The Call of My Home (by Lika)

This is the story of my HOME TOWN! 

We started our travels by leaving Perm by plane and flying to Moscow.  In Moscow we got tickets for the "fast" train that took us 4 hours north to Vyshny Volochyok which is very close to the town I was born in.

On the fast train we had a snack, played games, read books and slept.

When we arrived in Vyshny Volochyok I was surprised by the beautiful train station with all the weird stairs that connected the two sides of the track.  Next, we walked to the city and the hotel.

As you can see this is not the most interesting room.  The hotel room itself is very stuffy.  The wall paper was covered with yellow, gunky stuff that showed it hadn't been cleaned since Peter the Great stayed here in 1703. When Mom looked on the internet to find me a really nice hotel room she was excited to find the perfect room at the Birch Hotel.  As it turned out we didn't get the one in the picture and ended up with this one that felt like staying inside a tree. But the good news is we left the day after for a much nicer hotel!

This is one of my favorite restaurants where we celebrated our arrival.  First of all, I would like to comment that the ladies were very nice. Second of all they have yummy food like blini, pizza, ice cream and hot chocolate.  It was so good we came back for breakfast.  We didn't know where else to go.

This is an Orthodox church.  Inside it's very nice and tidy, except that I feel a little uncomfortable going to that church.  

On our second day we took the bus to glass factory in Krasnomaysky, which is the town that I may have lived in.  It is a village of 5,000 people. The factory was actually closed, but it was a nice drive.

This is the church across from the factory where we shivered and tried to puff ourselves out to keep us warm.

This is a typical house in the village that has 8 apartments in it. 

This is where I might have actually lived because I remember the white and red store.  How Exciting!!!!

Back in Vyshny Volochyok we were looking for more sites to see.

Beautiful view isn't it? Vyshny Volochyok is a canal town that connected St. Petersburg to Moscow with the canal system.  This was one of the few locations that boats would need to portage.

It's a very cold rainy day.

Here is the theater on the town square.

This is the memorial of artists for the region.

At the museum we saw animals, clothes and the history of Vyshny Volochyok.

It is very comforting to find one of these signs at your hotel room.  Needless to say there were not any of these at our first hotel room.

We celebrated by having a nice dinner in a very bright room and by buying me a silver ring to remember my city.

I hope you enjoyed this presentation.  Lika

Perm 36 Prison Work Camp (Gulag)

Well, since I am in Russia I think I should tell you what is going on in our daytime here.

On November 3rd 2012 we, my dad, mom, Ilya and I, drove to Perm 36, a prison work camp 120 km form Perm, opened in 1946 by General Stalin.  I can't believe how many people he sent to jail by just saying, "I disagree with your beliefs."  This place is not highly popular, but it's worth the trip!  

Here the walls surround you from every corner so; you don't have a chance of escape, and if you somehow did escape you wouldn't survive very long in the wilderness because of no food in the entire area, but your camp.  Here if you want to live you have to work, like logging, mining by hand and other things like hard labor.  Here they worked 14 hours a day with no rest. In the summer it was OK, but step into history and you will freeze your toes in the winter.  The high security jail consists of 6 rooms all very cold, wet, stinky and dark.  One of the rooms is a work place so if you went to jail you can't just sit your rear down and sleep.  You had to work hard in there too!  The prison staff would sit in one of the rooms, to make sure nobody is getting hit, running away or anything else like that.  

The prison guards would stand outside in the cold or hot weather.  No matter what they had to watch too. 

So what kinds of people would go to jail?  Well, some of them were writers, anybody who said bad things about politicians, average people that said anything about the government and sometimes even war heroes.

Most of the people spent there nights in one big sleeping room which consists of 64 bunks altogether.  All together that will fit 128 people in one room. WOW!

There was also a hospital, a banya which is a place to shower, a toilet building, a water tower and a guard shack. The toilets were very gross, very simple, but very stinky and not sanitary.  The water tower was a huge log building with a black-filmy water.  The hospital was very ordinary.  Also, the people had suits to wear, but easily wore holes in them.

The people who lived there got to write a letter once a month to their loved ones.  Can you believe that?  That means you can't hear from your loved ones for a month and you wouldn't know what is going on. There was a double fence around the grounds just in case someone tried to escape.

In conclusion, it was fun, but sad that so many people would die because of nothing.  This place closed in 1987; one the last works camps to still be used.  It is now a museum and that is how we were able to visit it.

by Angelika Jones

Things that are Expensive vs Not Expensive

Not expensive:

Milk: $1 per liter
Red & Green Peppers: About $.20 ea. (I remember paying $3.50 ea in Alaska in 1997)
Pack of Cigarettes: $1.00 to $1.75
Water: 6 liters for $.90 (US 1/2 liter for $1.25)
Vodka: 1 bottle for $3.00

Expensive:

All vehicles: New Opel sedan $35,000; Used BMW $90,000; Volkswagen Toureg $65,000 (in the US $43,000)
Rent: $800/month for 3 bedroom apartment in a high rise (Average income is $710 per month - More than one person per house has a full time job)
Interest Rate: Typical is 18%, bu I have seen it as low as 14% for a house loan.
Meat: $25 for 1 kg roast (2.2 lbs)
Typical bottle of wine starts at $10/bottle.  Decent stuff is a minimum of $15 to $25.

Keep in mind a typical Russian can expect to make 15,000 rubles per month ($500).  That is wy they must have more than one job, more than one person working per household and several generations living together.  These are upper middle class scenarios.

American Products

Generally speaking we are not missing anything we can't live without, but here are a couple examples of items we miss and yet have found a way to acquire, possess, beg, borrow or... You get the idea.

1. The number one item I missed WAS.... Peanut Butter!  That's right.  There is an entire society that has survived without peanut butter. Fortunately, there is a CostCo like store that imports some of these important staples of international concern.  We made a run last Friday.  (Also, you might note my new wool sweater that I only paid $30 for). One way we've found to improve a peanut butter and jelly sandwich is to use huckleberry jelly.  Now we have the best of both worlds.

2. Crest Toothpaste.  I didn't even know I was partial to Crest until I got here and couldn't get it.  We hope to have some delivered with friends that are visiting in December.

3. Car Rental.  I don't know if this is specifically American, but it is a standard thing to do in the US and we have never crossed this bridge when travelling overseas.  The driving rules are slightly different, but I officially survived, as well as all passengers and pedestrians, on our recent excursion.  It costs about $60 a day.  I found this car from a business trying to cater to business men from Europe.  I was his first American and I think it made his day.

Ilya and I show off our weekend transportation to the Gulag

This list can and will be extended in the future.  I thought these were some good examples to start off with.