Medvedev listens to Linkin Park

In a recent interview with the three major Russian TV stations, Medvedev revealed that his 14 year old son listens to Linkin Park, and that he, the president of Russia, even listens to them sometimes.

[Putin is manly] Judo

Current Prime Minister, and eternal manly man, Vladimir Putin has generously offered to join his country's judo squad. On the Moscow Times front page you can see a picture of him signing the judo manual he wrote with his trainer. (I tried to find a copy of this in Vlad, but none of the bookstores had it.)

Interesting tangent: the gym instructor at the institute where I studied had a four-foot portrait of Putin in his judogi and black belt hanging from his office wall.

Update: video available here.

Otherworldly Dudes and Iranian Refugees

Tom and I used to debate whether there were actually more crazy people in New York or whether they were just more visible. Some days it seemed like every corner and every subway stop revealed someone collecting used metro cards or talking into a shoe. These are the weirdos you generally avoid. But there are other weirdos with stories and they linger in your caged city imagination. Why is that man walking down the street with a cat on his head? Who is that guy on the blue line who yells at me to Help Feed the Homeless, and why does he have such a large duffel bag?

There's a universal rule of travel, the law of Weirdo Gravitation. When you're traveling, you're immediately attracted to oddballs for the possibility of an adventure or an easy anecdote. This was definitely the case in August in Kyrgyzstan. There was the policeman we met in a yurt camp on Lake Issakol who announced that his daughter was looking for a husband, and later offered to "introduce" Nick to her if he had over $40,000 or an apartment with more than two rooms. There was a Canadian defense attorney who had quit his private practice to travel the world for two years because he was "sick of whiners who don't want to pay."

In the hostel in Bishkek we met a guy we called "The Otherworldly Dude" (for his serene manner) and "German Taliban" (for his long beard and strange dress). By his own description, he had been traveling continuously since 1993, stopping for a few years at a time in various African countries and in India, where he founded a commune. With traditional clothes and his beard as a guise, he had walked across northern Afghanistan sometime after the start of the war. He wore baggy black capri shorts which were tied around the waist with a cloth belt. When asked where he got them, he sighed with otherworldly indifference and said: "They're just ordinary Thai fisherman's pants."

One of the more detailed and unique stories I heard was from an Iranian student in Bishkek. We'll call him "S." I've told his story to a number of friends and the usual reaction is skepticism. I met him over beers and shashlik four or five times and he seemed like a genuinely nice and interesting guy.

It starts like this: S was an art student living in Tehran until about two years ago. He came from a secular family with little interest in the regime or Islam. Looking at him, he could have just arrived from New York - tight pants, checkered slip-on shoes, metal studded belt, ironic t-shirt, earrings and hair to his shoulders. Not the sober ideal of a revolutionary Muslim.

In Tehran he met a girl whose grandparents had moved to Iran after the Russian revolution. Her family, too, was secular. She spoke both Russian and Farsi, and didn't look like an Iranian girl - her skin was paler, her features lighter. Clearly a foreigner, not Persian.

After dating for a while, they decided to move together to Bishkek so that S could learn Russian. Living there for a few months, making some friends, they decided to get "married." The quotation marks indicate that it wasn't a marriage that the Islamic Republic of Iran would recognize when they returned home, but something they did for themselves.

Eventually they did return to Tehran, in time for Nowruz celebrations in March. This was when things started going very badly for S. While home, his Russian love left him and moved in with someone else. S was so distraught that he spent the next week wandering aimlessly in the mountains outside of Tehran and roaming the streets of the city. At the end of that week, tired, disheveled, disoriented, he was sitting on the sidewalk when the religious police approached him. They thought he was a drug addict. They hauled him to the basement of a local mosque to interrogate him.

While they were asking him about his long hair, his piercings, his possible drug use, they went through his backpack. They turned on his laptop and found video clips that one of his friends had taken of the wedding in Bishkek. They immediately recognized that the bride wasn't Iranian and that it wasn't a standard Muslim ceremony.

They held him in the prison for days, beat him, tried to find out his connection to the foreigners, the infidels. Who are these people? Why are you drinking? What were you doing in Bishkek? S claimed that it was a video he shot as part of a drama production for a university project. They didn't believe him.

They only released him after his father came to the Mosque and signed over his house and car as bail for a future hearing in a religious court. Out of jail, his father bought him a plane ticket for the next flight back to Bishkek. He fled the country. The next day, S was back in Kyrgyzstan where Iranian citizens can easily get an entry visa.

Using the money left in his bank account, he enrolled in Russian classes at the university in Bishkek and was therefore able to get a longer-term student visa. He kept in touch with a friend in Tehran by email, using a new address and never including his name or important information. A few months later, the friend reported that his father had been arrested. At the time S told me this story, he said his father had been in jail for about a year and he had heard nothing from him since.

S says he applied for refugee status but it went nowhere. With limited opportunities to work and study in Kyrgyzstan, he was looking for visas to Russia or Europe, but passport issues are tricky when you're an Iranian on the run from the government. The last time I saw him, we met for breakfast and he introduced me to his girlfriend - an employee of the American embassy.

It's a strange and almost unbelievable story. Almost. I'm inclined to take it as a live confirmation of everything I know about the Iranian regime, and another reason why change is overdue in that country.

Litter Box Theater

I went to Moscow last weekend on Saturday November 7, the former Day of the Revolution (the big one). It's no longer an official government holiday, but there were still parades on Red Square and I saw lots of wreaths in Victory Park. I celebrated like a proper revolutionary - with a trip to the Moscow Cat Theater.

This is a real thing, it exists and it is well known. If you say the words "cat theater" in Russian (teatr koshek), many people will immediately say "Ah, Kuklechev!" That's the founder, Yuri Kuklechev. When I told one of my Russian friends that I was going to go to the cat theater, she replied "Kuklecheva?" This puzzled me for a moment as I contemplated the possibility of more than one cat theater in Moscow.

Anyway, at some point this clown (not derogatory, he's actually a clown) got the idea to train cats and dress them in outfits and put them on scooters and other incredibly cute and freakish things. One of my professors told me she saw the show as a child and it featured a cat dressed as a chef, stirring a boiling cauldron with a pawed spoon. Muscovites apparently love this sort of thing, because when I called to ask about tickets the woman on the phone told me good seats were available for 1400 rubles (that's about $45). Last time I was in St. Petersburg, I paid 800R ($25) to see the world famous Mariinsky Ballet Theater perform La Sylphide. There had better be some pirouetting.

When I got to the box office, I looked at the seating plan and ticket prices. Luckily, tickets for the furthest two sections were 200R and 150R. I asked for a pair of either and she told me there weren't any available. This was a lie, because after we bought our 350R ($11) tickets and took our seats eight rows remained empty behind us. Something about my black hooded sweatshirt, baseball hat and North Face jacket must have said "I will pay any price for this."

I somehow convinced Micah (picture below) to go with me. Micah is a smoking, drinking Kentuckian known to sport a handlebar mustache and complain loudly about the quality of his morning BM. The main audience for cat theater is three year olds and parents who look like they've run out of ideas. There was one couple in the corner who cuddled throughout the entire performance which was touching and creepy. We were clearly the oldest males in the theater not accompanied by a child or a female (the only two segments of society permitted to fawn and pet things).

I won't spend a lot of time outlining the performance, because it's much funnier to watch somebody step in a puddle or slip on ice than to describe it afterward. There were cats on scooters, cats hanging from half-moons, cats hopping between clouds above the stage. There were dance scenes that had nothing to do with cats and an impossible to follow plot involving a detective, a janitor and three scantily dressed dancers. (Micah: "I bet the one on the right knows how to work a pole.")

There were some highlights. Towards the middle, the human performers / cat herders brought out the feline equivalent of parallel bars. Through some more than obvious coaxing, the trainer managed to get one of the cats to monkey across the two bars using only its front paws, its back legs dangling in the air. And for the finale they brought out a small padded seat attached to a 15 foot pole. A different cat scaled the pole, sat atop it a moment to heighten the tension, then leaped down onto a cushioned pad held by a different performer. It was very dramatic.

After the show ended, the performers tossed balloons into the audience for the kids to take home with them, but none of them reached our back row. Micah and I left the theater bewildered and aimless, unsure what remained for two 20-something guys do in Moscow at 8pm on a Saturday night.

Happy Unity Day!

Another week, another holiday. This time Russia's Day of National Unity. My Russian friends tell me that, despite the government sponsored commercials, it is not actually a holiday. Wikipedia tells me that it was celebrated until the revolution in 1917 then reinstated in 2005 as a replacement for the former Day of the Revolution (November 7); that it commemorates an uprising which expelled Polish-Lithuanian forces from Moscow in November 1612; and that it used to have the catchy title "Day of Moscow’s Liberation from Polish Invaders." Wikipedia:

According to a recent poll, only 23 percent of Russians know the name of the holiday, up from 8 percent in 2005.

Happy sort of Holidays!

Bath House of Pain

In honor of Halloween which doesn't really exist here, seven of us dudes reserved a public banya. What's scarier than having this man's naked body permanently imprinted on your visual memory?

Just kidding Micah, you're an adonis.

It was my third banya. For neophytes, a banya is basically a "wet" sauna. That is, after you simmer in your own sweat for a while you go to an adjacent room to douse yourself in cold water. Over the summer I visited the banya out at the dacha, a small one with just a changing room and a combined washroom/sauna. Imagine a shed with two levels of wooden slats for seating, and a small hole in the ground to let the used water run off. The Halloween banya was a bathhouse mansion by comparison - there was the sauna itself, a couple showers, a small swimming pool, a pool table and a room with TV for relaxing. They had shot glasses too, but BYOV.

The most memorable banya was two weeks ago when I went to visit my friend Julia in Tver. We had spent the day before at a village wedding, which meant we started drinking vodka at breakfast, "So we'll have a good mood." I'll leave it at that. But the next day at breakfast Misha (Julia's husband) explained how the banya would help us sweat out the alcohol. "You can drink five shots, spend 15 minutes in the heat and be ready to drive," he explained while packing the car. Then he threw a shotgun on the stack of towels and handed me a size 8 cartridge. "For wild boars."

We drove out to Misha's country house with two of his tattooed friends. It was a secluded hovel with a fireplace and not much else, but there was a large three-room banya and a big table outside for dumplings, chocolate and vodka. After toasting to international friendship, we stripped down in the changing room. I started to go into the sauna when Misha said "Wait" and put a pointy, gray wool cap on my head. I'm still not entirely sure what this was for. To protect my hair? To keep in the heat? Maybe when you're sweating naked in front of three other grown men, you need to preserve your dignity by looking like a Napoleonic cavalry officer.

Banya's are often done in stages, three rounds of sweating and bathing with breaks to drink and stand outside in between. Round one was enjoyable. As the guest, I was offered one of the upper spots to recline in. "Lie down," Misha said. Then trying to be hospitable he said in English, "This is total relax." Ten minutes later we were standing outside in the dark, towels on, drinking Baltika and talking about Putin ("A product of the system," he said). In retrospect, I think this was how I had imagined the banya experience.

Until round two. I will never forget the smell of boiling beer. When you pour a can of Baltika 7 over hot coals - as Misha now did - the steam it produces feels like someone is injecting molten hops into your sinus cavity. It is oppressive, suffocating, and wheaty. Luckily, I was sporting that woolen fedora which I used to cover my face. "No, no," Misha said, "breathe it in. It's good for the lungs." The others were stone-faced with their eyes closed, like they were either trying not to cough or were attempting to get high from the vaporized alcohol.

We took a break. Sat by the fire, ate, drank beer straight from the can.

Round three. As a general life rule I do not take advice from a naked man, especially one wielding birch branches. So when Misha told me to lie down on my stomach with my hands at my sides it was with reluctance that I did so. Travelers will be familiar with the concept of oppressive hospitality - the overbearing hostess who wants to feed you too much, the excitable acquaintance who wants to show you the town when you only want to sleep. Sometimes it's easier to go along, to placate your inebriated host with lashing instruments. "Total relax," I thought and lay my head on a small pile of hay. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him soak the branches in water and shake away the loose leaves.

Pretty soon they were flailing away like that scene from the Passion. "It's good for the circulation," he reassured me. After two minutes or so he said, "Turn over." This time my hat wasn't covering my face.

After they were done, Misha told me to to keep lying down for sixty seconds while they left. I don't know if it was the thrashing, the beer steam or just the 180-degree heat but I found existence very uncomfortable. At "60" I was out the door and pouring the coldest bucket of water I could find over my head. When I toweled off and picked the remaining birch bits from the backs of my knees, I went outside to watch the stars spin. Back inside, Misha pointed out that my entire body was blotchy with red streaks - "Good for your metabolism," he said.

We all had one more shot. I laughed with a grin that said "I know there's a shotgun around here somewhere."

Vodka Tasting (#1)

Last night four of us conducted a blind taste-test of six common vodkas. We included four middle of the road bottles that we always see in restaurants and bars (Five Lakes, Green Label, Putinka and Parliament; each approximately $5 per half liter*), one crappy vodka (Russian Legend; about $2.5 per half liter), and one expensive bottle (Russian Diamond; about $10 per half liter). We bought some olives to make sure the event was classy.

There were two goals: to find the most drinkable yet reasonably priced vodka, and to see if there is a discernible difference between low end and high end bottles. The way I saw it, it was a win-win situation - either we confirmed that our palates were sufficiently honed to detect different vodka echelons, or we discovered that a low-priced bottle would be sufficiently drinkable for our needs.

After outlining different tests - sipability, swishability, mouth-feel, throat-feel, eye-burn - we got down to business. Most of them were drinkable. And, as expected, we all chose the least expensive as the worst, describing it as something we wouldn't drink again but may be able to use to strip varnish.

The biggest surprise was that we all rated the most expensive choice, Russian Diamond, as second worst, while we all rated one of the middle of the road selections, Putinka, as the smoothest with the softest flavor. And, yes, it's named after you know who.

Stay tuned for Vodka Tasting Round #2, when we include Russian Standard and Stolichnaya.

*For metrictards: one half liter is approximately 10 shots if you pour a biggish 50 mL shot (I believe a standard shot in the US is closer to 40mL). So you pay 50 cents per shot if you buy a bottle, which might explain part of the drinking problem in this country.

City Planning

Question: If you were a city planner, would you put your bus stops before or after cross-walks?

It seems to me that it would be much more efficient if bus stops were before cross walks; that way the bus only has to stop once and people can cross at the same time. But in Vlad most of the bus stops come after cross walks and traffic lights. Any thoughts on why this might be?

Big Races

The other day I was surfing channels and saw a bunch of grown men in chicken suits riding bikes around an obstacle course. I was intrigued.

Turns out it's a show called "Big Races." Apparently it's based on a BBC show called "It's a Knockout" which ran from 1966 to 1982; a version ran in the States as "Almost Anything Goes" in 1975 and 76.

There were four teams, each representing a different country, which competed for points in a series of strange events. One event had members of each time trying to stand on specially marked patches of ground in a bull pen while the bull roamed around trying to gore them. It was pretty cool.

The four teams were Russia, the U.S., China and Belarus but I have no idea why those four countries were represented and they never explained who any of the non-Russian competitors were. The Russian team, however, was interviewed at frequent intervals throughout the show; they also did sideline interviews with famous Russian athletes who were present to cheer on their side.

Despite a commanding American lead going into the final event, the Russian team won (surprise). According to the Russian Wikipedia page on the show, only one other team has won in the five seasons the show has run - China, in the first season.

The show is a good example of Russia's lite nationalism. Go to any sporting event, or really any public event in this country and you will see people waving Russian flags, even if the event has nothing to do with international competition. When I went to the beauty pageant last week there were five or six people in the audience with Russian flags who would wave them at intervals, while people were applauding or during a dance number.

Think about how this show would work in the States: there would be teams comprised of immigrants from their respective countries; they would do heartfelt backstories about how their family escaped civil war and fled to the U.S. and the children became successful restaurateurs; the stands would be filled with true compatriots who excitedly cheered their team; there would be flags and paraphernalia from each of the countries; the Spanish team would joke that they have more experience running away from bulls.

None of these things were apparent in this show. It seemed pretty clearly designed to make Russians feel good about themselves and their country and to cram as much flag-waving into a timeslot as possible. It's also a product of Channel One, one of the government-owned stations. At the end of the show the announcer asked us to "tune in next time and cheer Russia to victory!"

Little Miss Sex Bomb

So last night I attended "Miss Golden Autumn." My ticket refers to it as an "Entertainment Show," but I think most Americans would refer to it as a "beauty pageant" or a "beauty contest." I'll refer to it as "Russia's best attempt to make a 25 year old, red-blooded American male feel extremely awkward."

Here's why: despite the pastoral title, the way you determine Miss Golden Autumn is not through pie-baking, adroitness with a scythe or knowledge of animal husbandry but through a series of half-naked dance routines set to Tom Jone's "Sex Bomb." Awkward enough yet? If not, I should mention that the first contestant was 15 years old and few looked much older. More awkward? Let me add that I was invited to the event by one of my professors, who was also in attendance. Quite awkward you say? Final fact: her daughter was one of the competitors. Hey ya!

It took place at a city auditorium, almost all of the 200+ seats filled. There was a panel of judges and loveably inept presenters. The stage looked like it could have doubled as a high school set for "A Midsummer Night's Dream."

The first round was the "Presentation" phase. Each of the contestants got a few minutes to present some information about themselves. Some of the girls had prepared short slideshows set to music. If you asked a teenage girl to conduct a live reenactment of her Myspace page, this is what it would look like.

There were eight of them, almost all tall and blond. I had trouble keeping track of them. After the presentation round, only four left an impression on my mind: #1, because she was short, the only brunette, had immediately tripped over her words and was forced to restart; #4 because she was serene despite being heftier and clumsier than the rest, like participating in a beauty pageant was the way she relaxed after a week of elk hunting; #5 because she was the tallest, she strutted and was the only one who already seemed like a woman, and because she had a look on her face that said if she didn't win she was going to defenestrate one of the judges; and of course #7 because she was the teacher's daughter. I'll refer to her from now as "7".

After the Presentation round came the Talent portion. All of my favorites were reaffirmed: #1 because her strategy to win the title of Russia's "Miss Golden Autumn" was to dance a Cha-Cha-Cha in a pink tu-tu; #4 because she sang beautifully, was planted to one spot while on stage, and wore a completely unsexy dress-suit; #5 because she wore a red leotard with rips all up the legs, and because she looked like she might jump off stage to throttle the sound engineer if her song didn't play at the correct volume.

And of course 7, who I was bound by obligation to cheer for. I really wanted to. And I was relieved because she was wearing a modest sort of jazzy-1920's outfit with a top hat. But from the way the bass hit me in the chest when the music started, I knew it would not be tame. There was a lot of thrusting and undulating. The chorus of the song repeated "Let's do it on the beach, let's do it on the street. Let's do it in the car, wherever you are." She dipped in forward-sweeping gestures which, based on the design of her shirt, would have obligated me to look away under normal circumstances. At some point the audience started clapping to the beat. A relief! A godsend! It gave my hands something to do other than feel clammy.

Throughout the performance I did my best to look like I was watching someone else's home videos or looking at pictures from a colleague's recent trip abroad: respectful and slightly bored. Eye contact and smiling were avoided.

After the Talent phase came a hybrid evening-wear / wedding-dress phase. Having already tripped over her words, #1 kept tripping on her dress and at some point just decided to hold the front of it in both hands. I liked her determination. 7 looked elegant and nonplussed. When the round was over I turned to give a thumbs up to my teacher, then turned away and said a silent prayer that there would be no Swimwear round.

Prayer answered. The show concluded shortly thereafter and we we waited anxiously while the judges tallied the scores. I felt sincerely nervous for 7, a sort of nervousness I usually only get when watching a Game 7 in the playoffs.

Unfortunately for my professor, her daughter came in third. But she was given the "Audience Choice" award, something I had helped contribute to by writing her name on the back of my ticket and placing it in a ballot box at the end of the last round. I'm glad she got it, because I was secretly cheering for #1, the lone short brunette, who had the audacity to think that she could personify the Russian Fall with a lascivious Cuban dance in a tiny pink skirt.

Could I have been...

...president of Russia?

As far as I know, all Russian schoolchildren are taught English - from what I'm told, it's the only mandatory second language. English is not absent in Vladimir - menus at especially trendy cafes are often in both Russian and English and the radio is full of English-language hits.

But that's about it. Movies and TV shows are always over-dubbed and English-language periodicals are non-existent. The latter is even true in Moscow. Last time I was there, I checked every stall at the train station for anything in English - I would have killed for a copy of Metallurgy Digest - but found nothing.

And as N recently pointed out, a surprising number of people either don't speak English or will balk at using the English they've learned. So I wasn't shocked so much as curious when I saw a girl the other day, maybe 12 years old, wearing a pink t-shirt with glitter and pastels which read "Damn, I'm good in bed."

To an outsider this might seem sad or pitiful, but it has to be considered in the context of how English here is used.

English is a fashion statement. It shows you're modern, cosmopolitan, connected. It's a status symbol. Accordingly, shirts here are stenciled, plastered, splattered with English print. A typical example: today I was in a higher-end clothes store and saw a baby blue t-shirt with white schematics in the background and black lettering on top which read "Airplanes" and below "science and technologies."

Most common are collared shirts with blocks of text across the front, which look like someone left a wet copy of the New York Times on them.

Just like it's cool to get some Asian character tattooed on your neck or pelvis or whatever, it's cool to have a Latinate alphabet on your clothes.

As in the case above, this can lead to some pitiful (or hilarious, depending on your perspective) results.

Usually it's minor spelling and grammar mistakes:

(popular t-shirt around town)
-Because my sins is F5 jeans

(spotted on a bus to Suzdal):
-Montreal: for the diescerning, imdependent and freespirited men

(for sale at our city stadium):
-F.C. Torpedo Vladimir - To be a winners!

(purchased at a bazaar in Bishkek):


In the most extreme example I've heard of, a fellow traveler in Bishkek reported seeing a young lady wearing a t-shirt which declared her preference for well-proportioned, dark-skinned men in only five words.*

In my seventh grade math class there was an off-the-boater from Taiwan. He was the class whiz, but for months he wore white shoes with an unmistakable logo stenciled above the word "Playboy." He or his parents probably came to the understandable conclusion, that these were shoes for a 12 year old boy to run around in, to play in. When other students in the class told him what it stood for he was crushed, started crying and left class.

Sometimes, when I see these t-shirts, I think I should say something - not the fashion police, but a fashion vigilante. On the one hand, my Taiwanese classmate was probably done a favor before he hit high school.

On the other hand, how does a foreigner explain to a Russian 12 year old that her shirt is inappropriately salacious? How do you explain to the man sitting in front of you on the bus that his shirt is full of spelling mistakes? How do you open that conversation?

How do you explain to a 40-something female attendee at a Russian motocross rally that her t-shirt is both poorly written and overtly misogynistic?




*Stop counting on your fingers, perv!

[Textbooks] "You will die like a cur"

Last year the Ministry of Education approved a new textbook for use in grade 11 classes across the country. The book, Istoriya Rossii 1945-2008, met immediate criticism. One critic called it "a highly distorted version of 20th-century history;" another stated "nobody’s going to learn from this garbage of yours, because it’s horribly written and dark ." One of the book's contributors apparently found this irksome since he responded on his blog: "You will die like a cur, but your children will be learning from the textbook that I will write. And by the way, you can’t have any children, ’cause you’re a bleedin’ faggot."

Background on this spat here.

I now have a copy of it in front of me, purchased at a local bookstore for 190 rubles (~$6). I've only just started to look through it. It's not nearly as interesting as the comments above would lead you to believe, but here's a thought-provoker from the introduction:

We make the proviso that we are opponents of the concept of totalitarianism. This doctrine, equating the Soviet Union to Hitler's Germany, was not and is not an instrument of knowledge, but a weapon in an indeological war. Here it must be clearly acknowledged, that the ideology of Nazi Germany and the ideology of Soviet Russia had nothing in common between them.

Contemplate.

Greatest Russian Music Vid Ever in History

Hammer and Pickle

Russians love holidays. In my few weeks in this country, I've gotten to celebrate "Russia Day," "City Day," and the "National Day of Family, Love and Fidelity." In addition, there are all sorts of unofficial holidays like Pushkin's birthday (June 6), the first day of school ("the Day of Knowledge," Sept. 1), and any day when Putin goes hunting and takes off his shirt.

"Why do you [Russians] have so many holidays?" I asked a bus conductor on the way to "City Day." "Because life is hard and the people need to be cheered up," she replied. This struck me as a plausible theory. Then again, it would also answer the question "Why do I see so many people drinking vodka on public transport at 8 in the morning?"

Given the abundance of holidays, I was not entirely surprised to hear about the 9th Annual International Cucumber Festival. It was in Suzdal, about 30km from Vladimir. Other students from my group wanted to get there early, so they left around eight. I was tired and refused to believe it necessary to arrive early to a cucumber festival. I decided to go alone around 11, get there around 12. This was a mistake: Do not underestimate Russian vegetable holidays.

I got to the bus station around 11:30 and it was packed with 30-person "lines" at every teller. Despite years of practice waiting for toilet paper, queueing is not a great talent in this country. After pushing my way to the front I bought a ticket for the next bus out, at 12:30.

A long hour later, the bus arrived and was filled to capacity - all seats were taken and all standing room was filled. Cramped, hot, dusty. Grasping one of the overhead hand-holds, my armpit occasionally nuzzled a blonde woman's hair bun.

Despite this arrangement, I was feeling good. I had decided to break my month-long streak of only listening to Russian music and was instead rocking out to Coheed and Cambria. Around the time I started feeling self satisfied with this decision there was resounding XLOP (Russian for "bang"), the bus wretched and pulled over. And then, slowly, those gaps between peoples' heads (and underarms) began to darken and fill with DYM (Russian for "smoke").

Luckily, my fellow passengers made up for their earlier standing-in-line deficiency with an impressive demonstration of getting-the-hell-out-of-a-burning-bus. We evacuated onto the side of a busy highway.

We waited. A long line of cars passed in our direction. Like all Russians standing outside with nothing to do, my companions started lighting up their cigs. I imagined the puffing men turning to the nearest female and saying, "Dear god, Masha! We could have died of smoke inhalation in there!"

Passing us were hundreds of happy, expectant cucumber-festival goers. Through the windows of their Ladas I could feel their smugness.

I started asking people how far it was, thinking I might walk. "Ten kilometers. Fifteen. Maybe twenty." Idea abandoned. Some of the other passengers had already gotten their money back from the bus driver - who at this point was pouring gallon-jugs of water directly onto the engine - and had started to hitchhike. I saw a group of guys roughly my age and asked if I could join.

After walking for about twenty minutes with no luck, a lone taxi going in the opposite direction saw us and turned around. And finally around three o'clock we arrived to the extravaganza, just in time to see all my friends, leaving.

I wasn't about to leave. I needed to see something. Between the wooden peasant houses were a few cucumber dolls, dwindling barrels of pickles and a cucumber carved into a phallus.

This was around the time I began to think Russians have too many holidays. But look, 20 million dead in World War II, 75 years of Soviet rule, 10 years of stagnation and crime - maybe they do need to be cheered up. But imagine you're that conductor on the bus: You've just spent 70 hours of your week tearing off individual ticket stubs, yelling at drunkards and counting out 10 kopek coins. You may be skeptical of a holiday that involves waking up at 7am on a Saturday and driving 30km to view a giant cucumber schlong. Unless, of course, Putin shows up and takes off his shirt.

Textbook Case #1

I have in front of me a brand new copy of the textbook Russian History, XX - XXI Centuries (Danilov, 2009). It's for 9th graders.

Since it's my second semester here, I had more latitude in designing my weekly schedule. Five hours of grammar and five hours of conversation weren't negotiable (though my grammar instruction this term will be one-on-one). After that, I asked for two hours of literature, two hours of phonetics and six hours of history. Over the summer I only had two hours of history a week; I asked for more because 1) it was the course that required the least amount of preparation, and 2) I would also be able to meet with the history professor one-on-one, which would hopefully mean we would get to explore some interesting topics in-depth.

I thought this plan was even more clever because the director informed me that of my six hours of history I would only need to meet with the professor for two - the rest could be "independent study" in the library. This I understood as tacit consent to leave the institute and ask people about World War Two at a bar (they beat the fascists, by the way, in case you haven't talked to a Russian in EVER).

This plan was not clever. The history professor decided that I should pick a topic and write a 25 page paper over the course of the semester, which I have to assume he meant in Russian since he doesn't speak English. Woe.

Then he asked me for ideas. Luckily I had just read an article from the Moscow Times in which it was written: "President Dmitry Medvedev called for the introduction of a single history textbook to prevent schoolchildren’s minds from being turned into kasha."

So I suggested that I look at different Russian history textbooks to see the differences, particularly at sections describing Russian-American relations. He clearly liked this idea, because he didn't shoot it down like my first 20 ideas which I haven't listed here out of time constraints.

Here's a sample. The aforementioned textbook has a section in the last four pages which describes recent events in American/world history:

The situation in the world sharply changed after the terror acts of September 11, 2001 in New York and Washington. President Putin was the first foreign leader to call George Bush and offer his sympathies. After these events a Russian-American group was formed, the main task of which was the struggle with terrorism. Russia agreed with the actions of the U.S. and the mission against the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, charged with supporting international terrorism. Greater understanding in the west began to great the actions of Russia in Chechnya.

And on the next page:

President George Bush repeatedly expressed his concern with "the rolling back of democracy and free press in Russia." V.V. Putin answered that "we will never allow anyone to twist Russia's arm, which with every year year is growing stronger." In 2003 Russia, Germany and France formed the so-called European Trio and objected to the military actions of the U.S. in Iraq and the toppling of Saddam Hussein. Russia insisted on the involvement of the U.N. in deciding the Iraq problem.

Visa Woes

Bishkek is a transit limbo, a place where travelers wait for visas to Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan and sometimes Iran, China and Turkmenistan. Maybe because of this the city gets a bad rep, for being boring and a place where all you do is wait.

After Nick left I surveyed my options and decided to go to Uzbekistan - I wanted to see the ancient cities I'd read about in Peter Hopkirk's "The Great Game". Tajikistan was too out of the way, Dushanbe too hard to get to. Almaty, the former capital of Kazakhstan, is close to Bishkek (a five hour ride) but supposedly not very different or interesting. So Uzbekistan it was.

To get an Uzbek visa you first have to call the embassy to get on "the list." I called on a Friday, with exactly two weeks left to travel. I figured if I could get it in a week (and hopefully less) that would leave me enough time to head south, cross the border by Osh, and head to Andijon or Tashkent before Samarkand and Bokhara.

So I called. Most of the following interactions took place in Russian. I said I wanted to get a Visa to Uzbekistan. The woman on the other end of the phone said, "What nationality are you?" "American," I said. -"You can't come today. I'll put you on the list for Tuesday."

Keep in mind that getting on "the list" only enables you to APPLY for a visa- it doesn't mean you actually receive one. And since the embassy doesn't work on Mondays it meant going to Uzbekistan would be pushed off by at least four days. After I hung up the phone, I remembered that someone had told me that if you just go to the embassy and pester them long enough they'll let you apply. With nothing else to do, this became my new strategy.

I left for the embassy, application form, photos, copy of passport and money all with me. On the way, I ran into a Canadian I had met the day before. He was happy because he had just gotten his Uzbek visa and he gave me a bit of advice: "It's all about the guard out front," he said, "the one at the gate. He controls everything. If he likes you, he'll let you in." I prepared my best sweet talk.

Ten mintues later I found the embassy, saw a few people hanging around outside and spied the gate and the guard. I approached him: "Is it possible to apply for a visa today?"
-"What's your name? You're not on my list."
-"I know, but I really want to go visit your beautiful and historic country [sweet talk]."
-"What's your nationality?"
-"American."
-"Impossible. Come back on Tuesday."

This was dismaying, not least because I failed to grasp the connection between being American and applying for visas on Tuesday.

Right then, an Uzbek man and woman appeared and started talking feverishly with the guard in one of those crazy languages that lends itself well to feverish talking. The guard kept pointing at me. Then he motioned for me to come over; he took the visa application out of my hands and showed it to them. Then he asked in Russian: "Where did you get this?"
-"On the internet."
-"They can't figure out how to print it out."
-"I see," I said, not actually seeing where he was going with this.
-"Did you do it at the internet cafe around the corner," the woman interjected. "Can you come help me?"

The guard seemed genuinely interested in helping these people, probably because they spoke his secret code language. I realized my leverage. I turned to the guard: "If I go show them how to find the form online, will you let apply?"
-"Sure."
Success!

By this time it was 11 o'clock. I walked in to the internet cafe with a 40-something Uzbek woman with gold teeth and a 20 something Uzbek man in tow. The online application form is only in English, which explained why they couldn't figure it out. The woman spoke fine Russian so filling in the information was easy, but she was applying for three separate people so it took a while.

Then it was the guy's turn. He sat down next to me, handed me his documents. I was surprised because it was a Chinese passport and the picture clearly wasn't of him. I started filling in the information I could, but got hung up on "Passport Place of Issue." I asked him in Russian. He responded in one of those languages from over there. I asked him in English - nothing.

At this point I got a little worried about my own chances to apply that day, since the application required some complicated information about purpose of visit and place of stay, i.e. information which would require me to actually communicate with the guy. Luckily the Kyrgyz girl sitting next to me overheard our mutually unintelligble conversation and started talking to the man. Soon she was the de facto translator. As she explained to me, the two men (the one in the passport and the one actually applying for the visa) were Uighurs from Western China. Since she spoke Kyrgyz and Turkish- and Uighur is a Turkic language- she was able to speak with him.

Even with a translator, filling in the form was still difficult. The man didn't know the answers to most of the questions and kept calling his friend. When I asked the translator girl for the applicant's wife's name, she asked him in Turkic-crazy speak and started laughing. Then she turned to me and said, "Which one?"

Eventually we got it done. By this point it was well after noon. I hurried back to the embassy, the gate, the guard. "Where were you? What took you so long?" Unfortunately my Russian was not sufficient for: "I had to fill out three application forms for an Uzbek woman with gold teeth and an incomprehensible, polyamourous Uighur."
"Come back at three o'clock," he said.

I went to lunch and felt satisfied. I treated myself to scrambled eggs and crepes with jam. Life was good.

I went back at three. There was a small line, including the two from before. Slowly, each applicant went in, one and a time, and came out with their passports in hand and, presumably, a visa. Almost an hour later it was my turn, the last of the day. The guard motioned for me to go through the gate.

I walked up to the front door, rang the bell on the intercom. A woman's voice came on, "What do you want?" I recognized it from that morning on the phone. "I'd like to apply for a visa."
-"What's your nationality?"
-"American."
-"Come back on Tuesday."

------------

No good deed goes unpunished, or something. I did end up going back on Tuesday, after spending the weekend camping in Ala-Archa canyon south of Bishkek. I actually got in to the embassy, too. But the fastest they said they could get me the visa was "Friday or next Tuesday." Which meant that I would only have 6 days to travel in Uzbekistan at the most, a couple of days at the least. And they were going to charge me $200.

F that s. I went out to Karakol instead and went camping again. The hassle of applying isn't what annoys me so much. It's the implicit idea that SO MANY PEOPLE want to go to god-forsaken Uzbekistan that they need a list and a tight schedule of applicants to rein in the chaos and commotion. As if it's such a sought-after destination that they need an intake regime like freaking Ellis Island.

Anyway, next time.

Bad Russia #1

Today I was served a pizza which had both sour cream and dill on it. Both my sensibilities and my palate were offended.

Quick Observations on Kyrgyzstan

Happy and sad to be back in Vladimir from my extended vacation in Kyrgyzstan. Sad because classes start again and I'll have lost my freedom to roam and sleep in. Happy, surprisingly, to have Russian food again.

I'll have some good stories in the near future about trying to get an Uzbek visa and some of the strange and interesting people I met; for now, here are a couple of quick things I jotted down:

***
When shaking hands to greet each other men touch the sides of their heads together.

***
Manholes are often missing. Some of the drops are ten feet deep. Careful where you walk at night! (I was later told by a Kyrgyz girl that it was because people steal them for scrap.)

***
Manure bricks are often used as fuel, especially in small towns and in the country. It has a particular smell when burning - sweet, muttony, muddy.

***
Females receive straws when they order beer.

***
At street stands and in shops you can buy single cigarettes (3som, ~7cents), pieces of gum out of a pack (1som, ~2cents) or plastic cups of vodka (10-15som, ~24-30cents). In Kochkor we saw a man walk into the market, order a plastic cup of vodka, and down the thing on the spot.

***
Nick really, really likes seeing blood and guts.

***
A single city block of Bishkek has more internet cafes then I've seen in my entire time in Russia.

***
Of the three times I hitch hiked, each time was with Russians and two times it was after Kyrgyz drivers had asked exorbitant prices for the journey.

***
There is a Russian military base in the city of Kant, outside of Bishkek. It's not named after the philosopher; it means "sugar" in Kyrgyz.

DVDs

Watching movies and TV here are a challenge, since they are always overdubbed and never have subtitles. News is the hardest since the broadcasters speak so rapidly. Sports are good since a lot of the vocabulary is repeated. There are a couple of comedy shows with a lot of physical humor which makes them easy to understand. People always recommend cartoons, but the problem with cartoons is that they either have no dialog or have really wacky voices which are hard to decipher.

So I decided to pick up some dvds in Russian with Russian subtitles to watch when I'm just hanging out and when weather is crappy (which I have a feeling will be a lot soon).

I started asking people about Russian horror movies - they are usually really predictable and don't have a lot of complex dialog. The first one recommended to me was Yulenka (Tagline: "She doesn't play with dolls. She plays with people."), a movie about a male teacher at an all girl's school. The package said it had both Russian subtitles and an English audio track. I popped the movie in the DVD player at home and it had neither. The DVD menu looked really cheap so I'm led to believe that it was actually a pirated copy, despite the fact that the packaging looked immaculate and I purchased it in a real store (not at the market or on the street).

Since I still had the receipt I took it back and explained that it didn't have any subtitles and that I'm a foolish foreigner and can't watch Russian movies without them. Then I asked for recommendations for other Russian horror/thriller movies. The two guys working in the store would recommend a movie, then, with most of the disks, they would open the plastic wrapper, pop it in a computer to check if it had subtitles or not.

With some of the picks they said checking for subtitles wasn't necessary - that they were 100% sure that the back of the packaging was right. Those ones were always in normal looking plastic cases; the others requiring verification were always in the cardboard style cases. Which again makes me think some of their movies are pirated and others are legit.

I ran into the same issue in Russia before and in Thailand. Back in 2005 I bought a Brazilian Girls cd from a legit looking music store, which turned out to have typos on the back liner notes. And in Thailand you can buy legit looking DVDs which, when you get home and read the case, you discover have really hilarious typos, completely mangled English.

Alls well that ends well. Picked up two of the legit looking DVDs, "Zhest" and "Mechenosets." I'll report back after I get a chance to watch.

Group Dynamics

While we were still in Washington I met with two former students from my program, both of whom had lived in Vladimir. It was my last night in the States and I was complaining about the reluctance of the others in my group to go out and get to know each other. One of the two returnees made an observation that has proven true - that students who voluntarily choose to study intensive Russian, particularly in an anonymous city like Vladimir, are of a different sort, a set apart, strange. He may have used the term "weirdos."

There are ten of us, divided into three sections - graduates, undergrads, and a group of beginning ROTC students from Utah on a pilot program.

There are three of us in the graduate group - one is a master's student in Russian Language and Literature with five or six years of language preparation; the other is an Anthropology PhD with an interest in Russian food customs and four years of study. I hope her dissertation will explain why sour cream must be eaten with every meal.

The undergrads: two had only two years of study (like me), one had four. One is a bit older, was previously in the Navy and is now interested in Russian archaeology; the other two I think want to major in Russian lit.

And there's the ROTC group - a wholesome, god-fearing group of three Mormons and one lapsed Catholic with Native American roots. The three don't drink. If we go out to a bar they will order ice cream or juice. I like to imagine that they are actually a highly trained death squad operating undercover.

They are very friendly and therefore - at least in my imagination - very Mormon. The oldest was on a two year mission in Germany; as a result, 1) his German is quite good, and 2) he has a habit of talking to strangers in public places, even though he barely speaks Russian. During our group trip to Moscow he would disappear for long stretches at a time, arriving late to events. Two competing theories arose - either he was proselytizing to the godless communists, or he was debauching himself in the red light district. Either way, if there is a superlative at the end of the program for "Most likely to be stabbed by an angered Mafioso," I know who I would vote for.

Added to this is a recently arrived group of six cadets from the Naval Academy who appear, like the anthropology student, to be very interested in Russian food customs - at least national drinking habits.

I've been pondering the other possible superlatives - "Most likely to become the next Pushkin," or "Most likely to become the next Putin," or "Most likely to get drunk at the dacha and mauled by a bear." I haven't quite figured out where I fit.