Article in the East European Memory Studies Newsletter

My colleague Cornelius and I wrote an article last month for the organisation Memory at War and their monthly newsletter "East European Memory Studies". Just follow the link (http://www.memoryatwar.org/enewsletter-may-2011.pdf) and then you can find the article on page 14.

Russian Holidays

The last weeks in Russia were full of holidays. Starting on the 23. February with the celebrations for the day of the Red Army and ending two days ago with the international women‘s day. Last week Russia celebrated Maslenitsa for one week, which is sort of a pancake week to celebrate the end of winter. My friends and I prepared Russian blinis (pancakes) on various occasions with various kinds of fillings, side dishes and beverages. However, the negative side effect of Maslenitsa is that you eat far too many Blinis, so that you are not able to eat any more blinis for the next couple of weeks. The international women‘s day is a very important and big event in Russia. Every man has to make or buy presents (in most cases tulips) for all the women who are important in their life - be it a good friend, your wife or your working colleague. We also celebrated all these holidays at work, with a lot of alcohol and food. However, there is a difference to how holidays and bridging days are handled in Russia in comparison to Europe. When a holiday falls on a working day, you don’t have to work on that day, but you have to work on Saturday the following week.

Yoshkar Ola

Everyday life has also reached me in Moscow. Working, meeting friends, parties, speaking Russian and so on. Therefore, it was a relief that one of my organisations decided to send all volunteers from my organisation to a seminar in Yoshkar Ola to talk about Alternative Civilian Service in Russia. So, finally a reason to write a new blog entry. Hurray. I’ve never heard of the city Yoshkar Ola before. It’s the capital of the autonomous republic Mari El in the Russian Federation. It’s quite a small republic with only about 800,000 inhabitants, of which around 250,000 live in Yoshkar Ola. The city is located a bit more than 600 kilometres east from Moscow, thus, the other volunteers and I had a 15 hour train journey ahead of us, which was perfect for catching up on the latest news in our projects. On our journey we spoke with some people from Yoshkar Ola, who taught us that there lives an ethnic group of Mari people in Mari El, who even have their own language (Mari). They make up aproximately 40% of the population.

I kind of liked the city. It’s of course cheaper than in Moscow (especially taxis - 1 Euro per taxi ride, not per person), and there are quite some interesting and pretty buildings. We lived in a hotel and soon got to know Russian volunteers from various organisations who showed us Yoskar Ola. We also visited a children’s home 2 hours away from Yoshkar Ola, where the Russian volunteers played a theatre play to educate the children about various social problems. However, the most time consuming activity of the seminar was of course the discussion about alternative civilian service in Russia. The German volunteers explained the situation in Germany and the Russian side outlined the problems of civilian service in Russia. For example, men who decide to do such a civilan service do not have the right to choose where they are going to work. So the authorities for example might tell them to work in a post office or even at a military factory, which is of course not the idea behind such a service.

Overall, we had a lot of fun, we met interesting and kind people, talked a lot, learned about Mari El and the situation of Russian volunteers.

Berlin, my New Flat and Moscow during Winter

Every three months I need to renew my visa for Russia, because the Russian government only offers one-year-visa for students or workers, but not for volunteers. Therefore, I had to interrupt my work in Moscow for one and a half weeks to fly to Germany to organise a new visa. Fortunately, my organisation organised everything including the flights, the visa and also a place to stay if I hadn’t slept at a friends place. In adavance I had arranged that I would work at the House of the Wannsee Conference in Berlin, because it is cooperating with the Holocaust Centre in Moscow. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to work as much as I had hoped for, but I found some interesting books for our library.

I flew back to Moscow already before Christmas and it turned out that this had been a very good decision, as I needed to move out of my old flat on 26th December. Therefore, my christmas days weren’t the merriest of all, because I needed to pack and I had to listen to the conflicts between my former host family and the land lord. Nonetheless, I had a stress free and enjoyable Christmas Eve. I went to church with a friend where we sang many meditative songs, then we went to a cafe and I had the evening come to an end on a party with some other friends.

So, let’s now turn to the supposedly most interesting part of this blog entry: my new flat. I now live in a beautiful, quite big, sunny room with an own balcony. The flat is owned by a very nice, very intelligent and intriguing (80 years) old lady. Up to now it seems to me that we really like each other. And living together with her really improves my Russian, because I now speak Russian regularly and intensively. Last week we went to a classical concert together. Nevertheless, I believe she still thinks I haven’t experienced enough culture in Moscow yet. She often talks about various museums and then asks me whether I had visited theses museums already. And when I negate she reminds me that I have been living in Moscow for already 4 months and that it is really about time to experience Moscow’s manifold culture. The flat is located at the circle line of Moscow and it’s therefore a very central place to live. And I pay the same amount of money as I did when I relatively lived far away. My work is only a stone’s throw from here (one metro station), which, however, doesn’t hinder my from coming late to work. Overall I’m really really happy with my new living situation.

Finally, just shortly something about the winter in Moscow. The streets are very often unbelievably slippery because a snow layer on the pavement had frozen. I already tumbled twice, which wasn’t really the nicest experience I had so far, because all Moscovians then stare at the stupid tourist who went too quickly. When it started to thaw last week it was quite dangerous to walk through Moscow, because quite frequently snow or enormous icicles fell off the roofs. I had aready started to believe that it was going to be warmer in the next couple of weeks. But since Sunday we have -14°C again in Moscow.

Volgograd

First of all, I have to apologise for not keeping my blog up to date in the last months. This was due to several trips to other cities and the fact that I moved to another flat in Moscow. In early December all volunteers of my organisation who work in Russia had their first country seminar in Volgograd, which was in former times called Stalingrad. All volunteers, except the volunteer working in Volgograd, met in Moscow to take the night train to Volgograd. During the more than 19 hour train journey we ate all the food we had prepared in advance and talked a lot about our experiences in out projects. When we arrived, our country coordinator was already waiting for us to take the bus to our final destination at a German Protestant congregation. This was the first time we noticed the unbelievable dimension of this city. Volgograd extends itself along the river Volga and is therefore extremely long (80 kilometres). I heard that it is the second longest city in Russia (only Ekaterinenburg is longer). On the other hand however, Volgograd is not very wide but rather like a long stripe. Therefore, it took us always more than 40 minutes from our accommodation at the protestant congregation to the city centre of Volgograd.

During our seminar we spoke about our experiences and problems at work, about Russian history, but the biggest part of the seminar was devoted to the exploration of the city and its immense historical importance for Russian history. All over Russia one can find traces of World War II and Russia’s big victory against the Germans. One of the most crucial victories took place in the battle of Stalingrad. Thus, there are hundreds of monuments remembering this big victory in Volgograd today. These monuments, however, do not make Volograd a very beautiful city in my opinion, although the museums and monuments were very interesting (if not a little bit too patriotic and war-glorifying). We had a very good guide through Volograd, unfortunately, it was very very cold and wet so everyone was freezing, especially because we stayed outside for a very long time. Furthermore, it was very dizzy on that day so we couldn’t fully see the beauty of the most important sight in Volgograd - the impressive Rodina Mat (Mother of the father land) which calls the Russian people for the war against the German troops. Although we we were standing directly in front of the statue, which is bigger than the statue of liberty in New York, we could only see her feet and the silhouette. At the end of the tour we visited a soldier grave yard with German and Soviet soldiers. It was the first time for me to see a grave yard with German soldiers and one could see that Germany had given much more money for the German grave yard than the Russian side. On several stones the names of soldiers were engraved who fell during the battle. Among others I also found a soldier with my surname. On the next day we visited a very old ethnic German lady who lives in Russia (like many other ethinc Germans in the Volgaregion do) and talked with her about her life, we sang songs and she read out poems.

A Radio Interview and a Brawl

Some weeks ago the other Holocaust Center volunteer and I were invited to speak in front of students at the Moscovian university of foreign languages. The lecture dealt with Antifacism in Germany and mostly students studying German attended this event. A couple of days later I recieved a message by a young Russian journalist who currently works at the Russian radio station Голос России (Russia’s Voice) and who also took part at the lecture, because she wanted to organise an interview with us for one of their German speaking programmes. As far as I know this weekly programme is called „Foreignern in Russia“. So, we went to the radio station last week and we recieved special cards to pass security and then we entered the recording studio. I had not imagined the studio to bet that modern and it was really interesting to see how radio station work and look from inside. Before it was our turn to have the interview they were about to finish the German news for this day. The interview was taking place in a tiny room and we sat behind two microphones together with the journalist who was interviewing us. Another lady was sitting behind a window behind a computer to record, cut, and edit what we were saying. I was really nervous, however, it was better than I had thought. You can listen to the final result when you click on this link: http://german.ruvr.ru/radio_broadcast/26178531/35307980/
My voice sounds awful and what I am saying is really not the most intellectual of all things. I also do not really look good on the picture. But it is nevertheless, or perhaps just because of that, kind of funny.

On Friday I was having dinner with a friend in a Japanese restaurant and it would have been a normal evening out if it was not for a brawl to start. We do not really know how it began but at some point there were two relatively young drunken men throwing chairs at a 40 year old man who was with his girlfriend. The older man was also really agressive. They were kicking and beating each other really brutally in that restaurant. They also threw down most of the furniture and at the end there was so much blood on the floor, because the older guy and one of the younger ones had open wounds. Overall, it was really frightening and it showed that some Russian men still try to impress women by being agressive, especially once they are drunk. The police came thirty minutes after the fight was over. Normally they are everywhere, but when you need them they are late.

Finally, I would like to say that last weekend it began to snow in Moscow, but today it is only raining. On the picture you can see my favourite place in Moscow: Patriarshi Prudi.

The Beautiful Sides of Moscow

In the last two weeks I was exploring Moscow a little bit more, because I felt that I haven’t seen a lot yet. I wasn’t really fond of Moscow until then. Only big buildings and everything seemed to be grey. Butit was obviously true that I hadn’t seen much up to this point. In the last two weeks I’ve seen so many beautiful and interesting places in Moscow that I much more enjoy living in this city. I’ve been to several museums, abbeys, churches and parks and I walked through beautiful streets with lovely historic buildings. I especially liked the Gorkij Museum, which is situated in the last house of this famous Russian writer before he died. This house and its interior were built in the East European Art Nouveau style and the stair case in the house is supposed to be the prime example of this style. My favourite place in Moscow, however, is a small lake in the center of Moscow. It’s called Patraiarshi Prudi, and this place is so beautiful, because this lake is surrounded by trees and then by tall and old buildings and it’s really quiet there. And this is really an exception in the center of Moscow, because normally it’s always noisy. So, definately my favourite place to relax. At this place Mihael Bulgakov also wrote his famous novel „The Master and Magarita“ or the novel starts at the Patriarshi Prudi. I can’t really remember anymore. I guess I should just read the book. On the picture you can see the Cosmonaut Museum, where the Russians proudly demonstrate that they had been the first people in space and not the Americans and not the Europeans (That's what a Russian mother told her 5-year old son, when she showed him the first man in space on a picture in the museum). Alyways very interesting to listen to such conversations.

Maybe some updates on my work. At the Holocaust Center I‘m rearranging the book compartment and I’m starting to look for interesting books on the internet, which might suit our library. My Babushka unfortunately has a member of her family staying over for the winter. Therefore, I have to wait until my organisation finds a new Babushka for me. Until then I’ll just work one day longer at the Holocaust Center. I hope that I can start working in the Refugee Center next week, because I miss doing some social work as variation for my office work.

Saint Petersburg and Selenograd

One week ago I went to Saint Petersburg for the weekend with two other volunteers from Moscow to visit the volunteers in SaintPetersburg. I was really excited, because I had heard so many good things about Piter (Russians usually refer to Saint Petersburg as Piter). We went to Piter by night train, as this is the cheapest and most useful way to travel in Russia, because you usually save a lot of time. When we arrived in Petersburg we were picked up by our friend, who lives in the city centre of Petersburg right at the Nevskij Prospekt, Piters high street and also Putin’s favourite street as I was told. We then started a tour through Petersburg and this city is really really beautiful. A lot of old buldings in the historic center, various bridges, and the city is beautifully situated at the water which reminds me of Amsterdam and there are so many sights to visit. Among others we have seen the Mariinsky Palace and the Church of the Saviour on Blood. On Saturday night we also went to a party, but unfortunately we slept to long on the next day so we could’t go to the famous Hermitage museum, which is the biggest art museum in the world. Hopefully next time. On the way back to Moscow I only slept one hour, because it was unbearably hot inside the train. We arrived at 4 o’clock and had to wait until 6 o’clock at the station to take the first metro train.

Maybe as a contrary example to Saint Petersburg I’ve been to Selenograd, a suburban municipality of Moscow. After a 40 minute train ride one employee at the Holocaust Center, the other Holocaust Center volunteer and I arrived in Selenograd. The name does actually mean „Green City“, but I have to say that I’ve never seen an uglier and greyer city than this. Of course I haven’t seen everything of the city, but what I’ve seen was just pure uglyness. There were only huge skyscraper apartment building and big streets. Everything was grey and dismal. Our job in Selenograd was to visit a school and to present our organisation and teach pupils about the Holocaust. Surprisingly, it was a really great school, which organsises several events (much more than my school in Germany) and is very very active. Also the school children seemed to be very interested in the topic. Some school girls told us that they hate studying German, but they liked that volunteers from Germany and Austria came to their school.

Hugo Chavez, Zoo and a New Job

Last Thursday I went to a lecture on the situation in South America. Normally, I’m not really interested in South America, but the invitation proclaimed that Hugo Chavez, who came to Moscow to meet Mr Putin and Mr Medvedev, would also hold a speech. Therefore, my colleague and I sent the organisation an e-mail to register for the lecture. The lecture was supposed to start at 4:30, but the whole event was badly organised, so it took us an hour to get into the lecture hall, because the security guards started to check the passports and bags of all guests only when the lecture was already supposed to start. First, some Russian experts on South America talked about the situation in South America until it was the turn of Hugo Chavez. He has a really deep voice and is an excellent speaker. However, throughout the lecture I didn’t understand what he was saying because he spoke in Spanish and it was only translated into Russian. Therefore, I didn’t really know whether I should clap. Because sometimes he talked about North Korea and I didn’t want to clap when he was saying that it is the best country of the world. So I just didn’t clap. And he also criticised the United States several times and said how great Venezuela was. But at least I can say that I’ve seen Hugo Chavez. Yeah!

On Saturday I went to the zoo in Moscow. They only important thing to mention is that the living conditions for the animals are pretty upsetting. The cages are small, seldomly cleaned and the animals just sit around, look sad and are bored.

Yesterday I went to a refugee centre in Moscow. When I came to Moscow our country coordinator told me that I will also work in this refugee centre. I had thought that only the other volunteers would work there, but it sounded interesting so I was excited and happy to have the chance as well. We’re going to work in the centre one or two times a week after our regular work and help children with their homework or just teach them how to study. Every volunteer can choose what he wants to teach and he or she will get one child to take care for. I believe that next week I will get a call by the head of the centre to find out when I’m going to start my work.

Russian Post, Reparing Windows and Sergiev Pasod

You need a lot of patience in Russia. Patience and a lot of time. I had to experience that last Thursday. And although I thought that I’m a patient person, the Russian Post definately did proof me wrong. Sometimes one of the volunteers at the Holocaust Center has to go to the post office to pick up a package or a letter. This time it had been my turn to pick up three letters. So I walked to the office and waited in the queue. There were only 5 people in front of me but I had to wait 50 minutes until the lady at the counter helped me. I still can’t believe how slow a person can be. The staff at the post offices are everything but consumer oriented. The whole post system is so circuitous. Although, some other employees were working at that time, they didn’t seem to think about opening another counter. This woman even helped one of her colleagues to fill out a form, instead of continuing to serve the customers. I became more and more annoyed. When it was finally my turn, the lady told me that they only hand out packages at this counter and that I had to go to another counter. So 50 minutes for nothing. I went to another building to reach the other counter. But this was apparently the immigration office. After waiting 10 minutes the lady at this counter, however, showed me the way to again another counter. Finally I was able to pick up my letters. Next time I will carefully look whether I have to get packages or letters so this doesn’t happen to me again.

On Friday I went to my Babushka as usual. This time I cleaned her windows and I did the caulking for her windows. I guess I haven’t done that much repair work for ages. After that she prepared lunch and we listened and talked about classical music.

On Sunday I went to Sergiev Pasod with a group of business students from Moscow. The volunteers from Moscow including me got to know these students, because the students meet every Tuesday to drink one or two beers. And we normally join them there. Some girls planned this day trip to Sergiev Pasod, a city 90 minutes outside from Moscow. It’s famous for it’s Lavra, which is something similar to an abbey, just a little bite more impressive (as you can see in the picture at the top). We met really nice people, ate great food, saw beautiful buildings and walked through the Lavra. The weather was amazing and I really enjoyed this trip.

A weekend celebrating German Unification Day

I spent the last weekend practically eating, drinking, and talking all the time. I also had the possibility to listen to a concert and of course celebrate German Unification Day. The best thing about it - everything was for free. My friends and I started our festivities at the German culture and education institute Goete, which invited all Germans and people who study German to their central office. After some introductiory words and quiz games, it was time to eat. I had hoped for a buffet, but it turned out that the institute had organised waitresses which walk around with food and drinks. This however, wasn’t really the best idea, because everybody was hungry and the waitresses were chased by the masses and the trays were already emptied after seconds. Therefore, I also had to punch myself through the masses to snatch at least bites from the different kinds of food and beverages. Later on the German band Anajo from Augsburg played a conert in a big festival tent outside in the garden. The concert was really good and we all had a lot of fun.
The next day was a little more formal, because all German citizens were invited to the German embassy. It took us ages to walk to the embassy, because it is located between two metro stations and we didn’t know that it would take us 45 minutes. But we arrived and we were allowed into the embassy after we had shown our passports and passed the security check. Luckily, I had worn my Action Reconiliation for Peace T-Shirt. This way some people approached us and talked about our projects. Overall, the evening in the embassy wasn’t as good as the one in the Goete Institute, but the food was slightly better which is of course very important.

How to Treat an Old Lady

Today I went to my Babushka for the first time on my own. I called her half an hour before I arrived at her place. Surprisingly, this phone call went better than I had expected, because I'm normally not the best when it comes to talking Russian on the phone.
I also took the right bus and stopped at the right station on the way to her place. I went up the stairs in the house to her flat. The doors were already open, because her bell isn't working at the moment. I stayed there for half an hour and we talked a bit about what needed to be done in the flat and what we had to buy. We then together took the bus some stations further to go to a supermarket and a kind of building supplies store. It was a special social supermarket where everything was way cheaper than in other supermarkets. One could really feel that she had to decide and calculate what she really needed, because she recieves such a low pension. Although, it wasn't that far it took us 3 and a half hours to go there and back, because, as I already mentioned previously, she can't really walk well. Especially the three floors in the house are troublesome. But also daily life such as crossing the street and taking the bus are difficult. However, I enjoyed helping her and talking to her while walking with her arm in arm, because I felt like I did something good and that it really helps her when I carry the bags. When we came home, she cooked for me and we talked again about her life and about my family. That's what interests her most. I had taken my laptop with me to show her pictures of Kiev, because she was born there. She really seemed to enjoy looking at the pictures and talking about her experiences there.

P.S. I have a new (or rather a used) mobile phone. So I can really call people now and they will understand me. Yeah!

Moscow Nightlife

Moscow is famous for its unrestrained and unlimited nightlife – at least this is what my city guide told me. Therefore, I was really excited to go out for the first time with some friends in the inner city. First of all, however, I had to tell my host family that I will be away over night and asked them not to lock the bar of the door of the flat. Because in that case it’s impossible to open the door from outside. I also told them that I won’t come home before 7 o’clock in the morning, because the first Metros are driving at 6 o’clock in the morning. I really can’t understand why huge cities like New York, London, Tokyo, Moscow and so on do not have a Metro which drives non stop. At least every hour at night would be fine.
Anyway, I met my friends at a Metro station in the inner city, but they all had to wait for me because I couldn’t find them, because there were two platforms and I was waiting on one of the platforms while the others stood at the other platform. Problematically, my mobile phone isn’t working properly. When I call someone or someone calls me, I can hear him or her, but he or she can’t hear me. Therefore, it took us some time to find each other. We didn’t directly go to the club but walked around a bit to find some place to drink and to eat. But we only found a small kiosk where we bought some bear and chocolate cookies. Some drunk guy came to us and told us his life story and something about his wife. But I didn’t really listen and we were all soon really annoyed.
At 1 o’clock we went to the club Propaganda. We were 6 people (3 girls, 3 boys). One girl, which had been in Sankt Petersburg the last year told us that doormen don’t like it when you go to a club in a big group. Therefore, we went to the club in pairs. Oh, I forgot to mention that every club has doormen, who are usually really strict on the looks. So one should always be dressed fancily - meaning leather shoes for men and high heels for women. Our club, however, wasn’t such a strict high fashion club, and the entrance was for free. We were dancing for some hours, until we thought that we might go to another club, which wasn’t too far away. However, the doormen at this new club noticed that we were a group and didn’t let us in. It was the first time ever that I wasn’t allowed into a club. Then a strange old man approached us and told us that he knows a great club nearby where we can come in without problems. So we walked for 20 minutes to the next club. BUT they didn’t let us in. This man told us that he knows still another club. This time we had to walk even longer to discover that we weren’t allowed entrance to the club another time. Pretty disappointed we went back to Propaganda until the first Metro drove. A friend of mine and I went to a little bar close by to eat something. At 6 o’clock we all drove back home. The door to the flat wasn’t locked with the bar so I was able to lay in bed at 7’clock.

Speech, Babushka and Dancing Lesson

Last Friday had been a very busy and exciting day. First I went to the People’s Chamber of the Russian Federation, which discussed the whole day about civil services, volunteer work and the role of foreign volunteers in Russia. This is a highly discussed topic in Russia and therefore it was interesting to see the different opinions of organisations. One of the organisations I’m working for in Moscow is called Sostradanje, which supports victims of the Nazi and Stalin dictatorship and takes care of the household of these very old people. My job in the People’s Chamber was to hold a speech on my experiences so far in Russia, what I think could be improved concerning volunteer work, and what I want to achieve with my volunteering. I had to hold this speech in Russian. And I was totally shocked when I heard that the organisation wanted me to hold this speech, because my Russian still isn’t the best. But I had no other choice, it needed to be done. So I prepared this speech and the employees of Sostradanje corrected my Russian. As you can see on the picture, quite a lot of people were present when I had to hold the speech, and I’m really not the best public speaker. As you can imagine I was really nervous. After waiting for 6 other speeches to end, it was my turn. I told them that it was my first speech in Russian and that I was really nervous. They all smiled. And then I held the speech. It wasn’t too bad. I had practiced it hundreds of times beforehand. I still made some mistakes when pronouncing some words, but everyone clapped and I felt relieved when it was over. Afterwards there was a huge buffet and I was actually eating the whole time instead of speaking with other people.

In the afternoon I went to my Babushka (Grandmother) for the first time. The employees of Sostradanje call their clients Babushka and Dedushka (Grandfather). She is already 86 and a Russio-German. But she only knows 6 German words, which is good, because this way I have to speak Russian. She really can’t walk well anymore, but she lives in the 4th floor without an elevator. I can’t see how she manages to go down all these stairs when she wants to go outside. Furthermore, as all of the pensioners in Russia, she doesn’t get a high pension. I’m going to visit her every Friday and help cleaning her flat, buying products and most importantly talk to her, because these old people are often very alone.

In the evening I had my first dancing lesson in Moscow. I started to like dancing so much during the preperation camp before my year abroad in Hirschluch, where I took a dancing workshop.

First Day at Work

Today I had my first day at work and I was really nervous. I woke up at 7:30 in the morning and also my host father checked whether I was awake. I guess he was just wondering why I wasn’t awake yet, because I had told him the night before that I will get up at 7. But I just love sleeping too much.
At 8 o’clock I took the old trolley to the station. The streets were already full of cars, so it took me a little bit longer to arrive at the Metro station. Also the Metro was crowded, which meant that I had to stand for the next 25 of minutes. Apparently this wasn’t the Rush Hour yet, because Russians tend to go to work later (10 o’clock) and finish work late (7 o’clock). I only got to know the real Moscovian Rush Hour on my way back. I arrived at the Holocaust Centre 10 minutes early and thus walked along the River Moskva for 15 minutes.
The Center is located within a building in which also the Conservatorium of Moscow rents its rooms. Therefore, there are always young people around and it’s always noisy. Only the Austrian volunteer Cornelius was already in the Center when I arrived. We talked for a while and he showed me around. At 10 o’clock my boss also arrived and said hello. I was still nervous, because I heard so many bad stories about him. But actually he didn’t seem to be that bad. Then, Cornelius and I discussed what we wanted to do in the coming year. We planned on improving the website of the Center and also write wikipedia articles about it. My chocolate present sadly didn’t really get attention at first.
Our boss gave us the task to write a letter to a fund which usually gives the Center financial aid. But in the last years the Center has always used the same text in their application for the funds. One should usually tell the fund what was achieved in the last year and what the plans are for the upcoming year. The lady which sent the mail to the Center seemed to be quite angry that the Center had always used the same sentences and therefore asked several questions. It was our job to find the answers. This wasn’t as easy as it sounds, because even our boss didn’t state exactly in the reports what they did in 2010 and were planning to do in 2011. I wrote down some sentences and my boss added new ones. But his English was so bad that it took me ages to rewrite what he had written. Until the letter was finished I already worked two hours more than I should have. But after work the whole Holocaust Center team drank wine and ate my beloved chocolate and other sweets and talked about this and that. Cornelius and I had dinner after work and then I went home again. However, I stood in a traffic jam with my trolley bus for more than 30 minutes. But overall it had been a nice day.

The picture shows the Lomonossov University in the evening.

First Days in Moscow

Hello my friends,

on Wednesday I left Germany and flew to Moscow together with 5 other volunteers. We landed at Moscow-Vnukovo, where our country coordinator waited for us. I'm so happy I got through the passport control, because the staff always looks so grimmy and mean. We took the train (Electritshka) to one of Moscow's train stations and then took the Metro to another train station.

It really is an experience to use the Moscovian Metro, because many of its stations are pompously decorated and always crowded. Walking down stairs, taking escelators, waiting for the next Metro to come, squeezing through the crowd is especially stressful and exhausting when you carry more than 20 kilos of luggage and 10 kilos of hand luggage. Once we arrived we met the head of one of the organisations where I'm going to work. She took me to the northern end of Moscow where I will live in the next couple of months.

So I had to take the Metro again and after a 20 minute ride we had to take an old trollybus which brought us to my place, where my family was already waiting for me. My host family is from Armenia and consists of father, mother and son. They are really nice and always wanted to help. They showed my around the flat and my room. They only speak Russian which is of course a good thing, however I'm not sure whether I understood everything correctly. And it was often very embarrassing when I wanted to say something and it took me ages to find one word. Hopefully, my Russian will become better soon.

I spent my first evening eating a Ukrainian/Russian soop and talking to my host father. He asked me whether I liked Martini and then took a 1 liter bottle of Martini Bianco out of the fridge which we emptied together with his son on the same evening. I already felt drunk after 2 glasses but he continously filled my glass. Along the way we watched bad Russian soap operas. At ten o'clock I was finally fully drunk and I had to go to bed. On the next morning I went to Moscow to meet my country coordinator. She brought me to the Human Rights organisation Memorial where I met the other volunteer in Moscow. We filled out our registration form and went to the post office to be registrated. Now I'm officially and legally in Moscow.

After that we went to my work place - the Holocuast Centre and Fond. Most people were on holidays, but an Austrian volunteer who is already working there showed me around. My country coordinator told me that the boss of the centre is a little bit difficult and often choleric. Up to now he only liked Russian-Germans and one girl, which was an organisation genius. Hopefully, he will like me nonetheless. My first working day will be on Monday. I will bribe them on Monday with a box of chocolates, so they need to like me. Up to then I really want to go to the city centre, which I haven't seen yet. Maybe this is why I don't think that Moscow is really beautiful.

If you have any questions, just write a comment or send me an e-mail.

Only a few hours left

Privet :DDDDDD

I'm still in Germany, but on Wednesday I'm going to take my flight from Berlin to Moscow. I'm really excited and nervous and at the same time totally scared. As you might have seen, I've changed the name of the blog, which was of course necessary. The idea behind this blog, however, won't change. I'll keep you posted on the most important stuff happening to me in Moscow in the next year. I know that I'm not the best and most reliable writer when it comes to blogs, but I will try my best.

In the last one and a half weeks I spent my time in a tiny little youth hostel or rather a youth centre/park 30 minutes from Berlin where we were prepared for our year abroad.

I alrealy know some facts about my life in Moscow. I will live in a flat with a family from north caucasus and the flat is reeeaaaallly far away from the city centre. And even worse, it's 30 minutes away from the next Metro station. I hope that this family will at least have Internet, so I won't be fully isolated :P

I keep you posted once I arrived in my flat

Till

Lviv/Lvov/Lemberg

See Markus, I'm catching up :P

The second city I visited in Ukraine was Lviv, which is in the western region of Ukraine. The inhabitants are really proud of their ukrainian values, traditions and the ukrainian language. That’s why many people in Lviv think that they are the actual capital of Ukraine, because the further you go east and south in Ukraine, the more people speak Russian and feel more attached to Russia.

This time I didn’t travel with Olga but with my two room mates, the russian teacher of my american room mate, and her friend with her fiancee. We decided to take the overnighttrain again, but this time we already left Thursday evening and came home Sunday morning. Therefore, I had to take Friday off.

This time I wasn’t too worried about the night in the train, which turned out to be a mistake, because I had the worst night ever. I was able to sleep for 2 hours, because the light was turned on during night, it was far too hot in the cabin, people were snoring and I was thursty. The next morning I felt totally miserable and I had to take a nap once we arrived in our rather nice appartment.

Lviv is comparable to Prague and Vienna many beautifully restored buildings, a nice opera, a very historic inner city (UNESCO world heritage) but a booooooooring night life. We were actually planning on going out the first night in Lviv, but all bars closed at 11 o’clock already and there seemed to be no parties going on. Such a pitty. It felt a little bit like back in Maastricht :P

On the way back to Kiev I slept quite well, although a very disgusting man slept only two meters next to me. His sweater was far too short, which is why his big hairy belly was highly visible at all times. His feet stank absolutely disgusting, and one had to pass his feet everytime one wanted to go to the toilet. Additionally, he drank too much alcohol before the train ride and I had to smell this dirty alcoholic stink the whole night. Especially when he turned his face in my direction I could feel his breath on my face. At 4 o’clock and at 6 o’clock in the morning he woke me up to ask me whether he could drink out of my bottle of water. Of course I’m too nice of a person to say now. I never touched this bottle again. Uargh!!!

Odessa

Just today, Markus told me that my blog is a big disappointment. I had a bad conscious for the next hours, so I decided that I really have to start informing you guys again. Soooooooo here it is: the sequel of my great great great blog. Tatatataaaaa

I guess I will start writing about the first of my two trips I made in Ukraine in the last months. My next entries will not by chronologically, but I believe that no one really minds. :P

I always wanted to visit some other ukrainian cities during my stay in Ukraine, other than Kiev. I planned on going to Odessa, Lviv, Dnipropetrovsk, Donezk, Charkiw, on the Krim and maybe even do Molodva. This, however, were my plans before I came to Kiev, because I thought I will be bored like hell, have no friends, nothing to do and nothing to see in Kiev after 1 month. However, it all turned out a little bit different and I was kind of busy all the time sightseeing, meeting friends, working, sleeping and eating. And as being a creature of habit, I do not like too many changes in my everyday life so I wanted to stay in Kiev, because this meant the smallest amount of stress for me. But I wanted to visit at least one city in Ukraine, and Olga (a firend of mine) was continously pushing me to go to Odessa.

Thus, we planned on going to Odessa during one weekend - Friday night until Monday morning. The distance between Kiev and the other ukrianian cities is quite large, therefore the only possibility to go to other cities is by plane, train or by bus. I don’t trust ukrainian planes and drunk ukrainian pilots and buses are really shitty. Therefore we decided to take an overnight train from Kiev to Odessa. Olga is fluent in Russian, which was really helpful, because with my pathetic Russian skills, I couldn’t even have bought a train ticket on my own.

By the way the ukrainian service at the station is the worst I’ve ever seen. After waiting for 20 minutes in the queue, this “service-woman” just closed the line, because it was her lunch break. And of course there was no substitute. NO! So we had to switch the line and wait again. However, my room mates told me that when they were buying train tickets once, the service woman was pissed, because my ukrainian room mate wanted to know the different prices in the first, second and third class. Supposedly, you are only allowed to ask the price for one class, because the woman told my room mates that they shouldn’t ask so many questions and closed the cashpoint and told my room mates to come back tomorrow. Hahaha.

Anyways, at one point we got the tickets and took the train on Friday night. We had tickets for the third class, which is why we only paid 14 Euros there and back. It was the first time for me in an overnighttrain, but it turned out better than I thought. Third class basically means that you don’t have cabins, where you can close a door behind you, it rather is a floor with niches, where 6 people can sleep. three pallets at the bottom and three pallets at the top. Olga and I were in a niche with a young family with a small girl, which cried all the time. Then the conducter gave everyone bedclothes so we could start making our beds. I could sleep fairly well despite my fear that someone will steal al my money and my passport and despite the fact that people were continously passing by my bed to go to the toilet.

The next morning at 9 o’clock we arrived in Odessa and Olga got us an apartment for only 20 Euros per night. I think that the land lord thought, that I’m some kind of rich Western guy, who came to Ukraine to find a wife or to find cheap sex and that Olga was my victim. Ächem.

Odessa is a very very beautiful city at the black sea, although it is supposed to be even better in the summer. Olga and I planned on going to the opera on our first night, however, thanks to Yulia Timoshenko all schools, universities, cinemas and operas were closed for three weeks. So we couldn’t see La Boheme in one of the most beuatiful opera houses in the world, but had to watch the Ukrainian and Russian football match. Odessa has a very mediterranean touch. All the buildings and streets reminded me of Italy, and it looked very in comparison to Kiev for example. We also went to the beach smelled and touched the black sea and were visiting all the sights. We also went to a wax figure cabinet, which was sooooo bad. There were about 20 figures, however one could not even have guessed who each figure was supposed to represent, because the artists obviously didn’t have any talent.

If you have the chance to go to Odessa, you should definitely do it. Preferably in the summer, it is worth it. On the way back I slept really bad, because every two hours new people came into the train and were talking very loudly although it was 2 o’clock at night. Hence, I looked totally miserable on Monday morning when I went to work. Work is really fun when you haven’t slept more than 3 hours. I really hope that I will get Olga’s pictures from Odessa soon, so I can upload them on facebook.

Swine Flu

Great! Todays news have been all about the swine flu which now also reached Ukraine. People really start to panic. I think up to 35 people died so far. Especially in the west of Ukraine. And what is Mrs Timoschenko doing? She is closing all schools for 3 weeks, she forbids(!) all events where a crowd of people could be possible including concerts and cinemas.

This practically means I can't go to the DDT concert on sunday. But I'm not sure yet. I guess I have to ask at the ticket shop tomorrow. This evening I was in the city center and a quarter of the people were running around with these medicine masks. It looked quite scary. Now I don't have any idea what to do the next couple of days.

Anyways..

Yesterday, I've been to the swimming pool. It is quite difficult to get in there, because you need a medical certificate from a doctor that you are healthy, or you won't be allowed to swim. Luckily I have some connections to a doctor here in Kiev, who wrote me one of these certificates. I was told that it is also possible to give the saleslady a little bit more money under the table and she will let you in without a certificate. That's how Ukraine works :D