Road Trip II

Well, I'm finally getting around to sharing the results of my fact-finding trip to Moscow over the New Year's break. I have to say that the Russian authorities cooperated fully despite the stakes involved in my investigation. I was provided with an excellent translator (Joseph Kellner) who also arranged my accommodations with a friendly local. And every restaurant seemed to have specially reduced prices just for my visit (at least according to my ruble exchange calculations). Lastly, everywhere I went the police were out in force to make sure no one tried to impede my fact collecting. There was one misunderstanding where an officer yelled at me as if I was just some random tourist, but I can forgive him since I was trying to blend in by wearing normal clothing. Although such hospitality is materially irrelevant to my mission in Russia, I would be naive if I didn't admit that such friendliness could influence the official report in some fashion or another.

But before I even got to Russia, my translator and I decided to take a completely unofficial pleasure trip around Germany for Christmas.  Please ignore the strange discontinuity in my report. I tried long and hard to find an excuse for these random vacation photos, but I'm sure the committee enjoys looking at random peoples' photos as much as the next person.

The first stop was Berlin. Joey had never been to Germany so it was my job to introduce him to the history of the country which we pretty quickly learned only consists of the Holocaust (more to come on that later). This is the Brandenburg Gate where Ronald Reagan--the ur-inspiration for my trip to Russia--spoke back in 1987. Who'd a thunk back then that we'd all someday be honoring a Hollywood actor as the architect of world peace and western prosperity in 2015. Not me!

One curious thing about modern Germany is that they are the only industrialized country to still produce and consume Capri Sun (or 'Capri-Sonne' in German) in large quantities. This is us at Mustafa's, a famous Kebab place in Berlin where I took Joey immediately after landing. I was mocked for buying the capri sun but after cooling off my palette after the spicy kebab with the sugary sweet orange-powder liquid beverage, I was the one who was laughing.

Germans can seem cold and rude when you first meet them but they open up pretty quickly.

And here we are at the famous Berlin Wall. I personally think the controversy surrounding the wall is a result of a big east-west cultural misunderstanding. In west German culture walls had become semiotic markers for the insecurity of totalitarian states reliant on violence for legitimacy and the accompanying repression and lack of basic freedoms like travel. In east German culture, however, walls generally represented large, well-ordered piles of bricks dividing you from where you really wanted to go. So it was all a big misunderstanding.

I think that in the course of the 10 days we spent traveling around Germany from December 19th to December 29th from Berlin to Leipzig, from Cologne to Munich, we probably visited 9 different Christmas Markets. Christmas Markets are a famous mid-winter German tradition where hundreds of stalls set up shop on every German city's central square selling traditional Christmas delicacies like Gluhwein (mulled wine) and Kartoffelpuffer (hash-brown type things) as well as ornaments, honey, sausages, and a whole bunch of other things. This picture doesn't do justice to all the time spent at Christmas markets and all the amazing things we consumed, but just take my word for it.

Wurst

And off to Cologne!

To See Julia!!!

A really, really long wurst in Cologne. I'm still picking pieces of it out of my mustache.

The Cologne Cathedral took about 632 years to build and stands 515 ft tall. But none of us were prepared for how far Joey's jaw would drop upon seeing this structure. Living in Europe inoculates you a bit to just how crazy it is that dark-aged, uneducated, undernourished stunted mini-people could build such massive churches.

We also went to nearby Essen which at one point in time was the center of Germany's industrial revolution. The coal/steel plants are now all abandoned and this one has been turned into an ice-skating rink. It was a hipster's paradise. Ice-skating in the massive belly of an abandoned steelwork. It was pretty dope/dank.

For Christmas, we went to a little town called Konz near Trier where Julia's family has a vacation home. It was idyllic. We went to church on Christmas eve, sang Christmas hymns, and ate some Eucharist.

We then went home to eat some more. Julia's mom made soooo much delicious food for us over Christmas. Salmon, Roulade (don't know how to translate that), pies, cheese, and so much else. Julia's mom and two brothers are pictured here in a happier moment.

The entire area around Trier and Konz is Germany's #1 wine-growing region. It is the Mosel/Saar river valley and produces a ton of white Riesling wine. It's pretty hilly and the wine is somehow influenced by the slopes on which the grapes are grown. On Christmas morning we went on a long walk around the mini-mountain next to Julia's home. If you could hear the picture below, you'd hear me asking Julia's father about German politics and both of us expressing our strong support of Mutti Angela.

We tried on 19-century hats and ostentatious Christian jewelry trying to find the perfect look between a dandy and an evangelical.

Wow, this post is getting long. We went to Luxemburg. I'd never been there and still don't feel like I have. Driving through the entire country takes about an hour. What a wimp country. I think the point of the country is that it is a real geographical location but a fake country so that big companies can store their money there and not pay taxes where they actually do business. The model worked so well that the former president of Luxemburg is now the EU Commission president (Claude van Juncker)

We now come to what quickly became the main theme of our travels. In Berlin, we of course saw the Holocaust Memorial, we saw the Stolperstein, the Berlin Wall, and many other scars and scabs from the 20th-century. Being so close to France in Trier, we decided to go and see the WWI battlefield of Verdun. It was a cold day, rainy, snowy, and foggy. The cemeteries went on and on. It was still 2014 and thus 100 years since the beginning of the war.

As you can see in the photos above and below, one of the interesting features of Verdun is how the battle impacted the basic landscape of the area. I don't know if it was the massive year-long shelling, or the digging of hundreds of kilometers of trenches, or the movement of millions of men, horses, and vehicles over the land that caused this, but this is now what Verdun looks like. As you can see, the forest floor is pocked-marked and full of little mounds. Stay-tuned for more battlefields...

After Trier, we still had a few days left in Germany and decided to make a mad dash across the country to what many describe as Germany's Texas: Bavaria. Bavaria is religious, rowdy, rural, full of people wearing traditional dress like lederhosen, and even has a party working for independence from Germany.  In reality, we were only in Bavaria's capital city, Munich, which is actually quite liberal. But luckily, the Munich liberals don't have any objection to Bavaria's famous traditional cuisine such as beer, bread dumplings, and large cuts of beef. Joey, as you can see below, was dumbfounded at the quality of German beer (he described Russian beer as similar to the 'liquid you find at the bottom of garbage bags").

And it finally started snowing! It made for an extremely beautiful walk through the main park in Munich, the Englische Garten.

We also visited Dachau, a concentration camp near Munich. No comment.

Moving on to something only slightly happier, we met up with Taylor and David in Munich! David and Taylor were kind enough to invite me to join in on their honeymoon in Germany since my schedule prevented me from attending the wedding. Despite my absence at the wedding, the marriage seems to be thriving. I even hear that David has an exciting musical project starting up this coming Fall. I really think he could be a star if he continues making such wise decisions

And now, the moment we've been waiting for: arrival in Russia. You can immediately tell that everything is different in Russia the moment you try to do something as simple as read. No wonder we can't understand each other! But I had anticipated such issues. I was practicing cyrillic for weeks just so I could read the airport's advertisements for Russian digital entrepreunership.  

I knew that if I was to get to the bottom of the issue and avoid being stonewalled, I had to go straight to the center of it all, Red Square. Judging from what I'd seen in a lot of books and TV programs, Red Square seemed to be really important for Russian politics. Soldiers marching around, saluting Politburo members sitting atop Lenin's frozen corpse, with everything happening under the watchful eye of the bulbous orthodox church. I wanted answers and this was the place to get them. Nothing was going to stop me.

Unfortunately, I was quickly deterred by the -20F weather. I took a few pictures as evidence that I tried and then we quickly made our way over to the closest cafe to get some hot cocoa. 

I would've continued my investigation but then Russia just kind of shut down for the rest of my trip because of the New Year's holiday which they take extremely seriously. We were invited by one of Joey's Ruski friends to join a group of Russian youths at a Dacha (a cabin) outside Moscow. We agreed under the condition that no questions about our backgrounds would be asked. I've forgotten all these people names, but they were all very kind despite the fact that I threw up in their bathroom (the second time in as many road trips!)

Yeltsin speaking to us from the dead. Nah, this was actually the moment he turned power over to Putin in 1999 I believe. Good move Yelts.

I didn't realize this photo had been taken but after I calmed down I realized that it perfectly captures how tired I was at that very moment.

After taking the train back to Central Moscow we then boarded another 19 hour train for Stalingrad..whoops, I mean Volgograd. We felt like we just needed to get out of Moscow since it isn't so representative of what Joey considers the "real" Russia: the provinces. Apparently there are no laws in the provinces, no western influences, and everything is super cheap. Volgograd was a logical choice since Joey and I are both pretty interested in the Eastern Front of WWII (from opposing sides) and it was within reasonable distance of Moscow (only 40 hours return trip!). The train ride in itself was a part of the experience. We lived in these four-person cabins, got hot water from the samovar, and I toyed with Joey in chess with the down-time.

I think the thing that struck us both the most about Volgograd was the massive width of the Volga. No wonder the Russians held on to a bridgehead on the west bank so tenaciously. They would have had a hard time getting back.

Mother Russia celebrating impaling the fascist German hordes with a sword made of the carcasses of millions of her sons.

Looks pretty even, but black C5 to B7 sets up a queen-king fork with mate in two moves. 

This is Igor, the man from whom Joey is renting a room. Very friendly man who made a lot of incredible Russian food for us during my stay.

Now this is a story that must be told. On January 6th we were out and about on the streets of Moscow on our way to attend a midnight Orthodox Christmas mass (pictured below). It was extremely cold (-23F). Suddenly, upon turning a corner, we noticed some strange light streaks in the sky. As you can kind of make out in this picture, they were of all different colors without any clear arrangement. We had no idea what they could be. They didn't look anything like the northern lights, or anything like colored search lights (even if such things existed). The Russian lady next to us insisted that it was a Christmas miracle from God and that we needed to quickly repent. Joey began to tell me that the likelihood of him becoming Christian just shot up 100% (from 2% to 4%) and I was even starting to doubt my doubt. When we finally got home that night we looked it up and after a while we found out what the phenomenon is. In far-northern climes, when it gets really cold, the humidity in the air causes ice crystals to form. The light from the ground is then reflected in these ice crystals and the resulting light streaks are called "light pillars". They are apparently quite rare and spectacular, as we can testify. 

Pegida

Last night (Monday) I held a speech about my dissertation topic to this crowd in Leipzig:

As you can see, people had very strong feelings for and against my comments, but I think the majority liked it. Actually, what you are seeing here is the "anti-Legida" rally in downtown Leipzig. I was in attendance but didn't hold any speech. For those of you not following domestic German politics, "Legida" is an off-shoot movement of the original "Pegida" mass folk movement based out of nearby Dresden. Before you inevitably ask why anyone would be against such a poorly-named, but harmless-sounding folk movement, let me fill you in on the background. 

Starting in October of last year, this teutonic-looking fellow by the name of Lutz Bachmann began organizing a public protest every Monday evening in Dresden under the auspices of an organization he had established named "Pegida". Pegida is an acronym if you were wondering. It stands for "Patriotische Europäer gegen die Islamisierung des Abendlandes" (Patriotic Europeans against the Islamification of the West). While Herr Bachmann should be congratulated for coming up with a winning name for his movement--it has just the right number of vowels and consonants in the right places to qualify as a word--his movement's aims should not be commended. Capitalizing on recent turmoil in the Middle East (such as the gruesome actions of ISIS which spilled over into Germany) and what is already a major European unease with Muslim immigrants and refugees, Bachmann's Pegida movement calls together all Germans who fear that their western society is at risk of being swept away by a tide of muslim immigrants. In recent formulations of the movement's goals, Bachmann has called for decreasing the amount of accepted Refugees, demanded that the duty to integrate be made a part of the constitution, denounced Islamic 'misogyny' and sharia law' and demanded that Germany generally adopt a stricter immigration policy akin to Switzerland. 

As you can see in the chart above, Pegida's weekly walks quickly gathered steam. In October, only a handful of people showed up at these rallies. But by November, the number had grown to 5,000 or so each week and yesterday that number (in Dresden) was 30,000. Quick explanatory note: you may be wondering what the significance of Monday is. Demonstrating publicly on Monday evenings is an important tradition in East Germany. Back in 1989, a movement began where East Germans would gather on Monday evenings in churches (especially in Leipzig) to express their dissatisfaction with the communist regime. For Germans, this movement is seen as a major catalyst for the fall of the wall and its slogan of "Wir Sind das Volk" (We are the people) is a rallying cry for a very German-style grass-roots ideal of democratic and governmental transparency. Pegida directly evokes this tradition by meeting on Mondays and appropriating this chant (Wir sind das Volk) as an indictment of political elites who they feel no longer listen to the concerns of ordinary Aryans. 

But with their massive growth, Pegida now has the attention of all of Germany. For a society very sensitive to any right-wing movement, this is scary stuff. German political elites have been quick to denounce the movement as "Islamfeindlich" (anti-Islamic) and racist. Most observers are quick to point out that its stronghold--Dresden--is home to the least number of non-Caucasian residents anywhere in Germany and that Pegida's unrealistic fears of a Germany where German soon won't be spoken on the street are really stand-ins for a deeper frustration with life. Another important note: Dresden isn't just Pegida's stronghold. It is also the stronghold of contemporary German neo-Nazism. Every year on February 13th large numbers of neo-Nazis gather in Dresden to commemorate the Dresden fire-bombing and to march for a more just world...or something like that. I guess that is an important piece of background information as well. And then there is the Fuhrer himself: Lutz Bachmann. Bachmann served two years in prison (after being extradited from South Africa where he had fled) for burglary, selling cocaine, and driving drunk. Not exactly the best example of citizenship if you ask me.

Up until recently, popular right-wing parties hadn't found fertile ground in Germany. France is well-known for Le Pen's FN and a number of Scandinavian countries sport anti-immigration parties that do fairly well in elections. But as discontent with the EU and anxiety about islamic extremism have boiled over recently, this last election cycle saw the first viable right-wing party in Germany emerge: the AfD. It has been interesting to see how their leaders have been very careful to take a different line than the major parties in talking about Pegida. These protestors are potential voters for AfD and they've been very careful to say that their concerns are legitimate and should be listened to. Uh-huh. 

Now, with that background, I can return to the counter-protest last night. Leipzig is a very young city and our numbers far exceeded the new Leipzig branch of Pegida (thus "Legida") marchers (40,000 counter-protestors vs. 7,000 Legida). German students are very politically active (relative to American youth) and I often chuckle about how earnest they are. Instead of the normal potty-language graffiti that one might find in American toilets, one generally only finds left-wing mottos written in German bathroom stalls: "Say No to Racism!" or "No to Fascism" are common. So I wasn't surprised when my tram ride to Leipzig from Halle was jam-packed with what seemed like every college-student in town. 

There were a lot of great posters as well. One sign read "Bier trinkt das Volk" ("The People drink Beer!" which in German is a play on "We are the people"),  "Gegen die Dresdenisierung Leipzigs" (Against the Dresdenization of Leipzig), and this one below which says "Trailer Parks against ignorant, nationalistic Assholes". 

One thing that made the demonstration somewhat interesting to me was the ambiguity surrounding just what the Charlie Hebdo attacks meant for the demonstrations. On one hand, the Pegida people clearly sought to use the attacks to legitimize their movement: if you don't think Islam is threatening for Europe after Charlie Hebdo then you are the crazy one. But on the other hand, I saw quite a bit of Charlie Hebdo signs (Je suis Charlie) at the anti-demonstration and we even held a moment of silence for the victims. For the left, the attacks are mostly meaningful as an example of what happens when fundamentalism, hate, and intolerance are allowed to run wild--charges that are as readily applicable to Pegida's stances as they are to muslims. There's something tragic in the fact that such a morally unambiguous act leaves us with no corresponding clarity as to how to respond politically. We just end up accusing one another of misusing or misunderstanding the incident. 

In any case, Pegida (and Legida) won't disappear overnight and there should be many more Monday marches to visit. I suggested to my friends that we should try to mingle sometime with the Legida crowd just to see what they're like. So maybe that will be a future post!