And Everything After...
Hello blog.
I am finally back in Chicago. I am living in the Urkainian Village in an apartment with Sean, ever my house-mate-soul-mate of extreme hyphenation. Its good. Its a great place, a great neighborhood. It's kind of nice to be back.
But more about the now, later.
I spent the last month in Belarus, as the previous post implies, as well as road-tripping through the West Balkans, from the northern part of Croatia, down into Montenegro, and through Bosnia and Hercegovina. There are almost too many stories to tell, but many of them are being put together in film, so I will be posting those bit by bit. For the mean time, you can look at some photosets that highlight Belarus here:
and from the West Balkans trip here:
Just click on the photos and it will take you to the flickr pages for them.
More coming on grand adventures later...
Labels: belarus, bosnia, Brigette, croatia, hotlinks, Marko, montenegro, photos, Sasha, Stephen, travel
Belarus
So, we've made it to Belarus. We saw mummified saints in Kiev, and ate borshch made by Sasha's babushka, and have nearly been arrested like 5 times for taking pictures of Lenin. I dont even know.
But its been a good, weird adventure, full of the unexpected.
part of the unexpected is the internet here. Allow me to explain:
How to control information 101:
--deny home internet access to average citizens who can not justify the expense as related to non-state-threatening business.
--avoid scandal by providing high-speed internet access in local communities at state-run internet barns, where citizens can pay a pitance for hours of online time.
--Provide no more than 6 computers for every 10,000 citizens, so that people have to wait in line for hours to check e mail.
and the rest is cake.
So, anyway, we are taking lots of pictures, and lots more video. We've had (deliberate) photo opportunities with the local police cadets, seen Lee Harvey Oswald's old house in Minsk, and are gettign ready to go out to the country for a solstice celebration that apparently involves getting naked, jumping through hoops of fire, and searching for a secret, magic flower in the woods that binds you in a marriage pact with....someone. I'm not sure who, but it's all magical and stuff.
I get back to Budapest in about a week. I'll be able to post more when I get back to good old dysfyunctional attempts at democracy. So, till then. Па-па!
Labels: belarus, internet, travel
Rackeve=A Day in the Sociological Life
oh man, half of the department went to rackeve today, a village on the south island and hour outside of budapest, and swam in the danube, diving off of docks in the water, in between cat tails, then saw a thunderstorm start on the other side of the river, and watched lightning from the grass, then took a bunch of group pictures in front of the crazy sky, then ran for it as the temperature dropped like 5 deg celcius in an instant and the rain and wind started, and as we were dashing out of the way, the wind blew down one of the 30' tall trees that we had just been sitting under! and we hauled ass through the rain and took cover in the hotel that was immediately across the street that used to be a castle! and we had beer and hot chocolate in the cellar of the giant castle and had free coffee from a physics conference that was 5n the castle, and the walked all around this city and saw a serbian orthodox church compound that was breathtaking with golden steeples and wells and dogs and tombstones, and we ate cherries off of the trees in the street and then bought bags of them off of two kids who were picking them out of their yard who had this hilarious dog named cameron. thats not even the half if it, and it was awesome and we slept the whole way home. oh man. today was good.
Labels: aungo, Brigette, CEU, grad school, Luc, Ola, photos, rackeve, stefan, thin justification for my existace, travel
The Goings On
So, I have not been blogging because I have been, instead of living life and seeing the sun, writing my thesis and developing the most incredible ass-groove in a chair at Siraly, where Brigette, Stephen, Luc and I have permanently set up residence to kick this pig.
But here are a few small points of note to tide you over until I get my wee little life back
*Artyom used the word "harlot" in his thesis. There is no end to the hilarity that I find in this
*We bought our visas for Belarus. $125. wtf? We should be able to pick them up from the embassy tomorrow. Lord. I'm excited, but I plan on coming back friggin fluent. I won't have just gone to Belarus, I will have DONE Belarus.
*My camera got jacked by some sketchy Hungarian-Transylvanian dude who ended up at my house and made out with some chick on my couch after smoking in Monica's bedroom. Screw that guy. Screw that guy right in the ear. But, this means that I am on the market for a new one. I think I'm going to go for digital video
*Barring any impediments to the previous goal, Stephen, Brigette, Sasha, Marko and I are going to collaborate on "Belarus: The Movie"
*After Belarus, we are going to Croatia to mooch off of Marko's family and sleep in forests. While we are there, it will be Croatian Independance Day (Hooray! We're all still catholic! woo!). On independence day, it is meet for one to eat bear. With berries. Berry bear. Again, wtf?
*My thesis deadline is Monday, but I'm hoping to have it in by Friday. We'll see how it goes.
Labels: belarus, Brigette, CEU, croatia, food, grad school, Marko, Sasha, Stephen, travel
New Toy
I got myself a new cellphone for my birthday. Its great. Its quad band, unlocked, and works everywhere, even here in Ukraine. (my old phone was a locked t-mobile phone - i never was able to get the code they gave me to unlock it to work right, and so once i left the t-mobile network in Hungary, i wasnt able to roam. at all.)
I got a red Motorola PEBL, and its a really sexy phone. I am already in love with it.
I bought it while I was here in Odessa because, just like the phones that you buy in Hungary have Hungarian programmed onto them (omg, have you ever tried to text with T9 in a language that has 4 different variations on the letter O? sweet mother of god...), the phones here operate in Russian and Ukrainian. And the other standards, like English, French, Spanish, and German. But the cool thing is that it supports these other alphabets, so I can send and receive text messages in which ever one I want. Plus the face plate looks like this, with both sets of characters on it, which makes me feel super cool:
Ok, actually, thats a picture of a Razr, but you get the point. My camera is all packed up and I'm not going to start digging for stuff now. I have a train to the Ukrainian border in about 4.5 hours. So long Odessa.
Labels: thin justification for my existace, travel, ukraine
Beaches and Photosets
I walked down to the Arkadia Beach today. Its about an 8km walk from my hostel, through Shevchenko Park and down the beach trails to get there. It was a really lovely day. It kept cycling through warm sunny moments, and cool, breezy, grey and overcast moments. The weather hasn't yet decided if its spring or summer.
I took a few pics today, and finally uploaded a choice few to a new photo set on Flickr for this trip. Click on the picture below to see it.
Labels: flickr, hotlinks, odessa, photography, travel, ukraine
Odessa Cemetery
I went to the central cemetery today, which was a trip to say the least. Since going to the Budapest cemetery with Luc and Kate on All Souls Day last October, hunting down the mammoth memorials of Budapest's famous faces, I have been fascinated by them. In Europe, cemeteries are generally buzzing places full of people, green with ivy and thick with flowers. The headstones are often huge sculptures and gothic arches that add to the eerie beauty of the whole place.
This cemetery was the craziest I have ever been too. Giant packs of dogs live there, and were running around in packs all over the place. And the stones are practically on top of each other. The place is thick and green and overgrown. Its startling.
They also play orthodox hymns on loudspeakers outside this massive church in the center. Ultra-spooky.
Folks also deck out all the graves in bright bundles of flowers, real and otherwise. Like on these niches.
And check out these guys:
Stephen linked me an
article on EnglishRussia.com of Russian Mafia headstones that was really fascinating. Life-sized portraits of people holding cigarettes next to cadillacs. It was great. So, I took some of these pictures for Stephen, cause I know he needs something to do at 3 in the morning...
Ok, that last one is particularly creepy. If I had a child die, I dont know that I would want his or her larger than life mug staring at me like the Gerber baby for the rest of my life. Call me heartless, but I'm just not ok with it.
And I think this guy might have been married to a boat, or maybe his martini:
Labels: hotlinks, odessa, photos, travel, ukraine
Do I Have "Sexpot" Written Across My Forehead, Or What?
Today was the weirdest day ever. Honestly. It's only 11pm here and I'm ready to just go to bed and be done with it.
For starters, I slept in. I slept in a lot. Till like 11:30. And then I had a really slow morning, which was nice, cause I was exhausted from this whole trip (still kinda am) and I went out last night AND there was a 7pm women's meeting at the community center that I wanted to attend. So, no waking up early for me. This was kind of exciting for me also because the last few days in the center have been BORING. I usually get there at about 9 or 930 and stay till 230 or 3. At that point, most of the action is over. The action doesnt actually start till about 12 either, so the first few hours that I am there are good for the occasional interview if a staff member happens to be passing through, but are often really slow. I have started bringing articles with me to read during the long down times. Well, apparently this morning, the morning that I was delighted to sleep through, was a doozie. The first busy day at the clinic, and I slept through it. Apparently, people were even running out of materials charts and intake forms. THAT'S how busy it was. And then after I got there, total jack went down for hours. I even started screwing around on the computer because there was nothing to do and no one to talk to. And then this blasted women's meeting, which I recently heard someone describe to the rep of a very prominent US benefactor of this organization as "pratically a movement," never happened, cause no one showed up. I asked Marina about the meeting yesterday, and she said that it's popular, but the attendance fluxuates a lot. "Like a storm," she said, laughing. Funny. Really.
Ok, then the weirder stuff. Near the end of the day, Elena, a staff member who has hardly said a word to me since I got here, came up to me and handed me an e mail address that she had written on a scrap of paper. "Here" she said, "This is from Dima, he wanted me to give it to you." I said thanks, then looked closer at the address and realized that I had no idea who she was talking about. I went back over to her office and said, "I'm sorry, who is this?" She looked at me as though I had just asked where the front door was. "Dima!" she said, "You were talking to him the other day and he asked me to give you his address!" Like...Duh!
I have no idea who Dima is.
After I gave up on the women's group, I went out for a beer with Andrei. Andrei is interesting. Allegedly, he works for this organization. In reality, he spends a significant portion of the day on translate.ru looking for the words to describe to me his particular affinity to philosophies of black magic and voodoo studies and his current course of training, or playing roll-playing games on the computer that involve fantasy lands with dwarves wielding large axes. You'd never guess, looking at the guy. He looks like a totally normal, boring 40-something dude with cable sweaters and a degree in engineering. Anyway, he had been inviting me for a beer for a few days, so I finally took him up on it this evening. His son was there too. He was excited or me to meet his son because he traveled a lot with his dad when he was young, and speaks many languages, and he wants his son to meet worldly people and learn new languages too--like english for example.
His son is 6. When we met, the kid pulled a lighter out of his pocket and starts playing with it. I immediately have flash backs to when I was 4 and found a lighter and was very clearly instructed by my mother that these were not for people under the age of 30 to touch or play with. I recall even thinking that people who carried them were somehow bad people until I was about ten. Andrei is not ruffled by this at all, and, in fact, pays no attention as his son starts pulling cigarette butts out of the coffee can used as an ashtray by the front stairs of the center and lights the little paper bits left at the end of the filter on fire. Then goes over to the telephone pole, rips down some ads, comes back, and lights those on fire, then steals his dad's empty cigarette pack, pulls out all the foil paper, and tries repeatedly to light that on fire. Oh my lord. My sensibilities were so offended. But, the kid was also filthy--brown sticky hands, dirty clothes, brown face--which told me that his dad lets him play and lets him play hard, which I have to admit I have a lot of respect for. I don't know what I did, but I was somehow deemed acceptable by the kid, because as soon as the three of us walked out towards a cafe to get a drink, his grubby little mitt shot into mine and clung on for the rest of the trip. With his other free, smelly, soot covered little hand, he kept feeding me cola jellies out of his jacket pocket. It was cool. We were pals.
Then, at the bar, we order a couple of beers, and the kid is totally swigging his dad's beer. He apparently drinks vodka too. I can't imagine a kid that young even tolerating the taste of beer, but this one is way ahead of the curve apparently. But then it gets even weirder, because we start talking about languages and school and travel (frequent topics of conversation when the only common vocabulary you have with someone in any of the languages you share are of the second year "Hola, me llamo Paco. Voy a la biblioteca. Me gusta mucho comer manzanas," variety). But then after a bit, the conversation veers towards how awful Andrei's wife is, how she lives with her brother and doesn't care for the kid, and how Andrei has been telling his kid about me at home, and how the boy allegedly goes "Oh papa! An American girl? A wife for you and a mom for me!"
Holy Jebus. I'm, like, so gone. Now.
So, I tell him I need to split and head home. We pay the tab, walk out, and it turns out that he and his kid live like 3 blocks away from me, so they walk the whole 20 min back with me. Awkward. But, on the way home, Andrei tells me another funny story. It appears that a SECOND person made an attempt to show up on my doorstep professing love. The first is not Andrei. The first, if you havn't heard the story, was this dude who's name I don't even remember, from our tour group to the catacombs last week. We had a nice conversation (first pleasant, easy conversation I have had in Ukrainian since I got here, actually) all the way back from the village that we drove to that day, and then the guides and the group parted ways at the hostel and he lingered all awkwardly by the door and then finally left. Monday night, he shows up at the hostel, totally unannounced, dressed up, hair slicked back, trying to talk me into going out to dinner with him. And he's so nervous that he's talking fast and I can't understand a word he's saying. Too bad. He was kind of cute. But I had been wandering the streets of the city with the mobile exchange all day so I was tired and filthy, had already eaten, needed a shower badly, and didn't have the energy to deal with any more foreign languages at the moment, so that whole well intentioned endeavor failed (women, you know? sheesh). Well, apparently this ALMOST happened again, because on tuesday, I met a client named Vova. Vova asked me where I was staying in Odessa. I said that I was staying at the Black Sea Hostel, which is true. Now, not only is this a very very new place, so few people, except maybe the really really active local hospitality club members, will have heard of it, but hostels are sort of a new phenomenon in Ukraine as well. The word "hostel" doesn't really translate. I have to explain to most people here what it is, and they are often still confused afterwards. There is a huge three-star hotel in the city center called the Black Sea Hotel, so when I tell people where I am living, they usually hear me say 'hotel' instead of 'hostel' and think I am staying there. Well, the next night, Vova apparently got good and liquored up, and trucked his way down to the Black Sea Hotel and tried to find me. I have this incredible image in my head of this dude stumbling up to the counter and being like "where do you keep your Americans!?"
So, yea, its been an interesting week to say the least, and today totally topped it. I mean, Ukrainian women are hot. Hot. And I have been the awkward girl, who dresses like a slob and spends her time misunderstanding everyone, generally being in the way and making all those clumsy mistakes that crack people up like trying to pay for my own drinks and waiting to be seated at restaurants and assuming that there is any philosophy here of 'standing in line.' Oh, and speaking Ukrainian but not Russian. That also makes me a weirdo. Several people have actually burst out laughing when they hear that. Yet, somehow, I have managed to procure that 'exotic appeal.' Only in Ukraine, I think, and in working-class post-industrial Ukraine at that, do I get to be the intriguing foreign girl that everyone wants a piece of. And its totally not any fun, which is a damned shame. It's mostly just nerve wracking because, while I can generally get by just fine, I don't have the language skills to handle these situations adeptly, or with any grace at all for that matter, so I generally end up either exhausting myself trying desperately to assess whatever situation I find myself in, or just standing around with my finger up my nose, while some dude next to me thinks he's working it and it totally golden.
I never thought I'd say this, but this actually makes me miss dating in highschool. At least then you didn't have all these stupid adult sensibilities, so when people showed up unexpectedly, drunk off their asses, at your hotel, it was funny.
And speaking of whom, I have joined forces with Duncan to start a new blog...its like an ugly child. No one but us will love it, but we will love it so hard.
Labels: odessa, rabble rousing, travel, ukraine, wtf
Market Day
I mentioned this huge market that is right by the train station in an earlier post. I went down there today to take some pictures. I would say that it was successful. I came home with a kilo of pickles, dried parsimmons, and a whole kilo of white figs. Plus a ton of pictures that I am really excited about. The produce at this market was so beautiful. It looked like God himself breathed on this food. But a lot I couldn't bear to buy because I know that I'm not in my own kitchen and I don't have all the staples that are needed to prepare them well.
Anyway, here are some of the shots that I took there on the digital camera, the last one taken by Joanna, my adventure partner for the day. She is from upstate NY, and staying in my hostel as well.
The woman in this last shot was so wonderful. She, like many other women at the market, was selling picked cabbage and cucumbers out of huge plastic 70 gallon barrels. I asked her if I could take her picture (I got it on the Canon), and she blushed and laughed and said, "You want to take a picture of an old babushka like me?"
I also met a vendor who was selling pomegranates. He pulled me over, and told me to take his picture, then posed nobly behind his piles of fruit. I snapped a few, and then he asked if he could give me his address, so that I could send him a copy, to put up by his stand. I told him that I wouldnt have pictures for probably two weeks, but he said that that was great, so, hey, I hope they turned out ok!
After the market, we wandered around to the sea and passed a spring carnival that was open in the park between the station and the northern beaches. They even had a full on Strongest Man contest in the middle of the thing. I really wanted to get some pictures of it, but the crowds were so big that we couldn't muscle our way to the front.
It was also funny to realize that all of the carnival attractions were from Mexico. And I mean REALLY from Mecixo--made to be marketed and used IN Mexico
Please note that one is called "Mexican Casino" and the other one, the rooster, is saying "Ki-ki-ri-ki"
Honestly. It kills me. And I thought Romania was bad for bottom feeding.
In the evening I met up with a local girl named Vera, who took me to the pier out past the Potemkin stairs, and then took me for a beer with some of her friends from the university. They were really nice girls, all about 20, studying English at the university here in Odessa. They looked so Ukrainian. Big frilly fancy shiny skirts and tops and earrings and shoes that lace up to the knee with rhinestones and tons of buckles and flare. We talked for an hour and a half about getting married while they smoked skinny cigarettes and drank champagne at the bar. It was so rad.
Oh, and I also found out that football season has started here. The local team Chornomorets (чорноморец--it means, like, Black-Sea-ites) has a home stadium just up the street from me. They had a home game today, and another one next saturday, against the Kiev Arsenal. I am going with colors flying.
Nate would be so proud of me....
Labels: odessa, photography, photos, thin justification for my existace, travel, ukraine
Odessa Catacombs
I played hookie today. I got to the center and had a headache and was sooo tired. I faked a migrane and went home after about an hour. And I came home to find that a group of kids from the hostel were planning a trip this afternoon to the catacombs. Which was awesome. But I'll get to that in a sec.
This is the van that I have spent a few days on this week:
It runs ten different routes, two a day monday through friday with an outreach worker and a doctor on every route.
Here are a few shots from the beautiful neighborhood around the community center:
So, onto the catacombs. There are catacombs under Odessa. They run in a tangled labyrinth under the whole city. They were dug out over 130 years ago when builders were quarrying limestone along the black sea, and are estimated to be a total of 3000 km of unmapped tunnels. One fact that people often give you is that these catacombs are the reason why Odessa has no subway system, because they really do span underneath the entire city and beyond.
A couple from Switzerland who is staying in my room organized this trip, and brought a long me, and several other guests from Finland, Japan, Argentina, and Hood River, Oregon of all places. We got ourselves a humble translator and a bus which took us from the train station to a village on the north outskirts of Odessa, where there is a manned opening to the tunnels.
The entrance was all dressed up, with giant stairs down from ground level and a wide open entrance, which soon dissolved into tiny narrow passageways and small yellow light bulbs every 50 ft or so lighting our way.
We also had Svetlana, our ancient, Russian tour guide who walked around with a flashlight, talking in Russian over a microphone that was so loud we couldnt hear, despite the fact that she had been told that none of us spoke Russian. It was hysterical.
These catacombs are particularly important to Odessa's history, because during World War 2, nearly 2000 Russian partisans lived in these tunnels to hide from the Nazis. That large group lived in these caverns underground in hiding, barricading the entrances and sneaking food from the surface while undercover, for over two and a half years.
We find an old gun, the 18 yr old from Oregon picks it up, and the camera phones fly out of pockets at lightning speed:
There is a small 'museum' at the exit, which we had to climb up 5 flights of stairs to get back out to. The most prized item in the museum's collection is a handwritten letter by Fidel Castro which he wrote for the catacombs during his visit here in 1986. It speaks of the noble Soviet city, which protected its people and its way of life from the aggression of the fascists.
Eternal Glory my Comrades!
Labels: CEU photos, odessa, travel, ukraine
