Win.

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That's a few hours well-spent.

Allo?

Funny thing.  When Russians answer the phone, it's almost universally with a word that is "Allo?".  It seems to me like it would be the closest translation (phoenetically) to "hello" that is easy in the language.  I asked Ira about it and she said yes, it's just a word that has no other meaning, it's not a word in the Russian language except it means, "I am beginning a phone conversation with you, can you hear me, is our connection good, etc."  It would not be acceptable to say "Allo" to someone on the street, but it is what you say at the beginning of a phone call.

It seems pretty likely to me that this is simply a case of linguistic 'contamination' where the English word came over due to whatever reason, but only in that role.  Strange.

She vigorously denies this, and insists it's a Russian construction that has nothing to do with English, but oh well...

Comrades

I realized something interesting in a very direct way on the trip to Kazantip.  The ultimate fun for a Russian young man is to get drunk with his buddies.  When it's time to have fun, there is only one thing to do: get super wasted with your boys.  They would roam the party in groups of 5 or so, singing songs, doing shots, and being WAY touchier with each other than I'm accustomed to seeing. 

This, in and of itself, is not so strange, as in many cultures it's fun to get wasted with your boys, but the unique thing is the extent to which it is the objective.  I was running around one night with Josh (an American I met there) and Ira trying to find a girl for Josh.  The details are a bit hazy, but it seems like we started talking to some girls, then they were shortly joined by two big Russian guys.  I was a bit nervous about the situation, but did what I could to be friendly to the guys, and they were SO excited to meet some new boys to party with.  The girls wound up wandering off, and I think the guys had been just starting talking to the girls, and we apologized and they were like.  "No, listen.  Girls are everywhere here, it's not that often we get to meet new comrades."  They were INSISTENT that we come the next morning and find them on the beach and they would help Josh meet girls, and they were true to it. 

We showed up the next morning, but not Josh, and the guys were SO excited to see me.  They RUSHED to buy me a beer.  It's such a different mindset, though I don't feel I can do it justice.

Also, I saw, for the first time since I was probably 10 years old, more than one man using the same toilet.  I was waiting in a line of 3 guys for a toilet at the best-kept restroom there, and I was shocked when the occupant of the stall left and the group of three guys went in together.  They stood there with the door open and all used the toilet at the same time.  I couldn't quite bring myself to either pull out my camera and take a picture, or join them when one of them finished.

KaZantip opening video

I'm still looking for this song in a better format...

This is the text roughly translated:

speaking and showing kazantip
in a couple of moments in a big celebratory speech
we will be talking main specialist in a field of mass illusions and psychosis

the main doctor of the sanitorium kazantip
doctor nikita the first

(then a break, and this is the speech)

if all your life everyone tells you that you are insane
and you can't convince the world that they are wrong
then you can start building your own clinic
for the same insane people as you are

you can make your own rules there that don't work in the regular world
and paint suitcases in yellow color
and wear underwear with word happiness
or not wear any underwear at all
and then pretend that you are a princess
and play legos when you are way over 30 [years old]
or take an elevator to mars
and stuff like that

maybe in your insane assylum there won't be perfection
just let it be
but only those that called you insane
are now also your patients

republic of kazantip
you thought i was insane
but now we have full clinic of us
ku ku ku ku ku ku

dear patients, i don't see your hands
i don't see your hands
i don't see your hands
ku ku ku ku ku ku

and now open your mouth and say aahhhhhulena
dear patients, i don't see your hands
i don't see your hands
kukukukuku

(hymn-y kuku chorus)

but now because everyone is here, i announce the sanitorium is open

(shortly afterwards, though not in this video for some reason, he announced that the prescription for everyone was trance, and Above and Beyond came on for an amazing set)

Good idea, bad idea

Good idea:
Take your super-sexy, super-light, DVD-driveless laptop on an international trip because it's super-portable and you just want to do some coding or writing from time to time.

Bad idea:
Take said laptop, running the latest Mac OS (which does not seem to be available worldwide yet), into a cell phone shop in the Ukraine and let the cell modem you are buying install a bunch of drivers onto your computer.

In my experience, it just ate the computer.  I couldn't boot, and though I was able to get my hands on my OS re-install disk, (which seemed to be necessary because it had screwed up a bunch of kernel extensions - I was able to determine after about 5 hours of poking at it), I could not re-install because there was not another decent Mac to be found anywhere.  Le sigh.  I basically bricked my MacBook Air until my return to Moscow.  It is back alive, thankfully, but I lost a lot of good writing time...

Banking and Training

I am really shocked at the condition of banking in former USSR.  It's crazy the things you take for granted.

We've been on this side of the Atlantic now for a month and a week.  We have been able to use a Visa card a total of three times.  Once at OBI, the big Home Depot equivalent, once at Media-Mart, a big electronics superstore (and actually, I think many of the stores at the big mall in Moscow will take a Visa card), and then to buy our one-way train tickets to the Ukraine.

The whole time we were in Ukraine we were unable to use our Visa card anywhere.  That led to a shocking amount of scouring the Crimean Peninsula for an ATM that actually had money in it.  Crazy.  Funnily, the ticket-selling window at Kazantip had the sticker for Visa, Mastercard, etc, but when we asked if we could pay with our card, the woman looked at us like we were crazy.  This prompted a search for an ATM with money in it, since the tickets for the two of us were about $400.

The lack of a functional banking system, and public trust in general, was probably most egregiously a pain when we wanted to come back from the Ukraine.  To do so, we had to actually go to the train station, and then, since there was no information posted, we had to stand in a long line to talk to one of two cashiers at this busy station to find out when the trains were running to Moscow, which classes, which were available, etc.  We found that they did have two tickets on the train in the class we wanted, but we were a few hundred grivnas short (we had 1900 on hand, needed 2200).  Another ATM-finding trek ensued, followed by another long wait in line to actually buy the tickets.

There were posters all over for a company/service that says they will go to the train station and buy your ticket to Moscow for you, but they are widely regarded as scams.  There is no trust in any business - even if they were to deliver a ticket to you, you would not really trust it.  I feel like it's the polar opposite of the US airlines where you can buy your ticket from your smartphone, have it just show a barcode through the app, which the agent scans.

But I think that's a pretty high-level complaint, I spent probably 30% of the trip without running water...

A side note to this, the people in these all-cash societies generally hate when you don't have exact change for things.  Makes it tough when the ATM dispenses random bills, too.  Sometimes it's a 200 grivna note that comes out (generally despised by shopkeepers everywhere, rougly $25), sometimes it's a 50 grivna note (about $6).  This did, however, facilitate my first ever owning of a whole bank-wrapped bundle of bills after we went into one bank one time that was willing to trade our 200 grivna notes for a stack of 10's.

A new level of... Something

I just wrapped up an epic trip to the Ukraine.  We left on the 28th of July and got back last night, the 17th of August.  Phew.  I'll post some musings from the trip, but first...

I have used a new class of toilet:

It was about as exciting as it looks.