Oh, the sportivnii zal (for those not in the know, that's the gym). There is a decent little gym right next to my apartment building, and I've been going there now for the last two weeks. Let's be clear--it's nothing fancy. The main area is a room maybe 50 by 50 feet, and there are small locker rooms, a sauna, and a smaller room for aerobics classes. After the world-class RPAC, my little Akademia Tela (the name means body academy) is decidedly modest. There are, however, all the necessary machines, if only one of each. Also, there is always a trainer around, and they freely give advice and tips on form and exercise selection. One of the trainers is a girl about my age who was powerlifter, and she has given me a lot of good tips

There are two negative points: The gym is like a steamy oven--there is absolutely no ventilation other than three windows, and when there are 12 or 15 people working out in a small room, it gets really hot and muggy. Also, the showers are unlike anything I have ever seen outside of Russia. Imagine a two basins on a small platform in a room maybe 10 feet by 6 feet. There are two spigots that connect to handheld shower nozzles. Draw curtain across the back of the platform and you have a decidedly non-private and very inconvenient showering set up. About a third of the tiles that cover the walls are missing, and there is enough mildew in the corners to make the people who stage the before-and-after bathroom cleaner commercials cringe. Good thing I'm not a clean freak....

The cool thing about Russian gyms is that they really foster community. In America, we occasionally talk to the people we work out in the same room with, but usually we keep to ourselves, shooting sideways glances at the other people and thinking that someone should really tell that one kid that he is going to throw out his back if he keeps deadlifting like that. In Russia, however, people talk to each other, give advice, and help each other in the gym. My gym is small, so I pretty much recognize all the regulars now, and they all know each other. In true Russian fashion, everyone shakes each other's hands when they enter the gym. I'd gotten to know a few of the guys (being the token foreigner is a good way to get to know people), and on Tuesday, the gym hierarchy apparently decided that I was serious enough to deserve acknowledgement, and they all introduced themselves to me, which led to a long discussion of cultural differences and American politics in the locker room. We're now on handshake terms.

Another difference is that no one listens to headphones while working out. Instead, the radio or someone's ipod is always playing. The music of choice is American pop, electro, and techno remixes of any pop song. This song plays several times an hour on the radio (sadly, the girl in the clip has not yet come to the gym):

I've gone from one extreme to another. This summer, Cleveland, like most of the country, suffered (and very well may still be suffering) from a nasty drought. When I left, everything was brown and parched. We mowed the lawn twice all summer.

But it's a totally different story here. It has rained at least a little almost every day, and today has been especially bad. As the Russians would say, rain has poured as if from buckets (как из ведра), and it has turned the whole city into a big mess of puddles, rivers, and mud mires. Clearly, stormwater management was not a big priority during the construction of my neighborhood; most streets just turn into big streams, and  heaven help the poor pedestrian who happens to be walking along the sidewalk when a bus roars by. Also, frequently there simply aren't sidewalks, and people have made their own dirt paths. These makeshift paths are something I rarely see in America; we expect that the government would pave a path that is so heavily used, and, actually, I doubt Americans would make such paths--we tend to follow rules and stick to the dedicated sidewalks. Not so in Russia.

Anyway, my advice for anyone going to Russia is to get a good umbrella and a pair of solid, waterproof boots. You'll thank me for it when it's 50F and pouring rain and it's only August.....

This is a $1,181 bottle of vodka that I saw in the huge GUM department store in Moscow. I can think of a lot of other things I would buy first, but, for the person who has everything, a Faberge egg bottle of vodka is certainly unique.

So I mentioned in my last post that we had some misadventures and run ins with members of the Russian service industry during our trip to Moscow. Let me elaborate. When we arrived, the whole group went to see Red Square and GUM, and then we split into two smaller groups and went off into the city. The groups were supposed to meet up at the train station at 5:30pm to catch the 6:06 train back to Vladimir (I stayed the night, but I had to go to the station to change the time of my return ticket, so I went back with the other teachers).

We arrived at Kurskii train station at about 5:30, but the other members of the group were nowhere to be found. Their train wasn't yet listed on the departures board (that's how you find out what track your train is on), so I went to try to exchange my ticket while we waited. I went to ask first at the Russian Railways service center, and I got a curt--but efficient--answer that I was in the wrong place and needed to go to the ticket office. So I went to one of the ticket windows and waited while people in front of me bought tickets to Sevestopol (a city the Crimea).  When it was finally my turn, I gave the woman the ticket I wanted to exchange, and she explained to me that she could only exchange it for cash and not just change the time because the ticket was for an express train, which is operated by a different division of Russian Railways than the one that operates the local train I wanted to get a ticket for. Oh bureaucracy. So I took my money and checked the departures board again.

Their train was listed as departing from platform 4 at 18:06. So, after following signs for platforms 1-11 that led us to a barricaded door, we asked a policeman how to get to platform 4, and he explained exactly what to do. When we emerged onto the platform, there stood a train to Sochi (a city in the far south of Russia) and a train to Sevestopol--no train to Vladimir and very few people in sight. As the panic started to mount--at this point, about 10 minutes remained until departure--I asked an employee on the Sochi-bound train where the train to Vladimir was. He shrugged his shoulders. We got a similar response from a lady on the platform. One girl from the group asked, in bad Russian, "Where is Vladimir?," to which an employee simply pointed and said, "About 200 kilometers that way."

After sprinting up and down stairs and asking anyone we could find, we finally realized that we wanted not platform 4 but tupik 4 (a tupik is a dead end, as in, where the train tracks stop). We looked in the direction, and, across the train tracks, we watched the correct train depart.

So we headed back into the station to try to buy tickets for the next train. First, we thought it was worth a try to exchange the tickets, and here is where I met the most unfriendly servicewoman I have ever encountered in Russia. She was sitting at her ticket window tabulating something on the calculator, completing avoiding our glances and not acknowledging that we were there. After at least two minutes passed, she spoke: "And what are you gonna say?" (А что скажете вы?), which is really rude in Russian. She looked at our tickets, rolled her eyes, and said that she absolutely would not exchange them because we had missed our train (I expected that response).

So, the other teachers were out 383 rubles (about $10) and had to buy new return tickets. The woman who sold them, in stark contrast to the other people we had encountered, was really nice and patient. She explained exactly what to do, put up with our questions and worries about how the new tickets looked (they were just receipts, which is normal, but the other teachers were perturbed by their unofficial look). After I went back to ask her a few more questions and buy my return ticket, I thanked her, and she said that she sees it as her job to help people get to their destinations. At least someone has the right philosophy!

After getting tickets for the next train at 9pm, we decided that it was time for a beer and headed to a nearby cafe. It was a great choice. If you're ever in Moscow, I highly recommend Cafe Chaplin (Кафе "Чаплин") right off the Garden Ring south of Kurskii station. The staff was super friendly and spoke decent English, the beer was good and cold, and they gave us a cocktail they call the Drunk Alexei as a treat of the house. What's a Drunk Alexei? Take a martini glass and a hollowed-out grapefruit half. Fill the bottom of the glass with tomato juice, and fill the grapefruit with vodka. Put the grapefruit in the top of the glass. To drink, use the grapefruit like a shot glass, and then chase with the tomato juice.

It was just what we needed after a day like that.

Privet! (That's Russian for hi). I'm completely burned out from my weekend of travel in Moscow, so I'll keep  this short. It was cool to go back to the big city, and it certainly felt familiar. The second I stepped into the metro station after getting off the train from Vladimir, I knew I was back: The hustle of people, the rumble of trains, the particular oily smell of the metro--they are all firmly imprinted in my memory. We saw Red Square, GUM (the huge, historic, and insanely expensive department store just off Red Square), Moscow State University, Tverskaya Ulitsa, and the Patriarch's Ponds. I met up with quite a few of my friends in Moscow, too. It was great to see those places again, and I had a great time with my Russian friends.

But I have no idea how I lived in that city. The noise, the smells, the people, the prices--they were all too much. I'm actually surprised by my reaction: I love cities, and I've always considered myself a lover of the hustle and bustle of urban life. But I was so happy to leave that crazy megapolis and get off the train this morning in quiet, old, provincial Vladimir. Of course, our trip to Moscow was hectic: We had just 7 hours to see a city of 15 million people (the rest of the group didn't spend the night). I was on my feet for that whole time, walking, riding the metro, navigating filthy train stations (We had some train-station misadventures and run ins with very unhelpful members of the Russian "service" industry--more about that later). That sort of travel--coupled with a big sleep deficit--wore me out.

Here are a few pictures. The first is our train and the train station in Moscow when we arrived. Next is me in front of St. Basil's Cathedral. Next is a selection of wine that costs--no joke--more than $1,000 per bottle. Next is Patriarch's Pond. And finally, the last picture I took from the train window on my back to Vladimir--it's a good shot of how the countryside looks around here.

So I'm off to Moscow early tomorrow morning. The whole group of teachers is going on the 7:30 express train, and we will have a day to explore the big city. About half of the group has never been to Moscow, so another teacher who studied in Moscow and I will be the Muscovites of the group and show people around. We'll hit all the high points--Red Square, the Kremlin, the Arbat, the overlook from the hills near Moscow State University, Tverskaya Street, the monumental Moscow Metro. In the process, we'll wander through some of the beautiful old neighborhoods in the city center, which is one of my favorite things to do in Moscow. We might even stop by Patriarch's Ponds, which is a familiar place to anyone who has read Master and Margarita. I'm excited to return to one of my favorite cities and see my friends there!

That said, I'm definitely getting used to the slower and friendlier pace of life here in Vladimir. It's nice that it doesn't take an hour and half each way to get to work every day, and the prices here are noticeably lower. In Moscow, money seemed to just disappear, and I had to stop by the ATM and get money several times a week. Here, I can easily make 1000 rubles (about $30) last a week or more, which was impossible in Moscow. Before I left, one of my Russian professors at OSU told me that after a little while in a small city, I wouldn't be able to understand how I was able to live in Moscow. I've reached that point already. Old Vlady might not have all the clubs or the metro system, but that's fine with me. It feels like people actually live here, whereas in Moscow, it seems like people just try to survive.

This song, which I first heard at a Russian festival this summer, has been stuck in my head now for a few days after I heard again it on TV. So I'll share it. It's by the band B-2 and is called The Eternal Shadowy Counter (counter as in someone who counts down to, in this case, death). It's a very dark, very Russian song, and it sounds really cool. Here is an approximate (and very unpoetic) translation of the lyrics: 

I am not myself, my trace is lost

I fell headfirst into the sands of time

Fell to the bottom, and the metronome counts in silence.

While everyone is waiting for the arrival of the truth

A white lie sounds more sincere

It doesn't hide, and temptation and poison torture my soul.

I did everything and abandoned everything

In my game there are almost no rules

And my hero doesn't hold the line and asks for trouble.

I got rid of dreams and revelations

In the hands of fate lies my salvation

My patience has been threaded completely naked through the needle.

Chorus:

Eternal shadowy counter

Will save me everyday story of all religions

Devoted to me and for me devoted

And fully experienced with birth and death in every moment.