что такие «шнурки»?

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