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...