Monday, May 22, 2006
The Orient Express: The Soundtrack
Ken’s and my anniversary on May 8th always hits us at a terrible time. It’s always finals, grading, and graduation; this year, we barely saw each other for 15 minutes, but during those fifteen minutes, we managed to plan to celebrate our anniversary in Russia. And, folks, we did.
Last Friday night at midnight, we took the expensive overnight sleeper train to Moscow, eight hours each way. We immediately thought of the Orient Express, which we’re calling it, but it was really called the Red Line Express or something like that. For $280.00 (2 people round trip), we had what is a unique experience to us. Our berth was private, had two bench seats that convert to beds, box suppers with caviar and vodka (I only took one sip, Mom, and that was more than enough!), and a table for two set with cloth napkins.
I’ve converted the picture of us on the train to black-and-white, because we both totally felt like we were in an old romantic movie! We slept well both nights (we returned Saturday night on the midnight train as well; of course we sang “Midnight Train to Georgia”), nestled in our berths, lulled into sleep by the humming and lurching of the train.
And you know the funniest part? Think about that triumphant music that always plays at the end of those old movies, right when the credits are rolling. No kidding, when we stepped off the train—two young lovers who have now been married longer than we haven’t been—that kind of music swelled in the station, broadcasting
our triumphant return from Moscow, our successful managing of this trip where we didn’t know the language, and its confidence that this couple will make it for the long haul! How cool is that?!
Last Friday night at midnight, we took the expensive overnight sleeper train to Moscow, eight hours each way. We immediately thought of the Orient Express, which we’re calling it, but it was really called the Red Line Express or something like that. For $280.00 (2 people round trip), we had what is a unique experience to us. Our berth was private, had two bench seats that convert to beds, box suppers with caviar and vodka (I only took one sip, Mom, and that was more than enough!), and a table for two set with cloth napkins.
I’ve converted the picture of us on the train to black-and-white, because we both totally felt like we were in an old romantic movie! We slept well both nights (we returned Saturday night on the midnight train as well; of course we sang “Midnight Train to Georgia”), nestled in our berths, lulled into sleep by the humming and lurching of the train.
And you know the funniest part? Think about that triumphant music that always plays at the end of those old movies, right when the credits are rolling. No kidding, when we stepped off the train—two young lovers who have now been married longer than we haven’t been—that kind of music swelled in the station, broadcasting
our triumphant return from Moscow, our successful managing of this trip where we didn’t know the language, and its confidence that this couple will make it for the long haul! How cool is that?!
Friday, May 19, 2006
Cabbages, continued
OK, I told you I’d answer the cabbages question. It’s because they are cold-natured, and all winter long, they could be found bundled up with layer upon layer (like a cabbage) of clothes to keep warm!
Showers of Blessing
Technologically, Russia is so behind America on so many things, and then there are some things that blow me away, they’re so ahead, efficient, and stellar.
For example, our shower is unbelievably great; it’s a cubicle you enter (think teeny-tiny spa) with sliding doors, and you can set the spray to come from the hand-held bar, or a regular shower head, or a complete rain from the entire top of the unit (various strengths and droplet size), or jets that shoot out from the walls. (There’s even the incredibly random golf ball cleaner that you open and close them in that I can’t figure out how to turn on, which is fine since I didn’t bring any golf balls with me anyway.) But you have to turn the water on up to 15 minutes ahead (I know; it bugs me to waste this kind of water as well, but Joel assures me that there’s lots of water here!) in order for it to get hot.
There’s a great front-loading washing machine in the kitchen that is so cool that it can dry the clothes as well after it spins them. What a great idea! This is so advanced for America that I’ve only seen one before, and that was in Bobbie and Bernice Wolfe’s RV. However, almost nobody has a washing machine, and nobody, but nobody, has a dishwasher.
I’ve mentioned the improvements since last year in, for instance, the internet--many more people and places have excellent high-speed service--but the internet didn’t work at all yesterday at the Institute because inexplicably there was no electricity or phone service that day!
Many, many people have cell phones now, and their service is reliable and cheap; my guide Lina, for example, has what she calls the second-to-the-cheapest plan, and she pays about 1¢ to 2¢ per minute—no minimums or maximums, no 2-year plan—using a great, inexpensive phone that is smaller and cooler than mine anyway. So, for those of you with a, say, 750-minute plan in America, you would pay only about $7.50 to $15.00 that month for, and you wouldn’t have any overage charges, and you know how expensive those can be, because you still pay the same rate, and you don’t have to know ahead of time how many minutes you’ll talk in a given month. Way better.
The Metro, too, is cheap, efficient, and fast, and, if you know me at all, my preferred way of getting around, since I dislike driving. You can have a “smart card” that is so clever that Lina doesn’t even take hers out of her pocket; she just goes through the turnstile and it reads that she has her card with her. If, for example, she had given her card to me to use last year when she was in the United States, it wouldn’t have worked because it “knows” that she’s outside the country on a visitors’ visa. This is the kind of “Big Brother” that I find good and helpful. Even my temporary, works-for-one-week-only card doesn’t even have a bar code; I simply place it on the scanner, a green light comes on, and I’m cleared for the metro. However, when I arrived at my metro stop yesterday, the doors were all locked up inexplicably, with no sign or anything, messing up the many native Russians’ schedules who had to be somewhere. They--and I--walked to the next station, which was working just great, and all was fine—but again, it simply didn’t work that hour (it had earlier that day), again with no explanation (the posted hours said it would be open, and apparently it is, most of the time, working at that time, as best as I could figure from the Russian speakers around me).
OK, here’s another example: Russia, like France, has a fantastic mosquito killing system that I would love to have in the States. It’s a palm-sized ball into which you insert a tablet (think Glade Plug-in Scents) and plug the whole thing into an outlet. It’s so good that you can sleep with the windows open, and you won’t get a
single mosquito bite, and that’s saying something since Ken is so sweet he attracts bugs from Siberia and beyond. And yet you can’t find many, many useful products,such things as spot remover or carpet cleaner--and peanut butter is so expensive you have to sell your children to get any.
So, it just goes to show you that--well, I don’t know what it shows, but they’re interesting differences anyway.
For example, our shower is unbelievably great; it’s a cubicle you enter (think teeny-tiny spa) with sliding doors, and you can set the spray to come from the hand-held bar, or a regular shower head, or a complete rain from the entire top of the unit (various strengths and droplet size), or jets that shoot out from the walls. (There’s even the incredibly random golf ball cleaner that you open and close them in that I can’t figure out how to turn on, which is fine since I didn’t bring any golf balls with me anyway.) But you have to turn the water on up to 15 minutes ahead (I know; it bugs me to waste this kind of water as well, but Joel assures me that there’s lots of water here!) in order for it to get hot.
There’s a great front-loading washing machine in the kitchen that is so cool that it can dry the clothes as well after it spins them. What a great idea! This is so advanced for America that I’ve only seen one before, and that was in Bobbie and Bernice Wolfe’s RV. However, almost nobody has a washing machine, and nobody, but nobody, has a dishwasher.
I’ve mentioned the improvements since last year in, for instance, the internet--many more people and places have excellent high-speed service--but the internet didn’t work at all yesterday at the Institute because inexplicably there was no electricity or phone service that day!
Many, many people have cell phones now, and their service is reliable and cheap; my guide Lina, for example, has what she calls the second-to-the-cheapest plan, and she pays about 1¢ to 2¢ per minute—no minimums or maximums, no 2-year plan—using a great, inexpensive phone that is smaller and cooler than mine anyway. So, for those of you with a, say, 750-minute plan in America, you would pay only about $7.50 to $15.00 that month for, and you wouldn’t have any overage charges, and you know how expensive those can be, because you still pay the same rate, and you don’t have to know ahead of time how many minutes you’ll talk in a given month. Way better.
The Metro, too, is cheap, efficient, and fast, and, if you know me at all, my preferred way of getting around, since I dislike driving. You can have a “smart card” that is so clever that Lina doesn’t even take hers out of her pocket; she just goes through the turnstile and it reads that she has her card with her. If, for example, she had given her card to me to use last year when she was in the United States, it wouldn’t have worked because it “knows” that she’s outside the country on a visitors’ visa. This is the kind of “Big Brother” that I find good and helpful. Even my temporary, works-for-one-week-only card doesn’t even have a bar code; I simply place it on the scanner, a green light comes on, and I’m cleared for the metro. However, when I arrived at my metro stop yesterday, the doors were all locked up inexplicably, with no sign or anything, messing up the many native Russians’ schedules who had to be somewhere. They--and I--walked to the next station, which was working just great, and all was fine—but again, it simply didn’t work that hour (it had earlier that day), again with no explanation (the posted hours said it would be open, and apparently it is, most of the time, working at that time, as best as I could figure from the Russian speakers around me).
OK, here’s another example: Russia, like France, has a fantastic mosquito killing system that I would love to have in the States. It’s a palm-sized ball into which you insert a tablet (think Glade Plug-in Scents) and plug the whole thing into an outlet. It’s so good that you can sleep with the windows open, and you won’t get a
single mosquito bite, and that’s saying something since Ken is so sweet he attracts bugs from Siberia and beyond. And yet you can’t find many, many useful products,such things as spot remover or carpet cleaner--and peanut butter is so expensive you have to sell your children to get any.
So, it just goes to show you that--well, I don’t know what it shows, but they’re interesting differences anyway.
Thursday, May 18, 2006
Cabbages
OK, so here’s a question for you: Why would Russians call Nadene Henry (my grandma) and Gayla Herrington(my friend) cabbages?
(answer next blog)
Who’s On First?
OK, so it’s hard to speak Russian, but who says it’s easy to speak English? Think about these words:
through, thorough, though, thought, and tough.
They all start with a “t,” and they all have the letters “ough” in them in a row, and yet, their pronunciations are widely different.
Ken has been cracking me up with his variation of a “Who’s on First?” Russian routine. We bought and ate a delicious pancake sort of thing from a street vendor, and he attempted to tell one of the students about the experience. He told her, “We ate BLEE-nee.” She had no idea what he was talking about, so he repeated the sentence over again, only louder this time. Finally, she understood and said that it’s blih-NEE (emphasis on the 2nd syllable, but otherwise the same). Ken told me it’s like he kept telling someone over and over, “I ate an up-PUHL” instead of saying “APP-puhl” (apple)!
He continued by doing a couple more variations of his Russian shtick to me, saying things like “Have you noticed that ‘what’ and ‘100’ are the same in Russian? They’re both pronounced like “sh-TOE.” So, he proceeded to demonstrate, first in Russian and then in English:
Question: sh-TOE? (meaning what)
Answer: sh-TOE (meaning 100)
Question again: sh-TOE? (meaning what)
Response, only more frustrated: Yeah, that’s what I said, sh-TOE (100)!
Oh well, you get the point (or at least Abbott and Costello would have)!
(answer next blog)
Who’s On First?
OK, so it’s hard to speak Russian, but who says it’s easy to speak English? Think about these words:
through, thorough, though, thought, and tough.
They all start with a “t,” and they all have the letters “ough” in them in a row, and yet, their pronunciations are widely different.
Ken has been cracking me up with his variation of a “Who’s on First?” Russian routine. We bought and ate a delicious pancake sort of thing from a street vendor, and he attempted to tell one of the students about the experience. He told her, “We ate BLEE-nee.” She had no idea what he was talking about, so he repeated the sentence over again, only louder this time. Finally, she understood and said that it’s blih-NEE (emphasis on the 2nd syllable, but otherwise the same). Ken told me it’s like he kept telling someone over and over, “I ate an up-PUHL” instead of saying “APP-puhl” (apple)!
He continued by doing a couple more variations of his Russian shtick to me, saying things like “Have you noticed that ‘what’ and ‘100’ are the same in Russian? They’re both pronounced like “sh-TOE.” So, he proceeded to demonstrate, first in Russian and then in English:
Question: sh-TOE? (meaning what)
Answer: sh-TOE (meaning 100)
Question again: sh-TOE? (meaning what)
Response, only more frustrated: Yeah, that’s what I said, sh-TOE (100)!
Oh well, you get the point (or at least Abbott and Costello would have)!
Wednesday, May 17, 2006
Sunday afternoon excursion
Instead of taking my ever-popular Sunday afternoon nap, Ken and I went out exploring with the tour guide Lena whom we had met that morning in church. She is great, a student in her final year at the University of St. Petersburg in the Art History program. She really knows her stuff; she took us first to the Russian museum, which is an old museum dedicated entirely to the works of Russian artists. It was great; she showed us works by such painters as Bryullov, Siemiradzki, and others, and some fine sculptures, especially of Catherine the Great. The museum itself is beautiful, an old palace that has been a working museum since 1898, which in itself is impressive, I think. We then wandered around Nevskiy Prospekt, Russia’s most famous street and the hub of St. Petersburg. We saw the Winter Palace from the outside only, as it was already closed to visitors for the day and went into three different churches for a look at a Russian Orthodox, a Catholic, and an Armenian Orthodox assembly. And that was only the first day! Stay tuned...
Tuesday, May 16, 2006
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