Myriam Takes the Reins

TERKHIIN TSAGAAN NUUR, Mongolia – I summoned my inner cowboy, felt the noise build from deep in my gullet, and then bellowed so loudly that the sides of the frost-lined mountains echoed.

"CHU!" I said, but nothing happened.

My diminutive transport continued to munch on brown tufts of grass, ignoring my command to go. I tried again, this time with a gentle voice.

"Chu." And again and again. "Chu, chu, chu."

The obstinate equine would not budge. He could somehow sense the novice rider (and poor speaker of Mongolian) in the saddle. Then a knight in a reindeer coat galloped up beside us, and barked the order with such gravitas that the horse had no choice but to trot. Myriam, once again, showed why she is the group's naturalist.

I profile Myriam at great risk, because she is one of the most mercurial personalities I have ever met. Her vivacious enthusiasm hides a complex person, someone who can't be pinned down. I'm sure the Myriam I know is quite different from the Myriam I would have met off the steppes.

So, I start with the irrefutable. Myriam is German, her nationality clear from the first word out of her mouth. Her cadences are a bit abnormal, drawing out "o" and "u" sounds for an extra beat. Her natural tendency is to reach for the longer cognate, using compound words that are seldom found outside of English academic literature. She sometimes says "jaa."

Her hometown is a small village in Southern Germany. Her parents run a biodynamic farm. I've never heard the term before, but apparently they raise livestock and vegetables using organic methods and renewable energy. Here Myriam learned how to ride a horse. She adores animals, and pets anything in sight with fur or feathers.

Despite their reputation for punctuality, Germans dawdle through school. She spent most of her childhood in a Steiner School (sometimes called a "Waldorf Education"), where pupils don't use standardized textbooks, they create their own illustrated guides to the material. Significant amounts of time were spent being creative, with many art and music lessons. Rote learning and grades were minimized, although when they were introduced, she did well. Myriam graduated from high school at the age of 19, and will take between four and six years to earn her bachelors. In between she is taking two Gap years, to break up the long stays in academia.

She wanted to do a long-term volunteer project, so when she heard about a Swiss-Russian charity that sponsored a village for mentally and physical handicapped Russians, she pledged a year of her life. Incredibly, Myriam spoke no Russian. She boarded a plane for Irkutsk, 5,000 miles away, without knowing a word of the language. On arrival, a man drove her 60 miles to her new work site. There is no Internet, no cable television, just a few buildings, a barn and some animals. She works alongside a few Russian staff members, and one other volunteer, who is Swiss.

Two months after she arrived, Myriam felt ill. Her stomach hurt so badly that the village van took her to a hospital in Irkutsk. The doctors determined she had appendicitis, and removed the vestigial organ. Maybe a surgeon did not sanitize the scalpel or a nurse had a touch of the flu, because Myriam continued to deteriorate after the surgery. She slipped into a coma, probably from an infection. Worried, the hospital staff called Myriam's parents on the farm.

At this point in the story, my mouth is open and my eyebrows are arched from worry. But Myriam continues her near-death tale in a jaunty tone, as if this was a perfectly normal string of events. "After five days I woke up," she said. "My parents, they were worried for me, jaa. But they knew if it was my time, it was my time."

After a couple weeks of recovery, Myriam resumed her unpaid position deep in the forest. She shared a stuffy room with the Swiss girl, washed dishes, planted crops, and hauled equipment. She supervised the mentally-challenged patients, some of whom were prone to fits of violence and hysteria. They have few resources and little support in this isolated village; most Russians stigmatize the mentally and physically ill. What little money comes in is mostly from selling crafts made by the residents at European craft fairs and specialty shops. Myriam works tirelessly; her respite trips to Irkutsk are weeks apart and then only for a day or two.

For the first month Myriam was essentially a deaf-mute. She could not express her desires or understand what people around her wanted. Slowly, slowly the words came. She wrote them down, made lists and practiced over and over with the residents. Soon she had phrases, then sentences. And as the months went by, she got to know the people around her along with the language. Now her Russian is at a level where she finds it easier to speak to most Mongolians in Russian rather than in the English she's learned in grade school.

Myriam finds satisfying what to most would be unbearable. She's in Mongolia on a holiday, a holiday mandated by her continued to desire to work. Russia would only issue this tireless volunteer a six-month visa, so she had to head south and wait for the embassy to slowly process a couple of pieces of paper. The current estimate is two weeks.

So she came out here to the countryside, back to open spaces and wild horses. Wearing a bell bottom-shaped coat of reindeer fur given to her by a colleague in Russia, she mounts her steed without assistance – unlike the other three riders on this particular day.

With a single "CHU!" she takes off to the south. After a few paces the olive-colored scarf with tiny croqueted roses tied around her neck takes flight, forming a train of fabric that flows backward, as she charges ahead, toward adventure.

The Exile

KYAKHTA, Russia – On the road out of Russia, I passed only a single vehicle: an aging brown tank driving on a dirt road parallel to the main highway. As my rudimentary taxi got closer, two heads popped out. They wore the Russian army uniform, had shaven heads and couldn't have been older than 19. The tank operators had to stop because their mode of transport got completely ensconced in mud. The tank moved feebly forward and backward, but as my car drove into the distance it wasn't going much of anywhere.

That tank neatly represents what I will take away from two weeks in the Russian Federation. Russia is a powerful country, one that is becoming even more powerful with surging energy commodity prices and new mineral discoveries in remote areas. It is an important actor in global geopolitics, one that can still make waves in international affairs. But I'm not sure that the person driving this heavily armored tank is qualified for the job. Instead this lumbering giant might just be piloted by a scrawny, inexperienced teenager.

I didn't see Russia; I saw Russias. On the streets of Moscow I peered in restaurants where oligarchs and their progeny snarf down $100 mayonnaise-covered salads and saw one country. I saw that place again in the Sony store, where everything costs twice the price in the United States and there were two salespeople for every customer. To dodge the cold, I wandered through the GUM Department Store. Once a few mostly-empty Communist shops, the turn-of-the-century structure has been renovated and subdivided into dozens of fancy boutiques. This is the fanciest mall I have ever been to, anywhere on the planet, and inside the shoppers were privileged, mega-spenders with $2,000 clutches and matching designer boots.

Then there is the Other Russia, the one I saw mostly on transport. It was in van taxis, long-distance buses, on the subway and that epic train ride I came elbow-to-elbow with those not doing so well. The ones with cheap Chinese T-shirts and faded designs, carrying old backpacks back and forth from a block flat in a small suburb. They live lives without flash or glamor, eating out infrequently and . Dying early from poisonous liquor and poor working conditions. Subsiding on a pension that wouldn't be adequate in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Then there are the have-somes, the Sergeis and Vasilys that are doing O.K. Things are better than 1998, when the currency collapsed and the International Monetary Fund forced economy policy down Yestlin's throat like he was in charge of Sierra Leone. Their lot's improving, but life is still a slog.

These Russias should be in open conflict, with daily protests as the poor try to institute the Orange Revolution on a massive scale and those with a stake in the current system fight back with their superior resources. Instead, people from all walks of life accept Vladimir Putin as the driver of the country. He and his cronies get to decide where to point the tank, at defiant ex-Soviet Republics and democratic elements in the West.

I personally believe that the people with grapes should take them up with the driver. Make him pass a more difficult test before renewing his license. Try someone else at the wheel for a while.

But I'm no longer in the car, I just came for a test spin. I couldn't buy Russian. For all the friendly people I met here, meals I shared and wonderful literature and art I exposed to, I could never live here. The Russian deposition is too solemn for my extroverted personality. The skies are too gray and too cold someone who loves the beach. The quality of life is shit. It's a police state, somewhere where I had to worry about being written up for small infractions by an underpaid man in uniform. Most services are corrupt, so if I got in real trouble I wouldn't know where to go.

Russia is lurching in three directions. It may explode or prosper; I'm not sure. After spending some time here, it's no longer a black spot on the map. I'll be closely monitoring how things develop here – from a safe distance.

Previously: "Do Svidaniya"

Two Plates of Dumplings

ULAN-UDE, Russia — At a dinner party, when a new acquaintance discovers I live in China, they usually smile and rack their brain for the easiest line of inquiry. Inevitably, "How is the food there?" comes out. Then, to show that they've been to college and know a bit about the world, this caveat is tagged on: "Of course, the food is nothing like the Chinese food we have here..."

I stumble to answer this question, regularly not getting much more out than, "it's good," and mumbling something about there being plenty of culinary variety inside China. Sometimes this turns into a total meander, as I start listing off the tell-tale flavors of Cantonese, Sichuan, Fuijian and Heilongjiang schools of cooking. Then my inquirer's eyes begin to glaze over and their feet start shuffling toward the hors d'œuvres table.

The problem is party-goers believe they're asking a simple question, when instead they're stumbling into the complicated field of Chinese food around the world. There are many, many restaurants that serve a over-salted, watered-down version of Chinese food. But at the same time, the constant flow of immigrants from the Old World to the new ensures that more authentic tastes usually aren't hard to find, no matter how far from the Middle Kingdom.

Here in Ulan-Ude both flavors are easily available, and in the spirit of investigation and a rapidly diminishing tolerance for Russian food, I checked them both out.

My visit to the Siberian-Tibetan Temple awakened my hunger for Chinese cuisine, so after getting back into town I went looking for a Chinese restaurant. I didn't need to look far, as I saw Chinese characters on the building just beside the Hotel Udon. I went inside, down three stairs to what I expected to be a dining room. Instead I found a low-grade dance floor, complete with spinning yellow, magenta and blue lights and a tiny Mirrorball. The couple tables remaining were pushed to the side of the room, and were empty. Bad disco music blared from a very loud sound system. A busty woman in a tank-top and too much eyeliner motioned me toward the dance floor. Instead I went for the exit.

I grabbed chips, dried apples and a Coke from a small grocery store and went back to the hotel for a cold dinner. As I passed through the lobby, I saw a sign posted next to the desk. It was in Chinese, and said there was a restaurant on the hotel's top floor. I didn't even bother to drop off my fake dinner before going up there.

The restaurant was heaving with people, all Chinese. The restaurant's dining area wasn't much bigger than my single room, but the owner managed to cram a half-dozen oblong tables inside. Christmas lights and prints ripped off Russian Orthodox calendars hung on the walls. Each table was full, except for a tiny one near the kitchen door, which had a half-eaten bowl of fried rice on top. A waitress, a middle-aged Chinese woman gestured for me to sit down. She then cleared the bowl, wiped the table down with a foul smelling rag and placed a menu entirely in Cyrillic in front of me.

"I'd like to see a Chinese menu," I said, in Chinese.

The waitress did a strange thing: nothing. Didn't blink that I spoke in her native tounge, rather than Russian or my native English. Instead she got a Chinese menu to replace the Russian one.

I ate a very standard Chinese meal: kung pao chicken, fried rice, and a bowl of dumplings in soup. It was all quite tasty, and when the chef came out in the middle of my soup, I complimented him on the food. Were there many people in town, I asked.

Yes, the chef said, quite a few traders. Then he thanked me for coming and asked if I could make way for the next diner.

It was a completely normal Chinese dining expierence. Replace the Russian kitsch on the walls with some posters of Guilin and Lucky Cats, and I could have been in Sichuan Province. There is really is authentic Chinese food outside of the country.

The next day I woke up late, still suffering from a strange form of jet lag caused by my irregular schedule on the Trans-Siberian and the nosy comings and goings of the businessmen and hotel guests on the hall. I started walking the rough sidewalk toward the train tracks and downtown Ulan-Ude, not really sure of a destination. At a corner where I needed to turn right, I saw something that I'd walked by on my previous trips: a mostly-underground shopping plex, a concrete building designed based on what must be stolen blueprints from the Montreal Olympics. It was all gray, irregular slabs, topped off by an ugly cone rising from the entrance. I went inside.

The mall had two largely open levels. Most stores were filled, with music shops and places hawking cheap Chinese clothing. On the bottom level I noticed a small restaurant jutting into the atrium. The restaurant's name was in Cyrillic, but on either side were large Chinese dragons.

It was a mall food court restaurant minus the court. Food was ordered and paid for at the counter, and then customer brought it to an open table. At the counter I was presented with a Cyrillic menu.

"Do you have a Chinese menu?" I asked the woman behind the counter.

This time she stared at me blankly. I studied her features: flat face, pale skin, thick eyebrows. This woman wasn't Chinese, she was a Buryat, and didn't know Chinese from Martian. Thankfully the dishes were being prepared in the front of the stall, and I pointed to a few dumplings and some rice.

My first bite was strange. The dumpling wasn't wrapped in rice, instead it was fried in a thick dough. Inside wasn't pork, but instead a thick beef stew. This was Chinese food for Russian people. All the customers appeared to be citizens of the Federation, a typical Siberian mixture of Buryats and the Rus.

The food wasn't bad, just a bit bland; it was actually hardy in a way that traditional Chinese food is not. The lesson I draw from these back-to-back meals is that the Chinese adapt the menu to suit the audience. Not a terribly profound moral to this tale I know, but it makes a quick and easy answer at a dinner party.

Sad, Sad Jazz

ULAN-UDE, Russia — I'm a bit homesick.

That can happen during dinner at a place called the Fast Food Café, a Russian establishment that specializes in bringing America to the cold, dark taiga.

I wound up here because I couldn't find any other tasty-looking options in Ulan-Ude's main area - other than a giant Lenin head.

At the Fast Food Café, food is ordered cafeteria-style. The diner takes a tray and pushes it down three parallel metal rods, stopping to take any food that looks edible. On offer are Russo-ifed versions of American favorites, including fried chicken, hamburgers and hot dogs. Healthy dollops of Russia's national condiment and spice, mayonnaise, is sprinkled on top of everything, including the fruit and Caesar Salad. I have to request a custom order, which is difficult when your Lonely Planet Russian Phrasebook is back on the Trans-Siberian, speeding toward Vladivostok.

"Nyet mayo," I say, hoping for cognate. The kitchen worker, about 18 with her hair in a messy ponytail, doesn't get it. I point to a hot dog with three huge kosher pickle slices and a thick squirt of mayo on the top. "Nyet, nyet, nyet," I say. This time she starts to move, although shoots me a look that seems to say that she can't understand why I'd desecrate an American treat by eating it without sauce.

I grab a bag of chips, pay for my food and then go to the bar, where there's Budweiser, Heineken and Baltika on tap. I choose the native brew (#7), and look for an open seat. I find a line of empty stools facing the street windows, and take one in the middle.

The café is obviously a popular weekend hangout for the city's teenagers. And why wouldn't it be? The food is reasonably priced, and minus the mayonaise, pretty tasty, there's bunches of Ikea-knockoff tables in various sizes for small, medium and large groups and friends, and an attached movie theater and video arcade. As I take my third bite of processed pork, the house band starts to play. It's a jazz-quartet of balding middle-aged men in black T-shirts and leather coats.

They play the theme to "Titanic," then "The Bodyguard." The young patrons keep chatting away, but I stop doodling in my brown trip diary. The music choice is mawkish, but it's redeemed by the incredibly tight playing in the group. And here, in this artificially American environment, my mind turns to schmaltz. I'm 9,000 miles from home, in an incredibly foreign city. I haven't had a proper conversation in 10 days. The Internet Café blocked Skype, Gmail and AOL Instant Messenger, so I can't have even an electronic conversation with my friends and relatives. I'm cut-off, on assignment far away from my former life.

Eventually it's time for "Young Hannibal," the third sequel to "The Silence of the Lambs," in the attached movie theater. The film is slow, suspenseful and punctuated by random acts of violence. The atrocities on screen are horrific, . Lecter's enabler is Gong Li, the ravishing Shanghainese actress who made several key Zhang Yimou movies, including "Raise the Red Lantern," "Ju Dou," and "The Curse of the Golden Flower." A key section of the narrative takes place in Kaunaus, Lithuania, a town I passed through just a couple weeks ago. The film is dubbed into Russian, and with no recognizable dialog I stay stuck on the remembrance of things past.

After the film I grab another drink from the Fast Food Café bar. I scribble a few postcards, feigning being excited by my adventures when tonight I'm worn down. The band is between sets and a DJ is spinning songs popular during high school. Aalyiah's "Try Again." Pink's "Lady Marmalade" cover. Eminem's "My Name Is."

In China half the bar would come up to the strange redhead and practice their English. Russia is not China, here they leave the tall man writing in a worn, stained brown notebook alone, and don't ask if he needs help getting home after three beers and an equal number of hot dogs.

It's a cold, uphill two kilometers through half-lit streets back to the Hotel Udon. I don't want to risk riding a bootleg taxi at night in this foreign city, so I pull up the fur lined hood of my down parka and start the trudge. As I walk the jazz music echoes through my head, and eventually the cold is replaced by melancholy for things left behind on the road.

Model Minority

ULAN-UDE, Russia — Pity the indigenous Siberian.

Ruled by a government five time zones distant, the native population has had its religion muzzled, culture destroyed and witnessed mass migration of hundreds of thousands of Europeans.

It's hardly unique to the people in Siberia. Native Americans, Outback Aboriginals, and the Incas didn't have so easy, either. But here in the capital of Buryata, one of Siberia's largest ethnic minorities, the population is a taking an interesting turn from the type indigenous tale of woe and mistreatment. I don't want to say this to loudly, but the natives here appear to be doing just fine.

I saw my first Buryat on the Moscow Metro, a young woman with long, skinny legs and a slender frame. Her face was a revelation – a completely new type of visage. She had a long, very flat forehead, a broad nose and very small eyelids. She looked almost Korean, but her skin tone was much lighter, just a shade darker than a pale Russians. At first it seemed to be an impossible look, and I thought that this person must be an Kazakh Albino or just exceptionally light-skinned. But every day I would pass a couple people with the same features, and I realized there wasn't anything unusual about her look, just that there are very few Buryats found outside of Russia.

In Moscow that distinctive face can be dangerous. Right-wing, nationalist street gangs prowl the night, taunting, beating, and sometimes permanently disabling Asian faces in the city. The primary target is illegal migrants from Central Asia, Uzebks and Tajiks who come to Moscow to escape dire living conditions at home – conditions exacerbated by Russia's stranglehold on these countries' economies. There's a jingoistic undercurrent to this violence, and anyone who doesn't look Russian is a possible target.

A Moscow Times story describes what happened to a young Buryat, Yury, coming home to apartment one evening:

"About six teenagers, smaller guys, jumped me on the metro. I managed to throw them off me and it wasn't that serious at first," he recollected during an interview in his dorm room. "Then one of them yelled 'What are you waiting for?' and another stabbed me as they ran out of the car," he said, displaying a three-inch scar near his left kidney. As Yury, who declined to give his last name for this story, staggered around the metro station looking for help and bleeding profusely, the police stopped him for a document check. They helped themselves to all his cash and then decided to call the paramedics.

There are only 5,000 Buryats in a Moscow over 10 million. Here things are different. Buryats make up more than a third of the population, with more than a quarter-million in the Republic. That proportion seems low in the capital, Ulan-Ude, where most people have the distinctive face.

I spent most of the day passing those faces, walking the streets of the city. Ulan-Ude is in the middle of a cold snap, which in the middle of Siberia means it's really, really cold. Temperatures were more than a dozen degrees below zero during the day, and quickly plunge to -40 once the sun is down. There is no humidity in the dry, crisp air, so everyone must cover up to avoid the cold. This makes Buryat spotting quite difficult, as there is little difference in the way the two groups dress outside. Everyone wears a long fur coat, men in dark brown or black, women often in a cream. On the head women wear more fur, usually a peaked hat. Men sport something resembling a thick wool beret, which seems to keep the head warm but I'm not sure offers the ears any protection. Shoes and pants are muted colors, and draw the eye up to the dead animal warming the person above.

Fancy wool coats are a mark of luxury in America, and while they are less expensive and more of an essential here, hopelessly broke people don't own them. And the coats look rather new and well put together.

At the post office, mailing some postcards that say "Moscow" and "Warsaw," I wait in line behind several, uncovered women. The one in front of me is especially attractive, hair recently curved and her pale face covered with a layer of cover up. She wears a fire-engine red shade of lipsticks, and carries a fashionable black handbag. She appears to be off to a party after dropping some bills in the mail.

My winter stroll left me hungry, so I stopped into several restaurants looking for food. I found the offerings too upscale for my taste, including a sushi restaurant in a hotel lobby; a Russian restaurant, located underground and down a steep, winding staircase; and a tapa bar that also served sushi. At each place a dinner would be over $20, but the restaurants were all mostly full, primarily with Buryat customers. These middle-class patrons are served by an almost exclusively Russian wait staff.

Buryats run the convenience stores, the hair salons and the travel agencies. On the pedestrian shopping street, Buryats mingle with rusting Socialist statues celebrating the Double Helix and scientific progress, carrying bags of new clothes from the post-holiday sales. I go to a music store to find cheap, bootleg Siberian music and instead find fancy cell phones and iPod Nanos at nearly double their American price. There is a line at the register.

A consistent theme of Russia journalism in the Western Media is the presence of "Two Russias," Moscow and the poor countryside. Here in Siberia the capital's wealth appears to be spreading, impacting people in provincial cities and historically-repressed minorities. It's amazing and completely unexpected. I wish I had the services of a Russian guide, and could look up at academic at the local Buddhist university. I want to know why things seem O.K. here, and if this model could help the fractious relations in the multi-ethnic republic to the south.

I'm not naive enough to believe things are fine here; life for the Buryats is not easy. The countryside is still very poor, the birthrate is not high, corruption is widespread, costs are increasing for everyday items with the surplus of foreign currency. But these are problems of the entire Russia, not just the minority populations. In this world, that's a real sign of progress.

English Speaking Friends

ULAANBAATAR, Mongolia - Here in Mongolia, everyone knows someone who speaks English.

 

I first observed this phenomenon in the Russian border town of Kyakrt, where faithful blog readers will remember I nearly wound up broke and trapped inside Russia. Arriving in Kyakrt by minibus, I waved goodbye to three friendly passengers: a student, his girlfriend, and The Man with Pink Bubble Gum. After helping me lower my giant rolling suitcase to ground level, The Man with Pink Bubble Gum gestured toward my notebook. He took my pen and wrote a name and phone number on a blank page.

 

"Mongolia. Anglski. Mongolia," he said.

 

I understood. In Mongolia this person spoke English.

 

Hearing this the student took the notebook and wrote another name and phone number inside.

 

"Tour guide. Ulan Bator. Speak very good English."

 

Then they left. Leaving me stranded 150 miles from the nearest city with insufficent funds to cross the border. English speaking people in Mongolia are all well and good, but right then an English speaker in Russia would have been better.

 

This morning my mission was slightly more mudane. Jin and Myriam, two Filipino girls teaching English in Hohot, China and I wanted to head to the Black Market, a venue on the outskirts of Ulanbataar famous for Mongolian handicrafts, crappy haircuts and counterfeit everything.

 

We walked 15 minutes from the UB Guesthouse to the Chinese Market. The sky was clear and the air typically frigid. My exposed nose and cheeks felt the now-familiar numbing sensation of walking outdoors.

 

The Chinese Market is a series of four crumbling concrete pillars in the middle of a square. They appeared to be the remains of a highway overpass, but no four lane highway has ever crossed Mongolia. In the summer Chinese merchants sell imported bok choi and pork. Now the place serves as a gathering place for minibuses, the cheapest form of public transport in the city.

 

Myriam knew the Mongolian name for Black Market, and spoke Russian, the country's most popular second language. She approached the first minibus and said our destination. The driver shook his head and pointed toward the end of the line. She tried the second to the same effect. She kept moving toward the

 

"I don't understand," she said, in her German-accented English. "Last week they were all going to the Black Market."

 

We decided to hail a cab.

 

Two minutes later a late-model mint Nissan with no markings pulled over. Taxis aren't regulated in Mongolia, so anyone with a set of wheels and time to kill can be a taxi driver. We agreed on a price of 1,800T a person to the market - about $1.50, and started inching our way through the heavy Ulanbataar traffic.

 

The driver immediately took out a cell phone and starting chatting. Talking and driving are pretty common in this part of the world - Eliot Spitzer isn't in charge - and didn't really pay attention until the driver passed the phone to Myriam.

 

I could hear a man's voice talking loudly in choppy English on the other end of the line. Myriam had to ask her questions repeatedly, but eventually she was able to hang up the phone.

 

"The Black Market is closed for Tsagan Zar," she said, "We need to get out of the taxi."

 

Thank goodness for English-speaking friends.

Standing Up to a Bear

VILNIUS, Lithuania - Sunday is not usually a day for serious journalism in Lithuania.

This week the main paper, Lietuvos Rytas, was filled with stories about an upcoming local election (a pop star known as Pyscho and a forest hermit nicknamed Tarzan are running for seats), and the introduction of the Euro in Slovakia. But even flipping through the Lithuanian-language paper without a translation, one picture stands out. Buried deep inside is a picture of Russian President Vladmir Putin dressed in a suit but holding a handgun, with two masked men standing behind him, dressed like Chechnyan rebels.

The headline referred to Putin's Power Pyramid, a pyramid apparently controlled by thugs. The text of the article expanded on the provocative photograph, detailing spy agency plots and connecting him to the still-unsolved death of a Putin-critic in London several years ago.

Translating the article for me was Jonas, a 22-year-old student of political science at Vilnius University, the best school in the country. As he read, it became clear how serious an issue he thought this to be.

I'm not too strong on Lithuanian history. I vaguely remember some kind of Polish-Lithuania state lurking to the west of Prussia on maps during a Western European history course. I decided to have Jonas fill me in. Was Lithuania independent between the Two World Wars?

Jonas' answer started 998 years ago, at the first mention of Lithuania in a book. In the 13th century Vilnius was founded by the man who became its first and only king after a dream during a hunting trip. After his death the area became a duchy, and at one point ruled from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea. (Maps of this large Lithuanian Empire hang inside several Vilnius bars.) The duchy joined with next-door neighbor Poland through marriage, but by the 18th century the combined state was threatened by Russia, Prussia and Austria. In 1795 the Third Partion of Poland wiped Lithuania off the map. Independence came in 1918, but the Russians, then the Germans, then the Russians again occupied the country for 80 years.

What happened in 1990 was not independence, Jonas said, but a reaffirmation of what happened nearly a century earlier.

Here, Russia isn't a new democracy, but a former imperial power ready to snatch power back in the country.

Jonas talked about a trip this summer, when he travelled to Iceland for a conference on political studies in small European states. He thought there would be hysterical talk of the Russian bear, threatening to overtake Europe. Instead he was horrified to find Russia to be a non-issue among the delegates, who came from Nordic, Baltic and even former Warsaw Pact nations.

'This is crazy. They are a real threat.'

He talked about how Russia cut off the gas lines six months ago to Lithuania. The official explanation was 'technical problems' but Jonas and other international observers believe it is punishment for the country's pro-European Union policies.

How is a nation of less than four million supposed to oppose the world's largest country? Consider this. Lithuanian guerrilla fighters held out for nine years against the Soviets after World War II, the longest in Eastern Europe. In a war of words, I'd give them a long time.

A Russian Master

ALBANY, N.Y. - I'll cop to putting some unusual things on the blog this week. Poems, old articles and weird pictures. That's just the way it's going to be sometimes on here.

This morning I had tea with a Russian woman, Irina. Irina is in her middle 40s and came to our meeting in a full-length formal coat and black slacks. Her wavy hair was recently highlighted.

I wore a mint colored button down shirt with a yellow and blue band near the shoulders that said "RedEx: Redhot Express" across the front. It cost $5 at an export shop in Hong Kong.

We met at Border's Books and Music in the Albany suburb of Colonie. My father was there, and so was Irina's daughter, Tonya. Tonya, 15, is a ranked chess player, future AP student and anime fan. By coming to Albany today, she missed anime festival in New Hampshire. She made an elaborate costume for Halloween this year, a hooded warrior that took more than 20 hours of sewing between Irina and Tonya, and plans to wear it at future anime gatherings. I told her about my recent trip to an anime festival, where I saw a number of people walking the hotel event room floor with eight-foot keys from the game Kingdom Hearts.

"That's a very popular game," Tonya said. Apparently anime tastes in the Northeast aren't terribly different than in the Heartland.

Tonya and Irina live in Montpelier, the tiny capital of Vermont. (Tonya said it only has 8,000 people, Wikipedia says 8,035, which is pretty damn close.) They're originally from Moscow. I'm not sure why they came over here: I was too busy talking about anime to ask.

Irina and I met because I've recently begun planning a trip to Russia. I tentatively thinking about flying to Moscow from New York in early February, and making my way to language school in Beijing by rail. Paul Theroux, the chronicler of train journeys, has convinced me to take this long trip. Irina's never been on the long train, but she had some advice on the Moscow leg of the trip.



"The plane food was O.K.," she said. The best part about Aeroflot - the Russian airline - was the free rubber duck provided in coach.

Moscow has terrible traffic. It always moves, just at a slow pace. Obviously Irina does not travel with the blue light buying sect in the city.

I shouldn't travel places at night, it's not good. What will happene, I'm not sure, but Irina didn't get into I didn't want to ask.

There's a cool chocolate factory near the riverside monument to Peter the Great. Sounds yummy.



And best of all, Irina agreed to hook me up with an American friend living in Moscow to be a companion, guide, friend and possible host while in the city. For the price of a cup of Pomegranate Green Icea Tea, I learned quite a bit.