Travel Blog | TheDromomaniac.com | The science & philosophy of one-way travel

Living in Auspicious Times in Berlin, Germany

Posted on October 3, 2015 by The DromomaniacOctober 8, 2015

Before we get started:
NEWS OF THE YEAR I READ THREE TIMES TO MAKE SURE I WASN’T IMAGINING THINGS

“…tiny Djibouti said this month it would revamp its previously bankrupt national carrier. The new Air Djibouti will be managed by Iron Maiden rock singer Bruce Dickinson.” (Source: Reuters.)

Air Djibouti’s new slogan should be “Where every departure is two minutes to midnight.” The last time I saw Bruce Dickinson I got hit in the head with a bottle outside of an Iron Maiden concert. I was taken to the hospital, got five stitches, and then convinced the nurse to drive me back to the show. Even the most hardcore of metalheads kept their distance from the freak in the bloody head bandage and yellow t-shirt with red splotches all over it.
But I’m not here to talk about me. Oh, wait, this whole website is about me. Anyway, I was in Berlin for the 25th anniversary of the reunification between East and West Germany, a touchier subject among eastern Germans than you might guess. I was in East Berlin twice during the good old days of separation, so I have a long history with it. Nonetheless, is there any argument that Berlin is the most compelling city in Europe? Please let me know if I am mistaken.

Right in front of the Brandenburg Gate they put on an all-day show, but this photo is just an excuse to show the “Hot Sheep Cheese” stand, the white tent on the right, which must be the only thing all Germans can agree upon since it was the food closest to the stage.

Greasy Hungarian food was well represented on German reunification day. I stopped counting the langos stands after four. All it takes is one heavy Hungarian langos and you can barely move. Hungarian food as crowd control! Genius.

A short walk away from Brandenburg Gate is the Reichstag (Parliament building) where there was another show, but here the police barriers were in full force to keep people at a distance. From a choir. Once those German choir aficionados start feeling it, the mosh pit can get out of hand quickly.

In Berlin there was a spotting of Ai Weiwei, and when he got up from his group two of us formed an elaborate pincer movement to corner him. We then had a host of camera problems, but he was good-natured about it. Unfortunately, the distraction meant that others then came over wanting photos. Being famous must be awful because of people like me.

This is Paddy from Belfast, Northern Ireland, who intends to travel the world playing frying pans and buckets. He was fantastic, a blur of intensity. In a perfect world I would have video here instead, but that perfect world is coming.

Mother Angela Merkel, savior of the Syrians…and Iraqis…and Afghanis…and Eritreans…and…

Arbeit macht frei. (Work will make you free.) I visited Sachsenhausen concentration camp just north of Berlin. Everyone should visit a concentration camp while in Europe, no matter how you know you will feel when it’s over. I’ve been to Auschwitz, Dachau, Mauthausen and Sachsenhausen multiple times. If you are only going to one, though, it has to be Auschwitz.

I saw the Dolores Burrito shop in Wittenbergplatz and I flinched. Normally I am a Mexican food and sushi snob and refuse to eat them outside of their original domain, but I made an exception. Can we say now that burritos are more American than Mexican, and certainly more prevalent? Burritos are to California what doner kebab is to Germany and chicken tikka masala is to England.
When I walked inside and saw that indeed they meant Dolores St. with a huge map of San Francisco on the wall, I couldn’t resist. Yes, I did have a lime cilantro soy meat burrito. Born and raised in Northern California!

PRACTICAL INFORMATION
     Don’t put chipotle mayo on a burrito.
     A private room on Airbnb can cost the same as a dorm bed in Berlin, but few such people let you book immediately, and for a last-minute person like me, the wait for someone to approve my stay took too long. I ended up at Hotel Big Mama, a hostel near Osloer Strasse, which is perfect if you fly into Tegel Airport as the 128 bus ends right there.
     On the other hand, it almost makes no difference cost-wise where you stay in Berlin since it is likely you are going to buy the 6.90 euro day pass instead of paying 2.70 euros for single tickets. (Going to Sachsenhausen costs a little more.) Berlin is too spread out to do that much walking.
     Why don’t you stay with me? You can follow along with RSS, subscribe to an email feed, see what’s cooking on Facebook, pray that I’ll say something worth remembering on Twitter and if you are really slumming it, there’s always Google+. (I’ll follow you back!)

Hitchhiking in Bulgaria to a Sunny Hell

Posted on September 20, 2015 by The DromomaniacSeptember 23, 2015

     Hitchhiking has always been my favorite way of meeting local people. I hitchhiked every day on the Black Sea coast, sometimes out of necessity since buses can be few in low season. Since I am, um, less than fluent in Bulgarian, I’ve had to use a melange of languages to communicate with drivers, none of which I claim to speak, but hitchhiking is a privilege and I am happy to try anything, so I have been dredging up snippets of Swedish, French and often Russian.
     The only time hitchhiking was a struggle was getting around Burgas and as a last resort I velcroed my USA flag on my backpack. It’s a western European technique I use that I wasn’t keen on replicating here, and it worked, but then I forgot to take it off and the next driver was a burly, sneering Russian on vacation with his girlfriend.
     “I no like America,” he started. He wasn’t smiling, as some do when they say this—and plenty of people say this.
     Oh boy, here we go, I thought.
     “America,” he began again, but couldn’t find the words so he made a throat-slashing gesture. “Always war.”
     He asked about the elections next year. I tried to convey that I didn’t like anyone running. He opined, “Clinton is…” and again paused to search through his vocabulary, “…crazy chick.”

I was curious what a Bulgarian holiday resort was like, and I got a last-minute deal that put me on the middle of the top floor here at the Bohemi Hotel in Sunny Beach on the Black Sea Coast, 35km north of Burgas.

Sunny Beach is spectacularly awful, the true Las Vegas of Bulgaria. However, I had a nice room, modern, centrally located with a big bed, shower, toilet, toilet seat, toilet paper, towel, TV, aircon, AND buffet breakfast for 20 lev, which is $11.50. Thank you, booking.com, for letting me reserve without a credit card, too. (Alas, weak wifi. Serpents in paradise, friends. Serpents in paradise.)
When I arrived, however, I encountered something I hadn’t planned on: packs of loud British lager louts on holiday. They dominated the bar in the lobby, a swarm of them flirting with the bartender who looked like she had three acre-feet of makeup on her kabuki face. I thought a top floor room would insulate me from the rabble-rousers, but I was wrong. Drinking British are a more formidable presence than Chinese tour groups, and a gang of drunk British women is sheer terror.

The view from the Bohemi. From here it doesn’t look bad, but go a little farther to the see the soullessness up close. It’s perhaps the only town in Bulgaria that feels like an artificial construct to cater to cheap tourists, so it’s a parade of noisy bars, sex shops, tattoo parlors and carnival food. The beach is churned up and worn with too many umbrellas, paid areas and commotion. Why did I leave my pristine Veleka Beach in Sinemorets again?

Oddly juxtaposed at the end of Sunny Beach is UNESCO-protected Nessebar with its cozy streets and traditional wood-on-stone houses.

     If a Bulgarian asks for my name, I like to say it is Emil Kostadinov or maybe Yordan Letchkov, which always gets a smile. Who are they? Come on, let’s relive the best of the 1994 soccer World Cup in two short video clips! (This will be painless, I promise.) The first is this 13-second link to Letchkov’s spectacular header against mighty Germany, so out of the blue, that Letchkov became an instant hero that lasted for years, or at least until he was embroiled in numerous corruption scandals as mayor of his hometown.
     This second video is so good. It’s the last thirty seconds of France vs. Bulgaria, the final day of qualifying for the World Cup. All France had to do was sit on the ball and they were going through, but David Ginola lofted a dumb cross from the corner, and a ten seconds later Luboslav Penev made a perfect pass to Emil Kostadinov, which is below. (As only the British can do well, there is an engrossing back story to the day’s events. Penev and Kostadinov had to sneak across the French border before the match because the Bulgarian football federation forgot to apply for their visas.)
     The result was that Bulgaria qualified for the World Cup at France’s expense. The French commentary in the video adds to “la cauchemar” (the nightmare) as you see written on the bottom. I was watching this live on TV in Hungary with Peter Nagy in his home. A family member or two might have awoken in my celebration on a school night, but they still invite me back.

PRACTICAL INFORMATION
     These are some Bulgarian websites a friend recommended to find a cheap private room or hotel room. What I like is that they give complete info about the place and you can contact them yourself.
     http://pochivka.bg/ (It is better to use the Bulgarian version and use Google Translate because the English version, bgstay.com, doesn’t have a way to sort by price.)
     http://www.vipoferta.bg/
     http://bghotelite.com/
     http://www.kvartiri.ltd.bg/

This might be considered extreme since I had my own room with my own key, but in Sunny Beach I locked the zippers of my backpack to the TV cord. I always lock the zippers of my backpack in dorms and even airbnb places, too, since you don’t always know who is coming and going.

Why don’t you stay with me? You can follow along with RSS, subscribe to an email feed, see what’s cooking on Facebook, pray that I’ll say something worth remembering on Twitter and if you are really slumming it, there’s always Google+. (I’ll follow you back!)

Bulgaria Needs a New Name

Posted on September 17, 2015 by The DromomaniacSeptember 19, 2015

Hello from Bulgaria! I thought I knew a thing or two about Bulgaria as I have been here once before, but it is my first time on the Black Sea coast and it is a revelation—in mid-September, I should add, as my timing is perfect. I had no idea how attractive the beaches were, how mellow the people are, and the grapes and wild figs are at the peak of their ripeness.
I also didn’t know that the Cyrillic alphabet comes from Bulgaria. POP QUIZ QUESTION! How many countries use Cyrillic as their primary alphabet? Answer at the bottom.

This is one of the first signs you see when you enter Ahtopol, 70km south of Burgas. I would have named the restaurant “Fish and Chicks.” Thank you! Thank you! I’m here all week!

For a region that is developed, the coast southeast of Burgas has a nice, raw feeling to it. There are concentrated centers, but it’s easy to get out to quieter beaches. Now all the beaches are quiet. In the towns when I do come across tourists, I hear very few western languages. Even in high season I don’t get the feeling westerners dent the numbers of Bulgarians and Russians that come.
Why isn’t Bulgaria on everyone’s travel minds? I believe Bulgaria needs to rebrand itself, and the name doesn’t help. “Bulgaria” is not a good name. “Bull”, “Grrrr”, bulgar/vulgar—these all have negative connotations. Since there is no clear reason why the country is named Bulgaria, why not change it to something that will convey a more positive image? I am thinking of a name that evokes the exotic, something enchanting, alluring, attractive. I am thinking “West Thailand”.

Bulgaria does have one name I like. The money in Bulgaria is the lev and there are 100 stotinki in one lev. Stotinki! Who doesn’t love saying “stotinki”? If I had West Thai kids I would wag my finger at them, “You have to save every stotinki if you want to travel!”

Isn’t this something? The river comes right to the sea, makes a ninety degree turn to the left, and then another ninety degree turn to the right before emptying into the Black Sea. This is Veleka Beach, a wonderful spot in Sinemorets, which is about ten miles (16km) from the (closed) border with Turkey. The farther down the spit of sand you go, the more clothing optional it is. The river is a titch warmer than the sea.

For some inexplicable reason the season is considered completely over by now, mid-September. It’s a three-month period where everything is at capacity, and then the rest of the year it all sits idle save for a few basic shops for oldsters who have nowhere else to go. My timing is perfect, but I don’t understand as it’s still warm and will be for quite a while longer. What else matters? Where is everybody? It’s 23C (73F) every day. Nights are pleasant. Why do people not come in droves beyond the tiny high season? What am I missing here?
If someone was writing a book, or just wanted a relaxing place to stay for a month, what would be better than Bulgaria in Sept/Oct? I bet you could get a place for a song, next to nothing, and the weather has to be great. Hungary is far to the north and it stays nice and warm until the end of October.

Hay sculpture on a bluff above Veleka Beach

A friend from Sofia came out to meet me by the sea. We went to her favorite place, Smokinia (Fig Tree) Beach a few kilometers south of Sozopol, which is about 35km south of Burgas. This is another clothing optional beach, which meant a topless girl bartending but also a bottomless madman parading a Soviet flag around and bumming everyone out.
It was easy to hitchhike back to town. Strange how hitchhiking is so much easier with a girl.

Sozopol boat covered in ivy.

Autographed 8 x 10″ glossies available upon request.

I should have done my photo shoot here. Look at how much junk is on the inside of my lens. I am getting a new camera before the end of the year with neither a kickstarter campaign nor crowdfunding.

Grapes and figs, grapes and figs. They’re everywhere, and they are in season! This was in Varvara, a pretty little village just before Ahtopol. It looked like the house was closed for the winter, though I didn’t put much effort into checking as this was right next to the road where I was hitchhiking, and in between cars I would grab a grape. So sweet! I was disappointed when a car stopped to take me.

MEMORY LANE WITH A TENUOUS CONNECTION TO BULGARIA
     If I ever forget the year I was first in Bulgaria I just google “Michael Jackson first concert Bucharest” because I hitchhiked from the Hungary/Romania border in a truck with one of Michael Jackson’s roadies, a British guy who was eager to unload quickly as he said he wanted to “perv myself silly tonight”. (The British are nothing if not eloquent.) While we waited at the Nagylak/Nadlac border (which used to be an all-time classic free-for-all with every kind of weird thing going on, but then both countries had to go and get all prosperous and law-abiding and join the European Union) he introduced me to another roadie who had a giggly young German girl traveling with him. They had an arrangement where she would “see Europe” in exchange for him having his way with her. He was thrilled with the deal, he winked to me. That seems like forever ago as it’s almost unimaginable to me that a German girl would make such a deal today.
     Every border on that trip was memorable. At the Romanian/Bulgarian border at Giurgiu I was stuck as they wouldn’t let me walk over the Danube, but then an American woman on her own in a van materialized out of thin air and took me all the way to Veliko Tarnovo, my destination. While walking across the Bulgarian/Turkish border, a man came racing in front of me to take a bunch of photos of my face and then he ran away again. At the Turkish/Syrian border I saw numerous people stuck in no man’s land between borders in a dusty hell.
     On and on. I was pickpocketed in Istanbul. I went to the US Embassy in Amman, Jordan at 5am to watch the Presidential election results on TV. However, the coup de grace was the Israelis destroying all my film from the entire trip because I had been in Syria, among other things. Fall 1992 was easily a Top 5 unforgettable trip.
     PRACTICAL INFORMATION:

Look at this crap from Airbnb. This creative math happens because the person who makes the listing doesn’t do it in dollars, and Airbnb refuses to quote in fractions, so they conveniently round up. Airbnb is growing on me fast, but this kind of thing leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I hope they find the nickel and diming lucrative enough to counter the resentment.

     I stayed at an airbnb place in Sarafovo, which is literally five minutes walk from the Burgas airport, and yet I never heard the airport once. Sarafovo, like nearly all the coastal towns, is very sleepy, yet has a pleasant charm in this still-warm weather.
     In Ahtopol I stayed at Villa Jani Ahtopol on ulitsa Yana #8 (tel 0889-682889 and 089-7377151). 15 lev ($8.65) for a room with 2 beds, TV, shower, fridge, sea view and the woman even washed my clothes for free when I asked if there was a place to do it.
     I flew here for only $106 on Aeroflot one way from St. Petersburg and felt pretty good about it, but saw there were even cheaper deals to be had since the season is almost over. aviobilet.com looks interesting, though you have to go to the Russian version to see those deals, while the English version looks westward.
     Upon arriving in an unfamiliar country I ask the same question: can I drink the tap water? Sometimes people get a little offended, as if the question is really if I am in a banana republic. In Bulgaria everyone answers differently than the person before, and everyone is adamant, so I don’t take the chance.
     WARNING! There is a drink called boza that is disgusting. It tastes like the juice from a can of pinto beans that has been sitting out in the sun for days and is beginning to go sour.
     POP QUIZ ANSWER: Eleven countries use Cyrillic as their primary alphabet: Belarus, Bulgaria, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Macedonia, Mongolia, Montenegro, Russia, Serbia, Tajikistan, and Ukraine.

One last photo from Veleka Beach.

Suzdal, Vladimir and Life Lessons Learned in Russia

Posted on September 10, 2015 by The DromomaniacSeptember 10, 2015

In Vladimir I met up with a friend with bright red hair—but this isn’t her. This is a girl on a bus. Who knew Russia had so many striking redheads? Someone please tell me there is nothing creepy about taking a photo of a girl’s hair on the bus. Someone? Anyone? Hello? Would 100 rubles help?

When I alighted from the train at Vladimir, 190km (120 miles) east of Moscow, I saw the Trans Siberian train on the platform next to mine and stopped in my tracks. I stood still as others passed around me and considered my urge to jump on it. Go East, Young Man! Oh, how delicious that would be! East! Kazan! Yekaterinburg! Irkutsk! Khabarovsk! Vladivostok! Vladivostok, one of those cities I have never been but have long desired to go along with the likes of Tehran, Montreal, Philadelphia, Minsk, and fifteen places in Central Asia. But nooooooo! Russia doesn’t want punks like me running around their country. Thirty-day visas, pffft! They offer multiple entry visas like they are doing me a favor. When I am in Khabarovsk, what am I supposed to do, nip over to North Korea and back to continue my journey? Please.

Vladimir’s Cathedral of the Assumption

     Suzdal is a peach of a town with a fantastic atmosphere when the Chinese tour groups dissipate in the afternoon. The best is the sunset out behind the market square on the bluff overlooking the river where a good dozen or so art students paint and sketch in the quiet.
     I stayed at Godzilla’s Hostel (Top 10 dumb name for a hostel) for 700 rubles (US$10). It was two Moscow girls and me in the dorm room. One of them had more tattoos than I have seen on a woman in a long time, and I knew that because she was prancing around in the most minimal of clothing. She said she was from Moscow but she had the classic Central Asian full moon face that I love.
     At 2am I had to yell at them for being loud. I have a short fuse in hostels now. I don’t care what you’re not wearing. The worst of my wrath is reserved for the inbreds who have loud keypad tones when they text in the middle of the night. Why does anyone even need a keypad tone? Why is it on as a default? Are there people on this planet who don’t find that incredibly annoying? What is going on?
     A slightly milder version of my intense noisy gadget hatred is reserved for people with digital cameras that make a loud, non-digital, old school camera shutter sound when taking a photo. Why oh why does anyone need a sound at all, much less that sound? Are people suppose to feel soothed or reassured? Who are these people? I need names!
     What was I talking about? Oh, the hostel is the only one in the village, and in a good location. Great facilities.

The fake cows of Suzdal heading toward what I believe to be a real river.

Yes, a real river.

ATTENTION! ATTENTION! DEEP PARAGRAPHS AHEAD! PROCEED AT YOUR OWN RISK!
     When I was Thirty Days Younger Kent Foster, I was nervous about coming to Russia, which is completely absurd and embarrassing that I ever had such a thought. Extrapolating that, if you think about it, if I, Grandmaster Traveller, had feelings of trepidation about Russia, then how about everyone else, particularly the 99.9% of Americans who have never set foot in Russia?
     When you know precious little about a place and stay in an enclosed environment where the information you get that informs your opinions about other people and countries is from dubious sources, you can easily become enveloped in a myopic viewpoint based on fear and exaggerated threats. This is the essence of travel at its best: if you spend a little time in a country and develop even just a small understanding of it, you are less likely to have hostile feelings toward it.
     Some of us Americans claim that if any of our warmongering presidents had ever backpacked, at a minimum we would at least be more circumspect about our actions. It may be simplistic and naive, and backpacking itself hardly makes me a peacenik as I can think of a few guest house owners and taxi drivers I’d like to drop a drone bomb on, but the point is traveling can—if you allow it and are open to it—enable more positive attitudes, which is no small thing in these days of rigid opinions.
     My god, that was deeeeep! So profound! And I blog for free!

Inside the Suzdal Kremlin at the Church of Our Lady of Perpetual Tithing or something like that. I can’t keep track of all these churches.

     I don’t even remember what I was worried about in Russia. I now only think of Russians as being reserved, gentle, kind, helpful people. In fact, as I now remember, all the problems I had last time were in Ukraine. Ukraine and I need to do some fence-mending. It’s been too long since I was there.
     SOME COMPLETELY UNINTERESTING RANDOM THINGS I WANT TO INCLUDE SINCE THIS IS THE LAST RUSSIA BLOG POST:
—In Russia cars stop for pedestrians with an Australian-esque consistency (unlike supposedly uber-civilized Switzerland, where I was lucky to escape without tire tracks up and down my back). On my first day in the country I was struck not only by that but how few people jaywalk. And they don’t do it because of a threat of punishment, they do it as a matter of course.
—I have seen watermelons sold for as little as nine rubles a kilogram, which is US six cents a pound, which is a solid building block for paradise. All along the northern highways the side of the road is dotted with parked cars as people go forage in the forest for mushrooms.
—When you know only two Russian pop songs, and both are old, it’s exciting to recognize one of them being played in the street.
—St. Petersburg has less than half the population of Moscow, but it feels like a huge city. It is a huge city; at five million it has the same population as Finland or Denmark, but the hugeness is dispersed by the endless suburbs. Downtown never goes higher than five floors other than the churches.
PRACTICAL INFORMATION:
     I bought a US$106 ticket on the website of Aeroflot/Rossiya Airlines to go one way from St. Petersburg to Burgas, Bulgaria. That’s a deal for 200 minutes of flight time, if you weren’t sure. With the ruble so weak, it’s a good time to buy things that aren’t adjusted more quickly to the worsening rate.
     Run, don’t walk to Russia, especially at 68 rubles to the dollar.

Seen on the back streets of Suzdal.

The Decomposing Dromomaniac, Proud Russian Art Snob

Posted on September 8, 2015 by The DromomaniacSeptember 9, 2015

A church fresco closeup

     I am a huge fan of late-19th century Russian art. It’s true! Don’t pretend to be surprised. I’m not pandering to Russian art aficionados either. I have the purest of intentions and am hurt that you would think otherwise. Hurt! The power troika to see Russian art in the flesh is the Hermitage and Russian Museum in St. Petersburg and the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow. (Here is a sampling of what the Tretyakov has from the period.)
     My guy is intrepid traveller Vasily Vereshchagin, “Tamerlan’s Doors” a nice example of his work, but anyone could spend a chunk of time gazing at “Reply of the Zaporozhian Cossacks to Sultan Mehmed IV of the Ottoman Empire” by Ilya Repin, see the pathos in “The Unequal Marriage” by Vasily Pukirev, or laugh at “The Aristocrat’s Breakfast” by Pavel Fedotov. While I am at it, I love Zinaida Serebriakova’s self-portrait below from 1909. Reminds me of my sister.
     They were talented artists who were also the photojournalists and chroniclers of their time, able to convey in one static painting the feeling of the era in Russia and other countries in the flash of a moment, doing great, exalted things with their time abroad.
     Me? I run around collecting bottle caps.

Serebryakova self-portrait (photo from Wikipedia)

     St. Petersburg prides itself as a cultural epicenter: 200 museums, 100 theatres, 1200 libraries, 700 churches, and zero laundromats. Another FREE business idea, right in front of your face! And, as my nieces say, “Your face is a beast!”
     My face is a beast. I have to shave more often. If I let it go for three days, I go from fresh-faced ingenue to homeless drifter in a snap. I’m tired, too. I’m more than eight months away now, and I’m decomposing. I am not ageing well either. Scientists have declared that the only two things on earth that can be seen from outer space are the Great Wall of China and my bald spot.
     What were we talking about?
     St. Petersburg! Yes, home of the Hermitage. I like what the director of the museum said: “I can’t say that the Hermitage is the number one museum in the world, but it’s certainly not number two.”

If the Hermitage had no art, people would still come from around the globe to check it out. The parquet floors are amazing, some have patterns that match the ceiling above it.

Matching green malachite table and giant vase. My camera sucks; the color is washed out. It’s so much brighter in person.

PRACTICAL INFORMATION
They moved all the impressionists out of the top floor of the main Hermitage building and put them across the square on the top floor at something called the General Staff Building. I am warm to lukewarm about impressionists, but the exhibition is fantastic. First Thursday of the month is free. Few people seem to know this. I was there on the free day and was surprised at how quiet it was. There was only one Chinese tour group, which is how all travel will be measured shortly.

A shallow examination of Russian food

Posted on September 6, 2015 by The DromomaniacSeptember 8, 2015

MEMORY LANE
The bad old days. It was bread and cheese all the time. It was hard to find anything else. I would go into the small stores, get my bread and cheese, maybe some sunflower seeds, gamble on something new if it had intriguing packaging, and bring my meager lot to the stern babuschka at the counter. Cash registers weren’t always to be found, and in their place was an abacus. An abacus! The babuschka would aggressively slide the caroms to and fro, and then look at me impatiently, waiting for money. I would feebly ask, “Skolko?” (How much) and I’d watch as her face tightened and she would gesture with her open palm to the abacus between us with an exasperated look that said, “It’s right in front you, Jackass! Can’t you read?!”
I heard rumors of Georgian restaurants, but I could never find one. If I found a guy selling plov (rice pilaf) on the street, I ate enough for two meals. Pelmeni (dumplings) restaurants were also cause for celebration.

I’ve become a toilet snob. If it isn’t historic, I’m out.

Now it’s all Uzbek/sushi restaurants and everything under the sun if you have the money. The big American fast food chains are here, but Putin is on a western food jihad, banning imports as a retaliation for sanctions and destroying perfectly good food for show. Even the most fanatical of Russia supporters can’t defend it.
I don’t mind the ban. I don’t even notice the ban, which seems selective, as western food can be found without much trying. I can eat at a stolovaya or bistro, both cafeteria-style food that is much better than it sounds, all day, every day. Great selection, reasonably priced, and very Russian. Big fan.

This is Market Place in St. Petersburg, a high-end stolovaya. I think it is a chain. I hope it becomes a worldwide chain. It wouldn’t be out of place in California one bit, right down to the strawberry and basil smoothie. The salmon steak, potatoes, dessert and smoothie was about $8.

In the otherwise completely fifi GUM department store/mall off Red Square in Moscow, on the top floor is a place where normal people can eat. This isn’t really a potato buffet, but it’s a good time to point out that Russians love dill. It’s unavoidable, and as we all know, if even a microfiber of dill is on something, that something tastes of dill and only of dill.

There’s a very old Soviet-era donut place in the middle of downtown St. Petersburg on Bolshaya Konushenaya. They are called pushki, though I’m somehow unable to pronounce it correctly. 13 rubles (20 US cents) each. Thick juice is another 25 rubles (40 cents).

This was a fountain covered in watermelons in GUM.

And then the next week the watermelons were in the fountain.

A common sight: an apple tree groaning under the weight of a zillion apples. I know they’re in pain because every time I walk by they are yelling, “Get these apples off me!”

Moscow’s Magnificent Municipal Metro

Posted on August 31, 2015 by The DromomaniacAugust 31, 2015

MEMORY LANE
First, some rare genius. You know how I got my visa to Russia the first time? I went to the Russian embassy in Rangoon, Burma. In the 1990s, no one was going to Burma, which is exactly why I went by on a lark. The consul was smoking on the front steps of the embassy, he was so bored. He was bemused that I wanted a visa, and he let me have one without all the usual paperwork. I had no intention of going to Russia until I had the visa in my hand, but this once-in-a-blue-moon opportunity couldn’t be passed up.

     How about the majesty that is the Moscow metro stations? Some of them are very beautiful, as you can see. They try to preserve its timelessness as there is no advertising in the stations and maybe one sticker inside the trains for a mobile phone company, but that’s it. However, there is free wifi throughout the metro and often you can get a phone signal even though the interminable descent on most metro escalators feels like a journey to the center of the earth, it’s so deep.
     The system is very comprehensive, a la Paris, but Moscow is many times bigger than Paris. (In St. Petersburg the distance between stations is nothing short of incredible. I am always afraid I am going to fall asleep and wake up in Finland.)
     The signage is awful. If you are on a train and can’t understand or hear the announcements, you are screwed. Even then, though, I love the innovation of a male voice announcing the stops on trains coming into town from the suburbs and a female voice for trains going to the suburbs, ostensibly for the blind.
     The passengers are all very quiet. You’ve never been on a metro where so many people are reading hardcover books, no doubt thinking deep thoughts.

I’m sensing a message here.

Boris Yeltsin’s grave

A ballerina’s grave

That’s quite a church name.

PRACTICAL INFORMATION (US$1 = 66 rubles)
     There are no tourist offices in Moscow. Zero! There used to be one off Red Square, but it’s closed and they only say there is a phone number you can call. Bush league! There are at least ten dotted around St. Petersburg. At least there are the fantastic In Your Pocket guides, easily the best thing around for anywhere in Eastern Europe.
     It’s 31 rubles for a metro token in St. Petersburg and 50 rubles for a stored value single ticket in Moscow, though in Moscow the price comes down quickly if you buy a 5, 11 or 20-ride stored value card.
     The practical information is kind of weak this time. To beg your forgiveness, I will send a postcard from Russia to the first person who comments below.
     Why don’t you stay with me? You can follow along with RSS, subscribe to an email feed, see what’s cooking on Facebook, pray that I’ll say something worth remembering on Twitter and if you are really slumming it, there’s always Google+. (I’ll follow you back!)

The roots of my affection for Russia, Russians & Splean

Posted on August 28, 2015 by The DromomaniacAugust 28, 2015

We all enjoy listening to music in our own way.

I found the first Russian pop song that I like. I heard it at a flea market and went over to the guy blasting it on his tape player to have him write the name down. Then I noticed he was selling what looked like homemade photos of half-naked women. The lower half. He tried to entice me, randomly pulling out an 8×10″ glossy of a woman languorously leaning against a car, asking, “Erotica?”
The band is Splean and the song is “Anglo-Russkiy Slovar” (English-Russian dictionary). The video is horrible.

Get in the van!

     Other than my previous visit to Russia last century, which left an indelible mark on me, I have spent the most time among Russians while working for EF language school/camp in California. It was a summer program where European and Asian teenagers came together to live on the Long Beach State campus to learn English in the mornings and have free time otherwise. It was the “otherwise” that made it hell for all of us working there.
     The Russians made an impression. They arrived angry upon realizing that what they were promised back home from EF was all lies. EF lied to everyone, but the Danes, for example, took it in stride, deciding to make the most of being in California. The Russians weren’t so forgiving, and many of them made it their raison d’etre to cause trouble.
     Some of them. I tried to focus on the others, who were extraordinarily well-read and expressed pure contempt when I confessed that not only had I not read any Russian classics, but few American neither. They were deep, thoughtful people, and they piqued my interest about Russia and drew me towards them. That is, when I wasn’t taking some numnut to the hospital thirty minutes after telling him not to run by the pool or when they weren’t stealing my keys, or getting caught for drinking, or burning the fence, or for anything else I have successfully forgotten.

Everyone who thinks I should write a book about my travels, the best stories are really from the three summers I did that ridiculous job, partly thanks to the Russians. Just look to the left here. Sorry the picture is small. I can’t find the original, but this is evidence of the mistake I made on a weekend trip to Las Vegas when I told everyone to dress up because we were going out for a night on the town. These two Russians were 14 and 15 years old.
There are a dozen stories just from that one weekend, but when you take hundreds of Euro teens to Las Vegas, it’s impossible to come away without a dozen stories.

The Chinese. They’re also attracted to Russia. The Chinese have completely dominated Europe this summer, and their numbers are no less prodigious in Russia. It’s very surprising that the Chinese have such a huge presence in out-of-the-way places of heavy cultural significance like Suzdal.
What are we to make of Chinese tourism? At first I was dismissive, thinking that the Chinese probably don’t even know where they are half the time, but I shouldn’t be so quick to judge. On my first trip to Europe, I hardly knew anything about the countries I went to before I visited them, and what better way to learn about the world than to go out and see what’s doing? So I applaud you, Chinese tourists. Welcome to Europe! Now please, can you all stop shouting? And close your legs.

How to visit the Hermitage Museum and Kremlin for free

Posted on August 26, 2015 by The DromomaniacAugust 26, 2015

In Moscow I walked from Red Square to Lubyanka where the former KGB headquarters were, but I couldn’t remember which building it was in the vast intersection. I stopped to ask two policemen and they pointed across the street. When I asked what the building was now used for, they laughed, one of them saying, “Same.” The other said, “New KGB.”

I think most Americans imagine that visiting the Moscow Kremlin is like stepping into a hornet’s nest of Cold War intrigue, spies lurking around every corner, that it is a tightly controlled, dark and foreboding place. The truth is that visiting the Kremlin is like being on a college campus in summer. A California college campus. It’s open and leafy, quiet and peaceful, with small packs of tour groups being led to and fro. All the action is on Cathedral Square and the Armoury, and then the rest of it is an unremarkable super-clean expanse of open spaces and gardens.

Years from now the only thing I am going to remember about visiting the Kremlin are all the Fords I saw being driven around. Ford! What pact with the devil has Russia made to have Ford be the official auto supplier to the Kremlin?

     I haven’t discussed politics with Russians I am meeting other than to ask in a roundabout way, such as if a flight to Crimea—a part of Ukraine until recently—is considered a domestic flight. Everyone does appear to be pretty OK with the annexation of the ethnically Russian parts of Ukraine. With that reasoning, shouldn’t Latvia be next, as it also has a very large Russian population on its eastern border? Latvia had its independence once before, unlike Ukraine, but is that the only reason? If Hungary decides tomorrow to invade all of its neighbors to reunite those many territories that have long been ethnically Hungarian, is it the same thing? Feel free to educate me.
     This is an article in the New York Times from two weeks ago about the mood in Moscow at the moment. I don’t know what to think of it partly because I am a simple tourist not here long enough to know and partly because I don’t feel confident to say I have grasped the feeling here.
     I will say that—again, these are just the fleeting observations of a dude passing through that may or may not resemble reality—I have been caught off guard by how conservative Russia feels. Maybe subdued is the better word. I wasn’t expecting Sodom and Gomorrah, but the population is well north of 10 million, and yet it isn’t chaotic at all. There isn’t much honking on the roads, very little public drunkenness, and no hotheads. I also haven’t been out at night much, so take that into consideration.

Cheesy yet obligatory photo from next to Red Square in Moscow. I’ve been wearing these same clothes for eight long months.

St. Basil’s Cathedral.

95% of Red Square is blocked off for city celebrations next month.

MEMORY LANE
When I asked the policeman where the KGB headquarters were, I had a flashback to a time in Kiev, Ukraine when I asked directions from the police and they demanded to see my passport, took me outside, took me down the street into an apartment block, walked me behind a stairway, and said I had to pay $100 because of a “problem” with my visa. I stood my ground and as the price came down to $50 and then $20, I laughed, took my passport, and left.
PRACTICAL INFORMATION:
So how can you visit the Hermitage and the Kremlin for free? Hermitage tickets go for 600 rubles and the Kremlin Armoury Museum is 700 rubles. The thing to do is to simply buy a bunch of tickets and resell them to the people at the end of the line. It’s more lucrative to do this at the Hermitage where lines are especially long and ponderous, but the Kremlin has timed entry into the Armoury and most tourists don’t want to wait all day. Cash cow.

See this line at the Hermitage? This is for people who want to buy tickets at the ticket office, but behind them are ticket machines with much shorter lines where you can buy a bunch at a time. Sell six tickets for 700 rubles, and boom, you have a free ticket. Then give some customer service by showing them the line to enter because it is poorly signposted. Another FREE business idea from The Dromomaniac! I give and I give and I give…

Hockey Night in St. Petersburg on the Dying Ruble

Posted on August 24, 2015 by The DromomaniacAugust 24, 2015

Look at this ticket below. 50 rubles to see professional hockey in Russia! That’s about 70 cents. I am not sure exactly because the ruble is free-falling. ATTENTION: THE RUBLE IS SEVERELY ILL! NO ONE CALL A DOCTOR! It’s lost 10% just in the last two weeks. It was 63 to the dollar when I arrived and now it is over 70. I am afraid to take too much out of the ATM at one time. My Russian friends get angry when I tell them I do a little dance in front of moneychangers, but look at this chart of the exchange rate over the last five years. It’s been hovering around 30 forever, so I am allowed this one summer of affordable Russian travel. Thank you. Now pass the caviar.

I believe it was only 100 rubles for the best seats, but I didn’t even think of it. Sometimes my mentality is as if I have lived through the Depression or my parents were sharecroppers.

The remarkable thing about the evening was how unremarkable everything was. It was just a Russian version of pro hockey with some local differences, but it was all fine and good. I had flashbacks to the last time I went to a sports event in Russia (see Memory Lane below) so I had low expectations. By now I have accepted that my last trip to Russia was the ancient past.

The kiss cam. See? Some things are transcultural, if that is a word (and even if it isn’t, go get the domain name transcultural.ru; yet another free business idea from The Dromomaniac.) If you aren’t familiar with the kiss cam, here is a minute of kiss cam video.

These cheerleaders kept jumping into the viewfinder of my camera every time I tried to take a photo. So needy for attention.

I’m not sure what this is, and I thought of Robin MacAlpine, but I heard the national anthem and ran to my seat.

Top shelf goal from the mascot during intermission.

     Ilya Kovalchuk, a legitimate former NHL star, is the big draw in Russian pro hockey, though even he has to wonder about playing hockey in August. Here he is scoring on this penalty shot goal:

     SKA St. Petersburg is the reigning Russian champion but Sochi scored the first two goals. SKA woke up, scored the next five, and I left with a few minutes remaining into the warm St. Petersburg night, beating the foot traffic to the metro.
MEMORY LANE:
     Last time in Russia I went to a soccer match, Brazil vs. Russia. It was a big deal, a huge crowd in a huge stadium (Luzhniki?) but the facilities were so antiquated that if you wanted to use the toilet, you had to walk outside of the stadium and go next to a tree. I wouldn’t call it a fun-for-the-whole-family atmosphere either.
PRACTICAL INFORMATION:
     Buy any professional sports tickets that cost 70 cents. At worst you can sell them on ebay. Maybe.
     Hey, if you made it this far, since you probably don’t like hockey, as a token of my appreciation I’ll send a postcard from Russia to the first person who leaves a comment below.
     Why don’t you stay with me? You can follow along with RSS, subscribe to an email feed, see what’s cooking on Facebook, pray that I’ll say something worth remembering on Twitter and if you are really slumming it, there’s always Google+. (I’ll follow you back!)