Plans, Plans, Plans

I realize I need to talk about the Swiss part of our Christmas vacation. For whatever reason I'm drawing a blank. Switzerland is clean, gorgeous and has incredible dairy products. Also--my very cool baby brother and his family live there and we love spending time with them! Parry told me once that talking to Christina felt like "talking to a mirror." For Parry, this is a tremendous compliment. We love their kids (only our girls can out-talk Ruby-do) and Abby loves mothering Henry. In fact, we had such a wonderful time that we are having the 1st Christmas Vacation Reunion Tour--London edition in April. Also cool baby sister Julie will be along for the ride, beautiful baby Hannah in tow, and we hope the parental units, Jeff and Marge. We anticipate that there will be many other Christmas Vacation Reunion Tours before our time in Moscow is up. I'm campaigning for Spain/Morocco next April break and we're already talking about Israel for Christmas. Which brings me to the way a Moscow expat stays sane in the winter time: planning. Even for a compulsive list-maker planner like me planning takes on a new dimension during the Russian winter. When weather.com pronounces the forecast as "dreary," when you haven't seen the sun directly overhead for a month and everywhere you look seems to be coated with a layer of sludge and scum, you need to know that at some point, you're going to get out. For me this is especially important because of the rash of headaches I've had. I've been prone to migraines lately with no real logical trigger. When you're in a country that hates you, the weather is lousy, inflation rampant, the financial crisis bottomless and everyone around you, including your kids, are tight-lipped with stress, a migraine is the proverbial pond scum of your days. In fact, I'm writing this, squinting at my laptop because my head feels like an axe is embedded in my scalp and it is two hours too early for bed. I am COUNTING the days until I go to the US. You know things are ridiculous when an endoscopy and a bunch of blood tests are something to look forward to. I want OUT. My daily life has to be very planned. Unlike some expats, my driver is more like a personal taxi service than a personal driver. He is paid a flat fee per month to drive us; we give him a weekly schedule of when he is needed. The rest of the time is his--it is rare to never that I can simply call him in the middle of the day and say "Hey, McDonalds, пожалуйста." This means that I have to know when and where I'm going every day, a week in advance. This is anal retentive even for a control freak like me. A routine makes it easier : Mondays--shopping and/or lunch with Elke; Tuesdays--Anglo-American School Russian class; Fridays--International Women's Club Architecture Group. Sometimes my Indian cooking class breaks up the routine. Sometimes I take the bus and metro to the center for business lunch. And sometimes, I feel like I am a rat in a maze and one more week of planning is going to make me crazy. This is why I like vacations: I can come and go as I please without having to put it on a spreadsheet. I want a spinach salad from the pre-prepared food aisle at Waitrose--grab the Oyster card and head to the nearest Tube station. I want to walk aimlessly or go to a bookstore or window shop--all can be done at my leisure. I love to plan vacations. I spend hours online and reading travel books. I have become an expert on airports, airlines, hotels, public transportation and shopping. I can pack an under 20kg bag in 15 minutes and be out the door at a moment's notice. I don't do that often because I'm usually supervising the packing and document procurement for three children, but I can. Planning to get out is the best escape from living the plan. It's one of those twisted Catch-22 things about being Russia. Someday when I have my own car and the ability to go to Costco and indulge in rampant consumerism at will, I may recall with fondness the odd sort of simplicity that my planned life here has forced upon me. For now, I look forward to the next escape plan.

Thoughts on the new presidency from the girl with a migraine

I don't have a lot of recollections about being punished as a kid. The one memory I do have is of my father answering a tearful apology with, "Talk is cheap, Heather." He essentially said that saying your sorry and making amends--doing the right thing--are two different things. As someone who has at various junctures in her her past dealt in the world of words, I can definitely testify that any competent wordsmith can craft a deft turn of phrase that means absolutely nothing if it isn't backed up with action. I didn't watch the inauguration. I took a test, came down with a migraine headache, tried to read a chapter for my history class and gave up before the festivities were over. What I did read about were the polls portraying buoyant optimism on the part of the American people that President Obama can fix our problems. I saw journalists and commentators tripping over themselves to see who could come up with the most articulate superlative to describe the wonder that is our new president. I was reminded of reality when I read an article about the assassination of a human rights lawyer and his Novaya Gazeta journalist colleague near the Kroptinskaya metro here in Moscow in the last few days. Ah that the world were so simple that saying the right things could fix it. My take on things is decidedly more pragmatic. In an email to a British friend, I wrote, "...if I were less of a cynic, I would allow myself to be swept up in the optimistic tide of the American public and believe that everything will be sunshine, ponies, puppies, rainbows and unicorns now that we have a new president. Alas, I am a cynic and I have spent too many years watching politicians to believe that any politician can ever be a messiah. One can only hope they leave office without breaking all the toys." President Obama is a bright, charismatic, articulate, ambitious individual who has thus far made some shrewd decisions in who he has selected to work with (I think he could have done better than Hillary Clinton at State, but at least she can be a pitbull. Conflict of interest issues over her husband's foundation and library taking money from people like the Saudis makes me nervous. ) If he does try to reach beyond partisanship, avoid the temptation to spend the next four years prosecuting former Bushies to please the extreme Left, and do more than simply increase the size of government and throw money at the problem, he may have a shot at a second term. Absolving American citizens of personal responsibility for their bad spending habits and self-indulgence does not equate to solving problems. We don't need Santa Claus; we need a leader willing to make hard decisions, even if they are unpopular--even if it means people have to suffer the consequences of their choices. President Obama's election is historical but so far, he is symbolic, not substantive. Talk is cheap. Symbols are cheap. In many respects, what his team has excelled at so far is marketing him and selling him to the public. There isn't a lot in his record to justify the accolades that have been heaped on him nor to substantiate the expectations that he can fix all that ails the US. Reality is far more complex than rhetoric. So he said the right things. I can say the right things. Anyone with a good speechwriter can say the right things and say them eloquently. Until his actions show me that he is a man who is willing to deal honestly with the challenges facing our world in a substantive way, I will wait and hope, placing my faith in a merciful God.

My Christmas Vacation...Gay Pareee

I have never been a Francophile. It isn't that I don't appreciate France--particularly French art--but I've never understood what could possibly be so amazing about Paris that people drop everything in their lives to move there, wear berets, live in rat infested garrets and smoke in cafes while discussing Proust. This is, of course, an exaggeration, but I honestly couldn't imagine a city that was more amazing than, the Swiss Alps or the Norwegian fjords or more enchanting than the Cotswolds in England. I am more a Lord of the Rings girl than a Hunchback of Notre Dame girl. That being said, Paris is cool. It has a certain vibe--not to mention its streets being rife with history on every corner--that its hard not to love it. From goose-stepping Nazis to impressionists hawking their wares to generations of backpacking college kids camping out in the Tuilieres gardens--it all feels like it is alive in Paris today, no mater how long ago it happened. Parisians are unapologetic about their history. We all loved the irony of placing a Ferris wheel, more or less, on the spot where Marie Antoinette and her ilk were guillotined. Where else in the world do you put a kiddie ride on the spot of a famous person's death? Most people would have a plaque or a memorial. Not the French. They are shameless about tarting up Versailles with horrid modern art (nowadays, you must look past a plastic rendering of Michael Jackson and Bobo the monkey to take in the King's bedroom). At the same time, the top floor of the Musee Orsay is sacred space. I fell in love anew with VanGogh. What sad, tragic, brilliant painter. Loved the Orsay. Loved the Orangerie. Loved the Eiffel Tour by night. LOVED felafels in the Jewish Quarter. Didn't love the Louvre. I feel guilty for saying that. How dare I not love the Louvre. I love museums. I've queued in line for many museums of lesser status and thoroughly enjoyed everything about those museums. But the Louvre left me a little blitzed. Imagining the opening scenes of the DaVinci Code was probably the most entertaining aspect of the visit. "And that's where Sauniere's body was laid out in the pentagram with all the blood..." The rest of the time I felt like I was fighting for life and limb just to make it up an escalator with my purse, ticket and sanity in tact. My favorite moment was when my niece Ruby, after noting the throng around the "Mona Lisa", proclaimed, "I can't see!" and proceeded to crawl underneath a sea of legs, up beyond the security barrier right to the front where she was gently escorted away from DaVinci's most famous girl. I have been in Disneyland in August and managed easier crowds than the Louvre. Loved Michaelangelo's "Slaves." Loved DaVinci's "Madonna on the Rocks." Loved the Louvre-Rivoli metro stop font. It is the only stop on the Paris metro stop that uses this font. Wish I could find it and use it on my blog. Loved the garishly out of place pyramid over the lobby. In Paris, it makes a strange sort of sense. Won't be going back anytime soon. I'll be saving up my crowd queuing karma for the opening of Harry Potter World at Universal Studios Florida.

What Happened Over Our Christmas Vacation--a story in several parts, not in order...

I'm going to write these entries out of order. I'm just in one of those moods. I'll start off with Sara's story because I think it is more interesting than tales of meltdowns in Finnish grocery stores and complaints about the French ability to queue aren't what I'm in the mood to write about today. And what can you say about Switzerland? Boy, is it clean. Best restroom in the world is at the Gruyere Cheese factory, hands down. No one would ever get Hep A if we took a lesson from the Swiss sanitary habits. That being said, there are points of interest beyond self-cleaning toilets, all night cook-a-thons in Helsinki, being trampled before the Mona Lisa and watching "Australia" at a movie theater on the Champs Elysees. On Sunday, January 4, after a lovely holiday in Switzerland and Paris, we prepared to send Sara back to the US. She's done this flight what, five, six times now? She's flown back and forth between Western Europe, Russia and the US enough times that she can sleepwalk through JFK--this is saying something. The worst part of the journey, typically, is Sheremetyvo Airport. On some surveys, Sheremetyvo nips at the heels of Charles DeGaulle as the worst airport in the world. Let's just say that Heathrow is a welcome change from SVO. The trip started off poorly whenI discovered that the Moscow-Atlanta flight was delayed by 90 minutes. I gave Sara some rubles for a snack, she went through at least three security checks just to get to the gate and then we waved good-bye.I had plenty to do that afternoon. We were joining the Moscow, Russia and Moscow, Russia-West districts on a week long temple trip to Helsinki, Finland. An overnight train to St. Petersburg followed by a day long bus trek was ahead of us. We ate normal food (you never eat normal food on a Russian train), packed our bags and went to our cattle car third class bunk on the Petersburg train. And then we checked the Delta website to see what the status was of Sara's flight. The webpage said: DIVERTED. You expect delayed, in flight, landing, boarding but not DIVERTED. There are only a handful of reasons to divert a plane: mechanical problems, medical emergency, terrorism and inflight disruption. None of those are happy. Especially for a parent crammed into a cramped coffin of a bunk on a Russian train heading off into the bleak, freezing cold expanse of northern Russia. We tried using a calling card to contact anyone we could find in the US. No luck. I tried my brother Peter's cellphone in Geneva--he has Vonage VOIP and could call Delta for us. No answer. We finally sent an email to Parry's brother who had been charged to pick her up in SLC and take her back to university. The long and the short of the email was "FIND HER." And then we waited. All through the long night in the cramped bunk, my ipod noise-reducing headphones crammed in my ears, my Kindle hugged close to my chest so it didn't accidentally fall down the 5 feet from my bunk to the floor. In the morning we discovered that she had been diverted to Newfoundland, the first airport you can touchdown at once you're across the Atlantic. Not a great sign. She was delayed so long she missed her connection in Atlanta. What a wonderful development when your child has an 8AM econ class. The story of what happened on the flight is copypasted into this entry. The bottom line is this: Parry's brother Peter worked a miracle and got Sara back to SLC on Monday morning. The other people on that flight had to wait until Tuesday evening. Her luggage was lost, she hadn't had much sleep but she made it in one piece. We are eternally grateful for Peter helping her out. As a parent, it ranks up there as one of the scarier moments I've had, crossing your fingers that your child isn't on the flight where the suicide bomber has figured out how to mix the Delta lavatory handsoap with the lip balm in his bag to make an explosive device. In some respects the situation is pretty funny and fairly typical if you know what it is like traveling with Russian. That being said, I don't think Sara is that keen on traveling back to Russia any time soon. Perhaps a double major in European Studies isn't what she wants after all :)

Unruly Passenger Forces Emergency Landing Of Delta Flight

Sunday, January 4, 2009 – updated: 9:00 pm EST January 4, 2009 ATLANTA -- A Delta Air Lines flight bound for Atlanta was forced to make an emergency landing Sunday due to an unruly passenger.A Delta representative, who called the incident a security threat, told Channel 2 it happened aboard flight 47. Officials said the plane took off from Moscow and made an emergency landing in the Canadian town of Gander, Newfoundland.Delta said there are about 200 passengers on the Boeing 767.They confirmed the plane was met with Royal Canadian mounted patrol in Gander.Delta didn’t release details Sunday, but said the incident was grave enough to re-route the flight to another country where the problem passenger could be dealt with Sunday.“They are going to get everyone back to Atlanta safely,” said Delta spokesman Susan Elliott. “This is a rare occurrence.”The flight was scheduled to land at Atlanta's Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport Sunday night.Copyright 2009 by WSBTV.com. All rights reserved.

Atlanta-bound Delta jet diverted to Canada

Unruly Russian passenger in jail in Newfoundland after being restrained by 8 people

By CHRISTIAN BOONE

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Sunday, January 04, 2009

An unruly passenger so disrupted an international Delta Air Lines flight that the Atlanta-bound plane was diverted to a Canadian airport where authorities took the subject into custody. Flight 47 from Moscow to Atlanta made an unscheduled stop Sunday at Gander International Airport in Newfoundland, and the passenger was removed by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, said Delta spokeswoman Susan Elliott. Canadian authorities identified the passenger as Sergey Kotsur, 39, of Russia. Elliott said the decision to eject the passenger was made by the plane’s captain. She would not release details about Kotsur’s actions. According to a RCMP news release, the plane “was diverted as the result of an intoxicated, unruly male passenger.” The plane was carrying 206 passengers when it departed Moscow earlier Sunday. It landed at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport about 10 p.m., more than four hours behind schedule. Flight 47 passenger Eric Feliciano, waiting for his luggage late Sunday night after clearing customs, said the Russian passenger was sitting ahead of him in coach. He noticed an empty 1.5-liter bottle of Chivas Regal next to the man’s seat. Kotsur allegedly started fighting with his wife and banging on the side of the aircraft. “He was drunk,” said Feliciano, 40, a Tallahassee, Fla. resident who was returning home from vacation.. “I was afraid he was going to try to jump out of the plane or something.” Another passenger, Irakli Bolkvadze, 30, of Moscow, said he watched as crew members assisted by others confronted Kotsur. “The steward said some guy was sick,” and that he had mixed alcohol with “pills,” said Bolkvadze, who was flying to the United States for a vacation. It took eight people — male and female flight attendants and passengers including Feliciano — to hold Kotsur. They tried putting him in plastic wrist binders, but “he broke the restraints a couple of times,” the Florida man said. After police took Kotsur off the plane and put him in a police car, he tried to kick out a window of the vehicle, Feliciano said. He said he came to the crew’s aid because “you do what you need to do when you see a disturbance like that.” Kotsur remains in jail on assault and mischief charges. He is scheduled to appear in Gander Provincial Court on Wednedsday. — Staff writer Ben Smith contributed to this article.

Merry Christmas!

I'm sitting in an uncomfortable airport chair at Schiphol International, babysitting piles of backpacks and coats while the girls are off finding sandwiches and real European milk. European milk, for the record, rocks our world. We have no idea how they do it but European cows are happy cows. We needed a dose of happy cow after spending three hours sitting on a plane with not one but three under four year-olds screaming within a two row vicinity for what, 1/2 the plane ride? KLM has civilized food (couscous salad, Greek style), Russians are the worst airplane passengers I think I have ever seen and I am grateful for new Christmas headphones. Wanted to wish you all Happy Christmas (the British way) and hope that you aren't stranded in an airport somewhere or waiting for lost luggage, that you are with family or people you love and can enjoy the gift of the season. Tomorrow we will be in the land of yodeling, crepes and Gruyere cheese with the Swiss branch of our family. We love and miss our friends around the world--from our beloved Kangs, Brimhalls, Densleys, Benners, Packhams, Chelsea, Laurel and Bridget in Portland, the Clayton and Jarman clans scattered around the Western US, friends along the Wasatch front--too many to list--and friends from the Moscow branch who are scattered to the winds until the Russian holidays are over. We are thinking of you and remembering you fondly!

When it isn't so glamorous to be an expat

A lot of people hear about our travel schedule and think that we're just a regular group of Paris Hiltons jet setting around the globe. Believe me when I say that travel is the safety valve of our existence. I have logged many, many hours in coach class, meditating my way to sanity in spite of the stench of the Aeroflot fish selections, simply because I can't stand Moscow for one second longer. There's a reason why Moscow, Russia is ranked between Nicaragua and Tripoli, Libya in terms of difficulty and desirability of expat assignments. There are some cool things. Case in point: today, Emmy-winning Daily Show writer Kevin Bleyer was the guest speaker in my daughter's English class. Not many junior English students have such interesting lecture material. Last night, would I have cared about "The Daily Show?" Not really. Yesterday Abby came home from school sick. Not so much home as my friend Carolyn's house in Pokrovsky Hills, the expat compound adjacent to school. I've been camping there during the week because I've been substitute teaching early morning seminary. I'd sleep on Carolyn's couch, snuggling with her miniature schnauzer Kate, do some reading for my Latin American history class and eat lunch at the school. Since we had so many school events this week it was nice to be close by. At first, I thought Abby was simply exhausted from lack of sleep and school stress. By around 4PM, it became clear we would have to skip her choir performance. By 7PM, she was doubled over in pain, running a fever and crying because of her misery. This presented me with a problem. I couldn't tell from her symptoms exactly what she had. She didn't present with classic stomach flu symptoms like vomiting or cramps. Her whole belly was sensitive and the pain seemed centered in the mid to lower right-hand quadrant of her abdomen. Hubby's family has a history of appendicitis before age 20 so a malfunctioning intestine was not out of the question. The level of her pain troubled me, the violent nausea and the sudden onset of fever were bad signs. I called my friend the nurse, called the European Medical Center (useless--the triage nurse barely spoke English) and figured out what taxis I could call in the middle of the night that had dispatchers that spoke English and operated 24 hours a day. Our driver lives a good 45 minutes away without traffic. There's no way he could make it in a timely fashion. Have I mentioned how much I hate Moscow traffic? It's worse right now because the Russians are out 24/7 shopping for New Year's, spending everything they have since they think the ruble is going to collapse in a few months. She finally collapsed on the couch in a fitful sleep. Her fever stayed elevated. I haven't felt that kind of panic since my children were little. I'm stuck in a compound on the outskirts of a city that has traffic jams at 6:30AM with no car, no doctor I'd find trustworthy within 5 kilometers of my house and waiting to see if my daughter has a gastrointestinal virus or whether she'd need surgery. I have no pharmacy that's trustworthy within 5 kilometers (counterfeit drugs are an issue in Russia). The temperature is hovering around -6 to -8 Celsius, lower with wind chill. It's a special kind of stress you feel in moments like that. I even bought a bottle of vodka to have on hand in case we had to give her an alcohol bath to get her fever down (an old trick I learned from my Indian cooking teacher/friend Anita). No way you can use Tylenol when pain is the only symptom you can follow. I slept on the couch beside Abby, waking up periodically to check on her fever and her pain level. By about 3AM I was satisfied that it wasn't appendicitis and I crawled in my bed to sleep for two hours. I taught seminary and discussed why sometimes we are more 'Glinda' from Wicked than 'Elphaba'--what can I say? My brain was having serious serotonin deprivation issues. I missed the trip to the children's cancer hospital because Abby's insides weren't cooperating. I baked cookies for the mission's Christmas zone conference, talked to a sister missionary whose bank card is coming with my daughter on Saturday, edited my college daughter's paper on Russia/EU relations, slept for an hour because I had a headache that would slay an elephant and tried to catch up on the laundry. My friends Elke, Gloria and Sister Cranney, the mission mom, and I all talked about what we're going to do when the economy crashes and the grocery shipments to Moscow start being hijacked and compared notes on the latest attempt by the Kremlin to shut down free speech. One twin staggered home on time. The other twin called at 6:30PM to tell us that she'd been in a school bus crash, that she was fine, but that they were stranded until they could find another vehicle to bring them to our compound. At least they travel with an armed security guard. One twin is only halfway through the biology lab from hell (2800 words so far); the other pleaded with me to let her stay home tomorrow. She's about two notches above the walking dead. Elke did let me know that she would be available 24 hours a day to take us to the EMC in Moscow Center should it come to that. Bless Elke. I may be able to sleep without taking a Benadryl tonight. I may be able to relax without stress eating my way through my only remaining box of Nilla Wafers. There is a light at the end of the tunnel. Abby has watched all of "Psych" season 1 today. She's now working her way through "Monk" season 3--on German DVDs borrowed from St. Elke the Good. We heard this morning that Sara was upgraded to business class on her connecting flight to JFK tomorrow. This may mean the difference between wheeling her out of Sheremetyvo on a luggage cart or her walking out of her own volition after inevitable weather/air traffic delays. And so, gentle readers, don't be fooled by the travelogues. Life as an expat isn't all cultural enrichment and family pictures taken in front of iconic landmarks. Sometimes its sleeping on your crappy IKEA couch with nothing to watch but "Russia Today" propaganda, fingers crossed that you won't be stuck in holiday traffic at 2AM and fantasizing about "Target" and PF Changs lettuce wraps. When I inevitably write about my upcoming trips to Switzerland and Paris, France, please remember that I would trade my frequent jaunts to Europe for a WallMart--especially after a night like last night.

The Ghosts of Nazis and Stazi Past

I grew up believing that one day, a nuclear warhead from the USSR would land on the Air Force base not 30 miles from my home, and that I would die a slow painful death from radiation poisoning. We didn't need Chucky or Bride of Chucky or "Saw 5" to be scared: we had the KGB. Imagining being trapped behind the Iron Curtain, on the run, praying you'd make Checkpoint Charlie in West Berlin without first getting a bullet in your back was enough to make me break out in a cold sweat. When I watched the Berlin Wall come down on CNN, I witnessed something that I never, in my lifetime, had I fathomed would be possible. Two weeks ago, I saw several sections of the Berlin Wall, standing where they would have stood 25 years ago in no-man's land, but this time surrounded by bustling shoppers, burdened with bags, rushing from the glamorous, glass train station to the Potsdamer Plaz mall. This area had been the busiest square in Europe pre-WWII, before being bombed out in air raids and left desolate for decades during the Cold War. I had never imagined I would see this place outside of the pages of a John LeCarre novel. The prosperity and glitz of post-unification is on display wherever you care to look. And yet there is enough evidence of the past to make me shiver as I passed scarred building facade, riddled with bullet holes, imagining what these walls would say if they could speak. When I passed Tempelhof Airport on our way into the city center, I saw both Hitler's vision for a grand and glorious reich and the Berlin Airlift. The Reichstag, standing near the massive memorial to the Jewish holocaust, stands as an eeire reminder of the glorious old Germany, post WWI Weimar Republic. The Brandenburg Gate, illuminated for nighttime and Christmas, recalled both John Kennedy and Ronald Reagan ordering Gorbachev to tear down the wall. In Dresden, I sensed the ghosts in the soot-blackened surfaces of so many baroque buildings and in the new Frauenkirche, rebuilt primarily by money raised in the US and Britain whose air forces destroyed the heart of Dresden in their firebombing in 1945. I heard the Bach Christmas Oratorio performed in the Frauenkirche; Bach himself played in the original Frauenkirche. Everywhere I looked on the road from Berlin to Dresden, I saw the stark, stripped down Soviet-style architecture, spruced up so it was less bleak (my favorite was an apartment building that had been painted bright yellow with a massive red lobster logo stenciled on the side), but still it was a reminder of the time when Germany was East and West. Then and now. Us and them. As much as we move on from the past, we don't; as F.Scott Fitzgerald says in The Great Gatsby, "So we beat on, boast against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."