Collecting myself after "two weekends" of excesses, Part 4 (The Dacha), July 16, 2006

Hanging out with Katya a day or two before our festival of dance, I mentioned that my host family did not own a dacha and that Liza told us if we ever had the opportunity we should experience a real Russian banya (steam bath). She listened to my sad state of affairs and suggested that perhaps I would be able to join her family in going to her aunt’s dacha for picnic and banya. The last words of her invitation barely escaped her lips before I pushed out my reply:

“Yes! I would love to.”

With a confirming phone call to her aunt the deal was done and so I found myself walking with Katya from the center square to her apartment on one sunny Sunday morning. Inside the modest, cozy flat I met her mother and an exchange teacher from France—named Assad—staying with Katya for a few weeks. Also, a friend of her family boasting her own French guest, Elizabeth, was in the living room preparing for the dacha.

There wasn’t enough room for everyone in Katya’s aunt’s car; so when she pulled up outside, Katya and I trekked over to the nearest bus stop to catch Number 6 out of town. As is typical for well-coordinated travel plans, on the way to the dacha we passed the stop where I had grabbed the Number 19 downtown in order to meet Katya. Hitting the end of Prospekt Mira, our extended-length bus (an additional section of seating and standing area is adjoined to the front of the bus by a rotating joint and accordion-style casing) continued down the two-lane road heading straight west away from the high-rise apartments on the outskirts of Novgorod.

The buildings we along the road soon transitioned into the traditional Russian cottage-styles—using diagonal wooden slats in intersecting patterns for siding, usually painted in bright greens and whites though more often simply needing a paint job. We traveled with other Russians heading to their dachas, carrying picnic supplies or home repair materials. The tools and house parts were indicative of the Russian pastime directly connected to owning a dacha—that being the building and maintaining of it. The structures are thin-walled, with often improvised fences raised around their small plots made of scrap wood and wire—perhaps even lined up beer bottles for a brilliant accent that I saw around one dacha. Inside the fences are usually gardening row boasting a variety of fruits, vegetables, and flowers. And in all these respects, Katya’s aunt’s dacha was no different.

We exited the bus near a marshy strip of land backed by a thin tree line, behind which I could see the roofs of a small village of summer homes extending into the distance. Following the narrow dirt roads, Katya and I eventually found the right dacha with her aunt’s car jammed into the small space between the “road” and the plot. Taking the path leading alongside the two-story cottage and the southern part of the small garden, I could see light smoke puffing from the chimney popping out the top of the banya at the back of her yard.

I put down my bag filled with bathing suit, towel, gift, and camera. They had already started cooking some pork shish kebobs—a favorite dish here which I would not be partaking in since I was: 1) already full from a big breakfast and 2) not interested in tempting any indigestion by mixing the red meat’s oils with my poorly prepared stomach.

After some snapshots and a quick tour of the grounds and the lovely little house, I helped cook the shish kebobs by manning a water spritzer fashioned form an empty plastic bottle of Nikola Kvass with holes punched in the cap. Kvass, I later found out, is a drink made from fermenting oven-dried bread, water, and sugar and it is roughly equivalent here—if you place it at the opposite side of the soft drink spectrum—to America’s soda, although globalization has made Pepsi and Coke as omnipresent here as anywhere else. My job, spritzer in hand, was to keep the hot coals at bay with a squirt of water in order to prevent any charring of the pork cubes.

When all was cooked and ready, we sat in the kitchen and commenced the picnic portion of our afternoon. Out came a bottle of vodka and some beer. I was not terribly interested in the burn of the clear liquor right then, but lacking any moral opposition to the act and wishing to show my appreciation, I took a small shot to toast with my hosts. During the meal, I focused most of my attention on the delicious eggplant slices cooked with raw tomato and sour cream made by Katya’s mother. Already full from my host mother’s healthy, hefty breakfast, I re-stuffed myself at the summer house table, figuring I could sweat it all off in the banya later.

After tea, Katya and I took a walk around and I snapped some pictures of the other dachas in little ramshackle village. The walk helped me get some much needed digestion goign.

Upon our return, Katya’s aunt was already parading around in a towel with a very visible glow on her face from the sweat of banya.

“You can go in!”
“Us? Now?”
“Yes! Go!”

Inside the dacha, I stripped down to nothing and wrapped my beach towel around my bare body. If the situation would have been unisex, I would have been immersing myself fully nude—the absolute true way to do banya. But alas, Katya and I were sharing the steam, so towels it was.

The exterior door to what I thought was probably pretty similar to an Indian Longhouse opened into a waiting room with towels, seats, and a small CD player brought in to fill the space with pop music generously donated by one of the many Russian radio stations, which seem to have ubiquitous signal strength suggesting to me that rules here are not as strict as the FCC’s. We sat and talked to Assad for a while who was cooling off from a recent visit to the hot room. Katya’s aunt soon joined us, though, and insisted we go all the way in, so we walked first into the adjoining middle room where a large barrel of cool water sat in the corner. Numerous buckets and basins littered the floor, wooden benches were setup along the walls, and some soap and scrubbing brushes hung near the door. Katya and I proceeded into the final room then. The door’s handle—or rather the entire door—was quite hot, as was the floor, benches/beds, walls, and air inside this last room. I could almost feel my pores checking their water reserves and dilating in anticipation while the door closed.

Katya warned me not to touch the metal stove in the corner, which was an obvious no-no, yet always a good reminder for someone that tends to lose track of where their lengthy limbs decide to go. Now, normally, I am not very good with excesses of heat and was wondering how soon the banya experience would start to boil over my feeble thermometer. But I managed to adjust to the warmth, despite some labored breathing. I think sans towel would definitely have been better.

It was hard to tell how long our first immersion lasted, but our conversation kept us afloat despite our lethargy from the booty-shaking excesses of the previous night—plus, the beatings with birch branches helped a lot.

Yeah, that’s right… birch branch beating. A good lashing is, in fact, part of the traditional experience.

It started with me innocently asking Katya what the branches were for—it seemed pretty odd to have these bits of the foliage just simply strewn about the place.

“Oh. Those are for, like, hitting against your skin. It’s good for you. Do you want to try?”
“Absolutely yes. I want the whole experience.”
“Ok. Lay down here and I will do it.”

So I laid down on my stomach and prepared the nerves on my back for whatever may come.

“You may or may not like it.”
“Do you like it?”
“Sometimes I do.”
“It’s really good for you, though. It helps clear out your skin.”

Katya dipped a bundle of the branches in a basin of water on the floor and began the ritual. The first slap/smack/spank of the birch leaves made my eyes pop open and my muscles tense.

“Is it ok?” she laughed.
“Yeah, actually, it feels good. Go ahead.”

For about five or ten minutes I received the sweaty, stinging hot beating of a lifetime. It really felt good. Even though I let out a few obligatory and sarcastic BDSM “Oh Yeahs,” I seriously was enjoying the real Russian treatment.

We switched roles and I got to be master with the leafy cat o’ nine tails on Katya’s back. With a few more laughs we left the steam room, thoroughly soaked in our own sweat, stopping to clean off the residual leaves with water from the middle room’s barrel.

I wished Blair had been there to join in the fun. I would like nothing more than to have gone blow for blow with her and the birch branches. But back in the room with the exterior door, Katya was great company and we talked about how her aunt built the entire banya herself. I was impressed by the story of her inheriting the dacha from her father and fulfilling the family’s dream to build a banya there. It’s an expensive and time-consuming endeavor which shespent many a summer day toiling on. It was a banya in rare form, too, because of its three room construction, all completed using the traditional building process—involving logs cut to size and stacked cabin-style with only a mixture of sod and hay as the insulation and binder between each them in the walls.

Katya and I ventured into the banya twice more with plenty of birch branch beating to boot. It rained at one point so we went outside to enjoy the cold drops on our hot skin. During our second immersion, Katya wanted to turn up the heat, so she added some water to the hot rocks in the stove sending fresh steam rushing into my face—this I couldn’t handle—and I had to escape the pain and save the whiskers on my face from melting off.

Eventually, we were well sweated out and ready to shed the towels for clothes again. Finishing the whole banya process involved a lot of cold water and scrubbing. We took turns using the middle room, scraping the dead skin off our bodies with the brushes and washcloths and then liberally dumping water over our heads to rinse it all off.

Stepping out of the log building for the last time, I felt pretty amazing. It was a wonderfully refreshed feeling, like my body had just enjoyed a cathartic rubdown.

Thanking Katya’s aunt profusely, I offered her my gift—a collector’s tin of Hershey’s kisses. We opened them around the table along with leftovers and tea before going home. I’m never sure how hometown candy will go over because most chocolate here is very different from American-style milk chocolate. But the kisses seemed to go over well as crumpled wrapper after crumpled wrapper hit the table.

With another rain storm looming, Katya and I said our goodbyes and took off for the bus stop, making it just before the water started to pour down on the quiet Russian landscape surrounding us. Before I got off the bus, Katya said that she might visit her aunt’s dacha again in a few weeks.

“You would be welcome to come I’m sure.”
“I would love to go again.”

Collecting myself after a weekend of excesses, Part 3 (Discotheque), July 15, 2006

Originally, a selection of us study abroaders planned to scope out the swanky disco club “Talisman” last Saturday. And so, at 9:30 PM, we regrouped from our disparate parts of the city in front of the The Old Rus Mall—under which, Talisman lived.

It was a coldish night. Us guys, dressed in long pants and long-sleeve shirts, faired better outside than the girls in their skirts. I invited Katya to join us; and she sauntered over a little before 10:00 wearing a summer dress and looking appropriately cold. Yet, she gave her jacket to Lori, whose bones seemed far more chilled.

One of our study abroad group’s shortcomings thus far has been coordinating meetups not prearranged by our directors. And this night was no exception, as we failed to find Caitlin and/or she failed to find us following a generous cell phone call to her afforded by Katya.

After pushing back our start time to nearly 10:30, we decided to shove off minus the third expected female in our entourage—a total of seven. The reason we “shoved off” at that moment, rather than turning around and descending into Talisman’s bowels, is due to two major factors.. First was Katya’s cautionary description of Talisman’s clientele, which usually comprises overweight, well-to-do, forty-something Russian men, who come for the eye candy actually using the dance floor. It sounded very similar to the rumors I had heard about Pulse dance club in Rochester, which features a rotating dance floor—effectively creating a lazy susan viewing gallery for uncoordinated voyeurs sitting on the sidelines.

The second reason for not giving our patronage to Talisman was even more prohibitory—namely, the club’s insistence on not opening until midnight. Thus, together, our poorly-prepared team set off for a different discotheque suggested by Katya: Night Ocean.

With a little apprehension we entered the club and paid our 100 ruble (about 4 bucks) cover charge. While I was having my body felt up and scanned for mischievous metal objects, I took notice of the other Ocean patrons already inside and standing around the foyer, near the bathrooms. They looked, on average, about 16-17 years old. Lori, in her late 20s, seemed practically ancient here; however, she still at least looked younger than my six foot four, bearded 22.

Fortunately, with some alcohol and thumping bass the ranks could be equalized and soon our odd coterie became a spectacle for other reasons.

Our first stop inside was the downstairs bar where a few the team purchased translucent cans of fruit-flavored malt liquor. I tried a sip and was reminded of the headache-inducing swill from Boone’s Farm back home. On the second floor was the main dance floor and main bar with a decent selection of beers, priced slightly higher than at the street kiosks.

A few of us had downed a beer our two waiting for the group to assemble; and so a few of us decided to approach the dance floor. Brad, with zero discotheque experience and zero reservations, strode onto the slick floor first and began finding the rhythm. Within a few moments, the girls and I joined him.

At this point, the dance floor was not well populated. We tested out our limbs and each tried some moves that our minds and bodies decided were worth trying.

After a sweaty first half hour or so, I retreated to the bar and ordered a Czech beer (Kozel) and a bottle of water. Brad and I went to the balcony seeking cooler air and some respite. What we found was all of the 16-17 year olds nice enough to smoke outside. Our clothes were quickly polluted by the black air billowing form the harsh Russian cigarettes.

Wanting to get back to the night’s main activity, I gulped down my beer and reentered the growing mass of moving forms.

Though I failed to get appropriately or motivationally drunk, I still found myself easily intoxicated by the pumping bass and relaxing realization that it didn’t matter what anyone—except perhaps the police turned bouncers, thought about my scrawny frame cutting the rug around them. The police were even less intimidating than usual, as I looked into their young faces that couldn’t possibly be more than a year or two older than me, if at all.

I think my favorite moment out of our four hours of swimming in the Night Ocean came during one of my trips to the balcony for more ash-laden air. A girl, who seemed to be trying to get a rise out of passersby, looked into my eyes and wiggled her fingers magically across her face in a kind of 70s disco challenge. Accepting the proposal, I mirrored her finger wiggling taunt. What unfolded thereafter only Brad can truly attest to, witnessing the showdown from only a few paces away. Next to the first row of tables off the dance floor, she and I threw down dance moves and match one another’s flailing limbs for a good minute or two. Eventually, we turned away from one another’s determined stares, though not before ridiculousness had been reached.

Now while my performance in the back was spectacle enough, it was really nothing compared to the unbridled whirlwind that was Michael’s body on the dance floor. He was one of the least sober of our entourage. His style of dancing was like a postmodern experiment, mixing moves from the past 50+ years of popular dance in an almost unintelligible series. His addition to our corner of the dance floor secured the numerous snickers and pointing we were already receiving from the Russian boys and girls around us. But I think of the best features of our study abroad group is our acceptance of all the varied personalities and idiosyncrasies bound together by our shared inability to BE Russian.

Our solidarity stood opposite of what is often typical for America: the boys tend to get dragged to the dance club by their girlfriends—the real dancers. The boys then break out the alcohol and cigarettes and wait for a slow song. To help this situation, there are multiple mirrors set up around the dance floor, in front of which the “partnerless” girls can study their bodies and test their abs and asses on the imported hip hop and native electronic pop music—which, for the record, is some of the worst techno I have ever heard, yet it gets blasted on 9 out of 10 radio channels all day long in Russia.

Despite the music, I ended up sweating as much as the girls in front of the mirrors did. My nicest outfit was saturated in smoke and salty water by the end of the evening. We decided to leave around 3 or 3:30 AM. Katya said she usually stays until closing at 6:00 or 7:00 in the morning—the advantage, peripheral to all the fantabulous dancing, is that the buses start running again by then.

We asked about re-entry but were told by one of the guys my age in a blue uniform, that we would have to wait until 4:00 AM. So, collecting ourselves off the curb (where we were not allowed to crash according to the same blue suited gentleman) we made for the line of taxis. Since five of us were all going to the same area, we decided to split a cab. Some of us were more alert than others, but our senses were soon tweaked as we, literally, piled on top of one another in the backseat of the small Russian Lada, stupidly having decided to put the skinniest person with the best Russian up front with the driver—Lori. Overlapping each other, we formed seatbelts out of misplaced limbs. Since Russian cars have no seat belts whatsoever, it really couldn’t have been worse.

Before our taxi left, I said goodbye to Katya and finalized our plans to meet later that Sunday morning to head to her aunt’s dacha, which I was extremely eager to see because of its banya (Russian steam bath).

I fell asleep sometime during the four o’clock hour and woke up at 10:00 AM to prepare to leave. Wondering what the Russian banya experience would be like, I packed up my backpack (roukzak) and walked down to Prospekt Mira to pick up bus 20 heading downtown.

To be continued…

Collecting myself after a weekend of excesses, Part 2 (Staraya Russa), July 14, 2006

The ride to Staraya Russa consisted of little more to see than what was already inside our 13-person-filled van. I took the opportunity to share some music selections with Brad, who sat next to me—two songs, two bands—Mindless Self Indulgence and The Mountain Goats. Our journey took us past a lot of what looked like dachas, with their distinctive diagonal wooden siding. But I suspected they were most likely people’s homes, located well outside of the spheres of “modern” influence, except for those tall, skinny robot-looking power line towers in the distance bringing electricity to this usually permafrost region of northeast Russia.

When we finally arrived in Staraya Russa, it took only a few unexpected stops to ask directions in order for us to find our first and most important—maybe second most important, after lunch—destination in this ancient city: Dostoevsky’s summer house. Our final set of tips sent us down a road adjacent to a river, which eventually turned to cobblestone and led to the green with white accents, two-story home once owned by one of the masters of Russian literature.

After we began our tour, I immediately wished I had excused myself to the first floor to pay the 30 rubles needed take photographs of the house, because I quickly grew restless. (Interestingly enough, most museums here allow you to take pictures of even the most rare of items in their collection, all that is required is a nominal fee equal to about one US dollar).

Despite the lack of anything capable of satiating my terribly American need for glitzy presentation, two specific things struck me about the summer house and Dostoevsky’s life. First was the pleasant cordiality of our tour guide. It seemed anathema to the rest of the service industry I have thus far engaged with in Russia. Their “service with a smile” could at certain times be replaced with “service with a sense that you are inconveniencing the server in some way.” I remember Liza’s exclamation during our first stab at eating out in Novgorod:

“This is why no one gives tips in Russia!”

So besides the wonderfully friendly guide, there was one detail from all the historical tidbits about Dostoevsky’s life that rather stole my breath and made my heart thump, the same way it thumps right before you tear up out of sheer joy and love. Apparently, as the great writer lay on his deathbed, he confessed the depth of his love in earnest confidence to his wife…

“I have never cheated on you—not even in my mind.”

Perhaps it was out of pure amazement that I was so taken aback by his words, especially having been witness now to female fashion trends currently climbing up the ladies’ legs here in Russia. But I it mostly made me just reflect on how in love I am with my girlfriend and how much I yearn to profess my love with similar strength and ardor.

Since Saturday, I have been repeating Dostoevsky’s alleged words over and over again in my head and missing Blair with each repetition. And when Saturday night came, I wished her to be with me even more as I joined our head-turning covey of Americans—something I have come to think of as a pack of Russian gringos—hit the dance floor at Novgorod’s “Night Ocean” discotheque.


To be continued…

Collecting myself after a weekend of excesses, Part 1 (Pirates of the Caribbean), July 13, 2006

Four major points of interest need to be covered in this entry or subsequent entries: 1) Watching Pirates of the Caribbean, Dead Man’s Chest in Russian, 2) Visiting Staraya Russa with the study abroad group, 3) dedicating the better part of Saturday night to discotheque dancing, and 4) enjoying the calm of a friend’s aunt’s dacha and the purifying heat of her banya.

Let’s begin (davai).

On Thursday night, at 8:00 PM, Omar, Jared, Brad, Brad’s host brother Ruslan, and I hit up the Kinocenter for one of the premiere showings of the new Pirates of the Caribbean sequel in Russia(n). After seeing, and not fully grasping the slow, natively Russian plot, of the film Paragon last week, I was not sure what to expect.

The first contrast to my previous film experience in Russia was people—i.e. other people seeing the film, considering no one else was in the theatre watching Paragon except for my fellow study abroaders. In fact, the theater was packed this time around. And the packing started early on in the lobby. After we bought our tickets at the box office, which is affixed to the lobby but separated by a locked door from it, we proceeded into the large waiting space to, well, wait for the doors to open. We had the option of buying the stereotypical candy, soda, or… beer, but instead we opted to simply wait… and wait… and wait. As the hour approached, the Russian patrons slowly joined us in the rapidly warming theater lobby.

The theater workers waited until nearly every row x, seat y was sweating and fidgeting in pseudo-lines behind the rear entrances to the screening room. Finally, moments before 8:00 PM, the doors opened and we all managed to file in. I found my assigned seat (assigned!) in the third row and settled in, anticipating entertainment and a lot of unintelligible Russian dubbing.

We (everyone in the theater) sat there through a number of previews—the addition of which being the second contrast with my previous film experience. Then came the feature film; and with it, the first droplets of sweat caused by the mounting inferno that was a roomful of hot bodies downing beers all in close proximity.

The final contrast with my first Russian film experience ended up being… continuous entertainment. The Pirates sequel was visually compelling and more than sufficient in its ability to tell the story in pictures, allowing me to worry less about the torrent of foreign words zipping meaninglessly past my ears. I won’t reveal any of the plot, especially the details—considering I don’t know them—but I will say that the play on “davy jones’ locker’ is exceptionally clever from a creative angle and that once the movie is over the best way, by far, to debrief is by finding the exit and getting plenty of cool Russian air inside your lungs and blowing across your glistening neck.


In between Thursday’s movie outing and Saturday’s field trip was Friday’s walk with my Russian friend from America, Katya. I arrived at the city square in front of (mister made-of-metal) Lenin, thinking that we would be hitting up a club or something. But when I saw her coming toward me dressed in jeans, I knew something else was going down. Apparently, the French exchange teacher staying at her home wasn’t interested in clubbing, so she just felt like walking this evening.

Together, we headed into the Kremlin and over the walking bridge next to Yaroslav’s Court—a path I now knew quite thoroughly and thoroughly enjoyed. We chatted on random topics and I learned more about her year as an exchange student in Brighton (the suburb of Rochester, NY).

After looping around the west side of the Volkhov, we headed back to the Kremlin and ran into Michael, John, and Jared knocking back beers alongside the beach, near the gate in the Kremlin wall. We walked and talked with them a bit, and waited while they all used the natural bathroom of bushes underneath the small gorge-crossing bridge on the west side of the Kremlin.

It started getting late AND dark, as it tends to do after 11:00 PM, so I naturally volunteered to walk Katya home. At the door to her building she told me to call her the next day about doing something once I returned from Staraya Russa. With a quick goodbye, I took off running for the nearest bus stop to catch the last number 16 of the day back to my apartment.


The next morning I had to be downtown by 9:00 AM in order to jump in the van to Staraya Russa. It was a 2 hour trip, though original approximations ranging from 1 to 4 hours had been floating around before we set out.


To be continued…

Feeling full, July 12, 2006

Though many laud the French culinary arts or find their palates drawn to the national dishes of Greece and Italy, I must insist that Russians are the masters of soup.

It started with some hot chicken and mushroom soup. I was a little leery when Galina first mixed in sour cream (smetana), but shortly after I finished slurping up the first spoonful, I was acclimated to the peculiar garnish. The combination is hearty and filling—never salty or watery.

This first soup was very tasty, but I couldn’t help thinking my mom, Jane, with her bizarre culinary intuition, could have stumbled upon this same concoction at home. I want the honest-to-goodness national dishes. As I said in an earlier post, I want Borscht.

First, came a different cold soup. Out of the refrigerator, Galina lifted a pot of white, viscous soup bespeckled with pinks and greens. The pink was chicken sausage; the green was onion and dill; and the white was sour cream. It was absolutely fantastic—not just one of the best soups I ever had—but, seriously, one of the single best tasting dishes that my palate has ever had the pleasure of savoring. With white and black bread, I polished it off two more bowls of the amazing soup before bed last night.

Today was the big day, though. Today, I came home to see a ruddy red soup sitting on the stove. At first glance, I thought it might be the soup I desired, but I decided to build my hunger and catch up on some sleep—waiting until Galina came home, just to be sure.

Waking to the sound of her key turning the lock of our apartment’s exterior door, I blinked groggily and queried my stomach for pangs of hunger. I went to the bathroom to wash my face, as the familiar Russian questions came echoing down the hallway…

“Did you eat?” Galina asked.
“I will eat.” I mumbled back, clumsily.
“Did you eat?” she repeated.
“Oh. Um. I didn’t eat. But I will.”
“Come. Borscht.”
“Borscht?!” I responded, incredulously.
“Da.” She replied with a smile.

I walked into the kitchen and found my usual seat at the small table. Galina had a empty bowl ready for me with a big scoop of sour cream already on my spoon. She, then, proceeded to fill my entire bowl to the brim with the red, well-stocked Borscht.

I’m sure my eyes had grown very large by the time she set the heaping portion of soup in front of me. I thanked her and had at it. I found the flavor to be very complex—both satisfying and also demanding. Once my spoon started shoveling it in, it didn’t stop until there was only the brick-colored juice left at the bottom of the bowl, every droplet of which I carefully mopped up with white bread.

I sat for a few moments then, drinking my black tea and preparing for digestion.

No, wait. I needed more.

Galina came back into the kitchen and I asked her where the sour cream is. She took out the jar and gave me another healthy spoonful. Then, without hesitating, she held my bowl up next to the pot on the stove and proceeded to refill my entire original portion.

Knowing I wasn’t THAT hungry—but that if I absolutely must, I could finish the borscht—I gave a mental shrug and dug in.

So now, I am lying in my room—very full—waiting until 8 PM when I will be seeing the premiere of the Pirates of the Caribbean (Piraty Caribskogo Morya) in Russian, and quite convinced that no one knows soup like the Russians do.

On my balcony, under a red setting sun, July 10, 2006

Walking the streets of Novgorod at night are couples, friends, and co-workers. And public displays of affection are far from unacceptable.

Girlfriends walk arm in arm while they cross the street. A father holds his son’s hand as they stroll home alongside Kochetova Street. Man and woman, both dressed in green, each lend a hand, sharing the responsibility of a half-empty beer bottle suspended in between them.

Though the hot days and crowded buses with their sweaty and solemn patrons suggest a Russia stifled by oppression in its various forms, there is a not-to-be-overlooked social/communal atmosphere brimming under the brilliant sunsets and in the tightly held palms of neighbors, relatives, and lovers.

It makes me miss my girlfriend Blair. We are embedded in our own separate adventures this summer on very separate sides of this Earth. I wish I could walk the streets of Novgorod with her tonight—show her the Kremlin and the beach along the Volkhov River.

Perhaps, someday, I will return to Russia with her and together we can be another one of the hand-holding couples seeking out secluded places among the apartment buildings and bus stops—stealing kisses under this ruby red sky.

In Russia, the other Egypt, July 9, 2006

I needed a walk today. I had been cooped up in my apartment for too long following a far too friendly first encounter with Russian vodka—the kind Stas recommended—on Friday night.

Everyday, I look out my balcony window and see a church with a gold dome and what appears to be a small village in the distance. It was time to investigate these. With my trusty Canon in my pocket, I set off past the Catholic (non-orthodox) church and recreation facility, westward.

I passed many a Sunday walker, enjoying and/or enduring the bright sun. After a about 10 or 15 minutes of walking, I encountered the first “village hut.” It turned out to be, in fact, a dacha, or Russian summer house. This was the village I had espied from afar—a collection of small summer houses/sheds broken up into small fenced-in garden plots. Cabbage, tomatoes, and fruits covered the ground, supplementing the diets of the Novgorodian gardeners.

It was refreshing to see how a society once forced off their farmlands and into the big city factories still held on to their connection with the land. Dachas are the lovely little remnants of Russia’s historical peasant class—the same class of people who Karl Marx said was too simple and unorganized to trust with a communist revolution in Russia.

I continued my walk further west and saw smaller fences and bright colors straight ahead of me. It turned out to be a Russian cemetery. The camera came out quickly to capture the brilliant Orthodox crosses and elaborate tombstones.

Like the village of dachas, the cemetery was carved into little fenced-in plots. Each plot had a gate, a small garden of flowers, a bench for reflection, and of course the grave marker. These grave markers ranged from wrought-iron Orthodox crosses to seven-foot tall tombstones. The largest I saw featured the engraved picture of the dead man in khakis and a button-up shirt, hand in pocket, and smiling. Many of the tombstones had pictures of the dead person either etched right into the stone or a photograph printed on a plaque and affixed to the headstone.

Looking through the hundreds of rows of dead Russians depicted in lifelike detail made me think of the idol-like burials in ancient Egypt. While mummies and pyramids defy Russian practicality, it seems that a bit of “double faith” lives on in Russian cemeteries. Like Shinto ancestor worship, I couldn’t help feeling that each of these passed relatives lived on as memorialized idols in their little plots, where descendents continued to tend to them like gardeners of the deceased.

As I walked away from the cemetery and passed the gold-domed church erected next to its entrance, my thoughts moved to the very alive Russians I pass everyday. Studying the faces of the folks on their bikes and men with their plastic bags (the Russian equivalent of a man-purse), I realized that I rarely see any Russians with eyeglasses.

When I visited the Orphanage on Thursday, I was struck by the one director’s thick glasses. I now knew why—because I never see anyone with glasses on here. How can this be? The statistics of vision, in America at least, point to more people needing glasses than not.

A few possibilities came to mind:
1. Impeccable eyesight is rampant in Post-Soviet Russia;
2. Eyeglasses aren’t fashionable and are either avoided entirely or people only wear contact lenses;
3. Optometrists, or perhaps the (over/mis)diagnoses of poor vision, are absent here.

Whichever the reason, it is very interesting to notice—especially coming from a family and culture ready to do whatever it takes to correct a bad set of eyes.

And now that I think about it, not a single dead Russian I saw today wore glasses either.

Enjoying my recent sleep sessions, July 9, 2006

On Thursday afternoon, the person in charge of internships, Stas, took Brad and I to our internship site—the main building of the Novgorod Boarding School for Orphans. It is located in a quiet part of the “old city” near the Volkhov River.

We met the directors of the orphanage who were more than excited to see us, which made for, both a very warm and nearly overwhelming, tour of the facility. They spoke very little English and Stas had to translate for us.

They said we will be mostly taking the kids to the beach and watching over them. But they hoped we could help teach them some English—something Brad has direct experience with while teaching in Indonesia. And they would like us to help them use the computers in their small computer room.

“I have a degree in that,” I quickly interjected in Russian.

So combined with my experience as a camp counselor, this internship seems perfect.

On our tour, the ladies at the orphanage, with unreserved excitement, showed us the various rooms and talked over each other in Russian—making it even hard to understand their descriptions and explanations. I am really looking forward to meeting the kids and working with them. It’s my favorite age group, too, 12-16 year olds.

Some of the kids live in the city with their parents, but come to the orphanage for the day to get food and play because their parents are too poor or are never there to take care of them. The older students, at age 16, are transitioning out of the orphanage system and are there for the summer, using it as a halfway home. The other kids here this summer have specific issues that prevented them from traveling to the summer camp where the remainder of regulars are currently at.

The situation seems positive but unfortunate. There is obviously very little public funds poured into such social services and I image the dedicated women working the orphanage make little more than what is spend on each child in their care. I am more than happy to be volunteering my time with them.

After we said goodbye to our future co-workers, we grabbed a bus to the center and Stas explained to me how to buy vodka in Russia.

“There are three gradations of vodka. You want to find the bottles that have ‘lyuks’ in their ingredients on the back,” he revealed.

We go to the Volna Mall (as I said in my previous entry) after I had expressed interest in checking it out. Upon entering, the first store we come across is in fact the liquor store. Stepping through the entrance, I slowly realize that half of the entire shop is dedicated to vodka—racks after racks after racks. Stas shows me one of his favorite brands and I make a mental note of it.

Next, we go to the music/film/book store. These are the legal copies of CDs and DVDs in Russia. Most copies, though, are pirated, including the stack of films Vanya owns sitting on a shelf in my room. Some how, he has The Da Vinci Code on DVD. I have not yet watched it to look for moviegoer’s heads or listen for audience comments.

What I wanted from the video store was some Russian classic films, such as Eisenstein’s masterpieces, only with English subtitles. This was a crapshoot. You have to actually check each film individually in a DVD player for the existence of subtitles; and it is unlikely that a DVD includes them. I find nothing except a slew of popular American films from the last few years, painstakingly dubbed into Russian.

That’s right… dubbed—the sacrilegious practice of recording over the original actor’s voices and intonations. The Russians refuse to read subtitles like every good European or American connoisseur of foreign films. I ask Stas why this is.

“Russians are lazy,” he replies with a smirk.

He re-qualifies this statement, though, suggesting that other groups like the Swedes, who have a decent handle on English can use subtitles simply to aid their comprehension, where as most Russians know very little English. I remember him telling us earlier in the week that we can count on anyone over 30 not knowing any English.

When I got home, I took a nap and prepared for my evening. Most of my nights have been spent with television.

I flip on the tube and surf the channels. There are a lot of programs and serials from around the world, recast or simulcast on Russian TV. At any one time, I can find an American serial, dubbed into Russian, of course. I find the voiceover incredibly distracting and in some ways sad.

Even though television shows are far from the peak of cultural expression, I still find it unsatisfying to witness globalization and exportation of Western culture in this medium being so pervasive and consuming. Which brings me to commercials (reklama); they are broadcast 2-3 times an hour in 5-10 minute strings. And most of the products, and even their commercials, are Western. I see the stereotypical, attractive American women laughing and mouthing advertising scripts with jubilant Russian dubbed over top. The visual layers of the products’ labels recovered with the Cyrillic equivalents. Any vestige of a bipolar world system must live in the heads of conservative holdouts only, because living here reveals a very unipolar Earth—a fact completely confirmed while I watch a documentary entitled “Laura and George” about the American president’s life up to now, shown in coordination with the leader of the free world’s birthday. And yet… no one likes him here, as far as I can tell.

Novgorod, Russia, July 6, 2006

It is my birthday today.

Out of the past four years, while in college, I have been home for only one birthday. And I never know how to break the news to those around me in such circumstances, where my peers have no way of previously knowing that this very ordinary day in July is actually some kind of minor holiday for the tall, blond kid standing before them. It is one of those things I try to be modest about—a trait I learned from my parents who downplay their birthdays as much as possible. But still, there is always that nagging desire to celebrate your birthday with those around you in some way. You figure that 364.25 days out of the year, you are not terribly special—is it asking too much for a little extra on July 6th?

So, I broke the news to my compatriots in the most educational and quasi-clandestine way I knew how—in Russian:

“What will I do on my birthday today,” I ask.
“It’s your birthday?” the responses quizzically chime in return.

Liza asks when we should celebrate, and it defaults until the following night. I do not know what we will do.

And I was wondering what my host family would do. Are birthdays even a big deal in Russia? How are they celebrated, if at all?

I had a sense of the big 18 in Russia, at least. Vanya showed me photos from his “party.” It entailed eating out and going to a club for dancing with all his friends. But that was for the birthday that is the biggest transition for Russian children. At 18, they can drive, buy alcohol (legally), request their own visas, vote, and for boys, of course—serve their compulsory term in the military. That last freedom is bittersweet—or rather, just plain bitter. Vanya is certainly not looking forward to it. I can’t imagine him as a soldier—I suppose it hardens Russia’s men, disciplines them. But I would hate to see Vanya suffer with his less than macho personality and stature.

I remember when I turned 18 and gained the “ability” to register with the draft board. In America, it’s illegal not to register. And while, I have heard promises of the draft never being instated—I had and have more than a few qualms about the idea of conscription, nevertheless, being primed. Are there no pacifists in Russia? Or, perhaps there are just those who are not “good” soldiers. In Germany, there are alternatives to the military; my friend Markus started college late—choosing to complete a service project first.

But besides worry about the soldiering life, what else do Russians do on their birthdays? Are presents involved? I found out that, yes, presents are involved, at least in my house. After I took a two-hour nap this evening and finished my homework, my host-mother brought me to the kitchen for dinner—this part is typical… If I wake up, come home, sit in one place to long, etc., I am offered food.

She made me eggs—she knows I like eggs. Then she busted out the peach preserves. I have been scarfing down their currant preserves and strawberry preserves all week. My Russian Language teacher Sasha said that Russians make a lot of preserves, which makes sense considering non-preserved food can be in short supply during the dark Russian winters.

So, I ate and drank my obligatory tea. Then, from the cabinets underneath the kitchen counter, my host-mother produced a tall, blue box and presented it to me as my birthday gift (podarok). It was a lovely gesture—a traditional tea pot in miniature. It was a wonderful and thoughtful present. I have noticed that Russian gifts are exceptionally practical. I went to the Volna Mall today with Stosh and he told me that tea—the kind my family already drinks—would be an excellent gift some time.

So now I have tasted a bit of holiday. Katya, the exchange student I met in Rochester, is supposed to take me to a club this weekend. That will surely prove to be a foreign experience in more than one way.

On a side note regarding foreign experience, I have been a little disappointed in the amount of food that I am being served that could pass as American. Perhaps this is because Galina (My host-mom) is concerned about my no-red-meat thing. However, I get the impression that my host family may just eat more western foods (only with extra dill added). I told my teacher today that I had cold cereal for breakfast.

“Really?” she asked, almost taken aback. “You should ask for Kasha.”

So that will be my birthday resolution. Try to eat more indigenous food. Yes, it’s true, I really want borscht.

A Post-Script to my previous entry, July 5, 2006

Traversing the city a great deal more in the past few days and discussing my outlook on Russian apartments with a few counterparts has led me to reassess my previous position.

When I look out over the landscape of apartments in Novgorod, I see Bogotá; I see the backstreets of Venice; I see the outskirts of Toronto; I see every city. Novgorod’s apartment buildings to me are a metonym for a society that has better things to do than make an unremarkable wall look pretty.

This is a contrast with the United States, of course. Perhaps, in other parts of Russia there is more superficial battles to “keep up with the Joneses” raging just outside the confines of people’s living rooms, but I don’t see it here. I see people living—getting by. It’s not even a consequence of modesty, really; it’s just life. This what apartment buildings look like in areas of the world where it makes no sense to clean up a building’s exterior, when no one has a clean one to begin with, and it is not going to improve your quality of life or mine.

“It’s Russian Pragmatism,” as my Russian Politics professor would say.

But while people aren’t really decorating or even cleaning their apartment building exteriors, they are doing something else—and that’s watching television. I know my host mother and father turn the colorful box on as soon as they come home. And the shiny happy people selling you everything you need are right there waiting to break up your soap opera episode or your morning cartoons.

Like any good capitalistic country, post-communist or not, I am in a land of consumers. I really have yet to fully comprehend the penetration of the global phenomenon as it stands, here in Novgorod. But I am well aware that if I ever need a good Russian brew while I’m waiting for the bus, there are at least three brand names I would quickly recognize.

In my room, on my bed, but where am I? July 3, 2006

It seems to me the great equalizer in Russian cities is the general complexion of the apartment building exteriors.

I live in a beautiful apartment on the edge of town—television, computer with internet, new wallpaper, sturdy furniture, etc. Yet, from the outside you would swear I live in soon-to-be-condemned project housing. And all the apartments, I have seen, are in this state. Take some of the ugliest housing in New York City, make it over 10 stories high, and you have the state of living, superficially, in Novgorod.

However, I believe this does a fine job of upholding equality within a community, as “desired” by Soviet Russia. Of course, these buildings are relics of that period’s construction, but (seemingly) the ideal lives on simultaneously.

It doesn’t bother me as much now that I know that, in this case, the book’s cover is completely deceiving. Yet, I wonder what the tenets and citizens think about this compromise. Are the façade and true nature of these buildings just one more symbolic relic of the Communist Era?

In “my” room in Novgorod, July 2, 2006

Yesterday was quite the learning experience in Novgorodian history and hospitality. It started with me as the first person to wake on a Saturday.



…I went back to sleep for another hour—jetlag drawing my eyes closed. One hour later, I wake again—first again.

I take a shower and get dressed in my only change of clothes: a pair of khaki shorts, t-shirt from Goodwill, and white socks. I will be wearing my black non-sneakers today, again, too.

Vanya wakes up after I read a few more pages in my Russian Pulp book, which details the Russians’ fascination with romance, detective (detektivy), and romantic detective novels. Vanya and I sit across from one another drinking tea. For breakfast I had Nestle Gold Flakes with 4% milk and an apple that with only one look could have passed for a cantaloupe. Vanya eats a chocolate wafer. It is time for my first day out on the town.

My study abroad group meets at the Millennium Monument in Novgorod’s Kremlin. To get there requires a 15-20 minute bus ride from my apartment to downtown. Vanya shows me the ropes and which bus to take.

Taking a bus in Novgorod is similar to taking one in any American city. The patrons look on with long faces and, unless they are sitting or standing next to their better friends, they say nothing. One interesting facet is the manner in which fares are paid. A woman (always a woman, seemingly) walks up and down the bus aisle with a large purse-like bag and takes your money and gives change or checks your bus pass.

After the impromptu tour, we arrive at my scheduled tour of the historic sites in the city’s center. Everyone in the group talks about their first nights with their new families. With a quick count of heads, our guide—our future professor of advanced Russian—begins telling us about the famous personages and events of Russian history depicted on the large bell-shaped monument before us…

It all began, or so the legend goes, with the Slavic tribes call for a unifying leader. They looked toward the Vikings for help. With a Norse ruler, who takes up residency in Novgorod, Rus—the state—was born in 862. The figures of Russia’s first Millennium are carved in bronze for the monument’s unveiling in 1862 to commemorate that occasion.

We spend a healthy amount of time going through the various figurines chronologically. They are proud faces with noble deeds, no doubt, to be proud of.

From there we scope out the exterior of Saint Sophia’s Cathedral just across the central path. It is in the Novgorod style of architecture, minus the recently white-washed walls. And it fits the customary appeal of Russian Orthodox churches with tall onion domes atop it. Unfortunately, we cannot see the main dome, which is still gilded, due to renovation. Our guide says that at the apex of this central dome stands a cross with a dove perched upon it. The saying goes: if the bird falls from the cross, so too does Novgorod fall. Our guide comments that there is a rumor that the dove fell just before World War II, when the Nazis occupied Novgorod during their Russian campaign—this is the reason why only one dome is still gilded, the Nazis stripped off the rest.

We proceed to the belfry near the Kremlin’s fortress wall. I had a terribly touristy moment getting my picture taken next to the largest bell.

From here we cross through the fortress gate and walk on the bridge over the Volkhov River to Yaroslav’s Court. This area, with its assortment of churches and arched promenade directly across the river from the sandy beach in front of the Kremlin, is named for Yaroslav the Wise—once a regional rule in the Novgorod Oblast, widely respected for his extensive book learning.

We quickly stop off at a gift shop and then head to the bank a block away to exchange our American dollars for Russian rubles. The exchange rate was a little lower than hoped for, but we happily took our new paper money that could actually be used at the stores and restaurants surrounding us.

After a few more art and gift shops, we take a short bus ride, leaving us with only a 7-8 minute walk to our final historical/entertainment/dining stop for the day.

We start by filing right past the tables and benches prepared for us and straight to the unisex toilets. We, basically, followed one another like lemmings but were all relieved to find a bathroom at the end of our journey.

Settling into our benches, we were prepared for whatever.

And whatever quickly turned out to be two Russian women in traditional garb greeting us warmly and teaching us about the old customs for dinner parties with guests.

The taller of the two women smiled at me, walked over, beckoned for me to join her, and then without hesitation placed me standing right next to her in front of the group. Liza translated the explanation as the other woman next brought up Lori from our group.

I was to be made a duke—fitted with a fur-rimmed hat. The tall woman emphasized my most handsome and noble qualities to everyone: long blonde hair, wide shoulders, doesn’t eat too much, doesn’t drink to much, etc. Lori is then asked how she should greet such a man as I—with a normal or great expression of respect. Lori bows lowly. Now, Duke Erhardt must respond, in kind.

“Wha?” I mouth, turning a little red.

Liza mouths back, “Kiss.”

I saunter over to Lori and carefully feign a kiss on her left cheek. The room applauds.

The three standing females then face me in a row, hands held. Liza translates the situation:

“If you kiss one, you must kiss them all.”

We quickly realize that all of the old customs, songs, and games are punctuated with a kiss.

So, after a first course of very tasty potato, mushroom, meat (chicken for me), and cheese soup, we proceed to spin the bottle with song and dance for well over an hour.

The three male musicians, now in the room, along with the women finish with a goodbye song and then leave us to the second and final course of our meal, which was a plate of crepe-looking things at each table with gooseberry jam. However, they were much better than crepes and with 2 or 3 pieces filled a person under their sticky weight.

After the meal, our group went its separate ways with each persona’s host or hostess. Vanya met me at the portico and we headed home on the bus.

Walking from our stop to his building, I tried to express to him how unusually far the sidewalk was from the road parallel to it. I could not get him to understand what I was trying to say in Russian or English. Nor could I effectively express that I was merely making an observation.

Vanya and I talked in his for a while before his grandmother (babushka) came. She lives at the hospital now, but comes home for showers and to have her laundry done. I, also, met Sergei—Vanya’s brother. We nearly shook hands in the doorway, but Sergei quickly stepped into my room to complete the transaction. I quickly remembered from the guide notes I read at waytorussia.com that it was bad luck to shake hands while standing in separate rooms. The division suggests that the two shaking will surely quarrel.

With most everyone in my home gone in the evening, except for Vanya’s mother and father and me, I retreat to my room to listen to Radiohead and work on my book of 500 puzzles. However, I am interrupted in a few minutes by Vanya’s mom ushering me into the living room.

The World Cup game between England and Portugal plays granularly on the television. On the glass coffee table, a spread of cut veggies with salt, sugary fruit candies, and delicious chocolates—after a small fight with the packaging—is laid out.

Vanya’s father grabs the scotch whiskey from the refrigerator, which I had noticed earlier that day. He pours each of us a dram and we toast. After a couple swigs, just one full one for mama, we start talking—brokenly of course—about our families. I tell them about my mom, dad, and sister and what they do. In my mind, I am remembering test after test in my Russian courses, where I had to express this exact same information. But my memory is fading in and out, whiled all of my notes are trapped somewhere in the unavailable ether of international baggage.

So, I stumble through. Vanya’s dad asks me if I like fishing. I say that I haven’t done it since I was a boy. He reports what Vanya had told me earlier: that tomorrow we would be going to the lake, 20 minutes out of town, for fishing and a barbecue. He pours me some more whiskey and I smile at him.

“Tonight, we drink,” he exclaims in Russian.

I laugh and take down some more of the flavorful gold liquor, after another brief toast. Vanya’s parents get ready for bed when he gets home from his business computing class at Novgorod State University. I tell him about my evening as he sits at the computer chatting on ICQ.

I go back to my puzzles and Vanya proceeds to demonstrate the true extent of his obsession with the pop singer Madonna. He starts playing concert videos that I suspect he has watched hundreds of times before, as I hear him sing along.

“Why do you like Madonna so much?” I ask in Russian.
“I don’t know,” he replies in English.” It is because she did all this herself. No one did it for her. She is a strong person.”

I understand and agree.

He goes to bed shortly thereafter. I get on GAIM. Blair is on. Finally, some much hoped for live contact with my girlfriend.

After we talk of each other’s day’s adventures and exchange very necessary “I love yous” I venture off to bed. I shake my head and smile before falling asleep. Finally, a very long and full day draws to a close.