Snow? In September? I must be in Russia. I woke up this morning to see a light snow falling from the slate-grey sky. I remember one of my cross country races in high school was canceled due to temperatures above 90F--in October. I guess I'm not in Ohio anymore.

They (you know, "they") say that it's going to be a record-cold winter this year in Russia. Like once-in-a-hundred-years cold. That sounds fine to me; it will make for an untoppable comeback anytime anyone in Ohio complains about winter weather ("when it was -40 and blizzarding in Vladimir, we still went to work...."). As you quickly learn, layers are the key to surviving extreme cold. That and vodka are how Russians do it. 

Here a picture I snapped on my way to the gym yesterday morning. It's about three quarters of a mile to the gym, and that walk is a nice way to get moving before my workout. My morning walk takes me through apartment-building land, past a school, and past (not through!) the netherworld of garage land.

What is garage land? Well apartment buildings weren't built with the idea that residents would have private cars, so they were not equipped with any facilities for car storage. That worked in the Soviet Union when no one could afford a car, but now more and more people have cars (although not on American levels: most families have just one car, and a lot people don't have a car at all). All these cars choke what little parking exists near apartment buildings, and open space near apartment buildings is usually taken up with makeshift garages: metal or concrete structures that people build--usually illegally--wherever they can. These garages are really ugly, occupy what little open space exists in many neighborhoods, and create a warren of unseen space--a perfect environment for all sorts of sketchy activity.

Garages have a few important functions, though. They, of course, are a place to store cars. We Americans are really spoiled: Think of having to walk ten minutes on a frigid, dark, snowy morning to your little metal garage to get your car, only to find out that some idiot parked his car right in front of it (most garages have a stern warning painted on them not to park in front of the door). Garages have other functions, too. They act as the Russian equivalent of man caves, giving guys a place to tinker with stuff, swear and spit with impunity, and to get a break from life in their two-room apartments. There are also plenty of informal businesses in garages--mostly tire stores and greasy car repair shops.

Garages are also a place for criminal activity, committed by everyone from drug addicts to wanna-be thugs to actual thugs. If you see a couple of guys in Adidas track suits hanging out in the garages near a black BMW, you should probably turn around and go back the way you came. The garages near my apartment have a bad reputation--people get beat up as they take a short cut to the bus stop, and a girl was recently raped kidnapped and raped as she walked through them. Needless to say, I don't cut through the garages anymore. Also you don't have to look very hard to see discarded heroin syringes lying around near garages. I was walking to work one morning last winter and a guy came up to me griping about all the drug addicts in the neighborhood. What set him off? Someone had jabbed a used syringe into his car tire. Welcome to post-Soviet, post-industrial garage land.  

I found a very interesting article last night about alcohol and alcoholism in Russia. If there is one thing that most Americans associate with Russia, it is vodka. That association is perhaps a bit unfair: There is a lot more to Russia and Russian culture that vodka, but it is impossible to consider Russia without thinking of alcohol. Spirits pervade every aspect of life--the drunks sitting on benches swilling beer at 9am, the workplace champagne toasts for every birthday and celebration, the vodka-drenched holiday celebrations. Most stores have a vodka isle.

I think the article gives a pretty fair look at the state of things in Russia right now. This article states that the cheapest bottles of vodka cost 30 rubles ($1), which is true but misleading. Those cheap ones are just 50ml tiny bottles, but you can buy a half liter of totally drinkable vodka for the whopping sum of five dollars. Also, a few laws have been passed under Putin and Medvedev that make an attempt at limiting the availability of alcohol. They reclassified beer as an alcoholic beverage (it used to be considered a soft drink--ya that's how intense Russia is), and now you can't buy any alcohol between 11pm and 8am (a least if you are following the law).

Alcoholism exists everywhere, but you definitely get a full-on view of it here in Russia.Vladimir has a reputation for being a bastion of alcoholism, although locals say it probably isn't any worse than in any other medium-sized city and that the alcoholism in the countryside is beyond belief. In a lot of villages, there simply aren't any real jobs, so people line up every day outside the alcohol store at 8am, spend the whole day getting stewed, and repeat the process the next day, working odd jobs to pay for their vodka. Or people run stills in their Soviet apartments and sell illegal booze to all the drunks of the town. Honestly, seeing the hellholes and human tragedies created by alcoholism everyday makes even drinking in moderation seem much less appealing. Leave it to Russia to make something fun difficult and depressing. Maybe that's why I know quite a few Russians who don't drink alcohol at all.

Here's a link to the article:  

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/09/how-alcohol-conquered-russia/279965/

Here is an interesting article from the English-language Moscow Times newspaper. I had wondered whether Putin wrote his op-ed himself (doubtful) and who translated it. Can you imagine the pressure of translating Putin--or Obama's or any other world leader's--work?

Tweaking Putin's Op-Ed to Stick It to the U.S.

Here's a popular in Russia song that has been stuck in my head for a while. It's called Небо поможет нам (the sky will help us). This song seems to always be playing in taxis here in Vladimir, so it is best listened to through a pair of old Lada speakers over the whine of an unhappy Russian engine. If you can't make that work out, a pair of headphones also will do. Give it a listen.

I saw this written on a dirty bus window the other morning. I guess somebody with a spelling problem was dreaming of a warm, sunny place. 

My apartment doesn't have much in the way of appliances, but what we have still gives us trouble. Actually there are only three pieces of life-enhancing technology in the apartment--a stove, a refrigerator, and a television. I don't watch TV, and even if I did, we only get about seven channels (some of them fade in and out).

The stove/oven was the first act up. When our landlady showed us the apartment, she mentioned that the stove has a small gas leak, so if it smells too badly of gas in the kitchen, just turn off the gas supply valve. Fortunately she had the gas supply line changed a few weeks ago, so that has diminished the gassy smell. The oven, though, has its own personality. It is a Soviet oven that you have to light manually; there's a little tube you drop a lit match into. You first select your temperature--on a dial that has numbers one through eight (I have no idea what temperatures those line up to)--then push a red button, allowing gas to flow to the burner. You hold down the button for a little bit until a thermocouple warms up and tells the oven that it's lit. That thermocouple, though, is a finicky beast. Sometimes it heats up almost instantly, but other times it takes a few minutes. The poor oven operator, who has far better things to do with his life, is stuck holding down the button until the oven decides it is ready. My record so far is four minutes.

The refrigerator also has an attitude. Yesterday morning I noticed that the fridge door had been open all night because the freezer cabinet wasn't shut and was blocking the main door from shutting. The freezer was completely iced up, so the door was stuck open. In the process of fighting with the door and trying to chip some ice out, I bumped a button labeled оттайка, a word I quickly guessed means "defrost." That turned the compressor off, but I managed to get the door shut, so I didn't give it any more thought and went off to work. I got back later that day to see that the floor was covered with water. All that ice had melted--the defrost cycle was doing its job. I did a quick Yandex (the Russian Google) search of our refrigerator and the problem we were having and figured out how to heat up the thermostat to trick the fridge into working again. Fortunately I need to go to the grocery store, so there wasn't much of anything in the fridge that would spoil. I just hope the water didn't rain down on the neighbors below--that's definitely not a good way to endear yourself around the old apartment building. 

Sometimes I forget that I'm a foreigner in a foreign country. The Russian government, however, doesn't forget about my legal status. On Friday morning I had just finished shaving and was just about ready to leave for the gym when someone rang the doorbell of my apartment. I opened the door, and out in the hallway stood a middle-aged man in a dark jacket. He flashed a police badge and asked for my documents. 

Well that got rid of whatever sleepiness remained in my system. I grabbed my passport from my room and went back out into the hallway. I showed him my passport and visa, at which point he asked me "кто вы вообще?"--literally, "who are you in general?" What he wanted to know was whether I was American or something else. So I told him that I'm an American and that I'm here to teach English. He then asked how I found my apartment, how long I've been in Russia, when I plan to leave, and where I work. He wrote down all my answers and said he would check them against a database. With that, he left. 

My roommate and I had no idea what to make of that encounter. When we got to work, we asked our boss about it, and she said no to worry--stuff like that happens all the time. One of the neighbors probably called the police and reported foreigners living in the building. The plain-clothes police officer was there to check on our legal status (Russia also has issues with illegal immigration) and make sure that everything was on the up and up. She told us that it is a very common occurrence--the police were just following up on a tip. What's a bit disconcerting to me is that someone recognized our foreign status and called the police about it--someone who knows exactly where we live. Welcome to the police state, I guess.    

Sunday was election day in Russia. Up for election were the governors of several regions (including Vladimir region) and the mayor of Moscow. It wasn't exactly the hype-filled spectacle that is an American election, but there still were billboards with candidates' pitches, signs around town, and people passing out flyers. I was out with a group of students on Saturday night, and they started talking politics, which was an informative look into the Russian political world.

The results of the election were never really in question. The ruling party, United Russia, clearly would be the winner in almost every race. That's the thing with Russian politics: There may be fraud with the voting process, but the real reason that one party maintains control is that there really aren't any other viable choices. There's the Communist Party, which attracts mainly older people longing for the "good old days." There's the Liberal Democratic Party, which is really neither liberal nor democratic and is widely believed to be a Kremlin-sponsored opposition party to attract votes from nationalists. And then there are a few liberal parties that don't stand a chance of ever winning anything. So an average Russian only has one party he or she can vote for that stands a realistic chance of ever winning.

Despite this inherent uncompetitiveness, this year's elections provided a little excitement. The most watched and most interesting race was for Moscow's mayor. The establishment candidate, who was appointed by Medvedev when he was president, ran against a charismatic blogger. This blogger, Alexei Navalny, was expected to lose big, but he managed to garner about 30% of the vote. Many observers consider this the first real political campaign in a long time in Russia.

Here in Vladimir, though, it was the same old story. The United Russia candidate for regional governor won with 75% of the vote. Talk about a landslide. In the run up to the election, the city government built bus stop shelters and then covered with United Russia campaign ads. It was shameless campaigning at its best: The old ladies who could finally take shelter from the rain while they waited for a bus knew exactly who they could thank at the ballot box. I guess it worked.

Check out this Time Magazine article about the elections: Russia’s Elections: Even in Defeat, Anti-Putin Camp Finds Victory

Brrrrrrrr.  I guess fall has arrived in Russia! The low last night was 44F, and highs for the next week are in the 50s, with overnight lows dropping into the 40s. It's also been raining hard for the last two days. The leaves are even beginning to change, which is happening about a month earlier than where I'm from. Fall is my favorite season, although fall in Russia is a short, rainy season that just doesn't compare to the glorious autumn of the northern US, replete with crunchy leaves, crisp days, cross country, apple cider, Indian corn, and Halloween. 

One of the traditions of fall is to shuffle to the thermostat while making some remark about the weather forecast and turn the heat on, knowing that once that step is taken, it will be a long time before the furnace is quiet and the windows are open again. Pretty soon the smell of overheated dust fills the house, and with it begins heating season.

Unfortunately, this tradition doesn't happen in Russia. My apartment doesn't have a thermostat, and I have no control over the heat in my place. In Vladimir, the heating season begins on October 1 and ends on May 1, regardless of the weather conditions. On that first day of October, hot water will begin to flow from the giant central heat plant out to all the apartment buildings, offices, and factories. Your apartment is warmed to whatever temperature the bureaucrats in the central heat plant think is appropriate, give or take the heat loss and broken pipes that are all too common. The radiators in my apartment are all directly piped into big risers that travel through all nine floors of the building. That means that if I were to want to turn the heat off in my room, all the other radiators on that riser would go cold as well. That's just a hypothetical, though, because there's not even a valve on the radiator to control it. 

Lately it's been pretty chilly in the apartment at night. Hopefully we come out of this cold snap for a little while before heating season starts. But once the heat is on, it is really on. Usually apartments are way too hot for my taste: The thermostat at my house in the US was always set to 68F during the day and to an arctic 60F at night, saving energy but making getting out of bed on winter mornings quite unappealing. The apartment building that I lived in with my host family was brand new and at the very edge of the city, so it didn't get all that hot, which was nice. But I'm sure that my current apartment building will be toasty. Think indoor temperatures of like 78F. That's why most Russians leave a window cracked in the winter. Talk about energy efficient. 

On Saturday a few of the other teachers and I went to Vladimir's central market, a venue for buying all sorts of food, cheap clothes, and a strange assortment of housewares and other trinkets. My native Cleveland has the West Side Market, a 100-year-old public market with an interesting mix of old-school, ethnic, iconic sellers (such as Polish butchers who have been selling meat to blue-collar Clevelanders for generations) and upstart, organic cooperatives selling trendy, locally-grown vegetables (heirloom tomatoes and tubers with odd names); it's a melting pot where the industrial, immigrant Cleveland of yesteryear meets the scrappy, educated, rust-belt-chic, urban-gardening Cleveland that is arising amid the hulks of factories and the skeletons of neglected frame houses.

I could go on and on about Cleveland, but this is a blog about Vladimir, so I'll just say that Vladimir's central market is a grittier, realer version of the West Side Market. It's a place where people who can't really afford to shop at supermarkets go to buy their sustenance. It's a place where local producers of meats and fruits and vegetables join up with sellers from Central Asia and the Caucuses to sell a mix of goods sourced from around Vladimir Oblast and from around the whole former USSR. There's no trendy coffee roaster, and there's most definitely no cutesy cupcake baker (too bad, really). Instead of bearded hipsters, the market is packed with plodding babushki and burly guys. Ya, it's the real deal.

I bought a big shoulder of fresh lamb (at least a pound and a half), carrots, onions, and a bunch of spices, which I used to make plov, an Uzbek rice pilaf. The bill for all that was under 500 rubles ($15). I also bought a jar of local honey, which is some of the best honey I've ever had. It's a dark honey from buckwheat nectar, and it has a very strong, distinct taste. The lady who sold it to me expounded on its incredible medicinal powers. The only thing I got that wasn't so good were some peaches: They were kind of pasty, but maybe I'm in the wrong country to be expecting something that compares to a fresh Ohio peach on a hot August day.

Making plov

Jar of buckwheat honey 

   

Happy Labor Day weekend, America! I would love to be at a backyard barbecue right now, but Russia doesn't celebrate Labor Day (they have May Day, of course, but that holiday is inseparable from communism). Actually, while America has a day off tomorrow, we are actually starting our new academic year on Monday. So, put another way, we're laboring on Labor Day.

Puns aside, I'm excited to begin teaching again; that's what I here for, after all. I'll be teaching two levels this year--ZII and AII. I taught exclusively ZII last year, and it's the second-lowest level we have, so the grammar is very, very simple. AII should be more interesting. It's still a pretty low level, but the syllabus includes conditionals, passive voice, and past perfect, so at least my students will be able to talk about more exciting things than their daily routine and what the ate for lunch yesterday. Tomorrow and Tuesday we are meeting our students, which means that we're going to put on a skit for them and then learn who's in our classes. It should be fun.