Russia, My Challenge

January 17, 2013

Winston Churchill once remarked, Russia ‘is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma’, and I agree. Russia was indeed a difficult place for me to understand. I kept wanting to compare it to America. On the one hand, the people are largely white and Christian, and the culture looks somewhat like Western Europe, so there is the expectation this is just another European type place. But in fact it is not. By contrast if you go to India there is no mistaking the fact this is not a Western culture, in no way shape or form is India the same as Europe or North America. India looks and acts completely different from the West, So you are not confused, you expect it to be different. And it is!

But Russia is confusing because it does not look substantially different than the West, yet underneath the ‘hood’ of Russian culture the premises by which it operates are
distinctly different from the West. For sure there are strains of the West within Russian culture, but in general there is a radically different set of principles at work within Russian culture that are not found in the West. This is what makes Russia frustrating for a Western visitor, but also exciting. It is substantially different than the West. When you go to Russia you feel you have gone to a place substantially different. When you go to Spain or France, on the other hand, you do not feel you have gone that far away from your own world as a Westerner. There is no doubt in my mind, Russia exists in its own right and processes a great culture, and my trip was wonderful. Without a doubt, I will return if only to further explore those underlining premises that make Russia Russia.

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Observational Ditties

St. Petersburg, Russia
October 21, 2012

Food is basic and much less processed here. Sugar is not sweet. All the things I expect to be sweet are not sweet, at least not according to my taste, including chocolate. A typical bowl of sugar one finds at a restaurant table is mostly cubes and three quarters of them are brown. Even the white sugar cubes are not sweet. I tried sweetening my coffee with them, but I could simply not achieve the level of sweetness that I am used to. There is no hope of finding Splenda or other artificial sweeteners here. So I’ve given up using sugar or any other kind of sweetener in my coffee. Similarly, I can find no white bread. Yes there is so called white bread, but it’s really not white, it’s more like beige bread. I haven’t tried a soda, what to speak of a diet soda, neither of them seem to be readily available. All this I take as a good thing. And here’s the best part: I’m losing weight and I’m eating relatively normally. Even though I try to stay away from carbs, it is not possible. In addition I walk—a lot. Conclusion: our American lifestyle with our addiction to sweets and highly processed carbs and other foods is an unhealthy diet. I’m glad to be away from it. Russians, and indeed most Europeans are slim and I suspect more healthy than Americans. I wonder if diabetes is at such epidemic proportions here as it is in the US?

It would be hellish to live here and be a disabled person. There is virtually no wheelchair access, even including slopped curbs at intersections. There is nothing that makes this place functional for a disabled person.

I would not want to be gay or even black here. I’ve hardly seen a black person, yet I get the distinct feeling they would be discriminated against. This is just my opinion and I will try to find out more of what the general Russian attitude towards blacks may be. Similarly, I see no signs of gays. This tells me that to come out as a gay person in this country is probably dangerous. I will try to check into this as well.

If you are a vegetarian, life is also hard. This is a meat-eating culture. I have to hunt quite hard to find food. I have found that middle eastern and ethnic restaurants tend to be more favorable than regular Russian restaurants. Being a vegan? Forget it.

You see few sexually explicit books or magazines in the bookstores or on newsstands here. And by few I mean zero. Certainly you see a fair amount of kissing and hugging on the streets and parks between men and women, even older people, but there are no sexually explicit covers on books and magazines in the regular news and book stands that one sees in the rest of Europe. This suggests the government censors such things and if they control this, I wonder what else they censor.

Public toilets in Russia like the rest of Europe are generally clean. You never see writing on the walls, ‘for a good time call such and such’. There always seems to be paper towels and the trash cans that are not overflowing. I would not hesitate to use a bus station or even train station public toilet. In America I would do almost anything to avoid a public toilet.

There is a lot of construction here and you can see cranes throughout the city. Judging by what I see with all the people in the streets and shops so full of consumer goods and all the construction going on, the economy, at least in the cities of Moscow and St Petersburg must be booming.

Compared to the rest of Europe and even the United States gasoline is cheap here. It costs anywhere from 29.5 to 40 rubles per liter depending on the grade. The ruble is around 30 to the dollar so that makes gasoline about four dollars per gallon. That’s on par with the United States and easily half the price of the rest of Europe. Gasoline in Amsterdam was close to nine dollars a gallon. But the great thing is that gasoline is sold up to a 98 octane level. The highest in the US is 92. I would love to try my car on the 98 octane it was designed for. It would scream.

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Day Seven, The Buddhist Temple and Pushkin’s Home

St. Petersburg
October 22, 2012

Today I visited a Buddhist temple, which turned out to be Tibetan Buddhist. I was expecting a Chinese temple like we have in the Los Angeles area, but to my shear delight it was Tibetan! Complete with flags! What a difference between this place and the mosque. Both are basically low-budget ethnic run operations, yet this Buddhist temple had no problem welcoming me as a guest and even a devotee, whereas the mosque was full of fear and made me feel unwelcome. This speaks volumes to me.

I learned this Buddhist temple started at the beginning of the 20th century, but shortly after the Bolshevik Revolution it was taken over by the Soviets and used as a jamming center to block the transmissions of the Voice of America and Radio Free Europe. After the fall of the USSR it was returned to the Buddhist community and turned back into a Temple. Now that’s a piece of cold war history!

After my visit to this temple I went to the home of the famous poet Puskin, which is now a museum. It’s a simple place and the tour is not very long, but I found it dramatic. I was able to see where his family lived, where his study and library were, where his wife’s room was, and how he lived with his family. I also learned the details of how he died and even saw the gun that was used to kill him. He was killed in a pistol duel, which to me is the stupidest thing in the world, but I guess that’s what made Pushkin a Pushkin! The most interesting thing was to see the pages of his manuscripts. I could see the amount of work and the creative process that went into his poetry including all of the doodling. In no way did he just write his poetry once, instead he worked it over and over and over again. There was obviously a creative burst, but after that it was just plain hard work like any writer has to go through. This was good and inspiring to see.

After that I went to a nice Georgian restaurant. I have found that Eastern Russian and Middle Eastern restaurants are good places for me to eat. The regular blue eyes blonde Russian restaurants are just too much meat. I do much better in the ethnic restaurants. And yes, as promised, I tried my first shot of vodka. It’s like drinking turpentine! Yes I’m sure it’s an acquired taste, but that’s way too much acquiring for me. I could only take a sip and so left the rest. I’m sure that’s a sin to the Russian vodka god. I pray that I may be forgiven!

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St. Petersburg Russia Day Six, ‘Pushkinville’

October 21, 2012

It rained all night, so I thought it was going to be a terrible day, yet it turned out to be a wonderful day. I bought an excursion to a town 25 km outside of St. Petersburg called Pushkin, although I heard my tour guide call it Pushkinville. At first I thought this had something to do with the poet, but it turned out to be the summer residence for the Tsars! Pushkin is everywhere. In Russian this place is called Tsarskoye Selo or Tsar’s village. Today, the main place of attraction was the palace for Catherine 1, the wife of Peter the Great. Until I arrived here I had no idea where I was going. I just end up at places because someone says this is were I should go. And so here I am at the summer residences for the Tsars of Russia. And like everything about the Tsars it is extraordinarily beautiful and breathtaking. The location out of the city, and the general rural layout remind me of Versailles. Yet it’s bigger, and in my opinion, much better, especially the grounds and the gardens. The photos and video clips tell all.

What shocked me the most about this place is how the Nazis utterly ruined this palace during their occupation in the second war. This is a place of extraordinary beauty and here were these people destroying such beauty. It is hard to fathom. There are photos showing the ruins they left behind, and it was appalling. Since then everything has been restored and renovated by the Soviets and later governments. The Nazis were no better than the Taliban who destroyed the Buddhist statues and other archaeological remains in Afghanistan. On the way to these palaces our tour guide pointed out a large park in St. Petersburg that was used as a graveyard and crematorium for over 1 million people who died during the siege of Leningrad as St. Petersburg was called in Soviet times. She described this park as a very sad place for the St. Petersburg people. I just cannot imagine a million people dying in over 900 days, yet here it was. I’ve read about these things in history books, but now that I’ve come here and seen the people and seen what this culture is, I cannot conceive of such brutality and destruction. It is beyond my comprehension what kind of mental states were operating that caused the death of so many people and the destruction of so much art. I now want to go to Poland to see the concentration camps. Of course it was not only the Nazis that caused so much death and destruction, even Russia’s own leaders, Stalin for example, who caused the death of millions of his own citizens. As a North American all this is beyond comprehension. Seeing the photos of the destroyed palaces and hearing our tour guide speak of the sadness as we drove by this park are sticking points of this trip that I will never forget. It’s one thing to read of these things in a book, but to see them and experience them changes everything.

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JPL, NASA A Trip

I was recently invited for a private tour of NASA’s JPL site in La Cañada. I had done a family wedding for someone who worked there, so I had been offered a tour, and to my utter delight I was eventually invited. This was a great opportunity for Radhika since she was back from Berkeley for a few weeks and I’ve been encouraging her to invent warp drive. We had to get security clearances, but once that was done we were set to go. Being a product of the Star Trek generation I can’t help but have a keen interest in space research and exploration, so this was a fabulous opportunity to see one of the key places where it all happens. A few months back the Mars rover, Curiosity, had made a spectacular landing on Mars and this was the development and control center for this program. I could not have asked for a more exciting place to be.

My photos show the essence of the tour better than any words can convey, suffice to say this site reminded me of my Johnson Space Center tour in Houston back in the summer. JPL started in 1936 with a few geeky guys playing with rockets in a nearby wash, yet with the coming war the military picked up on the possibility of building propulsion systems to deliver bombs. God bless our military. Since then the site has developed into a full scale propulsion and robotics research center that has been released back to the non military community.

It quickly becomes obvious that both Houston and JPL are just two important pieces of a large network that is spread across the whole world. Space exploration and development is a global affair. This is not an American project, it is a human project. I find this fact heartening. Pure science always strives to straddle borders and politics. The downside, of course, is the military always lurks in the shadows, and at a moments notice any of this research can be militarized. Science and space are like religion, they embody both the best and the worst of humanity. Regardless, I am inspired to see such cooperations between nations to achieve a human end. I was again reminded of the young man in Houston who told us that space research was beyond the capability of any one nation and that it would take a planetary effort to reach to the stars. Again I pray that some young Berkeley student like Radhika will be the one to invent wrap drive.

Day Five, The Hermitage and Stockman’s

Yesterday I spent most of my time in the Hermitage, Russian’s primo art museum. This could easily be one of the world’s greatest museums, the collection is spectacular. The stairways, hallways and ceilings remind me of Versailles. The ambience is unbelievable, but there are two major flaws, the lighting is horrible and most of the paintings are under glass. The lighting, by far, is the lesser problem. There is a terrible glare on most of the paintings because of aged fluorescent lighting that hangs exposed in a circle around the perimeter of each room. I suppose this old lighting is just due a lack of funds, but I can’t understand why. The museum is packed. I wish they’d raise the ticket prices and correct this problem. Or perhaps sell off one Rubins to pay for everything! The second problem much worse. There is glass over most of the paintings! This is nothing less than desecration of art. And yes, I am sure they are doing this with all good intentions for security and for conservation, but why bother traveling across the world to see paintings under glass that can be seen on the Internet or in a book just as well. The reason you travel to museums like the Hermitage is to see real art. Looking at paintings through glass is sterile and almost pointless. From my photographer’s perspective I have nothing but praise for this museum because they issue photography permits, a fantastic idea and one that I wish all museums would institute, yet when they glass over the art all the advantage is lost. This glassing business was extremely frustrating and made my feelings known at the director’s office. If they would fix this problem the Hermitage would be a fantastic museum, one well worth returning to many times. As it stands I would not return, better to go to the British Museum or the Louvre.

Earlier in the day, before I went to the museum, I took a walk a few blocks away from my hotel to a department store and mall area called Stockman’s. Ordinarily when I walk here I have a bright red feather coat and everyone immediately spots me as a tourist and foreigner. Russians, even the women, wear dark colors. So I look like a California tomato walking down the street. On this day I wore my black raincoat and immediately blended in. Russians are suspicious of foreigners including tourists. This is a big problem because tourism is a huge business that Russians are missing out on. Without my tomato coat I had people coming up to me, girls no less, asking me for directions, but the second they discovered I was not Russia they shied away. In one store at Stockman’s I needed toothpaste, mouthwash and deodorant. And, of course, no one speaks a word of English and I have no idea of the Russian words for these items, so I approached a number of sales ladies using the appropriate gestures for toothbrush, mouthwash, and underarm deodorant. I tried to do it in a jocular way to ease the tension, but in all cases as soon as they realized I knew no Russian they immediately turned their head down and ignored me out right. It was amazing. I have been all over the world and never been treated in this way. Yet I was not offended, I understand the history and culture well enough not to take offense. But it is a fact, most Russians distrust and fear outsiders, I saw it the moment I entered this country in the way the passport officer and customs agent acted. This is something that holds this country back and with this attitude it will forever remain on the fringes of the developed world.

Day Four, Rain and Pessimism and Beauty, a Day at the Russian Museum

St. Petersburg
October 16, 2012

Today it rained, so I spent most of my time inside, at the Russia Museum. This where you can find primarily Russian paintings. Unfortunately, it was hard to appreciate much of what I saw of the older Russian art. It tended to be dark and heavy, and reminded me of the drab and heavy style of the Soviet leaders I recall seeing years ago, Khrushchev, Brezhnev, Andropov and Yeltsin. There is a dark and heavy side to Russian culture that I am unable to appreciate and it came at me in these older paintings styles. It is also there in Russian literature and even in the cuisine. This is the land of meat and potatoes, cabbage and alcohol. Is it unfair to expect anything else in a world devoid of sunshine and which is so cold for so many months of the year? And its true many Russians have a pessimistic view of their world. Nothing ever changes here I was repeatedly told. Almost every Russian alive today can remember when the banks failed. Indeed, they have failed in almost every generation. So I suppose Russians have cause for pessimism, disbelief and cynicism. And as you might expect, it is reflected in much of their culture.

And yet there is more to Russian culture than just pessimism and darkness. In the Russian Museum I found Russian art that was nothing less than fantastic and which reflects a whole other side of Russian culture. And strangely enough most of it was created during Soviet times, during the time of these same dark leaders. This is the enigma that is Russia. There is a beauty and richness of life here that is uniquely Russian and which can compare with the best of anywhere else in the world.

This is Russia.

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St. Petersburg, Third Day

October 15, 2012

Somehow I could not leave my hotel until noon. There is no light here till after 9am so things move slowly. If there is darkness almost to nine in October what will it be like in December? I’m told the sun does not rise till almost noon at that time of the year! I can’t imagine living in such a subluminous world. This morning I spent time in my hotel lobby sending video and emails to friends around the world, I then searched for hotels and trains to Moscow. I am going there on Thursday. Booking a hotel was no problem; I did that through a western website, but trying to book a train through a russian website proved too difficult, so I decided to just go to the train station and buy the tickets there. That was my first walking trip of the day.

Ordinary Russians do not use cards. It seems only tourists use them. Did I mention when I first arrived in Russia my internet accounts like American Express and Apple locked out? I had to go through each account separately to reactivate them. I have learned to have an emergency email address not connected with the particular account in order to re-activate it. Both Apple and Google use an emergency email address to contact you in case of a problem, but if that emergency address is just another Apple or Google address then you won’t be able to reactivate your account because your email servers will not work. It was a huge inconvenience, but eventually it was solved and I recovered my accounts. The bottom line? Russia is not within the civilized world. The moment you arrive your internet accounts lock. There is so much internet crime and fraud here that most Western companies use lock-out as a security measure. Only in August did Russia join the WTO (world trade organization), so it’s going to take a few years before Russia is considered part of the civilized world. The vast majority of Russians simply do not have credit cards. In the rail station to purchase a train ticket, I had to wait in a special line that handles credit cards. Most Russians are handing out fistfuls of paper money. What an odd sight! Not since 25 years ago in India have I seen that. My estimation is that Russia is about a generation behind the rest of the world in many things. Yes, it has internet access, cell phones, and flat-panel screens, but in so many other areas it is far behind. Credit card banking banking is a prime example. An other example is cell phones. It seems every Russian has a cell phone, but they do not have automatic accounts with their cell companies. Russians must charge their cell accounts with cash manually at street machine that are like ATMs.

Yesterday evening, I observed hoards of old and even young men standing around street corners openly drinking beer and liquor. They leave their bottles littered all over the street and of course some of them break. It creates a great mess. After dark I don’t feel safe. And yet yesterday I was in some of the most beautiful gardens and parks that I’ve seen anywhere in the world. Perfectly groomed and clean. So this is Russia, a huge contrast. On the faces of the people you can see great struggle, life is hard, yet the streets are full of people, the shops are full of things to buy. Yet I don’t see many tourists, so who is buying these things? It must be Russians. This is a country not open to tourism. Russians will not agree, but what is the first thing that happened to me in the airport, my passport was taken away, I was detained and my bags were searched. What kind of a tourist is going to return to such a place? And with the Internet I have already told hundreds of people. Will they want to come? Do you find English, French, German or Spanish translations on restaurant menus like the rest of Europ? At best you might find an English menu if you ask, but ninety of the time it is only Russian. And yet this country has fantastic palaces, parks, cathedrals and museums, only they are not making themselves available to the outside world. This is a country barely crawling out of its communist and totalitarian past. They still fear the outside. Seeing the crowds of people and the shops so full of goods suggests things are improving, yet the Russians I speak to tell me nothing ever changes here. They are pessimistic, but I see hope and signs of growth.

It took some time, but eventually I was able to purchase my train ticket with a credit card. Afterwards I took the Metro to the Peter and Paul Fortress at the other side of town on the Neva River more or less across from the Hermitage museum. This is where the Tzars of Russia and the Romanov family are entombed. This city’s Metro is very very deep! I have never taken such a long escalator ride down into the bowels of the earth. I can only assume Russians built their Metro this deep just to get closer to hell for warmth. The subway cars I traveled on reminded me of trains I used in Toronto during the 1960s and 1970s. As I said everything is 30 years behind. The lights on the cars blink on and off at different places just like they did in Toronto. On later trips I rode modern trains with AC and even wireless Internet. The metro is an efficient way to travel. Indeed many of the stations are like museums. They are beautiful!

The Peter and Paul Fortress and the area around it is outstanding. With the Neva river, it’s embankment walls, the royal gardens, the palaces and museums all spread throughout out this part of the city it truly is a beautiful city. This is Peter the Great’s part of the city. The Peter and Paul Fortress was originally built to defend the city from Sweden and Finland. Today it is a museum. It also played an important role in the Bolshevik revolution. At the moment it is being renovated, so it was hard to get good pictures. Russians are proud of their history and they take care to preserve and look after it. Like most things I had no idea of where I was visiting until I came here. To my surprise and utter delight this is the place where the Tzars of Russia, beginning from both Peter and Catherine the Great, are entombed. This is the royal mausoleum. I’m not sure why, but I found this to be a tremendously moving experience. Some years ago, I had taken a course on Russian history and here I was standing before the tomb of Peter the Great and even Nicholas the Second, the last Tzar of Russia. It was like seeing a famous painting for the first time.

And yet there was more. Russia, during its Soviet times, deeply affected my psyche as a child. I had never been here, but in my mind, this was the evil empire, a lawless and barbaric place that threatened my existence. I always heard about the Russians and the threat they posed to the civilized world. This, of course, was the time of the Cold War. I remember the Cuban missile crisis. I watched as Khrushchev slammed his shoe on the table at the United Nations saying we will bury the West. I remember the frantic worry of my mother and the absurd, but very real, bomb shelter in our basement. I remember hearing air raid sirens as a child and running home in fear an attack. I even peed my pants on the street as I ran home. It was a emotional and intense time of my life. And so now coming to Russia and seeing the place that caused so much fear was a liberating experience.

After visiting the Peter and Paul fortress I walked to a nearby mosque, the famous St Petersburg mosque. I’ve never been in a mosque so this is a good opportunity to visit. When I arrived it looked dirty and run down so I thought it wasn’t open, but then I walked around and found the side door and saw people coming and going. So I just followed what other people were doing. I went in took off my shoes and then went to go inside the main room. As I was about to go into the room one older man blocked my entry. After some hand gestures he allowed me to just step one step into the room so I could look. After only thirty seconds he made me leave. I saw other men coming and going, but he would not allow me to enter. The other men were not white, they may have been Russians from Chechnya or Dagestan, but he would not allow me. No doubt he knew I was not Muslim. I don’t think it was anything to do with me being white, but just don’t know. He nevertheless saw me as an outsider. I have never been stopped entering a church. I have been told to take off my hat, I have been stopped from taking photos, but I have always been welcome to enter. This has only happened once before. Years ago in Orissa, India, I was stopped from going into a Hindu temple because I was white. And in those days I was even traveling with a shaved head and dhoti. Anyway, I was respectful and I quietly left the mosque with all my thoughts about Islam. How much better would Islam be if it had a more open attitude?

After that I walked to the house Peter the Great and then walked through the Tzar’s summer gardens across the river. I even found another park which I thought was even better than the summer gardens. Russians take great care to look after their gardens and parks. These gardens and parks were as good as any I’ve seen.

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St. Petersburg, Day two, Walking

October 14, 2012

Today was a walking day. I truly became le flâneur, the city stroller. I walked down Nevsky Prospect, the main street though St Petersburg, where I had been the previous evening. This time I could see clearly what I’d seen in the dark the day before. Nevsky Prospect is actually no fun except for the first few times. It’s just a big noisy city street like anywhere else in the world, yet it’s amazing to see the crowds of people—who they are, how they dress, how they look—plus the shops, the buildings, the bridges and the canals, and, for me, the Cyrillic letters on everything. During my whole stay in Russia I could not stop myself constantly trying to read the letters. It became my obsession. I’d learned Cyrillic before I arrived, so here I was, perhaps my only chance to perfect it. Everywhere, I found myself trying to sound out the words. Макдоналдс, кофе, банк McDonalds, cafe, bank, and so on. It was a blast! In fact half knowing a script is quite addictive. The best part of town, however, is along the embankments near the Hermitage with all the canals and bridges. It’s peaceful. This is the part of St. Petersburg that causes people to say this is the most beautiful city in the world. Overall I would not give St. Petersburg this high a rating, but it is, no doubt, a beautiful city. In my opinion, Amsterdam is truly a beautiful city, even on its most ordinary streets.

On the way down Nevsky Prospect I passed some famous places including the Kazan Cathedral, a Russian Orthodox church, and the Cathedral of the Resurrection, which unfortunately turned out to be a museum. Both are spectacular places. The Kazan Cathedral is famous for the Icon of Kazan, an image of the Virgin Mary and Christ Child that is held in the highest esteem in Russian orthodoxy. Unfortunately the icon has been lost since 1904 and thought destroyed. The Cathedral of the Resurrection is also known as Our Savior on the Spilled Blood because it was the site where Tsar Alexander II was murdered in cold blood in 1881. The cathedral is a monument to him. Inside you can see the actual spot where he was attacked, a bomb was thrown at him. The cathedral was started by Alexander III, his son in 1883, and completed in 1907 under the last tsar, Nicholas II. Both inside and outside this is a beautiful building. But in fact I enjoyed the Kazan Cathedral more because it is a living place of worship. I much prefer living churches to museum churches. Faith is the difference between what is living and what is dead. Museum churches beg for life.

From these two places I continued down to the Tsar’s Winter Residence, now one of the worlds greatest museums, the Hermitage, and then into Palace Square. What an amazing place, as I think of the parades and ceremonies and the fighting and the killing that has taken place here including Bloody Sunday and the October Revolution of 1917. In the center there is the huge Alexander column commemorating the victory of Russia over Napoleon. Everywhere in St. Petersburg you find Peter the Great, his statues, his buildings, his canals, and his bridges. Everywhere Peter Peter Peter. It is truly amazing how he created such beautiful architecture in such a cold and brutal climate and on a bog no less. Peter the first was truly great! After Palace Square I saw Peter’s home, a small log cabin and then strolled through the Tsar’s summer gardens. Peter’s gardens are much better than Louis’s gardens! All these places shine with the mind boggling wealth of the Romanov family and the subsequent Tsar’s. There is nothing equivalent to it in North America. As I marvel at and appreciate such beauty I also consider that a nation only has so much wealth and it is obvious who had it in Russia. If one relatively small group had it all, a huge majority did not have it. No wonder there was such a violent backlash. In a day or two I will visit the Hermitage.

Here are my general impressions of St. Petersburg after my second day. Life is hard in this part of the world. I know the scars of a cold climate and I see it etched into the pavement and onto the faces of the people. I see struggle in the eyes of many people. Alcohol and meat are everywhere. It seems that people need these thing just to survive. I see men huddled on street corners openly drinking hard liquor in the dark. And yet there are amazing architectural monuments. I marvel that people could build these things in such a cold and harsh place. Nevsky Prospect is packed with people and stores filled with consumer goods. Electronics are everywhere. They say St. Petersburg girls are the best, and its true! I’ve never seen such beautiful girls in any city. So there is life and dynamism on the streets of St Petersburg. This is a place of contradiction. I see great pain and struggle and I see dynamic life. I see harshness and i see beauty.

In the evening I attended an orthodox mass. It was sweet. I’m a sucker for such things, regardless of the religion. Devotion draws me like a bee to honey. I have the bhakti curse. I tried to take a photo and a movie clip, but was stopped by an official of the church. It seems that photography is not allowed in orthodox churches. I noticed women cover their head and men take off their hat in churches. One elderly lady even came up to me and gestured that I should take off my hat. I felt embarrassed I had to be told to remove my hat. Yet later in a mosque I was barred from entry. I’m told had I covered my head I probably would have gotten in.

I often try to ask questions and discuss topical issues with the local people while I am in a new country. This is not always easy or wise. In the Netherlands there were lots of people willing and able to speak so I discussed the openness of Dutch society, particularly about cannabis and prostitution. Russia is a fascinating place and it raises a plethora of topical issues involving politics, economics, religion, social issues, authority, culture, and on an on. It’s a place very different from what I am used to. Unfortunately English speakers are hard to find and the ones you do find are unwilling to speak on such issues. My hotel staff were perfect examples. Everyone refused to speak on issues of substance, presumably out of fear for their jobs. They were polite and helpful on all kinds of issues which had no controversial qualities, but when it came to things of sensitivity they would not say a word. Eventually, I did find someone willing to speak, however their English was poor. This girl had lived the first 20 years of her life under Soviet rule and had no problem stating that times were better under soviet rule compared to now. She was not optimistic about the future. Hope and optimism are not Russian traits. She even mocked me, “Americans are naive. Your hope and optimism is a fools place.” In fact she preferred that Russia go back to the way it was, yet she had no hope that this would happen. “But nothing ever changes here. Things will not improve.” This person had no trust in politicians, government, nor even the banks. I read that a religious revival is taking place in Russia, so I asked what she thought about religion. ‘I am free of all that’ was the answer. Being in her 40s I could see she person was still part of Soviet Russia. She preferred the old days. Yet in the churches I saw both older people and younger people. My informant told me that during Soviet times their mother had been an atheist, but now in later years her mother had come to believe in God and had become religious. In Russia it is the young and the old who are the most hungry for religion.

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Russia Day One, First Impressions

St. Petersburg, Russia
October 13, 2012

I regard each country as a unique ‘activity zone’ and what I mean by this is that each country must be experienced and judged on its own terms. It is a grave mistake to judge one country in terms of another. Each country has its unique history, sociology, religion, culture and traditions. Since I have returned from Russia I have been struggling with how to interpret and understand my Russia experience. It is not like other places. To compare it to United States may seem natural, after all, Russia in its previous incarnation as the Soviet Union was a direct competitor to the US, a so-called superpower. I never visited the Soviet Union, but I suspect what Russia is today is quite different than what it was as the former Soviet Union. There is also a natural tendency to compare Russia with the rest of Europe. After all it is geographically close. Yet, as you will see below, my initial experience with Russia was not a good experience. I could easily paint the country with a wide brush saying that it is not as good as the US or Europe, that it is antiquated, unfriendly, and not a place I will return to, yet to do so would be to deny myself the Russian experience, which after all, is a human experience. The fact is, Russia just is, with all its good and with all its bad. From a tourist’s perspective it may not be as good as the Netherlands or some other part of Western Europe, but I am not traveling only as a tourist. I travel for self-realization. I travel to find what Amsterdam can teach about life and about myself. I travel to find what Russia can similarly teach. To judge Russia solely from a tourist’s perspective or from a perspective of Western Europe or the United States is to miss what is unique about this country and what it can teach about humanity and myself. Amsterdam, which I also visited on this trip, may be more fun, more palatable than St. Petersburg or Moscow, but to judge these cities in terms of what Amsterdam is, is to miss the valuable experience and the beauty that they have to offer. Russia is not an easy country to visit, yet it is a deeply rewarding country. So I cannot approach Russia with the same mindset as I would a country like the Netherlands. This is the reason I have not been able to write my Russia travel notes easily. I have been struggling to find the correct mindset in which to understand my Russia experience.

My first experience with Russia began on a KLM flight from Amsterdam to St Petersburg. I get a rush seeing a new country for the first time, so as I looked out of the plane while it circled above St. Petersburg preparing to land, I had this feeling of rush and excitement. There it was, my first view of Russia. What would I experience in this mysterious and forbidden land, which so much affected my life growing up?

Our jet landed at Pulkovo 2, St. Petersburg’s international terminal, without incident and on time. The contrast between Amsterdam’s Schiphol and Pulkovo was day and night. It’s as if I’d gone back a generation in time. Schiphol is modern, upscale and massive. Pulkovo is antiquated, uninviting and tiny. Our plane, just a mid size jet carrying 150 travelers, stopped on the tarmac, not directly at the terminal. There are no jetways; you walk down stairs from the plane, board a bus, and are driven to the terminal. The terminal lacks color and looks like something from the 1930s. The first words that jump to my mind are ‘drab’ and ‘parochial.’ I’m sorry to have to say these things. I know I may offend some of my Russian friends, but this is what I saw. I criticize the Los Angeles International Airport for being one of the worst airports in the world, but it’s massive, always busy, and totally congested. St. Petersburg is the second largest city in Russia so I expected at least something similar, yet the airport is tiny and virtually empty compared to a western airport on a Friday evening.

This is a cold place. You immediately feel it in the air.

Arriving in the terminal, I am greeted by a stoney faced immigration officer who says nothing, yet speaks volumes: we don’t want you here, go home. Fortunately, I moved through passport control without incident; my bags arrived without problem, but as I went through customs my bags were x-rayed and the customs lady, who was as stoney faced as her passport control colleague, saw something in my bag she did not like so had me ushered into a side room with my bag and told me, “Wait”! This is the only English I heard spoken by a Russian official. As she said this she slipped my passport into her side pocket. She had confiscated my passport!!! My passport was gone? My God! I’ve traveled the world over and never experienced anything remotely like this. So I waited. What was I supposed to do? How long would this go on? Immediately all the visions of what I had read on the US State Department webpage warning me about visiting Russia started to race through my head, particularly the ones about corrupt government officials and police. It was all starting to happen just like they said. Was I supposed to offer this customs officer money? Was she waiting for a bribe? I have never in my life given a bribe. I decided to do nothing except wait. Would this be the end of my trip? Would I end up in jail? Would I be deported? I simply did not know the rules of this country. The bribe option kept returning to my mind. Certainly I did not want to endanger myself further by offering a bribe, but if I did nothing would I wait here forever? After what appeared to be an interminable amount of time the customs agent, who had taken my passport, came into the room and gestured me to open my bags. No words were spoken. I complied and we proceeded to go through my luggage piece by piece. Indeed that big thing she had seen on the luggage x-ray monitor was my camera and its lens. I showed it to her, she indicated okay, gave back my passport, and gestured I could leave. That was it? No bribe? You cannot imagine my relief. Welcome to Russia!

Yet an experience like this make you wonder, is this how tourists are treated in Russia? First impressions are important. This country will never get on the recommended list for tourism with welcome ceremonies like this! Suspicion is the other word I would add to my first impressions of this country. I saw it on the faces of both the passport and customs agents and I was to see it time and time again. At any rate I was happy to be free and so I walked into the greeting area and again I saw a world which seemed a generation behind anything that I had known. I’d been transported back 30 years in time, yet here I was in Russia.

Once outside the terminal I began looking for a taxi. It was 5 o’clock in the afternoon on a Friday, but there were no information booths, no help for tourists, certainly no English and not even official taxis, just private cars, which I presumed, served as taxis. And to my utter surprise many drivers would not even consider taking my fare if I did not speak Russian! They just turned their head away and ignored me out right. I was astounded. Eventually there was a driver willing to take my fare and fortunately I was prepared, I had my hotel name and address written on a piece of paper in Russian letters. This is a travel lesson I had learned in the past. Driving from the airport to my hotel, I could only pray that I was going in the right direction. None of the taxis had meters or identification so you could never know if you’re actually being taken to the right place or being kidnapped! Fortunately, the trip to the downtown was uneventful, but I was surprised to see how little traffic there was. After all, this was a Friday evening and St. Petersburg was Russia’s second-largest city with a population of almost 5,000,000 and yet where was everybody? You would expect the traffic to be jammed at this time in such a large city. There were no freeways so we traveled along what I would call secondary roads and side streets with lots of warehouses and horrible grey apartment buildings. After coming from Amsterdam, which without question is one of the most beautiful cities in Europe, you can imagine the thoughts that were going through my head. This appeared to be a somber and forbidding world without prosperity.

Eventually I made it to my hotel in downtown St Petersburg and to my delight and surprise it was a reasonable place. It was not the Marriott or anything I was used to, but it was comfortable and clean and the room was sizably bigger and cheaper than my Amsterdam room. This was a Russian hotel and not a western chain, but the hotel staff at the desk spoke English and were extremely friendly. For the first time I felt welcome and comfortable. This was to be my home for the next week and a half. Once I was checked in I took a walk down the main street of St. Petersburg, Nevsky Prospect. Again, compared to a Western European city drabness fills the air. In defense, I must add there is nothing more drab and cold as the downtown area of many, dare I say, most American cities, and especially Los Angeles, but the streets here in St Petersburg were crowded and to my surprise were filled shops selling everything imaginable. At last I was seeing some signs of prosperity. I was, however, shocked to see just how much alcohol and smoking there is. Almost every street corner had groups of young and old men standing around in the dark and cold drinking beer and vodka and smoking. Apparently it’s not an offense to openly carry and drink alcohol in this town, even on street corners! Even though things are a little drab and I’m a generation back in time the streets of St Petersburg are lively and in the dark I could see shapes of beautiful palaces, bridges, canals and cathedrals. I had a first-class meal with a salad and a quiche. I tried an ATM machine and thank God I was able to obtain rubles. So I am here, I am happy, and I am in business. To me Russia is beginning to feel like Kolkata. On the surface it’s forbidding, drab and unfriendly, but underneath there is life and excitement and an adventure to be enjoyed.

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