Burlaki on the Hudson

Contrary to my regular protestations of an utterly routine boredom, things happen to us all the time. As it happens with the rest of humankind, only the biggest things tend to leave an imprint on our memory and, later on, resurface at a point of writing a blog entry.

The last few days gave rise to a few big occurrences, so my task of keeping an up-to-date, yet entertaining, chronicle is so much simpler.
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Chronicles, Customerography, Family & Friends, London & Environs

Ah, the joys of commuting! And the power of jinx! Just yesterday I had a stray thought that there had not been major transportation problems on my commute for quite a while. Lo and behold, today was a disaster.

When I arrived at my train station in the morning, the monitors were showing most of the trains cancelled due to “landslide and fire at London Bridge”. Some trains were diverted to another London station. A station worker, though, was barking into a megaphone: “Ladies and gentlemen, they found vast quantities of oxygen ignited next to large quantities of diesel. I am dead serious. On your return back, you are likely to have the same conditions. If you do not have to travel today, I suggest that you go home”. Some people did leave the station, although I have no idea whether they thought it a splendid idea to stay home for the day or simply figured alternative routes.

Due to my eleven meetings scheduled for the day, I had to stoically wait for the train. Luckily, I do not need to go all the way to the city, and even diverted service would stop at Lewisham, where I change for DLR. The first arriving train, however, was packed to the limit – impossible to get on. Some hapless travellers tried to penetrate the wall of human bodies and shouted “Move down” to the people inside, but with very little success…

I decided to wait for the next train, in about twenty minutes, and then make a decision whether to return home and call into all of my meetings or try an alternative route and arrive at the office by mid-day. The next train, thankfully, had enough room for people at Mottingham. And even for most people at the next station. But afterwards, history repeated itself with hapless blokes trying to get on and shouting “Move down” – only I was fighting for my personal space inside the carriage.

In the end, the trip only took about half an hour extra. Not entirely disastrous. But mindful of the guy with the megaphone, I decided to go a completely different route on my way home, one that I never used before. It involves taking the tube from Canary Wharf in the direction opposite of the city for one single station and then getting on a direct bus that stops not far from home. That fairly simple exercise did not go too well either, as the bus broke down just about quarter the way in and everybody had to get off. While me and five dozen other lucky people were waiting for the next bus, the driver suddenly announced that he had fixed the problem, and everybody rushed on board again. The bus then proceeded along circuitous and painfully slow route to the destination. When I finally started to recognize the environs (i.e., we were approaching my stop), an order came from the lower deck to change to the bus behind us… Overall, another hour and a half on public transport. It’s as if I never left Tri-State area…

Becky, meanwhile, learned to play a weird team game in school, called rounders. It’s in a way like baseball, but not really. There are nine players to a team. There are four poles (which one could call bases), but they are positioned in a trapezoidal shape in front of the batter. One team defends when another team bats. The inning consists of every player on a team having a go, regardless of the number of outs. Each at-bat consists of a single pitch – whether you hit it or not, you run. Your aim is to round as many bases as you can, but you only get a point if you round all four in one go; you get half a point for reaching the second base right away. Getting to the base is formalized by whacking the pole with your bat – you do not get rid of it when you start running. The defense gets you out if they whack the top of the pole with the ball while you are running towards it. Whew!

Becky, apparently, made enough of an impact in her phys-ed class to get conscripted into varsity team. Her debut was a valiant losing effort to a neighboring school.

They change sports every few weeks at her school, by the way. They already went through netball (which is to basketball what пионербол was to volleyball), field hockey, gymnastics, sports dancing and swimming. Now it’s tennis and rounders. Interesting approach!

Kimmy, on the other hand, is much into dinosaurs these days, because that is what they study in her second grade. On our couple of trips to the Natural History museum during winter, she was scared of the dino displays. Now she is begging to go there and take another look.

She also is growing to be a fellow impressionist admirer. We bought her a children’s book at one of the exhibitions that we visited last weekend, about a girl who is introduced to impressionism and Degas’ dancers in particular. Kimmy read it through several times already.

Children, Chronicles

In our many years in New Jersey, we cannot recall ever having a breakfast outside. Barbecues, parties – yes, but never a breakfast. There were several excuses for that, such as absence of a deck and complicated logistics of carrying stuff down wooden steps to the patio, but the fact remains. During our Tuscan sojourn, of course, we had breakfast in the gazebo every morning…

So now, with the spring weather in full swing, we are taking advantage of our great deck and garden. Today was the very first time that we served ourselves breakfast outside, but that will surely become common practice during the summer. Sitting in the warm morning sun prompted Natasha to remark that she would not mind spending the whole day that way. Alas, it is getting rather hot by mid-day (unless you move into the shade); the grass already started developing brown patches.

A number of people have remarked to us that this type of weather is normally reserved for May, not April. There has not been a drop of rain for probably three weeks now. As I find myself occasionally saying these days, Al Gore must be on to something.

My pragmatic wife is using the global warming to the benefit of the household. I made cursory remarks in the past that appliances in our rented house leave a lot to be desired, primarily along the lines of being small and ineffective. The drier is possibly the worst of all: You put a pair of socks in it, and in 75 minutes they come out only slightly less wet than they were right after washing. So Natasha stopped using the drier altogether, relying instead on hanging the clothes all over the house. Now, we stringed a couple of ropes across the deck, and the linen and clothes are happily flapping in the sun…

In case I never stated it that way before, London is a great place for museum- and gallery-aficionados, with many an interesting exhibition taking place at any given time. On Saturday, we took advantage of the couple of them, and came away very impressed.

The Royal Academy of Arts hosted and exhibition of pastels and drawings called Unknown Monet. There were a few less-known paintings sprinkled in (including a couple of versions of Water lilies and the magnetizing Rue de la Bavole, Honfleur), but most of the exhibits aimed at tracing Monet’s evolution as a painter as well as illustrating his methodical approach and preparation. Infinitely fascinating.

The National Gallery, in the meantime, currently holds two exhibitions centered on impressionists. The first one, From Manet to Picasso, brings together selected works of every celebrated master, such as Signac’s Cap Canaille, Seurat’s Bathers at Asnieres or Van Gogh’s Sunflowers.

The other exposition is devoted to Renoir’s landscapes, with 64 beautiful works by the painter. The entry to this last one was not cheap at £12 a pop, but worth every penny. I am a self-professed landscape admirer in general, but the use of color and light by Renoir in paintings such as The Skiff, Oarsmen at Chatou or The View of Argenteuil is absolutely breathtaking. Renoir was always at the top of my list of favorite painters and his position in my personal pantheon is now unassailable.

We bought a big political map of Europe and used pins to mark the places that we have already travelled to. There are still more pins in the former Soviet Union territories than otherwise, especially since the map is detailed enough to list towns such as Azov or Pushkin, and we feel compelled to stick a pin into any location that we remember setting a foot in, eve if we do not remember anything about the place (for instance, when I was 9 or 10, my dad and I took a car trip from Rostov to Moldova across Ukraine with his friend; we stayed overnight in Kherson, of which I have no recollection whatsoever beyond the fact itself; I am still pinning Kherson a “place visited”).

We came up with a few rules along the way (such as, an unmarked city that we purposefully visited – say, Rothenburg-ob-der-Tauber, – merits a separate pin in the appropriate location, whereas a driving trip that includes many small towns and villages merits a single pin either for the major marked town or just in the area). We ended up with 101 pins at the moment (53 in former USSR, 48 in Western Europe). Our progress will be duly reported in this space.

The look at our map is quite intriguing. It not only emphasizes the areas that we have not approached yet (Baltics and Nordics, Greece and Turkey, among others), but also makes clear that there are tons of places in countries that we covered quite well (Spain and France, especially) that we at best only drove through.

I am closing today on a very light note. Kimmy’s first experience with bidet in Tuscany has left an indelible impression on her. She has commented several times in the past few days how convenient that was, the word butt popping up every time…

Art & Culture, Chronicles, London & Environs, Travel

It took me a while to emerge from under the pile of emails after a protracted absence from work. But I did emerge from that battle victorious, if in desperate need of another vacation. Nice trips, I always found, have an annoying quality of appearing insufficiently long, when recalled after just a couple of days of routine, work, school, etc…

Anyhow, the beautiful Tuscan weather not exactly followed us to the cold shores of Great Britain, but sort of seeped in anyway. For the last few days, it’s been sunny and bright in London, a bit chilly in the mornings and at night, but very inviting during the day. I remember in the late 90′s, me and a group of coworkers would take a stroll during lunch hour along Park Avenue on a day like this, drinking in the sun, surveying shortening skirts and discussing whatever hot topic captivated us at the moment… Ah, good old times!

We went to a French restaurant in Soho last night, with new friends. They are relocating to London from Brooklyn and, in search of information, came across my blog. Emailing ensued, followed by a dinner out during the house hunting trip of theirs. The company was excellent, the restaurant pretty good too. A couple of bottles of Haut-Medoc and a superb selection of cheeses for dessert went along quite well with a conversation on many different topics. We did not exactly close the place, but we were there for nearly four hours. For a non-banquet type of a dining affair, that must be my personal record.

Too bad the guys will most likely be living somewhere north-west of center. Bad for us, not for them. St John’s Wood is one of the best residential areas in London, quite close to the city center, urban enough for those who dislike suburban living, but away from most of the tourist noise, with great parks and overall pleasant ambience. We were thinking about that area ourselves at first (it also happen to sit on the Jubilee line of the Underground, which goes directly to Canary Wharf, where my offices are), but turned away from it, because living space to rental price ratio is many times lower over there than in suburban Greenwich area where we reside. We cannot figure out how to manage with less than four bedrooms, but we now know a few families – albeit a bit younger and certainly more urban in their makeup – who manage quite all right. Long story short, yet another couple is going to reside diagonally across the city from us, which will surely make maintaining relationship complicated.

On a different tangent, this was a first time that we truly have walked around Soho at the end of a working day, and the place is happening. Pubs are packed, restaurants are impossible to get into without a reservation, tons of people on the street. Very cool!

For those keeping score, I was out after work on Tuesday for a couple of beers with a colleague visiting from New York. Just a couple, honest!

In other news, our electric shower pump (see about water pressure for reference) developed a terminal case of broken-itis and is being replaced in a few days (at landlord’s expense). In the meantime, taking a shower is an everyday adventure under a weak trickle of water.

Another item in need of repair, CD player in the car (we did not realize it right away, but it was only playing the right channel and nothing on the left) was fixed by the dealer with thousands of apologies for missing the problem during the vehicle check-up before delivery. While the car was serviced, we got to drive a loaner with only 125 miles on it, and that was a pretty good ride as well.

At the conclusion of today’s post, I feel compelled to say something in regard to the horrible thing that happened at Virginia Tech on Monday.

Guns make it awfully easy for a deranged person to kill people. You can sermonize all you want that “guns do not kill people, people kill people”, but the fact remains, a psycho would not be able to cut short lives of dozens of people in a short span if not for the institutionalized enablement of the Second Amendment. This guy was probably determined enough to get his guns on the black market, if needed. But we surely made it way too easy for him.

The Second Amendment is unlikely to ever get repealed, meaning that guns will always be easy to get. I think it is a sad commentary on the American nation that it considers something that stopped making sense a hundred years ago sacred.

I have no intention of turning my blog into a political forum, and I plan to limit my political statements to exceptional cases such as this. If you, my reader, would like to debate the topic with me, please email me directly.

Chronicles, Family & Friends, London & Environs, Re: Current Events

And the Spring Break holidays came to the end. We are home, in excellent spirits and feeling perfectly rested after a week in Tuscany. I am quite sure that that feeling will not survive through Wednesday…

But allow me to dwell on this pleasant week, and talk about Tuscany a little.

Outside of the countries that we have resided in (former USSR, USA, UK – it just hit me that union/united is clearly a common theme here ), there are only a couple of places – Paris, Vienna – that we visited more than once in our travels. We normally opt for sights unseen when selecting a destination, primarily for reasons of wanting to see as much as possible in our lifetime, while being limited in how much time we can allocate to travels. Yet, we already have a list of destinations that we want to come back to, and Tuscany always topped that list.

Let me tell you: Despite its new status as a rare place that we visited more than once, it still tops that list. This is a place where gorgeous vistas, amiable people, history-laden and visually astounding sights, good wine and indescribably delectable food all come together for us to form an unforgettable experience. There is no doubt that we will come back again and again.

We rented a villa several kilometers away from a small town called Montespertoli. The villa might not have been entirely authentic, located within a gated “development” that was built no more than 25-30 years ago, if that, but it was sitting amid vineyards high atop a hill. The view across the valley, to the towns, vineyards and castelli, went for miles and was utterly breathtaking. The villa also has a pool and a better satellite TV system than the one I have in London. From a certain standpoint, going to the local supermarket is the only reason to ever leave it during a stay.

We had all breakfasts, and a few lunches, in our private gazebo, taking in the view, drinking inexpensive Chianti and munching on local ingredients. The weather was magnificent, if not yet warm enough for the pool to be opened. Despite that, on a couple of days, we completely eschewed any sightseeing and contented ourselves with lounging in the sun coupled with uneventful drives to Montespertoli for a stroll around the town square and a time out for the kids on a playground.

The restaurants that we went to were all family run and all situated in locales so small as to barely warrant a village designation. Michelin does not even begin to guess that these places exist. The food was fantastic in every one of them, the service very friendly (there is always at least one person who understands a bit of English, although I find ordering in Italian to be infinitely more poetic), and the prices rather reasonable.

Separately, on our walks in various places, the girls tried a few dozen different flavors of gelato, as well as various local pastries.

The local residents at the development kept shocking us with unwarranted buongiorno‘s every morning. One family had girls the same age as ours, and Natasha tried to initiate contact, which went swimmingly through the stage of exchanging names. After that, the only common language was that of signs, with very limited success…

We did a bit of sightseeing as well, of course, mostly returning to the places that we’ve been to before.

Firenze is attractive in many aspects, and very walkable, but hundreds of annoying street vendors with makeshift stands make it quite bothersome at times. The palaces, churches and especially the Duomo with Giotto’s Campanile do make it one of the most beautiful cities in Europe.

Pisa’s Campo dei Miracoli is a majestic sight, with the Duomo, the Baptistery and the leaning tower, but there is hardly anything else to do there. Thousands of tourists are taking turns propping the tower up for snapshots, vending stalls are positioned all along the wall, and you cannot climb the tower unless you reserve tickets well in advance. Depending on your photographic inclinations, you may need as little as 45 minutes to tour the place.

Siena, by contract, is a town where one can spend quite a lot of time, walking its medieval streets and taking in the atmosphere. There are many grand palaces lining those streets, and the fashion boutiques and tourist shops are mingled with traditional gastronomic and wine establishments. The Duomo is very ornate and attractive both from the outside and on the inside. And the famous Piazza del Campo is truly one of the most striking places that I have ever seen.

Siena is a living city, with local residents going about their business – and to and from work – right in the midst of tourist hordes. San Gimignano is somewhat the opposite, a very well preserved medieval town that obviously lives for tourists only. It is still wonderful – and quite possibly, our Tuscan favorite, – but even on quiet side streets one rarely catches a glimpse of locals. In any case, architecturally it is very authentic, completely devoid of those annoying sellers of useless trinkets, and instead full of curious and quirky shops, which sell imaginative souvenirs amongst kitsch and/or local foodstuffs, and always in an appealing way.

One other medieval hill town that we went to, Certaldo, is off the beaten path. In this early season, only us and three German families were wandering its centuries-old streets. Do you know that Germans are by far the most well-travelled nation in Europe?

Anyway, we had a wonderful time, and when our New York cousins joined us for the last couple of days, it got even better. The villa owners, who produce their own wine, have probably never had so much demand for their product…

On our way home – we flew to/from Rome and drove the rental car the rest of the way – we managed to gallop around a few major sights in the Eternal City (Fontana de Trevi, Spanish Steps, Piazza Navona, Pantheon) for about an hour and a half. You should clearly recognize by now that it’s gotten to be a pet peeve of mine, but the trinket-sellers in Rome are insufferably in-your-face, so much so that I actually stopped being annoyed with tourist mobs…

Well, back to the grind tomorrow – the school is back and the people in the office are undoubtedly counting seconds to my return. What makes the thought bearable is the fact that in only three weeks we will be off to a long (May Day) weekend in Paris.

Ciao, bambini! A presto.

P.S. We have taken a large number of pictures on this trip, which hopefully will be posted within a couple of weeks. Our travelog notes on Tuscany can be found here.

Travel

I will only manage to get in a single blog entry in between two vacation trips, so I better write as much about the first one as possible before going onto the second one. So, here we go, briefly about Cotswolds…

Cotswolds is an area in Middle England that has similar significance for the country overall as Provence has for France, Andalucia has for Spain, or Tuscany has for Italy. In other words, it is often an idyllic place, easy on the eye, slow on pace, which retains plenty of cultural authenticity that is hard to find in big cities or famous tourist centers.

The weather in Cotswolds, of course, hardly compares to those other idyllic places, but, hey, England is hardly known for good wether, is it?

The heart of Cotswolds is located only about 70 miles north of London – even though it takes us a full hour to cross the city from our southeast starting point, the overall one-way ride is quite reasonable even for a day trip.

On our way there, we actually stopped and spent several hours in Oxford, which is not as picturesque as Cambridge, but is probably more imposing architecturally. We happened to arrive in the middle of some festival, and all over the town centers, colorfully dressed troupes presented inelaborate folk dances. Food market was also in full swing, selling meats, cheeses, sweets and everything in between. We gravitated from stall to stall, from performance to performance, visited one of the well-renowned colleges of the famous university, climbed a tower for a rooftop view of the town, and left quite satisfied.

Then, it was three days of driving through hedged green fields, taking in quaint and atmospheric towns and entertaining ourselves with various endeavors.

One of those was horse-riding. Beyond a pony ride at a local fair, none of us has ever sat a horse, so anticipation of the event was well mixed with trepidation, at least on the part of Natasha and me. Kids were boundlessly excited. We signed up for a hack, a leisurely ride through the countryside, where each of our horses were led on a leash by a trainer. Each one of us got equipped with a protective vest and a helmet, we not so much vaulted into the saddles as climbed with help of strategically placed steps, and off we went.

The weather was bright, the horses docile, and the path very inviting, so we all had a great time. Certain parts of our bodies went numb pretty soon, but we soldiered on. Going through a sleepy village was one of the highlights – a certain feeling of ages past crept in, weary travellers entering the town after a long ride from afar… The cars parked on the side of the road spoiled that feeling a bit… Another highlight was climbing out in the open on top of the hill and surveying the plains below…

Anyway, we survived the experience, and may actually try it again another day.

The girls also had a pottery lesson, and managed to create passable vases, which still need to be painted. Kimmy, who has better artistic instincts than anyone in the family, actually did quite well…

In one of the castles, we visited a pheasantry, where the mating season must have been in full swing. Several impossibly brightly colored male birds were engaging in some dancing around their far plainer female counterparts. There were also some attempts at fighting among rivals for affection. The kids were in stitches, watching the crazy birds…

Besides such diversions, we visited half a dozen beautiful towns, several gardens and manors, and generally indulged ourselves.

The fields of Cotswolds are full of grazing sheep. The girls excitedly looked for the animals from the car, but then, on several occasions, we had a chance to walk in near proximity of the herds. The kids kept trying to replicate the sounds that the sheep made, and at some point I started to wonder who was imitating whom, as the beh-eh-eh‘ing and meh-eh-eh‘ing kept alternating between Becky and the sheep, then Kimmy and the sheep… We did not venture to the fields themselves, keeping to the other side of the fences. One family with kids about Kimmy’s age did; the boy kept asking his father whether he could go chase the sheep; the father kept saying no; at some point, almost the entire herd that they were walking by started cantering towards them while making loud noises, scaring the kid mightily – he ran far ahead and climbed the nearest fence… Some combative sheep, they were…

All in all, we had a great time and probably could spend twice as many days in the area, but with our flight to Rome scheduled for Saturday, we figured we wanted to have at least a couple of days to detox from one trip before embarking on another one. My detox actually consisted of a day at work – and I am surely ready to go on another holiday.

Our travelog notes on Cotswolds can be found here. The pictures from the trip will likely be posted in a couple of weeks, after our return from Tuscany.

Travel