MoldovAnn

I’m in Madrid, for the EAIE conference. My flight was at 7:40, so I set the alarm for 5, and being the nervous nelly that I am about having to get up super early, I couldn’t sleep well and finally got up at 3 am. My boss from DC, who is also attending this conference, just called and wants to meet for dinner today. Coffee, where are you? I was fading 2 hours ago already and now I’ve not only got to be socialable, I’ve also got to be professional this evening. Gonna be tough.

It’s been a while since I felt as out of sorts as I do here – guess there’s more egotistical American in me than I care to admit! I fully expected to have no language problems, it’s Europe! Of course they all speak English. Rude awakening, my dear! The hotel restaurant staff understand English about as well as I understand Spanish. Found that out when my “vegetarian” lunch included chicken ceasar salad. Gotta refresh my memory about some key words!

The little piece of Madrid I’ve seen near the hotel is nice. I went for a walk after lunch, but almost all the shops were close 2-5 pm. How quaint! After the lunch ordeal, I wasn’t much up to dealing with shopkeepers. As I passed a shoe store I overheard a young woman say “pyat”. Just figured there was a Spanish word that sounded like the Russian word for “five”. Nope! Those three lovely ladies were russkis all the way, and they were just dumbfounded that shops would close in the afternoon. I have to admit, I was kind of surprised too, but like any good devushka, they figured it was just meant for everybody else and proceeded to ring the door bell, expecting someone to come open the store for them. It was kinda cute, atually, in a weird sort of way. Put me right at ease with my new surroundings.

I’m in Vladimir, Russia, this week. After the chaos at Boryspil last week, I made sure to be at the airport with plenty of time today, which meant getting up at 4:40 for my 8:20 flight. Taxi picked me up at 5:30, I was at Boryspil by 6:10, registration for my flight didn’t start until 6:30. It’s such a crap shoot at that airport!

It’s been a long day. It’s almost 1am local time, just an hour difference from Kyiv but I seem to have a new wind and can’t sleep. Things that I remembered today that I meant to write about earlier:

- Need to add “ice and easy access to getting it” to the list of things I love about the US, like ice machines in hotels and bags of ice at grocery stores. We spent days making ice for our margarita party this past weekend, which we used up in just a few short hours. Argh!

- Numerous crazy stories from Georgia. Such as…

I was all freaked out by the guy across the aisle from me on the Kyiv-Tbilisi flight, whose cell phone kept beeping throughout the flight. “Is your phone on?” I asked. “No, it’s off,” he said. “Strange, electronic devices rarely makes sounds when they are turned off.” He just stared at me.

As soon as the wheels of the plane touched the ground, two-thirds of the passengers jumped out of their seats and started getting their stuff from the overhead bins. The flight attendants asked a couple of times for them to sit down until the plane had stopped, but then they seemed to accept their defeat and just kept to themselves. I always wonder, where do those people think they will rush off to? The plane is sealed up tight, we’re still taxiing to the gate, yet it’s somehow crucially important that they get their stuff out and be ready to sprint out of the plane?

We hired a car and driver one day to take us to some cool historical sites just outside of Tbilisi. The driver stopped at a gas station on the way. There was a man sitting, maximum, six feet from the pump, smoking a cigarette. The driver got out, left the car running, and filled the tank. Igor and I looked at each. “I love you,” we said to each other, thinking these could very well be our last seconds on earth. We didn’t explode, thankfully, and Igor commented that he understands now that cell phones in airplanes is really nothing to these people.

When I departed from Batumi a week later, a woman got on the plane at the last moment and flopped down into the first available seat, which happened to be across from me. She buckled in as we pulled away from the gate. She starting searching through her purse, clearing becoming increasingly agitated. As we taxied to the runway, she unbuckled, stood up and took her luggage out of the overhead bin. She searched it as we pulled onto the runway, put it back, sat down again and searched her purse again. As the wheels lifted from the ground, she pulled out her cell phone, turned it on and dialed a number. I nearly had a heart attack.

“I can’t believe you are doing that”, I said to her. “I understand you’ve lost something, but it’s a question of safety.”
“Oh, calm down girl. I’ll just be quick.”
“And we’ll all die quickly.” (My imagination runs wild in a situation like this – all those unexplained plane crashes, were they because everyone on a plane turned on their phones?)
“I forgot my mobile phone in the airport,” she said, as if that justified everything.
“Your phone is more important than the lives of the people on this plane?”
Clearly she thought so.

As we ascended over the Black Sea, she called someone to tell them she’d forgotten her phone. I was contemplating calling my husband to tell him I love him.

People in this part of the world have a strange relationship to rules. I guess they would say the same about Americans, that we take them much too seriously. But I’m American and yes, dammit, I take my rules seriously, especially the ones that I understand to be about my safety and the safety of those around me. Do I think it’s absurd that in most of the US it is OK to operate a multi-ton motor vehicle after a couple of beers but it is not OK to walk in a park with an open alcholic beverage in your hand? Yeah, I do (how much damage can you do walking, for Pete’s sake?). Do I think there is logic to traffic rules? Hell yeah. I guess I understand somewhat risking your own life, and I recognize that some people (many?) don’t care about the lives of strangers around them. But driving like a maniac with your kids in the car, or standing up in a taxiing airplace with your baby in your arms, that I will just never understand. Even if you care for no other life around, how can you not care for the life of your child?

I’ve philosophized over this question with many an ex-pat. I do believe the insane rush to get your carry-on out and be first ready to exit the plane comes from the the mentality towards lines here, which is one of the biggest legacies of the Soviet Union (close but still not equal to the insane need to have any and all documents stamped; I swear one of these days I’m buying a unicorn stamp for all official business!).

I’ve concluded that if they don’t die from it the first time, they decide it’s OK to do all the time. There are many flaws to this theory, but it’s the only way I can rationalize the behavior.

I got back from Georgia on Friday afternoon, and I leave Monday morning for another workshop in Russia. Yikes! Thank goodness for the heat – my laundry dried quick enough for a re-pack for the next trip.

We had a great weekend in Tbilisi last week, and then I had a good workshop in Batumi. The only bummer was that it rained cats and dogs every single day and evening! And since the big attraction to having the workshop in Batumi was the Black Sea, it was disappointing that we couldn’t swim. One colleague braved it during a brief break in the rain, but the water was so rough, he didn’t try for long.

A US Navy GM destroyer arrived in Batumi along with us for training exercises with the Georgian Coast Guard. Turned out they ate at the same restaurant as us one evening. Our waitress disappeared for a LONG time, and when our Georgian colleague finally found here, he asked what was going on, why had she abandoned us.

Waitress: “We have Americans here in the other hall.”
Georgi: “We have Americans too!”
Waitress: “Well, these are Black Americans.”

We all had a good chuckle, and we agreed that we didn’t mind at all that we’d been ignored for a bit if that was her excuse – my, how times have changed!

My suitcase was full of fabulous Georgian wine on the return trip, plus a couple bottles of chacha, a drink the Georgians like to compare to grappa, but I think it’s more like turpentine. Very, very potent. And a perfect gift for my in-laws, who love that kind of stuff. One bottle of wine broke in my suitcase, though, which came to my attention when I noticed the trail of red liquid following me through the airport terminal. Turned out to be the decorative ceramic bottle that I bought solely because I liked the bottle. I’m not sure if the wine was any good or not, but I was bummed to lose the pretty bottle. And of course laundry was interesting. Thank goodness nothing valuable was destroyed!

It’s been hot as Hades in Kyiv, and we were excited to finally host a party on our big balcony – margarita night! Igor and I cooked all day, and had some of that delicious Georgian wine to keep us happy and motivated. Friends arrived, I had two margaritas, laid down on the couch for a sec, and next thing I know, I wake up and the guests were long gone! I was most definitely not the “hostess with the mostest” last night. I guess the booze, heat and travel just caught up with me and I was out for the count. I was up long for a few minutes, thought about cleaning up and putting the leftovers away, but was still utterly exhausted and fell dead asleep again. Poor Igor was up until 2:30 cleaning up. I swear, I don’t deserve his love! He was so nice about it, though, and we had a good laugh this morning. Boy, do I ever owe him for this one.

Tomorrow is an early start. After the last disaster at Boryspil, I’m not taking any risks and will head out at an ungodly early hour. Looks like the weather is cooler around Moscow than it’s been in Kyiv – that’s a relief!

It was a new record for total and utter chaos yesterday at Boryspil airport. It’s always a bit of a madhouse there, but yesterday was really quite impressive. Two counters for something like 6 or 7 flights to check in- Tbilisi, Bangkok, Tel Aviv, Dubai, Copenhagen and others. Everybody was freaking out, the poor ladies were doing their best, I’m sure, but passengers were yelling at them to work faster (which just ALWAYS makes someone want to work faster, right?). We were in line for registration for over an hour, finally just 2 or 3 people away from our turn, when 2 obnoxious men pushed their way to the front and wanted to ditch everyone because they were late. Very brave move, I thought- that crowd was pretty dang ready to go ballistic on somebody. I pointed out that we were ALL late, and Igor told them to get back to their place in line. (Turned out they were on the same flight as us, so definitely no more late than we were.)

Security noticed my little non-pointy scissors for my cross-stitch (which have gone on something like 10 or 12 flights with me) and said they weren’t allowed, but didn’t take them away. Just told me to leave them in the terminal (which, of course, I did not).

Passport control went smoothly, we breezed through. Igor noticed two men being deported. I overhead a man ask that his passport NOT be stamped. What was that about, I wonder? I’ve heard of Americans doing that in Cuba, or someone who travels between Armenia and Azerbaijan not wanting a stamp, but no stamp in Ukraine was a new one for me.

I checked the screen, Gate 1. By the time we got there, our gate had changed. The ladies at Gate 1 told us to go to Gate 4. We stood in line but something didn’t look right. I went to check the screen again, and now we were changed to Gate 5. I stared to wonder if they really knew where our plane was.

We finally boarded, then spent an entire hour on the tarmack, suffocating in the stifling hot air of the cabin. Babies screeching, everyone melting. When we finally did take off (and the air conditioning kicked on, thank god!), the pilot came on the intercom to apologize for the delay, which was due “to lack of services at Boryspil airport”. Wow. And they want to host Euro 2012 here? They’ve got a LONG way to go.

On the plus side, the new entrance to the terminal is spiffy (although the improvement over the previous entrances is questionable). And the barricades were arranged in one of the most logical ways I’ve ever seen in the parking lot at Boryspil (the traffic pattern is arranged differently every single time I go there).

We had a great evening in Tbilisi. We’re staying in a kind of bed-and-breakfast right in the center of town. A character of an old lady has almost an entire floor of an old historical building, and she rents out five or six rooms. At some point in time, the large rooms were renovated to each include a bathroom. The walls are covered with her own paintings (“I’m no artist, it’s just my hobby”). You could probably get a second floor in here, the ceilings are so high. When I called to make the reservation, she told me “У вас входит бракфаст”, which cracked me up (4 words in Russia, 1 in heavily-accented English, translation: breakfast (the word she said in English) is included).

We were both a bit irritable after the flight (and a loooonnngg wait for luggage in Tbilisi), but some wine and hatchipuri improved moods pretty quickly. Then a wonderful meal with friends at a cool outdoor restaurant along the river. So much for losing those American pounds!

We’ve had a couple of great days in Monterey, and head up to San Francisco today for the last leg of this incredible vacation. We’ve logged over 2100 miles already!

I’m slowly getting photos uploaded, but haven’t had a chance to add descriptions yet. The new underwater camera has provided some extra fun; check the photos from Elk Grove and Phoenix.

Some highlights of the trip so far:
Igor ate his first taco (liked it) and taco salad (loved it).

We drank a yard of margarita in Las Vegas, and have been drinking them most nights ever since.

Igor bought real cowboy boots in Carson City.

We sat RIGHT NEXT to sea lions on the wharf in Monterey, and got a great video of a sea otter dining on a crab.

I’m about ready to again live with closets and not out of a suitcase (but not entirely ready).

We’re in Carson City, Nevada, at Aunt Martha’s. First internet connection we’ve had in almost 2 weeks -and it’s been great! Lots and lots of pictures and stories to post. In brief:
Huntington Beach, CA- Igor swam in the (cold!) Pacific Ocean
Riverside, CA – great visit with my cousins Pat and Laura
Palm Springs, CA – rode the tram car up the mountain, gorgeous!
Phoenix, AZ – hot hot hot! Awesome Desert Botanical Garden
Grand Canyon – too amazing for words. Mule ride was fantastic adventure
Las Vegas – Disneyland for adults
Loooonnnngggg drive north to Carson City. Great to be with family, home-cooked meals. Igor’s having a great time working in the garden, I’m catching up on work (which is not so much fun, but 300 emails need to get cleaned up).

Photos to come…

Igor arrived late last night, after a long but uneventful trip. He has a new apprecation for the size of the US, after the 6-hour JFK-LAX flight. I have to admit, it left quite an impression on me too! I guess I’ve always flown with a layover somewhere, so never really understood that it takes that long even with just one direct flight. 6 hours after a 10-hour trans-Atlantic flight, though, and the only words you can say are “sore butt.”

Wednesday was the Country Fair at NAFSA, one of the best parts of the entire conference (IMHO). EducationUSA advisers from over 130 countries decorated booths, dressed in traditional costumes and met with thousands of university representatives who are interested to recruit international students.

We had an Armenian princess

And some Russian ones too

And of course a great team from Ukraine

It was the first opportunity I’ve had to wear my embroidered shirt from Kosiv (western UKraine).

Several of the US university reps thought I was Ukrainian, since I was wearing the shirt, and I even was complimented on my good English!

The full set of photos are on Flickr.

This week, Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia all celebrated their Independence Days. I was invited to a reception hosted by the Consul General of Azerbaijan last night. Wow, what a spread! And it was exciting to learn so much about the country. Did you know Azerbaijan was the first secular Muslim-majority country in the world? It had a brief indepence for 22-months in 1918-1919 before the Bolsheviks took over and incorporated it into the Soviet Union.

I got my feet wet in the Pacific Ocean last night.

But first we went to The Getty.

Look at that gorgeous blue sky!

I was bummed we couldn’t stroll on the beach with a nice cold beer, but margaritas and nachos with an ocean view was a pretty good substitution!

Full photo set is on Flickr.

We had a little scare a couple weeks ago when Igor got his new passport – the brilliant Ukrainian civil servants spelled his last name slightly differently in English from how it had been spelled in his old passport. While this normally wouldn’t be such a big deal, the problem was that his 5-year US visa was in his old passport, and now did not match the information in his valid travel documents. Some friends at the US Embassy said he technically should be able to get across the border with the slight discrepency, but who wants to take a chance like that? So he applied for a new visa, and thankfully he was able to get in quickly for his interview, which seemed to have been one of the more amusing moments of the Consular officer’s day. He chuckled at the story, and told Igor he’d have his passport back with a new visa within a week. It was delivered two days later!

And now we are counting down to the day he meets me in LA and we start a much needed and long anticipated FABULOUS vacation! The conference is great, don’t get me wrong; it’s wonderful to see my colleagues, meet new people and learn so much, but I am looking forward to putting it all behind me and hitting the road with my wonderful husband for three weeks of rest, relaxation, good food, interesting sites and new adventures. One week to go!

I’m in Georgia (the country, not the state). Beautiful! Great food! Great people!

Adventures started with my very first steps in the country. When they saw my American passport at Passport Control, I was politely pulled aside and asked if I had been to Mexico or California. “No, I live in Kyiv!” I blurted, hoping they wouldn’t notice the New York stamp from 2 days ago. Yikes.

The August 2008 war is still very fresh in everyone’s minds and a topic in nearly every conversation. I was especially skeptical of all news sources last fall – Russian news had a very specific spin, Ukrainian news too (especially considering President Yushchenko is godfather to President Saakasvili’s child, or the other way around, I always forget), and the US was all gaga over Saakasvili because he can speak English and has truly mastered the American soundbite (and American journalists just ate it up!). We haven’t talked about the politics of the war yet, but I have heard some really frightening and heart-breaking personal stories.

Tamar, her husband and their small baby were coming back to Tbilisi from visiting relatives in their home village. They were stopped in Gori, about 50 miles from Tbilisi, by a group of armed men dressed in soldier’s uniforms. I asked if they were Russians, and she said they spoke Russian “but not like Russians” – they did not seem to her to be ethnic Russians, but she couldn’t tell what kind of accents they had. Her impression was that they were not real soldiers, but were more or less bandits dressed up in soldiers’ uniforms.

The “soldiers” forced them out of the car, which they ransacked. They stole everything Tamar and her husband had with them, including the car. When her husband started to protest, they made signs as if they were going to shoot him and Tamar intervened, screaming and becoming hysterical. For some reason, the “soldiers” backed off. Again her husband protested, asking how he was supposed to get his 5-month old baby home, almost ranting and raving. The “soldiers” finally gave them another car, god-knows whose or where from. Tamar and her husband took it , wanting to get away as soon as possible. To their horror, when they got in, they found it “full of blood.” She still has no idea whose car it was or what happened in it.

A few days later, she saw their own car on TV, in a report from Gori. She recognized their license plate. Today they have no idea where their car is. But they are happy to be alive. She told this story to me with some light-heartedness, some laughter even now – perhaps it’s awe at having even survived to tell the tale – but others told me later that she had been in a deep state of shock for quite some time afterwards. I am amazed that she can talk about it at all, much less with a smile on her face, even if it’s an ironic one. These are amazing people.

I asked if the people’s whose homes were destroyed in Gori and other parts of the country during the war were being helped by the government, if some kind of temporary housing was available. Tamar said those people had been given “tiny shacks” to live in, but nothing decent, nothing like what they used to have. This prompted a passionate outcry from her colleague Tina.

“But we got nothing, nothing, no help at all, when we had to leave Abkahazia (in 1991)”. Tina was 6 when her ethnic Georgian family was forced out, becoming part of the huge population of Internally Displaced People in Georgia – in essence, refugees in their own country. I asked if she can go back there now. “Oh no, I’d be shot,” she stated matter-of-factly.

I’ll take democracy on steriods (as I call the over-zealous constant call for elections in Ukraine) any day of the week. I am grateful to live in a country that is proud of its relatively peaceful revolution. Oh how I wish the safety and comfort I feel in Kyiv was a more common experience for poeple in other parts of the world.

I got home yesterday afternoon, after a long and tiring couple of flights. Bummer I couldn’t get a direct NY-Kyiv flight on a Saturday. But I’m glad I didn’t spend the extra day in that assaulting city of New York – way too loud, way too crowded, way too much concrete for me.

I think this was the first time I’ve flown on Air France – aside from the stressful check-in at JFK, they were great. The vegetarian dinner was really good, with fresh rolls and good wine. Like on many flights now, each passenger had their own TV screen. But instead of one or two prescribed films, each person could choose their own movie from a pretty big selection. Since I’m so out-of-touch, I usually don’t know anything about the movies if they are less than a year old. I watched Marley and Me because I love Owen Wilson – he was good, but I still don’t understand what the movie wanted to be about and who wants to be crying on an airplane? Then I watched Revolutionary Road – great acting, but also not really what I would have thought of as first choice for a flight. I finally skimmed through the Comedy and Drama category – Nights in Rodanthe and a couple others I don’t recall right now but remember thinking “Lord, are there any movies without someone dying at the end?” But still, Air France was great.

It was a lovely 18C when I landed, sunny and beautiful. I sat out on our balcony for the first time, enjoying the sunshine and Sunday comics that Dad sent home with me – while Igor cooked up a batch of green borscht with the fresh sorrel he brought back from Korosten this weekend. With a dash of green Tabasco sauce – ah, the perfect blend of hot and sour! I enjoyed the food fest that is the US, but nothing beats Igor’s home cooking.

Pepette had another freak-out while I was gone. Her last one (and actually the first one) was in October 2007, also coincidentally when I was away on a business trip. She was hysterical, growling, screeching, acting like she not only did she not know Igor but like he was Enemy Number 1 who must be eliminated immediately. She actually bit him quite seriously before he managed to get her isolated in a spare room, where she spent most of the past week. She was calm when I got home, so I let her out for a bit when Igor went to the store. She’s still anxious and a bit nervous, and she seems hyper-sensitive to what are normal common sounds in our apartment – like water running through the pipes from upstairs neighbors. She was fine for awhile when Igor returned from the store, but when she did finally growl at him again, I herded her back into the spare room. We let her out again in the evening, and she even sat with me on the couch, snuggled under the blanket for a bit, but it seemed like she just couldn’t relax. When this happened before, the vet we took her couldn’t make any conclusions, and a friend who’s a vet in the US had three possible diagnosis: reaction to the drugs used at the pet salon when she was groomed, contaminated pet food, or good old-fashioned psycho-cat. We’ve done all the grooming since at home with no drugs, and changed her food and stuck to that brand only. Which leaves us with Psycho-cat. Demon-cat is more like it.

She’s purring on my lap at the moment, but we’ll see how things go when Igor gets up. We can’t live in terror of a small furball, never knowing if or when she’ll freak out. Both times happened when she was in heat, although she’s been in heat many more times with no freak-outs. But Igor suggested last night getting her sterilized, which is OK by me. I don’t know if it will help Psycho-cat syndrome, but our lives will certainly improve if she’s not in heat 2-3 times every spring and fall.

I leave tomorrow afternoon for my next trip – the beautiful country of Georgia. If all goes well, I’ll get to Batumi on the Black Sea for a day or two. It’s still on the cool side, so no swimming, but food extravaganza is guaranteed! Oh, and the steam baths… to die for!

I had a good time in New York, made a not insignficant contribution to the local economy, and will try to pack it all up in one suitcase this morning. (Damn it, I knew it was a mistake to bring only one!)

I had a absolutely fabulous time with friends. We celebrated Emily’s birthday Thursday night, and it’s hard to believe a bunch of Peace Corps friends got together and only talked about toilets for a few minutes. I’m so excited to Emily and Chris again in June at their wedding – they are finally doing it! Joanna stayed the week with me in the hotel, and it was really fun to “come home” at the end of the very long and exhausting conference days and get to talk and talk and talk with her, like when we visited each other in our Moldovan villages. It was soooo great to see Dan and hear the gossip and updates about old friends and colleagues.

I found a great deli not far from the hotel with an awesome salad bar, which has been my best friend this week. Joanna finally asked me if we don’t have salad in Ukraine, after my request to get dinner there yet again last night. I didn’t so much make a salad, though, as glom together a bunch of yummy things that we don’t have in Kyiv – baby corn, alfalfa sprouts, chickpeas, artichoke hearts, avocado, sundried tomatoes, Ceasar-salad dressing, croutons. YUM! It’s also the end of winter, so I haven’t seen much in the way of fresh vegetables for about six months.

The hotel inspired me to update my Travel Notes page, so I won’t repeat the rant here.

It was a fabulous trip. I enjoyed meeting with my colleagues at the advising center, and it was exciting to see some of the developments in Chisinau and southern Moldova. There is an American Corner in Ceadir-Lunga – holy cow! What a difference that could have made in my life when I was living in nearby Tvarditsa. We stopped at one gas station on the drive south that was down right modern. Igor and I both commented on how impressed we were with the bathroom – not only was it indoors (extremely rare in Moldova), it had running water, toilet paper and was clean. Wow.

After a couple days of business (and no further mishaps with the National Bank), we spent the weekend with my darling host family in Tvarditsa. It was just plain great. We ate until we got sick, drank the best wine in the world, and even got a tour of the wonderful little Tvarditsa museum.

When we got back to Kyiv and Igor showed me his photos, I shouldn’t have been surprised that nearly half of them are of the pigs, in all various stages of life and afterlife. The newborn piglets, the teenagers who were just born during our last visit in August, the enormous adults, the slabs of someone slaughtered in our honor, and the bits of fat frying up in the pan. A Ukrainian’s dream come true. Igor even made googly eyes and kissy face with the pigs.

We left Tvarditsa with a trunk full of “contraband”, as Igor said. Bags of homemade brinza (salty sheep’s cheese), canned veggies, a freshly slaughtered chicken, fresh eggs, some of that fried pig fat, and of course multiple bottles of the best wine on earth. When we stopped to fill up the gas tank, Igor and Sasha checked the stash and got worried that we’d have trouble at the border. Solution? Start eating and drinking now. Igor and I did the drinking, Sasha helped a bit with the eating.

I don’t know if it was the wine or what, but we had no problems crossing any of the borders. The boys cheered when they made it back into Ukraine, and I cheered when we made it to our apartment that evening. Photos are on Flickr.

Igor joined me for my trip to Moldova. We hired a friend to drive us here, since there are no direct flights from Kyiv and the train takes 16+ hours to travel 500 km (~320 miles). Within 5 hours we were on the border, then a good hour and a half spent passing through endless control points. We went through Transdniestra, this crazy little strip of land that thinks it’s an independent country while everyone else in the world thinks it’s a crazy little strip of land that belongs to Moldova. They take their craziness seriously, though, and have even introduced immigration forms at the border (new since we passed through last August).

The Moldovans have also introduced some new scams, namely an “ecology fee” which must be paid in local currency at the border. i could hardly bite my tongue hard enough to stop myself from endless commentary on the utter lack of an ecological conscience in the country.

We finally got to Chisniau about 7:30, checked into the hotel, and headed out for an absolutely fantastic dinner. For some reason, nearly all restaurants in Chisinau are in basements. I commented on this as we descended into the one we picked, and Sasha (friend/driver) said it probably had something to do with a positive association with wine cellars, which are extreme points of pride in Moldova. I think he’s onto something.

After a fabulous dinner, a delicious bottle of wine, an unncessary amount of vodka and a nightcap of a local brew akin to paint thinner, we stumbled on our way. Igor and I walked Sasha to his hotel, only to find it dark and locked up. The three of us took turns banging on the door and trying to explain to the stubborn guard on the other side that he should let in their paying customer. He was really stubborn, though, and probably could hear as little of what we said as we could hear of what he said, which wasn’t pretty much nothing. Finally Igor noticed the intercom.

“What do you want?”, the voice asked.
“To check in, get a room for the night.”
“This is the National Bank of Moldova” said the voice.

Oops. The hotel’s on the next corner. Double oops.

Today we went on a tour of the Cricova winery. Needless to say, none of us took particular advantage of the wine tasting at the end of the tour. We learned about the famous champagne process they use there, which is pretty dang cool, and saw what seemed to me at least a million and a half bottles of wine. Also pretty dang cool. So much wine, so little time….

Chisinau looks really good (and not just because of the wine). The city seems a lot nicer, cleaner, than when I lived in Moldova (gosh, is it really 4 years ago now?).

I had a very busy but fabulous time in Armenia. The food, the people, the weather – it was all fabulous. I was really busy, they packed my schedule quite tightly with meetings and events, but they were all productive and some even fun. I love talking to students, and I got to do it three times!

Yerevan is an interesting mix of new “under construction” sites and decaying, collapsing sites – some old abandoned buildings, some construction sites that were never completed and were abandoned (mostly at the end of the Soviet Union and early 90’s). So it has that in common with Kyiv, although it’s a lot smaller. Lots and lots of parks, lots and lots of monuments. I really want to go back during a nicer time of year to enjoy the great outdoor spaces.

We went for a day to Armenia’s second largest city, Gyumri. The 2-hour drive was gorgeous – fantastic view of Mt. Ararat as we departed from Yerevan, it’s just breathtaking! As we ascended higher and higher into the mountains, I really started to regret not buying a new camera when I had the chance. I was camera-less on the whole trip! Argh! Gyumri was hit hard in the 1988 earthquake, and I was told there are still destroyed buildings and homes in the city, although I didn’t see them myself. There was a lot of talk about a recent government decree to provide free houses to hundreds of families still displaced from the 1988 earthquake – for 21 years these families have been living in makeshift and (so-called) temporary emergency housing. Incredible.

I also heard a lot about the “dark ages”, three years in the mid-90’s when the entire country was without electricity and heat. Three years. Not a speck of electricity, not a bit of heat. One long-lasting result is the near total deforestation of much of the country, as so many trees were cut down for fuel during those years. I was fascinated, and impressed, with the positive attitude of so many Armenians that I met. I can’t begin to imagine the horrors of living in a city apartment with no electricity or heat for 3 days, much less three years, and yet one man reminisced almost with regret that those days were gone. He talked about how his children were small then, and they played games together every night, or told each other stories, or played piano and sang songs, or just sat and talked for hours on end. “Everyone’s so busy now,” he mused. I suppose he was mostly pining for the bygone days of his grown children’s childhoods, but wow, that he could remember those years of hardship with any warmth at all was amazing to me.

On another note, the Yerevan airport has joined the War on Liquids in full force, extending their profiling well beyond the clearly-threatening bottles of water. My purse was thoroughly searched and all items that could even potentially become a liquid (such as lipstick) were neatly packed into a small, clear plastic bag. Items that were formerly liquidish, such as an empty tube of cortizone cream kept in my purse to remind me to buy a new tube, were also scooped up and added to the surprisingly large pile of potentially dangerous liquidy items that are somehow rendered safe in a small, clear plastic bag. There must be some pretty cool super powers in those baggies.

The sky was perfectly clear as we departed from Yerevan, with a breathtaking view of the mountains all the way to the Black Sea. It was absolutely gorgeous. Beyond description gorgeous. I am so kicking myself for not getting a new camera yet.

Today was a good day. I saw only a tiny piece of Yerevan but I like the atmosphere here. I can tell it’s a great outdoor city in the warm months.

Re-reading my post from whatever ungodly hour I wrote it this morning, I note a bit of cynicism in my voice. Just a tad. A few hours of sleep, a fabulous Armenian lunch, good colleagues and good meetings have definitely improved my attitude. Looking forward to tomorrow.

I arrived in Armenia at 2:30 am local time. Yuck – the time I mean, not the place. Haven’t seen enough to form an opinion. First impresions: I hope the people on the plane are not indicative of the Armenians in general, as they were some of the most obnoxious travelers I’ve had the misfortune to be enclosed in a small space with. The airport, at least the small part I was in, was rather impressive. Bright and shiny. I bought my visa in the terminal while the obnoxious passengers jostled in line at passport control; by the time I got in line there I was the last one left so nobody left to shove me around. They have a rather clever design, in that the only way to your luggage is through a large store. Not a bad idea, as far as promoting capitalism goes, but at 3:00 am I have to wonder how many passengers were really interested in the designer purses and booze. I, for one, was not.

Hotel is good, free internet in my room, along with a well-stocked and reasonably priced mini-bar, both of which always score big points with me.

I could hardly keep my eyes open on plane, but of course now at 4:20 am I am wide awake. Good thing I didn’t schedule any morning meetings. Might have to see what kind of sleep-aid is available from the mini-bar.

Oh, and I’m looking forward to seeing which of weather.com’s forecasts are correct. Their prognosis for the coming week: -9 Celsius, 42 Farenheit. Now I’m no math (or weather) wizard, but I do know that negative temperatures in Celsius are below freezing, i.e. less that 32 degrees Farenheit. I’m guessing they have neither math nor weather wizards at weather.com. And let me say this: it is hard to pack for the possibility of either -9 (which, by the way, is 15 degrees Farenheit) or 42 Farenheit (which, by the way, is 5.5 Celsius).

“Best Western Congress Hotel modern Fitness Centre equipped with sauna is available during the whole year. It is situated on the basement and is a complimentary facility for our living guests.”

I’m starting to have second thoughts about my upcoming trip to Armenia.

I’m traveling back to Kyiv today, having left a not-so-insignificant economic stimulus package in both Washington DC and Columbus OH. We’ll see how the Germans are doing during my layover in Frankfurt, I might need to help them out, too.

Two weeks is definitely too long a period to be away from Igor. I think this is the longest we’ve been apart in nearly two years. It’s not been easy.

During my travels, though, he’s found a fitness club near us and been a couple times already. I’m looking forward to joining as well and working together on the flab we’ve both developed. (Nothing like trying on clothes with your best friends who aren’t in the least bit shy to let you know you’re porking out.)

I’m in Columbus. It’s always great to be here, but overwhelming, as well. So many people I’d like to see, things I’d like to do, and even less time than usual. I’ll be here 48 hours, and since I’m physically and mentally exhausted after 9 intense days in DC, I just can’t do it all this time. I’m also missing my husband like crazy.