We got our bags last night (well, all but one...)...

Eleven suitcases showed up at 8pm; only one of our group is still missing his-- turns out it was sent to the wrong hotel (part of the mix-up that was the bureaucratic Gordian knot we tried to unravel after our arrival to St. Petersburg), but it should be here today....

Last night some of us got out for a bit with Cornelius for an abbreviated "walking tour" in the heart of St. Petersburg (he said he was going to read us some Pushkin under the Pushkin statue in a little park in town-- I thought he was kidding; he wasn't). He cracks me up-- while he was going on about Pushkin and his wet nurse (you had to be there), I laughed so hard that I almost had an accident. After our short "tour" we were rained on. It had to have been in the low 50s, and it was windy and wet. Not the best weather in which to wander the city.

Yesterday during the day, we went on a city tour and then to the Hermitage museum, both went by kind of quickly-- there's just so much to see in a short amount of time! I did, however, learn how to say "hitchhike" in Russian after a conversation with our bus driver, Konstantin. The most fun I have here is listening to how everyday Russian is spoken!

I think our kids in the group especially are starting to see the cultural differences (and oddities) a little more clearly-- this is much better than my prattling on in class...

Gotta run for the bus now. More later!

This is Cornelius...

Our tour director who's just a sketch (in a Monty Python sort of way)!

Yours truly at 6:30am...

...after 4 hrs sleep, a shower w/ Russian soap, shampoo, and a borrowed shirt (and a few text msgs w/ my wife).

In the Hermitage museum...

Speaking of tourists...

Zach has a future modeling...or scaring locals...

After...

Note black Russian hats... Tourists!

Before...

On the bus at 9am for city tour

Russia on one pair of underwear...

For now. I was grody when I took this pic at dinner in our hotel at 9. Maybe we'll get bags tomorrow on the next British Air flight. We don't have them because of the storm that kept us on the runway in Newark for 2.5 hrs! So we literally ran through Heathrow airport in London (and our bags were checked through)... 80% frustration, 20% learning experience. The Russian system for reporting a lost bag involves a customs stamp on two of the exact same forms, then a third exact same form in another office. Each person had to go through this, one-by-one. We were at the airport until 6:30 or 7 after a 4pm arrival! The only thing that compares to this is a trip to a Russian post office. The folks here are learning quickly that there's one way...and the Russian way.

It took us 24 hrs...

...but we made it to the baggage claim in St. Petersburg at about 4:30pm. We got only 2 suitcases!...

LONG layover in Newark...

At ticket counter, which didn't open until 3:30. We got here at 11. We don't leave for London until 6:30...ugh!

We're off...

Here's the group at DFW airport. In about 24 hrs we'll be in St. Pete!

Another summer, another trip to Russia! (Woo-hoo!)

Well, it's been about 10 months since I posted anything to this blog... Time to dust it off in preparation for my fourth trip to Russia and my second with students from Mansfield, TX. We begin our journey eastward on Monday morning (really, really early Monday morning) from DFW airport. This trip will take our group of 10 from Texas to St. Petersburg to Moscow and back to Texas in 9 days.

If all goes as it should, I will be posting pictures here while travelling-- some near-realtime with my cellphone, so stay tuned!

More later as we get rolling...

Why is the hot water turned off in summer in Russia?

One of the other teachers in our group sent along this link to an interesting article in today's NY Times about hot water in Russia; unfortunately, many of the host families went through this while we were in both Vladimir and Murom. I was fortunate-- both Katya and The Colonel had a hot water heater in their bathrooms...

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/20/world/europe/20cnd-moscow.html

Trip pictures are online...

http://dbashmak.myphotoalbum.com

What a trip!

Is it just me, or was that a fast 5 weeks? I arrived back in Texas last night after a long day of travelling that began for all of us at 7:30am when we left our hotel for the Moscow airport by bus. After a couple of hours in traffic, we arrived at Sheremetevo-2 and stood in line for about another 45 minutes to get through security and ticketing, then had a little time on our hands before our 12:15pm flight to New York. The flight left a few minutes late, but we arrived at JFK a little early, at approximately 2pm-- no matter how you slice it, Moscow to the U.S. is a 10-hour flight.

At JFK, the customs entry point is probably the worst, in terms of "customer friendliness," I have experienced! (Washington Dulles is the best, in my opinion, and Dallas is okay.) The customs guy who was pointing folks into the citizen or non-citizen lines was stereotypically New York rude (and even told one visitor, not a U.S. citizen: "Ma'am, if you raise your voice one more time, you're gonna be here for 3 hours."-- nice, huh?) Besides the general feel of confusion (it was confusing to ME and I live here-- I helped one non-English-speaking Russian lady going to Seattle who couldn't figure out the bag-checking process for continued flights; I agreed that it was way too complicated of a process, a "cluster %$#@" as one of the Americans in our group remarked while we were in a line wondering what to do with our checked luggage, and added that it was worse than the Moscow airport to which she agreed). The part of this seemingly renaturalization ritual I REALLY don't understand is the full security check (shoes off, scans, etc.) before moving on to the next flight; I suppose it's because we can't be too sure about other countries' security measures...but, still, it was a drag after such a long flight. I feel sorry for foreigners whose first impression of America is JFK airport.

While we were in the luggage line trying to figure out what the procedure was, I noticed a 4:20pm flight to DFW a few gates away from our continued flight to Chicago O'Hare. Once we got out of the bowels of the reentry area, I hurried to the gate and asked if I could swap my Chicago ticket for a seat to Dallas. I got an even exchange, but had only minutes before boarding, so my suitcase went on to O'Hare and I didn't really get a chance to say goodbye to everyone... My wife met me at the airport at around 7:30pm and then after a quick stop by my mom's house for hello and a bite (I was tired as a dog, but my daughters, sister, dad, and aunt were there), I was home in bed by about 10:30pm. And, oddly enough, I slept pretty well-- no identifiable signs of jet lag just yet-- after the 20+ hour-long travel day that was yesterday.

So, if you're an "everyone" from the group, sorry to have disappeared so quickly! It was a great trip and you were a great bunch to travel with! I really, really enjoyed my time in Russia! And to Ron and Aleksei & Galya: Thank you SO much for everything!! I hope I haven't seen the last of you... And Katya (my hostess in Vladimir), if you're reading this: Вам огромное спасибо за то, что Вы открыли мне свою кавартиру (и жизнь) на две недели! Я очень хорошо провёл время... Передайте пожалуйста "Прощай" от меня Царю Стефану и его двоюродному брату Майку! And if you have been following my journey, I hope I was able to convey a sense of what we experienced as American teachers in Russia-- thanks for tagging along!

As soon as I can get all of my pictures uploaded to a webpage, I will post the link here.

So much Russia in so little time...

Удачи всем из Техаса!

E.B.

Прощай, Россия!

At the Moscow airport to go home, 10:30am Mon.

An American Lutheran in Russia

Aleksei and I after his service, 6pm Sun. It sure was nice to be able to be part of Aleksei's congregation again, even for only the length of a worship service. As a Lutheran pastor in Russia, he has his work cut out for him. Among those present this evening were a Norwegian family, husband and wife and two cute-as-can-be young daughters, who had been living here in Moscow a year and are going back to Norway on Wednesday. They were a pleasure to chat with, as was a young woman who will be marrying a Norwegian guy (who, she told me, is on a ship somewhere in the North Sea)-- Aleksei will be performing the ceremony next month. I met another young couple with a baby, whom Aleksei had baptized a few weeks ago; they were very nice, too. In the middle of the service, a twentysomething Russian woman wandered in and sat down...she turned out to be a Baptist from somewhere other than Moscow, but I could see she was struggling with the liturgy a bit, so I introduced myself to her and tried to help her along... Lutheran services are really not all that complicated, but the order of service takes a time or two to get down (but she persevered).

Anyway, it was great to visit Aleksei's congregation, which, incidentally, is the sister congregation of my Lutheran church family back in Texas. I wish I had had more time to visit with them!

Last day in Moscow...

Tomorrow we're up early to get a bus to the airport for our 12:15 flight to JFK in New York... I think everyone's about ready; it's not too difficult to read some of the shifts in the group dynamics. ;)

Today we visited, as you can tell from the previous posts, Red Square to see Lenin's mausoleum and St. Basil's Cathedral. I split from the group to return to the hotel to do some emailing/blogging before church at 5pm. Everyone else went on to the Arbat, a big shopping area where there's a Hard Rock Cafe the Americans just love to go into. I've been there a few times already, so...

...here I am. Contemplating lunch, actually, as it's currently about 1:30pm.

It's been a great trip, so far, but I really have to say that I enjoyed the more "real life" adventures of Vladimir and Murom. I like St. Pete and Moscow, but I'd rather live here for awhile among the natives than wander through the tourist spots... But all the places we've been in both cities are, I suppose, part of the See Russia experience, so I can't really complain. I've seen things I hadn't seen before, so for me it's been a VERY worthwhile experience!! (And our group is a good one-- everyone gets along with one another, which doesn't always happen with prolonged travel programs like this.)

Unless something more blog-worthy happens, I'll send up a last photo from the airport as we're saying Прощай! (Farewell!) to Moscow...

So, in advance, thanks for tuning in and keeping an eye on me/us here in Russia. It sure has been an odyssey!

Пока!

E.B.

St. Basil's Cathedral

Yours Truly in front of St. Basil's Cathedral on Red Square (the first time I've ever seen it without scaffolding!), 11:30am Sun. I got to see the inside for the first time; it's an interesting place, very different from other more typical Orthodox cathedrals.

Our sherpa...

Here's our Russian guide Nadya weighed down with my backpack full of cameras during our wait in the long line for Lenin's tomb, 10:30 Sun. (Got to tell you that the 90 minutes in line to spend 1 minute with Lenin was kind of anticlimactic... But now we can all say we've seen the ol' boy-- or his wax likeness...)