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.
Friday, August 30, 2013
Wednesday, August 28, 2013
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.
Tuesday, August 27, 2013
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.
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.
Sunday, August 25, 2013
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:
Wednesday, August 21, 2013
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.
Sunday, August 18, 2013
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.
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.
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