There's no place to sit! The lack of benches and seating in public places is one big difference between Russian and America that my family noticed. There really are very few places to just relax and take a load off during a long day of touring around a Russian city. I don't know if this reflects an official indifference toward the population, a lack of finances, or something else, but it sure is annoying. Parks don't have many benches, although I think this is by design: City officials removed all the benches at one Vladimir park to discourage drunks from congregating there. Of course, if the park were designed better, maybe it wouldn't be such an attractive place for drunks to hang out away from the eyes of police patrols. The worst places, though, are museums, where there are no benches or chairs at all in the galleries. The Hermitage, for example, has no places to sit, and it's the same story for pretty much every other museum we visited. That can make for a very long, unhappy day of looking at paintings. At one museum, we got yelled at because my dad sat down briefly in the only chair in the whole gallery, which was, of course, reserved for the angry lady who watches over the paintings (we were also the only people in the place). I guess it's further proof that you have to be tough to live in Russia.  

Here are two pictures of the area around my apartment building. There is a pond/lagoon nearby, and across that water feature is a small area of village-type houses. So it turns out that, despite that fact that I live in a nine-story building in a residential area of thousands of people, I actually feel like I'm not too disconnected from nature. And by that I mean that I get woken up by a rooster crowing every morning. The little path in my pictures goes around another big apartment building and is my favorite way to get to the bus stop (at least when it's not muddy). In America a path like this would have been paved a long time ago, but, well, we're not exactly in Kansas anymore. 

It's a small world. This morning I decided not to care about blending in and put on my Ohio State sweatshirt (the high today was 62F--welcome to August in Russia). I went to the store this afternoon and was walking back along a downtown-Vladimir sidewalk when I noticed that a group of older guys was staring at me as I approached. Then one of the guys started yelling at me. I couldn't understand what he was saying until it dawned on me that he was yelling English words in a strong, Southern accent. He was a Purdue fan and was heckling me good-naturedly (I actually still am not quite sure what he was saying), and I replied with a slightly-confused "Go bucks!"

It turns out that these guys were part of a group in town to work with orphans (interesting because the Russian government recently prohibited Americans from adopting kids from Russia). One guy was from Pennsylvania and has a kid who lives in the Cleveland area, and another is a college sports announcer who has been at countless games at Ohio State's Horseshoe, where I myself seen quite a few OSU wins. We talked for a little bit and then went our separate ways. It's amazing that, 5,000 miles away from the US, people still razz strangers on the street about Big Ten football. That, America, is success. 

Here are a few pictures from last week's city day here in Vladimir.

The main road was closed to traffic

A giant map displayed on the ancient ramparts

The event culminated in a fireworks show. 

It was a bit like a street fair mixed with July Fourth

Yesterday the teacher group went to Moscow for the day. Unfortuantely we got a really lousy day for sightseeing--rainy and cold (it was probably in the high 50s most of the day). We saw only a few high points, but missed a lot--we didn't visit the Sparrow Hills, for example. The high point (both literal and figurative) was riding the massive Ferris wheel at Moscow's VDNKh park. It's 71 meters tall (I hate the metric system, but I know that's tall), and a full rotation takes about eight minutes. We decided to ride in a closed car, which was good for those of us who don't like heights (read: me). The view of Moscow was amazing. Check out the pictures:

Each culture has its list of topics that are on the table for discussion and its list of things you'd better not discuss, at least not in polite company. Raunchy topics notwithstanding, there is one common question in Russia that would be jarring to most Americans. Americans: Imagine you're getting your hair cut, and the conversation turns to your job. The barber would really be crossing some lines if he asked you how much money you make. I think most Americans would be very uncomfortable in that situation, and few would give an exact answer. I remember a high-caliber public-relations consultant telling my Cleveland Foundation intern class that you should never, ever ask someone about their salary--it's none of your business how much money they make.  

In Russia, however, it's a different story. Salary is totally a topic open for discussion, and, in fact, it's one of the first questions people ask. I've had a lot of conversations that go like this: "Oh so you teach English. How much money do you make?" My American sensibilities want to scream out "it's none of your business!" but Russians wouldn't understand. I usually give a ballpark answer, but sometime people press me to give an exact number (talk about rude--at least in America). I'm used to the salary questions, but they still make me uncomfortable.   

Now that I'm living independently, I have to independently buy my own food. I enjoy cooking and, strangely enough, I enjoyed going to the grocery store when I was in college. In college, I would usually go to the grocery store with my roommates and friends on Sundays, and it was a good time to take a break from studying. Also, I'm pretty serious about my diet (gotta hit those macros for muscle growth), so I would always plan out exactly what I was going to buy. And, if nothing else, going to the grocery store was an chance to drive my car, and that's one of my favorite things to do.

It's a little different here, though. First of all, I don't have a car, so I have to walk to the grocery store or take a bus, and that limits how much I can buy at a time. I can't do the once-a-week grocery runs here because I can't carry all that food back from the store. There are a few stores very close to my apartment, but they are standard Russian grocery stores, and by that I mean that they are really lousy. If you want to buy white bread, mealy tomatoes, frozen chicken, mayonnaise, canned meat, and sticky-sweet candy, you're in luck at those stores. If you want anything else, you had better go somewhere else. Fortunately, we live close to Globus, which is a giant, German-owned grocery store that has most everything (although they don't have capers, which greatly annoyed my roommate). It's a fifteen-minute walk or a ten-minute bus ride, but that's where we usually go.

Globus has a lot, but it is still, at its heart, a Russian grocery store. Its Russianness, of course, is because it depends on the Russian food system. Certain things are very available and cheap, such as fish (we bought a two-pound fresh salmon fillet yesterday for $12--that would cost at least $25 in the US). But other things are of poor quality or simply don't exist. I bought a rock-hard avocado there for $3 and then decided that I'll just have to wait until I get back to the US to eat decent avocados again. US grocery stores have big selection of berries (strawberries, blueberries, blackberries, raspberries) pretty much year-round, and those berries, while not super cheap and sometimes not all that fresh (nothing like Chilean blueberries in Columbus, Ohio, in February), are plentiful and won't break the bank. Globus has a tiny section of berries, and they are amazingly expensive. Want strawberries? You can spend $5 for about 12 of them. Raspberries are even more expensive.

Most Russians, of course, don't buy berries in stores. They either grow them at their dacha, get them from friends who grow them at their dacha, or buy them at bus stops or markets from old ladies who grow them at their dacha. Dachas and home gardens play a huge role in the Russian food system, and that means that grocery stores often don't carry a lot of fresh produce. In the summer, that's great, because that in-season, locally grown produce tastes great. A fresh dacha-grown tomato tastes nothing like the watery, dreary thing you can get at the store. The situation gets depressing in the winter, however, when the only produce you can find is old tomatoes, shriveled peppers, mushy cucumbers, chalky bananas, and flavorless oranges.

I know that local produce and a push back against factory farming are popular in American these days, and I fully support a more fine-grained food system that is more rooted in communities and less dependent on chemicals, but I have to say that being in a country without such a well-developed food system makes me miss my industrial food. The fact that US consumers can get fresh fruits, vegetables, milk, and meat (not to mention all the specialty products that are shipped thousands of miles) for a decent price in the dead of winter is a testament to technology. Most foodstuffs in Russia cost about the same as in the US (meaning they are a lot less affordable--the average salary in Vladimir Oblast is about $510 a month), but the quality is often sub par.

As a testament to my Midwestern heritage--and the Midwest feeds the nation and a lot of the world, so this is related to food systems--here's a great country song. This goes out to the high-fructose-corn-syrup-producing, GMO-planting, mega-farming capital of the world and one of the reasons that American agriculture and the American food system is so astoundingly productive. Here's to those fly-over states.

    

Today is city day here in Vladimir, which means the main street is closed to traffic, and the whole center of the town is like a big street fair. I'll post pictures later--there's a fireworks show tonight, for example. Here's a song I heard a busker playing today. It's by the Russian rock group Aria, and it's called потерянный рай (lost paradise).  

Dust really piles up fast in Russia. I think it has to do with lax air-pollution laws and lots of exposed, eroding dirt. "I sweep my apartment on Sundays" is a common answer that my students give when I ask about their routines, and, now that I have my own place and no host mom to do the cleaning, I understand why sweeping is a necessary part of every week. I did some pushups when I got up this morning, and while in close proximity with my beautiful Soviet linoleum floor I noticed how it was covered with an impressively thick layer of dust. The dust was so thick, in fact, that my black shorts were completely dirty with mud-colored dust by the time I was done. The crazy thing was that I had swept and mopped the floor when I moved in just ten days ago. I've been keeping the door to the balcony hanging open that whole time (it's been pretty warm here), so I think all the air pollution has been settling out onto my floor. Lovely.

Another problem is the cleaning supplies I'm working with. The apartment came with cleaning basics, but they are--well--basic. The broom is a bundle of twigs about three feet long (not so convenient for a tall guy to use), and it seems to pick up only the biggest of the big dirt clods. The mop is the most basic thing possible--just a small, commercial-style mop head on a short handle--and there's no way to ring it out. So maybe that also contributes to the bad cleaning outcomes. Here's a shot of the broom, which is actually very common for Russia.

We finally got internet at our apartment! It only took a week for the technician to show up, but I guess I should be used to the less-than-urgent pace of Russian customer service. On an unrelated note, here's a shot of a distinctly un-Russian dinner. Not a drop of mayonnaise or a speck of dill to be found in this masterpiece of bachelor cooking. Sometimes it's nice to indulge my American culinary sensibilities, after all.

I love Italian food, but Russia does it differently than we do in the good, old US of A. For example, macaroni is used as a catch-all term for all types of pasta, ignoring the fact that macaroni is its own distinctive pasta variety. Also, Russians eat bread at every possible occasion (I don't want to eat three pieces of white bread with my pile of cheese-covered potatoes!), but they think it's strange to eat bread with pasta. That makes me wonder what the Italians do. I won't have to wonder for too long, though, because I'm going to Rome for Christmas, so I imagine I'll get a chance to find out how pasta really tastes. Until then, this will have to do.    

This blog post is on a subject dear to my heart--coffee. Russia is a tough place for a coffee connoisseur. I'll admit that I'm a bit of a coffee snob and a full-fledged coffee drinker (I stop short of calling myself an addict because, theoretically, I can go all day without a cup of coffee, by why would I want to do that?). Like much of Europe, Russians don't usually drink American-style big cups of black coffee. Instead it is common to order an espresso or an americano at cafes, and Russians usually drink it with a lot of sugar and often cream or milk. This coffee, however, isn't usually very strong, and it's expensive: A very small americano (maybe three ounces) at a normal cafe will run you somewhere around 100 rubles ($3).

Us coffee-swillers face an even bleaker picture outside of restaurants and cafes. At home or in the office, instant coffee is the standard. That's the kind of black substance that comes freeze-dried in a can, and you simply add hot water to create a coffee-like hot beverage. I've allowed far too much Nescafe Gold to enter my body here in Russia, and let me tell you, that stuff isn't real coffee. But most people drink instant coffee, and they usually doctor it up with about three spoonfuls of sugar.

Instant coffee gives me weird stomach pains and an irregular heartbeat, and so I try to limit my intake of that nasty stuff and brew my own coffee like a normal person. The trouble is that brewing coffee here is an expensive hobby. Ground coffee is expensive (comparable to prices in the US), and the quality is pretty poor unless you're willing to spend upwards of $10 for an 8-ounce bag, which is a little unrealistic on my teacher's salary. Also, drip coffee machines are really pricey and hard to find, so the people who brew coffee do it in french presses or in a little pot on the stove (by far the worst method--the resulting coffee is half coffee-ground sludge). But hey, at least it's not Nescafe.

There aren't all that many Americans who can tell you without taking a minute to think exactly what time 20:25 is. Russia, however, uses the 24-hour clock much more frequently than we do in the US. Maybe it's related to the militarization of Russian society, but people use the 24-hour clock even in casual speech. Americans--try to tell your friends you want to meet them at the bar at 21:30 and see what happens. 

My stint as a bus driver got me very comfortable using the 24-hour clock--I had to be able to instantly know what my supervisor meant when he said, "I need you to relieve CLS at Carmack 1 at 16:29." It took at little while, but I feel totally comfortable using the 24-hour clock. My students, of course, have little conception of what AM and PM mean: Russians also use the 12-hour clock in conversation, but they say things like, "Let's meet at 9 in the evening." What's interesting is that Americans generally just say, for example, "The movie starts at 9," and we understand that of course the movie is in the evening, whereas Russians almost always will either use the 24-hour clock or specify that the movie is at 9 in the evening. I guess the Russian way leaves less room for error, although I've never had a problem with the American system. 

Russia: the country of nelzya! My sister commented that she has never had a week in her life where more people told her that something was not allowed. The Russian word нельзя (nelzya—accent on the “ya”) means forbidden or impossible. So you can have a regular sentence like “здесь нельзя курить” (smoking isn’t allowed here) or “нельзя говорить во время спектакля” (talking during the show is not allowed), but then Russians use нельзя in lots of contexts where an English speaker wouldn’t use “forbidden.” There are lots of examples that sound ridiculous when translated into English: “Нельзя выходить на улицу без шапки!” (it’s forbidden to go outside without a hat”—standard babushka advice), “Мужчинам нельзя носить грязную обувь!” (“men aren’t allowed to wear dirty footwear”—I heard this one from my host mom when I attempted to put on some muddy boots) or “нельзя добавлять чили в борщ” (“it’s forbidden to add chili powder to borsch”—okay I’ve never heard a Russian say this, but I’m sure they would agree).


My family got the full нельзя treatment when they were here in Russia. Every day, people would tell us that it was forbidden to stand there, forbidden to take pictures, forbidden to go that way, forbidden to buy this, forbidden to sit there, forbidden to eat that, forbidden to get close to a painting, forbidden to wear that here. One time several years ago I was with a school group in a prison in St. Petersburg, and one of my classmates started absentmindedly whistling. A strict-looking old Russian woman hustled up and told him “нельзя свистеть!” (“whistling is forbidden!” ). That’s how I learned that there is a superstition in Russia that if you whistle indoors, you’ll lose all your money and so will everyone around you. People never whistle inside, which I use to full advantage as a class-control technique: I start whistling, and everyone falls into a nervous silence. It’s not like I have any money to lose anyway. 


My sister commented that Russia seems like a very rules-oriented place, with practically everything being нельзя. She hit the nail on the head: There is one right way to do everything (правильно—correct) and hundreds of wrong ways (неправильно—incorrect—or, of course, нельзя). If there is one word that I despise in Russian, it is неправильно, because that word suggests that there is only one possible correct way to do things. Imagine I’m lighting the stove with a match, and a Russian tells me that I’m striking the match неправильно. Or that I’m cutting an onion that way I was taught to cut onions by my dear mother who I’m sure has cut an unfathomable number of onions in her day and seems to be doing fine, and a Russian tells me that I’m cutting неправильно.  Or I’m eating my meat before I’ve touched my soup, and a Russian tells me that what I’m doing is нельзя. Do you feel my blood pressure rising? 

One of the best Russian teachers I’ve ever had, a guy from Moscow named Sasha, taught me more about Russian culture than about dry grammar. He pointed out this same rule-bound nature, and he attributed it to Russia’s Soviet heritage. There was one correct way to do things because, if you didn’t do everything exactly right (or, sometimes, even if you did), you would be punished. The rules were survival mechanisms: If you did everything adhering perfectly to the rules, following every instruction to the letter, you wouldn’t open yourself up to punishment. And, because Russia has a very strong we’re-all-in-this-mess-together attitude, people assume the right to make sure everybody else is following the rules, too. That’s why old women feel within their rights to scold people and tell them that what they’re doing in нельзя. That’s why Russian kids learn from a young age that this is how you do __________ правильно and get scolded if they deviate from those rules. Life becomes a set of rules that, if followed, ensure a smooth enough journey. But heaven forbid someone thinks outside the box and adds chili powder to borsch—that’s against the rules. Or they might just drop out of college in the 1970s and start tinkering around with computer parts…. 

"Welcome to Russia--Please watch your step!" Maybe that should be posted in Russia's airports to warn unsuspecting foreigners that they're entering a dangerous country for walking. One of the first things my family noticed about Russia was that you really have to be careful walking here. There are uneven steps, protruding unidentified metal things in the sidewalk, giant holes, unmarked construction zones, low-hanging wires, high curbs, tall flanges in the bottom of doorways, and broken glass everywhere. For the average American used to walking on nicely maintained sidewalks in a country with effective building regulations, it's downright dangerous to even go outside in Russia.

My dad joked that every time he took his attention off his feet to look at some impressive, historic building, he would trip, and it pretty much worked out that way. Living in Russia is a bit like riding the subway: At first you fall and trip a lot, but your legs adjust and get your balance after a little while. I know to watch my step, but even after a year, I still sometimes trip on exposed rebar or buckled pavement or uneven manhole covers.

Being in a country that pays such little attention to the basics of civic infrastructure and provides so little for its citizens really makes me appreciate the role that those "frivolous lawsuits" play in the American system. If someone tripped and fell into an unguarded open pit in the sidewalk, the city (or whoever was supposed to manage that chunk of sidewalk) would be hauled into court so fast it would make that Sapsan bullet train look like a horse and buggy. And this isn't an academic question: Several people have told me never to step on manhole covers in Russia because they occasionally collapse, giving the unfortunate pedestrian a broken leg or worse. Trip-and-fall lawsuits are a huge source of income for lawyers in the US, and the effect is obvious: Anyone (or any city) who cares about his liability won't open himself up to a huge lawsuit by allowing unsafe conditions to exist. Russia doesn't have that system (or at least not a well-functioning version of that system), and people can only wait for the government to fix sidewalks and roads and for the government to enact regulations against unsafe practices while dodging potholes and taking painkillers after the inevitable trips and falls. So, watch you step!     

One part of staying in Vladimir for another year was finding a place to live. I had a wonderful year with my host family--I can't compliment them enough for their hospitality, patience, and excellent cooking. My host family allowed me to do as I pleased, and I never felt like I was restricted or had my freedom constrained, but I knew that I needed to live a bit more independently if I were to stay for another year. So one of my colleagues and I did an apartment search in the spring and found an apartment that was being rented out by a friend of an American Home security guard. The price and location were right, and it's nice to have a connection to the person you're renting from. So we told her we wanted to rent the place, and we moved in on August 1.

Russia is a lot more informal than the US in things like this. In college my friends and I rented an apartment from the big campus-area realty company, and we had to sign all sorts of forms, have our parents co-sign the lease, put down a security deposit, and get all the utilities in our name. We did none of that for this apartment. We never signed a contract with our landlady, and she still hasn't even collected the rent for our first month (there's no security deposit)--she said she'll come by today or tomorrow to pick up the rent money. The situation with utilities is also strange for us Americans. We pay for hot water, cold water (there are two separate meters because the hot water comes from a central plant), and electricity. We have a gas stove, but the gas isn't metered; I think there is a flat-rate fee of 250 rubles (about $8) a month for gas. In order to record our electric meter reading, there is a piece of paper taped to our door in the entryway. This month our neighbors beat us to it and actually recorded our electric meter for us (you're supposed to write down your meter reading on the sixth of each month).

The apartment itself is pretty standard. In Russian terminology, it is a two-bedroom apartment, which means that there are two bedrooms, a kitchen, and a bathroom. That's it--no living room, no study, no dining room. The square footage? You're looking at a whopping 570 square feet; that's one quarter the size of the house my mom occasionally derides as being too small for our family in the US. That size, though, is normal for a Russian apartment, and families of three, four, or even five people live in places that size or smaller. Talk about claustrophobia.

The apartment hasn't been remodeled since it was built, and that was probably in the late 1970s or early 1980s, so the style of the place is very Soviet. For example, there is a radio mounted on the wall in the kitchen that receives only one station. In the Soviet Union, that radio would blare the national anthem at 6:00am, and all the good communists would get up and go to work building socialism. Of course, that whole building socialism thing kinda ended, and the apartment hasn't been touched since, so things are a bit beat up, but it's a good place for two 20-something teachers. Here are some pictures of my new place:

My room

My room from the other side. You can see my bed (it's really two twin beds pushed together--now that's what I call classy) and my balcony. The art on the wall isn't mine.  

The hallway

The bathroom. Notice the combined sink-shower faucet. That's standard for Russia.  

The toilet room (Russian apartments usually have separated bathrooms) 

The kitchen 

The kitchen balcony  

The kitchen again 

The view out my window

  

On my family's last full day in Russia, we started by visiting the Kremlin. The weather, which for the whole trip up to then had been absolutely perfect, looked to be threatening to turn rainy. This, coupled with the inevitable too-much-togetherness that marks the last days of family vacations, led to a bit of tension, but the rain held off, and we ended up getting along fine. The Kremlin is a fairly large territory and has several very old cathedrals mixed in with the tsarist palaces and Soviet-era buildings. Also, pretty much everyone visiting was foreign, which greatly annoyed some Russian ladies standing behind us in line (unaware that I could understand everything they were saying, they complained about the foreign tourists and wondered why Russians had to put up with foreigners in their own city).

After the Kremlin, we went to the New Tretyakov Gallery, which is a large museum of modern art. The museum has a very good collection of Russian avant-garde works, and we practically had the place to ourselves--quite a contrast to the jam-packed Hermitage in St. Petersburg. For our last dinner, we went to a very good Ukrainian restaurant very close to where we stayed. Ukrainian food is very similar to Russian food, although Ukraine is the birthplace of salo (salted lard--it's quite good), and so we toasted to the end of a great trip with Russian vodka chased with Ukrainian salo.

Inside the Kremlin

The world's largest cannon 

One of the Kremlin's churches  

This isn't the view most people think of when they hear "Kremlin" 

In the New Tretyakov  

Huge bell in the Kremlin. Like the Liberty Bell, it cracked during forging and has never been rung  

 Another Kremlin Church 

 The gates to Gorky Park 

My family told me that my job was to show them the pretty parts of Moscow. It's understandable that, after only seeing airports, train stations, and ugly peripheral neighborhoods, one would think that Moscow is just a big, crowded mess of a city. But there are pretty places in Moscow--one just has to know where to find them.

On our second day, we hit Moscow's museums hard. We started off by visiting the impressionism collection at the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts. We also visited a great exhibition of early 20th-century American magazine art, which was another one of those surreal experiences--we were looking at iconic pieces of Americana in Moscow. For all the hype that the Hermitage gets, we all agreed that the Pushkin is a better museum: The art is displayed better, and there is air conditioning.

After the Pushkin, we went to Victory Park and visited the Great Patriotic War Museum. For those who don't know, WWII is known as the Great Patriotic War in Russia, and it is a powerful subject. The Soviet Union lost at least 23 million people in the war. The museum itself is very grandiose and features a lot of Soviet symbology, which of course is a necessary part of the war's commemoration (it was the Soviet Union fighting, after all), but this symbology and the overall aggressive, assertive tone of the exhibits can be a bit estranging. We Americans, of course, are used to a different style of commemoration and even a slightly different interpretation of the history of the war. The museum is very powerful, though, and definitely gives a sense of the horrible totality of the war.  

Our last museum for the day was the Mayakovsky Museum. This was one of the strangest museums I have ever visited, and perhaps it is a fitting museum to the man behind so much new-age, revolutionary design in the earliest days of the Soviet Union. The museum featured absolutely no interpretation of the work, which was displayed helter-skelter throughout the whole multi-floored building. A lot of Russian museums are like this--they are very inaccessible without a guide who will expound in a didactic tone on every tiny detail of the place; the lone museum goer will find himself totally lost amid a sea of uninterpreted and obscure exhibits. Anyway, here are some pictures of our Moscow museum day:

Cathedral of Christ the Savior

American magazine covers in Mosow 

In the Mayakovsky Museum 

The exterior of the Pushkin 

Map of the Moscow Metro 

Victory Park

View of some of Moscow's most expensive real estate

Diorama of the siege of Leningrad

On the ceiling of the museum's main room 

In the main room

Some of the exhibits

The Bolshoi Theater