Travels to Siberia

What to say about the Russian embassy in Paris, where I spent three mornings in the past two weeks getting our visas for our trip next month to Moscow and St. Petersburg? For starters, it's in Siberia. Few places I've been to in Paris proper are more than a five-minute walk from a Metro, but this is one of them. (Ian Frazier explores this figurative sense of "Siberia" at the start of his fantastic book, Travels in Siberia, which has helped to kindle my own Russo-philia.) Once you get there, you then must wait along the iron fence ringing the embassy, for there is always a line to enter the consular services office, where visas are processed. Security at the front door is handled by a 50ish man in a dark suit who looks like a young Captain Ramius. He somehow manages to smile faintly with his mouth, while glaring at you with steely eyes hidden underneath a prominent brow. It's highly unnerving -- at once welcoming and fear-inspiring. And thereby indicative of the process that unfolded once inside and, based on what I've heard and read, of the country we'll visit.

Churchill once referred to Russia as "a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma." This is very much reflected in the visa-application form for Americans. It's two pages, with spaces of varying sizes (though most of them are small) for entering even more information than I can recall the French government asking of us before we moved to Paris, including the names and addresses of all schools we've attended since high school, all the jobs we've held, all the countries we've visited in the last ten years and whether we're experts in explosive devices. And it must be filled out in black ink, in duplicate, which I learned only after first submitting ours in blue. This error gave me the opportunity to observe the consular office in detail, as I sat at a communal table filling out new forms in black (other people at the table were doing the same, or cutting out passport photos and affixing them to their applications with Embassy-provided scissors and glue), and as I stood in line again that day and the next (I had to come back with the black-ink forms signed by Ashley), and the following Wednesday (to actually get the visas):

- The walls have wood paneling that probably dates to the de Gaulle administration.

- The furniture includes two La-Z-Boy-like leather chairs the same 1960s shade of brown as the walls, one of which broke while someone was sitting in it my second morning there.

- Behind the service windows I saw some bulky phones with curly cords that clearly were also of the same era. The red one looked like it might have once served as Khrushchev's hotline to the White House.

- Every so often I heard a burst of staticky Russian from the windows that appeared to be reserved for Russians, where the consular workers had to use some ancient intercom system to talk to the applicants.

Maybe someday some of that oil, natural-gas and mineral money will trickle down to the Paris embassy. In the meantime, visiting it is a very Kafka-esque experience.

Fortunately, behind the window at which I ended up was a polite, helpful consular officer who spoke English. She showed me my mistakes, told me how to correct them and referred to Ashley as "Mrs." throughout the process ("Here Mrs. must sign the application."). It was thus to her window that I returned on pick-up day, after I discovered a mistake on my visa (Mrs.'s was fine). She remembered me from the week before, told me to come back in fifteen minutes et voilà: the error was corrected, and at last we were good to go to Russia. Which goes to show how important it is to know the right people. Especially in Siberia.

-- MBB

III. Ljubljana

Once you figure out how to pronounce the name of the city, your work is over, for everything else about the city is easy and incredibly enticing. The car-free cobblestone streets of the old town. The many inviting cafes and cool design stores. The great food served by welcoming, English-speaking locals. The shop selling Slovenian sea salt in a range of forms, including, quite deliciously, as part of a dark-chocolate bar. And the picture-perfect castle on the hill overlooking it all. So say it with me: "loob-LEE-ah-na." And check it out if you can.

-- MBB

II. Split, Sarajevo and the Road in between

Whereas in Zagreb sound was the thing -- all those songs that struck personal notes for us -- in Split and in Bosnia it was smell. It started on the small deck off our room in Split, which offered a pretty view of the harbor and, the night we arrived, a spectacular golden orange sunset. It was the smell of burning fires. Judging from all the pizza places in town, it must have been all the wood-burning ovens at work. But as we made our way to Sarajevo, the smell evolved. One element -- the hardest to ignore -- was cigarettes. The driver of our bus, a grizzled veteran with a potbelly, a bald dome and the remaining hair slicked back on the sides, puffed away most of the eight-hour ride, despite the no-smoking sticker posted above him and the many stops we made along the way. On one of our last stops, at a picturesque bend in the road through the mountains, two pigs were roasting on a spit over charcoal, adding another olfactory element. Then, as we passed through small towns, I noticed a haze hanging over several of them. It was smoke from the wood being burned to heat all the homes and apartment buildings, which you could see puffing out of chimneys. It was also a taste -- quite literally -- of what was to come in Sarajevo, where, as the Wikitravel guide for the city warned us, the air is bad. Surrounded by mountains and home to many wood-burning chimneys and cars of varying ages -- from shiny new Mercedes to rattling old Ladas and Yugos (gas, as our driver to the airport on Sunday told us, is a euro per litre, well below Western Europe (though still probably out of reach for many Sarajevans)) -- a haze hangs over the city even thicker and grayer than what I saw in the smaller towns along the way. We smelled it everywhere we walked, and we felt it in our lungs. The stuff inside wasn't much better. For an American, walking into a Sarajevo restaurant is like taking a time machine back to when (a) a full meal for two cost $7 and (b) you could smoke inside. We took full advantage of the former, stuffing ourselves with delicious meat and cheese pies, sausages and bread charred from their time in charcoal-burning stoves, while the locals availed themselves of the latter. We walked out gingerly sniffing our clothes to assess the damage, but incredibly full and very satisfied.

Such cultural differences become trite when you step in to the exhibition on the seige of Sarajevo at the history museum. The museum itself was damaged during the Bosnian War, and perhaps as a further reminder they have not repaired it or chosen not to heat it. Or perhaps they don't have the money: walking around the center of town, you still see buildings partially or completely reduced to rubble, and even the town hall is still being restored. The exhibition is direct and powerful. There are photos of Sarajevans crouching behind UN vehicles, in preparation for a dash across a street that would expose them to snipers. There are makeshift stoves that people fashioned to burn the firewood that they gathered from parks to cook and heat their apartments. There is a young girl's diary with entries about a school day cut short because the teacher deemed it too unsafe and how time moves slowly when there's nothing to do. I smiled to myself when I saw that the local tobacco factory didn't stop production (the local brewery, meanwhile, was an important source of water during the seige), and I marveled at the fact that the newspaper never did either. In Sarajevo today, there are green shoots of capitalism amid the gray and rubble -- tall office towers and hotels and several large shopping centers, one of which contains a Vapiano where we ate the night we arrived (as in Budapest, once we saw it, we couldn't resist). The museum was a vivid reminder of a terrible part of a terrible war that was not that long ago at all.

-- MBB

Sunset over Split.

The Dalmatian coast, as seen from the window of our bus from Sarajevo to Split.

Picturesque bend in the road to Sarajevo.

The main market (Baščaršija) in Sarajevo.

I. Zagreb

The first in a three-part recap of our eight-day, three-country visit to the former Yugoslavia.

In a word, gray. From the time we touched down Monday morning till our prop plane to Split took off the next afternoon, that's what the weather was. Foggy too. And, for a time Tuesday morning, snowy, which put a damper on our visit to the main market. The market is a short walk from our hotel. So, it seems, is just about everything in Zagreb: the main cathedral with the two enormous spires; the pretty shopping street where we stopped for delicious miniature donut-like desserts covered in warm Nutella and sugar, and, later, cherry and honey schnapps; and the lovely park, surrounded by grand old buildings, that spreads north from the train station. For that reason, and for the nice room, large bed and ample breakfast buffet (featuring lasagna and other dishes we Americans normally don't associate with that time of day), I recommend the Hotel Dubrovnik for your next stay in Zagreb.

The city is altogether agreeable. In its center there are far more pedestrians and trams than cars, giving it a relaxed feel. Walking on the aforementioned pretty, donuts-and-schnapps street, we felt like we were in a village, not a city, what with the lack of cars and sounds, save for people walking and talking. At least until we arrived at the big new shopping mall -- all glass and dark metal, and full of high-end shops. Cars are allowed on this stretch of street, and the parking spaces were full of BMWs and Land Rovers. But one glance back across the street at the crumbling old houses leaning against one another, and we were returned to the little Balkan village.

The most striking thing about Zagreb was all the familiar music we heard. American music is common everywhere we've been in Europe. But here it was as if someone was spinning songs just for us. At dinner we sat down to the Boss's "Streets of Philadelphia." While selecting dessert in the bakery, we heard a French song we like. At breakfast, as we sipped our coffee and smelled the lasagna, it was a favorite from the Bridget Jones soundtrack. And on the bus to the airport, it was "Murder on the Dancefloor," a treasured memory from Ashley's days as a single gal in DC. (We would see the video for this song twice on the trip.) I don't know if Zagreb does this for all visitors, but we certainly appreciated it.

P.S. For your next stay in Zagreb, I also recommend checking out the Museum of Broken Relationships. We didn't visit it, because I only discovered it in the Croatian Airlines in-flight magazine on our way to Split (no pun intended), but it looks really cool.

-- MBB

The main square.

The pretty, donut-and-schnapps street.

The cathedral.

The main market.

The Color Red

The theme of red for our weekend jaunt to Krakow started out with my Rudolph-like nose compliments of one of those (since I am now thirty), blemishes. Whereas I would like to blame it on rudely diving into lavish amounts of Polish pastries, its origin instead came from the excessive amount of green-tea scented hand-cream that I had to glob in and around my nostrils in a failed attempt of decreasing the stench of one of our fellow passengers aboard our flight. Although I did not think it possible to emanate such odor, I can now say without reservation that deodorant is not a luxury, it should be an international mandate.

But, the good news is that my Rudolph Christmas costume allowed me to fit right in with the excessive holiday greenery still decorating the town (perhaps due to the city-wide Nativity contest that is ongoing until the end of February), the tastefully-adorned Christmas tree in one of the many picturesque town squares, but yet very conveniently was also in the correct color to help blend in with the Valentine's day hearts dangling in windows, artfully arranged in candy boxes, all while being illuminated by candles abound in numerous restaurants. A festive city indeed -- and one where I have never felt so proud to have a pimple.

But the red is also connected to a more gruesome item, and one that deserves no celebration or jubilation. As our Saturday started with an early rise to board the bus to Auschwitz, the day became one of melancholy and sadness. The nip in the air and the high winds aided in the dreariness that accompanies such atrocities. Regardless of how much Holocaust knowledge you may have, nothing prepares you for standing in front of the execution wall or roaming the basement corridors, lined with the pictures of grim faces who were murdered in those very cells. Red can also be the color of evil (and blood) and was certainly symbolic of our time on the sacred ground.

And as our hotel room did not afford us a weekend of MTV, instead we tuned into CNN to stay abreast of the situation in Egypt. The images are appalling --- rocks being collected as artillery, people looking exhausted, bruised and battered, all while fighting for the simple concept of equality (along with deodorant --- also an international mandate, I believe). The wound is clearly still open and will be spewing red for weeks (and potentially years) to come. If we reflect on history, blood-red is present in most major national/cultural/religious overhauls and changes. But as someone who has never had to suffer in any of those capacities, red in that form is hard to accept.

If I had to chose how I most prefer my red, I would have to opt for it in the shape of a heart (covered in chocolate and filled with peanut butter). Shallow, I know.

Some other rouge items of note this weekend:

-Matt's beet soup in the Milk Bar where we had Friday's dinner (a cafeteria style joint subsidized by the government). The best and most massive meal 10 euros has ever bought us!

-The cherry liquor we were served after dinner Saturday night. This was to help erase some of the memory of the massive meal we had just consumed (and how the band moved right next to use to harass us with a polka rendition of "I Love Paris in the Springtime").

-The color I want to use to decorate the possible new flat we are looking at upon return today! Think fantastic shoebox ---- with lots of red!

The main gates of Auschwitz

Execution Wall

Therapy starts with "P"

Last weekend I strapped on my back brace and we headed off for the weekend to Lisbon, Portugal. The extent of my Portuguese knowledge had been in thanks to the cookies my guardienne swapped me for Betty Crocker cupakes (blue frosting and all) post building “block” party. We had been in Normandie but I wanted to make our American presence known throughout the building by leaving a sampling of American delicacy, whereas I think she was just being nice. Regardless, I went into the weekend feeling good about this country (and it’s baked goods). Side note: Many guardiennes in Paris are Portugese. If I could actually communicate with my guardienne I would ask her why she would ever leave Lisbon to come here!

So perhaps you have already picked up on where this ditty is going. We left an angry, gray Paris (literally --- union protesters blowing whistles at us and chanting as we were trying to enjoy our Starbuck’s Café Americano in Terminal 2), which left me with a bad taste in my mouth (mind you not from the Starbuck’s, from the protesters who seem to follow us where ever we go) and landed in a sunny, welcoming, palm-covered, pastel-painted (English speaking) Portugal. If I had a Lilly Pulitzer in Paris, I would have worn it. I felt at home and alive.

The weekend was just what I needed to lift my spirits (defiant back still present). We climbed hills to take in magnificent views of the colors, the tile facades, and in the distance, a hint of the Atlantic Ocean. Cable cars, markets of plenty, authentic attire, all meshing with a new hip movement in pockets such as Bairro Alto --- think a love affair between Anthropologie and Merci. What a chic baby they have made. This is not to discount its equally trendy sister, Chiada. From wine bars in ancient aqueducts, to hair pieces only SJP could love, the city is understated cool, but still has the basics (like Hermes and Louie V.).

As another week has gone by, and we are back to our life here in the City of (No Sun) Light, I have to keep in mind that while it would be a lot easier to buy a sun lamp and a wheelchair to fix my current despair, our life here allows for experiences that some could never even dream of. So, I believe it is time to self-prescribe to conquer these issues once and for all. Prescription: One week in Paris, one weekend away (pastel provinces preferred). And so it goes, doctor’s orders.

PS--Next weekend is Krakow, Poland. I don't believe there will be palm trees or warmth, but at least it starts with a "P"!

Change

This morning I went over to my dually-stacked fuchsia-colored Target Tupperware tubs and pulled off the mauve sweater, black tee with a ruffle at the neckline and ill-fitting leggings that have found a home there for the last four days. On Monday I carefully chose this ensemble, as my fresh start to the week welcomed fresh attire. Yet as the week has worn on, and the humidity seems to amplify my sciatic pain, combined with a larger hurt that comes from memories of recently being home, I find myself unable to start anew each day. Although my days are filled with a number of activities and no down time, there is still that lack of a routine and constant change; which in turn means that I rarely see the same person twice a week, leading to my lack of change.

As I sit here on the metro, unable to stop staring at the lady across from me donning the seasonally inappropriate open-toed high-heels with revolting unpolished toes, inhaling a yogurt, with interspersed swigs of a Coke, I can't help but compare her to me. Although I would like to think my grey Chuck Taylor's are a little less of a turn-off, the overarching issue still remains the same. She is racing around, a sore thumb in her surroundings. She is out of place and in a hurry--- two feelings that encompass my day to day life here in Paris.

Yet I still struggle with how to make that ultimate change to really feel like Paris is my home. As a year has passed since I moved here, I have grown in so many ways. But in so many ways I am still sporting open-toed shoes in the dead of winter. I am inhaling my dinner at metro stops and staring at people with wide-eyes when spoken to in French. I am on over-drive but driving no where.

On Friday we go to the prefecture and collect our long-awaited carte des sejours, which will solidify my work status in France. Yet, as the character of Nelson Mandela so eloquently put in Invictus, “I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul,” so to am I in charge of my destiny. As another year has begun here in Paris, it is time to lose the mauve sweater and mix it up. The change will only come when I am ready, and I believe that time has come.

The long walk to the RER A in Opera