августа 27, 2007
Notice
8/27 16:33, Pushkin time
I should get this done before the guys from out of town show up tomorrow and I end up being incommunicado for the rest of the week.
Today started out very pleasantly; coming in to work, the sun was nice and low, and the rain coming in from the west combined to give a strikingly bright solid double-rainbow. Bright enough that the inner bow at the edges was almost painful to look directly at. It only lasted for maybe ninety seconds; but during the time, people on the sidewalks and the train station platform were dropping what they were holding to just stare. I suppose that means such a powerful one is uncommon here (and it was a good thing I was stopped, waiting for the train crossing to open; there were probably more than a handful of road accidents during that minute and a half...)
Anyway, just a really nice kick-off to the day.
And over the course of the day, I've gotten in touch with the guy about the lumber, the guy about the bricks, and the guys about the paperwork. I'll have a ruble-figure from the last two guys hopefully by the end of today, and a figure from the first hopefully in the next couple days. I did meet with the paperwork-agent to pick up the original of the fire department report on the house that used to stand on our lot and to give him a photocopy of my passport and documents-proving-legal-residence so he can get the electricity paperwork done.
Here's what such a fire department report looks like. Basically, we have who the land belongs to now, who the legal owner of the building was, when things happened, what happened (completely destroyed) and the cause of the fire (faulty stove/oven). All under the magical, all-powerful Stamp.
So there you have it. I'm off shortly to get the boys and whatnot, then tomorrow and the next few will be busy ones.
I should get this done before the guys from out of town show up tomorrow and I end up being incommunicado for the rest of the week.
Today started out very pleasantly; coming in to work, the sun was nice and low, and the rain coming in from the west combined to give a strikingly bright solid double-rainbow. Bright enough that the inner bow at the edges was almost painful to look directly at. It only lasted for maybe ninety seconds; but during the time, people on the sidewalks and the train station platform were dropping what they were holding to just stare. I suppose that means such a powerful one is uncommon here (and it was a good thing I was stopped, waiting for the train crossing to open; there were probably more than a handful of road accidents during that minute and a half...)
Anyway, just a really nice kick-off to the day.
And over the course of the day, I've gotten in touch with the guy about the lumber, the guy about the bricks, and the guys about the paperwork. I'll have a ruble-figure from the last two guys hopefully by the end of today, and a figure from the first hopefully in the next couple days. I did meet with the paperwork-agent to pick up the original of the fire department report on the house that used to stand on our lot and to give him a photocopy of my passport and documents-proving-legal-residence so he can get the electricity paperwork done.
Here's what such a fire department report looks like. Basically, we have who the land belongs to now, who the legal owner of the building was, when things happened, what happened (completely destroyed) and the cause of the fire (faulty stove/oven). All under the magical, all-powerful Stamp.
So there you have it. I'm off shortly to get the boys and whatnot, then tomorrow and the next few will be busy ones.
августа 25, 2007
Continuing Progress
8/25 16:09, Pushkin time
Another long hiatus. The boys and I have been going straight from work to pick them up and out to Pokrovskaya every evening. So time was pretty short, what with them still wanting to eat and all.
Anyway, I'm glad to say that as of Thursday evening, the foundation has been completely poured. Friday the three uzbeks removed the framing from around the concrete and headed off for another job site (we'll be getting a new crew to do the brickwork). Of course, since I didn't know they would be leaving, I hadn't arranged to be able to close up the container. So last night at eleven thirty, my phone rings -- our neighbor М calling (actually, Л, but using M's phone). She said that no sooner had darkness fallen than people started to come by to try to carry off the spare couple sacks of concrete and boards we had in the container. She wanted to confirm her suspicions that we had not, as the thieves were claiming, sold the materials to them. As she put it, 'if you bought them, why are you coming in the middle of the night to pick them up?'. So they chased the crooks off and first thing this morning the boys and I picked up a couple padlocks and then stopped by for a bit of a visit and to make the materials and remaining tools secure. Pretty much clearly my fault for having let the whole security question slide; but it's nice to have good neighbors.
Over there today I also met with a rep from a lumber mill. He claims to have on-hand all the boards we are looking for -- he wanted to make sure we understood that we were talking about a full train car's worth of wood; no small thing. We've talked a bit and agreed to hook up on Monday to arrange a time to get together next weekend and, depending on how the inspection goes, put a deposit down on the wood. At the same time, Monday I'll be getting together with the chief of the uzbek brigades to get the process of ordering and having delivered the bricks we're using to raise up part of the house. I'm trying to sort of nudge as much as possible out until next weekend, since this week not only is A coming in on Thursday (before which time I've got both boys to take care of still), but on Tuesday until Saturday morning there will also be one of the guys from Africa and another guy from Chicago, come out to have a working sit-down at the plant to get tooling started building and various other setup steps underway. As I may have mentioned, we're a bit later than we had at first hoped (by the previous estimates, we'd be up and running in another week; not it looks like the beginning of November) mainly due to problems on the US supplier side. But still, the Big Project is impending.
What else...
Ah yes; our agent-guy called in the middle of last week to say that the fire department had issued the documents pertaining to the fact that the house that used to stand on our land burned to the ground -- this closes out any potential ownership rights the previous guy may have technically retained, insofar as there not having physically been a house when he sold the land to us, the titling of the house at our address remained in his name. And in fact, our agent informs me that the papering of our title and the papering of our electricity is much closer to done than he had expected (we pay him monthly-plus; that is, whatever little 'gifts' he has to buy for the fire chief or building commissioner. So it damn well should go pretty quickly). We may actually be papered before the house is built. That's actually quite an oddity here.
And then, as regards Z and school. They at last posted the schedule for the pre-school-year medical checkups. Z's class is up first thing Friday morning (meaning, since A will be back, I don't have to figure out how to coordinate that myself). And then on 1 September, he gets his first day of school.
That is, on Saturday, the first of September...
The schools here actually kind of prefer when the year works out that way. The first day of school, all the way up and down the age scale, is more of an orientation and getting-used-to-doing-it-a-new-way day. It's first graders' first day at all; lots of second-graders are starting to get home from school on their own; and so forth. Having day 1 on a non-workday, parents are able to do the hand-holding that makes the transition much smoother. Z's school will be from nine to noon (three 'lessons' a day) for the rest of this year, and then coming back from the New Year's break, from nine to one. I know the 'core' lessons are Russian, Math, and a sort of Local History/Geography thing (I think it's called here, 'Our Pushkin'). Plus a couple of floating lessons like Art and whatnot. The curriculum is the sort of thing that everyone already knows -- since it's basically the same things they studied as kids -- so no one really goes into explaining it. So there remains an element of surprise for us.
We're also going to get Z set up at the aikido dojo near his school; A's hope is to arrange things so that he can hoof it the couple blocks from class over to aikido, and then she pick him up from there. The short school days present a sort of unexpected challenge to her.
Another long hiatus. The boys and I have been going straight from work to pick them up and out to Pokrovskaya every evening. So time was pretty short, what with them still wanting to eat and all.
Anyway, I'm glad to say that as of Thursday evening, the foundation has been completely poured. Friday the three uzbeks removed the framing from around the concrete and headed off for another job site (we'll be getting a new crew to do the brickwork). Of course, since I didn't know they would be leaving, I hadn't arranged to be able to close up the container. So last night at eleven thirty, my phone rings -- our neighbor М calling (actually, Л, but using M's phone). She said that no sooner had darkness fallen than people started to come by to try to carry off the spare couple sacks of concrete and boards we had in the container. She wanted to confirm her suspicions that we had not, as the thieves were claiming, sold the materials to them. As she put it, 'if you bought them, why are you coming in the middle of the night to pick them up?'. So they chased the crooks off and first thing this morning the boys and I picked up a couple padlocks and then stopped by for a bit of a visit and to make the materials and remaining tools secure. Pretty much clearly my fault for having let the whole security question slide; but it's nice to have good neighbors.
Over there today I also met with a rep from a lumber mill. He claims to have on-hand all the boards we are looking for -- he wanted to make sure we understood that we were talking about a full train car's worth of wood; no small thing. We've talked a bit and agreed to hook up on Monday to arrange a time to get together next weekend and, depending on how the inspection goes, put a deposit down on the wood. At the same time, Monday I'll be getting together with the chief of the uzbek brigades to get the process of ordering and having delivered the bricks we're using to raise up part of the house. I'm trying to sort of nudge as much as possible out until next weekend, since this week not only is A coming in on Thursday (before which time I've got both boys to take care of still), but on Tuesday until Saturday morning there will also be one of the guys from Africa and another guy from Chicago, come out to have a working sit-down at the plant to get tooling started building and various other setup steps underway. As I may have mentioned, we're a bit later than we had at first hoped (by the previous estimates, we'd be up and running in another week; not it looks like the beginning of November) mainly due to problems on the US supplier side. But still, the Big Project is impending.
What else...
Ah yes; our agent-guy called in the middle of last week to say that the fire department had issued the documents pertaining to the fact that the house that used to stand on our land burned to the ground -- this closes out any potential ownership rights the previous guy may have technically retained, insofar as there not having physically been a house when he sold the land to us, the titling of the house at our address remained in his name. And in fact, our agent informs me that the papering of our title and the papering of our electricity is much closer to done than he had expected (we pay him monthly-plus; that is, whatever little 'gifts' he has to buy for the fire chief or building commissioner. So it damn well should go pretty quickly). We may actually be papered before the house is built. That's actually quite an oddity here.
And then, as regards Z and school. They at last posted the schedule for the pre-school-year medical checkups. Z's class is up first thing Friday morning (meaning, since A will be back, I don't have to figure out how to coordinate that myself). And then on 1 September, he gets his first day of school.
That is, on Saturday, the first of September...
The schools here actually kind of prefer when the year works out that way. The first day of school, all the way up and down the age scale, is more of an orientation and getting-used-to-doing-it-a-new-way day. It's first graders' first day at all; lots of second-graders are starting to get home from school on their own; and so forth. Having day 1 on a non-workday, parents are able to do the hand-holding that makes the transition much smoother. Z's school will be from nine to noon (three 'lessons' a day) for the rest of this year, and then coming back from the New Year's break, from nine to one. I know the 'core' lessons are Russian, Math, and a sort of Local History/Geography thing (I think it's called here, 'Our Pushkin'). Plus a couple of floating lessons like Art and whatnot. The curriculum is the sort of thing that everyone already knows -- since it's basically the same things they studied as kids -- so no one really goes into explaining it. So there remains an element of surprise for us.
We're also going to get Z set up at the aikido dojo near his school; A's hope is to arrange things so that he can hoof it the couple blocks from class over to aikido, and then she pick him up from there. The short school days present a sort of unexpected challenge to her.
августа 20, 2007
Kiev pictures
8/20 21:30, Pushkin time
Here they are:
The hotel room
The view from the hotel front steps (that big pillar with the angel on top was pretty helpful finding our way back to the hotel...)
The boys munching ice cream on a hill overlooking the Dnieper.
A statue/fountain in the square down the hill from the hotel. The angel-pillar is right behind the picture taker.
Front view of the angel-pillar. Behind, you can see the third floor entrance of the six-floor mall.
Here they are:
The hotel room
The view from the hotel front steps (that big pillar with the angel on top was pretty helpful finding our way back to the hotel...)
The boys munching ice cream on a hill overlooking the Dnieper.
A statue/fountain in the square down the hill from the hotel. The angel-pillar is right behind the picture taker.
Front view of the angel-pillar. Behind, you can see the third floor entrance of the six-floor mall.
Monument to Saint Cyril (of cyrillic, as in, the guy who gave the barbarian tribes a written language)
Zack and the baby ostrich who came over to say 'hi'.
The boys and the way-too-close rhinoceros. The Kiev zoo was full of such opportunities to come in contact with nature...
A war monument. The plaque reads (I'm assuming, based on close correspondence to Russian words), 'This is in memory of the husbands and sons of Ukraine who were killed in Afghanistan'. It doesn't seem all that old -- almost certainly it was erected post-Soviet-Union.
The statue on the hill; World War 2 monument.
Playing on some tanks.
The statue from the top of the hill.
The beginning of the sculpture tunnel.
More sculpture tunnel (by the way, all statues running through the tunnel are facing more or less towards Germany.)
More statue tunnel
And then they had a big parking lot of military equipment. Here are the boys next to some MiGs.
And Zack and some torpedoes (and a riverboat)
And then the helicopter in the 'Afghan' section of the monument. These type are actually still in pretty frequent use today.
августа 19, 2007
Kiev (, etc.)
8/20 9:14, Pushkin time
So.
This is going to suffer a bit in the telling; my usual technique is to drag a writing implement (by which I mean a computer -- pencils and pens are for sketching and note-taking) with me and at least spend a chunk of each day that I may be unconnected getting my thoughts down. That way, I have a more legitimate day-to-day record of what was going on. For the Kiev trip, we packed light; which meant no writing implement. So I'm going off the notes the boys and I made each day and my already-dulling memories.
-sigh-
------
We got up, as intended, nice and early on Wednesday morning, got the last of our stuff packed up, triple-checked to make sure we had remembered everything, locked the place up, (unlocked, and took one more look to make sure we hadn't forgotten to turn anything off or whatnot), headed downstairs and outside, (dug one more time through our bags to make sure I hadn't taken anything out during the last check and forgotten to put it back in), and called for a cab to the airport. Only to be told that all the cabs from the one company whose card I had were busy for the next hour. What a kick-off. So instead we hoofed it the short ways out to the main road and started trying to flag someone down. And within a couple minutes we were on our way.
At the airport (Pulkovo 1 -- the domestic one), checkin and passport and the lot passed uneventfully, and more or less on time we and our two backpacks and my metal briefcase were off the ground on an Aerosvit 737. Being a ukrainian craft, Z got to experience the joy of finding a language distinct from, but still close enough to one that he knew for him to be able to read most signs. In fact, the differences were -- to him -- mostly very minor, comical ones (to pick one of very, very many examples, the emergency exit signs, rather than the Russian "ВЫХОД" ['vykhod'] read, "ВИХIД" [per Z's reading, 'veekheed']. In fact, Z spent most of the trip snickering to himself at about every sign he saw.
And we landed in Kiev an hour and a half later. Right away, we dashed to the passport control lines and managed to secure a spot only three people back (with twenty or so behind us). And inside seconds, G starts dancing around, grabbing himself. A couple more seconds, and he makes it clear to everyone that he's not going to make it if I try to make him wait. So, Z got to occupy a space in the line for the two minute it took us to dash to the bathroom and back (I suppose that the upstream side of immigration control is about the safest place for a kid to hang out briefly; there's literally nowhere for him to go that's not closely guarded, and he literally cannot get out without his parent). And then we were at the window, getting our passports stamped (on the wrong page; the idiot put the stamps on a page marked 'endorsements'... I hope no trouble comes of that later on...), and out legally onto Ukraine.
We snagged a cab right past customs and took a quick detour to milk an ATM for local cash with which to pay him. Then getting into the car, learned that the 100 hryvnya I had gotten was not even going to be enough to cover the cost of the ride (call it 5 hryvnya = 1 dollar, and Borispil is a ways out from the city). No problem, though; there's always another machine at the hotel.
So there we are, driving into Kiev. With, by the way, a cab driver who was very talkative, and impressed by the boys' language skills. I had my first bit of amusement on the ride when the driver started talking about how the hot days and nightly downpours they had been having were perfect weather for getting fish. Oh, but that's right -- they don't really do fish where we're from.
Confused, I pointed out that no, in fact, we definitely do fish - in fact where we're from is on a big river intersection and our region is really well-known for salmon and other stuff.
To which the driver respond: No, no. going into the woods and collecting fish...
Collecting fish? In the woods?
And then it hits me. The Ukrainian accent. People had told me about that some years back. They pronounce the letter 'Г' (the Russian hard-g) as 'h'. So this guy has been talking about collecting ГРЫБЫ ['gryby' in the russian pronunciation - mushrooms] in the woods, but I've been hearing 'hryby', which when the 'h' is softened by quick conversation comes out a whole lot like just 'рыбы' ['ryby' - fish]. There are other pronunciation differences, but that's the biggest one. And frankly, three days wasn't enough time for me to get totally used to it; even at the end I'd still have to think about what I had heard someone say in Russian to figure out which word they had actually used.
So anyway, we cross the river Dnieper, and finally get to our hotel, which as advertised is smack in the center of the city. And not a bad place, either. By then it was late enough that we forgot about the idea of finding the consulate and just took a stroll around. Kiev is a pretty hilly city, and we found a couple of neat parks overlooking the river inside a few blocks' distance from the hotel (pictures will follow. Later). Then on the return, we grabbed some food ('хлiб' as opposed to 'хлеб' [bread] -- another one that even still cracks Z up) and discovered that the slope at the top of which our hotel was located was also home to a six-story mall, sort of built-in and climbing to right up the top. So we took air conditioned escalators back. While we were having a munch, it started pouring and massive-thunderstorming. The storm went on for the better part of six hours at least (I'm not sure exactly when it ended; it was still going strong when I woke up briefly at one in the morning).
-----
The next morning, we got up bright and early, hotel-breakfasted, and set off with a single backpack full of distractions for the kids to the Russian consulate. We took the metro there -- the station was located right at the doors to the hill-mall and we were only three stops plus a transfer from our destination, and arrived almost an hour before the stated ten o'clock opening time. And (of course) there was already a line of about seven people waiting. I set the boys up with their distractions, went over to the person keeping track of the lines, and asked which of the lists was for visas. Only to be answered that visas were 'without lines'.
-jaw drops open in shock-
So okay. Ukraine is a non-visa country to Russia, so no locals needed them, and is also enough of a ways off the beaten path that vanishingly few foreigners come through. So we had only to wait until the doors opened, and then to walk right in and get started. And for an even more unexpected surprise, the doors of the consulate opened early. At just a hair past nine thirty I was already talking to the Consul; he was checking to make sure I hadn't forgotten to sign anything and then calling the visa office to let them know I was on the way. In fact, the guy, when I asked about taking the boys with me to the visa office, said, "no need, they can sit over here by my desk and color; I'll keep an eye on them for you".
-jaw drops open again-
And then at the visa office, whiz-bam-boom. Seven minutes and I'm out and walking across the hall to pay for the visas; another five and the boys and I are on our way to kill the six hours we have until the visas are ready for pick-up. G and Z asked for the zoo; the consular guard with a big smile gave us great directions, and away we went.
The zoo was five stations, plus a line-transfer away from the consulate. Of course, six hours is a pretty unreasonable amount of time to spend at a zoo, but we did have a good time. The highlight was when we got to the monkeys. The gorilla enclosure was open-air, and the gorilla himself was maybe five feet away (and two layers of fence) from where people could stand. G saw him, froze, and in a shocked voice said, 'ohmygodthat'skingkong'. The gorilla was munching on a potato, and G and he spent a bit just simply staring at each other. I tried very briefly to explain to G that King Kong is in fact much bigger, and that this was just a gorilla. To which his response was, 'I know what he looks like. That's king kong'.
Anyway, after the zoo we took the three-stops-plus-transfer back to the hotel, grabbed some more хлiб and even took a brief snooze. And then back to the consulate, got our visas, and there you have it.
Of course, we still had on the order of 24 hours to kill before our flight left. So we took a bit of a walk from the russian consulate down towards the river, eventually ending up at a monastery complex right on the bank. And strolling through the monastery complex, we found signs that Z explained to me said 'caves'. So, cool. We found the caves (which turned out to be 'catacombs') and walked them for a little bit. Once again G got to be impressed when I explained to him that inside the glass boxes on either side set into the wall were mummies. The fact that we went down there without a light or candle or anything made it even more exciting.
And after that, we walked a bit more of the riverbank until we came to a metro station. Four stops and we were back at the hotel.
----
And Friday, we slept in a bit, had breakfast, packed up, and were out trekking by ten. This time we took the metro down to one stop past the consulate and then hoofed the mile downhill to the riverbank ridgeline (then up to the top of the ridge), where a huge statue was visible from half the city. And it turned out the statue was part of the Kiev WWII memorial park -- which covers the riverbank ridgeline for the length of three hills. We walked the park, stopping frequently for the boys to play on the military gear (tanks and artillery and rockets and jets and even a helicopter in their 'Afghan war' annex), and wrapped up at the tourist entrance right near the entrance to the monastery grounds from the day before. We grabbed a bite to eat, then a taxi back to the airport. A bit early, but better that than late.
At the airport were all manner of signs indicating that noncitizens were forbidden to take Ukrainian currency out of the country (citizens are allowed 3000 hryvnya). So I stashed my souvenir-cash in a deep pocket and through customs and passport control we went. The sole misfortune was in going through security. I sent the boys and the backpacks through first, since my shoes always set off alarms. And once I had been checked out, there was Z, telling me that there was 'something wrong with his backpack'. The security guy tells me that we have a tool in it, and that tools are forbidden in carry-on (recall, we had brought the backpack down to Kiev). I did in fact have my old trusty pair of briefcase-repair pliers -- originally motorcycle-repair pliers. But what to do? I took them out, gave them to the security goon with a 'happy birthday' (his face said that they don't have that kind of sarcasm there) and away we went.
The plane came, we got on, and we flew home. The boys were stoked to see Pushkin from the air and even to be able to pick out our place (the green roof and the fact that it sits by itself in a field help a bit on that count) Passport control was a quick deal (recall, we were at the domestic airport; so our flight was the only one to come in at the time), and we grabbed a taxi driver right past customs. When we explained that we were headed for Pushkin (away from the city), he demurred and found another guy. On the way to this other guy's car, I asked how much he wanted for the trip. His answer -- 1000 rubles. I chuckled and told him to quit bullshitting. And he repeated 1000 rubles. It cost us 300 to get to the airport; I'm willing to accept a bit of a markup, but that was insane. Which I told him, but he insisted that 1000, no less. So I called him an pig-fucking thief (I love cursing in Russian) and walked off to find another cab. The next guy wanted 800, but by that point I was in less of a mood for crap; he also wouldn't haggle. So we set off on foot to get out of the region of the airport and find some more reasonable rates. Fortunately, the weather was nice, and at 9 at night it was still plenty light out, but not warm.
It was actually a pretty good walk. We got a mile away from the airport and found a guy sleeping in his cab (prior to starting work, as we found out). All he wanted was 400, which, considering we were going to be sitting in the dacha-bound end-of-workweek traffic, was plenty reasonable. A ride, some traffic, some chatting, and we were home.
-------
In other doings this weekend. Saturday was the 15-year party for the outfit I'm working with -- a big shindig at a yacht club on the river. The boys stayed with some friends and I drove into the city. The party was pretty good (though it would have been better if A had been there), and I didn't leave until 11. Meaning I picked the boys up at near midnight and they weren't in bed and asleep until almost one. So we all slept Sunday until almost noon (even G). And then took a quick ride into the city outskirts to get food and some concrete anchors; out to our property to drop the anchors off with the uzbeks and to explain how and where we wanted them located, and then back home for a relaxing afternoon/evening. The boys napped from two until five, and then weren't able to get to sleep until almost midnight again. But this morning, bright and early I dragged their butts out of bed. Tonight we'll make an early one of it, and by tomorrow we should be fully recovered.
Anyway, that's the last few days. As I said, pictures will eventually follow. We took quite a few, but since tonight we've got to run back by the property and pick up some dinner-type stuff and still try to get to bed at a reasonable hour, I don't expect to get to the formatting and posting until Tuesday at the earliest. But it won't be three months like with the Finland pictures.
So.
This is going to suffer a bit in the telling; my usual technique is to drag a writing implement (by which I mean a computer -- pencils and pens are for sketching and note-taking) with me and at least spend a chunk of each day that I may be unconnected getting my thoughts down. That way, I have a more legitimate day-to-day record of what was going on. For the Kiev trip, we packed light; which meant no writing implement. So I'm going off the notes the boys and I made each day and my already-dulling memories.
-sigh-
------
We got up, as intended, nice and early on Wednesday morning, got the last of our stuff packed up, triple-checked to make sure we had remembered everything, locked the place up, (unlocked, and took one more look to make sure we hadn't forgotten to turn anything off or whatnot), headed downstairs and outside, (dug one more time through our bags to make sure I hadn't taken anything out during the last check and forgotten to put it back in), and called for a cab to the airport. Only to be told that all the cabs from the one company whose card I had were busy for the next hour. What a kick-off. So instead we hoofed it the short ways out to the main road and started trying to flag someone down. And within a couple minutes we were on our way.
At the airport (Pulkovo 1 -- the domestic one), checkin and passport and the lot passed uneventfully, and more or less on time we and our two backpacks and my metal briefcase were off the ground on an Aerosvit 737. Being a ukrainian craft, Z got to experience the joy of finding a language distinct from, but still close enough to one that he knew for him to be able to read most signs. In fact, the differences were -- to him -- mostly very minor, comical ones (to pick one of very, very many examples, the emergency exit signs, rather than the Russian "ВЫХОД" ['vykhod'] read, "ВИХIД" [per Z's reading, 'veekheed']. In fact, Z spent most of the trip snickering to himself at about every sign he saw.
And we landed in Kiev an hour and a half later. Right away, we dashed to the passport control lines and managed to secure a spot only three people back (with twenty or so behind us). And inside seconds, G starts dancing around, grabbing himself. A couple more seconds, and he makes it clear to everyone that he's not going to make it if I try to make him wait. So, Z got to occupy a space in the line for the two minute it took us to dash to the bathroom and back (I suppose that the upstream side of immigration control is about the safest place for a kid to hang out briefly; there's literally nowhere for him to go that's not closely guarded, and he literally cannot get out without his parent). And then we were at the window, getting our passports stamped (on the wrong page; the idiot put the stamps on a page marked 'endorsements'... I hope no trouble comes of that later on...), and out legally onto Ukraine.
We snagged a cab right past customs and took a quick detour to milk an ATM for local cash with which to pay him. Then getting into the car, learned that the 100 hryvnya I had gotten was not even going to be enough to cover the cost of the ride (call it 5 hryvnya = 1 dollar, and Borispil is a ways out from the city). No problem, though; there's always another machine at the hotel.
So there we are, driving into Kiev. With, by the way, a cab driver who was very talkative, and impressed by the boys' language skills. I had my first bit of amusement on the ride when the driver started talking about how the hot days and nightly downpours they had been having were perfect weather for getting fish. Oh, but that's right -- they don't really do fish where we're from.
Confused, I pointed out that no, in fact, we definitely do fish - in fact where we're from is on a big river intersection and our region is really well-known for salmon and other stuff.
To which the driver respond: No, no. going into the woods and collecting fish...
Collecting fish? In the woods?
And then it hits me. The Ukrainian accent. People had told me about that some years back. They pronounce the letter 'Г' (the Russian hard-g) as 'h'. So this guy has been talking about collecting ГРЫБЫ ['gryby' in the russian pronunciation - mushrooms] in the woods, but I've been hearing 'hryby', which when the 'h' is softened by quick conversation comes out a whole lot like just 'рыбы' ['ryby' - fish]. There are other pronunciation differences, but that's the biggest one. And frankly, three days wasn't enough time for me to get totally used to it; even at the end I'd still have to think about what I had heard someone say in Russian to figure out which word they had actually used.
So anyway, we cross the river Dnieper, and finally get to our hotel, which as advertised is smack in the center of the city. And not a bad place, either. By then it was late enough that we forgot about the idea of finding the consulate and just took a stroll around. Kiev is a pretty hilly city, and we found a couple of neat parks overlooking the river inside a few blocks' distance from the hotel (pictures will follow. Later). Then on the return, we grabbed some food ('хлiб' as opposed to 'хлеб' [bread] -- another one that even still cracks Z up) and discovered that the slope at the top of which our hotel was located was also home to a six-story mall, sort of built-in and climbing to right up the top. So we took air conditioned escalators back. While we were having a munch, it started pouring and massive-thunderstorming. The storm went on for the better part of six hours at least (I'm not sure exactly when it ended; it was still going strong when I woke up briefly at one in the morning).
-----
The next morning, we got up bright and early, hotel-breakfasted, and set off with a single backpack full of distractions for the kids to the Russian consulate. We took the metro there -- the station was located right at the doors to the hill-mall and we were only three stops plus a transfer from our destination, and arrived almost an hour before the stated ten o'clock opening time. And (of course) there was already a line of about seven people waiting. I set the boys up with their distractions, went over to the person keeping track of the lines, and asked which of the lists was for visas. Only to be answered that visas were 'without lines'.
-jaw drops open in shock-
So okay. Ukraine is a non-visa country to Russia, so no locals needed them, and is also enough of a ways off the beaten path that vanishingly few foreigners come through. So we had only to wait until the doors opened, and then to walk right in and get started. And for an even more unexpected surprise, the doors of the consulate opened early. At just a hair past nine thirty I was already talking to the Consul; he was checking to make sure I hadn't forgotten to sign anything and then calling the visa office to let them know I was on the way. In fact, the guy, when I asked about taking the boys with me to the visa office, said, "no need, they can sit over here by my desk and color; I'll keep an eye on them for you".
-jaw drops open again-
And then at the visa office, whiz-bam-boom. Seven minutes and I'm out and walking across the hall to pay for the visas; another five and the boys and I are on our way to kill the six hours we have until the visas are ready for pick-up. G and Z asked for the zoo; the consular guard with a big smile gave us great directions, and away we went.
The zoo was five stations, plus a line-transfer away from the consulate. Of course, six hours is a pretty unreasonable amount of time to spend at a zoo, but we did have a good time. The highlight was when we got to the monkeys. The gorilla enclosure was open-air, and the gorilla himself was maybe five feet away (and two layers of fence) from where people could stand. G saw him, froze, and in a shocked voice said, 'ohmygodthat'skingkong'. The gorilla was munching on a potato, and G and he spent a bit just simply staring at each other. I tried very briefly to explain to G that King Kong is in fact much bigger, and that this was just a gorilla. To which his response was, 'I know what he looks like. That's king kong'.
Anyway, after the zoo we took the three-stops-plus-transfer back to the hotel, grabbed some more хлiб and even took a brief snooze. And then back to the consulate, got our visas, and there you have it.
Of course, we still had on the order of 24 hours to kill before our flight left. So we took a bit of a walk from the russian consulate down towards the river, eventually ending up at a monastery complex right on the bank. And strolling through the monastery complex, we found signs that Z explained to me said 'caves'. So, cool. We found the caves (which turned out to be 'catacombs') and walked them for a little bit. Once again G got to be impressed when I explained to him that inside the glass boxes on either side set into the wall were mummies. The fact that we went down there without a light or candle or anything made it even more exciting.
And after that, we walked a bit more of the riverbank until we came to a metro station. Four stops and we were back at the hotel.
----
And Friday, we slept in a bit, had breakfast, packed up, and were out trekking by ten. This time we took the metro down to one stop past the consulate and then hoofed the mile downhill to the riverbank ridgeline (then up to the top of the ridge), where a huge statue was visible from half the city. And it turned out the statue was part of the Kiev WWII memorial park -- which covers the riverbank ridgeline for the length of three hills. We walked the park, stopping frequently for the boys to play on the military gear (tanks and artillery and rockets and jets and even a helicopter in their 'Afghan war' annex), and wrapped up at the tourist entrance right near the entrance to the monastery grounds from the day before. We grabbed a bite to eat, then a taxi back to the airport. A bit early, but better that than late.
At the airport were all manner of signs indicating that noncitizens were forbidden to take Ukrainian currency out of the country (citizens are allowed 3000 hryvnya). So I stashed my souvenir-cash in a deep pocket and through customs and passport control we went. The sole misfortune was in going through security. I sent the boys and the backpacks through first, since my shoes always set off alarms. And once I had been checked out, there was Z, telling me that there was 'something wrong with his backpack'. The security guy tells me that we have a tool in it, and that tools are forbidden in carry-on (recall, we had brought the backpack down to Kiev). I did in fact have my old trusty pair of briefcase-repair pliers -- originally motorcycle-repair pliers. But what to do? I took them out, gave them to the security goon with a 'happy birthday' (his face said that they don't have that kind of sarcasm there) and away we went.
The plane came, we got on, and we flew home. The boys were stoked to see Pushkin from the air and even to be able to pick out our place (the green roof and the fact that it sits by itself in a field help a bit on that count) Passport control was a quick deal (recall, we were at the domestic airport; so our flight was the only one to come in at the time), and we grabbed a taxi driver right past customs. When we explained that we were headed for Pushkin (away from the city), he demurred and found another guy. On the way to this other guy's car, I asked how much he wanted for the trip. His answer -- 1000 rubles. I chuckled and told him to quit bullshitting. And he repeated 1000 rubles. It cost us 300 to get to the airport; I'm willing to accept a bit of a markup, but that was insane. Which I told him, but he insisted that 1000, no less. So I called him an pig-fucking thief (I love cursing in Russian) and walked off to find another cab. The next guy wanted 800, but by that point I was in less of a mood for crap; he also wouldn't haggle. So we set off on foot to get out of the region of the airport and find some more reasonable rates. Fortunately, the weather was nice, and at 9 at night it was still plenty light out, but not warm.
It was actually a pretty good walk. We got a mile away from the airport and found a guy sleeping in his cab (prior to starting work, as we found out). All he wanted was 400, which, considering we were going to be sitting in the dacha-bound end-of-workweek traffic, was plenty reasonable. A ride, some traffic, some chatting, and we were home.
-------
In other doings this weekend. Saturday was the 15-year party for the outfit I'm working with -- a big shindig at a yacht club on the river. The boys stayed with some friends and I drove into the city. The party was pretty good (though it would have been better if A had been there), and I didn't leave until 11. Meaning I picked the boys up at near midnight and they weren't in bed and asleep until almost one. So we all slept Sunday until almost noon (even G). And then took a quick ride into the city outskirts to get food and some concrete anchors; out to our property to drop the anchors off with the uzbeks and to explain how and where we wanted them located, and then back home for a relaxing afternoon/evening. The boys napped from two until five, and then weren't able to get to sleep until almost midnight again. But this morning, bright and early I dragged their butts out of bed. Tonight we'll make an early one of it, and by tomorrow we should be fully recovered.
Anyway, that's the last few days. As I said, pictures will eventually follow. We took quite a few, but since tonight we've got to run back by the property and pick up some dinner-type stuff and still try to get to bed at a reasonable hour, I don't expect to get to the formatting and posting until Tuesday at the earliest. But it won't be three months like with the Finland pictures.
августа 14, 2007
Prepared
8/14 21:10, Pushkin time
So tomorrow the boys and I head out to Kiev. We'll not be bringing the computer with us; I'll try taking some notes or something if anything of interest happens; otherwise we'll just bring back pictures (and new year-validity visas).
Yesterday was moderately interesting. After work, I picked the boys up from the preschool and we headed out to Pokrovskaya to check on things there. Work is progressing fine; I chatted with the head uzbek while Z pestered the other two guys and G played with М's daughter. As we were preparing to leave, the head guy asked if we minded doing one more thing. Then one of the other guys came over, one side of his face all swollen. Apparently it had started hurting about an hour earlier, and they wondered if we could bring him by the dentist to get whatever it was taken care of. Of course, by that time everything I could think of was closed, but М mentioned that he was pretty sure there was a 24-hour dentist near the hospital where L was born. So we piled the guy into the car and all headed out to find this place.
On the way back into Pushkin, the guy sort of sidelong mentions to me that he's not, strictly speaking, legally in the country. Duh. He lives in a shipping container, for chrissake.
So back into Pushkin, and we just flat can't find the place М was talking about. So we hop from place to place before finally getting to the clinic that A used -- a bit high-end, but open late. We got there at maybe two minutes to eight. The clinic works until nine, but the signs said that the dentist leaves at nine. Still, when they took one look at Р У and the dentist just rushed him into a chair. Of course, filling out his paperwork, they asked for his ID. I gave the whole, 'oh crap, we saw what was wrong and just rushed off without grabbing anything'. So she asked for his address. Thinking fast, I gave them the address of the dealership, which she took down without a question.
The problem was a bit of a serious one; we were at the dentist until 8:30, then had to swing by a pharmacy for him to pick up some antibiotics before dropping him back off at Pokrovskaya. Just another part of the joys of having gastarbeiters.
Anyway, we're all packed. Getting up tomorrow morning, taking a cab to the airport, and off to Ukraine. Excitement.
So tomorrow the boys and I head out to Kiev. We'll not be bringing the computer with us; I'll try taking some notes or something if anything of interest happens; otherwise we'll just bring back pictures (and new year-validity visas).
Yesterday was moderately interesting. After work, I picked the boys up from the preschool and we headed out to Pokrovskaya to check on things there. Work is progressing fine; I chatted with the head uzbek while Z pestered the other two guys and G played with М's daughter. As we were preparing to leave, the head guy asked if we minded doing one more thing. Then one of the other guys came over, one side of his face all swollen. Apparently it had started hurting about an hour earlier, and they wondered if we could bring him by the dentist to get whatever it was taken care of. Of course, by that time everything I could think of was closed, but М mentioned that he was pretty sure there was a 24-hour dentist near the hospital where L was born. So we piled the guy into the car and all headed out to find this place.
On the way back into Pushkin, the guy sort of sidelong mentions to me that he's not, strictly speaking, legally in the country. Duh. He lives in a shipping container, for chrissake.
So back into Pushkin, and we just flat can't find the place М was talking about. So we hop from place to place before finally getting to the clinic that A used -- a bit high-end, but open late. We got there at maybe two minutes to eight. The clinic works until nine, but the signs said that the dentist leaves at nine. Still, when they took one look at Р У and the dentist just rushed him into a chair. Of course, filling out his paperwork, they asked for his ID. I gave the whole, 'oh crap, we saw what was wrong and just rushed off without grabbing anything'. So she asked for his address. Thinking fast, I gave them the address of the dealership, which she took down without a question.
The problem was a bit of a serious one; we were at the dentist until 8:30, then had to swing by a pharmacy for him to pick up some antibiotics before dropping him back off at Pokrovskaya. Just another part of the joys of having gastarbeiters.
Anyway, we're all packed. Getting up tomorrow morning, taking a cab to the airport, and off to Ukraine. Excitement.
августа 12, 2007
Picture Post
8/12 17:17, Pushkin time
So the boys and I have tooled around a little bit this weekend, provisioned-up, and basically accomplished nothing of lasting value. Exactly as it should be.
We did swing by the property this morning, ran into М and family (had a sit and munch with them while Z chatted with the uzbek foundation guys and G bothered the livestock), and so forth. But I figured, I've promised from way back to get some pictures up; the boys are contentedly playing and I had the time to go through our camera. So here goes a few pictures of my taking:
The bear exhibit at the Helsinki zoo
The middle of downtown Helsinki
Not quite the middle of downtown Helsinki
What the hell does this say?
Streetside parking in Finland means having your pick of a wide variety of inscrutable, vaguely menacing street signs.
So the boys and I have tooled around a little bit this weekend, provisioned-up, and basically accomplished nothing of lasting value. Exactly as it should be.
We did swing by the property this morning, ran into М and family (had a sit and munch with them while Z chatted with the uzbek foundation guys and G bothered the livestock), and so forth. But I figured, I've promised from way back to get some pictures up; the boys are contentedly playing and I had the time to go through our camera. So here goes a few pictures of my taking:
The bear exhibit at the Helsinki zoo
The middle of downtown Helsinki
Not quite the middle of downtown Helsinki
What the hell does this say?
Streetside parking in Finland means having your pick of a wide variety of inscrutable, vaguely menacing street signs.
The woods in Rastila
More of Rastila
Finnish wildlife
The inlet at Rastila
Some shots of the status as of today. Holes will be drilled, rebar armature configured, and concrete poured starting tomorrow morning. Would have started today, but apparently (and this has been independently confirmed for me) the twelfth of August is 'construction worker day' in Russia. So the concrete guys are off until tomorrow. They've got so freaking many holidays here...
августа 10, 2007
Success!
8/10 18:26, Pushkin time
A and L called a bit ago from the other side of Pulkovo 2's passport control -- legally having left Russia. They'll be complementing the de jure with a de facto in another forty minutes. A is, needless to say, very happy.
How it all came together:
I spent a chunk of yesterday losing my will to resist bothering the lady who was taking care of L's exit visa. Finally in the evening I called her up to be told that, "oh my goodness, there was a serious complication..."
Heart temporarily taking a siesta, I asked for details.
A's visa was made out with a transliteration of our last name giving the 'c' as a Russian letter 'к'. Of course, that's no tthe way our name is said; rather the 'c' has an 's' sound (which is the Russian letter 'с', if anyone cares). That's no big deal for a visa, since by the actual rules you are allowed one 'error' per transliterated name. But of course, since L's birth certificate is a legal document, we filled it out with the proper cyrillic spelling of our last name -- by the way, the spelling that the boys and I have on our visas; it seems transliteration can be hit-or-miss sometimes. So the 'complication' was that L's last name on his birth certificate wasn't the same as his "mom's" last name on her visa.
At this point, my legs started to go all numb. The lady helping us out said that she had already made our explanations and that it should all still work out before lunchtime Friday. I elected not to cause A any further agony, and kept the news of the 'snag' to myself.
And then all day today, on the verge of puking from the stress. Until my phone rang (a half-hour before the lady had promised to call me with news) with the information that the exit visa had been issued and we were good to go. I called A, we got her stuff stashed back in the car, went into the city to meet the lady (passed her a couple thousand rubles 'appreciation'), and off to the airport. And then, they made it through.
So. With all the stress of the last three days, I've totally neglected to worry about the boys' and my visa. And I also have absolutely no idea what's been going on (if anything) on the house. We'll save figuring that out for tomorrow.
As an interesting aside, these last two days at work a very well-known automotive journalist came by to do a bit of a test-drive on the dump trucks that made my first major project. So I spent a good chunk of yesterday and a bit smaller chunk of today being interviewed for what will ultimately be a six-page article in the two-weeks-from-now Авторевю. Very cool and I will be sure to scan and post and translate it once it comes out.
A and L called a bit ago from the other side of Pulkovo 2's passport control -- legally having left Russia. They'll be complementing the de jure with a de facto in another forty minutes. A is, needless to say, very happy.
How it all came together:
I spent a chunk of yesterday losing my will to resist bothering the lady who was taking care of L's exit visa. Finally in the evening I called her up to be told that, "oh my goodness, there was a serious complication..."
Heart temporarily taking a siesta, I asked for details.
A's visa was made out with a transliteration of our last name giving the 'c' as a Russian letter 'к'. Of course, that's no tthe way our name is said; rather the 'c' has an 's' sound (which is the Russian letter 'с', if anyone cares). That's no big deal for a visa, since by the actual rules you are allowed one 'error' per transliterated name. But of course, since L's birth certificate is a legal document, we filled it out with the proper cyrillic spelling of our last name -- by the way, the spelling that the boys and I have on our visas; it seems transliteration can be hit-or-miss sometimes. So the 'complication' was that L's last name on his birth certificate wasn't the same as his "mom's" last name on her visa.
At this point, my legs started to go all numb. The lady helping us out said that she had already made our explanations and that it should all still work out before lunchtime Friday. I elected not to cause A any further agony, and kept the news of the 'snag' to myself.
And then all day today, on the verge of puking from the stress. Until my phone rang (a half-hour before the lady had promised to call me with news) with the information that the exit visa had been issued and we were good to go. I called A, we got her stuff stashed back in the car, went into the city to meet the lady (passed her a couple thousand rubles 'appreciation'), and off to the airport. And then, they made it through.
So. With all the stress of the last three days, I've totally neglected to worry about the boys' and my visa. And I also have absolutely no idea what's been going on (if anything) on the house. We'll save figuring that out for tomorrow.
As an interesting aside, these last two days at work a very well-known automotive journalist came by to do a bit of a test-drive on the dump trucks that made my first major project. So I spent a good chunk of yesterday and a bit smaller chunk of today being interviewed for what will ultimately be a six-page article in the two-weeks-from-now Авторевю. Very cool and I will be sure to scan and post and translate it once it comes out.
августа 08, 2007
Resolving
8/9 9:18, Pushkin time
I was back and forth to Pulkovo yesterday six times.
The consular office at the airport was singularly unhelpful -- in fact, very shortly into our conversation, they informed me that they "don't do anything". ...umm...okay...
So we hooked up with the outfit that has been taking care of getting our visa invitations and whatnot. They originally quoted us a term of ten days to get an exit visa for L, but the judicious application of money caused them to bring that down to a 'probably by friday morning' which when the money was handed over, became a 'definitely by friday morning'. Which, allowing for delays and whatnot made it not unreasonable to think about A leaving on friday evening -- which is convenient, since her visa is only good to the end of friday. Of course, her need to go no later than the end of that day, her inability to leave before the middle of that day (we had to give her and L's passports to the visa-getting folks), and the fact that most transatlantic flights leave by mid-afternoon at the latest means that she and L will be spending -- assuming all things work out now as they should -- right around twelve hours in the Frankfurt airport. Fortunately, Frankfurt is much more civilized than Warsaw, airport-amenities-wise. That and the fact that she'll be able to get into the business class lounge should maek the experience not quite so terrible. And her return trip is unchanged.
I achieved this feat of reorganization over the course of two hours spent on my sixth trip to Pulkovo at the Lufthansa office there. For A's original tickets, we were able to change the date, but not the itinerary; and there were no free flights in any reasonable timeframe on her itinerary. So we re-booked her original flights for use on our December-January trip (the boys and I will just make the same flights. And then we bought a whole spanking-new set of tickets for L and A right now. By the way, tickets bought two days in advance during what is still more or less tourist season? Not what you would call 'inexpensive'... In fact, the transatlantic leg of her outbound trip had no room in economy class. So a chunk of the two hours was spent in a three-way conversation with the LH clerk and the LH main office discussing a way to issue a ticket for a nonexistent economy seat and then immediately after purchase expend several thousand miles on upgrading it to a business class seat. As I mentioned yesterday, the LH guys are great folks.
So then it came time to pay for the tickets. I had the 85,000-and-change rubles on hand, but really was not interested in dumping such a large chunk of my cash in a place that had a visa/mastercard sign in the window. So we tried to buy it on our WaMu card. Which (of course) didn't take. The LH clerk offered that maybe there was some sort of bank restriction on our end -- definitely not on their end, since she knew from earlier that day that the 'mandatory approval' restriction from their bank was 15,000 euro. So we tried a couple times to split the cost card/cash (I remembered that in fact WaMu does have some sort of limit on purchasing over here; we ran into it when we bough A's sewing machine) all to no luck. Eventually, we had A on a skype call to the WaMu rep in one ear and on her cell to me in the other ear. The 'funniest' part was when the WaMu drone kept insisting that we name a specific number of dollars and cents for the transaction. Of course, we were trying to put through a specific number of rubles, instead. A checked the Inter Nets and found Google's rate-o-the-day; we trigged it out and gave the calculation to the lady with the explicit explanation that the amount we were giving her was NOT EXACT, because we didn't know the actual rate the bank was using (the LH clerk was just as baffled as us and kept saying, 'it's your bank's rate; they should know what it is... I had to explain about American customer service to the poor girl). At the end, the WaMu drone put in an approval for a specific amount of dollars -- that is, just what we told her not to do -- and disconnected. Then we sat down to wait a few minutes for the system to digest whatever they had just done, and I prepared to relieve myself of a large quantity of cash. Before that, we decided to give one more go at getting the tickets through; the LH system, however, all of a sudden started refusing to let through exactly the sum we had named to the WaMu lady. So, what the hell; we put in the full price of A's ticket (about 400 dollars more than had been approved). And it went through...
There was a moment of stunned silence in the LH office, and then smiles and laughs. I paid the remaining seven-thousand-odd rubles cash, got the tickets in my hand, and headed back home.
For now, we're with nothing to do. Nevertheless, I will continue to harass the people who have promised us the visa for L. And wait.
I was back and forth to Pulkovo yesterday six times.
The consular office at the airport was singularly unhelpful -- in fact, very shortly into our conversation, they informed me that they "don't do anything". ...umm...okay...
So we hooked up with the outfit that has been taking care of getting our visa invitations and whatnot. They originally quoted us a term of ten days to get an exit visa for L, but the judicious application of money caused them to bring that down to a 'probably by friday morning' which when the money was handed over, became a 'definitely by friday morning'. Which, allowing for delays and whatnot made it not unreasonable to think about A leaving on friday evening -- which is convenient, since her visa is only good to the end of friday. Of course, her need to go no later than the end of that day, her inability to leave before the middle of that day (we had to give her and L's passports to the visa-getting folks), and the fact that most transatlantic flights leave by mid-afternoon at the latest means that she and L will be spending -- assuming all things work out now as they should -- right around twelve hours in the Frankfurt airport. Fortunately, Frankfurt is much more civilized than Warsaw, airport-amenities-wise. That and the fact that she'll be able to get into the business class lounge should maek the experience not quite so terrible. And her return trip is unchanged.
I achieved this feat of reorganization over the course of two hours spent on my sixth trip to Pulkovo at the Lufthansa office there. For A's original tickets, we were able to change the date, but not the itinerary; and there were no free flights in any reasonable timeframe on her itinerary. So we re-booked her original flights for use on our December-January trip (the boys and I will just make the same flights. And then we bought a whole spanking-new set of tickets for L and A right now. By the way, tickets bought two days in advance during what is still more or less tourist season? Not what you would call 'inexpensive'... In fact, the transatlantic leg of her outbound trip had no room in economy class. So a chunk of the two hours was spent in a three-way conversation with the LH clerk and the LH main office discussing a way to issue a ticket for a nonexistent economy seat and then immediately after purchase expend several thousand miles on upgrading it to a business class seat. As I mentioned yesterday, the LH guys are great folks.
So then it came time to pay for the tickets. I had the 85,000-and-change rubles on hand, but really was not interested in dumping such a large chunk of my cash in a place that had a visa/mastercard sign in the window. So we tried to buy it on our WaMu card. Which (of course) didn't take. The LH clerk offered that maybe there was some sort of bank restriction on our end -- definitely not on their end, since she knew from earlier that day that the 'mandatory approval' restriction from their bank was 15,000 euro. So we tried a couple times to split the cost card/cash (I remembered that in fact WaMu does have some sort of limit on purchasing over here; we ran into it when we bough A's sewing machine) all to no luck. Eventually, we had A on a skype call to the WaMu rep in one ear and on her cell to me in the other ear. The 'funniest' part was when the WaMu drone kept insisting that we name a specific number of dollars and cents for the transaction. Of course, we were trying to put through a specific number of rubles, instead. A checked the Inter Nets and found Google's rate-o-the-day; we trigged it out and gave the calculation to the lady with the explicit explanation that the amount we were giving her was NOT EXACT, because we didn't know the actual rate the bank was using (the LH clerk was just as baffled as us and kept saying, 'it's your bank's rate; they should know what it is... I had to explain about American customer service to the poor girl). At the end, the WaMu drone put in an approval for a specific amount of dollars -- that is, just what we told her not to do -- and disconnected. Then we sat down to wait a few minutes for the system to digest whatever they had just done, and I prepared to relieve myself of a large quantity of cash. Before that, we decided to give one more go at getting the tickets through; the LH system, however, all of a sudden started refusing to let through exactly the sum we had named to the WaMu lady. So, what the hell; we put in the full price of A's ticket (about 400 dollars more than had been approved). And it went through...
There was a moment of stunned silence in the LH office, and then smiles and laughs. I paid the remaining seven-thousand-odd rubles cash, got the tickets in my hand, and headed back home.
For now, we're with nothing to do. Nevertheless, I will continue to harass the people who have promised us the visa for L. And wait.
августа 07, 2007
Steaming Piles
8/8 8:47, Pushkin time
So I was going to be writing right about now about how me and the boys are getting ready to get on a plane to Kiev. Instead...
We all got up at 3AM to get the jammied-kids stuffed in the car and A and L off to their flight to Frankfurt and ultimately back to Portland. We made pretty good time; got her there about five minutes before 4AM, then the boys and I headed back home. As we parked the car, my phone rings -- A. Jokingly, I asked her, 'what's wrong?'. Her response, 'they won't let the baby leave'.
Okay. So I had her pass the phone off to whatever person she was talking to and I started trying to get things straightened. Turns out the person she was talking to was the Lufthansa rep, who really couldn't do anything to help. So I offered to come back by and talk things over with the passport control folks myself. Called the kids back into the car, and away we went. This time, made it to the airport and inside by about 4:35. Right away a difficulty arose -- they were willing to break the security rules and let one non-ticketed person (me) in, but Z and G (still in their pajamas and yellow rubber boots) were going to put us over that limit. We got permission to stash to two boys in line-of-sight of A on the other side of the security area, and off I went to start the straightening-out process.
The issue, as it originally presented itself, was that L lacks a Russian visa in his passport. That is, the standard Russian visa is 'entry/exit' and he didn't have an 'exit'. Of course, we asked about that sort of thing at the US Consulate in Petersburg back before he was born and again when we got his passport. They assured us that the fact that he had no visa would be no problem -- simply demonstrating that he was born during the validity term of his mom's visa would be adequate to get him out to get his own visa (Russian visas are only issued outside the borders of Russia). It would seem that the Consulate folks are either idiots or fucking liars. The fact that a ten-second internet search turned up all the information we needed to orient ourselves to our situation makes the second of those two options the more probable. As И said this morning, there's really no way they could not know about it.
Anyway, back to the story. We took the packet of A's and L's passports and L's various birth documents to one of the passport control officers and I explained the situation and what we had been told by the consulate and the fact that A's visa expires on Friday (she really needs to go pretty soon) and the fact that the stupid American law requires a baby to have a passport and the fact that the main purpose of the trip -- some creative license taken here -- was to get the baby a proper visa. Plus, at the end I sort of offered to 'pay a fine' if that was what the situation called for. As I had hoped, the passport control officer found sympathy with our position and basically offered to head over to the department manager for his sign-off. She was in his office for a good few minutes before he came out himself and gave me a long line of text ending in 'get a visa'. So I attempted to paraphrase, 'they can go to the US and get their visa?'. But no. 'they need to go to the police and get the exit visa'. I asked which police, he said, 'the police'. I asked specifically which ones (they've got a few different kinds fulfilling different functions). He says, 'THE POLICE'. I say, 'so then we should go out to the traffic cops a the airport intersection and they'll take care of things?'. He say, 'T-H-E P-O-L-I-C-E', and walks away. Helpful.
So back to the LH counter, we get A's bags and I have to break it to her that it seems she's not leaving this morning as planned. The lady that I spoke to on the phone almost at the beginning of this basically laid out for me what we could do in terms of revising the tickets and helped us out towards the ticket office. And in the ticket office things started improving. We have, of course, non-changable, non-refundable, and so forth tickets. However, the LH people said that they understand that immigration issues like this come up and so there is a more or less long-standing policy of waiving the 'non's for people screwed in the way that A and L were. Of course, there is no room at this late date to get the flight pushed back a week or a couple days; space starts freeing up on the Frankfurt-Chicago flight (we could change dates without re-issue of tickets, but not routes) on the 22nd -- not an option I was prepared to bring back to the by-now collapsing A. So instead we came to the decision that we'll push back the date on her tickets to December, when we were all planning on coming by anyway, and just buy new ones for her for whenever this visa issue resolves itself. The Frankfurt-Portland direct flight is pretty open they say.
One bit of amusement came when a gentleman situated himself between me and the LH agent and began to loudly complain about not having been booked to a window seat. She tried several times to get him to step back and wait his turn, but no luck -- he kept taking the polite brush-offs for what they were. Finally, he pauses for breath or something and the LH girl tells him, 'I understand your unhappiness, but this other gentleman is dealing with the fact that his American citizen wife and newborn son are not being allowed to leave the country. I think you're done for now.' Awesome.
Anyway, as for the whole paperwork issue, there is apparently a consular division at the Pulkovo international airport, which is our first stop for getting things resolved. There is a nonzero (in the sense that no matter how big x is, 1/x will never be zero) chance that they will bang the whole thing out right there -- the Inter Nets say that at Pulkovo, Sheremtyevo, and Domodedovo airports, the consular divisions take care of emergency or otherwise special cases. Ours does seem to be a special case. On the other hand, we may end up having to spend up to a week waiting on paperwork to be done up -- in which case not only will L need a visa, but A will need a visa extension.
So, we make our way out of the airport. Near the gates, I see a policeman and stop to ask him if he knows anything about the consular office -- all anyone could say for sure to that point was that they were not open at 5AM. He made some guesses and then said that really, the best thing for us to do was go to our (the US) consulate. I explained, 'they don't give out visas there'. He said, 'well then, for information'. I: 'apparently they don't give that out either...'. So some Russian cop got a chuckle this morning, too.
Back home, I called И (I was polite enough to wait until 6:30 to do so; I was ready to ring before 5) and laid out our situation. He offered to make sure that A was escorted through any necessary steps in the papering process. Of course, we don't know if I would need to be there at the beginning (it wouldn't be unreasonable for them to ask for rboth arents, for example). So since we're going to be with the airport consular folks at 11, it is safe to say that the boys and I are not going to make our 11:00 flight to Kiev. The Pulkovo english-language website showed an alternate flight leaving just after six this evening, which would still leave the boys and I with enough time to get done what we need there. So I went back to the airport to find out about changing our tickets to that evening flight.
Once I made it to the head of the ticketing line, I learned that the website was incorrect, and that the morning flights are Mon-Wed-Fri and the evening flights are Tue-Thu-Fri. So in theory we could fly out tomorrow evening, spend the day of Friday getting our visas, then come back on saturday. except that there was no space on tomorrow's flight. The lady at the ticketing counter was nice enough, after hearing me relate my story over the phone to И, to change the dates for free to one week later. Now all that remains on that end is to get our hotel reservations shifted a week out, and Z, G, and I are set. That also gives us enough time to comfortably settle the questions of L's (and depending on speed, maybe A's) visas.
So in conclusion (for now):
- A is definitely going to be delayed in coming by the US
- When we all fly out in December, it will be through O'Hare, with a seven-hour layover
- The US Consulate in Saint-Petersburg (it's American Citizen Services department, at least) is staffed by assholes whose word should not under any circumstances be trusted.
- There turns out to be a means to extend one's visa legally if the need arises
- Lufthansa remains a very good outfit
So I was going to be writing right about now about how me and the boys are getting ready to get on a plane to Kiev. Instead...
We all got up at 3AM to get the jammied-kids stuffed in the car and A and L off to their flight to Frankfurt and ultimately back to Portland. We made pretty good time; got her there about five minutes before 4AM, then the boys and I headed back home. As we parked the car, my phone rings -- A. Jokingly, I asked her, 'what's wrong?'. Her response, 'they won't let the baby leave'.
Okay. So I had her pass the phone off to whatever person she was talking to and I started trying to get things straightened. Turns out the person she was talking to was the Lufthansa rep, who really couldn't do anything to help. So I offered to come back by and talk things over with the passport control folks myself. Called the kids back into the car, and away we went. This time, made it to the airport and inside by about 4:35. Right away a difficulty arose -- they were willing to break the security rules and let one non-ticketed person (me) in, but Z and G (still in their pajamas and yellow rubber boots) were going to put us over that limit. We got permission to stash to two boys in line-of-sight of A on the other side of the security area, and off I went to start the straightening-out process.
The issue, as it originally presented itself, was that L lacks a Russian visa in his passport. That is, the standard Russian visa is 'entry/exit' and he didn't have an 'exit'. Of course, we asked about that sort of thing at the US Consulate in Petersburg back before he was born and again when we got his passport. They assured us that the fact that he had no visa would be no problem -- simply demonstrating that he was born during the validity term of his mom's visa would be adequate to get him out to get his own visa (Russian visas are only issued outside the borders of Russia). It would seem that the Consulate folks are either idiots or fucking liars. The fact that a ten-second internet search turned up all the information we needed to orient ourselves to our situation makes the second of those two options the more probable. As И said this morning, there's really no way they could not know about it.
Anyway, back to the story. We took the packet of A's and L's passports and L's various birth documents to one of the passport control officers and I explained the situation and what we had been told by the consulate and the fact that A's visa expires on Friday (she really needs to go pretty soon) and the fact that the stupid American law requires a baby to have a passport and the fact that the main purpose of the trip -- some creative license taken here -- was to get the baby a proper visa. Plus, at the end I sort of offered to 'pay a fine' if that was what the situation called for. As I had hoped, the passport control officer found sympathy with our position and basically offered to head over to the department manager for his sign-off. She was in his office for a good few minutes before he came out himself and gave me a long line of text ending in 'get a visa'. So I attempted to paraphrase, 'they can go to the US and get their visa?'. But no. 'they need to go to the police and get the exit visa'. I asked which police, he said, 'the police'. I asked specifically which ones (they've got a few different kinds fulfilling different functions). He says, 'THE POLICE'. I say, 'so then we should go out to the traffic cops a the airport intersection and they'll take care of things?'. He say, 'T-H-E P-O-L-I-C-E', and walks away. Helpful.
So back to the LH counter, we get A's bags and I have to break it to her that it seems she's not leaving this morning as planned. The lady that I spoke to on the phone almost at the beginning of this basically laid out for me what we could do in terms of revising the tickets and helped us out towards the ticket office. And in the ticket office things started improving. We have, of course, non-changable, non-refundable, and so forth tickets. However, the LH people said that they understand that immigration issues like this come up and so there is a more or less long-standing policy of waiving the 'non's for people screwed in the way that A and L were. Of course, there is no room at this late date to get the flight pushed back a week or a couple days; space starts freeing up on the Frankfurt-Chicago flight (we could change dates without re-issue of tickets, but not routes) on the 22nd -- not an option I was prepared to bring back to the by-now collapsing A. So instead we came to the decision that we'll push back the date on her tickets to December, when we were all planning on coming by anyway, and just buy new ones for her for whenever this visa issue resolves itself. The Frankfurt-Portland direct flight is pretty open they say.
One bit of amusement came when a gentleman situated himself between me and the LH agent and began to loudly complain about not having been booked to a window seat. She tried several times to get him to step back and wait his turn, but no luck -- he kept taking the polite brush-offs for what they were. Finally, he pauses for breath or something and the LH girl tells him, 'I understand your unhappiness, but this other gentleman is dealing with the fact that his American citizen wife and newborn son are not being allowed to leave the country. I think you're done for now.' Awesome.
Anyway, as for the whole paperwork issue, there is apparently a consular division at the Pulkovo international airport, which is our first stop for getting things resolved. There is a nonzero (in the sense that no matter how big x is, 1/x will never be zero) chance that they will bang the whole thing out right there -- the Inter Nets say that at Pulkovo, Sheremtyevo, and Domodedovo airports, the consular divisions take care of emergency or otherwise special cases. Ours does seem to be a special case. On the other hand, we may end up having to spend up to a week waiting on paperwork to be done up -- in which case not only will L need a visa, but A will need a visa extension.
So, we make our way out of the airport. Near the gates, I see a policeman and stop to ask him if he knows anything about the consular office -- all anyone could say for sure to that point was that they were not open at 5AM. He made some guesses and then said that really, the best thing for us to do was go to our (the US) consulate. I explained, 'they don't give out visas there'. He said, 'well then, for information'. I: 'apparently they don't give that out either...'. So some Russian cop got a chuckle this morning, too.
Back home, I called И (I was polite enough to wait until 6:30 to do so; I was ready to ring before 5) and laid out our situation. He offered to make sure that A was escorted through any necessary steps in the papering process. Of course, we don't know if I would need to be there at the beginning (it wouldn't be unreasonable for them to ask for rboth arents, for example). So since we're going to be with the airport consular folks at 11, it is safe to say that the boys and I are not going to make our 11:00 flight to Kiev. The Pulkovo english-language website showed an alternate flight leaving just after six this evening, which would still leave the boys and I with enough time to get done what we need there. So I went back to the airport to find out about changing our tickets to that evening flight.
Once I made it to the head of the ticketing line, I learned that the website was incorrect, and that the morning flights are Mon-Wed-Fri and the evening flights are Tue-Thu-Fri. So in theory we could fly out tomorrow evening, spend the day of Friday getting our visas, then come back on saturday. except that there was no space on tomorrow's flight. The lady at the ticketing counter was nice enough, after hearing me relate my story over the phone to И, to change the dates for free to one week later. Now all that remains on that end is to get our hotel reservations shifted a week out, and Z, G, and I are set. That also gives us enough time to comfortably settle the questions of L's (and depending on speed, maybe A's) visas.
So in conclusion (for now):
- A is definitely going to be delayed in coming by the US
- When we all fly out in December, it will be through O'Hare, with a seven-hour layover
- The US Consulate in Saint-Petersburg (it's American Citizen Services department, at least) is staffed by assholes whose word should not under any circumstances be trusted.
- There turns out to be a means to extend one's visa legally if the need arises
- Lufthansa remains a very good outfit
августа 03, 2007
Friday
8/3 20:21, Pushkin time
So today at about noon I got a call from the chief of the crew working on our foundation that the backhoe and dump truck guys had showed up and started hauling old foundation chunks out and were looking to get paid. So I rushed over, stopping to grab an extra 10,000r at an atm on the way (they wanted 300r per cubic meter of removed stuff and I figured that at most they would haul off thirty cubes; so 20,000 was plenty extra). When I got there, the neighbor that had been keeping track informed me that already six dump trucks worth of stuff had been hauled off and the seventh was pretty close to full. These were 16-18 cubic meter dumps. Gack.
They ended up taking out 128 cubes of stuff. And as the final one was being loaded I called A and had her hurry over with the additional cash. But it's done. And the uzbeks are finishing the trenches right now with an eye to drilling and pouring starting tomorrow. Which is also И В's birthday, so we'll be over on that side of town for the better part of tomorrow anyway. And by the way, 128 cubes was for 38,400r, which according to И's building engineer is actually a really good deal. We ended up giving a chunk of it in dollars and a chunk in rubles; the guy organizing it told me when I asked, 'pay in euros or bahts or yen or whatever you want, it's all the same to me'. Chatting while the last truck was loaded, I learned that he and his crew are byelorussians here on guest-worker gigs. As he put it, whereas back there having two hundred bucks is enough to warrant getting picked up and shaken down - hard - by the local cops, out here he and his eight guys pull down over a half million dollars worth of profit a year, without any real hassles at all. Everybody comes for the money.
This evening also saw Z getting into pretty serious trouble. I came home and one of the neighbor kids came up to let me know that Z had called him a bad name (not really of the high-octane class of curses that I've learned at work, but this is a culture where even 'idiot' is a pretty serious one depending on the context). Z got a serious talking-to; was sent outside to seriously apologize to the kid and everyone else who was in earshot, and got sent to bed early. The id (actually one of Z's good friends) basically told him, 'I forgive you', and it was let slide. I suspect -- and explained to the kid before going in to lay in to Z, that most likely he just didn't understand the seriousness of what he was saying. Hopefully this all made an impression. It's not like Portland here, and this is probably going some way to make Z aware of that.
At the same time, I really need to keep a handle on my language, too. I slipped up one time around Z. To be informed by him, wide-eyed, that he understood what I had said. Understand or not, it's probably not a good idea for him to hear me using that kind of language (which, on the other hand, makes up almost 30% of 'industry' conversation -- Russian is very versatile).
And since I'm on a gloomy kick, I may as well finish off with the really dire news. A's friend passed it on to her a couple mornings ago, but I was unable to believe it until I found this confirmation. I trust that anyone with a soul who goes to Portland ever for the rest of time will respect the justice of the boycott that is being advocated. Without EBL, the whole twenty-eight hours of flying seems almost pointless...
So today at about noon I got a call from the chief of the crew working on our foundation that the backhoe and dump truck guys had showed up and started hauling old foundation chunks out and were looking to get paid. So I rushed over, stopping to grab an extra 10,000r at an atm on the way (they wanted 300r per cubic meter of removed stuff and I figured that at most they would haul off thirty cubes; so 20,000 was plenty extra). When I got there, the neighbor that had been keeping track informed me that already six dump trucks worth of stuff had been hauled off and the seventh was pretty close to full. These were 16-18 cubic meter dumps. Gack.
They ended up taking out 128 cubes of stuff. And as the final one was being loaded I called A and had her hurry over with the additional cash. But it's done. And the uzbeks are finishing the trenches right now with an eye to drilling and pouring starting tomorrow. Which is also И В's birthday, so we'll be over on that side of town for the better part of tomorrow anyway. And by the way, 128 cubes was for 38,400r, which according to И's building engineer is actually a really good deal. We ended up giving a chunk of it in dollars and a chunk in rubles; the guy organizing it told me when I asked, 'pay in euros or bahts or yen or whatever you want, it's all the same to me'. Chatting while the last truck was loaded, I learned that he and his crew are byelorussians here on guest-worker gigs. As he put it, whereas back there having two hundred bucks is enough to warrant getting picked up and shaken down - hard - by the local cops, out here he and his eight guys pull down over a half million dollars worth of profit a year, without any real hassles at all. Everybody comes for the money.
This evening also saw Z getting into pretty serious trouble. I came home and one of the neighbor kids came up to let me know that Z had called him a bad name (not really of the high-octane class of curses that I've learned at work, but this is a culture where even 'idiot' is a pretty serious one depending on the context). Z got a serious talking-to; was sent outside to seriously apologize to the kid and everyone else who was in earshot, and got sent to bed early. The id (actually one of Z's good friends) basically told him, 'I forgive you', and it was let slide. I suspect -- and explained to the kid before going in to lay in to Z, that most likely he just didn't understand the seriousness of what he was saying. Hopefully this all made an impression. It's not like Portland here, and this is probably going some way to make Z aware of that.
At the same time, I really need to keep a handle on my language, too. I slipped up one time around Z. To be informed by him, wide-eyed, that he understood what I had said. Understand or not, it's probably not a good idea for him to hear me using that kind of language (which, on the other hand, makes up almost 30% of 'industry' conversation -- Russian is very versatile).
And since I'm on a gloomy kick, I may as well finish off with the really dire news. A's friend passed it on to her a couple mornings ago, but I was unable to believe it until I found this confirmation. I trust that anyone with a soul who goes to Portland ever for the rest of time will respect the justice of the boycott that is being advocated. Without EBL, the whole twenty-eight hours of flying seems almost pointless...
августа 02, 2007
Getting close again
8/2 17:11, Pushkin time
So. Into the month that will see my one-year in Russia.
As to the house; trenches have been dug and we have been promised that tomorrow (seriously) morning (no, seriously) the tractor guy will definitely (quit snickering, he really means it this time) come out to take care of those lingering chunks of old foundation so the trenches can be finished and the drilling can start. I've paid out in the last couple of days the 16,000r for the sand and gravel; and 74,000r for the rebar, concrete, boards, anchors, and so forth that will be used in the foundationing, along with their delivery. All that's left now is to take care of the work itself -- which doesn't get paid until it is done.
Depending on how this all works out, we'll probably turn right around and have this same crew (who, for all the pain, are performing satisfactorily) do the brickwork of raising the half-floor up to the appropriate level preparatory to starting to stack wood on top of it. Supply of said wood, by the way, still not completely hammered out. But that's not too terrible; we'll get the well and septic put in during the meantime. Then everything else is ground-temperature-insensitive.
We're also getting ready with the boys for A's trip back to the US and our -- somewhat more brief -- trip to Kiev. G as usual is less than enthusiastic. Oh well. Three days we get to spend there; at least there will be hot water.
I also yesterday managed to run into the parents of a new kid in G's preschool who I had been informed some weeks back had an american dad who was looking to meet the 'other' americans in Pushkin. Surprisingly, the kid turned out to be one of the ones who never gave me the impression of speaking any english -- G says the two of them only talk in russian. Mom is ukranian; dad is from Virginia. They're here with Phillip-Morris (which has a big factory over on the other side of Kievskoye shosse). It was a mildly amusing encounter. As I walked into the preschool, mom and kid walked out and I heard once they passed him tell her, 'that was Garret's dad'. So she stopped me (in english) and made brief introductions before dad got out from the car -- he's sitting in the back, behind the Driver. Brief history turns up that they just came over this way from living the last four years in Switzerland (some sort of big P-M office there). Of course, I sling out the, 'alors tu parles aussi francais?'. Dad just sort of glazes, and it was up to the kid to tell me in french that his dad in fact doesn't parle. Pause for a couple of beats... (four years?!?)
Then back on topic, dad asks if there's any sort of -- I believe the word he used was 'society'. You know, other foreigners. In Pushkin. Again, pause for a few beats.
So. Not really. The expats all pretty well congregate in the city. I made a joke about them giving us directions be Metro station, and us having to crack out a map to figure out what the heck they are talking about. Since we drive ourselves everywhere, you see. Pause...
So then he asks about groups we hang around with. Well. There's И and family; И В and family; Е and С; Т and family; М and Л out in Pokrovskaya; С Ш; and then the guys from back in Moscow. I spent a few more moments pondering before coming up with the diplomatic answer that, 'we pretty much hang out with locals'.
Who knows. Maybe we'll hook up with them sometime.
As well, in response to a question that was posed me regarding my recent comments about people, not-northwesterners. Apparently, the differences that A and I notice so strongly are not really very readily apparent to a Russian. At least so they tell me.
So. Into the month that will see my one-year in Russia.
As to the house; trenches have been dug and we have been promised that tomorrow (seriously) morning (no, seriously) the tractor guy will definitely (quit snickering, he really means it this time) come out to take care of those lingering chunks of old foundation so the trenches can be finished and the drilling can start. I've paid out in the last couple of days the 16,000r for the sand and gravel; and 74,000r for the rebar, concrete, boards, anchors, and so forth that will be used in the foundationing, along with their delivery. All that's left now is to take care of the work itself -- which doesn't get paid until it is done.
Depending on how this all works out, we'll probably turn right around and have this same crew (who, for all the pain, are performing satisfactorily) do the brickwork of raising the half-floor up to the appropriate level preparatory to starting to stack wood on top of it. Supply of said wood, by the way, still not completely hammered out. But that's not too terrible; we'll get the well and septic put in during the meantime. Then everything else is ground-temperature-insensitive.
We're also getting ready with the boys for A's trip back to the US and our -- somewhat more brief -- trip to Kiev. G as usual is less than enthusiastic. Oh well. Three days we get to spend there; at least there will be hot water.
I also yesterday managed to run into the parents of a new kid in G's preschool who I had been informed some weeks back had an american dad who was looking to meet the 'other' americans in Pushkin. Surprisingly, the kid turned out to be one of the ones who never gave me the impression of speaking any english -- G says the two of them only talk in russian. Mom is ukranian; dad is from Virginia. They're here with Phillip-Morris (which has a big factory over on the other side of Kievskoye shosse). It was a mildly amusing encounter. As I walked into the preschool, mom and kid walked out and I heard once they passed him tell her, 'that was Garret's dad'. So she stopped me (in english) and made brief introductions before dad got out from the car -- he's sitting in the back, behind the Driver. Brief history turns up that they just came over this way from living the last four years in Switzerland (some sort of big P-M office there). Of course, I sling out the, 'alors tu parles aussi francais?'. Dad just sort of glazes, and it was up to the kid to tell me in french that his dad in fact doesn't parle. Pause for a couple of beats... (four years?!?)
Then back on topic, dad asks if there's any sort of -- I believe the word he used was 'society'. You know, other foreigners. In Pushkin. Again, pause for a few beats.
So. Not really. The expats all pretty well congregate in the city. I made a joke about them giving us directions be Metro station, and us having to crack out a map to figure out what the heck they are talking about. Since we drive ourselves everywhere, you see. Pause...
So then he asks about groups we hang around with. Well. There's И and family; И В and family; Е and С; Т and family; М and Л out in Pokrovskaya; С Ш; and then the guys from back in Moscow. I spent a few more moments pondering before coming up with the diplomatic answer that, 'we pretty much hang out with locals'.
Who knows. Maybe we'll hook up with them sometime.
As well, in response to a question that was posed me regarding my recent comments about people, not-northwesterners. Apparently, the differences that A and I notice so strongly are not really very readily apparent to a Russian. At least so they tell me.
