nickywritesfromrussia's Open Salon Blog

Banya

Tue, 11 May 2010 10:05:07 -0400

My dad was here, and then he left. The next batch of posts is in the order I felt like writing them, which is not necessarily the same order in which they happened. In fact, this first one is about the last thing I did. I went to the Russian banya!

The banya is a time honored tradition in Russian culture, a ritual cleansing of toxins and beating by birch branches. Our journey to the banya began with the ceremonial gathering of supplies, namely water, beer, fruits, and nuts. Armed with the essentials, we searched somewhat aimlessly for thirty minutes until we stumbled upon the heavy oak doors of the fabled Sanduny banya, which was established in 1808 and has been servicing the inhabitants of Moscow ever since.

Inside, the air was a cool relief from the muggy Moscow heat (shocking, I know, but Russia does get steamy in the summer). The floors were a mosaic of blue and white ceramic tiles; the walls were a soft wash of cream; the window where we paid was a little booth of polished hardwood. We bought four tickets and ventured further into this lair of luxury, eager to glimpse the opulence that awaited us.

We were not disappointed. Inside the women’s banya stood comfy booths upholstered in rich leather. We were shown to our own row, and as we shed our outdoor clothing, freshly laundered plush towels of forest green were laid out for us. We slid our feet into soft and spongy slippers, wrapped out hair in even softer pink towels, and shuffled into the banya.

The banya itself has several elements apart from the antechamber of relaxation. Sanduny banya opened with a spacious room reminiscent of a Roman bath. There were marble topped benches in a row at the center of the room, which was lined on both sides of its length with open shower booths. To the right of the entrance were two large wooden tubs brimming with cool water, and against the right wall there was a bucket near the ceiling with a cord you could pull to douse yourself with an icy splash. Far to the left there were stairs leading up to a standing pool, the water of which was flavored with essence of eucalyptus. The whole room was steamy but not hot, and women walked around covered in mud masks or yogurt exfoliants.

We rinsed off the city grime, and then entered the hot room of the banya. This room resembles what Americans know as a sauna. To the left of the door was a coal fire, and nearby stood wooden benches covered with buckets of water, jars of eucalyptus, and swatches of supple birch branches. A wooden staircase to the right led to a raised wooden platform with a slatted floor that ran the length of the wall opposite the door. This staircase we mounted and upon these slats we sat, as sitting in the heat of any of the higher benches would have been simply unbearable. The floor around us was soon covered with other women and their towels, and for a moment we all sat there waiting for the room to be ready.

Presently the door closed, and a woman of about thirty clad in a toga-like sheet and wearing a little wool beanie began throwing water onto the rocks. Again and again she ladled cool water onto the heated rocks, and every now and then she flicked a ladleful up over our heads. She added more eucalyptus to the water, and with a muttered warning of “Your eyes, ladies,” she through large spoonfuls over our now gently perspiring bodies. If you raised your arm just over your head, it was possible to feel the air building up heat and humidity. Suddenly, our master of ceremonies whipped off her sheet and began spinning it through the air. Faster and faster her arm whirled. Her quick movements stirred the ether like a spoon stirs soup, and the heat fell down from the ceiling to rest on our now dripping bodies. As the heat enveloped us, so did the steam, and soon nothing was visible through the stupor and breathing seemed like a labor of Herculean effort. My body shuddered with a second of panic that I couldn’t suck any oxygen out of the room, and then everything relaxed into a soft haze of sweat and mushy muscles. Those who couldn’t stand it for another second escaped to the cold showers and pools waiting outside, but I couldn’t imagine rising to make that journey. I watched as droplets of sweat fell from my legs, hit the floorboards, and evaporated. I lost track of time, and after what seemed like eternity, or one second, I gathered by towel about my boiling skin and began to edge out of the room.

As soon as I stood, the heat toward the ceiling struck me like a medicine ball to the chest. I used my towel as a shield, but the heat was vicious and unrelenting. It chased me down the stairs and out the door. In the shower room, I gulped deep breaths of air and spooned cool water all over my body with my hands. My plush slippers flapped around the tiled floor, dreamily following the equally languid movements of my friends. We drifted out of the banya back to our leather booth, where we sipped our beer and nibbled on nuts and raisins and waited for our bodies to readjust to the air outside the steaming room.

After another unnoticed amount of time had slipped by, we again braved the boiling room, this time armed with ven’iki, the birch branches and leaves. We took turns beating each other with the twigs, a practice which is supposed to draw toxins closer to the surface of the skin and then release them in capsules of sweat. The beatings really just turn your skin an angry, patchy red, and swirl the air about the room faster. Hearts palpitating from the effort and the heat, we fled the hot room and stood under the bucket of freezing water, periodically pulling the cord to release it down on us with a splash. Back to our booth, back to the hot room, into the eucalyptus pool. We were like nymphs; we were like mermaids. We were four happy girls enjoying an afternoon at a two-hundred-year-old spa. We were dripping with streams of sweat, opening our pores, drenching ourselves with the softness that can only be attained after hours in the banya. We were so soft! Even after our three hours were up, we wafted out onto the street glowing with softness. We carried it all the way to Teremok, our favorite fast-food pancake stand, where we delicately chowed down on fat blini filled with mushrooms and cheese. Forget the grease, the city grit, the overnight train ride home – I’m still soft and glowing.

Late

Mon, 26 Apr 2010 01:04:01 -0400

Life got crazy. First there was a terrorist bombing in the Moscow Metro. Then the entire government of Poland crashed into the still frosty ground. Now Icelandic volcanoes are spewing ash and soot miles into the atmosphere, leaving Russia alone but isolating her from the rest of Western Europe. Somehow, life in Belgorod wobbles on, nonchalantly oblivious to the havoc that the world wreaks around it. There is a sense of timelessness, despite the changing season, as though what has already happened has no relation to what is happening now, and what happens now will not impact what will happen in the future. Maybe that’s just for me, the little American thinking about what this year in Russia means in the grand scheme of her life, but sometimes I really do believe that Russia as a state-of-mind has no concept of forward thinking.

With this in mind, I’d like to expose my own lack of foresight and tell the story about how I almost missed my train to the Ukraine a few weeks ago.

There’s a minute before you are late in which you are not late. That minute stretches for infinity, and I often find myself wandering around through that minute, getting so completely lost in it that I forget that that infinite minute has a real time equivalent of sixty seconds, and that while a minute can last a lifetime, a second is always a second. I don’t even know where I go during that minute. It’s as though all of eternity happened in it, but afterwards I have no mental access to it whatsoever. Poof! The final dimension will never be conquered by a girl named Nicky because she is too much of a space cadet to report back home.

I woke up on time to catch the 7:50 express to Kharkov. I woke up well before 'on time,' and promptly fell back asleep. When I woke up again, it was 7:10, exactly ten minutes before I was supposed to meet Aillie and co. at the train station. Usually it takes me two real minutes to get myself ready, but often that translates into two real minutes and three minutes of infinity. I was in the elevator and traveling nine floors down by 7:15, and by 7:16 I was already hurrying along the walkway to the bus station. My steamy breath fogged my view of the bright blue onion domes of Orthodox church to my right, but the piercing early morning sunlight reflected off of the golden dome of the university’s observatory and shocked me out of my dreamy Russian reverie back to the harsh reality of my lateness. I urged my sleepy legs to move faster.

I passed the fountain under the cold gaze of the angel Gabriel, skipped across the street, and jogged first up the steps to the bus stop platform, then down into the underground crosswalk. I emerged on the other side to find no buses. My phone buzzed in my pocket, and before the receiver was even at my ear I could hear Aillie’s frantic voice asking me where the hell I was and why was I so late. She told me to grab a taxi, because unlike normal trains where you can hop on just seconds before they pull away, this train had to be boarded thirty minutes before departure so that the officials could check passports and visas. It was now exactly thirty minutes before departure.

I ran back down the stairs, through the underground crosswalk, up the stairs to where there is usually a long line of taxis just dying to be of service. On this blissful morning, there was not a single car. And just at that moment, my bus, the number 13, pulled away from my stop across the street. My phone buzzed again, and at this point the half of me that was conscious was panicking; the half of me that was still lost in eternity-time was having an existential experience. I ignored the call and took off running after my bus, hoping to catch the next 13 at the next stop, or maybe another bus that comes from a different direction but ends up at the same place.

Perhaps I have mentioned this before, but running is not a particularly popular or common pastime here in the land of the Rooskies. Running in your Sperry topsiders and patchwork jeans, your purse flailing behind you, is even less popular and common. But a late girl’s gotta do what a late girl’s gotta do. I sprinted past the eight ATMs on a single block, gasped for breath at the crosswalk (and watched another three of my busses go by), and flagged down a trolley bus at the stop. Trolley buses are notorious for moving slower than a snail, but I took the time to catch my breath and prepare for the final sprint.

When we finally pulled up to the train station, I shoved my fare at the driver, leapt from the bus, and hightailed it to the platform. My phone buzzed again, and I managed to snag it out of my pocket and answer it while weaving between morning commuters and the Muscovites recently deposited from the Belogorye train. “Where are you!??! Our boys are waiting for you at the entrance!” I changed course, my hair falling from its elastic and my coat flapping in the wind. I barreled into the boys, mumbling what I hope was, “I’m an idiot” in Russian, and we all ran together across three lines of train tracks and then down the platform to our car. Reaching deep into my bag, I fished out my passport, visa, migration card, registration, and train ticket, only to realize that my train ticket said not “Ouellet,” but “Kurzavina,” the last name of my good friend Anya, who wasn’t on the train yet either. Still running, I called Anya, who dreamily answered that she wasn’t coming. Now all of me panicked. Would they let me on the train with the wrong ticket? It’s Russia! No!

But at this point, we were already on the train, and just as I was asking about the ticket mix up, the doors slammed shut, and the conductor shooed us to our assigned seats. Aillie’s face was a wash of relief, but when I explained that I had Anya’s ticket and she wasn’t coming, that beautiful, shining expression died into a smoldering scowl. She pushed her way back to the conductor, who crossly listened to our dilemma before saying, “And? What difference? Go sit down.” What luck! We wiggled our way back to our seats to find Anya shoving her way through the door at the other end of the compartment. Somehow she had jumped into the first car before we took off and worked her way back to us. We had done it! Seven of us, all coming from different places, half of us notorious for being infinitely late, had made it onto one train for a day trip to a foreign land. Well, mildly foreign. Foreign enough for me to get a stamp in my passport! It’s orange, and has a little picture of a train on it. When we went home late in the evening by bus, I got another stamp with a car on it. Now if only I could stamp my forehead to not be quite so late all the time…

Home is ... where?

Sun, 11 Apr 2010 12:04:40 -0400

I have a laundry list of excuses for why I haven’t updated in eight bagillion years: it’s finally spring and I can’t justify spending time in front of my computer when the weather is just so beautiful; I realized I’m only here for another two months, and have therefore been spending every waking (and sleeping!) moment with friends; I’ve been struggling with my ever present feelings about what it means to be a foreigner living in Russia; I’m lazy. Take your pick.

Last week, my students performed a role-play in which they discussed different stereotypes that Americans have of Russia and vice versa. I was actually quite impressed by their bald faced honesty and articulate rendering of a topical that could potentially turn volatile. They swatted away the easy topics of bears in the street and vodka injections from an IV and opted for more serious issues, like modern youth culture, globalization, and immigration. I was completely shocked – this particular group has some weird social vibe, and I was convinced that there was nothing I could do that would encourage them to utter more than two simple sentences per class. But on this day, in that magical room on the eighth floor, they were jumping over each other to ask me questions. They were arguing with each other about things that are truly important to them, not just points of view that they have to take because the text book requires them to. They were initiating, talking, conversing!

One girl’s comment about immigrants, however, really got me thinking. She said something along the lines of, “People who come to Russia act like it’s their home even when it’s not. They don’t respect Russia.” It’s a pretty straightforward statement, except that I had no idea what she meant by ‘respect’ and ‘home.’ If these people have moved to Russia, isn’t Russia their new home? Or is home always that place where you come from, and not necessarily that place where you are? And what does it mean to ‘respect’ a place? She had a hard time answering these questions, and I think everyone in the room realized that it’s much more complicated than we all first thought.

Until this year, I thought that people who lived in Russia were Russian. It seems pretty clear, but then you remember that when asked what they are, Americans will answer with a detailed history of their families’ various nationalities: I’m about half Irish and French Canadian with a little Native American and a sprinkle of Luxemburgish. I assumed that all my students in Russia would be Russian, and therefore necessarily made an ass out of myself (haha…oh bad word play). Most of my students here can trace their families back through Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, and sometimes even as far as Mongolia. Somehow in the sea of my infinite ignorance I had lumped all of these countries together, supposing that their shared governance under the Soviet Union had somehow translated into a shared identity and sense of nationality. This is not the case. People here are quick to point out the small yet significant differences in culture, history, tradition, language and the main point – politics. The real kicker is that during the Soviet period all of the national boundaries disappeared, and people moved quite freely throughout the Union. But with the fall of the iron curtain rose the walls of separate nations, often trapping Turkmenis in Russian, Russians in Ukraine, et cetera, et cetera. Now you can find little hamlets of ‘immigrants’ all over Russia, working and living here as though they were home.

This is the point my student took up with relish. How can they live here and not respect Russia? How can they live here, taking advantage of the perks of being in Russia, and not adhere to the normative traditions, language, customs, and way of life? Why do they feel like this is home when they are so fundamentally not Russian?

I was a little taken aback by her bluntness. Sure, there are Americans who feel the same way about illegal aliens, but in my mind the situation in Russia is a little different. For one, the language barrier that so many people complain about in America is not really an issue here – most people in former satellite states can at least understand, if not speak fluent, Russian. Most Russians even have relatives living somewhere outside the borders of Russia. And not so long ago, those borders weren’t even there. Regardless of the political situation past or present, it seems that there is a strong sense of Russianness and otherness, which leads to the question: What does it mean to be Russian? What makes a Russian “Russian?” Apparently, living here and building your life here isn’t enough. That place where you live is just your house, not your home. Most of the students agreed that ‘home’ is the place where you are born, and even if you move away from that place, your ‘home’ will remain where your roots are. This idea of nativeness seems to be a huge part of the Russian identity.

But is that it? Someone once told me that language is what makes someone Russian, although that opinion was quickly shot down when someone else noted that I speak Russian and am most decidedly not Russian. Someone else once told me that being Russian is some innate part of your soul. You share a common empathy with your fellow countrymen. My fellow Fulbright Fellows share the opinion that being Russian entails lots of vodka, cigarettes, high heels for women, black pointy-toed shoes for men, and an imperviousness to frigid winters. Personally, I think it’s a mix of all of these things, and anyone who does not embody all of these parts never was and never will be considered ‘Russian.’ And if you aren’t Russian, Russia will likely never be home for you in the same way that it is for your Russian neighbors.

I guess that’s true anywhere, for the most part. However tacky it may be, I’m a firm believer in the “home is where the heart is” attitude. As for this whole issue of respecting a place, I don’t think I’ll be able to work that one out through writing a blog post about it. Respect is a culturally loaded term that has wildly different interpretations and expressions, and most of the time those do not translate from country to country. Maybe I’ll take this one on when I have something decisive to say about it; for now, I’ll go back to searching for little patches of home in Russia, which for now means sitting in my favorite café, pretending that everyone here is speaking English and drinking real coffee.

VIDEO POOOOOST

Wed, 31 Mar 2010 06:03:24 -0400

Enjoyyyyy!!

Girls, you have fire

Tue, 30 Mar 2010 05:03:58 -0400

I’m sure most of you have heard about the twin bombings in the Moscow metro on Monday morning. Thankfully, me and everyone I know are alright, although it’s certainly left us all a little shaken up. There were candle light vigils throughout Belgorod last night, but surprisingly it was not as hot a topic of conversation as I had expected. Maybe it’s better that way. If you’re looking for further reading, this article will tell you more.

But enough about terrorism. I really wanted to write about my recent day trip to the Ukraine, which to be honest was about as exciting as a day trip to Canada for an American who lives close to the border. Aillie and I woke up at the crack of dawn, unhindered by Russia’s early daylight savings switchover, and hiked over to the railway station. Our bus was packed with people eager to take advantage of a favorable exchange rate and the budding spring weather. True to form, I fell asleep as soon as the bus started moving, and didn’t wake up until we hit the border crossing. Buses and taxi-vans have their own special line, and on a normal day, this line moves quickly through the initial passport check, the Russian exit patrol, and finally the Ukrainian entrance patrol, but for some reason the line stalled and it took us two hours to cross the twenty meters of no-man’s-land. We kept ourselves warm and amused by syncing our MP3 players and dancing around. When we finally reached the window, the guard took one look at my passport, one look at me, and flatly said, “It doesn’t look like you.” My stomach dropped to my toes – I had visions of underground prison rooms that are usually reserved only for spies and traitors of the state – but then he said, “Smile.” America is the only country that encourages its citizens to smile for identification photos! As soon as I flashed my pearly whites, he stamped my passport and waved me through.

To be honest, the Ukraine looks almost exactly like Russia. Big surprise, I know. Kharkov, our destination, is an older city, and unlike Belgorod many of its older buildings are still standing today, giving the city a European feel. The modern boutiques and megamalls don’t hurt either. We exchanged our rubles for gribnyas (which I think look like Monopoly bills), bought some green plastic Metro tokens, and laughed at the funny language that warned us about closing doors and line changes. Aillie had a laundry list of things to get for spring, so we spent the day literally running from store to store, tearing through dressing rooms, and enjoying the little world-for-two that our English afforded us. At points the whole experience felt like a little slice of my former life in America – there was an Apple store, a Ralph Lauren and Tommy Hilfiger and Levi’s, a food court, and a mini ice-skating rink. Plus I had a partner in crime in territory that was mildly unfamiliar to us both. It was nice to not feel like the only clueless one.

On the trip home we silently stuffed our stomachs with sweet breads and juice while watching the snow piles grow higher and higher as we crept back toward Russia. The border crossing was about the same, except this time our driver – who is also the sweetest man in all of Eastern Europe – collected our passports, did the paperwork for us, and then roll called the entire bus to return them. When he hit mine, he looked at it for a while before deciphering ‘Nicole,’ which he yelled out in an uncertain tone. As he passed it back to me, he asked me to pass along a hello to his sister in Chicago. So, for the bus driver’s sister in Chicago: Hi! Your brother is doing great!

We finally made it home in one piece, exhausted and confused about the time – on top of it being daylight savings, Kharkov is also an hour behind Belgorod, so our sense of time was completely out of whack. This sense of time disorientation got even worse the next morning: on Mondays I have class at 8:30 and 10:15. I woke up at 10:10 and completely panicked – I set two alarms for 7:30 and 7:36! How could I sleep through two of them! I jumped to my phone – surely someone would have called if I had slept through a class and half – but there were no calls, and my phone read 7:10. I looked at my watch again: 10:11. PM. Somehow it had switched to my parents’ time zone in the middle of the night. I wasn’t late, I was early! I was so proud of myself that I snoozed for the next 40 minutes and ended up being late to class anyway. I’m a winner.

To end this ramble, I want to share my favorite moment from my Ukrainian excursion. Aillie and I were running to catch our bus, but as we emerged from the Metro to the square that is bordered by the main bank, the government building, and the train station, the afternoon sun illuminated the whole scene with such gentle gloriousness that we had to stop and look at it. While we were gazing around, a man approached us and said, “Girls, you have fire.” Aillie and I glanced at each other with uncertainty, and then back at the guy, who was now making the international hand gesture for “I need a lighter.” Even though we couldn’t help him out, it’s my favorite moment because of Aillie’s unrestrained delight that he attempted to use English with us. We were noticeably foreign together; we made people want to switch things up. We’re movers and shakers. We are fire.