Back in Ulan Ude

Everything went wonderful today--almost everything. 

I had to catch a bus early, and so I told everybody in the hostel to get me up early. One lady promised she would get it done because she was a light sleeper and early riser. 

I set two alarms and did not sleep much worrying about whether I would get up in time. Then about four o'clock I noticed the light sleeper/early waker's bed was empty. She was already awake.  No problem. She would wake me. Relax. But I could not go back to sleep. So at 5:00 I got up to shower. The lady was not around outside in the common room but as I walked back in, I saw her in a different bed than where she had gone to sleep. She waved at me and, noticing my quizzical look said "I moved.   Bedbugs "

OK, I thought.  Good reason to move. But is it really possible to have a six bunkbed dorm and have bedbugs in just one? Can you move away from them? And how does she know they were there? Don't you find out only the next morning?

Any ways, I headed out the door worrying whether I would get any taxi, and especially one at the proper price. It was barely 6:00 in the morning. By the time I had gotten to the sidewalk, I had two taxis drawing a bead on me. But a third made a wild u-turn in front if them. I showed him the little piece of paper that I had asked the hostel manager to write the destination and price (voxhall 4000t). He said "yup." I got in and boom all my worries were over. 

I was relieved because I had a real problem a few days ago getting back from Mongolia. I got attacked by about five taxi drivers who wanted 10000 to get me to the hostel. I said 6000 since that is what my hostel manager said it should cost. (And what I had paid a week ago to get to the bus station. ) Nobody wanted to go to 6000. So I started to walk away, and two guys came up and said come with them. I said 6000 and wrote it on the card for the hostel ( with the map) and showed it to them. They said "yes," using universal sign language if not words.  They take me to their car, which already has a driver and another guy in it. I show the card and the number 6000 on it. He says," yeah, and shakes his head up and down. I put my luggage in the trunk (something I don't like to do because it can be held as hostage. )

(I am writing this while drinking a really bad beer. It is Ulan Ude local and tastes sour like the fermented mares milk in the yurts.    But I finished it.  ) 

So I get in the taxi ( remember--every car in this part of the world is a taxi. You just have to pay to get a ride. ) I got me and two guys in back, the driver and a passenger in front. And my luggage in the trunk. The crew is just out looking for a way to get somebody to pay for their night out. They are driving the right direction. Finally, I get them to pull over near my hostel. ( They had no idea where it was, but had gotten close with the map card and my directions. ) so, they stop. I get out, And magically the trunk opens, my stuff is out. I hand the guy the 6000 and he says 10000. I say 6000. He gets mad and starts shouting. I show him the card that says 6000. He just yells some more and says 10 with his fingers. I hand out 6000. He starts to walk away without it, turn sand takes it, then storms back to the drivers seat. I start crossing the street to the hostel. The driver is making a hasty u turn right back my way. I did not look back, but hurried on, finished crossing the street and hurried in the door. 

No such problem today. Just got on the bus and twelve hours later pulled into Ulan Ude. I had made reservations at ones hostel but when u got there was told they were full, but had made a place for me at a hostel a kilter or so away. And up six flights of stairs. 

I was disappointed because that was an additional kilometer away from the train station.  And in a couple of days I have to leave from there at 5:00 am.    But I found another good hostel nearby. And all is well. 

Yertland

I have been down in central Mongolia, northern end of Gobi desert. 

Five days of trekking through the desert by foot, camel, and horse cart, jeep, and motorcycle was quite interesting. Fed by local herder families. Drank fermented mares milk. Ate goat cheese (what the lady is making below). Saw lots of rocks, sand, and goats, sheep, horses and some big beetles. Slept in tents and yerts. 

Only electricity was solar. And that was just enough to run the televisions and cell phones. 

There is a lot to say about this segment of the trip. Suffice for now to leave it at: "glad I did it, and it is good to be back." 

Ger To Ger

So here I am in the Ger to Ger offices. This is the company that offers travel experiences that let you live with families in their yurts (yerts, or gers). Out in the Gobi desert. Or near it. 

Anyway.   (Now it is twelve hours later.) saw a monastery, a beautiful museum, and lots else. Also had a four hour lecture orientation for the yert trip. 

I have to pack now. Maybe I will write more as I get ready for sleeping. 

Where I am going for five dsys has, I am told, no electricity.  So don't expect communication for a while. 

In Ulanbatar At Last

I am in a strange land today. 

Saw an old guy on my bus wearing a Ghengis Khan t-shirt. Yup, this is where it happened. 

My day started with google telling me that they had blocked my account. So I could not send out the long blog I had about the trip from Irkutsk. And it has apparently disappeared. So I have to rewrite it. I will later. 

The bus ride today was long. Thirteen some hours out of a promised 11. Three of that was border crossing. No real glitches, but it was forever. 

Mongolia had a few trees far north, but several hundred kilometers ago, it gave way to rolling hills and flat fields covered with sparse grass, an occasional yurt, lots if wandering cows (including on the highway slowing traffic). A couple of times I even saw herds of horses running along. Really pretty. 

I was real proud of myself. Got to the city and a couple of taxi hustlers wanted to get me to go into the center. Told me it was seven kilometers. I even  found what I assumed was an English couple in the station who sis it would cost me 10000 ($6) to get to town. I decided I would take taxi, but needed money first. It was hard to find bankomat, but I did, and got the money. On the way back to taxi stand, I found a bus. I figured--why not?

I asked the conductor. At first she did not understand, but when I showed her the map and pointed at the big square she knew exactly what I was talking about. So, for 400, I was going to get a ride that would have cost 10000 in a taxi. You get what you pay for. 

The conductor told me what I assumed meant she would tell me when to get off. Even named the street. Following along on My map, I got up and moved to the exit at the right time. She said wait. I did three stops later she tells me it was my street (by name) and that my street was "back there," pointing. What she did not say was that it was about a mile back there. 

Anyway, I got here. 

Religion in Russia

I don't have any iPhone pictures to post on this topic. And I have no access to a card reader to download pics.  So, no pics for now!!!

The minibus driver yesterday had a battery operated prayer wheel spinning on his dashboard. 

In Moscow I saw more than a few icons hanging from rear view mirrors in cars. To my western mind these looked like Russian St. Christopher medals. 

More than a few times I wandered into churches in Moscow or Irkutsk where I saw active worship going on.

Along the Moscow River last week, I was excluded from a church because I was wearing shorts. ( So I zipped on my legs, went back in, and watched about three hundred parishioners as a herd of priests conducted some really solemn mass--incense, procession, call and response chanting, a full choir..., really glorious.)

Today on Olkhon Island, I am in one of the five holy shamanic places in the world. (I don't know what that means, exactly. But it has religious significance. ) This place has prayer flags hung around nearly every vertical support--tree, fence post, whatever. 

Irena, the Moscow tour guide, says she was secretly baptized when she was a child, as many others were. 

And next week I am going to Mongolia. Although it is now an independent country, it was one of the former Soviet Socialist Republics for most of the last century, and therefore in the same boat as Russia itself under the communists. And my "list" for Mongolia includes a few monasteries. 

Suffice it to say that,  despite atheistic communist rule for seven decades, religion survived. I'm not saying it was easy. Stalin had more than a few churches destroyed, one famously because it impeded the flow of processions into Red Square. And Irena's baptism was "secret."

Other churches and monasteries were turned into museums of religion. 

One of the things Russians were talking about, I was told, around the time they were first exploring space was whether the cosmonauts would be able to see god. When Gargarin said yes, that he thought he could, Kruschev suppressed the comment. 

In general, while there was little that said one could not actually practice religion, the church itself suffered, and its more vocal supporters were marginalized. 

Part of Marx's seminal Communist Manifesto decried religion as "the opiate of the people." So there was a philosophical basis for the communist government to disparage religion. The Manifesto's reason for its attitude towards religion is interesting: the problem with religion is that it made people give up on improving things in this world because they were interested only in the next. Marx felt people should concentrate in this world. But religion dulled that sentiment just as opium dulls the real needs if the addict. It is hard to get the proletariat to throw off their chains if they know chains are only in this world, and they care only about the next. 

Curiously, this philosophical argument was not the real reason the church suffered under godless communism. The communists did not like religion mostly because the church had power. It was, along with the czar, the Establishment. If the communists wanted to take over, they had to cut off the church's power, just as they had eliminated the czar. 

If the church had not been also a political power, it would probably have been ignored. So, what the communists focused on was breaking its influence. Once that was done, the church was left somewhat alone. People were even allowed to practice their religion. I attended a mass forty years ago, and saw dozens of young seminarians studying in Yaroslavl at that time. And, as Irena is proof, people were being baptized in 1988. 

Watching a Russian orthodox service is pretty difficult. Some of it takes place behind an iconostasis that hides the action. It takes hours. (When I said I saw a mass back in 1973, I should have said I saw part of one in an hour or so.

i have some pics to illustrate se of this, but it will have to wait for a better Internet connection. 

Astronomy in Olkhon Island

Ok, so I am walking down a dirt road, coming back from the beach, looking for a little store to buy a beer for dinner ( the "board" in "room and board" at this place   includes three square meals, but nothing except coffee and tea for drinking). 

So, among the souvenirs stalls, cheap cafes, and all that you find in most tourist places, what should I find but one of those blow up planetariums where you pay a few bucks (probably rubles) crawl in, and see the constellations on the inside of the dome. I did not expect to see one of these. 

No, I did not go in. 

Instead I did something I do not think I have ever done before in my whole life. I went  a store and bought one can of beer. 

i had seen other guys do it. Buy just one tall can of beer. Usually one of those stronger beers that i don't know the names of. Mickeys or Malt liquor or something.  I looked at them, the guys buying one can of high alcohol beer. I looked at the way they were dressed, and how they carried themselves kinda down low and humble. And I wondered what circumstances drove those people to buy just one can. Why not a six pack or whatever? Did they not have a few left in the fridge from last week's six pack? 

Well, anyway, now I am one of them and I understand. They live at a boarding house that does not serve beer for dinner!

 More astronomy: I have thought about a starscape of the big rock on the lake here. But, really, as of 11:30 last night it was still light enough that there we were essentially starless. I was trying to go to sleep, but couldn't because of the caffeine in the too much tea I had for dinner. That is why I had to find the beer tonight. To avoid the caffeine. For health reasons. 

Update woke up in the middle of the night. The pointers in the Big Dipper were real high, and pointing south to the North Star. 

Olkhon Island

I am on on Olkhon Island, a long stretch of land near the western coast of Lake Baikal. The view above is from the cliff just outside my room. 

To get here, we bought a ticket at the hostel, and went downstairs and waited for the van. It was 90 minutes late. Eventually, though, it got there, picked us up, and dropped us at the.minibus station in town. There we joined a dozen others headed to Olkhon, We reached the ferry station after three o clock, but were told there was a four hour wait. Our driver figured he could get there quicker if he went across into the other lane ( the one drivers going the other way are supposed to use). He was right. We passed a lot of cars waiting properly in line and an hour later were boarding the ferry for the quick trip to the south end of the island. 

Once on the island there was no paved road. The roads on the mainland had been rough enough. These were worse. 

At one point, the mini bus could not make it up the hill. We all got out. The driver backed down the hill, took a running start, and reloaded us at the top. Finally at six o'clock we got to town. 

When we pulled in, we were dropped off at various places. I was worried because I had been told there was no room for me in the hostel, but that they would find me a room I could share with another tourist with a local neighbor family.  I envisioned living in some spare room with the family milling around. In fact the neighbor had a two story guest house with four purpose built guest rooms on a cliff overlooking the lake. There was in fact, no "family" around. And since they were not sold out, I had a room to myself with a great view.

Only way it could have been better would have been a sit down toilet instead of a squatter. (And heaven had it been en suite. )

This is quite a place. 

Status Report

The trip is proceeding successfully. I am heading back to Irkutsk today. 

Minor things have come up. My glasses broke and the two spares are also broken, but usable. Sunglasses broke. ( Actually, theses were the spare sunglasses. The pair i bought for the trip were apparently missing the nose pad on one side, which i caught on the way to the airport.  So, I took the pair that live in the car for my primary. ) Now the spare sunglasses are getting flaky. 

The rolling suitcase/ backpack has broken such that it no longer rolls well. This is a big difficulty since it means a whole lot more caring instead of rolling.  

Money is holding out good. Visa is working no problems. Have been exchanging dollars. I had brought excess in case visa did not work in ATMs. 

Clothes laundry is expensive, but I have had luck finding service every place I stayed. 

I had a bit of stomach/intestine problems, but nothing major. The other day I felt feverish, weak, and all. But I managed to make it through a lazy day with a little hiking, the beach, and such. 

My neck/shoulder problem I started in Alaska got better after the hip shots in the Czech, but came back a little. And Thursday I may have started it all up again when I had to lift my bag to top of minibus!!!! Update-- yes, it is back and hurts.    

The leg problem got a lot better, but still nags, particularly at night and in morning. After a little use it just nags. 

I am off to Irkutsk, then to Ulan Ude and Mongolia. I am a day late for my scheduled trip into the Gobi, but I think they will flex a bit. We'll see. 

Update. Finally after eight and a half hours am back in Irkutsk. I will post some things written on Olkhon island. They are out of order. 

The Hostel

I'm in Irkutsk, the "Paris of Siberia." 

Don't ask me how it got that name. Standing on the corner of Lenin Street and Karl Marks Avenue I did not see anything looking like l'Etoile. But maybe that was just me.  Don't get me wrong. Pretty enough city. But not Paris. 

This is Nerpa hostel lobby. A Nerpa is a fresh water seal as found in lake Baikal. Good hostel. Clean and staff is very knowledgeable about local, travel, etc. extremely helpful. I spent an hour or so last night explaining astronomy and imaging to the manager last night. Even looked At my website. She stayed awake the whole time ( of course, she was on duty). 

Today I go to  Olkhon island in middle of lake. No phone or Internet. Will see if I can blog or not blog. 

Leg better but not whole. Intestinal cramps made me drop into the Marriott yesterday without a reservation for a few minutes. Nice bathroom. Real nice bathroom. 

Dates on Mongolian portion having problems. I hope I get to go to my gers !!!!  

Anyway, I'm off soon. 

On the Train Again

I say again because I am in the sixty-second of seventy-five hours of this train ride.

That won't be my personal best. I once spent 85 hours going from Istanbul to Teheran. Luckily for me, this train had no grizzled old man trying to steal my boots at knife point like there was in Turkey. 

A couple of nights ago, we had a few hills around Ekaterinburg, where the last czar and his family were dispatched ( except Anastasia, etc. ). This is when we were crossing the Urals, the dividing line between Europe and Asia. I can't say that I was impressed with the Urals, because they were so small.   But, hey, they mark a big border!!!

The whole day looked like this. 

 ( sorry. I cannot upload the movie. )

We had a few station stops, including Novosibirsk, a huge city with a huge river.     

Otherwise the day was  grasslands, an occasional stand of trees, and flatness to make Kansas proud. 

This morning we have clear sunny skies with big puffy clouds over a rolling landscape. Local time is about four hours off train time, which is getting weird. 

We pass little villages now and then. I am told some of the little houses are residences. But a number are "dachas," which I always thought were fancy country estates. In fact, they are any summer cottage. The city people go there, tend vegetable gardens, and drink vodka. 

My Russian family got off the train, and were replaced  by a man and wife, and a single woman. She is also going to Irkutsk. This is good, because I was worried about getting up at 2:27 am Moscow time. Now somebody else in the compartment will be getting off with me. 

I was hungry, and went for the peanut butter and bread in my stash. The bread had turned moldy, though. So I just had peanut butter. 

I dropped an open liter and a half of coke in the hallway, and it joyously erupted all over the place--walls, window, dribbling on the floors of two compartments. Managed to wipe it up with my towel, but things are still tacky. Luckily I am leaving this place in 13 hours!!!

We stopped at a station and I bought two hard boiled eggs for 20 rubles. That is about 33cents each. They were so good I went back and got two more. That was lunch or dinner.  Hard to tell what is what here. It is 7:30 local time and the sun is still real high above some horizon. But it is only 3:30 in the afternoon Moscow time. It is hard to adjust. 

I wrote about it once, but I believe it was on one of the posts that got lost in transmission. The train itself is fairly slow. Intercity trains in Europe travel at up to 150 kilometers per hour. They don't average that, but cruise at that. This train will take more than 70 hours to go some 5100 kilometers. We are as i type going as fast as we ever travel and what little experience I have with trains which indicate their speed on the cars info window, we are traveling only  90 to maybe 100 kilometers per hour. 

Irena's observations

I told you the other day about how Irena was proud to be born in the Soviet Union and raised in Russia. 

Here are some other comments. 

She told me as we walked along that she had taken a tour with a Russian guide lately to see if there were any pointers or info she could pick up. She noticed that he did not have to look around, or count his group or anything. All thirty-something Russians in the group just stayed right with the group,following along, none of them separating. She said that would never happen with a western group. Westerners go off on their own, linger, and in all sorts of ways steer their own course, even with a tour group.

At one point, Irena described the past under communism, comparing it to the present under capitalism. Back then, the government pretty much decided what was needed. They trained "the best engineers, had doctors second to none in the world,"...etc. she said. "Now the best students are going only onto business courses, and engineering, medicine, and the like suffer. " Where have we heard that?

Irena ended every tour with a Group hug in a big circle, and a plea for world peace. 

On the Train

While I am fully stocked with lots of styrofoam noodle stuff, I wanted to eat in the dining car at least once. This is what 500 rubles gets me. (Thats about $15. ):  A breaded chicken filet, pan fried, some tomatoes, onion, etc. all mixed up, a side plate of boiled potatoes, and, of course, a beer. The food was good the setting was nice, cruising through what I guess are the steppes of Siberia (grasslands with occasional stretches of trees). One downside: I'm really not accustomed to people lighting up in a restaurant. And when I smelled smoke while eating, I did not like it. Surprise, surprise...it was the waiter. 

While i was back at dinner we had a twenty minute stop in a town named Barabinsk. We have these stops about every four hours. It is a chance for people to get off the train and get some fresh air. The train is comfortably air conditioned, with no openable windows. So people jump off to get some air. It is also where the smokers jump off to smoke. They are allowed to smoke between the wagons, and it really smells there. At any rate, while it is nice to get the air, one must be aware of the number of smokers. 

This is what the stop looked like Omsk. People milling around. People smoking. Lots of people buying food and drink for the train. They deliver some packages and do some train stuff and send us off again for another four hours. 

A few things of astronomical nature:

I saw the shadow of the earth at twilight last night. It was not like we see it at landers. At GMARS it seems to cover the whole horizon, a broad band. Last night it  was much more of a curved arc, much higher in altitude than in width. 

Secondly, the moon hung over what I assumed was a southwest horizon. But it may have been west. It is hard to get a reliable compass reading on a train. The funny thing is that the lit half was pointing down, not on my right as we usually see it. It was neatly midnight local time. But the sky was still bright. One could easily read outdoors in the light. 

Now, a note about time. It is always Moscow time on a Russian train. But Russia had something like seven time zones. For instance, I get off this train at 02:27 a couple of mornings from now. No, that is not the middle of the night, but 7:27 am. 

One more note. Last night at midnight, local time, we were looking out the window. It was light. Out. The sun had gone down officially some ninety minutes ago. But nautical twilight was so long that evening's  dusk merged right into dawn's. it never got dark. 

I had to put my hoodie on for a while today. We had drizzle on Omsk area. It had been hot in Moscow. I was in shorts the whole te except when the church made me zip the legs on. Now it is back to half clear/half clouds. P

I took a movie of the scenery. But this program won't let me post it. I'll get it to you later. 

Back to Humor

Ok, take a good look at this building. 

See how it is NOT symmetrical...

The left and right wings have different facades. This is the Moscow Hotel, originally built under Joseph Stalin. 

Why not symmetrical?

Well, the architects submitted the plans to old Joe. Their drafts had two proposed facades, allowing Stalin to make the final design choice. 

Stalin wrote "approved" and signed off on the project. But the architects could not determine which of the facades he had chosen, and were afraid to ask for fear Stalin would think they thought he had made a mistake. 

So they built one facade on one face and the other on the other side. 

Not only interesting, but apparently TRUE!!! I have heard and seen this story in various sources--not just the Internet. 

More interesting yet. Apparently the building was not well built or something and not long ago was torn down and completely rebuilt. But, the architect decided to keep the quirky asymmetry. 

Another story about communism. In the eighties two businessmen met in a Moscow bar. They got into an argument about their respective political systems.  The American says to his Russian counterpart, "But  you do not have freedom here, Dmitri. In my country I can stand in Times Square and yell at the top of my lungs;  'the American government is corrupt. Reagan is a liar.' You cannot do that here "

"But certainly I can," Dmitry responded. "I can stand up in Red Square and shout out loud 'the American government is corrupt. Reagan is a liar.' And nobody will arrest me. 

That one was probably not a true story. Another one Irena the tour guide liked to tell was to ask the Americans what was so good about their democracy when we could not even tell who our president might be until the last minute. "Here in Russia," she jokingly bragged, "we can tell months in advance."

She also said some people say "Russia does not have a democracy. We have a Putinocracy "

But what I really got a kick out of was Irena saying how proud she was to be born in the Soviet Union, and raised in Russia. She was very, very proud to be who she was. 

Train to Irkutsk

I boarded the "Moscow-Beijing" (actually, i think that trasliterated as "Peking") train last night. The train pulled out from Moscow's Yaroslavski station right on time. It was hot in the compartment, but it cooled down as the air conditioner kicked in. 

I am living with a Russian family. There is an army officer father, teacher mother, and university student daughter. The daughter is studying to be a translator, and is fluent in English and German. 

The compartment has two bunks on top. I am in one of them. 

I had gotten to the compartment first, and while alone, changed into my swim trunks and sandals.  ( I think i will be wearing this for the four day trip!!) They arrived moments later, before I really had time to figure much out. I stepped back outside to give them room to move and because it was very uncomfortable in the heat of the compartment. 

We had four plastic wrapped packs of sheets, a pillowcase, and a towel. They had already made up their two bottom bunks and turned them back into seats by the time we pulled out. I made up my bed and crawled up. Within an hour of leaving I was just in bed, reading the third of eight novels I had bought at Goodwill before leaving home. I had already left two behind at hostels. 

Everybody slept in, past ten o'clock at least. 

We have spent the day reading. They have also played on their iPad, read, talked some, and done some fancy crosswords. 

We are running pretty much dead on time. Every few hours we stop for fifteen or twenty minutes and we can get off and shop at the vendors. Prices are somewhat high, but not much higher than in Moscow as a whole. 

There is hot water at the end of the car. So I can use the dehydrated soups and noodles Eva and Judy bought for me in the Czech. 

This is what it be like for four days!!!

Humor Part One

We had a perfectly lovely little lady named Irena as guide on the "FREE tour of Moscow." She liked to tell stories.

For the first you have to know the Moscow subway. They have a dozen different lines running all around town. A ways out from the center is a line that runs a complete circle, connecting to most of the others. It looks like this:

See the brown circle line? The circle line was the fifth built, after the red, blue, green, and something else. 

How did it come about?

What happened is that the engineers put the plans, a map of the city and already built lines, down on Stalin's desk and asked where the next line should go. Stalin looked at them, looked at the map, sat his coffee cup down in the middle of their work, and berated them for inadequate planning. He then picked up his mug and ordered them out.  

Frightened for what would happen now that they had incurred Stalin's wrath, they put the brown line right where Stalin had left the mark with his coffee. 

That one was not true, but at least Irena said some people call the circle line the "coffee line."

Here is one that is true, and I've heard it in several places, not just the Internet!

Change of plans. .....

I just left Moscow. There are three Russians in my cabin and the daughter speaks excellent English. 

I am going to try to send this up over Russian cell service. 

I'll tell more of Irena's stories later. 

Leaving Moscow Tonight

Well, I have seen the things I came to re-see. 

My leg still hurts a lot. It is particularly bad the first hour of the morning. But after some use the pain calms down and it just hurts a little. The leg is functional. I limp now and then, and it occasionally gives out if I hit an uneven pavement wrong. But I walked many miles on it yesterday. So I am going forward. 

I think I will be without wifi, and thus email for four days on the train. So any posts will be difficult. 

I may come back to the hostel and post before I get on the train.

By the way, that weird guy "Ed" was gone for a while. He came back all excited saying he had talked to some important people.   

Cosmonaut museum

I wanted to make a special effort to visit the Moscow Cosmonaut Memorial Museum today. It is filled with a lot of displays, actual used spacecraft, and all sorts of memorabilia. Much of the signage, unfortunately for me, was in Russian. And, although my Cyrillic alphabet is getting better, I had to work even to  figure spacecraft names. There is also a lot of international recognition, including a hallway featuring female astronauts and cosmonauts, and a hall devoted to Hubble Space Telescope and its images. . 

 I won't include all there is to see, but it will make a pretty good article in the Prime Focus some day. 

The Russians are justifiably proud of their space program. Just one story.   I was trying to figure out who was featured in one of the wall posters. Some four year old kid, walking along with his bebichka (   Czech, and I think Russian, for grandmother) points to the pic, and excitedly shouts out "GARGARIN!"

If a four year old can recognize and get excited by the portrait, that says something. 

Hostel Inhabitants

My first night in hostel life was great. I was in a hostel I had stayed in  (in Warsaw) nine years ago while recovering from a really bad case of tourist trots. But this time I was the only person in a four bed dorm, and one of two in that wing to share the shower/bathrooms. So it was nice. 

Here at the Trans Siberian Hostel on Moscow, I have. not been as lucky. The bed is clean, and my downstairs roomie is a nice Russian art student who speaks a bit of English. 

But the two other guys, middle aged guy apparently from the Ukraine, have not, to my knowledge, moved from the room. They watch tv all day, sleeping through it. (At least whenever I am here. ) one of the had a shirt on for a bit this morning. Otherwise, it is just sitting there in their shorts. Art student and I are gone all day, and we cannot figure out why these two are here. 

Another guy in one of the private rooms stays locked up all day, except when he can get somebody to practice his Spanish. He is some kind of computer geek. Rumor has it he is laying low until somebody lets him go to another country. Calls himself Ed, but some of the other residents call him "the snowman," Weird guy. Spends his time looking for Spanish speaking guys to practice his spanish. Come all the way to Moscow to run into American weirdos!!!

There is hardly any room in the commons (kitchen/office/lobby). And the few chairs there are really uncomfortable. One of the two showers does not work. 

Maybe the next hostel will be better. 

My My (Moo Moo in MosCOW)

 

There's a chain of restaurants in Moscow. The signs outside say "My My," which is pronounced "Moo Moo."

It is kind of cafeteria style--you go through and select salad and stuff first. The guy got tired of me pointing, shaking my finger and pointing somewhere else, and just made  me up a pretty good little chicken salad. Then the next guy gave me exactly what I was pointing to. It was some kind of ground beef (I hope) patty under a potato and gravy/sauce. The next guy was really cool. He pointed to stuff and called it by name (in ENGLISH--by now they had me figured out)--rice, potatoes, beets....I took mashed potatoes. I skipped the desserts and headed for the beverages. Got half a liter of draft beer. "Pivo" is easy to say. (Although that is Czech. Here it is "piva.") He knew what I meant. 

This was a great looking meal--and I had no idea what of would cost until I got to the checkout. It was 401 rubles. That is $13 or so. More than I had expected. I got a little flustered with what the lady was asking me until I figured out 401 was a weird number. So I  fished out that extra ruble. I was so proud of myself figuring out that is what she was asking for, and then finding it among my coins, that I rushed off before getting the  100 ruble note in change from my 500. Apparently I did not even think of it until a minute later when a busboy came over to give me my  100 note and receipt!!!!!

But wait!  There's more!!!!

So I start to fish out my wallet to put my 100 away.    And my wallet is not where it belongs. 

That can be a problem with cargo pants. But it is why I have two pair of cargo pants that MATCH pocket for pocket. Seriously. 

Passport always goes here. Toilet paper here. Pen and phone zipped in here. Change here. And wallet here. But wallet was not "here. "

I'm a bit scared. I had done some banking today and had some $400 in US and rubles. Not good. Visa card, drivers

License, and paper copy of ident page of passport. Did not want to lose it. 

It was not in any of my pockets. Not on my cafeteria tray. Not in the backpack. Not at the cashier. Nowhere in two laps around the restaurant. All of a sudden none of the help can speak any English (although that one guy could probably still say "potato, rice, beets"). I resigned myself to having lost it. Sad. Bummed. 

Then there it was on the floor next to my chair. 

Lucky me. 

My How Things Have Changed

One of the things on my list for this trip was to duplicate a picture Dave and I took forty years ago. 

Think back forty years. The United States  and the Soviet Union were contesting everything. We won some. They won some. The battle was far from over. 

We were part of a German student travel group spending two weeks in Russia. I had heard about GUM Department store. It was right across Red Square from Lenin's tomb. For years the government had trumpeted how the many things on display showed the might of their economic system. 

The not so secret story, though, was that it really was not all that well stocked. The people who did buy there would often snap up whatever was offered, regardless of color or size in clothes, for instance. Things were in such short supply, the folk just bought what was there. 

I wanted to check it out myself. So when the group went, I found out that the stores were stocked. Not nearly what one would find at Sears or JC Penneys, but there was stuff to buy. The presentation was a bit lacking. I remember signs of one or two printed words saying (I was told) "Buy a Necklace," or "Shirts for Sale." The stores  had a mannequin or two. Maybe there was a picture of a severe looking lady with a nice new dress on or something. But not much in decor. It was pretty frumpy. 

There were a few stores featuring luxury foreign items like luggage and perfume I recall. But mostly just a few stalls of pedestrian stuff, and lots of empty stalls. 

The setting itself was worn and dingy. GUM was a series if tall arched hallways holding lots of stalls. There was a glass ceiling that was supposed to let in light, but most of our stay was cloudy on that trip. So, really, it was not too inspiring. Like most things in the system, it was stodgy and  "adequate."

One additional detail, at various times on that trip, locals slithered up to us on the street or metro and asked if we would sell our Levi's to them for forty US dollars or once something like eighty dollars worth of rubles. Apparently a good pair of pants was hard to come by. 

At any rate, we took our picture of GUM (on Ektachrome, with the extra speed of ASA 160) and went home. I think Dave has the picture. 

Today I wanted to retake that picture. So I did. It was bright, active, chic, and as high class busy as you would find in any great first class mall. Name the luxury, name the brand. It was on sale here. Quite a change!!!

 And then a few minutes later, in the next hall over, which looked pretty much like the first hall of GUM, I had to retake the picture. This time you can see, on the left if you look real hard, the Levi's store stretched across fifty meters of mall!!!

Solution to California budget Woes

To start with, California could recall to our home freeways any Highway Patrol officers we have stationed overseas. I took this picture a block from Red Square. 

Granted the traffic is horrendous. But let's tend the home hearth. 

On to Moscow

After a half day in Warsaw, I grabbed a Magnum Gold McFlurry at the train station. It was sub par. It is interesting to see how they vary around the world. 

Then the handle on my rolling luggage broke. I spent twenty minutes fruitlessly trying to fix it. That means I must carry my bag. Not a pleasant prospect. 

Finally the train arrived. I was in a three seat compartment. Above is what it looked like when as we neared Moscow. I had the top bunk. The
Middle and bottom were occupied by a young couple from Warsaw.  She was an archeologist going to the Ukraine to arrange field studies on early man. He was an infrastructure consultant so was quite interesting explaining the railroad system, and especially how the soviets arranged transportation so that they could fight WWIII on those flat plains. They took good care of me. 

Sleeping was harder than I thought. I was on the top bunk, and it was a little shorter. The thin pad was not soft enough to cushion my hips, especially my left one, the one I broke. So there was no comfortable position. 

As we approach Moscow the weather is clouding up. I cannot tell the temperature. My leg still hurts, but I have to assume it will function. 

Time to get ready. 

First time I got off a train in Moscow, my friend Dave looked around at the colorful jumble of the station and said, "what a ZOO!" Then he thought a sec and said, "...and I think we're the animals!!!"

Something Astronomical

I was walking along the street in Warsaw this morning and I saw this monument to Copernicus. Notice the orbits inlaid in the pavement. See how the moon has an orbit around the third planet out. 

I did not like the backlighting in this picture and I asked a local how long until the sun moved around for better lighting. 

"Around here," he told me, " we haven't thought the sun moved since Copernicus' time. It's the earth moving."

I'm Off

Today began the really meaty part of the adventure.

I'm at last leaving Judy, Steve, Eva, Mia, and the new cat Lily behind in Lhotka while I head off to Siberia.

This is always a powerful feeling. I am on the train. I found the right track and eventually car and seat. A nice lady was sitting in my reserved seat so I let her have it and took another even though it was not a window and I have to ride backwards.

This feeling, getting the right train and so forth, means that things are starting right. The time is finally right for the trip. Whatever will be will be. Just starting and all that.

It is one of the most exciting ments of any trip. Being on the right train.

It means so much more when you are not on an organized tour. There are so many things that can get screwed up when you are alone, no guide to help out. Lets just hope the rest of the trip works.

I started the day at a masseuse. One of the cousins knew Somebody who does body manipulations or fancy massages. They made arrangements. I figured if they could improve things and make it so I could walk, it would be worth 500 crowns. ($25). Well, it did not cure me, but it did help. And it cost 650 crowns. Let's just see how it goes. I need to make a decision before leaving Moscow Saturday about whether to journey on or fly home.

Meanwhile, I am buzzing along (backwards) on a train. My journey has begun.

Update: eight pm or so. I got to Warsaw and found myself at a hostel I stayed at some nine years ago. I had a commemorative meal at the KFC in memory of my first meal after a horrendous bout of bad intestines/ fever that had sidelined me for two days during that visit.

My leg and back hurt a bunch right now but not so bad I could not get from the train to the hostel. Hope I gets better.

Pub Life

I'm just not a pub guy. I have only been to a few pubs in my life.

And now my son and his wife own one here in the Czech Republic.

The pub is an old and well known pub in the region. It is the only pub in the whole village. The village has 56 people now that the guy they called "grampa" died last spring. The village is named Lhotka. To give you an idea of how nondescript that name is, the literal translation of "Lhotka" into English is "little village." So, the village is not even big enough to have a name other than "little village." The sign outside the village says "Entering Little Village." That's it!

But the pub is a regional pub, having been famous for many decades, even under the communists, as a place for people to hang out and discuss different ideas. It was far enough from Prerov that the authorities did not seem to bother it much.

Steve and Eva had their wedding reception in this pub. (Eva told me today that her first time in this pub was when she was one year old.) So, suffice it to say, it has been part of the people for quite some time.

The pub was getting older and the owners were having a hard time keeping it up. The old owner died, leaving his wife to make do. She finally decided to sell out. With months of work, Steve and Eva revived it, and now have a business that more than supports them and their daughter. They live in the back, with a garden and a little bunkhouse, and all that. More about the pub is on facebook at: U Olinka.

At any rate......This is what goes on in this pub.



There are half a dozen people who show up every day it is open, and sit for five hours or so, just visiting with each other, talking about their lives, politics, tennis, whatever.

There are a few people who come to play pool.

Many bicyclists stop by for a few hours while on their rides.

A couple of nights ago, in honor of the Fourth of July, Steve lit off a bunch of fireworks.

During the darker days in winter (It does not get dark here during the summer until 10:30.) every Wednesday is Movie Night. They use a video projector attached to the computer to show something or another.

Bands looking for a venue regularly hook up with Steve and Eva and play through the night. They pass a hat to pay them off. And there are a few bunks in the back where the band can sleep a while before heading home.

There is one woman who comes twice a day to have a pitcher filled up, and then goes home and drinks it down.

Another guy comes weekend nights just to sit quietly by himself, read his magazines, and drink beer. He spends his week as a manager of an important company, and just does not want to talk to a lot of people on the weekend!

Outside there are a few benches. Families bring their kids, sit under the Cherry trees, and drink beer, and discuss life. Last night one bunch brought a bunch of kebabs and grilled them under the trees. Another guy showed up about ten. He had been at a farmers market all day and still had a couple of dozen grilled mackerels unsold. So he gave th away. 

It seems that many of the folk are related. Or at least it seems to me. Eva's parents are wonderful people, very outgoing, and here three or four nights a week. The guy who built the pubs kitchen was there. 

The conversation is loud, and smoky. There is some sentiment that the country should go "No Smoking in Pubs," like the rest of the world has done, but it has not happened.

Steve has had as many as 245 people at one time. More typical is fifteen to thirty. There were 65 people here the other night. Many of them left just before 9:00 when the last bus left the village. Others stayed on, though till 3:00 am.  Although the pub is officially open from 5:00 to 10:00 Wednesday-Thursday and 2:00 to 12:00 or so weekends, Steve and Eva keep it open as long as people are enjoying themselves.

There is non alcoholic beer, and since the drinking and driving laws are very strict here, it is not unusual. It seems that Steve knows people who have a few beers in the pub, gone to sleep in the bunkhouse, woke up many hours later, and driven off. Caught in a minor traffic infraction, they have lost their license. Steve says that the allowed maximum is 0.0 per cent alcohol.

There are also shots of some Czech concoction called Slivovice that I tried years ago at Steve and Eva's wedding. It seems real popular with some. I refrain. I am still alive.

The beer continues, with the tap almost constantly running. Of course it takes about five minutes to pour a beer the real way. The foam is very thick, and one pours, lets it settle, and pours some more. As I said, it takes about five minutes between the time a beer is started until it is ready to be served. This is preferred because. "It lets the gas out " 

Steve and Eva serve the local brew, Zubr, named after the European Bison.

At any rate, as I said in the beginning, I am not a pub person. I just could not sit and visit that long. But for those who can, they certainly seem to enjoy this place. It is a Public House in the truest sense. Steve and Eva work hard to make it a nice place for all.

Socialized Medicine Again

About thirty years ago I was doing some tractor work on a slope, lost control, and wound up underneath the tractor. The tractor rolled a couple of times further down the slope. It left me semi conscious with my ankle up around my neck. The top of my femur had broken through my left acetabulum (hip socket). My hip was broken.

Jesus saved me.

His real name was Tommy, and he was a nice long haired bearded guy who lived down the street and drove an old yellow pickup that had lost its tailgate somewhere. Tommy had replaced it with a wooden plank in which he had carved Jesus's name. So we (Judy and I) called him Jesus.

At any rate, the wind was howling through the trees when I came to. So nobody could hear me yelling. And Judy and the boys were in Ohio for four more days. Tommy was working on his roof three houses away when he noticed an upside down tractor and came to investigate. Phone calls, an ambulance, and so forth...I'll skip details. That is how Jesus saved me.

Twenty two days later, they let me out of the hospital, and six months later I could walk normally. They said I would be arthritic forever in that hip and probably have it replaced by the time I was Fifty. In fact most of the time it goes unnoticed. It is annoying to get caught in the scanners at airports with the metal screws still in there. And I find it difficult to sit in meetings and on long flights. Oh, and every once in a while, something shifts and the pain is unbearable.

And it is happening right now. I have a pain,a severe pain, from my left hip stretching to my ankle. And walking is very taxing.

I don't normally go to the doctor in cases like this. But it is particularly bad this time, and I was worried it may be something worse. About ten years ago, I had what I thought was a sore knee. So I ignored it until I woke up three days later with my leg swollen to twice normal size. Some kind of cell poisoning. My doctor gave me a bunch of shots and scolded me severely for delaying treatment. He said I could have died.

So now it was my turn with socialized medicine. Turns out I was not eligible for socialized medicine in this country. Unlike in Obamacare, where aliens will get free services at taxpayer expense, I had to pay 604 crowns ($32). And then another 300 or so at the pharmacy.

My leg still hurts a lot. I hope I can walk when the big trip starts Monday.

So much for socialism.

I did not include a picture. Thought about taking one when the nurse was about to stick those two big needles in my butt. But, well, for now you can use your own imagination to paint the details.

UPDATE Monday July 8: This leg really hurts.   I am going to a therapist this morning and then a five hour train ride. Then I have a mile walk to my hotel. The longest I have been able to walk the last four days is a hundred meters. So wish me luck. 

By the way.  This may be more than the sore hip from my broken hip.   Whatever it is, if it does not get better I will have to give up on further travels for a while. 

Czech Food

We have been in the Czech for nearly a week now. So far we have had Czech hamburgers, Czech pizza, Czech spaghetti, Czech Kung Pao Pork, Czech burritos, and today in honor of the Fourth of July we are having Czech chili dogs.

It is American week at the supermarket in Prerov. That means we can buy peanut butter.

I have had some other meals in the Czech. At restaurants I try to order local traditional foods. I had a meal  yesterday of  dumplings and roast beef with a sauce. It is actually a Bratislava tradition even though we were in Moravia. And Monday I had chicken stuffed with tvaruzky. It is a special cheese from Olomouc, the next big town north of here. After I ordered it Steve told me it took six years before he could stomach it. He told me AFTER I ordered it.

At any rate the food in restaurants is good. The food at home is even better since Eva is a good cook.

Today Judy and Eva went to the store and bought a bunch of instant soups, peanuts, and other such stuff for my train ride. Lets see how much weight I lose on this trip. 

Football in the World

I think we all know that what the world calls "Football" is a much different game than what we play here in America. Well, I had the chance to find out last Sunday. We went to the "Czech Bowl," the championship game for all the teams playing football in the Czech Republic.

Let's start with some givens.
...The world is not allowed to use their hands
...Kicking is everything
...And small, quick guys have an advantage over the big bulky guy.

Nope, it isn't so. The football game I saw was not like that at all. Everything people had told me about how football was different in Europe and the rest of the world was wrong. It was not so different from what is played every fall here in the United States.

In the first place, the weather was late November weather, just like at home. It was cold and blustery, about fifty five or so degrees (F!!!) with big puffy clouds scuttling through. Sure, it was June, but the weather did not know that. It was football weather.

The tailgating before the game was not quite the same as at home. As a matter of fact, the grilled spiced mackerel smelled little like the ribs and stuff you'd find in the parking lot at home. And since nearly everybody walked to the game or took the bus, there weren't any tailgates, just vendors.

And inside, the eight piece chamber orchestra, full of strings like the big bass, a couple of violins, a viola, and all, were hardly what one might expect, even though it was fully electrified and playing Abba and Pink Floyd.

Before the game, the teams lined up for the National Anthem, which was quite nice, the red, white, and blue in proud display. Of course the Anthem was a different song, and the red, white, and blue had different shapes. But, hey......

We did have our cheerleaders, and they put on a respectable halftime show. In fact, there seemed to be three groups of cheerleaders. Two of the groups appeared to be not "Cheerleaders" but "Throw the girl up in the air and try to catch her" fans. Really, try hard to catch her if you can. They were certainly enthusiastic and had lots of fun (you know, the kind of "....Oh sure, lots of fun till somebody gets hurt!!!" fun.) Each of these teams were three or four girls and two or three guys and each spent the first half just repeatedly throwing the girls in the air. Did not seem to have much to do with the game, but it was fun.

But the third group was really together. They danced, put on a big halftime show, and looked very coordinated. At one point they even cheered at the right time. That was the only time they actually led a cheer in the entire half. But it was real well done. And they had fun dancing the rest of the half.

As for the game, it was quite entertaining for the more than 1000 visitors that had come to watch. (Okay, talking in the pub afterward, I was told it was just a bunch of people running around and then somebody falling over with a bunch of guys on top, and then everything stopped again until it was time to go.)

The Prague Black Panthers were playing the Prague Lions. Both teams were completely uniformed very professionally in their respective black and white or Orange and Blue Uniforms. Very complete, all matching, very professional. To see the forty or more of them line up on opposite sides of the field, with a set of six zebra refs in the middle was real, well, normal looking.

The game was competently played, and all that stuff about kicking being the be-all-end-all was simply bunk. There were two missed field goals, and a missed PAT. The punts only went some thirty yards, and none of the kickoffs went past the opposition 20 yard line. And the stuff about not using hands was simply not true. There was lots of passing. There were, to be true, a few dropped passes, and no interceptions. But only one fumble--and it was more of a bad snap.

And the big burly guys were very much in evidence.  They pushed and shoved on the line as much as any lineman in America!

The game, although well played, got a little lopsided. It was 40-9, with the Black Panthers beating the Lions.

A few other notes before I post this blog:

....Our Super Bowl costs more. I don't know what a ticket goes for in in the Super Bowl USA, but in the Czech Bowl it was 100 crowns, about $5.

....The names of the Czech players are harder to say.....although the announcer was doing well with them.

....The announcer does a lot more explaining in Czech than he does in the United States.

........US Announcer: "First Down."

       Czech Announcer: "They have gotten the ten yards they needed, so now they will get another four tries to go another ten yards."

........US Announcer: "Touchdown."

        Czech Announcer: "The runner with the ball has passed the goal line without being brought to the ground. That scores six points for his team. Now his team will have an opportunity to try to get another point, called an 'extra point' by kicking the ball through the tall posts you see on the end of the field." 

and

....The beer in the Czech Bowl is a lot better. Much better.

Fwd: Socialized Medicine

Seems on our arrival, our granddaughter Mia was two days into a case of what they call here "chicken pox" and Judy and I were about to have a first personal encounter with Socialized medicine. Unless the Republicans can somehow pass another resolution to derail it, and get Obama to sign the bill, we have this Obamacare socialized medicine coming in our own country, (and have had it for over-65 year olds for half a century or so). And I had read and heard about all the difficulties it would cause. So, I wanted to see what it was like when one had to try to deal with the grim reality of  illness in a socialized system.

 

Our son Steve, has lived with our daughter in law Eva here in the Czech for more than seven years. They pays taxes and special "medical insurance" (since they are self employed....regular workers get the benefit as part of their jobs, or pay a little for the insurance). So, they had grown accustomed to the ins and outs of the system, and were prepared for whatever they would have to go through to see their little girl get some kind of medical care...... 

 

We started by checking with the local pediatrician they usually use. Alas, he was "unavailable." (It was Saturday.)   So, we had to head for the clinic at the local hospital. It was barren except for some cute pictures, toys for the kids to play with, a nice little toy house, and so forth.  We worked our way to the head of the line more easily than I had anticipated (There was nobody else in the waiting room that morning.) And immediately (after knocking on the door) got the medical staff to acknowledge that we were there.

 

Then the paperwork began. Eva had to present a card, about the size of a driver's license, to the medical staff. If she did not have that she would have had to prove her identity some other way (drivers license or something).  This apparently was not enough. Eva also had to pass a little money to the staff. I had heard that in a closed system like this, the better off get better treatment by passing a little extra money along. Sure enough. Eva called it a co-pay, but I wondered how far it could go if one were really desperate for care.

 

We were in and out in less than ten minutes. The doctor saw Mia, spent a few minutes explaining the course of the disease, gave Eva some instructions on what needed to be done, prescribed some medicine to ease the discomfort. Then, out the door. No blood test, no CAT scans, no referral to a specialist....no nothing else (except a reminder to come back in ten days if the symptoms had not cleared). Oh, they did have us go off to a specialized store where medicines and such are provided (again the paperwork of that little card, and another "co-pay!!!).

 

On the plus side, they apparently did not call in any referrals to the death panels that are part of the upcoming Obamacare system.

 

This is what passes for medical care in a socialized system.

 

I'll keep you posted on what else happens, medically, in a system with

socialized medicine. Hopefully, the child will survive.