Things have been happening around here lately. I've been meeting more people and have generally been much busier than in the previous weeks. A lot of the new people I've met are Peace Corp Volunteers, though only one of them actually lives in Simferopol and she's leaving for good this weekend. Her name's Alison, and Maria put me in touch with her because I was looking to buy a guitar and Alison was looking to sell hers. She actually brought it with her from the US, so it isn't some cheap Russian brand. It's actually a Fender in pretty good shape, and she gave me a pretty fair deal on it as well. I'm happy to be able to play around on a guitar again, and since getting it I've even come up with a bridge for a song that I've been tinkering with for seven years or something crazy like that. Last Friday, Alison took me and another PCV named Sam to the Window on America in Simferopol. Many towns in countries around the world have these, and they are basically Embassy-sponsored American cultural centers where people can access US news material, books, movies, and all kinds of general information in English. They also offer "clubs" or classes on different topics lead by Americans, and Sam and I went there to get set up to lead some of these clubs ourselves. I'm waiting to hear back from them about what they'll have me do exactly, but it sounds more like straightforward English teaching than anything else, which should be pretty fun. I think the clubs are usually weekly, so it isn't too big of a commitment. It will be good to have something like this to structure my days / week around.
Alison also had a sort of going away party for herself and some other Crimea-based PCVs that are headed out soon, and there were others there who will be sticking around for a while. On Saturday night we all hung out in Alison's apartment drinking and playing charades for some reason. There are some pretty cool people around here in Peace Corp, and now I have some contacts for people in some different towns around Crimea. On Sunday, Alison again introduced me to some new people by inviting me along to dinner with her friend James. James is Chinese-Malaysian, and a student at the local Medical University. The school has a lot of students from Malaysia, as well as a number from India, the Middle East, and Nigeria. Apparently the school actively recruits students in these countries, and appeals to those who can't afford to attend universities in the West. After Malaysia recognized a degree from Crimean State Medical University as a legitimate medical degree, a huge wave of Malaysians came. Apparently the government has since revoked the decision to recognize the degree, once it came to their attention that the school isn't so great, but all those who had already come will have their degrees honored. So, James cooked us a delicious Chinese dinner, and we ate with him and his roommate Wong in their dorm room. On the way there we got stuck in the dorm's elevator for about five minutes before Wong came to break us out. Both of these guys were super friendly and spoke great English. James had gone to an English boarding school in India, so he was particularly well-spoken. Over dinner they told us more about life at the university, and about being Asian in Crimea. Apparently most people are used to seeing them around by now, and they don't get stared at as much as they did when they first arrived. Wong told us about the characteristics of our respective Chinese zodiac signs, then read our palms and showed us his tinctures. I had a very nice time with them, and hopefully I'll get to hang out with them some more in the near future. There's a night club here called the Cobra Club that apparently all the Malaysian students go to, but James has never gone. I told him that if he ever wanted to go I would go with him, so maybe I'll be checkin that out at some point. While at the university, Alison also pointed out where the Middle Eastern restaurant hidden among the dorms is, and now I'm excited to go back and check that out.
The other thing that's been going on lately is the arrival of a journalist who's writing a series of articles about the Crimea situation for the inline magazine Slate. His name is Joshua, and Maria had met him in DC and gave him my email address. He arrived on Saturday, and I arranged it so that he can stay in my new apartment during the week or so before I move in. While waiting for our meeting with the landlord, I showed Joshua around town a bit. We ate lunch at a Turkish place I hadn't been to yet, and wandered around the downtown area. On Monday the two of us took a day trip to Bakhchisaray, where we met up with Maria and wandered around town taking in the general Crimean Tatar-ness of it all. We saw the first medrassa in Europe (currently undergoing reconstruction), and I visited a master jeweler in his workshop. Joshua asked him some general questions as he started to form in his mind the article that he'll be writing about the Crimea Tatars. After our meeting and a little lunch, we checked out the Khan's Palace, which I had missed the last time I was in Bakhchisaray. Maria's ethnographer friend met us there to give us more background on the Crimean Tatars. He showed us around the grounds for a bit while Joshua asked some more questions and Maria translated. We got to see the legendary Fountain of Tears, about which Pushkin's famous poem "Bakhchisaray Fountain" was written. This poem was basically responsible for the sparing of the Khan's Palace and the small remnants of Crimean Tatar culture in Crimea during the Soviet period (apparently Stalin was a big fan). Considering the legend behind the fountain, I found it to be quite disappointing. It wasn't all that cool looking, and there was barely a trickle of water coming out of it at all (check my flickr page for a picture). After the palace we headed through the old town and up the hill behind it towards the Crimean Tatar settlement on the other side. This is where many of the Tatars settled in makeshift houses after returning from Central Asia beginning in the late 80's. There are a lot of settlements like this in Crimea, especially all around Simferopol. These settlements have since been given legal status, and the houses have been improved, but they are still generally very poor areas. The sky was getting very cloudy, dark, and sinister-looking, and made for some great pictures. I got a great one of the local Mosque with the creepy sky (again, check flickr). After a long walk back down the hill, Maria headed off and Joshua and I headed back towards the bus station to catch a ride back to Simferopol. Once we got there it started to rain for the first time in about a month here, so we jumped on the first marshrutka headed for our neighborhood. This was unfortunately heading the wrong way, so we had to backtrack a ways towards Bakhchisaray, and once we reached the end of the line had to ask the driver to let us on for the ride back into Simferopol. At least we got to stay out of the rain.
The last couple days Joshua has been going around and interviewing various people to collect material for his articles, and I've tagged along for most of them since I'm interested in essentially the same topic. In fact, a few of the interviews were with people that I suggested. These included the head of the Institute for Strategic Research, which reports directly to the President of Ukraine on Crimean issues, and the director of the Central Crimean Museum. I met both of these people last week when my advisor Sergei Nikolaiovich took me to meet them. Both are good friends of his, and they will both be helpful to my research in the coming months. I also took Joshua to meet my advisor at the university, and between the three of these people I think Joshua got some good stuff that he can work with. These Russian academic types, I'm finding, tend to say a lot but never really get to the point, and when they do the things they say are sometimes kind of crazy. For instance, my advisor said that he thinks Crimea has avoided conflict because Russians have a genetic predisposition towards avoiding conflict. This is something that has kind of come up before, and I know he's kind of got some weird Russian nationalist views, but at least he realizes his views as subjective and can still be helpful in guiding my research. Ignoring some of the crazy stuff, these guys made some interesting points about a number of issues surrounding the current Crimean geopolitical situation, and I hope they've been useful for Joshua. I personally didn't take a lot of notes, but it all got me thinking about some things that I'll be able to elaborate upon later with these same people. We also had another meeting with the Editor in Chief of the largest Crimean newspaper, Krymskaya Pravda. Like the others, he made some pretty crazy statements, but generally made some interesting points that he believes reflect the general feeling of the Russian population in Crimea. He said that he met earlier this year with Putin and Medvedev, thereby giving me and everybody I know a direct link to those two in the game of "six degrees of separation." He spoke very good English, but in order to explain everything in detail he preferred to speak in Russian. Joshua had hired a translator named Gulya to do all the translating at these meetings, and I must say it was nice being able to hear everything in English after hearing it in Russian, because there are still a lot of things that I miss in conversations like these. Gulya's a Crimean Tatar girl who has interned at the UN, and generally seems like a really cool person. I got her number, so hopefully I'll be seeing more of her around. Our meeting with the editor went really well, and he seems very accommodating. I told him that I'll be here doing research until July, and that I may wish to speak with him some more, and he seemed all to happy to help me. I'm just glad to finally be making all this good connections around here.
So, there are some interesting things coming up for me: Tomorrow Maria is driving Joshua and myself out to the far east of Crimea to the city Kerch, which is just across the strait from Russia (where I took a ferry a couple of years ago). Joshua is hoping to talk to someone there about the row over an island called Tuzla back in 2003 between Russian and Ukraine, but I have a feeling not much will come of it. It should be a fun trip either way. In the next few days I move into my new apartment, which I'm very excited about. Also in the next couple days, a Moldova Fulbrighter and his brother will be visiting and with them and Joshua I think I might head down to a town called Balaclava near Sevastopol, where they have a really cool submarine museum. Then, on the 25th, I head out for the big road trip to Lviv with Maria. I'm working on my return route back to Crimea, which I won't go into just yet, but it should be very interesting. I'm not sure if I'll get anything posted here before then (probably not, actually), so this may have to tide everyone over for a while. So, see you when I see you.
-Austin
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
к сожaлению, мой пол всегда грязный
So, I've been keeping fairly busy this past week or so. Let's start with last Wednesday. I met briefly in the early afternoon with a woman at the University who had just gotten back from a Fulbright-sponsered conference in Kiev, and she had been given my Fulbright ID to give to me upon her return to Simferopol. It turns out I had actually met her briefly during my first tour of the university a number of weeks ago. She's a professor of Political Science and speaks great English. I think she was on a Fulbright program in the US before. I got her card and I think I'll get in touch with her sometime soon to learn more about the Poly Sci department there and how they might be helpful for my project. After our meeting I headed downtown to grab some lunch at Cafe Piroga, and just when I couldn't find any open seats who should I find there but Maria, the grad student I had finally met a couple weeks before. We sat together while we ate our lunches and gushed over our happiness for the election results. We caught up on our recent trips (she had just returned from Turkey), and finally made plans for her to swing by my apartment later that evening to pick up a book she had lent me. She had to stick around to use the cafe's wifi, while I went for a little walk. She had told me about a music store where I could find a guitar, so I went looking for it but never actually found it. I did end up in the vicinity of the central market, though, and since I still hadn't checked it out I decided it was finally time. It is a lot bigger than any of the other markets I've been to so far in Simferopol, and reminded me a little of Osh bazaar in Bishkek (which is definitely a good thing). I'll now be keeping this market in mind whenever I need to buy just about anything. I finished exploring the market and headed home to wait for Maria to come by. She was the first person besides landlords, delivery people, cable installers, etc. to see my apartment, and I think she thinks it was pretty funny. She said it was the quintessential post-Soviet "remonted" (like remodeled) apartment, and she is right. It's kind of made up to look nice and shiny, but its kind of soulless and sterile feeling. I haven't really minded it too much, though, and besides the lack of hot water I haven't really thought of any good reason to move. Then, she mentioned that her old apartment was now free since she had just moved to Bakhchisaray, and she said that the rent is about $100 cheaper per month than it is here. It also has it's own water heater, and a lot more furnishing, storage space, utensils, bedding, etc. I had visited her there once before, and I did think that it was a nice cozy place, so now the prospect of moving there was starting to sound pretty good. As she was leaving, she invited me to tag along with her the next day to a Crimean Tatar music "festival" about an hour north of SImferopol, which sounded like a lot of fun, so I agreed to come.
I met Maria early the next morning at a corner near the central market, and we rendezvoused with some of her Crimean Tatar music connections who would be leading us to the festival. Maria is here researching Crimean Tatar music and ethnography, and she has made many friends and contacts in the Crimean Tatar community. Two of the people we were going to the festival with are apparently pretty well-known singers within the scene, and they were going to be judges at the festival. Maria has her own car, so we drove separately as the other car lead us out of town to a small village called Pervomaiskoye, in the northern part of Crimea. The festival was held in a small auditorium, and featured performances from acts all around Crimea. It really wasn't much of a festival, but more like a talent show. Many of the performers were children, but there were several adults as well. The acts were fairly versatile, and included a number of solo vocal performances, musical groups, traditional dace troupes, and even a skit. A lot of the dance numbers seemed very similar to me, and a lot of the music was lip-synced, or even instrument-synced. One of the groups featured a keyboard player whose keyboard wasn't actually plugged into anything, which made it fairly obvious that he wasn't really playing. I enjoyed it, and got a kick out of many of the acts that tickled my funny bone in a way that was very Tim and Eric. The problem, however, was that the festival featured 42 performances, so it really started to drag on way to long. Both Maria and I were enjoying it at first, but we started getting antsy and hungry as the acts started getting more and more monotonous. Once the scheduled performances had all finished, there was an additional musical interlude as the judges deliberated over their choices. I really don't know what they had to deliberate about, because there really didn't seem to be any winner. Instead, every single act was called up to the stage one-by-one to receive a certificate and some sort of prize. The prizes were a joke; some got stuffed animals, some got wooden owl statues, some got electric water-heating pitchers, and others got awful, cheesy dentist waiting room-style framed "art work." We had to sit and watch as each act was called up to receive these gifts! Once they had passed out all the prizes, and just as we thought we were free, two of the singers we had come from Simferopol with proceeded to give a mini concert for all their adoring fans in the audience. This is just like the typical synth- drum machine-backed, slightly eastern-sounding bland pop music you'd expect to hear in cabs all across much of the former USSR, and the people still eat it up. One of the singers got everyone, especially Maria and me, to et up and dance around in the aisles. Everyone does the belly-dancing style arm gestures when they dance here, and I tried my best to fit in but just felt ridiculous. Finally, they wrapped up all the singing, but we still weren't free to go. We had been invited to dine with our hosts and many others from the festival at a local restaurant, and although we were hungry, we knew we would be stuck there for a while. We followed everyone to the restaurant, where all the tables had been covered in snacks, salads, and drinks in anticipation of our arrival. It was a big group, so we took up the whole place. Everyone started snacking and sipping, and soon the toasts started. Apparently some Crimean Tatars adhere to the Islamic rule against alcohol consumption, but like Central Asians, many do not, and we drank toast after toast to the festival, to their culture, to friendship, blah blah blah. Since she was driving, Maria abstained from all but a couple toasts, but I happily joined in each time and as a results got pretty drunk. Everyone took turns giving toasts, even Maria when she was asked, and I was trying to mentally prepare a toast if they asked me to give one, but it never came around to me. Our soup and shashlyk finally came, and then the singing and dancing ensued. I was called up to dance with one of the singing sensations. Maria was getting really anxious to go, so in order for them to let us leave, she offered to sing and play some songs. She got up to the keyboard and played and sang a beautiful Ukrainian folk song, and everybody was so happy to learn that she was a musician herself. We got the person blocking us in to move their car, and we were finally off for the dark drive back to Simferopol. Once I got back to my apartment I realized that my cell phone had fallen out of my pocket, and I hoped it was still in Maria's car. Luckily she had just gone to use the internet before heading back to Bakhchisaray, and I was able to reach her by email in time for her to find my phone in her car and bring it back to me. [Side note: There's a lot of screaming and banging going on in the stairwell somewhere in my building, and it sounds like there's a serious fight going on or something. I'll try to ignore it.]
The next day was Friday, and I arranged a meeting with Maria's old landlord to see about renting the apartment. She had called him on my behalf the day before, and I set up a meeting the next evening to take another look at the apartment. The landlord's name is Sergey, and he is very friendly and seems to be very honest. When I had been there before I had only really seen the kitchen, so it was good to see the rest of it. There's a living room that's bigger than my bedroom here, with two couches (one of which folds out into a bed), a few bookshelves, a TV, and a nice big rug. There's a bedroom as well, but almost all of it is filled with a mountain of stuff that belongs to the Sergey's mother, who lives in New York. The room is mostly unusable, except for a fairly large bed that is tucked away in a nice little nook. The kitchen has a large table and with chairs, a refrigerator that's much larger than mine, a microwave, and all the utensils and cooking stuff I'll probably ever need. Oh, and a water heater of course! The only real downside is that there is no washing machine, but if it becomes a problem I could always buy one for not too much. There's also a weird closet that had a water leak in it recently and as a result smells pretty moldy, but Sergey has supposedly already cleaned it out some. The location is pretty great as well. It's only a few minutes walk from my current place, but closer to the center and even closer to the bus station and my local market. I also like the building itself and the neighborhood a lot better than where I am now. He agreed to rent the place to me for $300/month for at least the next three months, then he would have to reassess and depending on the economic situation in Ukraine, he might have to raise the price. I can live with that. I told him I was set on renting it, but that I'd just have to talk to my current landlord to make sure there won't be any problems with ending my lease early. I've been dreading calling him, but yesterday I finally mustered up the courage. I told him that I had found a new place that was cheaper and that I liked better, and that while I still liked my current place, I thought it would be better to move. By the time I called him the hot water had actually finally come on in my place, so I couldn't use that as a reason anymore, but I think it's still worth it to move. He seemed a bit upset at first, and didn't understand why I was moving now when I had told him before I'd be staying until August, but there wasn't really any way he could force me to stay, so he reluctantly said OK. I'm already paid up here through the 23rd, so I'll stay until around then, but I hope to start my lease on the new place around the 20th. My landlord called back a little later and suggested that he could lower my rent a bit if it would make me stay, but I said I just liked the other place more, and he finally gave up trying to win me back. He's a nice guy, and I felt a little bad bowing out of my lease so early, but it's totally worth it. I really like this other place.
Now, allow me to backtrack. On Saturday I took my first trip out to Bakhchisaray so Maria could show me around a bit. Bakhchisaray was the old capital of the Tatar Khante in Crimea, and today remains the center of Crimean Tatar culture. Maria is living there with a host family for a few weeks to be closer to all the action. The bus ride takes about a hlaf hour from Simferopol, and from the bus station I caught a marshrutka to the end of the line, which is right where Maria is living. The old town in Bakhchisaray is flanked on both sides by big cliffs that lead up into a couple different gorges, and it's just a really beautiful setting. From her place we started walking up one of the gorges to the Uspensky Monestary, built into the side of the cliff. Apparently it had first been carved out by some proto-Christian group centuries ago, then later incorporated by the Orthodox church, and just within the last five or so years it has been spruced up with new paintings and structural components. It was very beautiful, set into the side of the cliff face, and it looks like it has really benefited from its recent face-lift. There were a fair number of visitors and many vendors out, selling souvenirs, honey, wine, wild tea leaves, etc. From the monastery we pushed on up the gorge to the cave city of Chufut Kale. It is perched on a plateau above the cliffs and overlooking some nice gorges. A unique religious group called the Karaims lived here for many centuries. They're basically an offshoot of Judaism, wherein they believe in the Old Testament and use Hebrew, but they don't believe in the Talmud. I just recently read a little more about them, and apparently they migrated into Crimea and and a few other areas in Europe centuries ago from the Middle East, and lived in isolation for a long time. The cave city itself is quite different from the other cave city I visited recently. This one had a bit of a street plan to it, and generally seemed more thought-through. I'd say Ulistsikhe was cooler, just because it seemed much more ancient and spooky. This one did have some great views, though. After a bit of exploring we headed back down to town for some lunch. There are a few Crimean Tatar restaurants right around Maria's place, but only one was open, so we sat on their patio in the sun and had pretty good lagman and manty. After lunch we went back to her host family's place to trade music from our hard drives. This ended up taking much longer than we thought or hoped it would, and so I missed my chance to visit the Khan's Palace, the main attraction in Bakhchisaray. There will plenty of other opportunities. We chatted with her host mother for a while while we went through files. She teaches English in a classroom adjacent to the house, so she spoke to us in very good English. She gave us some background about the monastery and the cave city and about Bakhchisaray in general. She found it strange that I only wanted to drink water instead of coffee. By the time we finished with the files it was already dark, and since Maria was headed into town to use the internet, she gave me a ride back to the bus station. I waited around in the cold night for a while before the bus left for Simferopol, then had a nice ride back listening to Jesus and Mary Chain on my ipod.
I hung out with Maria again on Monday, after she called me in the morning and said I should meet her at the Crimean Tatar library. After some lunch at Piroga, I met her near the park and she showed me where the library is. She needed to talk to someone there, and thought it would be good for me to see it in case I needed to utilize some of their material for my project (which I very well might). She's also hoping that I might be able to help the director of the library develop and refine some grant proposals that she's been wanting Maria to help her with, but that she's just not able to do. I don't really have any experience writing up these rant proposals (they're very different from the Fulbright), and I don't even know where to go about finding this kind of grant money, but I'm going to try to help however I can. The director of the library is a very sweet older woman who said that I look just like one of her sons. She gave us a short tour of the library and gave me her card. Maria sent me some drafts of the rant proposals today, and they're aimed at developing a center to help raise awareness of the legal rights of ethnic minorities and the disabled, as well as arranging a conference along the same lines. It sounds pretty interesting, and I hope I can help make stuff happen. After the library, Maria had to pick up a new mobile modem she got to get online anywhere in the country where there's a cell phone signal. She has a mac just like mine, and we waited around the store for a while while they tried to get the modem configured. It was taking quite a while, since they aren't used to macs, so we went for a bite to eat while they took care of it. Maria hadn't had lunch yet, so we went to this pizza place that's pretty tasty (she gave me some of her pizza). When we got back to the store the internet thing was working, so we packed it up and headed out. Maria showed me a language school that's looking for native English speakers, and I took down the number from the sign. She also showed me the music store that sells guitars, but then she also remembered that a Peace Corp volunteer she knows who is leaving for home very soon is looking to sell her guitar, so it looks like i might be buying it from her. Maria gave me a lift home and invited me to a Crimean Tatar concert later that night, but I wasn't feeling up for it and decided to stay in.
Today I went to the University to finally get my student ID thing that will allow me to use the libraries and everything. I brought a small photo of myself to the Office for international student relations or whatever, and the told me to walk around for a bit while they made up my ID. I decided to check out the reservoir that just a little ways up the hill from the university. It took about 5 or 6 minutes to walk there from the university, and it's a fairly nice little body of water. The water level seems pretty low, and there were a lot of seagulls hanging out on the sloped side of the dam. There was another student there kind of hanging out. He was Asian, so I thought it might be one of the chinese students studying at the university. He seemed kind of lonely, and I thought about saying hello, but I had to fight that American tendency of mine, not knowing how it would be interpreted through possibly two cultural prisms, if in fact he was chinese. After throwing rocks in the water for a bit I headed back to the university, and waited around in the office while they finished up my ID. They gave me some fancy pens and a day planner, all produced in honor of the university's 90th anniversary. My ID turned out not to be any sort of handy card, but rather a half sheet of paper with my picture glued to it and stamp to verify it's authenticity. It basically says I'm a student there so let me do whatever. They didn't have a laminator, so they started explaining to me where I could et it laminated, but I just bought a little plastic folder to keep it in. I did a little grocery shopping at the market before heading home to take a nice, lukewarm shower. Even though the hot water is now on, it isn't always that hot. All the more reason to move.
That's pretty much my week, I was supposed to meet with my advisor on Monday, but our meeting keeps getting pushed back because he's been sick. As of now we're supposed to meet on Thursday so he can take me to the big library downtown. Hopefully it will pan out this time. Other things on the horizon: a farewell party on Saturday for some Peace Corp volunteers who are finishing up. I'm hoping there will be some there who aren't leaving yet, because it will be nice to meet some more people who will be around. Also, around Thanksgiving it looks like I'll be road tripping it out to Lviv in western Ukraine along with Maria, as she will be moving out there and doesn't want to have to drive all the way there by herself. It will take at least two days, and of I love long road trips, so I'm really looking forward to my first European road trip like this. There may even be the opportunity for a quick trip to Krakow from Lviv once we get there, and I'm starting to plan a trip back to Crimea for myself that would take me through Moldova. I'll tell you more when I know more.
-Austin
I met Maria early the next morning at a corner near the central market, and we rendezvoused with some of her Crimean Tatar music connections who would be leading us to the festival. Maria is here researching Crimean Tatar music and ethnography, and she has made many friends and contacts in the Crimean Tatar community. Two of the people we were going to the festival with are apparently pretty well-known singers within the scene, and they were going to be judges at the festival. Maria has her own car, so we drove separately as the other car lead us out of town to a small village called Pervomaiskoye, in the northern part of Crimea. The festival was held in a small auditorium, and featured performances from acts all around Crimea. It really wasn't much of a festival, but more like a talent show. Many of the performers were children, but there were several adults as well. The acts were fairly versatile, and included a number of solo vocal performances, musical groups, traditional dace troupes, and even a skit. A lot of the dance numbers seemed very similar to me, and a lot of the music was lip-synced, or even instrument-synced. One of the groups featured a keyboard player whose keyboard wasn't actually plugged into anything, which made it fairly obvious that he wasn't really playing. I enjoyed it, and got a kick out of many of the acts that tickled my funny bone in a way that was very Tim and Eric. The problem, however, was that the festival featured 42 performances, so it really started to drag on way to long. Both Maria and I were enjoying it at first, but we started getting antsy and hungry as the acts started getting more and more monotonous. Once the scheduled performances had all finished, there was an additional musical interlude as the judges deliberated over their choices. I really don't know what they had to deliberate about, because there really didn't seem to be any winner. Instead, every single act was called up to the stage one-by-one to receive a certificate and some sort of prize. The prizes were a joke; some got stuffed animals, some got wooden owl statues, some got electric water-heating pitchers, and others got awful, cheesy dentist waiting room-style framed "art work." We had to sit and watch as each act was called up to receive these gifts! Once they had passed out all the prizes, and just as we thought we were free, two of the singers we had come from Simferopol with proceeded to give a mini concert for all their adoring fans in the audience. This is just like the typical synth- drum machine-backed, slightly eastern-sounding bland pop music you'd expect to hear in cabs all across much of the former USSR, and the people still eat it up. One of the singers got everyone, especially Maria and me, to et up and dance around in the aisles. Everyone does the belly-dancing style arm gestures when they dance here, and I tried my best to fit in but just felt ridiculous. Finally, they wrapped up all the singing, but we still weren't free to go. We had been invited to dine with our hosts and many others from the festival at a local restaurant, and although we were hungry, we knew we would be stuck there for a while. We followed everyone to the restaurant, where all the tables had been covered in snacks, salads, and drinks in anticipation of our arrival. It was a big group, so we took up the whole place. Everyone started snacking and sipping, and soon the toasts started. Apparently some Crimean Tatars adhere to the Islamic rule against alcohol consumption, but like Central Asians, many do not, and we drank toast after toast to the festival, to their culture, to friendship, blah blah blah. Since she was driving, Maria abstained from all but a couple toasts, but I happily joined in each time and as a results got pretty drunk. Everyone took turns giving toasts, even Maria when she was asked, and I was trying to mentally prepare a toast if they asked me to give one, but it never came around to me. Our soup and shashlyk finally came, and then the singing and dancing ensued. I was called up to dance with one of the singing sensations. Maria was getting really anxious to go, so in order for them to let us leave, she offered to sing and play some songs. She got up to the keyboard and played and sang a beautiful Ukrainian folk song, and everybody was so happy to learn that she was a musician herself. We got the person blocking us in to move their car, and we were finally off for the dark drive back to Simferopol. Once I got back to my apartment I realized that my cell phone had fallen out of my pocket, and I hoped it was still in Maria's car. Luckily she had just gone to use the internet before heading back to Bakhchisaray, and I was able to reach her by email in time for her to find my phone in her car and bring it back to me. [Side note: There's a lot of screaming and banging going on in the stairwell somewhere in my building, and it sounds like there's a serious fight going on or something. I'll try to ignore it.]
The next day was Friday, and I arranged a meeting with Maria's old landlord to see about renting the apartment. She had called him on my behalf the day before, and I set up a meeting the next evening to take another look at the apartment. The landlord's name is Sergey, and he is very friendly and seems to be very honest. When I had been there before I had only really seen the kitchen, so it was good to see the rest of it. There's a living room that's bigger than my bedroom here, with two couches (one of which folds out into a bed), a few bookshelves, a TV, and a nice big rug. There's a bedroom as well, but almost all of it is filled with a mountain of stuff that belongs to the Sergey's mother, who lives in New York. The room is mostly unusable, except for a fairly large bed that is tucked away in a nice little nook. The kitchen has a large table and with chairs, a refrigerator that's much larger than mine, a microwave, and all the utensils and cooking stuff I'll probably ever need. Oh, and a water heater of course! The only real downside is that there is no washing machine, but if it becomes a problem I could always buy one for not too much. There's also a weird closet that had a water leak in it recently and as a result smells pretty moldy, but Sergey has supposedly already cleaned it out some. The location is pretty great as well. It's only a few minutes walk from my current place, but closer to the center and even closer to the bus station and my local market. I also like the building itself and the neighborhood a lot better than where I am now. He agreed to rent the place to me for $300/month for at least the next three months, then he would have to reassess and depending on the economic situation in Ukraine, he might have to raise the price. I can live with that. I told him I was set on renting it, but that I'd just have to talk to my current landlord to make sure there won't be any problems with ending my lease early. I've been dreading calling him, but yesterday I finally mustered up the courage. I told him that I had found a new place that was cheaper and that I liked better, and that while I still liked my current place, I thought it would be better to move. By the time I called him the hot water had actually finally come on in my place, so I couldn't use that as a reason anymore, but I think it's still worth it to move. He seemed a bit upset at first, and didn't understand why I was moving now when I had told him before I'd be staying until August, but there wasn't really any way he could force me to stay, so he reluctantly said OK. I'm already paid up here through the 23rd, so I'll stay until around then, but I hope to start my lease on the new place around the 20th. My landlord called back a little later and suggested that he could lower my rent a bit if it would make me stay, but I said I just liked the other place more, and he finally gave up trying to win me back. He's a nice guy, and I felt a little bad bowing out of my lease so early, but it's totally worth it. I really like this other place.
Now, allow me to backtrack. On Saturday I took my first trip out to Bakhchisaray so Maria could show me around a bit. Bakhchisaray was the old capital of the Tatar Khante in Crimea, and today remains the center of Crimean Tatar culture. Maria is living there with a host family for a few weeks to be closer to all the action. The bus ride takes about a hlaf hour from Simferopol, and from the bus station I caught a marshrutka to the end of the line, which is right where Maria is living. The old town in Bakhchisaray is flanked on both sides by big cliffs that lead up into a couple different gorges, and it's just a really beautiful setting. From her place we started walking up one of the gorges to the Uspensky Monestary, built into the side of the cliff. Apparently it had first been carved out by some proto-Christian group centuries ago, then later incorporated by the Orthodox church, and just within the last five or so years it has been spruced up with new paintings and structural components. It was very beautiful, set into the side of the cliff face, and it looks like it has really benefited from its recent face-lift. There were a fair number of visitors and many vendors out, selling souvenirs, honey, wine, wild tea leaves, etc. From the monastery we pushed on up the gorge to the cave city of Chufut Kale. It is perched on a plateau above the cliffs and overlooking some nice gorges. A unique religious group called the Karaims lived here for many centuries. They're basically an offshoot of Judaism, wherein they believe in the Old Testament and use Hebrew, but they don't believe in the Talmud. I just recently read a little more about them, and apparently they migrated into Crimea and and a few other areas in Europe centuries ago from the Middle East, and lived in isolation for a long time. The cave city itself is quite different from the other cave city I visited recently. This one had a bit of a street plan to it, and generally seemed more thought-through. I'd say Ulistsikhe was cooler, just because it seemed much more ancient and spooky. This one did have some great views, though. After a bit of exploring we headed back down to town for some lunch. There are a few Crimean Tatar restaurants right around Maria's place, but only one was open, so we sat on their patio in the sun and had pretty good lagman and manty. After lunch we went back to her host family's place to trade music from our hard drives. This ended up taking much longer than we thought or hoped it would, and so I missed my chance to visit the Khan's Palace, the main attraction in Bakhchisaray. There will plenty of other opportunities. We chatted with her host mother for a while while we went through files. She teaches English in a classroom adjacent to the house, so she spoke to us in very good English. She gave us some background about the monastery and the cave city and about Bakhchisaray in general. She found it strange that I only wanted to drink water instead of coffee. By the time we finished with the files it was already dark, and since Maria was headed into town to use the internet, she gave me a ride back to the bus station. I waited around in the cold night for a while before the bus left for Simferopol, then had a nice ride back listening to Jesus and Mary Chain on my ipod.
I hung out with Maria again on Monday, after she called me in the morning and said I should meet her at the Crimean Tatar library. After some lunch at Piroga, I met her near the park and she showed me where the library is. She needed to talk to someone there, and thought it would be good for me to see it in case I needed to utilize some of their material for my project (which I very well might). She's also hoping that I might be able to help the director of the library develop and refine some grant proposals that she's been wanting Maria to help her with, but that she's just not able to do. I don't really have any experience writing up these rant proposals (they're very different from the Fulbright), and I don't even know where to go about finding this kind of grant money, but I'm going to try to help however I can. The director of the library is a very sweet older woman who said that I look just like one of her sons. She gave us a short tour of the library and gave me her card. Maria sent me some drafts of the rant proposals today, and they're aimed at developing a center to help raise awareness of the legal rights of ethnic minorities and the disabled, as well as arranging a conference along the same lines. It sounds pretty interesting, and I hope I can help make stuff happen. After the library, Maria had to pick up a new mobile modem she got to get online anywhere in the country where there's a cell phone signal. She has a mac just like mine, and we waited around the store for a while while they tried to get the modem configured. It was taking quite a while, since they aren't used to macs, so we went for a bite to eat while they took care of it. Maria hadn't had lunch yet, so we went to this pizza place that's pretty tasty (she gave me some of her pizza). When we got back to the store the internet thing was working, so we packed it up and headed out. Maria showed me a language school that's looking for native English speakers, and I took down the number from the sign. She also showed me the music store that sells guitars, but then she also remembered that a Peace Corp volunteer she knows who is leaving for home very soon is looking to sell her guitar, so it looks like i might be buying it from her. Maria gave me a lift home and invited me to a Crimean Tatar concert later that night, but I wasn't feeling up for it and decided to stay in.
Today I went to the University to finally get my student ID thing that will allow me to use the libraries and everything. I brought a small photo of myself to the Office for international student relations or whatever, and the told me to walk around for a bit while they made up my ID. I decided to check out the reservoir that just a little ways up the hill from the university. It took about 5 or 6 minutes to walk there from the university, and it's a fairly nice little body of water. The water level seems pretty low, and there were a lot of seagulls hanging out on the sloped side of the dam. There was another student there kind of hanging out. He was Asian, so I thought it might be one of the chinese students studying at the university. He seemed kind of lonely, and I thought about saying hello, but I had to fight that American tendency of mine, not knowing how it would be interpreted through possibly two cultural prisms, if in fact he was chinese. After throwing rocks in the water for a bit I headed back to the university, and waited around in the office while they finished up my ID. They gave me some fancy pens and a day planner, all produced in honor of the university's 90th anniversary. My ID turned out not to be any sort of handy card, but rather a half sheet of paper with my picture glued to it and stamp to verify it's authenticity. It basically says I'm a student there so let me do whatever. They didn't have a laminator, so they started explaining to me where I could et it laminated, but I just bought a little plastic folder to keep it in. I did a little grocery shopping at the market before heading home to take a nice, lukewarm shower. Even though the hot water is now on, it isn't always that hot. All the more reason to move.
That's pretty much my week, I was supposed to meet with my advisor on Monday, but our meeting keeps getting pushed back because he's been sick. As of now we're supposed to meet on Thursday so he can take me to the big library downtown. Hopefully it will pan out this time. Other things on the horizon: a farewell party on Saturday for some Peace Corp volunteers who are finishing up. I'm hoping there will be some there who aren't leaving yet, because it will be nice to meet some more people who will be around. Also, around Thanksgiving it looks like I'll be road tripping it out to Lviv in western Ukraine along with Maria, as she will be moving out there and doesn't want to have to drive all the way there by herself. It will take at least two days, and of I love long road trips, so I'm really looking forward to my first European road trip like this. There may even be the opportunity for a quick trip to Krakow from Lviv once we get there, and I'm starting to plan a trip back to Crimea for myself that would take me through Moldova. I'll tell you more when I know more.
-Austin
საქართველო
For a couple of different reasons, I've decided not to publish an entry I've written about my recent trip. If you'd like to read it, however, just send me an email ( austincharron@gmail.com ) or make a comment, and I'll send you a copy.
-Austin
-Austin
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
