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...

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.

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...