Last year in October, Bill was in Siberia. Here are his journal entries from that trip. Names are initialed or changed for privacy of those who may not want to find themselves on this blog.
Oct. 26
Well, made it to Siberia and if we didn't get lost today (which we didn't) I don't think I have anything to worry about. Monday afternoon, before our meeting, S. and I walked in the rain down to Red Square. It we pretty impressive - the Kremlin and everything. Saw Lenin's tomb, but as you told me, they must have moved him since there was no one waiting to get in and visit. We went in St. Basil's church. You should look it up on the internet and see a picture! must have 8 onion-topped spires, each one is different colored, and each one is actually a seperate church. Pretty weird inside, really.
Then we had our meeting - big waste of time. But we met Nika our translator all week. She reminds me of Bev S. in looks. Then we sat around the airport for 4 hours and flew all night to Kemerovo.
Got to the hotel at 6 AM and took a nap and shower. Had lunch with our client then a meeting. Didn't get very far on the project. Walked around last night in the cold rain looking for a restaurant, just S. and I. Drank three BIG beers and a vodka shot, had a weird conversation with a drunk, and called it a night. Today we flew in an old Russian Red Army helicopter about an hour+ south to the new mine site they want to put in. It was a huge helicopter - more like a King Air airplane inside than any helo I've ever been in. Lots of mines, lots of forest (they call it "Tiger"). We landed on the muddy, wet ground and drove in an ex army truck down onto the property. Had a vodka toast and open faced ham or cheese sandwiches (had some type of sausage too, but it had cucs on it so I passed - although I did eat the tomotoe salad yesterday).
That's about it so far. I'm ready to come home, but alas, the work hasn't really started.
Now that I've found an internet, I'll see if I can write you messages on my computer and transfer them so I don't have to sit here and type.
Friday, October 28, 2005
Well the first week’s over, and the weekend is staring us in the face – the worst time of any trip away from home, and more importantly away from you. Although it’s already late Friday afternoon here, you’re (hopefully) sound asleep. I had hoped to be able to figure out how to phone you before the weekend started, but alas it proves impossible. Hopefully I’ll at least be able to call you from St. Petersburg on Wednesday, but that seems like a long way off.
Unfortunately the internet café here at the hotel isn’t open on the weekend, so I asked Nika to help me find another one. While we found one near the post office, it is also closed this weekend. Nika says she knows where another one is, but it will require taking a bus – an adventure that sounds appealing now but I’m not so sure how it will actually work out – looking for the stop at Octobersky Prospect, assuming that I can even get on the correct bus to begin with, although as they more or less continuously drove by the stop, it seemed like nearly every one was going the direction she said we needed to take. Well, that’s my big adventure for the weekend.
Other than tonight that is. Nika is getting tickets for S. and I to go with her to some concert in town. That will at least give us something to do.
I ate breakfast by myself the first two mornings. That was a trip, first just finding the restaurant here in the hotel, then getting a table, and ordering. Fortunately the waitress got me an English menu, and I was able to order a ham omelet, toast and juice, but it was not exactly easy. The omelet was actually pretty good, so the next morning I ordered fried eggs and ham – after I ordered it I realized it could be anything from runny to cooked solid – fried eggs was a pretty stupid thing to order. It wasn’t too bad, though, but a little runnier than I prefer. The ham, however, was much worse in a big steak than in the small pieces of the omelet – I think it was boiled or something. I wanted to puke after breakfast. And then at lunch yesterday, at the mine office, they had some kind of thing that at first I thought was a sausage, but looked more like an egg roll coated in some kind of stuff that kind of tasted like fish batter, complete with a fishy taste. I ate a few bites and never did figure out what it was – fish or meat or whatever. Then I got a bite with a little stringy white thing. I ate it and couldn’t tell what it was but hoped it was some kind of cheese. But when I took the next fork full, it was just too runny and white and disgusting for me to eat! Oh, and this was right after I’d had my first borscht. It wasn’t too bad, just cabbage soup – and real Russian borscht doesn’t have beets in it. I ate the broth and some of the cabbage and God knows what else, but left a fair amount of the floaters in the bottom of the bowl.
Last night for dinner we went to a pretty fancy place. Outside there was a big sign, something like “all honor to the coal miners” or some such thing, so I thought at first it was decorated like a mine, with hanging miner’s lamps and rounded ceilings, with lots of white drapery all about. But after I saw the waitresses garb, it became apparent they were trying for some kind of Arabian look, but failed. I did however get to watch most of Game 4 of the World Series, albeit with a significant delay and I had already found out that the White Sox had won the series so it was somewhat anticlimactic.
This restaurant was down by the River Tomb. You can walk the 6 or 8 blocks from our hotel to the river promenade down the middle of the park-like boulevard complete with numerous picnic benches and no end of monuments. The big one down by the river was one dedicated to the men lost in WW2, and there were also all kinds of small signs for soldiers that died in the 1970s, I would guess in Afghanistan. And another monument to what looked like a cosmonaut – I asked Nika and she said that the first man in space was from around here so I guess that’s who it was.
This morning while waiting in the lobby for everyone else, I saw this mother and little baby walking all around. They walked over by me, and the mother spoke in English to the child – something like “now where do you want to go?” So I asked how old he was and she almost fell over – YOU SPEAK ENGLISH?!?!?! He was 2 (although he looked and walked like Jon – which I said). The mother told me that he was quite small, that they had just adopted him – he had been taken from his mother who was an alcoholic and who kept abandoning him. They were from San Jose, CA and had been here for weeks getting details worked out but they had just gotten him yesterday, expected to get his passport photos today and then spend a week in Moscow until all the papers were completed. She said that I was the first English speaking person she’d met other than other folks staying here that were also adopting Russian babies. She said that they went down to Novoskosnyk, the town about 3 hours south of here near the mine we flew over, and there were 4 orphanages with over 150 kids that would just break your heart. She said they only let the kids outside for 10 minutes a day, and not in the winter. So I’ll have to keep my eyes open for other young parents and see if I see any more.
Okay, I’m off to try and send this to you now, before they close down for the weekend and just to make sure you get at least one e-mail from me after you get back from the weekend, regardless if I can figure out the bus schedule or not!
OCTOBER 30
I visited this morning a Russian Orthodox service. Actually, I said my rosary there since it was more than impossible to follow the service. And I thought our Tridentine Masses were ritualistic - they don't hold a candle to the Orthodox. We left after an hour and a half, and as near as I could tell, they had just gotten to the offertory. My goodness, it took 10 minutes to incense the Book of the Gospel before they chanted it! But it was interesting, to say the least.
Friday night we went to the concert. As it turns out it was Siberian and Russian folk music and dancers. Afterwards they gave us a CD with the whole show on it, so you can check it out yourself later this week!
It's been right around freezing to date, both night and day, but I think today is the coldest yet - and we had to walk several blocks after church and it's as cold as I've ever been. S. has one of those Russian mink hats - he let me try it on and it was like sticking your head in a furnace! Sorry, but so far no sign of anything like the Afghan hat you want. We went to the market yesterday and I checked out lots of fur hats but nothing like you showed me.
We're at a new internet place today (Sunday AM) across town from our hotel. It's much nicer than the one in the hotel, or even the one at the Post Office we checked out the other day.
NEXT DAY
Salutations from Siberia!
Well, at least I was able to e-mail you yesterday, so now I’m going to try and write on my computer and transfer via memory stick. I never could figure out the USB port on the computer, but IF I understood the gal working there, and IF she understood what I was asking, then this should work. We’ll see.
Unfortunately, the internet café in the first floor of this hotel is only open from 10 AM (too late – we usually leave by 9) until 7 PM (so far we’ve been knocking off at 5 so that should work tonight, but that’s more than 12 hours from now – a whole new day will transpire before then).
I just got up – it’s 5 AM. That’s when CNN comes on a channel over here, and I can hear “American” English! I think it’s as difficult to speak with S., or at least understand him, then it is the Russians. His Yorkshire accent is pretty thick. I wind up asking him to either repeat nearly everything he says – sometimes it’s just a word, or some phrase I don’t know what he’s saying, and sometimes it’s the whole sentence. But at least I can usually understand Nika. She’s pretty good with her English. Actually, she’s quite good – captures inflections and emotions pretty well, but I still think sometimes she’s missing some things. I suppose idioms cause her no end of grief.
Apparently she used to teach English as a second language at the University level – one of the guys we’re working with here at Severstal, Igor (I-gore, not E-gore) had her as a teacher years ago. She found that rather amusing!
I already told you how Nika reminds me of Bev. She’s got short blond hair, and glasses and a face like Bev, although she’s quite thin. When I got up to get off the plane after our arrival in Kemerovo, I looked around for her among the passengers (we each sat several rows apart, which meant I couldn’t figure out what the stewardess was asking me – she finally just threw me a dinner at one point, after asking me the same question (in retrospect – “would you like some dinner?” about four times but I had just woken up and couldn’t figure out what she wanted). Anyway, I looked around, and saw Nika about three rows behind me. Then I saw someone else, on the opposite side of the plane, that I thought was her. And I kept looking back and forth between the two nondescript thin, short-haired blondes, each about 55 years old, each with tiny wire rimmed glasses, and finally I figured out it was the second woman – for sure. Only to turn around and see yet another person that looked like her! Obviously she looks a lot like all middle aged Russian women! By the way, the third one was her.
The main guy here at SV’s operations, which are called K............gal, is a guy named Sy. He’s about 55, not too tall or fat, but still a BIG man. In fact, nearly all these guys have huge hands and fingers, and they’re very stout. I guess wimps like me can’t live through the Siberian winters!
Anyway, Sy has a commanding presence. At our first meeting, there were about ten guys, and everyone else had dress shirts and ties on, some suits, but Sy had one of those nice long sleeve knit pullover shirt (he probably had a sport coat somewhere) with no tie. But there was no doubt he was in charge. He seemed to want to make a point during our first meeting- must have wanted to intimidate us in front of his staff, but he was much more joking and pleasant yesterday in the helicopter.
S, Nika and I, along with the two guys from the Mining Institute, were outfitted in blue winter gear. Getting dressed in the surveyor’s office was kind of a trip, because once Nika left, I had no idea what we were supposed to be doing. We took our coats off ( they always seem to get offended when we just put them on a chair or in a corner and make a big deal about hanging them in the armoirs (or whatever you call them) that seem to be in every office – I guess if you need a place to put all your coats, sweaters, boots, and other winter gear and don’t want it just sitting around. We kind of just let the St Pete guys take the lead, but otherwise they were no help. Was I supposed to put these ski bibs over my jeans? No you dummy, put the long underwear on first! Which, by the way, was absolutely the warmest long underwear I’ve ever worn – I wanted to ask them if I could keep it! The stuff was all brand new, too, we had to take them out of the packages. Including some kind of woolen foot booties (over socks, or instead of?) and huge black boots. Anyway, the bibs and the HUGE coal were all blue, with reflective stripes – we looked like five people all dressed alike and ready to head out onto an arctic expedition! But Igor just put his boots on, and a lighter jacket. Thought maybe they were just kind of setting us up as dweebs from outside Siberia!
So we make our way back down the five flights of stairs at the SV headquarters (huge massive, school-like building, long hallways with doors into each office, terrible fake wood linoleum on the “nice” floors and very well worn real wood on the others, along with vast marble stairwells (yesterday we took the back stairs – today the main ones). Never saw any plants anywhere inside, but lots of mini-shrines in the common areas on each floor, either honoring their war dead, or the awards the coal mines have gotten, or a bunch of statistics on the types of mining equipment on the surveyor’s floor.
Then take the same van we took from the hotel an hour earlier (weird seating arrangement in very “industrial” type seats facing both directions) back to the airport. We get there and meet another car with a guy in it. We have to sign a sheet and he takes all our names. I was surprised when these guy went with us – I asked Nika later who he was, and she said from “security.” Okay. Glad I didn’t make him mad!
So we stand outside behind our van on the side of the street, in the freezing rain that occasionally spitted some snow, thinking that you sure couldn’t say this was a good day to fly. Finally, Nika said that even though we were supposed to leave at 11 and it was now 11:20, we were waiting for Sergey. When he shows up, with his driver in his own car, the three vehicles go winding our way behind hangers and such and then drive out on the tarmac and there’s these two BIG army helicopters. I was expecting something like the 8-passenger, stretched Bell helicopter we had at R&F, with the bubble in front and two doors on each side, and only a pilot, but this had at least a three passenger crew, all dressed out in army garb, and the first thing I see when I get up the ladder-like stairs was a microwave and wood paneling – this wasn’t no helicopter I’d ever seen! And Sy shows up in his full camouflage outfit and fancy leather jacket – that’s when I realized he was probably a major in the army or something before he went to work for the mines. I never did figure out if this was an army surplus kind of thing, or if they actually rented the helicopter for the day from the Army, which is what I suspect since when we landed back at the airport at the end of the day it was swarmed over by other Army maintenance folks. I guess if you’re not going to get funding from Moscow, you have to improvise ways to pay for maintaining your aircraft.
The trip itself was pretty nice. When we first took off, the weather was still ugly, but it turned out to be a nice, sunny day. As soon as we took off, Sy looked at me, made the sign of the cross (backwards, the Orthodox way, I think, since I’ve seen others make it this way) and laughed. I knew what he meant – kind of a universal joke, but one I wasn’t really hoping to have to laugh at. And only about five minutes into the flight, the helicopter was facing one direction, but we were flying more than 45 degrees off that, kind of going sideways. I suppose because of the wind. Didn’t really enamor me to the whole idea, but that was the last of any funny things going on, the rest of the trip was quite smooth, but very NOISY!!!!! I wish I had brought my ear plugs along. And you couldn’t see as well as I’d hoped out side the little porthole windows, since there were two huge gas tanks hanging off each side of the plane (or were they bombs?), blocking the view downward. But after about an hour of flight we started seeing surface mines (oh my! Huge fiascos of unregulated environmental disaster with no conceivable plan, just more relatively small draglines and electric shovels in literally hundreds of tiny pits. We only saw one mine that actually looked like a real mine, with a long pit and the dragline making its way across the landscape, where you could actually see what the plan was).
And the Tiger (the woods) wasn’t as impressive as I thought it would be. It was a blend of white barked aspens and pine trees, with numerous clearings scattered about, full of heavy undergrowth. The hills weren’t anything like E KY, more like Ohio, but the actual site where they want to put in the mine was pretty darn remote. We looked at the nearby train routes, since they have a choice as to which way they might run the line to their new mine, neither of which looks very promising. And they’ll have to run power lines over the hills, and an access road won’t be easy either.
Anyway, you’re probably not as interested in the mines as other events of the day. I told you about the truck ride down to the “river” – it was only about fifteen feet wide, but they said three meters deep. The vodka was in a bottle like wine – I was hoping that’s what it was, but no, it was “hot damn” like Vodka – actually pretty smooth, but it definitely took your breath away. Sy opened the Vodka, using a huge knife to peel away the seal. Then he said how the first drink always goes to the “woods creature” or “woodsman” – Nika used both terms in her translation. Nevertheless, he took about an inch of vodka in the first plastic glass and tossed it into the woods and said some kind of toast. Then we each got about an inch and a half of vodka in a plastic cup, Sy made a toast about the team there assembled to work together for the success of the future mine, I made some stupid similar toast – “to a successful and safe mine” – and they all drank their vodka down in one gulp. I realized this as I looked down at more than 2/3rd of mine still in my cup. Oops! Well I had to take a few more swigs to finish mine – at least Nika didn’t finish hers either – in fact she poured the rest of hers into Igor’s cup, and so he and I were the only two with any left. A few minutes later, Sy and the boys were laughing at Igor for still having some vodka left – I don’t think any of them saw Nika pour hers into his cup and they were most likely calling him some kind of wimp. Boy, thank God for all those years of practice with K. – it prepared me to at least hold my own, but I was sure glad they didn’t have another bottle!
Then they brought out the sandwiches, and we stood there in the woods, next to the stream and had our picnic. One of the guys who pulled up in the truck walked with us – I think he was yet another Vladimir, like one of the two Mining Institute guys (Igor warned us that that academicians at the various mining institutes weren’t like the real coal miners, and that the XYZ folks were the worst of all the mining institutes, and he was right!).
Anyway, Vladimir carried along an axe with about a two-foot long handle with us as we walked the quarter mile through the undergrowth down to the river from as far as the truck went. Vladimir refused to take any vodka, and instead toasted with water. I suppose he’s an alcoholic, although there could be some other reason why he didn’t take a drink, but he kind of kidded with Sy, like “you know I don’t drink” kind of banter when Sergey tried to give him some vodka. Never did figure out why he took the axe, but they were all kidding him about something like he doesn’t need a gun to protect us, he just will kill any wild animals with his axe. Anyway, he went down the steep bank to the river and filled up his cup with the water. He brought it back up and showed the other guys how clear it was – someone poured a cup of bottled water, and I think the river water WAS clearer!
Enough about the trip. When we got back, after I found the internet café, S and I went for a walk in town until we met Nika for dinner. It looked much brighter and nicer in the sunshine than it did in the drizzle the day before. The buildings looked brighter and nicer, at least in this part of town, near the city center (the outlying five-story buildings we pass in the van sill look very Communist-like, ugly apartments). We walked the other way and saw the town music hall, and the town theater (not cinema, more like a classical Greek style theatre). Then we saw the big town square, with its huge statue of Lenin. S. said that these folks around here are more disappointed with Perestroika and Glastnost and still look back to the times of Lenin as the good old days, even though he forcibly moved hundreds of thousands of folks from Estonia and other portions of western Russia and made them coal miners during the War.
I took a bunch of pictures, but it was getting dark pretty quickly and I don’t know how they’ll take. But the town almost looks quaint, in a socialist kind of way. S says that this is the only town with any culture or class within hundreds of miles, and I’d say he’s probably right. Nika says that the population is about 500,000 which makes it pretty good sized. She actually grew up nearby, and her 85-year old mom and one of her three kids still lives there still. Found this out at dinner. We went to a place called E-Moe, pronounced “yow-meow”. It was a traditional Russian restaurant. All the waitresses wore these red and white folk dress, and it was decorated in early Russian wood furnishings, kind of kitchy like a Russian Cracker Barrel, or maybe more like a Texas Roadhouse. Nika said it was a good place to try traditional Russian food – like that’s really what I wanted to do! She tried to get me to order the fish soup (S did) or the cold soup that she said the broth was kind of a mix between Coke and beer, and it had all kinds of vegetables and fish in it. Hmm, hmm! Sounded so good, didn’t it? I passed. And I passed on the borscht. The English menu we had was pretty interesting. Who knew that there were a least a dozen ways to fix tongue – not I, I assure you! The food items were all named things like, “Russian hare peaking from behind a bush” which was of course rabbit under a cover of pickled red cabbage or something. The waitress, who reminded me of Marsha from the Brady Bunch, but of course not a word of English, recommended some kind of meat plate for us to share. Which sounded pretty good to me, and then we ordered tomatoes, boiled potatoes, fried potatoes, and fried fern – S’s idea. I had hoped it would actually be fried, but no, it was more like very tiny asparagus. We all got beers, and Stuart also got vodka and pickled cabbage as an appetizer. I never did decide if it was the fish soup, the cabbage or the fried fern, but something sure stank! Oh, and with the soup, he got some kind of little pastry filled with fish and onions – boy was I sorry I didn’t order that! The meat was brought out on some kind of little metal box, I guess it somehow kept it warm. It had a veal and a beef steak (which were outstanding) and pork sausage on a skewer (same as I got for lunch in Moscow and I regretted it then also, but not too bad) and the sausage, which the waitress called kelboska, but it tasted more like English sausage – yuk! We just kept helping ourselves to the meat and I ate the fries, that was about it for me. And more beer! The “standard” mug is 0.51 liters, which is a pretty good sized beer – slightly bigger than the biggest draft you typically get in the US. It was actually Czech beer though, not Russian, although I’ve like the Russian beer I’ve had so far.
I’m sure there’s so much more to tell you, but I’d better call it a day or else everyone you send this too will harass me for being so long-winded!
Salutation #2 Orthodox Mass
Since my last e-mail was not composed on my computer but on the spur of the moment at the Internet Café, I may repeat myself, but in which case I apologize.
I’ve told you about the concert and church, and those were definitely the highlights of the last few days. Oh, and we found out today that Sy, the Director of the mining company, was relieved of his duties on Friday. Seems that he has taken full responsibility for an accident at one of their mines that killed four people. So now he’s in charge of development, which by our count is at least four different folks we’ve been told are in charge of development, specifically this mine that we’re working on. Politics as usual, with a Russian flair!
By the time I send this and you read it, we’ll have gone out to one of their active mines on Monday. That’s about the last thing we have to do down here in Kemerovo, but we aren’t scheduled to leave until Wednesday morning, so who knows what we’ll do on Tuesday. They’re probably all waiting for me to make a decision as to what we’re going to do!
I think I mentioned that most of the menu times are listed with titles like, Herring under the looking glass, and so other than knowing the general idea that it’s herring, you never really know what you’re getting because very seldom are the details of the item translated. For example the other day I got a Parmesan Salad – had no idea what to expect – wind up being some lettuce, not much, with lots of tomatoes and cucumbers, with one or two pieaces of parmesan cheese, blue cheese and about two kinds of mystery meat chunks. Anyway, today on the menu was a Mister Tomato. I pointed it out to Nika since she orders a plate of tomatoes at every meal. But she read the translation and said it was olives stuffed with tomatoes and mayonnaise, so she passed, but I thought you’d try it!
More on the Orthodox mass. To start out, the church of course has no pews, just a large open area, with four big pillars supporting the huge dome. Nearly every square of the walls and columns is coated with painted icons of various saints, some of which are real paintings in frames, some gold relief artwork, but most painted on the walls. The inside of the dome, which was quite high, was a huge portrait of Jesus. And there were pictures of Jesus and Mary everywhere, with untold number of other saints. Before Mass started, everyone was going up to the various icons, putting candles in the sand candleholders, bowing and making the “backward” sign of the cross, and kissing the icons. So this was going on in about 15 sites, and off to one side a priest was hearing confessions out in the open nave. At least that’s what I assume he was doing. The people were more or less lined up (the Russians sure don’t know how to queue up, they mostly just butt in) and after they said something to the priest, he puts a gold edged cloth on their bowed heads, says a prayer (absolution I presume) and then takes it off, they each bow down and kiss a book and move on. Two different old ladies came up to us as we stood there and waited for mass to begin. One told S, well through Nika, not to put his hands behind his back or else he’ll be a widower. The other told us that men generally stand on the right side and women on the left, although this is not a requirement, but she seemed like she wanted us to go to the right side!
Nika is an atheist, so she was little to no help at the Mass. In fact, I had asked her about going to church earlier in the week and she said she didn’t think there was a church in town! It was relatively new, so I presume it wasn’t here when she was growing up.
So last night when she called to see if we’d need her to translate on Sunday (we didn’t use her on Saturday – I thought that we were doing her a favor, but S and I figured out that it probably means she won’t get paid for the day, so we were determined to use her on Sunday at least for a while) we asked her if she could find out about Mass. I had pointed out a sign outside the hotel that I thought said there was a church (it had a cross on it and seemed to indicate to me that maybe there was a church nearby) but she kind of dismissed it. Anyway, she found out that Mass was at 9:30 and she also reminded us that we needed to turn our clocks back overnight.
Anyway, we met Nika at 9 and took a taxi to the church. It was huge and construction was still being completed. The service finally started about 9:40, which gave me a chance to look around at everything. I forget what they call that wall that separates the altar area from the general public, but it was darned impressive. And there was like a communion railing that came out into the center of the dome – it had a big pillow like thing right under the center of the dome (never did figure out what that was for) and a picture on a special stand. People were lining up (more or less) on each side of the railing and entering this area more or less one at a time, bowing, making the sign of the cross and kissing this picture on like a book stand. Never figured out what that was either.
The first 20 minutes of the mass consisted of what sounded like a rather high-pitched boy chanting from behind the wall. I guess it’s the Russian equivalent of Gregorian chant. All of a sudden, it sounds like a broken record, and he sings the same words, something like “bitty canoe” over and over and over and over again before moving on. All the while people would bow and make the sign of the cross, sometimes together but more often a couple spread out around the church just appeared to do it at various times more or less at random, but there may have been some pattern I never could figure out. Then the “bitty canoe” words again, about every tenth time he’d throw in a couple of other words, then back to “bitty canoe.” Five minutes later the same thing. I finally counted them once, and he sang it 40 times in a row, with about three or four short two or three word phrases stuck in there about three or four times. I figured this was some type of Confiteor, and Nika told me later that it meant “he saves” or something like that. Finally, after 20 minutes, we heard another voice, this time the priest or the deacon, much deeper in a series of short replies to the higher-pitched chants.
It was at least 45 minutes into it before one of the doors to the side of the main door in the screen opened up and what I guess is the deacon came out with incense. I mean he spent the next 15 minutes incensing all the icons (beginning with the one of Jesus right next to the main door) and he went around the entire church hitting several of the major ones on the walls. It was interesting, that as he stood in front of the main door, which was kind of an open gold filigree kind of thing with six small icons on it, so it was probably one-third open into the main altar area – anyway when he stood there and chanted, it was very deep and booming, I guess it was going into the altar area and bouncing all around the church, because as soon as he went to the side, it completely changed and sounded more or less normal.
Later on, he came out and they brought out what I presume was the Book of the Gospels, and spent another 10 minutes chanting and incensing it, but this time, the choir suddenly responded. I didn’t even know there was a choir loft, but when they responded it was like angels. They replied to chants off and on for the rest of the service, and it did sound like alleluia in a few spots, but otherwise I understood NOTHING that was ever sung.
Oh, and finally the main doors were opened. You could see a priest in his big hat (all the folks had gold vestments on) with a big beard – obviously the man in charge. And behind the altar was a big strained glass picture of Jesus that lit up from the sun shining in behind it. I didn’t realize how dark the church was until then. It was impressive!
One of the candle bearers (acolyte?) later chanted what appeared to be the first reading. Oh, and they turned on the main chandelier before he started. It must have been 25 feet tall, hanging from the middle of the dome, right over the pillow and near the picture that everyone was venerating before Mass started. They put a book stand near the picture for the readings. After what seemed like an eternity of more chanting, the deacon changed the Gospel (I presume that’s what it was). Later on, the Deacon was at the main icon on the wall, and the priest was inside at the altar – the acolyte brought out sheets that the deacon chanted (the petitions I presume – I think they were being written down in the vestibule before Mass) and the priest would periodically respond.
By this time, well over an hour into the service, my back was killing me from standing up on the hard marble. But I’d look around and there were untold numbers of old, I mean old, small Russian women, and if they could stand, I figured I could. There was also a young mother with what looked like a 3-year old in a papoose kind of thing on her chest and stomach – I don’t know how she did it. People kept moving around, and leaving and coming the whole time. Nika and S went outside for a while. Eventually I followed, after they closed the main doors to the altar.
SALUTATION #3 Nov. 1, 2005
Maybe the massage will help delay the inevitable. Have a file on my memory stick but so far can't figure out how to install it on this computer to transfer it to you so it may have to wait. This is our last full day in Siberia.
We're off in the morning to Moscow and then onto St. Petersburg. We inquired this morning about perhaps changing our flight to today, and both Nika and Igor just rolled on the floor with laughter. Nevertheless they checked with the airline rep in the lobby and of course he said it could not be done - never mind the timetable on the window of his little booth, the computer says there's no flights today. Okay, that's Russia!
Did I tell you about the time we got to the office and everybody was walking out the door when we were walking in at about 9 AM. Igor told us that the power was scheduled to be off from 9 until noon. Great!
But we sat around in the semi-dark and made it through the morning so it didn't have too many negative affects. Today, the snow came, right on schedule (November 1).
It is snowing to beat the band, but I doubt if it will have any impact on our travel tomorrow, after all this is Siberia - these Siberian salt miners aren't going to let a little snow keep them from flying a plane! And today they completely rerouted traffic here in Kemerovo - a town of 500,000 (that's almost 5 times the size of Springfield ILL) that only has two bridges across the River Tomb that separates the town. But today was the day that they shut down one of the bridges to tie in a new bridge that they’re building - I thought that they had stopped working on it since not a soul was there all last week, but apparently they were waiting for the big day - TODAY).
So traffic was completely screwed up, with cops at every intersection trying to direct traffic, and the snow causing a few accidents just to make it a complete fiasco. We did go to a real mall and supermarket today - I didn't think they really had one in the town, but Nika took us there so S could buy vodka, cigarettes and cavier to bring home to his wife. I could only find some Russian espresso for you - but who knows if it will be any good? [turned out to be instant coffee]
Oct. 26
Well, made it to Siberia and if we didn't get lost today (which we didn't) I don't think I have anything to worry about. Monday afternoon, before our meeting, S. and I walked in the rain down to Red Square. It we pretty impressive - the Kremlin and everything. Saw Lenin's tomb, but as you told me, they must have moved him since there was no one waiting to get in and visit. We went in St. Basil's church. You should look it up on the internet and see a picture! must have 8 onion-topped spires, each one is different colored, and each one is actually a seperate church. Pretty weird inside, really.
Then we had our meeting - big waste of time. But we met Nika our translator all week. She reminds me of Bev S. in looks. Then we sat around the airport for 4 hours and flew all night to Kemerovo.
Got to the hotel at 6 AM and took a nap and shower. Had lunch with our client then a meeting. Didn't get very far on the project. Walked around last night in the cold rain looking for a restaurant, just S. and I. Drank three BIG beers and a vodka shot, had a weird conversation with a drunk, and called it a night. Today we flew in an old Russian Red Army helicopter about an hour+ south to the new mine site they want to put in. It was a huge helicopter - more like a King Air airplane inside than any helo I've ever been in. Lots of mines, lots of forest (they call it "Tiger"). We landed on the muddy, wet ground and drove in an ex army truck down onto the property. Had a vodka toast and open faced ham or cheese sandwiches (had some type of sausage too, but it had cucs on it so I passed - although I did eat the tomotoe salad yesterday).
That's about it so far. I'm ready to come home, but alas, the work hasn't really started.
Now that I've found an internet, I'll see if I can write you messages on my computer and transfer them so I don't have to sit here and type.
Friday, October 28, 2005
Well the first week’s over, and the weekend is staring us in the face – the worst time of any trip away from home, and more importantly away from you. Although it’s already late Friday afternoon here, you’re (hopefully) sound asleep. I had hoped to be able to figure out how to phone you before the weekend started, but alas it proves impossible. Hopefully I’ll at least be able to call you from St. Petersburg on Wednesday, but that seems like a long way off.
Unfortunately the internet café here at the hotel isn’t open on the weekend, so I asked Nika to help me find another one. While we found one near the post office, it is also closed this weekend. Nika says she knows where another one is, but it will require taking a bus – an adventure that sounds appealing now but I’m not so sure how it will actually work out – looking for the stop at Octobersky Prospect, assuming that I can even get on the correct bus to begin with, although as they more or less continuously drove by the stop, it seemed like nearly every one was going the direction she said we needed to take. Well, that’s my big adventure for the weekend.
Other than tonight that is. Nika is getting tickets for S. and I to go with her to some concert in town. That will at least give us something to do.
I ate breakfast by myself the first two mornings. That was a trip, first just finding the restaurant here in the hotel, then getting a table, and ordering. Fortunately the waitress got me an English menu, and I was able to order a ham omelet, toast and juice, but it was not exactly easy. The omelet was actually pretty good, so the next morning I ordered fried eggs and ham – after I ordered it I realized it could be anything from runny to cooked solid – fried eggs was a pretty stupid thing to order. It wasn’t too bad, though, but a little runnier than I prefer. The ham, however, was much worse in a big steak than in the small pieces of the omelet – I think it was boiled or something. I wanted to puke after breakfast. And then at lunch yesterday, at the mine office, they had some kind of thing that at first I thought was a sausage, but looked more like an egg roll coated in some kind of stuff that kind of tasted like fish batter, complete with a fishy taste. I ate a few bites and never did figure out what it was – fish or meat or whatever. Then I got a bite with a little stringy white thing. I ate it and couldn’t tell what it was but hoped it was some kind of cheese. But when I took the next fork full, it was just too runny and white and disgusting for me to eat! Oh, and this was right after I’d had my first borscht. It wasn’t too bad, just cabbage soup – and real Russian borscht doesn’t have beets in it. I ate the broth and some of the cabbage and God knows what else, but left a fair amount of the floaters in the bottom of the bowl.
Last night for dinner we went to a pretty fancy place. Outside there was a big sign, something like “all honor to the coal miners” or some such thing, so I thought at first it was decorated like a mine, with hanging miner’s lamps and rounded ceilings, with lots of white drapery all about. But after I saw the waitresses garb, it became apparent they were trying for some kind of Arabian look, but failed. I did however get to watch most of Game 4 of the World Series, albeit with a significant delay and I had already found out that the White Sox had won the series so it was somewhat anticlimactic.
This restaurant was down by the River Tomb. You can walk the 6 or 8 blocks from our hotel to the river promenade down the middle of the park-like boulevard complete with numerous picnic benches and no end of monuments. The big one down by the river was one dedicated to the men lost in WW2, and there were also all kinds of small signs for soldiers that died in the 1970s, I would guess in Afghanistan. And another monument to what looked like a cosmonaut – I asked Nika and she said that the first man in space was from around here so I guess that’s who it was.
This morning while waiting in the lobby for everyone else, I saw this mother and little baby walking all around. They walked over by me, and the mother spoke in English to the child – something like “now where do you want to go?” So I asked how old he was and she almost fell over – YOU SPEAK ENGLISH?!?!?! He was 2 (although he looked and walked like Jon – which I said). The mother told me that he was quite small, that they had just adopted him – he had been taken from his mother who was an alcoholic and who kept abandoning him. They were from San Jose, CA and had been here for weeks getting details worked out but they had just gotten him yesterday, expected to get his passport photos today and then spend a week in Moscow until all the papers were completed. She said that I was the first English speaking person she’d met other than other folks staying here that were also adopting Russian babies. She said that they went down to Novoskosnyk, the town about 3 hours south of here near the mine we flew over, and there were 4 orphanages with over 150 kids that would just break your heart. She said they only let the kids outside for 10 minutes a day, and not in the winter. So I’ll have to keep my eyes open for other young parents and see if I see any more.
Okay, I’m off to try and send this to you now, before they close down for the weekend and just to make sure you get at least one e-mail from me after you get back from the weekend, regardless if I can figure out the bus schedule or not!
OCTOBER 30
I visited this morning a Russian Orthodox service. Actually, I said my rosary there since it was more than impossible to follow the service. And I thought our Tridentine Masses were ritualistic - they don't hold a candle to the Orthodox. We left after an hour and a half, and as near as I could tell, they had just gotten to the offertory. My goodness, it took 10 minutes to incense the Book of the Gospel before they chanted it! But it was interesting, to say the least.
Friday night we went to the concert. As it turns out it was Siberian and Russian folk music and dancers. Afterwards they gave us a CD with the whole show on it, so you can check it out yourself later this week!
It's been right around freezing to date, both night and day, but I think today is the coldest yet - and we had to walk several blocks after church and it's as cold as I've ever been. S. has one of those Russian mink hats - he let me try it on and it was like sticking your head in a furnace! Sorry, but so far no sign of anything like the Afghan hat you want. We went to the market yesterday and I checked out lots of fur hats but nothing like you showed me.
We're at a new internet place today (Sunday AM) across town from our hotel. It's much nicer than the one in the hotel, or even the one at the Post Office we checked out the other day.
NEXT DAY
Salutations from Siberia!
Well, at least I was able to e-mail you yesterday, so now I’m going to try and write on my computer and transfer via memory stick. I never could figure out the USB port on the computer, but IF I understood the gal working there, and IF she understood what I was asking, then this should work. We’ll see.
Unfortunately, the internet café in the first floor of this hotel is only open from 10 AM (too late – we usually leave by 9) until 7 PM (so far we’ve been knocking off at 5 so that should work tonight, but that’s more than 12 hours from now – a whole new day will transpire before then).
I just got up – it’s 5 AM. That’s when CNN comes on a channel over here, and I can hear “American” English! I think it’s as difficult to speak with S., or at least understand him, then it is the Russians. His Yorkshire accent is pretty thick. I wind up asking him to either repeat nearly everything he says – sometimes it’s just a word, or some phrase I don’t know what he’s saying, and sometimes it’s the whole sentence. But at least I can usually understand Nika. She’s pretty good with her English. Actually, she’s quite good – captures inflections and emotions pretty well, but I still think sometimes she’s missing some things. I suppose idioms cause her no end of grief.
Apparently she used to teach English as a second language at the University level – one of the guys we’re working with here at Severstal, Igor (I-gore, not E-gore) had her as a teacher years ago. She found that rather amusing!
I already told you how Nika reminds me of Bev. She’s got short blond hair, and glasses and a face like Bev, although she’s quite thin. When I got up to get off the plane after our arrival in Kemerovo, I looked around for her among the passengers (we each sat several rows apart, which meant I couldn’t figure out what the stewardess was asking me – she finally just threw me a dinner at one point, after asking me the same question (in retrospect – “would you like some dinner?” about four times but I had just woken up and couldn’t figure out what she wanted). Anyway, I looked around, and saw Nika about three rows behind me. Then I saw someone else, on the opposite side of the plane, that I thought was her. And I kept looking back and forth between the two nondescript thin, short-haired blondes, each about 55 years old, each with tiny wire rimmed glasses, and finally I figured out it was the second woman – for sure. Only to turn around and see yet another person that looked like her! Obviously she looks a lot like all middle aged Russian women! By the way, the third one was her.
The main guy here at SV’s operations, which are called K............gal, is a guy named Sy. He’s about 55, not too tall or fat, but still a BIG man. In fact, nearly all these guys have huge hands and fingers, and they’re very stout. I guess wimps like me can’t live through the Siberian winters!
Anyway, Sy has a commanding presence. At our first meeting, there were about ten guys, and everyone else had dress shirts and ties on, some suits, but Sy had one of those nice long sleeve knit pullover shirt (he probably had a sport coat somewhere) with no tie. But there was no doubt he was in charge. He seemed to want to make a point during our first meeting- must have wanted to intimidate us in front of his staff, but he was much more joking and pleasant yesterday in the helicopter.
S, Nika and I, along with the two guys from the Mining Institute, were outfitted in blue winter gear. Getting dressed in the surveyor’s office was kind of a trip, because once Nika left, I had no idea what we were supposed to be doing. We took our coats off ( they always seem to get offended when we just put them on a chair or in a corner and make a big deal about hanging them in the armoirs (or whatever you call them) that seem to be in every office – I guess if you need a place to put all your coats, sweaters, boots, and other winter gear and don’t want it just sitting around. We kind of just let the St Pete guys take the lead, but otherwise they were no help. Was I supposed to put these ski bibs over my jeans? No you dummy, put the long underwear on first! Which, by the way, was absolutely the warmest long underwear I’ve ever worn – I wanted to ask them if I could keep it! The stuff was all brand new, too, we had to take them out of the packages. Including some kind of woolen foot booties (over socks, or instead of?) and huge black boots. Anyway, the bibs and the HUGE coal were all blue, with reflective stripes – we looked like five people all dressed alike and ready to head out onto an arctic expedition! But Igor just put his boots on, and a lighter jacket. Thought maybe they were just kind of setting us up as dweebs from outside Siberia!
So we make our way back down the five flights of stairs at the SV headquarters (huge massive, school-like building, long hallways with doors into each office, terrible fake wood linoleum on the “nice” floors and very well worn real wood on the others, along with vast marble stairwells (yesterday we took the back stairs – today the main ones). Never saw any plants anywhere inside, but lots of mini-shrines in the common areas on each floor, either honoring their war dead, or the awards the coal mines have gotten, or a bunch of statistics on the types of mining equipment on the surveyor’s floor.
Then take the same van we took from the hotel an hour earlier (weird seating arrangement in very “industrial” type seats facing both directions) back to the airport. We get there and meet another car with a guy in it. We have to sign a sheet and he takes all our names. I was surprised when these guy went with us – I asked Nika later who he was, and she said from “security.” Okay. Glad I didn’t make him mad!
So we stand outside behind our van on the side of the street, in the freezing rain that occasionally spitted some snow, thinking that you sure couldn’t say this was a good day to fly. Finally, Nika said that even though we were supposed to leave at 11 and it was now 11:20, we were waiting for Sergey. When he shows up, with his driver in his own car, the three vehicles go winding our way behind hangers and such and then drive out on the tarmac and there’s these two BIG army helicopters. I was expecting something like the 8-passenger, stretched Bell helicopter we had at R&F, with the bubble in front and two doors on each side, and only a pilot, but this had at least a three passenger crew, all dressed out in army garb, and the first thing I see when I get up the ladder-like stairs was a microwave and wood paneling – this wasn’t no helicopter I’d ever seen! And Sy shows up in his full camouflage outfit and fancy leather jacket – that’s when I realized he was probably a major in the army or something before he went to work for the mines. I never did figure out if this was an army surplus kind of thing, or if they actually rented the helicopter for the day from the Army, which is what I suspect since when we landed back at the airport at the end of the day it was swarmed over by other Army maintenance folks. I guess if you’re not going to get funding from Moscow, you have to improvise ways to pay for maintaining your aircraft.
The trip itself was pretty nice. When we first took off, the weather was still ugly, but it turned out to be a nice, sunny day. As soon as we took off, Sy looked at me, made the sign of the cross (backwards, the Orthodox way, I think, since I’ve seen others make it this way) and laughed. I knew what he meant – kind of a universal joke, but one I wasn’t really hoping to have to laugh at. And only about five minutes into the flight, the helicopter was facing one direction, but we were flying more than 45 degrees off that, kind of going sideways. I suppose because of the wind. Didn’t really enamor me to the whole idea, but that was the last of any funny things going on, the rest of the trip was quite smooth, but very NOISY!!!!! I wish I had brought my ear plugs along. And you couldn’t see as well as I’d hoped out side the little porthole windows, since there were two huge gas tanks hanging off each side of the plane (or were they bombs?), blocking the view downward. But after about an hour of flight we started seeing surface mines (oh my! Huge fiascos of unregulated environmental disaster with no conceivable plan, just more relatively small draglines and electric shovels in literally hundreds of tiny pits. We only saw one mine that actually looked like a real mine, with a long pit and the dragline making its way across the landscape, where you could actually see what the plan was).
And the Tiger (the woods) wasn’t as impressive as I thought it would be. It was a blend of white barked aspens and pine trees, with numerous clearings scattered about, full of heavy undergrowth. The hills weren’t anything like E KY, more like Ohio, but the actual site where they want to put in the mine was pretty darn remote. We looked at the nearby train routes, since they have a choice as to which way they might run the line to their new mine, neither of which looks very promising. And they’ll have to run power lines over the hills, and an access road won’t be easy either.
Anyway, you’re probably not as interested in the mines as other events of the day. I told you about the truck ride down to the “river” – it was only about fifteen feet wide, but they said three meters deep. The vodka was in a bottle like wine – I was hoping that’s what it was, but no, it was “hot damn” like Vodka – actually pretty smooth, but it definitely took your breath away. Sy opened the Vodka, using a huge knife to peel away the seal. Then he said how the first drink always goes to the “woods creature” or “woodsman” – Nika used both terms in her translation. Nevertheless, he took about an inch of vodka in the first plastic glass and tossed it into the woods and said some kind of toast. Then we each got about an inch and a half of vodka in a plastic cup, Sy made a toast about the team there assembled to work together for the success of the future mine, I made some stupid similar toast – “to a successful and safe mine” – and they all drank their vodka down in one gulp. I realized this as I looked down at more than 2/3rd of mine still in my cup. Oops! Well I had to take a few more swigs to finish mine – at least Nika didn’t finish hers either – in fact she poured the rest of hers into Igor’s cup, and so he and I were the only two with any left. A few minutes later, Sy and the boys were laughing at Igor for still having some vodka left – I don’t think any of them saw Nika pour hers into his cup and they were most likely calling him some kind of wimp. Boy, thank God for all those years of practice with K. – it prepared me to at least hold my own, but I was sure glad they didn’t have another bottle!
Then they brought out the sandwiches, and we stood there in the woods, next to the stream and had our picnic. One of the guys who pulled up in the truck walked with us – I think he was yet another Vladimir, like one of the two Mining Institute guys (Igor warned us that that academicians at the various mining institutes weren’t like the real coal miners, and that the XYZ folks were the worst of all the mining institutes, and he was right!).
Anyway, Vladimir carried along an axe with about a two-foot long handle with us as we walked the quarter mile through the undergrowth down to the river from as far as the truck went. Vladimir refused to take any vodka, and instead toasted with water. I suppose he’s an alcoholic, although there could be some other reason why he didn’t take a drink, but he kind of kidded with Sy, like “you know I don’t drink” kind of banter when Sergey tried to give him some vodka. Never did figure out why he took the axe, but they were all kidding him about something like he doesn’t need a gun to protect us, he just will kill any wild animals with his axe. Anyway, he went down the steep bank to the river and filled up his cup with the water. He brought it back up and showed the other guys how clear it was – someone poured a cup of bottled water, and I think the river water WAS clearer!
Enough about the trip. When we got back, after I found the internet café, S and I went for a walk in town until we met Nika for dinner. It looked much brighter and nicer in the sunshine than it did in the drizzle the day before. The buildings looked brighter and nicer, at least in this part of town, near the city center (the outlying five-story buildings we pass in the van sill look very Communist-like, ugly apartments). We walked the other way and saw the town music hall, and the town theater (not cinema, more like a classical Greek style theatre). Then we saw the big town square, with its huge statue of Lenin. S. said that these folks around here are more disappointed with Perestroika and Glastnost and still look back to the times of Lenin as the good old days, even though he forcibly moved hundreds of thousands of folks from Estonia and other portions of western Russia and made them coal miners during the War.
I took a bunch of pictures, but it was getting dark pretty quickly and I don’t know how they’ll take. But the town almost looks quaint, in a socialist kind of way. S says that this is the only town with any culture or class within hundreds of miles, and I’d say he’s probably right. Nika says that the population is about 500,000 which makes it pretty good sized. She actually grew up nearby, and her 85-year old mom and one of her three kids still lives there still. Found this out at dinner. We went to a place called E-Moe, pronounced “yow-meow”. It was a traditional Russian restaurant. All the waitresses wore these red and white folk dress, and it was decorated in early Russian wood furnishings, kind of kitchy like a Russian Cracker Barrel, or maybe more like a Texas Roadhouse. Nika said it was a good place to try traditional Russian food – like that’s really what I wanted to do! She tried to get me to order the fish soup (S did) or the cold soup that she said the broth was kind of a mix between Coke and beer, and it had all kinds of vegetables and fish in it. Hmm, hmm! Sounded so good, didn’t it? I passed. And I passed on the borscht. The English menu we had was pretty interesting. Who knew that there were a least a dozen ways to fix tongue – not I, I assure you! The food items were all named things like, “Russian hare peaking from behind a bush” which was of course rabbit under a cover of pickled red cabbage or something. The waitress, who reminded me of Marsha from the Brady Bunch, but of course not a word of English, recommended some kind of meat plate for us to share. Which sounded pretty good to me, and then we ordered tomatoes, boiled potatoes, fried potatoes, and fried fern – S’s idea. I had hoped it would actually be fried, but no, it was more like very tiny asparagus. We all got beers, and Stuart also got vodka and pickled cabbage as an appetizer. I never did decide if it was the fish soup, the cabbage or the fried fern, but something sure stank! Oh, and with the soup, he got some kind of little pastry filled with fish and onions – boy was I sorry I didn’t order that! The meat was brought out on some kind of little metal box, I guess it somehow kept it warm. It had a veal and a beef steak (which were outstanding) and pork sausage on a skewer (same as I got for lunch in Moscow and I regretted it then also, but not too bad) and the sausage, which the waitress called kelboska, but it tasted more like English sausage – yuk! We just kept helping ourselves to the meat and I ate the fries, that was about it for me. And more beer! The “standard” mug is 0.51 liters, which is a pretty good sized beer – slightly bigger than the biggest draft you typically get in the US. It was actually Czech beer though, not Russian, although I’ve like the Russian beer I’ve had so far.
I’m sure there’s so much more to tell you, but I’d better call it a day or else everyone you send this too will harass me for being so long-winded!
Salutation #2 Orthodox Mass
Since my last e-mail was not composed on my computer but on the spur of the moment at the Internet Café, I may repeat myself, but in which case I apologize.
I’ve told you about the concert and church, and those were definitely the highlights of the last few days. Oh, and we found out today that Sy, the Director of the mining company, was relieved of his duties on Friday. Seems that he has taken full responsibility for an accident at one of their mines that killed four people. So now he’s in charge of development, which by our count is at least four different folks we’ve been told are in charge of development, specifically this mine that we’re working on. Politics as usual, with a Russian flair!
By the time I send this and you read it, we’ll have gone out to one of their active mines on Monday. That’s about the last thing we have to do down here in Kemerovo, but we aren’t scheduled to leave until Wednesday morning, so who knows what we’ll do on Tuesday. They’re probably all waiting for me to make a decision as to what we’re going to do!
I think I mentioned that most of the menu times are listed with titles like, Herring under the looking glass, and so other than knowing the general idea that it’s herring, you never really know what you’re getting because very seldom are the details of the item translated. For example the other day I got a Parmesan Salad – had no idea what to expect – wind up being some lettuce, not much, with lots of tomatoes and cucumbers, with one or two pieaces of parmesan cheese, blue cheese and about two kinds of mystery meat chunks. Anyway, today on the menu was a Mister Tomato. I pointed it out to Nika since she orders a plate of tomatoes at every meal. But she read the translation and said it was olives stuffed with tomatoes and mayonnaise, so she passed, but I thought you’d try it!
More on the Orthodox mass. To start out, the church of course has no pews, just a large open area, with four big pillars supporting the huge dome. Nearly every square of the walls and columns is coated with painted icons of various saints, some of which are real paintings in frames, some gold relief artwork, but most painted on the walls. The inside of the dome, which was quite high, was a huge portrait of Jesus. And there were pictures of Jesus and Mary everywhere, with untold number of other saints. Before Mass started, everyone was going up to the various icons, putting candles in the sand candleholders, bowing and making the “backward” sign of the cross, and kissing the icons. So this was going on in about 15 sites, and off to one side a priest was hearing confessions out in the open nave. At least that’s what I assume he was doing. The people were more or less lined up (the Russians sure don’t know how to queue up, they mostly just butt in) and after they said something to the priest, he puts a gold edged cloth on their bowed heads, says a prayer (absolution I presume) and then takes it off, they each bow down and kiss a book and move on. Two different old ladies came up to us as we stood there and waited for mass to begin. One told S, well through Nika, not to put his hands behind his back or else he’ll be a widower. The other told us that men generally stand on the right side and women on the left, although this is not a requirement, but she seemed like she wanted us to go to the right side!
Nika is an atheist, so she was little to no help at the Mass. In fact, I had asked her about going to church earlier in the week and she said she didn’t think there was a church in town! It was relatively new, so I presume it wasn’t here when she was growing up.
So last night when she called to see if we’d need her to translate on Sunday (we didn’t use her on Saturday – I thought that we were doing her a favor, but S and I figured out that it probably means she won’t get paid for the day, so we were determined to use her on Sunday at least for a while) we asked her if she could find out about Mass. I had pointed out a sign outside the hotel that I thought said there was a church (it had a cross on it and seemed to indicate to me that maybe there was a church nearby) but she kind of dismissed it. Anyway, she found out that Mass was at 9:30 and she also reminded us that we needed to turn our clocks back overnight.
Anyway, we met Nika at 9 and took a taxi to the church. It was huge and construction was still being completed. The service finally started about 9:40, which gave me a chance to look around at everything. I forget what they call that wall that separates the altar area from the general public, but it was darned impressive. And there was like a communion railing that came out into the center of the dome – it had a big pillow like thing right under the center of the dome (never did figure out what that was for) and a picture on a special stand. People were lining up (more or less) on each side of the railing and entering this area more or less one at a time, bowing, making the sign of the cross and kissing this picture on like a book stand. Never figured out what that was either.
The first 20 minutes of the mass consisted of what sounded like a rather high-pitched boy chanting from behind the wall. I guess it’s the Russian equivalent of Gregorian chant. All of a sudden, it sounds like a broken record, and he sings the same words, something like “bitty canoe” over and over and over and over again before moving on. All the while people would bow and make the sign of the cross, sometimes together but more often a couple spread out around the church just appeared to do it at various times more or less at random, but there may have been some pattern I never could figure out. Then the “bitty canoe” words again, about every tenth time he’d throw in a couple of other words, then back to “bitty canoe.” Five minutes later the same thing. I finally counted them once, and he sang it 40 times in a row, with about three or four short two or three word phrases stuck in there about three or four times. I figured this was some type of Confiteor, and Nika told me later that it meant “he saves” or something like that. Finally, after 20 minutes, we heard another voice, this time the priest or the deacon, much deeper in a series of short replies to the higher-pitched chants.
It was at least 45 minutes into it before one of the doors to the side of the main door in the screen opened up and what I guess is the deacon came out with incense. I mean he spent the next 15 minutes incensing all the icons (beginning with the one of Jesus right next to the main door) and he went around the entire church hitting several of the major ones on the walls. It was interesting, that as he stood in front of the main door, which was kind of an open gold filigree kind of thing with six small icons on it, so it was probably one-third open into the main altar area – anyway when he stood there and chanted, it was very deep and booming, I guess it was going into the altar area and bouncing all around the church, because as soon as he went to the side, it completely changed and sounded more or less normal.
Later on, he came out and they brought out what I presume was the Book of the Gospels, and spent another 10 minutes chanting and incensing it, but this time, the choir suddenly responded. I didn’t even know there was a choir loft, but when they responded it was like angels. They replied to chants off and on for the rest of the service, and it did sound like alleluia in a few spots, but otherwise I understood NOTHING that was ever sung.
Oh, and finally the main doors were opened. You could see a priest in his big hat (all the folks had gold vestments on) with a big beard – obviously the man in charge. And behind the altar was a big strained glass picture of Jesus that lit up from the sun shining in behind it. I didn’t realize how dark the church was until then. It was impressive!
One of the candle bearers (acolyte?) later chanted what appeared to be the first reading. Oh, and they turned on the main chandelier before he started. It must have been 25 feet tall, hanging from the middle of the dome, right over the pillow and near the picture that everyone was venerating before Mass started. They put a book stand near the picture for the readings. After what seemed like an eternity of more chanting, the deacon changed the Gospel (I presume that’s what it was). Later on, the Deacon was at the main icon on the wall, and the priest was inside at the altar – the acolyte brought out sheets that the deacon chanted (the petitions I presume – I think they were being written down in the vestibule before Mass) and the priest would periodically respond.
By this time, well over an hour into the service, my back was killing me from standing up on the hard marble. But I’d look around and there were untold numbers of old, I mean old, small Russian women, and if they could stand, I figured I could. There was also a young mother with what looked like a 3-year old in a papoose kind of thing on her chest and stomach – I don’t know how she did it. People kept moving around, and leaving and coming the whole time. Nika and S went outside for a while. Eventually I followed, after they closed the main doors to the altar.
SALUTATION #3 Nov. 1, 2005
Maybe the massage will help delay the inevitable. Have a file on my memory stick but so far can't figure out how to install it on this computer to transfer it to you so it may have to wait. This is our last full day in Siberia.
We're off in the morning to Moscow and then onto St. Petersburg. We inquired this morning about perhaps changing our flight to today, and both Nika and Igor just rolled on the floor with laughter. Nevertheless they checked with the airline rep in the lobby and of course he said it could not be done - never mind the timetable on the window of his little booth, the computer says there's no flights today. Okay, that's Russia!
Did I tell you about the time we got to the office and everybody was walking out the door when we were walking in at about 9 AM. Igor told us that the power was scheduled to be off from 9 until noon. Great!
But we sat around in the semi-dark and made it through the morning so it didn't have too many negative affects. Today, the snow came, right on schedule (November 1).
It is snowing to beat the band, but I doubt if it will have any impact on our travel tomorrow, after all this is Siberia - these Siberian salt miners aren't going to let a little snow keep them from flying a plane! And today they completely rerouted traffic here in Kemerovo - a town of 500,000 (that's almost 5 times the size of Springfield ILL) that only has two bridges across the River Tomb that separates the town. But today was the day that they shut down one of the bridges to tie in a new bridge that they’re building - I thought that they had stopped working on it since not a soul was there all last week, but apparently they were waiting for the big day - TODAY).
So traffic was completely screwed up, with cops at every intersection trying to direct traffic, and the snow causing a few accidents just to make it a complete fiasco. We did go to a real mall and supermarket today - I didn't think they really had one in the town, but Nika took us there so S could buy vodka, cigarettes and cavier to bring home to his wife. I could only find some Russian espresso for you - but who knows if it will be any good? [turned out to be instant coffee]
posted by MEISTER-Blog | 10:45 AM
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