Ukraine in the Membrane

While I have a sec to blog-

-The hotel in Kyiv had a great open-air balcony with a tiny guard railing. The balcony, like the hotel, was the finest in 1980s Soviet engineering... so there was NO WAY I was going onto that thing. NO. STINKING. WAY.

-Visited the Perchask Monastery. Beautiful churches, neat history, and Russian Orthodox priests walking around gabbing on their cell phones. The best part of this monastery are the underground caves that the original monks dug a thousand years ago. Those mummified monks are kept in glass coffins in those caves - and if you can handle the long narrow walkway into the depths, it's an amazing candlelit experience.

-Visited the Monument to the Great Patriotic War... basically an old Soviet museum dedicated to World War 2. Nothing was in English, but it's not hard to figure out a museum full of "this is when the Germans attacked," "this is what they did," and "this is what we did to kick them out."

-Meanwhile, outside the museum are rows upon rows of old Soviet military hardware - tanks, cannons, missiles, helicopters. The little kid in me was in heaven looking at all that stuff.

-Boy, that Harry Potter kid is popular everywhere. Except in Cyrillic, it's spelled/pronounced GARY Potter. Good ole comrade Gary Potter.

-It was supposed to rain heavily in Kyiv - but it didn't. It just got HUMID. So by the time we got on our night train to Lviv, we were dying of heat. The train windows were all open, so by the time we got moving, the breeze brought us back to normal. Then around 3 in the morning, the train went through the thunderstorm. Imagine getting woken up by thunder and lightning and driving rain on the roof of your train car... and INSIDE the train car because all the windows were open. Ugh. It was a LOOOONG night.

-Lviv was a cute little town. Beautiful beautiful architecture everywhere you look... and not much else to do. Very glad we got to see it, but very glad we're only there for one day.

-McDonald's is such a funny thing. Back home, I hate hate HATE going to McDonald's. But here in Europe? Sometimes you just want a familiar menu, a clean bathroom, and something the kids will eat. But the suggestion I was given was if you MUST go to a McDonald's while in Europe, don't order something that you recognize. Try to order the local dish - the food that you can only get in Europe. So let this be my official highest recommendation! If you go to a McDonald's in Ukraine, get the Schmochetky. Which I think is the McFriedShrimp. It was really good. If it was shrimp. Which I'm not entirely sure of.

More to come...

Back in the USSR

Wish I didn't have to use that title, but it works. No long long missive tonight - just quick observations...

-Managed to watch a few bits of Russian television. While cartoons have the English language audio track taken out before dubbing, live action shows just have Russian voices laid over the English voices. Very annoying trying to watch Scrubs and NewsRadio when you hear an English-language echo to everything. Also plenty of Spanish tele-novellas dubbed into Russian. Watched a few minutes of old black & white Russian movies - good stuff! Movie listings said that "1941" was going to be on tv - imagine my surprise when it WASN'T the Spielberg movie, but a Russian movie that was... um, not as funny. Also caught a few minutes of a Russian war drama set in Afghanistan.

-On the train from St. Petersburg to Moscow, among all the graffiti, someone had painted Bart Simpson and Bender. Matt Groening is apparently huge among the Russian tagger community.

-Moscow is just the way you'd think it'd be. Huge and monolithic. Red Square is more RED than you'd think, St. Basil's Cathedral is more EYE-POPPING than you'd think, Kremlin is OLDER than you'd think, and the rest of Moscow is more GRAY than you'd think. The drizzly rain made it feel just like the movies.

-Visited Gorky Park. Obligatory Martin Cruz Smith reference.

-At Gorky Park, they have the Russian Space Shuttle. It was intended to be their answer to America's shuttle program, but communism fell and they never had the money to finish it. So they put it in Gorky Park and turned it into a cheezy 4-d amusement park ride. It was kinda cool to look at, but kinda sad, too.

-Took the overnight train from Moscow to Kiev. On the way out, the Russian border people were very friendly. In contrast, the Ukranian border people were BIZARRE. The one spoke English and decided to grill me on my travel plans and demanding to see my train tickets out of the country. When she found out I was going to Lviv, she demanded to know, "WHO TOLD YOU TO VISIT LVIV?!?" I responded, "Uh, my friends told me it was kinda pretty there." They let us in the country, so I can't complain.

-Kiev is awesome. Smaller than Moscow, not as eye-catching as St. Petersburg, but a fun town.

-Ukrainians seem like Californians compared to Russians. There's more sun, so they're more laid-back, more smiley. I've said and heard the phrases, "Thank you" and "You're welcome" more in one day in Ukraine than I did all week in Russia.

-Chornobyl Museum. Wow. I thought it'd be kinda freaky to see Chornobyl, but now I don't want to. The museum highlights the human cost of what happened there. Now I can't think of Chornobyl without seeing all the faces of all the nuclear technicians, fire fighters, paramedics, police, pilots, miners, and innocent people who died from the radiation - and all the politicians who didn't lift a finger to help them.

-Chicken Kiev. I've eaten like three helpings of it. It's awesome here.

-Ukranian TV... Beverly Hills 90210 dubbed in Ukrainian, along with replays of NHL playoff games from 1995. Awesome.

The Idiot

There are always those interesting cultural differences that you become keenly aware of when traveling. And by keenly aware, I mean "smacked upside the head by."

Russians don't smile. It's not a mean or surly thing - it's a cultural difference. Smiling at someone you don't know is considered insincere in Russia. The Russians we've met here have been kind and warm and generous... but they don't smile.

Contrast this to, oh, I don't know, ME. A guy who's been described as (and I'm putting it mildly) Guy Smiley.

Day one, I just rolled with it. Russians don't smile. Gotcha.

Day two, I started to feel self-conscious.

Day three, I realize that I'm still walking around with a smile on my face. Women think I'm hitting on them. Men think I'm hitting on them. Russians in general give me funny looks.

Some of them are clearly looking because they notice I'm not from around here. A combination of the ethnicity, the hair, the clothes - it all stands out a bit around here.

But for the most part, they see an idiot. A goofy, smiling idiot. And I'm entertaining.

For example-

Rustic chicken. Ordering fast food in Russia is scary. The Russians don't make orderly queues - it's just a mass mob that crowds forward to the counter. I tried to order from the board at Rustic Chicken, but it was baffling. They switched back and forth between the Russian word for chicken, and the Russian phonetic spelling of "chicken". I got to the front and somehow managed to order a basket of their famous spicy hot wings - all the while cracking up the staff with my bad Russian and wild hand gestures trying to order. I think they'll be talking about the time that dopey idiot tried to order chicken for a LONG time to come...

Yusupov Palace. An amazing palace, whose claim to fame is that it's where Rasputin was poisoned, stabbed, shot, and forced to order chicken in another language. The coat check is in the basement, which has a ludicrously low ceiling. I rested on a bench near the restrooms, then stood up to leave... then smashed my head against the low ceiling. Like I said - low ceiling. After the pain subsided, a group of four Russian kids - aged 8 to 12 - ran up to me, shouted something at me in Russian, cracked up laughing, and then ran away. I have no idea what they were saying... but they laughed. That counts for something.

Cathedral of the Saviour on Spilled Blood. Went up to the ticket cashier and tried in my best Russian to spit out that I needed two adult tickets and two children's tickets. I gestured towards my family, making noises as if it would explain things. The elderly Russian woman behind the counter, nodded, then spit out in perfect English. "Two adult tickets, two child's tickets. That'll be 810 rubles, please. And if you have small bills, that would be terrific." Sigh. She didn't laugh, but I'm sure she got a smile out of me making an idiot out of myself.

But I'm having such a great time in this town, I don't mind being the idiot.

Awesome sights the idiot has seen around town-

The Hermitage. The Cathedral of the Saviour on Spilled Blood. The Kazan Cathedral. St. Isaac's Cathedral (couldn't go to the top because of bad weather). Nevsky Prospekt. Peterhof Palace. Yusupov Palace. Russian Museum. Ethnographic Museum.

Observations from the idiot-

-I wanted to take a photo of the statue of Lenin outside the train station when we arrived. Turns out the statue is gone for repair. Apparently some kids stuck a firecracker in the statue and KABOOM - down goes Lenin.

-Wandered through Kazan Cathedral. Took some pictures before someone stopped me because photography isn't allowed. I think he cut me some slack because I fit the Asian-photographer stereotype. FINALLY - the stereotype works in my favor.

-Young people in St. Petersburg speak great English.

-Passed a guy standing on the street shotgunning a bottle of vodka. I just assumed this was normal - but from the reaction of people around, this is NOT a normal thing in St. Petersburg.

-Matroishka (stacking) dolls are everywhere. The official souvenir salespeople stick to licensed dolls, but the street vendors carry a bunch of unlicensed ones. And by unlicensed, I mean really REALLY kitschy. Harry Potter stacking dolls, Barrack Obama dolls, Winnie the Pooh, Spongebob Squarepants, The Simpsons, etc. They're awesome in their kitschiness, but the art is just terrible. Couldn't spend good money on them.

-The apartment I'm staying at has the Russian Jetix channel and the UK Cartoon Network channel. It's really weird watching these channels because there are NO commercials! No toy commercials?!? How do they fund these things without toy commercials? Also odd that Cartoon Network speeds things up - the Ben 10 opening is about five seconds shorter by running the opening sequence at high speed. Also caught some interstitials that I'd never seen - like the one of Mojo Jojo singing Tears for Fears' "Everybody Wants to Rule the World."

-Saw a Russian Army Officer walking around... with his iPod. Would've taken a picture, but didn't want to risk getting sent to Siberia.

-Walked through Mars Field, where the Eternal Flame burns for victims of the 1917 revolution. What a weird weird place. There was a groom and bride getting their wedding photos taken alongside the flame. Some boyfriend thought it'd be funny to try and push his girlfriend INTO the flame. Teenagers were making out around the memorial stones to communist founders. And there were women walking through the park in the brightest hot pants I've ever seen. Very surreal experience. Lenin would not approve.

-Teenagers tried to bum cigarettes off me in English. I didn't have any, of course, but I was impressed with their ability to bum cigarettes in multiple languages.

-Lots of couples getting married around town. It's such a picturesque place, it's not really surprising. My favorite was the bride and groom where the bride was in bright orangish-pink and the groom was in full-on mullet.

What the idiot ate-

-Terrasa. Upstairs place with a view of the Kazan Cathedral. Had chicken schnitzel, Georgian fried bread with cheese and walnut sauce, and red caviar sushi.

-Albertone. Terrific Italian from Milan. Had the margherita pizza.

-Rustic Chicken. Russian fast food place that merged with KFC. Had their spicy hot wings.

-Stolle. Amazing Russian pies. Had the meat pie, the mushroom pie, and the cherry pie.

-Sadko. Amazing Russian restaurant with the singing waiters. Had the pork shashlik.

-Olivia. Greek restaurant. Had the Mutton souvlaki and a tuna salad.

-Shilla. Korean restaurant. Had the kimchee fried rice.

The Eugene World Tour 2009 marches on...

The Eugene Who Came in from the Cold

Next stop on the Eugene World Tour 2009 - Russia! Hopped the morning Sibelius train from Helsinki to St. Petersburg. Seated next to us on the train were four people from Pittsburgh.

There are way too many of us Americans. I can't go anywhere to get away from us.

All border and passport checks are done on the train while moving. The first set of passport checkers were Finnish. Nice guys, though they were all packing handguns. Made me wonder what kind of trouble the Finnish border guys get into.

Next up - the Russian border check.

Now if I've learned ANYTHING from movies and television, it's that there are two types of female Russian guards. The big no nonsense East-German-swimmer women... and the foxy dominatrix ones. You can recognize the foxy ones from their distinctive walk, where the heels of their boots make those intimidating CLOMPS as they step across the floor. Think Vanessa Angel in "Spies Like Us" - not Cate Blanchett in Indiana Jones.

So which one was I going to get? Which one was going to ask, "PAPERS PLEASE!"

This is me we're talking about. Of COURSE I got the big, no nonsense one. She was pleasant enough - just took my passport without saying anything. But the foxy one was apparently assigned to other duties. I'd like to think she was off somewhere seducing some American guy to become a Russian spy.

And can I say how much I love train travel? So much nicer than airline travel. I had breakfast in the dining car - scrambled eggs with sausages, cold cuts, salad, potatoes, bread, and a croissant. Unlike with air travel, I actually got some rest during the voyage. Actual honest REST.

Great. Now I'm revisiting the fourth Indiana Jones movie in my head. More from Russia soon.

Hot as Helsinki

Next stop in the Eugene World Tour 2009 - Helsinki, Finland!

-Flew into Helsinki airport from London Gatwick on Easyjet. Hey fellas - two words: Scandinavian Stewardesses. Nuff said.

-The whole "it's cold in Finland" thing? Lies. Damn filthy lies. Helsinki was brutally hot. And I live in the San Fernando Valley. I know what hot is. It wasn't Woodland Hills hot... but it was hot.

-Guys in Finland all kinda look alike. Like a cross between Dolph Lundgren and Bruce Timm.

-The neighborhood near the hotel and train station was a little nuts - with a samba Carnival going on, and a separate street party. The street party was a weird mix of goths, skaters, burn-outs, hippies, ravers, alcoholics, and homeless. Now picture them taking off their shirts to expose their pasty white skin to the sun, smoking cigarettes, drawing on the street with colored chalk, and dancing to terrible, TERRIBLE techno music. More on them in a bit...

-While visiting the Church in the Rock, got into a nice chat with an older German gentleman. He took one look at me and my family, then asked, "Californians?" Apparently we're easy to spot. I should've asked him if he was a fan of Baywatch...

-It's funny how teenage boys arer just like teenage boys in all other countries in the world. In Finland, the boys were hanging out, chattering in perfect English, dogging on their friends, and talking about their favorite YouTube videos. If it wasn't for jetlag, I could've been overhearing kids in Los Angeles.

-Spent a quiet moment outside the iconic Helsinki Lutheran Cathedral in the impressive Senate Square. There were people around, but it was kinda quiet... until the naked guy came running. Didn't see where he came from, but he was running laps around the statue of Czar Alexander II while his friends cheered. Soon there was a fan club of teenagers and skaters all egging him on. One yelled, "Riverdance!" Unfortunately for humanity, he obliged.

-Towards the end of the day, the sun finally got blocked by some cloud cover. Because Helsinki's so far north, it was 7pm at night and the sun was still high in the sky.

Then the clouds opened up and started pouring! Thunder, lightning, chubby rain...

And wet hippies.

The rain sent them scrambling for cover in the areas around my hotel. Under every overhang and dry spot was a bunch of burn-outs getting hammered on cheap beer, playing off-tune guitars, and lamenting the end of their party. One of the homeless guys was even talking to the sky, trying to get the rain to stop.

-Watched a little Finnish Disney Channel - Phineas & Ferb and the Replacements in Finnish, Fairly OddParents and Hannah Montana in English. MTV Europe shows actual honest-to-goodness music videos.

-Wish I'd had more time in Helsinki. Minus the wet-hippies, this is fun little town.

And for those few of you who got the "chubby rain" reference, "gotcha suckas!"

London Calling

The Eugene World Tour 2009 begins with a brief stop-over in London. I know some of you would love to hear every detail and all the things I'm seeing. Well FORGET IT. I'm not some trained animal whose job it is to entertain you people!

Wait. Actually, I am, aren't I?

Okay. So here're some notes.

-Air New Zealand non-stop from LAX to London gets a huge thumbs up. The planes all have personal entertainment devices (with many many many episodes of Flight of the Conchords), free white wine, the flight attendants all have charming accents, the food was actually somewhat edible. A positive experience.

-Alas, like most airlines, there aren't power hook-ups in your seat in Economy. Would be nice to be able to keep my laptop charged for the whole flight. However, there are power hook-ups in all the lavatories - there for men who want to shave during the flight.

Which begs the question... what's to stop me from bring an extension cord, plugging it in one of the lavatories, laying the cord down the aisle, and then running my laptop to my heart's content? I mean, the alternative is for me to bring my laptop into the lavatory and just, uh, sit there for a while...

-Fun game when you're on a plane - sit up in your seat and see what movies everyone else is watching. You'll find yourself surprised, and then start to extrapolate what this means about them.

The pudgy plumber? He's watching "Hannah and her Sisters."

The vapid Paris Hilton? She's watching "Pink Panther 2."

The kid who won't stop crying? He's watching "Speed Racer."

And the guy who looks kinda creepy and weird? He's watching a double-feature of "In-Bruges" and "The Adventures of Winnie the Pooh."

Sit far far away from that guy...

-Took forever to get to my hotel. Just my luck, I landed in London during a 48 hour Tube strike. Instead of taking the tube straight from Heathrow to my hotel, I took the train to Paddington, then queued up for half an hour for a black taxi driven by a guy who actually shouted, "Blimey!" Didn't realize people still said that.

-Stayed at the Premier Inn County Hall in London. Awesome hotel in the old County Hall building, so it's right in the shadow of the London Eye and Big Ben. Thanks to jet lag, I took a stroll along the south bank of the Thames at 5 in the morning. Very peaceful - walked across Westminster Bridge and had it all to myself. You could almost hear the ghosts of old London. If you're curious, they sounded like Peter O'Toole in A Lion in Winter.

-I love love London, but this was only a short one-day layover. Only had time to walk the parks and the sights with all the other American tourists, swung by Kings Cross platform 9 3/4 to beat-up the Gryffindor freshmen, and then took in some history at the British Museum.

-The receptionist who checked me into my hotel? I'm pretty sure it was Amy Winehouse. Because if it wasn't, there's yet-another woman running around London with a thick block of eye make-up and tall hair.

-Clicking around on the the television set, saw something that completely blew me away. Imagine suddenly seeing something that you knew of. You'd heard of. You believed that it existed, and yet you'd never seen it? Well, allow me to shout it from the rooftops!

I saw Finley the Fire Engine!

It was a pre-school toon from a few years ago. Many of my friends worked on the show, and they made a lot of episodes! But it never aired in the U.S. But now I can say that I was one of the lucky ones who saw it.

-Went downstairs into the lobby and the tv screen there had BREAKING NEWs... along with a photograph of Madonna. Sigh. I wondered to myself if the Brits love having Madonna around? or if they just sit there and stew that we dumped her off on them?

-Stupidest thing I've done since I got here.

Me. Standing under Big Ben.

Me: "Hey, what time is it?"

I reached for my cell phone, then stopped and slapped myself for being stupid.

-I ain't no Jane Espenson, but here's some of what I've been eating in London.

...A spicy (curry?) meatball bagel sandwich from a neighborhood deli.

...A huge English breakfast with back bacon, sausages, runny scrambled eggs, baked beans, tomatos, and mushrooms.

...A tuna and cucumber sandwich on a baguette.

-Dumbest thing I paid money for. At a souvenir shop, my eye caught the "City of Liverpool 'Streets Named After Beatles' Limited Edition Collectors Guitar Pick." It was ridiculously expensive for a silly collectors guitar pick. Then the saleslady said, "George and John glow in the dark."

SOLD! So I am now the proud/ashamed owner of a "John Lennon Drive" collectors guitar pick that glows in the dark. I'm so proud/ashamed.

-Got driven to Victoria Station by a cab driver who can best be described as the Bangaldesh version of Ernie from Sesame Street. Nice guy - hilarious yet somewhat off-putting laugh.

That's it for London. More blog notes to come...

He's a Mac, and I'm a piece of junk

Stupid Microsoft. I would've blogged earlier, but my brand new netbook running Windows XP decided to blue screen to death at 30,000 feet. Apparently trying to open a JPEG image was enough for the OS to blue screen, and then not be able to boot up becuase the boot instructions were damaged.

By trying to open a JPEG.

It's a good thing Microsoft doesn't build cars. Otherwise turning on the radio might cause the car to explode.

Storm Hawks - Alliance for Children and Television Award

From The Canadian Press-

Award of Excellence, Animation Ages 9-14 category: "Storm Hawks" produced by Nerd Corps Entertainment, broadcast by YTV.

Big props to all the crazy-talented people at Nerd Corps!