Hey guys. Let me fill y'all in on what's been going on. Last Sunday I finally got the chance to meet up and talk with other people in Simferopol! I think I mentioned before a grad student who's in Crimea doing research on ethnomusicology and whose blog I found a while back. Well, her name's Maria, and we had been playing internet tag for a little while but finally spoke on the phone on Sunday and she invited me over for some drinks and to hang out for a bit with her and her boyfriend, who was visiting. Turns out she lives about an 8 minute walk away, right next to the apartment I first stayed in when I got to Simferopol, in fact. I walked over around 9:00 along the river path. I had never been on the path at night before, and it was actually a bit creepy. It's completely unlit, so the only light source is whatever trickles through the trees from lights in buildings and from distant streets. Luckily I didn't get mugged, and after a bit of confusion trying to find the right building I finally met up with Maria. She lives in a cozy little apartment that feels much more lived-in than mine. Her boyfriend's name is Franz, and the two of them were super friendly and fun to talk to. Honestly, I was just really glad to be able to hang out with and talk to anybody, especially in English, since it's been pretty lonesome around here lately. I told her about my project and I learned more about what she's been doing here. She's looking at the musical heritage of the local Crimean Tatars, as well as another small ethnic group in Western Ukraine. She has a lot of great contact with the Crimean Tatar community, including the head of the (unofficial and unrecognized) Crimean Tatar Parliament, the Mejlis. This will definitely come in handy when it comes time to look more closely at the Crimean Tatar aspect of the current geopolitical situation down here in Crimea, as per my project. I talked with Franz for a while as well and found out that, like Maria, he's a musician and currently plays piano with the group The Hold Steady. They had to cancel some European tour dates, so he took the opportunity to come out and visit Maria. I was taken aback when he told me the name of the band because, though I actually hadn't heard The Hold Steady before, I had definitely heard a fair amount about them and knew that they are quite popular and well-known nationally and internationally. In fact, here's a clip of them on Letterman from this summer (that would of course be Franz on the keyboard). So, I thought it was pretty cool to unexpectedly meet something of a celebrity out here in Crimea. We all sat around drinking wine and talked a lot about music while I played DJ on Maria's iTunes. Franz and I even bonded a bit over our mutual love of Gene Pitney. We also played a rousing game of Scrabble on Franz's iPhone (man, those things sure are cool. I may just have to get one when I get back to the states next summer). I had a really nice time hanging out with them, and although Franz has since left Crimea, I look forward to meeting up with Maria again in the near future. She's soon moving to the nearby town of Bakhchisarai for a while, but it's so close that I definitely think we'll still have the opportunity to hang out once she moves out there. It might even give me a chance to finally get to check out Bakhchisarai, which is a Crimean must-see.
On Monday I went downtown for a bit, mainly to get lunch at one of my new favorite restaurants, Kafe Piroga (the inside-out pizza place). After lunch I went on a mission to find an ATM where I could withdraw US Dollars. See, I knew rent day was coming up, so I had to start collecting the rent cause I know you can't always withdraw the entire amount you need in one go. There's an ATM at the market near my place that supposedly dispense Dollars, but every time I've tried it says that it cannot process the request. I have a feeling that this might have to do with the fact that the Grivnya (local currency) has been getting increasingly weak against the dollar lately, as the global credit crisis starts taking its toll on Ukraine. When I first got here just about a month ago, the Dollar was worth just over 5 Grivnya, and now it's closer to 6. I've heard that the ATMs are running out of Dollars really quickly as people are hoarding them as the Grivnya gets weaker and weaker. My friend Tye was running into this same problem when he was trying to get his rent money together in Kiev while I was there. Wether or not this is really what's happening, I certainly wasn't able to find Dollars anywhere. Most ATMs I found simply don't stock Dollars, but there is one bank whose ATMS do give you the option of withdrawing Dollars. I've probably tried about four different ATMs from this bank, and none of them were able to dispense Dollars. I must have tried twelve ATMs all together. I got frustrated after a while and decided to head home. I did get to walk down a street where I hadn't been yet and see a bit more of the city in my quest for ATMs, at least. I finally determined that I was just going to have to pay my rent in Grivnya, so the next day I withdrew about $400 worth from a nearby ATM to hold onto it until rent day. I checked the current exchange rate online, and $400 I think was about 2,150 Grivnya. Well, today (Thursday) was rent day, and my landlord called this morning to say he'd be coming by today. I told him I couldn't find any Dollars and that I would have to pay him in Grivnya. He said that was OK, and that he'd check the current exchange rate once he got to Simferopol from wherever it is he lives. I checked it myself online, and saw that $400 was now about 2,300 Grivnya! Considering that I would also be paying for my utilities, I was afraid I now didn't have enough Grivnya to cover it all, so I ran down to the nearest ATM and got some more to cover it. Well, after saying he'd be by before noon, I waited around all day for my landlord and he never showed up. I'm now wondering if he decided to wait another day hoping the exchange rate would go up (or down? which do you say in this case?) so he could get some more Grivnya out of me. But, I also wonder, would that benefit him? Would he benefit from having more Grivnya even if they are worth less and all together worth the same amount visa-a-visa the Dollar? I really can't figure that stuff out. I'll have to ask Tye the economist. Anyways, we'll see what the exchange rate is tomorrow and if he comes by or not. It was pretty annoying waiting around for him, I must say.
Let's skip back one day here. Yesterday was Wednesday, the day of my big presentation. Actually, "presentation" is really overstating it. They really just wanted me to briefly introduce myself and say a bit about my research interests and goals during their staff meeting. The night before I had written up what I wanted to say (this is all in Russian, mind you) and more or less memorized it. I got there early and mulled around the halls a bit before they called me in to there meeting and sat me down in front of a room of about 15 people. I think this is the largest group of native Russian speakers that I have addressed in Russian before. The head docent (not like a guide, but kind of like a secretary or overseer of the department), whom I had met the previous week, gave me a brief introduction and said some of the things that I was going to include in my brief speech. It threw me off a bit, and so not to sound redundant I improvised a bit, using parts of my prepared speech to fill in the holes her introduction had left. I made a few little slip ups, but over all I think I spoke pretty well and everyone seemed satisfied with what I had said. It was then that I was introduced to the man who is going to be my advisor, Professor Kysylev. This is the husband of the professor I had met with before. He didn't look very professorial, in fact I never would have guessed that he was a professor if I had seen him on the street. He's kind of lanky, has bad teeth,and was wearing baggy corduroys and a light tan sweater. We left the meeting so we could start talking and he could show me around a bit. The first stop was the faculty restroom so he could smoke a cigarette out the window. We were joined by a couple other smokers during the course of his cigarette. He's quite talkative and speaks fairly quickly, but I could follow him for the most part. He took me to the university's main library, as well as a few smaller libraries and reading rooms scattered throughout the building (there is one main building for the whole university) so he could introduce me to the librarians and so they'll remember me when I return to do research. He also showed me how to use the library's card catalog system, though apparently there's also a digital version available. He took me to the university's bookstore, which has a lot of great books available on Crimean topics (the best collection of books on Crimea available anywhere, he assured me). He also showed me the school's cafeteria, which will be a nice place to get some cheap food when I'm there. At one point in the tour his wife called me and asked me to hand the phone to her husband. Apparently he left his phone at home, so he had to go meet her to get it and apparently take care of some other business, because he stuck me in a room for about 15 minutes while he took care of things. Some of the docents and secretaries were in this room taking questions from students. They gave me some chocolate, sat me in a chair, and showed me the Atlas of Crimea that the Geography department published not too long ago. I must say I was quite impressed with the atlas. It featured dozens of maps with all kinds of geological, geomorphological, meteorological, and demographical information, presented in some very innovative ways. It's not quite the Atlas of Oregon that the U of O Geography department published, but that one sets the bar pretty high. I asked them where I could buy a copy, and they said that they weren't really available for sale. Lucky for me, one of the professors soon arrived to present me with my very own copy, a gift from the department! I was quite smitten, as most of you reading this will know that I'm a bit of a map and atlas junkie. The one I had been looking at was published in Russian and Ukrainian, but the one they gave me was in English and Ukrainian, which is fine, but ideally for me it would have been in English and Russian. I can't complain though, It really was a great gift. This now makes three books that i have been given by the university. Professor Kysylev returned after a bit and we saw some more of the building. We ended the tour outside and stood around talking for a while. Actually, I didn't really do much talking at all as he never really asked me a lot of questions. I asked a few short questions myself, but I was mainly focusing on keeping up with his ranting. He does tend to go off topic quite a bit. I don't mean to sound like he wasn't helpful or anything. I think he will be very useful as an advisor, and I look forward to working with him more. He kept telling me about all the important people that he knows and to whom he will introduce me. Most of them included distinguished academics in all kinds of fields, but also local politicians and people in the media, including the local correspondent for Russian TV news giant NTV. One thing I quickly learned about the professor is that he doesn't really display the kind of academic objectiveness that we usually expect in our professors in the US. I mean, certainly American professors have their opinions and aren't usually afraid to let them be known, but with Professor Kysylev (and I suspect this is true of a lot of academics in this part of the world) his personal convictions seem like they would often conflict with and may even guide his research and teaching agenda. To put it bluntly, I detected some hints of pro-Russian tendencies in him, which I would expect of most people down here, but I was a bit surprised to see it come through in an academic like this. For example, he mentioned the pro-Ukrainian minority in Crimea, and did the Russian gesture for "crazy" where you touch your temple with your middle finger and rotate your wrist around. He said something to the effect of "they're not right in the head." Can you imagine a professor in the US saying something like this? It doesn't mean that he won't be able to teach me anything, it just means that I might have to take some of the things he says with a grain of salt and not let it effect the objectivity of my research. Anyways, we concluded our meeting with a plan to meet again very soon (before I go to Georgia) to discuss my project itself, since we really didn't touch on it this time. I'm probably going to call him tomorrow and set up a Monday meeting, so I can have some time to refine my ideas a bit more.
After our meeting I wandered through the botanical gardens next to the school. I found some nice areas with ponds and flower gardens. I think this is my favorite park in the city, since it is so close and peaceful. I walked through the park and came out near the market. I had some pastries for lunch and couldn't help but give some scraps to an adorable and hungry little dog that sat at my feet looking longingly while I ate. I also had to buy some shoelaces, since the lace on my left brown boot snapped a few days before as I was tying them. The problem was, I didn't know the word for shoelaces and had forgotten to look it up in the dictionary. So, I went to the booth where the friendly lady sells miscellaneous household goods an told her, "I need something and I don't know what it's called, but I can show it to you." I held up my shoe and pointed to my laces. She and the woman she was talking with both chuckled and said, "shnurky?" Aha! I think I had heard that word before but had forgotten it. While they helped me learn the word, they didn't actually have them there, but they pointed me towards the booth that sold general shoe items, where I proudly and successfully asked for shnurky. I returned to my apartment, laced up my boots, and waited around until a little before sunset to take a walk to the top of the cliffs across the street. I had decided it was finally time to check it out, and I wanted to lighting to be good so I could get some nice pictures. I walked down the street towards downtown about 8 minutes or so to where the path up the hill starts, and quickly made my way to the top. Parts of it are pretty steep, but over all it was an easy and pleasant little hike up to the top. This hill, as I think I have explained, is one big archeological site of the ancient Scythian civilization that lived in Crimea over 2,000 years ago. I guess the whole project lost funding or people's interest because there's nothing going on up there nowadays, and the hilltop is a nice open grassy pasture that is pockmarked by small dips and rises that bare evidence to past digs. The view over the city is pretty nice, though to be honest Simferopol isn't that spectacular looking from up there (you do get a pretty good sense for the size of the city, though). You view is mainly of my end of town, including of course my building right in front and the hill on the other side of the bus station behind it. It was cool to get a better sense of the complex of apartment buildings that my apartment is in, and I could even pinpoint my window. Looking southeast from the top, you can also see the edge of the dam on the other side of the university. I haven't been out there yet, but I guess I didn't realize how elevated it actually is. It does make sense, considering it's a manmade reservoir built up behind it. I look forward to checking it out one of these days. Although the top of the hill is very grassy and soft, the cliff edge is very rocky and craggy, and I found pins that have been driven into the rock near the edge where people can belay down the side of the cliff. I've seen people doing this from my window, in fact. The sun was setting on the other side of the hill, and I got some nice pictures of the city and of the hilltop itself. I walked around the side facing away from my apartment towards a big apartment building that I can see from my window. I found a small steep path down the hillside and made my way back to the street, from where I walked downhill back to the apartment as it started getting dark. I stopped in at one of the small grocery stores I recently discovered, and bought two small chicken Kiev cutlets for dinner. Since I don't have a microwave and I didn't want to bother heating them in the oven, I decided to eat them cold. The first was fine, but when I bit into the second one I found that most of the chicken inside was still raw! only bit into the breaded outer coating, but I pulled out some of the chicken and found that it was still pink, so I spit it all out, threw it away and cooked some eggs instead.
Like I already said, today I mostly hung around the apartment waiting for my landlord to show. I finally left around 4:00 so I could get some food at the market. I discovered another food stand, this one serving falafel and "pita burger." I had the pita burger this time, which was a burger patty in a pita shell (not really pita, though) with onions, cabbage, beets, ketchup and mayonnaise. It was alright, but I'm looking forward to trying the falafel next time. Tomorrow is Friday, and assuming my landlord shows up and I get my rent situation squared away, I think I'll buy a bus ticket to Sevastopol for Saturday. I'll probably come back later that day, but if I like it enough and feel I need some more time there, maybe I'll rent an apartment for the night. I promise I'll write here at least once more before heading to Georgia in a little less than a week.
-Austin
Friday, October 24, 2008
Sunday, October 19, 2008
вы упали в хорошем месте
I guess it's been about a week since I last posted, so I think it's time I got to it. It hasn't been because I've been too busy, as Grandma surmised, but just to opposite in fact. Things have been really slow lately and I just haven't felt the need to really write about. I'm still in a bit of a slump as far as getting going on my project, as well as getting involved with other - for lack of a better word - extracurricular activities, but it looks like things should be picking up in both those regards soon.
The most exciting thing I've done since you last heard from me was take a day trip down to Yalta, which I did last Saturday. It's really easy to catch a ride at the bus station a few minutes from my apartment. You don't even have to go through the bus station itself, because several trolleybuses and marshrutkas come by on their way out of town and you can just hop on like you would for a ride around the city, and it only costs about $4. I hoped on a marshrutka and settled in next to some guy whose jacket was taking up part of my seat. The drive takes about and hour and fifteen minutes, and is quite pretty especially now with leaves turning. About two fifths of the ride to Yalta is along the coast, starting at the town Alushta and going by smaller towns like Gurzuf, Nikita, and Massandra. The mountains rise pretty quickly out of the sea along Crimea's souther coast, and so the highway is set up above most of the towns, which lets you look down at most of them as you drive past but doesn't afford you the same overview of the place like a drive through the town might. These towns are usually set on a nice bay or inlet and all seem pretty nice. I'll have to find the time to take a nice slow tour of the towns along the southern coast from Alushta (or even further up, like from Sudak) to Sevastopol.
I was in nostalgia mode most of the time in Yalta, thinking back on the time I was here two years ago with fellow St. Petersburg study abroaders. I made a beeline for the waterfront as soon as I got into town, walking the fairly long distance from the bus station. In fact, it was quite a bit longer than I remember it being last time. The waterfront was just as I remembered it, but the weather was much nicer this time and the town was still just coming down from it's summer high season, so much more people were out along the waterfront and most of the gimmicky rides and games were still all set up, unlike last time (it was March when I went before). I sat on the edge of the dock for a bit, enjoying the view, the sun, and the cool sea breeze. I don't remember being able to do so last time, but I thought I could see all the way to the Swallow's Nest down the coast. It could have just been a rock that looked like it from that far of a distance, though. I strolled along the promenade for a while, taking the time to walk down piers and sit on a small rocky beach for a while. It was by no means an ideal beach; very small, right off of the busy promenade with no sense of privacy, and there was a speaker pointed directly at the beach that would blare a pre-recorded message about tours of the surrounding area every few minutes. It was nice to sit there for a bit though, and I even got to go wading in the water. I had a swimsuit in my backpack and I probably could have found a place to change into it and go for a swim (the water was a little chilly, but not too bad at all), but it didn't seem right for some reason. Plus, I would have had to leave my backpack with my camera, ipod, etc. unattended on the shore, which seemed too risky on a busy beach like this. Another thing: I found that some people around here are pretty shameless about wearing a swimsuit and sunbathing in public when they probably should be.
From the beach I cut up away from the water front into a neighborhood I didn't check out last time. I stumbled upon a wonderful little church across the street from a "topless bar" (which is just transliterated from the English) called the Arizona Club. I kept walking along this one street for a while as it starting rising about the downtown area, thinking that it would eventually intersect another street that would lead me back down, but after a while I realized it just kept going without a way down, so I had to turn around. I lingered along the waterfront a little while longer, mostly just people-watching, before heading to the area east of downtown near the train ticket booth. It was here that I stumbled upon another area of town that I hadn't discovered last time: a whole different waterfront / beach area! I don't know how I could have missed it, because it seems like a major destination for visitors. It's called Massandra beach, like the nearby town, and it is accessible by a little path off of one of the main roads that I just didn't bother checking out before. It's actually a series of different beaches sectioned off from each other by big raised platforms jutting out into the sea. There is a nice path lined with vendors and restaurants along the edge of the beaches, and to the other side the hill rises rapidly and there are a number of fancy hotels and apartments. Many of the beach sections are reserved for guests of various hotels, but some of them at least appeared to be public, so I went down onto one and sat in the pebbles for a while, throwing rocks into the water. I walked a little further down the beach afterwards until the beach area tapered off. I watch a women swim pretty far out into the water, but since the water was really quite calm it didn't seem dangerous at all, like it might in the Pacific back home. The sun was getting low in the sky, so I figured I should start heading back to Simferopol. I walked back to the down town area and caught a marshrutka back up to the bus station, where I found a minibus right away heading to Simferopol. By this time the sky had somehow gotten very overcast, so the views of the sea weren't as inspiring heading back. It was dark by the time I got back to Simferopol.
In the week since Yalta I've done a whole lot of nothing, really. I've gotten pretty engrossed in the elections back home, and have spent a lot of time on the internet catching up on all the developments. I even got up at 4:00 AM the other night to watch the third debate online. I've also been doing more research on Crimea stuff, just getting more ideas about the direction I want to take my project. I've been doing a bit more exploring around the city as well. I've discovered a few new restaurants that I like. One of them is in the market by my apartment. They have fairly decent pizza and pasta for pretty cheap. I also discovered a shaurma place at the market that's better than the other one I've been going to. I think the key difference is that they put onions in it, while the other one doesn't. There's another place downtown that I had been meaning to check out, since I had walked by before and thought I saw people eating blinis. I finally tried it the other day, but was confused by there menu and didn't see blini at first, so I ended up ordering their specialty, a "pie", or "pirog" (the place is called "Cafe of Pirog"). These pies are unlike either the American or Russian conception of a pie, but are pretty tasty. They're basically like a pizza with another thin layer of crust folded over and covering the toppings. I guess it's kind of like a calzone, but it's still flat and you eat it like a pizza. I got my with chicken and cheese. It was only after I ordered that I found the separate blini menu on the wall, much smaller than the big pirog menu. I definitely enjoyed it, but I'll have to try the blinis next time.
One day earlier this week I was going to try to make it down to Sevastopol for the day, but it proved unsuccessful. I thought I'd be able to simple hop on a bus or marshrutka that was heading there, much like I had to Yalta, because it's about the same distance away.Since my neighborhood isn't on the way to Sevastopol, I headed down to the train station where I thought I could find a ride. It turns out there aren't really any marshrutkas going t Sevastopol, or anything that you can just simply "hop onto," you have to actually buy a ticket for a scheduled bus. It was already kind of late in the day by the time I got to the station and figured all this out, plus there was a long line for tickets and there didn't seem to be a bus heading to Sevastopol for a little while, so I bailed on the plan. There are buses to Sevastopol leaving from the bus station right by my apartment too, so it will be easy to buy a ticket and catch a bus there sometime in the very near future. Anyway, since I was going to stick around town and hadn't eaten yet, and since the ticket booth was right next to McDonalds, I decided to pop in for a quick lunch. It's not the best place to have lunch, but at least it did provide me with a funny anecdote that pertains nicely to my research project: I was sitting at a table outside on their patio, when some guy asked if he could sit there too, since the other tables were all taken. We both sat quietly eating, not talking to each other, when he finally gestured towards the trash bin and asked me, "what does that mean, 'dya-ku-yem-o?'" He was talking about the word written on the flap to the garbage can that all fast food places have. Knowing what's usually written on those flaps, knowing that everything at McDonalds is written in Ukrainian here, and knowing that this word sounds very similar to a certain Czech word I know, I had already determined that "dyakuemo" means "thank you" (or, probably, "we thank you"). I told him simply, "I think it's Ukrainian," to which he shook his head and said, "kashmar!" (like, "what a nightmare!"). Once he had finished his food, he looked to me again and asked, "where am I supposed to put this garbage?" I smiled and said, "over there where the Ukrainian writing is," to which he just shook his head again, as if that were only adding insult to injury. I couldn't help but laugh to myself after he left. I know he lives in Crimea and speaks Russian, but the idea that he would never have encountered that word in Ukrainian before, and the fact that he would seem so personally offended by it, seems strange to me considering that Ukrainian is still used in advertising, television, and all other kinds of media in Crimea. It just goes to show how important the language issue is for the overwhelmingly Russian-speaking population of Crimea. Also the fact that he didn't know where to put his garbage was pretty funny as well.
After lunch I rode back to my neighborhood, but instead of going home I decided to explore the area a little bit. I walked down Gurzufskaya street and ended up at the creek, which I followed in the direction away from town. I then cut over to the University's botanical garden, which the creek runs past. It was a warm sunny day, and it was very nice to walk through the rose gardens and various other landscaped garden areas. I sat on a bench for a while enjoying the weather before heading home. On the way back I passed a pretty cool monument commemorating the deportation of the Crimean Tatars. It was a big chunk of stone in the shape of Crimea, with beams heading out in different directions towards stones with the names of all the Soviet republics that the Crimean Tatars were sent to (Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan, which got the vast majority). I took a slightly different route back home from the one I usually take, and found some shops I hadn't seen before, including a grocery store that I'll probably check out soon.
Yesterday I was finally able to schedule a meeting with the head of the International Education Department at the university. The director, Marina, is the one who has been trying to get a meeting for me with the Rector of the university, and she is a good resource for all things going on at the university as well. On my way into the main university building, I was simply waved in by the security guard, while some chinese students had to rummage through their bags for their IDs. I don't think he remembered me from the one other time I came in with a professor (I don't even know if it was the same security guard). Maybe I just looked like a Westerner and he figured I must have some official business there, or maybe he's just racist towards Chinese. Anyway, my meeting went well, although it doesn't look like I'll b getting a meeting with the Rector any time soon. Apparently he's in the middle of giving out awards or something right now, and after that he's taking his vacation. Marina tells me that he has been informed of my presence, so there may be some sort of formal contact with him later on down the line. At any rate, I think I'll probably want to interview him for my project sometime in the spring (I think I mentioned that he was speaker of the Crimean Supreme Soviet [like Parliament] in the early '90's and played a very important role in the process of securing Crimea's autonomous status). He's actually a professor of geography, and Marina gave me a copy of his book "The Regional Geopolitics of Sustainable Development" about Crimea, which will likely come in very handy. She also gave me a copy of a recently published book with general information about the university in Russian and English. I told her more about my ideas and plans for my research project, and afterwards she took me to the geography department to meet with the vice-dean and head secretary of the Socio-Economic Georaphy faculty, who in turn introduced me to the Dean. Marina and I told them about who I was and what I was interested in doing here, and now they've scheduled me to come back on Wednesday during a meeting of the faculty to meet the professors and give a brief presentation of myself and what I'd like to research while I'm here. I'll finally get to meet the husband of the professor I met with earlier who, it sounds like, will end up being my primary advisor while I'm here. I'm pretty nervous about this presentation, given my modest language skills and still somewhat vague ideas about my project, but I think it should turn out alright. Marina had to leave before I had a chance to talk to her about some other things not relating to my project specifically, such as getting hooked up with the English department and seeing if they need an assistant or if I could do some tutoring, but it will have to wait for our next meeting. Before she left I was able to get the phone number of one of the students from Willamette University who are studying here, though it turns out they just left for a two-week trip to Moscow and St. Petersburg, and once they get back I'll be heading out to Georgia, so it may be a while before I'm able to get in touch with them, but I'd certainly like to. I did pass two girls speaking English on the river path the other day, and I suspected they might be two of the Willametters. but I didn't think quick enough nor would I have been bold enough to simply blurt out, "hey, English!" or something like that. In other news, I have made email contact with a grad student who is here doing research and whose blog I have been following for a while. She was out of town for most of this week, but hopefully we'll be meeting up soon, because I'm really starting to get bored and lonely without people to hang out with here.
One last thing I did: Today I finally checked out the book fair that happens every weekend a few bus stops up Kiev street. It's pretty big, but a lot of vendors were already starting to pack up by the time I got there. Most of them were selling books aimed at students or children, but there was a good variety of history, self-help, general interest, magazines, etc. There were even a number of CD and DVD booths. I ended up buying a small "tourism atlas" of Crimea, which is basically like a gazetteer with detailed segment-by-segment maps of the whole region, along with city maps for the main towns and a lot of good information about different spots around the peninsula. I also got a book on the geography of Ukraine meant mainly for students, and it looks like it has a lot of useful info. I'm interested in seeing the language that it uses to talk about Crimea, and what biases that might reveal. Oh, the other day I also bought some books at a bookstore downtown: One on the history of Crimea, an in-depth guide to all the various tourist sites and natural areas of Crimea, and a small booklet of poetry about Crimea. I've gone Crimea-crazy (That is pretty much the point of me being here, though)!
Gee, for not really doing much this week, I sure was able to write a lot. My water was shut off again today, which is extremely frustrating. Last time it didn't bother me too much since it happened right before I left for Kiev and by the time I got back it was back on. This time I'm stuck in the apartment without being able to simply wash my hands, flush the toilet, or do the dishes. I was able to cook dinner without water (the usual onions, pepper, garlic, potatoes, eggs, and cheese), but no way to do the dishes afterward. Since I was in Kiev last time, I really don't know how long to expect the water to be off. I hope it's back on by tomorrow, or else things will start getting tricky. I think I'm going to start filling empty bottles with water and leaving them under the sink so I'll have some in these situations, because I'm sure this is going to happen again. That's it for now. I'll let you know how my presentation goes.
-Austin
The most exciting thing I've done since you last heard from me was take a day trip down to Yalta, which I did last Saturday. It's really easy to catch a ride at the bus station a few minutes from my apartment. You don't even have to go through the bus station itself, because several trolleybuses and marshrutkas come by on their way out of town and you can just hop on like you would for a ride around the city, and it only costs about $4. I hoped on a marshrutka and settled in next to some guy whose jacket was taking up part of my seat. The drive takes about and hour and fifteen minutes, and is quite pretty especially now with leaves turning. About two fifths of the ride to Yalta is along the coast, starting at the town Alushta and going by smaller towns like Gurzuf, Nikita, and Massandra. The mountains rise pretty quickly out of the sea along Crimea's souther coast, and so the highway is set up above most of the towns, which lets you look down at most of them as you drive past but doesn't afford you the same overview of the place like a drive through the town might. These towns are usually set on a nice bay or inlet and all seem pretty nice. I'll have to find the time to take a nice slow tour of the towns along the southern coast from Alushta (or even further up, like from Sudak) to Sevastopol.
I was in nostalgia mode most of the time in Yalta, thinking back on the time I was here two years ago with fellow St. Petersburg study abroaders. I made a beeline for the waterfront as soon as I got into town, walking the fairly long distance from the bus station. In fact, it was quite a bit longer than I remember it being last time. The waterfront was just as I remembered it, but the weather was much nicer this time and the town was still just coming down from it's summer high season, so much more people were out along the waterfront and most of the gimmicky rides and games were still all set up, unlike last time (it was March when I went before). I sat on the edge of the dock for a bit, enjoying the view, the sun, and the cool sea breeze. I don't remember being able to do so last time, but I thought I could see all the way to the Swallow's Nest down the coast. It could have just been a rock that looked like it from that far of a distance, though. I strolled along the promenade for a while, taking the time to walk down piers and sit on a small rocky beach for a while. It was by no means an ideal beach; very small, right off of the busy promenade with no sense of privacy, and there was a speaker pointed directly at the beach that would blare a pre-recorded message about tours of the surrounding area every few minutes. It was nice to sit there for a bit though, and I even got to go wading in the water. I had a swimsuit in my backpack and I probably could have found a place to change into it and go for a swim (the water was a little chilly, but not too bad at all), but it didn't seem right for some reason. Plus, I would have had to leave my backpack with my camera, ipod, etc. unattended on the shore, which seemed too risky on a busy beach like this. Another thing: I found that some people around here are pretty shameless about wearing a swimsuit and sunbathing in public when they probably should be.
From the beach I cut up away from the water front into a neighborhood I didn't check out last time. I stumbled upon a wonderful little church across the street from a "topless bar" (which is just transliterated from the English) called the Arizona Club. I kept walking along this one street for a while as it starting rising about the downtown area, thinking that it would eventually intersect another street that would lead me back down, but after a while I realized it just kept going without a way down, so I had to turn around. I lingered along the waterfront a little while longer, mostly just people-watching, before heading to the area east of downtown near the train ticket booth. It was here that I stumbled upon another area of town that I hadn't discovered last time: a whole different waterfront / beach area! I don't know how I could have missed it, because it seems like a major destination for visitors. It's called Massandra beach, like the nearby town, and it is accessible by a little path off of one of the main roads that I just didn't bother checking out before. It's actually a series of different beaches sectioned off from each other by big raised platforms jutting out into the sea. There is a nice path lined with vendors and restaurants along the edge of the beaches, and to the other side the hill rises rapidly and there are a number of fancy hotels and apartments. Many of the beach sections are reserved for guests of various hotels, but some of them at least appeared to be public, so I went down onto one and sat in the pebbles for a while, throwing rocks into the water. I walked a little further down the beach afterwards until the beach area tapered off. I watch a women swim pretty far out into the water, but since the water was really quite calm it didn't seem dangerous at all, like it might in the Pacific back home. The sun was getting low in the sky, so I figured I should start heading back to Simferopol. I walked back to the down town area and caught a marshrutka back up to the bus station, where I found a minibus right away heading to Simferopol. By this time the sky had somehow gotten very overcast, so the views of the sea weren't as inspiring heading back. It was dark by the time I got back to Simferopol.
In the week since Yalta I've done a whole lot of nothing, really. I've gotten pretty engrossed in the elections back home, and have spent a lot of time on the internet catching up on all the developments. I even got up at 4:00 AM the other night to watch the third debate online. I've also been doing more research on Crimea stuff, just getting more ideas about the direction I want to take my project. I've been doing a bit more exploring around the city as well. I've discovered a few new restaurants that I like. One of them is in the market by my apartment. They have fairly decent pizza and pasta for pretty cheap. I also discovered a shaurma place at the market that's better than the other one I've been going to. I think the key difference is that they put onions in it, while the other one doesn't. There's another place downtown that I had been meaning to check out, since I had walked by before and thought I saw people eating blinis. I finally tried it the other day, but was confused by there menu and didn't see blini at first, so I ended up ordering their specialty, a "pie", or "pirog" (the place is called "Cafe of Pirog"). These pies are unlike either the American or Russian conception of a pie, but are pretty tasty. They're basically like a pizza with another thin layer of crust folded over and covering the toppings. I guess it's kind of like a calzone, but it's still flat and you eat it like a pizza. I got my with chicken and cheese. It was only after I ordered that I found the separate blini menu on the wall, much smaller than the big pirog menu. I definitely enjoyed it, but I'll have to try the blinis next time.
One day earlier this week I was going to try to make it down to Sevastopol for the day, but it proved unsuccessful. I thought I'd be able to simple hop on a bus or marshrutka that was heading there, much like I had to Yalta, because it's about the same distance away.Since my neighborhood isn't on the way to Sevastopol, I headed down to the train station where I thought I could find a ride. It turns out there aren't really any marshrutkas going t Sevastopol, or anything that you can just simply "hop onto," you have to actually buy a ticket for a scheduled bus. It was already kind of late in the day by the time I got to the station and figured all this out, plus there was a long line for tickets and there didn't seem to be a bus heading to Sevastopol for a little while, so I bailed on the plan. There are buses to Sevastopol leaving from the bus station right by my apartment too, so it will be easy to buy a ticket and catch a bus there sometime in the very near future. Anyway, since I was going to stick around town and hadn't eaten yet, and since the ticket booth was right next to McDonalds, I decided to pop in for a quick lunch. It's not the best place to have lunch, but at least it did provide me with a funny anecdote that pertains nicely to my research project: I was sitting at a table outside on their patio, when some guy asked if he could sit there too, since the other tables were all taken. We both sat quietly eating, not talking to each other, when he finally gestured towards the trash bin and asked me, "what does that mean, 'dya-ku-yem-o?'" He was talking about the word written on the flap to the garbage can that all fast food places have. Knowing what's usually written on those flaps, knowing that everything at McDonalds is written in Ukrainian here, and knowing that this word sounds very similar to a certain Czech word I know, I had already determined that "dyakuemo" means "thank you" (or, probably, "we thank you"). I told him simply, "I think it's Ukrainian," to which he shook his head and said, "kashmar!" (like, "what a nightmare!"). Once he had finished his food, he looked to me again and asked, "where am I supposed to put this garbage?" I smiled and said, "over there where the Ukrainian writing is," to which he just shook his head again, as if that were only adding insult to injury. I couldn't help but laugh to myself after he left. I know he lives in Crimea and speaks Russian, but the idea that he would never have encountered that word in Ukrainian before, and the fact that he would seem so personally offended by it, seems strange to me considering that Ukrainian is still used in advertising, television, and all other kinds of media in Crimea. It just goes to show how important the language issue is for the overwhelmingly Russian-speaking population of Crimea. Also the fact that he didn't know where to put his garbage was pretty funny as well.
After lunch I rode back to my neighborhood, but instead of going home I decided to explore the area a little bit. I walked down Gurzufskaya street and ended up at the creek, which I followed in the direction away from town. I then cut over to the University's botanical garden, which the creek runs past. It was a warm sunny day, and it was very nice to walk through the rose gardens and various other landscaped garden areas. I sat on a bench for a while enjoying the weather before heading home. On the way back I passed a pretty cool monument commemorating the deportation of the Crimean Tatars. It was a big chunk of stone in the shape of Crimea, with beams heading out in different directions towards stones with the names of all the Soviet republics that the Crimean Tatars were sent to (Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan, which got the vast majority). I took a slightly different route back home from the one I usually take, and found some shops I hadn't seen before, including a grocery store that I'll probably check out soon.
Yesterday I was finally able to schedule a meeting with the head of the International Education Department at the university. The director, Marina, is the one who has been trying to get a meeting for me with the Rector of the university, and she is a good resource for all things going on at the university as well. On my way into the main university building, I was simply waved in by the security guard, while some chinese students had to rummage through their bags for their IDs. I don't think he remembered me from the one other time I came in with a professor (I don't even know if it was the same security guard). Maybe I just looked like a Westerner and he figured I must have some official business there, or maybe he's just racist towards Chinese. Anyway, my meeting went well, although it doesn't look like I'll b getting a meeting with the Rector any time soon. Apparently he's in the middle of giving out awards or something right now, and after that he's taking his vacation. Marina tells me that he has been informed of my presence, so there may be some sort of formal contact with him later on down the line. At any rate, I think I'll probably want to interview him for my project sometime in the spring (I think I mentioned that he was speaker of the Crimean Supreme Soviet [like Parliament] in the early '90's and played a very important role in the process of securing Crimea's autonomous status). He's actually a professor of geography, and Marina gave me a copy of his book "The Regional Geopolitics of Sustainable Development" about Crimea, which will likely come in very handy. She also gave me a copy of a recently published book with general information about the university in Russian and English. I told her more about my ideas and plans for my research project, and afterwards she took me to the geography department to meet with the vice-dean and head secretary of the Socio-Economic Georaphy faculty, who in turn introduced me to the Dean. Marina and I told them about who I was and what I was interested in doing here, and now they've scheduled me to come back on Wednesday during a meeting of the faculty to meet the professors and give a brief presentation of myself and what I'd like to research while I'm here. I'll finally get to meet the husband of the professor I met with earlier who, it sounds like, will end up being my primary advisor while I'm here. I'm pretty nervous about this presentation, given my modest language skills and still somewhat vague ideas about my project, but I think it should turn out alright. Marina had to leave before I had a chance to talk to her about some other things not relating to my project specifically, such as getting hooked up with the English department and seeing if they need an assistant or if I could do some tutoring, but it will have to wait for our next meeting. Before she left I was able to get the phone number of one of the students from Willamette University who are studying here, though it turns out they just left for a two-week trip to Moscow and St. Petersburg, and once they get back I'll be heading out to Georgia, so it may be a while before I'm able to get in touch with them, but I'd certainly like to. I did pass two girls speaking English on the river path the other day, and I suspected they might be two of the Willametters. but I didn't think quick enough nor would I have been bold enough to simply blurt out, "hey, English!" or something like that. In other news, I have made email contact with a grad student who is here doing research and whose blog I have been following for a while. She was out of town for most of this week, but hopefully we'll be meeting up soon, because I'm really starting to get bored and lonely without people to hang out with here.
One last thing I did: Today I finally checked out the book fair that happens every weekend a few bus stops up Kiev street. It's pretty big, but a lot of vendors were already starting to pack up by the time I got there. Most of them were selling books aimed at students or children, but there was a good variety of history, self-help, general interest, magazines, etc. There were even a number of CD and DVD booths. I ended up buying a small "tourism atlas" of Crimea, which is basically like a gazetteer with detailed segment-by-segment maps of the whole region, along with city maps for the main towns and a lot of good information about different spots around the peninsula. I also got a book on the geography of Ukraine meant mainly for students, and it looks like it has a lot of useful info. I'm interested in seeing the language that it uses to talk about Crimea, and what biases that might reveal. Oh, the other day I also bought some books at a bookstore downtown: One on the history of Crimea, an in-depth guide to all the various tourist sites and natural areas of Crimea, and a small booklet of poetry about Crimea. I've gone Crimea-crazy (That is pretty much the point of me being here, though)!
Gee, for not really doing much this week, I sure was able to write a lot. My water was shut off again today, which is extremely frustrating. Last time it didn't bother me too much since it happened right before I left for Kiev and by the time I got back it was back on. This time I'm stuck in the apartment without being able to simply wash my hands, flush the toilet, or do the dishes. I was able to cook dinner without water (the usual onions, pepper, garlic, potatoes, eggs, and cheese), but no way to do the dishes afterward. Since I was in Kiev last time, I really don't know how long to expect the water to be off. I hope it's back on by tomorrow, or else things will start getting tricky. I think I'm going to start filling empty bottles with water and leaving them under the sink so I'll have some in these situations, because I'm sure this is going to happen again. That's it for now. I'll let you know how my presentation goes.
-Austin
Friday, October 10, 2008
Я нарушил мое обещание
OK, I'v been really lazy since I got back to SImferopol, but I'm finally ready to write some about my week or so in Kiev. So, last Wednesday afternoon I got on a train and settled in for the 15 hour train ride. The ride was pretty uneventful. I rode platzkart (the lowest class) like I prefer, and I had the bed along the aisle, which I don't really mind as long as I get the lower bunk, cause I can't really get up into those cramped upper bunks. Thankfully nobody ever claimed the bed above me, but whenever we pulled into a town and let more people on I was always on the edge of my seat waiting to see if someone had purchased that spot, meaning I would be obliged to share a seat with them on the bottom. There was a what appeared to be a band going to Kyiv for a show or something, cause they had a ton of instruments and gear they kept loading on. I don't even know how they stored it all, but it seemed like such a crazy and cool idea to tour by passenger train. The guy one bed up from me had the worst smelling feet I had ever smelled, so I had to put my head at the other end to sleep.
We got into Kiev early Thursday morning, and I walked the 5 or so blocks (mostly uphill) to the hotel that Fulbright had booked for us (the email we had received that said the hotel was just "steps from the train station" was pretty misleading). After waiting around for our rooms to become available, I got cleaned up and ready for our first round of orientation stuff. We all met in a conference room in the hotel and had a couple different sessions talking about general things-to-do-now-that-we've-arrived stuff, and us students had a session with two Fulbrighters from last year who are still bumming around Kiev. They talked a lot about practical things for living in this part of the world, adjusting to the culture, blah blah blah, stuff I've already one through a number of times, so it wasn't really enlightening for me personally. Once our orientation was over I had a little time to kill before our reception later, so I walked down the street to find some quick food since I hadn't eaten all day. I had to walk surprisingly far before I found a little stand that sold these tasty hand-held pizza-type snacks (I later found out it's a chain of little stands found everywhere all over the city). I got slightly lost on my way back to the hotel because I took a different street back that ended up veering away from it, but I found it soon enough.
That night we had a fancy reception at the apartment of the Deputy Chief of Mission from the US Embassy, which included many other Embassy employees, Ukrainian Fulbrighters, and other important people. I think it was the first event I've ever been to where servers walk around with plates of hors d'oeuvres (it just took me forever to figure out how to spell that) and come around to refill your wine glass. Oh, I finally tried caviar for the first! They had deviled eggs topped with red caviar and a few other caviar snacks at the main food table as well. My verdict: actually pretty good, or at least way better than I expected. I got to talk to some of the Fulbrighters I hadn't met or really gotten to know yet, and met some other interesting people as well. I met a Ukrainian guy named Dennis who just got back from his Fulbright project as an aide to a US congressman (some freshman congressman from Minnesota), and we had a good conversation. I also met some employees from the Embassy who are about my age, and after the reception was over a small group of us went over to one employee's apartment to have some drinks and get ready to go out to a bar. This group included fellow Fulbrighter and Pacific Northwesterner Tye, Darrin who I mentioned before, a guy named Alex (Sasha), who's American and a current Russia Fulbrighter hanging around Kiev waiting for a Russian visa, two girls who work at the Embassy (the girl whose apartment we went to was named Anaida, but I forget the other's name), and one Fulbright scholar named Johanen, who's a professor at Northwestern and is in Kiev teaching Jewish studies (he was kind of the odd one out in this group). Apparently the Embassy takes good care if it's employees, because Anaida was given this huge amazing apartment with a big screen TV. We sat around a drank some fancy whiskey while Johanen went off on a number of different academic topics which were very interesting, but somehow distracting for the tone of the evening. A couple more Americans showed up later and I began to comprehend the vast network of Americans and Westerners in Kiev (at least certainly vast compared to Simferopol) as many began to talk about all their mutual friends and connections within the city.I had a nice time, but when everyone got ready to head to some bar I decided to head back to the hotel, since I was tired and hadn't gotten a good night's sleep on the train the night before, plus the hotel was right around the corner.
The next day we all met in the hotel lobby (by the way, in the lobby there were a bunch of signed pictures of local "celebrities" who had visited the hotel, almost all of whom I'd never heard of, but among all the B-Listers was Ukrainian President Yushchenko, standing right there in the same lobby!) and headed to a branch of the US Embassy for more orientation. We had a security briefing, a run down of the poilitical and economic situation in Ukraine, and some other talks about various resources available to us. At this session I finally met the Fulbright Scholar who is also in SImferopol, named Steven. He seemed like a really nice guy, and is here with his entire family including three small kids! He said he'd have me over for dinner sometime, and apparently he's got some apartment. The most interesting part of this session was a discussion on the recent Georgian conflict with two Ukrainian Political Science professors. They had a lot of interesting things to say about it and the impact on Ukraine, a lot of which I knew already and agreed with, but they did give me some new ideas about how to guide my research. I got both of their cards in case I need to get in touch with them to get some information of resources or research materials or something like that.
That was the final part of our orientation, and afterwards we were invited back to the Fulbright office where there was photography show opening for an American and a Ukrainian photographer. Oh, on the way out of the Embassy branch some of us got on an elevator with one more person than the posted maximum number, and got stuck in the elevator for about five minutes! I actually saved us by (eventually) just trying to push the door open, and it worked. We were actually already on the first floor, but the door just wouldn't open on it's own. The security guy bitched at us for exceeding the limit, but we just walked away. We took the metro to the office and when we got there it was already full of what appeared to be a bunch of teenagers, so I wasn't really sure what kind of event it was supposed to be. I had a bit to drink, looked at some of the cool photographs, and then decided to leave pretty quickly because it was kind of a weird scene, plus it was super hot and uncomfortable in that room. I headed back to the hotel and waited to hear from Tye, who was talking to people about getting together that night, but when he called he said everyone was pretty tired and were just going to stay in, so I had a nice quite evening at the hotel watching CNN international as the House voted on the bailout bill.
With the orientation over, the next day was essentially free, but our coordinator Myron was leading whoever was interested to the weekly antiques fair on the other side of the river, and I decided to check it out. A small group of us took the metro, and along the way I got to talk to fellow Fulbrighter Sarah, who's in the Western Ukrainian city of Lviv, where i really need to get to sometime soon. The fair was pretty cool, with people selling old books, art, weapons, pins, knick knacks, and everything in between. It did seem more like a place for serious collectors more than casual souvenir shoppers, but I did end up getting a couple of things. I bought a little ceramic figurine of a women holding a drum and wearing a komsomol hat for my mom, because she always asks me to get kitschy figurines from this part of the world. It was a little expensive, but way cheaper than some of the other figurines they had for sale. I also bought a little pin with the Skoda logo that I'll probably end up giving to Lily because of our mutual obsession with that logo. On of the scholars bought a really cool painting, and dropped some pretty big bucks on it, but if I had a lot of disposable income I probably would have bought it too.
After the fair most of us headed to a pub called the Golden Gate where Democrats Abroad was sponsoring a showing of the previous night's vice presidential debate. A lot of Americans had turned out, certainly most of them Democrats. Myron (our coordinator) was sitting next to me and kept saying angry things under his breathe after everything Palin said. I knew I liked him when I met him. I had a tasty sandwich and a beer, and even though they took forever to arrive, I had a nice time watching and getting angry with everyone else. Inside the pub, I noticed two guys wearing Oregon Ducks T-shirts, so I had to o say hello after the debate. They were super excited to meet a fellow Duck / Oregonian, though seemed a bit disappointed when they learned I don't follow the football team. In fact, they were going to be watching the UO - USC game on a computer at 3 AM that night, and invited me to come, but of course I wasn't into that. I did talk to them a while, and learned that they had graduated quite a while ago (2000), and that they are both former Ukraine Peace Corp volunteers. One of them now works for a German law firm in Kiev, while the other just returned to start teaching English. They seemed like nice guys, but they and their friends seemed like a bunch of crazy party animals, so I'm not sure how much I'd enjoy hanging out with them. I did et one of their numbers, so maybe I'll meet up with them sometime when I'm in Kiev.
I had to get out of the hotel that day, but luckily Tye had just been allowed to move into his new apartment on the same day, eliminating the need for me to stay at the supposedly terrible hostel that he had been staying at for a little while. I got my stuff from the hotel and met him at the metro station down the street from his new place. His apartment is huge and quite nice, and my entire apartment could have fit into his living room, but he's paying over twice as much as I am for mine. All things considered, though, for a place that big with such a good location in Kiev (really close to the center), he's actually getting a pretty sweet deal, I think. So, after settling in at his place, his friend / last year Fulbrighter Rachel came over to take us to her friend's apartment / her temporary apartment to hang out with a group of her local friends. There were three Ukrainian girls (Julia, Julia, and Olga), and a guy (Kostya), but he left pretty early and was later replaced by Olga's brother. The apartment was really nice and felt almost exactly like a newer American apartment (except of course for the outlets). We spoke mainly in Russian for a while, but when it became apparent that us Americans were having a little difficulty keeping up in the conversations, everyone switched to English and it remained the default language of the evening. All the girls spoke pretty impeccable English, actually, so I don't know why we didn't just start with it. Olga chain smoked the whole time, and we all sipped wine and talked about all kinds of different things around the kitchen table while listening mostly to Amy Winehouse on repeat. This girl Rachel seemed so familiar to me the whole time, like I know I had met her somewhere, but I'm sure I haven't since she went to Yale. I figured out eventually that she really reminded me of my friend Autumn back in Eugene, but it still felt like I had met her personally as well. It was the weirdest thing. By the time Tye and I had to head back it was too late to take the metro, so we shared a cab with one of the Julias and then stayed up a bit watching Flight of the Concords on Tye's computer.
The next day (Sunday, I think) Tye and I decided to do a little sight seeing around the city. First off, we wanted to get some breakfast at what the Lonely Planet Ukraine Guide says is the best blini stand in the Kiev, but when we got there it was closed and being worked on or something. Disappointed, we checked the book for another restaurant in the area, and settled on one that is supposed to be the city's best Ukrainian restaurant. It was pretty much lunch time by then, so we were open to thins besides breakfast food, The restaurant was called Pervak, and it was quite tasty indeed. We both had amazing sausage and vareniki (like mini pirogies). After lunch we headed to the central part of town to see some of the main tourist attractions. We started at the Zoloti Vorota ("Golden Gate," what the pub is named after), which was the original gate to medieval Kiev way back when it was a walled city. It's been fixed up a bunch, but it is pretty cool still. We went to the top and had a pretty nice view of some of the surrounding area. Afterwards we headed down the street to two of Kiev's main cathedrals: St. Sophia's and St. Michael's. They both face each other separated by two squares and a short stretch of road. St. Sophia's was the bigger of the two, and had a huge bell tower next to it as well. At St. Sophia's you have to pay both to get onto the grounds and to go inside the cathedral, and to avoid paying the much higher standard adult fare, Tye lent me his old Willamette student ID to get the student price, while he used an ID from the Monterey Institute. They didn't know what the hell any of it was, so it worked just fine. I didn't bring my old UO ID with me to Ukraine, but I do have my old student ID from St. Petersburg that is much more identifiable here, so maybe it will work for such things in the future. Inside was pretty spectacular, as these cathedrals usually are. You should go see some sometime. We finished up at St. Sophia's and headed for St. Michael's, which had an awesome purplish-blue color (I think you call it periwinkle, but I'm not sure). This was actually an operating cathedral, so there were people inside lighting candles and saying prayers.One candle had drooped over and was dripping onto the floor, but somehow the drops were still lit for a second as the fell, so it looked like it was dripping fire and was really mesmerizing. Tye and I stared at it until the wick shriveled up and it stopped dripping. Outside we saw an Orthodox priest performing a blessing ritual on a car as it's owners watched. Tye and I got a kick of watching and taking pictures of it.
From St. Michael's we headed down to Maidan Nezalezhnosti (Independence Square), the heart of Kiev. People were out everywhere enjoying their weekend, and we just hung out there for a while watching people skateboard, pose for pictures, etc. This is where the huge protests were during the Orange Revolution a few years back. From there we headed back to Tye's place (which is only about 3 blocks away!) and decided where we'd like to get some dinner. I suggested Georgian food, so we found a place in the book and headed out. The restaurant was quite expensive (most Georgian places are, I find), but it was quite delicious, as expected. This is probably a good point to mention that Tye and I, along with Sasha the Russian-bound Fulbrighter, have decided to take a quick trip to Georgia over Halloween weekend! We already bought our tickets, and it looks like we'll be spending about 4 days in and around Tbilisi. I really wanted to do a bigger Caucasus trip that would include Azerbaijan and Armenia, as well as the rest of Georgia, but Tye was really serious about going and I thought it would be a good idea to go this time with some friends. I'm still planning on taking that bigger trip before I get back to the states, though. I'm really excited about this trip, especially after that delicious Georgian meal. I think the plan is to just gorge ourselves on food and wine for four days while seeing as much of the city as we can. Of course, you'll get to hear all about that trip in about a month. After dinner we headed back to the apartment and watched 30 Rock on Tye's computer for a bit before hitting the hay.
On Monday, Tye had to get back to work (he's been teaching English), so I spent most of the day exploring on my own. I had breakfast at a pastry shop up the street from the apartment, and headed out the the Kievo-Pecherska Lavra (a monastery with caves), which is Kiev's biggest tourist attraction. This was Monday of course, so it really wasn't too crowded. I hear it gets crazy on the weekend. The upper part of the monastery had a few really nice cathedrals, one of which was only recently rebuilt after it had been destroyed in WWII. A big chunk of the original is displayed in front of it. There are also apparently some great museums there, but I somehow missed out on them (Tye seemed really disappointed when he heard that), so I'll have to see them next time. A path from the upper part leads to the lower Lavra, where all the Monks live and practice their faith. The big attraction here is the underground caves where mummified monks are on display for worshippers to visit (you can't really see them, they're wrapped in holy robes and encased in glass). You enter the caves through one church and come out the other. It was pretty cool but I was really expecting something more like the catacombs I saw at the monastery in Pechory in Russia, near the Estonian border. This place hardly felt like a cave, since all the walls were plastered over. It was pretty small down there, since most of it is supposedly off limits to those who aren't there to pray (though Tye got back there when he went, so I'm not sure). It was still interesting to see all the people kissing the mummy cases and saying prayers. On my way to the lower exit of the Lavra, I stopped at a tiny chapel where people where drinking washing themselves with the hold water coming from its spigot. Some guy in a track suite came up to me and started speaking to me quite quickly about it, and though I didn't comprehend everything he must have said, I did get that he was telling me to try drinking the water. So I tried it, and it was fine, but he kept looking at me like he expected something else from me, like I was supposed to give him some money for him having suggested I try the water. I told him I couldn't help him, and then he proceeded to tell me what I now believe was supposed to be some kind of curse. He said in an hour I would get sick, and after a year... I didn't really catch what he said would happen, but I assumed it was death. I missed a lot of what he said, but seeing as though he was just some guy in a track suite, I figured it was just some stupid ploy to pray on people at this holy site and try to get some money out of them, so I just walked off. An hour later I felt fine, I'm happy to say.
From the Lavra I walked to the nearest metro station, and considered riding out to the Hydropark (an island in the middle of the Dnipro River in Kiev that serves as the city's big park), but I decided instead to head down to the Maidan again, get some lunch, and explore in that area some more. I ended up eating at McDonald's near the square, just because it was so convenient and McDonald's in other countries are always kind of fun and don't make me feel too guilty. Afterwards I walked around the area, found the creepy "Chimera House" with weird gargoyles all over it, and walked around the area of the Bessarabian Bazaar. I found a bookstore and bought a Russian-Ukrainian dictionary, along with a couple maps cause that's what I'm into. I was waiting around to hear from Tye once he finished all of his stuff for the day, and eventually we met up back at his apartment. He bought some pelmeni and tomato sauce, so we ate that night, and then spent a while exchanging music and TV show files (I've since been watching a ton of 30 Rock). We were both pretty tired and called it an early night.
The next morning was my final morning in Kiev, as my train left around 6:00 that evening. Tye had to work again, and I had vague plans to go to this street with lots of vendors, but I was feeling pretty lazy, and instead just went down to the Fulbright office to get reimbursed for my train ticket back to SImferopol. I had to meet Tye around 2:00 back at his apartment to give him his key back, then just headed to the train station with all my stuff I had to wait around for a couple hours, so I just sat and stared in one of the sitting halls. When I had bought my ticket back to SImferopol, all the platzkart tickets were already gone. so I had to go with the next class up, kupe. This is where there are four beds to a single, closed off compartment, and usually I prefer platzkart when I travel alone just because you aren't stuck in a small room with 3 strangers for the whole ride, plus it's quite a bit cheaper (at least Fulbright was paying for this ride). This ride in kupe actually turned out to be a pretty positive experience, though. Just before the train took off, three young guys showed up in my heretofore empty compartment. They all had shaved heads, and my first though was one of dread as I thought I would be sharing the ride with a bunch of skinheads, but then one of them soon told me that they were soldiers. I found out a bit later that they had in fact all just gotten out of the army that day, and were each heading home. There was Sasha from Dnipropetrovsk, Igor from Zaporizhzhya. and Dima from Sevastopol (in Crimea). Dima spoke a little bit of English, and seemed to enjoy practicing it with me. They were all pretty friendly, and just mostly seemed really relieved and a bit free-spirited, as I imagine I would feel after just getting out of the army. Sasha hooked his cell phone up to some portable speakers, and they all started singing along to his collection of pop, folk, and rock songs. When I asked them who the singer of one of the songs was, they said they didn't know. I pictured them having only these songs to listen to for the last year while they were in the army, and sharing a bond over them without knowing anything about the singer. They started getting beers and snacks from the providnist (head of the train car), and soon started bringing some back for me. I had a great time drinking with them, asking them questions about army life and their opinions about Ukraine and Crimea, and grooving on their music. I even to to sing along with them on one song, cause they had some Kino on the phone. I was beginning to worry that they were going to stay up drinking and laughing all night and that I wouldn't be able to get to sleep, but they tuckered out right around when I was beginning to, so we all got some decent rest. I didn't sleep a whole lot though, unfortunately, just because I wasn't all that comfortable on my little bed. The stops in Dnipropetrovsk and Zaporizhzhya happened in the middle of the night, so before each stop one of the guys got up to get all dressed up in their full military regalia so they could make their family proud when they got of of the train. Something about that touched me. Dima got off with me in Simferopol and then caught a bus the rest of the way to Sevastopol. I took a taxi back to my apartment just so I wouldn't have to deal with taking my bags on a marshrutka.
So, the last few days since I got back have been really lazy. I used up the rest of my initial internet traffic allotment, and went down to the office to start my limitless monthly plan. It's nice to be able to use the internet now without worrying about the traffic limit, though the speed is a bit slower than I would like. I checked out this supposedly Armenian restaurant in Gagarin Park yesterday, and found it to be pretty darn expensive and not all that terrific, though they did have surprisingly decent lagman.I walked around a bit too, and finally wandered through the children's park. I really need to go back there with a camera, because there are all kinds of weird ride and attractions for kids there. The coolest part, though, is the big cement letters that spell out "children's park" in Russian at the park's entrance. I'll put a picture of it up sometime, you'll see how cool it is. There was also a small zoo, but I thought it would be too depressing to go in, but also weird for a guy like me alone in a zoo in a children's park. Today I had lunch at a little cafe up the street, where I tried Chicken Kiev for the first time, then did some grocery shopping in the adjacent market. I'm back on the potato/onion/pepper/cheese scramble diet for the next few days, though I'm spicing it up with some garlic this time. Mainly I've just been cruising the internet and watching 30 Rock for most of the time these past few days, but next week I'm going to meet with some people at the university and start getting back on track with the research stuff. I've decided tomorrow I'm finally going to head down to the beach (probably Yalta, just because it's the easiest part to get to). I think we're all caught up now. I know I broke my promise about huge posts like this, but I guess I'm just that type of blogger. See you next time!
-Austin
p.s. Check out my flickr page. I uploaded some pictures from Simferopol and Kiev.
We got into Kiev early Thursday morning, and I walked the 5 or so blocks (mostly uphill) to the hotel that Fulbright had booked for us (the email we had received that said the hotel was just "steps from the train station" was pretty misleading). After waiting around for our rooms to become available, I got cleaned up and ready for our first round of orientation stuff. We all met in a conference room in the hotel and had a couple different sessions talking about general things-to-do-now-that-we've-arrived stuff, and us students had a session with two Fulbrighters from last year who are still bumming around Kiev. They talked a lot about practical things for living in this part of the world, adjusting to the culture, blah blah blah, stuff I've already one through a number of times, so it wasn't really enlightening for me personally. Once our orientation was over I had a little time to kill before our reception later, so I walked down the street to find some quick food since I hadn't eaten all day. I had to walk surprisingly far before I found a little stand that sold these tasty hand-held pizza-type snacks (I later found out it's a chain of little stands found everywhere all over the city). I got slightly lost on my way back to the hotel because I took a different street back that ended up veering away from it, but I found it soon enough.
That night we had a fancy reception at the apartment of the Deputy Chief of Mission from the US Embassy, which included many other Embassy employees, Ukrainian Fulbrighters, and other important people. I think it was the first event I've ever been to where servers walk around with plates of hors d'oeuvres (it just took me forever to figure out how to spell that) and come around to refill your wine glass. Oh, I finally tried caviar for the first! They had deviled eggs topped with red caviar and a few other caviar snacks at the main food table as well. My verdict: actually pretty good, or at least way better than I expected. I got to talk to some of the Fulbrighters I hadn't met or really gotten to know yet, and met some other interesting people as well. I met a Ukrainian guy named Dennis who just got back from his Fulbright project as an aide to a US congressman (some freshman congressman from Minnesota), and we had a good conversation. I also met some employees from the Embassy who are about my age, and after the reception was over a small group of us went over to one employee's apartment to have some drinks and get ready to go out to a bar. This group included fellow Fulbrighter and Pacific Northwesterner Tye, Darrin who I mentioned before, a guy named Alex (Sasha), who's American and a current Russia Fulbrighter hanging around Kiev waiting for a Russian visa, two girls who work at the Embassy (the girl whose apartment we went to was named Anaida, but I forget the other's name), and one Fulbright scholar named Johanen, who's a professor at Northwestern and is in Kiev teaching Jewish studies (he was kind of the odd one out in this group). Apparently the Embassy takes good care if it's employees, because Anaida was given this huge amazing apartment with a big screen TV. We sat around a drank some fancy whiskey while Johanen went off on a number of different academic topics which were very interesting, but somehow distracting for the tone of the evening. A couple more Americans showed up later and I began to comprehend the vast network of Americans and Westerners in Kiev (at least certainly vast compared to Simferopol) as many began to talk about all their mutual friends and connections within the city.I had a nice time, but when everyone got ready to head to some bar I decided to head back to the hotel, since I was tired and hadn't gotten a good night's sleep on the train the night before, plus the hotel was right around the corner.
The next day we all met in the hotel lobby (by the way, in the lobby there were a bunch of signed pictures of local "celebrities" who had visited the hotel, almost all of whom I'd never heard of, but among all the B-Listers was Ukrainian President Yushchenko, standing right there in the same lobby!) and headed to a branch of the US Embassy for more orientation. We had a security briefing, a run down of the poilitical and economic situation in Ukraine, and some other talks about various resources available to us. At this session I finally met the Fulbright Scholar who is also in SImferopol, named Steven. He seemed like a really nice guy, and is here with his entire family including three small kids! He said he'd have me over for dinner sometime, and apparently he's got some apartment. The most interesting part of this session was a discussion on the recent Georgian conflict with two Ukrainian Political Science professors. They had a lot of interesting things to say about it and the impact on Ukraine, a lot of which I knew already and agreed with, but they did give me some new ideas about how to guide my research. I got both of their cards in case I need to get in touch with them to get some information of resources or research materials or something like that.
That was the final part of our orientation, and afterwards we were invited back to the Fulbright office where there was photography show opening for an American and a Ukrainian photographer. Oh, on the way out of the Embassy branch some of us got on an elevator with one more person than the posted maximum number, and got stuck in the elevator for about five minutes! I actually saved us by (eventually) just trying to push the door open, and it worked. We were actually already on the first floor, but the door just wouldn't open on it's own. The security guy bitched at us for exceeding the limit, but we just walked away. We took the metro to the office and when we got there it was already full of what appeared to be a bunch of teenagers, so I wasn't really sure what kind of event it was supposed to be. I had a bit to drink, looked at some of the cool photographs, and then decided to leave pretty quickly because it was kind of a weird scene, plus it was super hot and uncomfortable in that room. I headed back to the hotel and waited to hear from Tye, who was talking to people about getting together that night, but when he called he said everyone was pretty tired and were just going to stay in, so I had a nice quite evening at the hotel watching CNN international as the House voted on the bailout bill.
With the orientation over, the next day was essentially free, but our coordinator Myron was leading whoever was interested to the weekly antiques fair on the other side of the river, and I decided to check it out. A small group of us took the metro, and along the way I got to talk to fellow Fulbrighter Sarah, who's in the Western Ukrainian city of Lviv, where i really need to get to sometime soon. The fair was pretty cool, with people selling old books, art, weapons, pins, knick knacks, and everything in between. It did seem more like a place for serious collectors more than casual souvenir shoppers, but I did end up getting a couple of things. I bought a little ceramic figurine of a women holding a drum and wearing a komsomol hat for my mom, because she always asks me to get kitschy figurines from this part of the world. It was a little expensive, but way cheaper than some of the other figurines they had for sale. I also bought a little pin with the Skoda logo that I'll probably end up giving to Lily because of our mutual obsession with that logo. On of the scholars bought a really cool painting, and dropped some pretty big bucks on it, but if I had a lot of disposable income I probably would have bought it too.
After the fair most of us headed to a pub called the Golden Gate where Democrats Abroad was sponsoring a showing of the previous night's vice presidential debate. A lot of Americans had turned out, certainly most of them Democrats. Myron (our coordinator) was sitting next to me and kept saying angry things under his breathe after everything Palin said. I knew I liked him when I met him. I had a tasty sandwich and a beer, and even though they took forever to arrive, I had a nice time watching and getting angry with everyone else. Inside the pub, I noticed two guys wearing Oregon Ducks T-shirts, so I had to o say hello after the debate. They were super excited to meet a fellow Duck / Oregonian, though seemed a bit disappointed when they learned I don't follow the football team. In fact, they were going to be watching the UO - USC game on a computer at 3 AM that night, and invited me to come, but of course I wasn't into that. I did talk to them a while, and learned that they had graduated quite a while ago (2000), and that they are both former Ukraine Peace Corp volunteers. One of them now works for a German law firm in Kiev, while the other just returned to start teaching English. They seemed like nice guys, but they and their friends seemed like a bunch of crazy party animals, so I'm not sure how much I'd enjoy hanging out with them. I did et one of their numbers, so maybe I'll meet up with them sometime when I'm in Kiev.
I had to get out of the hotel that day, but luckily Tye had just been allowed to move into his new apartment on the same day, eliminating the need for me to stay at the supposedly terrible hostel that he had been staying at for a little while. I got my stuff from the hotel and met him at the metro station down the street from his new place. His apartment is huge and quite nice, and my entire apartment could have fit into his living room, but he's paying over twice as much as I am for mine. All things considered, though, for a place that big with such a good location in Kiev (really close to the center), he's actually getting a pretty sweet deal, I think. So, after settling in at his place, his friend / last year Fulbrighter Rachel came over to take us to her friend's apartment / her temporary apartment to hang out with a group of her local friends. There were three Ukrainian girls (Julia, Julia, and Olga), and a guy (Kostya), but he left pretty early and was later replaced by Olga's brother. The apartment was really nice and felt almost exactly like a newer American apartment (except of course for the outlets). We spoke mainly in Russian for a while, but when it became apparent that us Americans were having a little difficulty keeping up in the conversations, everyone switched to English and it remained the default language of the evening. All the girls spoke pretty impeccable English, actually, so I don't know why we didn't just start with it. Olga chain smoked the whole time, and we all sipped wine and talked about all kinds of different things around the kitchen table while listening mostly to Amy Winehouse on repeat. This girl Rachel seemed so familiar to me the whole time, like I know I had met her somewhere, but I'm sure I haven't since she went to Yale. I figured out eventually that she really reminded me of my friend Autumn back in Eugene, but it still felt like I had met her personally as well. It was the weirdest thing. By the time Tye and I had to head back it was too late to take the metro, so we shared a cab with one of the Julias and then stayed up a bit watching Flight of the Concords on Tye's computer.
The next day (Sunday, I think) Tye and I decided to do a little sight seeing around the city. First off, we wanted to get some breakfast at what the Lonely Planet Ukraine Guide says is the best blini stand in the Kiev, but when we got there it was closed and being worked on or something. Disappointed, we checked the book for another restaurant in the area, and settled on one that is supposed to be the city's best Ukrainian restaurant. It was pretty much lunch time by then, so we were open to thins besides breakfast food, The restaurant was called Pervak, and it was quite tasty indeed. We both had amazing sausage and vareniki (like mini pirogies). After lunch we headed to the central part of town to see some of the main tourist attractions. We started at the Zoloti Vorota ("Golden Gate," what the pub is named after), which was the original gate to medieval Kiev way back when it was a walled city. It's been fixed up a bunch, but it is pretty cool still. We went to the top and had a pretty nice view of some of the surrounding area. Afterwards we headed down the street to two of Kiev's main cathedrals: St. Sophia's and St. Michael's. They both face each other separated by two squares and a short stretch of road. St. Sophia's was the bigger of the two, and had a huge bell tower next to it as well. At St. Sophia's you have to pay both to get onto the grounds and to go inside the cathedral, and to avoid paying the much higher standard adult fare, Tye lent me his old Willamette student ID to get the student price, while he used an ID from the Monterey Institute. They didn't know what the hell any of it was, so it worked just fine. I didn't bring my old UO ID with me to Ukraine, but I do have my old student ID from St. Petersburg that is much more identifiable here, so maybe it will work for such things in the future. Inside was pretty spectacular, as these cathedrals usually are. You should go see some sometime. We finished up at St. Sophia's and headed for St. Michael's, which had an awesome purplish-blue color (I think you call it periwinkle, but I'm not sure). This was actually an operating cathedral, so there were people inside lighting candles and saying prayers.One candle had drooped over and was dripping onto the floor, but somehow the drops were still lit for a second as the fell, so it looked like it was dripping fire and was really mesmerizing. Tye and I stared at it until the wick shriveled up and it stopped dripping. Outside we saw an Orthodox priest performing a blessing ritual on a car as it's owners watched. Tye and I got a kick of watching and taking pictures of it.
From St. Michael's we headed down to Maidan Nezalezhnosti (Independence Square), the heart of Kiev. People were out everywhere enjoying their weekend, and we just hung out there for a while watching people skateboard, pose for pictures, etc. This is where the huge protests were during the Orange Revolution a few years back. From there we headed back to Tye's place (which is only about 3 blocks away!) and decided where we'd like to get some dinner. I suggested Georgian food, so we found a place in the book and headed out. The restaurant was quite expensive (most Georgian places are, I find), but it was quite delicious, as expected. This is probably a good point to mention that Tye and I, along with Sasha the Russian-bound Fulbrighter, have decided to take a quick trip to Georgia over Halloween weekend! We already bought our tickets, and it looks like we'll be spending about 4 days in and around Tbilisi. I really wanted to do a bigger Caucasus trip that would include Azerbaijan and Armenia, as well as the rest of Georgia, but Tye was really serious about going and I thought it would be a good idea to go this time with some friends. I'm still planning on taking that bigger trip before I get back to the states, though. I'm really excited about this trip, especially after that delicious Georgian meal. I think the plan is to just gorge ourselves on food and wine for four days while seeing as much of the city as we can. Of course, you'll get to hear all about that trip in about a month. After dinner we headed back to the apartment and watched 30 Rock on Tye's computer for a bit before hitting the hay.
On Monday, Tye had to get back to work (he's been teaching English), so I spent most of the day exploring on my own. I had breakfast at a pastry shop up the street from the apartment, and headed out the the Kievo-Pecherska Lavra (a monastery with caves), which is Kiev's biggest tourist attraction. This was Monday of course, so it really wasn't too crowded. I hear it gets crazy on the weekend. The upper part of the monastery had a few really nice cathedrals, one of which was only recently rebuilt after it had been destroyed in WWII. A big chunk of the original is displayed in front of it. There are also apparently some great museums there, but I somehow missed out on them (Tye seemed really disappointed when he heard that), so I'll have to see them next time. A path from the upper part leads to the lower Lavra, where all the Monks live and practice their faith. The big attraction here is the underground caves where mummified monks are on display for worshippers to visit (you can't really see them, they're wrapped in holy robes and encased in glass). You enter the caves through one church and come out the other. It was pretty cool but I was really expecting something more like the catacombs I saw at the monastery in Pechory in Russia, near the Estonian border. This place hardly felt like a cave, since all the walls were plastered over. It was pretty small down there, since most of it is supposedly off limits to those who aren't there to pray (though Tye got back there when he went, so I'm not sure). It was still interesting to see all the people kissing the mummy cases and saying prayers. On my way to the lower exit of the Lavra, I stopped at a tiny chapel where people where drinking washing themselves with the hold water coming from its spigot. Some guy in a track suite came up to me and started speaking to me quite quickly about it, and though I didn't comprehend everything he must have said, I did get that he was telling me to try drinking the water. So I tried it, and it was fine, but he kept looking at me like he expected something else from me, like I was supposed to give him some money for him having suggested I try the water. I told him I couldn't help him, and then he proceeded to tell me what I now believe was supposed to be some kind of curse. He said in an hour I would get sick, and after a year... I didn't really catch what he said would happen, but I assumed it was death. I missed a lot of what he said, but seeing as though he was just some guy in a track suite, I figured it was just some stupid ploy to pray on people at this holy site and try to get some money out of them, so I just walked off. An hour later I felt fine, I'm happy to say.
From the Lavra I walked to the nearest metro station, and considered riding out to the Hydropark (an island in the middle of the Dnipro River in Kiev that serves as the city's big park), but I decided instead to head down to the Maidan again, get some lunch, and explore in that area some more. I ended up eating at McDonald's near the square, just because it was so convenient and McDonald's in other countries are always kind of fun and don't make me feel too guilty. Afterwards I walked around the area, found the creepy "Chimera House" with weird gargoyles all over it, and walked around the area of the Bessarabian Bazaar. I found a bookstore and bought a Russian-Ukrainian dictionary, along with a couple maps cause that's what I'm into. I was waiting around to hear from Tye once he finished all of his stuff for the day, and eventually we met up back at his apartment. He bought some pelmeni and tomato sauce, so we ate that night, and then spent a while exchanging music and TV show files (I've since been watching a ton of 30 Rock). We were both pretty tired and called it an early night.
The next morning was my final morning in Kiev, as my train left around 6:00 that evening. Tye had to work again, and I had vague plans to go to this street with lots of vendors, but I was feeling pretty lazy, and instead just went down to the Fulbright office to get reimbursed for my train ticket back to SImferopol. I had to meet Tye around 2:00 back at his apartment to give him his key back, then just headed to the train station with all my stuff I had to wait around for a couple hours, so I just sat and stared in one of the sitting halls. When I had bought my ticket back to SImferopol, all the platzkart tickets were already gone. so I had to go with the next class up, kupe. This is where there are four beds to a single, closed off compartment, and usually I prefer platzkart when I travel alone just because you aren't stuck in a small room with 3 strangers for the whole ride, plus it's quite a bit cheaper (at least Fulbright was paying for this ride). This ride in kupe actually turned out to be a pretty positive experience, though. Just before the train took off, three young guys showed up in my heretofore empty compartment. They all had shaved heads, and my first though was one of dread as I thought I would be sharing the ride with a bunch of skinheads, but then one of them soon told me that they were soldiers. I found out a bit later that they had in fact all just gotten out of the army that day, and were each heading home. There was Sasha from Dnipropetrovsk, Igor from Zaporizhzhya. and Dima from Sevastopol (in Crimea). Dima spoke a little bit of English, and seemed to enjoy practicing it with me. They were all pretty friendly, and just mostly seemed really relieved and a bit free-spirited, as I imagine I would feel after just getting out of the army. Sasha hooked his cell phone up to some portable speakers, and they all started singing along to his collection of pop, folk, and rock songs. When I asked them who the singer of one of the songs was, they said they didn't know. I pictured them having only these songs to listen to for the last year while they were in the army, and sharing a bond over them without knowing anything about the singer. They started getting beers and snacks from the providnist (head of the train car), and soon started bringing some back for me. I had a great time drinking with them, asking them questions about army life and their opinions about Ukraine and Crimea, and grooving on their music. I even to to sing along with them on one song, cause they had some Kino on the phone. I was beginning to worry that they were going to stay up drinking and laughing all night and that I wouldn't be able to get to sleep, but they tuckered out right around when I was beginning to, so we all got some decent rest. I didn't sleep a whole lot though, unfortunately, just because I wasn't all that comfortable on my little bed. The stops in Dnipropetrovsk and Zaporizhzhya happened in the middle of the night, so before each stop one of the guys got up to get all dressed up in their full military regalia so they could make their family proud when they got of of the train. Something about that touched me. Dima got off with me in Simferopol and then caught a bus the rest of the way to Sevastopol. I took a taxi back to my apartment just so I wouldn't have to deal with taking my bags on a marshrutka.
So, the last few days since I got back have been really lazy. I used up the rest of my initial internet traffic allotment, and went down to the office to start my limitless monthly plan. It's nice to be able to use the internet now without worrying about the traffic limit, though the speed is a bit slower than I would like. I checked out this supposedly Armenian restaurant in Gagarin Park yesterday, and found it to be pretty darn expensive and not all that terrific, though they did have surprisingly decent lagman.I walked around a bit too, and finally wandered through the children's park. I really need to go back there with a camera, because there are all kinds of weird ride and attractions for kids there. The coolest part, though, is the big cement letters that spell out "children's park" in Russian at the park's entrance. I'll put a picture of it up sometime, you'll see how cool it is. There was also a small zoo, but I thought it would be too depressing to go in, but also weird for a guy like me alone in a zoo in a children's park. Today I had lunch at a little cafe up the street, where I tried Chicken Kiev for the first time, then did some grocery shopping in the adjacent market. I'm back on the potato/onion/pepper/cheese scramble diet for the next few days, though I'm spicing it up with some garlic this time. Mainly I've just been cruising the internet and watching 30 Rock for most of the time these past few days, but next week I'm going to meet with some people at the university and start getting back on track with the research stuff. I've decided tomorrow I'm finally going to head down to the beach (probably Yalta, just because it's the easiest part to get to). I think we're all caught up now. I know I broke my promise about huge posts like this, but I guess I'm just that type of blogger. See you next time!
-Austin
p.s. Check out my flickr page. I uploaded some pictures from Simferopol and Kiev.
Monday, October 6, 2008
ничего страшного
Yo - I've been in Kiev for about five days now, and have been having a great time. I head back to Simferopol tomorrow (meaning I won't actually get there until the day after that), and once I'm there I'll write up a nice long post about my adventures in the city, and will have a ton of pictures to accompany it, but for right now I just wanted to pop in and say. Check back in a few days!
-Austin
-Austin
Wednesday, October 1, 2008
куда пошла вода?
Here's a quick update: I finally got the internet working in my apartment! I had to bring my laptop to the office of the company and have "slick" Dima help me configure this VPN business. It didn't work that night, but I tried it again the next morning one last time before calling him up again and it suddenly started working. So yesterday was spent mostly hanging around the apartment catching up on internet stuff.
The day before that I finally went over to the university that's supposedly sponsoring my stay here, though not many people seemed to know about it. I met my advisor/professor Natalya, and she was very friendly and helpful. She took me to the International Education Office so they could start taking care of all the paperwork and technical stuff for my affiliation with the university. They told me that the school has a partnership with Willamette University, and that four of its students are currently studying at the university here! I look forward to meeting them soon. They also said that they're going to set up a meeting for me with the Rector of the University (basically the President), which I'm now really nervous about. This guy is a big wig. A HUGE wig. Before becoming the Rector here, he was head of Crimean Parliament in the early 90's when they were sorting out the whole autonomy issue for Crimea, which has a lot to do with my research here. He was very much a central figure, and I've actually been reading about him in a book about the whole Crimean issue. So I have to meet with him and tell him about what I want to research. I'm king of dreading this meeting cause my ideas aren't entirely crystalized yet, plus I'm not confident enough in my language abilities to be really be able to make a good first impression. We'll just have to see how it goes.
I also got a washing machine that day, though the landlordy guy's son (I think) had to come back the next day (yesterday) with all the right tubes and tools to install it. He was here for about two hours, but apparently it works alright now. I've been conserving my clothes cause I knew it would be a little while before I'd be able to wash anything. The thing is really small though, probably about a third the size of what we would consider a normal washing machine, so I'll have to do washes in cycles I guess.Of course, I couldn't do any washing right now if I wanted to because all my water is currently cut off! It wasn't something the kid did yesterday, cause it worked last night after he left, but this morning I tried turning on the water and nothing came out, either hot or cold. I'm hoping some problem is just being fixed somewhere up the line (maybe turning on the hot water?), and it'll get going again very soon.
To tell you the truth, I'm not too preoccupied with the water situation right now because in a few hours I head off for the train station and head to Kiev for 4 or 5 days or so. I'm really excited to get to see the city, and it'll be nice to meet up with all the other Fulbrighters again. I still have to pack, and I'll have to bring something nice cause there's a reception at the apartment of the Deputy Chief of Mission at the US Embassy, whatever that means. I have a feeling it will be fairly swanky. Of course I'll have to shave tomorrow morning at the hotel now since I can't do it here without the water. I really hope when I get back from Kiev the water will be working fine. I may or may not get online much from Kiev, so I won't promise anything here until I get back.
Once I do get back to Simferopol, one of my top priorities is to hit the beach, either Yalta or Sevastopol. I haven't been able to get away yet, and I really want to try swimming in the Black Sea before it starts getting too cold. I heard it's swimmable through October, so I should still be good. I guess that's it for now. I'll tell Kiev you said hi.
-Austin
The day before that I finally went over to the university that's supposedly sponsoring my stay here, though not many people seemed to know about it. I met my advisor/professor Natalya, and she was very friendly and helpful. She took me to the International Education Office so they could start taking care of all the paperwork and technical stuff for my affiliation with the university. They told me that the school has a partnership with Willamette University, and that four of its students are currently studying at the university here! I look forward to meeting them soon. They also said that they're going to set up a meeting for me with the Rector of the University (basically the President), which I'm now really nervous about. This guy is a big wig. A HUGE wig. Before becoming the Rector here, he was head of Crimean Parliament in the early 90's when they were sorting out the whole autonomy issue for Crimea, which has a lot to do with my research here. He was very much a central figure, and I've actually been reading about him in a book about the whole Crimean issue. So I have to meet with him and tell him about what I want to research. I'm king of dreading this meeting cause my ideas aren't entirely crystalized yet, plus I'm not confident enough in my language abilities to be really be able to make a good first impression. We'll just have to see how it goes.
I also got a washing machine that day, though the landlordy guy's son (I think) had to come back the next day (yesterday) with all the right tubes and tools to install it. He was here for about two hours, but apparently it works alright now. I've been conserving my clothes cause I knew it would be a little while before I'd be able to wash anything. The thing is really small though, probably about a third the size of what we would consider a normal washing machine, so I'll have to do washes in cycles I guess.Of course, I couldn't do any washing right now if I wanted to because all my water is currently cut off! It wasn't something the kid did yesterday, cause it worked last night after he left, but this morning I tried turning on the water and nothing came out, either hot or cold. I'm hoping some problem is just being fixed somewhere up the line (maybe turning on the hot water?), and it'll get going again very soon.
To tell you the truth, I'm not too preoccupied with the water situation right now because in a few hours I head off for the train station and head to Kiev for 4 or 5 days or so. I'm really excited to get to see the city, and it'll be nice to meet up with all the other Fulbrighters again. I still have to pack, and I'll have to bring something nice cause there's a reception at the apartment of the Deputy Chief of Mission at the US Embassy, whatever that means. I have a feeling it will be fairly swanky. Of course I'll have to shave tomorrow morning at the hotel now since I can't do it here without the water. I really hope when I get back from Kiev the water will be working fine. I may or may not get online much from Kiev, so I won't promise anything here until I get back.
Once I do get back to Simferopol, one of my top priorities is to hit the beach, either Yalta or Sevastopol. I haven't been able to get away yet, and I really want to try swimming in the Black Sea before it starts getting too cold. I heard it's swimmable through October, so I should still be good. I guess that's it for now. I'll tell Kiev you said hi.
-Austin
Sunday, September 28, 2008
целый день гуляю
Howdy. It’s Saturday night and I’m lamely stuck at home reading and blogging. I guess I’m not really stuck here, as I’m free to go when and where ever I please, but since I don’t really know anybody here yet and it’s pretty chilly outside, I feel like holding up in the old apartment for another night. Unfortunately, I am still without internet for the time being, and am writing this in word to be uploaded later. I did get internet installed in the apartment yesterday, but apparently getting online isn’t as easy as just plugging in the cable and firing up the browser like it would be back home. Apparently my internet provider uses something called a VPN, which, not being a computer nerd, I had never heard of, but I ascertained that it’s some sort of exclusive network that requires specific configuration to access. I was given an instruction sheet in Russian with all the pertinent info for how to connect to this VPN, but since Ukraine is not Mac-friendly (like the rest of the world outside the US), the instructions were for Windows only. I figured out where to do the configuration on my Mac, and tried plugging in all the right numbers and codes given on the instruction sheet, but alas, success has eluded me. Yeah, it’s pretty frustrating. I tried calling the rep from the company today to see if he could help me, but he didn’t answer. I’m going to try to get a hold of him tomorrow and hopefully I’ll be up and running in the next couple of days, or at least before heading to Kiev on Wednesday. If all goes well, I’ll be able to post this from my own computer before I would even get the chance to make it back to the internet center.
So, yesterday was spent mostly dealing with internet stuff. Around noon I was about to head out to do some more exploring of the city, when literally as I was putting my shoes on to go out the door I got a call from the internet people that said they would be coming by in an hour to install the cable. So, that kept me at home. The guy came by in his big utility vest and box-o-cable to check out the apartment to see where to run the cable, then headed to the roof to take care of business. Since these old Soviet apartment buildings obviously aren’t wired for this sort of thing, the way the install things like internet or cable TV around here is to just hang a long wire from the roof along the side of the building and into the window of the apartment. There are a few other cords that run past my balcony window to apartments below mine. So, while Johnny cable-run was up top doing his thing, my landlady called to say she was bringing round the new landlord (which I had been told about when I signed the lease) in fifteen minutes or so. I thought it might get crazy with them and the internet guy all here at the same time, but the guy was really taking a long time up on the roof, so the others came and left well before he came back down. My new landlord is a guy named Alexander (real original), and he seems pretty nice. He checked out the apartment just to get a sense of his new investment, I guess, and seemed to be contemplating taking my TV. Did I mention I have a TV? I do, and it is kind of nice being able to watch sleazy Russian music videos every now and then. Thankfully a women who accompanied my landlord and who I can only assume is his wife seemed to convince him to leave it for my sake. The landlord was also given a set of keys to my apartment, which makes me a little uneasy, but I guess that’s pretty standard, huh?
After my new and old landlords left I stuck around waiting for the internet guy to come back down. He was seriously up there for about three hours, and I was beginning to suspect that he might have left. The cable was there, and I could bring it into the apartment, but it didn’t have an end piece on it so I assumed he wasn’t finished. Eventually he came back to wrap everything up. He drilled some holes, strung the cable into the apartment, and put the proper end piece on, and that’s when all my connection problems started. I eventually gave up and finally got a chance to leave my apartment that day, and only to head over to the market to buy some food to cook. I didn’t want to buy a lot of stuff, so I just got some pelmeny and sour cream, along with a little vodka for good measure. I had a nice pelmeny dinner, then did a little drinking while finally watching the movie Pulp Fiction, which I had copied from Netflix before coming. Of all the movies that I haven’t seen but should have, Pulp Fiction has always been the one that has confounded people the most, and so I kind of feel like more of a real person now for having seen it. It’ll be nice to never get that shocked and disappointed reaction from people when they hear I haven’t seen it. My verdict: pretty good. While I was watching it, I started hearing bangs and seeing flashes outside, so I went onto the balcony to see what all the commotion was and determined that there were fireworks going off somewhere. They sounded to be very close, but they were going off on the other side of the next apartment building over, and the side of the building was blocking my view. I could only see the flashes from the fireworks bouncing off the cliffs and trees across the street. I have no idea what the occasion was, but it was kind of fun in a pseudo-scary way, like the city was under attack or something (hopefully this was as close to that scenario as we’re going to get!) Oh, on Friday I also finally spoke to my local advisor/professor on the phone, and we arranged to meet on Monday to talk about what it is exactly I’ll be doing here. I’ll let you know how that goes.
Today was fairly productive. I headed downtown mainly to use the internet, but since I couldn’t figure out which marshrutka would take me there directly, I just decided to take one to the train station and walk again from there to downtown. Actually, it wasn’t on a marshrutka, but on a trolleybus, which I found to be almost four times less expensive than a marshrutka (60 kopeks vs. 2 grivna, or about 12 cents vs. 40 cents). The internet club was filled with noisy teenagers playing computer games, exactly like the Lonely Planet guide’s description. This kid next to me seemed to think that if you click the mouse repeatedly as hard as you can it will get things to work faster. After using the internet I wandered around the immediate area, discovering the Silpo Center, which I had ready about. It’s a small shopping center with a western-style grocery store. It may or may not come in handy in the future. For now I’ve been having pretty good success getting everything I need from my small local market. Some of the vendors there are even starting to remember me! I wandered around behind the center and discovered two orthodox churches and the Russian consulate, which will come in handy if I decide to take a trip to Russia while I’m here (it’s not really near the top of my list of places to visit this time around, though). I was getting tired and cold so I caught a marshrutka back home to my part of town. Before heading home I stopped at the market to pick up a few things to make dinner. I got some potatoes, onions, peppers, eggs, lavash (kind of like a super thin tortilla), cooking oil, and salt (a whole kilogram and a half no less), and along with the cheese and sour cream I had from yesterday I made delicious breakfast-style burritos. I have a feeling I’ll be making this kind of dish a lot. I needed a shower, and decided it would just be easier to take a straight-up cold shower than to try dealing with the pot of warm water like last time. It was easier and more efficient, but far less pleasant. I really hope the hot water comes on soon. Since then I’ve been doing some reading and blog writing. There appears to be a party of some sort in the apartment above me. Hopefully it won’t go on for to long. I’ll stop there.
-Austin
So, yesterday was spent mostly dealing with internet stuff. Around noon I was about to head out to do some more exploring of the city, when literally as I was putting my shoes on to go out the door I got a call from the internet people that said they would be coming by in an hour to install the cable. So, that kept me at home. The guy came by in his big utility vest and box-o-cable to check out the apartment to see where to run the cable, then headed to the roof to take care of business. Since these old Soviet apartment buildings obviously aren’t wired for this sort of thing, the way the install things like internet or cable TV around here is to just hang a long wire from the roof along the side of the building and into the window of the apartment. There are a few other cords that run past my balcony window to apartments below mine. So, while Johnny cable-run was up top doing his thing, my landlady called to say she was bringing round the new landlord (which I had been told about when I signed the lease) in fifteen minutes or so. I thought it might get crazy with them and the internet guy all here at the same time, but the guy was really taking a long time up on the roof, so the others came and left well before he came back down. My new landlord is a guy named Alexander (real original), and he seems pretty nice. He checked out the apartment just to get a sense of his new investment, I guess, and seemed to be contemplating taking my TV. Did I mention I have a TV? I do, and it is kind of nice being able to watch sleazy Russian music videos every now and then. Thankfully a women who accompanied my landlord and who I can only assume is his wife seemed to convince him to leave it for my sake. The landlord was also given a set of keys to my apartment, which makes me a little uneasy, but I guess that’s pretty standard, huh?
After my new and old landlords left I stuck around waiting for the internet guy to come back down. He was seriously up there for about three hours, and I was beginning to suspect that he might have left. The cable was there, and I could bring it into the apartment, but it didn’t have an end piece on it so I assumed he wasn’t finished. Eventually he came back to wrap everything up. He drilled some holes, strung the cable into the apartment, and put the proper end piece on, and that’s when all my connection problems started. I eventually gave up and finally got a chance to leave my apartment that day, and only to head over to the market to buy some food to cook. I didn’t want to buy a lot of stuff, so I just got some pelmeny and sour cream, along with a little vodka for good measure. I had a nice pelmeny dinner, then did a little drinking while finally watching the movie Pulp Fiction, which I had copied from Netflix before coming. Of all the movies that I haven’t seen but should have, Pulp Fiction has always been the one that has confounded people the most, and so I kind of feel like more of a real person now for having seen it. It’ll be nice to never get that shocked and disappointed reaction from people when they hear I haven’t seen it. My verdict: pretty good. While I was watching it, I started hearing bangs and seeing flashes outside, so I went onto the balcony to see what all the commotion was and determined that there were fireworks going off somewhere. They sounded to be very close, but they were going off on the other side of the next apartment building over, and the side of the building was blocking my view. I could only see the flashes from the fireworks bouncing off the cliffs and trees across the street. I have no idea what the occasion was, but it was kind of fun in a pseudo-scary way, like the city was under attack or something (hopefully this was as close to that scenario as we’re going to get!) Oh, on Friday I also finally spoke to my local advisor/professor on the phone, and we arranged to meet on Monday to talk about what it is exactly I’ll be doing here. I’ll let you know how that goes.
Today was fairly productive. I headed downtown mainly to use the internet, but since I couldn’t figure out which marshrutka would take me there directly, I just decided to take one to the train station and walk again from there to downtown. Actually, it wasn’t on a marshrutka, but on a trolleybus, which I found to be almost four times less expensive than a marshrutka (60 kopeks vs. 2 grivna, or about 12 cents vs. 40 cents). The internet club was filled with noisy teenagers playing computer games, exactly like the Lonely Planet guide’s description. This kid next to me seemed to think that if you click the mouse repeatedly as hard as you can it will get things to work faster. After using the internet I wandered around the immediate area, discovering the Silpo Center, which I had ready about. It’s a small shopping center with a western-style grocery store. It may or may not come in handy in the future. For now I’ve been having pretty good success getting everything I need from my small local market. Some of the vendors there are even starting to remember me! I wandered around behind the center and discovered two orthodox churches and the Russian consulate, which will come in handy if I decide to take a trip to Russia while I’m here (it’s not really near the top of my list of places to visit this time around, though). I was getting tired and cold so I caught a marshrutka back home to my part of town. Before heading home I stopped at the market to pick up a few things to make dinner. I got some potatoes, onions, peppers, eggs, lavash (kind of like a super thin tortilla), cooking oil, and salt (a whole kilogram and a half no less), and along with the cheese and sour cream I had from yesterday I made delicious breakfast-style burritos. I have a feeling I’ll be making this kind of dish a lot. I needed a shower, and decided it would just be easier to take a straight-up cold shower than to try dealing with the pot of warm water like last time. It was easier and more efficient, but far less pleasant. I really hope the hot water comes on soon. Since then I’ve been doing some reading and blog writing. There appears to be a party of some sort in the apartment above me. Hopefully it won’t go on for to long. I’ll stop there.
-Austin
Saturday, September 27, 2008
ещё без интернета
Hiya. It’s now Thursday, and I’ve been moved into my apartment for about three days now. So far it’s been pretty good, and I’ve spent time the last couple days gathering all the things one would need in their apartment. You know, cooking and eating utensils, cleaning supplies, spare light bulbs (well, light bulbs to replace the four that were burnt out), etc. Probably the most exciting thin I bought was a Brita-style water-filtering pitcher. The tap water here is awful and not recommended to drink, so I figured a filter would be a good investment and alternative to buying tons of bottled water all the time. It cost about $16, fits perfectly in my tiny fridge, and appears to work just great!
The landlady and her assistant or whoever have helped me out with domestic stuff as well, although it did take them a little while. My first night here they were supposed to bring over some bed stuff (sheets, blankets, etc.), and they said they’d bring them over around 5:00, so I waited around at 5:00 and kept waiting for a few hours, but nobody ever came. I fell asleep waiting and then realized I’d have to spend the night without the bed stuff. Luckily there were a few pillows lying around, but I had to use my coat, my hoodie, and my towel as makeshift blankets. It wasn’t so bad, except for the bed itself. I guess it’s about a queen size, but it consists of two separate twin-sized pieces laid side-by-side into a frame, so there’s a big dip in the middle where the two meet. Each piece is basically a board with foam padding held in place by the outside fabric, so it doesn’t offer a lot of support. After a night sleeping on it, I figured I’d need to buy some sort of extra padding to go over it, but luckily the landlady had the bed problem taken care of. Her assistant finally arrived with some bed and kitchen stuff the next day, but I was surprised to find with him a couple of burly movers hauling a brand new mattress up the stairs as well (I live on the fifth floor, so it took a lot of huffing and puffing for them to get it up). There was, however, another problem: We couldn’t get the mattress through the door! See, My front door and my neighbor’s front door are in a little nook that is closed off by a steel gate that we both have keys to. My door is on the left once inside the gate, and my neighbor’s is across from the gate (there’s no door on the third [right] side). My door opens out towards the gate, and the neighbor’s opens out towards my door, and so we weren’t able to either get the mattress through the gate and then around my door, or conversely backed into my neighbor’s apartment and then forward into mine (because his door would be blocking my door, you see). So, the only way to do it was to take my door off its hinges, but since they didn’t have the right tool to do that, we had to leave the mattress inside the gate until the next day so the movers could return with the right sized Alan’s head screwdriver and finish the job. The mattress propped up inside the gate made it difficult to get in and out. Luckily, the movers returned today and took care of everything. I was late getting home because I had gotten on a marshrutka heading the wrong direction, and thus had to ride it to the end, turn around, and ride past where I had initially gotten on in order to go the right direction home. I let them in, they took down the door, put in the new mattress and hauled away the old ones. I was kind of hoping they would leave the old ones so I could keep them on the balcony and I’d have something to offer future guests to sleep on. As it stands there is nothing else besides the bed to sleep on in my apartment (though the bed could easily accommodate two), so I’ll probably have to buy some sort of pad before I have any guests stay the night. As the movers were leaving, one of the movers was hinting at a tip, but I half played dumb and half was dumb and didn’t know anything about tipping procedures in this situation, so he soon gave up and the movers left grumbling. I set up my bed with the sheets and blanket I bought earlier today, and now I have a right proper bed to sleep on, and it’s quite comfy to match; with real springs in it and everything! The landlady’s assistant had brought a blanket the night before, but it was really old and musty. The first thing I thought when I smelled it was, “that smells like the Soviet Union.” It is nice having a back-up blanket, though.
Besides shopping for and setting up my apartment, I’ve spent some time exploring the city. Simferopol isn’t exactly laid out in a nice grid, but it’s been fairly easy to figure out just from wandering and looking at maps. So far my favorite feature of the city is the Salgir River running through the middle and the nice paths running along side it. Sure it’s really just a creek, and it’s kind of smelly in places, but the path is a great alternative to walking along the busy streets. Best of all, the river is about a two minute walk from the door to my building, so it’s quite convenient. I spent most of the day Wednesday walking along the river path. There are lots of nice little sitting areas and even some gardens and parks along the way. Today I finally explored the downtown area and the area around the train station. There was something very exciting about being at the train station for me, because this is a place I had been before, Two years ago while I was studying in Russia, some friends and I took a trip to Sochi and then over to Crimea and Yalta, and although we didn’t really spend any time in Simferopol, we come here to catch our train back to Saint Petersburg. So, this is really the first time I have returned to someplace abroad that I have been to before, and being at the train station again made it sink in. It seemed like such a travel milestone: to not only visit a place, but to revisit it as well. I ate some street food from the vendors around the station, bought a nice detailed map of the city, and wandered towards downtown. There’s a really nice pedestrian-only area with some cool old buildings and fancy shops (though for a pedestrian-only zone it sure did have a lot of cars parked in it). I didn’t even get to see all of the downtown area yet, but between it and the train station, Simferopol seems pretty bustling and metropolitan. My part of town, though not too far from the center, is a bit sleepier, so it was nice to finally see where all the action is in town, and now I definitely feel better about spending the next ten months here. To be fair, my neighborhood does have some good perks: I’m right next to the bus station, which means it will be really easy to catch rides to other towns around Crimea; there’s a small but useful market right across from the bus station, where I’ve been able to get almost everything I need for the apartment so far; the university is really close as well, though I haven’t been there yet; there’s an awesome hill with cliffs right across the street from me (of which I have a great view), and I’m looking forward to going up there sometime soon and checking out the view; there’s a Crimean Tatar / Central Asian restaurant about 15 minutes away by foot, where I’ll be able to satisfy my craving for lagman, manty, and plov. I’ve eaten there once so far, and the lagman was pretty decent. In case you were unaware, lagman is an amazing Central Asian noodle soup with mutton and vegetables. As some of you already know from reading my last blog, I became something of a lagman snob while living in Kyrgyzstan. I don’t expect to ever find a lagman as good as the lagman at the resturant Nooruz in Bishkek, but I’m sure the stuff here will hold me over until the day I’m somehow able to return to Bishkek and have that heavenly soup one more time.
So, what’s on the docket for the next few days: I should be getting internet in my apartment very soon. The guy Sergei who first picked me up at the airport has a son who works for an internet provider, and he brought him over to et the ball rolling. His son Dima was very slick with his leather jacket, sunglasses and fancy Bluetooth headset (apparently a traditional accessory in this family). I showed him my Airport Express router that I brought to set up wifi in my apartment, and he was intently interested in it. He looked it over several times, and then took a voice memo on his cell phone explaining what it was and reading off some details from the information written on the side. He said it would work fine with their services, and that they’ll be able to run a cable into my apartment sometime this week. I’m also supposedly getting a washing machine sometime in the next week, but I’ll have to let both the landlady and the internet people that they’ll need to do it before Wednesday, because that’s the day I’m heading to Kiev (sorry, but being in a Russian-speaking area I’m just going to have to stick with the Russian spelling in favor of the Ukrainian and seemingly more PC “Kyiv”) for the Fulbright Ukraine orientation. I’m really looking forward to catching up with the other Fulbrighters, and getting to explore the big city a bit. Hopefully before that, though, I’ll get a chance to head down to the beach (most likely Yalta) and go swimming in the Black Sea before the weather and the water start getting to cold. It’ll be a lot of fun going back to Yalta as well. I’m shooting for Saturday or Sunday to do that. I’m also planning on meeting with my advisor/supervisor/professor at the university for the first time on Monday. I talked to her on the phone briefly the day I arrived, and she said I should just worry about getting an apartment and getting all set up before I head over to the university and get down to business, so that’s what I’ve been doing this week.
I’ll likely upload this post from an internet center on Friday, but hopefully soon after that I’ll be set up with internet in the apartment and I can start doing more frequent posting. Drop me a line!
-Austin
The landlady and her assistant or whoever have helped me out with domestic stuff as well, although it did take them a little while. My first night here they were supposed to bring over some bed stuff (sheets, blankets, etc.), and they said they’d bring them over around 5:00, so I waited around at 5:00 and kept waiting for a few hours, but nobody ever came. I fell asleep waiting and then realized I’d have to spend the night without the bed stuff. Luckily there were a few pillows lying around, but I had to use my coat, my hoodie, and my towel as makeshift blankets. It wasn’t so bad, except for the bed itself. I guess it’s about a queen size, but it consists of two separate twin-sized pieces laid side-by-side into a frame, so there’s a big dip in the middle where the two meet. Each piece is basically a board with foam padding held in place by the outside fabric, so it doesn’t offer a lot of support. After a night sleeping on it, I figured I’d need to buy some sort of extra padding to go over it, but luckily the landlady had the bed problem taken care of. Her assistant finally arrived with some bed and kitchen stuff the next day, but I was surprised to find with him a couple of burly movers hauling a brand new mattress up the stairs as well (I live on the fifth floor, so it took a lot of huffing and puffing for them to get it up). There was, however, another problem: We couldn’t get the mattress through the door! See, My front door and my neighbor’s front door are in a little nook that is closed off by a steel gate that we both have keys to. My door is on the left once inside the gate, and my neighbor’s is across from the gate (there’s no door on the third [right] side). My door opens out towards the gate, and the neighbor’s opens out towards my door, and so we weren’t able to either get the mattress through the gate and then around my door, or conversely backed into my neighbor’s apartment and then forward into mine (because his door would be blocking my door, you see). So, the only way to do it was to take my door off its hinges, but since they didn’t have the right tool to do that, we had to leave the mattress inside the gate until the next day so the movers could return with the right sized Alan’s head screwdriver and finish the job. The mattress propped up inside the gate made it difficult to get in and out. Luckily, the movers returned today and took care of everything. I was late getting home because I had gotten on a marshrutka heading the wrong direction, and thus had to ride it to the end, turn around, and ride past where I had initially gotten on in order to go the right direction home. I let them in, they took down the door, put in the new mattress and hauled away the old ones. I was kind of hoping they would leave the old ones so I could keep them on the balcony and I’d have something to offer future guests to sleep on. As it stands there is nothing else besides the bed to sleep on in my apartment (though the bed could easily accommodate two), so I’ll probably have to buy some sort of pad before I have any guests stay the night. As the movers were leaving, one of the movers was hinting at a tip, but I half played dumb and half was dumb and didn’t know anything about tipping procedures in this situation, so he soon gave up and the movers left grumbling. I set up my bed with the sheets and blanket I bought earlier today, and now I have a right proper bed to sleep on, and it’s quite comfy to match; with real springs in it and everything! The landlady’s assistant had brought a blanket the night before, but it was really old and musty. The first thing I thought when I smelled it was, “that smells like the Soviet Union.” It is nice having a back-up blanket, though.
Besides shopping for and setting up my apartment, I’ve spent some time exploring the city. Simferopol isn’t exactly laid out in a nice grid, but it’s been fairly easy to figure out just from wandering and looking at maps. So far my favorite feature of the city is the Salgir River running through the middle and the nice paths running along side it. Sure it’s really just a creek, and it’s kind of smelly in places, but the path is a great alternative to walking along the busy streets. Best of all, the river is about a two minute walk from the door to my building, so it’s quite convenient. I spent most of the day Wednesday walking along the river path. There are lots of nice little sitting areas and even some gardens and parks along the way. Today I finally explored the downtown area and the area around the train station. There was something very exciting about being at the train station for me, because this is a place I had been before, Two years ago while I was studying in Russia, some friends and I took a trip to Sochi and then over to Crimea and Yalta, and although we didn’t really spend any time in Simferopol, we come here to catch our train back to Saint Petersburg. So, this is really the first time I have returned to someplace abroad that I have been to before, and being at the train station again made it sink in. It seemed like such a travel milestone: to not only visit a place, but to revisit it as well. I ate some street food from the vendors around the station, bought a nice detailed map of the city, and wandered towards downtown. There’s a really nice pedestrian-only area with some cool old buildings and fancy shops (though for a pedestrian-only zone it sure did have a lot of cars parked in it). I didn’t even get to see all of the downtown area yet, but between it and the train station, Simferopol seems pretty bustling and metropolitan. My part of town, though not too far from the center, is a bit sleepier, so it was nice to finally see where all the action is in town, and now I definitely feel better about spending the next ten months here. To be fair, my neighborhood does have some good perks: I’m right next to the bus station, which means it will be really easy to catch rides to other towns around Crimea; there’s a small but useful market right across from the bus station, where I’ve been able to get almost everything I need for the apartment so far; the university is really close as well, though I haven’t been there yet; there’s an awesome hill with cliffs right across the street from me (of which I have a great view), and I’m looking forward to going up there sometime soon and checking out the view; there’s a Crimean Tatar / Central Asian restaurant about 15 minutes away by foot, where I’ll be able to satisfy my craving for lagman, manty, and plov. I’ve eaten there once so far, and the lagman was pretty decent. In case you were unaware, lagman is an amazing Central Asian noodle soup with mutton and vegetables. As some of you already know from reading my last blog, I became something of a lagman snob while living in Kyrgyzstan. I don’t expect to ever find a lagman as good as the lagman at the resturant Nooruz in Bishkek, but I’m sure the stuff here will hold me over until the day I’m somehow able to return to Bishkek and have that heavenly soup one more time.
So, what’s on the docket for the next few days: I should be getting internet in my apartment very soon. The guy Sergei who first picked me up at the airport has a son who works for an internet provider, and he brought him over to et the ball rolling. His son Dima was very slick with his leather jacket, sunglasses and fancy Bluetooth headset (apparently a traditional accessory in this family). I showed him my Airport Express router that I brought to set up wifi in my apartment, and he was intently interested in it. He looked it over several times, and then took a voice memo on his cell phone explaining what it was and reading off some details from the information written on the side. He said it would work fine with their services, and that they’ll be able to run a cable into my apartment sometime this week. I’m also supposedly getting a washing machine sometime in the next week, but I’ll have to let both the landlady and the internet people that they’ll need to do it before Wednesday, because that’s the day I’m heading to Kiev (sorry, but being in a Russian-speaking area I’m just going to have to stick with the Russian spelling in favor of the Ukrainian and seemingly more PC “Kyiv”) for the Fulbright Ukraine orientation. I’m really looking forward to catching up with the other Fulbrighters, and getting to explore the big city a bit. Hopefully before that, though, I’ll get a chance to head down to the beach (most likely Yalta) and go swimming in the Black Sea before the weather and the water start getting to cold. It’ll be a lot of fun going back to Yalta as well. I’m shooting for Saturday or Sunday to do that. I’m also planning on meeting with my advisor/supervisor/professor at the university for the first time on Monday. I talked to her on the phone briefly the day I arrived, and she said I should just worry about getting an apartment and getting all set up before I head over to the university and get down to business, so that’s what I’ve been doing this week.
I’ll likely upload this post from an internet center on Friday, but hopefully soon after that I’ll be set up with internet in the apartment and I can start doing more frequent posting. Drop me a line!
-Austin
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