in this room, but none of the people who were part of those memories are currently here. I am slowly warming to the idea, however, that it will be a place of many new adventures and happy times.

Day 3: Thursday we let ourselves sleep in a little bit, before heading again to the hospital to pick up our results. Before we left, however, Defri received a call from another Indonesian student who’d arrived at the airport and was coming to the dorm, but had no idea where she would be staying. She and her Tatarian fiancé joined us in room 820, and after some tea we headed to the hospital. After being sent from one room to another and then finally to the back of the same line we’d been in the day before, we decided to walk around for a bit and come back later. We walked towards downtown and went into the shopping centre where we did all of our grocery shopping two years ago. Since then, a movie theatre, 2 or 3 dozen clothing stores, and a bus stop with a free shuttle to the newly constructed Ikea have been added to the centre…this city seems to be drowning in new money in its transition to the world of unbridled capitalism, yet the new billboards and stiletto-bearing professional class and fancy commercial districts don’t seem to quite know how to exist beside the crumbling soviet apartment blocks, the polluted Iset River that runs through the city, nor the head-covering babushkas who beg for money in the parks—this is a country of contradictions. By the time we returned to the hospital, it was only a short 35 or 40 minute wait to pick up our results. From here, we then returned to the dorm to wait another 40 minutes or so to give the results to our beloved komandant.

I began this post a few days ago, and since then we have waited in a number of new lines, but I think you get the idea by now. My favourite line so far, however, has been our meal preparation line—in true Russian style, we’ve fallen into the routine of taking turns cooking the evening meal. And when you put 3 men from 3 different continents in a 1.5m x 2m kitchen, the results are never boring. And it is for such an eclectic dinner that I now depart.

A Very Rigid Search/The Kindness of Strangers Parts II & III

2007-09-07T08:48:00.000-07:00

Sunday, September 2- Monday, September 3, 2007

Either Mark and I are good at looking like lost and confused foreigners and garnering sympathy from those around us, or traveling really is one of the best ways to renew one’s faith in humanity, for, once again Len’s adage has been proved true—we would not be on this train now save for the kindness of strangers. After an early start yesterday morning we made our way to the Hamburg airport and found ourselves flying to Moscow. United by our common lack of understanding of German, we began talking to the woman sitting next to us on the plane. She was a Muskovite who’d been visiting a boyfriend in Germany, and was now heading home. We landed in Moscow in the middle of the afternoon, took the little shuttle bus typical of Moscow airports to the main terminal, and then walked into a room of about 400 people waiting in line for passport control. Welcome to Russia, our mild-mannered Muskovite friend offered. We continued to talk with her while we waited the hour to get to the front of the line, during which time she managed to phone a friend and find out what train station we should go to in order to buy tickets for Yekaterinburg. She again waited for us in the baggage claim area, and came with us to catch a bus to the metro line, where she got off to show us which subway to take to get to the train station. We bid her farewell, feeling warmly welcomed to a country that is perhaps unfairly not known for warm welcomes.

We proceeded on the subway to Komolskaya station, where the Kazanski, Leningradski and Yaraslovksi train stations are all located. We went inside and were given direction to the ticket booth. Before asking about tickets, however, we decided we better find a place to get some cash. Unfortunately the ATM in the station was broken, so I left Mark with the luggage and set off to found another machine. The last time I was here, I never had the least bit of trouble accessing money, so I did not expect this search to last very long. I set out into the main square, a square from which I could see the main building of Moscow State University silhouetted in the evening sky. I found a dozen or so machines that accepted local bank cards, and 1 or two broken machines that would normally have accepted Interac. I returned rather tired and disgruntled to where Mark was sitting with our luggage. Mark offered to go search, but I decided however that rather than having Mark search all the places I’d already been, I might as well keep looking. And so I set out again. By this time the sun had already set and the novelty of the search worn off. I found a machine that seemed to be working until I put in the amount and it told me my transaction could not be processed. I then figured out that the machine dispensed nothing more than 500ruble bills, but I couldn’t even get this to work. I tried to ask a nearby security guard if there was another machine nearby, and when I finally managed to communicate what I was looking for he gave me a disparaging gaze and replied “zdes nyeto” (here there are none…). And so I continued the search, by this time definitely not in the best of moods, having slept only 2 hours the night before nor eaten since 6am. Not wanting to return empty handed, I went back to a department store across the street where I’d found one of the broken machines before, and followed some more signs to the third floor. I walked in what seemed like circles for awhile (I don’t know how to begin to describe a Russian department store), until finally I turned a corner to a dimly lit staircase, and at the end of the corridor stood an ATM machine. As I eagerly approached it and say the “cirrus” symbol and no “ne rabotayet” (not working) signs, I nearly wanted to cry and felt a bit as if I was in a cartoon, the treasure at the end of a long search being illuminated by a light from heaven. I again wanted to cry when the machine actually dispensed money. I was so happy (and hungry) on my return to the train station that I bought two ice cream cones, a treat I was introduced to by Len who was rather addicted to these strange little cones that come in plastic wrapping and don’t ever seem to melt. I returned triumphantly to where Mark was sitting and offered him this typical Russian dessert.

After sat briefly to enjoy our ice cream and garner enough courage to face our next challenge: the ticket counter. And so we set out again, down to the ticket counter. This would be a test of my Russian proficiency, and also determine where we would be sleeping tonight. I approached the window trying to seem confident and told the woman we wanted to go to Sverdlovsk (in train lingo Yekaterinburg is still known by its Soviet name), tonight if possible, third class. She told me there was no room third class tonight or tomorrow, only second class. I asked how much it cost, though couldn’t understand her response through the garbled microphone that mediates all such interaction in Russia (as the person behind the ticket booth is always encased in glass). I asked her if she could write down the prices for me, and after muttering some not very happy words about tourists she shoved a piece of paper under the glass. The prices were quite a lot more than we’d been hoping to pay (as we had wanted to travel third class), and also more money than I had been allowed to take out of the ATM in one withdrawal, and so after a moment of standing stupefied in front of a not very friendly ticket officer we moved away from the window to come up with an alternate plan. We considered going to another station to see if they had anything third class (Mark also thought maybe we’d find a nicer sales officer, but I had my doubts), but in the end decided we might as well just fork out the money so we wouldn’t have to sleep in the train station. And so I set out once again to find an ATM. Once outside, I decided I might as well at least check at Kazanski station, so I ran down the road to cross the street, then walked around in circles in the train station for awhile before realizing that I had to go out onto the train platforms and around the outside of the building to get to the ticket office. The woman at this counter was surprisingly a little friendly, finding my mediocre Russian somewhat amusing. She told me they had third class tickets, but as you need a passport to buy a ticket, I couldn’t purchase tickets for both Mark and I. She also kept telling me to go back to Yaraslovki station, and so I left empty-handed. Luckily I found a working ATM machine at the entrance of this station, and then ran back to the other station to report these new developments to Mark. We were a bit confused by this conflicting ticket sales, and in the end decided to stay where we were. We went back to the ticket office, intentially choosing a different window, and again I said we wanted to go to Sverdlovsk tonight. She, too, said they had no third class tickets. I asked if there were any third class tickets leaving from Kazanski station and she said no to this as well, and then quoted us a second class ticket. I can’t remember why, now, but for some reason we stopped to talk about this again, someone went in front of us in line, and then the ticket window closed, so we got into another line and finally decided to just fork over the money for a second class ticket and be on our way. Moral of the story: there is a reason that normal people buy tickets through travel agencies.

Thoroughly exhausted, we found the platform from which our train was debarking and were happy to see that it was already there, and, to my great excitement, the car we were in was closest to the train station! (It can be a 15 minute walk from one end of a Russian train to the other if your, and if your car happens to be at the other end and you aren’t there very early, this can lead to frantic races down the train platform.) We boarded the train and found our kupe, and by this time I was quite happy that we had the extra space and privacy that second class tickets afford you—and we lucked out and are sharing the kupe with one other person. This person is Yuri, a dentistry student about the same age as us, who is heading back to university in Perm for the year. And Yuri, like Masha on the plane, has given us the warmest of welcomes (and an awful lot of food). He speaks a few words in English, English that he has learned mostly from American hip hop and rap artists, but he has been very talkative and patient with our Russian and so our practice has begun. About 20 minutes after the train left, he started taking some food out of one of his bags, a bag that I’ve since discovered contains only food and a few presents for his university friends. He’s asked me to write down the names of the foods we are eating, a list that looks something like this: potatoes, hard-boiled eggs, cucumbers, tomatoes, sausage, chicken, cheese, noodle soup, cake, cookies, orange juice, bread, peanut butter, black tea. Yuri tells us that he is a boxer (and he definitely has the biceps to prove it), and he tells us that he must eat a lot. He also has two grandmothers who like to spoil him with vegetables from their gardens. There is far more food here than 3 people could eat in 2 days, let alone 1, and so we have accepted his generous gifts to the contentment of our stomachs.

It is now mid-afternoon on Monday, we have just passed through Kirov, the halfway point of our journey. The sun is shining once again, and although Russia remains grey in much of my memory, this is perhaps the first time we have had two consecutive days of sun. And after three weeks of travel like this—3 planes, 10 buses, 7 buses, and an assortment of other land and sea modes of local transit (yes, I had fun adding those up)-- it feels now as if we are heading home. The birch trees and intermittent track-side villages whirring by outside the window are a mark of familiarity, a place I have known before. This is a new home for Mark, and for me as well, yet also a place that has always remained home in my memories, a place where I left, as Len predicted (it seems this man knows Russia well), a little piece of my heart.

A Rainy Swiss Adventure

2007-09-07T08:35:00.000-07:00

Wednesday, August 29, 2007

I am sitting in the passenger seat of an aging blue Renault journeying down the narrowest paved road I’ve ever seen, somewhere just inside the Swiss border. We’ve set out for a tour of the mountains, but the weather is not cooperating. There was a light drizzle when we left the farm, but it has since turned into a steady rain, and the higher we climb, the less we can see, until at the top of the mountains we can barely see 10m in front of us through the fog. We slow to almost a standstill at each road sign as I try and navigate the route Céphas’ brother has mapped out for us—a scenic route through the mountains that he’s done on bike. Our spirits (and the ground beneath us) are understandable dampened by the rain, there is a tension in the car, caused by the disappointment that our views of the Swiss countryside have been obscured by what Céphas tells us is very unusual weather. We decide to take a shorter route home, grâce à our visibility problems. We back up to a road that descends the mountain towards a town called St. Ursul. And although it is raining, today is one of those days where, inside of resigning oneself over to feelings of disappointment, I feel as if something unplanned will happen to save the day from complete failure.

We arrive in St. Ursul after a short drive, the breaks squeal as we descend the winding hill, a detail Céphas tells me not to mention to my mother. We decide to find a parking spot and walk around the town. Just as we get out of the car, the steady rain turns into a downpour. Céphas pulls out two umbrellas from the trunk, and we start to explore the downtown. As I walk between Céphas and Mark, the umbrellas serve more as an eaves trough directing water towards me than as a shield against the rain. In a few minutes I am completely drenched and give up using the umbrellas altogether. I think to myself that were we on a canoe trip, this would be the point of a stormy day where we’d resign ourselves to soggy feet (and legs and bums, etc.) and just start singing, the act of singing ridiculous songs together somehow making the time pass more enjoyably.

We enter the cobblestone downtown and decide to follow a sign towards a hermitage . We ascend some stone stairs and end up in what seem to be a dead end. An elderly man with sparse white hair comes out of a little garden shack and tells us that we can can’t pass through the gate behind him, but we can follow the stairs up the mountain to “la croix.” We begin our journey upwards on a very slippery and narrow mountain path that doesn’t seem to lead anywhere. We find a few small shrines in the forest, but decide to come back down. I take a slightly different route than on the way up, and come across a hobbit-like wooden door set inside a stone wall. I push it open gently to reveal another, better maintained walkway. I call Céphas and Mark over, and we follow the path to a set of stairs that leads up to the original hermitage we were seeking—a small chapel on the top of the hill overlooking the city, flanked by a tiny cave and a shrine set back inside the rocks. We sit here for awhile, enjoying the view, then decide to continue on. We head back towards the door, and a sign that directs us towards “le chemin des statues.” We decide to see where this leads, I full of a childlike sense of adventure and Céphas and Mark at least willing to tolerate a little more exploration on this wet, green, treed mountain side. We come to a fork in the road, I take the higher road. We come to another fork in the road, I begin up the higher road, but then we decide to turn back to the lower. We walk along here for awhile until we see through the trees a turret and a wall—the lookout of an ancient fortified city, that we had seen from the road below when we drove into town. Céphas pushes on the door. It is open. We peak inside and find some camping supplies. Céphas remarks that the Swiss are a very trusting people. We venture up the narrow staircase, one storey and then two, stopping to look at the city below through the key-hole-like slotted windows. We are on top of the city, and, here, sheltered briefly from the rain, it feels as if it could be the top of the world.

We wind our way back down the stairs, then back down the mountain, and somehow find ourselves on the opposite side of the gate that our gardener friend told us we could not pass before. We find ourselves in someone’s backyard, but eventually make our way back to the street. We walk down this picturesque streets a little farther. Céphas tells us that Switzerland has the best preserved ancient buildings of this part of Europe, being the only country to escape air bombardment. We wander into a grocery store to buy some chocolate—who can leave Switzerland without Swiss chocolate? The rain has slowed and we enjoy the chocolate as we search the streets for a public toilet. Satisfied, we decide to head towards home. The rain picks up again and we walk quickly towards the car, where we eat the lunch we’d packed and brought along and wait out the heavy rain. As we drive home, the fog seems to be lifting, or at least from this lower altitude we can see green hills extending upwards that promise to be mountains, though their peaks remain cloaked in thick rain clouds. We take a different route home so that Céphas can show us the village of Florimont, the closest village to their farm, that is just inside the French border. We hold our breath as we drive past the border, this is a road that Céphas, who has Swiss and French citizenship, travels, but not a road that travelers such as we should be on. We are relieved that no one is there, at this, the only real border left in Europe. We wind our way through Florimont and back to the farm. We enter the house and Priscille, Céphas’ younger sister, asks us how our trip was. Céphas tells her the rain was terrible (he also tells me it is French custom to complain about everything), and I say that although we didn’t see much, we still had fun, we went on an adventure, and it is these adventures that make the best stories—and, of course, the best memories.

A Return to Roots

2007-09-01T13:25:00.000-07:00

Monday August 27-Thursday August 30, 2007

I awoke Tuesday morning feeling more rested than any other morning since we left, albeit a bit disoriented—upon opening my eyes I couldn’t remember where I was and spent a few moments searching my memory to recall where I’d closed my eyes the night before. But as it slowly came back to me and I settled into my surroundings, I couldn’t help but let the corners of my mouth turn upwards. And I lay for awhile in the strange knowledge that I was awaking in a house and in a land in which my Amish ancestors also awoke until the middle of the 19^th century. When I had gathered enough motivation to get up, I wandered down the stairs and into the older half of the farmhouse—dating to 1824—and into the old farm kitchen. Here I was greeted by Henri, Céphas’ uncle who lives with the family, a man best described as jolly and kind-spirited, with wispy white hair and an unforgettable laugh. Henri offers me some coffee, which he warms in the microwave, and then summons us to the kitchen table for a breakfast of fresh bread, fresh milk (as fresh as it gets, the cows have just been milked), home-grown honey and elderberry jam. He speaks quickly and jovially in the French of someone who grew up speaking Low German—Henri and Céphas’ father Andre came to this are on the border of Alsace and Franche-Compté in the 1950s, an area that was, at the time, populated almost solely by Mennonite farmers. Today they are one of the few Mennonite farms left in the area, and the land around has been put to other uses. Céphas tells us that the forest across from the lane entry nearly escaped being developed as plot for chalets, and also explains that the seemingly out of place fence in the field nearest the house was put there 3 years ago when the back half of the field was dug up to install a gas line with Russian origins. In the valley between the Voges and the Jura mountains, he tells us that their back field was the only option, and while they were compensated for three years of lost crops, they had little say in the operation. Nevertheless, this farm—“La Ferme de la Petite Taille”—remains a refuge of sorts, a rural retreat in an increasingly urban country and urban world.

We spend three days at this retreat, and both Mark and I are quick to say upon our departure that the nights on the bus and the multiple trains and layovers were worth the trip. For the first time in awhile, at the farm we find space—both physical and mental—and are able to relax and to begin to digest some of the experiences we’ve had. We are surrounded by people—Céphas, his younger sister, brother and sister-in-law and their 3-week old daughter Cami, Henri, and Céphas’ parents—who have been more than kind and accommodating, tolerating our broken French, offering us coffee, bread, and a variety of fresh fruits and vegetables, and genuine welcome. We are surrounded by a beautiful countryside—there is a sizeable lake in the middle of the property, on a clear day we can see the Jura mountains, there are an abundance of fruit trees, most notably an apple tree bearing the juiciest fruit I have ever tasted, and the rolling hills typical of this corner of France. We are afforded the opportunity to reflect on the distance we have traveled, and the nearing reality of the year ahead.

Let me paint one final pictures. It is Thursday morning, and I’ve awoken in the same bed as Tuesday, though this time more accustomed to my surroundings. I wander to the same kitchen as before for coffee and bread and fresh milk and honey. Mark and I decide to wander to the end of the lane, across the road to the forest that has just narrowly escaped development. After a misty rainy foggy day driving through Switzerland, we enjoy the sun and clear sky and view of the horizon that the sunny weather affords us. We are guided back to the house by smells of a wonderful meal in progress. Céphas gives me two heads of lettuce and two tomatoes that he has just picked from the garden and I go into the other room to prepare a salad, the kitchen too full of people for me to work in there. I set the table for 9 people, and after about an hour everyone has wandered in from various parts of the farm. We begin with soup, then move to a course of potatoes, veal, cabbage, beets, cucumber salad, lettuce salad. Andre offers us fudge that he has brought back with him from his trip to Birmingham to visit his oldest son. We drink juice made from a syrup boiled out of a flower that Céphas grows in the garden. For dessert we have an apple custard that Céphas has prepared with apples from one of their trees. We enjoy coffee and fresh cream with our pie. People leave the table in stages, off to various jobs around the property—cows to be milked, babies to be cared for, dishes to be washed. Céphas comes down with me to the lake as I make use of the few hours we have left there and the nice weather to swim in the lake. We swim and then pack quickly, taking as many apples as we can carry for the trek back to Bremen. Céphas drives us through the winding narrow roads of southern Alsace back to Mulhouse and we run to catch the train. We stand on the platform to briefly catch our breath, glad that our train has been delayed. We say goodbye to a friend and board the train, waving through the window as the train pulls away like in the movies. As we watch the mountains through the train window on our way back through Strasbourg I am sad for the first time to be leaving a place, a place that felt strangely like home. I am content to do nothing but watch the mountains pass by, and think about a time that I may be able to return again to this country, to this land of hills and farms and roots—tree roots, crop roots and family roots—to this place of comfort and subtle yet ineffable beauty

From Baltic Shores

2007-09-01T13:10:00.000-07:00

Sunday, August 26, 2007

It’s a sunny Sunday afternoon and I find myself somewhere I definitely did not expect to be on a voyage to Siberia—or even knew existed: a beautiful sandy beach, just north of the most heavily trafficked canal in the world, where the Kiel fiord meets the Baltic Sea. The fiord in front of us is populated with more sailboats, ocean liners and cruise ships than I’ve seen in one place, save perhaps the Bosphorus, there’s a persistent breeze carrying the faintest hint of salt, periodically whipping of sand around my shoulders and creating a paradise for kite-flyers, wind-surfers, sailing enthusiasts and wind turbines. And, the sun is at least intermittedly gracing us with her presence.

I’ve just been visited by a young blonde-haired 2-year old who crawled up from behind me to where I am sitting in the sand. I smiled at her and she smiled back. I laughed and she sheepishly laughed as well. I started pushing sand around with my hands, and she did the same. Eventually we sat together in the sand, and I tried to get her to smile by burying my feet in the sand and then poking my toes through the sand, until she began to do the same. She named various objects in German—a rock, a plane overhead, our feet—and we continued to bury each other’s feet until her mother came and they continued on down the shore.

After a week of not understanding linguistically what is going on around me, I found encouragement in this short encounter as I was reminded by the simple language of this child and my obstinate use of words in our interaction what we all pass through a stage when communication is not based in words, but in gestures, mimicked actions, imitation, observation, smiles. And though this blonde-haired babe was entering into the world of German, fortunately, if we are willing to use and recognize and at least attribute significance to it, our ability to communicate without words never leaves us. This is a language that I’ve (re)learned in many foreign encounters—most notably perhaps with the Turkish students we befriended the last time I was in Russia, and then again in Turkey last summer. It is a language of necessity, perhaps—a language that teaches us humility as we return to more infantile forms of communication. But it is also a language with a certain transcendent quality, for it is a language that we all speak and understand if only we are willing to at times to be silent and return to an earlier, more primary way of ingesting our surroundings and making meaning in relationships.

The Kindness of Strangers (or, a week in Bremen)

2007-08-24T13:53:00.001-07:00

Before I left for Russia the first time around, Len gave us two words of advice: 1) Never take ‘no’ for an answer (i.e. there’s always someway to maneuver your way through the bureaucracy of Russia); and 2) your success in this venture will depend on the kindness of strangers. Our safe arrival to Bremen earlier this week once again proved true at least the latter of these counsels. After leaving Stan’s Dalston apartment at 3am, we made our way to Gatwick airport by means of a meandering late night bus and then a train in time to find out that the liquor at the duty free shop was only duty free if you are leaving the EU, and then to talk a café worker into giving us two coffees for the remaining pounds and pence we could muster out of our increasingly eclectic change collection. And five hours after departing for the airport, we flew a short 1.5 hours to Hamburg and made it through customs with much less to report than in England. From the airport we discovered that we needed to take a bus to the train station. This bus we found fairly easily, and sat down at the back beside a man who looked to be in his mid-40s. Mark proceeded to practice the few German phrases he’d been working on, and between our German phrasebook and the man’s broken English, we discovered that he was from a Kurdish town in Eastern Turkey, that we shared a love for (or at least knowledge of) Sultanahmet and Aya Sofia, and that he too was headed to Bremen on the train. When we arrived at the train station, he directed us to the ticket line, then told us to wait while he went to an automated ticket machine, then led us towards the trains. We were slightly confused as to what exactly he had purchased, until another wayward German youth we picked up while boarding the train explained that he’d purchased some type of 2-day group pass (that strangely cost only 1euro more than a single one-way ticket). He refused our offers of money to pay for the ticket, and kept a watchful eye on our luggage as we enjoyed the scenery beyond the train windows. And so we traveled to Bremen by means of the generosity of a middle-aged Kurdish man with the kindest of hazel eyes and the gentlest smile I have seen in awhile.

After parting ways with our Turkish friend, we met up with Konsti (the German exchange student who lived with my parents this year) and have been enjoying his hospitality and beautiful home for the past week. This week has been necessarily slower than the last, as we’ve spent time catching up on some sleep, exploring the streets and endless parks of Bremen, reading, swimming, kayaking, cooking extravagant dinners and eating them together, and catching up with Konsti in his home element. While not a major tourist destination, Bremen is quite a picturesque city, with the biggest park of meandering rivers, forests, even fields full of cows and sheep and goats that I have ever seen and the best system of bike lanes and pathways of any city I’ve ever encountered. This week has been a week of greenery, good food, good conversations, and space to consider more fully what exactly this year is going to entail. On the one hand, on the train between Hamburg and Bremen I felt for the first time that this adventure was actually real, probably a result of no longer understanding the conversations going on around me, the thrill of being somewhere I’ve never been before, another plane and country behind us, the chance encounter and kindness of a Kurdish stranger, and the freshness of the wind-turbine spotted northern German country-side. Yet on this side of the Atlantic, Konsti is the closest thing I have to family. And so while I finally feel as if at long last we are departed, I also feel as if we are at home. I imagine this phenomenon will continue as I am re-acquainted with long-lost friends as we continue to make our way east.

On that note, we are headed out tomorrow morning to new cities and new friends. We are taking the train to Kiel, a city on the North Sea, where a friend of mine from high school is living, and then on Sunday we will head to Strasbourg and then Mulhouse to visit with Cephas (a friend of the family) at his family’s farm in Alsace. We will return to Bremen next Friday before we finally head to Moscow on Sunday morning. And as we set out once again, or succumb to our transient nature, I trust that we will find our way at least in part by the grace and kindness of the strangers and friends we shall meet along the way.

Snapshots of England

2007-08-24T13:51:00.000-07:00

A week has come and gone and it is only now on the other side of the English Channel that I find the time to write. In the rush of buses, subways, trains, planes, museums, couches, bread, fruit, rivers, rolling hills, rain and much more, it’s hard to know where to begin. I could document what we’ve done each day, though I fear such an approach would not allow for a full appreciation of the moments that make these days unique from each other, memorable among many. And so, perhaps as I’ve recently finished Orhan Pamuk’s Istanbul, a memoir of photos and prose, I am going to speak of England in snapshots, using various photographs as starting points, as windows into frozen moments, captured memories. I was sitting today on the banks of the Thames flipping through some of my pictures from both the past week and earlier in the summer, and I had the strange feeling of being present in more than one place and time at once—photographs can have that transporting quality—mixed with a contented revelation that I, just as the camera in my hands, had witnessed these things myself, these images proof that I have indeed seen these things with my own two eyes. And so, without further ado, I offer these images and wandering thoughts to you…

(my gmail account has somehow switched itself in German and I can't figure out how to upload pictures...more to come soon)

I Wonder as I Wander...

2007-08-13T10:03:00.000-07:00

Some thoughts before take-off (and an explanation of this title)

wanderlust: (wŏn'dər-lŭst') –noun, a very strong or irresistible impulse to explore

wonder: noun, (1) a feeling of surprise and admiration, caused by something beautiful, unexected, or unfamiliar (2) a person or thing that causes such a feeling; verb (1) feel curious; desire to know (2) feel doubt (3) feel amazement and admiration

A few months ago I was introduced by a dear friend to the idea of wanderlust, defined above here as “a very strong or irresistible impulse to explore.” At the time I had just arrived in Rivière-du-Loup, and had written that although before departure I’d been somewhat indifferent to my trip, somewhere between watching the sun rise over the Toronto skyline and watching it set over the St. Lawrence, softly illuminating the foothills of the Appalachians behind, that unquenchable desire to explore the unknown had been re-kindled. I also noted that three months to the day from then I would be boarding a plane bound for the far shores of the Atlantic, the beginning of another journey into foreign wildernesses, and that I’d come to deeply appreciate these in between times, the hours—days, weeks even—spent in transit, not merely as the time spent between point A and point B, but as the most acute physical representation of why we journey at all: the constant motion, the transfers, the changing scenery, the fatigue, the same sun rising and setting, the mind sometimes still, sometimes running wild, the by-chance meetings of people going here and there, criss-crossing lives intersecting for a moment...the knowledge that the joy of the road is in the journey and not the end.

These initial discussions of wanderlust moved into more conversations and thoughts on the idea of wonder, wandering, and the relationship between the two. I often accidentally confuse the two—a slip in spelling here and there changing the meaning of sentences though not their coherency—and am intrigued by their etymological similarity. Over the past few months, as I’ve wandered the banks of the St. Lawrence and then the lakes and rivers and wilds of Algonquin Park and my physical and emotional limits, I’ve come to understand the relationship between these two phenomena—wondering and wandering—to be more than a closeness in spelling, but as a reciprocal, cyclical, never-ending courtship in which each idea enforces and re-enforces, enriches and fuels the other. Or, as a friend once wrote, wonder is best understood as both a cause and an effect; in this vein, I’ve come to understand wandering as just that—both the cause of wonder and also its effect.

The three months that separated my trip to foreign shores when I arrived in Rivière-du-Loup have changed somehow into days (hours!), and as I go through the processes of preparing to leave and saying goodbye, I find myself alternating between feelings of sadness, fear, and, of course, excitement. The sadness is for what I am leaving behind—a city that has never felt more like home, and the family and friends who make it home; the fear is for the unknown and unpredictability of adventures such as these; and the excitement is for both the known and unknown possibilities, adventures, discoveries, friendships and wisdom that I know will come over the next year. And for one reason or another, as I embark on this particular adventure, I find the ideas of wondering and wandering especially relevant. Perhaps it is because the itinerary of this trip is still relatively unknown, and we really are wandering our way to Yekaterinburg, through multiple countries and even more cities, and by means of numerous forms of transportation. Perhaps it is because for the first time in my life, I don’t really have a concrete plan, or a rational explanation for why I am going where I am, fueled only by an inexplicable wonder for the language, people, history, beauty, contradictions and endless wildernesses that are Russia. Perhaps it is a combination of the two. Above all else, however, I think it is because as I explore—wander, that is—the various places, ideas, relationships, cities, libraries, palettes, poetry, philosophy, universities, faces, music and emotions that are of interest to me, the one concept that unites these seemingly unrelated tangents is wonder: wonder for the awesome discovered and yet to be uncovered corners of this finely woven planet that we call home, for the beautiful and fragile diversity of our species, for the joy and suffering that make us human and connect us to each other, and for the unpredictability of the waters that make up this river of life.

I wonder as I wander out under the sky… (John Jacob Niles)

Welcome!

2007-08-13T00:05:00.000-07:00

Hello and welcome dear friends, family and internet strangers! I’ve finally decided to take the plunge into the world of information communication technology, and, mostly out of a dislike of mass e-mails, reconciled myself to the idea of having my thoughts and ideas and aimless ramblings floating around in the public domains of cyberspace. As many of you know, I’m beginning this blog as I set off for foreign lands and adventures, and hope to document many of the stories of the coming year here. I hope that you all enjoy what you read. Whether you read it to know where in the world I am and what I’m doing there, as a window into another life facilitated through my experiences, or you’ve just stumbled across these ramblings of a long-winded traveler, please let me know what you think! And as the hours before take-off slowly slip away, here the adventure begins. Thanks in advance for your ears (or eyes). Пока (poka, for now)!