Hump Day

Wednesday comes and life is more settled after the decidedly bizarre events of last week and the weekend.  I accompany Jim to his law school classes.  Most of the first year students can come only to the morning 80 minute session, so he makes a point to call on them (pick on them?) in the mornings.  Alexander is one tall first year with a sloppy head of black hair and a sweatshirt.  Jim calls on him, he stands, but significantly slouched, and shyly gives his response in Russian.  Jim calls on him again and he speaks more forcefully and stands a bit straighter.  The third time he is standing erect and clearly excited to have his thoughts heard.  His answer this time isn't the best, but so what?  He's hooked on the class.
The uniform for over half the girls in the class is mini-skirt and black knee-high boots with 3-4 inch spike heels.  Others wear business suits.  Only the first year boys and one sullen older boy are not dressed up for the class.  I am starting the third round of my three ties.
Lunch with Gala and Jim in the faculty dining room is uneventful and tasty as usual, finished with tea.  I am using the opportunities to improve my Russian and expand my vocabulary.  Pezhalsta is please and Spasiba is thank you.  Hrosho is fine or well.  Suddenly A Clockwork Orange with Alex and his droogs and their Russian slang comes to my mind.  They were always saying "Horror show" no doubt meaning Hrosho.
Jim and I explore by walking down Gorkiy Street to the Angara River.  A few fisherman are there and some couples walking together.  The temperature may be just above freezing.  We follow the walkway for many blocks crossing under one of the bridges.  Then we're in an industrial section with no more sidewalk.  Of course, the two alpha males each know exactly how to continue despite not a map between us.  We find some interesting wooden buildings juxtaposed with modern construction and cross several muddy areas where the ice and snow are melting.  We continue walking in the direction we both agree is toward the park and the Kolchak monument near the northern end of Lenin Street, but eventually realize we're lost until I decipher the street sign and realize we're on Gorkiy Street again just two blocks from the apartment.  I need my GPS!
Dinner is in the apartment and is salmon baked in a pastry, delicious as usual.
We walk to the 24 hour supermarket for supplies.  Security is openly eyeing me with suspicion in the liquor department as I peruse more varieties of vodka than I've previously seen.  Then a walk back home each carrying several grocery bags. Jim and I each have a shot of chile pepper infused vodka as a treat and then off to read and bed.
Tomorrow I am speaking to a 2nd year class and then a 4th year class so they can have the rare opportunity to hear a native English speaker.  Then a tour of an ophthalmology clinic is planned.

Potpourri

Special Note:  We did not feel Wednesday, April 14th, morning's earthquake in China, epicenter about 1,000 miles south of us.

Tuesday marks one week from when we first started traveling, Jim and I meeting at JFK airport with two succeeding red-eye flights to arrive in Irkutsk, Siberia, Russia. Irkutsk is the capital of the Irkutsk Oblast (region, equivalent to our states in some ways). The city has about 640,000 people and was founded 349 years ago as the administrative outpost for all of Russia to the east which at that time included Alaska.

Starting the Celebration Early

 So Sitka, Alaska, reported to the government in Irkutsk. Irkutsk is at 52° 18' N latitude (about the same as Amsterdam) and 104° 15' E longitude (similar to Singapore).  It is just over 300 miles to Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia and 1,000 miles to Beijing).  The city is bisected by the Angara River, the only one to flow out of Lake Baikal. We are on the east bank within 4 blocks of the river. There are several bridges including a new one finished just this year. Our apartment is on Gorkiy Street with a bust of Gorkiy just across the street in a small park.  The red dot on the map below at the top of the B2 grid square marks our apartment.  Look closely, it is small, but I can see it.

Lenin Street parallels the river and is a quarter block away and about a right angle to Gorkiy Street. Karl Marx Street parallels Gorkiy and these three streets seem to bound the university.

Our apartment has a small foyer between the two doors with the space, I'm sure for some extra insulation. There is a small entrance corridor with the first door on the right being the "throne." The toilet is actually up two steps within the WC, so that probably qualifies as a throne.

Another step inside the entrance is a door on the left leading to my small bedroom with a loveseat-sized couch, an armoire, and a twin sized bed. At the foot of the bed is a step ladder and the vacuum cleaner. Also in my room is the iron and ironing board, which I have actually used!
The door opposite mine is the kitchen.

The shower room is off the kitchen.  The above view is from the shower room doorway.  Below is the sink and shower.  Note the spout over the sink swivels to be over the bathtub.

Jim's bedroom is larger; I conceded that to him immediately as it has a desk and I knew he would have more work to do. My bedroom is about 10' x 12' and the entryway from the outside door is about 15 feet long.

Tuesday morning and afternoon is law school classes in American law again.  After that the students watched A Few Good Men in Russian with expectation of discussion on Wednesday.  Jim and I had expectations of dinner at the apartment, but the dining room staff tempted us with байкальский омуль (Baikal omul) a fish that proved as delicious as its reputation.

Wednesday we will finally have a little more free time after classes and Thursday I will be speaking with students on my own without a translator--they are all supposed to have decent English skills.  There is a large medical school here and I am supposed to go to an ophthalmology clinic.  Svetlana, Jim's other translator from two years ago invited us to her house for dinner Friday night.  She has a cute 15 month old boy and is married to a man in Russian internal security who is "very serious."  Saturday is scheduled a train ride around the south end of Lake Baikal with the dean.

Law School and Jazz

Professor Troupis introducing himself

We’re up early as Jim is fretting about details for the classes. I wash out some of the weekend’s clothes and hang them. Fortunately, the hot water pipes are purposely configured in the shower room (which doubles as the kitchen sink) to hang towels for warming. I call Jane using the apartment phone and a 200 ruble ($7) calling card I’ve purchased. Amazingly, it again works perfectly. She has called me a few times using Skype. Breakfast is Kellogg’s Miel (honey) Pops in 2.5% milk. The supermarket on Karl Marx Street didn’t have Fiber One, my preference. At 9AM we are in the classroom. Jim’s Power Point presentation appears on the screen after a little work by Aleksandr Alexandreivich Romanov, the technology assistant who proudly shows Jim how the “Smart Board” works. The Smart Board is the screen where the presentation appears. It includes special colored markers which electronically show up on the screen and an electronic eraser. However there is no remote for the presentation. We are told it is not sold in Irkutsk. A laser pointer is located at last and at 10:35 the class begins on schedule with about 30 students, predominantly girls. They range from first year to fourth year and ages 18-23 with most 18-20. They will be able to practice law, but not trial law, after 5 years of University. If they decide they want to teach law, they can get a PhD here in law, one of 4 universities in the country to offer it. Jim tells me this is the third-ranked law school in the country after Moscow and St. Petersburg.

The students introducing themselves

Jim engages the students quickly and has them discussing the American constitution and the limits of the federal powers as well as the structure of the state and federal court systems. After 80 minutes there is a 15 minute break during which the first year students leave for their other classes and the rest return for 80 more minutes.

Gala interpreting in class

Aleksandr and Gala help Jim and I get passwords and logons for the university internet system and we have a late lunch. We are able to use computers in one of the technology rooms crowded with students. I find out the Cubs are 2-4 for the season, the president of Poland has died in a Russian plane crash and Justice Stevens is retiring from the Supreme Court. I also find out the temperature in Venice, FL, but I’d rather not know. Gala reminded us we agreed to go to a jazz concert tonight with the American musician, Frank Lacy. He is unknown to me. Dinner is cold leftovers from the refrigerator. We walk out of our apartment on Gorkiy Street a ½ block to Lenin Street paralleling the Angara River which divides the town. The sky is blue and it may be freezing or above for the first time. Twenty minutes later Jim and I have arrived at the Music Theater, a beautiful Soviet era structure with young, excited people gathering near the entrance. Gala appears with the tickets a few minutes before the performance and the concert begins with a local band consisting of a gifted keyboardist, a lead guitarist who appears to be 6’7” tall, a bass guitarist and drummer. Then Frank Lacy appears carrying a flugelhorn and trombone. Later he sings and plays the conga drums as well. A Russian singer comes out doing scat like Ella Fitzgerald.

The Band on Stage

The experience is quite enjoyable. During one of the breaks, the MC talks from the stage to the audience. Several times I hear the words “Frank Lacy.” Gala translates and tells us he is saying how hard Frank Lacy is to get along with and that is why he has no band of his own, but still is a gifted musician. Frank Lacy, who later tells us “My Russian—no good,” smiles through it. Jim and I take a taxi home.

The Steppes of Siberia and Dr. Zhivago

Sunday comes with a more relaxed pace. After last night’s “relaxing” sauna complete with birch twig beatings, I am ready for relaxed.

These are marks on my back three days later from the birch twigs

After breakfast, more ice fishing. I catch three small fish and actually remove the hook from the mouth of one—it doesn’t sound like much, but the fishing I’ve done in the last few decades has been on charter fishing boats and very little of that. The twin driving forces for the day’s schedule have been “We’ve got to be out of the rental house by 2PM” and Jim saying he needs to work on tomorrow’s classes. It is 2PM and we are still fishing. By 3PM we stop and have lunch. Finally, at 4PM the five of us are in the Land Cruiser and packed for Irkutsk. The 2PM deadline had some apparent flexibility. Andrei asks us if we want to drive back to the road by land on rutted paths or bounce along the ice some more. Ice is, of course, chosen. He spins the vehicle 720 degrees on the ice twice in the first two miles when the studded snow tires lose traction. 5PM finds us on the road to Irkutsk through the steppes of Siberia made famous to many Americans in the 1965 movie of Boris Pasternak’s book, Dr. Zhivago. The terrain reminds me of eastern Montana, but Jim says northern Manitoba. You get the idea. Rare signs of humans, barren plains and hills, rocky outcroppings and the occasional Buriyat “temple”. The pace of the journey changes when we stop to leave cigarettes alongside the road as thanks to the gods for the fishing success, then turn down a dirt road to ask a young Buriyat boy if this is the road to the sacred mountain where every four years the Buriyat equivalent of the Olympics are held. He overcomes his shyness and says yes with an apple being his reward. He bites in as soon as it touches his hands. The dirt road is mostly mud and ice, so we angle up the incline a little and travel cross country. We can see the sacred mountain after a few miles, but cannot practically get there so we retrace our route past some abandoned red brick buildings with some windows still intact. It is what’s left of a Soviet era collective farm. It is unimaginable considering a commune here trying to make a living off the harsh land. We pass horses roaming free, sometimes on the road, long-haired, horned cattle also sometimes on the road and reach Irkutsk before 9PM. The police have set up a traffic stop “to check papers” our hosts explain, but our vehicle is not selected. Jim has gotten some work done during the ride. He is a bit anxious how tomorrow’s first classes will play out. We marvel at the events of the weekend and crawl into our dormitory style twin beds for the night.

KC, We're not in Florida Anymore!

Flat KC on Lake Baikal

Ice Fishing!  I'm doing this for Jim out of friendship.  Our ride is due to arrive at 6AM Saturday, April 10th, so we're up at 5:15 packing up for the weekend.  They finally arrive at 7AM and we drive on paved road for three hours toward Lake Baikal, stopping for bait (live crustaceans that look like 1/4 inch long shrimp) and to ask the gods for their blessings.  No kidding!  The Buriyat people, who live around Lake Baikal and look identical to Mongolians traditionally have 99 gods, 55 good, and 44 bad.  So we stop at a wooden open structure along the road, add our coins to the thousands already there, drink some vodka, and tie cloth strips around the wooden supports.

Finally, we turn off the paved road to a dirt road for several kilometers, then turn off the dirt road to no road where the traffic wardens hand a paper to each car telling how to drive on the ice.  We reach the edge of the frozen lake (ice 1.3-1.5 meters thick) and drive the Toyota Land Cruiser for several miles onto the lake.  We are in a portion of the lake called the "small sea", the only shallow area.  The wind is 30 miles per hour and the temperature in the teens.  So what do we do?  We leave the warm vehicle, hand drill 8" holes in the ice and fish!

Before losing any fingers or ears to frostbite, we head to a restaurant on the ice!  It is a Buriyat ger, like a Mongolian yurt.  Inside are a Buriyat mother and her 3 daughters who start cooking our fish and making dumplings.  Andrei talks the mother into letting him drill a fishing hole inside the ger!

Jim ice fishing inside a restaurant

The fish and dumplings were delicious, so what to do next.  One of the gang gathers a few scrap pieces of firewood from outside the restaurant and we drive several miles on the ice to a more remote part of the lake and do skeet shooting with the firewood as skeet.

Jim and I have been up since shortly after 5AM and it is now approaching sunset.  I cannot speak for him, but sleep is all I have on my frozen mind.  Our hosts, however, think nothing finishes the day like a баня (russian sauna) complete with getting beaten all over with birch branches.  The temperature in the sauna is supposed to be 95 degrees Centigrade (203 Fahrenheit, I think).  It feels like my skin is burning, then we go out into the snow, then back into the sauna, then beaten (massaged they call it) with the hot birch branches.  Sleep comes sometime after midnight with more ice fishing promised for the next day.

First Visit to Lake Baikal

Today we go to Listvyanka, a fishing village on Lake Baikal, prominently featured in Clive Cussler’s book Treasure of Khan.  But first a trip to Taltsi, a museum outside Irkutsk on the Angara river where 200-300 year old wooden buildings are preserved.  Some are residences, fully furnished; some churches; some administrative buildings.  The wood holds up well for being so old.

The museum in Listvyanka is on the shores of Lake Baikal and has two 3-D models of the lake demonstrating how amazingly deep it is over most of its area, even a mile deep in spots.  Also there are two nerpa (fresh-water seals) in a display.

Finally, we stopped "for something hot to drink" which turned out to be vodka with snacks.  During the return trip to Irkutsk, Andrei, our ice fishing guide for the weekend, called and said Jim and I needed "resin boots" for the weekend.  So Gala knocked on the door of a just-closed sporting goods store that re-opened for us after her entreaties and we bought our boots.  Think cow-milking boots with liners!

Mayo Clinic of Irkutsk

Thursday we arrived in Irkutsk as scheduled.  We went to the "Diagnostic Clinic" in the afternoon.  In the foyer, a machine dispensed a pair of shoe covers in a transparent egg for 5 rubles (about 15 cents).  Everyone was putting them on, so we did as well.  Security then led us to the elevator to the director's office and we were quickly led in and introduced.  He is a man of about 50.  He spoke a little English, but Gala, our interpreter helped immensely in translating our discussion of what his clinic did.  It is an outpatient clinic of several stories with primarily internists, but also a few surgeons (two gynecologists and two urologists).  People with insurance or private pay patients come here for rapid, complete diagnosis.  The director prides himself on the rapid turnaround of radiology images, lab tests (including pathology slides) and procedures, trying hard to complete at least 90 % of the patients' needs within one day.  In addition to his medical degree he has a management degree and uses sigma 7, "lean technology", and other industrial efficiency techniques.  Despite the application of industrial methods, the clinic appears patient-friendly.  The electonic medical record is designed to have laboratory results and radiology images appear instantly when they are done.  He gave us a tour of much of the clinic.  He apologized for his 0.5 Tesla MRI saying it would be updated soon.  The clinic was begun with a loan from the Japanese government; much of the equipment is from . . . Japan!  They have a small English language website http://en.dc.baikal.ru/   Above the director's desk is a photo of him shaking hands at the clinic with Vladimir Putin.  Below is a picture of me shaking hands with him.

Jim, Gala, and I then went to a sporting goods store to buy me a stocking hat and both of us thermal underwear for the ice fishing trip.  We finished the first day with dinner in the faculty dining room before finally getting to bed.