Walking in Yekaterinburg

 

Walking the Iset

The Iset is the river that flows through Yekaterinburg (named after Peter the Great's wife, Catherine I), Russia where I’ve been living since late autumn. Along the river is my favorite place to walk. I’ve only walked about a mile of it, which can get repetitive. There are a couple of small, wooded parks along this stretch of the river that I occasionally stroll through. They help break the monotony, though it is hard to get tired of looking at and listening to a flowing river.  

Here are three different views of some art on display in one of the parks along the Iset.

Thank God for winter. With the onset of Russian winter, a part of the river pools in a wide-open area and freezes, and people use this as a short cut. No bridge needed! This is not allowed, but many locals do it to save themselves hours of time of walking all the way around, so I figured, while in Yekaterinburg . . .

On one side of the road, the river runs freely; on the other side, it pools and, while still flowing, looks more like a pond or lake.

I walked on frozen lakes when I lived in Minnesota. I remember following my boyfriend onto a frozen lake for the first time, gingerly putting one foot at a time out in front of me and tapping the ice before committing my 120 or so pounds to it. And I listened closely for splitting sounds. Over time, I got more comfortable. I learned some of the science behind being on ice. The ice needs to be 4” thick to support a person up to 200 pounds, 5” for a snowmobile, 8-12” for a crowd or small vehicle and 12-15” for a truck or SUV. But this business of walking over flowing as opposed to standing water was new to me.

As wind will ripple the surface of a pool of water, so it ripples the snowy ice, reminding me that what is underneath me is flowing. 

It’s a little less than a mile to walk from our apartment to the river. How I dress is, naturally, determined by the weather. This is the only time I ever check the weather because otherwise, what difference does it make? When it was 27 degrees below zero, I wore everything in my closet. I did look a little strange, but I stayed warmish. The day I started writing this post, it was 27 above, so I left my down coat at home and ventured out in a sweater and light jacket. (Mom, I'm not in Phoenix any more!) I didn’t want to wear my mask (my cold weather mask) because the day was so sunny and bright, and I needed my sunglasses. They fog up when I wear them with my mask. I’d forgotten to check the wind speed before setting out. It was gentle, but that still makes it colder. To determine wind direction and speed, all a meteorologist would need to do is attach a wind gauge to my forehead. If I’m walking north, the wind will be northerly; if I’m walking east, the wind will be easterly, etc. I understand my great-great-grandpa walking uphill both directions to school.

The first time I contemplated crossing the frozen Iset, I stood on the sidewalk and looked at all the people walking across and those sitting, looking intently into their ice holes, fishing. It must be safe, I thought to myself, look at all of them. So, I chose a well-worn (but not too well-worn) path and crossed. I started out slowly, just in case, picked up speed and finished quickly, just in case. And I prayed, God help this fool. Gratefully, I made it across and this became my new route.

I like walking in Yekaterinburg, whether along the river or the city streets. People walk here, rather than saunter. Most places I walk, I'm always winding my way around others and I rarely get passed. Here, I get passed every time I go out. I love it (unless they’re smoking). In so many cities, people stroll along the sidewalks so slowly, it makes me crazy with impatience. And they do it three and four abreast taking up the entire breadth of the sidewalk. Four women in Munich walked into me carrying my groceries home, causing me to land in the street, then yelled something in German at me! Sometimes the most efficient way to get by is to play a surprise game of Red Rover with them and burst through from behind to the other side.

This chubby guy was welcoming people into a restaurant.

This pair of statues represent the two main characters from a popular Russian story/movie called The Twelve Chairs. Briefly, it's about a man whose mother, on her deathbed, told him that she'd hidden the family fortune, her diamonds, from the Bolsheviks in one of the dining room chair cushions. Their furniture was taken from them by the communists after the Russian revolution. He sets out to find them in hopes of regaining the fortune. It's full of funny escapades and witty characters.

Above are three views of The Stonecutter's House. there are several charming, elaborate wooden structures similar to this scattered through Yekaterinburg, each with its own story.  

Walking in the extreme cold is an experience. My eyes get teary if it’s windy and my tears freeze on my lashes. (For some rather spectacular pictures of frozen lashes, google or Bing search frozen lashes images.) My nose runs when I’m just sitting indoors, but something happens (contraction of nasal passages and such stuff) when I go outside that my nose turns into a dike that needs a finger stuck in it. (But I'm trying not to do that, especially in public.) I take plenty of tissues with me when I walk, but getting the tissue to the nose is no easy task. When it was 27 below, I had to debate whether I thought I could get my gloves, hat and mask off before the drippage froze or my fingers frostbitten. (I can’t get my mask off without taking off my gloves because my gloves stick to the Velcro; I have to take my hat off because it covers part of the mask fastening. It’s complicated.) I don’t like the idea of the drippage building up in my mask right above my lips, so I often wind up taking it all off (from the neck up) and blowing my nose. We have precious little Puff’s Plus with us here, so I ration them. Douglas is not allowed to use them. (He blows his nose only when coming in from the cold, about twice a day. He can use the thin, stiff, local stuff.) Yesterday, I dropped one of my Puff’s Plus—an unused one. It was windy. I gave chase. It flitted from snowy patch to icy patch with me in pursuit until I finally caught it. It was dirty. I was in a quandary over what to do with it. Throwing it away was not an option. Putting it in my pocket with the (various stages of) clean ones was not an option, so I held onto it hoping it would dry in the wind. (I could brush it off and use it later.) All the way home, I looked like I was surrendering.

You might need a magnifying glass to see my lashes, let alone the frost on them, but it's all there.

A couple of weeks ago, I started seeing a change in the ice. Where there had been snow everywhere, there were spots that looked suspiciously like water. Maybe it’s just ice from which the snow has blown, I thought. I pondered this before setting out. Was it melting? It was still below freezing, in the twenties. I still saw people walking across. I still saw people sitting on their ice holes fishing. An igloo someone had made stood near the shore, as did a gazebo that had been set up on the ice on which no one was allowed to walk. (Go figure.) I decided to chance it, and I crossed successfully.

Men enjoying the final days of ice fishing on the Iset River.

It’s now officially spring and I know the ice won’t last forever, so every time I start to cross, I give the river the once-over. As long as I see people crossing it without suddenly disappearing into it, I’ll cross. Last week, on my way across I got my boot wet, and my toes. This happened when I strayed slightly from the set path to get out of someone’s way coming from the opposite shore. Lesson learned. Don’t stray from the path. I thought I learned that in all those fairy tales I read. But how can the path be so firm and a few inches away be so slushy and wet?

On one of my walks, in keeping with one of my coping mechanisms to combat depression during this pandemic, I decided I needed a change. So when I got to the open area, I decided not just to cross the river, but to crisscross it. There are several worn paths that people use crossing to and from various points. With the advent of the slush and wet toes, part of my new routine is inspecting the ice by looking over it and determining whether or not I see any arms waving frantically from the river. If I see more people casually crossing than frantically waving arms, I cross. That day I crossed about eight times. Fun.

I'll leave you with one more street picture for Easter. It still amazes me to walk down the street and see something a grand and beautiful as the churches and locals, quite used to them, of course, just passing them like any other building.

Have a blessed Easter and enjoy some jelly beans for me.

Lent: Fasting and Slowing Down

This Lent, I decided to drink nothing but water. I'd fallen into a practice of having a daily Pepsi or Coke, when I couldn't find Pepsi, and nightly cognac. I've switched to diet Pepsi to cut sugar, and I haven't been getting schnockered from the cognac, but I don't want this to become a thoughtless habit. there's been a bit of cheating, but I'm doing all right.

I've also been enjoying daily Lenten readings every morning with my mother. The first Friday of Lent, it suggested a fast. I decided that, since it wasn't too  late (I hadn't had breakfast), I'd fast that day. I almost made it to sunset. (I was getting addle-minded and a little weak, so I had some simple Russian brown bread, with butter. Then some raisins. Then some M&Ms.) The next Friday I did better; I made it to official sunset. In order to keep myself occupied without expending too much energy, I've been doing everything very slowly on Fridays. This has been a surprisingly pleasing, mindful experience. The first Friday, I ran errands. Usually when I walk, I look ahead at the lights. If it looks like it's getting ready to change, I alter my pace so I can avoid standing and waiting to cross the street. It's been quite cold here, often around 20 below, and you can often stand at a light for 90 seconds. But that day I didn't rush. I just experienced the cold, looked around and lived it, appreciating that I wasn't cooped up indoors. The second Friday, I took a two-hour walk along the Iset river. I made sure to walk away from home slowly, so I'd have a nice long walk. I emerged from an underpass tunnel and saw this:

The Sevastyanov House in Yekaterinburg, Russia.

There are birch trees along the Iset across from the Sevastyanov House, the patterns of which remind me of a harlequin in black and white. (So many of these pictures look like I took them in black and white, but I didn't.)

A view of the Iset through a wrought-iron railing on an overpass.

These beautiful ice crystals form on the water all along the banks of the river. Here's a closeup:

They remind me of decorations on a cake. 

I sneaked across the frozen river. It's not allowed, but plenty of people have made a nice trail, so I took my chances. Like sand dunes, you can find plenty of pictures of nature's artwork, but somehow it never gets too dull.

There are small parks along the Iset, and some spillways. Not exactly waterfalls, but I cn pretend. There are nice signs of life along the river: fishermen, ducks, beautiful pigeons that are camouflaged white with gray and black splotches:

And art:

Snow in any language means fun.

The mindfulness on Fridays has calmed me. I did laundry and, as I carried it upstairs from the dryer, thought with each step how one task was completed. We had clean sheets and towels to go into the weekend with and we'd both feel better to have more clean clothes to choose from. I perform more self-care regimens on Fridays to give my body the attention it's not getting through food. I've continued working on a writing I began a year or so ago about what I thought Jesus might have experienced and thought when He went into the wilderness alone for those weeks. That gives me a reason to feel the hunger rather than ignore it. 

In one of my bloglettes early in the pandemic, I wrote of experiencing the isolation and limitations of the pandemic. I wrote of some of the freedoms that could come of it. This might sound random, but stay with me. I've had two very minor surgeries in the past month and a half. What looked like a large pimple on the back of my wrist wouldn't go away, so I had it excised, twice. The first time by a dermatologist who assured me is wasn't cancerous. The second time by a plastic surgeon after it was biopsied and determined to, indeed, be cancerous. The dermatologist kept turning my head away with her hand so I couldn't see her working. I told her, as best I could in Russian, that as long as she held a scalpel in one hand and my arm in the other, I was going to watch. The plastic surgeon didn't care that I watched. He even got a pillow for me so I could better see him slice the surrounding area, pull it back with a long tweezers and alternately snip and cauterize the tissue beneath until it was removed. I've long hated injections, but living in all these countries requires that I keep up-to-date on recommended vaccinations. I've discovered that they hurt less if I watch. Watching this procedure was so fascinating that I was more comfortable than I would have been looking at a sterile wall saying la-la-de-da I'm in my happy place to myself, while imagining what was going on.

So, I'm slowing down during my Friday fasts, even focusing on them, and, like watching the needle go in and studying the snipping and cauterizing, it makes it less uncomfortable, gives it an element of interest, even fascination. Sometimes I worry that after the pandemic is over and we can all go out and be together again, everything I can do now (all the self-care, taking walks, exercising, reading, practicing recorders) will remind me of the pandemic isolation. I hope not. Perhaps all this practice on mindful focusing will help when that time comes. Perhaps it will prove to be preventive. 

Poor Douglas

If you're new to reading this blog, Douglas is my husband. He's a Foreign Service Officer serving in Russia. We started out in Vladivostok. We were evacuated to Moscow during the pandemic where we spent about nine months. We've now been living in Yekaterinburg for about six weeks. Like the rest of you, we don't know what's going to happen next. Also like many of you, he works remotely from home most of the time. For the most part, I stay quietly out of the way.

This morning after breakfast, he announced that he was heading upstairs to get dressed. This should have been a clue to me that a meeting was imminent, but I missed it. I went up to play a Christmas song, New York Fairy Tale by The Progues, which has been in my head for several days in hopes of ridding myself of it for about eleven months. I found it and played it, loudly. I heard a door firmly shut. This hint I did receive and I turned the volume down, a bit. In the song, reference is made to another song, Rare Mountain Dew. I decided to follow Fairy Tale with The Dubliner's version of Rare Mountain Dew. I didn't want to fall down the modern rabbit hole of Irish music, so I exited out before forces beyond my control pulled me further in. It was then that I heard voices. For real. I realized that as I was singing along with "you scumbag, you maggot, you cheap lousy faggot" and skipping to "to my hi di-diddly-idle-um, diddly-doo-ri-diddlum-deh" Douglas was in a meeting listening to, and talking with the Consul General and other colleagues. After the meeting, I apologized to him. He said he hadn't noticed. 

And there, folks, you have one of the fundamental differences between Douglas and I. I will sit here writing (or what-evering) and be distracted by the neighbor's refrigerator kicking on and off, while Douglas can be oblivious to "you're a bum, you're a punk, you're an old slut on junk lying there almost dead on a drip in that bed" (yes, it's a Christmas song!) while he's working. I wish I had that kind of focus, I really do.

Last Friday, Douglas called me from the Consulate to tell me that the long-awaited package from Moscow had finally caught up to us. Unfortunately, it was not the Halloween marshmallow pumpkin candies I was expecting from my Aunt Katy. It was from Aunt Katy, however. Douglas asked me if I wanted him to tell me what it was. This question can mean two very opposing things. It can mean that it's something that will either thrill me or disappoint me greatly. I told him to tell me. "She sent you something called Naked Males." He said. Naked males, I thought. My curiosity was piqued. But knowing that the word naked means different things for the various sexes - movies are full of nudity, but rarely will you see a penis, I asked, "Are there penises?" "No." He curtly answered. I later found out why he'd been so short with me. When he got home, he pulled it out. The gift. The one from my Aunt. It was a manicure kit called Naked Nails. Oopsy. My mistake. 

Everything is so up in the air right now regarding the fate of the Consulate in Vladivostok (still officially Douglas's post), and I hate to put any pressure on him (especially as I sit hear listening to him sing to himself, I've got the sword of Damocles hanging over my head), but we must get back to Vladivostok or to the States. We're out of Charmin and chocolate chips. I've thrown away two of my pajama tops for being threadbare and stretched out. While I admit the threadbare part can be sexy (especially after night sweats), the stretched out part is just unattractive. Without my books and the Vladivostok Consulate library as a backup, my Kindle bill is going up by about $16 a month. I know, I know, I could borrow through the library. I haven't figured that out yet. Anyone? Kaliope? 

This morning, Douglas and I walked to the Consulate together, him to work and me to exercise in the gym. I forgot to kiss him goodbye at home before we bundled. Easy to understand. I wasn't saying goodbye yet. Anyway, as we neared the Consulate I knew I wanted to kiss him before we went our separate ways. I thought ahead enough to not wait until we were inside where he might be shy or embarrassed about kissing me, so I asked him when we were outside the door. I saw his eyes roll just a bit. Not because he didn't want to kiss me, but because in order to kiss me, he'd have to remove his mask. In order to remove his mask, he'd have to take off his ear muffs. To get the ear muffs off, he'd have to doff his hat and to get any of that off, he'd have to take off his mittens. It was 27 below last week. Not as cold this week, but still ."I have needs." I said. So he did a very modest strip tease and kissed me. 

I don't deserve him.

I'll leave you with some wintry pictures of Yekaterinburg.

I found this hothouse in a nearby park. What a treat.

There are two ice sculpture displays within walking distance.

I hope this comes off as humorous in this picture as it did when I passed it on the street. He looks like he's holding out his hat for a handout, but is poised with a snowball for those who don't contribute!

Holidays in the Time of Pandemic

 

In 2020, because we couldn't go out to eat and lacked the forethought to order through Amazon the  number of weeks in advance it would have required to be timely, we celebrated my birthday around a fire pit eating Georgian khachapuri delivered to the Embassy compound. For Douglas's birthday, I baked him an apple pie. Our anniversary was spent watching a movie and eating a 'special' dinner of take-out burritos and chili soup from the American Diner in the Embassy. For Thanksgiving, I found some deli-sliced turkey, sweet potatoes, cranberries and one box of Stove Top stuffing that we ate on opposite sides of the apartment while Douglas finished a quarantine after a trip to Vladivostok. 

I was determined to have a festive Christmas.

The yolka in the parking lot of our apartment in Yekaterinburg. Yolka translates as Christmas tree, but it's more of a New Year's tree, since the Russians celebrate the new year with a decorated tree.

Then we were bundled off to Yekaterinburg where they needed Douglas to serve as management officer and act as post security officer. One job just isn't enough for some people in the eyes of their superiors, two or three are better. "Just bear with me during this and throw some food my way." Douglas told me just before his head sunk into his computer and he disappeared.

A detail from the yolka in the parking lot.

I try to maximize trips to the grocery store and only go once a week to avoid exposure to the coronavirus. Society's mouth-breathers have been thoughtful enough to make themselves obvious by leaving their noses hanging out over their masks as they walk around cloaked in their entitlement, so I can usually avoid them. I speak enough Russian to get by at the grocery store - I don't have to flap my arms or rudely squeeze myself if I want chicken or milk. (I don't think you want to know about the time I had to buy tampons while living in Germany.) Our oven here is about a third the size of a standard American home oven, so turkey is out of the question. Maybe a couple Cornish game hens cooked one at a time. For the most part, for Christmas dinner I stuck to things I knew. But I also wanted brown sugar. There's plenty of brown sugar on the shelves here, but there's no molasses in it. It's not unusual for me to draw a small crowd when I shop. It usually takes two or three to confer, read labels and figure out exactly what it is I want. I am grateful for the patience of the Russian people. I found brown sugar at the fifth store I visited - dark brown! Since I'm on the topic of sugar, you know the difference between regular granulated sugar and baker's sugar? Well, double or triple the size of the grains of our regular sugar and you have the only sugar available here. You must allow extra time for the sugar to dissolve when making everything or everything crunches.

So, our dinner of sautéed peppers, onions and zucchini with rice and salmon was colorful and delicious. But we had no Christmas decorations. Wait. Not true. My dear mother send me one of those cardboard Advent calendars with the chocolates hidden behind each window. We gave it a prominent place on our couch and surrounded it with gifts from Douglas's co-workers.

These are our Christmas decorations for 2020. The picture of the young women is a Peace Corps calendar with photographs take by volunteers around the world.

I'm not crazy-busy like Douglas, but there is plenty to do to fill my days, even when it's not Christmastime. When we're living as we are (so-called temporarily), we are provided with what are called welcome kits which are made up of the bare minimum of household supplies: four each of bowls, plates and utensils, popsicle sticks that somehow pass as knives, kitchen shears that can barely cut lettuce, burlap towels, blankets that are made of some sort of rubbery material, 14" mattresses with fitted sheets made for 8" mattresses,  etc. and I am grateful for these welcome kits. Really. But to leave behind Wusthof knives and have to wash dishes twice a day to have something clean to eat off of is taxing. Then there's the laundry. Our washer and dryer are each large enough for about three bath towels, so it must be done often. The units came with no instruction manuals. The dials for the washer have pictures:

In case you're wondering what all the Russian means, briefly: beside the picture of the pants, it says jeans'; beside the picture of the shirt, it says 'shirts.' You get it. I have deliberated for many minutes when I stand before it with a pair of pants and a shirt I want to launder.

The dryer is no clearer. Your choices include iron-dry, shelf-dry, closet-dry and very dry. Most cycles for each last well over an hour and a half.

Okay, back to the holidays. I've mentioned before that New Year is the big holiday in Russia. Christmas is more of a church holy day. 

I wanted sparkling wine for toasting the new year. This was challenging since I don't know Russian wines (she writes as though she knows American wines or Italian wines). It was further complicated by the fact that I'd forgotten to bring my reading glasses, so I couldn't make out сухое (dry) or сладкий (sweet) which usually appears in very small print on the back label. (Reading microscopic English is hard enough, but to make out the Cyrillic alphabet is just too much.) I did, however find a брют (brut) for P295 (295 rubles, about $4). Pretty cheap. I was suspicious. Well, I thought, maybe this is the two-buck-Chuck of Russia; maybe it's not so bad. I took it. There was another bottle nearer the checkout for P495 (about $5.35), so I figured I could afford that as a back-up. 

Fireworks are popular here, perhaps from the proximity to China, I don't know. So there were intermittent fireworks all night New Year's Eve. They aren't very spectacular, not that I've seen, but they're beloved. In Vladivostok, they were a regular occurrence all year round.

Douglas ended 2020 with the receipt of some very good news, news I'm not allowed to share yet. That's your teaser to read next month's blog.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year from Yekaterinburg, Russia!