Kazan — summer 2010

It has begun! The first leg of my return to Russia after being gone way too many years. To my surprise I was met at the Phoenix airport by Daniel, a participant in our program who has made us quite proud at ASU by winning a Boren scholarship. I'm particularly proud of him; he has done his first- and second-year Russian classes with me. I wish I could claim credit, but the truth is that he is very bright and hardworking. Daniel could learn Ancient Greek from a hole in the ground.

Daniel's flight path to Kazan only partially intersects mine. He flies from Washington-Moscow-Kazan. The Moscow-Kazan portion is on S7 Airline, which has a baggage limitation of 15 lbs. Being a clever guy, Daniel managed to pack his entire 8 weeks of luggage into two carry-on bags. Eight... weeks... of luggage... Good heavens. I'll be in Russia eleven weeks and I had to pay an extra $200 for my overweight bag. Do you think I'm going to go to Russia without my pomegranate and pumice shower gel? Surely you jest.

Washington/Dulles is full of Russian language. Passed by a group of teenage girls wearing "Future Leaders Exchange" t-shirts. They were all speaking Russian. They had a Tatar or Kalmyk look to them. You would never have had a giggly group of Russian-speaking teenaged girls in the US during the Soviet period. I eavesdropped on phone conversations and was astonished how much the Russian language has changed, especially with words imported from English. And when I had trouble connecting with wi-fi, I approached some Russian guys for advice, and with disgust they said: «Здесь нет бесплатного интернета» "There is no free internet here."

Damned if they weren't right. These hairbags at Dulles don't offer free wi-fi, unlike the user-friendly Phoenix airport. What's worse, the sign-on for most of the standard services they have don't seem to automatically redirect your URL to where you can give them a credit-card number. I ended up asking a stranger how he had gained access: Boingo. So I tried Boingo, and it seems to be working fine.

Dulles is 90 degrees and human. Rather worse than Phoenix, which I usually think of as the "ancestral hellhole."

Next stop: Frankfurt am Main.

PS. No, there is no such thing as pomegranate and pumice shower gel... at least as far as I know.

My plane was to depart Dulles at 10:00 last night. At 10:10 the pilot announced that a thunderstorm was passing by, and that ATC required them to sit 30 minutes till the storm passed over and eastward. We of course we're to fly out eastward. I was skeptical about the 30 minutes. When the storm hit, it was worthy of an Arizona August monsoon. The lightning was marvelous and the plane swayed back and forth as if some giantess were rocking us to sleep while singing a thunderous lullaby. Finally two hours later we took off.

My companion on the left was a New Yorker descended of Indian parents. She had married a German man, and they spoke to the kids in both languages. Needless to say, she was holding her 22 month old son in her lap, which would be hell for some bachelors, but I've always loved kids, and this one was certainly calmer than my nephew had been at that age. They finally served us dinner at 1:30 a.m. Frankfurt time. Bennet, the hyperactive little boy, had succumbed to Morpheus around 11:00 p.m., and his mother held him in her lap for the next eight hours, never getting up to use the restroom or eat. I was struck by how easy my life is in comparison with parents with young children. In the morning Bennet awoke, and I had the pleasure of using the airplane magazines to play the "Where is?" game, pointing at pictures and asking things like «Wo ist das Fraulein?» «Wo sind die Uhre?» «Wo ist das Ring?» And the kid semi-cooperated. I was pleased. We arrived at 2:00 p.m. Our approach had its bumpy moments. Bennet's sister Chelsea barfed, and just when we thought we were out of the danger zone and safely on the ground, Bennet did the same. Fortunately I had a blanket handy for quick clean up.

The Frankfurt airport is enormous. After I had obtained a boarding card and confirmed that all was well with my luggage, I took the subway train into Frankfurt am Main, aiming at the Hauptwache. Mind you, I haven't used German for sixteen years, so I can't say much these days outside of «Haben Sie etwas zu erklären?» "Do you have something to declare?" Not a particularly helpful phrase for finding your away around. The machine that I bought my subway pass from was all in German, and there were so many destination options within Frankfurt that I had to ask help four times before I found a potentially reliable answer. And even then I only partially understood what train to get on, forgetting completely that sometimes a train only runs part of a line, which means on the first attempt I only got to the main train station. By then I was starting to understand the difference between the city maps and the subway diagrams. I got to the Hauptwache plaza.

Glory! The weather was perfect tourist weather, slightly overcast and about 75 degrees. This part of Frankfurt has quite a few pedestrian streets, several of which had farmers' markets going on. Even in the subways there were fruit and vegetable stands, all of which sold these beautiful cups of freshly cut fruit, that struck me as a much more sensible snack than anything I myself have ever seen in an American subway. Each of the produce stands also sold the German's favorite vegetable, white asparagus. In some of the stands the white asparagus was freakishly thick, remining me of nothing so much as albino marital aids.

They had something called a "Fressgass Fest" going on, which meant there was a plethora of food stands everywhere along with live music. I wandered the streets, enjoying the occasional neo-classical building or medieval remnant that appeared in the midst of more modern construction. Per stereotype there were sausages everywhere, and to my surprise one of the ubiquitous ones was Currywurst, a sausage with Indian seasonings. Very tasty. The Germans are particularly noted for their love of beer, but today there was a drink everywhere with strawberries floating in it. I inquired. It's a mix of strawberries, strawberry syrup, and white wine (Proseco?). And let me tell you, they weren't using pre-processed strawberries. I watched a woman cut the strawberries fresh herself.

After a couple hours of wondering I went back to the airport. Wouldn't due to miss the flight, after all.

Tomorrow: Kazan!

Just before I came to Russia, I bought an Olympus Stylus-7010 digital camera. I've mostly been happy with it. Occasionally, however, it would produce a digital error in a jpeg file, which means in essence that the picture turned out bad. The rate seems to be increasing. Today four of the 20 pictures I took came out bad. This is not good. I'll see if a firmware update helps.

Later: no firmware updates are available. I've just e-mailed Olympus (8:10 p.m. Kazan time, 22 June 2010). We'll see if they have the integrity to answer.

Before I came to Kazan, I did some web-searches on the city water system. All the travel sites suggested avoiding drinking the tap water, but none of them referenced any particular reason or cited any particular data sources. I eventually found one that said that giardia had been detected in the city water in 1996, but of course that was some time ago. My advice to students was the same here as you would give for any other place you travelled: drink boiled water only, and use only boiled water to brush your teeth.

Two of our guys came down with giardia anyway. The father of one is a physician and gave a distance-diagnosis and directed them to use the standard metronidazole, which had a very prompt effect at fixing them up.

About two weeks ago I got lazy and started brushing my teeth with tapwater. And now... you guessed it... it looks like I have giardia. The pain feels like it's in a different place than my previous experience of gas pain, so much so that I wondered if something wasn't wrong with a kidney or appendix or liver. So I'm self-diagnosing. Bought the drug. Started it today.

Kazan is a wonderful place. It's peaceful and safe, but today, of all days, our local friends advised us not to be out on the streets in the evening. Why? Because it's Airborne Ranger Day here (День воздушно-десантных войск). Tonight the city will be full of rangers, active and retired, out drinking and causing fights. It's the one night you don't want to be heard speaking a foreign language during these three weeks. This is probably excessive caution on the part of our hosts. Even drunk, most Russians don't immediately want to pummel you. But these guys are tough, courageous, and patriotic. Picture for yourself the most uneducated and America-centric parts of our own military out on a binge. Potentially the same thing.