elkmu's adventures

The Blueprint

2008-12-11T09:15:00.000-05:00

Okay guys this is it, www.paneurasianbiketrip.com, we are going!! There is no reasonable doubt now.
In March Levi Bridges and I are going to back to school to learn Russian for a couple of months in Vladivostok, Russia we will be living in the dorms one more time, training, packing and learning Russian. Then one day, hopefully in April, we will get on the bikes and start riding, not stopping until Portugal (I could give you the name, but there seems to be some discrepancy about whether it is Oporto or Porto, I guess we will figure that out when we hit the welcome sign). Along the way we will be using the website to write blogs (yes I will still email), posting pictures and videos (a new weapon in our arsenal) as often as possible (I hear the wireless connections in Siberia are primo).
Answers to some of the questions
"How Long"
-We don't know, it depends on the route we take but somewhere around 10,000 miles.
"What countries are you going to?"
-we want to stay flexible go with what sounds most amazing, so please send us your favorite town in Austria or your contact in Siberia we might use them.
"Can I go?"
-definitely, we want people to come and do a week here or there, perhaps you would like to do the Siberia leg
"where the hell did you guys come up with this idea?"
-I don't think Levi and I have ever had anything but this idea, I remember that when we met at Alfred, the first day we were talking about doing a semester in Alaska and by the end of the night (and the beer) we had the map out and were looking at Russia (I haven't been able to stop looking at that map since). And by that fall break I already had in my possession "Off the Map, Bicycling through Russia" By Mark Jenkins and we had already spent countless hours staring at the map and talking about routes (not realizing then that there is only one road through Russia, the rest we were looking at were railroads). Since then it has always been in the back of our minds, every time we got together, without fail the map came out and we would start the fantasy all over again. It was only after walking across Spain that we realized that we could do this trip and how amazing it could be. We have been "planning" this trip ever since, which usually involves one hour in an entire "planning weekend" devoted to actually doing research. Levi likes to bring up the time that he tried to do some research with me and I looked at the map said "Yep, no problem", slammed the atlas closed and went back to sleep.

Recently we have been a bit more productive, we managed to get discount bikes from a bike shop in Maine, and thanks almost entirely to Kylie Silva we now have a website, www.paneurasianbiketrip.com again shamelessly promoting. But mostly we just wind up getting together and talking incessently about the trip without getting a scrap on paper, last time we did a "business trip" we left Levi's house without bikes, laptops, maps, and no paper, but boy did we talk about the trip!!

The bike trip, like the planning, will be unconventional. We may spend days in a small village because the hospitality (and vodka) is so good, or I may force us well off the trail to find a Siberian Dostoevsky Museum or a historical Russian town. And Levi; god only knows where he may lead the trip, I wouldn't be surprised if a Russian truck driver was somehow involved. And my job as always will be to convey these stories and observations to you in the most amusing and straight forward manner. I look forward to it tremendously. I'll see you in Vladivostok!!
ellski

p.s. Spread the website, we are trying to get some sort of sponsorship and we figure the more popular the site is the more likely we are to get some discount socks.

A Return To Bad Decision Making

2008-07-24T11:17:00.000-04:00

I got off the plane and already things had changed. The air didn't bite, instead I was sweating, I got to the immigration line and got my landing card... I was stunned, they had taken to giving you the english translation on the landing card, saving me hours of digging through my shitty russian dictionary.
But some things never change.. We walked out of the airport and there was a man at 10 am just getting a little bit stumbly with his beer, swaying a bit from side to side.Then I looked over and there was a quite slim girl smoking an even slimmer cigarrette and drinking a huge can of beer. AHHH Mother Russia. Sue and I took a small bus into the center of the city, saving approximately 79.50 dollars as the ticket cost us about 50 cents and the taxi's wanted 80 dollars. of course sue is ecstatic, she saw her first passed out person, her first russian prostitute, neither of which would be her last. when we got out at saddovaya square she was bewildered by the bright neon lights of the casino's. I on the otherhand noticed another trashcan fire, I had always thought that was a winter thing, I guess not. We walked to the hotel where we were in for a moment that can only be described by remembering what south africa's dear president said after meeting with mugabe after the election earlier this year. a member of the press asked him about the crisis in zimbabwe and mbeki said "crisis? what crisis?" we walked into the hotel I put my reservation on the desk and the woman said "reservation? what reservation?" perfect. I land in st. petes in the busiest season and this woman has no record of my reservation. Sue is on the verge of panic. however after some work was done they found us a hotel for that night and promised to work something out by morning. So obviously after checking into the new hotel there was only one thing to do, we walked to the nearest kiosk and purchased a couple of warm baltika 7's and some wine and proceeded to forget our troubles. There is no lie when they say that the sun doesn't set in st. petes during the white nights, around 10 it felt like 330 and the only thing resembling night is a bit of dusk round 1.
By morning the hotel situation was resolved thank god and we began our sightseeing, going back to all my old haunts that i have described many a time, i took my mother to palace square where they were gearing up for a huge concert, we went to vasilly island to the street with no cars, we saw nevsky in all it's shopping glory. We went to the opera that evening, where i successfully retrieved my tickets that i had ordered online. Sue was very pleased, i was bored to tears but such is life. The first thing I was really feeling that was different here was that people were nicer, much much nicer and more helpful, not as amazing as SA but still noticeably nicer. The next day we went to the hermitage, and walked about, and later that night i went out on my own. now as i recall in the past i had had trouble really communicating and making friends in st. petes. Not this time, in a matter of moments i was taking shots with a group of men on the street while talking to the militsya, i don't know if i've ever met such friendly russians in my life, then i carried on my way to mars field or the Communist war memorial where unlike in the guide books where they tell you not to go on the grass out of respect for the dead revolutionaries buried there, there were thousands of teenagers and young people on the grass drinking and celebrating the white nights, needless to say i was quickly incorporated and spent a good part of the night with a group of young artists drinking, watching fireworks and watching the bridges rise. It was almost like russia had embraced kindness, they hadn't mastered it yet, but they were trying. The next day was my great triumph, everyone from the old days of st. petes will appreciate this, me, with my shitty russian flawlessly ordered tickets to moscow and back on the train, and the people behind me didn't even seem to want to kill me that badly, i didn't even see a weapon drawn after the first ten minutes.
The drinking hasn't changed here, in no way. you still see the bottle of vodka between two people on the street, you still seee the crazy casual day drinking by men, women, children, executives, taxi drivers, policemen, and anyone and everyone. you still don't hire a taxi, you just stick out your hand and a man stops and bargains a fare, and I still suck at bargaining and russian numbers. Sue was quite freaked out when i hired our first car, but since then she's really taken to it, likening it to her old days hitchhiking. our incidents haven't been to bad so far, except when it comes to ordering, where we are confined to shashlik (skewered meat) and solyanka (a delicious russian soup) because the pressure of trying to order anything else is too great and again my dictionary is so bad that it seems to have left out anything to do with food at all, so occasionally mistakes are made.
Our trip was not made just to st. petersburg we also went to russia, where needless to say mistakes were made. Namely the worst one was impatience, we got to our hotel after the night train from st. petersburg, there was no one there, in fact it was just a communist style building which we happened to have the key code for. we panicked, we had already had hotel trouble, we were tired and afraid of being caught out in the dark with the drunk moscovites. we walked for hours searching for a hotel or an internet cafe in vain (i knew i had the phone number online) screaming at each other as only my mother and i can do. then in a final act of desperation we went back to the building debating the merits of sleeping in the hallway, yeah of course they were there and waiting for us. well we spent 4 comfortable nights in moscow visiting lenin and his waxy complexion watching the russians go Euro 2008 crazy then have their hopes dashed by the spanish, like so many others. I also met up with one of my old friends from saint petersburg, erika, we rehashed our love of russia and how we thought the people were nicer now and more money was flowing through the country and just as much alcohol.
Then there was the return to st. petersburg where I met some guys who were just finishing a month at the same school that i studied at (IMOP!!!!!!!!!) And then something new happened, something that hadn't happened before to me... I got mugged. And not just mugged, mugged by the police (which has the convenience of being able to report the crime at the same time, for a small fee of course) yes I finally got mugged, complete with shoving and threats of use of a billy club. How else could i wrap up 5 and a half months of South Africa and 2 weeks of nightless travel. ellski

Goodbye South Africa

2008-07-24T10:42:00.000-04:00

Well it's over. I am sitting here in London, on free internet, with the doors unlocked and the fences unbarbed. The academic decathalon is over, i took my last final over a week ago, how did i do??? how could anyone know, I wrote essays, long ones they seemed full of information that pertained to the course but that could mean nothing at uct, perhaps they grade entirely on grammer or expect full citations, or perhaps half of it is your handwriting, I have no idea.
One of the final things of any significance i did here was go to the district 6 museum, which like Sophiatown in Johannesburg was a Black district full of culture and life that was then forcefully closed by the apartheid government and moved to the townships at what was considered a much safer distance from the "good white folk" of South Africa. It wasn't that I was unfamiliar with the story, but the one thing that really shocked me was the shear stupidity of moving everyone out of an area, essentially downtown, and destroying every building in sight, they were never even able to rebuild it it still stands fairly desolate, mostly just empty lots. I guess racism won out over city planning.
anyway, the recap of the things i will miss about south Africa:
actually I just thought before I wrote this i would look back at the 10 things i wrote about st. petersburg, and i know it sounds rather strange but they are so similar that i think i will run them together in a comparison, and it will help you new guys to the email club, russia will be in bold:
well here is a final little round up of the things I
will miss:
10. Open potholes and the likes, I've been walking by
the same open pothole for 4 months, it's on the main
causeway to the metro stop, all they've ever had over
it is one 2 by 4. They still haven't cleaned up the
piles of trash they collected for spring cleaning, in
fact the piles have really just kind of spread out
again, they collected leaves a few weeks ago and
needless to say those aren't in piles any longer
10. What can I say, I walk by a goddamn open pothole on my way to the school shuttle stop every day here in africa too, in fact one of my roomates, never to be named of course, took a digger right into it, getting quite the bashed knee and sore hip. the only precaution i've seen them take is too put an egg crate over it, oh and actually I think they have been slowly depositing it with trash hoping that instead of having to cover it, it will become an underground trashcan, which seems to be what they have done with another one quite near by although it is smaller, it is now on level with the pavement, filled with beer bottles and biltong wrappers.

9. Trashcan fires: Never had seen one in my life, let
alone on a main thoroughfare, but often Nevsky will be
alight with 2 or 3 trashcans where people are too lazy
to put out their cigarettes and huge fires
erupt(apparently no one feels the need to put out the
blaze, indeed I saw a dumpster on fire the other day
and smoke billowing out, burning your eyes, eventually
it just burnt out, I guess that's the policy here
because I have never seen a fire truck, but plenty of
fires)
9. okay I can't say i've seen a trashcan fire here in south africa, they seem to have that under control. I can't put something comparable here either but i will put something more substantial. I will miss visits to the townships, where people living under the most cramped and uncomfortable conditions have the most amazing spirit of life, many of them love and enjoy life more than americans with the world at their feet driving porches and such. Certainly they have gripes with where life has put them but there is still hope, and they can still appreciate what little they have.

8. Water: well really this is something I can't wait
for, just to be able to drink from the tap like a
normal human being, and not have to plan ahead "okay
am I gonna be thirsty tomorrow morning?? Probably,
well I'd better go to the store now and get some
because if not, no joy

8.That one makes me laugh, remembering how awful it was to wake up with just a drop of water in the morning, and having to lug 2 5 gallon jugs up 3 flights every few days. well except for that time that cape town forgot to process it's water and everyone got ecoli, there haven't been any problems. But there is something that is just as annoying here electricity, it wasn't the paying as you go aspect of it that is so bad, but the lack of it when it counts, roaming black outs, unannounced extended power outages, our house in particular had it's own electricity problems. what do you do?? well call the electrician. "oh no I can't deal with that you have to call eskom (the power company)." eskom: "oh this isn't our department, you have to call the city planning board" city planning board: "what you need is an electrician" electrician: "yeah you should be fine now" twenty minutes later the power has some new affliction, eventually we just gave up an conceded that you had to turn on the hot water heater manually, wait for 3 hours for it to heat up and hope no one jumped in the shower, did the dishes, washed their hands or did a load of laundry before you got your shower.

7. doing things the hard way: boy do you guys have it
easy, you go to the store with a 20 dollar bill and
buy a candy bar no problem, I go and spend 300 out of
a 500 and they say "we can't change this do you have a
smaller bill?" then they have to go into the safe yell
at me some more and then the rest of the line starts
getting angry, I've never been shot down trying to
spend money in America, it's happened about a dozen
times here, they'd rather reject your business than
give you change.
7. I'm really begining to get used to harboring small bills, and breaking big bills every chance i get. But here I think doing things the hard way is more appropriate to UCT, where efficiency comes to die. My favorite is the printing on campus, it's positively genius, okay guys, most places in the world have all there computers on just a few networks, how about this for efficiency: we'll put the printers all on one network, that way if even the slightest thing goes wrong ALL the printers in EVERY building will be completely off. but don't worry the internet probably won't be working anyway.

6.The food, Bliny Borsch Solyanka (a form o Russian
hot dog stew) all of them even the fear of a
contaminated meal or the fairly standard bad meal (I
think the contemporary version of Russian roulette is
just going out to eat at a restaurant and seeing how
sick you get.
6. Ah the food. yep it will be missed, the random peices of dried meat on a string (presumably for small children to tie around their wrists so they don't drop them) coming in all varieties, beef, kudu, ostritch, whatever it is they will dry it and sell it. the boerwors, sausages grilled to perfection and served with onions just a hop skip and a jump from your favorite bar (one of my roomates (again not to be named) perhaps gives the greatest testament to the boerswors, dropping one on the ground on the way back to the bar, looking both directions, picking it up and eating it) the samosas or samoosas depending, particularly Buddy's at the Corner Bar, chicken are the best in my opinion, but many claim the cheesy ones rule supreme, the fish in mozambique. and of course the many many braais(bbqs). yeah i guess the food wasn't particularly healthy now was it. I personally heard little of food poisoning here in SA, certainly nothing like russia.

5. The dangerous streets of St. Petersburg: Jarrods
got broken legs, Richard had his knee broken by a
security guard, Antoine got the worse black eye I've
ever seen, Megan and Matt got robbed of their cell
phones and camera in a Russian dacha 3 hours out of
the city, Becky and Kendra had to run away from fake
police, Matt, Jarrod and Pavel got in a fight for
being American. This city is out of hand, that is just
among my friends, since I've been here (I'm sure
you've heard) one IMOP student was murdered, and there
has been a real rash of hate crime in St. Pete's (the
mafia influence in Moscow keeps that city more in line
and keeps the skinheads out)
5. Well there was probably a time when i thought st. petersburg was the most dangerous place a person could go, I think i've changed my perspective now. I live in a house guarded like a prison my neighbors have electric fences, about half of my friends have horror stories and the daily news is on the verge of terrifying, I laugh at the robbed cell phones of st. petes, who hasn't lost a cell phone here. When it comes to police it is tough to say who is worse? the st petes cops who are notoriously currupt and always hasseling you (80 percent of russians wouldn't go to the police in any circumstance) or the SA police who when called may take up to 2 hours to arrive?? which would you prefer.

4. The city itself: Just amazing that's all I can say
everywhere you turn is history, and everywhere you
look an amazing building, be it Stalinist architecture
or a tsarist palace
4. OBZ!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I could have wound up anywhere, but boy am I happy I wound up in Observatory, it had a great vibe a great look, tremendous people. By the end of the semester you couldn't walk down the street without meeting someone you knew and having a convo. OBZ is the best I couldn't have asked for a better place.

3. The Babushkas: oh sure they're jaded, angry, pushy,
fearless but these crazy, short, old lady's are
somewhat endearing, they occasionally laugh at you in
a nice way, every once in a while they say excuse me
before sitting on you in the subway, once I even saw
one turn and smile at me when she cut me in the
grocery line. They are characters that's to be sure,
unlike any you might find in the states
3. This might be the greatest difference between Russia and SA those Babushkas so quick to cut you, heckle you, demand from you. here they are so ready (indeed everyone is) help you, let you go first, sing for you, make you take part in something (even if it is that awful beer). I don't think i've seen to many older ladies even get angry except maybe for one time at the wedding when i wasn't singing enough and she felt she was dissapointing me.

2. The war hero's: yesterday was victory day, (while
the rest of the world celebrates the end of WWII on
may 8th Russia decided to be different and celebrate
it as the 9th) there was something quite awe inspiring
watching the Blockade survivors walk down Nevsky in
their annual parade (a parade that gets shorter and
shorter each year mind you) and then in a show of
patriotism everyone follows behind so that most of St.
Petersburg is actually marching behind them (after a
wall of militsia)
2. Okay so this one I'm changing completely, because i can't talk about africa without mentioning all the amazing hiking biking and walking trips i've done and how spectacular each one was, or how for days afterward i thought to myself as I lay in a bath of ice how horribly mountainous South Africa really is. Caving with sean and nick (although caving is not really what it was, it was more of a race up the mountain, a quick stroll through the caves and then a jell-o legged race to the bottom, you guys don't have a slow speed do you? Or those long coastal bike rides i took, who would have thought that coast meant ungodly ride never going on flat road either crawling up or flying down.
1. The Alcohol: come on I mean really it's Russia,
what else could be number one, I'm in the country
where they invented alcoholism. There are babushkas
here who could out drink the most capable frat boys,
we might be buying beer for a party at the
supermarket, but all of a sudden a little old lady
cuts you with 3 liters of vodka in her basket, then
you turn around and there is a 12 year old with a pint
and a beer, you look across at the successful
businessman or woman and they couldn't actually wait
for the line and are drinking their beer in line. You
walk outside and on a sunny day there is no one
without a drink, you see the cop hanging out smoking a
cigarette and drinking a 9 percent beer, the guy at
the kiosk is drinking a beer you get on the metro and
everyone has a "travel drink" beer, canned gin and
tonic, "alco-energy" drink, this country is way beyond
anything you could imagine, trust me. Oh and did I
mention that all this is before 10 am??? So that's it,
that's all I got, I hope everyone enjoyed the emails,
I'll be home soon From Russia with love ellski
10. Yes i suppose that South Africa's drinking culture will be sorely missed. Passing the paint can full of chewy nasty beer, or walking around the townships beer in hand (it seems to be the only place such a thing is really done, the "travel beer" has no place in Obsevatory or cape town.) it makes a funny contrast here, sure you can't drink if you are walking down the street, but everytime you get in a car (the hitchhiking comes to mind) you are offered a beer, it seems to be a tradition, even if the driver isn't always drinking (although often is) you can't take a car ride beerless, it is taboo. Which country wins out on the ridiculousness of drinking? well it's tough to say I think South Africa is more ridiculous in its drinking because it is conscious drinking people notice that people are drunk, people notice that beer is being drank awfully early, whereas russia it can hardly be described so, only foreigners seem that it's ridiculous that children are drinking and the cab driver has a 2 liter beer in the front seat, they are so used to it they don't even notice.
While waiting in line at the jo'burg airport i met a guy, we started talking, wound up talking for quite a while and when i told him i'd studied in russia and south africa he said "it's funny you've done that, i was talking with some one the other day and they were telling me that of all the places that offer study abroad programs there are always the same two countries on the bottom of the list as the least attended South Africa and Russia. Now I know for a fact that I am sending this email to about 100 people that can confirm that this means 90 percent of the study abroad students are making a huge mistake.
Years it has taken to finish college: 7
In those 7 years:
Number of Schools attended: 5
Semesters Abroad: 3
Certificates from God: 2
Countries visited: 22
Continents: 4
Approximate hours on buses: 23 days or 552 hours
Friends for life made: countless
One Perfect College Experience

And just to warn you, this is not the last email. I am in London waiting for my mother to arrive and we head off to Russia for two weeks of more craziness, perhaps a second look will give a new perspective, and yes I am gonna drag my mom to the banya. e

Welcome to South Africa...Duck Mother****er

2008-06-04T08:21:00.001-04:00

That is the line from one of the best t-shirts i've seen here, the only picture on the t-shirt is that of an AK 47.

It seemed quite appropriate as I now seem to live in what can best be termed a slightly different conditions. The trouble started in Jo'burg where anti-immigrant violence broke, directed on Somali's Zimbabwe-ans and Mozambique-ans. Then slowly it traveled down the coast to cape town. The source of the violence is poverty- shocker- people frustrated that there are no jobs and focus there hate on the Somalis who often own the local grocery stores in the townships, and the others who compete for jobs. The church across the road is housing immigrants from the townships which is cool, although it is not to say that there isn't anti-immigrant sentiment here, I remember long before this a man approached me crying (at the time i thought he was a particularly adept beggar) claiming to be from kenya and saying how everyone here was so mean to him and he couldn't get a job, no one would give him a chance. I gave him some change and never thought more of it until this. then the other day a homeless guy came to our door complaining about the immigrants, saying they were taking all the jobs. actually one of the more interesting things recently that we discovered, we have a policy never to give money to anyone who comes to the door, sure that sounds kinda cruel, but it came after we did for the first few days and weeks and suddenly every 5 minutes there is someone at your door, it's too much. well there is this one really quite insane fellow who we gave food to once and he has never really stopped coming, he doesn't speak or shout he just holds his hand on the doorbell for about 10 minutes and then leaves, needless to say he is not a fan favorite, also he accused one of my roomates of stealing from him and he carries a knife. Now it's always been kind of a wonder as too why he keeps coming back. well the other day I was coming back from the store and saw him outside the house, not wanting to get involved with this guy i turned around and pretended I was going the other way, Shortly thereafter he passed by and i walked back to the house, on our wall there was a huge piss stain, it turns out he has been ringing the doorbell for 10 minutes at a time then in vengence he pisses on our wall, i guess he just has to use the bathroom.
Suddenly everything fell apart.
Some of our roomates went to the local restaurant which has free internet. It's a really nice restaurant, and it has always seemed out of place in observatory, even more so with so many people sitting there with their laptops. Sure enough two men enter and try and grab the laptops from two girls sitting next to my roomates, then when the girls refused they started hitting the girls, one of the laptops fell and broke, they panicked grabbed one of my roomates purses and the girls laptop and sprinted out of the restaurant. So that was interesting. Luckily no one was severly hurt or had much taken.
Then there was the one yesterday... this one was scary. Jess was on her way to a final around 430 in the afternoon (you should never take a minibus taxi a) alone as a woman b) after 4 c) one with just dudes. But jess was late for a final, didn't want to wait for her friends and went for it.
(just to clarify these are VW vans with a driver and man sitting in the back opening the door and collecting the money, oh and shouting CAAAAAAAAAAAPE TYYOOOOOOOOOOWWWWWWWWWWWWWWNNNNNNNN!!!! to anyone and everyone on the street, often getting out of the car to chase you down just to ask you if you are going to WWYYYYYYYYYYYYYYNNNNNNNNNNBEEEEEERRRRRG which is the other town they call out. but anyway)
jess gets in and immediately things get weird with the money collector
"ah miss we just have to take a detour here to pick up more passengers"
-they toured around the townships, the man collecting the money got sketchier and sketchier "you know dear there are some people who do good things and some who do bad"
- awkward
finally after gassing up the car they continue into a nice area "don't worry sweetie we just have to stop at this factory, don't worry you're safe, I'm not gonna rob and rape ya, ahahahaha"
finally it gets ugly.
he pulls out a knife and demands everything she has "gimme you bank card and pin NOW!!!"
"I don't have it I'm going to a final, why the fuck would I bring it there?" jess by the way is tough
she gives the man her backpack which has nothing, he is still shouting at her and pushing her, and the van is still moving, finally she throws her cell phone at him jumps up to the front seat, the driver stops and she gets out. the van drives off and she finds herself in a nice quiet suburb of capetown, oh and she still has a final to take.

So needless to say things have escalated here. But rest assured in reality these are just a few isolated incidents, on the whole I feel very safe here, alert but safe. Tomorrow marks a week left here before I go to London for a few days, pick up my mother and go to mother russia, I've taken 3 of my "finals", which i wouldn't know whether to classify as really easy or really hard, only grades will tell. Friday is my last final, then some hiking and i'm out of here... well maybe a beer or two.
e

Paradise Park: The White Township

2008-05-23T03:29:00.001-04:00

I have been really lucky this semester to have decided to take astronomy here. My teacher is a world renowned astronomer who should have been a comedian, every class is like stand-up. Actually he just delivered his last lecture at UCT after 30 years of teaching and the entire science faculty was in my astronomy 100 class, some of his old students even flew in to be at his last lecture, he's a legend. But the best part of the astronomy class was that last weekend he took us out on an overnight camping trip to the desert (Karoo) to visit one of the South hemisphere's largest telescopes (number 2 I think) and do some observing in the dark desert sky.
So dumb old me spent the friday night before the trip getting a good amount of sleep, then the next morning I got up packed a light bag including a light sleeping bag and headed to the meeting point. The first thing I noticed was the size of the bags everyone else had, large, "what could these people have for an overnight" after a five hour bus trip we arrived in the Karoo, my first trip to the desert. The first thing I realized was I was drastically underdressed, and the large bags were sleeping bags for the night. Now I assumed that this being a school trip, it would be pretty mellow. I guess that was when I noticed the people boozing and smoking weed, and this 70 year old man just chilling in the midst of it as if it wasn't happening or just didn't care. Now I had prepared myself for 40 degree temps and that was what it was, but I hadn't considered the wind, which was whipping at a cool 40 miles an hour, blowing our tents all over and getting the "feels like" temperature to about 0. I didn't sleep most of the night partially because the stars were amazing and mostly because i was afraid i would lose a digit in the evening.
That was my first "wholesome" weekend, this last weekend Arne and i decided to have another "wholesome" weekend by going out biking along the coast for two days. Of course our first obstacle was that we wanted to leave really early on saturday morning and of course our favorite band was playing on longstreet friday night, well needless to say we wound up staying up til 3 am jumping up and down and dancing until we were exausted.
we awoke exausted at 7:30 the next morning, sure 4 hours is plenty for a 80 kilometer day (sound familiar levi??) We started off strong, nice tailwind, fairly flat road couple of bumps but nothing too bad, and it was gorgeous out. Then we hit the first mountain, a good 25 minute climb followed by a 5 minute decent of equal distance, and then back into the climb. It was some sort of mental and physical torture, there were no flats, just long painful uphills followed by quick downhills and then more long painfull uphills. After each hill Arne and I would simply break into hysterics as we looked over at the next cliff which would include a huge uphill and a huge downhill. after 40 k we could barely move, but we had to make it to the town with the hostel, which was still 40 ka away. Sadly we had started a bit late (we had to drive to the start and only started at noon) so around 4 we were still a bit far away (somebody had to stop and take photos of the baboons too) so we decided that hitchhiking was safer than riding into the night, so we sat down on the side of the road and prepared some sandwiches for the wait. I hadn't even taken the first bite when a van drew up with 4 people on board all of whom seemed a little to giddy to pick us up. "hop on in guys, going to hermanus??" "yeah thanks" "no problem, here have a beer, we've been at a 4x4 rally all day. We'll give you a ride to hermanus but first i promised my girl here a game of pool." ( I think I actually heard Levi laughing at me for this situation) The first thing I noticed about these guys besides the fact that they had been drinking large quantities of alcohol was that they were pure afrikaaners, they had the real accent.
They brought us to this dive bar literally out in the middle of nowhere. I have never felt less comfortable in a bar, perhaps i'm just used to being in the minority now, but the bar was all white, and they all stared at us rather suspiciously. The guys we were with introduced us to everyone, which was even weirder, one of the guys had an addiction to tiger balm, which was a new one for me, he took it and stuck it up his nose, fair enough, the guy was a huge rugby fan, and looked like he could probably crumple arne and i, so when he insisted we try it I found myself sticking tiger balm up my nose and inhaling deeply, I don't know if I got high, but it certainly smelled like eucalyptus for quite some time. The next guy I met really brought out the true character of the bar to light "yeah Fish-haven used to be amazing until the ANC (African National Congress) moved all the kaffirs (derogatory term for Black peopple) oh wait i'm not supposed to use that term anymore- Blacks here to win the election" I was begining to get a little uncomfortable, needless to say. Eventually we headed out, only after the guys decided we were spending the night at their house (our guys were much more tolerant and nice than the rest of the bar crowd). We headed off towards their house, although not before cruising through the townships at about 60 hitting speed bumps sending those of us in the back a solid foot off the ground (just what you need after a long day of riding - to fall on your ass repeatedly). "Now you guys I know you think the van is very nice, but our house is rather plain, you see we live in a township, a white township" Now I've heard it all. we arrive at the house and honestly it was rather nice, i couldn't see the other houses, but this one was nice. well needless to say we stayed up way to late, watching one of the guys' dog do trick, which includes holding a cigarette in his mouth while walking around, and for some reason that I couldn't understand we kept listening to Guns n Roses, (no complaint for me) in particular "Paradise City" which everyone belted out in their drunken own way. eventually arne and I were able to excuse ourselves and crawl into bed. the next morning was rough, real rough, I couldn't move my neck at all from clenching my shoulders on the uphills my head hurt for some reason and my butt was really painful. Arne and I made a quick exit in the morning for fear of being forced back to the bar, we gingerly got on the bikes and I immediately realized what a "White Township" was: a trailer park. And then I realized why the emphasis on paradise city, the name of the park was Paradise Park.
We rode home the full 85k hungover and really unable to put our butts on the bike seats, but triumphant not only in the concept of an amazing ride, but also a ridiculous night with real Afrikaaners (hey it was uncomfortable but it was an interesting side to SA) and the glory of staying in a white township.
e

Kalle Trophy, Township Wedding: How Gangsta is That?

2008-05-23T03:28:00.002-04:00

Well there had been a lot of build up to this past week and weekend. Arne one of my German roomates had recruited us into his Kalle Trophy months ago, We'd been anticipating the Township wedding for weeks and a 50 Cent concert in Cape Town was a must. Let's start with The Kalle Trophy, a time honored German tradition of drinking and walking on Fathers Day (sssshhhhhh no one tell the gemans that May first is actually Worker's Day). Apparently Arne has been running this tradition for 9 years and he was determined to bring it to cape town. We got quite a crew including Gary, the owner of the Corner Bar, we even did a cruise out to the site of the walk a week in advance with Gary (which involved going to pick him up in Mitchel's Plain on the Cape Flats, keep that in mind for later) We settled on Tocai Forest where i went riding earlier this trip.
The day finally arrived, we all gathered at our house (gary and his wife actually slept at the bar the night before so as to be ready- I don't really know why his wife did, but whatever) and one of our female roomates gave us a ride to the forest(for some reason this is an all male event). We had a trailer for our beer as is tradition, ours was our trash can. Needless to say seven guys with sharpie written t-shirts with necklaces of beer cans were a complete success. It was a national holiday, everyone was barbequeing or braai-ing and drinking heavily. We spent our time walking between campfires cooking our own meat and talking to people. It was perfect, the day was beautiful everyone thought that they had never seen anything so silly as a group of Americans Germans and South Africans towing a big trash can full of beer and meat. Then as usual, there was the dancing, you can't seem to go anywhere without a spontaneous dance party, this is why we always bring our german, Flo with us because he can outdance anyone under the sun and then we can just sit back and watch.
It's always a good day when you wake up and put on a pinstripe suit, and that saturday was one of those days. Arne and I decided to rent suits for the occasion, and if you are gonna rent suits you might as well go pinstripes. we show up at the meeting place painfully overdessed (or in our opinion, spectacular) and head to the township. This was an amazing experience, I can't stress enough how amazing the energy at this wedding was unbelievable. We arrived at her house and the singing and dancing was in full effect, dozens of women in full color african dress chanting and singing grabbing us and pulling us into the circles. After the bride came out of the house in a beautiful home made dress the procession sang their way to the church which if was in the US rather resembled a VFW hall. But this was more of a church than any I've ever been in, the wedding party danced down the aisle to Xhosa songs and the marriage was performed by a "fire and brimstone" priest who did more scolding and warnings about South African society (he at one point screamed that the devil was present during the ceremony, it got eerily creepy when he would switch into Xhosa) than commending the couple. Then Lindiwe (the bride and our house manager) was given a new name and they were pronounced man and wife. Then came the more unexpected aspect of the wedding, the reception. We were under the impression that there would be a braai at Lindiwe's house and there would be a party all night, but actually we went to a school gymnasium where there was an eloquent reception which you would all recognize as a belonging in a wedding, well except once again for the group songs and spontaneous dancing. The African touch?? we sat in two informal sittings where when you were done you got up and someone else took your seat, this created an really cool mix, we got to meet lots of people. I think the only way that I can explain the energy of this event was that in the initial trip to the church one of the few cars that were going accidentally ran over and killed the neighbors puppy, (gruesome I know) but there was no stopping of singing or anything there was too much excitement for the occasion, even the owner seemed not too mind.
We had to leave early though, we had a concert to go to, a fifty cent concert no less on the cape flats. Perfect. It was not as wild as we would have liked though, we thought for sure the scene would be really exciting even though none of us really like the music. Instead it was rather not full, but there were some rather amusing moments watching 50 cent try and act gangster in a city that certainly held some tougher men than him. My favorite moment was when he brought up a group of what appeared to be small children up on the stage made a couple of comments about children being the future or something then asked one of the girls how old she was. "22" she replied and fifty was rendered speechless. Then he tried to play a dangerous game, Guess-Where-That-Guy-In-The-Audience-Is_From. "I've been all over Africa and I can tell where guys are from, that guy is from Angola!!" Nope, South African care to try again fifty? "Well that guy in the grey definitely is" nope Mozambique. It got quite amusing, also at the end of every song he played a gunshot sound, the first few times you saw quite a few people jump, but eventually they realized what was going on.
Recently Gary burnt us two of his favorite movies, we had let them sit about for a while not thinking about them until the day after the fifty cent concert when we decided to put one in. It wasn't a movie it was a documentary about Polsmore Prison, the prison located just outside of town (right next to the US Consulate) and the gangs that call it home. Disturbing and scary. The first scene was of the inmates being strip searched on entry to the prison, each man was made to squat before entry so as to make sure that they aren't carrying drugs and according to the head warden "to prepare them for being raped" Then we met some of the "Numbers" most of whom had come in for just a few years but were now in for life "they prefer here to the outside". Then they travelled out to the Cape Flats where the majority of the gang members come from (indeed the gang is now also an outside of prison gang) They interviewed the Americans which is a gang on the flats complete with there own "White house" where they smoke Tik or Meth. They are the most powerful game on the Cape and have thousands of members, and they are aligned with the Numbers. Then the documentary went back into the prison where the warden discussed the way the prison was broken down, this was perhaps the most bizarre part, they label half the prison "for gangsters only" literally the signs on the walls say gangster section. They might as well say "numbers hangout". He then acknowledged that they don't attempt to stop drugs, rape or fighting/ murder, they just try to keep them from overpowering the guards who they outnumber 100 to 1. well I feel safe just a few k from the prison. Well at least I live in Obz, not near where these gangs hang out.
The next day Tom ran into Gary and told him how fascinated we were with his documentary. "Oh yeah isn't it crazy, there are so many of the Number's that hang out in Obz. They love to go out to the bars here." Perfect, stay away from the tatooed guys in the corners of bars. e

Mustaches, Bikes and Books

2008-05-03T02:19:00.000-04:00

so what has it been two weeks?? It has been an interesting 2 weeks I guess the place to start is the mustache party, i swear i'd never even been to a theme party until i came here, no every week i seem to have to do something to my hair or dress. I can't grow a mustache, lets just put that out there to begin with, luckily neither can most in only a weeks time, so i would say there were about 100 heavily mascara clad mustaches at this party. It was a great party, they even managed to get an American Classic, a keg. unfortunately there was no yard at this house so the party just slowly poured out onto the street until it was something of a block party, that is when the five cop cars came and broke up the party, thats right in one of the most dangerous countries in the world the police have nothing better to do than break up mustache parties (i love the thought of them getting back to the station and telling the others "you would not believe the party we just broke up!!") Luckily the house was just a stones through from The Corner Bar. Now I think i might have mentioned this place once or twice, but i can only say that i might have created a monster. It was the same bar we had the birthday party at where i baked the cat cake, and yeah i've become rather close with the owner (i currently have a tab there for making his 14 year old daughter a cake for her birthday, heart shaped for chris brown, who apparently is a musician). But now I can hardly go out without someone saying "ell we've got to go to the corner bar i've never been and i hear the samoosas are incredible (true this family run bar boasts some of the best food around)" so needless to say, when the party was busted we went to the corner bar. Anyway in the morning we got up for our group trip to Robben Island. We happened to go on one of the roughest days of the year, perfect after a mustache party. The whole tour I was just walking around in a group and i could never figure out why I felt so awkward, then after taking a couple of pictures around the island I realized I still had my handlebar mascara mustache. perfect. besides this the trip to Robben Island was excellent, they have an ingenious concept of giving you two tour guides one a former Pan African Congress prisoner and then a African National Congress prisoner, it was awesome, and the island itself was beautiful, the view of cape town was spectacular.
The next day Jorn my dear Norwegian friend borrowed some bikes from another group of our south African friends (this is becoming a habit) and went on an all day bike ride through cape town to cape point. well you can't win them all, about mid way out one of the bikes broke, so we're stuck about an hour from cape town with two rather large bicycles, luckily the ticket salesmen for the trains said for a mere dollar more we could take our bikes on the train, the only problem with this was that this information was not known to anyone else working in the station, so at every new entrance we were told that we couldn't take the bikes on the train, followed by that person going back to the ticket counter to find out, this happened about 4 times before we were allowed to get on the train. The best part was when we finally get the bikes on board and one of the passengers leans over and says "are you allowed to bring bikes on board?"
Now on a sad and disturbing note, there have been many violent crimes in and around campus lately, firstly there was an armed robbery on the campus last saturday, where the end result was a shootout with the campus security, however there was no injuries. Then much more tragically on monday one of the professors here was murdered outside his house as he was backing his car out to let his wife into the garage, two men tried to take his car and apparently there was a problem. This is the second such incident at UCT this year. Also one of our study abroad students was in an altercation the other night where he wound up stabbed by a screwdriver. He was fine luckily but this is one of many robberies that I know of, I've been lucky so far though.
But I won't end on such a sad note.
The other day I was thinking that perhaps I hadn't really set the scene of what it is like here at least academically. We've all been trying to really figure out how to describe what the school here is like. It's not really like school, you go to lectures you learn nothing, we've been going to the lectures for 3 months now and none of us can even come up with what kind of questions they might ask on the finals. No one has a clue in any of my classes, then someone the other day asked whether the lectures were really based around the finals and the teacher said "no, it's all just based on the packets, lectures are just to pull things together if you're confused" makes sense, why would you have classes that taught you anything. So we've taken to calling this semester abroad as an academic decathalon, here are the ten obstacles that you must overcome to pass this semester:
1. Classes that are in no way based around your 2 hour final worth 50 percent of your grade
2. Having only 250mb per month of internet at UCT after that you're cut off and must use an internet cafe
3. Blackouts twice a week on campus during school hours
4. blackouts twice a week at your home at night (really makes procrastinating a thing of the past you've never heard so many people say "oh I can't tonight I have to write a paper due 2 days from now in case there is a blackout")
5. You can't buy the books you need on campus or at any specific store in capetown, but the library only has one copy of each on 2 hour loan, tough luck come essay time, oh and amazon won't ship or sell to South Africa
6. The campus printing facilities often go out for weeks at a time (yes for some unknown reason an entire campus of printers is connected)
7. you can't bring coffee (or for that matter anything) into the library (this one might be my least favorite)
8. They have taken the top 25 points off the grade scale so passing is 50-75 so you never really know what you are getting in a class, I mean really what is a 67??
9. Every Thursday and friday there is either a concert, dance competition, drum session or some sort of school sanctioned event right in the middle of campus so that no class room is without noise pollution
10. and my favorite this coming long weekend before most everyones big papers are due and your tests are approaching they have decided to close the library for 6 days in a row followed by a monday with a power outage, luckily they have advertised this in a small corner of the library where i happened to pass on my way to take out a book for 2 hours.
e

A Couple of bike rides my parents would disapprove of

2008-04-15T10:24:00.000-04:00

So one of the best parts of our mozambique trip is that I now have a lot of new south african friends, in particular ones who like to hike and bike, perfect i'll get to check out some really cool places around here that aren't in the guidebooks. So one thursday I agreed to go with my friend nick mountain biking, he had a friend who could lend me a bike. we met at school, he had told me he could give me a ride to the trail, I niavely thought he meant that he had a car. we walk through the parking lot to of course... a 1970 motorcycle "ugh nick i'm not riding on the back of this" "com'on of course you are, why wouldn't you??" "ah because I've never ridden a motorbike before and i think they're crazy" "oh don't worry it's easy just keep your wait centered" "what happens if i don't keep my weight centered" "we crash silly" perfect. next thing i know i'm on the back of this thing flying through capetown with an iron grip on nicks shoulders begging to be allowed to walk. we were successful in getting to nicks house where there was of course his car. needless to say i insisted on taking the car after that.
We get to the trail head meet up with Nick's friend Rob, who had the bike for me, he pulls out this aging bike that looks well, rather fragile, but i am so excited to go biking that I hop right on, then the next bit of bad news hits "ugh dude we forgot your helmet, that's okay right" perfect, before i can really contemplate that ridiculous concept, i discover that the brakes are reversed meaning that the brake lever i am instinctively used to gripping in an emergency is no longer the rear brake but the first break. well no big deal we're just going to climb a mountain and then descend, on the way up i won't need brakes or a helmet and on the way down I would just go slow and cautious.
now it has been a while since i've mountain biked, and heading straight up a mountain is probably not the easiest way to "get back into it" but after 1 and a half torturous hours of climbing through the most amazing scenery overlooking cape town we finally made it to the down hill, at this point i could barely feel my legs and i was feeling like I might have sweated out every ounce of liquid out of my body, but i had made it. now the downhill, then i can go and rehydrate. well easier said than done, i guess it is obvious to anyone else that an hour and a half of climbing is not a quick descent. But i was up for the challenge, thinking it would be mainly fire roads, well that was silly, this is Africa after all. I quickly realize that it is a really tight singletrack (just think shoulder to shoulder) and that every fifty meters or so there is a rather large jump or drop. what more could i ask for if i had a helmet and functioning breaks that weren't reversed. my parents would have been rather proud seeing how cautiously I went down the mountain, i even got off and walked to the laughter of the others. But it was amazing can't wait to do it again, perhaps with a helmet though.
Besides that things here in SA have been rather quiet, we went to a jungle themed party which was an excuse to buy some traditional dress shirts, we've been in the middle of some really creepy minibus territory wars including one where our driver hit one of the rival minibus money collectors (they are always leaving the car running around the street trying to get you to go to a area called "wynberg" which I can only imagine what it is like) but instead of apologizing or even just moving on he gets out of the van and runs screaming after him, perhaps the funniest part of this was that as he got out of the drivers seat he dropped his bottle of booze on the ground in front of him. then the other day one of our housemates Perris was almost arrested while in a taxi that turned out to be smuggling drugs. oh and perhaps the best part of the week was when I got ready to make my triumphant return to the Russian empire. I go to the consulate at 2:30 knowing they close at 5 thinking to myself what perfect timing this was. I go up to the consulate and open the door, the receptionist behind the desk looks at me like i just slapped her in the face or something, I try to recover with a smile, "hi I'm here to apply for a visa" "no" "okay why not" "we're closed" of course "what time do you reopen?" naively thinking that it was lunch break "tomorrow" "okay could i just leave my application and everything here?" "no! you come back tomorrow" well that makes sense, should be a fun trip to russia! ellski

Mozambique: Guns, Hoes, and Books

2008-04-15T10:22:00.000-04:00

First things first let's set the scene for my fall break here in Africa:
The Legend of Sean
When we first arrived here in Cape Town in January, there were several people constantly in and out of our house who seemed to be working for the landlord, but one guy in particular caught our attention. this guy sean seemed to have absolutely no responsibilities, we really only saw him at social events (i.e. the bar), then one day we went with the landlords company to go hiking, perhaps you remember, the caves. Well we were all introducing ourselves, most people were going to UCT, but then one girl was just like "oh hi I'm kate, I'm sean's intern" This guy has an intern??? So then we begin to wonder even more about sean, eventually it comes out that he owns the houses we rent. fair enough, he's 28 a college dropout and owns 6 houses, good for him, then we later find out that he owns a scuba diving school and a company that provides Americans internships in cape town. fantastic, really cool guy, successful, good for him, but then one day we find out the real kicker: he lives with his parents!!! Perfect. so needless to say when we find out that he is running a trip to mozambique and swaziland in a big bus (and not one of those ridiculous overland oversized SUV's) with 50 american, german, norweigan, south african and french students and interns it was love at first sight tom and I were bound to go.
The Trip:
the first thing i can say about this trip was I should have looked more closely at the tickets that tom bought us for johannesburg, 1-Time Airlines is not something I would have gone for looking back on it. We get to the airport in Capetown, and we are supposed to be in jo'burg by 11 at night which means our flight needs to leave at 8:30 latest, luckily we booked one at 745, no biggie. well one thing that no one tells you about the cape town airport until you get there is that it works on a rotational basis, now i have absolutely no idea what that means but I rather imagine that all the pilots are in the back room somewhere playing cards and whoever wins each round gets to go and takeoff. well let me just say that the 1-time pilot doesn't have much of a poker face because we were a solid 2 and a half hours late taking off, watching other flights to jo'burg leave only slightly late because there pilots got better hands. we finally arrive and meet up with the group, let the vacation begin.
should have known from the start what kind of crazy ride this was going to be, an all night bus ride to maputo the capitol of mozambique?? we get on the bus and the first thing i notice is there is one thing definitely missing, a bathroom. "Okay everybody welcome to the moz trip 2008, now we don't have a bathroom on this bus, so everyone has one emergency piss stop for the trip, and other than that you must have a group of five guys or 3 girls to stop the bus." "the sean" has spoken and the rules are in place. we soon learn from the first stop what is meant by a pee stop, a pull over on the side of an african highway, peeing into the tall grass. it was about 4 in the morning when we came upon our first incident, ever seen one of those awnings for cars to pull under to keep cool??? well we accidentally backed into one of those (mind you we did have 2 professional drivers just to clarify) but that wasn't really a big deal, however when we drove forward it actually ripped the entire back window out. an interesting turn of events to say the least. we went with the quick fix option of putting about 4 surfboards against the hole to block most of the air coming in, but for the rest of the trip we had to fully unload the bus each stop as we had real trouble locking the doors after that.
That morning we arrived at the mozambique border, where we had been warned of having to wait for several hours at the border. what was not really described for us was what the mozambique border would be like, in fact i don't know if it is possible to describe it, I think one of the more interesting aspects about it was that whereas we had been on paved roads the entire time and indeed would be as soon as we got a bit past the border, the crossing itself was totally dirt, I had never seen so many interesting things crossing a border either, a man walking a cow across (actually there was quite a few of those), people pushing cars across, trucks chock full of fresh spices and herbs, what else. it was about this time that we were told we physically had to leave the bus and leave south Africa (i.e. paperwork) and walk to mozambique (i.e. paperwork) and that then we could reboard the bus. well after making our way through a maze of abandoned cars, alleyways between shacks and numerous trash heaps (funny enough there were no signs of any kind here) we arrived at a rather large shed, or perhaps garage is more appropriate, where we waited for about 2 hours for the visas to be filed (in a filing cabinet, don't think for a second about computers). finally we get back on pavement, pass the no-mans land between the official border between the two countries (I now being a connoisseur of razor wire and security must say they really do a fine job there, and the landmines are really a nice addition, they really tie the border together) AND WE ARE IN MOZAMBIQUE!!!!! just another short 6 hours on the bus and we're ... oh wait i nearly forgot there was another incident, someone i won't name names because it is rather embarrassingly dumb really had to pee, and boy when the next pee break come, he just hopped out of the bus and ran to relieve himself, he thought he felt some thing strange but his mind was rather on other pressing matters, when he finally looked to see why his foot rather hurt he realized he had cut it on a broken bottle grass. boy am i glad i'm not that guy, not only did he have to deal with the cut, but everyone kept coming up to him and saying "boy ell you'd better keep that cut clean, last year i had one on the trip and my foot swelled up to the size of a football." or "I think i'm gonna call you a doctor for that cut when we get to maputo, don't want to take any risks" just what i wanted to hear. so foot elevated (it really in the end was a very minor cut) we arrived in the capitol city, Maputo. The first thing I noticed about Maputo besides how sketchy and interesting it was, was that literally every single street was named after a communist socialist or at least far left ruler, president, revolutionary or dictator. Mao road intersected engels ave, frelimo (the leftist ruling party in Mozambique) drive with lenin lane etc. that night we went to a brazilian bar for dinner and drinks, the most interesting thing about this bar was that they were soccer freaks "ellery, there is nothing strange about a brazilian bar being really into soccer, it's there national pastime, if they weren't it would be weird" true, you are right about that, but what was weird was that they were huge ITALIAN soccer fans, everywhere were flags of Serie A and the national team. The next day we went around the city in our windowless bus, stopping in the market, where i was talked into buying many silly things i don't need by a lot of "friends" who gave me a "special price". then we went to the very famous Maputo fish market where you go through the market and buy a fish of your liking and then go to the restaurant where they cook it for you, it was amazing, so fresh and delicious, maybe the best fish i've ever eaten, but i was going to be saying that quite a bit on this trip.one thing that was new to me at these hostels we stayed at was the mosquito netting, i don't know if you've ever slept in mosquito netting but it is one of the most frustrating things, it's always caught somewhere, or a limb of yours has found it's way out and is eaten alive by morning, i think i'll be getting malaria anyday now. It was decided at some point that it would be much better to once again drive a midnight bus trip to get one more day in tofo (amusingly pronounced tofu) it was grueling but worth it we drove all night, where tom and i discovered the art of sleeping in the aisles of the bus, for maximum comfort, which tom very rightly described as "similar to when george costanza sleeps under his desk at work." when we got to tofo we checked into our thatched huts and headed to the bathwater that is the indian ocean, nothing quite as refreshing after an all day bus ride than a sunset dip.
About our hostel at tofo:
there were several amusing points about it, the saltwater was clearer than the rest of the water which was a rather gross brown color, the bar called bamboozi had literally no money the entire time we were there, even with 50 students giving them money all day and night they seemed to never have any change, so they created their own currency, bamboozi bucks, which was just a scrap of paper that had a number written on it, as in the amount owed to you and a signature, i think this is how currency actually started out isn't it? As I said they had disgusting brown water here, probably with cholera already mixed in (there had been a typhoon a few weeks ago which had flooded the place creating a bit of an outbreak) but the bar, the only food supply within 15 minute walk down the beach, had no water, the first day they had about 25 bottles, then 2 days later they got about 40 more, but these were both gone within a matter of hours. besides that small inconvenience it was heaven, a small town within walking distance on the beach where you could go to get amazing street food, like fresh fish, barracuda samosas, or to barter your shorts for some wood carvings. one of seans employees took me and a couple others to go get our hair braided outside of town, away from the common scene, into the real thatched huts, and we spent the day with these wonderful people who braided our hair for about 2 dollars apiece (they made custom pants for 6). by the fourth morning it had become apparent that I was either the worlds greatest mosquito attractor or I had bed bugs, genetically mutated unstoppable bedbugs, and judging from the mattress i was sleeping on it seemed the latter was the most logical. I'd never had bed bugs, so it was kind of a new and exciting if not disgusting experience.
After 5 days well spent on the beaches and village of tofo, we left again at 1am for Swaziland, which luckily was only a cool 12 hours away, did i mention that for all of these bus rides, there were no food stops, we might hit a convenience store if you were lucky but for the most part it was just pee stops on the side of the highway. now i did say it was just a cool 12 hours, but our bus was quickly dying, to get to tofo we had had to off road for about a half hour, which is not easy in a greyhound. in swazi we were simply crawling up hills slower than cyclists, and then when we finally got to the town 17 hours later we had to take the bus down a road which can only be described as not a road. but we made it to paradise number two. We were only in swaziland for a day and a half but it was possibly even more amazing than tofo, we went on a safari, we went off roading in something other than a bus, there were bonfires, and nick (sean's friend who had taken me for the braids) and myself snuck off and found a genuine swazi village, not like the one they offer you as a tour, and we hung out there with the people for quite a while, the food here was also some of the best of the trip, amazing beef stew, wonderful chicken, and traditional swazi gruel, which is the wrong word but the right one escapes me, for breakfast. finally it all came to an end as we cruised back to jo'burg in our windowless, squeaking, bathroomless bus and flew 1-time back to Cape Town. perfect. el
oh and the title??? the mozambique flag's crest is a cross of a hoe and a ak-47 with a book behind it. what could be more appropriate.

Burning Afrika and The World's Largest Bike Race

2008-03-11T02:51:00.001-04:00

Normally I would think it would be difficult to top our last weekend, renting out a bar, having a wonderful cookout with international students, but on friday Arne (one of the germans) and I had an incident that somehow gave us a feeling that the weekend would be even more interesting. We were simply stopping to ring our friends doorbell and see if they wanted to go to the grocery store (always travel in groups), when we suddenly heard what sounded like a bird being beheaded, suddenly a man came out of an alleyway with a huge crow writhing in his hands, he simply walked by and said "how's it going fellas". Needless to say we fell into hysterics, it was a sign of things to come. Friday was just a simple friday, and so was saturday to be, I had volunteered to get up at 5am to be worker at the world's largest bike race, over 35000 people race 109 km all day long. So the good money would be on going to bed early. That would be a really smart move, so I went to a pool party at one of our friends houses. Simple enough, I was actually on my way out, heading to bed like the responsible person I am. Suddenly one of our South Africans friends came in and said "hey guys you ever heard of burning man???"
"yeah of course, i've always wanted to see that"
"oh man well SA has it's own version, a little smaller but it is tonight!!!"
"no I can't I have to get up early for The cape Argus [the bike race]"
"you riding it??"
"no just have to volunteer"
"oh you'll be fine then"
this is where i should have inserted a really assertive "no" and walked out the door. I didn't so a few hours later I found myself on the way to a eco village i.e. where hippies go to die in the middle of no where outside cape town. Afrika Burning was the name of it and they hope to have it every year. It was of course just as silly as you could imagine, costumes, fire, bands, drunk people, people who seemed to be under the influence of something quite different, perhaps TIK- South Africa's equivilant of crack. We immediately found a room that looks like where the seances would later go down, but in the corner we found huge sheet costumes, now in the US we would probably just make sheet ghosts, these however were 3 huge zebras, which we proceeded to take out to the dance-lawn, we were but another animal on the range out there though. people with giraffe hats, leopard outfits, wild dogs running about, and of course what would a crazy party out in the woods be without a man doing an interpretive dance in a speedo. They burned 2 men that evening one at 1 and one at 3 both were seperated by fire twirlers (??? I don't know what else to call them) The burning itself was quite wild (who would have thought a 20 foot bonfire would get that hot) although we all felt it got a little uncomfortable at the end when the remains of the man burning seemed to take the shape of a burning cross. I got home at about 330 (interestingly enough i would say the hardest and most frustrating aspect of Cape Town is how difficult it is to get a cab, many a trip has been foiled by this.). perfect just an hour and a half before the car comes to pick me up.
Well at least I will be doing something the whole time, I'll be so busy that i won't even feel my tiredness. that was a mistaken notion. I was very lucky I was at the end of the 100k race so i had to sit in the dark until about 7:30 with nothing to do, but unable to sleep because I was a volunteer. But it was fun, especially for a bike geek like me, watching not only the first group to go by, the real racers, where you simply saw a blur, and then interestingly enough about 200 cars- the team cars and media almost outnumber the riders. Then though came the 34,900 slower riders who were much more entertaining. some were fast, some slow, some in costumes (apparently they came right from burning man too!). My job was simple wave a flag and warn the riders about the cliff upcoming and try not to lose too many over it. I was in heaven, well except for the no sleep thing, just checking out bikes and cheering people on, for which they would always say "Thank You Marshall" which is what I was, but somehow in a south African accent it sounds very cool. Well so eventually around 2 I was brought home. Perfect now i can take that nap, I was making a goodnight sandwich (for some reason there was no food available at a bike race) when the final insult hit me. We had been planning on going to another concert in the botanical gardens, which is about the coolest thing in the world, but this week the band was a really famous cape town band and sold out in 2 hours.
"hey ell, guess what? Goldie and Perris don't want to go to Goldfish tonight!! Now we can go"
[to finish this story with "no i think I am going to go to bed", stop reading here and close the email and just think of how nice that sleep was for me] or [to finish this story with "sure I'll go, when is the next time i'll be able to see goldfish a kirstenbosch gardens" continue reading]
Boy I am glad I went, one thing about the music here is it always suprises me at fitting into no catagory i could make up, this was 2 guys with a saxaphone and a dj booth, making a mix of techno and jazz and soul, and every few minutes a new person would be added for different vocals or to add percussion. Although it sounds gross, i can't think of one person right now reading this email right now after reading that description that is thinking "oh I think i'd like that" but you probably all would- keep in mind that the crowd at the kirstenbosch gardens is an amazing mix of ages. I'll bring it home for those of you interested. oh and i finally went to bed at 8pm that evening. goodnight. ell

Mayo, Cat Cake and International Bonding

2008-03-06T02:52:00.000-05:00

Okay I think I've finally got some interesting stories/observations for you. One of my favorite new facts i've learned about our area here is about the minibuses, the volkswagen vans that serve as public transportation. Apparently they are all run by organized crime, in fact when the University of Capetown decided to get their own shuttle service (after 5 minibus drivers were shot execution style, and they decided it might be a liability to have school kids riding the minis) they had to have a sit down with the minibus people and agree not to use the main road through town, because it would cut down on the revenue of the VW's. perfect right?? that is until one of the campus shuttles had to take a detour on the main road and one of the minibus drivers got on the bus and threatened the driver with a gun. so that's interesting. Another thing that might be reminiscent of my russia emails for you is... MORE GODDAMNED MAYO. I hate mayonaise (i can't even spell it) and it is on everything, chicken sandwich??? nope think more 2 parts mayo i part shredded chicken. But on the bright side, the school campus (apart from being covered in ivy, and therefore my first Ivy league school) is like street food heaven, everyday i have either Indian, Felafel, chinese, Mayo sandwich, fastfood or African. oh and everyone is barefoot all the time here, grocery store, classroom, restaurant, where ever whenever.
But on to my week, well it was as usual here pretty school based, lots of class, occasional moments of goofing off. It wasn't until friday that i got any real cultural experiences, when we were invited by our landlord to her house in Nyanga, the biggest township in Cape Town for a braai, it was once again just perfect, every trip out to the townships is a real eyeopener. It's not so much the poverty and the dirtyness, it is the happiness and friendliness of the people, everyone is genuine and ready to smile (as opposed to myself who as a waiter is fake and always ready to smile) We had an amazing time, my favorite occurence which keeps happening to me is that people ask me why I'm not doing shawco (a volunteer program to teach little kids) I always answer that a0 i'm doing habitat for humanity b) I'm not very good with kids and c) who would possibly want me being a role model to small children. And always without fail about 20 minutes after saying this I am in the middle of a group of kids with several of them hanging off me, or starting games of chicken with all the kids. This was no exception, and of course as the chairman of the South Africa for Barack Obama i got every kid (most of whom don't speak english) chanting "Yes we can". obviously, but to explain my blatant obnoxious american traits, I had been discussing this with some of the parents and they at least understood it and supported it, and the kids loved it- hey i figure for your first english phrase "yes we can" is pretty good.
Saturday was our big day though, we had been planning this 21st birthday party for 2 weeks, I even made another of my patented shaped cakes, actually this one might have been the best one yet, a huge cat, big enough to serve 35 people with some to spare. we rented out the corner bar (from Gary the South African Republican, who voted for the nationalists) had a huge braai (with 4 different kinds of salads all featuring my favorite condiment...MAYO) Lamb Chicken Sausage all of 3 dollars a head. it was amazing. we invited a whole bunch of kids from the orientation so it wasn't just americans, we had Tanzanians, Ugandans, South Africans, Norweigans, Germans, Denmark-ians and even a Frenchie. It was a really good mix, which is good because who wants to go 10,000 miles away and spend all their time with people from an hour down the road. Also I can now actually not walk across campus (barefoot) without wondering into about 10 people i know, who would have thought, I was popular all this time , I was just on the wrong continent. e

Security Breach or Another Window Story

2008-03-06T02:51:00.000-05:00

Well it was bound to happen, in Florence it was a girl sleep walking her way out a third floor window, in St. Petersburg it was Jarrod having been overserved out a third story window, and nearly a month into my third semester abroad I once again have a window story. Thankfully not my own. In one of the houses
down the street full of Americans, a girl awoke during the night to find a robber trying to escape from her second floor window. Amazingly, instead of running screaming out the door as i think i would have, she actually got up and pushed the man out the window onto the ground. Needless to say it has caused quite a flustering of the Americans, nothing much was taken, just one guys camera, cellphone and some money- he had left his room unlocked and had fallen asleep on the couch downstairs. The robber apparently was fine, just landed in the grass dusted himself off and left. What i find to be the most interesting about all this is our own reaction when we went to there house a few days later, we couldn't believe how little security there was!! we kept saying things like "look how little razor wire there is" or "well of course they should never have left a window open at night that didn't have bars on it, even if it was the second floor!!" We've become like security junkies, the other day i found myself really admiring someones house for it's over the top razor-wiring, "just imagine how safe you would be in there!".

Another discovery i'm making here, quite slowly is that this country may not be quite as liberal as i believed. I have met quite a few coloured or black South Africans who a) did not vote for Nelson Mandela b) continue to not vote for the ANC c) really miss aparthied. all of which i find strange, now granted this country has become poorer since 1994, but I find it hard to believe that many black South Africans wouldn't vote for Mandela, but i guess that is just a preconcieved notion i brought here. There is also still a very big racial divide here, many of our orientation leaders talked about the fact that for the most part the only whites that hang out with the black Africans are international students. "everyone else, yes we go to class with them and go to discussions with them, maybe even the sports clubs, but besides that we don't hang out together, that's why we love the international students, they don't care, they want to meet everyone." I thought that was nice.

Saturday I tried to climb table mountain again (I like to hike, and boy is this a hike) however although the forecast was for 80 calm and clear in cape town, that in no way means that table mountain will follow those guidelines. The mountain was angry that day!! We got about 3/4 of the way up in approximately 110 km/hour winds and stinging rain before it became clear that the girl who i was climbing with was likely to be blown right off the mountain, or at least into the barbed wire guard rails (it was blowing me around pretty badly as well, we had to get shelter behind rocks). so we turned back vowing to go again this saturday.

Besides that not too much has been going on, I go to school, friday we are hoping to go to a rugby match and watch the Cape Town team play, the Stormers, then saturday we are renting out our local bar (and by renting out i mean he's just letting us have a room to our selves) for one of our roomates 21st birthday party, and we are going to braai- which is the SA version of barbequeing, except with all sorts of meats i've never heard of, but the salads are exactly the same, Gary the bartender was very pleased to offer us a variety of them "okay my wife will make 3 salads, a spaghetti salad, a bean salad and a green salad" something i took for being so American turns out is also very popular here.
Here's another food highlight for you, we've been introduced to the Chip Roll, what could that possibly be you ask?? how about french fies in a bun... nope thats it, just fries in a bun, sometimes if you're lucky they'll put some sort of sauce on it, but mostly it is just a chip sandwich. It's certainly not very atkins friendly, but it is rather popular. e

The Garden Route, German style!!!

2008-02-18T09:18:00.000-05:00

I don't think i really need to tell you what a roadtrip with 8 college kids is like, but when you factor in a mercedes benz, a german at the helm (he kept saying things like "in my country we don't have speed limits" as an excuse for doing 120 in a 60) and when you keep in mind we're driving on the left hand side of the road, while trying to spot baboons... yeah it got wild. but we only drove into oncoming traffic once, and hit nothing. The Garden route is a very famous and picturesque road along the coast of south Africa, picture the amalfi drive but with wildlife parks and instead of crazy italian drivers honking at you for going to slow, it's laid back South Africans honking at you because the crazy german you put in charge keeps trying to pass 3 and 4 tractor trailers at a time. One of the first things we noticed about our adventure was that we gambled wrong, we didn't bring any music thinking that the SA radio was going to be the 8th wonder of the world, full of reggae, crazy drum driven world rock and perhaps some African Hip-hop. Why would anyone ever think that?!?! Soft rock, channel after channel of soft rock, current pop hits that even 6 21 year old college girls couldn't stand. "and here is another mariah carey hit, followed by celine dion and the newest diddy from gloria estefan" and that was when we heard music, most of the time I was just scrolling through static. But when that one Bob Marley song came on, boy did we blast it. It was awesome to be on the road in africa, even if it was a Pop Safari. our first destination was to a town that's claim to fame is that you can ride the ostritches, we pasted hundreds of these farms, offering ostritch rides tours, burgers and weddings (!?!?!?!!???). Unfortunately ostritch riding is a tempermental sport, it had rained one day in the last month and therefore the ground was too slippery to strap a human to a walking bird. So we piled in the bus and continued (soundtrack: softrock and romantic power ballads). We instead went to the zoo, i mean hey, it's no safari but we were desperate to do something, it was very fun, several people actually petted the cheetahs and tiger cubs (i had just eaten a rather large amount of biltong- or South African beef jerky- and thought it best to abstain from getting in a cage with man eating cubs). Then we got back in the car (soundtrack, yanni i think) and headed to the hostel in a town called Wilderness (judging from our night there you probably don't need the -er in the name wildness would be fine) The Hostel was awesome, right on the beach, bar on the hill, family run, there were only two bad things about it, totally disorganized (they overbooked two nights in a row, i slept on the floor twice) and run by a group of guys who seemed to like nothing more than antagonizing one of our travelling buddies (he had never dealt with anti-american sentiment, and he stayed up most of the night sitting round a fire of white South Africans getting lectured about our horrible government, he hates it two, but it gets old when you get tag teamed for several hours). The next day it was bungy jump, the world's highest, I refrained from doing it, something about hanging on my head for 15 minutes after being bounced on my head for 30 seconds. However if I had known that it was going to be 5 hour ordeal I would have, by the time we were out of there and back in the bus the sun was setting and the day was over (soundtrack: annoying techno) we returned to wilderness ate some more ostritch (i had ostritch alfredo... yep you read that right). the next day we had to head back, as bad as the music had been so far, we realized we had made an even bigger blunder it was valentines day, we spent the rest of the ride listening to the most excruciatingly bad music until we landed back in capetown where we all decided, NO MORE LYRICS and turned on the classical channel as we cruised into the townships by accident (that was rather surreal). The trip ended with the most amazing fish and chips on the shore (a staple here) and more classical as we highwayed back to the rent-a-car center.

And that essentially was the end of our vacation, we finally went to school for the first time on friday and today. The classes seem not overly challenging, but not overly easy. We are actually in the university (most of my previous experiences with study abroad have been with teachers piped in just for americans) and although if you happen to be taking a class with the word Africa in it it is most likely Americans, luckily i'm taking astronomy where i seem to be the only american. This weekend we went to two concerts, one of the bands reminded me of jethro tull (must have been the flute). Then yesterday me 1 german and the other American guy climbed Table Mountain, which had been touted as "a nice easy climb, with one tough and steep part at the end" so we decided to go around 9 in the morning, which would have been the perfect time, if the cabby who has been driving cabs for 20 years knew how to get to the number one tourist attraction in capetown, the mountain. Instead he just said "oh we'll just go into the center and ask someone" 1.5 hours later we made it to the base of the mountain. "!##$#$@!!! That's a steep mountain!" 2 hours of rock steps later we made it to the top, there was no joy, I'm a fairly good hiker, I mean hell I walked across spain, but all three of us and the three we met up with were crying by the top, and stopping every 3 minutes. our only joy was joking about the way Arne (the german) called the gorge a "george" and was constantly misinterpretting our talking about the Endorphin rush we would get at the top by asking "hey guys what is this Dolphin rush at the top?" We get to the top, have a meal, only to be informed via text that the group going to that nights concert at a Botanical gardens leaves in an hour and a half. Well only one thing to do as we see the table cloth set (the tablecloth is the cloud cover that naturally appears over the mountain, it really is incredible , a low level cloud flys over the mountain and disappears as it falls off the cliff into the warmer air- or at least it's something scientific like that) "time for us to run down the mountain while it is completely foggy!!" Safe, very safe. we made it though and we were relaxing at the kirstenbosch gardens just an hour later (it might have been the most sophisticated thing i've done to date, I felt that we even lacked one of those woven twig picnic baskets) listening to a Ska reggae band that was absolutely amazing. more when i get it e

It is going to fun!!

2008-02-18T09:16:00.001-05:00

okay so where was I?? grilling ostritch and donkey for super bowl i believe. Well this week was mostly orientation and registration, which at the university of cape town is actually a form of torture comparable to water boarding, line waiting. they do not have a computer system here that can handle everyone registering online, so we do it all by hand, in 95 degree rooms, okay so that doesn't sound that bad, it's like they did it in the old days right?? no because they have this great concept of putting everything into the computer system, but only with 3 designated computer people, for a school of around 17000, I literally have spent 4 hours a day for the last week standing in lines. but hey, it's africa time. on friday I finally had finished the registration process, I get home to the compound and on our fridge is a note inviting us to go hiking, it said just a friendly hike, and then a little cave exploring and the last line is written "it is going to fun" which i thought pretty much sealed the deal. me and my roomate tom decided we would go, everyone else was to tired, or hadn't finished registering. we meet up with the group, organized by our landlord, and it's a pretty average group, which reassured tom and I that it wouldn't be a crazy mountain climbing adventure or anything. boy were we wrong, we get there and literally jog up this mountain, only stopping twice eachtime everyone had to much pride to ask for a slower pace, but you could see the pain and agony, then we finally reach the top, the caves. It's not like just walking into the caves, it is contorting your body to fit through crevasses in total darkness (the "guides" forgot flashlights, we were all using our cellphones) tom is clausttraphobic, and i think after that experience I am too. Although I did go on the super tight optional cave, with only about 4 of us willing to do it, but the guides gave us a treat, by singing the south african national anthem in complete darkness (i had suggested koombaiya, but apparently that wasn't appropriate). It was really amazing though, even if my knees were covered with a mix of my own blood and bat guano. when we reached the otherside we were rewarded with an incredible overlook of the ocean and the small fishing towns on the northern cape. there was something else though that should have registered that didn't, the way down was a straight cliff, as our "guides" took off like billy goats jumping down the mountain the rest of us kind of looked at eachother and said "shouldn't we have signed a waiver for this?" "do we need ropes and caribeeners for this" by the time we had scaled our way down to just a regular mountain, the guides were no where to be found. "great i'm lost in africa, !@##$@$%#$!!!!!!" but we did a little bushwhacking (just what you need for open wounds, strange plants that resemble poinson ivy in rubbing against you) and eventually found our way back to the cars. Actually i think that was the most fun i've had in a while, and after the guide took the beleagured americans to a pub on the water for an apology beer, which was nice. And since then "it is going to fun" has become the motto of the house.
Yesterday we hired the "boogie bus" which i'm not sure if i've mentioned is the reggae themed beat up volkswagen that we take around capetown (14 can fit inside, not including the boogie man himself, steve) this time we hired him to take us on a wine tasting tour. the vineyards were as you imagine very beautiful although the area is the heart of Aparthied, so one kind of feels out of place wearing a barak obama t-shirt. But we went to several different vineyards, tried all sorts of wines and cheeses (if we hadn't been travelling in a beat up volkswagen with old cd's covering it, i'd say it was a classy trip, but...) but the highlight was certainly when boogie took us to a lion sanctuary, sure it's no safari, but it was cool none the less (there was something disturbing about going to see the lions after tasting wine all day, especially after what happened in san francisco, but people managed to keep their limbs to themselves.
All this travelling with the boogie man gave us the great idea of renting a bus for ourselves, to drive around the garden route of SA, which is what we did today, we went to avis and rented a van, no problems whatsoever, until the woman looked at my address and said "you do have secure parking for the van right? Observatory is really dangerous" we said of course, and thought no more of it, there are tons of cars all over the streets and for just one night it will be fine. that was our thinking until we saw the van, a brand new mercedes benz 8 person van. horrifying, we can't park that in obs. it'll be gone before we're out of the car. luckily we had the brilliant idea of taking it too the neighboring garage (ironically a benz specialist) we gave them some beers and they agreed to keep the van overnight, not without however saying when they saw us pull up with it "oh man no wonder you want to get this thing off the street, with so much crime around here I always carry a gun" a reassuring start to an adventure. tomorrow we're off. ell

Countdown to Capetown

2008-02-18T08:46:00.001-05:00

Well I'm off again this time to Capetown, South Africa. But on my way i decided to go back to florence where i studied before. Even before I left london i felt i was back in italy, I got cut in line by everyone while waiting for the plane, somehow i went from standing about third in line to dead last, and they managed to do it so politely i found myself often helping the older folks cut me, like helping an old lady cross the road. then when we reached italian customs and there was no cutting to be done, all the men started singing in line for the customs people to open another booth. Welcome Back to italia!!
One of the first things i noticed when i got back to florence, was of course my mother was right, she always talks about how when she returned to rome after studying there it was completely different. So was florence, my favorite bars were either empty or clothing stores (apparently the bars i used to frequent weren't as cool as i thought, if they can't make it 4 years), there were no men from senegal offering you fake luis vuitton bags and sunglasses every five feet (apparently the government has combated this by not fining or putting these men in jail, but fining the customer, thereby eliminating their customer base). But the biggest shock of all came when i went to light up that huge celebratory cigar at the one bar that is still there teatro and was told non fuimare!!!!!!!! No smoking?!? what!! que??? you can't smoke anywhere inside anymore! I don't even know how the italians can cope, i'm sitting in a internet cafe and there is no ashtray nearby, no cloud of smoke above me making me nauseaus, it's a very sad day.
it's good to be travelling again, although i'm beginning to think i'm not really any good at it, I've already had several incidents the first occured my first night out in florence, when i returned to the hostel, as i was walking back i was just thinking to myself how funny it would be if i had misread the hostel policy on returning late (i had intentionally booked a hostel that would let me in 24 hours a day, due to some of the incidents levi and i had on the Camino de Santiago, which resulted in street sleeping or angry proprietors) and sure enough when i got to the door, it was locked and said that everyone MUST be in by 2am. &%$&!! %£$"£!!! $%"$"/%!!!! "I'm not doing it again" I thought "I refuse to wake up the hotel, or get yelled at" so i did what was in my mind my only logical choice, took out my money and valuable cards and put them in the sole of my boots and took a seat at a nearby outdoor patio intending to wait for the next 3 hours, perhaps even catch a few winks. Luckily for me some guys were leaving the hostel only like a half hour later and the women on duty let me in, apparently when they say EVERYONE MUST BE IN BY 2AM!!! it only means that if you aren't just ring the bell and i'll let you in. the other incident was less idiotic, but certainly could have been worse, as my friend pickel (she's studying here) and I went to bologna yesterday and just as we were about to get on the train realized that there was a train strike starting at nine that evening, you know right around the time we had intended to come back. so we cut the trip a little short (we still almost missed the last train to florence, when they say 9 they actually mean 8:30, duh) but still had a great meal and I finally got to put a face to the name you hear so often, Mohammed (the bologna cathedral has a fresco in it depicting the prophet Mohammed, which is why the security is rather tight). that's all i have time for, i took the liberty of just adding some people's emails to this list, if you're one of them and you find this horribly boring and not interesting just let me know and i'll cut you from the list. the next one i promise will be sillier, more informative and from south Africa
-ell

A Three Hour Tour

2007-12-03T20:46:00.001-05:00

well here I am stuck to a plastic chair in Tuxtla,
mexico pouring with sweat. yep I finally made it south
of the border, and what an adventure it has been
already.
After an extremely sketchy flight into Mexico City in
a thunder storm I met up with levi at the airport.
Already some of the key features of my stay in mexico
city were apparent. Turns out that with something like
20 million people running around, everything takes a
bit longer. levi told me he was on the way, he said it
would be about 2 hours, I had a hard time
understanding how when the airport is in the center of
the city getting there could take 2 hours, now I
believe. He showed up,we got a hotel room in the
center of the city, where obviously got caught up,
however this time we managed not to get kicked out of
the place. The next day we headed up to the "beverly
hills" of mexico city as levi likes to call it, where
he went to class and I spent most of my time woozy and
trying to avoid scorpions in the room(only later did
it occur to me that when at high elevatons one
shouldn{t try and keep up with levi) After class levi
and I met up with one of his friends, neither of us
were interested in doing anything, just going to hang
out I was gonna meet some mexicans and the next day we
would see the sights before escaping the city for the
week.
However levi{s friend isn{t like that, he{s insistent.
Alejandro: "my friend we must go to the forest"
me: I don{t know it{s 10 at night where is the forest?
alejandro: just three hours that{s all, it is
beautiful

he wouldnt take no for an answer. despite the fact
that it was 10 at night and beauty is hard to discern
in the pitch black. so we piled into this extremely
beat up car and started to roll to the forest. The
first thing that strikes you about traveling in mexico
city is the speed bumps, thousands of speed bumps,
every street, most highways, every corner there is a
speedbump to keep everyone moving at a slow pace.
well that combined well with the blown rear left shock
of alejandros vehicle, so instead of a comfortable
ride, levi and I had to scrunch as tight as possible
to the right in the back of this car (another
interesting part was that this was also alejandros
first date with a girl from school, not the most
romantic night: cruising for 3 hours with 2 gringos
piled in the back) so the entire 1.5 hour trip was
taken at intervals of getting the car up to 60 or 70
miles an hour and then slamming on the breaks to a
standstill and very slowly easing the car over the
bump (even as we got well into the mountains, the
speed bumps persisted). Finally we got to a dirt road
"okay guys you have to walk from here, to bumpy" so
levi and I got out of the car and walked behind for a
good mile or so. then alejandro parks the car and we
proceed to the forest, which it turns out is guarded
by dogs and somebody{s house. But The view was
spectacular, the moon was full and we were high in the
mountains, we were right along a river, watching it
snake between mountains, it was about this point that
alejandro pulled out a joint, and it didn{t take long
before the view went from the most amazing serene
landscape to the most ominious and foreboding.
suddenly in the distance all i could here was this
large truck coming down the dirt road we had followed
and I even heard it park at the house we would have to
pass before returning to the car. Immediately my mind
was working out various horror movie scenarios mostly
involving the movie Duel. just as my mind is really
getting to an advanced state of paranioa alejandro
says "okay time to go" by the way it is now 1 am
therefore without the trip home it has already been 3
hours. so we start walking back by the house, while
the dogs are barking like mad, i of course can barely
resist braking into a run, but I do simply not to make
a fool of myself. We get back to the car and of
course levi and I are standing behind the car waiting
for alejandro to start the car when we see the dogs
approaching, they were about as ominious as my basset
hound, coming over tails wagging. just another moment
of foolishness. So alejandro takes of and we start
walking, but this time he goes pretty fast and levi
and I are actually running trying to keep up with him
(nothing like a little high altitude training) we
finally get back on the road again and I instantly
fall asleep, can{t wait to got to bed, of course every
thirty seconds once again we come to a screeeching
halt for a speed bump, meanwhile to the background of
mozart, alejandro starts questioning me "have you had
tacos yet?" ah actaully no, I haven't
"okay we{re going to get taco{s" its now 3am and we
are in search of a taco staand (not a very hard thing
to find in mexico city, about as frequent as a
speedbump) so we got ourselves about 5 tacos each and
then alejandro was about to force more on us because
we{d only had chicken and beef, no pork ones yet, but
we were saved because they were closing down. an
amazing night. Yesterday levi and I toured the city,
seeing the trotski(i consider this more of a
continuation of my saint pete{s trip than mexico city)
and the frida kahlo museum and then walking around the
center photographing every church in sight, most of
which are at a healthy lean and are sinking into the
ground, indeed a healthy bow can be seen on most any
building in the city. the church tour led us to some
of the dirties places i have ever been needless to
say, one square in particualar was simply covered in
fesces and had a truly ungodly smell (for an insight
into levi{s personality here{s his quote about that
square "wow this is absolutely one of my favorite
spots in mexico city") indeed the local homeless had
pretty much claimed it as there own. As for
everything else it is as you expected I of course am
sick from the water, could have been all those tacos
I{ve been eating. that of course made the 12 hour bus
ride i just took a little wilder(probably for everyone
else as well), but by the end of the day levi and i
will be drinking cervesas on the beach of the pacific.
oh and just one of the great details of my time in
mexico so far is the buses, just the fact that many of
the city buses are extremely decked out with really
nice rims and some of them even have lights
underneath, there is nothing quite like being in a
small volkswagen bus (the private line) turning to see
a monstrous double exhaust bus possibly with a lift
kit, and bright purple lights blasting from underneath
it, it{s unlike anything i{ve ever seen, i can only
hope the truro shuttle adopts the same policy.
ellejandro

Mayhem in Mexico City

2007-12-03T20:44:00.000-05:00

well so I'm back in truro and for the first time i
will attempt to write an email not from abroad, not as
easy as you think. Well after the first few days in
mexico city we headed south to Chiapas, a southern
mexican state that borders guatemala. The bus ride was
fantastic, the bus chairs reclined ten times more than
the greyhounds I'm used to. There was only one strange
feature, unlike the greyhound buses and most buses
i've ever been on this bus went direct, no cigarette
breaks no meal stops nothing 12 hours no getting up.
Levi and I in the morning realized that this also
meant that they never changed drivers!?!? how is this
possible?? the same driver for 12 hours that doesn't
seem safe. then on exiting the bus all our questions
were answered, A baggage compartment opened up and a
alternate driver stuck himself out, stretched and
yawned. Apparently they have converted one of the
baggage compartments into a small bedroom for another
driver to catch a few winks complete with a
matress(this wasn't a one time thing, every bus we saw
this was the case, one of them even had a few hawaiian
shirts and a guitar in it, perhaps for those long
nights out before getting on the bus)
Neither levi or I have ever had what you'd call a
typical vacation, heading to the beach catching some
rays and drinking cervezas on the beach, so we decided
it was time. we headed to a really small coastal town
called puerto arista which lonely planet describes as
"a small town of 2000 people with a few chiapans
visiting on the weekends... but on semana santa
chaipans come by the thousands" yep it was semana
santa (easter week) and they were set up for spring
break mexican style (most of the visitors were
mexicans, in fact we only saw one other gringo) So it
was wonderful, 4 days of lounging, spring breaking
(yep), and watching chickens drink from coconuts. It
was just about then that things started to get
interesting, first thing that happened, we were
swimming and I stepped on something alive, it moved, I
moved but not fast enough, I got stung barbed or
bitten, so I immediatly went into 45 minutes of
paranoid breathing trying to come up with all the
things I could of stepped on that would send me to the
hospital. But that past and it was just a little
blood. the next day we took an incredible ride on the
bus again into the mountains, at one point it took us
4 hours to go 100 km because the road was so twisty
(indeed for most of the ride the bus hugged the
breakdown lane so hard and the dropoff was so steep
you had the sensation of flying) San Cristobal was our
next destination, a small colonial (i'm pretty sure
that isn't the right word, perhaps it is even PC) town
way way in the mountains. We arrived late and woozy.
The next day was a big day, we met up with one of our
fellow pilgrims from the camino de santiago, she was
travelling chaipas as well. Early in the day I
realized it was gonna be hot and that I should take
off my long sleeved shirt and put on a t-shirt, the
real mistake I made was that this t-shirt had a wide
neck, much wider than my farmers tan I had been
working on. thinking nothing of it we continued to
church hunt seeing some amazing pastel churches. That
night I didn't even feel hot, however at about 4 am I
suddenly woke up felt my shoulder and realized things
had officially gone "rogue" my shoulder had started to
bubble and was alarmingly hot, I ran into the shower
and took a real cold shower, which needless to say
dazed alarmed and having just woke up nearly sent me
into shock. so the next day instead of going on the
tour of the canyon with levi and sabrina (the other
pilgrim) I was in the hotel room with a wet towel
around my neck (I did get my revenge though, as it
turns out levi went on the canyon trip, sat out on the
boat sleeves rolled up, just thinking how great it was
not to have sensitive skin like ellery and how being
one 64th Native American really was helping right
about now, when he got home he said he felt a bit
nausaus, blaming it on some old pizza, then about 2
hours later he vomited and realized he had acquired
heat stroke, so we sat in opposite beds tossing aloe
between us for the rest of the night). lesson learned
(when you say 15 dollars for mexican sunscreen is too
much, you're gonna pay) luckily i didn't miss too
much, (we had seen every church and sight in san
Cristobal the first day) we headed back to mexico city
the next day (which was real close to a disaster as
well because idiots that we are, we never book ahead,
and it turns out that everyone in mexico is travelling
on the last sunday of semana santa because they have
work the next day...duh, luckily by going a mere 4
hours out of the way we found a town that still had
tickets back to mexico) So we arrived, exhausted, and
burnt, headed into the mexico city metro, just waiting
to get back to levi's house (for one thing I wanted to
resoak my towel) we were in a real packed car, and I
was just exhausted and for that one moment let my
guard down (yep you know where this is going) my
shoulder hurt and I couldn't really reach my pocket,
but I was just thinking to myself "boy I should have
my hand on my wallet like I always do on the subway
(even in the states)" reached for it and of course it
was gone, just like that. lesson learned (if you're
gonna be such an idiot as to not by sunscreen and get
burned at least don't let your sunburn get in the way
of your alertness) Well luckily my passport and my
american money were still in my bag, just lost my
liscense and atm card.
My last two days in mexico city were very tame, the
first spent in levi's room finally watching my
blisters heal, and then the second day we went to
Tiuhatiuacan or something like that, some of the
biggest pyramids in mexico, and catching a few Diego
Rivera murals. Then I finally got that well earned
plane ride to washington DC where I got a USA passport
stamp and was informed that my luggage would be coming
on a later flight, therefore when I got to boston I
would just file a lost luggage claim and the next day
they would deliver it to my house, "whatever fine at
this point I don't even care" was my attitude as I got
onto the plane to boston, then something occured to me
that really made me chuckle to myself (I looked quite
the fool on the plane) yep my return bus ticket was in
my bag, oh and of course I don't have any money or
credit cards (I was pickpocketed remember you fool).
lesson learned (when you don't buy sunscreen, you're
gonna get burned, when you let your guard down you're
gonna get robbed, and when you pack your bag leave
everything you're gonna need to get home on you, cause
their gonna lose your luggage, and then you're just
fucked!!
ell
p.s. united was kind enough to write me a voucher
home, my luggage arrived before I woke up the next
day, my sunburn is healing and you can always make
more money.
next stop: south africa, lets see how bad that can get

Travels with my Mother

2007-12-03T20:41:00.000-05:00

No one said it would be easy, travelling never
is, especially with your mother. It started the
moment we were leaving "now you've got your tickets
right?" and "Now when we get to the airport we're
going to check our bags so make sure you have
everything you need" "yes sue", "Yes Mother". It's
almost as though she thinks i've never travelled
before. Oh well this is what you get when you put two
people on a trip together who both always think
they're right.
We arrived in Istanbul 2 days ago, after a terrible
layover in a Paris terminal which had no seats, or
actually it had about 17 seats for the 500 people
waiting in the terminal, and most of those seats were
reserved, i.e. empty and gaurded by a vicious French
woman who hovered overthem gaurding them for those
passengers travelling by bus (apparently bus
travellers get first dibs in Charles de Gaulle). The
experience was so awful that i have officially
renounced my defense of the french.
Istanbul itself is spectacular, after a minor hangup
at the airport (we didn't know we needed a visa) we
went straight to our hotel which has a terrace which
overlooks the Blue Mosque on one side and Aya Sofia on
the other,they serve breakfast everyday on terrace as
well. The first thing that struck me about istanbul
is the sobriety (after russia every one looks a little
more sober) instead of the common curbside beer
drinking there is nothing but juice and tea, people
running through the streets delivering tea from vendor
to vendor. Even the fishermen, who are on the shore
all day don't have that bottle of wine between them,
instead they are just pounding back a thermos of hot
Chai.
Kebabs have been disappointing, I was under the
impression that a kebab, doner kebab, gyro, Shaverma,
etc, were all the same thing, a wrapped meat sandwich
for the road, however here i keep getting myself into
trouble when i order a kebab, and immediately the
person tells me to take a seat ("perhaps he's just
slow at making them and wants me to rest" i think)
insted he comes back with a plate of food and i am
once again stuck with an immobile meal. And of course
they are so nice there is no explaining to them that
you've made another dreadful mistake and would like to
run away now.
Perhaps the most odd thing that has happened to us so
far has been our experience with the shoe shiners.
The first day as we were walking along the sea side we
passed a man walking with his shoe shine kit, as he
walked by he dropped his brush, I picked it up and
handed it to him, he insisted that i take a shoeshine,
i refused as i had already made my first mistaken
kebab order earlier and we were trying to make up
time. Then again this evening as we were walking home
the same thing happened and the man again insisted on
giving me a shoeshine, i again refused (why the hell
would i want my hiking boots shined). Now I was
beginning to get suspicious, was this a con?? do they
with a flick of the wrist drop their brush trying to
drum up a tip by offering a free shoeshine for picking
up their brush. Sue and I were having a good chuckle
about this (we occasionally do have good moments when
the two of us don't want to kill each other) when the
man in front of us again dropped his brush, this time
a woman picked it up for him I believe she was
Turkish, and he thanked her and walked on, so i don't
really know whether or not it is a scam or wether they
just need to redesign the shoeshine kit with a strap
to hold the brush on.
well my hour is almost up and the old lady upstairs
(who i fear many a person in this country thinks is my
sugar mamma)has demanded news from the world outside,
and seeing as how we've been bickering all day i'd
better just do this to avoid any further trouble.
ell

In the Approrpiate Places

2007-12-03T20:32:00.002-05:00

well of course as always I forgot several tidbits of
information in my las email. For one I forgot about
Susan and I's misadventure at the Topkapi palace,
which after wondering around the wonderful gardens and
treasury we found a small door off to the side,
wondering in behind susan there was an immediate
feeling of mistake, there in the corner was a man in a
turban in a glassed off booth, reading a book into a
microphone, yet there was no sounds in the room,
Susan did a 180 of apprehension, but I pushed her into
the room anyways. The cases in the room were filled
with artifacts of Muhammed, His sword, Dust from his
tomb, a letter of his to a rival, it was certainly an
experience to casually walk into, everyone had a
headscarf, sue made a b-line for the exit I immediatly
removed my hat(!), a classic travel screw-up.
Immediately after I recieved an email from my one and
only Turkish (or Half Turkish) Friend condeming me for
saying that the Turks don't drink I was of course
proved quite wrong as a young man who works here at
the hotel, declared that he drinks and drinks heavily,
"I drink under the table, not on the table, Father,
Uncle no like, you!, you drink only three beer, when I
drink, i drink many beers, my cousin and i 12 each"
Needless to say we have a bar date for saturday, he
thinks he's gonna show me a thing or two (haha). Since
then he has been my in at the hotel, extra bread at
breakfast, extremely lame jokes when i leave
(including the one with the detatchable finger, and
some lame pick-up lines he doesn't seem to know are
pick-up lines)
Finally the most bizarre bit of information that I've
picked up is that the Turkish People have of course
perfected the Toilet-Bidet, simply by adding a small
nozzle on the inside rim of the toilet, which Lonely
Planet I think phrases best as "squirts water in the
appropriate places" No Thank You I think I'll decide
what is an appropriate place for water to be squirted.
Besides this I can think of nothing else at present,
except a few personal notes:
Levi, I tried to change my departure in Iceland, the
receptionist was as cold as ice and told me to go to
hell,
Russia Buddies, My mom and I dined on Blini, Pelmeni,
and Borscht at a nice russian restaurant the other
night, sadly no baltika.
ell

A Night Out

2007-12-03T20:32:00.001-05:00

Well needless to say things have definitely picked up
in my life after the arrival of levi and Nate. Levi
arrived the first night and my mother, myself and levi
stayed at what seemed to be a nice parisian hotel by
the opera. After a firm and unwarranted warning the
first night by the owner as we walked down the stairs
"What is wrong with you?? Quiet now please, you cannot
be so arrogant, if you don´t treat us with respect we
will not respect you!!!" that was at 830 at night
because we were talking on the stairwell on our way
downstairs, an ominous beginning. Then the next day
as nate was checking in we were pulled aside
"gentlemen, no food in the bed, ever!!!" uh okay we
hadn´t even brought food into the room, but we
respectfully said no problem. Well obviously there was
going to be a problem. So we go out on the town to
celebrate our new adventure, and arrive home at about
3 now we knew we were dealing with a crazy hotel
owner, so we immediately went upstairs to bed, levi
and I though decided to go ask nate a question, no
prob right, well he was staying one floor down from
us. We walk down the stairs, immediately there is the
owner, he grabs me(i have the bruise) "out, out you go
out!!!!! you are drunk, fuck you get out" we are
immediately wrestled downstairs and thrown out. "can
we get our stuff?" "no you are drunk get out"
so there i was at 330 am in my t-shirt with levi
nothing more we could do he locked the door and kicked
us out. So we walk around town, hoping he´ll go to
sleep, but he is awake, I knock on the door, "just let
us get our stuff and we´ll go" "no 8 o clock, not
before or i call the police!!!" So we are stuck in
t-shirts on the streets of paris with my mother and
Nate in the hotel with no way of contacting them.
about 5 am the man is gone and a very nice attendant
there let us in apologizing for the owner saying he
was crazy. we get our stuff tell nate and sue we´ll
meet them at the bakery across the street. The
attendant tried to convince us to stay saying the old
guy was just mad and wouldn´t mind if we spent the
night, luckily we didn´t later comments made us sure
that poor boy would have lost his job. So levi and i
had about 12 espressos and 3 baguettes, finally after
saying good bye to susan (needless to say rather
awkwardly, indeed levi´s quote "don´t worry sue your
boy is in good hands" seemed somehow misplaced) we got
nate from the hotel at which nate said "thanks for
nothing" to which the owner said "fuck you!!! You
Arrogant Americans, go back to baghdad, fuck you
guys!!" and that pretty much sealed the deal on paris
for me. we got on a train where only one of us had
tickets for actual seats and sleepless, angry and
hungover we arrived in St. Jean Pied du Port. we got
there at 11, starving and rushed to the closest
restaurant where unexpectedly the most amazingly good
experience happened to us (and just in the nick of
time).
We went into the restaurant and were
immediately brought into conversation with an english
speaking basque seperatist, he immediately bought us a
drink. "food" "non, the kitchen is closed as is
everywhere else just stay here with us, we have been
drinking the very best of french wines all day so
ignore the others (indeed i could do nothing else as i
spoke no basque and that was all they spoke) there
was a lot of singing, a lot of chants for "basque
power", no concern for our pilgrimage, a bit of
discussion about the best way to cook a pigeon after
shooting it, and of course a lot of us trying to
explain why we didn´t like that good president of ours
and why we didn´t like schwarzeneggar. quite a wild
intro into basque country. I will tell you no more as
today i am two days past those incidents, but i had to
put them to email before i forgot (although i´ll never
forget that man screaming fuck you go back to baghdad) ell

30k a day eh??

2007-12-03T20:31:00.001-05:00

It started at 7am with a crazed short frenchwoman
barging into our room screaming and yelling in french
the gist of which was that if we didn´t get moving
soon we´d never make it to roncesvalles (the next
town). so we packed our stuff and got to walking. at
first it was amazing, we walked through farms and
roads covered with cowshit. then we hit the mainroad
for a bit and we overtook our first group of pilgrims.
needless to say this inflated our egos, we were
feeling strong, the road wasn´t that tough and this
day was supposed to be the hardest one, well lets see
what we can do. we really picked up the pace for quite
a while, we got really close to roncesvalles, about 2
miles. And then we went off road and hit the
mountains, already quite tired after our last push we
started an excruciating climb, up painfully steep
fireroads surrounded by barbed wire (which it was all
you could do to avoid grabbing and using as a railing;
indeed nate did) Finally reaching the top shells of
men we immediately were hit by the wind so frozen,
starving, exhausted and humiliated we arrived into
roncesvalles and ate all the food availlable at the
small cafe there.
we checked into the first albergue for a good lie down
directly after. This albergue kinda reminded you of a
bad summercamp dormatory, stained small mattresses and
rickity old beds and so close together some were even
touching so you had to becareful of the man next to
you. One man came in and said to us "oh man i don´t
like this, kinda reminds you of guantanimo bay eh??"
but to us just the lie down was heaven, although
having only one shower for 30 sweaty pilgrims wasn´t
exactly and airfreshener.
One of the best things about the trip is the pilgrim
meal that is generally offered everywhere you go, it´s
like the usual set menus at restaurants across europe
except that here along the camino they give you twice
the food, half the price and wine, and everyone loves
you " what you are pilgrims oh here let me buy you a
drink" or "i´m gonna givve you the best meal i can".
this night in particular we had a huge trout each,
fries, a wonderful garlic soup and a bottle of wine
for about 6 bucks.
However of course you must walk 8 hours a day, which
takes a toll let me say. It´s taken me this long to
write because we wake up at 6am and walk until around
3 then we have to lie down a bit and then of course
gorge ourselves and be in bed by 9 or earlier, it
leaves little time for anything else. I´ve read 10
pages in my book. But the camino itself at least what
we´ve seen of it is amazing, and travelling at a swift
3 kilometers an hour is the way to see it.
immediately that level of silliness that 3 boys on an
extremely intense physical adventure can achieve has
been attained, all day long is spent laughing at the
silliest things, not the least of which is the fact
that my scallop shell (the scallop shell is the symbol
of the pilgrim here) cut me open the first night as my
bag fell, an ominous start. Or the fact that there
seems to be nothing in this country to eat that
doesn´t contain a healthy portion of eggs in it, i
think i´m eating about 10 a day which i´m sure can´t
be good for me. We hit pamplona after 3 days and
decided to take a day off, levi had an ingrown
toenail, nates knees were bruised (!?!) and i had
about 3 blisters (since moved up to 4, 2 on each
foot). so we went out, Pamplona on a saturday night is
quite the rowdy place, first of all we´re beginning to
realize that basque people are the nicest in the
world, the first ones we meet immediately love our
story of a couple of american pilgrims, get a good
chuckle out of it as there buying us a few beers, and
say "but seriously boys you won´t make it to burghos
(about half way)" in fact no one that night was
willing to believe that we were pilgrims and if they
did they refused to believe we would make it.
and that´s pretty much what it´s like, each day we
spend several hours walking and then approximately the
same amount of time "tending to our feet" stuffing our
faces and occasionally talking to people twice our age
doing the walk who always seem to be in better shape
than us(or at least they hide it well).

Well that peice of email has been saved on my account
for about 2 weeks, it is impossible to find any sort
of internet in small rural spain. i´m not going to
read it so if i repeat myself i´m sorry. after
pamplona we continued our walk (as we do) for 2 more
days before once again being hobbled to the point of
stopping in a town called estella. the great
highlight of that town was that it was pretty big,
therefore we hoped to get internet, alas every
internet cafe we went to either was down or had a
whopping 1 computer (why you would call it an internet
cafe is beyond me) also in desperation to escape the
10 egg a day and 2 pounds of ham diet of ours we went
out for the worst chinese of my life (which is saying
something) where levi´s chiken was actually raw. this
may not seem like a big deal to you, but to those of
us with 8 hours of hiking a day those 1 or 2 hours of
the day when food is involved are very important and
raw chicken is not the answer for an aching stomach.
by the time we started up again things had vastly
improved, the blisters were healed-ish, nates knees
seemed to have regained some of their bounce and
levi´s pinky toe was on the mend.
although i must say that about an hour a day is spent
dealing with the feets, applying antibiotic cream,
putting band-aids on, popping blisters, massaging feet
mid walk, indeed by the end of this i´ll probably miss
taking such good care of my feet.
we walked for 7 straight days, got quite a good rhythm
going, we even made friends with an australian couple
who were like us "party pilgrims" looking more for
adventure than any spirituality. we walked with them
to burgos where we had already planned a nice day of
rest, again though there was no internet, indeed we
can hardly get anything accomplished on these days of
rest because for some reason with out the packs our
feet hurt more and so we stumble through the streets
from kebab place to pizza place to more fried egg
place and back to bed. we´re lucky if we get laundry
done.
after burgos we hit the meseta, or the flat plains
which it turns out is essentially like walking in a
muddy wind tunnel, the wind howls so loudly you can´t
here the person next to you and you begin to think
your hearing voices. so that´s where i am, trudging a
long absolutely loving it, can barely walk at night
but that´s all i do during the day so why would i want
to anyway. there´s a ton more funny stories and funny
events but either i can´t remember them off hand,
they´re to ridiculous to mention or perhaps not funny
at all, it´s tough to tell anymore whats funny when
you´ve been with the same 2 people for over a month
with little outside contact other than a strange
australian couple and some very solitary pilgrims.
ell

The Flood

2007-12-03T20:30:00.001-05:00

it´s feels like quite a while since i last wrote an
email, indeed we´re practically in santiago, just four
more days until the big celebration.
after burgos we walked two days across the flats,
where things got real weird, how weird well let´s just
say that we asked a woman where we could get a beer
after our walk and she said "no beer but head to the
end of the road and you´ll have fun" we walk to the
end of the street and what do we see? a group of guys
butchering a pig, a huge sow. unbelievable, she
thought that this was a good time?? go through a few
towns where the best thing going on on a saturday
night is animal slaughtering and you´ll start to get a
little weirded out. Nate is leaving the 4th of
december so we had to skip a few days ahead, about 90k
therefore we chose to blast through the flat lands by
train so that we could see all of the mountains by
foot(before you call us cheaters levi and i are gonna
walk to the ocean, 90 k in order to make it up). So we
fastforwarded to Leon just in time for our streak of
beautiful weather to end, let the torrents begin. On
the bright side we finally got to test our rain gear,
it works but just kinda. the land once again is
mountainous, we have past now though all the tough
challenges in the last few day, the highest point, the
biggest climb etc, most of which was done during some
god awful rain storms and winds whipping all around
the next day´s paper said winds over 100km an hour
(notice how i used kph to make myself look tougher)
but now at least they´ve stopped serving so many eggs
and we actually get soups and pasta. we´ve met a
variety of psychopaths, none of the religious kind
though one man who had killed a dog on his journey
with his swiss army knife (for some reason there are a
lot of crazed german shepards running free in
galicia), we met a man who ditched his family and
started walking from his back yard in paris. uh oh no
more net time, ell

A Mountain of Cocaine and the End of The World

2007-12-03T20:29:00.001-05:00

when we began this pilgrimage a month ago levi told
the story of when he first heard about the camino from
someone other than me. he was in northern spain
visiting his friend when the landlord came in and
started trying to convince them to go on the camino.
after telling them about the trials and tribulations
of the trip, the blisters, the storms, the rain, he
said "but when you get to the top of that hill
overlooking santiago and see that city it`s like doing
a mountain of cocaine, needless to say we thought that
was the most ridiculous description for the feeling
you get at the end of a religious pilgrimage you could
get, so we planned on quite a few festivities for the
day of walking into santiago. finally after a few more
days in shitty galician pilgrim refuges (the only ones
where bedbugs were prevelant and where we kept
sleeping in the same room with a man who walked in all
leather and screamed in his sleep, who we later
learned was a crazy spanish special forces member, who
judging by the screaming had seen some crazy things.)
the day arrived and to say the least it was a crazy
one, i believe i was the one who jokingly mentioned
walking into santiago shirtless but levi was crazy
enough to put it in action. yep complete with magic
marker scallop shells you beloved party pilgrims
walked into santiago shirtless in the rain on december
1 2006, we may not have been the first to do it but
judging from the stares we got we might have been the
most original, people loved it, they just love to see
pilgrims having a good time and we were definitely
having a good time, spraying eachother with champagne
and beer. anyway eventually we put our shirts back on
and headed into the church knocked heads with the
saint of wisdom, hugged saint james, put our hands on
the tree of knowledge and came out the otherside
squeaky clean of sin and ready to party. we went and
got our certificates from god, got a hotel room and
went out to meet some more pilgrims, needless to say
it was a party, we met in front of the church and i
jokingly said "so off to the club then huh?" but they
were into it, just imagine the scene 15 grungy dirty
foul smelling pilgrims dressed in raingear or
sweatpants unshaved and ranging from 23to 65(mostly
towards the later end) marching into santiago's
trendiest nightclub on a saturday night jumping around
dancing and hooting and hollering all night, needless
to say the spaniards just kinda cleared away from us
and we did our own thing, mostly involved finding out
who was going to keep going the next 4 days walk to
the end of the earth fisterre, what in pilgrim times
was considered to be the westernmost point in europe
and the world (they were wrong on both counts it's
actually in portugal)
nate was heading home but levi and i spent another day
in santiago and then started walking out on monday
again in the rain, this time with no map, just going
on following the yellow arrows, yep we got lost, a
nice 5k detour to start the day, but we did roll into
the albergue that night and were back on the road.
Then the hurricane hit, i thought the roof was gonna
come off the rickety old building or the rain was
gonna break the glass, later we learned that the wind
was over 100k an hour and there was 40 litres of rain
for every 1 square meter, and this is what we woke up
to that Morning, but we were on a schedule, we had to
walk (everyone else was either staying another day or
takiçng a bus), we waited till 10 and headed out. The
camino was a river 3 seconds in and my feet were
soaked, parts were knee deep and higher and that was
with avoiding the deep part. trees were down in the
middle of the trail and then we started hearing
thunder and lightning. it took us longer to walk 8k
then i could have ever imagined possible, so we got to
the next town and took a cab, didn't want to, not
proud of it but there was no way we would have made it
before 9pm if at all, so tough luck. luckily the next
morning was beautiful and we walked our last 30k in
perfect sunlight and warm temps, we even walked the
last 3k on the beach to fisterre, so with the
exception of a few k we've walked across spain, levi
and i walked to the very tip of the peninsula drank
some wine and headed back down the road like kings,
nothing could have brought us down, not even the
incredibly sketchy road we were walking down, it was
so dangerous we actually though that a car behind us
was slowing down to give us a ride when...WHAM levi
got hit by an egg, as if we haven't had enough fucking
eggs some teenagers decided to get a couple of
pilgrims, oh well we still felt like kings, just laugh
it off, we were off to our celebratory meal. By the
time we reached town again it was already beginning to
happen, "I don't feel so good levi, i think i'm just
gonna go to bed" got back to the albergue and did the
first vomit, "ugh maybe it's just food poisoning" then
levi came back "you know i don't feel very good
either" his first vomit.
the perfect ending to the camino both of us sleeping
on some soiled mattresses in the hallway of the
albergue so we could be close to the bathroom as we
vomited for 17 straight hours.
numbers of miles walked:500
number of blisters on feet: 20
number of hotels kicked out:1
number of glasses levi broke at the club in santiago:3
number of flights of stairs fallen down:3
number of pilgrims who went home and immediately got
engaged: 1
perfect camino

Russian Emails

2007-12-03T20:21:00.000-05:00

these were emails I sent from Russia, I put them up in
reverse order so that they read chronologically. I hope
to put up pictures with them soon too.

Letter From Afar

2007-12-03T20:14:00.002-05:00

well so here am in yet another strange land for 4
months. First things first let's dispel some rumors:

1. Apparently it's not cold in Russia, or at least St.
Petersburg. the 16 of us left London wearing most of
our luggage and after surviving a bumpy plane ride of
drunken Russians (one of whom tried to smoke on the
flight and hit on the American girls) we exited the
airport again wearing almost everything we owned only
to take a deep breath of air "god damn it's like 45
degrees out why the hell am wearing 3 pairs of long
johns." everyday since I’ve seen the sun for most of
the day it's been nicer than London (not that that is
saying much)

2. Communism isn't gone it's on vacation, Lenin is
still flying high in front of the Finland station
awaiting his return. and our dorm life is far from
capitalist, everything is included.

3. Study abroad schools are slack? oh no I’ve got
Russian 3 hours a day, which is quite a bit
considering that it's light out only like 8 hours a
day. plus another hour of Hw. but we go on plenty of
field trips and small adventures like...

4. the Russian Hospital: not as clean as you'd think
with socialized healthcare. the needle did come from a
package though (might not have been a brand name or a
medical one but I don't ask too many questions). and i
think the paint chips and broken walls are just to
keep the patients spirits up (you pray to god to get
well and get out of there, in my case don't complain
about having to take a HIV test, I’ve never been so
not scared of a needle in my life).

5. All they do here is drink vodka and i won't be able
to escape constant drunkenness: false, they have beer
too.

6. will be the only one of the 16 students who won't
speak Russian... false know why? cause Russian is
ridiculously hard (there are three of us)

7. there will not be any Americans there wrong again
there's this really weird guy from Washington DC who
is obsessed with kickboxing and fighting, oh and
women, really really into women, his names Ben so be
on the look out ladies.

8. Dostoevsky is the greatest writer and the city of
St. Petersburg loves him: i bet you thought i was
gonna say false but not even 80 years of atheistic
communism can wipe fydor of the map, his salvation
thru suffering is very alive in this land of black
snow. honestly that might be all the myths i can
address right now, will address the myths of
babushka's, kvass, and others in later emails. this
being the first email it is g-rated after this those
of you with curious children might have to use a black
magic marker as we all know i am a casual cusser. what
can i say i get it from my father. I’m here, i just
went to Dostoevsky's house it was incredible, i feel
complete tomorrow we go to the hermitage for a field
trip. the avenues are as wide as the women's
cheekbones are high. everything is in some sort of
coded language that makes it difficult to understand
(apparently they call it Cyrillic) but I’m getting
there hopefully next time I’ll say goodbye in Russian
but right now I don't know the word peace ell p.s. by
the way I’ve seen 2 bear cubs just chilling on park
benches

Mistakes were made

2007-12-03T20:14:00.001-05:00

yes as with traveling in any foreign countries people
will make mistakes, college students especially. When
it comes to shopping troubles can arise, certainly
when the language is so different, one tends just to
get the gist of the product you are buying and not
read those pesky side notes. for instance the other
day I fell pray to buying a very nice beer which had
no alcohol in it. also Jarrod, one of my suitemates
was nearly killed by some super spicy mustard, now we
like it but that first surprise bite sends you for a
loop. And of course the best of these mistakes again
involves Jarrod, who after a late evening of sampling
some of St. Petersburg’s finest vodkas, cracks a
energy drink on our way to remedial Russian 001. Now
we get to class and obviously i was expecting Jarrod
to be in bad shape but after Tatyana (our Russian
babushka teacher) told him "Jarrod I can see that you
can't read." I was laughing and glanced back at Jarrod
only to see that the side of the can said 9% alcohol.
which I think everyone knows. needless to say I didn't
tell him (I honestly thought he had finished it, he'd
been drinking it for 2 hours) He got to the point
where he was really unable to function at all. good
stuff. A few little notes on my Russian life, firstly
we have communal pots and pans held by our 24 hour
landlady at the end of the hall who has to deal with
40 college students. she's the one who if you choose
to call would answer the phone and try and track me
down (she's constantly walking into the rooms trying
to find someone usually mid "social gathering" oh and
she speaks no English.) The subway, besides being
similar to journey to the center of the earth in terms
of depth is very convenient and easy, interestingly
enough not very full most of the time, and on the
escalator, no one walks everyone just stands, not like
in England where if you occupy the left side or
"passing lane" your libel to be beaten. There are many
more things to address unfortunately the cashier at
this internet cafe refuses to cash my 1000 ruble
note(33 dollars) a common problem when you roll with
the big bucks like me. many have addressed concerns
that some people who should receive these emails are
not or that your email has changed, seeing how it's an
hour to the internet cafe and -10 f outside I'll leave
it to you cozy Americans to do the job, oh and as I
said I can't buy any more minutes right now (sometimes
one has to buy extra groceries just to cash a 500. but
nobody said it'd be easy) only 2 mins left gotta type
fast, which reminds me that some of you also are
concerned with my grammar and spelling, well last time
the keyboard had limited keys and few capital letters
available, this time I have to hit the spacebar with
my fist. ell

City of Breshnev

2007-12-03T20:13:00.000-05:00

goosd news, I founsd that mxcdsonalsds always breaks
your thousansd for you!!! so up yours cxafe max!! well
it appears that a lot of you are more interestesd in
Russia than I thought, I've got all sorts of questions
regarding food, the amerixcans, the area I'm living
in, etxc (if you haven't alreasdy notixcesd tosday's
glitxch is being unable to type c without xc and no d
without sd) but before any of that nonsense will
someone please recxorsd the super bowl for me?? my
folks xcertainly xcannot sdo it, someone must step up
bexcause if bill xcower wins I want to see it. I live
in what the tourguisde affexctionately xcalls the
xcity of breshnev. Apparently in the 70's there was a
housing xcrunxch in sdowntown st. pete's so housing
xcomplexes were put up in quite a hurry, basixcally i
live on the outskirts, there is nothing but strip
malls ansd harsdxcore xcommunist builsdings
surrounsding me. On the upsisde the metro is only a
brisk (ands i mean brisk)9 minute walk away ands the
supermarket is only about three. it's not as sketxchy
as it sounsds or looks at first becxause of xcourse
you xcannot go more than i'sd say 12.5 feet without
meeting a sexcurity gaursd or offixcer of russian law.
The foosd??? dson't you mean the mayonaise?? axctually
i haven't enxcounteresd that mucxh mayo i've been
roxcking the mushrooms at every meal I xcan though
ansd I'sd say the foods is... interesting. I sdig it
lots of bliny's or xcrepes filled with any possible
xcombonation. haven't roxckesd the kebab sxcene but I
will bexcause they are my first ansd true love. the
amerixcans??? sdo you really wanna hear about them???
xcan't you just cxut ands paste?? Jarrod one member of
my suite, 29 looks like an aberxcrombie mosdel ansd
has spent 10 years in the air forxce as a survival
spexcialist. neesdless to say my new best friensd,
he's unbelievably funny, ands he's an olsd man like
me, not into the hardscxore sdrinking (exxcept for
that axcxcisdental 9 am energy sdrink mishap). very
into seeing the sights ansd full of unbelievable
stories. Chad: Jarrod's roomate ansd the sexconds half
of "the barracxks" as we like to cxall them, a marine.
quite, spensds most of his time studsying exxcept for
when he goes out cxlubbing ansd sdoesn't xcome home
til 6am. he's 23 ansd the skinniest marine i imagine
possible. Patrick, my roomate xcompleting the
"xcivilian" sisde of the suite maybe 20 years olsd,
from new hampshire. this boy loves vosdka ansd
sleeping, oh ansd jazz musixc, interesting xcombo. I
think we've excxhangesd like 5 minutes of
xconversation total. Pavel, russian born amerixcan
xcitizen a "moderate" in everything but his sdrinking
ands ego. Heavily sarxcasticx ansd kinsda a sdixck but
my friensd xcause he's fluent. he's an international
stusdies major so neesdless to say we have some
unpleasant xconversations. Jacob, very goosd at
russian is this gay boy from ohio. dsefinitely one of
my favorite people on the trip he's alreasdy got the
invite to the xcape. very interestesd in going to the
hermitage with me ansd jarrosd for several sdays. math
major Kendra: reformesd xcommunist, but before you
xcringe she's now just a soxcialist, after her arrest
in xcuba. Haven't spent nearly enough time talking to
her, but it's only been a week. Honestly that's all
the profiling i xcan sdo for now, maybe i'll work on
it some more later. I suppose you'sd like a sample of
my trips so far. the hermitage was ands still is
amazing massive is all i xcan say, oh ansd stolen, I
mean the russians must have gone to pixcasso's house
ansd taken what he hasd lying on the easel, they've
got like 5 rooms of him, very impressive art of all
styles ands periodss. tosday we went to tsarkoe selo
the tsar's summer resisdencxe we hads to wear little
booties on our feet whixch masde the harsdwoods floors
one giant icxe skating rink. we saw russia's 8th
wonsder of the worlsd "the amber room" whixch has
taken 30 years ansd like 10 million dsollars to
restore(hey, that's like a billion rubles, ansd keep
in minsd they xcan't finsd xchange for a thousansd)
the arcxitexcture was as always withe the tsar's way
over the top. but it was great. i took a bunxch of
photo's ansd i hope to get the website thing going so
everyone xcan enjoy. no bears, although it was xcolsd
however a wilsd sdog sdisd hang out with us while we
walkeds or ran the garsdens (we went to a new low
tosday as the bottom of the thermometer hit -20) i'm
now living full time in long johns. however it was
only -15 or so in st. pete's whixch is like 1 layer
less, so just about everything i own. Amazingly though
i'm sdigging the xcolsd ands my room here is warmer
than the one at my house (we're getting a spaxce
heater pops!!) so that's kinsda what it's like minus
the cxrazy lingo ansd sdrinking of my amerixcan
friensds here, whixch my parents neesd not hear about
xcause they assume I'm leadsing the paxck(whixch I'm
not). but for those of you who want a little peixce of
airforxce lingo here we go "okay boys our t.o.t. is 15
minutes, hey ell xcan you believe that those guys
winchestered 3 bottles of absinth last night?? well
charlie doesn't take a day off so neither dso we...
Pushkin in 15" ansd for your information I abstainesd
from the absinth, but yes that is what it's like in
russia, in the barraxcks, but hey at least I sdon't
neesd an alarm xcloxck anymore. if your not sixck of
these absursdly long emails yet fear not I'm stopping
off at mxcsdonalsds to break a thousansd on the way
home so i xcan sensd you more, if you are sixck of
them... well xchange your email ell

You ate where?!?!

2007-12-03T20:12:00.000-05:00

okay looks like this keyboard is free from defects, so
any mistakes made are mine. Firstly a small anecdote
again about our incompetence as a group. I expect
Jarrod and I to make mistakes I mean we're in remedial
Russian, but when I go out with a large group of
Russian majors I want results, today obviously wasn't
that day. We went to the open air market today in a
whopping -20 (although weather.com kindly pointed out
that it feels like -32) Fahrenheit. we were told that
the open air market is open 7 days a week till 7 at
night, if you call 3 vendors and a stray dog open then
I guess it was open. after perusing the goods and
making a whopping 0 purchases we decided to eat,
fairly simple eh?? I mean it's hard not to find a
restaurant, well we found one and walked in all 9 of
us, should have turned around as soon as we realized
our host was wearing a corset over her sweater, but we
didn't... yep it was a strip joint. Well I mean we
already have our coats off and it's fucking cold
outside might as well stay. It was by far the best
food we've had yet (must have been a high class place)
and the girls were only practicing striping in full
sweaters and jeans (unfortunately for them the dance
area is right next to the door) Just goes to show that
we have absolutely no idea what's going on at any
moment.
This week was the first week of elective classes and
I've gotten acquainted quite well with 2 of 3 teachers
(one of them seems to be stuck somewhere, maybe
Mongolia??) here's what I got.
Tatyana: my Russian teacher, or as a kid who had her
last semester put it "satanic babushka" she's tough
and seems not to like boys ,it also hurts the boys
case that the one girl in the class is a auditory
genius who picked up German fluently in under 12
months, can sing the alphabet backwards including the
inversed melody... and she taught her self these
things. Whereas Jarrod and I spend most of our time
trying to correctly pronounce "ochin preyatna" only to
have her laugh at us. that's right for 3 hours a day I
deal with this cruella de ville.
my literature teacher (didn't catch the name) seems
very nice and relaxed no real deadlines just read
Eugene Onegin, crime and punishment, Anna Karenina and
A hero of our time by the end of the semester and we
should be fine. Very nice Babushka I sure wish she
taught a class of mine that didn't meet just once a
week.
"The General" Igor Dimitrivitch amazing man, possibly
ex KGB and certainly rocking a fake leg. he's teaching
my Kievian-revolution Russian history class and my
communist era history class. was quoted today "The
Norman’s are the yeast to the Slavic dough" If you
don't laugh at that I don't know what to tell you
cause I'm not about to talk to you about the Norman
theory, which he also said that if he had taught
during Stalin era "I would not be here for next
class". These Russians take their history seriously.
Tomorrow I've decided to skip Tatyana and head to see
fydor in his grave, seems like a good decision to me.
A word about the cold (I think I've included one of
these in every email, but shit it's cold) there is a
difference between cold at home and cold here at home
when it's "freezing" it means that the usual coat and
hat isn't quite enough but you bear it out, here it
means when you look outside on a nice sunny day you
can see the water particles floating by in ice form,
it means you can see your breath in the hallway. And
it means that everything you have... is one layer too
few. again a good quote on staying warm from the
general "it's not so much what you put on top of you
as what you put beside you" you gotta put the warmest
layer I.e. long johns and thermals right on your skin
man, if there's any air there it's gonna rock at about
1 degree. you can't really blink for too long or
you'll open your eyes to eyelash prison, and it's
beginning to get to that cold point where your scarf
is just a block of ice after a block (keep in mind I’m
never outside for more than like 9 minutes) those of
you who have heard Keith’s story of being the coldest
and hottest in his life in the same place within 6
months of each other... I have officially destroyed my
chances of that unless I catch on fire between now and
May. Do me a favor and go outside and turn on your
cars and leave them running, if this global warming
thing is for real I want to jumpstart it. Now I've
gotten some excellent emails back but some of you are
slacking, I'm looking towards the chimney sweep
department, you know I like a good update (or perhaps
they have already changed their email to avoid further
email updates) Tomorrow we go to the engineers castle
where Dostoevsky studied in his youth and tsar Paul
was murdered by his guards, luckily there are no
gardens really like Tsarkoe Selo, so I won't feel
wimpy when i choose the indoor version. More info as
it strikes me ell

Somebody Please Help Me!!!!

2007-12-03T20:11:00.000-05:00

as you can see I'm sure I've been having trouble
adding names to the list, therefore i think everyone
just got like 3 of the same emails. For those just
added please just pick someone on the list and have
them forward you the others, it would take me to long
and these last few days have been too ridiculous to
cut short. but first some good excerpts about the
sights for my mom and Pop’s: for all you soviet
sympathizers I went to the Kirov museum maybe the best
museum yet complete with the jacket and hat he was
wearing when he died (bullet hole intact)
interestingly enough this is paired with the "soviet
schooling museum" which highlights achievements in
soviet education system good stuff lots of propaganda.
Very very in your face attendants but fun. then we
went to Pavlovsk yesterday which was beautiful, and
warm (1 degree) we went all around the park which was
filled with jolly Russians playing in the snow,
tobogganing and troika rides (we did a bit of sledding
ourselves and I crossed my first frozen river)
We also went to the Engineer’s Castle, which was a
former tsarist palace until Paul was murdered there
and no Romanov would set foot in it. Frankly I don’t
understand why we did either, apart from it being mid
restoration (most of the Palace looked like an
abandoned office, except for the rooms where there
were big surly workmen chain smoking, mixing paint and
chasing vodka with instant coffee) it was also hosted
by the most overly interested guide in Russia, I don’t
think many people go to this museum, he was telling
the most detailed boring stories, not about the murder
of the tsar or the engineers school that was here
before, instead he was talking about the reproduction
paintings, it was awful, not to mention we were forced
to here it twice once from him in Russian and then
again in English.
Enough romantic guidebook crap here we go: Saturday
night: we'd been planning on going to this Irish pub
all week, which we'd heard had the finest hamburgers
in all of mother Russia. after a nice 10 block walk
(the subway system has one flaw: the city center is
not involved) we get there and it's packed and no one
will give us the time of day (happens when Americans
roll in 15 deep in Russian bars) but we eventually and
miserably find some seats which they promptly mark
reserved (subtle hint) but we're here and staying here
at least for a beer, then someone orders one of the
burgers. It looks like one of those meals that if you
eat it you get free, this place was home of the ten
inch... hamburger (a little Adrian’s love there) so we
finally got into the pub style ate some burgers
watched Manchester United and had a good time.
But we had another bar to go to that we'd read about
in a guide book, so we go there or at least close to
it we had to ask directions in Russian from to Russian
women translation: "excuse me do you know where "the
scenic" is?" "no what is it" "it's a bar" "oh a bar,
follow us we're going to very popular Russian bar" I
know what your thinking great culture opportunity.
outside this looks like an excellent bar, it's in a
basement, many people and cars outside awesome. we go
inside and it is... a strip bar, what the F&*$^ck are
you kidding me?? again?? well so we decide to stay,
we've kinda made friends with the Russians and why not
if the girls don't mind neither do we. first rule
about strip bars... if the women aren't taking off
there clothes it's not a strip bar. “so where are we?”
we begin to wonder, just a dance bar with half naked
girls table dancing?? then one of our more eager
classmates tries to pick up a Russian girl and we
discover yep… it's a brothel. 5 outta 8 girls are
escorts. things are getting weirder, but hey this is
what Russia is all about right (Keith had just asked
me earlier that evening about the human trafficking
aspect of Russia, apparently he saw something on 60
minutes)... we decide to stay, then one of the girls
gets propositioned, that's right a man wanted to buy
her for his son (it musta been something with the
lighting and the extreme security of the place because
all this sounds a lot sketchier than it was) she
kindly refused. Then not ten minutes later the same
girl goes to the bar and orders a 2 drinks and is 10
roubles short, she turns to see if one of us can cover
her when the man next to her grabs her breast and
hands her a ten rouble note, needless to say that
didn’t go over well.
things were weird no doubt about it, but how could
they get more interesting?? I can only imagine that
the owner's thought pattern goes something like this:
"well we're catering to one indulgence why not add
another, and i find food network fascinating!!" yep
they wheel out a hotplate and food, stop the dancing
and music and bring out a chef "everybody pause for
the cooking demo" needless to say that was the last
straw, half naked women, Russian grandma
transvestites, prostitutes, propositions that's all
well and good but when you start making stir fry at 1
am it's time for the Americans to jet cause obviously
this is gonna only get weirder.
9 people 2 taxi's (or actually in Russia you just
take a car) 2 rules
1.split the military into two cars incase there's any
trouble
2. split the Russian linguists into two cars to help
the military boys in case of hostage negotiations.
so that was our Saturday evening anybody able to beat
that??? Now as you can see we've been having some
interesting experiences with safety as a group. one
guy here who lives off campus was walking to his house
when a man asked him for a light, (john at the time
had a laptop and a wallet with a bunch of cash on him)
and the man proceeded to mug him and take his hat,
gloves, and watch (quite honestly way more valuable
than any money are the hat and gloves).
Then one of those loud obnoxious Aussie’s that lived
down the hall and think the world is there playground,
was cold and drunk the other night5 and decided that
the best way to remedy this situation was to go to the
local police station (as Jarrod put it "if you've ever
watched discovery channel you know that's a bad idea")
next thing you know he's got a gun pointed at his head
and his cell phone is "confiscated". so perhaps safety
is not this city's strongpoint.
and just because i can here are a few more culture
shock moments I bought fish sticks thinking they were
mozzarella sticks or chicken (it's really tough to
tell sometimes), Jarrod tried to cook a pizza in a
frying pan (caution men cooking) somebody bought
moisturizer instead of shampoo, it just never ends oh
and my roommate ate some salami the other day followed
by a few hours later "i think that's the kinda sausage
you're supposed to cook" this shit happens like 4
times a day in the dorms did i mention jarrod and the
nutmeg?? i think i did. another interesting problem
for us: we still have yet to find a bar a real Russian
bar, it's either been the British pub (which comes
complete with British prices), strip joint, House of
ill repute, or the most commonly frequented one
casino's which are just slot machines skeevy gamblers
and high security which kicks us out once they realize
we're just there for a piva.
well that might be all i have to say. keep your
emails coming i like to think I’m not boring you all
to death. oh and I did laundry this morning and for 60
extra rubes you get the real deal, this little old
babushka does your laundry for you (while
chain-smoking like 4 packs an hour so your laundry
might not have the "febreeze fresh" smell) and she
folds it all military style, unreal. oh and the cafe
downstairs yeah I get a double espresso (straight from
Italia) for get this 10 rubles which is approximately
33 cents sometimes there is this attendant who only
charges 9 rubles too (I’d tell her to charge me the
normal price but my Russian consists of just adding
-ski to the end of each word) byski fromski elski

One down 15 to go(sorry I fucked up, this is supposed to be another entry)

yep that's right folks somebody's out of the race
she's going home. (she was the early favorite for the
early return flight and stuck it out and won the prize
for early return) Krystle: what she is doing on a
Russian trip in the first place was a mystery to us
all. She was the reason for so few phone calls home
from the rest of us because she occupied the phone
meant to be shared by the 30 odd students of our floor
about 12 hours a day leaving the rest of us very
kindly that 12 hour window between 11:30 pm and 11:30
am when all of you are asleep. She only ate at
McDonalds same as at home apparently, in fact her
doctor after clocking her cholesterol at 255 (or as he
put: that of a 70 year old man) reduced her to only
the fish sandwich. When she did go out it was 3 sheets
to the wind and she was asking "Who's your favorite
general???? mine's Patton what about you jarrod?? is
it the desert fox?" she's leaving on Tuesday after an
evening out with the Estonians on our floor which no
one has been able to find out what happened except
they were stopped by the police 3 separate times.
needless to say we're all thrilled.
yesterday those moving into home stay went to dinner
at their houses to meet the families and those who
weren't buddied up. I went with my roommate Patrick,
as you can imagine I didn't have a lot to say... no
Russian and Patrick’s fluentish. I only made one
sentence before I quit trying because I was due for an
international incident. I meant to say I think St.
Petersburg is very cold (my teacher has taught us all
of 3 useful things to say) but mistook the word for
cold with that for BAD!!! yeah I was done after that.
after a wonderfully awkward meal where the host had to
stand and eat while Patrick, myself and her 2
daughters crammed around the dinner table we sat down
for some small talk, the girls had to be evicted for
the chairs. Patrick who usually doesn't speak at all
was forced to carry the load, and instead of talking
about himself or music (he's a pianist and she's a
professional violinist) he starts talking about me.
Nothing more pleasant than sitting in on a
conversation about yourself and only understanding
like 3 words. So of course he tells her I love
Dostoevsky, oh shit you done opened a whole new can of
worms there. "I no like Dostoevsky, please why would
you like him?" gee thanks Patrick we talked a bit
about literature (it turns out that she can speak
English at least a little bit but the program pays her
to keep it hush hush) and I managed once again to
escape unscathed. then for the next 2.5 hours i was
subjected to Patrick on the piano (which was nice)
then the girls came in and played with him (also very
nice) and then the mother went crazy and began
scolding everyone (including Patrick) about not
playing correctly (this was less nice). overall though
a fun evening, especially when you compare it with
some of the other experiences.
Jarrod tagged along with a girl to a rich babushka's
house (her son is a Russian pop singer and the whole
apartment looks like a groupie lives there) where not
only did the 88 year old babushka rip her shirt open
at the table saying it was hot (yeah apparently she's
a little crazy) but this morning he was sick off of
the beats he'd eaten (the girl was a vegetarian so
they got only beats and bread). another girl's
babushka explained that she does only two things stays
in the apartment and uses the telephone and goes to
the store "nahodka" down stairs. Most of the meal was
spent pointing out which items came from nahodka and
which from other markets.
Finally I think it might be time to explain one of my
favorite terms Babushka'ed: to berated or attacked by
a belligerent grandma. how often does this happen you
ask??? often, very often. one day we were waiting for
some of us to finish grocery shopping and not wanting
to get cold we stayed inside this little mall area,
sure enough a little 4'7" babushka came right out of
her stall screaming at us in Russian. This was like
day 6 so no one knew what to do or what she was saying
so we just kept saying da, da and since there was
about 7 of us it must have been rather amusing.
another example is one girl was sitting on the subway
next to a young man when a babushka came on board and
rather than ask the young man for his seat she started
screaming at the girl and lecturing that because
babushka's used to make her move as a child (I imagine
that was pre revolution) she always made women move
(the man seemed to really enjoy the scene) and of
course I myself am Babushka’ed nearly everyday when I
go to class with Tatyana who just belligerently yells
net net net at me and jarrod for 3 hours.
yesterday jarrod and I hoofed it all around the city
and went up to the top of the cathedral and took some
amazing photographs and visited the ice palace (yeah
it was crazy, complete with elephant slide) someday I
will post them on the internet but probably not till I
return home sorry. tomorrow we go to the philharmonic
(yawn) and next week we go to Novgorod. Interestingly
enough we have thurs and fri off for men's day this
week (you only get one day off for women's day, but
that's probably to make up for the fact that women
live like an extra 30 years over men here) I think
that might be all I have for now. peace ellski

The Beginning of the Post-Frozen Era

2007-12-03T20:10:00.001-05:00

you wouldn't believe it if you saw it... water on the
sidewalk my friends. I don't know if you all have
really had your SUV’s running this whole time or what
but I think most every Russian thermometer has broken
(most only go to -10 degrees Celsius) It's fucking 32
degrees here and shit is melting (I've been assured
that it won't stay). I didn't think I’d live to see
the day when I could go out in just a sweatshirt till
at least march but here I am warm and perhaps
overdressed by Russian standards (they run a higher
bac (blood alcohol content) than I do and can afford
to wear less). Speaking of vodka apparently there are
some nasty rumors circulating the US about a vodka
shortage in Russia...what!?!?!? are you kidding???
there are three yes three aisles in every store with
their own security guard patrolling them making sure
the national resource isn't pilfered.
now about my weekend... Well we went to the St.
Petersburg philharmonic on Saturday night for what was
dubbed "orchestra music" well we pile in to a huge
room (more chandeliers than people...a common
occurrence here) and listen to a 25 minute
introduction followed by the entrance of a pianist and
a violin player who looked like Roger Ebert. He
proceeded to give another 25 minute introduction at
which point those of us not asleep were treated to
about 5 pieces of music. then they musicians got off
stage so obviously we thought that there would be some
more instruments filing on... nope they come back out
(vodka break???) and play another 5 songs and file out
again (second vodka break???) they return a third time
at which point you can look at our group and see who
is making a break at intermission and not turning back
because they are gnawing on some part of their body or
clothing as though a bullet is being removed. (my
parents will be happy to hear I was gnawing on my
fingernails!!)
so we make a break for the closest restaurant we can
find. we go inside sit down, only after admiring the
abundance of dead animals on the walls do we
notice...the stage...yep you got it: strip joint. for
those of you keeping track at home that's 3 strip
joints in 3 weeks. No one was dancing, but there was
no doubt about it. another good meal, Viking themed,
good soup (my staple). then to cap this fine evening
off, it was someone’s birthday. Obviously we needed
champagne, so off to the neighborhood store. The
champagne section unfortunately was a little to close
to the vodka section where the armed guard was and
sadly he had such horrible BO (seinfeld-esque) that we
grabbed the first kind we could find.
Back at the dorm someone asked the question "why does
the champagne have cartoons on it??"...yep children's
champagne a big fat 0.0% alcohol (and yes there is
something rather disturbing with the whole concept of
a whole shelf of kids champagne but this is a country
with a bit of a drinking problem). oh well too bad,
just comes with the Russian territory. then last night
we went to another restaurant (double birthday) which
was good or bad depending who you were and what you
ordered. One girl ordered a tuna sandwich (never go to
close to home in a foreign country) and got tuna piled
on mushrooms and i think beans, no bread. Another
person ordered a ham sandwich and got 2 tiny pieces of
bread and uncooked bacon. i got mushroom soup and
bliny no prob, delicious (i learned my lesson one day
by ordering potatoes and vegetables as a side: 4
slices of grilled potato and a piece of lettuce).
a new interesting development in the dorms is the
bathroom situation, apparently Russian toilets and
baths are telepathically interconnected: once one goes
they all go. about 4 out of 8 rooms are currently
experiencing technical difficulties with the bathroom
scene (i.e. flooding of epic proportions), just more
communist spirit: share and share alike.
and my final little bit of adventure goes out to the
"leftists" shall we say (you know G.W. Bush is
listening) I went to the "Political History Museum" or
communist museum and saw the propaganda, the documents
and clothing of the period (no concrete computer but
one Breshnev era TV, looked like quality picture to
me) and of course I saw Lenin's study, his desk and
the balcony he addressed the proletariat from during
his time in St. Petersburg. All housed in the Tsar's
mistress's former house (Lenin always liked a bit of
irony). And don't worry I snapped up a bunch of
pictures (for 40 rubles you can take pictures of
everything in Russia except the amber room) including
some great soviet stained glass.
Still got 20 minutes of internet time so: a new
person profile Katie or Katya: the third member of my
beginner Russian class apart from Jarrod and myself.
she's kind of like a 5 year old except that she can
pick up languages annoyingly fast (as opposed to
jarrod and myself who have the learning curve of 5
year olds) She enjoys milk, coloring, singing
everything, and dancing (if you thought no one
actually danced like Elaine think again, and she does
bi-daily) she doesn't wear pants, just dresses (bright
idea in 30 below) she even had a blowout argument with
her mother before she left about taking a pair (she
took them but I think she's burnt them). needless to
say she and I don't really see eye to eye on a lot of
things especially because she is a shameless defender
of Tatyana (tatyana has never said net to her the
whole time, in fact she only says "I don't think Katya
is American I think she is Russian!! Jarrod and Ell
what is wrong with you?? why don't you speak like
katya???) again tatyana doesn't really seem to like
guys. that's all I got more from the motherland later
peace ell

Birch Twigs and Naked Babushkas

2007-12-03T20:09:00.001-05:00

yep, that's right the American college students
descended on the St. Petersburg public banya. culture
shock?? try culture clash. here's how it happened: The
banya talk has been circulating for weeks amongst us
Americans, the year round students said it was the
most memorable experience in Russia, and since our
program director seems incapable of any sort of
planning or scheduling (how she got the job remains
something of a mystery) we decided to go ourselves on
coed night. We went with one experienced banya boy,
who claims to frequent the banya almost every week
(this immediately came into question when he couldn't
find the banya). After a good deal of searching we
find the banya which from the outside looks like a
huge public toilet (disconcerting I know) we go inside
and of course it's not quite up to some of the girls
(or guys) standards, typical Russian building, about
as clean as the hospital i.e. less than you'd like
with all the nakedness that's about to go down. we
walk in and RENT sheets and pay the entrance fee, a
grand total of 4 dollars. Modesty is already thrown
out the door when we are all given 1 room for our
belongings and to change into our togas. After we
change in shifts we begin the trek to the banya, first
there is the bar/ lounge area serving beer, potato
chips and an absurd variety of dried fish. We then
make a bathroom break before entering, of course my
delightful comrades don't watch the door properly
(there seem to be few locking doors in the banya)
while i'm using it and damn if a Russian man didn't
see fit to share the one toilet with me, again modesty
out the door. Then we have to enter the shower room,
if there hadn't been 10 other Americans with me I
might have turned back at the river of mud coursing
through the shower room (those sandals I bought before
going: best investment ever) we did our rinsing along
with maybe 30 other crazy naked Russians who were all
beating each other with birch twigs/leaves (they
actually have quite a variety of branches each with
it's own mystical properties). Finally Banya time: we
go into the warm up room, a small wood paneled room
with the classic hot rocks in the center. Good sweat,
I felt like Kramer, alright I can do this it's hot but
relaxing; banya is not to crazy or anything just a
sauna. then I’m informed that this is the warm up
room: oh shit. we go into the next room and there is a
rickety wooden platform about ten feet high in this
room, you ascend the staircase, the railing is like
400 degrees and each step adds about 50 degrees. on
the top of this platform there are about 12(small
area) Russian men and women covered in sweat beating
the crap out of each other with these twigs, all ages
all sexes most naked. huh I guess this is kinda
insane. just as your eyes are adjusting to the dim
lighting you realize you're completely drenched and
the far wall is just a huge brick oven. I try and run
my hands through my hair...yeah don't do
that...untouchably hot. then the Russians notice that
there nice banya experience is being invaded by a
bunch of American college students. "Fuck that let's
see what these kids can take. Open the doors" oh yeah
they open the oven up throw some beer on it...yeah you
heard me beer for that nice bread baking smell.
suddenly a insane wave of heat hits you, you can't
even keep you eyes open (it's like when you open up a
400 degree oven in the kitchen and you get that blast,
except we were already in a 400 degree oven) you feel
like you might be getting burnt through and through.
then they do the helicopter, spinning a towel over
ones head and subjecting us all to insane blasts of
heat (you'd think it would be cooling, nope the only
thing you can do is assume the crash position and beg
for mercy) at this point every one including the
Russians are grunting and groaning in agony. Gotta
hold out, gotta show these Russians we're tough. I
think the first time we lasted about 7 minutes(that
was probably my best showing of the evening). then you
descend (which unfortunately brings you closer to the
firewall) and get out of there and run to the ice cold
bath do a quick dunk and head to the bar. phew that
was crazy, but that was just round one. we get to the
lounge area and watch some Russian Olympic hockey
(nothing better than a bunch of hooting and hollering
with some semi clad babushka's). next round we skip
the warm up room, buy our own beating leaves and let
the sweat fly (oh yeah did I mention the nastiness of
the flying sweat...I won't go into any further
detail). I strike up conversation with the man next to
me, we talk hockey. As you all know I know nothing
about hockey but it doesn't seem to matter as long as
I agree with him that Russia is going to win we have
no problems. He beats me for a while, I beat him, good
times. well it's getting on about 10 o clock or 10:30
at night, obviously the management has decided that
everyone has had enough to drink (your changing room
doubles as you private drinking room as I pass them
you see Russians pounding vodka and chasing it with
pickles, which apparently is tradition, I imagine it
primes you for that big chunk of salted herring in the
middle of the table) So it's time to open up the
outside pool!! the what!?!? you ask yeah next thing
you know instead of the cold pool indoors we are
running through the snow into the luke warm pool
outside under the stars, and just like Kramer says
"the air is cold the water is hot... it's
sweeeeeee-eet" of course the water might be like 95
degrees, so the effect isn't quite the same. but
nothing like a bunch of Americans doing cannon balls
at 11 at night to clear out the pool (before you
cringe about Americans being loud and offensive
everywhere we go I'll have you know that the biggest
splash came from a Russian grandpa or "Dadushka") yep
all in all it was a pretty spectacular time. I awoke
this morning to notice I probably lost like 7 layers
of skin so I know have that healthy pale Russian look.

In other events Jarrod went to his home stay meal
(the one before was someone else’s that he tagged
along for) where firstly the girl he went with was
forced to help cook the meal while he relaxed,
secondly the meal again was disgusting. it consisted
of fake crab meat mixed with mayo, sour cream, and
lemon juice mmmm, what could you possibly put that on
to make it even more tasty??? how about raw fish
soaked in a castor oil like substance??? yep that
might do it. (he managed to not puke until he got home
and neither did the girl who went with him, who was a
vegetarian and had never had fish before...ever) the
house itself I cannot describe any better than
Dostoevsky who we've come to the conclusion described
it about 150 years ago as in Marmeledov's house in
Crime and Punishment (according to jarrod not much has
changed except there are live wires hanging from the
ceiling) He will be sleeping on a couch in his own
room, the mother sleeps on a bunch of log's strapped
together and towels laid on top of it and the daughter
sleeps behind a partition. yeah we've got a pool going
on who's moving back into the dorms first and jarrod
is rather a popular bet. although I told him he can't
move back in until I go for dinner (apparently they
also ate the world's spiciest mustard, I must try it,
it came from a can and jarrod thinks it might be
Stalinist Era) well I can't believe it but I burnt
through a whole hour writing this silly email. I hope
it's not too boring. stay in touch ellski

To The Finland Gulf

2007-12-03T20:08:00.003-05:00

I've now been away from Russian class for 4 days,
totally forgotten everything. I'm definitely getting
Babushka’ed on Monday. But on the bright side I have
seen some really interesting things. On Thursday a
group of us went out on a museum mission, First stop
the anthropology museum. Why on earth would i go to an
anthropology museum you ask? Well apparently Peter the
Great, the founder of this city took it upon himself
to eliminate some superstitions that seemed to be
circulating around Russia during his reign. One of
them was that deformed children were the product of
the devil, obviously the truth had to be put out
there, Peter informed them that the deformed babies
were in fact the result of the mothers fears and bad
thoughts about having a deformed baby (perhaps
something to look into you perspective mothers out
there). Well how do you get the message across to
millions of peasants?? yep you pickle deformed babies,
Peter would pay peasants money for their dead babies
so that he could pickle them and put them on display,
and they're still here 300 years later. Wild stuff,
and rather nauseating.
From there we went to the Defense of Leningrad Museum
where, a small World War II museum, the most exciting
thing that happened there was that somehow we wound up
with 10 tickets for 4 people, no one really knows how
that happened because the words sound nothing alike
but since they were a whopping 30 cents a piece we
took the hit. then yesterday we went to Novgorod the
oldest city in Russia, complete with a church for
every year of it's existence. Simply ridiculous, it's
a small town and it has like 56 churches (yes sue I
took plenty of pictures) that's like 2 per block. we
saw some guys doing the polar bear club thing when
it's 15 below or something ridiculous like that.
Apparently it’s not just jumping in cold water here,
instead they cut the hole in the ice way out in the
middle of the river so that you must calmly walk
(running isn’t allowed) in your speedo out there to
freeze, jump in and then walk back, all at -15 not
including the rather brisk wind.
And today I made a trek to the Gulf of Finland, which
if you look at a map might seem rather close, seeing
as how St. Petersburg is a port and on the coast. But
that is just a lie the closest subway is a good hour
walk from the sea. Oh and doesn't that sound romantic
a nice walk through the city and then along the
coastline. No, no it's not, it became real weird real
fast. Barbed wire and barking rabid dogs were all I
saw. Since the other day when we saw a man just
walking into the subway by our dorm get attacked and
bitten by a rabid roaming dog dogs strike the fear of
dog in me (the only way he repulsed the dog was to
start barking back at him). When I finally got to the
Gulf it was on lock down, couldn't come close to the
water. got a glimpse over a bridge and turned and
headed back, I thought for sure I was gonna get mugged
as I seem to look American (I got flagged today too in
the subway, finally I got asked for my "documents" I
was beginning to think it wasn't ever gonna happen).
So all in all a good week. Well it seems lately that
we've developed a confidence problem as a whole, we've
been here a month, we have the basic idea of how
things work and now we've been confidently trying new
things. Bad Idea, for instance we tried a Korean
restaurant the other day, keep in mind that we really
don't know all the words in a Russian restaurant,
Korean menu in Russian?? it's just a crapshoot what
you get. What did we get?? Sick. then after that
nauseating meal I decided that I needed a bliny or
crepe, now I’d heard that the potato ones off the
street were particularly good, well this particular
bliny stand didn't have a solo potato bliny and we
didn't know what the word next to potato was, turns
out it was some sort of mayonnaise/sour cream/
ketchup/ sweet sauce. No Joy there my friends. we got
back to the dorm and one girl didn't make it out again
(but her soup did).
we then continued our poor food day by eating a kebab
which I had no problem with but one of the kids
managed to be number 5 this week with non alcohol
related illness. More and more our ordering adventures
remind me of Keith in France when he said "I've eaten
a great deal of something, but I don't know what it
is" only to find out it was tongue (which mind you
seems to be incorporated into 9 out of 10 soups here)
one of my staples here is these "meat" filled
pastries, no one is quite sure what they are or really
what meat they even taste like (they serve them in the
cafeteria downstairs so they seem to be safe).
In Novgorod I ordered a meal, paid for it and never
received it, everyone else got served but not me
(after seeing the dish I was quite pleased that it
never arrived) thankfully it was only a 2 dollar
entree, because there was no chance of explaining in
this little cafe the concept of refund.
that's all I can handle right now, I have more to
tell but this internet cafe is making me nauseous as
the haze of cigarette smoke is pretty bad. Sorry I
never answer anyone’s emails except with these bulk
ones, someday I will. As to the question of mailing
something here, it is apparently rather expensive and
slow (apparently customs helps itself to any food
products and opens any boxes, perhaps tries the
clothing on) oh and it's not even in Russia, it's in
Finland, but I can get it. but email is king for
contacting me (I might have to by a soviet gasmask for
next time though.) ell

A Thousand Doobers Each!

2007-12-03T20:08:00.001-05:00

so let me see the last time we spoke I had taken a
long walk?? sounds about right. well not a lot has
really been going on. at least as far as sight seeing
but as far as cultural experiences it has been rather
intense (I love this place so much, you can't get used
to it, every moment is shocking).
firstly there have been 2 house warming parties this
week as many of the foreign students are moving into
actual apartments. I luckily only attended one, where
the most serious incident was being Babushka’ed at
about 1 am (nightgown Babushka’ed is really quite an
experience, this one was flailing around quite
angrily). However when we arrived at IMOP we did have
another incident with the guard. you see the deal at
IMOP is that you have a curfew of 12pm you're not
supposed to return any later, however if you do the
guard has to let you in, obviously this leads to some
interesting incidents, this time in particular the
guard wouldn't allow us in and we had to call someone
already in the building. He came down and tried to
reason with the guard, apparently he wanted a 1000
rubles (things are never simple here) and he finally
let us in saying "I just like to watch them dance in
the cold". again this was the tame party.
The other party I didn't attend however not only did
it get out of hand (the other could be called more of
a soiree), people got stuck in the elevators for
several hours (never trust a Russian elevator, i
realized that day one when we were told that the
elevator in our dorm wouldn't stop on our floor, still
doesn't, never will). Then the cops came, now unlike
in America when the police get involved, they don't
just pour out the beer and disperse the party, they
want cash, lots of cash. They started by rummaging
through all the drawers and everyone's coats taking as
they wished (Chad only realized this morning that he'd
been quasi-mugged, some marine he is!) then they
demanded a 1000 rubles from everyone, at which point a
girl nearly fluent in Russian (thankfully) said this
is outrageous and slapped the cop and said "we're
calling the American embassy" (nothing scares Russians
quite like the American embassy) yep, they ran with
their tales between their legs.
On a slightly tamer note everyone has moved into
their home stays now, and the dorm is nearly empty
(finally some reading time!). Jarrod (who has
apparently developed something of a cult following
among those of you reading these emails) has moved
into his home stay where again he was subjected to a
nearly inedible chicken dish, but on the bright side
he was told "This is your last free meal, after this
it will be 7 dollars a meal" so Jarrod is off the
hook, he can just look cheap instead of nauseous. Now
you might think this sounds absurd: 7 dollars a meal
(you could go to a restaurant for that), but it turns
out most of these babushka's are just in it for the
money, each week you see a line at the ATM in the
lobby of babushka's eagerly forcing their exchange
student to pay up in American dollars, Babushka
robbery if you ask me. They all demand their money
immediately and in American dollars. I myself now have
a room to myself (although generally when there is an
empty room the digiorna or hall attendant manages to
bring a new German kid in while you're sleeping, for
some reason she refuses to give you notice either)
Although my motivationally challenged roommate Patrick
has left most of his wardrobe and shoes in my room
because he was to lazy to really pack.
And now to my favorite part of the week, my
experience changing our return tickets at the Moscow
station. So we're told that "it's not going to be easy
to figure out the ticket system": bad sign. Well we go
to the station and after about 30 minutes figure out
where we need to return the tickets(you can't just
change the dates you must return them for less money
and buy them for more). We return them with almost no
hassle, then we find quite easily the line to buy new
tickets, no prob. After getting babushka'ed once or
twice (they simply cut you, no one else does just
babushkas, I’ve even seen them break into someone’s
conversation with the attendant to get what they want)
we finally get up to the window, now as you know I
know 0 Russian, and wisely I went with 3 people who
have studied at least 2 years of Russian, thinking
this would be a piece of cake. Turns out 2 years is
simply not enough Russian to order a train ticket from
Moscow to St. Petersburg on the 19th of march, the
lady is screaming at us, we're writing on scraps of
paper she's writing in some sort of indecipherable
Russian cursive. it's bad, there are some rather large
Russian getting quite impatient with us(I’ve never
seen so many 7 foot tall people as I’ve seen here).
all Chad can shout is vecherom or evening. finally we
manage to get our tickets and are walking away when
Kendra says "hey guys we said 19th right?? Cause these
are for the 12th" #$@@^%$%$%$%^%^&%&^^!!!!!!!!!!! now
we're angry, which as everyone knows gets you nowhere
fast. Kendra goes storming back to the lady (in a
reversal of fortune a babushka made way for us, I
would have too, nothing better than laughing at the
Americans) of course the woman starts screaming again
saying that we said the 12th not the 19th (they are
extremely close in Russian) and being angry and fed up
Kendra doesn't take the fall (always a mistake) and
yep she tells us we must return them at the other
counter. so all in all we lost about 300 doobers or 10
dollars and about 1.5 hours of our lives.
One final bit for all you Ahkmatovites out there... I
went to the house today, seeing not only her house and
works (including several first drafts that look
astonishingly like the scribbling of another poet in
my life) but also Joseph Brodsky's study in the
adjoining house. And there is hope for the poets
because there were about 50 people in the place,
packed by poetry standards I’d say.
a little post script for the jarrod fans: Both of the
kids in his home stay have run away in the night
(possibly to escape the meals) and as of yet haven't
returned, I have no idea what that means but i thought
you'd get a kick out of it. ell

A General Update

2007-12-03T20:06:00.000-05:00

okay so it's been a while since I last wrote and
quite a bit has been going on (the last two emails I
felt I’d been stretching for something to say so I
thought I’d take a break) first of all we went to a
hockey game here, which actually wasn't quite as crazy
as you'd think. sure the Russians are drunk and crazy,
but there was no fighting on the ice or in the crowds,
in fact the only obnoxious thing about it was that
everyone there seems to bring their duck calls and
blow them all the time(apparently they really took to
"the mighty ducks" here).
then let me see the next day I went out to dinner at
"the idiot", a Dostoevsky themed restaurant with
excellent Russian food and for once there wasn't
anyone stripping, gambling or for sale. This week we
also went to the banya again, I really can't say
enough good things about the banya, just really jolly
really drunk Russians trying to sweat out the
Americans can it get any better??? This time however
the outdoor pool's lights were on, not only making for
a bit of an awkward time (sure were no longer modest
but does anyone want a spotlight??) but also it shed
light on the fact that the water was green!!! Yikes!!!
Also we talked to a Finnish regular who told us that
the banya we frequent was the only one operational
during the blockade (sure we can't eat, but let's go
to the banya) apparently that was also the last time
the water was changed.
This week was also international women's day which
can be best summed up by The General "for women's day
it is tradition for us 1 hour before work to make
table of our desk and start drinking... so be careful
on your way home. Of course Russian men cannot really
celebrate women's day so instead we get drunk" (what
else would Russians do with a day off) and he was
quite right, Wednesday everywhere you looked you saw
men not with beers or bottles in their hands as you
see on a normal day but men (and women) staggering
drunk, unable to drink anymore, taking diggers on the
ice sidewalks (yes it's still cold, still frozen, and
still winter despite the fact that the Russian spring
starts march 1). The General is really the most
amazing part of my life, he is so filled with Russian
nationalism, biases, and sayings that you are in
stitches from the beginning of class to the end. "The
only hard currency in Russia was vodka" -referencing
the inflation right after the soviet collapse "In
Egypt you could wake up hung over kill a few slaves
and feel better, you couldn't do that in Russia"-
explaining the difference between serfs and slaves
"it's like when Russians took a cosmonaut and put him
on an airplane thinking he would still be an expert,
he dropped his pencil and looked up" -referencing god
knows what but it was hysterical.
Now for those of you keeping track at home I am
taking a slight vacation from writing, as today I head
off to Moscow for 3 days and then another 7 in Kiev
and transit. I'm finished with the evil Tatyana,
finally out of that babushka's reach, I took my final
today. wish me luck in Moscow, don't worry I’ll leave
big L some flowers for all of you, I know you miss
him. ell

St. Petersburg is not Russia!! Moscow is Russia!!

2007-12-03T20:05:00.002-05:00

My mother always likes to relate the story of her
airplane trip to Spain next to "the big Russian" and
his quote "St. Petersburg is not Russia! Moscow is
Russia" well I guess I’ve officially been to Russia.
We took the night train from St. Pete's to Moscow,
apparently the Russians like to make up for the ice
cold temps outside by creating an oven inside, it must
have been a 90 degrees in the cabin (which put Euro
rail train cars to shame, apparently the soviets
mastered two things: railway cars and subway systems).
of course we couldn't keep the door open because of
the safety concerns. Not only did our guide horrify us
by telling us that last year 25 of 26 people were
robbed on the train ride- even with their doors
locked, her boyfriend informed us of the technique
commonly used: they pump in sleeping gas and then pick
the lock. Needless to say between the heat and fear
little sleep was gotten. We arrive at 6 in the morning
way to early for our hotel to let us in, so... bus
tour time, oh yeah we were chipper. we walk out of the
station having been told that Moscow is currently 5
degrees WARMER than St. Pete's, nope turns out weather
forecasters are full of shit everywhere in the world,
BLIZZARD, maybe the second coldest temp I’ve
experienced in Russia, but of course that doesn't stop
our 6:30 am walk through red square, people were
starting to get upset at this point. However Moscow is
amazing and I don't think I would have wished to
experience it any other way, finally real Russia.
We get to the hotel around eleven which is in the
middle of the most ridiculous market you've ever
seen(unless I’m told you've been to Asia where this
chaos is commonplace) people are flying through the
streets with oh say 50 bales of clothing on their
trolleys, there are trucks being loaded and unloaded
at a chaotic rate, no one speaks English and few speak
Russian either there seems, so you can't even find out
how much a bale of clothing goes for, or what that
might contain. Again or RA's boyfriend informs us that
people often get hustled into the back room (I imagine
things get quite unpleasant there, perhaps a free trip
in the back of a Uhaul van to Hungary??) But I did
manage to find -at the more tame souvenir fair also
located by the hotel- a rather nice new jacket or coat
rather, Soviet pea coat. So the risk was worth it
(although the street food wasn't). The next day we
went to see Lenin, a little over the top, as only the
Russians know how, armed guards hustling you down,
into, past, and out from a rather yellowed Lenin in
the middle of a huge marbled and heavily surveyed
room. Just looks like he's taking a nap.
Moscow is rather expensive (or we are just growing
accustomed to living in St. Pete's we can't tell
which) it seems like it is as expensive as the states,
i paid an outrageous amount for my borsch at one
restaurant (4 dollars) which wasn't even that good.
and it is a little or actually a lot sketchier than
St. Petersburg. As jarrod said "my guard is on high
here, I have a feeling shit could go rogue at any
minute" But fear not because as I write this email I
am in Kiev, safer, cheaper but in my opinion slightly
less interesting (all this will go in the next email,
we're on a tight schedule and I can only talk Moscow
now) the final night we went to the opera, La Boheme
to be exact, which I am willing to admit was pretty
fun and well done, although we had been out touring
all day and had no time to eat until after the opera
(once again sticking me to shaverma i.e. Russian
kebab, which I think is not so good for the digestive
track) But the opera itself was very fun. The next day
we took the 13 hour train ride to Kiev, which will
wait till next time. ell

Kiev Just for the Chicken

2007-12-03T20:05:00.001-05:00

So we left Moscow in a big hurry, it was great don't
get me wrong, but the whole trip was like a whirlwind.
I particularly liked that we went to see Lenin and
Stalin’s (who has more flowers than anyone) graves and
then went to the huge shopping mall across the way
(which if Lenin ever wakes up from his nap will be the
first thing he sees, complete with Nike Swoosh). We
board another sleeper car bound for Kiev and our first
interaction with Russian Border guards. Surprisingly
(especially after a month of living in Russia) they
just let us go, stamped our passports and said "have
fun in Ukraine" no money requests, no pat downs
nothing.
We arrived in Kiev at 8 in the morning, first thing
we see?? A 250 foot Russian goddess with sword and
Soviet Sickle and hammer. IF you know anything about
soviet architecture you know this screams Stalin's
brainchild (everything over the top soviet i.e. the
cool buildings were done under Stalin, perhaps that's
why he has so many flowers). You can just see him one
night, dead drunk "hey guys how about this let's build
a huge Russian woman, like 100 meters tall with a huge
sickle and hammer, and plop it in Kiev?? Then they'll
never be able to escape the Soviet Yoke" well maybe
that's not word for word but if you throw a few -skis
in there I’m sure it would translate. After attempting
to rent a apartment from a babushka unsuccessfully
(something about 5 Americans on spring break turned
her off to that idea) we settled on the hostel which
was conveniently located in the center of nowhere.
Chad and I tried to find a place to eat breakfast...
yeah like 4 mile walk and then it was just McDonalds.
However we quickly realized that the reason we
couldn't find anything was that we were a little off
on our time... i.e. 2 hours off we though that people
would be up and moving but it was in reality only 8 o
clock we thought it was 10 (nothing really goes on in
Russia before 10 unless it involves alcohol).
Also we found out that like many Russian villages
there aren't so many restaurants as house restaurants
and house hotels, which would essentially mean that
when your kid moves out of his or her room for college
you put up a hotel sign in your window, or if you like
to cook you put up a restaurant sign (most of the
places we went like this had no menu but seemed just
to decide what you would want, and you either said yes
or left, there was only one option per person, but
every table got a different dish) Our first day we
went to St. Sophia, a copy of the Constantinople St.
Sophia although I get the impression that the one in
Constantinople is massive and has an immense dome,
this I imagine due to snowfall fears was like a
miniature. But the interior was the best we've seen
yet, mostly because the Russian definition of
restoration was paint a new fresco on top so they're
all painted in like 1902 (seriously the concept of
real restoration has just hit here our art history
teacher talks about it like it's a marvel of science).
We also went to a monastery nearby (Russian and
Ukraine are out of control with churches and
monasteries, people say the communists destroyed a lot
of churches and monasteries but surely it must have
been because there simply was no room otherwise, each
city tour starts with "before the communists we had a
lot of churches now we only have 600" every two feet:
onion dome.
After the first day we were rather churched out, but
the second day we decided to go to the "monk caves" in
yet another monastery supposedly very creepy, you buy
a candle as your ticket, you have to rent a guide, a
must see, at least this is the way the guide book
describes it. Well so we get there, nice monastery per
usual, we find the cave entrance, buy our candles and
get into a tour group. Yep it's in Russian, yep for
the first 40 minutes we are trying to avoid an
international incident as we're all led around
expected to kiss each icon and pray (we were in a
group with two portly Russian monks) finally after
we'd abstained from every religious activity, and
there were a lot the tour guide says "what's wrong?
are you catholic??" so that made things a little more
awkward. Finally we get to the cave part, we light our
candles, jarrod and I get all excited and ... well
someone should rename this sight "monk cellar" it's
probably above ground, totally lit up inside, it's
whitewashed smooth walls and completely covered
bodies, the only interesting thing about this sight
was watching the portly monk try and wedge through
these incredibly cramped quarters and kneel down and
kiss each coffin(I certainly couldn't have done it, I
really still don't understand how he was doing it, I
think it was an optical illusion, but it almost made a
believer out of me)
After this tour (mind you we still had to listen to
the tour guide explain each saint or monk and their
deeds in a language we couldn't understand, and of
course we were stuck behind the whole group, there was
no escape) we sprinted to the huge "Mother Russia"
statue, even more impressive up close, complete with
an eternal flame (now extinguished, something I’ve
never seen before) and a huge ,soviet military display
where for 30 cents you could mess around on a soviet
helicopter, complete with cheesy gunfire sounds. and
we got to see a couple of the huge Russian missiles
which I imagine were once pointed at my dear North
Truro military installment(don't worry Uncle Ellery I
took plenty of photos for you).
Our final day in Kiev was spent going to the souvenir
market and Bulgakov's house, which mind you I haven't
read any of his works but from the look of the
abundance of medicine bottles and the creepy
psycadelic light display might have enjoyed whatever
drugs were available at the time (not to mention there
is a head shop across the way) curious to say the
least. Oh and yes one last thing, about the chicken,
does anyone know what Chicken Kiev is?? I didn't until
I ordered it the first night, turns out they take a
chicken breast, wrap it around a stick of butter,
bread it and deep fry it!! I think that answers a lot
of questions about the former soviet state now doesn't
it? back in St. Pete's where it's now possible to get
your feet wet ell

Back in the USSR

2007-12-03T20:04:00.000-05:00

It's good to be back in the Motherland, everything is
a little more interesting here. For instance as I was
walking out of the cafeteria the other day one student
came running down shouting "don't eat at the
cafeteria! Don't eat at the Cafeteria!! there's been a
hepatitis A outbreak 20 kids are in the hospital!"
welcome home! (fear not I’m not only vaccinated from
it but also later found out it was a bad gyro stand
not our cafeteria, thank goodness I go for the bliny
stands and not the gyro's!!) Then about 2 days ago I
went to the internet cafe, and after typing out a nice
long email for you people(on a keyboard that required
a hammer to push the keys down) I took a momentary
stretch and of course the screen went blue and the
computer crashed before I could send it, ah sweet
sweet Mother Russia.
No it really is good to be back, it is staying light
out till about 9 o’clock now and it's not even April,
things are sure to be wild in may. For the last 2 days
it's been pouring out, which mind you is the first
rain I’ve ever seen in St. Petersburg so it must mean
it's warming up. You can actually see sidewalk. I
don't need 3 layers to go across the street, it's
pretty cool. There are a few drawbacks though that
some might find unpleasant, it turns out that the city
turns into a mud pit in spring, or more accurately a
deadly combination of mud and ice which can lead to
some nasty spills. I think I might be the only person
left who hasn't taken a spill yet (I’m thinking of
investing in spiked shoes to keep this streak alive)
Jarrod took a digger that set off a car alarm the
other day, even the babushka's stopped to laugh.
Another flaw is that after 5 months of perma-frost
the dog poop is starting to be uncovered, so now you
have to dodge ice, mud, puddles and dog shit, it's a
minefield on the sidewalks(not to mention the months
of accumulated litter). It's not what you'd call
pretty in St. Pete's right now. But I’m loving it, I
have no class and just wander the streets on a daily
basis, I walked Dostoevsky's old stomping ground the
other day and saw all the Crime and Punishment sights,
which now just like everywhere in this city is filled
with gambling stores (I really don't know what else to
call them, their not casino's their just rooms with
slot machines and a beer vending machine). Dostoevsky
would be proud!
We haven't returned to the banya yet this month
although I think tonight might be the night as we all
just had our midterms (which were pathetically easy,
apparently we have already "bought" our grades and no
one fails here) so we could use a good night of
Russian silliness.
Although we've become a little more accustomed to
Russian life recently, the other day we did discover
something rather bizarre, Russians apparently love
Mexican food, can't get enough. We wanted to go out to
eat at a Mexican place the other day and we found
about 4 in St. Petersburg, we went to the first one
right down the street, full, completely full they
wouldn't seat us till after 10 (it was like 7). Okay
never even seen a restaurant in Russia half full, but
maybe it was a party. we decide to call the next one
on the list also full (or at least that's what we
think they said) are you kidding. so we get blinys
instead, which also turned out disastrous as jarrod
ordered 2 chicken blinys and got two with red caviar,
oh yeah he was rather upset. So the next day we decide
to go out at 5 how can they be full at 5, go to the
first one yep full no seating again till 9 so we call
the second one also full, no one in Russia even eats
at 5 what the hell is going on. then we trek halfway
across town to the third one they are also packed but
they agree to seat us on the condition that we eat
within 2 hours. it was worth it but next time we're
making reservations (as soon as we learn how to say
that in Russian)
On Saturday it will be official, we only have a month
and a half left in this northern paradise, so I’ll be
kicking up the sightseeing, as soon as the weather
improves (ha!!). Unless of course Mr. Bush decides to
block the boarders and then perhaps i can spend a
little more time over here (I hear he is not happy
with my adopted homeland right now) ell
Safety, Fun and Finally the Sun
As you can see the emails are getting less frequent,
mostly because now that I can see sidewalk and it's
light until 930 one really wants to do things. I've
been walking the streets quite a bit getting to know
the city. The biggest events this week were again
safety related (I’m pretty sure all cities in America
are more dangerous though).
Friday night we went out to this little hole in the
wall Russian bar called Dacha, it's always packed
literally shoulder to shoulder, in fact it resembles a
packed subway car. A whole bunch of us went Jarrod and
I were just commenting on how if a fight broke out
things would be a massacre when matt, one of my
roommates cut in on a guy trying to hit on another
American (why the Russian would be afraid of an
American man wearing eyeliner beats me) and promptly
put his arm on Matt’s shoulder and said
"Americanits??" then Matt shrugged the guys hand of
and away it went he grabbed Matt's throat, Matt’s
boyfriend grabbed Matt he got hit in the face, Pavel
another American tried to break it up he got hit to
the ground and kicked in the face by the bouncer. This
is bad but those of us who realized the possibilities
just were fearing one thing and yep Pavel answered
"Jarrod help me"... oh fuck now we're all going to
jail. Jarrod is gone from my side in a second,
throwing little Russian stick figures right and left
immediately he is in the tussle, luckily for everyone
the fight was basically over and we were all just
promptly hustled out of the bar (this is the second
bar fight matt has caused, I’m beginning to think that
eyeliner isn't such a good idea at Russian clubs).
The next day we learn that another group of our
friends were mugged and beat up outside that same bar,
needless to say that one is off the list. Now that
it's nicer out the pickpocket gangs have also come
into fashion, I was getting on to the subway
yesterday, and the car wasn't even that packed but all
of a sudden I’m being bumped and pushed, then when I’m
on the car I’m suddenly cornered by 4 Russians
pretending to talk on their cell phones, their tactic
as far as I can see is to cover all angles so that
they can get your wallet but I had my hands in my
pockets so they switch to plan b which is since you
can't get around them you take your hands out of your
pockets to push them, I didn't do this either so they
exited the train before the doors had closed. The same
thing happened to Jacob and Jarrod. And let's not
forget that the holiday of hate is approaching
(Hitler's birthday) where we have all been told that
we shouldn't leave IMOP because the skinheads go
crazy.
Brighter news: The ice on the Neva and other canals
is just starting to break and float out into the ocean
so in another few days or so the bridges start going
up in the evenings which can make life difficult as
you can't get out of St. Petersburg proper from like 1
till 4 you can imagine how not fun that is going to
be. But on the bright side pretty soon it'll be light
out when the bridges rise and that is apparently a
favorite Russian tradition to watch them, I’m down if
I can drag myself out to see that hour in the morning.

On Sunday we again tried to see the Finland gulf and
were successful, in fact we got to walk out on it (as
far as we dare, although you could actually see little
tent cities about a mile out on the ice, I bet they
sleep well at night) not only did we see the gulf of
Finland but we also found an amusement park (with a
conspicuous title of "diva" with an obvious Disney
trademark "D", love that the Russians don't give a
damn for copyrights) and we got to play bumper cars
(the Russian children and parents were not to pleased
by the hooliganing Americans bashing into them, but we
had fun) And Saturday was our spring meal which was
AIFS paid for (good to see that 10,000 went somewhere)
where we went to an Armenian restaurant and had a nice
traditional Russian dish (shashleek, which is some
sort of skewered meat) indeed we couldn't figure out
what was so Armenian about the meal, but hey it was
good. to those questions about bad vodka I just read
the other day that 35,000 people a year die from bad
vodka, indeed that's why we are told to always spend
at least 4 dollars on a bottle (no skimping out here)
although I wonder if it's bad vodka or too much vodka.
As to when I get home it's may 13th, about midnight.
as to cute Russian girls, yes they are here but when
you see that they all turn into these crazy jaded and
angry Russian babushkas you'd think twice (it really
is an amazing transformation, how do you lose that
many inches of height I’ll never figure out) greetings
from the alcohol capitol of the world ell

Russia a World Power?

2007-12-03T20:03:00.000-05:00

Recently my mother told me that people are beginning
to talk of Russia returning to "world power" status,
and I could nearly not contain my laughter, it's not
that I wouldn't be happy for the Russians, more power
to them, but if their a world power that doesn't say
much for the status of the world. Today I was walking
down the street, it's finally spring here and crews
are beginning to fix St. Petes up for the summer
tourist season. I saw three men painting little street
side fences along Nevsky, 2 of them with paintbrushes
and one of them supervising, now there is only one
color and really it only needed one guy with a can of
spray paint. Then we proceeded a little farther and we
saw two men cleaning the aluminum siding put up for
construction, fair enough with all the winter mud it
was looking pretty gross, but again instead of hosing
it off in like 4 minutes they had 5 gallon buckets of
water and little paintbrushes, going over each spot
like 4 times. then we continue on, now we've been
talking amongst our selves how someone with a pressure
washer could really make a fortune in St. Petes
because all the street facades are gross and
blackened, but we were pretty sure they didn't have a
clue what a pressure washer is, nope today I saw a man
pressure washing the gutter and the bottom of street
signs, good choice. and that is just what I saw today,
the inefficiency of this country is shocking (and
really quite amusing, I don't think it would be any
fun if it was easy) they have men who's only job is to
come out with their brooms when it rains and push the
water around (they try and move puddles with brooms,
fat chance!) they are the same people I believe who
now that it has dried swept all the grassy areas of
the litter and topsoil(again good idea) but then
interestingly enough no one comes and picks up the
piles so as you walk down the street there are these
huge piles of month old litter, and they've just been
sitting there for about 2 weeks slowly dispersing
again into the street. And you think these people can
pull it together and regain world power status???
But as for my time in Russia, it's simply amazing,
I’ve become culturally active, attending plays,
opera's and jazz concerts (turns out there was a
reason I preferred soccer games and sightseeing).
Monday we went to see “Samson and Delilah”, which
really wasn't that bad, a little over the top with the
"artistic interpretation" but not too shabby, then
Sunday we went to see "Three Sisters" a play by
Chekhov. Now I like Chekhov, really I do, but this was
one of those in your face versions where the audience
is part of the stage, well let me tell you the
drawback of this, you can't get up, not at all in fact
the entrance is behind where the actors are acting,
and how long was this play?? 3 hours. Now surely your
thinking to yourself "well it probably isn't that bad,
they must have had an intermission or 2" nope no
intermission, 3 hours in Russian, people, not just me
were freaking out, the old babushkas really looked
like they were going to jump out the windows (i was
gonna use them to cushion my fall) then at the end
when we thought things were over with the actor came
out for applause about 8 times until one fed up
American screamed at everyone "get up! get up! for the
love of god get up!" and promptly pushed the person in
front of her off her chair and made a mad dash for it.
we were all quickly at her heals, it wasn't that we
hated it, but for some reason the play was extremely
over acted and people kept screaming "i want tea" and
then would start crying then one man started crying
and said "but I like coffee" I’m not sure that they
didn't take some liberty with Chekhov's script and
concept.
Lately I have been going on what most of my friends
here call "death marches" where some poor sap says
"boy Ellery I’d really like to see some of the city,
you walk around a lot, can i come with you" 7 hours
later they hobble back to school and say never again,
what can I say, anyone who knows what traveling with
my mom is like knows that's an easy day.
I finally went to Jarrod’s home stay the other day
for the first time, depressing is the word for it,
cramped also comes to mind. They appear to have had a
small fire in the bathroom (I suspect the son lit the
toilet paper on fire not knowing the result) Jarrod
has yet to be able to figure out what happened or why
they don't paint over the scorch marks. the hanging
electrical cords and partitioned rooms are rather
nicer than I thought (although I never thought you
could split a closet into two rooms).
Next weekend I head to Tallinn and we lose another
girl, she's going home, but when she is supposed to, a
quarter student.
A lot of the year round students have become openly
hostile to everything Russian, and just watch American
movies and receive shipments of mac and cheese and
tootsie rolls, most not going out at all, rarely even
to class as a protest (one can sympathize, Russia’s
tough, but then again they were the ones who signed up
for a year) even the semester students are getting
antsy, especially with restaurant service, which is
militantly slow to say the least (I don't really like
going out to eat with Jarrod because I’m afraid of
landing in jail). But now that we're getting vitamin
d from the sun about 16 hours a day things will
improve, now it's time for me to go, it's 5 o clock
and I’ve only got another 5 before the sun goes down
and I promised Joe we'd see the rest of the city in 3
hours max, he doesn't know what he's gotten into!! ell

Where exactly is that?!?!

2007-12-03T20:02:00.000-05:00

Tallinn eh, does anyone even know where that is??
Well I believe technically speaking it is a higher
latitude than St. Pete's (yeah good vacation
destination) and it's in Estonia, one of the Baltic
states. Well we decided to take the bus to Tallinn
just to escape the burg, (really just needed to escape
the people not the city) that was our first mistake.
as you all know I’ve spent some time on the bus, but
nothing like this, the Russian road system is far from
adequate, in fact I felt like I was stuck on a plane
during turbulence for 9 hours with one 2.5 hour break
at the boarder for customs and visa work (normally
having a 2.5 hour delay like this might have angered
me but this was the only time my butt didn't hurt. the
seats are amazingly uncomfortable, they seem to have
taken a greyhound bus and added about 3 rows of
seating, thereby creating an even more cramped seat. I
physically couldn't fit my legs in front of me. But
when we arrived in Tallinn we realized it was worth
it, not only is it a beautiful medieval town like
Brugge or Siena, but it was also gorgeous out, like
maybe the clearest sky I’ve seen since cape cod. Only
one drawback, coming from St. Petersburg which is a
rather large city with lots to do, Tallinn is really
really small, we kept over walking the distances (I
think our map we had was actually to scale of 1:2) and
as far as museums there wasn't very much interesting
(just the standard all over Russia and it's former
parts, a Pushkin museum and a house of peter the
greats, oh and a building built by Rastrelli) we were
actually thinking of going to Finland for one of our 2
days there (only thing holding us back was we over
slept). So having seen the city sights in the first 25
minutes of being there we did what anyone else would
do... we ate at probably 40 percent of the restaurants
and drank in probably 60 percent of the bars. We were
finally like Europeans (every Russians dream) we sat
on the big open square looking at the oldest town hall
in Europe. we ran into about 10 other kids from our
trip also traveling to Tallinn that weekend (again
small city) we watched the crazy British stag parties
that go on in Tallinn; they mentioned it in a guide
book and it's really quite true I personally saw about
15 different parties going on and we heard more
English than Estonian (not that I’d know what that
sounds like) the second night we were randomly
approached by a man on the street who rented us an
apartment for the night, which was rather straight out
of the 70's with leopard print beds, weird shaped
chairs and bizzarro paintings (we also counted about
17 crosses around the place, and we think they might
have been hari krishnas, but they didn't try and sell
us any religion so it was okay by us)
It's finally really warm here, like I think 60, we
sit outside the dorms now and have no use for the
lounge (I’m sure now that I’ve said this it'll be
snowing all week, which apparently really isn't out of
the question until July here) I don't even need a
jacket, bliss, really having been so cold for so long
it is really something to feel the sun on your face
(also I’ve never been so pale, we're all like ghosts,
or really just Russians) sorry for the short email but
I’m not at the internet cafe, I’m in the dorms and
people are very touchy about their internet here (they
like to use it themselves to pretend like their home,
again people are getting hostile here, many haven't
left the dorms for weeks, and I fear they might start
eating each other soon, fear not it won't be me, I’m
never here) ellski

May Day

2007-12-03T20:01:00.000-05:00

The countdown has begun, Russia is coming to an end,
and it is sad (or was sad until I tried to write my
dad a b-day card and found that that website crashed
my computer every time I used it and once again I have
a shitty keyboard). this week we went to the private
banya, which was really probably the nicest interior
of any building I’ve ever been in in Russia, complete
with big screen TV, although it's great downfall was
it's tile floors, which added with water have left my
body quite bruised and battered (took about 3
diggers). then the next day we went to the Baltika
brewery, which obviously with 14 college students and
a free beer taste test was really quite fun (although,
strangely enough we'd already tried most of them).
Besides this most of our time has been spent picture
taking and seeing the last few sights around town. we
went to the largest black market in St. Petersburg,
filled with all sorts of counterfeit goods like DVD’s,
CD’s, car parts, guns and knives. and of course like
any good Russian market it was filled at the front
with babushka's selling absolutely any worthless scrap
you can imagine, what’s that? you tore a piece of your
shirt?? save the piece, it might fetch a rouble, oh
don't throw that freely distributed magazine away or
that broken pair of sunglasses, their gold in some
babushka's eyes. Good times. We also went to Alexander
Nevsky monastery where they were letting everyone in
free, no questions asked, but the second their heard
English they charged us 30 roubles each, unfortunate,
but typical.
then today we saw the May Day celebratory parade,
which essentially means every political party there is
marches down Nevsky prospect chanting and singing,
needless to say security is tight and the political
parties varied. they actually had an armed guard
separating the mainstream pro-capitalism groups with
the communists and anarchists (I fear the communists
might really diminish by next year, as most of them
weren't walking but using wheelchairs, times are a
changin...then it'll just be the Stalinists and the
anarchists)
I went out in shorts the other day, it was cold but
still I decided to go for it, the sun has been shining
for about 12 days straight (and almost 24 hours a day,
it's light till 1030 or so followed by a 2 hour dusk,
trust me that'll really mess u up) so basically it is
pure bliss, Russia is saluting is for making it
through what napoleon couldn't. still no flowers or
foliage, indeed there are still piles of snow in
places, but much better (and with about 20 hours of
daylight each day I imagine the foliage comes
quickly). For you poet enthusiasts I got a photo of
the stray dog, which is still open (perhaps under new
management) and serving poets of St. Petersburg. Happy
birthday dad, hope all is well ellski

Bad Decision Making

2007-12-03T19:47:00.000-05:00

Well a lot has certainly happened since the last time
I wrote an email, it’s Wednesday and I just finished
my second to last final, really I feel guilty about
getting credit for this, but whatever. The last thing
I had done when we talked was go to the Baltika
factory right? Well I guess my story starts there,
Thursday we had to return to the Baltika Brewery
because of course the gift shop wasn’t open when we
went (apparently it closes during the weekends, yeah I
know a little absurd) so we returned so we could get
some hats and shirts, well it turns out that there are
2 different gift shops, one that you can go in if
you’ve been on the tour and one for the general
public, the one for the general public is really just
a discount beer store with a couple of hats and
ashtrays, well after about an half hour of arguing
that we’d already been to the tour and wanted to buy
t-shirts etc. (Jarrod kept yelling that he’d spend a
thousand doobers at least in the shop) they inform us
that the shop actually just closed about 3 minutes
ago, well in a case like this there is only one thing
left to do, we walked back to the public gift shop
bought beers and sat in the lobby, asking every 15
minutes a new face whether they wouldn’t just get us
some t-shirts, we’d give them 500 doobers. Finally a
women comes out with 4 t-shirts says “take them
they’re free” and left, well needless o say we
defeated Russian bureaucracy and were thrilled.
However all this was soon to be forgotten, we came
home and decided to enjoy a wonderful day, we sat on
the lawn, made dinner, generally had a nice time. So
around 12 o clock it isn’t really unnatural to find a
group of people sitting on a windowsill enjoying the
sunset, everyone does it, it isn’t odd. Well needless
to say bad decision making was involved Jarrod lost
his balance on the sill and fell 3 stories to the
asphalt, he is okay now, although it has been a trying
process. Jarrod got rushed to the hospital (luckily,
the international clinic, like a 5-star hotel, if Mick
Jagger were to trip and fall, they would bring him
here) He wound up with 2 broken heels a mild
concussion and some scrapes and scratches, the real
bummer is that he isn’t allowed to leave the hospital
until he leaves on Friday, again needless to say it’s
been a real downer for the trip (luckily he is covered
by his home insurance because the insurance wouldn’t
cover him here) I myself had a two hour interview with
the police while they tried to decide whether he
jumped in attempting to commit suicide, whether it was
a stunt or whether someone i.e. me pushed him
(obviously none of those are true, and thankfully they
accepted that).
Besides this ridiculousness (we’ve all been getting
some good laughs from the situation, even Jarrod, in
fact he might be the one who has made the most jokes)
nothing really has been going on here, the digornia’s
now all hate me as they see me as the starter of the
trouble (he was my friend, my window, and he wasn’t
even supposed to be in the building past 10) so I get
Babushka’ed more than ever.
We went to Peterhof another tsar palace but the
fountains for which it is famous were off and the
palace was closed even though we had made reservations
for that day (I mean really people, Russia just
doesn’t get this tourism thing) and now most of us are
just killing time before our plane trip home to
America (Jarrod more than most)

well here is a final little round up of the things I
will miss:
10. Open potholes and the likes, I’ve been walking by
the same open pothole for 4 months, it’s on the main
causeway to the metro stop, all they’ve ever had over
it is one 2 by 4. They still haven’t cleaned up the
piles of trash they collected for spring cleaning, in
fact the piles have really just kind of spread out
again, they collected leaves a few weeks ago and
needless to say those aren’t in piles any longer
9. Trashcan fires: Never had seen one in my life, let
alone on a main thoroughfare, but often Nevsky will be
alight with 2 or 3 trashcans where people are too lazy
to put out their cigarettes and huge fires
erupt(apparently no one feels the need to put out the
blaze, indeed I saw a dumpster on fire the other day
and smoke billowing out, burning your eyes, eventually
it just burnt out, I guess that’s the policy here
because I have never seen a fire truck, but plenty of
fires)
8. Water: well really this is something I can’t wait
for, just to be able to drink from the tap like a
normal human being, and not have to plan ahead “okay
am I gonna be thirsty tomorrow morning?? Probably,
well I’d better go to the store now and get some
because if not, no joy
7. doing things the hard way: boy do you guys have it
easy, you go to the store with a 20 dollar bill and
buy a candy bar no problem, I go and spend 300 out of
a 500 and they say “we can’t change this do you have a
smaller bill?” then they have to go into the safe yell
at me some more and then the rest of the line starts
getting angry, I’ve never been shot down trying to
spend money in America, it’s happened about a dozen
times here, they’d rather reject your business than
give you change.
6.The food, Bliny Borsch Solyanka (a form o Russian
hot dog stew) all of them even the fear of a
contaminated meal or the fairly standard bad meal (I
think the contemporary version of Russian roulette is
just going out to eat at a restaurant and seeing how
sick you get.
5. The dangerous streets of St. Petersburg: Jarrods
got broken legs, Richard had his knee broken by a
security guard, Antoine got the worse black eye I’ve
ever seen, Megan and Matt got robbed of their cell
phones and camera in a Russian dacha 3 hours out of
the city, Becky and Kendra had to run away from fake
police, Matt, Jarrod and Pavel got in a fight for
being American. This city is out of hand, that is just
among my friends, since I’ve been here (I’m sure
you’ve heard) one IMOP student was murdered, and there
has been a real rash of hate crime in St. Pete’s (the
mafia influence in Moscow keeps that city more in line
and keeps the skinheads out)
4. The city itself: Just amazing that’s all I can say
everywhere you turn is history, and everywhere you
look an amazing building, be it Stalinist architecture
or a tsarist palace
3. The Babushkas: oh sure they’re jaded, angry, pushy,
fearless but these crazy, short, old lady’s are
somewhat endearing, they occasionally laugh at you in
a nice way, every once in a while they say excuse me
before sitting on you in the subway, once I even saw
one turn and smile at me when she cut me in the
grocery line. They are characters that’s to be sure,
unlike any you might find in the states
2. The war hero’s: yesterday was victory day, (while
the rest of the world celebrates the end of WWII on
may 8th Russia decided to be different and celebrate
it as the 9th) there was something quite awe inspiring
watching the Blockade survivors walk down Nevsky in
their annual parade (a parade that gets shorter and
shorter each year mind you) and then in a show of
patriotism everyone follows behind so that most of St.
Petersburg is actually marching behind them (after a
wall of militsia)
1. The Alcohol: come on I mean really it’s Russia,
what else could be number one, I’m in the country
where they invented alcoholism. There are babushkas
here who could out drink the most capable frat boys,
we might be buying beer for a party at the
supermarket, but all of a sudden a little old lady
cuts you with 3 liters of vodka in her basket, then
you turn around and there is a 12 year old with a pint
and a beer, you look across at the successful
businessman or woman and they couldn’t actually wait
for the line and are drinking their beer in line. You
walk outside and on a sunny day there is no one
without a drink, you see the cop hanging out smoking a
cigarette and drinking a 9 percent beer, the guy at
the kiosk is drinking a beer you get on the metro and
everyone has a “travel drink” beer, canned gin and
tonic, “alco-energy” drink, this country is way beyond
anything you could imagine, trust me. Oh and did I
mention that all this is before 10 am??? So that’s it,
that’s all I got, I hope everyone enjoyed the emails,
I’ll be home soon From Russia with love ellski