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.