A Drive Around the Peninsula

Sunset North of Lazurnyi Bereg
Originally uploaded by lkwalker71.

Christmas Eve day here in Vlad was a lovely, sunny day with temperatures only around -3C and barely any wind. We decided to take a drive around the south and east edges of the Murav'ev-Amurskii Peninsula, in the direction we hadn't yet traveled. (You can explore the photos and the geography on the Flickr map if you follow the linked picture.)

We were pleasantly surprised at the landscape and the scenery. Although you do get the usual trash deposited all over the place, this lessened as we got further from the city, until it really was nearly pristine nature (the kind that Russians love to praise even while they are throwing their plastic bags and Snickers wrappers out into the vast expanse of "priroda" that they are claiming to enjoy).

We stopped along the way at a couple of little bays and beaches -- we weren't the only ones to enjoy a lovely Sunday afternoon, but I can tell that these locations are surely much more full of people in the summer and fall. At a beachside cafe at the little resort point of Lazurnyi Bereg ("Azure Shore"), we had kebab (or shashlyk in local parlance), Uzbek dumplings (manty), some pickled herring, and a salad of fresh vegetables. And were again pleasantly surprised at the friendly, slightly shy waitress. Definitely not the norm in Russia.

In case you are wondering about the name of the peninsula, Count Nikolai Murav'ev-Amurskii was governor-general of Eastern Siberia in the mid-nineteenth century, and there are a bunch of things in and around Vlad that bear his name. If you're dying to know more about him and Russia's exploration of the Far East (perhaps in preparation for a visit to these parts?), I suspect that Mark Bassin's 1999 historical monograph "Imperial Visions" may provide a good, if academic, overview in English.

(Almost) Gone With the Wind

OK, here is my pre-New Year’s resolution: I want to start adding something shorter more frequently to the blog. I can’t promise that I’ll keep my resolution immediately or even stick to it routinely, but I hope to start inching my way towards the goal.

So, for today: cold wind. Dan, the chief surveyor of the Goat Path in our family, can surely comment on this more thoroughly than I can. But I'll try. After being greeted here in Vlad by a long and unseasonably warm autumn, and then experiencing one truly warm December day this past Tuesday, during the night between Tuesday and Wednesday the weather really turned! We could hear the wind whipping up around our house and buffeting our windows that night, and it hasn’t really let up much since then. Today, Thursday, it started out around -15C and the warmest it got was -11C. I knew it was really bad when our nanny decided to forego her usual mid-day walk outside with Anya all bundled up in her stroller.

Yesterday I had to go to a holiday event at the American Consul General’s residence, which is located high up on “Tiger Hill,” on the spit of land that runs between the Amur Gulf and the Golden Horn Bay that is Vlad’s harbor.

(I know that my earlier attempt to use online maps to show where we are didn’t work out for everyone, but I will try again. If you go to this site: http://map.primorye.ru/default.asp?l=eng and type in “1 morskaya” for the street and “14” for the house number, you should get a map that can be opened in a new window and fully manipulated, and which will show you our approximate location.)

Out there on Tiger Hill, the wind was unbelievable -- I was dressed nicely for the event and wearing heels, but had to park near the Hotel Vladivostok (at 10 Naberezhnaya) and walk uphill about five minutes to get to the house. Afterwards, on the way back down to the car, as I walked with my friend Branca, the wind blew so hard that we both felt like sailboats. We were literally pushed downhill so hard that I thought I was just going to lose my balance and control of my feet completely and tumble down! It was the strangest feeling, and not altogether pleasant. Definitely the hardest wind I’ve ever experienced. We latched arms to try to make it down the hill in one piece, and we did make it down safely, but I was actually afraid that with the increased surface area we’d really become a sail and be blown out into the bay!

Our other big news since we’ve last written in: the remainder of our household effects has arrived! And on Christmas Day evening, which made for a very welcome gift. We are now in the thick of unpacking and making our home much more familiar and comfortable to us. That is a lot of fun -- I think we are enjoying hanging the pictures the most out of everything. (Dan is at work hanging that huge, 4-part map of Russia "and contiguous states" that used to hang in our guest room back in Bethesda as I write this.)

I still have a partial draft of an entry that describes the general feel of shopping here in Vlad, and I assure you I will finish it soon and post it. Until I get the chance to do that, I’ll try to write in more often with the tidbits that I can manage…

Fat Cats, Fast Cars

Forgive the alliteration, but after a long day at work I will seize upon any available stylistic crutch on order to force myself to get words to screen.

First, the cats. We have two of them. We inherited them from a former consulate employee who had the misfortune of being posted to Bermuda – where, evidently, British Commonwealth regulations require that all incoming animals be quarantined for some length of time. Either he didn’t like the cats that much or he figured the quarantine would break their little kitty spirits, but either way he decided to pawn (paw?) them off on us.

The cats are great. Really the only problem with them was their names: originally, as I understand it, Lilo and Sinatra. Well, they are now Edgar and Sanchez. Edgar keeps himself relatively clean, but Sanchez can be a bit dirtier. When we first got the cats, we were told that Edgar (né Lilo – or was it Sinatra?) is affectionate and cuddly, whereas Sanchez (né Sinatra – or was it Lilo?) is rather more the scruffy cat-about-town. In fact, however, Sanchez appears to be the more house-bound. In fact, he’s turned into a bit of a nuisance. If Anya is not crying, then the sound we are hearing is Sanchez at the bottom of the stairs, mewling loudly to be allowed into our room. The really annoying thing is that our room door is generally open, and all Sanchez has to do is get his lazy cat ass up the stairs and through the door.

Once in the room, however (usually after a combination of coaxing and carrying, the latter often in guilty recompense for having angrily thrown a shoe at the whiny bastard), Sanchez likes to meow a “hello” then curl up in a corner of the bed and get his serious catnap on.

Edgar, on the other hand, has turned out to be downright aloof. A week after we got him, in fact, Lisa let him out, and he disappeared. And the cat did not come back the very next day. In fact, after five days without seeing him we were pretty sure that he had been eaten by one of the wolf-like dogs prowling unleashed along the goat path. Imagine my surprise, then, to look up from my reading a couple weeks ago and see Edgar padding across the floor of the living room. He must have slipped in when one of us wasn't looking.

On to the cars. Or, more specifically, ours. It's here. In fact, it's been here since November 20. But we can't drive it yet. Allow me to offer you a window into the bureaucracy.

The car was apparently offloaded in the Port of Vladivostok on the evening of November 20. We were told that it would take some time to clear customs – perhaps until Friday, November 24. Friday, of course, came and went, as did the following Monday. On Tuesday the 27th, we got the green light (I don't know who gives the green light, but we got it). Usually our GSO (General Services Office) guys go down to the port themselves and pick vehicles up, but I wanted to go with them, which they kindly allowed.

We arrived at the port at around 3:30pm and waited a bit in order to meet the relevant people (in particular the representative of the freight forwarder that handled the shipment). Once these people showed up, it looked like things were going to happen. But at 4pm, we were told that it was "tea time." I thought maybe this was a joke – even the Russian GSO staff thought maybe it was a joke – but, no, in fact the period from 4 to 5 is tea-time and no-one works during that time. This was a little frustrating because we could see the crane operator sitting in his seat, and with the push of a few levers he could grab our container and send us on our way. We started to wonder: Robert Shonov, second-in-command at the GSO, thought we might have to wait until 6pm, since “coffee break” might run from 5 to 6. But, I said, 6 to 7 must surely be vodka break. But our driver, Sergey, said that vodka break likely began at 8am, and had not yet stopped.

Long story, um, long, we got the car at 5pm. Very exciting to see as they opened up the container and there it was: our 2006 Nissan X-terra, in an entirely different part of the world from where we saw it last. A little heart flutter as it failed to start, but then we realized the battery was not connected. Success! We got our paperwork and drove out of the port.

Success, however, turned out to be a relative term. It would require a few days to register the car with the traffic cops and get plates for it. Fine. I figured we could go in the next day. But, as it turned out, they don’t do inspections on Wednesdays. So, Thursday, Sergey takes the car down to the traffic police. He returned later that day, however, saying that the traffic police could not find the “engine number” on the car. That is, we had the VIN, but they wanted the engine number before registering it. We looked ourselves, but could find nothing. The traffic cops told us to bring it by the next day, Friday, and they would have an “expert” in who could presumably find the number.

So Sergey brought the car in on Friday and, sure enough, the expert found the number. (It’s buried under the exhaust manifold on the left side of the car, by the way, almost at the bottom of the engine.) Success! I again (foolishly) thought. But no. Now that we had found the correct engine number, it had to be entered onto our customs form (on which an incorrect number had earlier been written). And this was not simply a matter of us running by the customs agency. No, we had to contact our freight forwarders, who would themselves handle the paperwork. They had of course closed by this time.

On Monday, we did finally get the form – someone had simply crossed out the incorrect number and scrawled in the correct one, slapping it with a fat stamp making it all official. Off to get the plates! I thought. Of course not: I should have remembered that they are closed on Monday.

So Tuesday, we set out. I have the feeling that I will be driving the car home. This time Sergey is not available, so Robert and I drive the car up ourselves to meet with Sergey’s traffic cop contact. First, the car is briefly inspected, during which we spend a considerable amount of time showing the traffic cops where the engine number is. (Time goes a little slower as well for us because what must be the first X-terra in Vlad is attracting a little attention – which is in and of itself somewhat surprising, because the X-terra’s more pimped-out, gas-guzzling cousin, the Armada, is in plentiful supply here.)

Inspection successful. Success! Of course not. Now we must bring the forms to the traffic police office where they will be officially received. It is there that the news is broken to me that the license plates are in another location altogether, and I won’t be getting those today. In fact, there appears to be some question about whether the plates are even available – since we need special red diplomatic plates ordered from Moscow. If we are out of them, we are doomed, because it will surely take months to get them.

Update: the plates came! We are now free to roam the madcap streets of Vladivostok. We’ll talk about driving in a subsequent post...

Mapping Vlad (and Vlapping Mad)

For a couple of weeks I have been wanting to write and describe better our surroundings and the day-to-day activities that have been keeping us (or me and Anya, at least) busy. I’ve described the trip straight down the goat path, but I wanted to describe a bit more the world surrounding us as we know it – Anya and I most days know it by traversing it on foot (well, one of us on foot, the other in Snugli), and on some other occasions we have traversed broader sweeps of that world in cars.

The trouble is -- or maybe this actually has been an inspiration to recreate the outside world in word form -- I haven’t been out much lately. From colds that struck all 3 of us (making it Anya's first), to other minor health problems, to the sheer complicated nature of getting out with the baby while also keeping the necessary feeding and napping schedule, I will be honest: the specific location of our housing combined with Russian conditions more generally have me very nearly housebound for the short-term future, and not very happy about it. If my posts to the blog are a little sparse at this point, it is in part because there hasn't always been a lot of material for "good-natured missives from the field," but I'm trying to keep my spirits up and the writing coming, so I don't lose anyone who's still reading.

In any case, let me try to draw you a mental map of the world around me that I was beginning to know and will hope to continue to explore when I can manage it…

For starters, here is a real map of it; if you see the designation “Leninskiy district” and the diagonally-situated building a little to the right of that marked “1-5,” that is those very townhouses I keep talking about. The Consulate building is at 32 Pushkinskaya Street (running roughing parallel with the bottom of the map, below the townhouses). The lower part of the Goat Path, at least, has a name: “Ulitsa Metallistov,” or “Metalworker Street.” (Sounds so industrialized and modern, no? Yeah, don’t get any big ideas….)

So, basically you can imagine that Pushkinskaya Street and, one street below and closer to the water, Svetlanskaya Street are both at lower elevations than our house. These streets, starting from about the Consulate and extending west, just skirt the edge of the harbor and Golden Horn Bay, forming a little arc draped across the northwest curve of the bay. When I talk about “downtown” (if I ever have reason to again…), this is basically what I’m referring to.

[By the way, ignore the discrepancy between how I am spelling Russian words and how they are spelled on the map I referred you to. It is a good map, but not made by linguists. I’m a stickler who won’t give up the transliteration system I was trained with, and these people who made the map are using some other crappy rules to render Cyrillic alphabet into English.]

If you open the above link into a new window, and if you then click on “open the map” directly above the map image that resulted, you'll get a third window and a fully manipulable map of Vlad. Zoom out a little and scroll west, and you’ll eventually find the harbor and the pedestrian street Ulitsa Fokina and the train station where we took those pics of our Sunday outing a few weeks ago. (Or, you can see what else I’ve been up to in my “fun with maps” on Flickr. Since Vlad’s GoogleMaps coverage is so spotty, these are probably more interesting viewed in Hybrid mode than in simple Map mode -- look to the upper right of the linked Flickr page for that feature.)

Since, as I’ve alluded to, the descent via Goat Path is doable but not exactly a party (or, really, it’s the ascent that’s not winning any awards for fun), I haven’t been spending every day strapping Anya to me and bounding down to that part of town to explore. (Not to go on too long about it, but another issue here is the fact that nursing a baby actually takes a lot out of you physically. So, I really find I only have the strength to make one outing per day with Anya strapped to me. Some have asked me whether I’ve made it yet to the archives; imagine my wistful smile when I say ‘no’ and contemplate the small steps into the outside world that are really within my reach at this point.)

The way my typical days together with Anya have shaped up, we spend them more often in domestic, mundane activities than in doing the special kinds of outings for which “downtown” is reserved. (E.g., jazz concerts, the first of which, among those I’ve described -- in this post -- was at Gorky Theater, set back from the city’s main downtown drag at Svetlanskaya 49. A second one was held just southwest of that, at Svetlanskaya 48.)

Speaking of those jazz concerts, and the few outings I’ve had without Anya, I did make it a week and a half ago to that second one, which constituted the latest big event sponsored by the Consulate Public Affairs section: a visit from the US Navy 7th Fleet Band’s “Far East Edition,” for opening night of Vladivostok’s 3rd annual International Jazz Festival. It was fun, and the band was extremely entertaining -- so much energy. They were talented musicians, but I think what was more remarkable to me was their energy and ability to entertain and really put on a show.

But the nature of our everyday existence means that Anya and I are more often than not found uphill, basically on the ridge along which Prospekt Vsevoloda Sibirtseva runs. (That’s essentially “Sibirtseva Boulevard”; evidently the locals really call it Prospekt Krasoty, which translates as “Beauty Boulevard.” I have to believe that this is meant not tongue-in-cheek, as it would if it referred to the actual stuff located on the thoroughfare, but seriously, and in reference to the spectacular view of the harbor and the spit of land that forms its southern jaw, that this street affords especially at night, when all the lights are twinkling.)

The other place that we tend to go when we have explored town so far, and which I'll pick up describing in my next post, is the sort of valley to the north of what I have described here so far. This is the area where I guess the “first river” north of the harbor runs west into the Amur Gulf, and hence named “First River” or “Pervaya Rechka.” This is where one of my favorite shopping markets is located (and what do you think it’s called? That’s right, “First River,” or “Pervorechenskii” rynok).

But I have to save something for next time, so stay tuned for Pervaya Rechka and a more general description of our experiences with shops and markets this time around in Russia...

Reunited With Our Toys

My apologies for having let the blog go untended. (Although I guess that conjures up images of an overgrown, weedy mess, which is not exactly what has happened here. I guess I left it unwatered or something.)

OK, first order of business, since we have been complaining a lot about our echoing, empty 4-story home and the delayed delivery of our air freight: I need to update my dear readers on that situation.

As many of you are aware, we packed out of our Bethesda home on October 11-12 and lived in a hotel room with our darling baby daughter for 8 straight nights specifically so that we might receive our things that much more quickly, especially the more important things that we placed in our “unaccompanied air baggage.” Much to our chagrin, despite that planning, once we arrived in Vlad it quickly became apparent that the shipping company had pitched our loot in a storage bin at JFK airport and was waiting for, oh, I don't know, I guess a special, engraved invitation requesting that they complete the transaction.

To be fair, knowledgeable sources assure me that such shipments can't leave their port of departure until the recipient is at his destination. In any case, nobody at the shipping company seemed aware that they even had a shipment to deliver until Dan checked its status on his second day on the job.

At the end of that first week we were informed that we would have our stuff on November 4. Yee-haw! Since that was a Saturday, we got ourselves all ready for a delivery on or about Monday, November 6.

Where the story gets a bit hairy is after nothing shows up on said Monday and Dan checks on the status again on Tuesday, November 7. Friendly shipper dude tells us our shipment is sitting in Krasnoyarsk, awaiting clearance by Russian customs. Now, if you aren’t familiar with Krasnoyarsk or its location, take a gander at the link I’ve helpfully provided. Scroll down until you see it on the righthand side of your screen, pinpointed in the red center portion of the map of Russia. Now, remind yourself of where we are located -– Primorskii region of the Russian Far East -– and look at this page to refresh your memory of where that is, again highlighted in red. (Ah, what would I do without Wikipedia?)

Joking geography lessons aside, the geniuses at "Stonepath Logistics" seem to have estimated that the fastest way to get our stuff between Washington and Vladivostok was very nearly to place it on a horse-drawn cart a'clop-clopping down a stone path. They arranged for it to travel east across the Atlantic Ocean via Frankfurt, and then to enter Russia smack dab in the middle of Siberia, where the customs agents (bless their hearts [said in retrospect, having looked over the insanely careful but fairly meaningless documentation they created]) appear to have no idea how to deal with diplomatic shipments. (Why would they??) It sat there for a few days, while Embassy personnel in Moscow helped get the wheels turning, then caught a flight to Vladivostok on Friday, November 10, where it sat for yet a few more days awaiting more customs paperwork.

(To add insult to injury, or maybe just heartbreak, the family who arrived at post in Vladivostok a full week after us, also from DC, received its air freight on that very Friday. It was even initially assumed that this diplomatic shipment was for us, since we were here earlier, and it only stood to reason.... But then on Friday morning they clarified that it wasn't for Kronenfeld. Arrrgh! The frustration!)

Long story short –- well, OK, I hear you: long whiny story long -– our air freight arrived at our home on a Russian UPS truck as it backed into our driveway on the morning of Tuesday, November 14.

One of the most amusing things to us was the notation on the label in this photo, to the right of the big "JFK": "Deliver by 10/25/06." Seems like nobody at Stonepath got the memo.

Anyway, as you can see from the Flickr photos documenting the event, one of the best things -– in my opinion -– to arrive in the boxes was the supply of toys for Anya to play with and continue to develop her fledgling motor skills (and, yes, I'll admit, entertain herself for a few minutes at a time while I make myself a cup of coffee or whatever).

Toys for the adults in the family also arrived but are not pictured: stereo receiver, CD player, and full-sized speakers, as well as desktop computer and home wireless network doodads, which Dan proceeded to play with, so we are technologically even more plugged in now than in my last report. And last, but certainly not least, about 8 jars of salsa, 3 cans of chipotle chiles, 3 bottles of hot sauce, and 1 bag of ready-to-mix tortilla flour, which I proceeded to play with and use to make us our first spicy dinner in a while. Best ill-formed tortilla, open-faced burrito-type-thing I have had in a loooong time.

On the Media

Although our house still has that empty feeling and we are still awaiting the first batch of our stuff, which should arrive this week, I’ve been feeling a lot more plugged in to information this week.

Why is that? you ask. One thing we’ve had for several days, of course, is the DSL hookup. (You didn’t think we were uploading this stuff on dial-up, did you?) I’ve started exploring podcasts a little bit – mainly because it’s a way for me to listen to a story or two from, say, yesterday’s PBS News Hour while I eat lunch or do something else around the house even after I disconnect from the internet and leave the fourth floor. I’m also back to trying to keep updated on the news from the States by keeping one or two front-page stories from the New York Times (from the night before, since it’s already tomorrow in Vladivostok when I check in) up on my computer desktop. The trick is obviously then to find the time to read them in the course of the day, and even that happens from time to time.

An even more (unexpectedly) exciting change is that, thanks to a very unusual type of Cable Guy, we’ve got our American “Armed Forces Network” (AFN) TV cable working. Last week, I was told that a guy named Yurii would be coming at about 10 on Tuesday morning. When he didn’t show up until about noon, I wasn’t very surprised. In fact, I thought that was pretty good, judging by American service-call standards. But, for whatever reason, I didn’t expect a cable repairman to look like a rock band promoter, or maybe even a hipster drug dealer. No offense to rock band promoters, but I’m kind of trying a few things on for size, since I’m actually not quite sure what his get-up signified in American style semiotics.

He wore sunglasses, was tan, kind of skinny and short, had on a leather jacket and tight grey colored jeans, and wore some kind of Euro-fashion, pointy leather shoes, I think, which of course he took off after entering the townhouse, in the Russian habit. I think he had a soul patch or something, too. I can’t remember too well, and I was so taken aback by his appearance that I kind of forgot to mentally catalog what it was that was so striking about it. And funny, too, from the point of view of an American waiting for a “cable guy.” Frankly, he was kind of creepy, and that wasn’t helped by the fact that he insisted on speaking pretty rudimentary English to me in a heavy weird-sounding Russian accent, even after I gently let it become apparent that I spoke Russian better than that.

Anyway, Yurii had been called out to help us stop inadvertently stealing the AFN from our diplo-neighbors. As it was, every time we turned on the cable box, we threw the reception out for the townhouses to our left and our right. I think it was a frequency issue. In any case, Yurii changed the configuration and now it works.

Ironically, having the cable hookup means that we now get better TV than we have for a very long time. Since about fall 2004, if I remember correctly, when the cable company cut off the free hookup we had inherited when we first moved to Bethesda. Now we’re able to watch all sorts of network news shows (when it’s the next day here, of course) and Saturday Night Live, all with great reception. We also get the Daily Show and the Colbert Report, which is completely new. And we can even listen to NPR on the upper channels that have the AFN viewing schedule scrolling constantly. With all of that, we feel a lot more connected to the kinds of information we were used to getting back home.

I’ve also been enjoying the array of local Vladivostok newspapers that Dan brings home from his reporting section at work a few times a week. I always have fun in Russia trying to figure out not only what precisely the newspaper stories say but what the tone and leaning of a publication is. Not to mention that it helps you get ground just to learn more about what the reading public and journalists in the country and the locality are paying attention to.

Last week I was most interested in stories about the recently-elected Primorye regional parliament, and trying to figure out what the reports of that body’s antics during its initial meeting indicate about the local and regional political situation, who they indicate are the personalities to listen for, etc. Sounds like the regional party “United Russia” – Putin’s party – is, not surprisingly, the majority party with the clout to attract stragglers to its parliamentary faction. It’s also not clear who will populate the opposition and exactly what form this tiny group’s challenge to the “bears” of the Putin party will take.

Another story that caught my eye last week was the commentary on the lead-up to Russia’s November 4th holiday, the “Day of National Unity,” which was celebrated (? commemorated?) for only the second time this year. As foreign commentators have mentioned of late, it’s a good indication of what a delicate balancing act the government is engaged in with burgeoning nationalist elements when it decides to create a holiday of this sort. And then has to deal with the fallout as the public gives its varied interpretations of what a celebration of “national unity” should look like. Last year, perhaps most noticeably in Moscow, the holiday was marked by public skinhead rallies.

Last week, Vlad’s newspapers were abuzz reporting on acts of “hooliganism” that took place late one night on the city’s prominent embankment that leads out onto the Amur Gulf (where we took our stroll last Sunday afternoon) and an incident of vandalism in which swastikas were found spray-painted on the city’s synagogue. Organized nationalist groups in town disavowed the actions (insisting helpfully instead that they would have beat up a few Chinese or Korean laborers if they had wanted to make a statement). Journalists wondered whether there was a connection between the vandals’ activities and the “Russian March” demonstration planned for the morning of November 4 by the local chapter of Dvizhenie protiv nelegal’noi immigratsii (Movement Against Illegal Immigration). Since Dan actually observed the first half hour of the march, I’ll let him comment on it directly (very briefly, so as not to keep you in complete suspense: it was pretty much a bust, thankfully).

But I found myself wishing I had the freedom to get out more and talk to local people about these issues, to see what comment they might have on the holiday in general and these incidents and the march specifically, and to write something about what I might learn. Obviously, it’s possible in principle for me to do these things, but in practice I don’t feel like it’s very much within my reach right now. I think what I’m trying to say is that, despite the disturbing significance of these news stories, I was glad to find I had a real personal engagement in the issues I was reading about, and that I even sensed the potential for these unfortunate tendencies in contemporary Russian society to inspire me to get out and pick up again the work of investigating the elements of a story and then telling that story to a reading audience. All of which leads back to the mundane things that keep this stuff a daydream for now and reminds me that I still need to get our babysitter situation sorted out and gain some time for myself to pursue either this kind of journalistic project or my historical research, or both.

And speaking of babysitting, last but not least among the connections established recently between us and the outside world lies at the intersection of the media and the munchkin: Anya has begun starring in video of more than one kind. Locally, she was spotted on Vladivostok network TV in some footage shot at the consulate reception welcoming American jazz vocalist Arlee Leonard to town one evening during our first week here. (At right is a photo of Arlee, Anya, Svetlana from the TV station, and Dan.) I have yet to see the tape, but evidently they showed a portion of Ms. Leonard’s impromptu concert that night, over which the commentator quips that “even two-month-old Anya, the youngest member of the American diplomatic corps, understood the importance of the occasion and kept quiet out of respect for the performer.” (It’s nice to see that Russian television journalism continues to take serious editorial license, even in regard to our daughter.)

Anya’s also seen her debut on the global media stage. In an attempt to give her grandparents and other interested parties even more lifelike updates on the kid than still photos can provide, I’ve started uploading some short videos of her onto YouTube. I know, it’s crazy, but I just can’t resist the temptation of all of these geeky/trendy web things when they can be helpful bridging the distance now that we are so far away.

A Good Day

Things will undoubtedly get frigid here very soon. Sure, for all of our glibness before coming out here, Vladivostok is NOT actually in Siberia (it’s in Primorye, or the Maritime Province). And sure, it’s actually almost (not quite) the most southerly Russian city, with a latitude comparable to that of Boston, MA (OK, not the warmest city in the U.S., but not Moose Freezer, Canada, either – and anyway, well to the south of Paris, France). And ask any Russian, and he’ll describe Vladivostok as a swarthy southern port city; don’t be surprised if he conjures up palm trees.

But despite all this we know the freeze will come. For the fact is, Vladivostok’s winter mean temperature is lower than that of Moscow and St. Petersburg (although not a single Russian we’ve spoken to actually believes this). Streets are apparently closed down here in winter because driving is too treacherous. The port freezes over (although plying icebreakers will still presumably deliver our mother lode – exploded or not – of salsa come mid-December).

So, the freeze is coming.

Fortunately, however, that day wasn’t today.

Today was a beautiful fall day, by anyone’s standards. Even as I write this, at 6pm, I am in my shortsleeves, on our fourth floor balcony, drinking wine (courtesy of Korean Air business class – yes, goddamnit, I saved it), and watching the sun descend slowly over Golden Horn Bay.

Really the good day started yesterday, with our exploration of the “Pervorechenenskiy Rynok” – the market in the neighboring part of town. This was great for me because I discovered that Primorye is in fact full of seafood. This would of course appear to be self-evident: it is the “Maritime Province,” after all, and home to a sizable fishing industry. Yet some of the people we’d spoken to before coming out here had said that the local seafood offerings were surprisingly meager, perhaps because most of the fishing is for export.

Nevertheless, there was a pleasing array of seafood laid out in the market: fist-sized local scallops, large chunks of conch, all kinds of shrimp, and a number of seagoing fish, including salmon, halibut, and tuna. There was more exotic fare as well: sea urchin eggs; a strange crayfish-like crustacean called medvedka, or “little bear,” in Russian; and a surprisingly diverse collection of seaweed. What is most interesting to me is that all of this food, which I associate with Asian cuisine, was being sold by and to Russians. An indication that Russia is a bit more culturally diverse, perhaps, than it is given credit for. So I bought a kilo of scallops and 250 grams of conch, which I will sauté in butter, lemon, pepper, and chives as soon as I’m done writing this.

Although yesterday was a bit overcast, we woke up this morning to a bright, clear day, and realized we had to go exploring. After getting the munchkin weatherproofed in her oversized baby snowsuit and hitching her to Lisa in the Snuggli, we set off down the Goat Path toward Svetlanskaya street, the main thoroughfare leading into the center of town. Since we’ve arrived here we’ve been a little confused about local transport: how much should taxis cost? Which buses go where? Are we allowed to use embassy motorpool? (That last question alone could be the subject of its very own blog.) But I’m happy to report that catching buses into and out of town was both easy and cheap – 4 stops and 8 rubles (30 cents).

After descending in the center we briefly explored what appears to be a new, toney shopping center in the middle of town, with seven floors of high-priced European fashion and a sushi bar on the top floor. Something to think about in the future.

We then walked along the pedestrian street (Ulitsa Fokina) to the ocean, where there is a sort of boardwalk, where people were strolling. With lunchtime approaching, we very quickly followed our noses to a series of open-air grills, where we bought two plates of shashlyk, or grilled pork. We are pleased to report that it was so nice, we had it twice. And a couple of Bochkaryev beers to wash it down. For her part, Anya mercifully slept in her Snugli.

After strolling some more along the boardwalk (and taking note of a sad “dolfinarium,” which we opted not to explore), we set off back into town. I was pleased to find several purveyors of compact disks (today’s purchase: Modest Mouse’s complete oeuvre on MP3, along with two recent albums by my favorite Russian singer, Garik Sukachev ).

By this time, the munchkin, whom I was now carrying, was starting to stir, and so we found a café that my colleague at the consulate had recommended, “Presto,” so that Anya could feed and we could have some coffee. An oasis in central Vlad: we had excellent cappuccinos, taking note for future reference of the broad array of food and drink (mojitos!?) options. I even managed to change Anya on a windowsill without every Russian in the place giving me the skunk-eye.

(A brief aside: I’m pretty sure I’m the only guy in town who walks into town with his kid in a Snugli. In fact, until I saw a woman with her kid in a similar contraption yesterday, I would have said Lisa was the only woman to do same as well. Russians tend to stare: not disdainfully, but openly. The same way they stare at our clothes, or Lisa’s boots [see previous posts from St. Petersburg]. For my part, I’ve taken to winking at people when they stare.)

Following coffee, we explored the attractive art deco train station, with its announcements of trains headed to Moscow, six and a half days away.

After another hour of walking around, we caught a bus home – or rather to the foot of the Goat Path. 15 minutes of walking straight up we made it to our door.

All in all, a great day. Now it’s time for dinner.

[Post-Script, later that evening, and subsequent evenings: The munchkin paid us back for the fine day by crying her baby eyes out for much of the evening. What's going on, we asked ourselves? 5 hours of crying? We are hoping this is just, as they say, a phase...]

View of the Golden Horn

View of the Golden Horn
Originally uploaded by lkwalker71.

The row of townhouses where most of the foreign service officers in Vlad live is situated on a high hill, overlooking the city and the bay --the “Golden Horn” -- on which Vladivostok is situated. This shot is taken from our windows and shows the downtown in the lower right of the frame. The district to the southwest of downtown, on a little peninsula that juts out into the Amur Gulf, is on the left in the frame.

Regarding the reported air pollution here: it’s true that, from where we sit, the atmosphere directly above the downtown and the port is pretty hazy. But up where we live the wind clears things out and the air is really quite nice and clean. One drawback to our location is the fact that it really is difficult to get around and to get anywhere of interest or use without a car. This is actually kind of unusual for Russian cities, but Vlad has quite a unique geography for someone with western Russia as a frame of reference.

The consulate is a ten-minute walk away, but that walk is down an extremely steep, rocky dirt road (the "Goat Path," to the diplo-crowd). In present weather, that’s just a slight inconvenience, even with a ten-pound baby in a harness on your chest. (Just hypothetically speaking, of course.) You just have to be a little careful with your footing on the way down, and you get pretty winded on the way back up. But I can see that once it snows and/or ice forms, walking down that path will pretty much not be an option, especially carrying Anya. Hopefully our car will arrive before then! (And it goes without saying, grandparents: yes, we will be extra careful in the car when it's icy and snowy, too!)

We have already received suggestions of people who are willing to help us out for a fee, including a driver whom we can hire to take us where we need to go in the interim before the car arrives. We’ve also been offered some babysitter options, and possibly a person to come in once or twice a week to help keep this cavernous place clean! My hope is to interview a few people over the weekend and get set up in the next several days with a babysitter and perhaps even a regular schedule of getting out for a few hours each week.

Speaking of getting out, I’ve taken Anya down the Goat Path a couple of times this week, both to visit Dan and meet folks at the consulate, and to explore some of the main streets downtown. Last night Dan gave me a real treat: he took care of Anya while I used our tickets to the latest in the consulate’s Public Affairs Section-sponsored music series, a jazz concert with an American vocalist and local Vlad and Khabarovsk instrumentalists. I know it wasn’t much of a sacrifice for Dan, but it was amazing to me how I hadn’t had a chance (and hadn’t noticed) in so long to just sit and enjoy some music, and let my mind wander to anything at all, beyond Anya!

OK, next time I will post some impressions of other things we've seen in town...

Punk slobber

Punk slobber
Originally uploaded by lkwalker71.

As I was saying, Anya’s difficulties with the move have been the most important element influencing our own adult-sized perceptions of the transition so far, and in turn they've been the issue that’s most preoccupied us over the past week.

Since we arrived here on Saturday afternoon, local time, she continued in the vein she began in that darkened cube of a room in the Seoul airport, waking up about every two hours, regardless of the time of day or night, wanting to be fed. She seemed cranky for lack of a good, long sleep. We’ve tried hard to institute a routine: to get her down for a nap about a half an hour after each feeding and to get her back to sensing that night is the time for sleep. Thankfully, the last couple of nights she has done a lot better, with about a twelve-hour night from 7-ish to 7-ish, broken roughly in half by one middle-of-the-night feeding.

Surprisingly, the sunrise and sunset are pretty late here in Vlad (at least until this Sunday, when Daylight Savings Time ends), which means that we three have been rising pretty much in the dark. We go to one of two sitting areas and watch the sunrise as the adults drink their morning coffee and the munchkin has her milk.

Our place here is really big – without our stuff having arrived, too big and empty and echoing. (The latest report on the surface shipment of the bulk of our household effects gives an ETA of mid-December, which is not too bad at 2 months after our arrival. But: hello, frozen Herdez.) Hopefully our air freight will arrive soon. Not surprisingly, one of Dan’s first shopping priorities was to buy us a small stereo system, so that we can at least have some music and make our life here feel a little more familiar, and the place seem a little less empty.

We do indeed (as we had been told but found it hard to fathom) have four floors of living space in a townhouse whose footprint is a bit larger than that of the two-floor townhouse we had in Bethesda. Which obviously translates to a great deal more space. Like most diplomatic housing, it is furnished, and we are still trying to figure out how we want to situate the various kinds of furniture that were provided with the place, and, accordingly, how we’ll want to use the various spaces. The ground floor is set up with a sitting room toward the front, and a laundry room and storage, and entry to an [extremely!] unfinished basement behind that. Second floor has full dining room and a couple of armchairs in front area, and a large kitchen to the rear. Third floor has a master bedroom and a second bedroom, where Anya sleeps. The fourth and top floor has another bedroom in the back and a sort of undefined room in front, which opens out onto a balcony the width of the place. We plan to use that top floor as a study for me and a fairly well contained guest suite when all of you folks who promised a visit come to town (hint, hint).

Part of the issue with figuring out how to use the space is really the placement of bathrooms and kitchen, as well as the sheer number of floors you need to traverse to get from one place to another. We think we’ll use the top floor also as our main TV room and family living room when we don’t have visitors, and keep the second-floor dining room less crowded and also a bit more neat and presentable. But it sure will be a drag to go down two flights from the TV room for any drinks or snacks! Spending time on the second floor alternatively requires a trip up one flight for a bathroom, both for us and for any guests we happen to round up in our social life here. Finally, the lack of a phone jack on the second floor (and the fact that doorbell and phone ringtone are identical) means that if you’re in the kitchen or the sitting area on the second floor, you take a gamble either racing upstairs to grab the phone or galloping down to the front door when someone rings. I figured out the hard way this morning, though, that you’re fairly safe if you always choose to answer the phone, since the doorbell has a phone-based intercom. Which means that, if I’d gone upstairs when someone rang today, I not only wouldn’t have missed the mystery caller who waited long enough for me to see that no one was at the door but (of course) hung up the second before I picked up the phone. And if by chance it had been a live visitor, at least I could have let them know via intercom that I’d be down the two flights to the door in a jiffy. In any case, beginning to plan for how we’ll use the space is kind of fun, and hopefully we’ll get some help moving some of the furniture around and installing a phone jack on the second floor before too long to work out some of the kinks.

But enough complaining about the oh-so-terribly-spacious digs we’ve just moved to. I know -- nobody's feeling my pain. Next time I’ll start describing our environs, which will surely be more interesting.

Let the Vladiblogstokking begin!

Well, we have arrived in Vladivostok. Let the Vladiblogstokking begin! There is a lot to tell, having just arrived -- where do I start? I guess I’ll tell a little about how we got here…

Our travel here, from its start in DC and continuing through Seoul and onward to our new home, was surprisingly easy with little Anya, at least in the air. She did great on both of our flights: the fourteen-and-a-half-hour leg from Dulles to Seoul, and the two-and-a-half-hour one into Vlad. She slept for about four hours at a stretch on the long flight, and only had one minor crying jag. And on the short flight she was conveniently hungry right as we took off and nursed again as we landed, so that on both flights we successfully used this nursing strategy as a way to keep her calm and unaffected by the change in air pressure.

But on the ground she has really been thrown for a loop and, in turn, is throwing us for one. Already in DC, at the hotel where we spent the eight nights after we moved out of our house, she had begun to lose the good nighttime sleep habits she’d formed over her first seven weeks of life at home in Bethesda. And I think, between the extreme time change and all the new places and spaces and smells that she must sense, her little baby biorhythms really have been thrown out of whack. After the ease of flight # 1, once we were in Seoul, our overnight in the windowless little cube of a room at the transit hotel at Incheon Airport was pretty rough, with Anya waking up about every two hours and super-cranky. It didn’t help, of course, that we too were exhausted and jetlagged. We made it from about 8pm to 7am, and then we took refuge in the business class lounge, had some brekkies, a couple of cappucinos, and enjoyed the quiet and some welcome sleep from Anya.

Ahhh, business class. Dan has enjoyed this pleasure a few times in recent years, on trips over fourteen hours, when the State Department allows employees to fly that way. Once on a trip to Russia with my job at Health and Human Services, in 2004, I also received an upgrade to business, but Delta and other US airlines of course in this respect as in many others do not compare to international companies. Korean Air’s newer planes, like the one we flew here on, have those great fully reclining seats that I’d heard Dan and others rave about from British Airways, and they really do make a difference. After some difficulty with our seat assignments in the beginning (the KAL desk attendant who checked us in at Dulles for some reason switched our originally assigned seats, which were all together, to another set that, despite his assurances, had us separated), we had a full row of three to ourselves, with Anya set up in her carseat in the center and mom and dad on either side. In particular now, in retrospect, I’m glad we had the comfort of that flight before the difficult days and nights that followed.