Folks.  I’m in the Moscow Airport just about to board a plane back to the US. I found some free woreless so I wanted to get a quick post in.  For now, I’ll just post the pictures and add the text when I land.. sort of the reverse of what I’ve been fdoing all week.
  It’ll be really nice to be home ! Can’t wait to see my family.

-jc

I’m now on the flight from JFK back to Burlington . I’ve got a few minutes to add the text to the pictures I posted… Let me see if I can remember what I was going to write about….

     Oh yeah… Yesterday our Academy TC  meeting ended at 1 PM. It was a the end of a great three day session. We got lots done and got to interact with some very cool people from the IBM STG Russia Lab. The rest of the afternoon was free for us to do some email catch up then do a little exploring around town. We grabbed the buss back to the hotel then headed out on foot to explore. Our first goal was check out the Kremlin museums. One of the guidebooks had said that it was open everyday.. but it turned out to be closed on Thursday.. bummer.  Undeterred Lori and Charlie and  headed off to check out Arbat Street.. The “Haight-Ashbury” of Moscow. In the 60’s and 70’s Arbat was a big counter culture hang out… Musicians like Balat Okudcheva  (I’m sure I’m butchering his name) hung out here writing cool folk songs and playing guitar. Today Arbat is full of tacky tschotsky shops, bars, street artists ,toy vendors musicians and tattoo shops. I loved it ! the thing I loved most was the huge number of high school age kids hanging out and singing on the street. Their energy was really pretty amazing.  Two  things I noticed about Arbat.. and about Moscow in general.   First,  few people over 20 are smiling…   I counted 1 smiling person out of 30 that passed my in one minute… It’s not that they’re mad or sad.. it’s just that the general affect is pretty flat… Once you start talking to them they brighten up. The second thing that’s hard not to notice is that Moscow women really love to dress up.. Everywhere we went the women were dressed like they were headed to a fancy party. For example, of the same 30 people I counted for my smile experiment, 5 of the women had on spike heels even on the rough cobblestones.   The funny thing is that the guys don’t seem to care what they wear.. I fit right in.  Around 5, we stopped for a quick beer then headed back to meet the others at the hotel for dinner.

This add is all over the city.. not sure what it is

Notice the time and the color of the sky

By the time we finished dinner it was close to 11PM and the sky was still twilight.. That was so cool It was the longest day of the year after all. We made it back to the hotel around 11:30 after finding all the bars either full or closed.. We had one  more shot of Vodka to close out the trip.. Russians seem to drink a shot with every meal ! 

At about 10 of 12 I went out by myself to red square to finish off my solstice with sam. I was surprised to find the square full of people.. Nothing special was going on.. just folks walking around. I talked with Sam for a while,  took a few pictures and headed back home.   

Again.. notice the color of the sky.. thsi is just before midnight.

Sam and I in Red Square

Sam – courtesy of a Samsung sign and a building to block some of it for my camera

I woke this morning, packed  and checked out of the hotel . My friend Steve and I shared a cab to the airport since we were on the same flight back to the US. We passed this church on the way there.

It was good catching up with Steve. His wife Helen died last October. Every time we talk, we compare notes on our path towards healing. This trip we did a bunch of talking about how foggy our brains have become. As always, it’s good to talk to  someone who has some idea of what I’m going through. .. even if our situations are very, very different.

     The flight back was really a breeze. After the Asia and Australia trips I’ve   made over the last year or so, the 9.5 hour trip over the Atlantic seemed like a piece of cake. I was sitting next to the coolest guy, Mohamed.

He is an aerospace engineer working with companies like Boeing to help them meet international safety guidelines. Mohamed is a Palestinian who went to grad school in Germany and now lives in Seattle. We talked for a good part of the trip about the middle east, religions, politicians, kids, families, Sam, travel. By the time we landed, we had worked out most of the world’s problems. He is a really good thinker. I hope we find a way to stay in touch.  Another cool thing on the flight was tta there was a group of about 15 young kids from an orphanage in Moscow. They were going to NYC to do a band contest. The kids were wicked bored and the  flight attendants were trying to find things to do with them.. I went back and taught them my favorite paper airplane design: the flying ring.We were tossing them all over the plane. It was good fun..

 

Self-portrait in plane bathroom

Here we are passing near vilnus, the place where almost all of my great granpartents came from

    We got to JFK exactly on time, then I had a 4 hour layover waiting for the trip to Burlington. That too was a snap.. It was so beitiful flying in here

I was finally standing on terra firma in beautiful Vermont . Tim came and picked me up and took me up to his house where Diane and company were just finishing up a huge batch of SamStones.  It was sooooooooo nice to see my family again.. I had missed them so much..

   Right now, I’m missing the sandman… I can hardly keep my eyes open. I need to get some sleep.  There’s no place like home , There’s no place like home,
There’s no place like home

 -jc

 

..

I’m getting time lagged from my limited access to internet. I find myself about what happened yesterday, today… Hope it’s OK with all of you.

Today marks 7 months since Sam’s accident. I woke up thinking so hard about him. Today is the longest day of the year and I am going to spend it with Sam in my heart.. as I do everyday… I love you my son

So.. where was I ? (There’s always that akward transistion) Yesterday.. I mentioned I started with a 6:30 AM run around the Kremlin. It was so cool being out on the street in braod daylight with hardly another soul in sight. Folks seem to get to work here around 10 AM.. that’s because they eat dinner around 10PM.  Here are some pictures from yesterday’s run.. Note that Ameikansky culture is all around.. 

 It was a little surreal to see an McDonalds overlooking the Kremlin gardens. 

The walls of the Kremlin

More of St. Cyrils

Lenin’s tomb again

After my run in the elevator

Built like a brick s**thouse

I then went to the pricy ($32 $US)  but yummy breakfast buffet and grabbed some fruit and smoked salmon.

Breakfast food

The bus ride to work was quick. We saw a few cool statues on the way.

Yuri Gegarin, first man in space !

Kommrad Lenin

A statue that’s being moved because it’s ‘too ugly’  And that’s saying something here

I know I briefly described yesterdays meetings at IBM.They were really productive.. I think this Academy stuff is the most creative and satisfying part of my job right now..    I love meeting folks in other IBM communities.  Here’s a picutur of one of the roundtables we had with new employees. These were amazing folks… all were perfectly fluent in English,whip-smart,  funny and cynical as hell. Cynicism has been raised to an art form  here.. folks have a highly developed sense of irony but they seem to have fun with it.  

Some smart new guys at IBM Russia (Note: not all the smart people here are guys.. the lab director is my freind Jen T)

We also met with 4 senior professors from Russian universities. Profs V. Ivanakov, V., Gergel, I Galiamova, S,. Kalinkow.  Prof Ivonakov is  the dean of Physics and Technology at Moscow State University.. that’s the most prestigious Technical university in Russia.. ,, Its like their MIT.

The visiting Prof’s

We were introduced as visiting dignitaries.. By title, I’m one of the two most senior folks of our 20 person group  which is uber-weird for me. I’m certainly the most immature. Most  of the Profs spoke perfect English, but protocol demanded we have a cold-war style interpreter..

The interpretter

it was pretty funny.. the Profs kept correcting the translator… and would start to answer us in English. Then remember and restart in Russian . After the meeting we were able to talk to them informally which was great. Prof Kaliniokow is a world expert in visualization and is really excited about helping kids visualize science and math concepts. I think I’ve found a friend.

    We grabbed lunch in the cafeteria in this building. The food was hard to figure out…. But tasty enough…

Lunch.. (Note: most food here is brown)

The gang !

Then back for another couple of hours of meetings. My US-based day-job colleagues started to wake up in late afternoon over here and I dropped into trying to be in two places at once. I do feel guilty for being over here while they struggle back at home.. I need to pay attention to that feeling.. I’m always feeling torn between what I ‘should’ do and what I ‘want to’ do.   Anyway….

    Around 6 we headed back to the hotel. Last night was our big communal dinner . We went to a traditional Moscow place and it was fantastic.. The place was all decorated with mosaics and murals. The staff were all in native costumes. I could tell that the place was geared to tourists.. but it felt real. They kept bringing cool food out.. and we kept eating. The food was amazing !

The Russian flag

 The front of the resturant

Buns filled with meat, mushrooms , or cabbage

Special cranberry juice

One of our waitresses

One of my sculptures

Peter the Great and John the Pretty Good

Candle people

A sturgeon

Steve’s Lamb

My Stugeon

A ‘Heart- Sturgeon’ (Billy, thats for you)

The Lady Singers (see the movies !.. they sing beutifully)

My Beer (I added Cranberry juice just for fun)

The Balailika Boys

Serving

Joe and Jane

One of the really cool things was the entertainment.. despite the cramped quarters, we had two bands.. the first was two accordions and a balalaika 

Reminds me of a an old Yiddish song that I know… Eddie new it too and we started to sing it

 
Tumbala tumbala tumbalaleika,
Tumbala tumbala tumbalaleika,
Tumbalaleika, schpil balaleika,
Tumbalaleika, frejlech sol sajn.

 The next band was 4 women dancers and an accordion player. The women had really beautiful voices. They danced despite all the foot traffic moving around them.. it was really fun

 

After dinner, we could hardly move !.. We went once more to Red Square to try and walk off our dinner. Here are a few more pictures from that.

The gang in front of St Cyrils

Note the time..it’s 5 minutes of 11PM.. and this is the color of the sky.

We went back to the hotel around 11:30 and ended up having a spirited meeting on a work topic until about 12:30.. Vodka helped us all reach a good technical compromise. I went up to my room and dialed into the internet over the phone. I added all of last nights pictures over the 56kB phone connection.. which was pretty painful .  I also called home and talked to Max which was great. I miss those boys like crazy. I heard that Gabe has a 103.5 fever and still feels crummy.. It’s hard to be away when the kids are sick. It’s a big burden on Diane, I know.  I haven’t been able to catch her by phone yet.. I miss her so much..  I love you my family !  At about 1:30 I fell asleep and slept great..

    This morning I was up at around 7.. then met up with  a brave subset of my posse here for an attempt to get to work by subway.. It was a hoot !…  Pictures from that tomorrow !

 Anyway.. now I’m in the meeting and trying to type and participate  at the same time.  I’m not nearly as good at multitasking as I was before Sam’s passing.. So.. I’m going to stop now and pay attention.. 

 Talk to you later ! Love you all. Dasvidania !

 -jc

 

Folks…I’m goint to try adding pictures in for today’s blog. I’m having to do this over a shaky phone line.. so.. I apologize if the pictures are all crammed together

I just added the pictures from yesterday’s blog.. so please go take a look. I apologize for my uneven postings, but getting to an internet connection is really tough here. The place is very technically advanced but for some reason wireless internet is just not that common. There’s no internet of any kind in the hotel rooms… but you can get wireless if you go down and sit in the lobby. That involves paying the equivalent of $20US for an hour of use . Then you need to use the service from one of the sofa’s in the lobby.. which you have  to share with the many ladies of the evening that seem to work the hotel. It’s a weird and unwholesome scene.  So.. I’m doing my blogging from work.

 

   So speaking of blogging… where was I ?    Let me start from last night. Just after I posted yesterday we were hustled into a bus and began the 40 minute drive to the hotel. All of us were exhausted and we took turns falling asleep mid sentence. The drive through the city was pretty interesting…

   The Hotel Metropol is quite nice. (every eastern European city I’ve evr been in has a ‘Hotel Metropol’ )  It looks just like you think an eastern European  grand hotel would look. It has lots of dark  corners to hide in and lots of mysterious  looking people hanging around. You can imagine a century of Communist Party officers walking these halls…

 

The hotel as it looked 100 years ago

Another guest, Leo Tolstoy

My humble room

The spooky hallway outside my room

After a quick freshen up, we walked across the street to an Italian restaurant. There were 14 of us including my Academy friends (Hugh, Mike, Kelly, Phillipe, Lori, Charlie, Takeo-San, Jane, Edie, Karl-Heinz, Robert, Guru, Fukanaga-san, John. Joanne, Steve, Caroly, and Deb) We were joined by some friends from other cites including Marcel and Stephan, Francesca, and Esther , Andreas from Slovenia and Christian from Vienna. Christian and I figured out that we lived only 2 doors away  from each other in 1979 when I lived in Vienna. at 42 Graf Starhembergasse . I gave him a SamStone to take to the Erol’s who still live there. I also gave a SamStone to Marcel to take to my friend Bhavna in Zurich.      The food and conversation were great. I just love being with these folks. In order to fit in better, we bought a liter bottle of Vodka.As they say ” When in Rome….. “

 

Weirdness on the menu

This one’s for you Vickie !

Huh ?

We toasted Sam

Dangerous stuff… tastes like water !

here goes

Nastarovie !

Everybody smokes here..

My Halo

Back to beer

Good dark beer.. tasted like chocolate

After dinner we wandered a block down the street to Red Square, home of the Kermlin, Lenin’s Tomb and St. Basil’s Cathedral. I remember grainy movies of uniformed party members watching a parade of tanks from the bleachers n this very square. Nothing could have prepared my for the beautiful and peaceful scene that greeted me last. It was really breathtaking.. It was a beautiful night with a few stars starting to blink on in a deep blue late afternoon color sky… funny thing was that  this afternoon sky was happening at 10:30 at night.!  Lori, Hugh and I walked around for about an hour

Here are some of the pictures from last night..

he old GUM State store.. now a very upscale department store in red square

All the crosses were replaced with stars after WWII

GUms again

Random cool building on Red Square

Lori and Hugh

An Icon over the gate to the square

St. Cyril’s (wow !)

The gates

Random cool roof thingys

Lenin’s tomb

St Cyril’s domes

St Cyrils around 10PM !

OK.. I lied it was 10:40 PM Note the color of the sky !

Da moon !

Can’t get enough of htis one.. St Cyrils that is..Hugh’s OK too

Tossed a Samstone in here.. Made me happy and sad

The Bollshoi Ballet under repair

My twin Karl Marx (for you Glenn !)

The metro sign

Stand on this and through a coin over your sholder and something good is supposed to happen.. at least it did for the person who cautgh my coin

 I tossed a SamStone into the grounds of St. Basil’s. It made me happy and sad.
It was still twilight at 11:30 when I went in. I made a feeble attempt to try and get on the internet, gave up and fell instantly asleep… There’s no better sleep than jetlagged sleep.. Ahh.

 

I slept through until 6:30. I got up and immediately went downstairs for a run. I took a quick jog around the Kremlin… which is about 1.5 miles around.. I’ll tell you one thing.. Russians are not early risers. The streets were still deserted when I went in around 7.

After a quick shower I ran downstairs for a very expensive.. but very tasty breakfast.. then a half hour ride to IBM. The day here has been pretty productive.. In addition to the Academy work were doing, we had some good meetings  with some recent hires and met with the communications folks here.   I love meeting new people . it reminds me why I really love IBM…

     I gotta pretend to be paying attention again so I should go. I just heard from Diane that it’s hotter than heck there and Gabe’s got a fever. I’m bummed  that I wasn’t’ there for his last day of school .. I guess he missed it too. I miss my family like crazy..   Hope everyone is doing well. OK.. gotta run !

Dasvidanya !

  -me

I’m now safely in Moscow.. though getting here was quite a trip in every respect. Things started out a little goofy in Burlington. My flight was delayed about 2.5 hours because the crew needed sleep.. Heck I needed sleep, too. But at least I showed up. Turns out that lots of flights were delayed

I made it to JFK with only a few minutes to spare. I got to the gate to the Moscow flight just as it was beginning  to board. The flight itself was gloriously uneventful… nice big comfy seat, good seat mate (Doug)  and pretty decent food. 

Doug sells securities for a Russian firm so he’s here every couple of months. We talked about Russia, politics, music (he’s in a band) and families. We talked on and off about Sam .. he walked off the plane with a SamStone and an unconventional idea on what to do with it.. (I’m not telling). Despite my best intentions I didn’t get a lick of work done either for IBM or for myself.. Instead I  managed to catch about 5 hours of sleep..      My family was with  me in my dreams. I could feel Sam close to me. 

   They woke us about a hour out of Moscow for breakfast. Just as we  landed, Doug whipped out his phone and let me hear one of the songs his band covers.. ‘Secret  Agent Man’   .. a perfect welcome to this mysterious place. ( I think he figured out that I was a spy) .

    Customs and immigrations was a snap since I was carrying my bag.. I went from plane to my preordered Taxi in about 10 minutes.. that’s when the fun began.I showed him the address in the briefing letter I received and we headed out.  We drove through unbelievable traffic for about an hour to get to a sparkling new IBM building .  Some familiar sights.. some wierd ones.

I paid the cab and went up , I thought, to my meeting. I walked into the conference room thinking I’d find my friends…. But saw a bunch of Russian folks and one friend of mine from Switzerland. He came out in the hall and quickly let me know that the office  I was looking for had moved two months ago and was now  across town  . Oy !

    The folks at the center offered to call me a cab which would arrive in an hour or so to take me to the other facility about an hour an a half’s drive away. I wasn’t interested in that at all. I asked about the Metro.. and they frowned.. It’s too confusing says them.. The perfect challenge says I.. Anyway.. I took off from there with my suitcase and walked about a quarter mile to the Metro stop.  I am a real subway junky and love being packed and jostled into a train. The trip was really cool. Most of the trains were modern.. and the stations were really beautiful. Someone explained that during the 50 years that artisan’s were not allowed to paint churches, they decorated subway stations instead.  The trains and stations were well marked… I found myself really, really glad that I learned to read Cyrillic when I was in High School…  I can’t speak or understand more than 100 words of Russian.. but at least I can read the street and subway signs.

     Here’s one example of one to the subway stops.. In English it’s ‘OktoberSkya’.. which reminded me of the movie October Sky. 

Here are some other images from the subway..

I made it cross town in about 30 minutes..   That was easy.. I came out on the street and had no idea where I was.. I ended up spending about 40 minutes looking for the address of the IBM place.. I asked tons of people a) ‘Do oyu speak English’ (govorite po Igleski ? ).. and getting the answer ‘Nyet'(no).. then having people explain loudly and slowly in impenetrable Russian where I was supposed to go.. Based on the pointing.. no 2 people agreed on the direction. I eventually walked into an office and asked to use their phone.. I called my friend  Jen and she guided me in.    The area around the plant is pretty gritty….

    I got to the lobby hot, sweaty and tired.. and surprise, surprise.. I ran into someone I knew from NY in the lobby.. She was here just as a coincidence.. It is a very small planet. Finally I found my meeting and my friends

OK.. We’re heading out.. I’m going to post this…now and add pictures later if I can

Dasvydahnia !

-jc