Favorite Kiev Pictures

So I am in Moscow and it is a very rainy day. This weekend the whole program is off to St. Petersburg, which should be fun if the weather improves a bit (even if I'll be spending two of the next three night on the train). Anyway now is sort of a time of reflection and with a bit of an Internet connection I wanted to post my favorite pictures from Kiev. What was really great when I was in Kiev was that I got to meet a lot of young Ukrainians. In Kiev I lived in a working class neighborhood in an apartment with Ukrainians more or less my age. For Ukrainians, Kiev is the land of opportunity (better jobs, but also cleaner air than in the east and less corruption). I lived in a working-class neighborhood with some Ukrainians more or less my age. Really nice people, but not simple lives. It was interesting to meet people pretty much my age who already had families and who had more to look forward to in an evening drink than the future.

Anyway, here are my favorite pictures from Kiev:

Ukrainian

So things are pretty good here in Kiev. I have met some other interesting young people and feel like I have gotten a good sense for the city.

What has impressed me the most here is how much Ukrainian has taken the place of Russian. When I was in Odessa (a very much Russian speaking part of Ukraine) I had asked about Ukrainian being taught as a foreign language to the Russian-speaking inhabitants of Odessa. My teacher made a really big deal out of emphasizing that Ukrainian was not a foreign language in Odessa and at the time I didn't really understand why. The fact of the matter is that in Ukraine all of the signage is in Ukrainian and only Ukrainian. This extends to most shop signs (with the exception of Crimea) as well. Also there are few Russian-language schools in Ukraine and pretty much everyone regardless of what part of the country they are from or what language they speak goes to Ukrainian- language school. Even if many of the older teachers end up teaching in a mixture of Russian and Ukrainian, the fact of the matter is that if you grow up in Ukraine today you are surrounded by Ukrainian (it dominates tv too). In that sense you can't talk about Ukraine being a 'foreign language' even if you are living in the Russian speaking East.

This all impresses me even more because this was very much not the case in Kazakhstan. In Kazakhstan, like in Ukraine, you had a native language that suffered as a result of direct or indirect Soviet promotion of Russian. After the collapse of communism in both countries you had attempts to promote the 'native language.' Efforts in Kazakhstan have been far less successful. First of all in Kazakhstan you have the problem that in comparisons to Ukrainians in Ukraine, Kazakhs make up a much smaller percentage of the population. Then there is the issue where as an educated speaker of Russian can probably understand about 60% of Ukrainian with no exposure to it before (both being Eastern Slavic language), Kazakh apart from a few loan words shares very little in common with Russian and is much harder for Russian speakers to pick up just by watching tv. In Kazakhstan, however, there is the added complication that given the choice between Kazakh- and Russian-language school even Kazakh speaking ethnic Kazakhs will often choose Russian school (the better textbook are in Russian).

In any case, the official rhetoric when it comes to language is very similar Ukraine and Kazakhstan, the results, however, have been very different. I suppose I am just impressed by the success of ukrainianization in Ukraine, especially considering the failure of a previous attempt in the 20s.

Anyway, over the past couple of days I have been spending time with young Ukrainian bankers. I had answered some ads in a Kiev English language paper from people willing to trade Russian for English (I done most stuff here on my own) and ended up meeting with two of them. Both were more or less my age and were trying to work on their English for career purposes. Both were really nice and were native Russian speakers so it was interesting to get their take on things (as products of the post-Soviet period both were also fluent in Ukrainian and had no real concerns about the expanded use of Ukrainian), and one of them had taken part in protests here in Kiev during the Orange Revolution so that was interesting. Though I was glad for the company, I have to admit that both in terms of the breadth of their interests were a little dull so I will be looking forward to shaking things up a bit when I head to Minsk.

I had wanted to come to Ukraine because especially after the Orange Revolution because I really felt like there was hope here. Hope in the sense that there was an up and coming generation that was talented and energetic and unhampered by media censorship or a completely rigged electoral system (the latter not being the case in Russia or Kazakhstan). Change is possible in Ukraine. After having spent in total of about a month in Ukraine this year I can say there is hope in Ukraine, the media is truly free, elections are free, but the sheer number of problems the country faces makes that hope difficult to realize if there aren't politicians capable enough to tackle them even if they are popular. Ukraine has tremendous class divides, housing is crushingly expensive (even for the poorest quality), villages are dieing out, alcoholism is a way of dealing with everyday life, life expectancy is low, cronyism and graft are prevalent, and women face huge discrimination and little help is raising the children they often have to provide for on their own on salaries that aren't sufficient for one person to live off of. All of this makes the hope that exists in Ukraine bittersweet. Yes in Ukraine there is a better chance of addressing these problems and the problems of those without connections in general, but even if they are better than in Russian or Kazakhstan the probability of addressing all of these problems effectively is slim. None of which is helped by the fact that politicians are more focused on fighting each other than helping people.

So Kiev is interesting. Not surprisingly it was quite different from my expectations. Admittedly my main interest in Kiev is historical, going to old churches and museums and trying to take in the vibe. I had a great time doing all of that when I was in St. Petersburg and I would be lieing if I said I wasn't trying to recapture some of that. As the ancient capital of the Eastern Slavs Kiev does have a lot of history, but as the Soviet mined the center of town on their way out the center is not where Kiev's rich history is to be found (though if you are looking for cheap-looking Stalinist-Gothic architecture surround by a giant mall and McDonald's that you could find). Kiev does, however, have moments of mind numbing beauty particularly it monasteries and churches.

In general it is a bit of weird mixture for me because in its baroque churches and bright colors it reminds me a lot of St. Petersburg, though with its Soviet architecture it reminds me of Almaty. The fact that I hear more Russian here than anything else, but everything is written in Ukrainian also throws me for a loop.

Swan Song

So as of Wednesday my time in Vienna has drawn to a close. It has not been the easiest year, but I have gotten a lot out of it. As I have mentioned before, the European education system is not for me. The Diplomatic Academy is not typical for Austria, but in most of the classes there was still far too much emphasis on regurgitation and summary than on analysis and coming up with new ideas. Still, I was able to spend a year in Europe on scholarship doing German, French, and Russian simultaneously. I also got an introduction to international law. There were a lot of fun moments and it was great to travel, but I have always been a person looking ahead and who wanted to get going with the next thing so I am happy to be off.

On Wednesday I leave for Kiev where I will be hanging out and doing some Russian language stuff for two weeks (very excited!). After that I will be in Minsk for four days visiting some friends from the academy. Then I am off to Moscow for a month long exchange with the Diplomatic Academy of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Hopefully while there I will manage a weekend trip to Kazan aw well. In any case, it is a former-Soviet Union themed summer, but that is how I like them and I am at a point with my Russian where I am genuinely excited about using it and less intimidated than I used to be.

From here on out the posts will be much less frequent until I make it back to the states in August (I definitely won’t be fulfilling my 20 posts a month quota, which is self-imposed of course). Still I hope to squeeze a few in from interesting places and things develop.

Cafe Alt Wien

Here in Vienna my hang out of choice has been Cafe Alt Wien. It is pretty central, but manages to be off the beaten tourist path while still having a strong student following. It is probably the place where I have felt most comfortable here in Vienna. Anyway here are a few pictures.

Me and Özlem

I drink.

Özlem drinks.

I explain my (somewhat intoxicated) treatise on the nature of man.

Özlem clearly thinks I am not spouting BS.

Reiko arrives and studious work begins.

Özlem and Reiko don't agree.

And this picture clearly explains the end of our story. Clearly. It's like a choose your own adventure except the page you chose is blank. That or we killed Özlem and bow in honor of a job well done.

Done

As of Wednesday I have been completely done with school work. It was not easy (on Wednesday alone I had three exams), but it is finally over as is my year here in Vienna. I'd like to say I did well on everything, but I didn't so at this point I mainly celebrating the completion(also important). In previous entries I have listed my complaints about the Euoprean education system (little room for creativity, all emphasis on memorization and little to none on analysis), and in many ways this year has been how the two of us just don't really get along. Nonetheless, I was really touched in my Russian composition class when the professor told me how impressed she was with my style and how with every sentence she could tell I was trying to say something. To me, it seemed like validation of the priorities of the educational system I come from.

Now we are on to the end of the year parties. There is a trip to an Austrian wine pub tonight (heuriger) and tomorrow there is the big end of the year party where students, faculty, and alumni will mix. It all promises to be pretty nice. For me, though, it amusing how there is much more of an emphasis on networking here. They sent out an e-mail of all the alumni who are coming and their jobs specifically for the graduating students to be able to make connections with those people. I know it is nice, but for me it is still weird. Maybe it is because I don't have much in the way of concrete career goals, but I just wouldn't walk about a random person who had a job might want to have one explicitly for the purpose of making connections. I might do it if it were something I was really interested in and wanted to know if the person liked the job, but me that is different. Oh well, let the networking begin.

Snow Globe

My friend Hannah and I went to the Vienna Snow Globe Museum. They claim to have made the first snow globe in 1900, and after being alerted to the places existence it seemed worth checking out. The snow globes were very nice (there is also a 'museum,' but we weren't too interested). Their snow globes were just sort of different, they were well made, but not too expensive. Mind you there were a lot of really corny ones (like Hoki Poki, the advent sorceror, above), but a lot of them were cool because they showed different scenes from Austrian life and bits of the country we had seen. Oh yeah, and the place seemed to be run by recovering drug addicts. Not trying to be mean, just how they seemed.

Interestingly, though this place claims to be the first one to make a snow globe, the wikipedia entry for 'snow globe' makes no mention of it. The entry marks France as the birth place of the snow globe, though not mentioning a specific person or place. The German entry does mention does mention the shop we went to, but as the first place to get a patent for a snow globe, not as the first place to make one. Oh snow globe politics [insert metaphor about their fighting somehow being like when you shake up a snow globe and all the snow goes crazy]. Yes.

Governors Island

Governors Island has pretty much always amazed me. First there is the name, which I think is great, and which refers to the time when it was the exclusive property of the British governor of New York. Then there is just the fact that you have this 172 acre plot of land so close to one of the the most space cramped part of the Unites States and next to nothing has been done with it (they uses it as a dump for a while). The place just clearly has a lot of potential, the view alone says that.

Over the years the island has changed hands quite a bit being given by the army to New York State, from New York State to the Department of the Interior, and from the Department of the Interior to the National Park Service. The fact that is belonged to the military saved it from the clutches of Robert Moses and now they are getting ready to develop the property (as a park and leaving the historical buildings on the north face of the island in tact). Anyway here are my favorite and least favorite plans for Governors Island (there are five proposals in total and you can see them all here):

"The Mollusk" - Involves flooding big chunks of the island with more chunks being flooded at high tide. It is supposed "evoke the mollusks that once encrusted the island's shores." Yes so they don't say flooding, they say 'tidal pools,' but either way I think it is stupid. First I don't think anyone will get/care that they are trying to make the island look like a mollusk and I don't think most people are too interested in the island's mollusk past. Also, it just seems a waste to flood good land, not to mention the tidal pools would be big mosquito breeding grounds in summer (not fun). They did want to put in thermal pools though (for people) a la Iceland facing the Statue of Liberty, though, that was pretty cool.

"The Island" - This plan involves creating a big meadow, a working farm, a beach, and a ravine within the island that you can kayak around in (with fantastic views). This one just works for me better, it seems to make better use of space while differentiating the areas and providing a lot of variety of nature in one of the most urban areas of the world. This endorsement may be the kiss of death for the proposal.

Anyway, look at the link for the full plans, the images are pretty cool (would have posted them there, but sadly they are not swipeable).

Prince Philip, My Hero

Prince Philip, the husband of Queen Elizabeth, has a habit of saying offensive things at public events (usually about the ethnic group/nationality the event is for). Eddie Izzard said that he has habit saying things like [insert stodgy British accent] "you are all a bunch of bastard." An itemized list stolen from wikipedia is actually quite a bit of (offensive) fun:

• Speaking to a driving instructor in Scotland, he asked: "How do you keep the natives off the booze long enough to get them through the test?"
• When visiting China in 1986, he told a group of British students, "If you stay here much longer, you'll all be slitty-eyed".
• After accepting a gift from a Kenyan citizen he replied, "You are a woman, aren't you?"
• "If it has four legs and is not a chair, has wings and is not an aeroplane, or swims and is not a submarine, the Cantonese will eat it." (1986)
• In 1966 he remarked that "British women can't cook."
• To a British student in Papua New Guinea: "You managed not to get eaten then?"
• Angering local residents in Lockerbie when on a visit to the town in 1993, the Prince said to a man who lived in a road where eleven people had been killed by wreckage from the Pan Am jumbo jet: "People usually say that after a fire it is water damage that is the worst. We are still trying to dry out Windsor Castle."
• On a visit to the new National Assembly for Wales in Cardiff, he told a group of deaf children standing next to a Jamaican steel drum band, "Deaf? If you are near there, no wonder you are deaf."
• He asked an Indigenous Australian, "Still throwing spears?" (2002)
• Said to a Briton in Budapest, Hungary, "You can't have been here that long – you haven't got a pot belly." (1993)
• Seeing a shoddily installed fuse box in a high-tech Edinburgh factory, HRH remarked that it looked "like it was put in by an Indian".
• During a Royal visit to China in 1986 he described Beijing as "ghastly".
• "Aren't most of you descended from pirates?" (in 1994, to an islander in the Cayman Islands)
• At the height of the recession in 1981 he said: "Everybody was saying we must have more leisure. Now they are complaining they are unemployed."
• Upon presenting a Duke of Edinburgh Award to a student, when informed that the young man was going to help out in Romania for six months, he asked if the student was going to help the Romanian orphans; upon being informed he was not, it was claimed the 85-year-old duke added: "Ah good, there's so many over there you feel they breed them just to put in orphanages."

• At the University of Salford, he told a 13-year-old aspiring astronaut: "You could do with losing a bit of weight."
• In 1997, the Duke of Edinburgh, participating in an already controversial British visit to the Jallianwala Bagh massacre (Amritsar Massacre) Monument, provoked outrage in India and in the UK with an offhand comment. Having observed a plaque claiming 2,000 casualties, Prince Philip observed, "That's not right. The number is less."
• During a Royal visit to a Tamil Hindu temple in London , he asked a Hindu priest if he was related to the terrorist Tamil Tigers.
• He once attributed a badly finished carpentry job to one having been done by an Indian.
• In 1988 he said that "In the event that I am reincarnated, I would like to return as a deadly virus, in order to contribute something to solve overpopulation."
• In 1996 he drew sharp criticism when he said a gun was no more dangerous than a cricket bat in the hands of a madman. The comment came in the wake of the massacre of 16 children and their teacher by a gun-toting psychopath in Dunblane, Scotland.

At this point I think he must be trying, planing his next offensive remark. Oh yes, but to top it all of, he is worshipped as a god in the South Pacific.

Dunce

Feeling a bit duncish today.

Mr and Mrs

So in my post-war European history class the professor talks about 'Mrs. T' a lot, I being an educated individual first think of the wife of Mr. T. You know similar sass, maybe similar hair, somewhat more female. He means Margaret Thatcher. I rather like the though of them being married. They are both forceful in their own way, and just think of the children.

So on this ad there was some graffiti.

Here is a close up:

It translates as: Why do you only see women with perfect asses everywhere? 99% of real women have cellulite. I do too.

I though it was pretty cool sort of social/gender activist graffiti is pretty cool (it is true though, there are a lot more asses, female, in Austrian ads and they are all pretty much perfect).

What was awesome too was that there was response graffiti below it. I don't have a good picture of it and don't quite remember what it said, but it was cool to have a sort of deep conversation going on a pretty superficial advert.

Belarusian Embassy

Also, I have wanted to share this for a while:

This (the Belarusian embassy here in Vienna) is next to this:

A montessori school.

Am I the only one who finds it amusing that the last 'dictaitorship in Euopre's' embassy is right next to the kinder gentler sort of preschool? Do they balance each other out?

Time a tickin

So I have been posting so much lately is has been amazing (also a warning, blogspot is stuck in German mode again so there is no spell check so spelling should be 'interesting,' and by that I mean 'creative,' and by that I mean crap).

I have, however, had many things I have wanted to blog about. Here is a short list:

1. Cambridge - how I really liked it, but probably still wouldn't study there.

2. England - my relationship with five years on.

3. Governor's Island - the development plans of this huge piece of New York real estate and how most of them are pretty crappy if not just very weird. One I really liked.

4. There was a big storm here - how everyone complained about it and I wasn't really phased as it was the only big storm the whole year and trees falling down due to storms I recall happening fairly often where I have lived in the states.

5. German exam - how there was a giant kids event opposite where we were taking the test and how their screams of joy while I was stuck in a dark room writing a business letter for a coffee company made me die a little inside.

6. Plane tickets to Ukraine - my having of them! I am going t Kiev in under two weeks.

7. A forward looking update of 'those who left us this year' - present hopefuls include Mugabe, Castro, and Kim Jong-Il (well come one he doesn't look that healthy does he?).

Some of these may still happen, though if you actually want one you should let me know.

Oxford

Oxford is very pretty. Especially the older part of town (where the bus took me) is strikingly more historical than both American architecture or the architecture America chose to copy. After first arriving I was sort of sad that I have yet to have the opportunity to study at Oxford (I thought about applying, not that that meant I would have gotten in, when I was in boarding school in England; I also could have gone there instead of Berlin and Kazakhstan for my year abroad). At Oxford I would say there is a real sense of tradition and through the colleges I would say a greater sense of community and belonging than say at Columbia, though it is not grand in the way Columbia (or many other American universities) are.

What did strike me after walking around, however, was: 1. Oxford is really rather small 2. it very quickly becomes like an American small town or suburb (though to my knowledge Oxford, unlike Cambridge, does not have a Chilis). Of course, Oxford does have great bus service to London (cheap and very regular) so it does have access to a big city . Still as I have learned I am a fairly urban-oriented person I realized that Oxford would not have been the place for me to be (not to mention in the British educational system in general is is harder to do all the random things I like to do, i.e. the mixture of German, Russian, politics, and history I did at Columbia would not have been possible).

More than anything else, Oxford struck me as a being a great back-drop for life, be that studies or working.

Weekend Break

Over the Weekend I was in London, Oxford, and Cambridge. I'll have more on that later, for now here are some of my favorite pictures.

Improv Team Names

Once in a while I come a across a word awesome enough to be a name of an improv team. Today I stumbled upon one of those: Polydactyl. Give it a second to set in. Let it just roll off your tongue. Poly-dactyl. Now if you don't know Latin or whatever it is from, as I most clearly do not, the first association is a pterodactyl combined with poly (many), so like many pterodactyls. Could it get much cooler? Than a storm of pterodactyls soaring past you? I think not. Not to mention it is actually the medical term for a cat with too many toes.

In case you are curious, the full story is here.

Good Weekend

So I am not sure if I can pull of a green bee header for my post (sooo not girly at all), but it was the best image I found after doing a google image search for "weekend" after having been disappointed by what came up with "Weekend Update" (really you would expect better images).

I had a good weekend.

Okay it wasn't perfect, but for me it is really important that I have time to hang out with lots of different people, have meaningful conversations, and also good of a bit. All of this achieved.

Well come to think about it the weekend basically started for me on Thursday. Late Friday afternoon I went to hang out with a Turkish friend of mine of the Franz Josef Kai and met a really good Turkish friend (Özlem) of hers from Ankara (don't ask, it is a complicated story though interesting). The set up is pretty funny as the water in the canal is pretty dirty and the scenery is pretty urban, but there are drink bars, sand, and lounge chairs, so it is all pretty good fun. Good conversations (anti-Americanism, the Austro-Hungarian relationship, and the joys of Ankara).

After that I headed over with Özlem to a cool Israeli falafel/pita place where we by chance met a friend of hers from the university (Dima). Dima was very cool. A Moldovan Jew whose family came to Austria when he was still quite young he has dived full force into his various identities (Jew, Russian, Moldovan, Austria), and speaks an astounding number of languages. Anyway, he knew a film I had seen in my Russian class called Passport (about a Georgian guy accompanying his Jewish brother to the airport to wish him well in Israel, who ends up going to Israel in his place) so we all spoke about that for a while. He also told me a bit about the owner of the restaurant who is an Azeri Jew who went to Israel for a while before coming to Austria (and who also speaks a ridiculous number of languages). Anyway, that was Thursday. Really very pleasant.

Friday night was the end of the semester party at the Orientalistik (yes I know oriental sounds better in English, but it is everything from Turkish and Middle Eastern stuff to East Asians studies so you tell me what to call it in English). That was quite cool. Entry was cheap and came with good amounts of food and booze and there was a great Turkish band and fun dancing ensued. Also a success and so ended Friday night.

On Saturday I had a few drinks with a really cool Kazakh guy. Good conversations. It was cool getting to talk with someone about Kazakhstan again who has a personal connection to the country.

After that it was hang out time with a bunch of the Fulbrighters. There was falafel and much chatter. A bunch of them are leaving next week so it was a but of a goodbye thing though many of them unlike me will be staying next year. So yes we chatted, and then headed over to the Museumsquartier where they have big comfy block things you can lay on. Well we finally snagged one of those and hung out there and that was pretty much the night.

A nice mixture of different people with lively conversation, really can't complain.

Also if anyone is out there is reading this these days feel free to leave a comment it will ease my quasi-worries.

Hip Agony

I have a trip planned to the UK next weekend. The original plan was to stay with my old host parents for a couple days before going up to Cambridge to visit some friends studying up there. My host parents had really wanted to see me so I had planned the trip really to see them, only to see I had the time for a somewhat longer trip and could get two birds with one stone by seeing friends and making it to Cambridge for the first time. So far so good.

Well last Wednesday I got an e-mail from my English host mom telling me that my English host father was going to have to have a hip replacement that weekend and that they wouldn't be able to host me. She phrased it if I could now head up to Cambridge earlier. All fine and well, except I have nowhere to stay at Cambridge until Saturday, and now no place to stay elsewhere in the UK either (does complaining about this make me a horrible person?). Grumble.

So have been more or less scrambling since then. It doesn't help that I suffer from travel anxiety (freaking out a bit if I don't have everything in order). I have been trying to stay with other friends in the greater London area, which makes me feel super awkward as it is sort of late notice and I really don't like imposing. So far no luck. I could stay at a hotel, but I don't know where would be a good place to stay/at the end of my year abroad I am a little short on funds and London is not known for its affordability.

To make thing worse, I haven't heard back from the person I am supposed to be staying with in Cambridge, which under normal circumstances wouldn't be an issue, but with my general state of confusion and travel anxiety is a little worrying.

Sigh. I just don't know if I should cancel the trip and get back some of the money from the flight or bravely push ahead.

[Poster's note: image of hip replacement above = creepy]

Thanks a Whole Hell of a lot Mr. Morgan

In the US when you buy something in a store you generally have two options: cash or credit. More and more you have debit too. Generally, people don't care which one you use. Cash is always accepted.

Now welcome to Austria. Credit cards are rarely accepted (generally off of the hardcore tourist track the credit cards signs disappear damn quick), super markets never accept them (most Austrians find the idea of grocery story accepting credit cards abhorrent), and if you do somehow manage to use a credit card for a smallish purchase the sales people will probably think you are a criminal who stole someone credit card.

So that all bothers me. But to be fair, they do do more with debit cards here. Yet the best ones are really the places that accept neither credit cards, nor debit cards, nor cash. Yes they want direct bank transfers so they never have to deal with the cash, it just means the money magically appears in their account. All fine in well, if it didn't involve you having to go find out how much it cost, then going to the bank filling out the form, and then having to go back to the original place where you needed pay for the thing, show them the bank transfer form and then finally get whatever the hell it was you needed to do all of that for. The fact that opening hours are much shorter than in the US, lunch break are much longer, pretty much nothing is open Saturday, and there are far more random holidays when businesses close down makes all of this a lot of fun.

How could it get any worse? Well when I needed to buy travel insurance for Russian today (less than 20 euros) I was told that they didn't accept credit cards, debit cards, cash, or normal account to account bank transfers, rather you had to to go to the bank give them cash, pay a fee for paying in cash and then they would transfer the money to the business. Apparently that would be faster than a normal bank transfer. You know what would be even faster? Accepting the cash I had with me when I went to your business in the first place.

What kills me here is like to give you only one way of paying for things and then attach a fee. There is often both a credit card fee and a cash fee. But if that is the only payment you offer then that is your fault, and if you really want the money then it isn't an optional fee, it is just the price.

So morale of this story: paying is so much easier in the US! You don't have to carry around loads of cash, if you do they will accepts it, and either way they are unlikely to make you go through a complicated bank transfer system that will penalize you for paying with cash, the most basic form of money. They want you moeny in America and don't make it so difficult for you to give it to them. Glory to the evil capitalist empire!

Les Fatals Picards

I love the Fatals Picards! They are amazing. Yes the played at Eurovision, but they are great and even their song for Eurovision was great ( I posted it here a while back). I think I like them so much because they basically have my randomness, but in French! It gives me hope that I can be expressed in French.

In any case, my love for them has only grown since I got their newest album in the mail. Here is a brief list of things about the album that make me love them:

1. A song about what dictators you would choose to play which positions if you were making a soccer team entirely of dictators (and why). Rightest dictators get to play right to attack. The song then follows this same model then continues with other activitiesm (making a reggae group for example).

2. An audio track with Dart Vader performing various every day activities (basically activities you would have to drill in a French class). Darth Vader goes to the bakery, Darth Vader reserves a torture hall over the phone. Also just the notion of a French Darth Vader greatly amuses me.

Okay it is a short list, but the fun thing is that I don't understand all of it so each time I listen to the songs it is like cracked out listening comprehension as the songs are ridiculous and at first you wonder if that is what they are really saying.

Long lives les Fatals Picards!

The Internship That Wasn't

The gentleman above is Rakhat Aliyev, son-in-law of the President of Kazakhstan, Nursultan Nazarbayev. Aliyev has been quite influential in Kazakhstani politics for quite some time now holding numerous high-profile positions in government, and most recently having been the Kazakhstani ambassador to Austria and the OSCE. He and his wife were particularly noticeable on the Kazakhstani political field as, well, the field is pretty barren and he and his wife not only have major media holdings, but his wife until recently headed a high-profile pro-presidential party Asar (besides being a judge on the Kazakhstani version of American Idol).

Well, last week Aliyev was dismissed from his position as ambassador only to have international warrants for his arrest issued by the Kazakhstani government. You might ask yourself, what they hell happened? Well a few things. Aliyev had had clashes with the president before (tends to happen a bit more often when you want to be president yourself), though the officials grounds for the arrest was the abduction and presumed murder of at least one manager of the Kazakhstani Nurbank. The interesting thing is it seems that everybody already new about that and that Aliyev was responsible, it isn't really new, but back then Aliyev was still under the presidential shield. Family is very important in Kazakhstan.

So what really happened? Well in Kazakhstan they recently passed amendments to the constitutions. Most of it fairly standard stuff, strengthening the legislature a bit t0 appease Western critics and maybe win Kazakhstan the presidency of the OSCE (really symbolic in a country so overwhelmingly dominated by the executive). Well standard, except for one provision exempting the current president from any term limits. It is a but ridiculous as: A. The current president has been running Kazakhstan pretty much since the pre-independence days B. Just started another seven year term last year C. He will be well into his seventies by the the time he would need to be re-elected.

Well, presidential-hopeful Aliyev didn't like that so much and openly criticized the move. Shortly there after he found himself stripped of his post (and by extension his diplomatic immunity), and shortly after that on Kazakhstan's most wanted list before being taken into custody by Austrian authorities. His tv channel was shut down in Kazakhstan was shut down for three months (officially for violating the 50 percent Kazakh language content requirement), and he is applying for asylum status.

In any case, Aliyev was a pretty sleazy character know for his corruption and violence, refereed to in several news sources as one of Central Asia's most despised men (if you would like a counter argument to that you can look at this deligthfully biased wikipedia article, which pretty much credits him with every good thing ever to happen to Kazakhstan). He will probably patch things up again with Nazarbayev, and for the moment it has added quite the bit of excitement to usually controversyless Vienna.

What is interesting, is that I really wanted to do an internship at the Kazakhstani embassy here in Vienna. I like Kazakhstan, you know. It is a small mission and it would have been cool...if I would have been linked to a guy currently accused of murder and on Kazakhstan's black list.

Hillary

Excerpt from the index of Carl Bernstein's book:

Clinton, Hillary Rodham

aggression and confrontational mode of, 219, 274

aloofness and detachment of, 32, 36, 44, 87, 145

anger, temper and hurt of, 7 32-3, 39, 88, 97 148, 180, 188-9, 280-1, 303, 303, 306, 309-13, 331, 357, 371, 382, 443, 452, 510, 518, 526

bossiness and control of, 27, 32, 76, 84, 90, 266

depression of, 39-40, 393, 408, 413

distractedness and disorientation of, 222, 309, 313

divorce considered by, 6, 26, 76, 553

egregious errors and failures of, 9, 44, 92-3, 95, 143-4, 147, 217, 304, 320, 408-11

entitlement attitude of, 217, 228, 229, 285

grudges of, 161, 224

holier-than-thou attitude of, 308-9

identity problem of, 188-9, 223

introspection lacking in, 44

lying of, 324, 335, 446, 452n, 453, 469

oratorical problems of, 70

tin ear of, 143, 228

unhappiness of, 310-11

I don't think he likes her.

Also, I think I showed good self-restraint with this post, I could have started it off with this pic:

Die lange Nacht der offenen Kirchen

Ah summer is coming and Vienna is filling with obnoxious tourists. There are pluses and minuses. On the minus side are the obnoxious American girls who just finished their first year of college loudly complaining about their less than stellar grades, and the ever growing packs of Mozart impersonators that prey upon them by getting them to buy over priced concert tickets (come to think of it that might be a plus), but on the plus side there are some cool events going on like the long night of the open churches. Rather like the long night of the museums earlier this year, on the long night of the churches churches are open much later than usual with special concerts and lectures going on and with things like the crypts being open and free of admission. There is also some free food and the whole thing also has a "Seeeeee, church is coooooool, you should come more often. It is sooo always like this, yeah with rock star lighting. Yes." Unlike the US, the proselytizing is pretty harmless, though you do sort of want to take those people out for a drink and get them some friends.

So yes churches. Well I saw a crypt, but they had redone it so there was only one room with bones all over the place. Bit of a let down really. I did, however, finally see the church where the hearts of the different Hapsburg emperors are kept. Yes, the hearts are kept separately from their bodies. I think it would be a great place to take your sweetheart on Valentine's day. The hearts were in a really small room and you had to look through a whole in a thick door to get a look. The urns they were in were pretty small, but there were a lot of them. All together, so sweet.

The other really cool things was at one of the Cathdrel's near me (Karlskirche). I have been there before, but on the inside it isn't that nice right now because they have been renovating and there is scaffolding going all the way up to the top of the dome. Well yesterday they were taking people up in an elevator and letting you stand right under the dome while an art historian lectured about its history. It was pretty cool.

Western Ukraine

So my most recent trip to Ukraine, though brief, had a bit of personal significance for me as it is where part of my family hails from. I am only a quarter Ukrainian, but as I don't look so Italian and I don't identify with the Irish/I am a slavophile my Ukrainian roots are pretty important to me. In general I think Americans struggle with identity issues a lot more than other nationalities. Yes, America has a strong tradition and such, but at the end of the day it is just a citizenship and there is always the question of where your family is from, something which comes up both as a result of weirdo last names and the strange dishes your family eats on special occasions. I am sort of jealous of the people who have very strong ethnic identities rooted in America (African Americans, Native Americans, Cajuns, Russian Alaskans, German Texans so and so forth), but for most white Americans their roots are in Europe and at some point you try and (re)connect with those.

The reconnecting is a bit weird if only because they places you are looking for don't really exist. The stories I heard in my family about the old country were from my great grandparents generation (i.e. about a hundred years ago). As a result what it means to be Swedish, Italian, or German in the US gets frozen where it continues to evolve in those countries. Old hatreds also tend to get frozen. An English professor of mine (i.e. from England) told me the Irish with the strongest negative feeling towards the UK she had met were Irish-Americans. I can't really compare with Irish Irish, but I know that with my dad and grandfather dislike the UK as if they were the Irish forced to leave Northern Ireland, and even I am quick to mention that my family were catholics from Northern Ireland and that my name is anglicized Celtic.

But I digress.

I actually heard very little about Ukraine from my grandma, which is a little weird as she probably had the most direct connection to the old country of all my grandparents (she speaks fluent Ukrainian). She was always quick to mention that Ukrainian wasn't Russian and that the Russians had done horrible things to the Ukrainians, but other than that she was pretty quiet on the issue. My grandmother basically wanted to be American, so despite being born Stephenia Matwijkow, she started be called Sally is school and eventually married an Italian and became Sally Mezzatesta. Anyway, I think the fact that she rarely spoke about it made me all the more curious and hence the interest in the trip.

So here are a few quick reasons why western Ukraine is special: it is the center of Ukrainian nationalism, it was part of Austria-Hungary, and not the Russian Empire, and the people are Greek Catholic and not Russian or Ukrainian orthodox. Interestingly, at this point I am much more familiar with the former Russian Empire and Russian orthodoxy so western Ukraine felt much more western European than I expected it to. The people didn't look especially Slavic to me, the churches didn't have onion domes, and they were far fewer icons in the churches than you would find even in other part of Ukraine (though people did pray to them in a way you wouldn't in a catholic church).

People were really nice and happy to speak to me in Russian, the food was good and cheap, and there were a lot of lovely churches (ah more baroque, the sign of Austrian domination). I suppose it was just interesting because I really had no understanding for the place. Certainly there was a strong Polish influence, but it seems simplistic to reduce it to that (i.e. Western Ukraine = Poland, even if it was part of Poland for a while). It was just weird because part of L'viv felt like part of Cleveland (a place with a strong Polish influence) , parts felt like Central Europe, but hardly any of it felt like Russia/eastern Ukraine (i.e. east Slavic).

Essentially, L'viv surprised me as it wasn't what I expected it to be. Interestingly while I was there I had one person tell me they thought I was Polish and another tell me I looked like I was ethnically Cossack (both identities linked to the region). I am not really sure where L'viv fits in with me, but I do feel challenged to develop a better understanding of the place. In many ways it was similiar to what I know and that surprised me.

Poland and Ukraine

Analysis to come, but first my favorite picks from the weekend's trip.

Filler

Excerpt form an article on BBC news about different (crazy) reality tv shows:

SPACE CADETS (UK)

They thought they had blasted off into space from a cosmonaut training camp in Russia - but in fact, they were stuck in a fake spaceship in a warehouse in Suffolk.

The contestants believed they were Britain's first "space tourists"

Contestants on Channel 4's show were strung along for two weeks in 2005, with the original line-up of 10 whittled down to three "winners".

Each of them received £25,000 for their efforts, although they did admit to being disappointed that they had been fooled.

They became suspicious after being asked to hold a ceremony on their "spaceship" for a celebrity Russian dog called Mr Bimby.

So cruel. I would so do it to people. Stupid contestant,"Well it was really emotionaly draining, but we pulled together, and in the end we did get to spend time in space." No, no you didn't. You spent some quality time in warehouse in a rather undesirable part of the UK.

Not necessarily bad entertainment though, I would pay good money to see them celebrating gospodiin Bimby's birthday.

Kamini

Sooo sick. I had pretty much recovered before my trip, which then preceded to trip me and bang my head repeatedly in the wall. It was a really good trip though. Ugh. I have three tests this week. At least I just gave my presentation on Law and the War on Terror, which went pretty well. Anyway, here is a music video from French rapper Kamini that we watched in class today. The song is called 'I'm White!' Enjoy!

Keep on Truckin

I feel like I have spent more of this weekend on the train than in real places. After a solid 15 hours of train travel on Friday, I made it to L'viv in Ukraine (where my Grandma's family hails from!)...at 5:00 in the morning. After a solid day and a half there (pictures and analysis to come when I am back in Vienna), it was time for another solid 8 hours of train travel to make it back to Cracow (fortunately to be able to get off the train and spend the night). Cracow is very nice. I can sort of understand Polish from Russian and constantly debate whether it is better or worse to use Russian or just act like every other tourist and use English (I tend to go with English and try and avoid the language of the former opressor). Also, there must be Easy Jet or Ryan Air flight to here, because there are loads of Brits. I think low cost air travel in single handedly destroying the image of the British as a civilized cultured people.

What can I say, crackheadedness runs in the family

Got this video from my darlining brother. The guy is French. Enjoy!

Turkey

After my last trip to Turkey in 2000 I became a big Turkish advocate. I had been very impressed by Istanbul, and by the fact that not all women wore headscarves like the Turkish women in my German textbooks. Particularly when it came to the question of Turkey joining the EU I argued that Turkey was a true and vibrant democracy with an elite comparable in values to that of Europe.

On my second trip this year I became more aware of the differences. I still love Turkey, but Turkish society is quite different from most European society: most Turkish women are very limited in terms of the opportunities they have (it is not normal for young women to live alone, certainly not with a man before they are married), Turkish society is rather authoritarian compared to 'Western' society (things like it being a crime to insult Ata-Turk, the founder of modern Turkey, or to claim that Turkey committed genocide towards the Armenians), and despite recent progress minorities in Turkey are stigmatized in a way I can only compare with Russia (the recent murder of a Turkish-Armenian journalist for example).

The issue with Turkey, though, is that these issues tear at the very political fabric of Turkey. Take the head-scarf for example. Since the time of Ata-Turk it has been a crime to wear a head-scarf in public spaces like government buildings or universities. Recently that has been relaxed, but it still prohibited in the books. The current party in power in Turkey (the AKP) has Islamic roots, and is seeking a larger role for Islam in public life (for example women being allowed to wear head-scarves at university). In Turkey that sort of a stance is highly controversial not only because the cornerstone of the Turkish state is its being secular, but because a symbol like the head-scarf is seen to show the direction Turkey is going in (with the head-scarf, for many, away from modernity).

In Turkey today, there is generally perceived to be a battle for the country's soul. Turkey has a very 'European' elite and middle class, but as a poor country it also had a very large essentially peasant class who have much more in common with Syrians or Iraqis than the French or Germans. The difference between Turkey and countries of similar development and geographic position, is that Turkey has been unrelentingly Western and European oriented over the past eighty or so years. Educated Turks see their country as Western and their country's future to be in the West. The question is whether the West equals Europe, and if Turkey can continue to be Western if it is not in the EU.

Uh Oh....

I am jealous of all of you still in New York! Your should go see this show at the UCB Theatre:

A DOUBLE DATE WITH JULIE AND JACKIE
Thurs, May 24 at 9:30 pm
UCB Theatre
307 W 26th St, Just west of 8th Ave

Check out the promotional video (the second one, though you should watch the first one too since it is what it is parodying).