My Ski Adventure Part II

Posted on September 24, 2012 by Jill Foer Hirsch

So Bill still hadn’t ditched me by lunchtime, and he said that we were going to have to get on the chair lift to meet my family for lunch.  My heart was filled with terror…the legendary chair lift.  We pretended we were on the lift and practiced for a while, and then I had to face the real one.  Much to my surprise I was able to get on the chair lift without incident.  When we got to the top, I gracefully hopped out and would have glided away had I not fallen straight on my face.  OK, stuff happens, but the important thing was that we made it to the restaurant.  I was rather pleased with myself when they came in and realized I’d made it.  I stomped around the restaurant in my boots as if that was something I did all the time.  I pretented to talk ski talk like I was an old pro.  And I didn’t fall during lunch!

But then my family headed out in different directions and it was just me, Bill, and the mountain.  And about 300 other people on skis and snowboards whooshing right by us.  Bill said he noticed how close I am with my niece, and asked if I used to sing to her when she was a baby.  I told him I did.  What did I sing?  Oh I don’t know, stuff like Mary had a little lamb.  He asked me to start singing it and I was mortified—my “singing” could be registered as a lethal weapon.  But Bill didn’t care; it was time to ski and sing.  We started gliding down the slope as I was singing about Mary and her lambs at the top of my lungs.  Ooops!  I wasn’t paying attention and had skied halfway down the slope, and upon realizing that I promptly got off balance and fell.  After Bill managed to get me upright and ready to go, he started asking me questions about my niece and nephews.  I gabbed and gabbed and then realized I had made it down the rest of the slope.  Bill clearly knew how to distract me and let my instincts take over.  We were right at the bottom when I fell again.  All in all not too bad.

Before I knew it I was back on the chair lift, and once again fell on my face trying to get out of the thing.  OK, so a few falls here and there.  I had two skis strapped on and so far Bill hadn’t ditched me; good stuff.  When we started back down for the second time, my nephew Craig saw me and came whizzing by me;  then he turned around and skied back up the slope.  Seriously, who has that kind of energy, especially in the thin air at our escalation?  This is why I’ve written the other 2 kids out of the will.  What have they done for me lately?  Craig cheered me on for a bit and then zig zagged over to some kind of double double black diamond slope marked with a skull and crossbones or something.

Early in the day Bill told me there would come a point where I needed to fall and I should just go for it.  I didn’t understand but he said I would when it happened.  As I finished my second run down the slope, I somehow started sliding left and was headed directly for the big hole at the base of the chairlift.  They had yellow plastic stuff up as a barrier, but that was definitely not going to contain me.  So I did it, just closed my eyes and threw myself right down on the ground.

It was my last fall and I realized I had really and truly skied that day.  The theme to Rocky was playing in my head as I strolled down to the shop to return my boots and skis. It was a mighty fine day on the slopes.

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My Ski Adventure, Part I

Posted on September 23, 2012 by Jill Foer Hirsch

I think everyone knows by now that I’m a giant klutz, and no one would dream that I could learn to ski.  But my brother CJ and sister-in-law Lisa were taking all the kids out to Colorado for a ski vacation and I thought maybe this was the opportunity to finally shine at something athletic.  I mean how hard could it be?  So Dan and I signed up for the beginner’s class on our first morning.

The instructor took us all to the shop to rent boots and skis, and we practiced clicking the skis on to the boots.  Naturally I was already struggling, but figured the fake it ‘till you make it philosophy would work well.  So we headed out to the bunny slope and I hear click click click all over the place as people strap their skis on, and realized faking it wasn’t really helping anymore.  Dan to the rescue as usual, and we finally managed to snap on my skis.  Unfortunately by the time we finished with that the class had already moved on to the bunny slope.  I tried it a couple of times but I could only ski halfway down before falling and rolling the rest of the way.  It was pretty discouraging, especially when I looked up and saw that the rest of the class had already moved on to the next slope.

I cheered up when the instructor called time for lunch, but then I realized he was waving me over to talk to him.  Stop me if you’ve heard this one…he told me he felt I was too far behind the rest of the class and wouldn’t be able to catch up after lunch.  He offered me a refund and suggested I just keep giving the bunny slope a try.  Fine.  As we know from my lame attempt to learn how to dance, I’d been down this road before.

At dinner that night I told my family that I was done with skiing, and planned to shop and nap and sip hot cocoa for the rest of the trip.  And that’s what I did for the next two days, although when everyone else came tumbling in from the slopes, laughing and talking about the day’s adventures, I felt really left out.

We only had two days left in Colorado when my niece looked me in the eye and said she was disappointed in me for not trying harder to learn how to ski, and it was sad that we would never get to ski together.   Ouch.  That did me in completely.

Clearly I had no choice but to try again, so first thing the next morning I decided to start fresh and hired a one-on-one ski instructor; that way I could not be compared to anyone else and we could go at my own snail-like pace.  Bill The Instructor was great; he helped me with all the equipment and talked to me about how I learn new things.  He asked me what I hoped to get out of the lesson and I told him I wanted to be able to meet my family for lunch at a place I hadn’t been able to get to because I couldn’t ski.

We skipped the bunny slope and went straight to the ferocious beginner’s slope.  Bill showed me the t-bar that I was supposed to catch as it came by and sort of sit on while I was dragged to the top of the hill.  I figured no way, but with Bill anything was possible because he refused to let me fail.  Before I knew it I was gliding up the hill on the t-bar.  I was so proud of myself until I realized that getting up the mountain was just the beginning; I still needed to learn how to ski.  I fell a lot of course, but Bill kept telling me I was doing great and to keep up the good work.  Huh?  This was unfamiliar to me.  We made it to lunchtime and he still hadn’t given me the sympathetic talk and offered me a refund.  It was a pivotal moment in my life.

Ski Adventure Part II soon to follow…

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Take It From Me

Posted on September 22, 2012 by Jill Foer Hirsch

As noted yesterday, I have been known to listen to a conversation among a bunch of strangers and butt right in.  You don’t have to thank me; it’s important that I give of myself and enrich the lives of others.  Just one small service I provide.

Several months ago I was at the airport having a bite to eat, and there was a lively group one table over; a man and two women.  As I listened in, I learned that all three of them had been divorced, and some of them more than once.  They were all whining about finding the “perfect” person out there.  They all had lists of criteria, but somehow they were losing on love.

I tried as hard as I could to keep my trap shut, but I couldn’t take it anymore.  I scooted over a little closer and said “throw away your list.”  They all looked pretty annoyed but I expected nothing less.  I told them again to throw away their lists and stop looking for the “perfect” mate.  Sure, the legends of the Abominable Snowman, the Loch Ness Monster and The Perfect Mate persist, but it’s just fantasy.  They seemed doubtful when I told them even if there was such a thing as a Perfect Mate, they would want to kill themselves after a few months of dating Mr. or Ms. Perfect.

Can you imagine?  The constant drone and persistent boredom of perfect-ness; always agreeing and complimenting, sacrificing themselves for each other.  Then before you know it the wife sells her hair to buy her husband a watch chain and the husband sells his watch to buy her beautiful combs to hold back her flowing mane.  Everyone is screwed then, right?  She doesn’t look so hot anymore and he has no idea when it’s time to come home for their perfect little dinner.

Creating a match is not some kind of cosmic salad bar; I’ll take this, none of that, do you have any this, that could be fresher.  Real life is a composed salad.  There’s some stuff you don’t like so you work around it.  You don’t make a big deal when you hit a sour note in the dressing, you savor your favorite parts, and

OMG.  Did you see where I was headed there?  A Really Bad Metaphor, or as they’re known in the biz, an RBM.  They sneak right up on me.  I apologize.  Anyway, what I told these folks is that they should stop looking for a pieced together Frankenmate and start looking for someone whole, warts and all.

Before I knew it, someone in the restaurant started one of those slow claps you see in the movies, building and building to a standing ovation with hundreds of people worshiping me for my wisdom.  I graciously blew kisses at the crowd and then was carried out on a wave of shoulders.

Of course my memory could be foggy.  I might have just paid my check and headed to the gate.

 

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A Little Story About Jack and Diane

Posted on September 21, 2012 by Jill Foer Hirsch

I will admit that one of my guilty pleasures is eavesdropping in restaurants.  When Dan and I go out to dinner, I have to shush him sometimes to listen in on a neighboring table.  It’s not the nicest thing in the world, but it’s not the worst either.  The worst thing would be if I actually butted in to the conversation.  Yep, I’ve done that too but that’s another story for another time.

We went out to dinner tonight; a chic romantic little place called Captain Pell’s Seafood.  It’s a textbook perfect crab house; fluorescent lights, rickety torn up tables and chairs, brown kraft paper over the table, and a stack of paper towels for napkins.  As you recall we don’t eat crabs anymore; we go for the bi-valves who apparently don’t feel pain when they’re breaded and fried and dipped in cocktail sauce.  And there were no animals harmed in the making of the hush puppies.

It was in this elegant setting that we sat next to a couple who I’m just going to call Jack and Diane.  I have no idea what Jack does for a living, or where he works, but I can tell you a lot about his job.  And even though I don’t know Jack’s actual name, I know he works with a fellow named Glen.  Here’s what I know about Glen—he is the worst kind of low down dirty rotten backstabber you’ve ever seen.

As Jack tells it, this guy Glen just waltzed in and got a job for which he is completely unqualified.  Jack suspects he is secretly the nephew of the owner of the company or something, and Diane agrees 100%, because Glen gets away with murder.  Glen calls in sick a lot, and if anyone else did that they’d be, and I quote, “reppermanded or something.”   But noooo, not Glen the bleeping golden boy.  And when he is at work he does nothing but make more work for everyone else, and he lives to make Jack look bad.  Glen is a bleeping bleep.  Diane thinks Glen is a giant bleeping bleep and his whole salary should be given to Jack as a bonus, because Jack’s the only one who does a damn thing over there.

The boss buys Glen’s act because he is a bleeping bleepity bleep bleep moron who just likes Glen because he has his head up the boss’s bleep. It turns out that the boss has it in for Jack because he gets reppermanded just for looking crossways.  Diane has half a mind to march right in there and give him a piece of her mind.  To be honest, if Diane is using just half a mind to begin with, and then gives a piece of it to the boss, she is going to have precious little left.

I would estimate at that point that Jack and Diane had consumed 3 dozen crabs and 8 gallons of Bud Light.  The more Bud Light, the worse that bleeping bleep of a boss got.  By now Jack and Diane have decided that Glen and the boss are “funny” and they’re probably sleeping together.  In my mind this proves once and for all that Jack is a real man and Glen and the boss are just bleeps.  Diane agrees.

Jack and Diane decided that they couldn’t eat any more crabs and they might as well just meet their friends at a bar.  By now I’m sure everyone at the bar knows that Glen is a bleeping son of a bleep.  That’s just Glen.

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I Drank the Kool-Aid

Posted on September 20, 2012 by Jill Foer Hirsch

I have always been fascinated by the buzz words that fuel business.  Recently I was speaking with someone about a new process and she jokingly suggested we “storyboard” it.  I love that expression, and the concept, because we can take something quick and easy and just get it done, or we can turn it into a whole production so that we can show off a shiny “deliverable”, another favorite.

Another thing we love to do with any idea is to “roundtable” it.  There was a time when we would just say “meet” or even “brainstorm”, but we’re so desperate now we need to conjure up images of Camelot.  Everyone now enjoys “bio-breaks” in the middle of “roundtabling” (yes, it’s a verb too); that way everyone can be clear about the purpose and not just use the 3.5 minutes to goof off or whatever.  “Table it” means that even though there is a meeting to discuss whatever the “it” is, “it” will simply be deferred for another 5 years at which point “it” will be moot.  Who knew there was such a big difference between a roundtable and just a plain old table?  If people want to be less transparent about their intent they’ll substitute the expression “tickle it”, which means to set a reminder that you are never going to discuss the issue.

I still enjoy some classics like “run it up the flagpole” and “float it.”  The most mainstream  of all expressions is FYI, which my friend used to cleverly express as “F your I”.  The really mundane stuff like “bean counter” and “suit” never really go out of style, but we have fabulous new substitutes such as “C-Suite”.  Change Management isn’t terribly impressive these days unless it is a “sea change.”  I remember “bifurcate” being in fashion for a while; absolutely everything had to be “bifurcated.”  I engaged in a little gamesmanship and started “trifurcating” everything, which made “bifurcate” sound so last week.  Also in favor for a while was “nimble” which meant a flurry of “roundtabling” to talk about how quickly the organization could implement “sea change”, which is ironic since by its very nature “roundtabling” slows everything down to a crawl.

Some expressions have run their lifespan and really ought to be left to die in peace; “buy-in”, “drill-down”, and certainly “out of the box,” which is code for encouraging everyone to think about new ways of doing things, and then completely diluting their ideas and cramming them back in the box.  This has happened to me so much lately that now I don’t even peek over the edge of the box to check out the view.  It’s easier to just “drink the Kool-Aid” and stay “on message.”  I think we’re also well overdue to kill off “paradigm shift”, “repurpose”, “value add” and “value engineering.”

I guess I should admit I am as guilty as anyone of throwing all these expressions around.  I like to “onboard” employees and “ramp up” projects and complain about people who actually focus on their work rather than “multitasking.”  Jealousy, without a doubt, which is why if anyone comes to me with the slightest whiff of an idea I tell them to roundtable it and come back with deliverables.  That’s just my fancy way of saying that anyone with new ideas must be reminded to keep their nose to the grindstone and their eyes to themselves.  I’m too busy defining my brand to actually execute deliverables.

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Meet Me at the Speakeasy in Gettysburg

Posted on September 19, 2012 by Jill Foer Hirsch

I don’t want to dwell on middle age too much, but I probably will because it’s starting to get really noticeable.  Maybe it’s particularly bad for Baby Boomers, given the fact that we think the world revolves around us.  On the topic of Baby Boomers, though, as luck would have it I was born at the very end of the very last year in the range designated as boomers.  This means that exactly when I begin to need them, all public and natural resources will be completely depleted.  But hey, enjoy.

Associates fresh out of law school are looking younger and younger as I get older.  I am often tempted to ask them if their mom knows where they are because I don’t want her to worry.  Sometimes when I look at their date of birth I am stunned.  I can’t help but think about what I was up to the year they were born, and at this point I was doing exactly what I’m doing now, droning away at a law firm.  There is some comfort in knowing they will have the same fate.  If I get someone particularly high-spirited and chipper, I let them know that their spirit and ambition will soon be squashed like a bug so they can earn a living.  It’s not all Hello Kitty! and horse farms you know.

We frequently have college students running around the office in the glamorous position of File Clerk.  Not too long ago, one of them asked about a piece of equipment they had seen in a closet.  What appeared to them to be an antique something, was an IBM Selectric.  Some of us remember when that was cutting edge technology; years ago at least some people still needed to use it from time to time to fill out forms, but now that we can convert PDFs to editable forms, there is truly and officially no reason to have one at all.   I like keeping it around and the next time someone asks I’ll just say it’s a polygraph machine we use to make sure File Clerks haven’t embellished their qualifications.

And oh, the smart phones.  In my day, the only person in the world who had a smart phone was Maxwell Smart.  They’re named after him, right?  I remember getting a Palm Pilot around 1998 and it was the coolest thing ever, because I could “beam” messages to another Palm user if they were seated directly across from me, no more than 10’ apart, and nothing interrupted the line of sight for the little red lights to shine at each other.  I remember being downright giddy about the power I suddenly had in my hands.  Now I hear young people laughing about how primitive their first smart phone was, when they were a kid.  As to beaming, that is now a relic akin to the Selectric.  I am still clinging onto my Blackberry for dear life, but as I understand it you can just touch two iPhones together and exchange all kinds of information.  And if you don’t use protection, you will get a virus or a little baby iPhone will be born in just 3 short months.

I think the most challenging gap is with pop culture references.  My Partridge Family jokes go over like a lead balloon.  And when I tell people our cats are named Janet, Jack, Chrissie and Mrs. Roper a lot of them have no idea what that means.  I went to a Rod Stewart/Stevie Nicks concert recently and neither name ringed a bell with my secretary at all.  Like, nothing.  It made me sad to think of all the young people who’ve grown up without the support of Stevie Nicks crooning from their…iPod I guess.  I mean, where would I be without Stevie?  The absolute life dream of a former colleague of mine is to check in to the Betty Ford clinic if/when Stevie Nicks is there.  Worth going through rehab just to be in her presence.  I’m bringing butterfly sleeves and a fan.

When I break out of my little bubble and remember that sadly, the world doesn’t revolve around me, I realize that the generation gap goes both ways.  Saved by the Bell and Dawson’s Creek are shows I think were on for a while.  But geez these kids talk about it like it was the Partridge Family or something.  I remember that from their perspective, I’m a total geezer.  They don’t distinguish between the Civil War, the Big Band Era, and the Beatles.  Can we just be clear that I wasn’t a flapper?  I didn’t welcome the boys back from WWII? I enjoyed both electricity AND indoor plumbing growing up?  It’s understandable though because no matter how old you are, your parents are ancient.  So when a young adult says “Led Zeppelin?  I think my parents used to listen to that”, I get it.

How fortunate for me that I still have the perspective of being much younger than a whole other generation of people…like my parents.  I believe in my heart my mom knows why dinosaurs are extinct—because she witnessed it.  Maybe even caused it.  I picture any time before I was born in black and white; I have to remember there were colors even though they didn’t show up in pictures yet.  Recently someone in my office asked me to print out a PDF and scan it.  I started to explain but then figured I might as well look like a hero; I had it as a PDF in record time!  Yes, wisenheimers, it was already in OCR format.  And if it wasn’t, we have software that automatically converts everything anyway.  I think the reason I’m able to grasp this kind of technology is because it results in me never having to leave my desk to look at a file.  LazyWare.

I guess it’s time to just embrace the whole thing.  If anyone asks, I walked 5 miles to school each day, barefoot, uphill both ways.  Virginia was still a colony.  Waved hello to Robert E. Lee and his grandmother every morning.  But I definitely don’t have any idea what happened to the dinosaurs, not even the one I had as a pet when I was a child.

 

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Moscow Prequel: In the USSR Part 0

Posted on September 18, 2012 by Jill Foer Hirsch

I promise that unless/until we go back to Russia, this is it for Tales of the USSR!

Our trip to St. Petersburg several years prior was so different from our experience in Moscow.  Yes, we had to go through all the same red tape to get in to the country, but the city was beautiful and charming and vibrant and we were desperately trying not to embarrass ourselves with any kind of oafish American type move.  Ooops, too late…

Our guide in St. Petersburg was a young woman named, predictably, Natasha.

I had my fingers crossed that our driver’s name would be Boris, but I guess you can’t have everything.  I don’t remember his name; I just remember being really disappointed that it wasn’t Boris.  But life goes on.

Unlike Moscow, when we went off season, we were in St. Petersburg in July, during the magic of the Midnight Sun; the peak of Russia’s short tourist season.  There were people packed in everywhere we went.  The only people who weren’t in the museums were the locals who were all sprawled out naked on the riverbanks.  Remember?  I mean, were you paying attention a couple of postings ago?

Like Ivan The Studious, Natasha was very proud of her heritage.  And she was eager to show off the Hermitage Museum.  I was beyond excited to get in there…and we kind of got in there, by virtue of being shoved by the people behind us into the people in front of us.  We made it through a few exhibits; intricate Fabergé eggs; magnificent jewels; an enchanting collection of Russian carriages being guarded by tourists who crawled under the red velvet rope and were never seen or heard from again.

But then I got to a point where I just couldn’t take it anymore.  We were trying to look at some paintings, and we were at least 6 layers deep.  I couldn’t see anything but a sea of heads; I was being pushed and shoved and jostled and I could barely breathe.  I told Natasha I wanted to leave.  She was none too happy—she couldn’t believe anyone would willingly leave the Hermitage halfway through.  That made two of us, but I just couldn’t deal.  I was trying to be polite but at the same time I was pushing my way out of there.  Natasha was steamed.  When we got outside I tried to explain about the crowds, but she didn’t get it.

It occurred to me that the Russians have a very different concept of personal space, and Natasha really didn’t understand what I was telling her.  I’m an American dammit, and I’m entitled to land spreading out so far and wide; keep the Hermitage just give me that countryside!  Well, I didn’t break out in song, but it was in my head the whole time.  The point is, Americans need an inordinate amount of personal space compared to many other cultures.

But none of that mattered because Natasha was staring daggers at me and clearly wanted to kill me.  Meanwhile, do you think Dan was supporting me?  Heck no.  He was busy telling Natasha that he had been just fine in there and he wished I hadn’t insisted that we leave.  Way to have my back Dan…with a knife.  Natasha was young, cute, sweet and charming; Dan would have said anything to save himself and throw me under the bus.  So it goes.

We were fortunate to have absolutely amazing weather during our visit, 70 degrees, blue skies, lovely breeze.  It was a perfect time to go to Peterhof, built by Peter the Great and inspired by Versailles.  With palaces, elaborate fountains and ornate gardens, it’s pretty nice digs.  At our first glimpse Natasha stood very straight and said to me “you have been to Versailles?”  I said that I had, and she said “and?” and swept her arm across the expanse of gardens.  Without a moment’s hesitation I said “Versailles is a back woods shack!  It is erased forever from my memory!”  Natasha was pleased and we were back on good terms.  For the record, Peterhof really is much more beautiful than Versailles, and I am not saying that just to cover my butt in case Natasha is reading this.  I look at these beautiful pictures and can barely believe we were there, but trust me, the “now-defunct” KGB (wink wink) has a file tracing our every move.

We went to a Russian heritage show one evening with lots of folk dancing and vodka.  The dancers stomping on the stage at least kept Dan awake.  And then suddenly, what do ya know, the Village People were appearing live!  “It’s fun to stay in the U.S.S.R. it’s fun to stay in the U.S.S.R.!”  Ooops, forgot, “It’s fun to stay in the Russian Federation, it’s fun to…”  Not exactly the same rhythm, but there’s no YMCA so what choice did they have?

I tried caviar again…and hated it as much as the first time I tried it.  Beluga or not, mother-of-pearl spoon and all, at the end of the day it’s just fish eggs.  On the other hand, I do enjoy a cracker with a dollop of sour cream, so it’s not all bad.  Plus I really love an excuse to work the word dollop into a sentence; it’s an awesome word.  We did OK on food though; St. Petersburg is a sophisticated city where lepers, zombies and vegetarians could sit down together and eat in peace.

At the grocery store trying to buy some basic supplies, the city seemed less sophisticated.  When we walked into the store, it was a row of check-out kiosks, but we couldn’t go any further.  We had to write down the items we wanted (well, Natasha had to) and hand it to the grandma in the babushka (who later got a job in the lost luggage office at the airport in Moscow.)  The grandma would walk back to the shelves, as slowly as one person can possibly walk and still be moving, and bring back lots of interesting items that were not on our list.  I didn’t want to piss off Natasha again, let alone the grandma who would have to make another long trip, so we just bought the stuff and “accidentally” left it somewhere.

All in all it was a great trip with no unfortunate Stalin jokes.  And if by chance Natasha is reading this, I’d like to give her a shout out and let her know I am coming back soon, in the dead of winter, to see the entire Hermitage.  Twice.

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Back in the USSR, Part II

Posted on September 17, 2012 by Jill Foer Hirsch

We awoke on our second morning in Moscow to the happy news that our luggage had arrived.  Yuri and Ivan looked relieved to see we were wearing clean clothes and off we went.  Dan was eager to hit the Cosmonaut Museum, where we were greeted by their mascot, Laika, the first dog in space.  I was anxious for a photo op but all these bratty little kids kept cutting in line, so all we got was a picture of me in the background.

We had fun looking at all the weird space stuff that looks almost like our weird space stuff, except theirs has Cyrillic letters and a different flag.  Dan was a pretty happy camper.

Next on the list was the Darwin Museum, where we saw a lot of stuffed animals…but not the kind you see in a toy store.  Pretty cute stuff, but the squirrel hit too close to home.

If you’re on the fence about evolution, I suggest you go see a stuffed ape, and take a good long look.  Compare the ape’s features to those of your crazy ass Uncle Harry.  You remember him; he’s the one who got so drunk at your wedding that he felt up the bride and then threw up on the wedding cake.  The missing link.

Over the next couple of days we enjoyed things I’d always dreamed about; toured the Kremlin, strolled through Red Square, looked at an endless line in front of Lenin’s mausoleum, and checked out Russia’s big department store, GUM.  Lots of merchandise made in China; I guess some things are universal.  We ogled St. Basil’s and took the classic tourist “look what I found!” picture, visited a convent or two, checked out Olympic Park, and picked up some overpriced Matryoshka dolls.

We went to see the Bolshoi ballet one evening; it was beautiful except that I had to keep poking Dan because he was snoring.  It took me right back to my glory days of being a Prima Ballerina.   Maybe not, but if I had been a Prima Ballerina it certainly would have been nostalgic.  But as we all know, my attempt at dance lessons ended badly.

You may wonder where we were finding grub given the ordeal on the first day.  As it turned out there was a Starbucks (Coffee for The People) right up the street, next door to an Italian restaurant.  We figured we were set.  But we were late in getting back one evening and decided we’d just get a bite in the little coffee shop in the hotel.  We shared a fluffy omelet and some delicious mushroom soup, and I was content right up until the bill came and seemed to total $85.  We did the ruble to dollar thing a few times to make sure it wasn’t our math, and then it dawned on me that we probably got someone else’s check, like the people in the corner eating blini and caviar.  Nope, that was our check, not in the fancy restaurant but in the coffee shop.  Yes, the omelet had 3 eggs, but I only got a cup of soup, not a bowl; so much for eating in the hotel, and thank goodness we hadn’t ordered coffee and dessert.

When it comes to leaders the Russian people tolerate a lot and expect little.  For example, many of us think of Stalin as, say, a paranoid mass murderer.  But when Dan made a little Stalin joke in the car one day, things got tense.  Yuri glared at us while good old Ivan lectured, “yes, Stalin did many bad things to many people, but he did many good things too.  He was not a bad man!”  Wow.  Talk about lowered expectations!  No more Stalin jokes; understood.  It is interesting to be a guest in a country where one man can be considered both a national hero and an evil murderer; although it is election time here in the US…

There was only one other thing to worry about while we were in Moscow; the world renowned Russian bureaucracy.  In a brilliant catch-22, it is illegal for a traveler in Russia to leave the country without the right visa and papers, and at the same time it is illegal to stay in Russia under those circumstances.  We were super careful with our paper work and luckily made it in and out without incident.

At the end of the day the Muscovites were kind enough to allow us to explore their city, and other than the omelet and the whole Stalin thing, we tried not to judge.

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Happy New Year

Posted on September 17, 2012 by Jill Foer Hirsch

The Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashanah, begins at sunset tonight. Jews around the world will welcome year 5773 by eating a huge meal, going to synagogue, and sleeping until someone pokes them.  Rosh Hashanah kicks off the High Holidays, the ten Days of Awe in which Jews pray that the holiday will soon be over.  It is believed that the Book of Life is opened on Rosh Hashanah, and you have ten days to edit your page in the book by erasing all your sins from the prior year.   It’s always good to inscribe yourself with a pencil, to maintain a little flexibility.  This is why sales of no. 2 pencils skyrocket this time of year.

Yom Kippur is the finale and the holiest day of the year; it is when the Book of Life is closed and your destiny is sealed for another year (hopefully).  Jews eat pretty big meals to commemorate all holidays, but the afternoon before Yom Kippur begins at sunset, we eat even more.  This is because you must fast for the next 24 hours.  You’re supposed to be focused on atoning for all your sins, but who can think with a growling stomach?  Taking food away from Jews on Yom Kippur is like taking booze away from the Irish on Christmas.

Some people may confuse the Jewish New Year with the Chinese New Year, and they actually share some of the same traditions.  Chinese New Year kicks off with visits to elderly family members.  Rosh Hashanah starts off by checking in on your elders at the cemetery.

During Chinese New Year single women write their contact info on mandarin oranges and toss them into the river where they are collected by single men.  If the orange is sweet, so is the girl, and if it’s sour, well, she better be really hot.  Jews have a ritual called Tashlich, where we throw bits of bread in a river to symbolically cast off our sins.  It doesn’t matter if the bread’s sweet, sour or stale; the Jew who threw it doesn’t ever want to see it again.

Food traditions are surprisingly similar.  Jews begin many holiday meals with gefilte fish, a kind of jellied fish meatball.  It’s eaten with horseradish which masks the smell and taste of the fish.  A classic Chinese New Year dish is yusheng, a raw fish salad.  Jews eat big matzoh balls in chicken soup as their second course.  The second course for Chinese New Year is tangyuan, a glutinous rice ball served in soup.

That is where the tradition of the two New Year’s branch off in different directions.  The Chinese New Year is based on 12 animals, dragon, pig, dog, rat, rooster, ox, tiger, snake, horse, goat, monkey and rabbit.  The Jewish New Year is based on synagogue gossip.  For example, Jews say “oy vey has he aged, he looks like a dog” or “that woman is as stubborn as a goat”, and on Yom Kippur, when no one is allowed to brush their teeth, the common greeting is “nice dragon breath you got there.”

The Chinese New Year is celebrated by firecrackers, parades and dragon dances, and children are given “lucky money” in red envelopes.  For Jews, firecrackers just result in everyone complaining they have a migraine, and money talk revolves around how much it costs to buy clothes for the holidays and speculation on whether that ox of a woman Mildred owns any other dress than the one she wears every year.  Kids who engage in a little mishegas (craziness) and stomp around like dragons are immediately reprimanded by an adult, any adult, hissing in their ears like a snake.

Parades?  Not so much; the Jewish commemoration includes ritual self-flagellation while droning on about sins.  Although while not a parade, exactly, the Jews rushing for the food at the end of Yom Kippur services is certainly a spectacle.

Wishing everyone a Happy New Year, no matter how or when you celebrate. May you be sealed in the Book of Life.  From now until sunset tonight, we’re going to go party like it’s 5772.

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Back in the USSR, Part I

Posted on September 16, 2012 by Jill Foer Hirsch

Dan and I traveled to Moscow three years ago.  Moscow is not what I would call a charming city; it’s imposing with its Stalinist skyscrapers and 60’ high Kremlin walls.  Moscow has a look that says don’t f*** with me.

More than 20 years after the end of the Cold War, it’s still a hassle to travel to Russia.  We’d been to St. Petersburg a few years prior to our Moscow trip, so we already knew the drill.  We needed to fill out a half dozen forms and submit them to the Russian Embassy with our passports. It’s up to the traveler as to how quickly the paperwork is processed, based on a tiered fee system.  For enough money, you can have everything back in a week.  For a nominal fee, you can never see your passports again.  Totally up to you.

Americans traveling in Russia must also have a sponsor who agrees to be responsible for them while they’re visiting.  For a small fee your exorbitantly expensive hotel will forget to provide you a letter.  For an exorbitant fee they will send the letter right away.  We decided to hire a guide and driver for the time we were there, so we needed to present a confirmation letter with itinerary from the tour guide.  Guess how you get that?  Have checkbook, will travel, and off we went.

You know that sinking feeling you get when everyone else on your flight has collected their things and are long gone, and the luggage carousel is going around and around, with one sad little duffel bag on it?  It feels worse in Moscow.

We found our way to the lost luggage office, staffed by about a dozen very intimidating Russian grandmas wearing babushkas and fussing at each other.  We knew exactly one Russian word, spasibo, which means thank you.  For future reference, if you stand in the middle of the lost luggage office in Moscow saying spasibo over and over again, you don’t get your luggage, and everyone starts to get pretty grumpy.

We completed an endless form only to find out they needed it in triplicate, but there was no carbon paper.  There were two or three copiers in the room, but when we pointed to those all the women shouted NYET and started wildly gesticulating.  Well then, never mind.  So we filled the whole thing out again, and then again.  Finally, with no assurance whatsoever that we would ever see our luggage again, we found our way to our hotel.

In the morning, our luggage still hadn’t arrived but the concierge was on the phone with the luggage office uttering what sounded like a string of really good Russian curse words.  We felt reassured.  Our guide and driver showed up bright and early, and off we went in our dirty clothes.

Yuri was a pleasant, quiet guy behind the wheel of a blue Renault.  Ivan was our guide, whom we quickly dubbed Ivan The Studious.  He was a really sweet guy and was very proud of his heritage.  Museum after museum, every single room, every item in every room, every item in every case in every room…you get the idea.  It’s not like I didn’t want to see a room full of beautiful samovars, but after looking at about 200 of them, it’s enough.

Russian rulers have a rather bloody history, with more plot twists and turns than a telenovela.  The most typical form of death for a Tsar was murder.  Whether poisoned, stabbed, bludgeoned or shot, it was typically at the hands of a relative or elite guard.  Ivan The Studious really brought that point home as he told us of each leader’s reign.  A typical ending to Ivan’s Tales of the Tsars was “he murdered two of his sons, his wife stabbed him, and the one remaining son poisoned his mother and ascended the throne at the age of 12.”  He would go on, sadly, “and then he himself was killed by his cousin, on his 15th birthday.  The cousin ascended the throne at age 38 and of course suffered a bloody death when he was murdered by his own mother at the age of 42.”

I’m one of those people who feels compelled to make noise in the library and laugh when it’s completely inappropriate, and Ivan was so sad and so serious that I was ready to break into a fit of giggles, so I walked away to take a third look at samovar number 147, which suddenly seemed very amusing.

After a truly enlightening morning, it was time for lunch.  We explained to Ivan and Yuri that we are vegetarian.  Yuri, alarmed, grabbed a sack from the front seat and explained that his wife packed him lunch every day, so he was just fine thanks.  Ivan was deep in thought.  He didn’t know of any vegetarian restaurants.  We explained that really all we needed was someplace we could get bread and cheese, and we would be fine.  He still looked concerned, but we wandered into a nearby restaurant.  He said something to the old woman behind the counter and the next thing I knew the woman shooed us out of the restaurant.  We tried a couple more restaurants with similar results.  We asked Ivan what was going on, and he said we should not be offended but no one wanted to serve vegetarians.  No offense taken, until I saw a family of lepers and zombies (mixed marriage) being warmly welcomed into the restaurant that just kicked us out.

We told Ivan there was no need to announce that we were vegetarian, but he was beside himself.  So we ended up putting on hats and dark glasses and sneaking in to a cafeteria where we got bread, cheese and big cups of mushrooms that had been smothered in cream and baked.  Delicious, and the hell with the other places.

We filled the afternoon with two or three more museums, and headed back to the hotel to find the concierge was still on the phone spitting out insults in Russian…and we realized that we would be spending the evening washing our clothes in the tub.

Can you stand to hear more?  Back in the USSR, Part II coming soon to a blog near you…

 

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