Welcome To Russia Part II

Posted in Rodger's Russia Book | Posted by rodger |

rings

For the past 10 years, I have been living a few months each year in Russia. During that time I have seen vast changes in the county and have come to know it as few Americans ever will.

The important thing about this book is what I didn’t do and what I am not. I didn’t go to Russia as a journalist or diplomat didn’t live in fancy apartment, and I am not a tourist. My wife is a Russian and I had other friends who had married Russian women. I have lived in big places like Moscow and Tver, but spend most of my time out in a village in the south of Russia, a thousand miles from Moscow, a hundred miles from civilization, and about as far away from America as you can get without riding a camel.

It is important to know that there are several Russias. You are probably most familiar with the Moscow version of Russia. It’s home to more billionaires than any other city in the world, and about the second most expensive city in the world to live in. It is the “Land of Mink and Mercedes”. Most of my letters were written from the other Russia, the “Land of the Cotton Dress and The Lada.”

When you see a news broadcast showing families running from the terrorist attacks by piling their belongings on the family tractor and hitting the road, or when you see pictures of old women in faded cotton dresses and head scarves sitting in front of decrepit rural houses judging the world, you are looking at my Russia.

That real Russia has a much in common with Moscow as Rwanda has in common with New York City. Not that I haven’t written about Moscow. Like most people, I went there first – and Russians are about the same everywhere.

Before we start, I should introduce you to the cast of characters that you’ll be meeting.

I’m Rodger Olsen. When I started these letters, I was in my late fifties, and had just achieved the middle aged man’s mid life crisis dream. I had married a beautiful, intelligent Russian woman who was over twenty years younger than me. Now, any psychologist worth his degree can tell you that this is a dream that normally turns into frightening nightmare, and having been a psychologist before I turned honest, I was very aware of that.

However, I had been divorced twice and had given up on dating American women. I met enough on them on the internet, but while the women’s ads varied in wording, the typical ad from an American woman really read “Be Zorro. Carry me away on your white horse, or the back of your Harley. Make every day exciting for me. Be responsible for my every mood. Spend every night walking in the moonlight. Be my best girl friend. Oh, and make me laugh! And, remember that I’m not ‘that’ type of girl.”

That was a problem for me. While I look like Rodney Dangerfeld, I really wasn’t looking for full time job as a comedian, and I liked “that” type of girl. During the last date I had with an American woman, she spent the entire evening explaining how all of the evil in the world was because of men being too “manly” and not appreciating “real values”. When she invited me in at the end of the evening, I declined. I told her it wasn’t right for her to sleep with the enemy.

The last one before that spent a big part of the evening explaining what kind of man she wanted. She wanted someone to share his feelings, be her best friend, share her love of antiquing, and, of course, make her laugh. At the end of the evening I told her, ‘Sandy, we’re both looking for the same thing, a good woman. I you find one you don’t need, send her my way.” and I quit dating.

Then I discovered Russian women. It was my first experience with Russian culture that wasn’t scripted by Warner Brothers, and it was an eye opener. Where American women demanded “make me laugh”, Russian women asked “Where would we live?” Where American women demanded that I make their life endlessly exciting, Russian women asked if I could support a wife. American woman asked about vacations, fine dining, adventure and walking hand in hand on the beach. Russian women asked about children.

They weren’t less romantic, but they seemed to live in the real world. I liked that.

There are two differences that were most important. None of the women that I corresponded with hated men or were ashamed of being women. They were proud of their cooking skills and expected the men to fish, work, repair the car, and protect them. Antiquing was never mentioned.

They second thing was the absence of the “desperate man” game. American women constantly label any man dumb enough to say that we wants to get married or settle down as “a weak, desperate loser” and they’ll have nothing to do with them. Then they complain to their girl friends that their boy friends are players who won’t propose.

Russian women were dating for a purpose and were not at all shy about saying they wanted wifehood, motherhood, and a home. I liked that too.

Nothing worked out for a while because Moscow is a long way to go for a first date, but then I got a letter from Larisa, who became the second major character in this book. The letter pretty much said, ‘I am a beautiful young Russian doctor in the US doing research and you remind me of someone I used to have a crush on. Wanna get married?” (Larisa will kill me when she reads that, but that’s the way I remember it.)

At first I took it for a joke. I’ve had male friends who dated much younger women. They are the ones who come in to the office Monday morning complaining that their crazy date threw up on their couch, wrecked their car, and spent the evening whining about their old boy friends. It’s always a disaster.

But, Larisa was cute, seemed to be intelligent, and courtesy required that I at least see her once – just to be courteous of course. Surprisingly, we sorta clicked. She convinced me that she had always planned to marry an older man (not this much older) because all of the young men she knew in Russia were drunk, abusive, and poor providers. The only really happy marriages that she saw, she said, were her girl friends who married older men who had settled down.

Of course, anything said by a woman beautiful enough to be in Playboy is obviously true. Larisa and her friends are typical Russian women. Of course, there is always a lot of variation between individuals, but typical Russian women treat a man with respect, at least in public. They are proud of looking like woman, and don’t cut their hair off, lose their makeup kits, and suddenly discover the comfort of wearing sneakers and jeans 365 days a year the day that they get married. They even cook and most are proud of being mothers, not embarrassed about it.

I should, however, take a moment to defuse all those great fantasies that you men are having out there. Russian women are not just cute little sex kittens. Russian women have been faced with generations of Russian men who are mostly too drunk to get much done, so, despite being respectful to their spouses, they have had to learn to get most things done on their own and to make many more independent decisions than American women. The saying is Russia is “The man is the Head of the house, but the woman is the Neck and she points the head at what she wants it to see.”

Getting a Russian woman to do what you want requires that you speak in a clear, authoritative tone, and then when that fails, a baseball bat and choke chain are recommended. These are stubborn women.

I married mine in November 2001. It has been a normal marriage with the normal problems. We have fought, made up, split up, and gotten back together. The age difference did cause problems, particularly when we were unable to have a child. However, we have now been married ten years. We have a beautiful three year old daughter, live part time in Russia, and I have been introduced to a fascinating county.

The last leading character is Elvira. She is Larisa’s mother. I refer to her as “Elvira”, “Mama”, “Baba” or “Your crazy mother”, depending on the context and my mood. She is only about two years older than me and must have been very upset when her daughter married me. She is very typical of her generation. She is peasant through and through. If her grandmother didn’t do it, eat it, or own, it, it must be evil. When I met her she hated food preservatives, junk food, modern appliances, all lazy people poorer than herself, all greedy people richer than her, and most men. Aside from her microwave, she still feels the same way.

I have, however, gotten a lot of respect for her good features. She is a survivor who has lived through poverty, political turmoil, and the loss of a couple of husbands. She retired from a job as a kindergarten teacher and has worked as an ice cream vendor, home care worker, and bootlegger to support Larisa. She is a very typical pig headed Russian peasant and I have been happy to have her for a mother in law.

In 2003, Larisa and I made my first trip to Russia. Larisa only had two weeks of vacation available so we decided to go only as far as Moscow. Her home town was over a thousand miles south, but we didn’t have time for a train ride there and back and neither of us wanted to fly south. It was less than ten years after the fall of the Soviet Union and due to inebriated pilots and poor maintenance Russian planes were falling from the sky with depressing regularity.

Larisa’s mother had an aunt in Moscow that she could stay with until we could meet her there, so we arranged to meet and stay in Moscow.

March 20, 2003 First Time in Moscow

Posted in Rodger's Russia Book | Posted by rodger |

 

Well, I am in Moscow. I would have phoned someone to let people know that we are alright, but the concept of pay phone is strange here. You have to get tokens from the post office to use in the pay phones. No token, no phone call.

It was a lot easier than I expected. I’m a child of the cold war and I’ve heard horror stories all my life about how hard it was to get into Russia. The few people I knew who had been here had tales of searched baggage, intense questioning and KGB suspicions. What happened was that I got my baggage from the carousel, and then stood in line for an hour waiting for a bored border guard to ask if I was here for business or pleasure. I said “family”, he stamped my passport and said “Next”. That’s it. Guess the war is over.

As you know, we are here to see meet Larisa’s mother and to visit Leo Frankowski, a close friend of mine who moved to Russia about two years ago. Larisa’s aunt lives here in Moscow and has rented her neighbors apartment for us to stay in while we are here.

We are not in that original apartment. Larisa’s aunt arranged for us to use a vacant apartment next to hers, but it was not exactly vacant. It was more like abandoned with a fungus infected couch/bed (divan in Russian) left behind. It was a disaster.

The apartment was typical for a communist era apartment. It had one large room walled tastefully with poorly patched plaster of various colors, a separate four foot wide kitchen with a broken two burner stove, and the pervasive smell of moldy furniture. As it had only one main room, there was, of course, only one electrical outlet. They must sell a LOT of extension cords in Russia.

We spent one day looking for a hotel before we gave up. I don’t know if it is because capitalism is new here in Russia, or if Russians have always been crooked, but we were conned (“Just pay us the money and THEN we let you see the room – don’t worry it looks just like this picture that I showed you.”), lied to (“Oh, no, We couldn’t have said $60 a day on the phone. The rooms here rent for $100.”), and disgusted (“You must understand, sir, that all Russian beds are that small, and peeling paint is considered quite fashionable this year.”)

I also found out that in a large Russian hotel, each floor is a separate hotel, with separate managers, reservations, and prices. If the hotel on the sixth floor doesn’t have what you want, you can try the separate but identical hotel on the seventh. Does everyone know how to say “wasteful overhead”?

The second day, we got a call from Larisa’s friend. Her parents live in a nice apartment (by Russian standards) in the middle of Moscow and they own a Dacha. They were willing to go their Dacha and let us use their apartment for $400 for two weeks. I feel rather strange about this, but we are living in someone else’s apartment – using their dishes and towels and telephone. Apparently this is not an uncommon arrangement in Russia.

This apartment is small, but nice even by New York or Chicago standards. It has a washing machine in the bathroom, oak floors, a cable box that doesn’t work, and a telephone that only makes local calls, but it is very nice as the owner has done a lot of work on it.

My wife has been having a great time. After feeling helpless for so long in the states, she is now the organizer, interpreter and leader, and she loves it. She gets our cabs and leads us through metro stations with the confidence of a Moscow native. It is nice to see her feel confident.

I would have a tough time getting a cab here. Many people who have cars pick up people on the side of the road and sell them a ride. It is so common, the Larisa has never taken more than a minute or two to wave someone down. You stand in the street and hold your hand up and in a few seconds, a car will stop, and a stranger will offer you a ride – for a price. The costs are usually cheap and there is some sort of unwritten fare schedule that everyone seems to know. Our most expensive ride was from the old apartment in the suburbs to the new apartment in the center of Moscow. It cost $10 in a real, licensed cab. Still no meter, still a negotiated flat price, but a real cab. Problem for me is that EVERY ride has to be negotiated and my Russian is still pretty much limited to “Ya nee ponymyoo” (I don’t understand).

Sadly, the old Moscow is almost gone. There are still thousands of communist era apartment blocks (HUGE, gray and badly built.), but we did our shopping tonight in a Supermarket a block away (the Russians call it a “Supermarket”). When we stopped for a snack at a kiosk near the metro station we were offered our choice of the traditional Russian snacks – hot dog, chili dog, hamburger, cheeseburger, or pizza – washed down by those traditional Russian delights – Pepsi, Pepsi light, coke, coke light, or Mountain Dew.

The most common legacy of the communist era is in the faces of the people. I have seen a thousand Russians on the street and in the metro and have not seen one smile. Every single one looks like a man who has just been told his dog died.

A part of it is culture, but I suspect that part of it is simple reaction to reality. Today in the Metro, I sat across from a woman who appeared to be in her 70s. I realized that in the years since the 1930s she has seen turmoil, hunger, and war. She probably saw the last part of Stalin’s reign, may have been here during the years that the Germans were at the gates of Moscow, and she has seen the years of food shortage in the 40’s and again in the 70s. In 1989 she had to worry about freezing when the Russian government said that there was not enough heating oil to keep Moscow warm in worst part of the winter. Then she saw her pension made worthless by inflation and realized that she had been cheated out a lifetime of promises for security. It’s no wonder that there was sadness in her wrinkled and worn face.

However, the young people can make money – and a lot of it – and they are still wearing expressions that are just as sad.

Not all Russians are as sour in private. Larisa’s uncle Slav reminds me of my father and uncles. He drinks too much and is a happy inebriate who tells broad jokes, proposes too many toasts and can even make jokes with a man with whom he shares not a word of language.

March 26, 2003 I Go Solo

Posted in Rodger's Russia Book | Posted by rodger |

 

Hey, I made it all the way to the post office/internet station all by myself. Larisa and her mother are at a government office trying to get permission to bring a couple of Larisa’s paintings back to the states and I am alone in Moscow.

I can get around alright, but I am going to starve to death. I can’t read a restaurant menu.

I learned the Russian word for “that”, “eto” and have been feeding myself with that one word, and a finger. The most common form of business here is a Kiosk. It’s a glass prison on the sidewalk with a small window through which you shout your order to a surly clerk who throws your merchandise back through the same tiny window. I eat by pointing to food and saying “eto”. If I want two of them, I say “eto, eto”. Russians have no sense of humor, but most eventually and grudgingly give me what I want.

I don’t know what the Russian for “Pedestrian” is, but it must be the same word as “Target”. In Russian, cars rule the road, and drivers drive without any attention to whether or not there is a person on the road. This is apparently because during socialism only important people had cars, and they didn’t care if the poor failed to get out of the way.

Larisa tells me that if a driver hits a pedestrian, they might sue the pedestrian for damage to their car. I thought she was kidding until some jackass actually nudged me with his bumper when I didn’t get out of the way fast enough.

I have always resented those stupid movie scenes where our hero drives at high speed down sidewalks and side roads and through intersections scattering pedestrians left and right. My internal censor keeps saying “You can’t do that”. Guess what. That’s how they drive every day in Moscow.

Lane spacing is also as free form as English spelling was before dictionaries. On the same street you have 2, 3 or 3.5 (half street, half curb) lanes over a few blocks. One of our drivers gestured to the surface of the street and told us that there used to be white lines on the pavement, but everyone was happy when they wore off because they got in the way of good, creative driving.

Our apartment is on a main street near downtown Moscow. Yesterday morning I had to jump back into the doorway, because someone had decided that the sidewalk was wide enough to drive on. Parking is also free form. People park on the left side, right side, or sidewalk. They park parallel or nose in or slanted or, in a few cases, in the middle of the street as the mood dictates.

I decided not to rent a car.

March 27, 2003 Tver, the City of Beautiful Women

Posted in Rodger's Russia Book | Posted by rodger |

We are in Tver. Leo and Marina came up to Moscow for two days and we returned to Tver with them yesterday. We are returning to Moscow in a few hours. There is a commuter train from here to Moscow that costs about $1.50 for the two and a half-hour trip – or more accurately – WOULD cost $1.50 if they had not canceled 4 of the 8 scheduled trains. This means that the few trains still running are not at the times we need and will be standing room only. Russians will sell a ticket for train where you have to stand up for 3 hours – no problem. When Larisa asked the “nice woman” behind the counter if the trains were running, she said “I can’t be bothered with all this crap, look at the damned board!” No wonder they’re all pissed off all of the time.

In a few hours we will be picked up by the driver that we hired and be taken on the three hour trip for 1000 rubles – about $30.00

Tver is very different from Moscow. Out here people claim that Russia plans to put an Embassy in Moscow so that they will have embassies in all nearby foreign countries.

Prices are about half of Moscow prices, and we are staying in luxurious three room suite for $80 a night. It has a large bedroom, a dining room complete with luxury furniture, and a living room. I would have booked a smaller room, but in Moscow any room under $120 is a pigsty. I thought that we were taking a chance on even booking an 80-dollar hotel.

This is medium sized college town. It has a concert hall, movie theater, library, and several universities, but it still looks like Tijuana. Leo says that the city is improving at an astonishing rate, but the pavements are still dirty and cracked and up close the buildings are in bad need of paint and plaster. Beautiful buildings but…. Apparently there was no money for maintenance during the last ten or fifteen years of communist rule and the buildings show it.

The old “who gives a damn” attitude still rules most common Russians. They put a brand new entry door in Leo’s apartment building a few weeks ago. A few days later someone ripped up the padding on the inside of the door. It’s like a world populated by juvenile delinquents who never pick up after themselves.

Tver has central heat like Moscow. I learned how they regulate the utility usage. If your block uses too much hot water, the central station cuts you off without warning – for a few hours or days or a week. When we got up this morning, we found out why our luxury suite had very nice electric heaters in every room.

On the other hand, I treated Leo and Marina to breakfast in the hotel restaurant. We had several small cheese and ham sandwiches (Russians call it “butter bread”), sausage, Lox, some caviar on toast, tea, coffee, pastries – and a bill for $4.00

There are several dating agencies in town, including the one that introduced Leo to Marina. The local legend says that they are here because of Tver’s second name, “The City of Beautiful Women”. It was so known, it is said, because the major industry even before socialism was cloth manufacturing. The industry attracted thousands of young country girls into town to work the looms, resulting in a century long surplus of women. I don’t know about the truth of the legend, but there is enough pulchritude in town to get a married man in trouble just for looking.

 

March 27, 2003 Evening in Moscow

Posted in Rodger's Russia Book | Posted by rodger |

It was worth the money for hotel and cab just for the ride through the countryside.

There are thousands of little houses beside the road. They are old, small and mostly falling down. It seems that Stalin’s dream and promise was a house for every man. They built thousands and thousands of houses. Of course, the houses could not be very large (some are about 12 by 20 feet) and not everyone could have luxuries like plumbing and electricity, but after 90 years, many or even most, are still standing. The residents paint them bright green and put gingerbread molding and bright colored shutters on the windows. Going inside is like stepping into a time machine and getting out in 1910. Most of the walls are covered with Victorian wallpaper, there are wood or coal stoves in the middle of the floor, and the one that I was in had a pressed tin ceiling in the living room – last seen in here in 1918 Indiana.

Most have not been maintained for 90 years and are in terrible shape – some are missing parts of the roofs – but at one time the road to Tver must have looked like a Disney movie set.

But, Russia is changing. Behind the picturesque shacks, modern commuter suburbs are going up. Some homes are as nice as, or nicer than, anything in California. Over the 250 kilometers between Tver and Moscow, I counted at least 20 modern gas stations being built – and two actually working. We stopped for lunch and bathroom at a busy McDonald’s. It seems that the age of the car is about to come into Russia.

  

March 28, 2003 Wednesday Night

Posted in Rodger's Russia Book | Posted by rodger |

Today I saw the other Moscow – or maybe the other Russia.

After I left the Internet office, I took a stroll down the main drag of downtown. It was like New York – not the New York that we have now – the New York before it turned into a dirty welfare town. Not every young woman wore short skirts. Some wore skirts with slits up to the waist. Some wore belts that doubled as skirts. A few spoilsports even wore slacks. High fashion, Mercedes, and money were everywhere. There are stores with English signs and European products and everywhere the hustle and bustle of money being made and spent. No parking on the sidewalk here – selling yes – parking no. These people are making as much in a day as Larisas’s friends are making in a month – and spending it fast.

There are a lot of underground passages in Moscow. The downtown streets are at least 8 lanes wide and impossible to cross on the surface, so they have tunnels under the streets and between the Metro stations. There are a lot of tunnels and every one is lined with mini-stores.

They close in a section of wall less than 5 feet deep and about 10 feet wide with aluminum windows and a door with a selling window in it. They sell music, nylons, makeup, cigarettes, office supplies, perfumes, eyeglasses, beer, and clothing – from a space where the proprietor literally has to step outside to turn around. These are the people that are building the new homes on the road to Tver and driving to work in their new cars. I understand now why the rest of Russia feels that Moscow is a foreign place. I wonder how long the two Russias can coexist. There must be tremendous tension building up.

We had one of Larisas’ old friends over for dinner tonight. She‘s a doctor working in a lab, and she makes $200 a month. Her husband is a computer engineer working at the Cosmos Hotel for about $350 a month. She is unhappy that her sister makes $1000 a month as a hairdresser. Even the nurses take tips for “special services” – like having your blood test ordered on time -and make more money that a doctor

We talked for quite a while about why doctors are paid so little and why she didn’t quit and find a job that makes more money. It comes down to two things. Old communist jobs are paid nothing. That includes doctors because they are paid by the state, and the other factor is that doctors don’t see a choice.

One of the major remnants of communism is an attitude that nothing can get better and a firm belief that $200 a month for life is better than $1000 a month for as long as your job lasts. Leo says that there are people working in government paid positions for as little as $35 a month – while their neighbors buy BMWs. This can’t go on forever.

I can’t wait to see if prosperity or despair wins the day. Today we are going to see more of Larisa’s friends. She loves to see them, cries inconsolably when they part, and needs lots of ice cream to make her smile again. Thankfully, Baskin Robins has also invaded Russia. We have one a block from the apartment. Tonight, the Russian Circus. We are leaving in two days and this is the first tourist thing that I will have seen.

March 30, 2003 Time To Go Home & Love Russian style

Posted in Rodger's Russia Book | Posted by rodger |

 

It’s our last day in Moscow. Strangely, I will miss this place a little, but only a little.

Yesterday, I saw a fairy tale, Russian version.

Nakita loves Nadia. Nadia loves Nakita, but will not marry him. Nadia is Leo’s interpreter. She is 24 years old and cute. She works as an English Instructor for the college at $35 a month and works for Leo as an interpreter for $2 an hour. She was born, grew up in, and lives in Tver. Nakita is her boyfriend and my new partner in Russian Programming Connection.

Nakita is about 25, blondish, dressed in the latest fashions, sharp as Hell and Leo’s best friend over the last two years. He works in Moscow programming UNIX shells for Sun Microsystems, and he is a real go getter. I just spent two hours discussing business, religion, and philosophy with him. I can see why Leo likes him. He was born in, grew up in, and fled from Tver.

Nadia will not marry Nakita because her parents don’t think that he is proper man. Nadia’s parents are of the old school. They worked for the state, believe in service to the state, expect nothing, got nothing. They are Old Russian. They don’t like people who want success and money and good jobs. They don’t like Nakita because he is ambitious and hard working. Nakita even has a cell phone. The 10 dollars a month that Nakita spends for the cell phone separates him from Nadia’s parents. They live in one world, he in the other.

Tomorrow he will ask Nadia to move to Moscow with him. I don’t think he has a prayer, but I hope for him. Nowhere have a seen a clearer example of the difference between old and new Russia. Can you imagine any American parent saying “You cannot marry that man! He wants to make a good living! He even wants to be successful!!!!” It’s a Russian fairly tale. I can’t wait to see how it ends.

I want to take some pictures of the old apartment buildings here. There is no other way that you will believe what they are like. Bill, my son in law, would love the wiring here. In the older buildings, the fuse boxes have no surface plates. When you open the outer box, the wires are all exposed – and the fuse boxes are at waist height and never locked. Sometimes they have no doors on the fuse boxes or no boxes on the fuse panel – and the wires are still exposed. They have 220 volt 60 cycle current running through wires exposed to the air.

It’s nice that there is only one set of mains in each apartment staircase. They are in large cabinets in the hallway just inside the main door. The also have no surface plates, and are NEVER locked. Here we have 440 volt current waiting to entertain the children. Of course we add to that the octopus wiring at every outlet (ok, for a three room apartment “both outlets”) and we have one of those old public service advertisements about bad wiring. I suppose that it is an effective Darwinian control mechanism.

It almost makes you nostalgic for government control.

After a while you can even almost get nostalgic for lawyers. Leo went to the bathroom at the circus a few months ago. As he entered the dark stall, his foot went into a foot deep hole with a pipe sticking up from the bottom. He was hurt rather badly. The lawyer, when he could find one, said something like “Well, you should watch where you are going – even in the dark.” The hole in the floor is still there, still in the dark, and presumably still hurting people. No one can get rich by spilling McDonalds coffee on himself in this country. O.k,. so you really can’t get nostalgic about lawyers, but almost.

I am looking forward to getting home. I want my car back, English speaking TV, my cable box, and real salad. They don’t eat lettuce in Russia. What they call a salad is anything like fish or beets or beans mixed with lots of mayonnaise. A salad bar is 14 kinds of unrecognizable stuff in mayonnaise.

April 2, 2003 Back Home

Posted in Rodger's Russia Book | Posted by rodger |

 

Even though I am home now and can call on the phone, I wanted to get down on paper (at least electronic paper) my last thoughts on Moscow before I forget them.

It is a place much more cosmopolitan in some ways than it is here. Here in Lake Elsinore, there is no 24 hour drug store- the nearest one is in Temecula. Vons and Albertsons are back to closing at midnight – after that, you only have a few circle K’s open. The most common sign I saw in Moscow was “24 YACA” – Meaning “24 hours”. Many drug stores, all supermarkets, a small store on about every block, the casinos, and even a few Kiosks run 24 hours a day. Did I mention Casinos? Lots of them. Only slot machines, but a lot of them. In shops on the street corners, down town, in the train stations, lots of Slot Shops. No one seems to know that gambling is “morally reprehensible, breeds crime, and is a blight on society”. So it isn’t.

On the other hand, you can’t buy packing tape or get a key made unless you know where to go. The supermarkets are better than they used to be, but the stores are very specialized. When we needed packing tape for a painting that Larisa bought, I couldn’t find it anywhere. We finally borrowed a few feet of tape from our landlord, but I have no idea where he got it- by the way, plastic tape of all sorts is called “Scotch” in Russia – talk about the power of American Advertising.

I got a chance to chat with the driver who took us back to the airport. He was a man of about 30. I had been noticing that about a quarter of the billboards and other advertising were in the Latin alphabet – and many of them were in English. I asked him if most people could now read the Latin alphabet. He said, “Da” and read a few of the signs hat we passed. He said that many Russians are worried about the “Americanization of Russia.” They think of all foreign products – even Sony and Pokemon – as “American”. This has caused the usual division between old and young people. Old people still detest the western influence. Young people want to be western. You hear more American music than Russian and even rap is popular with the young. They buy magazines about American movie stars, American music, and Harleys. Every news stand has copies of “Cosmopolitan” and “Playboy” and “BAM” and dozens of other American magazines with the cover in English and the text inside in Russian.

It reminds of the Rock and Roll controversies when I was young. I was too tactful to mention that that was how we won the cold war. One of the most popular shows on Russian TV is about three Russian policemen stationed in Las Vegas and catching bad Russians doing nasty things there.

Maybe that’s why the fanciest casino downtown is called “Super Slots” (ok, they spell it “Cynep Clotc” – but you pronounce it “Super Slots”)

Russian TV is pretty good – if you speak Russian. You get seven channels in Moscow without cable. Unfortunately there isn’t a single caption or any programming in English. What the Russians do is up to American standards of TV production, but about 1/3 or all programming is from the US – mostly our old cop shows. The Russian idea of dubbing is to turn down the sound on the original tape (but leave the sound there) and a couple of Russian speakers speak over the English during the show. I even saw one program where one Russian speaker spoke all of the parts – men, women, boys, girls, all in the same bored monotone. Larisa believes that sooner or later everyone will understand English from subliminal learning – because so much of their TV is simultaneous English/Russian and you can almost make out the English in the background.

I did see one news program that I think I understood in spite of no translations. A news program showed a gasoline pipeline that runs through a large open field or park that we had passed a few days before. With good old Russian engineering principles, they had not buried the pipe. It was suspended on rusted supports about 3 feet off of the ground. The segment began with a pan of the pipe and then focused on a leaking joint. The picture then panned back to show two Russian women with jars, pails, and buckets, collecting the leaking gasoline. Then it panned back further to show that the women had set up a very professional gas price sign next to the road.

They interviewed several people who were walking past or purchasing gas. I couldn’t understand the Russian, but it was obvious that they were asking people if it was wrong to sell or buy stolen gas, and the people were all shrugging their shoulders and looking confused. The last segment was an interview that I could not understand with an official at the police department. He looked both confused and concerned, but I will never know what happened to the resourceful old ladies

Good old rugged capitalism and communist “ethics” seem to work well together in Russia. Still good to be home. I actually drove to the store today surrounded by drivers who drove only on the road, avoided the sidewalks, and drove mostly between these wonderful white lines that they have on American roads.

June 17, 2004 Back in Russia

Posted in Rodger's Russia Book | Posted by rodger |

 

On this trip, I are in my wife’s home town, Prochlodney. It is in southern RuSDC10303ssia, about 75 miles from the Chechnya border. She had described her home as being in a “village” so I was surprised to find a small city of perhaps 100,000 inhabitants. However, each of the suburbs is a lot like a small old village, and we are actually in a small village called Premalka which means “by the river Malka”

Easy test #1.

Given the following facts.

  1. The light switches on Russian bathrooms and toilets are on the outside of the room.
  2. Most Russian bathroom doors do not have handles. They have a sliding lock of each side of the door.
  3. The lock on the outside keeps the door closed normally. When you are inside, a different slider keeps it closed while you are using it.

What, therefore, it the favorite game to play when your little sister or brother is sitting on the toilet? Anyone miss this one?

Things have changed a lot in the time I was gone. The most noticeable change is in the stores. In old Russia, everyone in retail business was a full time, professional, practiced jackass. This was because of the way retail business ran. There was lots of worthless money around, but nothing to buy with it. If your store had any product, people would line up and beg for it. On the other hand, as a clerk, you could not be fired, and could not get a raise. Outside of the store, your life was a miserable drunken tapestry of standing in line in other stores to get stuff from other surly clerks. So the only fun you had, the only self satisfaction you had, was to be a surly jackass to everyone who came it. It was petty, but it was the best thing you had going.

Half of the stores and businesses still run that way. At a kiosk near our apartment, I yelled through the tiny window for chips and pointed at the plain Lays chips in the window. The clerk threw a bag of barbecue chips though the window and banged on the counter for her money. She was very angry when I would not take the chips that I hated and said sarcastic things that I am rather glad to be unable to translate.

On the other hand, a wise and now prosperous Chechnyan has made a deal with the city to put convenience stores at several of the bus stops. He builds a nice brick awning for the passengers to wait under, and a small brick store at each busy stop. The stores are like tiny, tiny 7-11s. You walk inside instead of yelling through a window and the clerk behind the counter does her smiling best to get you what you want. When the clerk at the local store found out that there was an American coke drinker living nearby, she even ordered extra diet coke for the shelves.

The place is busy. The nearby kiosk is not. (later note: the kiosk closed before I left Prochlodney a month later and the nasty clerk probably still can’t figure out why she lost her job.)

However, my letters have gotten longer in part because there is NOTHING ELSE TO DO in Prochlodney. I am in the middle of damned near nowhere. I now understand why my mother in law goes to the bazaar every day. I thought it was just because Russians have always done that. With little or no refrigeration in the old days and small spaces to store stuff in, women here have always shopped often. Now I think it is because the bazaar is the major entertainment in town. I have started to find excuses to go haggle about the price of apples!

Anyway, feel free to put off reading this letter until you have a lot of free time – or just delete it. I have had too much time to write letters.

I have been working hard at understanding the one major question that fascinated me before I got here. In the former Soviet block, the average income per person is only $200 per month. Here in the outlands, the average is about half of that. The question is “How do they do that?” How do you live with two children and less than $400 per month – a lot less if you are a doctor.

In my mind, this is compounded by the “Victor” problem. My new uncle Victor is one of that last (I hope) living and breathing communists. He misses Stalin and loudly claims “Stalin would know how to handle the damned Chechens! We never had problems when he was alive!” He is intelligent, competent, capable, and likable. However, Victor has two hobbies – drinking and not working. Fortunately, he is often able to combine his two hobbies into a single activity. He brags to me that he gets 50 days of vacation every year and that, as a rentgonologist (x-ray reader), his bosses can’t make him work more than 5 hours a day. This leaves considerable time for his hobbies. His ability to get by without working is his proudest accomplishment, and he still longs for “good old Stalin. He knew how to get things done!”

Turns out that Victor is not typical here – and people do get by.

Part of it is that some expenses are simply lower here. Local phone service is free, utilities are a fifth of the cost in the states, and medical insurance (but not drugs) is free to everyone. Some of the major things that Americans sweat over simply are not a problem.

When you hire a service like a taxi or a plumber, he makes the same lousy money that you do. I just hired a man to install a new water heater in this apartment. The installation will cost me 100 rubles – $3.15 – for a job that took almost two hours.

However, clothes, food and imported anything costs the same here as in the US, and even if your house, utilities and medical insurance were free, you would have a hard time making it on less than $400 a month.

Add in to the equation that the percentage of home ownership here in Prochlodney is at least as high as in Orange County – and if you only count those that actually own their own home as apposed to those who are purchasing with a mortgage, the percentage is astronomically higher. Remember that there are no mortgages. “Own” in Russia really means “Own”.

Turns out that in this part of rural Russia, people here have a tradition of getting by that has done them well for a long time.

First, home ownership. If you lived in an apartment or a home on a collective in 1992, you hit the home ownership lottery. The state deeded the apartments to the current residents and the homes on the collectives went to the members of the collective. They were usually lousy homes and apartments, but they were yours free and clear.

In this area, many people already owned homes. Larisa’s parents built their first home when she was a little girl. In the Soviet Union, laws on property ownership varied from place to place. In this republic, you can’t own farm land, but you have always been able to own, buy, and sell the ground your home stands on or the apartment you live in.

The land itself was usually free. The local collective built houses on the edge of the farm toward the town. The land in the town was owned by the city. By some process no westerner will ever understand, you could (and still can) get the city to give you a building lot for free. The building lots in private hands are also damned cheap because you have to buy all land with cash and those free lots keep prices down.

People like Larisa’s parents and Era and Uri (her sister and brother in law), then build their own homes – cheap. The foundations are clay and concrete block – produced locally. Concrete blocks and oversized bricks are made with local materials by workers who get the usual lousy $200 month pay and cost about one cent apiece. Walls are built of brick or block and the ceiling is clay, cement, and lattice work. The blocks are denser and better looking than American concrete blocks. They have more of the look of bricks. The walls, as in all of Russia are thick masonry.SDC10296

To make a ceiling, you put up a latticework of cheap, poorly trimmed stringers, supported by boards propped up on the floor below. You then lay clay on top of them; add a layer of concrete, and then more clay. No expensive fiberglass insulation – just cheap and solid clay and concrete.

The 18’ thick outside walls and the underside of the ceiling are finished with a layer of troweled concrete (or plaster if you can afford it) and wallpaper. No sheathing, insulation, plastic vapor barrier, or wallboard, just 18 inches of solid brick. Come the nuclear winter, or even the Russian winter, these walls will still be here.

Inside, the walls are one block or brick width of masonry.

Warm, safe, strong, and the only thing besides cockroaches likely to survive a nuclear war.

The roofs are fascinating. The older buildings in Prochlodney have red tile roofs just like southern California homes. They call the tiles “cherry pits” around here. However, the newer buildings have roofs that look like a dark grey version of that wavy plastic sheeting that we use for patio roofs. Uri showed me that they are actually a lightweight concrete and fiberglass cloth stuff. It comes in large sheets and one man can nail up a complete roof in an afternoon. They also skip the sheathing, insulation, vapor barrier and most of the framing on the roof and still get an almost immortal roof.

As you don’t have trucks with ready mix concrete available, walkways and patio areas are usually tiled in an Ottoman style – except that the fancy tiles are actually cheap concrete. Fancier home owners paint them in a pattern

Fences, gates, and the common gingerbread decorations are stainless steel. Goes up a lot faster than our wooden fences and costs a hell of a lot less. Russia owns most of the world’s nickel and stainless steel is cheaper than wood. Then they paint the fence, trim and gates a tasteful BRIGHT GREEN or BRIGHT BLUE. They don’t sell pastel paint here.

The point is, that there are a lot of cheaper ways to get the same functionality that we have without the expense. These are not American homes. Closets are nonexistent, the kitchens are generally so small they belong in a travel trailer, and this type of construction leaves you with exposed pipes running across your kitchen and bathroom walls. However, these are comfortable, warm, and attractive homes done for 10% of the American cost.

I realized how common this building is when I saw the neighborhood cement truck. It wasn’t one of those mobile mixers that we see in the states. It was a truck full of sacks of cement. The city provides aggregate and sand free to home builders, but you have to purchase the cement and mix it yourself. The trucks drive through the neighborhoods beeping their horns like the ice cream trucks of old. If you need cement that day, you wave them down and they unload what you need. What looks like a local self service car wash down the street is actually a steel shed full of concrete sacks handy for you.

Lots of things are just done smarter. You would have a hard time convincing anyone in this town that you needed a $40,000 SUV to get to the store in when there are new Ladas for less than $4000 and Volgas for less than $5000 – and Honda scooters if you can’t afford the Lada.

Food costs about the same as the states, but they eat differently. You can now purchase just about any convenience food in the supermarket. You can get frozen pizza, frozen pie, frozen vegetables and frozen strudel. Most Russians don’t get them. They cook. Like grandma did.

Meals run mostly to fish, potatoes, local vegetables, bread, and flour products. Meat is served at most meals, but not in the quantity or quality Americans are used too. Pancakes, Pushki (thick, greasy, delicious pancakes), Perogi (fried bread with meat or potatoes inside), Pelmini (a sort of boiled ravioli without tomato sauce), blintzes (mostly fried bread with meat or cheese and salt or sugar inside), potatoes, cabbage and bread-like products are the most common components of a meal. Add local vegetables, sour cream, greens that I refuse to describe, and beer and you have a meal.

It is a diabetic’s tasty nightmare. I have to get out of here before my mother in law commits murder by cooking.

Restaurants, though cheap, are a used rarely and the only convenience food that I have seen commonly in homes is frozen pelmini.

The usual decorative plant in the front yard in this area is a potato. Beans, corn, “greens”, and fruit trees also make attractive lawns. If you have a green yard, it is edible greens. One fellow here actually has grass in his front yard but no one can figure out why. I think that the neighbors are all waiting for the cow to show up. Some people here DO have cows and chickens in the back yard. One of my neighbors has a cow in a yard with too little grass to feed it, so the children walk the cow every afternoon, so that it can graze on roadside grass.

Of course, the urban apartment dweller can’t build his own apartment. However, he benefits from that lack of mortgages. In the U.S., the cost of a home is whatever you can barely afford to make payments on for the next 30 years. If interest rates go down, home prices go into the stratosphere. Here the price is limited to what a prosperous and prudent man can have under the mattress.

We just had dinner in one of the best apartments that I have seen in Russia. It was in beautiful condition. It had hardwood floors, decorative plaster ceilings, a modern western style kitchen, and a $10,000 price tag. Lesser apartments sell for $3000 or less. If you can’t buy, rents start at less than $50 a month.

During the bleak fall of 1992, when Russia was out of money and Moscow was out of food, the American press printed the Great Potato Story. They reported that the Russian government had announced that there were millions of potatoes in the fields without anyone to pick them. Since the city was facing a food shortage, the government would provide trains to take people out to the fields. Anyone could go, dig potatoes, keep all that they dug, and live on them through the winter. Most of the trains never left. No one showed up.

I can’t vouch for the truth of the story, but it certainly fits the attitudes of a lot of Russians that I met up north. One if my major worries about Russia has been the laziness and lack of initiative that Communism left behind.

Not here. These people would have dug all of the potatoes and then picked the weeds on the side of the fields to use in salads.

The rest of society also gets along. The lack of money shows, but not the way it did in postcolonial Africa. I have not been there, but all of the reports were that once the colonials left things just stopped working. The power plants broke down. The buses quit working, the river boats rusted. Not here. You see the results of lack of money here, but there are few disasters and overall, most things work as well as they can with the money they have.

40 years old and running well EVERY day.

40 years old and running well EVERY day.

For instance, the city has a lot of new Russian made 14 person minibuses. However, they also have virtually every bus every purchased in the last 50 years. The bus that we traveled to Nalchick on was the same bus Larisa used to go to college. The windshields are often cracked, the upholstery is gone, and the paint is chipped on all of these busses. However, I have not been on one that didn’t start well and run smooth, and they don’t seem to break down any more often than American buses. In fact, it must be comforting to know that you can take a bus to the train station, go away for 20 years, and then take the same bus from the train station that you took too it 20 years earlier.

The streets are a major safety feature of the city. Driving is done by men who consider it a competitive sport. Given a chance, they will do 120 kilometers and hour on a two lane street with a one bus in front of them and one coming in the approaching lane – and pass. Thank God, there is not enough money to keep the streets in repair. The constant two foot wide pot holes serve as cheap speed bumps and save many innocent lives.

However, they do work at that street repair. They use wooden wagons behind farm tractors along with the few small bobcats that they have been able to afford. I see road crews working every day and working at least as fast as a California highway worker.

Of course, stretching and doing only go so far. Remember what I said about this area having no water pressure. They need a new water tower.

I was explaining in my best patient pompous American way how to get some action from city hall. I pointed out that 20% of the cities residents lived in Premalka (this area of town – literally “area by the river Malka”). I suggested to Uri and Victor that they get the citizens together to petition the mayor for some money. Uri said “won’t work.” I said, “You have democracy now. Threaten the mayor with losing his job and maybe he will find the money.” Victor said patiently, “won’t work”. Uri sighed and pointed to a house down the street. “That’s the mayor’s house. He doesn’t have water either.”

Russians, even the hardy ones down here, are a discouraged bunch. Depression is the national sport, and they have been practicing it since the time of the czars. They are certain that things will never get better in Russia. Everyone keeps saying that it will be 50 years before Russians have microwaves and supermarkets and clothes dryers. However, they are working here and I think that they will surprise themselves.

Until a few years ago houses in Prochlodney were built in a style that was used in America from 1740 to about 1870. People started by building a structure a little smaller than a typical one car garage. The structure held the kitchen and dining room. They then often moved into this tiny structure while they built the rest of the house in a separate building. The living rooms and bedrooms were a separate house with a covered breeze way in between. So when you walk the streets of Southern Russia, you see big house, tiny house, big house, tiny house.

This was done in the early days of America because of the danger of fire from cooking and the lack of fire departments. Larisa says that they did in Russia to keep the smell of cooking out of the house. I think that they did it because they all knew that someday their mother in law would move in.

In the last few years, the custom of two buildings has disappeared.

Aside from small towns, apartment buildings are everywhere. Most people live in them. The best are ones were built before 1960. The others come in dictator flavors. Every ruler had his idea of what the next million apartments should be. In addition to Stalin apartments, there are Khrushchev apartments, Gorbachev apartments and so on. People usually prefer the Stalin apartments because they have very high ceilings. Almost all of the apartments in Prochlodney are Khrushchev apartments. The odd thing is that no matter where you go over a 5000 mile range, all of the apartments built at the same time have the same floor plans. They were built as modules in factories approved by whatever ruler was in place then.

Americans would, however, go crazy over the zoning. Russians have never had enough buildings to be choosy about where you put things and still don’t have any sense about business placement. The police station in Tver was in a residential area in an old converted pre-revolutionary home. The best video store was down an alley. Sometimes you walk into a store front and find computers on the back wall, t-shirts on the left, and perfumes on the right. The best software store was in a converted garage behind an apartment building. Larisa’s dentist had his office in an unused room in the athletic center. The sounds of basketball and people splashing in the pool mixed with the sounds of the dental drill.

The most delightful placement that I saw was the “Sex Shop”. The store front sign was in English and there was another sign above it in Russian that I couldn’t read. I went in only, of course, for the purposes of cultural research – and found myself in a boutique.

A nicely dressed lady was selling upscale perfumes, scarves, jewelry, makeup, and similar items in the store. Seeing my obvious confusion, she gave me her best “Oh, God. Another pervert” stare and nodded to a sign low on the back wall. It was on the staircase to the basement

The sign read “Sex Shop”. Russian men must be a lot braver than American men.

They are starting to catch on. There is an area of Prochlodney called “Santa Barbara” where people are building only big and nice homes. The area where Leo is building his home in is now almost all big new homes. In the meantime, there is a recurrent feeling of non-reality when you look at the buildings and see that there is usually no “neighborhood”.

As an American, however, you would find some of the situations familiar.

In northern Russia, the population is almost totally White Russia with a very few African blacks left over from the cold war days.

Down here, the Russians are in enclaves that are almost totally Russian. They are surrounded by a majority Muslim population. Experienced residents can tell Muslim men from Russian due to their darker hair and eyes color. The traditional Muslim women wear worse clothes than their Russian counterparts and spend more time sweeping up the porch.

The Muslims in this area speak Kabordenian or Balkarian at home and Russian in public. Now that central authority has weakened, some of the schools are teaching in the ethnic languages rather than Russian. Larisa tells me that over 170 separate languages are spoken in the republics that comprise the new Russia. It sounds as frightening and confusing as Los Angeles schools.

There are lots of Asians here. I thought they were the leftovers of the Tartars that Stalin moved around, but it turns out that they are North Korean. They are famous for moving here and becoming onion farmers. It makes you wonder just how poor a country can be when it’s citizens immigrate to rural Russia for a better life.

That last group all over Russia is the Rom. Gypsies. They dress like the gypsies we see in the movies. Uri, my new cousin who works in the prison says that it is important to have the gypsies. After all, he says, who would do their traditional jobs of drug dealing, cheating, fortune telling, and stealing if the gypsies were not there.

By the way, gypsy women are UGLY. They don’t bathe much, their clothes usually need a good washing, and they have bad breath. They are not successful as prostitutes, because no one wants them. Forget any fantasies you may have had about them.

 

July 6, 2004 Back in the States

Posted in Rodger's Russia Book | Posted by rodger |

I am back in the States. Now that I have rested for a few days, I wanted to pass on some of the last things that I saw before I forget them.

I had to pay a bribe to leave Russia. When we got to the airport, everyone had to show papers to get in. The ranking policeman recognized that I was a strange American who probably had some money. He invited Larisa and me into a private office where he explained that I was not legal because of a technicality in my papers. I was legal and Larisa kept trying to explain that.

When the officer asked what time my plane left, the play was obvious. I was legal and could demand a hearing, but the airplane would be long gone by then. I suggested to Larisa that we apologize for our accidental error and ask if payment of a small fine would clear up the matter. I knew enough Russian to understand the answer “pyat sot” – 500 rubles – about $14. I handed the nice man a 500 ruble note and it disappeared under a book on the desk in a smooth gesture that would have made any magician proud. The nice officer smiled broadly as returned my passport and wished me a good trip – in English.

By the way, everyone pays bribes. The high patrolmen stand by the side of the road with wands that look like small barber poles, “fishing for rubles”. If they think you are going to fast, or have to much money, they wave you over to the side and charge you 100 rubles for speeding or 50 rubles for not storing your jack properly, or 40 rubles for not having a good spare. I paid twice for my drivers.

To get on an airplane, you either purchase a ticket or bribe the stewardess. The two suicide women who blew up Russian airplanes last year got on the airplanes by bribing the stewardess’. You can purchase a bus ticket at the station, or wait about a block away from the station where the driver will stop to pick up additional passengers at a real discount rate. When we took a bus to Nalchick, the nearest big city, it filled up with ticketed passengers at the terminal. Two blocks from the terminal, the driver stopped and REALLY FILLED the bus with discount passengers. The bus was then crowded way beyond “standing room only”. More like “breathing room, with effort” only.

Even the teller at the bank where we paid some taxes demanded a 30 cent bribe (ten rubles) before she would stamp the receipt.

Russians see this as the biggest problem that they face in trying to build a modern economy, and they are right.

But it’s a great country.

September 13, 2007 The South of Russia

Posted in Rodger's Russia Book | Posted by rodger |

I have reached southern Russia and I cannot decide whether to write up the trip for Travelers Digest or The Police Gazette.

Aeroflot certainly did give us a little slice of Russia in the Air. Because I am too tall to fit into a standard seat, last year we purchased tickets early and reserved exit row seats. Unfortunately, we got to airport after other passengers and someone gave the checkin clerk $20 to get our seats and we ended up in the bowels of the airplane. This time we both reserved the exit row seats AND came to the airport three hours early – to hear from the checkin clerk that we had reserved seats 10 rows behind the exit row. She looked at us and said with a straight face that those were the seats we had reserved. Later, during the trip, I met several other Americans who had been moved to bad seats. In one case, a husband and wife were informed that they had reserved seats several rows apart. Apparently, seat reservations at Aeroflot are considered only mild suggestions for the checkin people. The flight also left about an hour late as two passengers failed the security checks and they and their luggage had to be removed from the plane. This turned out to be the highest point of the trip.

The train was a different experience – much worse.

As Larisa is staying in Russia for an extended period, we are carrying a total of seven bags. Four large checked bags stuffed to the 70 pound weight limit, two 20 pound carry-ons, and a computer bag. By the time we reached Prochlodney, I viewed those suitcase shaped boat anchors with all of the affection that the Russians felt toward the Nazis.

We got to the train station a little early and waited outside surrounded by our wall of bags. When Larisa went inside to check the schedule, I noticed that a young Russian was squatted down near me, talking on a cell phone. He was maybe 20 years old, dressed in the latest all black hood’s attire, including the pointy black elf shoes that are all the rage with men in Russia. He kept getting up to stretch his legs and each time, moved closer to our luggage when he squatted down. About 20 feet behind him, three slightly younger men were lounging by a wall, closely watching his progress. It’s an old gag, send someone to grab one bag and run and if the victim pursues the bag, the other three move in and remove the rest of the luggage – in the other direction. The last time he got up “to stretch”, I moved around to where he was, sat on a bag, and made eye contact. The three “strangers” behind him were visibly disgusted. When Larisa returned a minute later, he got up and started to walk off, but stopped to say to Larisa “Your man does not seem to like me to be near his luggage.” As he left, the other “strangers” also decided that their cigarette break was over and left.

We got some porters to move most of the luggage to the train platform. However, luggage carts can only hold so much, so I ended up stuck carrying the heavy computer bag and dragging one of the overloaded carry-ons. As a result, I fell a little behind Larisa and the porters. When I reached the top of the entrance ramp, I damned near fell over a fellow who was kneeled down “tying his shoe”. At the same time, the world’s worst pick pocket bumped into me from behind and went for my wallet and passport. As the wallet was buttoned in and the passport was in my front pocket, along with my left hand, he didn’t get anything except a brief hand holding as he went for the front pocket. He was almost running when he retreated. As there was no time to report him, I continued to the train platform and wondered how long it would take for such a clumsy team of bumpers to end up in jail.

When we got to the train platform, there were at least four guards checking everyone’s tickets. Our guard took one look at our luggage and declared that we were obviously overweight. We would have to get our baggage checked before we got through. This happened last year, and a small four dollar tip got us through without hassle. This year, the guard ignored the offer for a tip and pointed out the weigh station at the other end of the train station. As we started to leave, a “helpful” 40 year old civilian who looked like he should be on the Sopranos said he would talk to the guard and see if the matter could be solved without the weighing. He came back in a few seconds with a price of 2000 Rubles – about $80! Larisa told him to stuff it and we headed for the scales. It turned out that we were four kilograms underweight. Close, but in the free zone.

The clerk stapled the weight tag to the tickets and we headed back to the train. This time, three guards passed our tickets back and forth between them, trying to figure out how to get past the problem that we were underweight. They grudgingly let us pass, but as we were putting the bags on the train, another angry man in civvies ran up and told the porter that she couldn’t let us board the train because we didn’t have a printed receipt for the overweight bags. She told him that we had tickets and a receipt for the scales and there was NO such thing as a printed order when we were underweight. He left angry enough to have a well deserved stroke.

I suspect that the inflation in tips was because organized crime had another outlet. Instead of it just being the local guy getting lunch money, the organization provided a go-between to shield them from corruption charges, a local tough guy manager to keep everyone in line – and hefty price inflation.

The lady ported turned out to be one of the few highlights of the trip. She traveled all the way to Prochlodney with us, gave good service and was actually cheerful sometimes.

When we reached the border of the Caucuses, my education continued. As you may know, Russia is not as integrated as the US. There are several “independent republics” that have a status something like an Indian Reservation in the states. They are allowed their own border guards, legislature, language, and laws – up to a point. When the train reached one of these borders, a very young military type went down the corridors checking visas and passports. When he got to us, he told me that my passport was no good because I had to carry a Russian translation of it with me at all times. I was still trying to remember the Russia word for BS when his supervisor came up and gently took the passport from him. The nice man asked if I was an American, verified the visa in the passport and welcomed me to wherever it was we were. Then he pulled the young man aside for a conversation that I would guess included a lesson that Americans do not take silly hints for bribes.

I knew from the newspaper reports that corruption was getting much worse in Russia, but I had no idea that it was also becoming more incompetent.

 

September 17, 2007 A Holiday!

Posted in Rodger's Russia Book | Posted by rodger |

Ah, Russia, or Ah, The Caucasus. For the Russians, this is a great national holiday weekend. This is the weekend celebration of the 1880’s integration of Kabardino into the Glorious Russian Empire. This is the biggest and best holiday of the year, complete with fireworks and days off, at least for the Russians. They don’t seem to even notice that this may not be the proudest day of the year for the Kabardinian segment of the population – who still speak Kabardinian and have fought to have the language brought back into the schools. Of course, Russians still can’t imagine why the Estonians, who fought on Germany’s side in WWII and were subsequently conquered by Stalin, do not revere the WWII memorial to the Russian troops that Russia left behind.

A small lesson in Russian government.

Upon arrival in Kabardino-Balkariya, I have three days to register my presence with the police. Not knowing that Monday was also a holiday, we hired a car to take us to the regional center to register.

When we got there, the door for registration was closed. We were told that it was closed because of the holiday, but that the person who did registration might come in a 9 or 10 for a meeting and he might register me. The door was in the back of an Albertson’s sized building and all of the other offices seemed to be alive and working, so this seemed possible.

We returned every 20 minutes until 9:45 – when the door was open. A young lady said that she would do the paperwork and the boss, who was at a meeting, would come back in about an hour to sign in. Unfortunately, she became visibly upset when she saw my entrance stamp. I entered Russia more than three days ago. My wife explained that we spent two days in Moscow and on the train and had only been in Kabardino for three days. The girl was still visibly upset until Larisa produced our train tickets which she had accidentally kept in her purse.

An hour later we returned and were told that the paperwork was going well, but the girl needed copies of my passport, my mother in law’s passport, my entrance stamp and my visa – and they didn’t have a copy machine so we would have to go across the street and get copies made.

When we got that done, we were told that the boss would be out of his meeting soon and would sign the documents. As we were not allowed to stay in the office, we sat on some benches in front of the main entrance to the building watching the boss in his meeting. For an hour he stood in the parking lot with his work buddies, smoked, talked, laughed, and occasionally sent a guilty look in our direction. By noon the “meeting” was over and he signed my documents before going to lunch.

Ah, the Russian work ethic.

 

September 18, 2007 The Cons continue

Posted in Rodger's Russia Book | Posted by rodger |

 

 

 

 

 

I brought enough cash along to last a month and I have ATM cards if I need them, but I don’t want to pay the usage fees if I can avoid it So, today I took nice, clean, unblemished American dollars to the bank for conversion to Rubles.

The nice lady in the bank said they only took very good bills. Mine were too wrinkled and one had a spot of ink on it. She would never, she said, be able to get anyone to take a wrinkled bill from her. She said, however, that there was an exchange nearby where they took “bad” money,

In spite of the fact that the bills were in almost perfect condition, I went to the “place where they took bad money.” The woman there went over every bill as if she were doing a forensic investigation, noting every little wrinkle and running her fingernail over imagined blemishes. Finally she announced that she could take “some” of my bills for a 10 percent discount from an already discounted exchange fee and with a small service fee on top of that. I blurted out “tee balder” (you crazy!) and snatched the bills from the tray.

She was, of course, just trying to get a hefty discount that would go into her own pocket.

Later my mother in law said that I had done a bad thing. I used the personal pronoun “Tee” when I should have only used the impersonal “Vee” when insulting someone.

So far, the ATM is the only thing around that has not tried to cheat me,

Haven’t gotten much writing done yet, but times are interesting.

September 19, 2007 How I Learned To Love the DMV

Posted in Rodger's Russia Book | Posted by rodger |

Good News. I have lost almost 20 pounds since coming to Russia.

Better News. The antibiotics seem to be working and I am beginning to regain weight.

Old Russia, New Russia

They’re dying out fast, but the old peasant babushka is still around. They’ve seen Germans, Stalin, starvation, purges, and poverty. They labored on collective farms or in factories for 40 years and ended up with pensions of $20 a month. Now they often sit on street corners or in bazaars selling sunflower seeds. One flagged down our Marshutka (minibus) a few days ago. Like all of them, she was grey haired, bent by age, her few teeth golden or grey, her cotton dress faded beyond belief, feed shod in frayed slippers. Her work worn face was topped with a scarf and she carried a plastic bag for a purse. Until a few years ago, they were entitled to free bus rides and even now few drivers will ask for a fare from them. However, as she sat down the tinny sound of opera came from her plastic bag until she answered her new cell phone.

How to learn to love the DMV

In a moment of husbandly foolishness, I agreed to go with my wife to get her new internal passport. The internal passport goes back to Czarist Russia. Every citizen has one and has to show it constantly. We couldn’t get cell phones without showing passports.

Larisa had hers stolen in the States, so she had get a new one. I figured we’d go to some office, spend a half an hour filling out forms and be done with it. I might as well have figured that there was an honest lawyer somewhere.

Day 1

Go to the village offices in Larisa’s home village on the edge of town. Spend an hour waiting and an hour explaining and fill out big forms. She was counseled to say she lost the passport, because if she said it was stolen, the police would insist on a 6 month long investigation even though the theft happened 9,000 miles away. It might have been worse, but Larisa’s mother was with us and she knew everyone in the office. Among other things, she is on the committee which counts votes and reports the results that Moscow orders.

Day1 – Afternoon.

The forms have to be stamped by the federal police before they can be processed, so we got a cab to the police post outside of town. Serious place, grey block building with guards, guard posts, heavy steel doors. I had a feeling that an American should not be here. They let us into a dark room where the upper half of one wall was a steel grid dividing the darkened half from an office where four burly, pot bellied, head shaved police were working at desks and practicing their growling.

The office was lit only by light coming in from half windows set high in the wall, and there weren’t any windows in the room we were in. When Larisa complained, the guard explained that there was no light because of the storm last night. Apparently the police had vast social powers, but no electrical power. Tough luck if we couldn’t see the form he handed us. Fortunately, I had a small flashlight on my keychain and Larisa used it while filling in the form, and we had a stamp a few minutes later.

There were no cabs out that far from town, so we waited a half an hour for a bus.

Day 2

We took the forms, now stamped, back to the village offices. Another hour or so passed while nothing happened. Larisa showed the stamped form to a secretary, she left for a while, the mayor showed up to chat with me in incomprehensible Russian then went on to explain to Larisa’s mother how they planned to replace an unruly group of kiosks with a nice modern mini-mart and gas station. The secretary came back from wherever she had gone. Eventually we left with all of the forms in a nice plastic bag.

Day 2 – Afternoon

The forms now have to be turned in at the local police station. We got to the station on the other end of town to be confronted by 5 or 6 lines of people – about 30 people per line – in front of one window and five doors. The halls were filled with people in lines. All of the doors were unlabeled, and there was no directory, no information window, and no way in Hell to tell which line to spend the next couple of hours standing in. Larisa tried asking people which line they thought they were in, but not all of the people in any line agreed with why they were there. A lot of people were obviously going to be very unhappy a few hours later when they got to the door and found out that they were in the wrong line.

We left. Larisa had a “better idea”,

Day 3

The police office opens at 9;00. Larisa got up at 6:00 to be first in line. She figured that if she were first in line, she could ask the staff coming in to work which line to stand in. It worked, sort of. Other people started showing up about 7:00 and some of them knew the magic door. By 9:30 Larisa was done – after only two and a half hours of standing in line in a closed office.

Day 3 – Afternoon

The best was yet to come.

The police took the forms, but couldn’t take the 12 dollar fee. For than we had to go a bank on the one side of town that we had not yet visited and pay the fee there. I joined her at the police station and we took a bus to the Berbank – a bank that accepted government payments.

The line there was fairly short, but they took 8 kinds of payments and they only had one general purpose form for recording them. The payer was directed to take the general purpose form and copy about 8 lines of coded numbers at about 30 characters per line onto the general purpose form to turn it into the form needed for their type of payment. Not to worry, there was a bench with 8 sample forms posted on the wall to copy from. No problem if you make a mistake, we have plenty of time to wait for you do to it again.

When Larisa asked why they didn’t just print 8 different forms for people to use, she got the usual “Why the Hell should we?” stare from the clerk.

The lady behind her in line said ‘Why waste our time complaining? Nothing ever gets done.”

Day 3 Even later

We returned to the local police station, pissed off about 20 people who were standing in line by cutting in front and handing the receipt to the clerk inside.

Mission accomplished, and only three days wasted.

All of which goes a long way toward explaining why China has prospered dramatically and Russia has faltered along. In spite of a one party repressive rule in China, the government there admits to over a thousand incidents of civil unrest every year. There are plenty of incidents of corruption and repression, but push a Chinese too far, and he AND his friends will scream hard and let you know they are unhappy. The Chinese Communist party is always aware that they are there because of a peasant revolt and can be removed the same way.

The Russian government has no such worry. Keep vodka, bread, and cigarettes cheap and you can treat the populace like mushrooms. They are a discouraged lot.

 

September 21, 2007 Interesting Russian Fact

Posted in Rodger's Russia Book | Posted by rodger |

DSC00997In America, the stop lights go green, yellow, red, green. – Go, Prepare to Stop, Stop, Go.
In Russia, the stop lights go green, yellow, red, YELLOW, green.- Go, Prepare to Stop, Ready, Set, GO!
The Nice Side of Things
Not all is crooks, crime, and government – although that might be repetitive.
Its late summer here and Balkariya is still warm. The Russian girls are very stylish, and the current style is either “Britney Spears is way overdressed”, or “Las Vegas Slut”. Young girls and women up to age 35 or so are dressed in 3 or 4 inch heals under skirts that are barely bigger than belts. Lots of cleavage is in sight, and my 13 year old niece has yet to show up in anything that would cover her belly button.
The boys do the same. Bare torsos tanned to perfection over low slung work out pants are common. This is most oversexed population I have seen since the 60’s, and I am beginning to figure out why the local school recently mandated uniforms for all students. It was just trying to keep them dressed.
It may also do something to solve Russia’s great demographic problem. As everyone knows, every year there are fewer Russians – a lot fewer. Smoking, drinking, crazy driving, and an unwillingness to put up with kids is making the population fall by a million people a year. Some cities have started “procreation holidays”. Everyone gets the day off to stay home, stay in bed, and MAKE A BABY! There are big prizes for the woman who delivers the first baby nine months from the Procreation Day. Perhaps these kids are just being patriotic.
Saturday night, we had a joint birthday party for me, my mother in law and my 13 year old niece. They set the table on the back porch, with seats for twelve people, Larisa and I and mother in law along with Christine’s parents, grandparents, brother and a few friends. I had offered to host the celebration at a local restaurant, but the grandparents loudly proclaimed that they would never set foot inside a restaurant, damned waste of money that it was.
The table could have been in Michigan or Indiana. Mother and aunts had put out their specialties. Dark toast with mayonnaise and hamburger bits, mashed potatoes, dark toast again but with fish paste, small chunks of pork and lamb in gravy, potato salad with clam bits, tiny salted fish, bread chunks, and vodka. Lots of vodka.
Russians may be drunks, but they don’t drink without an excuse, so every few minutes someone proposed a toast and everyone drained their glasses. Then the men would eat a small chunk of sausage because everyone knows that you won’t really get drunk if you eat protein in between drinks.
During the dinner, I commented that it was strange that we were drinking vodka out of half liter bottles. Even in the States, a 1.75 liter bottle is pretty standard for heavy drinkers. Uncle Victor explained that the small bottles were refrigerator bottles. When you went fishing, you took the 5 liter bottle with you.
That led cousin Uri to explain that that wasn’t always enough. He claimed that the last time he went fishing with three of his friends that they ran out. They were in the process of sending someone for more when one of the drunker friends found a half bottle of something clear lying in trunk of Uri’s car. Figuring it was booze, the friend, he said, drank it all down before he realized that it was shampoo. No real harm done, but the friend did fart bubbles for a week.
When the first meal was eaten, the pizzas and cakes that Larisa and I had ordered arrived and it started all over again.
When everyone was properly oiled, the dancing began down on the patio. Everyone danced without partners or much skill, or much rhythm, but with lots of laughter and a chance for silly photos. Worst dancing I have ever seen and some of the happiest. It got hard to remember how downtrodden and hopeless most Russians are.
Of course, it isn’t all bad news.
Outside of government, things are moving fast. This is so far in the boonies, it makes Nebraska look like Paris This is as far away from civilization as you can get without riding a camel, though I did see two horse drawn carts on the road yesterday.
But things are moving. Case in point, this is being sent to you via a DSL connection.
When socialism died about 8 years ago, there was one Univermag (department store) with mostly empty shelves, one restaurant with no customers and a few kiosks selling ice cream or carbonated water for a kopek. The village had one grocery store and there were two more in the town. Most of the food and clothing was purchased at the eternal bazaar. There wasn’t much there, but was better than the stores.
When I got here five years ago, kiosks were everywhere. They were the first, quickest and cheapest way to capitalism. For those of you unfamiliar with a Russian kiosk, it is a 3 meter square building with one wooden side and three sides which are glass from the waist up. Wares are displayed in all of the windows, so closely packed that you can’t see into the kiosk. Each of them sells everything from beer to bread, to pencils to toys. There is a small window in the front though which you shout your order and a surly clerk inside tosses something similar to your order through the window and demands payment in a mean voice.
Even then, there were some signs of real life. An enterprising businessman offered to build covered brick bus stops for the city in exchange for the right to have a miniature food mart in each one. It was very small, but you could actually walk inside, order over the counter, and expect a clerk to attempt a smile when she handed you your change
However, most businesses were primitive. A woman on the main road near us sold school supplies from her front room. She had only a sign with an arrow on it in front of her house. No indication of what the arrow was for or what, if anything, she was selling.
Now, all over, people are learning and things are changing. It’s like watching a garden bloom and I enjoy seeing it.
Today the lady selling school supplies has removed the curtains from her front windows so that you can see the school supplies and the sign out front has pictures of happy children and specifies good cheap paper and pencils.
Two years ago, the attitude everywhere was “You bought it. If it breaks, tough luck. It ain’t ours anymore.” This year we purchased a television set. The store specified that if there were any problems in the first two weeks, they would replace the set from stock and if there were any problems during the warranty period, they would arrange the repairs. They are learning how to get customers and make business.
The bazaar is still the center of commerce. It’s open from 8 to 1 every day and sells everything you find at a super Wal-Mart. It’s low tech, low cost selling space and has for a hundred years been the center of business in this town. The variety of goods and services is enough to make you smile. Today we saw a man making keys on the street in front of the bazaar. He had an antique key machine and he had shinnied up a light post to steal power to run it. Good man doing a lot of business.
But the bazaar is molting from the outside in. Open air stalls are being replaced by small permanent buildings on the bazaar grounds and the place is being surrounded by tiny but modern techmarts (appliance/computer stores). When our water heater died this week, we purchased a new one from a techmart that was a miniature version of Bestbuy.
There are still kiosks in town, but they are now nice miniature stores where you walk in and see products on the shelves or walls, and they now each sell one type of product. From where I am sitting I can see kiosks selling school supplies, toys purses, blouses, snacks (ok. Beer) and lingerie. One product line per kiosk. There are still of a few of the old kiosks around the older residential areas, but they are going fast.
One strange bit of merchandising is the “Products” store. The word means the same in English and Russian and “products” stores usually carry food, but may have electrical supplies, panties, kitchenware or towels. All “products”
The newest phenomenons are “Minimart”s, “Supermarkets”, and “Magnet” stores (also supermarkets). There are now two Supermarkets in town, three Magnet stores, and many Minimarts. I wondered for a while why they used the English names. There are good Russian equivalents. Minimart in Russian is “Melinkee Magazine”. Then I realized it was for the same reason that we call crescent rolls “croissants”. A crescent roll is ten cents and a croissant is a buck. Foreign words are sexy even if they are English foreign words. Yesterday, on a bus ride to a big city, I saw a small broken down building pretty much in the middle of nowhere. It had white paint where there was paint, tasteful cardboard over the broken window in the door, a slight lean to the left, and a sign that said “Minimart”.
There is, of course, some pain and dislocation. New businesses are killing the old ones. As the flowers bloom, the weeds are weeded out. The Univermarg has been closed several months for renovations and may never return. I am certain that kiosk owners aren’t happy and former kiosk workers are probably getting pain in their faces from the new happy expressions that they have to wear. (Those who cannot be made to smile usually compromise with a wooden face or a smirk.)
The price of progress, a pain in the face.

September 26, 2007 The Walk

Posted in Rodger's Russia Book | Posted by rodger |

SDC11405Most Russian men walk the Walk. You know the Walk. The Soldier Walk, the Gunfighter Walk, the I’m a Confident Bad Ass Walk. Feet slightly apart, elbows held out slightly from the sides, arms swinging confidently, striding with manliness. They learn it by age 12 and continue it until age 50 or so. No skipping, slouching, or lounging. Some Russians do slouch occasionally, but they aren’t real Russian Men.

Of course, it isn’t all that simple. People vary here as elsewhere, but Russia is a much more aggressive society with greater individual freedom and corresponding less protection. Aggression is a protective paint for many men. It reminds me a lot of America in the 40’s and 50’s before friendly fisticuffs became assault and battery.

Short skirts on the women, manly attitudes from the men. It sounds like simple Heaven until you meet our taxi driver.

For those of you who have not met a Russian taxi driver, I can only say that a taxi ride is as close to riding in a formula one race as you can get without a $100,000 dollar car and a pit crew. The most common taxi is a Lada. Not the 1952 Plymouth Lada or the 1975 Volkswagen Lada, or the 1954 Ford Lada, but the tiny 1979 Fiat Lada which they copied legally by buying a factory from Fiat. It carries four people (if two are midgets), has no seat belts, has a manual transmission and a tiny engine, and the safest thing about it is that it breaks down a lot and cannot actually hurt you when it is not moving.

We recently took a cab ride from our apartment to our cousin’s house about 3 or 4 miles away. In the first mile, the cab driver went 60 Kilometers per hour in a 30 zone, passed on the left on a two lane street with a truck coming head on, ran a red light, cut in front of another car that had to swerve to miss him, and passed on the right on the same road, missing a little old lady by about a foot. When Larisa told him to slow down, his response was a sarcastic “Do want to still be traveling there tomorrow?” She said “No, just alive.” He grudgingly slowed down a little.

His attitude fit the normal ambiance of a Prochlodney cab. There are some rational drivers with nice cars, but most cabs are OLD Ladas that have been poorly maintained and smoked in for a lot of years. The last one I rode in had home made wooden replacements for the inside door pulls. Most cabbies play loud music constantly, have icons on the dash board, fuzzy animals hanging from the mirror, and will chain smoke while driving unless you really complain. The music is about half American, but I had no idea that there were living bands that made those horrible sounds in English.

Then we met HER. Prochlodney’s only female cab driver. Well, at least she was as female as the old Soviet shot-putters. She was about as tall as I am, bulky but not fat, wore makeup, a long skirt, and had a nice hairdo. Best of all, her cab was clean. Spotless. Smelled good. She was cleaning it as she waited for a fare.

Finally, we found a sane feminine driver. We gratefully entered the tiny Lada and then held tight on to the straps as she cut into traffic at high speed, popping rotten rap music into the loud stereo while she cut off the driver in the next lane. So much for femininity.

Of course, all is changing. There are now new cabs on the street. They are large and comfortable Volgas from cab companies named Sputnik (Satellite) and Novya Joltay (New Yellow). There are still more Ladas driven by drivers with a death wish, but times are getting better. Someday we are going to miss the sensation of risking our lives every time we go for groceries.

We tried to buy a car yesterday. It turns out that there are no car dealers in Prochlodney and damned few ads in the paper. People buy and sell cars at the Prochlodney Car Bazaar, famous for miles around.

It is an area with the size and appearance of a large recycling yard, dirt and rock floored, surrounded by a block wall and serviced by vendors selling beer, soda, pishkis, and shish kabobs along one wall. The owners bring their cars and then sit in them all day while prospective purchasers wander through.

The cars are packed so tightly that a test drive is virtually impossible and people are constantly shouting “out of the way” as drivers try again and again to jockey cars in or out of the field.

One unexpected effect of being in the boonies is that used cars are relatively high priced here. There are a few new car dealerships in Nalchick, about an hour away, but nothing else even close, so cars depreciate slowly. Most of the cars are 10 to 20 year old Ladas, and the rest are very overpriced by American standards. Although there were many Japanese and German cars in good shape, I still never saw this many autos with cracked windshields, broken tail light lenses, and For Sale signs on them.

We looked, but didn’t buy.

We have to talk about Little Luda. She really is little, barely, maybe, five feet tall and slimly built. Little Luda is our 38 year old mildly retarded niece. A few months after our last trip, her mother died of a broken heart and starvation. The first caused by the loss her husband of 20 years and the second enabled by her uncaring daughter in law who spent her time partying and celebrating her husband’s army duty with 2 years of bedding every man in Premalka. Despite the family’s attempts to help, Little Luda’s mother faded away and died.

That left Little Luda, the sweetest little person in Premalka, alone with Elona. Elona is six years old. She is cute as they come and very smart. She smiles a lot and giggles good, and when she hugs you, you feel that you are the most important person in the world. Unfortunately, Elona doesn’t have a legal father. You see Little Luda was also a little retarded about men, and sex, and birth control, and as soon as she got pregnant, the boyfriend became a total stranger. A few years later, Larisa and I offered to hire a lawyer to get child support for her, but in Russia “unofficial” children have no standing at all. There was no help, no welfare, no child support, nothing.

houseandkitchen

Little Luda’s home. The building on the left was built first and contains the original kitchen and one room. Luda & Elona live in it now. The building on the right is the main house was built later.

But, in Russia, it is good to have a family. Luda didn’t have to worry about rent because she lived in the kitchen of her mother’s home. The home is one of the old ones where the kitchen and dining room were built first and were in a separate building. The main house was a few feet away and didn’t have a kitchen. These houses are now disappearing and kitchens being added to the main houses. This one still had the small building, so Luda and her daughter live there while her brother occupies the main house with this new wife and two new children.

But that won’t buy bread and milk – and there isn’t a lot to spare here – even among family members. So, my mother in law took Little Luda down to the local school for abused children and demanded that they give her a job. When they said that they were no jobs available, she told them “Listen, this girl needs help. Her parents are dead and she has a child to feed. No one will hire her and she can help you here. You have to give her a job!” So, they did

Its’ a lousy job, but she can take Elona to work with her and the child eats lunch with the students. It pays enough for bread and milk and an occasional toy. Her brother helps when he can and family members have found a used television, a cell phone and clothes for her and the child.

That’s Aid to Depending Children, Russian style.

P.S. Larisa told me after I wrote this, that Little Luda knew very well about birth control. She just wanted a baby to love at any cost. Normally I would call that poor judgment, but it is really hard to find anything bad about a decision that results in Elona.

 

September 28, 2007 The Viewing From Out Here

Posted in Rodger's Russia Book | Posted by rodger |

Before we came, I sent $200 to my mother-in-law and ask her to install Satellite TV in our apartment. With over 550 channels, I figured that we would get at least one American television channel and maybe even a movie channel or two.

Boy was I wrong.

Six hundred channels consists of 20 Russian language channels – none of them movie channels, 30+ religious channels (many in English, but who cares), some Turkish channels, Saudi Arabian State Television, Kuwait, Libya, Liberian, Sudan, Oman, Kurdistan, Italian television channels, some shopping channels, 50+ sex channels (mostly Arab with 800 numbers displayed), and news. Lots of news, some of it in English. The only English channels to watch.

I have BBC, Russia Today, Press TV (from six countries), France News, Saudi News, and Al Jazeera in English. I watch a lot of news. I have learned a lot.

Of course, America is still considered important, as is the American dollar. All of the countries were upset when the US cut interest rates to save the fools with mortgages they couldn’t afford. It made the American dollar drop and they are all heavily invested in dollars. Saudi Television commented that Greenspan would never have made such a politically motivated move. I was surprised that they knew who he was, but then his book got a lot of coverage on all of the news channels, particularly his comments on how the Republicans betrayed their principles and spent like drunken sailors when they were in power.

None of the news channels can transmit for a half an hour without spending part of it on America and American foreign policy.

News interviews are different in Europe. American interviewers generally try to at least look fair in the interviews. The European equivalent is “Open wide, Mister. I want to stuff some more words into your mouth.” I heard one reporter today say “Your party leader has proposed that you need to raise taxes. Are you going to betray your trust with your constituents by raising their taxes or betray your party leader by not supporting him?” The guys who came up with “Are your still beating your wife?” were amateurs compared to these interviewers.

The two best channels for news are, of course, BBC, and, surprisingly, Al Jazeera. In the States, we picture Al Jazeera as a bunch of lunatics extorting people to carry suicide bombs and burn Americans. I’ve never seen the Arab version, so I don’t know what they do, but the English service is run out of London and they are professionals who show no more bias than Fox News. They are, however, able to interview EVERYONE on the other side of our wars, and that makes interesting news.

I particularly enjoyed the interview with an insurgent leader of an Iraqi resistance group explaining why his group first broke with Al Quida and then tried to get them killed by the Americans. To paraphrase, “Those idiots were killing Iraqis. It’s morally alright to kill invaders, but you can’t let anyone kill your own people, so we turned the lunatics in to the Americans.”

One thing I learned was surprising. Bush scares people. Condelisa Rice gets less respect than anyone else in the news world, but Bush actually scares a lot of people. People are worried that the most powerful arsenal in the world is controlled by a man who says he governs by talking with God every day. They don’t see much difference between this and Komeni, and it worries them that they cannot trust him to be rational

Recently Bush made back to back speeches on the economy and the progress in Iraq. More than one foreign commentator referred to Bush’s “Faith based government” and commented that he must have gotten his “facts” on faith, because they didn’t match anything in the real world.

The big worry mentioned frequently on foreign news programs is that Bush will decide that his successor will not have the “moral courage” to do “the right thing”, and that he will do a preemptive strike on Iran before he leaves office.

Foreign leaders point out frequently that Bush has a belligerent attitude, a proven history of preemptive strikes, and a history of distorting facts to support his actions. He scares people.

Rice, on the other hand, just pisses people off. She began a recent visit to Russia by publicly criticizing the Russian government for its lack of democracy. Aside from the fact that this struck a sour note when it came from a government that runs Guantanomo and has secret prisons in Eastern Europe, it was widely considered extremely bad manners. She was, after all, a guest of a foreign government and starting out by publicly castigating your hosts was very bad form.

Of course, it fit in well with the current picture of the States. You must all be aware that respect for America is near an all time low, but American media will never show you just how low. In the last 8 years, we have become the hypocritical mean spirited aunt that you hope will not show up to spoil the party. Everyone fears our army and covets our money, but they are getting fed up with the constant lecturing and threatening. Oh, well. I can always tell people that I’m Canadian. Canada never offends anyone.

Another thing I learned from Television is that Arabs are way horny hypocrites. The most common channels on the satellites are Arab language sex channels. “Had a hard day harassing women who refuse to wear a full Chandra? Tired from stoning women who showed an ankle in public? Take a break and talk to Fatima at 800-Arabtramp! She dresses like an Egyptian whore and will lead you though fantasies that you would kill your wife for even imagining.” The free demos on the screen are often so graphic that the playboy channel would blush.

Apparently the old double standard is alive and well somewhere in the world. Your wife and mother and daughter MUST be pure virgins, but you spend your time fantasizing about women in leather boots and damned little else. It fits that this occurs in a region where many men still ride donkeys. Fits.

A little closing note about Luda and Elona

Posted in Rodger's Russia Book | Posted by rodger |

SDC11421Elona is in the pediatric hospital in Nalchick. There is nothing seriously wrong, but doctors learned that Elona has a kidney with two lobes rather that one and they want to observe her for 10 days to make certain that the congenital condition is not causing any health problems.

We went to see them on Saturday after we went to Nalchick for an appointment with Larisa’s thesis sponsor. (“102” reasons to visit Nalchick.)

For those that have not seen a Russian hospital, you should know that there are very different from what you are used too. Most do not provide drugs. They are purchased from nearby pharmacies and there are runners who make their living fetching drugs for those too ill to go themselves. Meals are provided, but are often minimal and the condition of the building is often dreadful. The one that Elona is in was only 15 years old, but a total lack of maintenance makes it look very worn.

They also normally only provide meals for the patients and we knew that Luda’s funds are very limited. While Larisa was in her meeting, I went to a “Products” store and filled a couple of bags with fruit, bread, hard cookies, candy bars and other items that would be filling and could last a few days in a hospital room.

The news was, however, pretty good. Elona was as cheerful as ever and it would have been worth the trip just for one of her hugs. Luda had told the staff right off that she had “limited” income and they had helped out. They provided what meals they could for her and Elona got her antibiotics from the hospital without charge. Luda, for all of her limitations, had planned well. She had packed clean clothes for 10 days for both of them and had put away 100 rubles ($4) for the bus ride home. Of course, we added a little to her money supply in case she needed something else.

The most interesting and cheerful thing was that we couldn’t get into Elona’s room. The hospital had limited staff and no money, so the mothers were cleaning it.

They do this regularly. They get together a few times a week and clean the entire place, floors, wall, furniture, and bathrooms with soapy water and bleach.

Make that one more thing that I hope never changes. These people complain a lot about government and politicians and the world in general, but they cope. When they have to do something, they get it done with whatever resources they have.

Compare that to the “hurricane victims” in New Orleans who were insulted when they were offered cold sandwiches instead of a hot meal during the evacuation.

These people don’t have much yet, but they keep buses going that should have been scrapped after World War II and while they look like crap, they keep the engines running smooth. If all they have is a 20 year old Lada, they rebuild the engine, tape the upholstery together, and get to work taxiing, and they do it without complaining that FEMA wasn’t there fast enough with the ice water.

I kinda like them.

September 30, 2007 Things that have changed

Posted in Rodger's Russia Book | Posted by rodger |

It’s almost time to go. Tomorrow I leave for the long home. Fifty two hours of train, bus, and cab to get back to LA.

Russian Trivia

Russian hot dogs come in inedible plastic skins, and are sold by number. You tell the clerk how many you want, and she snips that many off the chain. To get the sheath off, you cook the hot dog and, while it is hot, puncture the skin with a fork or knife and, if you got it right, the hot dog pops in the pan and you peel the dog out of the now shredded skin.

What happens if you get it wrong and the dog is not ready? You contemplate the wisdom of the phrase “Win some, lose some.”

Things that were not here the last time I visited.

Ketchup

French Fries

Air Conditioning

Lettuce (in some restaurants)

Yellow Cabs

Mini-marts

Magnet Stores (Groceries, not magnets)

Pizza – lots of parlors

Insurance Salesmen (Well, not all progress is good.)

Children with cell phones

Techmarts (appliance/computer stores)

Little stores in place of kiosks

Microwave popcorn

Polite Sales People.

Stores with warranties on their products.

Frozen food in the stores.

Diet Pepsi.

Pet Food.

Things That Have Not Changed

My dear wife wants her Russian passport to have her new last name. We have been married for six years, but only in the States. Russia and the US do not have an agreement to recognize each other’s marriages, so her passport still has her maiden name.

She announced last week that we needed to get re-married in Russia so that she could get a new name. I would be flattered, but I think that her real reasons are that one of the most famous porn stars in Russia and one of the most annoying political activists in the Caucus are both also named Larisa Romanova. (Larisa is reading over my shoulder. She insists that I say that she only wants to change her name because I am the last husband she will ever have.)

All it took, she said, was to show our American marriage license at the marriage bureau and they would remarry us that day. Anyone out there still believe that?

Our first stop was at Marriage Registration Bureau. Good news, they said. Karbodino-Balkariya now recognizes all marriages from everywhere. All Larisa has to do is to show the American marriage license and they will record the marriage and change her passport. Oops (you knew that was coming), it has to be a certified and notarized translated copy in Russian.

The next step was to find a Notary, as we figured a notary would know the procedure for a notarized translation. There are a lot of notaries in town and they have nice offices. I should have known that a regime as hung up on triple stamping everything and cross filing it twice would have a lot of notaries.

Off we went to find a notary. The first one had no line in front of his/her office. Inside the office there was a woman typing at a computer. For several minutes she refused to acknowledge our presence in any way. Eventually, she got up from her computer, did several fussy office things, and then, noticing us for the first time, began screaming at Larisa for disturbing her work.

At the second notary’s office, there were several people waiting in chairs in the hallway. When Larisa asked if the notary was very busy, one man replied “He’s not in there.” When Larisa asked “Then why are you people sitting here?” a woman said “We heard that he might come to work.”

The third notary said that there were no actual translation firms in town. What we had to do was to find someone with a degree in English to translate the document then that person would have to come to the notary office with us and a certified copy of his/her diploma to attest in person that the translation was accurate.

Fortunately, one of Larisa’s old college friends had a degree in English and had a copy of her degree. She lived in Nalchick, but she agreed to help. No problem. Larisa translated the license herself, we took a 20 minute bus ride to the station, waited a half hour for a one hour bus ride to Nalchick, took a marshutka (mini-bus) to meet her friend Olga, made a 20 minute walk to the notary, and after 45 minutes of poking, examining, questioning, copying, retyping, stamping, binding, and sealing the notary made the translation legal.

Then we had to go home, the same way. Some people go fishing or boating or hiking or sun bathing on their vacations. I go to Nalchick.

Next day Larisa took the document to the Marriage Bureau – who told her she was now in the wrong office. Since she was registering a marriage rather than getting married, she had to go to the Passport office. The people at the bureau were not certain where it was, but they had a phone number.

On the 15th or so try, someone at the passport office reluctantly picked up the phone and told Larisa “We are moving. Call back in a week.” Larisa explained that would be difficult because her husband was leaving a few days. The woman told her to come to the office and said it was behind another building down town. When Larisa asked for the address, the woman replied. “I’ve already told you enough. Goodbye!”

When we found the office, the woman rather reluctantly accepted the documents and said that she would check with her boss as to whether they were adequate – when she saw him in Nalchick the next day. (If I ever write a book about this, it will be titled “101 reasons to go to Nalchick”.)

Things I Hope Never Change.

Skirt and dresses, four inch heels and makeup. No one has yet told Russian women how much easier it is in the morning if you cut your hair off and look like a man.

Women are not insulted by the idea that they are female, and could not possibly understand the concept of burning your bra for the right to urinate standing up. (My college actually did install standup female urinals at the height of the Steinhiem madness.)

People wear blue jeans to work in – only. They don’t show up for a date or a dinner party in their best worn Levis.

Children go to mountains and parks with their school groups – and never worry about the responsibility wavers and multiple permission slips that have strangled American children. Take that, you damned lawyers.

Speaking of lawyers, there are not a lot of them here. The profession is poorly paid and is respected even less than in the states. There are no such things as the thousands of frivolous law suits and class actions that support the legal leeches of America. Here in this growing town, the sidewalks are not even. There are sudden 4-8 in steps between new areas and those still waiting to be developed. If you fall down, break your leg, and sue the business owner, the first thing the judge will ask you is why you weren’t looking where the Hell you were going.

Men are not asked to apologize for being born into the wrong gender. They swagger, cuss, drink, fight, argue, look at woman and generally act manly without apologizing. However, in private and between each other, the women do sometimes express pity for the unfortunates who were born men – but only between themselves.

School children are still assigned to rake leaves in the park and once a year to pick crops in the fields. It was grape season here recently and our niece was sent to spend a day picking grapes. She picked 10 baskets full was allowed to take home as much as she could reasonably carry. I like that kids know where the food comes from, and I’ll bet those grapes tasted great.

Women are proud of motherhood. ‘Nuff said.

No one believes a single word that ANY politician says. Don’t deny it; there have been American politicians you believed.

There is a tremendous amount of personal freedom here. You remember freedom. It’s what you had before you surrendered the county to the PC Police. No one gets sued for a racial joke (sometimes you can get hit, but not sued), and no one pretends that calling a crippled man “mobility challenged” will get him out of his wheel chair. Today a woman that I squeezed by on the Marshutka, told me politely but pointedly that I needed to eat less. Ah, freedom. My old friend, I remember you well.

October 15, 2007 Back In the States

Posted in Rodger's Russia Book | Posted by rodger |

They say it was different in the good old days.

Russia is ratty. Outside of boom towns like Moscow, everything needs paint. The apartment hallways are maintained by the city – and are NOT maintained. Most apartments have enclosed utilitarian balconies where clothes are dried and spare furniture kept. The balconies look decrepit with peeling paint and ill fitting windows. Yard spaces would have an American county inspector writing tickets right and left and the walkways are broken and often unswept.

They tell me that it was not always so.

During socialism, at least during part of socialism, it was better. The country was poorer, but cleaner.

According to western sources, the socialist economy was propped up by slave labor in the Gulags. Russians don’t like to talk about that, but prisoners mining gold, iron, and nickel and building dams and factories supplemented the poor output of the socialist state. The economy wasn’t great, but it struggled along and they managed do new construction and maintain the apartment buildings. With the death of Stalin, the Gulags started to shut down and over the years, the economy slowly ground down. There just wasn’t enough money to be a military superpower and still buy paint. By 1980 there wasn’t enough money left to do building maintenance in most of Russia.

Larisa and I visited a hospital that was brand new and nice about 20 years ago. In just 20 years, it has become almost decrepit from a total lack of maintenance. In the states, it would be a young building. In big cities like Tver and Nalchick, all of the apartment buildings started to crumble. Like most big cities, the neighbors were strangers and they didn’t work together to keep things cleaned up.

According to people here, it wasn’t that bad in Prochlodney as long as the socialist state continued. There wasn’t a lot of money, but there was tradition and donated labor from factories that didn’t need to make a profit.

A couple of times a year, they had cleanup campaigns. The biggest was for Lenin’s Birthday. To prepare for the holiday, everyone took a day off school or work and cleaned up the town. Walks were scrubbed, lawns trimmed, windows washed and walls painted. The local factory would send workers out on one or more Saturdays to handle the big jobs and do a lot of the repair – on factory time.

In small towns, people can work together and these people, and a lot of others in small towns, I am told, kept their city fixed up until socialism died in 1992. After that, the factories couldn’t provide free labor any more and with the deepening economic crisis hope withered, along with the traditions. This town and a lot of others ran downhill.

Now, it’s pretty ratty. Individuals own the apartments, but the exterior, hallways, and utility lines are still the responsibility of the city – and the city still doesn’t have much money – or at least not much money that hasn’t been stolen.

However, as with much of Russia these days, there’s a little light on the horizon. The apartment buildings are getting a little better as the owners are earning more money. The terrible balconies and poorly fitted windows are slowly beginning to disappear. One of the most popular businesses in Prochlodney is “Okna” (Windows). You see the signs everywhere. In our apartment building everyone now chips in 20 rubles a month to pay an old woman to keep the halls and entryway clean.

The change in business property is much faster. Business buildings are owned privately, inside and out, and the owners are learning that better outside means higher rents or more customers inside. The main street of Nalchick looks good enough to be a street in Germany or Norway. Even in little Prochlodney, there are a lot of new buildings going up and buildings being refurbished by private owners – and those are often nice buildings. Twenty more years and things might be nice all over, maybe.

Some things, however, are going to be hard to change. It may be awhile before the hospitals get rebuilt.

Russia has a lot of money in the bank these days. They have set aside an emergency fund about as big as the annual budget, and with more and more oil money coming in, the government gets richer every day. One of the major concerns of the central banks is keeping the ruble down. It’s getting to be a strong currency and that can cause inflation that Russia doesn’t want. Five years ago, 75% of the population said that they preferred to keep dollars rather than rubles because they trusted dollars more. These days, it’s about 15%. Dollars go down and rubles go up in spite of the best attempts the government can make to keep the ruble cheap.

So, why don’t they spend more? Almost every hospital in Russia is a filthy wreck. The highway system is a major impediment to progress and doctors and police are paid about $300 a month. If they didn’t take tips and bribes, they couldn’t feed their families.

There are a lot of reasons, such as fear of inflation, but the short answer is corruption. The central government can’t figure out how to get the money to the people who need it, and it is driving Putin crazy.

To understand how they steal, you have to realize that Russia is a cash economy. Checks are unknown and even deals involving millions of rubles are handled with real money.

Russia knew that they would have to rebuild Chechnya after the war if they were going to convince the Chechnyans to rejoin Russia willingly. They understand that people without homes and jobs make willing terrorists, so, they allocated 15 billion rubles to rebuilding the infrastructure, repairing the apartments, and funding factories to provide jobs. That was about $700 million dollars. They are still looking for most of it. The men who stole it were identified and charged by the FSB, but they are still employed in the Kremlin while they wait years for the trials to begin.

I have seen how it works more than once. The wife of a friend of mine worked in the finance department of the Tver Oblast (An oblast is the equivalent of a state). During her period of employment, the central government funded a new hospital in Tver. She had severe pangs of guilt as she watched a lot of the money stolen. After all, her daughter and her husband had been patients in the crappy hospitals that were supposed to be replaced. She said that the governor’s personal inspector would review the plans and sign off that they were completed. However, sometimes wings that had 10 rooms on the plan ended up with five rooms and sometimes entire wings disappeared – but were paid for according to plan. Tile floors become linoleum, oxygen piping disappeared, and the concrete got thinner. The governor, contractor and inspector each pocketed a fortune.

Down here, in our little village of Premalka, my mother in law has no water for about half of each year. The main water tower collapsed years ago and wasn’t replaced. Everybody farms their lots and in the summer, the water slows to a trickle when everyone is trying to irrigate. Two years ago, Moscow sent money for a new water tower. There is still no sign of the water tower, but the mayor has developed the habit of flying to France for soccer games.

The central government has tried to stop the corruption, but… Up until a few years ago, pensioners got a list of benefits in kind, such things as free bus rides and free prescriptions. Problem was that a lot of the money disappeared on the way down. So, Putin replaced the benefits in kind with a cash payment. He figured that it would be harder to steal cash from the pensioner’s pockets than to steal the money sent for medicine or street car repair. He was probably right, but the pensioners were enraged. He didn’t realize that free bus rides were a mark of pride for the workers, and it was one of the few things he did that pissed off everyone.

About a year ago, he replaced the elected governors of most states with a system in which he nominates a governor and the regional Duma (state congress) then confirms or denies the appointment. In part it was an attempt to get people in place who would steal less. It hasn’t worked yet, but they keep trying.

A few months ago, I heard Putin speak to a national convention of police officers. He was not shy about telling them “It is time for you to decide who you work for!” i.e. if you take bribes, you don’t work for us. The police officers appeared uncomfortable, but my driver still paid a 100 ruble bribe when he made an illegal turn a few days ago.

A few weeks ago, Putin appointed a new prime minister. There has been a lot of speculation as to why he did it, but he did pick someone impressive. The new man had just spent two years heading the department that searched for and punished money laundering. In America, we would call what he did “forensic accounting.” I listened to his first cabinet meeting on the English language Russian news channel.

One of the first items on the agenda was Sakhalin Island. It’s a huge and somewhat remote island off of Siberia. They had a major earthquake a few months ago and the Duma voted a substantial amount of money for relief efforts. The new Prime Minister started the meeting by asking the Health and Social Services minister why the money had not yet arrived in Sakhalin. When he didn’t get a clear answer, he asked for the name of the person specifically assigned to that project. When he got the name, he told the Social Services minister to get the man on a plane to Sakhalin. “He can come back when he delivers the money to the local relief agencies.” According to the newspapers, the man did get on a military flight to the remote island that night, and stayed there until the money showed up about a week later.

Later in the same meeting, the Prime Minister asked the Port Authority people why the cargo handling contracts at major ports were only for eleven months at a time. “We all know that the standard contract around the world is for 20 years. If you are making them re-negotiate every eleven months, it can only be because there is something shadowy going on. We have had enough in the shadows. Come to the next meeting with real contracts.”

I don’t know if the new guy will get anything done – or if he really wants to – but it was nice to hear someone in government who would publicly brand other government officials as thieves.

However, the Nalchick hospital will stay a slum for awhile because the central government can’t figure out how to spend money on the hospital without most of it disappearing

October 16, 2007 Kleb, Mayonnaise, and Chicken bone soup

Posted in Rodger's Russia Book | Posted by rodger |

I cannot leave this without talking about Russian food. Along with walking several miles a day, it is one of the reasons that I have lost 15 pounds this month.

Most of the calories in the Russian diet come from bread (“kleb”), potatoes, and cabbage, and it colors a lot of what they do.

You could never get a Russian to understand the phrase “the best thing since sliced bread!” Sliced bread has been available in the supermarkets for several years and almost no one wants it. Russian bread comes in two sizes, a small loaf and a big loaf. The big loaf is twice as big as the small loaf and about half of the size of loaf of American bread – and weights about the same. They don’t add preservatives, coloring, vitamins, minerals or fillers. It comes out heavier, slightly darker, and delicious. This has been a poor county, and the attitude toward bread reflects the fact that the bread is not a garnish, but a major source of the calories in the meal.

They refer to American style bread as “air bread” and wonder how Americans can eat all that stuff that the bakeries add to what might have been perfectly good bread.

Since the bread is stiffer than “air bread” and as everyone has at least one good sharp bread knife, they get slices when they want them – sort of. I’ve seen uncle Victor cut slices that look like they came out of a machine. Me, I’m lucky if I don’t cut my fingers.

Order a meal in a Russian restaurant and they will always serve a substantial basket of bread with it. It’s not for looks, people eat it. The typical Russian man eats with two hands. One hand works the fork and the other holds the bread. Bite of goulash, big bite of bread, bite of goulash, drink of beer, bite of bread… He eats with gusto, like a hungry man should. Seems more natural than the sissy way American men eat. Women are more delicate. They usually put down the bread between bites.

There are sandwiches on the menus, but not on the plates. Order a sandwich and you will get slices of meat and a basket with hand cut slices of bread.

There is meat, but it is mostly “farsh”. Now farsh would be your mother’s meatloaf – if farsh tasted better and had more meat in it. There’s pork farsh, lamb farsh, beef farsh, and chicken farsh, but you don’t always know what you’re getting. Sometimes they just tell you that it is “meat farsh”. To make farsh, you grind the meat up into an unrecognizable paste, add rice and/or flour and/or cabbage and/or onions and/or eggs and whatever else you have handy. Sorta like the hobo stew of meats. It exists both because meat is very expensive for the average family in Russia, and the animals are NOT corn fed. The difference between a beef steak and the sole of your shoe is mainly shape and color. Once you grind it up and add a lot of filler, it is both edible and tasteless.

One of the first things that my mother in law wanted when she visited us was a grinding machine to make her farsh. I couldn’t convince her that American meat was actually edible and she ground EVERYTHING. She even reground the hamburger to make it a finer farsh paste. She ground chicken meat, pork steaks, roasts, and damned near got to my porterhouse steak before I stopped her. Even the cat was hiding its tail and looking worried.

Aside from farsh, most of what you find in the stores is sausage or salami. In chunks of course, there isn’t such a thing as “sliced lunch meat.” When I asked Larisa to bring home some bacon, it was Canadian bacon, which looks like sausage. When I asked for ham, it was a tube of ham about the size of Canadian bacon, which looks like sausage.

There is a lot of fish, but the other major meat is the answer to the great American mystery, “Where did the dark meat go?” Most Americans drink light beer and prefer white meat when we eat chicken. As a result, Campbells makes its chicken noodle soup with all white meat and every fast food restaurant has “all white meat” chicken nuggets. Now, if McDonalds sell millions of chicken’s worth of white meat, what do they do with the dark meat?

A lot of it goes to Russia, where they call it “Bush legs.” Russians like the dark meat, and we ship thousands of containers of legs and thighs to them every year. It’s tasty, cheap protein and Russians love it. It’s been the subject of regulation, trade war, and discord, but Bush legs are still a major trade item.

Of course, they fix it differently, and boiled chicken is just not to my taste. In America, we boil the chicken carcass, strip the meat from it, and then add vegetables to make soup. My mother in law skips the stripping step. She, like a lot of Russian housewives, adds the chicken parts whole – bones and all. My wife gets upset when I call it “chicken bone soup.”

By the way, Russians are real careless about bones and cartilage. When cooking, they attack a piece of meat with a cleaver and more gusto than care. Even in restaurants, the shish kabobs and goulash will choke you if you get careless. Watch for bones and stay alive.

Occasionally, some people do eat real meat, mostly pork. There are a few stores that carry cuts of meat under plastic on foam trays, but the normal way to order meat is to point at the area of the carcass that you want and watch while the vendor hacks it off with a saw and a cleaver. Not for me. I have pictures, but I won’t send them.

When people think of exotic foods and different cuisines, they usually think of something really different, like the French love for nasty, slimy, aquatic bugs (snails) or weird spices like the hot stuff from India. However, economics and history can make significant changes in simple, common, ordinary foods.

I’ve already touched on how bread is treated differently in Russia and there is more to the bread story. In America, a meat pie is a thin bottom crust, a thinner top crust and a lot of meat and potatoes and gravy and carrots and peas in between. In Russia a meat pie is a lot of bread with just enough meat filler to see but not actually taste. Russians love pirogues (fried bread with meat or cheese as a filler), but you have to look close to find the filler. It’s real cheap and tastes real good and is made that way because flour was most of what you had.

Due to the lack of modern food processing plants in the past, they still eat mayonnaise, not Miracle Whip. It is real mayonnaise made from egg yolks, lemon juice, and oil. It’s creamy and a little yellow and not at all like the pasty white sandwich spread we use in the States.

They also use about 50% less sugar than Americans do in everything. I don’t know if it started because sugar was expensive or is just a cultural preference, but cookies, cakes, candy bars and even ice cream are different.

Russians have always loved chocolate. Even during socialism, there were lots of brands of chocolate bars in the stores, wrapped in beautiful foil with great pictures on the box. The standard Russian candy bar was, and is, about the size of kitchen bar of Hershey’s dark chocolate and, unfortunately, almost as bitter. Yuch. New Russians prefer Mars bars.

The cookies, cakes and ice cream are better. At first biting into an almond cookie with low sugar is a little like biting into almond cardboard, but it grows on you. After a while I began to realize that American sweets are just too damned sweet. The sugar overpowers everything. Most Russian ice cream is much better than its American equivalent because they don’t add as much sugar to the already rich creamy base. After a while I even began to prefer the cookies.

The Russian word for cake is “tort” and torts are very important. In the worst of times, you might not be able to afford a diamond ring, but a little flower, a few eggs, and a little sugar will get you a cake. It’s probably another example how culture and economics effect food, but who cares? The cakes are great, and pity the poor bastard who neglects to bring his wife or girlfriend a tort on “Woman’s Day”. I remember getting on the tram in Tver on Woman’s Day and seeing every man over the age of 16 sitting there holding white cake boxes in their laps.

The best Russian cakes are layer cakes. They make a dozen thin crisp layers of cake and tie all together with some kind of sweet syrup and top it with chocolate flakes and frosting. It’s a work of art and my mother in law is a great artist. I laugh at her chicken bone soup, but I crave her cakes.

In the mean time, I am now back in the States for a couple of months and I fully intend to stay on a salad diet broken only occasionally by trips to the Hometown Buffet, Chinese food, Taco Bell, and McDonalds, but mostly salads. I swear.

April 8, 2008 Soviet Elevators Are Different

Posted in Rodger's Russia Book | Posted by rodger |

aptblodkIt has to be that there is an old American-hating Communist Party die-hard in the plumbing department. No one else would do such dirty trick. This morning there was hot water – or at least sort of hot water after it ran for 10 or 15 minutes. I got wet and started to soap up when I noticed a drop in the water pressure. Within less than a minute the hot water disappeared and left me with soap in my eyes, holding a cold water spray. Oh, well. At least a cold water rinse isn’t quite as painful as an entire cold water shower.

Soviet elevators are different. Note: that is “Soviet”. New elevators here, as elsewhere, are built by Otis and similar companies and have more brains than the average inner city student. However, my building, like most others with elevators, has soviet elevators.

In a Western elevator, you call the elevator by pushing as button that tells it what direction you want to go in. When the elevator comes, you and all of the other passengers push buttons for the floors that you want and the elevator delivers all of you to the proper floors, stopping to pick up other passengers going in the same direction. When it has delivered all the passengers, it does the same thing in reverse.

As the original Soviet designers must have said, “Who needs such decadent Western nonsense? We don’t waste money on extra buttons! We play ‘find the elevator’!!” On each floor, there is only one button. No capitalist nonsense about which direction you are going. The button is a simple call button and it is “first called, first served”. When the elevator stops, it will start again toward the next button push. It doesn’t matter where you are, how long you have been waiting, or what direction you are going in, NEXT PUSH WINS! Push too soon, you lose. Push too late, you wait.

People wait by the elevator doors, ears pressed to the elevator shaft, listening for the doors to open and close on another floor, and timing their pushes. My wife has learned that if she pushes the elevator button three times slowly starting at the moment the door closes on another floor, she usually wins.

Getting in is the same thing. This is a nine story building and there are eight buttons. There were nine buttons, but in the years since button number 5 broke off, residents of the fifth floor have had a choice of going to the fourth floor and walking up one flight, or going to the sixth floor and walking down the stairs. If there is more than one person in the elevator, everyone asks “what floor?” before any buttons are pushed – because first button wins. The person with the shortest trip pushes first, and when they reach his floor, the next person up pushes for his. If you are going to the second floor and the person ahead of you pushes for nine, have a good trip.

Of course, there isn’t much competition for which button is pushed when you get in, as the elevator is about 3 feet wide by four feet deep, big enough for three good friends to use.

If you purchase furniture, or anything else, that doesn’t fit in the elevator, delivery services charge about one hundred rubles ($4.00) per floor to bring it up. Larisa and I purchased a table one inch too wide to fit into the elevator. It took a long time for a fat man and a cute woman to carry it up nine floors.

I should mention that, with all of the bad things that I have said about this building, this apartment is no longer the standard in Russia. Most are better, and some are a lot worse.

We are living in an “unimproved” apartment. These are getting rarer as Russians make more money. With money, you can have an apartment or house here that would past muster in any California neighborhood. Furniture stores are everywhere and doing a hot business. Two of the most common business signs in Russia are “Mabele” and “Okna”, furniture and windows.

From the bottom up, the worst living is the communal apartment. They’re gone from major centers like Moscow and St. Petersburg as speculators purchased them all and converted them into million dollar multi room apartments, but they still exist here in the smaller cities and towns. You saw these in the American movies of the 50’s and 60’s and, for once, Hollywood got it right. As recently as 1980, twenty percent of the urban population lived in these nightmares.

A communal apartment consists of a kitchen, bathroom and from 4 to 20 individual “apartments” normally consisting of one room apiece. It’s sort of the college dorm from Hell. Your roommates are often full families living in their one room, and no matter how obnoxious, dangerous, or dirty they are, you can’t get them out. They own it as much as you do. I’ve heard a few nightmare tales about drunken and dangerous co-owners that would be a real downer to repeat here.

The best simple picture of what it’s like living in one of these was shown by my wife’s lack of concern when the cheap Chinese toilet seat I bought broke the other day. I went to use the facilities and found the seat leaning on the wall. Larisa normally tells me about such things and asks me to fix them. Turns out that she thought this was perfectly normal, as she lived for a few years in communal apartments. There, she says, everyone has their own toilet seat that they take with them to the bathroom.

These, thankfully, are going away, even here. There are perhaps 3 or 4 large buildings left in Nalchick that are communal apartments. They are mostly inhabited by immigrants and the largest has 20 rooms per apartment.

The next step is what we are in. This is an un-repaired, original format Soviet Apartment. The city owns and supposedly maintains the exterior and hallways, but nothing has been maintained since before the fall of the Soviet Union. Internally, the apartment is solid – plaster walls and wood floors over a concrete structure, but the workmanship and materials are pathetic. The bathroom sink is attached to wall tiles and is slowly falling off, and the bathtub doesn’t drain right because the installer carelessly installed it with the foot about an inch lower than the drain area, and none of the doors or windows works right. The hardware was cheap to begin with and there are now multiple layers of thick paint on every wood surface. Windows don’t lock, doors don’t work right. Originally there were no cabinets on the kitchen walls, and what we have now is scrounged.

These apartments are purchased by two groups of people, those too poor to afford anything else, and speculators attempting to make a profit. We’re in the second group.

The next step up is where most of our friends are. These crappy concrete boxes are sturdy, so people on the way up purchase and gut them. They replace the bathrooms and kitchens with western standard equipment, tear out the windows and doors and replace them with modern equivalents, close in the balconies with insulated walls and hardwood floors, install washing machines and hot water heaters, and end up with modern apartments. It works. Our friend’s 42 inch flat screen television with its two satellite boxes looks just fine in their refurbished apartment, and he runs his business from a professional looking office that sits where the open balcony used to be.

From there, we get into the “New Russian” housing. New apartment buildings all built to Western standards and huge crazily designed houses. No one seems to build a small house and no two people build anything even remotely alike.

You see construction patterns here that are similar to things done America about 100 years ago. Between here and Larisa’s work, the bus passes at least three places where the owners had small 800 or 900 square foot businesses at the sidewalk, and where they are now building 3000-4000 square foot mansions attached to the back of the businesses.

In all cases, there is NO concept of lawn here, so the new mega homes are built right up to the property lines, protected by 6 foot high stainless steel fences with expensive marble trim. The homes are large for a couple of reasons. Just plain old vanity and pride play a large part, but the reaction to the very crowded conditions these people lived in before is also important. Even with all of the building that has been done in recent years, the average housing space per person in Russia is still only 170 square feet, much less than half of what we have in the states. Our apartment is just over 360 square feet and we purchased it from a family of four.

In any case, when you build, square footage is relatively cheap here. The homes are all built from concrete, brick, block, and stainless steel – all cheap commodities in Russia. It’s also real brick or block construction, not a wooden framework with a brick facing and wallboard on the inside like we do in the States. It’s cheap to build, warm in the winter, cool in the summer, and damned near immortal.

Of course, in this newly rich segment of society, homes are built with the same subtle sense of style that effects woman’s clothing. Therefore, the term “garish” often applies to these huge buildings with oversized Greek or Roman columned porches, oddly shaped floor plans and seemingly random roof lines. I know from friends’ experiences that getting a building permit in a Russian city requires that you submit plans drawn by a licensed architect, so I can only surmise that a Russian architectural degree requires both creativity and dyslexia.

Actually, after living in Southern California’s cookie cutter subdivisions, these unique homes are a breath of fresh air, garish or not.

Of course, not everyone is a New Russian. Ira and Uri and a lot of others are still plugging along as Old Russians.

I talked about Cousin Ira and Uri’s house before. Uri works as a prison guard and Ira works in a school. Between them they make about $600 a month. When I first met them about 4 years ago, it was less than $400. Four years ago, they were just moving into their partially completed home. Uri, a little hired help, his family and friends had put the house up for very little money. The land was free, and the house was concrete, concrete block, clay, and a little plaster. All of the rooms were usable, but the only finished room was the kitchen and the bathroom was a little brick house on the end of the walk. As we used to advertise in Indiana, it had a “Path to bath.” If you missed the letter where I described how the house was built, it’s worth asking for a copy.

Bottom line then and now is no mortgage, no financing, and pay as you go. I was out there last weekend and the house is now about 90% done and it looks good. The living room is wallpapered and carpeted and the ceiling there is covered with a foam tile that I have never seen in the states, and wish I could get there. Russian wallpaper, by the way, is much fancier and a lot nicer that any you can get in the States. All of the bedrooms are wallpapered and have rugs or wood floors finished in them. Ira was particularly proud of the new bathroom and laundry rooms. Just a few weekends ago, Uri and Ira’s father tiled the wet rooms and permanently installed the indoor toilet. They did an impressive job and it looks as good as any tile I’ve ever seen.

Of course, there are some strange effects of this pay-as-you go technique. If you walk into the front door of the house, the front foyer and the hallway look like an unfinished concrete cave, and the door trim is still missing from the bedroom doors. You don’t see the nice stuff until you get into one of the rooms. However, I am certain that those areas will look as good as the rest of the place as soon as Uri and Ira can afford the plaster and paint and time. And they will never have to make a mortgage payment.

That’s how you do it on $600 a month.

Think about when you are sweating your house payment.

Getting an airplane ticket – Russian style

Posted in Rodger's Russia Book | Posted by rodger |

To remind everyone. Getting an airline ticket, American style. Go on website for Southwest Airlines, select flight (10 minutes if you are shopping around for time and cost), pay with credit card (one minute), go back on website before flight to check in (2 minutes.)

It’s different here.

1) Go to Aeroflot office 10 minutes from the house. They explain that they only handle domestic flights and know nothing about international travel.

2) Go to Aeroflot web site and see prices that start at $1900 for a one way ticket.

3) Go to Travelocity and find Aeroflot flight for $785 with a connecting stop in Paris.

4) Telephone Aeroflot in Moscow. They explain that the cheap fair is a connecting flight with Air France, and they only handle pure Aeroflot flights. In any case, if we take the Aeroflot-Air France trip, they will charge us $300 for the trip to Moscow to get the flight.

5) Telephone an Aeroflot office in the “nearby” city of Minerale Vode (Mineral Waters) and be told that they can get us a cheaper ticket, if we come into the office.

6) Go to Minerale Vode. They require Larisa’s passport in order to sell a ticket, and the passport is at her mother’s home in Prochlodney, about a third of the way to Minerale Vode. So, take the 6:50 am Marshutka for the 1 hour and 15 minute trip to Prochlodney, meet mother at bus depot, take taxi to train station, get there just in time to catch the morning train for the 2 and a half hour ride to Minerale Vode, get a cab (who’s cabbie charges three times the going rate because he knows we have no idea where the Aeroflot office is), and in only about four hours, you are in the Aeroflot office.

7) Watch the nice lady spend one hour trying to issue wife’s ticket. The computer keeps rejecting the inputs and nice lady is confused. Then spend about 45 minutes watching nice lady charge the change fee for my ticket. She does not know the charge code that the computer requires, but she has enough stamina to keep trying to guess for 45 minutes before she calls the home office for the code. One final 15 minute wait while nice lady makes three separate charges to my credit card (Larisa’s ticket, my change fee, the service fee for my change fee) and meticulously writes out three triplicate manual receipts printed so neatly that a computer could not have done better.

8) Get Lunch. After two hours of mind-numbing waiting at Aeroflot, beer is required, but the train back has NO toilets so a sip of Coke will have to do.

9) Get cab back to train station, board train for 3 and a half hour ride on wooden seats back to Nalchick, refuse wife’s idea to walk several blocks to get another Marshutka, and get a taxi home from the train station.

10) Done! In less than 12 hours!

 

 

April 10, 2008 I Took a Marshutka Today

Posted in Rodger's Russia Book | Posted by rodger |

DSC00780

I took a Marshutka to the computer store today. I’ve spoken before about this uniquely Russian institution. Little 14 seat busses built into what looks like Dodge Maxi Van, they are a study in group motion. As the driver is busy driving, he can’t take money easily, so the 13 passengers pass the money from hand to hand until it gets to the driver and then pass back the change the same way. As these are short haul buses, people are getting on and off constantly, changing seats, squeezing themselves though the tiny aisles past seats which point in several directions and handling the heavy self-service entry door.

If they didn’t work together the passengers wouldn’t get anywhere.

The Marshutkas are mostly painted school bus yellow with a few white ones in the mix. Every single one of them should have racing stripe down the middle. The Marshutkas are owned by the drivers who pay a flat fee to the city for the route. Except for the usual bribes, the money they make is theirs to keep. As a result, they move like banshees through the streets. No one seems to care about saving gas, brakes or shocks. They just drive like hell to get as many passengers as possible as fast as possible. The one I was in today was racing another bus on the same route to get to the Bazaar first. My driver lost and was passed by the other one, who got the full load from the Bazaar stop. They have a fixed route, but not a schedule, so it’s a free for all fight for passengers, and remember that the driver is accepting money passed over his shoulder from the passengers behind him and making change all the while he is driving.

Russian safety tip: Do not ever decide to cross the street in front of an oncoming Marshutka. Your relatives will have a hard time getting the yellow paint off of you before the funeral.

Egg cartons are beginning to appear in Russia. However, most eggs are sold by the10 lot and handed to you in a clear plastic bag. Be careful how you carry those groceries.

Every culture since the invention of pocket change has had its fast food, and chains of fast food restaurants. Even in Pompeii, they have found the remains of a chain of identical restaurants with fast food in steam tables. (Romans liked soups, dried fish, heated vegetables, bread with olive oil, cheese, lentils, and hamburgers as fast food. They didn’t have mustard and catsup, but they served ground meat on a bun with pine nuts, lentils, and quarum for condiments.)

You’ve got McDonald’s and Taco Bell: Hamburgers, big hamburgers, bigger hamburgers, tacos, and burritos. We’ve got Plov! Meat is expensive and tough here, so most fast food is dough stuff: sweet buns, bad little hot dogs baked in a bun, deep fried khuchini (meat, cheese or cabbage filled pastries deep fried like donuts), perogi (same thing, baked), pushki, and other baked pastries, but today I had Plov!

At the bazaar, they have a long row of virtually identical fast food stalls. There are two old broken down tables inside each tiny restaurant, and each one has a large kettle out front. In that kettle, they keep a mixture of rice, beef, and carrots steaming all day. For 50 rubles (less than $2), they will dish you up a bowl of the stuff topped with sour cabbage and accompanied by dark bread. With a $1 bottle of Russian beer, you have the greatest $3 fast lunch I have ever had. Foo on McDonald’s.

Most Russians are aware of the election going on in America. Just about every one who finds out that I’m American asks what I think of Bush. Fortunately, the word “idiot” is the same in both languages. Then they ask who is going to win the election. I tell them that the polls show McCain will be an easy winner. Worries them a little, but the attitude world wide seems to be “Anyone but Bush!”

If I am talking with a woman, she will inevitable ask “How about Clinton?” Once, I muttered the word “bitch” as I tried to think of an appropriate Russian phrase. How was I to know that the women there understood that word in English and that the equivalent Russian it is a very, very dirty word? They still take my money in that store, but no one smiles at me or says anything anymore.

Maybe I’ll just start telling people that I’m Canadian.

The Russians are somewhat confused by the American politicians. In Russia, what little debate there is in a campaign is about things like how to apportion the budget, what to do about national defense, and the shortage of housing and health care. It’s hard for them to understand why a politician would base his campaign on a promise to stop homosexuals from marrying and bring God back into the White house.

Of course, the homosexual “issues” do not play here. Homosexual acts are officially legal in Russia, and there is a lot of freedom here, and no one really cares what you do in private. On the other hand, it is very much like America in the 50’s. If you are a man and another man makes a pass at you, you are encouraged to get a few friends together for a game called “pound the queer”. If you are a woman and are approached by another woman, you are encouraged to photograph the encounter for the Russian issue of Penthouse.

Of course, there are no such things as “gay pride parades” in Russia.

Of all the sad signs in the sad places of the world, the saddest must be “Remont” on the door of the elevator in our building. “Remont” translates as ‘Repair” and we live in a 9th floor apartment. These Megaliths were built at the height of the communist era. Nine stories tall, normally grouped in batches of 3 to 5 buildings around a play area, these are the ones you most often see in pictures of Russia.

Most Russian apartment buildings are built five stories tall. The price of an apartment depends a lot on what floor it is on. No one wants the first floor because passersby can see into, and, worse, break into your apartment. No one wants the fifth floor because Russians don’t put elevators into any building less than six stories tall. The favorite floor is the second with third and fourth following up. In a probably related matter, it is hard to sell a gym membership in Russia.

Where do old television series go to die? Sometimes, here.

No, I’m not desperate for entertainment. There is nothing desperate about watching 6 hours of television in a language that I don’t know. I watched two episodes of “The Nanny” and one episode of “Married with Children” done with Russian actors. Since the Russian actors use the same scripts as the Americans, I didn’t need language to understand the nanny’s glee when Maxwell stood up to his mother and said that he was going to marry the nanny, no matter how low class she was.

Then there was “Kto Boss?” (‘Whose The Boss”), “Are you smarter than a 5th grader”, “Denge Taxi” (“Cash Cab”), and “Weakest Link.”

Perhaps the definition of “Hot Water” should be recognized as a variable value. Maybe it doesn’t have to be really hot. Those of you who have camped do remember that a real cold water shower is a very painful experience. If you don’t remember, come on over and bring a towel. Perhaps if it doesn’t actually cause pain, you should consider water to be “somewhat hot”. Time for my shower. More, later.

 

April 12, 2008 Fight! Fight! Fight!

Posted in Rodger's Russia Book | Posted by rodger |

 

Here in America, we live in an emasculated society where shop owners are often charged with attempted murder if they shoot back at robbers. We tell our boys to “just tell the teacher” if a classmate bullies them, “don’t you hit them back!” I always figured that was bad advice.

It is different here. Today, I had a fight.

I was taking a bus from Nalchick to Prochlodney. I was alone on the bus with about 35 women and three outrageously drunk young men about 20 years old.

It wasn’t much past noon, but they already had found time to get stumbling down drunk. Two of them began to roam the aisle of the bus annoying the young women, bragging, and generally being obnoxious. The third sat embarrassed in the back of the bus trying hard not be with his friends.

About a half hour into the trip, halfway between the cities, the bus driver, a wiry guy not much younger than me yelled at them in Russia. I don’t know exactly what he said, but the drunks took it real personal. The two of them went to the front of the bus and started a loud argument with a man who was driving 50 miles an hour. I heard one of them yell “I don’t want to!” and then heard him hit the driver.

I am embarrassed to say that I sat in my seat for several seconds wondering what to do. Guess I’m getting old. Then I realized that at the same moment the drunk hit the driver, 35 female heads swiveled to look at me. No one said anything, they just looked.

So I jumped up from my seat and headed forward. I wish that I could say that it was a heroic John Wayne style fight, but the real world doesn’t get THAT good. The bus had stopped, and one of the drunks was hitting the driver while he punched back from his seat. The punchers friend was behind him, trying to reach the driver. I grabbed that one from behind and threw him into the door well. I admit that I am petty enough to have really enjoyed the look on his face when he saw me coming. I’m a really big guy and he was really surprised.

The driver was pushing his assailant away and had managed to reach back and open the bus door. He was a skinny little guy and almost as old as me, but he was a tough old bird. The two of us pushed his puncher into the door well with his friend and we kicked both of them out on to the road. By that time they were not trying to hurt us, they were just concentrating on holding onto the door and not hitting the pavement too hard.

When we had them out, a woman from the back of the bus came to the door, threw their coats out, and spit out the door at them.

We took off, leaving them sitting on the roadside, about 20 miles from the nearest town.

In America, they would have sued us, the bus company, and the nice woman who spit at them. Here, they sobered up, hitchhiked back into town, and kept quiet about being kicked off the bus.

I’m too old to get into fights, but it was refreshing to step back into the 1940’s for a few minutes and live in a world where people were expected to take care of themselves and stand up to the bad guys.

 

February 15, 2009 Time Spent In Rural Indiana

Posted in Rodger's Russia Book | Posted by rodger |

 

I have not written since my arrival in Russia because I have been spending several days in rural Indiana, about 1955. I have debated whether to even write about my unpleasant experience, but….

Since my arrival in Southern Russia, I have been suffering from what we used to call “Montezuma’s Revenge.” As you know, this is a debilitating and embarrassing condition. It is even worse in a small Russian apartment with poor interior sound insulation, and a commode that has the acoustics of a tuba in a concert hall. I am certain that every tenant in this building, and probably the next one, knows of my condition in detail, time, date, and frequency.

If there is any good news, it is that I have been too miserable to feel much embarrassment. I am also losing a lot of weight.

Then the family, aunts, uncles, cousins and nephews came to dinner yesterday. I can now catch an occasional word of Russian in a conversation, and I learned that the word “diarrhea” is the same in both languages. Apparently, my condition has been one of the major topics of conversation for the past week, with mother-in-law giving detailed hourly reports to her sister, and her niece, and her nephew, and…. It made for fine dinner conversation.

If you are old enough, you might remember 1950’s rural Indiana, or rural anywhere else. The major topics of conversation when women gathered were the gory details of Martha’s last operation and the game of counting the days between marriage ceremony and baby delivery. For a few moments, it felt like childhood returned.

I now feel much better and it’s a nice winter morning. The snow has stopped and temperature is almost shirt sleeve. I sit here on this glorious morning listing to the soft sounds of my mother in law screaming out of the second floor balcony at a woman who is screaming back from the ground about the septic pumping truck.

As there is no sewer system in the village, these apartments have a cesspit, which has to be pumped out a couple of times a week. One person in the complex collects the money from all of the tenants once a month and pays cash twice a week to the truck driver. There are no credit cards, billing accounts, or checks in this republic. Therefore, its cash or keep the poop. The woman with the money is in Nalchick this morning and the driver will not pump without cash. Somehow, the woman in the yard has decided that this is my mother in laws fault.

Turns out that the woman who went to Nalchick left money for the pumping truck with her neighbor, but that neighbor is across the street at the community center and cannot hear the truck. By the time they rounded her up, the truck was gone. There is, apparently, no set schedule for the truck, so some one always has to be waiting breathlessly with money in hand.

All services here are the same. When we went to the Post Office/Phone Company to inquire about internet service, the longest line was people paying their bills – in cash. You bring your bill to the window and fork over the money. No bill? There is now a computer in the lobby where you can print a copy and then get back in line. This is a big improvement from last year. Then you had to stand in another line waiting for a grumpy woman to sort through the file cabinets to find your paper bill and slam it down on the counter in front of you.

Phone, gas, electricity, heating, it’s all the same. Take the bill physically to the office and pay in cash. Of course, people are not stupid. In some larger apartment buildings one person will collect from everyone for basic services like garbage and water and pass the money on.

It makes me realize how wonderful it is in America where companies bill you periodically for services and let you pay on line or by check. The very faint odor of the un-pumped tank wafting through the window will increase my appreciation.

Don’t you love the fact that Edison will send you a bill that you can pay online or send a check back? In my case, Edison bills me electronically and my bank pays the bill automatically. I hear rumors that Moscow now has on line bill pay, but it will be a long time coming to the villages.

How do you know that a Russian is talking on the telephone? Easy, everyone within a block or so can hear them and so can you,

Apparently, the soviet telephone systems were not all that good, so people got the habit of trying to be heard over noisy lines – by screaming at the phone. They also cover the mouthpiece with their hands to keep the sound in.

Of course, the young people have all had real phones their entire life, so they talk normally on the phone.

Do Russians Really Drink A lot?

Is 18 liters of vodka per person, per year for every man woman and child a lot? The Moscow times carried an article today that stated that the head of the national police force was asking the Duma to outlaw drinking on airplanes. They then went on to list several incidents this year where passengers assaulted flight attendants and two incidents where drunken passengers tried to hijack the aircraft. Last month a drunken Turkmanian decided in mid-flight that he wanted to go back to Turkistan, so he handed the attendant a note that said he had a bomb and wanted the plane re-routed. Unfortunately for him, the other Russians on board had also had enough to drink to be combative, so they tackled him, pounded him a little, and sat on him for the rest of the flight,

Only in Russia could we say, “It’s not just the passengers”. A few years ago, three male flight attendants got drunk during the flight and then assaulted a passenger when he complained about the bad service.

It isn’t always funny. A few weeks ago, the passengers on a Moscow to New York flight realized that the captain who was making the welcoming announcements was too drunk too talk straight. They jumped out of their seats and refused to let the plane take off. This is how Aeroflot handled it – step by step.

First, the pilot came back and assured everyone he was not drunk. The passengers told him they were not fooled. They were Russians and they knew a drunk when they saw him.

The Pilot assured them that he would not touch the controls because there were four pilots on board for the transatlantic flight and someone else would do the flying today,

Second, One of the other pilots came back and said that the captain was not feeling good that day, but he would fly plane and let the captain sit it out,

Third, After two hours of cell phone calls to Aeroflot and continued mutiny, an Aeroflot representative came on board and told the passengers that it didn’t matter what shape the pilot was in because the plane flew itself by computer and the pilots didn’t really have to do anything.

Finally, after over four hours of passenger mutiny, Aeroflot replaced the pilots and the plane took off.

Even less funny, about a year ago, Aeroflot had its first serious crash in over a decade. A plane making a difficult landing during a storm in Siberia went off the end of the runway. A lot of people died. It was thought that the storm was the only cause of the crash, and it may have been the major cause. However, the government just released the final crash investigation. The pilot had alcohol in his system, and the flight recorder shows that he asked the co-pilot to take over just before the crash. His last words were “You take over, can’t you see that I can’t land this thing?” Apparently the copilot couldn’t land it either.

This is the airline that I have to fly home on.

I should point out that despite these occurrences; Aeroflot has the best or second best safety record world wide in each of the last 5 years. Don’t want anyone worrying unnecessarily.

 

February 23, 2009 Love, Russian Style

Posted in Rodger's Russia Book | Posted by rodger |

I’m singing in the rain, singing in rain, and I’m haaapy agaaain! Why an I happy? Because when it rains, it’s too warm for your ears to freeze off and too warm for ice on the ground. Love rain. Speaking of love…..

Love, Russian Style

Mother in law, Elvira, just lost her boyfriend.

She deserved it. He has been chasing her for a year and she was still resisting. Nikolay was the man who purchased our apartment in downtown Prochlodney. When he saw mother, it was love, or like, or something, at first sight.

Personally, I just think that he was just after a young chick. He was 71and she is still a spry 68 years old, with a figure like a well filled beer barrel and bright red hair. She is also as shy as a hungry lion, as soft spoken as a fog horn, and a damned good cook.

He expressed an interest right away and invited her to dinner and found any excuse to see her. When his feelings really got serious, he opened his refrigerator and showed her it was full of food. That’s courting, Russian style.

Anybody out there laughing has never missed a meal.

If you’ve ever gone a day or so without being able to eat, you don’t need an explanation about the refrigerator, and if you haven’t had the experience, you will never understand it.

She refused to commit to anything, but kept seeing him often enough so that he invited her to select the family potatoes with him in the fall. This is a serious family custom around here. Every fall, the family members get together and sample potatoes from the bazaar. They purchase a few from each grower, take them home and cook them. Then they get together to evaluate the potatoes and decide how much they will purchase from each grower to get through the winter. This was just too much commitment for Elvira, so Nikolay drifted away and eventually found another girl friend in St. Petersburg.

Most of the world outside of America and Europe has gone through hard times in recent memory. Russians have seen the shortages of socialism, months without paychecks, then the crazy times of the early 90’s, the total devaluation of their money, and if they are old enough, the starvations of WWII and its aftermath.

Russian woman are not lacking in romance, love, or sex drive, but the best single thing that a man can say is “I can take care of you and our children.” The second best thing is “I won’t get real drunk and hit anyone.” For a Russian man, the most important thing that a Russian woman can say is, if course, “yes”, but the next most important thing would be “I own an apartment.”

We’ve already talked about how Singles ads are different here, for the women, anyway.

The average men’s ad is the same all over the world, “Short potbellied, pock marked, couch potato wants gorgeous skinny younger woman who is a good enough actress to convince him that he is a great lover.”

However, the woman’s are different here. You’ve all read the singles ads in America. We all do. It makes us appreciate the fact that we don’t have to place one.

The most popular single phrase in American women’s ads is “make me laugh”. The typical ad is “Wanted, younger man to sweep me away on the back of his Harley to walk hand in hand on beautiful beaches and enjoy fine dining. Be my best friend, share my girly secrets. Make my life beautiful. Friendship first, possibly something else later.” Yep, it really does read “Be Zorro, ride up on your white charger, sweep me up in your black cape and fulfill all of my Opra-driven fantasies – and don’t you dare hint that you want what we both want, because I’m not that kind of girl!”

Here in the real world, marriage is important. It has love and sex, and, more important it makes you a team to get through a difficult world. No one is ashamed of wanting to be married. If you try one of those psychobabble lines like “You have to learn to live on your own first before you can actually love someone else”, you will get the blank stare that you richly deserve.

A typical ad from a Russian woman reads, “Wanted, a kind man, not too much older than me, to love, and care for, and raise a family with.”

On the good side, Russian women still do not consider “wife” a derogatory job description. They generally cook for their husbands (food that has never seen a freezer or a microwave), wash and IRON the clothes, clean the house, worry about how their husbands look when they leave the house, and change the diapers.

Pre-menopausal women wear makeup every day, skirts when the weather allows, high heels, and clothes that match.

And you still wonder why American men respond to Russian women?

Sounds good don’t it. Would be, too, if the average Russian man didn’t drink more than the average fish, and if the average Russian women didn’t define “care for’ as telling her husband what to eat, drink, wear, and do, respectfully, of course. Since most, but definitely not all, men here are drunk a lot, the women have gotten used to running things while the drunken sot sleeps it off. Women describe it as, “The man is the head of the household, but the woman is the neck, and she points the head to what she wants it to see.”

If you do marry a Russian woman, I suggest flowers, candy, and a straight jacket.

Oh, mother has a new boy friend, but he isn’t getting any cuddling either. A new man moved into the apartment below hers. He comes up and fixes things for her and she often fixes food for him. Sometimes they eat together when we kids aren’t in town. He likes Elvira a lot, but he will never get anywhere with her. Whenever he takes her anywhere, he lets her pay him 10 rubles for gas. That kills his chances. Russian women are also smart enough to avoid cheapskates.

March 2, 2009 Two Funerals and a Fool

Posted in Rodger's Russia Book | Posted by rodger |

There were two funerals today. I attended one of them, made a fool out of myself, and had a nice meal.

Today, the Lada died. That may not mean much to you people in America, but the Lada is the second most popular car in history. The 18.5 million made ranks the Lada just under the Volkswagen bugs’ 19.5 million and above the Model T with its 16.5 million made. Almost 70% were exported to Europe, Asia, and Australia, where the low price and rugged simplicity made them popular.

If you have ever seen a picture of a Russian street or a Russian driving a car, you have seen a Lada. It is a tiny little box that looks like a 1966 Fiat. In fact, it actually was a 1966 Fiat.

The Italians sold the entire plant to Russia. Russia began making 1966 fiats in 1970 – and was still making them last week. They used heavier steel for the body so it would hold up better in Siberia, made the suspension stronger to hold up to the rotten Russia roads, and sold it for as little as $2500. It was roomy for a micro car, had a big trunk, for a micro car, and was easy to repair. The rumor was that the easy repair was necessary because the owners did a lot of repair. I have heard about the lousy quality of the Ladas every time I go to Russia, but I have seen a lot of them that have run 300,000 to 400,000 miles. They just keep repairing them.

You see a lot of Ladas with house carpeting on the front floor, wood grained linoleum over the shift box, hand carved wooded door handles, and dash board knobs made from old radio knobs. The owners didn’t usually have a lot of money, but they found ways to keep them going. Since gas prices went up several years ago, a lot of Ladas have been converted to run on natural gas. In addition to the gasoline tank, they have a “gas” tank in the trunk for LPG.

They have changed over the years. As the old dies wore out, the lines were sharpened up, gauges were improved, the dash was changed, the headlights went from round to modern square lights, chrome cleaned up, and so on. The price also went up from $2500 to eventually almost $6000. After a recent round of discounts and a run up in the American dollar, they were selling for less than $5000 new when they were discontinued. They were still fairly popular, but the Russian government decreed that all new car production had to meet EU standards, and there was just no way to update a 1966 design to meet twenty first century emission and collision standards.

I will miss the cramped little cars, starting about 25 years from now when the last ones finally wear out.

The second funeral was more personal. A family friend, the father in law of my wife’s cousin died. It was very different than death in America. It also proved one of the biggest differences between Rural Russia and the United States.

He died on Friday, and the funeral was on Saturday. In rural Russia, there are no funeral homes and no embalmers. If you die on Friday, Saturday is a good time for the burial.

When my grandmother died in small town America, her body was embalmed the same day. A professional mortician made her look “peaceful” before her body sat in the mortuary for three days while friends and family came to pay their last respects.

When Sergie died, his wife and sisters prepared the body for burial themselves. They washed and dressed him and placed him in a casket under the car port. The next morning the more religious relatives had a two hour religious ceremony in the same driveway – which most of us skipped. About noon, the rest of us began to show up. People stood around the front yard and gossiped just as they do in America. They talked about Sergei tried to console the wailing widow, talked about work and school, and each other.

People don’t really dress up for funerals here. Most were mostly in their casual clothes. The closer family and friends were dressed in black when possible. The major exception was my 14 year old niece who, apparently, had been told that this was a costume party rather than a funeral and who came dressed as a hooker. But then, most Russian girls her age dress that way.

When we took my grandmother to the cemetery, we loaded her $5500 mahogany coffin with the brass hinges and grips into the Cadillac hearse and then we all drove our cars behind the hearse, out to the cemetery.

In Premalka, six of his friends carried the pine box out to a flat bed truck and we walked to the cemetery. The coffin was a simple pine box, silk lined and covered with blue bunting. There were no hinges, no handles, and no top until we got to the grave site. We walked in a solemn procession behind the truck, and it was a real procession. The truck came first, followed by the wife and sister, then followed by people holding up a cross and religious icons. Then, ten wide, the rest of us walked slowly behind them.

The trip to the old cemetery was about two miles and there we had to part with tradition. The grave was actually at a new cemetery that was another mile away over muddy paths, so the family had rented busses to take us the rest of the way.

The coffin was lowered by the family and the grave filled in by mourners before we left.

After the funeral, everyone went to a restaurant that served a “funeral special meal.” We had the entire restaurant and they served what my family says is the standard funeral meal. We started with a tray of cheese, bread, and salami. The main course was borche, of course, with more chunks of bread, and a little tort (Russian cake) for desert.

Of course, we all carefully made certain that we gave a gift that more than covered the price of our meals and bus rides. The family does not need more expenses at a time like this.

All in all, the process and the expense made a lot more sense than our customs. We spend far too much money on the dead that could better be used for the living, and our funerals have no more significance than this one.

On the sad side, the widow was inconsolable. She cried and wailed in a manner that only happens in bad movies. In a Russian marriage that lasts, and they do not all last, the bond is a tight one. Sergei was a little older than me. He and his wife were children when the Germans came during WWII, youth when the post war hunger hit, adults during socialism, and approaching senior age when the economy collapsed in 1992. In Indiana, we would call it a hard scrabble life. It took both of them to keep food on the table.

In addition to her emotional loss, she now she faces a future without insurance payouts, or social security widow’s benefits, or Aid to Seniors. Her home is paid for, but her savings will eventually run out and her pension may not cover food and heat, so her children will end up helping her – if she is lucky.

Perhaps she will be lucky as Russian families are usually closer than ours.

Oh, the part about making a fool out of myself. When we were walking to the cemetery, I was paying too much attention to the other marchers and too little attention to the muddy road. As a result, I fell on my muddy butt when I stepped in a pothole in the dirt road. Larisa helped me up and then, in the typical fashion of a loving wife hissed at me “How could you do that? Now everyone thinks that you’re drunk!” Apparently people fall down a lot in Russia, but not sober ones. Oops.

June 10, 2010 The Saga Of Savropol & Russian GPS

Posted in Rodger's Russia Book | Posted by rodger |

 

We are in StSDC10130avropol for a few days to visit an orphanage. It is a gorgeous thousand year old city on the southern edge of Russia. I’ll write more about it later.

I guess the best way to describe Stavropol is to start with the hotel that we are in. For $120 a night, it is a first class European style hotel. The best short picture that I can give is that the shower stall has 10 shower heads – 8 for body massage, one hand held, and an overhead rain head. It also has built in lights, fan, water pump and individual water heater- and there is a Lamborghini in the parking lot.

This is NOT Prochlodney. There are thousands of cars and damned near no Lada’s to be seen. The average car is newer, cleaner, and better kept than a car in California. The people are well dressed, and the restaurants are full. We ordered Caesar salad and beer from a mini-brewery on our first evening here, and we could have had real steak, pizza, pasta, hamburgers or hot dogs at the many restaurants that line the streets. This is rich Russian city and it hovers between Europe and Russia in attitude.

One of the subtler differences showed at the breakfast buffet. This place puts on a great breakfast. Unlike the anemic tables of bagels and cereal the Holiday Inn’s call breakfast, this place offers 5 different salads, sausages, boiled eggs, two kinds of egg custard, pasta, sweetbreads, French toast, cereals, rolls, fruit, and too much more to list.

However, the difference is not in the food, but in the people. I have only been to three buffets before in Russia. Three years ago and last year, the buffets had to have little cards explaining that no one was counting the number of grams you ate and that you could come back as often as you wanted – and sometimes the waitresses had to convince skeptical guests that they were serious about that all-you-can- eat thing. Not here. The average guest here is an experienced traveler who is very familiar with the breakfast buffet. They wander in, fill their plates and sit down for a little business conversation over breakfast – and they leave tips.

From the front steps of our hotel, you can see dozens of new business buildings and apartment houses. There are a lot of older buildings here too, but they are not the decrepit wrecks you see elsewhere in Russia.

We even ran across a modern movie theater. It was in a business building downtown, but once you got inside, it could have been in Orange County. It was an eight screen multiplex showing all of the latest 3D movies from Hollywood. On the way to the theater, there was a modern snack bar and gorgeous marble bathrooms. The main difference between this theater and the ones in Orange County was that this one is newer and fancier.

I’m going to miss this place when we have to head back out to the boonies.

I rather wondered where all the money came from and I learned that this is a rich town that has earned it pay. It is heavy into industry, including mechanical engineering, metal-working, chemistry, electric power engineering and oil and gas. It is also the 4th largest supplier of food and food processing services in Russia. They have one of the best technical universities in Russia and have colleges of medicine and dentistry. They have been a prosperous and hard working people here since the city was established by retired soldiers in 1775.

There have actually been people living here for well over a thousand years and the name derives from a Byzantine Greek settlement that the Russians mistakenly thought had been named “city of the cross” in Greek. There is no sign of earlier habitation in ruins or history. To Russians, history starts when the Czar established a fort on the site of a Cossack settlement. There is not much sentiment about pre-Russian pasts.

One of the people who shared his story with us was one of our marshutka drivers. He said that his job was literally Hell on Wheels (Russian driving is so competitive that it is being considered as an Olympic sport), but he gets two days a week off and earns about 50,00 rubles ($1,800) a month. That’s about three times the average wage in Russia.

From the look of the cars and clothes, most other people seem to be doing about as well as him.

Then we found out what had not changed in this modern city. Larisa’s bridge fell out this morning and we needed to find a dentist to glue it back in. and we suddenly found ourselves back in old Russia.

She asked at the front desk for the location of the nearest dentist. There were two young men there. One gave her vague directions and a casual point. The other drew her map to a dentist office that was about five blocks away.

We took the map and started out. The first direction was to go three blocks east. Unfortunately, despite the nice neat map, the street ended in one block. We crossed the light at the end of the street and Larisa asked a woman going by where the building was. She said that the street ended, but that we should continue to walk through park in front of us. Half way through the park, Larisa stopped a man who looked like a college professor and asked again. He said that one of the streets on the map was the street at the north edge of the park and that we should go “that way”. As we left the park, a young college student that Larisa stopped pointed to a huge medical center and said that was the building.

When we got there, it turned out not to a dentist office, but the major medical center of the region. After standing in line for about 15 minutes (there were two people in front of her), Larisa was told by an adamant clerk that they didn’t do that kind of work there, and that the dentists didn’t come in until 1:00 and that they would not do it then either.

On the way out, Larisa stopped at an information desk to ask where a real dentist office could be found. At first the clerk there could not believe that anyone would disrupt her peace and quiet with such a question, but she soon softened up and gave Larisa directions to another building, – sort of. She made a lot of gestures about like a carrier flight controller bringing in a jet and told her to go to the Salva restaurant and turn right.

We left the building and turned right, that being the best guess as to where the woman had been gesturing. There had been a lot of gestures, but we had no idea which way she was pointing. At the first corner, Larisa asked two tattooed men where the restaurant was and they had no idea. We continued across the street and turned right because that’s where Larisa thought she saw the restaurant.

The first person we came too was a lady in a grey striped sweater and skirt, who said that we had turned the wrong way out of the building, and the restaurant, was the other way.

O.K, back to the medical center and trek on. The first person Larisa stopped said we were going the right way. While I tried to buy a coke, Larisa asked a vendor sitting at a sidewalk table and someone else – who thought we were going the right way – probably. By that time, I suggested that we were walking too much and that we should just ask a cab driver to take us to the nearest dentist. The cab driver would not take us, because the office we were looking for was only 200 meters from where we were. He pointed out another street to turn on –and he was right.

About two blocks down (after a short stop to purchase a pen – where Larisa swore later that she didn’t ask directions), we came to the main dental school and treatment center.

It was about 7 blocks, with three turns and a park, and the way I count it, about 9 people told us how to get there. Russia doesn’t have much GPS yet, but the old PPS (Personal People Search) is still working.

Oh, and they fixed her bridge, treated a couple of small ulcers they found and charged her 550 rubles – less than $20.

I guess that I have to explain that my wife is not a crazy Russian – at least not about directions.

What she did was common and for a good reason.

During Communism a lot of information that we consider either public or inconsequential was classified: Things such as the location of the local tire manufacturing plant, the locations of many government offices and road maps.

Now that communism is dead, maps are no longer illegal, but they are not common and they are very hard to find. The country has its own new GPS system in orbit, and Medebev is publicly insisting the people use it, but I have not yet seen a private car with a GPS system and have not seen one for sale anywhere.

Old attitudes die hard and the real attitude here is “What do you need a map for? You going somewhere you shouldn’t go? Maybe doing a little terrorist sabotage, Yankee?”

Since I first wrote this, I have seen a GPS, sort of. The taxi driver that took us back to the bus station had a GPS on the dash. It turned out to be a home grown system. He and his boss have cobbled together a GPS that uses Google Earth maps, and they have written software that allows them to add street names to the map. The driver told us that he and his boss have a web site to sell the systems. However, not many people have been willing to purchase the systems, and they were worried. He knew, he said, that owning a map was no longer a crime, but he was worried that selling them might be.

The arrogant attitude of public transport officials has not been helpful. In San Francisco or London every station has a map of the system on the wall and little folding maps of the bus routes are everywhere. Generally, Russian buses and Marshutkas have route numbers on them, but there is no way to tell where the route goes – except to ask the people waiting at the bus stop or to stop the driver and ask him where he is going.

In Prochlodney, I have a wallet card that I made myself. Using times given by Uncle Victor, I made a cheat sheet with the times of buses and marshutkas to and from the Bazaar. The times do not always seem accurate and I just found out why. Victor made the list by sitting out at the bus stop most of the day and asking marshutka drivers how often they drove by that stop.

It is changing – slowly. Savropol is the first place that I have seen buses and marshutkas with silk-screened route lists on the windows. The Savropol bus that we rode last night had a list of all of its major stops printed on the window in bright yellow paint.

Not here in the sticks.

Mother in law just went out to get cherries for this afternoon’s baking. She took a ladder, not a shopping basket.

 

June 23, 2010 Home Remodeling – The Russian Way

Posted in Rodger's Russia Book | Posted by rodger |

As I have written before, mother’s apartment in Premalka has no water during the summer. The main water tower fell down in a storm years ago, leaving very little pressure in the lines. Even on good days, the water pressure is pathetic.

During the summer, everyone waters their gardens all day and there is NO water left to get the second floor of this apartment building – or much of anywhere else in the village.

The government is aware of the problem and is sympathetic. In fact, the federal government sent money for a new tower several years ago. There is still no new tower, but the mayor was able to afford several expensive trips to France to watch soccer games.

A workman that we hired recently works for the water department. Dimitri says that the remaining tower is in such bad shape that you can stick a finger through it. He and the other workers spend a lot of their time patching it up.

He says that the republic (equivalent to a state) gave them money last year to replace the tower. He says that he is still fixing the old one, has not seen the new one, but has noticed that the manager of the water district is making good progress on building his new house.

There is a little water in the middle of the night if you go to the basement, but there is too little pressure to get it up the stairs, so mother and my wife have been trudging down the stairs with buckets and bottles to fill up with water at night.

Showers here are whores baths. (For those of you who have not heard the phrase, it refers to the fact that there were no showers in fancy French brothels so the girls stood in a tub of water to bathe between customers), and clothes washing is a hand powered affair.

A few days ago, I was wandering through the bazaar and saw that there were several places selling water pumps for homes that use well water. With a little encouragement, Larisa’s mother phoned a man who works for the water department and found out that I was certainly not the first person to have the idea of using one in Premalka. In fact, the man in the apartment below us had a water pump installed in his bedroom.

I asked why we didn’t’ call one of the professional plumbers in the phone book. They pointed out that there was NO phone book. No Yellow pages; just a small white pages that no one had ever looked at, and don’t even ask about the newspaper ads. No one in his/her right mind would hire some stranger to work on their house.

Larisa also said that every plumber in town who know anything worked for the water department. I gave up.

Dimitri came over the next day and did it the Russian Way,

He looked at the problem and said that he knew how to fix it. He gave us an estimate of 11,000 rubles – about 8,000 for the parts and 3,000 for his labor. To get the perspective, the dollar is about 30 rubles, so he was talking about $250 for the parts and another $100 for him and his assistant. Frankly, that was a lot of labor for $100, but Dimitri works full time for the water department for about 6000 rubles a month – less than $200, and he makes, he says, about 20,000 more doing part time work.

As soon as I agreed to the price, we were off and running. It was 3:30 in the afternoon, late to do business in Prochlodney as the bazaar closes a little after 1:00. Not to worry, Dimitri knew where everyone lived.

Our first stop was at a home down a dirt road (most of the roads in Premalka are dirt) where we were met by a man who had pump waiting on his front porch and two more visible beyond his open front door. Dimitri said that the man had a store, but that he kept all the “good stuff” at home. The pump was about a grand more than we estimated and I assumed (wrongly) that Dimitri and his friend split the extra later.

Then back in the car and down another dirt road. The next man was a plumber with a Russian Work Truck in his driveway. For those of you unfamiliar with the term, a Russian work truck is an old Lada (like a 1972 Fiat) with a rusty roof rack on the top and thirty or so 20 foot lengths of plastic pipe drooped over the roof rack and tied to both front and back bumpers. There were boxes in every inch of space, passenger seat, trunk, back seats, and tied to the roof rack. From the many boxes, parts began to appear and be laid out on the driveway as Dimitri and his friend laid out the job like the medieval masons who worked by making full size drawings on the floor and cutting around the lines.

T-joints, elbows, slip joints, valves and pipes came together. At one point Dimitri’s friend held up a part and asked me what they call it in English. It was a slip joint with one metal end that screwed into the pump and a second end that was plastic and was the receptacle for the plastic pipe. When I told him, he laughed and said “Russian call it an ‘American’”. Male humor changes nowhere.

I paid him another grand. I figured that the parts were worth 700 rubles and that I got 300 ruble “American discount”, but it was still under thirty bucks and cheaper than Home Depot.

The third stop surprised me. It was a brand new and well stocked electrical store with a variety of fuse boxes and fittings. What it didn’t have was a sign. It was a brand new modern store on a major road with no way to know what was inside. To install the pump, we also needed a new fuse box as the old one was a communist era two line 5 amp box. Dimitri asked for a minimum sized box smaller than any I have ever seen before, and I upgraded it to larger box for about 30 dollars more.

The last store was a regular hardware store for wire, plugs, staples, and so on. Larisa says that when we came in, the clerk in the back saw Dimitri and said something on the order of “Here comes the smart ass again” I guess that I should mention that Dimitri does not ever stop talking. I think that he has learned to speak even when he is inhaling.

Back to the apartment about 5:30 and Dimitri got to work. None of this “I’ll schedule it and call you later” stuff. By 8:30 the pump was plumbed in and working on a temporary electrical line. Dimitri couldn’t install the new electrical panel until the electric company came out to remove the official seals on the old one.

He came back the next day and installed the new electrical panel. He does nice work for a man who never stops talking.

Two Days Later –

Well, the pump is in. We spent $410 and got wonderful water until the rains stopped. When it rains, no one waters their crops and there is water left on this end of the line. When the rain stopped, we got wonderful water from 2:00 am to 5:00 am, and a dry pump the rest of the time.

It turns out that the problem is the feed pipe. There is a water pipe along the bottom of the basement that has water almost all of the time. This is the pipe that Larisa ’s mother was getting water from. The pipe that normally feeds this apartment runs across the top of the wall and rarely has water.

Dimitri, the plumber, was over today and offered to move the feed pipe to the better water pipe. Mother threw a fit. She said that the neighbors would sue her if she tapped into the common pipe.

Dimitri reassured her that it would not make any difference to her neighbors; they would have as much water as usual. Mother was adamant, almost screaming No NADA (No way.) We finally got the truth out of her. She is terrified that the neighbors will be jealous and hate her if she has water and they don’t.

Larisa said to her, “Anton’s mother” (a neighbor in the identical building next door) “has a pump. Does everyone hate her?”

“Yes, everyone hates her! I hate her. She has water and we don’t!”

At least we have water from 2:00 to 5:00 am and on days when it rains. And it runs real strong when it runs. *** Update July 2, 2010. While working on a sewer problem in the yard, a workman discovered today that the water in this building was partially turned off a couple of years ago. There was an accident in a parking lot about 75 yards from the building and the fire department turned off the water to here while they fought the resulting fire. When they left, they only turned in back on part way. In all these years, no one ever bothered to check it. He opened the valve all the way and while the water pressure is still very low, we have water most of the time now. You can’t beat the Russian government workman – but you often want to.

 

June 24, 2010 Good News! We got a free taxi ride today!

Posted in Rodger's Russia Book | Posted by rodger |

 

Elona forgot her jacket at church on Sunday, so Larisa and I ordered a taxi and went to get the jacket and do a little shopping.

In the center of town, about half way to our destination, there was a very loud Thump and I was suddenly laying horizontally on a collapsed seat back, looking at the cab roof. A car had hit our taxi from the rear and pushed it into the car in front. It was a hard collision with no sign that the car that hit us had made any attempt to brake, but no one was hurt because the impact was squarely bumper to bumper. Larisa bumped her head a little on something in the back, but the pain went away in a few minutes, and the cab driver was too damned mad to feel any pain.

When we got out, the teenage driver of the car behind us and his friend were standing by the open doors of their car. The friend was yelling, “Uri, I keep telling you that you have to hit the brakes once in a while, You can’t just keep hitting the gas pedal.!”

Larisa and I stood on the grassy center median for a few minutes watching the screaming and yelling and wondering what was going to happen next. The accident happened right in front of the local police station, where a dozen or so officers stood around the parking lot carefully ignoring the accident scene. Accidents require a police report, but there were not going to be any police volunteers today.

We were about to start walking when Dimitri showed up. He was in the car behind the one that hit us. He and his brother were on the way to a hardware store right across from the church, so they gave us a ride. It’s a small village.

Bad news – The only sad thing is that the 25 year old taxi was owned by the taxi driver, who is now out of work until he can replace it. I hope that brat that hit us had good insurance.

June 24, 2010 Today They Put In the Air Conditioner

Posted in Rodger's Russia Book | Posted by rodger |

As is usual lately, I was surprised by the workmen. I have seen so much bad work and so much dishonesty since I started coming to Russia that I am immediately suspicious of every workman. I am still having a hard time believing the Dimitri is an honest as he appears to be.

We looked at getting air conditioning about 2 years ago, but at $1000+, it was just too expensive. Around here, you can rarely use a window air conditioner because the windows all open in like doors and there double windows in each sash. The commies built simple but effective insulated windows by putting one inside and an identical one outside in the same sash, with a 4 or 5 inch gap between them.

So, you use split air conditioners. These are rare in America but common in Europe and here in Russia. The compressor is in a separate box that’s mounted outside. The evaporator and fan are mounted on an inside wall and connected to the compressor by drilling a hole through the concrete wall and running one power line and two Freon lines through the wall.

This year, air conditioners started at $320 and the temperatures started at 90 degrees – a really good match. The store even arranged, sort of, for installation. Like American stores, they contracted out the job to locals for a fixed price. They offered it for 2400 rubles – about $80 – cheap for mounting something on the outside wall of the second floor.

That night there was an insistent knocking on the door at about 10 pm. No sane person opens a Russian door at that time of night, especially for two muscular young men stripped to the waist and showing their tattoos. However, they were standing in front of a couple of large cardboard boxes and we eventually realized that the knockers and bangers were from the Techmart and not from the local Head Breakers and Robbers Association. They said that they had sold so many air conditioners that they couldn’t get them delivered during the day and so they were still working, in the dark.

The job was supposed to done in five days, but the days passed, we kept squeezing past the boxes in the hallway, and the installers didn’t show up. We stopped by the store and were told that it would be a couple of more days because of the work load. Then, about 3 hours later, the work crew showed up. Two young guys with big tools and looking about old enough to get into the local high school dance. Of course, everyone looks young nowadays.

A long discussion ensued. At first they said that they would need a cherry picker and that it would cost us an additional 700 rubles for the truck. I fumed about the extra expense and asked why the store said 2400 rubles if that wasn’t the real price. Then they decided that they couldn’t get a cherry picker into the driveway and would have to use ladders. Then they didn’t have any ladders that long with them and they weren’t enthusiastic about climbing that high anyway with a 40 pound compressor in their arms. I fumed some more, but I actually agreed wholeheartedly. I wouldn’t do it and I have Medicare.

Then they measured the wall and their ladders and hung out the window with a tape measure and announced “We can do it!” The ladders were long enough to get the outside unit to within about 5 feet of where the inside unit would be. Then they could run copper tubing down the outside wall to connect up. Of course, the copper tubing would be 500 rubles per meter and took two meters.

I did some more fuming about the cost of the tubing and said “No way. The copper tubing would leak heat like a sieve and make the air conditioner useless.“ One of the workmen gave the crazy American a sad look and picked up a piece of pipe insulation from the other side of the floor. Oops. Now I remember rule #17A – “Never assume the other guy is an idiot.”

I guessed that I had done enough fuming for the day, and for the week, and probably for the trip, and then I realized that 500 rubles was only 15 bucks – less that I would be charged anywhere else in the world, and that brings us to Rule #4, “A real man never passes up a good chance to shut up.”

I did shut up and they finished up a long, hard job. They struggled with the outside unit, but got it in place about a foot higher than they expected – and about a foot higher than it was safe to go on the ladders. The inside units usually go way up high on the inside wall and direct the air down. They drilled and punched and measured and eventually got the inside unit on the wall – after another hour of hard work.

They charged us 2900 rubles (less than 100 dollars) – 2400 for the store installation and 500 for the extra pipe – and they earned every ruble.

These kids and Dimitri may be the new thing in Russia. In the old days, the work was so bad it was hard to describe. Everyone worked for the government, and the standards were even worse then in most governments. Apartment walls were often roughly finished or patched with all the skill of a 10 year old in his first shop class.

In the old Russia, if the door was about the same size and shape as the door frame, you didn’t complain. Doors didn’t really have to close all the way, did they? And you shouldn’t complain about those pipes running across the middle of the wall. It would have taken some thought to hide them in the baseboard, and they delivered gas and water just fine the way they were.

More and more, people aren’t putting up with it. Now that they are making money and paying their own way, they want things done right, and no one wants to pay for “government work” with real money. The crap work and the crap workmen are not all gone, but they are on the way out.

The air conditioner is only 9000 BTU and this is a two room apartment, but it may cool the entire place, and I just found out that it has a heat pump function for when the central heat fails. When one of the workmen measured how far he had to drill to get through the outside wall, he found that he had drilled 50 centimeters – about 18 inches of solid concrete separates us from the outside world, and every cheap window is one of those two windows in the same frame. They did get something right when they built these places.

By the way, Boris Yeltsin initially became famous because as a director of the Sverdlovsk House-Building Combine, he refused to allow workmen to install floors that didn’t meet the walls or closet doors that would not close in new apartments. It was so unusual it made him famous, got him promoted to Moscow and eventually made him President of Russia.

 

March 27, 2003 Tver, the City of Beautiful Women

Posted in Rodger's Russia Book | Posted by rodger |

We are in Tver. Leo and Marina came up to Moscow for two days and we returned to Tver with them yesterday. We are returning to Moscow in a few hours. There is a commuter train from here to Moscow that costs about $1.50 for the two and a half-hour trip – or more accurately – WOULD cost $1.50 if they had not canceled 4 of the 8 scheduled trains. This means that the few trains still running are not at the times we need and will be standing room only. Russians will sell a ticket for train where you have to stand up for 3 hours – no problem. When Larisa asked the “nice woman” behind the counter if the trains were running, she said “I can’t be bothered with all this crap, look at the damned board!” No wonder they’re all pissed off all of the time.

In a few hours we will be picked up by the driver that we hired and be taken on the three hour trip for 1000 rubles – about $30.00

Tver is very different from Moscow. Out here people claim that Russia plans to put an Embassy in Moscow so that they will have embassies in all nearby foreign countries.

Prices are about half of Moscow prices, and we are staying in luxurious three room suite for $80 a night. It has a large bedroom, a dining room complete with luxury furniture, and a living room. I would have booked a smaller room, but in Moscow any room under $120 is a pigsty. I thought that we were taking a chance on even booking an 80-dollar hotel.

This is medium sized college town. It has a concert hall, movie theatre, library, and several universities, but it still looks like Tijuana. Leo says that the city is improving at an astonishing rate, but the pavements are still dirty and cracked and up close the buildings are in bad need of paint and plaster. Beautiful buildings but…. Apparently there was no money for maintenance during the last ten or fifteen years of communist rule and the buildings show it.

The old “who gives a damn” attitude still rules most common Russians. They put a brand new entry door in Leo’s apartment building a few weeks ago. A few days later someone ripped up the padding on the inside of the door. It’s like a world populated by juvenile delinquents who never pick up after themselves.

Tver has central heat like Moscow. I learned how they regulate the utility usage. If your block uses too much hot water, the central station cuts you off without warning – for a few hours or days or a week. When we got up this morning, we found out why our luxury suite had very nice electric heaters in every room.

On the other hand, I treated Leo and Marina to breakfast in the hotel restaurant. We had several small cheese and ham sandwiches (Russians call it “butter bread”), sausage, Lox, some caviar on toast, tea, coffee, pastries – and a bill for $4.00

There are several dating agencies in town, including the one that introduced Leo to Marina. The local legend says that they are here because of Tver’s second name, “The City of Beautiful Women”. It was so known, it is said, because the major industry even before socialism was cloth manufacturing. The industry attracted thousands of young country girls into town to work the looms, resulting in a century long surplus of women. I don’t know about the truth of the legend, but there is enough pulchritude in town to get a married man in trouble just for looking.

 

March 26, 2003 I Go Solo

Posted in Rodger's Russia Book | Posted by rodger |

 

Hey, I made it all the way to the post office/internet station all by myself. Larisa and her mother are at a government office trying to get permission to bring a couple of Larisa’s paintings back to the states and I am alone in Moscow.

I can get around alright, but I am going to starve to death. I can’t read a restaurant menu.

I learned the Russian word for “that”, “eto” and have been feeding myself with that one word, and a finger. The most common form of business here is a Kiosk. It’s a glass prison on the sidewalk with a small window through which you shout your order to a surly clerk who throws your merchandise back through the same tiny window. I eat by pointing to food and saying “eto”. If I want two of them, I say “eto, eto”. Russians have no sense of humor, but most eventually and grudgingly give me what I want.

I don’t know what the Russian for “Pedestrian” is, but it must be the same word as “Target”. In Russian, cars rule the road, and drivers drive without any attention to whether or not there is a person on the road. This is apparently because during socialism only important people had cars, and they didn’t care if the poor failed to get out of the way.

Larisa tells me that if a driver hits a pedestrian, they might sue the pedestrian for damage to their car. I thought she was kidding until some jackass actually nudged me with his bumper when I didn’t get out of the way fast enough.

I have always resented those stupid movie scenes where our hero drives at high speed down sidewalks and side roads and through intersections scattering pedestrians left and right. My internal censor keeps saying “You can’t do that”. Guess what. That’s how they drive every day in Moscow.

Lane spacing is also as free form as English spelling was before dictionaries. On the same street you have 2, 3 or 3.5 (half street, half curb) lanes over a few blocks. One of our drivers gestured to the surface of the street and told us that there used to be white lines on the pavement, but everyone was happy when they wore off because they got in the way of good, creative driving.

Our apartment is on a main street near downtown Moscow. Yesterday morning I had to jump back into the doorway, because someone had decided that the sidewalk was wide enough to drive on. Parking is also free form. People park on the left side, right side, or sidewalk. They park parallel or nose in or slanted or, in a few cases, in the middle of the street as the mood dictates.

I decided not to rent a car.

 

March 20, 2003 First Time in Moscow

Posted in Rodger's Russia Book | Posted by rodger |

Well, I am in Moscow. I would have phoned someone to let people know that we are alright, but the concept of pay phone is strange here. You have to get tokens from the post office to use in the pay phones. No token, no phone call.

It was a lot easier than I expected. I’m a child of the cold war and I’ve heard horror stories all my life about how hard it was to get into Russia. The few people I knew who had been here had tales of searched baggage, intense questioning and KGB suspicions. What happened was that I got my baggage from the carousel, and then stood in line for an hour waiting for a bored border guard to ask if I was here for business or pleasure. I said “family”, he stamped my passport and said “Next”. That’s it. Guess the war is over.

As you know, we are here to see meet Larisa’s mother and to visit Leo Frankowski, a close friend of mine who moved to Russia about two years ago. Larisa’s aunt lives here in Moscow and has rented her neighbors apartment for us to stay in while we are here.

We are not in that original apartment. Larisa’s aunt arranged for us to use a vacant apartment next to hers, but it was not exactly vacant. It was more like abandoned with a fungus infected couch/bed (divan in Russian) left behind. It was a disaster.

The apartment was typical for a communist era apartment. It had one large room walled tastefully with poorly patched plaster of various colors, a separate four foot wide kitchen with a broken two burner stove, and the pervasive smell of moldy furniture. As it had only one main room, there was, of course, only one electrical outlet. They must sell a LOT of extension cords in Russia.

We spent one day looking for a hotel before we gave up. I don’t know if it is because capitalism is new here in Russia, or if Russians have always been crooked, but we were conned (“Just pay us the money and THEN we let you see the room – don’t worry it looks just like this picture that I showed you.”), lied to (“Oh, no, We couldn’t have said $60 a day on the phone. The rooms here rent for $100.”), and disgusted (“You must understand, sir, that all Russian beds are that small, and peeling paint is considered quite fashionable this year.”)

I also found out that in a large Russian hotel, each floor is a separate hotel, with separate managers, reservations, and prices. If the hotel on the sixth floor doesn’t have what you want, you can try the separate but identical hotel on the seventh. Does everyone know how to say “wasteful overhead”?

The second day, we got a call from Larisa’s friend. Her parents live in a nice apartment (by Russian standards) in the middle of Moscow and they own a Dacha. They were willing to go their Dacha and let us use their apartment for $400 for two weeks. I feel rather strange about this, but we are living in someone else’s apartment – using their dishes and towels and telephone. Apparently this is not an uncommon arrangement in Russia.

This apartment is small, but nice even by New York or Chicago standards. It has a washing machine in the bathroom, oak floors, a cable box that doesn’t work, and a telephone that only makes local calls, but it is very nice as the owner has done a lot of work on it.

My wife has been having a great time. After feeling helpless for so long in the states, she is now the organizer, interpreter and leader, and she loves it. She gets our cabs and leads us through metro stations with the confidence of a Moscow native. It is nice to see her feel confident.

I would have a tough time getting a cab here. Many people who have cars pick up people on the side of the road and sell them a ride. It is so common, the Larisa has never taken more than a minute or two to wave someone down. You stand in the street and hold your hand up and in a few seconds, a car will stop, and a stranger will offer you a ride – for a price. The costs are usually cheap and there is some sort of unwritten fare schedule that everyone seems to know. Our most expensive ride was from the old apartment in the suburbs to the new apartment in the center of Moscow. It cost $10 in a real, licensed cab. Still no meter, still a negotiated flat price, but a real cab. Problem for me is that EVERY ride has to be negotiated and my Russian is still pretty much limited to “Ya nee ponymyoo” (I don’t understand).

Sadly, the old Moscow is almost gone. There are still thousands of communist era apartment blocks (HUGE, gray and badly built.), but we did our shopping tonight in a Supermarket a block away (the Russians call it a “Supermarket”). When we stopped for a snack at a kiosk near the metro station we were offered our choice of the traditional Russian snacks – hot dog, chili dog, hamburger, cheeseburger, or pizza – washed down by those traditional Russian delights – Pepsi, Pepsi light, coke, coke light, or Mountain Dew.

The most common legacy of the communist era is in the faces of the people. I have seen a thousand Russians on the street and in the metro and have not seen one smile. Every single one looks like a man who has just been told his dog died.

A part of it is culture, but I suspect that part of it is simple reaction to reality. Today in the Metro, I sat across from a woman who appeared to be in her 70s. I realized that in the years since the 1930s she has seen turmoil, hunger, and war. She probably saw the last part of Stalin’s reign, may have been here during the years that the Germans were at the gates of Moscow, and she has seen the years of food shortage in the 40’s and again in the 70s. In 1989 she had to worry about freezing when the Russian government said that there was not enough heating oil to keep Moscow warm in worst part of the winter. Then she saw her pension made worthless by inflation and realized that she had been cheated out a lifetime of promises for security. It’s no wonder that there was sadness in her wrinkled and worn face.

However, the young people can make money – and a lot of it – and they are still wearing expressions that are just as sad.

Not all Russians are as sour in private. Larisa’s uncle Slav reminds me of my father and uncles. He drinks too much and is a happy inebriate who tells broad jokes, proposes too many toasts and can even make jokes with a man with whom he shares not a word of language.

 

Before we start, I should introduce you to the cast of characters that you’ll be meeting.

Posted in Rodger's Russia Book | Posted by rodger |

 

I’m Rodger Olsen. When I started these letters, I was in my late fifties, and had just achieved the middle aged man’s mid life crisis dream. I had married a beautiful, intelligent Russian woman who was over twenty years younger than me. Now, any psychologist worth his degree can tell you that this is a dream that normally turns into frightening nightmare, and having been a psychologist before I turned honest, I was very aware of that.

However, I had been divorced twice and had given up on dating American women. I met enough on them on the internet, but while the women’s ads varied in wording, the typical ad from an American woman really read “Be Zorro. Carry me away on your white horse, or the back of your Harley. Make every day exciting for me. Be responsible for my every mood. Spend every night walking in the moonlight. Be my best girl friend. Oh, and make me laugh! And, remember that I’m not ‘that’ type of girl.”

That was a problem for me. While I look like Rodney Dangerfeld, I really wasn’t looking for full time job as a comedian, and I liked “that” type of girl. During the last date I had with an American woman, she spent the entire evening explaining how all of the evil in the world was because of men being too “manly” and not appreciating “real values”. When she invited me in at the end of the evening, I declined. I told her it wasn’t right for her to sleep with the enemy.

The last one before that spent a big part of the evening explaining what kind of man she wanted. She wanted someone to share his feelings, be her best friend, share her love of antiquing, and, of course, make her laugh. At the end of the evening I told her, ‘Sandy, we’re both looking for the same thing, a good woman. I you find one you don’t need, send her my way.” and I quit dating.

Then I discovered Russian women. It was my first experience with Russian culture that wasn’t scripted by Warner Brothers, and it was an eye opener. Where American women demanded “make me laugh”, Russian women asked “Where would we live?” Where American women demanded that I make their life endlessly exciting, Russian women asked if I could support a wife. American woman asked about vacations, fine dining, adventure and walking hand in hand on the beach. Russian women asked about children.

They weren’t less romantic, but they seemed to live in the real world. I liked that.

There are two differences that were most important. None of the women that I corresponded with hated men or were ashamed of being women. They were proud of their cooking skills and expected the men to fish, work, repair the car, and protect them. Antiquing was never mentioned.

They second thing was the absence of the “desperate man” game. American women constantly label any man dumb enough to say that we wants to get married or settle down as “a weak, desperate loser” and they’ll have nothing to do with them. Then they complain to their girl friends that their boy friends are players who won’t propose.

Russian women were dating for a purpose and were not at all shy about saying they wanted wifehood, motherhood, and a home. I liked that too.

Nothing worked out for a while because Moscow is a long way to go for a first date, but then I got a letter from Larisa, who became the second major character in this book. The letter pretty much said, ‘I am a beautiful young Russian doctor in the US doing research and you remind me of someone I used to have a crush on. Wanna get married?” (Larisa will kill me when she reads that, but that’s the way I remember it.)

At first I took it for a joke. I’ve had male friends who dated much younger women. They are the ones who come in to the office Monday morning complaining that their crazy date threw up on their couch, wrecked their car, and spent the evening whining about their old boy friends. It’s always a disaster.

But, Larisa was cute, seemed to be intelligent, and courtesy required that I at least see her once – just to be courteous of course. Surprisingly, we sorta clicked. She convinced me that she had always planned to marry an older man (not this much older) because all of the young men she knew in Russia were drunk, abusive, and poor providers. The only really happy marriages that she saw, she said, were her girl friends who married older men who had settled down.

Of course, anything said by a woman beautiful enough to be in Playboy is obviously true. Larisa and her friends are typical Russian women. Of course, there is always a lot of variation between individuals, but typical Russian women treat a man with respect, at least in public. They are proud of looking like woman, and don’t cut their hair off, lose their makeup kits, and suddenly discover the comfort of wearing sneakers and jeans 365 days a year the day that they get married. They even cook and most are proud of being mothers, not embarrassed about it.

I should, however, take a moment to defuse all those great fantasies that you men are having out there. Russian women are not just cute little sex kittens. Russian women have been faced with generations of Russian men who are mostly too drunk to get much done, so, despite being respectful to their spouses, they have had to learn to get most things done on their own and to make many more independent decisions than American women. The saying is Russia is “The man is the Head of the house, but the woman is the Neck and she points the head at what she wants it to see.”

Getting a Russian woman to do what you want requires that you speak in a clear, authoritative tone, and then when that fails, a baseball bat and choke chain are recommended. These are stubborn women.

I married mine in November 2001. It has been a normal marriage with the normal problems. We have fought, made up, split up, and gotten back together. The age difference did cause problems, particularly when we were unable to have a child. However, we have now been married ten years. We have a beautiful three year old daughter, live part time in Russia, and I have been introduced to a fascinating county.

The last leading character is Elvira. She is Larisa’s mother. I refer to her as “Elvira”, “Mama”, “Baba” or “Your crazy mother”, depending on the context and my mood. She is only about two years older than me and must have been very upset when her daughter married me. She is very typical of her generation. She is peasant through and through. If her grandmother didn’t do it, eat it, or own, it, it must be evil. When I met her she hated food preservatives, junk food, modern appliances, all lazy people poorer than herself, all greedy people richer than her, and most men. Aside from her microwave, she still feels the same way.

I have, however, gotten a lot of respect for her good features. She is a survivor who has lived through poverty, political turmoil, and the loss of a couple of husbands. She retired from a job as a kindergarten teacher and has worked as an ice cream vendor, home care worker, and bootlegger to support Larisa. She is a very typical pig headed Russian peasant and I have been happy to have her for a mother in law.

In 2003, Larisa and I made my first trip to Russia. Larisa only had two weeks of vacation available so we decided to go only as far as Moscow. Her home town was over a thousand miles south, but we didn’t have time for a train ride there and back and neither of us wanted to fly south. It was less than ten years after the fall of the Soviet Union and due to inebriated pilots and poor maintenance Russian planes were falling from the sky with depressing regularity.

Larisa’s mother had an aunt in Moscow that she could stay with until we could meet her there, so we arranged to meet and stay in Moscow.

 

June 26, 2010 Fun Russian Facts

Posted in Rodger's Russia Book | Posted by rodger |

Old Style Russian toilet paper is brown, unperforated, and has a texture suitable for removing rust from a chrome bumper. It is also thick enough to be springy, and is still the most common paper used. New Russian toilet paper is white, still not perforated, soft, and still springy.

As real beds are now becoming common, there are some full sized and queen sized blankets for sale in the marketplace. However, every Russian home is stocked with the old blankets. They are between a beach towel and a single blanket in size and if you are more than 5’5”, they give you three choices: Cold feet, cold head, or two blankets.

A few restaurants and businesses now offer free toilets. However, most toilets – including those in public facilities like bus stations are pay toilets, and the price is going up. There are no coin slots.  An old babushka sits in front of the bathroom with a roll of toilet paper and change. Three years ago, it was 5 rubles (about 15 cents), now it is usually 10 rubles and sometimes as high as 12 rubles. That’s 30 cents a pop, or a pee. That means that a 67 year old man who is traveling can spend $5.00 a day on pee fees.

I am considering a new comedy act. “You might live in a village if,,,”

The milkman comes every morning at 6:30 am to deliver a gallon of milk in a large mouth jug. At 4:30 AM it was still in the cow.

Putin’s name translates as ‘The Way”. (Obama must be jealous.)

Medyebev’s name translates as “Bear”. (Considering his size, his first name should have been “Teddy”.)

Russia’s most famous author, Tolstoy, translates as “Fatso”

In Russian, “Red Square” is pronounced “Krasney Plushit” – and sounds a lot better in English.

In Socialist Russia, contracting any STD was a crime. The police picked you up, placed you forcibly in a hospital, and kept you there until you were cured. I’m not sure that I can argue with that. Cubans used the same system to virtually eradicate AIDS in their country.

July 2, 2010 Going To the Doctor

Posted in Rodger's Russia Book | Posted by rodger |

There should be a point to all letters. Sometimes they are humorous in a broad way, sometimes they are quiet humor. Sometimes they are “feel good” stories because they talk about something nice that happened to other people, and sometimes they are “feel good” stories in the sense of “Thank God! That didn’t happen to me.”

I think that we are firmly in that last category today.

I would have written earlier, but Larisa has been touring the drug stores trying to purchase the x-ray film that she owes to Uncle Victor and it has been a long day.

My left eye has been uncomfortable for several weeks. Starting at about the day I left the states, the eye has felt sore and, at times, felt as if something was under the lid. Inspections with a mirror and flushing with an eye cup didn’t find anything, and a few days ago I began to have some problems with vision in that eye. Dark clouds occasionally appeared in the field of vision.

Time to see the doctor. Not as easy as it sounds. Everyone here has insurance and the local medical facility has no idea of how to accept cash – except as bribes. (Medical care is “free” only if you ignore the considerable bribes due for each visit.) I could probably get in, but the one female ophthalmologist at the hospital sees about a hundred clients a day with a civil service attitude.

The alternative was the new private eye doctor in town. She charges heavily, 600 rubles, almost 20 bucks for a visit, and I personally didn’t have much hope of better than public service.

Boy, was I surprised and boy, did I surprise her. The office was clean, modern and well equipped. Kaiser would have been proud of it. As soon as she learned that I was a diabetic and had vision problems, she assured me that there was a new laser facility in a nearby city that could do coagulation for diabetics. (Diabetics go blind because the small blood vessels in the retina burst, releasing blood into to eyeball and it can often be forestalled by using a laser to weld the tear closed.)

Then she gave me an exam that was thorough, professional and competent. She found that I was going to have cataracts in about 10 years, that I had a slightly elevated pressure in my eyes, and that I had a big blasted hair under my lower eyelid. The dark spots in my vision were the hair repeatedly sticking up in the front of my eye, and waving around. When she removed the hair, the problems went away. My wife was pleased and then demanded to know if it was hair from a woman. Peace was preserved when the doctor said that it appeared to be from a child – probably picked up on the airplane.

As for me, I surprised the doctor too. She examined my eyes with several instruments and eventually dilated my pupils and used one of the old fashioned hand held lights to search my eyes repeatedly.

She eventually told Larisa that she could not believe that there was no damage to my retinas because every diabetic that she saw had serious eye damage, heart troubles and damage to the peripheral blood vessels within five years. I’ve been a diabetic for almost 30 years and still have my eyes and my feet intact.

You should be happy about that because it’s not all my fault. I’m a careful diabetic, but the main reasons I have my health are the American lifestyle and same health system that protects you.

You and I have doctors who check our blood pressure every time they get close to us. Our doctors monitor our cholesterol and prescribe medication every time it gets a little to high, and they check our liver function every time they do a blood test. Kaiser spends $4 a day on diabetic test strips for me and checks my long term diabetes effects every 6 months. You get the same level of treatment and you will probably live about 83 years if you are a woman and about 75 if you are a man.

The average Russian male lives 59 years, and the females 73 years. Every year, Putin puts on a big show of being a sportsman on his vacation. You see pictures of him stripped to the waist while white water rafting or wrestling. He does it because he is 58 years old and he has to convince the Russian public that he is not OLD yet. At 58, the average Russian man has only about a year to live.

July 05, 2010 Larisa Goes to the Doctor

Posted in Rodger's Russia Book | Posted by rodger |

Larisa has a cold and decided to go the doctor. She had the same two choices that I had, go to the local, and free, hospital and stand in line for hours waiting to be helped by a doctor who could care less, or go to a private doctor. Fortunately, we have a private clinic now.

We got there about 11:30 and Larisa got right in to see the doctor. Not a fancy place, but they had a public john, clean linoleum, and soft benches. By noon, the doctor had determined that Larisa had a serious case of bronchitis, had written her a handful of prescriptions, and decided that Larisa needed to be checked for pneumonia. That takes an x-ray. She also prescribed an infusion of vitamin spiked Saline solution.

We don’t have a lot of x-ray machines in Prochlodney, and the doctor doesn’t have any saline solution.

First choice: go to the public hospital about a block away. They have a machine. Unfortunately, they also have a long wait and she might or might not get in before closing time. Second choice: Uncle Victor is the primary x-ray reader at a small hospital on the other side of town. Of course, they close the x-ray department at noon and people start going home at 2:00. Unhandy when it is now 1:00. But, for family, Victor got his nurse to take the x-ray after hours and even LENT us the film. Patients have to bring their own x-ray film and we didn’t have time to stop on the way,

On the way back to the clinic, we stopped to purchase the antibiotics, decongestant, expectorant, saline solutions, drip bag, infusion needles, tubing, and gauze pads for the infusion. The nurse will do the infusion, but the patient has to leave the clinic, run out to the pharmacy for supplies and bring them back. Oh, and the drug store was out of x-ray film, so Larisa had to stop at several other stores on the way home to look for the film.

We got back to the clinic about 2:30 and then Larisa waited about an hour to start the infusion. She got right in but they only had one infusion stand, and some one else was using it.

Yep. Wonder how many patients die because they are not strong enough to run out to the pharmacy for nitro pills?

It’s not a crazy as it sounds. O.K. it IS as crazy as it sounds, but there is, I think, a reason behind the madness.

It is only my theory, but I do know that the communist constitution promised, among other things, free housing, job security for all, and free health care. What it didn’t specifically guarantee was free medication. It seems that in order to stick to the letter of the law and still save badly needed money, they separated “heath care” from medication. The hospital and doctors were guaranteed to be free to all, but you had to get your own medicine.

That has varied a little over the years, and the hospital where Larisa worked provided free drugs for cancer patients with expensive prescriptions. There was, however, never enough to go around and many people died early from lack of medications. It was very depressing to be a doctor in those conditions.

50 years of culture is hard to change, so in all but the most modern clinics and hospitals, there is still a separate pharmacy and larger hospitals have people (not hospital employees) who make a living running down to the pharmacy for bedridden patients.

I swear that I will never, never, complain about Kaiser again.

July 7, 2010 The Russian Glen Beck

Posted in Rodger's Russia Book | Posted by rodger |

If you love Glen Beck and like O’Reilly, this guy is your new best friend.
On the other hand, if you hate Beck, this guy will raise your blood pressure enough to cause a stroke.
RTN is the English language Russian news channel. Mr. Keiser is between OReilly and Beck in style and way right of both of them politically and economically. His female sidekick is American and she also seems to be a rabidly anti-bank and anti-government as  he is.
He says a lot of stuff the even O’Reilly would shy away from – such as his segment on the similarities between Obama’s idea of government and Fascism, and he provides real nasty looks at how much the insiders, such as bankers and businessmen, who contribute well to politicians, have ripped off from the American public.
His take on the protestors at the G-20 meeting would be novel to most Americans. He claims that, unlike the past where the nuts and fruits came out to demand free everything as their “rights”, that most of the protestors now were people who were upset about the various governments stealing trillions of dollars of tax money and giving it to banks who were “too big to fail” and who made good campaign contributions. As he put it, “people who were being driven into economic serfdom to support friends of politicians.”
Last week, he had a pad of “Obama Dollars” – oversized American 1000 dollar bills with Obama’s face on them – and he kept peeling them off as he talked about how much Obama has spent and claiming the soon his Obama dollars and American dollars would be worth about the same – and his were bigger and softer.
Today, he showed the news article where Hillary warned other countries to stop oppressing their citizens who wanted to protest – and then showed film of American reporters being arrested for filming the oil spill and protesters at the Democratic convention being tear gassed. He is the only man I know who hates Obama more than I do.
One warning. He hates BOTH sides of the aisle equally (which fits with my feelings) so if you want partisan reporting, you won’t get it from him.
http://rt.com/On_Air.html
Look for Keiser reports on the list of daily shows- it is worth a watch.

July 13, 2010 A Piece Of History – That Sounds Like Jello

Posted in Rodger's Russia Book | Posted by rodger |

withspeedcontrol

I own several pieces of history. I own a plant fossil from the Cambrian period, an Egyptian stone goddess from a third dynasty grave, a Civil War bullet, and now a Lada.

For those of you who have been incarcerated or entombed for the past 20 years, a Lada is the famous Communist copy of the 1972 Fiat, and you can’t say “Russia” without saying “Lada”. O.K. maybe you also need to say “vodka”, but you get the point.

There have actually been a lot of Ladas. There was the “estate” wagon”, the 4×4, ten different models of the 1972 fiat four door as it evolved over the years, and recently, several modern hatchbacks and sedans. However, the 4 door fiat based models have always been called the “Zhiguli ”s (pronounced “jigguly”) and they have always deserved the name.

We purchased a 2004 model 2107 – about the last model they made before they gave up on them in 2008.

Like all “Zhiguli ”s, it is a stick shift, with seats and pedals spaced properly for the neighborhood midget, has never had even provision for air conditioning, has 4 tiny doors that tall men have to back into, a mechanical dash clock that has never worked, and a cute little 1500 cc engine that will actually go over 90 miles an hour with a suicidal driver on board. It does fit into tiny parking spaces, and ours has a FM/tape player in it.

Car buying here is not a lot different from purchasing in America – except for the higher prices and more crooks involved.

Used cars are higher priced here than in the States. There is still a shortage of used cars because cars only became common after 1994 and there is a 30% tariff on all cars, new and used, entering the country. It is not uncommon to see a 1984 Lada still on the road and still for sale; rust, dents, orange paint, cracked windshield and all. We got our 2004 model for $2600 and got a bargain.

I hired a local expert to help. I have bought and sold dozens of cars in America, but I know when I have met my match.

The latest scam is mortgages. Consumer credit is new in Russia and car loans even newer. The government is a little behind, so liens are NOT recorded on the car titles. The latest scam is to get a mortgage on your car, sell it, and scram before the bank comes to repossess the car. The courts have not yet sorted out whose fault it is, but the cars do go back to the bank.

Even before communism died, one of the common scams was to advertise a car at a good price and arrange to meet with a purchaser – who always brings cash in Russia. The scammer then relieves the prospective purchaser of his money and sometimes his life.

Car ownership is also hard to determine here. Even in America, my first question to a seller is “who is on the title.” If he answers, “My wife’s cousin. He asked me to sell it for him.” you know that you are dealing with an illegal dealer who will be long gone if there are problems with the title.

Here, that’s almost common. It costs 4000 rubles to change a title and that $135 is a lot of money. What they often do is to just write a note for the new owner that he is “borrowing the car and has my permission to drive it.” Of course, you never get legal title that way, can’t insure the car, and can’t sell it to anyone with more brains than you have.

Damage is another problem. As you know, Russians consider driving to be a competitive sport, somewhat improved by a little drinky-poo beforehand. Combine that with bad roads, bad manners, and general lack of driving experience and you will soon believe that cars come from the factories pre-dented, somewhat like pre-washed jeans, Repair is not always as careful as it could be, so pre-wrecked cars need to be avoided.

Then there is the poverty thing. People everywhere are as honest as they can afford to be, and the average Russian can’t afford much so you have to be careful who you deal with and not believe a word he says.

Then, of course, you have to find a car. The local Prochlodney paper is published once a week and traditionally has a limited number of adds for over priced junky cars and there is not such thing as a used car lot, or even new car lot within about 100 kilometers. I have only twice seen a car on the road side with a for sale sign on it. So, when we were recently in Mineral Waters, a big city about a 2 hours north from here, I asked the cabbie if there was an area in town where there were used car lots. He said that there was a new car area, but “most of us go out to Prochlodney. The biggest car bazaar in the area is held there every weekend.”

Picture a big field. Bigger than that. It has a concrete block wall around it and a row of food and beer stands across the front. Along the right wall big trucks are parked with tires, transmissions, car wax, headlights, windshields, and tools displayed on the ground around them.

The rest of it is over 10 acres of cars parked on dirt and gravel. Old cars, new cars, busses, marshutkas, delivery vans, trucks, Ladas, Opels, BMW’s, Hondas, and lots more Ladas. The owners sit in the cars waiting for buyers. Mostly it is young men, but entire families sit in some of them. Most owners put a small hand lettered sign on the windshield with the year and the price of the car, and a lot of the trunks and hoods are open.

The cars are parked side by side along supposed aisles that are soon also packed with cars, and there is NO organization beyond self help. The biggest noise was the shouting of men who were trying to get cars out of the pack so they could test drive them

At the food stands, people use gas fed woks to fry meat filled bread and sell beer and soft drinks that you can eat or drink at rickety tables with ancient school chairs arranged around them. This is obviously a Man place. This is where you leave behind the kids and the old lady to do some car shopping, dealing, talking and lying. Nice place.

Andre, our expert, is an old school chum of Larisas’ and a man who makes his living buying and selling whatever he can, including cars. We agreed to trade a laptop that I brought from America for his services. It turned out to be a real bargain. Andre earned his laptop.

He met us at a supermarket near his home. We had to take a taxi out to the car bazaar because our expert’s car wasn’t working. His clutch was gone.

We weren’t at the bazaar for 20 minutes before we saw a beautiful car that Larisa and I both loved. It was a white 2005 Lada with a natural gas conversion and it was in really great shape. They wanted 95,000 ($3050) for it. Andre crawled under it and announced that the front half should look good, since both fenders and the bumper had been changed after what must have been a honey of an accident.

After that he shopped and we waited near the food stands. This was a lot harder than it sounds. It was about as hot as the third level of Hell and dusty. It seemed like hours before Andre called us to say he found a car,

It was a similar white Lada, 2003 for 85,000. It was not quite as nice as the first one, but then the fenders hadn’t been replaced. Andre gave it a tough test drive and we agreed to buy it. The first step was to go the notary office at the car bazaar to sign the car over. It was closed and stayed closed for over an hour. No sign in the window, no way to know why it was closed, and no people. Russia.

Then Andre said that he knew a notary nearby that we could use. I knew there was a problem when the notary started questioning the owner and the owner started gesturing and arguing. Andre had not noticed that the name on the paperwork was similar to the name of the seller, but not the same. The seller had never transferred the title. He tried telling the notary that he really did own the car and he really did pay for it and “I know that guy on the title, he’s a friend of mine. He’ll tell you the car is mine.” Unfortunately, they guy on the title wasn’t there and our seller couldn’t sell.

It was nice of him to give us a ride back to the bazaar.

The field was looking strange. It was noon, and over half of the cars were gone. People pay cash and delivery is usually NOW. I figured we were out of luck and I was in a really BAD mood, in spite of my normally calm and quiet demeanor.

Andrea showed a lot of energy and got right back to work. Within 30-40 minutes he found a possible diamond in the rough. It was a 2004 model he had bargained down to 85,000. The owner was a bus driver, who hadn’t cleaned it up very well for sale, but he drove it himself every day and he knew how to maintain a car. After a protracted negotiation, not helped at all by my bad mood, we agreed to buy the car for 82,500. I figured that Andre’s expertise saved us 10,000 and my miserable mood saved 2500 more.

In a few days, I will know if my new piece of history is a diamond in the rough, or just rough.

Fun Fact About Russia

If you pull up to the GAS pump in a Russian gas station, you fill be offered methane. About half of all the vehicles in this area have been converted to the cheaper fuel. To get gasoline, you have to pull up to the BENZENE pump.

July 24, 2010 My Jiggly Zhiguli

Posted in Rodger's Russia Book | Posted by rodger |

myladaMy diamond in the rough turned out to be a lot more “rough” than diamond. I rather expected that this was going to happen in a country where no one can afford to sell a car that runs.
That brought us to plan two. I had limited our choices to Ladas from the start. My reasoning was that their quality was known to be poor; but that parts and repair were cheap and were available anywhere, and if we bought older Audi or Ford, we would have been stuck with higher repair bills if we got a lemon.
We had the car less than a day when we realized that the horn didn’t work. This is serious in Russia. Not only will the car not pass its annual technical inspection, but Russians are genetically unable to drive without a working horn. It is like Italians not being able to talk without their hands (How do you gag an Italian? Tie his hands behind his back.) Without a horn, a Russian driver either has to park the car or go mad.
We picked a random mechanic who happened to have a garage right across from a major auto parts store. After about 20 minutes, he announced that the entire steering wheel hub had to be replaced. That is the part right under your steering wheel where the turn signal, windshield washer and light controls are. Not good. In America, the part alone is over $200 and labor matches that.
The mechanic walked with us across the street to the parts store with the hub in his hands. The counter lady saw us come in the door and by the time we got to the counter, she had two new ones lying in front of us. The mechanic picked the one he liked and we paid 360 rubles for it – about 12 dollars.
Half an hour later, we got more bad news. The steering wheel itself needed to be replaced. Apparently the horn rim had been slammed down so many times that the springs were worn out.
Back at the parts store, the nice lady didn’t have the wheel for our car, but she did have a selection of nicer ones that fit fine. We selected a more modern looking wheel and paid 800 rubles for it. About $26 for a new factory steering wheel!
The mechanic charged us 300 rubles for his work ($9.80) and we tipped him another 100 rubles because I just could not pay an experienced mechanic less than $5 an hour. We had just paid about $50 for a repair that would have cost several hundred dollars on an American car.
Next problem
We found out on our next trip that the auto battery was on its last legs. We went to a small city about two hours north where Larisa had to make her official adoption request for a child she had found.
When we locked the car on a main road and started to walk away, the car decided that it was lonely. As we walked away, it started flashing its parking lights, sounding a siren, and turning the headlights on and off. We didn’t even know that the damned thing had an alarm system! We pushed every button on the remote, opened and closed the doors, started and stopped the engine, and turned the flashers on and off and it just kept complaining while passing pedestrians gave us dirty looks. Eventually we were able to quiet every thing except the flashers and Larisa was able to keep her appointment.
An hour later we returned to a car that was still flashing the flashers, but which didn’t have enough charge in the battery to start. There is no such thing as AAA in Russia, but Larisa is a cute package and she got a passing cab driver to agree to jump the car for 100 rubles. ($3).
The new battery a few days later was 2000 rubles at the Car Bazaar – about $60 – for a heavy duty American style battery. We also had to spend a buck buying a tie down for the battery. Every car, even Ladas, have a system to clamp the battery in place as a tipped over battery is a serious problem. Ours had a common Russian version as the last person to replace the battery just dumped it under the hood, threw away the clamp, and decided that everything would be alright if he didn’t hit any really big bumps.
As long as we were going to buy parts, I also purchased a new grill and some black plastic trim pieces for the car. The old grill was losing its chrome and a new one was only 950 rubles (another $30 item). I do think that the lady who sold it to me said something in Russian that sounded like “putting lipstick on a pig”, but I can’t be certain.
When Larisa took the car in for the technical inspection at the DMV, they told us that the windshield was too dark. We had to replace the entire windshield with a clear one. In America that is about a $250 job. Andre found us a shop that would sell us the windshield for 740 rubles and put it in for 220 rubles – less than $30 for the entire job
The shop owner said that Russians love dark windows so much that they will often put in the dark windows and then have the old clear one put in for one day every year so that they can pass the inspection. They also have to pay a bribe every time a cop sees them with the dark windshield and needs money for lunch.
A few days later, Larisa noticed that the heater blower was not working, and while I was looking at it, I noticed that the entire heater had been bypassed. The heater hoses had been disconnected under the hood and that’s only done if the heater is leaking.
We went back to the mechanic who told us that the repair would cost 3000 rubles ($100) and that no one did that much work on a car. He suggested that we do what everyone else does and sell the car to a sucker, who would also refuse to fix it and would sell it to another sucker, who would…. Well, you get the idea. It keeps the car bazaar in business.
We decided to fix it anyway. I was not going to sell a car over a $100 repair. However, it had to be fixed as Russia has, well, “Russian” Winters and it was going to be real cold in a few months.
Now we had to find a new mechanic. There aren’t any yellow pages in Russia and a quick check of the newspaper showed no adverts from radiator shops. We started by stopping in at the small Jigguley only parts store where I had purchased the grill. The nice lady there walked us over a few buildings to a mechanic who was the greasiest human being that I have ever seen. Every inch of his body was black with grease except his eyeballs. I did wonder how he could move around in pants that were stiff enough to stand in the corner by themselves.
He wiped his greasy cheek with the equally greasy back of his hand and grunted that he only did engine work and he didn’t know anyone who worked inside a car.
Next we stopped at another nearby mechanic who also only did engine work, but who gave us directions to someone who did radiator work out on the edge of town. Someone who seemed not to exist when we got to the road on the edge of town. We stopped into a parts store out there to ask if we had the directions right and he didn’t know any mechanic who fit the description that we had, BUT he knew someone on a different side of town who worked on such things.
Finally. We got to an auto repair area where a father and son rented two side by side bays. The father did body work in the right hand bay while his son did mechanic work in the left bay. The son told Larisa that a lot of people sent work to him because he was young and willing to work. The old mechanics only wanted to do engine work because it paid more and you didn’t have to wash your hands between jobs.
He gave us a time and we brought the car back that afternoon. For those of you who are not familiar with cars, the heater radiator is normally under the dash and very hard to get too. It turned out that he knew how to get to it by disassembling the glove box and a few other pieces of the dash.
The radiator did turn out to be bad. As I expected, it had been bypassed because it was leaking water.
He had a friend of his drive us down to a parts store where I purchased a new radiator core for 600 rubles and a new control valve for 160 rubles. The control valve wasn’t bad yet, but it controls the amount of heat coming from the radiator and replacing it with a new one was a cheap insurance against another repair job. Total price, American, $24.50
The kid put the new heater core and, as he had to put the console back together, he also fixed the fan by reconnecting it, got the disconnected cigarette lighter working again, fixed the lights on the console and improved the way the glove box worked. The glove box had a habit of popping open whenever you hit a bump, and he adjusted it to work better. While he was working he said to Larisa, “You know, a real Russian would just drive a nail into the dashboard and hold the glove box door closed with a rubber band.”
The kid finished the two hour job (in 90 degree heat) and asked for 400 rubles – about $13. I gave him a tip and got his phone number.
We seem to be about done with the repairs for now but I expect that there will be more maintenance on this car than on an American car of the same age, and Lada years are not the same as Ford years. Looking at the condition of Ladas around here, I would say that a six year old Lada was 12 years old in Ford years.
As they say “Lada $2650, repairs $235, a sense of history, priceless”.

June 26, 2010 Museum Time.

Posted in Rodger's Russia Book | Posted by rodger |
garage

Museum Location

Your local museum has got nothing better than the average Russian garage. To heck with George Washington’s teeth and Pocahontas’ bra, we have REAL history here!
The poorer a person is, the more they tend to horde things. As things are harder to replace, there is a stronger desire to hold onto everything, useful, useless, or otherwise. My mother in law has lived on a skinny pension for several years and was a communist government worker before that. Like most old communists, she is a champion hoarder.
It is not just her. Most Russians are like her. She has a storage area in the basement of the apartment building which was used by one her neighbors. It is full of lumber so bad that it would be turned down by most bonfire builders, rusty pipes, old boxes, and unidentifiable metal parts of forgotten machines. However, as bad as the lumber is, replacing a step could cost $15 for a heavy piece of wood, so you hold on to whatever you have.
She also owns a garage that we needed to clean a little before we could get our new car into in.
In addition to the brand new refrigerator that Larisa got her, and the working but smaller one that she had before that, Elvira has her last communist era refrigerator, which she uses as a plant stand, and the one before that, which is filled with dusty books. Neither one has worked for many years, but Elvira insists that someday someone is going to want them. In the mean time, they are a display of refrigerator history.
The one that we purchased for her was made in Russia by a German firm. It is over six feet tall, has automatic defrosting, and a large freezer door across the top. The last Communist refrigerator is about 4 and half feet tall, has a freezer section inside that runs across the top, and is dark and scary when you open the door. The one before that is a little smaller still, and has a freezer compartment big enough for a couple of ice trays. You can’t buy ice trays in Russia, but it you have them, you are all set. The one in the garage is older still. It’s definitely bigger than a four drawer file cabinet and reflects the superior eating habits of communists. Unlike you capitalist lackeys, we eat only fresh and healthy food. We don’t need no degenerate freezer compartment!
My favorite garage piece is the communist era radio. Every apartment had one wired to the fuse panel right near the front door. It hung high on the wall or over the front door so that it could be heard throughout the apartment. It has on only one button – the on/off/volume button. It didn’t need a tuning knob because there was only one station. I wish that I could fit that in my suitcase.
While shifting broken furniture, I ran across her Stalin stove. It was junk when I first met Larisa 10 years ago and, as Elvira loved to cook, I tried to impress her with a brand new stove. He old stove was one of the bigger communist stoves. Hers had three burners, two working and one decorative, and a non-working oven. You have seen stoves like it if you have ever wandered through an old wrecked Winnebago.
She had that and the tiny older 2 burner stove in the garage. The 2 burner was probably from the 30’s. It has 2 burners on the cook top and a pan storage area that looks like an oven – but isn’t. It was hade with metal shelves and a window in the “oven”, but no burners.
Before you feel too superior, remember that stoves like these were common in New York apartments through the 30’s and 40’. In one of Jack Lemmon’s movies, you can see him trying to cook on one.
The water heater is there. I replaced Mother’s a few years ago. Now she has a new demand fired electronically controlled gas water heater on the kitchen wall. It is a pretty neat invention. It monitors the hot water line and only creates hot water when the tap is opened. It can put out hot water in less than 10 seconds and keep doing it as long as the tap is open. It is much more efficient than the tank type that we use in the states.
On the other hand, the one in the garage is twice the size of the new one. It has a door in the front where you insert a long match to light it when you want hot water. It also has a lever that controls the height of the flame. When you want to take a shower or wash the dishes, you turn on the gas valve on the wall, light the flame, adjust the height, do your business, and then turn off the water heater to keep it from burning itself up – and then remember to turn off the gas valve because this thing has no safety valve to keep it from blowing up if the gas is on and the fire is out.
Mother keeps it for a spare. The only use I can see for it is to restage the Hindenburg disaster.
Mother has no old washing machines because very few people outside of the communist party members could afford one, but we there are a couple of machines that Larisa and I bought after socialism died and which we have now passed on to other owners.
Two years ago, we purchased the newest and best machine we could find. It was all plastic, stood about 40 inches tall, and had two tubs and manual controls. In spite of its size, it was “portable”. To use it, you brought it into the kitchen, hooked the water feed up to the faucet, dropped the drain hose into the sink, and loaded your clothes into the first tub. You then flipped a switch to fill the tub with water, turned a knob to the desired wash time, and watched the machine wash your clothes. When the wash was over, you flipped another switch to empty the tub, transferred the clothes over to the spinner tub, and set the timer for the amount of spinning you wanted. We passed it on to a young couple with a new child. They couldn’t afford a new one and were grateful for our old one.
Back in 2004, we purchased our first Russian washing machine. We were living in a rented apartment and there is no such thing as a Laundromat in the country. I found a small machine for about $50 in a local hardware store. It was a plastic box about the size of a big breadbox and it sat on your kitchen counter or in your bathtub. You hooked it up to the faucet, put in a handful of clothes and turned the switch to make it gently agitate the clothes. It didn’t spin anything, so it was essentially a little useless. I have no idea whose garage that thing currently resides in.
I found out that the rented apartment actually had a washing machine under the bed. This was one of the fancy ones available only to rich party members during socialism.
Picture a bright red steel coffee table about four feet square. You begin by rolling it out from under the bed and struggling to get it upright. The help of a neighbor boy or two is recommended for this step. When you have it upright, (looking like a coffee table set on its side), you roll it over to the sink and, as usual, attach the water and drain hoses. Now comes the good part. When you open a door on the top, you see a vertical drum for the clothes. You have to rotate the drum around until the hole in the drum matches the door in the top, and put the clothes through the hole. I suppose that you had to somehow fish them out again when you were done, but I never got that far. I couldn’t read the Russian labels on the buttons anyway and it didn’t look as if had been used in years, so it went back under the bed, where it probably is until this day.
When you thing about it, those garages hold good news. The direction of change is good and getting faster. Here in America, poll after poll shows that our children expect to live worst lives than we did. The facts show that we are getting deeper in debt, buying smaller houses later in life, and that every year fewer of us can afford a new car. We are still the strongest and best economy in the world, but the direction now is down. We are in a good spot, but we’re not getting much richer.
On the other hand, Russia’s direction is up. Four years ago no one in Premalka had a washing machine and today four of the six apartments in our building have modern machines. Five years ago, mother in law didn’t want a microwave because she had no idea what it was for and none of her friends had one. Today, she and everyone else use their microwave every day.
They are still in the 1930s, but they are moving fast into the 1950s. Must be nice to be moving up.

July 16, 2010 Friday morning. – I’m Getting Married Again

Posted in Rodger's Russia Book | Posted by rodger |

 

Larisa has felt bad that we never been married in Russia and can’t make it legal here until the adoption is finalized. He passport says “single” and her husband is here so rarely that her friends barely believe she is married.
Her solution is that we are going to get married in the church before I leave. Father Andre has agreed to perform a religious ceremony separate from the legal one.
Only baptized Orthodox can be married in the church, so I agreed to go through baptism. It was in interesting ceremony about a half an hour long and I got a new name. My secret name is now “Roman”. I also got to enter the secret altar that Larisa will never see because it is “Men ONLY”.
Larisa has wanted to baptize me for years and was gleeful when I agreed to pretend to be baptized. I have always refused to go through it because, as an atheist leaning agnostic, I think it is silly. Then I realized that I could not logically claim that it was silly and meaningless and still say that it was so meaningful that I would not do it as a price of admission to the wedding party. I giggle. Larisa happy. Father Andre smart man who goes along with a good act to keep Larisa happy.
Actually, I rather like Father Andre and wish that my Russian was good enough to have a conversation away from Larisa. He works hard, gives good advice, and seems to really care more about his parishioners than their religion. Orthodox priests dress funny, but they are married men with families and tend to be saner than their Catholic counterparts.
There is one other twist to this. The local adoption manager knows that Larisa is married in the States. Larisa told her at the insistence of me and Father Andre. She agrees that Larisa should keep it secret while she is adopting the child because she, like Larisa, thinks that the orphanages will give Larisa a sick child if they know the child will end up in the States. She has, however, insisted that Larisa and I make her married status legal here before she signs the final adoption papers.
I’m going to marry the same woman three times.

July 23, 2010 My Name Is Now “Roman

Posted in Rodger's Russia Book | Posted by rodger |

SDC11853

I just got married, again: this time in the Russian Orthodox Church, and I got baptized too. I also got a new name. My name is now “Roman”.

The Russian Orthodox Church is a lot different than what you are familiar with if you are a Protestant in America. It is a very old religion, older even than Catholicism. It began early and has existed apart from main stream western religion since about 330 A.D.

It was founded and nurtured by Roman citizens who were commanded to become Christian and who carried over a lot of their old attitudes to the new religion. At the time, the official religions of Rome were the old pagan religions which were based on appeasing and bribing the gods to do good stuff for you. Worshiping Pan didn’t mean that you had a warm and fuzzy relationship with the little god; it meant that if you paid him off with the proper ritual and sacrifice that he would get you a girl friend. Most old religions were like that.

Some of those attitudes leaked through to the new Orthodox Christianity. Russian Orthodox people have a much stronger belief in the actual power of icons, amulets, holy waters, and ritual than do the later Protestants. Some of my relatives believe that holy water has mystical powers and will cure stomach aches if you rub it on your belly and say a prayer. Wearing a cross makes you lucky and protects you from the Devil. Icons are a major part of the religion and are treated as if they had real power. They often believe that dirt from places important to one or another saint has curative or holy powers.

My Protestant and agnostic friends would, of course, think that’s silly. They only believe in lucky charms, Saint Christopher medals, rabbit’s feet and other “modern” things.

The most common icon these days is a laminated card about the size of a playing card with the picture of a saint on it, and it is not unusual to get into a cab and see that the driver has glued icons of saints across the dash from window to window, and there are plenty of icons to choose from because there are about 15,000 saints recognized by the Orthodox Church. No one knows exactly how many, because there is no central committee or process to oversee sainthoods.

This leads to a rich and complex church. Icons and statues are everywhere. Crosses and pictures of saints are sold in the lobby and worn or carried by about everyone. There is whole wall of icons behind the altar and art everywhere. The richness of the standard Russian altar makes the Catholics look like poor cousins.

The churches themselves, like the early Catholic churches, are patterned after the public buildings of Rome and Constantinople. The worship area is cross shaped with high domes and vaults. Aside from the onion skin tops, they look like the Roman baths that still survive in Rome, and they tend to be impressive even in a small town like Prochlodney.

Unfortunately, while the church is full of gold, icons, painting, artwork, candles, and lecterns, it is not full of chairs. Apparently the God of the Orthodox Church likes to see that you will suffer a bit to worship him, so everyone stands during the two hour services.

Ouch.

The rituals are also old, and impressive.

The baptism took place in an impressive room with an altar, enough icons to cover a circus tent, and a set of steps going down into the floor to, well, nowhere. The steps were there so that the priest could reach my head to pour the oil on it.

When I was a young man, I was baptized in the Baptist church. It was pretty quick. The minister asked if I loved Christ, and when I said “Yes”, he dunked me in a pool of water. Orthodox does a bigger ceremony.

Before the ceremony, I had to pick a new name. By tradition, it is supposed to be a name associated with a saint whose birthday is on or near my baptism date. Fortunately, there are LOTS of saints, so you get a nice selection of new names. As a history buff, I chose the name “Roman”, but I might have chosen differently if I had known that he was a famous religious musical poet. He’s the saint of singers. However, my wife says that now when she prays for me, she uses the name “Roman” so God will remember me by the name that I was introduced with.

The ceremony took about half an hour, with Father Andre bravely trying to conduct the ceremony with my wife as a translator. Orthodox parishioners must love walking in circles, because we circled the baptismal font (as a kid we called it the Holy Bird Bath) several times, before I descended the stairs to nowhere and got anointed and renamed.

No matter what religion you are, you cannot complain about the beauty of the marriage ceremony in the Orthodox Church. I won’t bore you men with the details, but this church feels that one day in their lives, a man should be a king and woman a queen. As you walk around the altar holding your candles in golden candlesticks, you each wear a golden crown. It’s nice.

We did skip one of the traditions. The bride and groom stand on a cloth about the size of end table cover. On the traditional cloth, the end where the groom stands has embroidered letters that promise the man will love his wife as he loves his lord. On the place where the bride stands, the words promise that she will obey her husband as she would Christ.

We used a plain cloth. As much as I love my wife, “Obey” is not concept that comes easy to her, and I was afraid that a lie that big would bring a lightning bolt down from heaven. She does try to be Christian wife, and I am glad that I married her, but “obey” is not easy for her.

I wonder if the baptism and the marriage mean that she is now Mrs. Rodger Roman Olsen.

Recent Comments

UA-70148931-1