Ukraine

We went to Ukraine over the weekend, for a family reunion with Alla's cousins. They live in the town of Romny, which is on the main rail line towards Crimea. The town has changed little in recent years, though there is definitely wear and tear.
The asphalt sidewalks, for example, are deteriorating and you can see the old brick and stone sidewalks below. We speculated on how much fun it would be to see the original sidewalks restored, but of course there is no money for that right now.

It was a real joy to be with Allas cousins and other relatives, and they took really good care of us. We were met with spectacular food and a delicious lunch, and enjoyed several great meals together and a couple of great walks around the town.

Romny is a quiet place with big trees and shady avenues. The people who live there clearly love it, but it's small enough that it doesn't draw me the way Minsk does. Family, however, is a big draw.

Family members in Romny live simply, carrying on some aspects of traditional life. While they have indoor plumbing, they do still have a summer toilet and a summer shower. In the spirit of the season, I used both of them. The summer toilet is actually just an outhouse, but it's made of stone and it's cool enough that it doesn't smell. The summer shower is a magnificent wooden cabinet with a black tank on the roof, where water is heated by sunlight.

I can describe Romny much better with photographs than with words, so I hope you will click here so see my album.

Iranian music

I am sitting in one of the city's smaller exposition centers, right close to home. One of my classmates told me about an Iranian Expo taking place there right now, and I dropped in to see what it was all about. (Nuclear power? Nahh...) I still don't really know much because I was drawn upstairs by music.

Right now I'm looking at a row of people with drums of various kinds, a stringed instrument that looks a bit like a dulcimer, a fiddle, a bass fiddle, and a singer. The music is unfamiliar but compelling, the way any large group of drummers tends to be compelling. 

Wait! While I was typing, the musicians stopped and they announced a puppet theater and cuisine sampling downstairs. And now they've brought out a new musical group, this time a trio with tambourine, drum, and a four-stringed instrument played with a bow. Oh, I see, the trio is supporting the puppet theater. Wow, this is really cool!


Don't you wish you were here?

Brief trip to Vilnus

I didn't actually get to Vilnus, nor have I even left the city. But I had a nice evening at a local restaurant. Alla's in Saint Petersburg for a couple of days and I didn't want to dine alone. Unable to round up any of my classmates for dinner, I set out to the local high-end cafeteria for a dinner I at least wouldn't have to wait for.

The restaurant was fairly full, and the only table I spotted had four chairs. I figured if I was lucky, somebody would get desperate enough to sit down. Sure enough, a really nice lumberman sat down with me halfway through my meal. He lives in Vilnus and has an office in Minsk. He used to have a third office somewhere in Russia, but had to scale back for challenging economic times. He spends one week out of three in his office here. He buys Belarusian lumber and sells it worldwide. Before the economic crisis, he was shipping some thirty cubic meters of lumber every week, but it's less now.

Anyway, he's a really nice guy and made a fantastic dinner companion. I even enjoyed the fact that he didn't hassle me about my age. He asked, and I answered that I don't count years. He replied, "Better to count friends than years, right?"

Right.

Na dacha (on the dacha)

We served dinner last night to our landlords, Anna Adamnova and Evgenny Ivanovich. They're super-nice people, and we always enjoy seeing them. Last night they were feeling especially expansive and invited us out to their dacha today. Having never been a guest at anybody's dacha, I was pretty excited about this.

While they would ordinarily have gone early this morning, they waited until I finished my class today and then they picked us up. Our plan included a swim, a walk, and shashleek. (Shashleek is Russian for sheesh-ke-bab, and the meats are generally marinated for a day and then cooked over smokey coals from a wood fire. Today's fire was from cherry branches.) It turns out that our plan also included lunch, but I didn't realize that and I ate before we left. Oops. I enjoyed both lunches.

For more, see 2010-06 June

We stopped to swim in a beautiful river whose name I have already forgotten, but it was really great. This made us decide to go swimming again tomorrow, perhaps in the Minsk Sea.

The dacha itself is a very-well-constructed log home surrounded by an extremely ambitious garden with two greenhouses and edible plants practically everywhere. The house has a deep and chilly root cellar, and the nearest running water is at a sink in the yard. I enjoyed washing off fresh radishes in the sink and cutting them into our salad.

At the very back of the property, our hosts have added a second building, a traditional Russian bath-house that smelled really great inside. This little building even has running water and a shower.

I could write a whole entry about the chicken shashleek, but I won't. Let me just say that I was really happy that they managed to send me home with the leftovers in spite of Alla's polite refusal.

If you want to see more pictures of this dacha excursion, I posted some here.

Belarusian humor

One day President Lukashenko was feeling particularly peeved over President Bush's policy toward his country and launched a bombing raid on the USA. His advisors were horrified about the likely outcome and mobilized all resources to prepare a defense. Frantically, Belarusian computer hackers worked their way into the White House security system, and within two two days they had a live video feed from the Situation Room. There was George Bush, spinning the globe and muttering, "Where's Belarus? Where's Belarus?..."

Car rental

We wanted to go to Mir and Nezvish today, outlying towns a little tricky to reach by public transit. We figured it was time to drive a car here anyway, so I reserved a car last night over the Internet. Hertz had nothing to offer, but Avis presented a wide choice of cars, so I booked one and went to bed.

This morning we went over to the Hotel Belarus, where we were supposed to pick up our car. I went in and spoke to the woman in the lobby behind the window with the Avis sticker on it. She said that Avis was on the second floor, so we went over to the elevator. On the way, Alla checked with the security guard, who said that Avis was on the third floor. Getting into the elevator first, Alla pressed 3. There was NOBODY anywhere on the third floor, so we went back down to the second floor.

The second floor was nearly deserted too, but Alla did find a cleaning lady who told her that Avis wasn’t there. I can’t remember who it finally was who sent us to the 21st floor, but we did find a bigger Avis sign in the elevator lobby. Alla asked the nearby coat-check lady where to find the office. She told us which rooms Avis occupied but opined that there was nobody there. We checked both doors, and the coat-check lady had been right.

So, we called the 24-hour service number posted on the office door. After two tries, we got somebody on the phone who had no idea that we’d reserved a car. It turns out that they only come to work if they know a day in advance about an upcoming reservation, and I had reserved too late.

Fine. We just had to get the heck out of that crazy hotel and find a taxi. We got into the elevator and pressed 1. The elevator went down to 14 and the door opened. Nobody was there, and the elevator showed no enthusiasm about continuing our decent. I pressed the first floor button a few more times and the elevator renewed its descent, briefly. It opened next on floor 13, where a guy got on and the arrow inside the car indicated that it was about to go up. We fled, and got better results with the next elevator.

Fortunately, our luck changed once we escaped the building. Outside the hotel we found a nice little minivan with a very kind driver who took us on our planned excursion for approximately the same price we expected to spend on the rental car. I don’t think I’ll bother renting a car ever, as long as I can ride with Vadim. We ended up having a great day.

For a few more pictures, click 2010-06 Mary's visit

Soccer

My cousin Mary Cranston is in town, and we went to a soccer game together. This was a friendship match between Belarus and Sweden, but the stadium had a healthy crowd even though the game wouldn't affect either team's standings.

Our friend Sergey Merkulov got the tickets for us, and we met him on the street in front of the stadium. Getting there, we swam through crowds much like getting to a Red Sox game in Boston. The biggest difference was the lack of scalpers here. There's no scalping on hard-to-get ballet tickets either, so I guess it's a general rule.

The stadium was built at the time of the 1966 Moscow Olympics, and there's a big torch at one side for the Olympic flame. (Not lit today.) The seats may also date back to 1966. They are colorful plastic, but over the years they've developed a patina of white dust that comes off on one's clothes. Sergey was prepared for this, and brought a newspaper. We each sat on a sheet from the Minsky Courier, which may be the highest and best use for that particular newspaper.

We encountered security forces everywhere, mostly dressed in army uniforms. They checked our bags and pockets twice, both times with metal detectors and pat-downs. Then when we sat down, we noticed a row of guards along the edge of each section, sitting one above the other two or three rows apart. And then there was the section of the stadium dedicated exclusively to army guys. It felt pretty safe in there.

Sweden won the game 1-0. Belarus took a lot of shots, but they were generally high and the Swedish goalie didn't appear to be under a whole lot of stress. Still, we had high hopes and screamed and yelled now and again. Especially Sergey. He can yell really loudly, and it was a relief when he moved to the row in front of us instead of yelling beside us. His son took care of the from-the-side yelling.

I played a little soccer myself a couple of days before the match, one-on-one with Sergey's young son Matvey. Matvey was nice to me, and when the score got too lopsided he let me get ahead a little. Then he dropped the hammer and won the game handily. He's invited me back for a rematch now that I've had a refresher on how the game looks when played properly. I'm ready.