End of St. P

August 16, 2006-Then & Now
(photos:Musicians,
Host family,
David in army hat)

David wanted to note some differences from his visit in 1985. Then there were only Russian Lada cars. Now there’s every variety with Honda and Ford made here and Toyota to follow. Then the airport had separate waiting rooms for Russians and foreigners. Food and goods are plentiful now and there are no lines in the stores since there’s no fear of shortages. The key-ladies who handed out room keys on each hotel floor are gone as are the bank of tape recorders in the lobby to record conversations in rooms that were all bugged.

We had breakfast today with Lorna and Yong . He is S. Korean and immigrated to the U.S. in 1955. She’s Hawaiian and is ¼ Spanish and ¾ Korean. He follows Confucianism and she’s a Buddhist who also follows the teachings of Confucius. We’re not alone among non-Christians in our group.

Catherine's

This morning we traveled past working state farms that survived “perestroika.” Farmers are still called “workers” but now have small private plots of their own with root cellars for storage. They live in crumbling Cabrini-Green look-alike human warehouse apartments nearby. We arrived at the Village of the Czars also known as Pushkin. It was the home of Alexander Pushkin and has many museums honoring his life and work. It’s better known as the summer home of the Romanoffs and looks like a precursor to modern gated communities. The entry is through an Egyptian arch reminiscent of the Temple at Luxor. Tree-lined avenues join one palace and dacha to the other. But the centerpiece is Catherine’s Palace. It was from this village that Nicholas, Alexandra, and their children were arrested and taken to prison to be murdered.

Catherine I, the washerwoman who became the second wife of Peter the Great, built a twelve- room dacha in 1710. It was added on to by her daughter Elizabeth I until it became an opulent 1000-foot long palace. The result was fifty-five rooms where the royals lived and a like number for servants and support systems to run the rest. The exterior is painted light blue to match Elizabeth’s eyes and is detailed in gold leaf. We were met by a band that danced to their own music to distract us from the long line where we waited with dozens of other groups. When we finally gained entry we had to put on surgical footies to protect the floors as we did at Peterhoff. I thought it was just an easy way to get the floors polished for free. I had fun “skating” as I slogged through the clutch of tourists. There’s so much gold leaf design in the interior I was glad I’d applied ample sunscreen. Elizabeth was big on Baroque.

Elizabeth I was a party animal. She had a ball every night for three reasons. She had the palace to show off and hundreds of servants to keep busy and she owned 15,000 gowns she had to wear. I finally got the lineage down and can elaborate on who’s who in the Russian royal zoo. Peter the Great married Catherine I. Elizabeth I was their daughter. Elizabeth didn’t marry and had no known children. She chose the son of her sister to ascend the throne after her death. Her nephew Peter III was mentally deficient and it’s reported that as an adult he played with children’s toys. He married Catherine who dubbed herself the Great and she had him assassinated. There you go. Even though C II was a lousy wife and mother she was an excellent grandma and nurtured her favorite, Alexander, to the throne.

The Germans occupied the Village of Czars and destroyed the palaces as they retreated. From the gilt details to the parquet floors to the delft floor-to-ceiling stoves that heated every room, Catherine’s Palace has been restored. In 1941, they even stole the walls of the amber room. They packed it in crates and shipped it home. It hasn’t been seen since 1942 and no one knows where it is. Ironically the amber encrusted walls were a gift to Peter the Great from Prussia. During reconstruction Germany helped pay for some of the costs. It took 20+ years to restore. I cannot even begin to describe what a room with amber walls looks like. Amber changes color with heat and there are many shades from the traditional yellow to red. It’s made up of individual pieces fit together to create repeating patterns including frames for art. Another irony is that the restoration took place under the Communist regime.

Hermitage

Everyone was looking forward to our visit to the Hermitage. It was the carrot on the stick; the last place we toured. We began our adventure in the Winter Palace and covered four of the five palaces that comprise the complex. The security was so bad as to be laughable. Some of us walked through and some walked around unsupervised metal detectors. We fought crowds coming and going through the same solitary detector. On our way out there was a guard sitting in a chair with his feet up and his hat pulled over his eyes. We were told that security had been beefed up after a curator and his family stole 231 objects over six years.

The crushing crowds made it hard to stay with our group and I had to keep reminding myself to look at the architectural features and art rather than focus on where our guide was. The one word to describe it is overwhelming. The original palace dates from 1763 but there was a fire in 1837. It was re-built but during WWII little old ladies who volunteered at the museum managed to crate and transport 2/3 of the collection to Siberia by train before the bombs and shelling reached the building.

Unlike the gold painted papier-mâché chandeliers of the Yusopov Palace, the chandeliers in the Hermitage were bronze covered in gold leaf. One weighed two tons. The gold swirls and curlicues on the domed ceilings were echoed in the intricate parquet work of the floors. A partial list of Masters hanging in the galleries includes Rembrandt who is sadly displayed behind glass after a deranged man threw acid on one piece. El Greco, Goya, Michelangelo, Raphael, Titian, Van Dycke, da Vinci, and Rubens hang one after the other like so many trophies. There’s an entire floor devoted to Impressionist paintings given to the museum when the collection of two local merchants was nationalized.

Numb from hours of gawking we returned to the hotel to find that it had a new name. It’s now a Radisson Park Inn. We rested for an hour and climbed back onto our bus for an hour drive into the countryside. It was time for the home-hosted dinner, a signature of Grand Circle Travel.

Meeting the Natives

Our guide said that because Russians are reserved it was very difficult finding a family to host the dinners. Even after seeing Luba and Nicholai host dinners for three years their neighbors aren’t willing to give it a try. Nadia is always amazed at how friendly Americans are and how easily they’ll strike up a conversation with a stranger. Luba is a former history teacher who is now principal of her 600-student school that spans grades 1-11. Nicholai is a stevedore at the port of St. Pete. He’s a local boy and she’s a Ukrainian who came to study teaching at the university. They’ve been married 25 years and have a daughter, Katya, who is 18 and a university student. Their son, Dennis, is 24, living at home, and a worry to them.

Nicholais father built the house fifty years ago. His father now lives in a house across the street. We learned that a dacha is a summerhouse owned by city apartment dwellers. A doma is a freestanding house. Domas are in the country too since there are no detached houses in the city. The houses we passed were run down. The roofs were in terrible disrepair and the wooden walls needed painting. All had vegetable and flower gardens but the grounds weren’t tended as ours are. There was little room for a lawn and priorities emphasized the need to grow food rather than pristine grass.

The house is small with two bedrooms. The son sleeps in the living room, which was turned into our dining room. We sat down to eat the meal Nicholai cooked when four singer-dancer types burst into the room and entertained us. The family cat sneaked in and was given dispensation to stay since he had taken a liking to one of us. He ended up sleeping on my lap after a while. The meal was meatballs made with beef and pork so we were given chicken. Dessert was a delicious flaky pastry swirl topped with sugar and made by Luba’s mother.

After the meal we asked questions. Luba speaks some English and was part of a teacher exchange in Chicago. Nadia did the translating when necessary. Luba said that public schooling ends at grade 11. One-third of the students at her school leave after ninth grade and 90 per cent of the remainder go on to university after graduation. When asked about life before and after Communism she said that it’s better now but not easier. It’s freer, not more secure. The health insurance they have through work only covers emergencies, health care is poorer, and pensions are less now. Nicholai likes Putin and is optimistic about the future of Russia. Luba said that even though they grew up during the Cold War they were never afraid of the U.S. As far as Bush goes, she diplomatically said that,” if you like him he is good.” They stated that Putin and Bush are friends. Labor unions aren’t strong and Nicholai didn’t feel that the ones in existence represented the workers well. They had strong negative feelings about the army. Conscription is alive and well, but they advised their son to become a policeman rather than risk going into the army. There have been several hazing scandals resulting in the deaths of new recruits. The Russian army hasn’t changed too much I suspect. In our grandparents generation young men would break their trigger fingers or worse to avoid the draft.

We didn’t get back to the hotel until 10:30pm. We had to pack tonight to be ready to leave for Finland after a lecture tomorrow. It’s after midnight. Pleasant dreams.

Toby

Scandinavia-Still St. Pete

August 15, 2006- Who Knew?
(photos:Catherine's Palace,
Peterhof,
Synagogue,
Hermitage on canal)

We made contact with Talia and wished her happy birthday. After I sang her the Happy Birthday song in English she asked me to sing it in Hebrew. I was thrilled to do it. Fees for phone and email are very high and there are no high-speed connections in the rooms. I think you”ll be getting this from Helsinki.

We started our day with a cruise on the canals and rivers. St. P is in much better shape than Venice after which it’s patterned. One reason is that it’s newer. The other is that the canals are separated from the buildings by a road. Flooding is a problem even here. There is a seasonal backwash caused by winds from the Gulf of Finland, which is part of the Baltic Sea. Every 100 years (1924, 1824, 1724) there have been catastrophic floods. In winter the river Neva freezes from the end of November-March. Shipping stops on the river but the main ports on the Baltic are open. Peter the Great was so adamant that bridges would spoil the beauty of the waterfront and should not be built that he gave every family a free boat and sailing lessons. He built the canals among the 101 islands that existed at his time. Now bridges abound (no two are alike) and the islands were filled in and merged so there are only forty-two today. Who knew?

We passed the pink and white Stronganoff Palace, Hermitage and Winter Palace, and emerged into the Neva River. The dramatic widening of the waterway would have been enough but now we were surrounded by the water side of the Hermitage, the Admiralty, and Peter and Paul fort and cathedral. Domes and minarets of a mosque loomed nearby, a result of Nicholas II allowing religions other than Russian Orthodox to build places of worship. The ship, Aurora, was anchored at a dock as a reminder of the Revolution. It’s one hundred four years old and was used to fire on the Winter Palace in October of 1917. David was excited to see the old Leningrad Hotel (now the St. Petersburg) where he’d stayed while visiting “refusniks” in 1985. In 1989 a fire destroyed most of the hotel. Investors were brought in to give advise on what to do with the poorly restored remnants. They suggested it be razed.

No Disputin’

We tied up at the Yusupov Palace to visit one of the few that survived totally intact with all its furnishings. The family was one of the wealthiest before the Revolution. Their lineage was from Ivan the Terrible in the 1400’s and they’d been growing their money with the help of free labor from serfs ever since. Before serfdom was abolished in 1861 they owned 30,000 serfs and fift-four estates. Their holdings included five-hundred mines and numerous factories. We entered the small apartment where Felix Yusupov used to entertain his personal friends. A member of the Romanoff family, he was troubled by the hold Rasputin had on Nicholas and Alexandra. It was rumored that Rasputin was having an affair with Alexandra but it was more likely that his hold on her was due to his ability to calm the family when their only son and heir fell ill with hemophilia. Rasputin spent time at a monastery but was never ordained. He dressed like a monk and was said to have hypnotic light blue eyes. He was charismatic and professed to be a healer and miracle worker but was a womanizer and heavy drinker. He adhered to the philosophy that a person could not repent unless he sinned. Since repentance was imperative, sinning was necessary. He managed to convince women of that view with great success. But at the center of it all the Yusupovs and their friends felt that the forty-seven year old Rasputin was controlling the family and by extension the country. Russia had lost a war with tiny Japan and was weakened after WWI. Nicholas Romanoff was a kind and sensitive man but not a strong leader. They decided to kill Rasputin to save the reputation of the royal Romanoffs.

On Dec. 16, 1916, Felix invited Rasputin to dinner in his private quarters. Four friends were standing by. One, a doctor, poisoned the wine with cyaninde. Rasputin drank it but didn’t die. Felix ran to his friends with the news and they instructed him to shoot Rasputin. When that was done Felix went upstairs to report his progress. When they all went to remove Raputin’s body it was gone. He had not died but crawled up a flight of stairs and out the door. They found him bleeding on the street. They wrapped him in the drapes from the room where he’d been shot, put him in the car, and drove him out of town to a pre-arranged spot on the river where an ice hole had been cut. They dropped him into the water and thought his body would be found in the spring. Unfortunately their bad luck held and the drapery snagged on the ice. A couple of days later the body was found. An autopsy showed that Rasputin died of drowning. There was no shortage of suspects. Nicholas II, called Felix Yusupov and his cohorts to the palace and told them to disappear. They figured it would be a good time to take their families to the warmth of the Crimea.

In Oct. of 1917 the Revolution began in St. Petersburg. The Yusupov wealth was nationalized but the family had fled. Over the years they survived by selling what jewelry and art they had taken to the Crimea then transported with them to France. Recently the granddaughter of Felix visited the Palace and presented them with her portrait. She will never be able to claim her inheritance from the government. Felix augmented his income by writing three memoirs the most popular of which documented the murder of Rasputin.

Branching Out

On our way to visit the gardens of Peterhoff we drove past the one and only synagogue in the city. It is a salmon and white ornate structure built in the Russian style with onion domes and looks like a church. The only difference is the absence of a cross at the top.

The group had a surprise Metro ride before we left town and saw the famously ornate stations on the red line. One had pillars made of molded glass and bronze and crystal chandeliers. Most stations are very plain but Stalin saw to it that “the people” had a few touches of luxury. All stations are clean. There’s no graffiti.

Lucky for me I only fall asleep when seated. Whether it is a ten or twenty minute ride or one hour, when I sit on the bus I’m out like a light. I apologized to one woman today for falling asleep in the middle of a conversation.

Peterhoff was built by Peter the Great as a summerhouse on the Baltic. It’s famous for its abundance of gravity fed fountains and gardens styled after the Palace of Versailles. When the Germans retreated from the ports they held on the Baltic after WWII they destroyed Peterhoff, the system of fountains, and tore out the gardens. Today’s Russians are very proud of the reconstruction.

One of the smaller buildings is called Catherine’s Block. Our guide hates the way “block” is used. It’s too institutional. This building was a large elaborate “cottage.” Catherine of the self-imposed greatness convinced her lover and his brothers to kill her husband there. Lovely girl. Russian history is so predictable.

You may have noticed that I haven’t mentioned our meals. They’re adequate but not memorable. There’s an abundance of mayonnaise in salads and one person was going to start another Revolution if we were served beets again. Dessert is iced-cream or fruit. Our guide, Nadia said that Russians aren’t big on baking. What happened to bobka and rugelach? One of our group is an oenophile and makes his own wine. He tasted Russian wine and bought a bottle of Italian.

We’d signed up for a Cossack show at our hotel for tonight. It appeared to me to be a loud opera with break dancing and no plot. My uncles would dance like that when they had enough to drink at weddings. When I fell asleep during the first rowdy act I decided to pack it in. Cossacks aren’t dear to my heart. Remember Fiddler on the Roof? Come to think of it we would have nowhere to visit if we eliminated all the fine countries that killed our relatives or threw them out. At least Scandinavia has a clean track record.

There are forest fires burning close to the city and the locals are hoping for rain. They fear the smoke will reach into town as it has in the past. Tonight we can smell it through the open window of our barely air-conditioned room.

We have a full day tomorrow, our last in Russia. We finally go to the Hermitage.

Toby

Scandinavia-Touring At Last

August 14, 2006-St. Petersburg
(Photos:Chezma Church,
Romanov graves,
Peter tthe Great's crypt,
Church of Saviour on Spilled Blood)


Tomorrow is our granddaughter Talia's birthday and we have no way of calling her. It makes me sad. We celebrated with her before we left. It satisfied her but not me. As you know it’s hard for me to adjust at the beginning of our trips. This isn’t making it easier.

Our group staggered onto the bus for a tour of the city of St. P. I should cut myself some slack on learning the names of our fellow travelers. There are twenty-two in all. I know most of the women but the men seem to run together. Our hotel is outside the city center. The guide said there was no suitable place closer in. We were joined by a student photographer who is taping us as we tour. He will edit pre-shot footage of the sites we have seen into it. Of course it will be for sale.

We got a lesson in Communist architecture. There is ugly, uglier, and ugliest. The styles are named for whomever was the dictator at the time of construction. Stalinist is the best constructed and most attractive with the Khrushchev era the worst. Fortunately we quickly found the adorable pink and white wedding cake-like Chezma Church built around 1770. Russian Orthodox services are 1 1/2 –2 hours long and the congregation stands the entire time. The larger more ornate churches are cavernous since there are no seats. They’re also now mostly museums. Worship is conducted in “church Slavonic” and the younger people don’t understand and cannot read it. Under Communism some churches were used as warehouses and one had a swimming pool built inside. There’s still a church housing the Museum of Atheism. After three generations of atheism, it’s difficult if not impossible for religion to gain a solid foothold. Padded theater seating might help.

We rode down Muskovsky Prospekt, a wide boulevard, and benefited from the sprucing up done for the G-8. Most facades were freshly painted and flowers were in abundance. St. P has always been a clean city and is famous for lovely public parks where even on a Monday we saw four wedding parties taking photos. Citizens enjoy owning their apartments now but since the state is no longer responsible for providing housing homelessness is a new problem here. Prosperity for some has brought more cars and cars too are homeless as parking was never a consideration in the old days. History Lesson St. Petersburg is 300 years old. It was founded by Peter the Great and became the capital from 1712-1917. It sits on what used to be Swedish territory but around the 1600’s Peter wanted to build a European capital and fought for twenty-one years to get this marshy location. It was Russia’s by history since in the 1300’s it was Novgorod. When Peter got it back from the Swedes he went to England and Amsterdam to study shipbuilding. He learned well. Shipbuilding is still the main industry here. He never lived to see his city plan completed but it was followed to the letter. Today they still adhere to his limit on the height of buildings in the old city being less than seventy-five feet tall. After WWI the name was changed to Petrograd since St. Petersburg was too German a name. In 1917 it became Leningrad and in 1991 it was back to St. Petersburg by a slim majority of 54% in a democratic vote.

Peter the Great was dubbed “Great” after his death based on his achievements. Peter tired of his first wife and sent her to a convent. He took as his second wife, Catherine who became the 1st. She was a washerwoman/”entertainer” for the troops who made it big but not “great.” It was Catherine II who named herself “great.” Perhaps she based her honorific on the number of lovers she had. The Neva River is lined with pastel colored palaces many of which she built for her favorites. Five of those palaces comprise the Hermitage.

Peter built Peter and Paul Fort and Church on an island in the Neva River. There are 308 bridges in the city limits twenty-two of which are drawbridges. The drawbridges are only open from 2AM-5AM for the larger ships to pass. The fort never saw military use but has housed political prisoners and is presently a mint. P and P Church was built in 1712 in the European style loved by P “the Great” and is the resting place for the Romanov family. Russia is in the process of gathering the remains of its dead princesses who married into other European families. They’’re re-interring them in crypts in P and P. But tit for tat, one crypt is empty. A princess who married Russian was recently sent home to her country of origin. The Romanovs and all the servants who were killed with them when they were assassinated were re-buried in the church and DNA testing shows that the ephemeral Anastasia is among them.

St. Isaacs Church was built in the1850’s. It’s not dedicated to the Isaac we know but to a Byzantine monk. It escaped damage in WWII when many of the gold church domes were painted gray to camouflage them. Flanking the entrance to the altar are ten columns encrusted with mosaic malachite veneers. The two columns immediately on the sides of the massive entrance to the altar are lapis lazuli. It’s overwhelmingly opulent in a good way. In winter ice formed on the inside of the dome and upper walls. Braziers were placed around the sanctuary to warm the worshippers and their breath added more heat. Candles were used in the chandeliers. What was created was a weather system with chunks of ice falling on the faithful. Many oil paintings were replaced with exact replicas in mosaic to avoid deterioration from the weather. Italian artisans didn’t come to Russia to create the mosaics. Russians went to Italy to be trained. The results are remarkable. Some originals are shown next to the mosaics and are indistinguishable as to color, composition, and shading. The only give-aways are the edges of the tiles. Eventually the weather problem was solved with the advent of central heating and electricity.

The Church on Spilled Blood was the place where Alexander II was assassinated. It’s built in typical Russian onion-domed splendor featuring multi-colored roof tiles. We didn’t go inside and I think that’s the last of churches for this leg of the trip.

On Our Own

The Red October beckoned us as the “official” gift shop stop. So far I’ve been able to resist buying anything but this is only day two For the first time in our travels I’m wearing a money belt under my shirt. David has some money and a credit card hanging in a pouch under his shirt. We hate it but our guide said it is necessary. She told us only to use credit cards in the hotel or approved shops since credit card fraud is rampant. One woman has a fanny pack with a steel wire through the belt part. I may invest in one when we get home. It has to be more comfortable.

All but four of us are going to see Swan Lake tonight. David saw the Kirov dance it when he was here in the 80’s. We saw the Kirov in Cleveland so we decided to skip it. We decided to ride the Metro downtown on our own. Susan and Chester Watson joined us. Chet is retired from the military and had a top security clearance. He doesn’t talk much about what it was he did. Susan is a CPA. He’s a Republican who says he’s been disappointed by some of his choices. He thinks that Mitt Romney would be a good candidate and he would vote for Joe Lieberman. I think Susan may be a closet Democrat. We followed the instructions given to us by Nadia and entered the Metro station near our hotel. We bought tokens for twelve rubles each (fifty cents) and descended an endless escalator into subterranean St. P. Built in the good old days, subways doubled as bomb shelters. A free economy is evident in ads displayed in the train cars and on the walls of the stations. Train stations aren’t necessarily labeled and the announcer tells the next stop so we counted out six stations and got off at the seventh. Stations are a mile apart. As we surfaced David was jostled by someone who kept saying, “Excuse me,” but was blocked by someone else. He thought it might be an attempted pick pocketing so veered off to the side. He didn’t have anything in his pockets anyway but was uncomfortable with the situation. His reward for his quick thinking detour was finding a street vendor selling Diet Coke, his first in a few days. We negotiated the street scene ending up sitting in a park near the river until it was time to go. Sun sets around 10PM and we wanted to be back by dark.

I napped a lot on the bus and feel more rested. I think I’m settling in. Tomorrow we go to Peterhoff, Yuspupov Palace, and take a cruise on the canals.

Toby

Scandinavia-Off To St. Pete.

August 12, 2006-Insecurity
(Photo:St. Petersburg, Russia)

We’ve re-packed. We were a lot less stressed than the couple in the next room who argued and yelled as they decided what stayed and what didn’t. Luckily we aren’t carrying baby formula or breast milk. It’s allowed on board but has to be tasted by the passenger to clear security. I am carrying an almost empty bottle of lens solution with me. It’s saline and I’ll squirt it in my mouth if necessary.

We sat on the porch of Junior’s Restaurant while we ate lunch. It’s around the corner from our hotel and has been our fallback for snacks. Two of New York’s finest mounted police strolled by. It was amusing to see a cop on a cell phone on a horse.

Getting There

We called Finn Air to be sure our flight was leaving on time. They told us they wanted us there for check-in hours ahead of take-off. Ugh! That means we sat in a skuzzy waiting room for four hours for a 7 hr and 15 min long flight. The security was lame. They didn’t even open the toiletries bag in my carry-on or David’s CPAP breathing machine. We passed the time meeting other Grand Circle Tour travelers.

The flight left for Helsinki an hour late due to increased security. When the announcements started I thought I was in a Saturday Night Live sketch and someone was going to ask to “skeeewer de torkey.” The accented English was a blend of Scandinavian and Russian. As we boarded we were handed eight ounce bottles of water as a consolation prize for disposing of our own liquids. They passed out water frequently as they tend to do on long hauls. It was welcome since lunch was a spicy chicken curry. The orange juice with our breakfast snack referred users to contact Country Pure Foods in Akron, Ohio 44314, with any questions. They gave a web site of juice4u.com. Never heard of it.

We landed in Helsinki on August 13, and immediately walked onto our flight for St. Petersburg. We were settled in our seats when we were informed of a forty minute delay due to navigational equipment issues. The two cities are spitting distance from each other, but I guess the pilot was being picky.

The 45-minute flight approached St. Petersburg, Russia over the Gulf of Finland. We flew low enough to see shipping activity. The area alternates between forest and farmland until the airport and gray city housing blocks come into view. The welcoming terminal was vintage Communist military mustard and tan stone construction. The bright spot was Nadia, our guide, who promises to be knowledgeable and understandable. She teaches English for eight months of the year and is a guide the balance.

We stopped at the Warsaw Restaurant for our third meal of pork products. We had two snacks while flying that consisted of ham and cheese sandwiches. At the Warsaw the soup had sausage. Nadia immediately noted our request and we were served a delicious hot beef borscht with sour cream.

We are now ensconced in the Pulkovskaya Hotel owned by SAS and Radisson. It’s lots better than I expected but the past lives on. The two towers of the building are called “blocks.” We are in block I. The dining room is in block II. Nadia said that the hotel staff insists that the building is air-conditioned. The public rooms are fine. The guest rooms are on the warm side. The solution is to call the desk and insist that they send someone to unlock the windows. She also told us that hairdryers are available on request. There is no charge and nowhere to plug them into the bathroom but they work in any plug in the sleeping area. Lucky for us our window was already unlocked and we only need a hair dryer to dry laundry.

Toby

Scandinavia-More Exploration

August 11, 2006-New York

Our day started with an attempt to get theater tickets at the TKTS booth in the Fulton Market area. The problem was that it being Friday, there were noseats available for any show we wanted to see. We enjoyed the pedestrianized area of the wharf and took off for lunch at, you guessed it, Katz’s. As we arrived we saw an ambulance out front. That’s not a good sign at a restaurant. It turned out that the EMTs had stopped for lunch. In short order (no pun intended) the ambulance was joined by a full hook and ladder fire engine. The entire crew piled into Katz’s in full battle regalia and dug into their lunches too. We couldn’t resist taking photos.

On the subway headed to Chinatown Syd proposed that it would be less money to share a cab than to pay $2 per person per subway ride. As it turned out that wasn’t true, but our cab rides were more exciting than the subway. We had drivers from Sierra-Leone, Pakistan, and Egypt. They all learned to drive in their home countries. Enough said.

Janet was intent on buying knock-off handbags in Chinatown. She and Syd ventured into a tiny stall and disappeared. We thought they’d moved on down the street but couldn’t find them. Eventually they emerged having bought three purses. They told us about the saleslady whispering to them about a secret room. Before they knew it the back wall opened and they were whisked into an even tinier space crammed with more authentic counterfeits. NYC has cracked down on the vendors so in the stores the items are labeled with NYC tags. The back room had the same merchandise with Prada, Louis Vuitton, or whatever labels were appropriate to the style.

Shabbat

We went to 5:15pm services at Temple Emanuel. It’s the premier reform congregation in the world. Services were held in the chapel where only 80-90 of the 500+ seats were occupied. A police car with lights flashing sat outside the entire time and security guards searched bags before people entered. The senior of five rabbis led uninspired worship using Ashkenazic Hebrew pronunciation and the old Union Prayer Book. It was Syd’s and Janet’s first encounter with classical Reform Judaism. It was too bad the glorious voices of the choir and cantor chose dirge-like tunes. In fact, we felt as if the entire service and participants were performing the perfectly choreographed presentation under water. Music, movements, and speech were painfully slow. The congregation didn’t participate in singing as is typical of classical Reform. The entire event was a spectator sport. We could have phoned it in there was that much emotion. Afterwards, the rabbi asked David to do Kiddush and introduced him as a colleague he remembered from when they lived together in the dorm at Hebrew Union College. My David never lived in the dorm. We were married when he started HUC and had our own apartment.

We cabbed it back to Chinatown for dinner and took our time searching the streets until we were satisfied with the Chinese/Caucasian ratio in the restaurant. We chose. Mr. Tang’s. The food was divine even if the service was not. We only ordered three bowls of rice and from then on we got three of everything including wine glasses and fortune cookies.

We got back to the hotel on the early side and said our sad good-byes to the Bruces. They head for Japan for a few days before returning to Australia.

Toby

Scandinavia-The Big Apple

Aug. 9, 2006-Red Alert

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It’s all my fault. Every time we leave on a trip I wonder if there will be anything to write about. This morning the terrorists provided me with plenty. In case you were living under a rock, there was a red alert for flights from Heathrow to NYC. No carry-on bags were allowed. The U.S. was imposing an orange alert. When we got to the Akron-Canton Airport at 7AM and went to check in at Air-Tran we were told that we had to remove all liquid, paste, and gel products from our carry-on. That included toothpaste, lotions, water, hair gel, lip-gloss. We grabbed our medicine from our cases and tossed our kits into checked luggage. We’ll re-organize when we get to New York. Amazingly, the flight left on time despite announcements that crews were delayed since they too were caught unawares and had to go through their bags and eliminate the “contraband.”

David went to buy something for breakfast and there was a guy ordering a beer. Mind you, it was 7AM. He asked us (rhetorically) if we saw a problem with having a beer that early. I took it as a legitimate question and answered that if he needed a beer at that hour he had a big problem. He then said that with what was going on with the airports today we all had problems.

The saddest part of this latest bit of terrorism is that the standard will now be set at a new level. Liquids, gels, and pastes will join the list of items to be confiscated along with nail clippers and cork screws. David agrees with me on profiling. It makes no sense to him if you’re looking for a white murderer to detain blacks. Why was the little old lady in front of us who was traveling with her church group made to undergo a physical search at security and at the gate? Why don’t we consult with the Israelis who don’t go through this nonsense & employ more humane methods? They talk to each passenger. That’s it, just talk. They’re trained to profile by behavior.

Aussie Connection

For those of you who didn’t know, Syd and Janet Bruce, our friends from Australia, stayed with us in Akron, drove through Canada and met us in NYC. They were waiting in our hotel lobby when we arrived. Our first stop was Katz’s deli on Houston in the Lower East Side. We gorged on pastrami sandwiches and were grossed out when we spotted two pastrami and American cheese sandwiches waiting to go. I thought that was illegal.

Janet had been urged by an uncle to go to Borough Park in Brooklyn. We headed there by subway after lunch. It was a long sad trek on the wrong train that involved much map reading, backtracking, and querying passers-by before we gave up and headed for the discount ticket booth. We scored tickets to The Color Purple only to be told that there were limited site lines. We opted for orchestra seats to The Wedding Singer. The theater is right across from our hotel, The Milford Plaza. We’ve stayed here before. It’s serviceable and in a great location.

While we were waiting in line for tickets, Syd was running around trying to cash American Express Traveler’s checks in U.S. dollars for U.S. dollars at any number of banks. He finally convinced someone to call AmEx and verify the numbers to make sure they were valid. The bank workers were singularly unhelpful and unfriendly. He had no trouble cashing the checks in Seattle and Toronto. Even though New York has worked on its user-friendly reputation there’s room for improvement. But, I must say that the women in Prospect Park who offered their condolences when telling us we were not in Borough Park were compassionate. The off-duty concierge on the subway who gave us various tips on getting to the TCKT kiosk, how we should have gotten to Borough Park, and information on timing our trip to JFK for our flight overseas was inspiring.

I’m already missing the kids. Alex is shopping for a dress for Homecoming. Talia will turn 4 Aug. 15, and Rylee is seven weeks old. She’ll be 10 1/2 weeks when we return. In an attempt to augment my guilt Daniel quietly mentioned that the second month of the life of a baby is the best. He went on to make sure I realized we’d be missing half of her life. That’s my boy! Well, I intend to be an integral part of the life of Rylee. She will never know what she missed those 3 1/2 weeks.

Afterwards

The Wedding Singer is a Mama Mia type musical set in New Jersey in 1985. It was a movie by the same name. I didn’t see the movie but the play was my kind of Broadway. The plot and lyrics were predictable but it was energetic, had raucous rock music with a strong beat, and fabulous staging. The cast was tops and their limber bodies covered the stage in an endless display of raw edgy sensuality. The costumes were reminiscent of some clothing at the Discovery Shop, a re-sale store where I volunteer. They were vintage.

We’re off to bed now. Tomorrow we’ll have new adventures.

Toby