Odessa at Night

The weather here in Odessa has been not so good for sight seeing during the day - very gray and cloudy. As soon as the sun comes out I promise more photos because the city center is really beautiful. The photos here are of the City Hall and of the old coobblestone Deribasovskaya str., which is closed to traffic.

Odessa is much more developed than Kishinev. There are supermarkets with all sorts of imported products to choose from (even fruits and vegetables!) and huge malls. There's a Lacoste store, a Benetton, and a Columbia store. The city is bigger than I thought it would be, the center barely walkable, but the city itself extending in all directions. I'm living in a very nice apartment with some relatives of close friends of the family (the friends from New York) with running hot water, a decent toilet, a nice bath, and a laundry machine. The apartment, on the inside, could easily be in Manhattan, though from the outside, it still looks sort of like Kishinev. Apparently, apartments in this area are really sought after and expensive, but I think that's mostly because they are very near the sea and lots of the seaside beach resorts and clubs are nearby. Not so fancy in the winter, but there's a university (Polytechnic University of Odessa) around the corner and lots of late night and 24 hour stores. I feel like I'm living in a city, maybe an outer borough.

Last night, my host sister Genya, who'se 16 years old but thinks she's abount 25, showed me around the city center. We saw the government buildings, the Potemkin staircase (didn't know this, but it's named so only due to the famous Eisentein movie) with the statue of Rochelieu at the very top, the Opera House (really beautiful, photos in daytime to come), and the seaport on the black sea. The seaport wasn't as impressive as I expected it to be, mostly because it has a huge gaudy hotel (Hotel Odessa, apparently the nicest and most expensive here) and the water's dirty and frozen. I can see how nice it would be in the summer, though. People in Odessa are as talkative as they are known to be, and as loud. Genya is hilarious. Every other word out of her mouth is "Gospody!" (which roughly translates to "Oh God, how horribly difficult my life is!") and she likes to use it particularly when she bends down to pick something up or arrives from a day at school. Apparently, school for her is very stressful because she is the President of her tiny Lycee (60 people in 4 grades) and there's lots of gossip and jealous people who start things with her. She describes herself as the leader of the pack; she's popular, and everyone (except for those few bitches, of course) likes her. Her first kiss with her present professional soccer-playing boyfriend was at the seaport, and she showed me the exact spot, but don't tell her dad that.

As far as work is concerned I met a whole bunch of people yesterday who gave me lots of phone numbers and addresses of interesting people to interview. It's going to be a little tougher to get involved at the Hesed here because there's no central Jewish campus as in Kishinev (apparently they are building one here soon) so the programs are spread out throughout the city. However, this is also a good thing, since I will not be pulled into some of the time-wasting business I was pulled into at the Hesed in Kishinev. I will be more on my own here, but I will have less people running around me inviting me to things that are not particularly useful. This is good since I feel like I could have gotten more done in Kishinev if I were a bit more independent and less reliant on other people. I have a list of 10 interviewees and I'm calling some today to get started. A bunch of them are survivers and fighters from the Blockade of Leningrad. I'm considering a trip to Balta (where my grandfather was born), but think it may be a waste of time since it's far away and there's not much to see there.

Last Kishinev Meal

I took my host parents out to a sweet Romanian restaurant where I ordered the same thing I always order at Romanian restaurants - Mamaliga, that amazing cornmeal mush (that is how it is translated into English!). Unfortunately, I had to go without the usual sour cream and feta cheese accompaniment because, as you all know, the stomach was not feeling so good in Kishinev (it is better here in Odessa). My host parents went all out ordering porkchops, which I think were probably the most expensive thing on the menu, and also first and second courses (all very meaty). Oh well, they deserved it.

To Odessa via Transdniestria

UPDATE:
We didn't go through Transdniestria. The driver told me it would mean lots of problems and bribes and waiting at borders. I was a bit disappointed, mainly because I had promised some of you souvenirs and stories, but then realized this was probably for the best when I saw how annoying and corrupt even the Ukrainian border crossings were. We waited for about an hour as I watched people pay the officers to get by quicker. And then the dirver still had to pay about the equivalent of 6$ for "insurance."


After breakfast this morning with the businessman Moldovan cousin, Ilan, I'm getting a ride from Ilan's driver to Odessa. Originally, the plan was to take an old train over to Odessa, and this would have required me to sit on an uncomfortable wooden bench for 5 hours with no bathroom and probably lots of nasty smelling armpits in my face. A private ride and driver (for free!) is far better, and not only because it will be infinitely more comfortable, but because I will get to see Transdniestria, a country with its own currency, president, and police, which no one else in the world recognizes. Apparently the most direct route to Odessa from Kishinev goes through both Bendery and Tiraspol, the capital of the region. For some history and geography check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transdniestria. Transdniestria would rather be part of Russia than part of Moldova, and most of all it wants a return to the Soviet Union (apparently its the only region that hasn't changed much since the fall, preserving its Lenin monument, its Russian language, and it's street names).

Nusim and Bluma Vaysman's (my great-grandparents') Graves

My grandfather's parents' graves at the Jewish Cemetary in Kishinev. With the help of someone from the cemetary fund, I finally found them.

Clara Kogan, 100

This is the 100-year-old woman I've been visiting and can't really get enough of. No way she looks 100!

Failed Jewish Cemetary Visit (#1)

I came to Kishinev with no intention of finding my roots. I'm not searching for long-lost relatives or people that personally knew my grandfather. It's just too hard, and I don't really see any purpose in it. It would be a frustrating and unrewarding experience since Vaysman (or Weissman) is one of the most common Eastern European Jewish names. (Still, for some reason everyone here likes to introduce me as "Robin, who's come to Kishinev to search for her roots.")There was only one thing I was intent on doing, however, that is directly connected to my roots. I wanted to visit my great grandparents' graves at the Jewish cemetary in Kishinev, and this afternoon I went out to the edge of the city in search. I had already looked in a cemetary directory in the library and found the location of the graves on a map, and I figured it couldn't be all that hard once I got there. After all, I thought, there would of course be someone there to help, a tourist center or something. I wasn't the first person who had come back to Kishinev "in search of her roots" without a personal tour guide was I?

Well, it turned out there wasn't anyone there to help, and I don't know why I expected there to be. Sometimes my head is still in America. There were two groundskeepers who reaked of vodka who were very willing to show me the same book I had looked up in the library, but who were unwilling to take any further steps to help me find the graves. There was a woman who did such things, they explained, but she is the head administrator for all the cemetaries in Kishinev and she's not always around (but has no schedule or mobile phone at which I can reach her). I wandered in the calf-deep snow through the 300-year-old cemetary, which was totally empty except for two people visiting one grave. Though the map in the library book was carefully marked off into sectors and parts and each grave labelled with a number, there was no such careful designation on the actual gravestones or paths. The graves were practically piled up on top of each other, and the snow and mud made it particularly difficult to see more than just the graves directly in front of me. I felt alone and helpless and came back to the goundskeepers a few times asking for help, each time with the intention of offering them a few lei, which I really should've done but never did.

Still, there were two interesting graves I came upon. One of them was another Kachka, written in cyrrilic, someone I think who was probably unrelated to me, but I photographed it anyway. Another was this grave that was obviously for someone with a lot of fans. It was tough to make out the name on it because there were colorful fake flowers and wreaths and all sorts of decorations thrown all around it. Then I saw it was Ichael Schraibman's grave (PHOTO above), the beloved Yiddish writer who died in September who I couldn't wait to meet (and planned on maybe living with in Kishinev). His grave was right out in front on the main path, and stuck out like a monument. People here must have really loved him.

More good news is that it's only Monday and I have almost a week left to find someone from the community to take me to the cemetary. I do, after all, know most of the important people in the Jewish community here by now. And they like me! Also, my buddy Adam from Peace Corp (the one located in Kishinev) gave me a bunch of Pepto Bismol for my bloated stomach.

Visiting a Moldovan Village

The last few days have been extreme and ridiculous. Thursday I met a 100 year old woman to interview for my project. She looked about 80 and was totally sane. (Photos coming soon). Unfortunately her 70 year old neighbor who comes in to help her once in a while, since she doesn't really have any family left, came in and took over our conversation and insisited on talking at me and telling me her autobiography for the next 2 hours while she sat there quiet, and frustrated, unable to hear much of what he was saying through her hearing aid. Only after I promised her that I'd come back next week and have her correct everything I wrote down did she calm down about it.

After the interview I prepared to visit a Moldovan village. From Kishinev I was invited by a Peace Corp volunteer I met last week to visit him in his village of service, called Zguritjza (about 3 hours north outside of Kishinev, the village is situation at almost the very northeast corner of the country). I thought I had seen farms in Ireland and America, but this was a whole other world. Here people transport themselves and their agriculture produce (wheat, fruits, vegetables, meat, and milk) on horse drawn sleds, which work remarkably well (unlike cars) on the un-cleaned snowy and muddy streets. In the winter, since there's nothing to do on the farm, the men and teens drink all day. Some go to the vocational boarding school I visited, whose principal the volunteer is trying to nab on blatant corruption.

The volunteer is living in a total shithole apartment. No heat except for a coal stove which he has to spend hours warming up and filling with wood, then coal. No running water or plumbing - he shits in a bag when it's too cold to visit the outhouse and throws the waste in the wood stove . Apparently he lived with a host mom for a short time, but couldn't stand her because she was insane. If he prefers his present living situation, she must have really been insane. Luckily, I spent both nights and had my meals at his counterpart's house, probably the richest house and most functional family in the village, still a far cry from rural life in America. This house had a nice bathtub, plumbing, hot water, a washer machine, a refridgerator...all the modern amenities. The family consisted of the mother and father, their daughter and the daughter's husband, and a 3 year-old-grandaughter, all of them living under one roof with one bathroom which could be reached only by walking through one of the bedrooms. Still, they seemed super happy and functional, and all insisted they couldn't live any other way, without each other. The mother explained to me that some of the villagers don't appreciate the way that the family lives. They think it's too extravagent to OWN all of these things; according to her, most of them want Communism back. And it's no surprise considering how much more functional the agricultural industry and villages in general were. People apparently lived really well on these communal farms during Soviet times, and when the government fell apart no one knew what to do with themselves. They simply weren't used to making decisions or figuring out what to do and when, and they had no idea how to take care of a farm themselves. They all threw their hands up in the air almost instantly and gave up - that is all except for a few of these business-types who saw the opportunities they now had.

The mother is a serious business-woman and brings in probably almost all the money for the household (the father works at the flour mill). She's running around (or being driven around by her personal chauffer) to surrounding towns and cities taking care of her multiple businesses and taking care of her NGO. She also runs a wool factory on the side. Her son follows her around not doing much. It's funny that although the mother so clearly monetarily takes care of the family, her husband controls all of the monetary resources; before she leaves for work in the morning (no vacations or weekends) he gets out of bed and gives her money for the day, she says thank you and either goes back to bed or to the mill. The daughter (mother of the grand-daughter) is the house wife. She's expected to have dinner and breakfast ready for everyone and to serve the men when they ask for a fork or for some tea, or a sandwich. She never sits down with everyone to eat. It's like she's constantly at the job - and her job is to serve the family, particularly her father and her husband.

I spent Friday followoing around the volunteer while he tried to meet people for consultations and such for her NGO and for his side prjects. Each meeting ended up either being cancelled or cut short due to the incompetance of the people he was trying to meet and their horrible lack of any sense of time. I have no idea how people here get anything done. It must be so frustrating for these niave American volunteers who are used to functional organizations and some level of efficiency.

I was mildly interested in how the Moldovan family viewed the Jewish question, but didn't really want it to be the focus of my visit. Unfortunately, it came up from the very beginning since the volunteer told them ahead of time about my project and my family, and they were very interested and intent on mentioning every Jewish person they knew in the village before they all left. Apparently there's only one or two left now but it used to be a Jewish colony in the czarist times and there's a pretty cool old Jewish cemetary there that I visited (photos coming). This family seemed to have very good feelings towards Jews, but they didn't seem to really understand why my family would want to leave the Soviet Union and not come back so badly, or why they never learned Romanian. It also surprised me that they had never heard of Birobidzhan, the Jewish Autonomous Republic that was set up by the Soviets in eastern Siberia. Turns out my host grandfather in Kishinev was born in Birobidzhan - his parents were some of the idealistic activist settlers who tried to set up another Palestine there in the 30s.

More soon about my rich second cousin Moldovan businessman rotary club member who's only 18 years-old and took me out to a restaurant today. Definitely a contrast with the village experience. And hopefully photos coming Tuesday.

my hosts, and soccer in the snow

The Kishinev lions

Kishinev - Not Half Bad

It's not as bad as everyone said it would be. It's not as cold. It's not as dark. And it's not as dangerous. People smile more than in Israel and they're more friendly to me. It's cold, but nothing worse than Boston, and my decision to wear long underwear under my jeans has made me more comfortable outside than I was at Harvard.

Still, my host parents, who have decided to stay here even though they could easily have left for Israel long ago (the man explained to me that the community here needs him and that's why he's still here), live very very modestly. They very much conserve the use of their boiler, seemingly only turning it on for special occasions like my arrival and when I insist on taking a warm shower. Other times they just boil up some water on the stove and use it to take a sort of pot and tub shower. I'm not sure how they do it, but it was pretty impossible for me to wash my hair like that two nights ago. I'm trying to buy them as many products as I can which we all use (like bread and milk and toilet paper), but I'm going to leave them money when I leave too, since it's obvious that I am a significant burden on their resources. Apparently their pensions completely go to gas and electricity. If the old man didn't work (and if they weren't receiving help from the Hesed, funded by the JDC) they'd probably starve.

Most people here speak Romanian as their first language (though not the old people, and not so much the Jews), but everyone knows Russian and they understand my requests perfectly. I really like practicing my Russian and I haven't really had any problems communicating with people, except that my hosts really like to complete my sentences when I can't think of Russian vocabulary, which is a little frustrating. I'm having a little bit of a problem figuring out how to refer to people - with their patronic or with only their first name, and with the familiar vs. the polite form of "you". Still, no one yet has said anything that has made me think that I'm making the wrong linguistic decisions and I feel generally very good about my Russian skills. Less people here are laughing at my Russian than did in Israel. And people at bars seem not to have been lowering their quality of service below the already very low level when serving me.

The people at Kedem, which is the Jewish community center here which has the Hesed welfare center, the Hillel, and other services, have been extremely welcoming. I could never have imagined that everyone would be so willing to help, and so excited about me being there. I was lucky. The guy I'm living with is an important writer in the Yiddish community and an important musician and teacher at the conservatory here. He's very involved with the center, so this has been an in. On top of that connection, and the contacts I had established there from New York, it turns out that my mother's cousin in Israel (who I stayed with near Tel Aviv) still has a friend here and by chance it turns out that she works at the center. She was there when I showed up with my host and adding together what she knew about me from the cousin, she figured out who I was. Right away she grabbed me and welcomed me with a huge smile and hug, inviting me to one of the programs she runs for the elderly there called "Warm House" - basically a lunch gathering and conversation hour with ghetto survivors.

I've made some friends at the center already around my age - a Peace Corp volunteer and some other employees who basically write grants and do other things for the center. It's a very friendly place to be and I managed to stay there all day yesterday for 12 hours, being invited to all sorts of events as well as having to stand in front of large groups of employees (and clients too) and describe all of my wodnerfulness. I spent the first half of the day at the Day Care Center, which serves a rotating group of elderly people who visit once every two weeks. We painted plates with them, had a shabbat lunch, excercized in chairs etc. I think it's probably the highlight of a lot of their lives. A few of the guests were very obviously seriously poor, one of them taking all the extra food (from all of the plates) home in one tupperware container. As bad as everyone's situation probably is, it's not visible to me except in the situation of the old pensioners. My host mother's pension is the equivalent of 30$ a month. Most things here are much cheaper than they are in the states, but imported food products and toiletries are comparably priced to the US (gas is worse, I think). It surprised my host that I was willing to shell out the equivalent of 2.50$ for a nice new map of Chisinau instead of using the one they had with the old Soviet names probably made in 1975.

Monday I've scheduled my first interview. The employees of the center have hooked me up with some interesting people to interview who have connections to the places where my grandfather was born, was during the war, or are in other ways relevant to my project. They're all really old - over 80 - but apparently verbose. They're all clients of the Hesed and I'll be visiting them at their homes all over Chisinau. Tomorrow I'm taking a Jewish tour of Kishinev given by a Hesed volunteer and I plan on visiting the location where my parents grew up and where they went to school. I also am going to sit on some stone lions in one of the central parks for my mother - I haven't found them yet, but I will tomorrow mom.

Kishinev via Istanbul

Tomorrow morning at 6:45AM I depart Ben Gurion Airport in Israel for Istanbul. There I have 8 hours to go into the old city, look at the Hagia Sofia and the Blue Mosque, and then depart for Kishinev, Moldova at 6:10PM.

Israel has been a transition period for me. My relatives have been here to walk me through technicalities like transport, to hold my hand as if I were their 5-year-old daughter, and to protect me as best they could from danger by feeding me fatty Russian food and driving me everywhere. I've spoken to my parents almost every day on the phone. It hasn't been all that different from the US.

Now it's time to move on. I will probably feel more alone in Kishinev than I've ever felt. Whatever is awaiting me there is sure to surprise me, but I'm ready to be surprised, so maybe then I won't be too surprised? I'm getting ready today to stuff my money belt and distribute my valuables among my luggage and my clothes. Trying to put myself in a less laid back mindset, to prepare myself for a foreign place where I'm not sure who's out to get me. Not knowing what to expect is a bit scary, but I'm ready. Next post will be from the country with the lowest GDP in all of Europe, the first country to go back to Communism after the breakup of the Soviet Union, the country where my grandfather lived between WWII and 1979, where my parents grew up and where I was probably thought up -- Moldova.