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.
Saturday, December 30, 2006
Thursday, December 28, 2006
(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…
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…
Monday, December 18, 2006
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...
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...
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