Optimist

I’m a pretty optimistic guy, and I think this occasionally complicates my life. Peanut butter complicates my life too. When I put the two of them together, I should know I’m headed for a fall.

My readers know that I like peanut butter, and that I go to some lengths to keep a supply of it here in Belarus. I had a pretty good stash built up until recently because I bought a bunch of it when we were in Vilnius and then I supplemented my supply with three jars of Trader Joe’s crunchy almond butter when I last visited the States. I stacked those three jars of almond butter one above the other and rolled them up in a cardboard tube. This apparently caused some concern for the transportation safety people in San Francisco, who took my bag aside and inspected the contents. I got my stuff, but it arrived a day late and I’m not sure whether to blame the inspectors or the French. In any case, my stash looked pretty good as recently as a month ago.

Feeling flush, we even gave away some of the Lithuanian peanut butter. Then somebody noticed that I’d lost a little weight and I decided to go back to my caloric habits and eat nut butters more often. I’m consuming it quickly, and will run out before we leave.

I got pretty excited, then, when I noticed a big store called Preston Maximus over on the other side of town. My Lithuanian peanut butter came from a bigger version of the same store, called MaXXimus. There’s also a 3-X version of the store in Vilnius. The 2-X and 3-X guys sell peanut butter, but the 1-X stores don’t. Still, I had hopes for the local Preston Maximus because it looked so big. I looked them up on the internet to figure out how to get back there.

What-ho! Preston has three stores, and one of them is so important that it’s open 24 hours a day. I figured that this certainly implied exotic things, and I went to that one today. It would have been easy to reach in a taxi, but I took the tramway and then a long walk. I carried an empty backpack and high hopes. Unfortunately, however, all I took back was disappointment. This 24-hour store sells more wine than anything else. I asked the clerk about peanut butter and she said they had it. Unfortunately, the Russian word for butter is the same as the word for oil, and I have no appetite for peanut-oil sandwiches. I walked through the store and photographed everything so you can see it for yourselves. I got the whole store in three photographs, two of which are worth posting below.

Main area in Preston Supermarket

Preston produce section

I can wait. I know where to buy peanut butter in Boston.

Buying services

Whenever I get complacent about living here in Belarus, something new pops up. Today I went to get my teeth cleaned, as I do every six months. The dentist peered around in my mouth, poked and prodded, and declared that everything is grand except for some tartar (it’s called “stone” in Russian) on my lower teeth. He decided in that light that he only needed to clean the bottom half of my mouth. Half an hour later, I got half the usual bill for half the usual job. It’s possible that he was trying to squeeze in another patient for the second half hour, since he chatted with his assistant about a patient whose crown had finally arrived.

The other service I tried to buy today was a repair to my winter coat. I have a very heavy shearling garment that started coming apart at one of the shoulder seams. Alla suggested that I should ask the seamstress if she could handle it before I bothered bringing it down. I’m glad I took this advice because the seamstress said that she doesn’t work on leather. She sent me home to call central services to ask where to get the work done. I started home and then turned back because I’d noticed a luggage repair shop in the same building. Their sign promised repairs on suitcases, handbags and umbrellas. Certainly they’ve got a sewing machine capable of stitching leather! The clerk was horrified by my request. NO. They do not work on clothing. Call central services.

I got Alla to call Central Services, who sent me to a shop with the right equipment and the right union card. My coat is now ready for winter.

Finally, I got a taste of hotel guest services at an economy hotel. A friend of a friend is staying nearby and I tried to return her call. The hotel operator asked me what room this guest occupied, but I didn’t know. Then she asked me the nationality of the guest. American. Oh yeah: she knew where the Americans were, and they weren’t in the hotel. We still get a little extra attention around here.

Skvoznyak

I’m not sure I’m even aware of all the health rules I grew up with, but I can see that folks in the Slavic world have grown up with some rules we don’t follow. The bane of summer is the skvoznyak, or draft. Drafts are really bad here, and lots of people are sure that they’ll lead to death or disability. Alla doesn’t follow this particular rule, and it drives her completely nuts to get inside a bus on a hot day and find the passengers ahead of her closing the windows. I watched one of these negotiations yesterday. The elderly babushka two seats ahead of us closed her window. The next window didn’t open at all, so we weren’t getting a whole lot of moving air, though the sunlight warmed us just fine. I don’t know how hot it was in there, but cooler would have been better and Alla really wanted to feel a breeze on her face.

Alla asked Babushka to open her window. Babushka refused on account of the draft. Alla observed that a draft might actually result in increased comfort. Babushka didn’t care. She worried more about dying from the diseases she’d catch from breathing the draft. Alla tried to convince her that a draft in a bus would be no more dangerous than a breeze at the beach, and she tried to loan Babushka a scarf to protect herself in the service of society. Another passenger joined in. He was standing in the aisle, and I suspect the heat seemed even more oppressive with his head closer to the ceiling of the bus. Babushka covered her ears with her arms and hunkered down after batting his hands away from her window.

Most people don’t try so hard to get windows open on public transport. We all know how frightened people feel about drafts and we share a social covenant that the draft-dodger has priority over anybody else’s fear of heat stroke.

Slavs worry about heat stroke once they’re outside the bus. Kids seem to be at the greatest risk for this and few responsible mothers would allow a young child outdoors in hot weather without a hat. I found this interesting enough that I collected a few kid-in-hat photos my first springtime in Minsk, but I don’t even think about it any more.

I chatted with a friend about this last night. The conversation started when I invited her to sit on the lawn with me and have our English class outdoors. When she declined, I realized that I’d just asked her to violate another health rule. Girls and women should NEVER sit on the ground. Apparently sitting on the ground leads to infertility and possibly additional maladies. It’s hard for me to argue about this stuff because we all know that Americans spend vast amounts of money on fertility treatments but few of us know what’s behind it. I honestly don’t imagine it’s because the girls sat on the dirt in the playground, but I can’t prove it.

Generally I stay out of any battles over traditional beliefs, but I’m careful to follow one of them. I don’t think it relates to health, but for some reason people don’t want to give or receive a gift across the threshold of a door. In America, when I welcome guests I start the greeting the moment I see them. Open door, see guest, shake hand. Bring guest into house. I think most of us do it that way, but I don’t do it here. The handshake is a gift, and it loses its value when given over a threshold. I think I’m supposed to wait until the guest comes into the house to offer any greeting, but in our apartment building I step outside the door and wait for them after I buzz them in. That way I can greet them as soon as I see them but I’m not looking across a threshold.

No doubt I grew up with rules that seem just as strange to people from outside my culture. It's hard for me to say, because I probably don't even think about them.

Why I like it here

Frequently people ask me why I’m here. When I first started hanging out in Minsk I assumed that people who asked me that must imagine I’m a spy. Knowing the culture better now, I no longer flatter myself with that. I think they’re just curious, and possibly a little surprised. People more commonly wish to get out of Belarus than to get in, and the population is shrinking. Here I am, an American, with a passport that enables me to cross a large number of borders without so much as a visa. And what have I done? I’ve completed dozens of forms and filled my passport with stickers in order to get into this place.

My neighbor asked me about this very specifically the other day. He started out directly, asking what I’m doing here, and before I could answer he softened his question by pointing out that "we," meaning Belarusians, have to live here but I’ve made a choice that surprises him. I summarized for him some of the things I’ve written in my blog about what’s fun for me here, and subsequently related the story with some amusement to my friend Sergey.

Sergey’s a clever man and he offered me a better answer for the next time I get such a question. I should tell the questioner that I like the dairy products here. That’s true. Nobody’s ryazhenka compares with Minsk Brand, and I miss it when I’m away. But there’s more about living here that I find unique and wonderful.

Lately I’ve been spending an inordinate amount of time getting weather forecasts. It’s not that I care all that much about the weather, but I’ve discovered a weather site that amuses me no end. It’s at http://pogoda.tut.by. Down at the bottom of the page they display a Flash animation of a model dressed for the weather. I discovered this a few days ago, when he was wearing shorts and flip-flops until it should start raining, at which time he put on a lighter shirt and added a transparent rain jacket. A few days ago he stopped wearing any of that stuff and started hanging out in his bathing suit. Then it got really hot and he appeared naked behind a guitar. A little rain doesn’t seem to bother his guitar, but on Monday he’s going to carry an umbrella while parading about naked.
There’s a radio button on the left side that flips the image to night-time. So far I’ve never seen him naked at night, but today I am puzzled by his choices because over the next three days the nighttime temperature forecast steadily increases but in the middle he puts on slightly lighter shoes and a slightly warmer shirt. I’m ashamed to admit that I’ve studied this enough to know that his clothing sometimes changes a couple of times within an hour and it’s never warm enough to run around naked in downtown Minsk. Still, it’s entertainment I’d never find in Boston and another good reason to stay in Minsk.

To have and have not

[Warning added July 29: This post seems a little long to me today, and it's not my favorite. I won't be offended if you skip it. The ones with the pictures seem to be the most popular. -Steve]

I went shopping this afternoon. I fortified myself in advance by eating smoked salmon on crackers with a side dish of Trader Joe’s almond butter and a huge helping of strawberries from the dacha. Finally, I treated myself to the last morsel of Gruyere cheese from our trip through Switzerland. Alla and I have been rationing the Gruyere and I justified myself in taking the last bite by adding it to my shopping list for the giant grocery store at the end of my odyssey. Thus prepared, I roared off to TSUM and bought a pair of linen pants on sale for about $20. I have no idea what these would have cost in the US, but it seemed like a very good deal to me even if the styling varies a bit from what I’d wear in America. I’m not there anyway.

Next I rode the subway a few stops to GUM, where I discovered an even bigger choice of linen pants supposedly in my size. Buying pants in Belarus is a little less certain than buying pants in the US because the manufacturers haven’t made any effort to agree over what a given size means. At GUM I tried on every pair in the size most likely to fit me among all the sizes I tried on at TSUM. Less than 50% of the pants I put on fit, and I chose a favorite. I also chose a couple pairs of shorts that come below my knees, since my other shorts are seriously out of style. After completing a few other purchases at GUM without adventure, I returned to the subway and rode out to the Korona Hypermart.

I know my way around Korona pretty well and I’ve gotten used to finding what I want there, but I came up dry on a couple of key items today. First, of course, was the Gruyere cheese. I just couldn’t find it, so I asked the lady at the fancy-foods counter if she had any. She’d never heard of it. Confident that since we ALWAYS have this stuff in our refrigerator at home and Korona has all kinds of cheeses I don’t buy, I asked her to talk to somebody else. The next clerk didn’t know anything about this strange cheese either and said I wouldn’t find it at the deli counter. I took another look anyway and then went over to the packaged-cheese area. Finding nothing, I asked the stock clerk about Gruyere. “What’s it like?” she asked.

I told her it was a lot like Emmental without the holes and she showed me where she keeps the Emmental. Having no Gruyere, however, she suggested that I go over to have a look at their wide selection of Belarusian cheeses. I didn’t fall for that trick. Belarus produces a wide variety of cheeses, but as far as we can determine, they all taste exactly the same: white and bland.

Disappointed, I gave up and went off to get some Zip Lock freezer bags. Alla has harvested a huge volume of berries and we’ve been freezing a lot of them to save for winter. We started with bags we brought from Boston, but needed a lot more. In the housewares department I found aluminum foil, plastic wrap and parchment paper, but didn’t see the bags I wanted. Interestingly, you don’t have to buy these roll items inside a box if you don’t want. You have the option of buying just the roll of stuff, which is wonderfully sound environmentally but prevents you from stacking them on a shelf at home. Truthfully, I didn’t find that so interesting at the time because I wanted heavy freezer bags with a zipper top. Ha! No freaking way! The best I could do was to buy some Polish freezer bags about half the thickness of the bags from Boston. I bought them. At home I learned that I should have bought string at the same time because the bags didn’t come with anything to close the ends. We’ll make do. That’s the Belarusian way.

Slavianski Bazaar

In Chekhov’s time there was a hotel in Moscow called Slavianski Bazaar. Now it’s an annual music and arts festival in Vitebsk, Belarus. Whenever people talk about it they get very enthusiastic, but we’ve never been there because we kept going home in early July before the festival started. Our landlady got all excited for us and sent a friend of hers to buy some tickets to a couple of shows before we even got back from our spring travels. When we got here she informed us that we already had tickets to shows on Friday.

Alla and I didn’t get serious about the festival in time to book a hotel room, so we also had to take this friend’s offer to stay as her houseguests. The hot weather broke just in time, and we enjoyed a very comfortable ride to Vitebsk in a new Mercedes minibus. The air conditioning never gets to the back of those minibuses, so we count ourselves lucky. We enjoyed watching forests and meadows roll by, and finally passed the famous Vitebsk linen fields; pulling into town just as the interior of the bus began to warm up in the noonday sun.
I enjoyed the city itself more than the two shows we attended. I think we could have chosen better if we had done our own planning, but I did enjoy seeing the Igor Moiseev Ballet again. Vitebsk is an extraordinarily beautiful city, anchored by gorgeous churches and broad pedestrian areas built on the banks of a clean-looking river. We walked kilometer after kilometer, exploring the festival vendors’ stalls and the city itself. Remembering the nearby linen mills, we bought lightweight linen shirts for summer. If the weather gets hot again, we’ll be ready. If not, well, we like the shirts anyway.

We came home on the train and enjoyed different scenery. Most spectacularly, the sun set very slowly in a reddened sky over rye fields, streams and golden church domes. I had a hard time getting my homework finished because I kept having to look out the window, but I managed to finish the last paragraph of my Chekhov story just as we arrived in Minsk. I’m chagrined that we didn’t get to know Vitebsk sooner, and glad we finally made a trip. I’d send tourists there for sure, even without the Slavianski Bazaar.

At the lager

I’ve been attending a Baptist church here because there are no congregations of my own denomination. Last Sunday the pastor complained that he was having trouble contacting the congregation and offered us the opportunity to join an improved contact list. I filled in the form they offered and Presto!, I got a text message on my phone a few days later. It turns out that they recently purchased land on which to build a “lager,” or camp, and they wanted men from the congregation to come for a work day. They caught me at an opportune moment, because I’d just been thinking that I wanted to be more generous about charitable activities.

The kids will arrive in one week, and we had plenty to do. Collectively we brought electricity to a former barn and put a huge new roof in front of it so the kids would have a place to congregate outdoors in rainy weather. We also installed a sidewalk and patio, took down a fence and mowed a field. Among other things, I helped to hang a door in the kitchen building so the cook would have a bedroom close to the work area, and then I worked on filling in the wiring trench and schlepping water for the crew making the concrete for the sidewalk. I had a little trouble getting started because everybody was reluctant to assign tasks to me, but when I paid a little attention I noticed plenty of ways to fit in.

They’ve dug a swimming hole. I think they have plans to build a regular pool in the next few days, but I’m not really sure about it. Right now it’s filling in with groundwater and collecting rain, but the water is brown from silt and I didn’t get in even though I needed a rinse. I got my rinse anyway: The pastor poured well water over most of us to cool us off, and even added a blessing when he baptized me.

I really enjoyed being in the company of a bunch of very kind men working on a project for people we may not even know. I hear that such behavior is less common in Belarus than in America, so I count it a special privilege.