Anniversary

Yesterday was the one-year anniversary of our arrival in Russia. I can't believe it's been that long. And what have I learned during the year? So much and yet so little.

I know how to order a Subway sandwich in Russian.

I've learned to elbow old ladies in the face so I don't lose my place in line.

I've learned to hold my breath for two blocks while I weave through chain-smokers on my walk to work.

I've discovered how much environmentalism means to me, now that I can't recycle and I see a lot of pollution every day.

Overall though, the main thing I've learned is that trying to make grandiose statements about Russia is an endeavor at which you're doomed to fail. I'm more knowledgeable about Russia than before we came, but far more confused.

Many things about Russia have been exactly as I perceived. People do smoke a lot and drink a lot of vodka. They eat a lot of blini and pickled mushrooms. No lie. People of all classes and ages attend fine arts events, much more so than in the US. But do they go for the right reasons? That I'm not sure of.

I go through days when I get so fed up. When I've stepped on one too many loogies or one too many drivers has cut me off, and I declare that I am SO SICK of this place and ALL RUSSIANS ARE JERKS and I'M NOT COMING OUT OF MY APARTMENT AGAIN UNTIL WE LEAVE THIS PLACE. Then someone will chase me down when I've left a store and forgetten my purse, or I see a babushka bundling up her grandson in the snow, or I see people who have much less than I do in terms of health or money or fortune laughing and having a good time, and I remember that certain human instincts show up anywhere you go.

They say that America is the land of contradictions, but really that title should go to Russia. The divides between rich and poor here are staggering. Life expectancies are as contradictory as possible; men have 3rd world life expectancies and women have 1st world. They're constantly making advances in science and weapons and highly respect their scientists, but small villages still go without electricity. And while society hasn't shown any concern for the environment yet, because of poverty people here are masters of making due with very little, reusing whenever possible, and repairing everything for prolonged use. I'm perpetually amazed at the number of repair shops here, many for things Americans would simply throw away. And yet, new products are often so poorly made that they need to be repaired almost immediately. It's a baffling cycle.

Russia and America do have an awful lot in common, leaving me to wonder sometimes how we were enemies for so long. Each country has an incredible amount of patriotism. Each is cut-throat in its goal to be the best, the richest, the fastest. Russia is quickly catching up with America's commercialism, especially in terms of overwhelming options. Money can get you anything here, and tough luck to those who don't have it. And America lately has been catching up with Russia in terms of silencing or criticizing those who say something the powerful don't agree with. Much like America, Russia's landscape is highly varied and contains a wealth of natural resources. Will they be squandered away for a quick buck for a few, or will they be slowly distributed to guarantee a comfortable future for all? Will Russia eventually become even more commercialized than America or will it return to its socialist thinking?

I'm extremely curious to see where the country will go in the future. Although it's losing population, its people are genetically and historically ready to take on the world if the opportunity arises, and it has the resources to do so. Russia's future looks to be a bright one if its cards are played right.

And who knows where I will be, 10 or 20 years from now... but at least one more year here awaits me. Will I ever reach a solid conclusion, or will Russia continue to surprise me? Either way, I'm looking forward to it. Maybe I'll leave more confused than I came, but a mind once opened can never be closed, and for that I'm thankful.

The Most Honest Blog You'll Ever Read

I know I don't usually post about things besides travel here, but I just received a link to the following video today and it fired me up.

The Most Terrifying Video You'll Ever See

You can watch it if you'd like, but really it boils down to this. He has a theory on how to make the right choice about whether or not to act on global warming. The theory is basically to make a pro/con chart and to decide what the smallest risk is. His chart looks like this:



His theory is that we cannot control whether global warming is true or false, so we need only worry about the columns of whether or not we take action instead of wasting time arguing over the truth of the rows. And of the worst-case scenarios in each column, economic recession is less of a tragedy than total chaos, hence, despite the potential of wasting money, taking action is the better choice.

Why it takes him like 9 minutes to say this, I don't know. But anyway.

Everyone already knows that taking action is the logical choice to make. But he's forgotten to factor in the biggest part of the equation: greed. Greed is the main reason that significant changes have not already been made. The personal greed of the small percentage of rich (and environmentally influential) individuals on the planet prevents them from taking action because, if it turns out to be true and catastrophe strikes, it won't affect those who are still rich. They don't care what happens to the rest of the planet and will do everything in their power to hoard money for themselves, including ignoring the millions of people who may spread this video around.

What needs to be pointed out- rather than action being a potential waste of money- is the fact that taking action could be a huge economic boon. The greedy who don't want to change because they're protecting their bank accounts need to realize that technological and lifestyle changes could be huge money makers. When computers were first invented, people worried that they would take away jobs that humans used to do; now working with computers is one of the biggest employment sectors of our nation. The same with global warming- after the initial investment, there is plenty of money to be made, whether it's selling $40 organic cotton t-shirts or formulating better environmentally friendly cleaning compounds or installing solar panel shingles or whatever.

People need to take a step beyond this "spread the word! just install an energy efficient lightbulb, man!" thinking, and take the truest step forward: that of convincing the people who make the biggest footprints that helping the environment does not mean going into poverty. It will make them just as much money as they're making now, all while slowing down starvation in Africa, the likelihood of another Katrina, etc. After all, remember who was most affected by Katrina? Not those with thick pocketbooks, that's for sure... so why should the rich thin out their pocketbooks to help the planet when they're not susceptible to the risks? The answer is, they don't have to- they only think they have to.

Human beings have been on this planet way too long to still be gullible enough to believe that the conscience or goodwill of the influential will somehow magically take over. After all, you don't get into a position of wealth and power by being a minimalistic pacifist who believes in helping others. (Okay, maybe a few have, but certainly not enough to reverse the direction this planet is heading in.) We are also gullbile if we forget that we are not living in a market economy. Some of us would like that to be different, but for now, it's not.

The goal here is to remove the fear of change- the idea that change=things being worse. Where does this fear come from? When has a new idea ever been embraced and then led to complete catastrophe? Take music, for example. When CDs starting changing to MP3s, everyone in the music industry freaked out. "We won't be able to make money anymore! Everything's just going to be spread around for free!" And what ended up happening? Not just that more musicians than ever before are able to share their work and people are listening to music in more ways and places than ever thought possible; but jobs were created too- designers for MP3 players, programmers who figure out how to stop music from being shared for free too much, scientists developing longer-lasting batteries, marketers pushing their product. Know all those iPod commercials on TV? When did you ever see TV commercials for CD players? Right there, that's jobs for thousands of people- creating commercials to promote a new technology- and while considered commonplace now, that technology scared the crap out of people 10 years ago and was expected to cause a recession in the music industry. Has any such thing happened?

There are thousands of other similar examples out there. Where does it come from? Why do industries believe that building something that doesn't need to be replaced all the time or serviced all the time mean that jobs will end? Like if roads started being built from recycled tires instead of asphalt. Recycled tire roads reduce pollution by reusing something that would otherwise be burned, not to mention providing a safer, better grip for cars, and they last longer because they expand with changes in temperature instead of cracking like asphalt roads. They'll last decades without a single patch. Which is exactly why asphalt companies don't want them to be built- because they think it means roads will never have to be built again. Maybe it means asphalt roads will never be built again, but why can't asphalt companies roll over into becoming recycled-tire companies? They could make millions replacing all the old worn-out roads across the country. It's not like that would be finished overnight and then they'd all be out of a job. And even if all those roads were finished and never needed to be replaced or repaired every again, does that mean there's not something else they could do next? Why do people no longer have ingenuity and imagination? Already the time we've saved through technological improvements (say, the dishwasher) is being filled with things we never could have imagined (such as virtual Wii tennis). What if we'd let ourselves be influenced by the sponge lobby? ("Building dishwashers will take jobs away from good men and women making sponges!") Sounds silly, but that's essentially what we're talking about. Yesterday sponges, today dishwashers and Wii- what could be next? Aren't you excited to find out? Or are you too busy servicing your Hummer because it hit a pothole?

This mindset that no money can be made in a world of advancing technologies and environmental consciousness is the number one thing holding us back from actually making it happen, and this video perpetuates that belief. From manufacturing low- or no-flow toilets to planting rooftop gardens to teaching home gardeners how to compost to driving a commuter train instead of just your car, there are endless ways that going green can better our economy- certainly more so than continuing stodgy old technologies. Really his chart needs to look like this:



Here the choice is obvious, just as it is in real life- and these real-life choices point out the benefits that exist even for those whose greed rules over their heart. When THIS message is spread, and only then, will TRUE environmental change begin to happen- not only for the rich or the poor, but for EVERYONE.

An extremely late photo-blog of Tallinn

So as evidenced by my new profile picture, I just started getting back pictures from Italy, at which point it dawned on me that I still haven't written about my last two trips, so I'd better start lest I become buried under my own photos. Sorry if seeing people in parkas throws you off, it being June and all.

Visiting Tallinn checked off number two on our list of the Baltic trifecta (Riga being no. 1, with Vilnius still to come). We began our visit on March 8th, which is International Women's Day. ("International" meaning "Everywhere but America," which is extra strange considering it began there.) Consequently, we observed many young men carrying bags and flowers for their attached-at-the-hip girlfriends. Never mind that the next day this came to a screeching halt and the city returned to being the British bachelor-party playground that it's becoming more and more known for, thanks to cheap flights, beautiful women, and local men who don't care about their appearance nearly as much as British men.

Anyway.

Only last month did a train route between St. Petersburg and Tallinn open, so we drove for our trip. It wasn't nearly as dangerous as the road to Helsinki, mostly because the road was so horribly mangled that driving over 30 MPH is impossible. The road looked like swiss cheese; there were potholes big enough to swallow small cars. And there was very little traffic. Good thing, since you often had to swerve into the oncoming lane to avoid breaking an axle on your side of the road.

Here is a stretch of Russian road, coming into a village. Yes, that's a sign warning you to look out for cows.



After about 2 1/2 hours of this, we crossed the border into Estonia, where things immediately and dramatically improved. Here's some Estonian countryside, including a glimpse of the Gulf of Finland and a wind farm.





As you may or may not know, Estonia was under the thumb of Russia during the Soviet Union days, and still shows leftover signs of Russia's influence. (Sometimes it tries to remove them, and then all hell breaks loose.) Among these are the giant concrete housing blocks on the outskirts of town.



As you enter the city proper, though, things dramatically improve.

The main attraction of Tallinn is its walled medieval city. Thanks to its limestone cliffs and large port, Tallinn was an important trading point from the 13th century on. The Brotherhood of Blackheads was founded here, it was a member of the Hansiatic League, and over the years Tallinn was taken over by, among others, the Teutonic Knights, the Danes, the Crusades, the Swedes, the Nazis, and finally the Soviet Union. Thus you end up with a fascinating mix of styles. The walled city was originally split into two separate cities, with their own laws and everything: Toompea, higher on the hill, the older of the two, and back in the day home to dignitaries, officials and aristocracy; their elevation allowed them to look over the Lower Town, where merchants and the general public lived. Amazing to think they were ever separated, since the whole old city area is quite small.

Here is a view of the Toompea area from outside the wall.



Here's another angle. While they've since built in steps, you can see why it would be intimidating to try and scale this.



The first stop in Tallinn is Raekoja Plats, also known as Town Hall square, which has the usual shopping and restaurants. Keep an eye out for the guys with carts selling hot nuts.

The square by day...



The Gothic-era Town Hall by night.



Here is a borrowed picture of the square during warmer times of year, when sidewalk tables perk everything up.



Within the square is the Town Hall Pharmacy, which has been in business in the same spot at least since 1422. They have a little museum with old apothecary bottles and scary-looking syringes and other things of that sort. Fear not, however; they do sell modern medicine.

The pharmacy:



Near the square is another fun tourist spot known as the "Cat Well."



It is so-called because apparently Tallinn's Medieval residents believed that an evil spirit lived in the well. The spirit needed to be fed or else it would make the town's wells run dry. The most common meal was stray cats. Many a homeless tabby lost its life by being chucked down the well. I can't believe the town never had a major cholera outbreak.

On that appetizing note, I must take a break for dinner. No cats involved. More highlights of Tallinn on the way...

Approach of the White Nights

Sunrise today: 4:41 AM.

Sunset: 11:16 PM.

Needing sunglasses at 9:30 PM: priceless.

Two weeks to the solstice!!