so i haven't posted in a while, partially because i had no time, partially because i had no interneting and it was difficult. so i'm going back in time to make this chronologically correct.
we arrive in moscow and surprisingly, i'm feeling not sleepy at all. we, of course, we get disinfected..err..have our temperature taken before we exit the plane. we decide to take public transport into the city, which ordinarily, i think is a brilliant idea. we get on this light rail train, then the metro. this is where the problem starts. steve has a bad back adn is not allowed to lift things, so i'm carrying his suitcase as well as mine. not a problem if you had like a flight of stairs, but it turns out the moscow subway has many stations, and station transfers all of which lack escalators. steve, also, amazingly managed to pack just as much as i did (didnt' think it was possible). again, shouldn't be a problem, but my stomach, asleep thinking it's night time is not accepting the coffee i poured into it in efforts to keep my head awake. i am suffering from the worst visceral pain ever. doubled over, with both my carry-on bags slipping off my shoulders, i am running up adn down stairs with two heavy suitcases. up and down, up and down. i am ready to curse. the hotel is super nice, by that i mean, it's nice and not russian, (which sort of by default makes it nicer). i have my own room, it's great. we're supposed to be doing interviews, but tajiks dont call us so in order not to fall asleep we wander off into the city. somehow, the plan is to go to the moscow modern art museum. i've been there already, but i dont think steve heard me say it three times. oh well. i like the museum better this time, more new stuff. and being sleepy and sleep deprived puts you in this special sense of being, almost trance-like. art makes more sense, different sense, it appeals to you (me) in a different way. i spend time staring at a wooden statues of a naked lady balancing a bowl of fruit on her head. it is called 'balance' and the body is carved in different layers, emphasizing symmetry between textures of wood. but the statue starts movng, tilting, in my head of course because it is called balance and it cannot move. weird.
i wake up at 3. there is nothing i can do. i am wide-awake. i give in adn after hours of watching tv, i have my cup of coffee at 5. then i go for a walk. in my glasses, which i never do because i hate my glasses and the fact that i can't see in them. but there is soemtihng liberated about being in a foreign city. at 7 am, it is cold and wet adn dark with silver gray clouds. i wonder the streets of moscow, turning around randomly when i choose. steve oversleeps, for the first time in his life, he claims, and doesn't get up until noon. it has been a very long morning.
Saturday, October 31, 2009
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
in der ukraine
i am roasting pumpkin for the fam, i think they are going to hate it. i managed to slice my finger open because my aunt has no proper (as i understand it) kitchen equipment and her cutting board moves.
i ahve to say that after all my dislike for moscow, and tehre has been some, i now see that moscow is a largermore metropolitan city than kiev. it's like comparing berlin adn leipzig--impossible. kiev has been uneventful. i went ot the forest for a bbq. we made roast meat and soup in the fire. that was fun. i also got to drive a car, all by myself. so i have to say this car is actually older than me. the steering wheel lacks a pump which means that every time you want to turn it you manually have to use your man/woman power to crank the wheel, which took some effort. first i could not reach the pedal, then i could not see the road. but after all things were adjusted, i got to drive myself through the city at night, without any knowled ge of what european traffic signs actually meant. :)
my uncle's wallet got stolen. i was going to walk around the city and he wanted to accompany me so we took the subway for the stroll. being a car owner, he has not ridden the subway in like 10 years, so after getting off and trying to purchase some batteries he realized that his wallet was missing. along wiht his old retired person ID, money, and atm card. crap. so we call his wife, my aunt, try to get her to get a number to the bank to report the stolen card. we call, leave a message (yes tothe bank) asking to call us back. we wait, we start walking...some time later, my uncle reaches into his pocket adn finds his old retired person ID with all atm cards and 40 Hrivnas. the wallet is gone as is money, but i guess the guy must have returned all the things he didn't need (or couldn't use, like atm cards without pins) and even left some money for the train ride back. i'd like to point out that as a foreigner, my wallet is still intact, knock on wood. i gotta go check out the pumpkin.
i ahve to say that after all my dislike for moscow, and tehre has been some, i now see that moscow is a largermore metropolitan city than kiev. it's like comparing berlin adn leipzig--impossible. kiev has been uneventful. i went ot the forest for a bbq. we made roast meat and soup in the fire. that was fun. i also got to drive a car, all by myself. so i have to say this car is actually older than me. the steering wheel lacks a pump which means that every time you want to turn it you manually have to use your man/woman power to crank the wheel, which took some effort. first i could not reach the pedal, then i could not see the road. but after all things were adjusted, i got to drive myself through the city at night, without any knowled ge of what european traffic signs actually meant. :)
my uncle's wallet got stolen. i was going to walk around the city and he wanted to accompany me so we took the subway for the stroll. being a car owner, he has not ridden the subway in like 10 years, so after getting off and trying to purchase some batteries he realized that his wallet was missing. along wiht his old retired person ID, money, and atm card. crap. so we call his wife, my aunt, try to get her to get a number to the bank to report the stolen card. we call, leave a message (yes tothe bank) asking to call us back. we wait, we start walking...some time later, my uncle reaches into his pocket adn finds his old retired person ID with all atm cards and 40 Hrivnas. the wallet is gone as is money, but i guess the guy must have returned all the things he didn't need (or couldn't use, like atm cards without pins) and even left some money for the train ride back. i'd like to point out that as a foreigner, my wallet is still intact, knock on wood. i gotta go check out the pumpkin.
Saturday, October 3, 2009
leaving moscow
So I was sitting in a coffee-house named ‘coffee-house’ having breakfast, which should really be lunch since I’ve been up since 3 am. Yesterday I finished my last interview (yay!) and tohir decided that we needed to celebrate. First, I spent about an hour sitting in his office in the company of tajik men, eating cake. The cake was weird, reminding me of carrot cake with honey between the layers, but generously lathered in strange butter cream, and the men spent the whole time conversing in tajik (or pamiri, I cannot tell) so I was also utterly bored. After that we went to a small restaurant called ‘the bear den’ which I thought was cute, at first, because it was in the basement. Turned out it wasn’t so cute when I discovered animal heads and bear hides, claws intact, on the wall. For some reason we ended up sitting in an isolated ‘private’ table which suddenly felt oddly ‘romantic’. That’s when the drinking began. It turns out 100g of vodka is a lot of vodka. The Russians are known for drinking ‘100 grams’ almost every day as a normal thing, so I, foolishly, was expecting something equaling 2 shots. It took a really long time to figure out what kind of mixing combination I was going to get, since I was not about to start taking shots with an older man in a privacy of a restaurant booth, but then the waitress brought out what looked like a small carafe, half full of vodka. Damnit! I guess, it was still better than that bottle of cognac tohir was trying to order for us to share (I told him I was not an old man to drink cognac, especially, without ice).we talked about tajik politics and extreme islamist movement in that region, and then I weaseled my way home. I think that’s why I woke up at 3 am, completely dehydrated, my belly churning from consumed strange cake.
The cleaning lady burst in through the door at 10:30 (I was leaving at 11:15) apologizing for being late. She started talking immediately nonstop, and when the car called from downstairs (at 10:40), she wouldn’t let me leave for like 15 minutes. Turned out everyone thought I was leaving at 10:15, so the cabby apologized profusely, and then called the company to yell at them for mixing up the times. Needless to say, I arrived at the airport, like my mother, way early. I checked in and then proceeded to the security check. This is where the fun began. There were tajiks, many tajiks, and all late for a flight leaving for samarkand. So they jumped lines, were told to hurry up, and got mixed up with passports (I swear sometimes I think this is the first time they’ve flown anywhere, which is impossible because they have to have gotten here somehow). At the xray machine, I was told that nothing needed to come out of my bag (laptop included), but a family of 3 late for samarkand rushed ahead of me. That’s fine, except that the rolling thing was full so they started shoving their stuff in, pushing everyone’s else’s neat gray box off the wrong end of rolling thing. It took them 5 minutes of getting situated. I walked through some magical glass box that may have scanned me with uranium, may have analyzed my dna in the process, who knows, but the family of three was told to open their bags after the scanner. The mother of the family, elderly lady in a potato sack dress, opened her purse and pulled out a bundle wrapped in cloth. Inside the bundle was silverware—that is spoons, forks, and KNIVES. The security lady took out knives from every single set (there must have been like 5) to the loud complains of mother-lady about ‘these are just knives, what am I going to kill someone?”. This would never have worked in the US.Walking around the duty free shops and searching for edibles, I came across a café that served ‘vegetable tartilas” (that would be tortillas for you all). It’s a good thing few Mexicans make it to Moscow, otherwise, there might be political crisis over tortillas in the making. I have to say, overall, Russians do a very poor job of translating, missing prepositions and sending people to places they shouldn’t go. Because everyone appears to be a loser like me and arrived at the airport 5 hours before their flight, there is nowhere to sit. So I weaseled my way to a far table in a café. There is a man sitting next to me, who uselessly attempted to get me to share his table, even moved his spread of personal belongings. No thanks, besides, this way I have a great view of a couple in a café next to this one, taking turns taking shots from a bottle of whiskey…it is 2 in the afternoon.
The cleaning lady burst in through the door at 10:30 (I was leaving at 11:15) apologizing for being late. She started talking immediately nonstop, and when the car called from downstairs (at 10:40), she wouldn’t let me leave for like 15 minutes. Turned out everyone thought I was leaving at 10:15, so the cabby apologized profusely, and then called the company to yell at them for mixing up the times. Needless to say, I arrived at the airport, like my mother, way early. I checked in and then proceeded to the security check. This is where the fun began. There were tajiks, many tajiks, and all late for a flight leaving for samarkand. So they jumped lines, were told to hurry up, and got mixed up with passports (I swear sometimes I think this is the first time they’ve flown anywhere, which is impossible because they have to have gotten here somehow). At the xray machine, I was told that nothing needed to come out of my bag (laptop included), but a family of 3 late for samarkand rushed ahead of me. That’s fine, except that the rolling thing was full so they started shoving their stuff in, pushing everyone’s else’s neat gray box off the wrong end of rolling thing. It took them 5 minutes of getting situated. I walked through some magical glass box that may have scanned me with uranium, may have analyzed my dna in the process, who knows, but the family of three was told to open their bags after the scanner. The mother of the family, elderly lady in a potato sack dress, opened her purse and pulled out a bundle wrapped in cloth. Inside the bundle was silverware—that is spoons, forks, and KNIVES. The security lady took out knives from every single set (there must have been like 5) to the loud complains of mother-lady about ‘these are just knives, what am I going to kill someone?”. This would never have worked in the US.Walking around the duty free shops and searching for edibles, I came across a café that served ‘vegetable tartilas” (that would be tortillas for you all). It’s a good thing few Mexicans make it to Moscow, otherwise, there might be political crisis over tortillas in the making. I have to say, overall, Russians do a very poor job of translating, missing prepositions and sending people to places they shouldn’t go. Because everyone appears to be a loser like me and arrived at the airport 5 hours before their flight, there is nowhere to sit. So I weaseled my way to a far table in a café. There is a man sitting next to me, who uselessly attempted to get me to share his table, even moved his spread of personal belongings. No thanks, besides, this way I have a great view of a couple in a café next to this one, taking turns taking shots from a bottle of whiskey…it is 2 in the afternoon.
Notes from the underground
So unlike the title of a great Dostoevsky work, this will not be about loathing, or even about human character…but maybe.
I wanted to write about my interviews. There have been some great ones that stand out in my mind, there have been the ones when I felt like I was pulling teeth, each word being a struggle. Every woman had a similar story, really, a similar reason for doing what she did: everyone needed a job, couldn’t find one, wouldn’t get hired, and had babies/siblings/parents at home to feed. Some spoke of their work openly, knowing that what they do is not spectacular, but it is a way to make a living, the only way they can. Others, were deeply troubled and shamed for turning to this kind of work. Everyone liked their clients, had their regulars, but there was a great diversity of who was better. some disliked tajiks for the rough ways, others spoke of them as gentle and tender and attentive (I’m sure these are details no one really wants to read about J ) many had men, pimps, that they worked for. Maybe not directly, but somehow they were sharing their profits with some dudes that were finding them clients or acting as their bodyguards. It really bothered me how everyone talked about these guys: there is no other way, it is totally normal that I am paying him half of what I get, and after all he is a nice guy, really nice guy. Why? I don’t know. Some of the stories I heard are completely messed up, of women being raped, kept prisoner, or tricked and coaxed into becoming sex workers. All of these have been tajik men, which makes me sort of dislike them a whole lot.
There is a general sense of dislike of tajiks in Moscow. Here, they are migrant workers, ‘gastarbeiters’ as they use the german word, and people ignore them, make fun of them, and think they are dirty. Kind of like Mexicans in lawn services and in kitchens. What bothers me is that listening to these ladies, seeing creepy tajik men squat on trains (no one squats on trains, that is not considered proper), having them stare at you and try to talk to you in the poorest Russian grammar ever, makes me dislike tajik men as well. not as people, of course, but you slowly start wondering where the line from dislike and creeped out feeling becomes more, becomes ethnic dislike. Maybe I’m just tired of dysfunctional work. Trying to make plans with tajiks is ridiculous and takes 10 min. instead of just telling you what they want and where and when they are going ot meet you, you end up answering all kinds of questions like: “how are things there?” (where is there, I’m not in Chicago, I’m in Moscow) and fishing for clues because ‘we’ve got, you know, there, well, later’ is in no way a descriptive complete sentence. Added is the fact that even after living in Russia for several years, no one seems to grasp the concept of adjective endings appropriate to gender of the noun, or that tenses in verbs are actually useful in making things more understandable, and I get completely and totally frustrated talking to my own team. For no reason, I know. But I lack patience, I think. Now I’m angry again L….i’m going to drink my second cup of coffee and stare out the window, it’s raining cats and dogs in Moscow, literally, since the stray dogs are all wet.
I wanted to write about my interviews. There have been some great ones that stand out in my mind, there have been the ones when I felt like I was pulling teeth, each word being a struggle. Every woman had a similar story, really, a similar reason for doing what she did: everyone needed a job, couldn’t find one, wouldn’t get hired, and had babies/siblings/parents at home to feed. Some spoke of their work openly, knowing that what they do is not spectacular, but it is a way to make a living, the only way they can. Others, were deeply troubled and shamed for turning to this kind of work. Everyone liked their clients, had their regulars, but there was a great diversity of who was better. some disliked tajiks for the rough ways, others spoke of them as gentle and tender and attentive (I’m sure these are details no one really wants to read about J ) many had men, pimps, that they worked for. Maybe not directly, but somehow they were sharing their profits with some dudes that were finding them clients or acting as their bodyguards. It really bothered me how everyone talked about these guys: there is no other way, it is totally normal that I am paying him half of what I get, and after all he is a nice guy, really nice guy. Why? I don’t know. Some of the stories I heard are completely messed up, of women being raped, kept prisoner, or tricked and coaxed into becoming sex workers. All of these have been tajik men, which makes me sort of dislike them a whole lot.
There is a general sense of dislike of tajiks in Moscow. Here, they are migrant workers, ‘gastarbeiters’ as they use the german word, and people ignore them, make fun of them, and think they are dirty. Kind of like Mexicans in lawn services and in kitchens. What bothers me is that listening to these ladies, seeing creepy tajik men squat on trains (no one squats on trains, that is not considered proper), having them stare at you and try to talk to you in the poorest Russian grammar ever, makes me dislike tajik men as well. not as people, of course, but you slowly start wondering where the line from dislike and creeped out feeling becomes more, becomes ethnic dislike. Maybe I’m just tired of dysfunctional work. Trying to make plans with tajiks is ridiculous and takes 10 min. instead of just telling you what they want and where and when they are going ot meet you, you end up answering all kinds of questions like: “how are things there?” (where is there, I’m not in Chicago, I’m in Moscow) and fishing for clues because ‘we’ve got, you know, there, well, later’ is in no way a descriptive complete sentence. Added is the fact that even after living in Russia for several years, no one seems to grasp the concept of adjective endings appropriate to gender of the noun, or that tenses in verbs are actually useful in making things more understandable, and I get completely and totally frustrated talking to my own team. For no reason, I know. But I lack patience, I think. Now I’m angry again L….i’m going to drink my second cup of coffee and stare out the window, it’s raining cats and dogs in Moscow, literally, since the stray dogs are all wet.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)