Ordinary weird

Slowly, we’re getting into the swing of things. The great thing about living abroad is the way that it makes the weird ordinary and the ordinary weird. For more than I year, the backdrop of my life featured onion-domed churches, billboards and posters in another alphabet, people chattering in another language all around me. Several times a day it would strike me that this was the strangest situation I’d ever been in, stranger than I would have dared to imagine when I was young. That all of Europe and the Atlantic Ocean were between me and where I was born, that there was a vast country all around that I was slowly beginning to actually understand.

Then I come back, and the scenes around me are familiar but all the details are sticking out. The first thing that came as a shock was how quiet it is up here – real quiet, as in, you don’t hear anything and when you try to actively listen you realize there is just stone cold nothing out there. It is almost unsettling. Also, I’m still at the stage at which nearly anything I do is the first time I’ve done it in ages. I had a burrito for lunch today – first burrito I’ve had in more than 15 months!

But it is all starting to sink in. Reading the Russian papers online, I feel like I’m reading about a very far away place. I don’t seem to cherish the ability to communicate freely and effortlessly with people in my native language the way I did in the first few days. And today, the Eagle ran my last “Letter from Moscow” column. It was the hardest one to write, as I tried to wrap it all up and get on paper all these stray thoughts I’d accumulated over the past year. The result is as incoherent as you’d expect from someone still going through jet lag, culture shock, life with a very busy toddler, and near constant worrying about what he’s going to do next.

Still feel gone

Before I let it slip another day, the family and I have arrived safely back in the States. Our trip back last week was a major adventure, handled with our family's now familiar stoicism. We learned more than we ever thought we would about the floor-plan of Boeing 747s thanks to chasing Mila around one for over five hours over the Atlantic, and made it from one end of Schiphol Airport to the other in under twenty minutes to catch our connecting flight while picking up three kilos of aged Gouda, The Times, Le Monde, and De Volksrant along the way. Since getting back to the Berkshires, we've been fighting jet lag and culture shock here at Camp Williamstown, where we are peacefully free of telephones and television for the time being. Still getting back on track, but more to come soon...

Walking to work

We're heading back to the States in a few days. We're starting to pack, and last week was my last one at the old office. Here are some pics I took one morning last week of the things I saw each day on my way there and back...


(The entrance to the Shchukinskaya Metro station)


(The artwork on the platform at Shchukinskaya, depicting our peaceful riverside neighborhood)



(The crossing at Barrikadnaya, where you switch to the Circle Line)



(The Park Kultury Metro station)


(Looking up Zubovsky Bulvar, my office is hidden behind that giant aircraft-carrier sized Nissan ad. This is for the best, as it is one of the more hideous Soviet relics in the city. Through my time in Moscow, it has been hidden by ads for Starry Melnick beer, Nikola kvass, among others.)

My talking head debut

Just like my favorite blogging media personalities, I now have the chance to make a cross-platform promotional post: I'm slated to appear on the Russia Today channel this evening to discuss tonight's Russia-Netherlands quarterfinal at Euro 2008. Watch me try to pronounce "Diniyar Bilyaletdinov" and "Demy De Zeeuw" on live teevee.

Kuzminki

(View of the north bank of Shibaevsky Pond)

For this long-weekend (in Russia) Friday we made a rare excursion to eastern Moscow for a trip to Kuzminki Park, which is clear across town but right on the Purple Line. The weather was nice, and Mila was in a good mood, so it was a nice family outing.

No matter what you do with a toddler, you are doing something with a toddler first and anything else a distant second. Kuzminki apparently has some interesting old estates and churches to visit, but we saw none of it. Most of the park is forest and lakes, and Mila took her time running around, blowing dandelions, and the like. We spent a good portion of our day at a simple playground where our kid discovered the unique fun of pushing her toy stroller up and down some planks.



Eventually, Mila actually wound down and decided to take a nap. This is a big deal, because lately she's uncovered some additional power source inside herself and has become increasingly convinced that she doesn't need to nap. She conked out for a little while though -- all that running up and down on the playground, obviously -- which was enough time for us to get shashlik...



I have to say that after all this time here, shashlik is probably my favorite thing about Russia. These are little chunks of marinated pork grilled over an open fire, with a side of piquante tomato sauce with cilantro, and often served with lavash, vegetable kebabs and some pickled goods...





A city park, summer, and meat grilled on sticks served on plastic is hard to beat (even if it may not look appetizing in pictures!)



On the way back, Mila fed ducks for the first time. I have to say, she's got quite an arm for her age.





(looking east over the pond)

Absurdistan

One of the books I bought on my trip to Washington and just got around to reading is Gary Shteyngart's Absurdistan, which I found one sale at a bookshop in Georgetown. It's the story of Misha Vainberg, an obese son of a criminally rich man, who is eager to return to the multi-culti United States to be with his South Bronx love. But thanks to his father's line of work, Misha can't get an American visa, and so concocts a roundabout scheme involving a trip to a CIS nation on the Caspian Sea for a fraudulent EU passport. But he manages to get caught up in the murky world of post-Soviet politics.

As I read it, I felt a bit of deja vu: like his acclaimed debut, The Russian Debutante's Handbook, Absurdistan is in large part almost two completely different novels thrown together. In each case, one is very good, the other, not so much. Handbook is about the Russian-American immigrant experience -- full of of very sharp insights into about assimilation, America, Russia. But then goes wildly off the rails when the story relocates to Prague, or however Shteyngart specifically dubs its transparent stand-in. Absurdistan goes the same way, an opening in Russia that is full of close observation, followed by a meandering plot in some imaginary place.

I also have some concerns about his madcap quirkiness. This seems to be a common affliction among hot younger writers these days. I remember I first heard the word "Absurdistan" at a strangely under-publicized reading he gave at Barnard College years ago, right after Handbook came out. It was a very nice night, only about a dozen people showed up, and I was generally impressed. But when he mentioned he thought his next project would be called "Absurdistan," I thought, "uh-oh." But Shteyngart is writing about Russia, and having lived her for awhile, I see how that is actually probably the best key in which to work. For example, twice Misha Vainberg's cellphone doesn't work, and he gets an automated message that says, "Respected mobile phone user: your attempt to make a connection has failed. There is nothing more to be done. Please hang up." Sounds a little to quirky and cute, but that's actually what cellphones here say when they can't get a signal.

But what really sealed the book for me is the realization about what Shteyngart is really doing here. When I realized that I was starting to sympathize with a gluttonous, track-suit wearing, son of a murderous oligarch, through a lot of whining and some of the least appetizing sex scenes in all of fiction, I realized he's playing a pretty big game. He's taking a close hard look at the Russian Soul. He's trying to describe in lucid prose what, famously and aggravatingly, "can only be seen with the eyes of the soul." There are two scenes in particular that I think are laser-like in defining something important about Russia: the description of the way Misha and Alyosha-Bob become friends on a snowy night in college, and the brief speech Misha's servant Timofey delivers at a key moment late in the book. Never let it be said there are no writers anymore willing to tackle Big Themes.

The view from Sparrow Hills

Last week, Olga took me for a walk around her alma mater, Moscow State University, because I'd never been to that part of the city before and wanted to see it. From the university it is a short walk to Sparrow Hills, a steep hill over a bend in the Moscow River that offers easily the best views of the city.

Moscow is a sprawling metropolis, and it really isn't designed to be actually seen from a detached perspective like other cities. There is no skyline as it were, just buildings and smokestacks in the distance. You realize this from Sparrow Hills, which is impressive, but makes you feel like a bee that has just looked back at his kicked-over hive.

Here is the view looking a little to the north. Moving from the right to the left, you can see three of the spires of Stalin's famous "Seven Sisters," which are each impressive in their own right but never really -- in my opinion at least -- dominate the skyline as some people think. At the far right is the Foreign Ministry, moving to the left in the distance is the Kudrinskaya apartment block, and in the center (near the smokestack) is the Hotel Ukraina. That little bit of Singapore that seems to have dropped out of the sky on the far left side is the famous "Moscow-City" complex, the new business heart of the city that will eventually feature the tallest building in Europe.



This next photo below is a shot looking a little to the right. Right up front is the stolid mass of Luzhniki Stadium, the home of the 1980 Olympics. Looking just above it, you can see the Cathedral of Christ the Savior with its gold dome. Just a bit further past it, you can kinda make out the gold domes of the Kremlin's cathedrals as well.

History must work

I had last Wednesday off, and took a trip down to visit Park Pobedy, Russia's primary war memorial, located down along Kutusovsky Prospekt west of the city center. I went knowing full well that it isn't quite the soundest intellectual experience in the city, but I was curious.

The giant park itself is probably the last real Soviet space -- planning for it began in Soviet times, but it wasn't actually completed until 1995. It sprawls with fountains and paved plazas. And considering the way Moscow's real estate market is developing, this is certainly the last big development here that won't entail a shopping mall, "business center," condos, and underground parking.

The Park Pobedy metro station is one of the system's newest, and you can tell as you step off the train into the gleaming bright halls. Unlike most station, there is no Soviet kitsch hanging around, just simple designs. On the one hand, it feels cleanly modern, but on the other hand it feels a bit like a western European airport.

You pop up on the Prospekt near the 1812 Triumphal Arch, and the park opens up before you. Wednesday happened to be the day to celebrate the Border Guards -- their 90th anniversary no less. Whenever any of the security branches celebrate their name-day, all the veterans don their old hats and medals, invade some prominent public space, get scandalously drunk, and do everything they can think of to embarrass their entire service. The park was full of former border guards wearing their distinctive bright green halo-hats. They were a bit better behaved than the celebrating paratroopers and sailors I'd seen before, but not by much.

The park forces you to walk about half an hour through a vast square lined with fountains and thick with obscure symbolism -- five terraces for the five years of the war, and the like. Soviet public planning and architecture is deliberately about alienation, a conscious effort to make the individual feel useless and absurd in the presence of a space that is designed for no earthly being, and only derives its value from its emptiness, implying that only raw volume alone could possibly fill it up.

Park Pobedy offers the interesting aspect of forcibly shoving in the exact same space the two worst things to happen to Moscow's architecture: Soviet excess and Zurab Tsereteli. The Moscow government's favorite hack sculptor designed the central "Victory Monument," a giant metal obelisk. You'd think that a very tall and perfectly straight pillar would be a hard thing to screw up, but Tsereteli finds a way to do so. It features chaotic etchings all the way up and down it, St. George killing some kind of Nazi dragon at the base, and a giant Nike hanging off the top bearing golden trumpets and laurels that looks like it will snap off and fall to earth one of these days.

The centerpiece of the park is the Central Museum of the Great Patriotic War. I dutifully paid my 120 ruble foreigner-rate ticket took a look inside. A very Soviet space, designed around spaces that fit that alienating quality I mentioned -- in this case with lots of square rooms and right angles and plenty of uncomfortable furniture scattered around for no real reason.

But even worse, the space is designed to put history to work. It is not an educational experience, it is an indoctrination. The lower level features the "Hall of Memory and Sorrow," a long, dimly lit hallway lined with vitrines featuring volumes listing the dead. Hanging from the ceiling are million of different sized crystals dangling from thin gold chains -- representing, naturally, the millions of tears shed, etc. The hall eventually leads you up to a secular pieta of a stout Russian woman holding on her lap a deceased soldier.

Surrounding the hall are the dioramas, which sum up the fast hit nature of ideology. I guess I expected something more than the large, dusty paintings I saw, but I was starkly disappointed in what I saw. They start with the Battle for Moscow, showing ranks of new recruits rushing to the front through a snowy landscape. Smoke and fire in the distance, Soviet planes commanding the skies. The next features Stalingrad, which to my amazement depicts Soviet troops celebrating the victory amid a handful of shell-shocked and despondent Nazi prisoners. The diorama about the Leningrad blockade really works the heart-strings, featuring dead babushkas on the street and cultural treasures in flame all around. Other images of the Battle of Kursk and the taking of Berlin are cartoonish in their depiction of writhing men in battle, of dramatically flailing bodies, smoke and wrecked machines. They were taking schoolchildren through all this.

Upstairs features the Hall of Glory, a giant domed space with the names of all the Heroes of the Soviet Union engraved on the walls (interesting fact: seven unrelated men named "Mikhail Borisov" were Heroes). In the center is a typical "Bronze Soldier" kind of statue. Apparently, they swear in new officers there.

I remember a few years ago when the U.S. was in full emotive agitation about "The Greatest Generation" that there was a noticeable backlash against simplifying the very complicated experience of war. I heard some of the strongest doubts come from veterans themselves. That seemed quite healthy to me. I've written a lot about Russia's problematic use of history and ideology, but sometimes I wonder if the enormity of what happened simply makes it impossible to speak the truth.

###

Since I was in the neighborhood, I walked from the park up Ulitsa Barklaya to Gorbushka, the great emporium of all things technical, pirated, and copied. As goes Russia, so goes Gorbushka. What had begun as a dodgy set of stalls selling all kinds of products of dubious provenance, the market has been tamed and moved indoors. The lower levels are pretty much like any other appliance store, full of plasma televisions, washer/dryers, microwaves, and stoves. The upper level was once jammed with small stalls of whatever you could possibly hope to find for jawdropping prices. But each time I go back, there seem to be fewer of these, and more and more "respectable" places, with legitimate prices. One more chapter in Russia's voyage to the global economy closes.

Stuff on teevee

Very busy couple of days here in Moscow. To my real amazement, it seems the Champions League final at Luzhniki on Wednesday really did go off without any trouble. The cops even put on their dressy uniforms, with the dress jackets and clean white shirts rather than their day-to-day paunch-enhancing light blue blouses.

The game was on western European time, so it didn't get underway until about 11 p.m. here, and didn't wrap up until nearly 2 a.m. as a result. Then I had to write my column about it all. I had already written something about Saturday's Russia Cup final between CSKA Moscow and Amkar Perm -- specifically about the way it ended in a penalty shoot-out. But since the big game ended the same way, I felt there was no way I could avoid hashing it in. (UPDATE 5/24: I wish I'd had more time to think through my column about the game. The commentary about the nature of these kinds of events has been very interesting, like this and this. I think I may be on to something.

It very much feels like we are going through a great clump of big events right before the slow, dull dacha season arrives. For example, this weekend we have the Eurovision finals in Belgrade. Last year, I was able to watch my first Eurovision, and was swept away by its unapologetic cheesiness, circus-like nationalism, and phenomenally curious voting patterns.

Alas, this year, I'm a bit depressed about it, especially since Ireland's entry -- a singing turkey puppet named Dustin -- was dismissed, I don't see anyone carrying the torch for us ironically-inclined viewers. Plus, I've actually heard that Russia's Dima Bilan is tipped as the favorite, which makes my head hurt. For those of you who don't follow Russian pop closely, Dima is the owner of Russia's most famous mullet -- which is saying quite a lot in this mullet-mad nation. He is very popular with teenage girls -- and apparently with certain kinds of older men thanks to some risque photo shoots in his impressionable youth.

The very fact that he became Russia's selection this year demonstrates the scandalous web of influence-peddling and nepotism that ruins the spirit of competition and international friendship behind this long-running event (pfff... tryin' to keep a straightface). Dima already had his chance in 2006, and brought shame and dishonor to the Russian people with his embarrassing second place finish. This year is nothing more than his management's effort to make another futile push into the wider European market.

I hope it doesn't work. This song, which I've seen a couple times on the music channels, is so awful that it stops being funny. It is in English, but that kind of Eastern European cheese-pop English that you don't recognize unless someone tells you, "hey, I think this song is in English!" I can't tell what the hell the lyrics are about, but judging by the video, it is about a very sick and incredibly picturesque little boy. Judging Dima's interest in him and the obviously Western quality of care at the hospital where he is staying (no nurses demanding bribes for painkillers, the floors look like they've been cleaned since the Andropov era, etc etc), I guess he is the son of a well-placed oligarch, but that's neither here nor there. The point is he is awfully sick, in a Dickensian sort of stoic heart-stirring way, and Dima organizes a "beneficent" concert for him at a hockey arena. He performs this song about hope and shit with some dude pretending to saw away on a fiddle and a fashion photographer hovering around. The coup de grace that makes this about everything wrong with today's Russia arrives when jackass ice skater Yevgeny Plushenko makes an appearance and twirls around to inspire everyone or whatever.

And this thing is tipped to win the whole thing. I am so profoundly disillusioned that I almost can't be ironic anymore. I think I'll skip the crappy songs and just watch the voting -- which seriously ought to be the subject of a colloquium at the Council on Foreign Relations or something. Fareed Zakaria ought to write a book about it.

And you know who definitely can't be ironic? Russia's state-run First Channel, which will broadcast the final. They've been running a promo with a definite message. It shows the Russian national hockey team winning the World Championships in Canada last week, plus Zenit St. Petersburg winning the UEFA Cup this month, and ends with Dima's quest for glory. So you see, Eurovision -- just like international sports -- is really about proving the amazing super-awesome glory of Russia over all the suckahs. Take that Estonia! Shove it Ukraine!

UPDATE (5/25): Ungh. Dima's "live" performance, and the nationalist backwash here the morning after, have been even more loathsome than I had imagined. The 12-year old girls of Europe have let mankind down. I voted last night -- only because how often do I get to vote in the Eurovision finals? -- and was ready to go with Azerbaijan, whose entry included men dressed as angels and a guy sitting on a throne pouring fake blood on a writhing dancer. But I chose to go with Spain's entry, which seemed in the light-hearted spirit appropriate for things like this.

A little more on Vladimir...

I tried to sum up some of my thoughts about our experience in Vladimir in this month's installment of my "Letter from Moscow" column in the Berkshire Eagle. (It'll only be up for a few days though...)