Learning about Russian culture is difficult. Especially when your friends tell you that they grew up on American culture. They read American comics, read American literature, grew up watching movies from Mike Nichols and Jimmy Jarmusch. Aside from being inundated with Soviet cartoons, I've been getting an excellent education in Ameican culture. Does it seem strange to anyone but me that all of my friends were born in the Soviet Union?

I went to Liza's English class this afternoon where we discussed stereotypes for different regions in the States. They were very interested in the differences between southern belles, valley girls, and jersey girls. As well as how hicks, hillbillys, and rednecks are different. Did you know that people from Arkansas are made from corn?

Aside from being filled to the gills with math here, I spend alot of my time learning alot about English (question of the night last night: what are the prepositions doing in "I've been out/up/down there"), Russian (who knew it would be so hard to ask for the piece of cheese on the left, no not your left, my left), and French (it's me and two frenchmen in my Russian class).

What else... The highlight of my new in the apartment was finding out that I can open the paint enrusted windows, and I am now able to open one bottle of beer with another. Oh man, if only my scholarship advisor could read what I'm learning to do in Russia. Oh wait she does.

Speaking of research, I found a professor here that does work related to what I'm currently doing with Holly. The only tricky part is staying out of his spit zone, otherwise I think we're going to hit it off real well.

Aside from falling голова over heels in love, I think that's it in the news department for now.

Nothing to see here

Remember how I mentioned that wedlock is slightly more unlikely than spending time in prison? It turns out that I was right.

But let's not get ahead of ourselves. There's so much to tell and now that I have your attention, we should start from the beginning.

An autumn celebration, a night of horror : Halloween came to Moscow. After selfish prompting, my adopted mother in Russia, Peggy, graciously offered the use of her apartment for this night. We cooked, ate, and drank non-stop. Some of the food was good, like baked apples smothered in honey, raisins, nuts, and whatever else we could find. The pumpkin soup was a miracle, and the mulled wine divine. But the eggnog turned out less noggy and more like a bottle of Jameson with some raw eggs mixed in (but it was almost redeemed the next morning as it made a reappearance for French toast).

The most important part of the evening, however, was that this was the first time that I introduced the different groups of friends to each other. Up until this point, I felt like I was living separate lives. One with the other foreigners in the Math in Moscow program, one with the Russians at the dorm in which I used to live, another all together with the friends I've made outside of the dorm and Math in Moscow. It's emotionally exhausting at times to be constantly meeting new people. I was dropped in this city knowing no one, and it takes a lot of effort to get to know people, to let them get to know you.

Anywho, all in all, this night was a success.

You might have noticed that I mentioned the dorm in which I used to live. Where am I know? Deported? Not yet, you'll read about that in a few paragraphs. Under a bridge? Sometimes I find myself under bridges, but I have a real place to sleep. In a real bed. In a room, next to a real shower, which is right next to the kitchen with a very real stoven (stove/oven).

I've moved into an amazing apartment. As idle curiosity will be the punchline for the story about the police in Michurinsk, it is also the reason for this change. I have been on the lookout since I've gotten here for goodwill-esque stores. A place to buy clothes and gadgets cheaply. Of course, such a thing doesn't exist in Moscow. So I gave Craig's List a whirl. No one uses Craig's List. Well, almost no one. I looked through the housing section and saw a posting : 11500RUR Kutuzovsky 1 BR - Looking for a roommate. I emailed the gal, we meet up, see the place, the university sends someone out to look at the place and I move in shortly thereafter. My roommate is a manager for an art hall in Moscow that is the home of a contemporary dance troupe, that hosts cartoon festivals, film festivals, and much more. She's a riot, and the sweetest person I know. She can also read me like a book. Which is fine, but it gets unnverving when she decides it's story time and reads me aloud. She knows what I'm thinking, how I'm feeling... It's all very strange, but she's great. Катя is sort of like my Russian big sister.

So. About Michurinsk. Along the lines of wanting to find a cheap place for clothes, shoes, even haircuts, I was told that I should go to Voronezh. The home town to not a few of my friends here and even to a friend in the states. So I invite Bill and Наташа (also from Voronezh) to come with me. We start from Moscow at 730 in the morning and travel in a southerly direction. Much like a falling leaf we have no idea where we are sometimes, we backtrack, find our way, and continue on. One thing leads to another and we find ourselves on an electrichka (intercity, cheap, eletric train) to Michurinsk, already about 390km from Moscow. Voronezh is 460km, however Michurinsk to Voronezh is 150km. Anyways, we arrive after dark in Michurinsk at 8 in the evening. We check the timetables to find the next means of transport to Voronezh. The earliest is an elektrichka at 4 in the morning. We now have 8 hours to kill. We find the main drag, buy some supplies for the night and take on the city. We find a monument for wokers at Chernobyl, we pick up a stray dog along our walks, and we wander around until we find the other train station in the town. We sit down, relax, play cards, and eat.

It is the stroke of midnight (give or take a couple of hours) and in walks the militsiya. Here we are, a couple of Americans and a Russian with our feet on the chairs, our stuff scattered all across the floor, a bottle of wine, food and cards. One of them walks over and looks at each of us in turn.

"What are you doing here?"
"We're waiting for our 4 o'clock train."
"Oh, ok. Would you like some tea?"

We were completely floored. He brings out three cups of tea, sits down and starts chatting with us. His name is Viktor, he visits his mother in Chernobyl each year ("I'm telling you, it's completely safe there"), used to be in the military, and has a son my age. We ask him to tell us about the city (it used to be named Kozlov, and is now named after a Russian polymath, it's a fascinating town), and he has a great sense of humor (he had us going for a few minutes that he didn't believe we were foreigners). We were the first Americans he's met, and he was really interested in our opinions about things that we just didn't have the vocabulary to talk about. He got up to go back to his office in the train station and we continued to play cards.

He comes out again, and tells us he's sorry to disturb us, but he's just doing his job and may he please see our documents?

To make a long story short, we had the local and federal police along with the ФСБ (KGB with a new name), printing us, questioning us, and taking our statements all night and all morning. I slept in the cell (it was more comfortable), the other two in the lobby, and we walked out of the station after noon with 2000RUR fines each to pay and one infraction of statute 18.8 "Violation of a foreign national or stateless person, the rules of entry to Russia or the regime of stay (residence) in Russia" One more infraction and we're deported and can't return to Russia for 5 years.

вот. All is well, we're back in Moscow. Some details are clearly missing from the narrative, but if you are in the area, you've got a place to stay and we'll have to chat over tea.

Out of prison and straight to wedlock

Sorry for the post title, I thought I'd offer a viable explanation for the lack of posts. Actually, I haven't been to prison (yet), nor have I been married to the love of my life (a proposition slightly more unlikely than the first). I've just been having the time of my life.

Classes have started already. In fact, we're just now writing our midterms and it is is week eight already (of fifteen weeks). Classes are hard. Very hard. I'm taking four math classes (algebra, knot theory, topology, and ergodic theory) and a class on Russian language. Each class lasts for three hours, with some short breaks in the middle. Now, we all know I love math. And the math here is terribly interesting. No not just interesting, but amazing. However, it's impossible for me to digest that much math in three hours. It's lead to a lot of changes in the way I learn. I'm used to sitting in lecture three times a week for an hour, understanding the lecture more or less, and then getting on with my day. But the lectures here feel like a... well like a hammer. If I try to understand as we go along in the lecture (which is taught a fairly clip pace), I will be knocked out intellectually for the rest of the day. So my reaction has been to go polar opposite of my previous strategy, now I take notes (that's a first for those who are curious) much to the exclusion of immediate understanding. So that adds another time sink outside of class in addition to the grueling, but interesting homework problems.

Without going into too much detail (gotta leave the boring narration for the slideshows that you'll be dying to see), I've been wasting my time around Moscow. I've made a bitching set of friends who against all reason put up with me and my Russian. Interestingly enough, the overwhelming majority of them are linguists. Go figure. We've been to dachas (think a cabin and you've got it) in the outskirts of Moscow, and a citywide scavenger hunt in the capital of an oblast a couple of oblasts away (oblast = state). With the other international students, we went to St. Petersburg shortly after we got here. In Moscow, I happily wander and get lost. Stumbling on a few of the innumerable state sponsored (read : free) museums, concerts, and galleries. While none of the muscovites I know play any instruments (yet! one's picking up the accordian, another the harmonica. Should I try my hand at the banjo?), but they all know plenty of musicians which makes it easy to find a small, out of the way concert to go to.

I've only begun to see the big, and the small of Moscow. The known and the unknown. I have my eyes set on getting to know this city, but also on the rest of Russia. With the renewal of my AMS scholarship, and my visa extended to July 31st, I have seven weeks of vacation in the winter (from a week before christmas to the second week of February), and ten weeks after the program ends (a week before my birthday). I'm like a kid in a candy shop. I have my eyes set on too much of europe and asia, and already I've fallen in love with what I've seen of the country, the culture, and the people.

The highs are higher, and the lows lower in Russia. Perhaps this is a mix of the emotional rollercoaster of living in another country, the cultural differences being a double edged sword (they both clarify and obfuscate ideas and people), and the beauty and difficulty of the language. In any case, I miss my friends and family (I wasn't homesick until part of home, Dad and Amy, visited last week), but love the people I've met here.

Week 1

This week I learned as much about North American culture as Russian. As infrequently as the canadians use "eh?" as a universal suffix, does the Californian from Bezerkeley use "dude" in every conceivable grammatical mode. I've seen only two black people during this week in Moscow, and when the conversation happened to turn to gay rights at Esther's dacha this weekend, none of the Russians knew any gays in Moscow (I later learned this was not true, but the line of questioning wasn't very tactful. Especially in a place where just holding hands with a bloke in the street could land you in a hospital). Aside from appearing to be thirty years behind in terms of civil rights (and fashion! mullets and plaid, everywhere!), these initial impressions hardly speak for Russian culture at large, and even less for individuals.

Some of the most important people for the weeks to come are Lisa, Anya, and Esther. They are three wonderful Russian students who work for the Math in Moscow program who showed us around our neighborhood the first day, and have been accompanying us on trips around Russia. Lisa, as you may remember, was the one that picked me up from the airport, but together with Anya, I didn't see much of either until Питер/St. Pete. and whose stories will be told in week 3 (stay tuned!). Esther's story and that of my first weekend in Moscow follows.

Esther, born in Moscow, raised in Israel, a five foot fewer-inches-than-feet tall, bundle of contagious laughter, and world traveler. During the week she mentioned that she was going out to her parents dacha in Pokrovka that weekend, so we invited ourselves along. Sleeping bags underarm we make our way out to the trainstation. We're no sooner than 10 minutes on our way out of Moscow than every sense becomes aware of the difference in air quality. You can see, feel, and taste the cleaner air.

The dacha is like a home away from home (and certainly a home away from the dorms), and there we pass on the beutiful tradition of smores. Most of the other students go off and play cards, and Daniel and I get to meet two of Esya's friends : Kirill and Vova. Both in the philology department, studying Estonian; though Kirill has graduated and Vova is writing his disertation. Vova heads to bed, and Daniel, Esya, Kirill and I hang out around the campfire in the backyard, under the stars, braving the biting cold. An amazing weekend in Russia. The following morning we spend a few hours picking apples from the trees, with them patiently telling me how to less awkwardly construct my thoughts in Russian.

We'll get to the apple pie making another post for it was done in another week. I'll end on a little saying that I picked up from a textbook last year : "Лучше поздно, чем никогда" This entry was typed up piecemeal, and I think it shows... I'll try to be better about timely writing these things up when they're fresh so I can be just as late in posting but have more time to edit. However, "Better late than never".

-M

(III)Moscow : Red Dawn

My wonderful Step-mother Amy is full of it. Full of good advice that is. Why lug around two suitcases when you can stick one in a locker at the airport? Always the right tool for the right job, she likes to say. Call a spade what it is, a shovel! But if she tries to tell you to check two bags on S7 airlines (who never having heard of my step-mum will repeat : "Sorry sir, you may only check one bag"), hold your ground!

Ten euros per kilo later, I make my way through security, but not before bumping into some poor woman on my way (my flight leaves in 10 minutes, go go go!). I realize that my breath is not going to do anyone any favors on the flight and quickly brush my teeth (my flight leaves in 6 minutes, run!). I make it to the gate with plenty of time to spare (5 minutes 'til lift off) and.... not only is there the woman into whom I bumped at security, but the rest of the passengers. They're taking their sweet time loading, or rather preparing to load us. I amble over to Shannon (oh she has a name, she must be an important part of the story!), and apologize for being so rude at security. She's been living in Moscow for the past year teaching english, and she introduces me to her friend and Orthodox nun for the past lifetime and a half!

She and the rest of the plane are leaving dublin after a tour of a bunch of old hills and half buried rocks. You wouldn't think that rocks could be that interesting to talk about, but coming from a nun with a bunch of Russians sitting around to hear the stories again, anything would have been interesting at that point. Alas, like the tower of Babel, we are divided into our seats on the plane unable to communicate.

I idly wonder which city it is that we are passing over right now. Is it Moscow yet? No, we still haven't left the runway. Are we there yet? No, we must be flying over the baltic sea. Wait a minute, we must be close. I know this song. Yes, the pilot said we would be on time and I had timed this song almost perfectly. We're descending, and in the grey squishy thing between my ears echo the words : "I am just a new boy, a stranger in this town. Where are all the good times? Who's gunna show this stranger around?"

I remember only three things before I passed out on my dorm bed. The first was the most anxious moment in my life : "What if she decides they have too many math majors in Russia? Is my visa valid? I don't look anything like my passport photo... Shit, I forgot my piano music!" The customs lady hardly took a second glance at me or my passport. Whatever welcome she might have uttered had she been inclined to be so welcoming would not compare to the immense feeling of joy I felt banging my knee into the metal turnstill on my way into Russia.

The second was after picking up my checked baggage. I walk through customs, and see from the crowd my face staring at me. I'm tripped out on a sleeping pill, in a foreign country, with customs officers trying to talk to me in Russian. The last thing i need is an existential crisis. From behind my face pops up Liza's face, she squints then turns the sign around to reveal my name. After satisfied that my face and my other face are a good enough match, she breaks into a grin and gives me a hug!

In the darkness of early morning we hop into a car, she falls asleep in the back seat, and I get to make small talk (very small, neither of us speak the other's language) with the driver. Domodedova appears to be in the middle of forest. Moscow happens slowly, sneaking up on you. Every now and then you are fooled by a cluster of buildings, maybe purporting to be the edge of Moscow. But you know to wait. I waited and then I saw the sun rise on the city and on my new life in Moscow.

(II)Dublin : The calm before the storm

I'm not sure which is more striking. The fact that there are more Australians than Irish in Dublin, or that the street signs are older than our constitution.

After nearly getting run over by not looking the right direction when crossing the street (the maniacs drive on the wrong side of the road!), I take a bus into Dublin and hop off at the Dublin Spire after realizing that I was hopelessly lost without the address for the hostel. After some grunting and hand gestures I established that the local language was not yet Russian, but English. I make it to my hostel after a while wandering around with wide eyes and a fly trap the size of a tea saucer. This city is beautiful!

I no sooner than step out of a long overdue shower than meet one of my roommates who promptly invites me to join him and our other roommates to a tour of the Jameson whiskey plant. As night turned to day, so did the whiskey turn into Guinness. Awesome night made short : well, I think I just did. Surely my impression of this night was biased by my debut into travelling in Europe and hanging out with other twenty-somethings coming and going on their own adventures, but it was just that : amazing.

The next morning, I crawled out of bed then woke up. Knowing that I had everything to see and no time to do it, I naturally gave up. I walked through a triathalon, past the zoo, found a museum (and my new favorite modern artist), and otherwise wandered aimlessly around Dublin. I'll take tours when I'm retired, I'm here to see the city.

Any impressions? I feel like I should say that the people were really nice. But I won't. I don't understand why this is such an oft used description of a city. Are there cities where people are supposed to be really mean? Is there some backwater city in the world were people go out of their way to be rude? We give too much credit to culture and its ability to fundamentally alter a person. So far in my limited travels, niceness seems to be prevalent among people. Even if they're not from Portland.

Dublin. Where the people party as if they bought sin at a two for one sale. My gateway to Moscow.

(I)Pre-game impressions : The party is always funnest right before the police arrive

This summer was a blast. My jobs didn't leave me a burnt out shell at the end of the day, and what's more : I got to choose my hours. This let me hang out with many awesome people : old friends and acquaintances from school, highschool friends freshly graduated from university, and new, fun people that crawled out of the corvallis woodwork during the summer. This summer was especially filled with energy. Everyone I knew was on their way to adventure. They were applying to grad schools and jobs, moving to the middle of nowhere and to highrise apartments in manhattan. With this in mind, you could see why I quickly became despondent as my trips increased in frequency near the end of summer, eventually landing me in Russia.

My first reaction to my changing circumstances was that I was putting my life on hold. I had spent time with all these awesome people over the summer, and they'll continue to be awesome and do awesome things while I'm gone. All of a sudden, the barbeques and inane discussions over which is the best microbrew of the collection were going to be a fifth of the world away. Almost as many miles as there are feet in a mile away. If I could hear people in Oregon shout my name, it would only be 7 hours and fifteen minutes after they shouted that the sound would reach my ears.

For a while this rain cloud hung over my head (they call me Joe Bfstplk). But then though I knew I would miss my friends (I do), I realized that this outlook would imply some sort of constancy that doesn't exist. My friends change, my home cities change, and (in an egotistic way) most importantly I change. I love how we're supposed to become less egocentric as we age, but really I'm becoming more so. It's not so important where I am, or what I'm doing. Any experiences I have is, by definition, my life. Just as there is no rewind button, there ain't no time to get up for more popcorn either.

So here I am fresh out of summer. I worked, I partied, I left. I got to see family wedded, wasted, wetted, and wizened. Here's to life and to whatever it brings!