I'm Finally Starting to Understand

Since we got back from Scandinavia, we've mostly been going about our daily lives and preparing for our next set of trips.  The weather was remarkably cool and wet for most of July, with some days only getting into the low 60's - not that we minded.  

Toward the end of the month, we rented the Embassy Dacha - basically a large cabin in a quiet green area in the suburbs - for a weekend with some friends of ours.  The weather wasn't great, but we had a nice time just relaxing, grilling, and watching the kids play.  Unfortunately I neglected to get pictures.  It was a good chance to break away from the usual distractions as there was no internet and the TV selection featured almost nothing in English.  That said, it did have satellite feeds from Somalia and several adult Arab channels, which as far as I could tell consisted of women without their hair covered.  It wasn't that far out of town, but we felt like we were in another (more peaceful) world, so it was nice. 

My big cultural experience was trying to purchase train tickets for our upcoming trip to Siberia without the help of a travel agency.  Tickets only go on sale a certain period of time before the travel date, but seats can fill up fast, so it's good to get there as soon as their available, especially since the trips we are taking are rather long and we wanted to buy out a whole compartment.  So I had to go to the train station twice - once for the international leg, which was available 60 days in advance, and then again for the domestic leg, which went on sale 45 days in advance. 

The international tickets were no problem at all. I was frankly amazed that I got exactly what I wanted with little fuss.  The purchase of the domestic tickets was a little more enlightening into local customs.  First, every ticket window has it's own schedule.  It is open during certain hours and goes on break at specific times.  These times are posted in the window and that leads customers to shop around, trying to gauge, based on the number of people in line, whether they will likely get to the window before the next break.   As part of this shopping around, they will also tell the last person in line to hold a space for them while they go and look for better prospects.  This unfortunate person then tells anyone else who comes along how many "people" are in line behind them.  But they seem to regulate one another fairly strictly.  When I was in line, a man came up and was asking me when the next break would be at our window.  Before I could answer, a woman in the next line (who had figured out I wasn't local) started shouting at him that he should not try to cut in front of me.   While unnecessary, it was nice to see that rules are in place, even if it's not immediately apparent. 

The next fun part is that waiting in line becomes something of a spectator sport.  Since everyone is anxious about whether they will get to the window in time, they all listen in carefully to what the person currently being served is doing.  When one couple kept arguing with the cashier about whether she gave them the right tickets, and then came back to argue about whether she gave them the correct change, there were concerted groans and exhortations, similar to what you might hear at a hockey game, and a collected sigh of relief when they moved on. 

When I got to the window (with time to spare before the next break), I found myself face to face with a prime example of surly Russian customer service.  I tried to be extra polite in the hopes of winning her cooperation, but she was unmoved.  All domestic tickets are given in Moscow time, so you have to know the time difference of the place you are going to make sure you are on the train you want.  I wanted a train at 8:00am local time at destination and she was telling me that the tickets were at 3 o'clock.  Wanting to make sure that I would be on the 8:00am and not the 8:00pm, I asked if it was 3 in the morning.  She said no.  Confused, I started to explain that I wanted the train at 3 in the morning and she shouted at me that the train was 3 at night.  I finally understood, she meant that it would still be the middle of the night in Moscow at 3am local time.  Nonplussed, I retorted that it will be morning where we are going.  I got a glare from the ticket woman, but some appreciative laughs from the onlookers behind me. 

When I gave her our passports, she asked me for a translation.  When I started to say that I didn't have one, she cut me off and told me to go get one.  What I didn't get to finish saying was that our visas have our names on them using Cyrillic characters. And every time I tried to tell her this, she spoke more loudly that she must have our names written in Russian letters. I knew the crowd had my back so I finally ran out of patience and shouted at her that our names are on our visas in Russian letters so please just look at the visas!  It was like the sun coming out from behind a cloud.  She smiled, she was friendly, she was helpful, and she gave me my tickets and wished me safe travels.  18 months into our tour and I finally get how it works. 

With our September travel plans in hand, I decided to take a long weekend in the beginning of August as work has been particularly atrocious of late.  On the Friday, we took Aiden to the zoo, and he was suitably fascinated. 

Stephanie and I were a bit confused by an enormous sculpture that seemed to involve animals, war, and scary kings.  I still haven't figured out what it means, nut it was interesting.

For the most part, the animals seemed well kept, although the locals were particularly unobservant of the numerous signs about the animals being wild, dangerous, and not wanting to be fed.  That didn't stop a guy from trying to get the giraffe to lick his daughter through the fence.  Didn't get that one on photo, but Aiden and I observed from a safe distance.

Most of the animals seemed happy, but in August things warmed up again and this bear seemed particularly miserable.

When we got to the monkey area, I thought this graphic sign would have been useful throughout the park.  Perhaps a picture of a giraffe eating a small child would have prevented the aforementioned gentleman from trying to have his daughter licked.

That weekend, we decided to take a day trip to the ancient city of Kolomna.  Nearly as old as Moscow, and the sight of some historical events like the muster of troops by Dmitry Donskoy in 1380 presaged the first major Russian victories against their Tatar (Mongol) occupiers.   And in 1547, Ivan The Terrible gathered his forces for the conquest of Kazan. Kolomna was even considered for a location of the capital instead of Moscow at one point.  So a day trip to a place of historic significance, known for it's bucolic setting seemed just the thing. 

We piled onto a decrepit electrichka (electric train), which was soon packed to overflowing with other people trying to get out of the city. 

We arrived without incident, and most of the people got off the train before Kolomna.  However, when we entered the old city gates, we were dismayed to see what appeared to be a sanctioned protest that looked like it would make sightseeing very difficult.  People seemed to be forming a human chain around the old town, shouting slogans about the youth being Russia's power.  We are well trained to be wary of public demonstrations, particularly those of nationalistic fervor, and we were hungry anyway, so we ducked into a restaurant to escape and find out more about what was going on.

After the very stereotypical rigmarole of being told that they were out of everything we wanted to order, we settled for our 2nd and 3rd choices.  We eventually got our food and asked the waitress what was happening.  She laughed and said they are holding a "flash mob" to rally support for the Kolomna Kremlin to be selected as one of Russia's 10 icons - a competition being run by one of the TV networks.  I found the term flash mob funny since any spontaneous gathering would have to be approved by the authorities before it could happen.

While we were eating we heard the roar of airplanes and thought we were going to be bombed.  Half the restaurant rushed out to see it.  I went out to have a look myself and was treated to a flyover by Russian military jets.  A group of pilots known as The Swifts.  It was pretty awesome.

After lunch, armed with our new understanding, we thought it was a pretty neat coincidence that we got to be in Kolomna for this show of civic pride.  We enjoyed an outdoor concert by the main cathedrals and just spent the day wandering the old town.

Kolomna has some very well preserved 18th and 19th century buildings and I thought that if you don't look too closely, their main street could be any downtown thoroughfare in a small town in middle America.

We also enjoyed some nice views of the confluence of the Moscow and Oka rivers, part of which made Kolomna such a strategic location in Russia's early history.

One of the great things about our visit was that the Kremlin walls were open to the public - which is ordinarily not the case.  Great views abounded.

On our way home, we stopped for some famous local pastilles, made from apples and picked up a bottle of honey wine for later that evening.

There's a video of the jets and some of the concert for those who are interested. 

On the way home, we discovered that Aiden had a very high fever and ended up having to take him to the medical clinic for tests, but it turned out to be nothing serious and he recovered just fine on his own.  Unfortunately for one rude woman on the subway, however, I wasn't in the mood for her shenanigans.  Pushing and shoving is routine when it comes to getting on the escalators, and usually I just roll my eyes and let it past.  But on this particular occasion, I just couldn't stand it anymore.  So when this middle aged woman shoved past me, I didn't get out of her way and her bag got caught between us.  I didn't move. So she yanked the bag and turned around to start yelling at me.  I cut her off with a look and being a foot-and-a-half taller than her, I leaned down to make sure she heard me and said loudly in Russian "The word you want to say is EXCUSE ME!!!"  Of course this caused everyone to look at us, and it must have looked very bad for this huge man to be yelling at this little woman, but frankly, I didn't care.  She muttered something about someone's whole life, and I'm not sure whether she was saying that she had never been spoken to like that in her whole life, or was cursing me with some affliction for the rest of my whole life, but I didn't care about that either.  I did feel better, though. 

More recently, Stephanie and I had a date night where we did a walking tour around an area of Moscow we really haven't seen.  There were mostly some nice churches, and the weather was beautiful. 

On our way through a park, we encountered a disturbing but powerful sculpture called "The Children: Victims of Adult's Vices".  It depicts to children surrounded by personifications of adult vices like drug addiction, prostitution, alcoholism, child labor, sadism, ignorance, irresponsible science, ignorance, indifference, war, weapons trade, those without memory, poverty, and theft.  It was really amazing - and if you can enlarge the second picture, you'll see that war is holding a bomb with a Mickey Mouse head.

We wrapped up our evening with a nice walk along the river with views of the Kremlin, and I was even able to get a great picture of the moon.

I had to manipulate the moon shot quite a bit to get the features to stand out so much, but was pretty amazed by what I could do with a point and shoot digital camera.

We are now packing to head up to St. Petersburg for a couple of weeks while I support the G20 summit, which should be both a nice change of pace and an interesting work experience.  I'm sure we'll have more to share when we get back. 

Across the Baltic Sea

In early July, we took a week long jaunt to the Baltic Sea.  First we flew from Moscow to Tallinn, and while the flight was less than two hours, it seemed like the longest trip every because Aiden decided to have a tantrum and only fell asleep when there were about 15 minutes left to go, which meant we had to wake him up shortly thereafter.  Luckily, it was a short trip to our hotel, located right in the old town center. 

We went to dinner straight away at a place called "Grandma's" and enjoyed some authentic Estonian cuisine.  Aiden was put in a much better mood by the candle on the table, which inspired him to start singing Happy Birthday in his own special way.  By the time dinner was over, we were all pretty tired so we called it a night and rested up for the next day of sightseeing.

Tallinn's old town is fairly small and it's easily covered in a day of walking.  We headed up to the Toompea, which provides great views over the medieval town.  The weather couldn't have been better and was a nice break from a relatively warm June in Moscow.

Down in the old city, Stephanie and I took turns climbing the very narrow and crowded stairs of St. Olaf's church, which was used by the Soviet's to block TV signals from nearby Finland.  The view was amazing,  but it was a little daunting to look down and see that the top of the tower wasn't really built for people.  It has a curved edge with no railing and if it wasn't for the fence they put up, you would slip right off.

We stopped for lunch at a locally famous pancake place and had one stuffed with bacon and cheese, and another filled with brie, tvorog, and apricots.  It was delicious, but we were sort of put off our meal by the movie they were showing which featured some pornographic movie scenes that didn't really go well with pancakes or 2-year olds.

For his part, Aiden enjoyed running around, but it took some getting used to the cobble-stoned streets and he took a couple of spills.  Nothing serious and nothing that slowed him down really.  Tallinn is sort of an ideal destination for us with a combination of quaint medieval flare and excessive quantities of good food and beer.

In the evening, after lots of sightseeing and a little shopping, we succumbed to temptation and ate at the most touristy restaurant in town.  Fortunately, the food is as good as the decorations were kitsch and we enjoyed honey beer, herb beer, cinnamon beer, and a lot of interesting medieval (historically accurate) dishes that I can't really remember because of all the beer.  It was a good time, even for Aiden, who didn't get to have beer, but got to run around the little wooden patio.

That evening, we went to a local shopping mall to get supplies for our overnight ferry the next day.  I was very tempted to buy an ostrich egg, but Stephanie reminded me that I wouldn't have anywhere to cook it. I wonder what it would have been like hard-boiled?

On our last day in Tallinn, we took a trip out to the country side.  Figuring out the bus was it's own accomplishment, as I had to guess which language to speak.  In Estonia, the younger generation generally eschews Russian in favor of English, while the older generation doesn't speak much english but doesn't like Russian either (with good reason given their treatment under the Soviets). So when encountering older folks, I learned to ask if they spoke English first, then when they said no, offered to speak Russian, which seemed to be acceptable.

We took the bus out of the city to the open air museum, which is filled with houses, windmills, churches, stores, and other buildings from the 17th-19th centuries, all laid out in a bucolic park.  Aside from being peaceful and having plenty of space for Aiden to run around, it was very interesting.  They really did a fantastic job of collecting authentic buildings and artifacts and then setting up the homes as exhibits.

Aiden also got to see a lot of his favorite farm animals and got into a crowing competition with a rooster.  They're actually a bit frightening close up.

We made it back into town with a little bit of time to spare before heading down to the harbor to board our ferry, which was more like a cruise ship.  Aiden got very excited on the gangway and started shouting "Airplane" until we picked him up and showed him the boat out the window, at which point he started shouting "Boat" instead. 

We braved a very windy top deck to enjoy the views of Tallinn from the water as the boat pulled out, and then headed back inside to cash in our 50% off coupons for beer while Aiden played in the childrens' area.  Eventually, we had to take Aiden out of the ball pit because other parents, were enjoying their drinks too much to tell their kids to stop jumping on top of the smaller children.

Our cabin was comfortable, and the sleeping area of the boat was quiet, but I wouldn't call it the most restful night because Aiden kept waking up.  But even that had it's bright side as we were up nice and early to take in the beautiful views of the Stockholm archipelago, which we entered several hours before reaching our destination.

We only went inside long enough to enjoy the smorgasbord breakfast, where I made sure to eat my 11 Euros' worth of delicious smoked salmon (and then some).  Getting to our hotel from the port was a short subway ride away and we were shown to a cozy loft room where we spent the next three days trying to keep Aiden from climbing the ladder without adult supervision.

We spent the afternoon touring the old town in Gamla Stan and the surrounding islands.  Neither of us realized that Stockholm is basically a small archipelago, but it makes for beautiful views and lots of fresh air.

Even the palace is on the small island of Gamla Stan.  We finished our evening off with dinner in the old town and went back to our hotel to catch up on the sleep we missed the night before.

The next day, we took a different route and crossed one of the bridges to a couple of different islands, which gave us the chance to enjoy views of the old town from across the water.

A little later, we enjoyed a ferry ride around the inner islands, which was included on our three day transportation pass, on the way to the island of Djurgarden, where we spent the day.

At Djurgarden, we started with the Vasa museum, featuring the reconstructed ship of the same name.  Apparently, the Vasa was built in 1628 for the war between Stockholm and Poland, but it wasn't properly balanced and sank just minutes after leaving the port.  It was recently salvaged and reconstructed using 95% of the original wood.  It is increadibly impressive, particularly the detailed carvings all around the ship.  I think it would be easily possible to spend a whole day there, but our schedule and our son wouldn't allow it, so we moved on to the Skansen outdoor museum nearby.

Skansen has taken the outdoor museum to a whole new level. They transported an entire town center to the island and then set up outlying farms and villages nearby so that visitors can explore a whole community.  It includes buildings representative of different social classes and the employees are able to talk about the significance of certain items and what life would have been like for the particular inhabitants...

In the town center they have a general store, including the family quarters behind the shop...

A spice shop, where we learned that spices were primarily used to make spoiled meat edible after the long winter.  Above it, there was a small apartment where a family lived and we learned that the clothing factory would rent the sewing machine to the employee for about 50% of their income.  The plus side for the worker was that they could make their children work as well to increase productivity.

We also got to sample sweets at a working bakery and visit a glass blowing workshop.

On the outskirts, there were poor homesteads with working fireplaces...

A beautiful church with original paintings...

And wealthier home steads, signified by red coloring and extra rooms that were only used once or twice per year.

Aiden tolerated our visiting the buildings, so we made sure he got to spend time seeing the zoo of Scandinavian animals, including reindeer, lynx, bears, foxes, boar, elk, and others.  He was particularly excited to see the owl, which he recognized from one of his books.

The park was even divided to represent different landscaps and building styles, with forests in the northern part and bogs in the southern parts.  Even the architecture was different.

I was particularly fascinated with the wooden belfries, which could always be seen from a long way off.

Aiden really enjoyed an old-fashioned car ride.

We discovered our favorite building as the park was getting ready to close, an old manor house that would have belonged to one of the nobility. They even showed how the house would have changed over time, with additional panes added to the window (over the original wood exterior), and how the interior design would have changed from the traditional mural paintings to plainer solid colors.

That evening, we had dinner at the Bishop's Arms on the island of Soldermam, where we were staying.  It looked like a neighborhood pub, but it was some of the best food either of us have had in a very long time.  Just looking at the picture makes my mouth water.

On the way home we stopped to get some fruit for Aiden at a store and I couldn't resist two candy bars that I probounce "Day-um" and "Plop".

For our last day in Stockholm, we took a commuter train out of the city to the ancient town of Sigtuna, which dates back over 1000 years and is still organized along the original viking roads.

We spent a beautiful day seeking out the rune stones, walking along the lake front, and visiting the ruins of catholic churches that fell into disuse after the conversion to protestantism.

One church that was built a bit later was converted to a protestant church and is still in use.  It contains some artifacts dating all the way back to the 13th century.

Back in Stockholm, we decided to spend our remaining hours in Gamla Stan, and made it a point to visit the main church, which was closed when we were there the first day.  This is the church where coronation and royal weddings are held. There are spectacular gilded seat boxes for the nobility in the front and an unusual silver and alabaster altar.

I was particularly interested in seeing the famous sculpture of St. George and the dragon, which is amazing and has a lot of unexpected details (see this link: http://www.dodedans.com/Enotke3.htm).  It's hard to believe it is over 500 years old. 

We spent awhile longer enjoying the sights in the old town before hopping on the subway, which gave one last great view of the Gamla Stan before we headed back home.

Epilogue: After the success at the Bishop's arms the night before, we decided to try our luck in Soldermam again for our last meal, but alas could not agree on a place to eat. So we ended up getting smoked salmon and local cheese to have with bread from the supermarket.  We also bought some frozen lingan berries to have over ice cream.  It was a far cry from the amazing meal of the night before, but it wasn't a bad way to finish out the trip.