Sensible and practical Fanny, transformed into Madame l’Ambassadrice, is confronted with a series of diplomatic near catastrophes.  Her predecessor refuses to quit the Embassy, sets up a rival court in a small Annex and must be  smoked out by Fanny’s Machiavellian Uncle Davy.  Northey, Fanny’s emotionally immature but very attractive niece, is brought on as social secretary, and succeeds in complicating matters by driving every Frenchman she meets to distraction.  Northey’s devotion to animals gets her into all manner of scrapes including a massively inconvenient mission to save a basket of lobsters destined for a State Dinner, driving them in the Embassy car to liberate them at the point where the Seine becomes tidal. In the nightclubs of Paris, Northey inadvertently leaks random facts about Fanny and Alfred to a hostile yellow journalist, who stitches it into a series of scandalous articles about life in the Embassy.  Fanny’s four sons arrive in their turn to cause havoc and only her determination to avert disaster, with a little help from Alfred’s suave Deputy Head of Mission and kindly French friends keep Alfred blissfully unawares, international scandal at bay, and the ship of diplomacy afloat.

I thought I might send a copy over to the new US Ambassador to Russia Michael “McFaulty” McFaul (I’m pretty sure I’m the first to pen this nickname.)  I imagine he is also having trouble sleeping (and if he isn’t – he should be) and possibly could use both a good laugh and  a few pointers about how to get on in the Diplomatic Corps.

McFaulty, an “Orange Revolution” specialist has put just about every possible foot wrong since he arrived, and has continued to insert three or four into his mouth on a weekly basis.  One might wonder if he’s confused the “RESET” function with the “CNTRL-ALT-DEL” combination – but since McFaulty actually came up with the RESET concept in the first place, this seems unlikely.  He got off to a roaring start by holding a reception for NGO and opposition leaders about  four minutes after he get off the plane, which is the kind of thing that really thrills the Kremlin crowd.  He blogs and tweets, which is, of course, a national disgrace, since, as every John Le Carre reader knows, Ambassadors are meant to cable, not tweet.  To complete the trifecta, McFaul went postal recently on TV to some cheap Anna Chapman lookalike who hounded him on his way to meet with his “old friend,”  another politically irrelevant Russian opposition leader.  In this cringe-making footage, which of course went viral, McFaulty got angry, and in  heavily and unfortunately accented Russian accused the Russian media of hacking into his telephone and e-mail accounts.  He called Russia “wild.”  Oh dear: of course it is, but one can’t say it — in Russian to Russians in Russia.  It makes one wonder how well McFaulty really knows Russia after all.  He has like six PhDs, and one can imagine him playing with dun-colored Lego as an 8-year old, building a miniature replica of the US Embassy in Moscow and pretending to be the Ambassador, but how could he be so naïve as to think that it’s the journalists who are hacking into his e-mail accounts?  Even Northey knows better. We might as well send Sarah Palin (who appears to be job hunting this week) over to do the job.   She at least has seen Russia from her house.

A seasoned journalist friend and I were chatting about this today and she (far more sympathetic than I) suggested we get together a team and offer some media training.   I’m not sure I’d go that far (not at tax time anyway, since I feel I’m so not getting my money’s worth with this hire) but a few bullet points seem in order…because, Gwadhelpus – and I just thought of this — it soon it will be July 4^th.  So here are a few tips for McFaulty:

1. Get a haircut.  A short one.  No Russian will take you seriously with all that strawberry blond hair flopping about in your eyes.  And while you are at it, get a well-cut suit and, please — get an overcoat.  Standing around escalating the Cold War with some henna-haired journalist in your shirt sleeves for five whole minutes is just not dignified.  Neither is that moment when the bearded opposition guy has to urge you to “come in…come in., you’ll catch a cold!”
2. Use your office.  You know…the dun colored one on the Garden Ring?  The one you built with your Lego?  All this ricocheting around town – of course they know where you are and what you are doing.  Like Fanny and Alfred, you have a large and fully staffed Embassy and also a large, elegant, and fully-staff house in the Center of Moscow. Unlike them, you have Marines.  Make the beards and weirds come to you for heaven sake.
3. Just. Stop. Speaking. Russian. In. Public.  Didn’t they cover this in “Ambassadorships for Dummies?” You may have six PhDs in Russian studies and dun-colored Lego, and be buddies with a lot of irrelevant has been politicos like Boris Nemstov, McFaulty, but your spoken Russian just isn’t cutting the mustard.  No foreigner’s does.  We sound just as ridiculous speaking Russian to them, as they do speaking English to us.  We are Moose and Squirrel to them.  Speak English, McFaulty.  Particularly on camera.  I myself never speak Russian if I can help it, and HRH (my “Horrible Russian Husband”)  assures me my accent is not nearly as bad as yours.   I find things move much faster that way.
4. Stop blogging and for the love of God, stop tweeting.  What can you be thinking?  Look what it did to Medvedev.
5. That guy Sergei Lavrov?  The Russian Secretary of State?  He is the real deal.  Take a leaf from his book – he expresses outrage by the mere lift of one half of his eyebrow and shivers run all the way from Whitehall to Rosslyn.
6. I get that we are supposed to promote democracy everywhere, even in places where they don’t want it, but I wonder if just a small part of your diplomatic brief should be devoted to averting World War III?  Look up realpolotik on the Wikipedia machine.
7. Read Nancy Mitford’s “Don’t Tell Alfred.”  Seriously.  At least, get your wife to.

“Oh God,” I groaned to HRH, “the Fake Buddhist wants to have a Girls Night Out.”

“If you don’t like her,” said HRH, “don’t go.”

“It’s more complicated than that,” I said.

“You either like her, or you don’t,” said HRH, “that seems pretty uncomplicated to me.”

The friend we hate is a universal problem, made much more intense in expatriate circles.  Expat friendships happen quickly: circumstance sparks friendship, common origins fan the flames, and before you know it, woosh — you have a raging relationship.  Then, in no time, your three best friends move 5000 miles away, and you are left with the Fake Buddhist.

No one really likes the Fake Buddhist, who hails, I have long suspected, from one of those lackluster square state west of Ohio.  There is much talk of “The Island,” but no details as to its GPS coordinates.  She is not Asian.  She is self absorbed, rather bossy, and deeply annoying: qualities that seem at odds with her stridently proclaimed Buddhist beliefs.  These, however, always seem somehow ingenuous, though she meditates, does a lot of yoga, and takes online courses on Zen gardening, she nevertheless wears fur, which Tancy points out has got to be wrong.   To tell the truth, none of us knows any real Buddhists, but she still seems fake.

The Fake Buddhist is very judgmental – she likens coffee to heroin, feigning horror at Lucy’s standard triple quad latte.  Chocolate in any form, however, is very much acceptable, as is something called popcelebrity.com — the homepage on her laptop.   The Fake Buddhist always rouses in me a strong urge to order something large, meat-based and starchy with a lot of cheese on it and consume the entire thing right there, washed down with way too much bad wine.  I usually succumb, and this does me no good, and provides The Fake Buddhist with no end of satisfaction.  She’s a great one for providing advice on the art of  “moving on and moving up,” in terms of upgrading one’s spouse, which she has successfully done at least once.  “Breathe…just breathe,” she advised serenely when Elise’s schmuck husband ran off with a 22-year old secretary called Natasha: when clearly something more along the lines of “girlfriend, you need to lawyer up – here’s the number of my guy in New Jersey,” was what was called for.

I do not care for the Fake Buddhist.  I do not want to spend time with her.  I think her stance that “politics is just so pedestrian,” is actionable.  If I were not an expat, I would unfriend her – like in real life, not just on Facebook.   After all, she “unsubscribed” to my food blog’s newsletter, which I imagine she knows I know.   I’d so much rather just shoot off a text that I’m not feeling well and spend an evening with a healthy salad and Lord and Lady Grantham at Downton Abbey.

“I can’t just say I’m unavailable,” I find myself saying to HRH, “what am I supposed to do – pretend I’m in Nizhniy Taigil for the week?  I’m hemorrhaging friends as it is with this economic downturn.”

HRH’s very Russian approach to friendship is the polar opposite of mine: He has three friends from his childhood days, four friends from military school, and Ilya Potapov, with whom he lived when he first got out of military school and that is it.   That’s it.  HRH feels his list is complete.   Everyone else is either an “acquaintance” or someone he is associated with in a work.   He is not up nights worrying about this circle ever expanding or contracting.

“I have enough friends,” he shrugged.

“Isn’t there a Russian proverb that says, ‘Better 100 friends than 100 rubles?’” I pressed.

“I don’t have nearly enough rubles,” said HRH kicking off his slippers, “don’t go — stay home with me!”

“No,” I sighed.  “It’s tempting, but if I don’t go, I won’t be able to compare notes with my real friends on how horrible she is.”

“I give up!” exploded HRH and grumpily turned his attention back to the TV.

“Breathe,” I advised, “just breathe.”

“What time is it?” I asked HRH, my “Handsome Russian Husband.”

“It’s 6,” said HRH, who never changes his watch from Moscow time, no matter where he is in the world.

In my iPhone’s “Date and Time Settings,” I slid the knob on “Set Automatically” to the right.  The screen flickered, then showed 5.00 pm.  Defeated, I scrolled down to “Set Date & Time” and adjusted the time manually to 6.00 pm.

“There’s a potent symbol of the Medvedev legacy,” I said to HRH as we queued in adjacent passport control lines, “He’s such an Apple junkie and yet every one of their devices – even the iPad – refuses to acknowledge current Moscow time.”

HRH shrugged and motioned me into his line.  His line always moves faster.

“Poor old Medevev,” I said to HRH, in the car on the way home, “he’s going to end up one of those incredibly short chapters in Russian history like Feodor II or…who was that guy who came after Stalin?”

“Malenkov,” said HRH automatically, as he cut off a Honda in mid lurch thereby gaining four more inches of wiggle room.

“All anyone is going to remember about Medvedev is that under his administration and urging, the number of Russia’s time zones was reduced from 11 to 9.”

“Little too close to Canada for my liking,” said HRH.

What Rasputin-type advisor, I wondered, convinced Medvedev to reduce the number of time zones, once a proud Soviet 16 down a pathetic 9?  Who told him that he’d get a surge in his approval ratings amidst a population whose guiding principle has always been, “And what makes us inferior to other nations (huh)?”

“Listen,” said HRH, who doesn’t waste any time feeling sorry for Russia’s elected officials, “reducing the number of time zones might make good business sense, but cancelling daylight’s savings time has to have been part of the next guy’s election strategy – there is no upside for millions of children getting up and going to school in the pitch black dark.”

“To say nothing of 40-something businessmen,” I smiled.

In 2011, as part of the time shuffle, Russia “sprang forward” in March but did not “fall back” in October.  Medvedev tweeted that the change would reduce Russians’ “stress and illness,” as well as bring them closer to Asia during the business day.  But what price the convenience of a conference call to Shanghai compared with the extra hour is now seems to take on the return from a weekend’s shopping in Europe?

On the news that night, The Frontrunner in the upcoming presidential election – a self-confessed night owl – fielded a question about the time change from a group of entrepreneurs

“I’m not opposed to a review,” said the Frontrunner with his characteristic smirk.

“Timely,” said HRH nodding in approval.

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This article first appeared in print in The Washington Post and Russia Beyond The Headlines on February 29, 2012 under the title, “The Power Of Time Zones.”  A link to the original online version may be found here.

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Hey there readers!  What was your take on the Presidential time change mess?  Did you have trouble waking up in the morning, or did it cure all your “stresses and illnesses?”  Do you think the next guy will change things back again?   Let us know what you think by hitting the comment button below!

I have to admit, I put down my romantic notions about Russia’s future — reluctantly, to be sure, but firmly, about 15 years ago.  I don’t think the Great Russian Soul is anything different from the Great Peruvian Soul, and I still don’t believe in the medical properties of strawberry jam.

And yet…

And yet, every decade or so, something moves me to think maybe my position warrants a review.   Sunday was one of those moments.   Erroneously called a “flash mob” by a number of news outlets, the protest was anything but.  It was a steady, determined, optimistic event featuring Russians from all walks of life, all of whom seemed to be there for no other reason than their belief that they needed to do something concrete to protest against the current political situation.

I spent three hours with the White Ring, and I saw no drunkenness, unpleasantness — no shoving or pushing, or the disorganization that often characterizes public events in Russia.  I saw strangers holding hands, drivers leaning on their horns, not out of frustration from a traffic jam, but in support of the human chain formed along the inside of the Garden Ring.

I saw more smiles in Moscow than I’ve seen in a very long time.

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Dear Readers:

Have you been out on the barricades lately?  What’s your take on the upcoming elections?   Any bets on the outcome?

-God The Father

If you’ve ever thought about having a polar bear experience, this may be your lucky day!

January 19^th for Orthdodox Christians is Epiphany or Theophany, which commemorates the Baptism of Christ in the Jordan River by John the Baptist.  Note that this is the adult Jesus and John the Baptist, not the toddlers in “The Virgin of the Rocks.”  This is a common misunderstanding since Epiphany comes so close to Christmas, many people think it is all about Baby Jesus getting baptized.  This would have been a huge waste of time since both Jesus and the Virgin Mary were born without original sin.  If you are scratching your head thinking, “surely we had that already,” remember that the Orthodox, or Julian calendar lags 13 days behind the Western or Gregorian Calendar.

Epiphany or Theophany means literally “holy light” and signifies divine revelation.  Just after he was baptized, the Gospels relate that Jesus heard a voice from heaven saying, “This is my well beloved son in whom I am well pleased.”  Jesus then immediately took off for his time in the wilderness, following the well-trodden path of his Old Testament ancestors:  Moses after the burning bush, and Abraham after the three angels.

In Orthodox countries, the celebration of Epiphany usually centers around some kind of interaction with water.  In Russia, where suffering is the dernier cri, the hard core types celebrate Epiphany with total bodily immersion into river water, which is accessed via a large crucifix-shaped hole drilled out the ice.   At midnight.

Surely not, I hear you cry.

Wanna bet?

Check out this compelling photograph taken by British photographer, Henrietta Challinor, entitled “Epiphany II Serebryanni Bor.”

Photo by Henrietta Challinor

The Baptism of Christ reminds me of hands-down the funniest thing that ever happened to me personally.  It gets a full description in my forthcoming book, but I thought I would include it in this post, since it fits right in with today’s holiday:

From Jennifer Eremeeva’s forthcoming novel, “Herring Under Fur Coat.”

 For my fortieth birthday, HRH allowed me to choose the annual May holiday destination, and I chose Jordan, somewhat to his dismay.  HRH’s idea of a good holiday is to find a beach with an adjacent bar and divide his day between running, sleeping, and consuming the local beer.  He eats sparingly of what is fresh, and falls into an exhausted heap at the end of the day.  Thus, he re-charges his batteries.   I don’t mind this kind of thing, but I also feel that there is much of the world left to see, and Jordan was high up on my list.

 Velvet was all for Jordan, as soon as she saw that most of the sites could be – and in her opinion should be – explored astride either a donkey or a horse.   Most 9 year olds might find a four-day trek through Petra tedious, but not Velvet.  She was in love with a spindly donkey called Abdul, who drank Coca-Cola strait from the can.  We explored Petra, then exchanged the horses for camels and headed into Wadi Rum, where David Lean filmed a lot of Laurence of Arabia, and finally, like Laurence, on to Aqaba for some much needed beach time.

 It was on the way to Aqaba that we first encountered the couple.  We stopped at an observation platform overlooking a Crusaders’ Castle, with complimentary toilet facilities and obligatory oversized portraits of King Abdullah and Queen Rania.   As our guide explained the history of the Crusaders in Jordan, which I found interesting, and HRH and Velvet (well trained by me to be nice to tour guides) were listening to politely enough, our attention was diverted by a couple instructing their guide in broken English how to use a complicated digital camera.  There, literally in the middle of no where, we were confronted with Homo Novus Russicanus.

 New Russians are the latest incarnation of Slavs on the move, fueled by Petrodollars, anxious to experience all that the world has to offer – and Bistro Bistro Bistro!  Cost is not a primary concern to these garishly clad Buccaneers, who make high end hoteliers and luxury goods retailers from Mayfair to Rodeo Drive lick their lips in anticipation.  New Russians travel in high season, which to some extent they have re-defined for the industry, paying top ruble for the best suites. They spend huge sums at the hotel’s restaurants and outlets.  They lease chauffer-driven Bentleys to take them three blocks and then wait for them.  They pay the hotel to send all manner of things, animal, vegetable AND mineral up via room service, and don’t blink when they get the five-figure bill at the end of 3 days.

 This couple looked to be on the low end of this high-end species – possibly regional, rather than Muscovite, but with all the trappings.  The man was right out of Central Casting: stocky, balding, intense turquoise blue eyes, which exactly matched his wife’s finger and toenail polish.  Jordan is pretty tolerant as Muslim countries go, but the wife seemed prepared to push that tolerance to the limit: she wore a sheer pearl pink silky tunic over a lacey black bra that left little of her impressive cleavage to the imagination.  Her skin tight white jeans and gold lame sandals did not, to me, seem the ideal trekking through Wadi Rum ensemble. I idly wondered how on earth she would have mounted a camel, as she struck a red-carpet pose, pouted prettily, against the backdrop of the oversized portrait of Queen Rania (which no woman in her right mind would ever do, because, even if you are Angelina Jolie, the contrast is impossible.)   But that’s a New Russian for you — lots of expensive camera equipment, which they use exclusively to take pictures of themselves in front of famous monuments – never just the monuments, and it is the most tedious thing in the entire world.  I once went to the Himalayas with my Moscow book club, and while I went around trying to capture artistic shots of tortured looking Tibetan pilgrims at a temple, our Russian members hammed it up in front of every fire hydrant they could find and spent the whole time snapping each other.

 “Oh wow,” I said, “Do you think they are on the way to Aqaba as well?”

They were, and as luck would have it, they showed up at our hotel, where we were somewhat thrown onto the same side of the beach when a group of Saudi women arrived, swathed from head to toe in black abayas, with a passel of children.  The women took one look at Blue Fingernails (as I then thought of her, and still do today) and scurried as far away as they could.  Velvet, on the other hand, was riveted.  Blue Fingernails had a blue bikini exactly the color of her nail polish, and a blue dragon tattooed at just the place where her spine ended and somewhat below where her bikini started.  The dragon was breathing fire due South.

 Blue Fingernails pulled a dog-eared Russian-language Harlequin Romance from her beach bag and settled herself on a lounge chair.  She flagged a passing waiter and ordered a coke without ice.    As the waiter turned to attend other patrons, we caught sight of Blue Fingernails, in a swift, and clearly practiced gesture, pull a fifth of Canadian Club out of her bag, add a hefty tote to the Coke and, in a flash, deep sixed the bottle back into her bag.

 It was 10:30 am.

Blue Fingernails was soon joined by her husband, whom I instantly christened “Pectoral Cross” because his poolside ensemble consisted of the Russian swimsuit of choice: a teeny tiny Speedo, leaving absolutely nothing to the imagination, and which I have happily convinced HRH is not suitable beach attire.  On his feet, he wore black male Biggest Loser flip flops, and not a blessed thing else except a massive gold cross hung around his thick neck with a heavy chain, featuring a highly Baroque treatment of Jesus Christ – also adorned in a teeny tiny Speedo – in the throes of his final agonies at Calvary.  It was the size of my outstretched palm and was the largest piece of religious jewelry I’d ever seen on a member of the laity.  I was fascinated, and so was Velvet – as he lay down next to Blue Fingernails, and turned his face up to the heavens for some sun worship. I wondered what kind of a tan line the cross created.   Did he, I mused, carefully replace it in one established slot at each session to ensure a crisp line?  Russians, including HRH, believe that the sun contains vital nutrients and vitamins, so they never use SPF of any level, and I could tell from their ruddy complexions that it was clear that Blue Fingernails and Pectoral Cross had spent several weeks cultivating the Vitamin D.

 Velvet has inherited her endless fascination with people watching from me.  HRH doesn’t care for the pastime – he’s never fascinated by the latest gossip, and remains frustratingly indifferent when I greet him with, “You will NOT believe what X just told me about Y.”  So, it is probably just as well he missed the main Pectoral Cross and Blue Fingernails event, and who knows, had he still been with us, we might have missed it entirely.

 After our respite in Aqaba, HRH flew back a day early to Moscow, leaving Velvet and I to finish up our holiday at the Dead Sea.   As soon as we packed him off to the airport, I moved forward with my intention to re-visit the Queen Noor furniture workshop, where I had earmarked some beautiful inlaid wood chairs. HRH had dismissed the idea of having them shipped to Moscow, which the Jordanians assured me was the smallest of troubles, on the grounds that Customs on the Russian side would be a mess.  I thought they were just what our new apartment needed, and figured it would be easy to present HRH with a fait accompli.

 Fate handed us a chatty Jordanian driver who thoroughly approved of our plan to buy the furniture, for which he garnered the traditional kickback.   He discovered that we had not done much of the Biblical sightseeing around Madhaba, and insisted he take us to the Baptism of Christ site.  Well worth the trip, he advised.

 HRH’s mother is dead religious, and we thought we might pick up something meaningful for her at the inevitable gift shop.   I was intrigued to see the Jordan River, so we agreed, thinking it would be what I call a “quick stop/photo opp/potty hop/must shop” kind of visit.    I should have known better – I who had led tour groups in the footsteps of St. Paul — anything to do with the life of Jesus Christ is expansive, uphill, ecumenical and crowded, and the Baptism of Christ Center was all of those things.  It was also multi-lingual.   We were placed in a group with a couple from Seattle who had arrived the night before, who wanted to pick our brains about Petra; two Albanian nuns who spoke not one word, and, low and behold! Blue Fingernails and Pectoral Cross.

 Blue Fingernails seemed dressed more demurely – she had on a top that had sleeves, over a long pair of jeans.  She carried a plastic laundry bag purloined from the Aqaba Kempinski that clanked – did I detect the outline of the bottle of Canadian Club?  She also had a weird kind of kerchief on her head – way too flimsy to provide any real protection from the sun, and not in keeping with her usual wardrobe choices.   Pectoral Cross was wearing jeans and a close fitting T-shirt made of a very shiny black material, against which the cross glistened and shone in the Middle Eastern glare, making the Jesus figure dance about, as if actually writhing in pain.   We smiled the awkward smile of people who have been traveling in tandem but not actually met, and headed off behind our guide, who split his commentary between Russian and English.

 The Baptism Site covered a lot of ground – just like St. Paul — and most of it was downhill towards the riverbed — along a slippery set of stone staircases that wound around in the shade of massive and very unnatural plantings.   As we picked our way down, the guide  drew out attention  to the right of the path to a small stone platform some 25 feet below.  This, he explained was where Jesus had stopped to pray before being baptized.

 “I go down there to pray,” said Pectoral Cross in a matter-of-fact kind of way.

 Heavens, I thought.  Was this a sort of one up-manship of the Son of Man?  I looked again at Blue Fingernails’ weird kerchief and realized in a flash that  — fancy Nikon, Canadian Club and the Harlequin Romance aside — Blue Fingernails and Pectoral Cross were in Jordan for purely religious reasons!   The kerchief was spiritual headgear – like any good Orthodox Christian woman, Blue Fingernails was covering her head to visit a sight of religious significance. I listened hard to the exchange between the guide and Pectoral Cross.

 “It is not permitted to descend,” said the guide, in a weary manner, that suggested that Pectoral Cross was not the first person he’d encountered who wanted to literally Walk In The Way of The Lord.

 Pectoral Cross gave the guide a very Eastern European smirk which basically communicates the following: “Listen you inferior brown towel head, I know that you know that I know this is a rule, but you know that I know that you will look the other way because you know that I know that if you do look the other way, I will tip you enormously when – and only when – this thing that want that you know and I know is against the rules – is accomplished to my satisfaction.”

 “What’s going on?” asked the girl from Seattle, leaning over to tighten the toggles of her KEEN trekking sandals.

 “He wants to pray down there,” said Velvet, helpfully, as calmly as if she were announcing that he wanted to make a potty stop.

 “Really?” asked the guy from Seattle, in wonderment.  No doubt sharing our initial impression that Pectoral Cross didn’t seem the type.

 “It seems so,” I said, and we all leaned over the railing to watch the drama unfold.

 The Albanian nuns crossed themselves, the Jordanian guide looked around surreptitiously while Blue Fingernails handed Pectoral Cross the Aqaba Kempinski bag, and Pectoral Cross scurried down the slope to the stone platform where he knelt, drew a small church candle in a glass holder from the laundry bag and tugged a gold ZIPPO lighter out of his back pocket.  He lit the candle, carefully returned the ZIPPO, then crossed himself using three fingers in the Ultra Orthodox manner and intoned prayers we couldn’t hear.

 I took a swig of tepid mineral water and handed the bottle to Velvet.  Time passed.    From somewhere nearby, a muezzin crackled, and then moaned out

“Allllllaaaaaahhhhhhhhh Akbarrrrrrrrrrrrrr”  — God is great — calling for the Muslim noonday prayers.   Pectoral Cross finally lifted his head, extinguished the candle, hiked himself up the slope and rejoined the party without a word.  We continued on.

 Our next stop, the guide informed us, casting nervous looks at Pectoral Cross, was the site at which Jesus disrobed prior to getting baptized by John in the waters of the Jordan.  There was a little grotto just to the side of the path.  Without a word, Blue Fingernails handed Pectoral Cross the Aqaba Kempinski laundry bag and he went into the grotto.  The Albanian nuns crossed themselves again. The Seattle couple looked on with growing fascination, as Pectoral Cross, once again down on his knees, re-lit the candle with the gold ZIPPO, and then removed the shiny skin-tight black T-shirt, carefully re-adjusted the Savoir of Mankind on his hairless chest (did he wax, I wondered) and crossed himself a few more times.  Rising, he placed the folded T-shirt into the laundry bag, and, shirtless, without even a hint of SPF, re-joined the party.

We continued downhill along the shady walkway until it abruptly stopped and we were once again in the bright sunshine.   To our left was a gaudy Russian Orthodox Church that looked as if it had been completed last week (it had) and beyond it, the River Jordan.

 I don’t know what you think of when you think of the River Jordan, if indeed, you think about it at all, but my image had always been of a wide, majestic sort of waterway, with a slow, but steady, stately current — nothing so unbridled or inelegant as a torrent or anything, but commanding.  If I’d thought about the color at all, I think I would have assigned it a blue in the marine hues, with subtle hints of green, flecked with the occasional silver highlight of foam.   As to the depth, wasn’t there a song that went something like “Jordan’s river, is deep and wide?”  Or was it “chilly and wide?”  I did, however, imagine a shallow end, possibly with convenient steps leading into it, for Jesus to kneel in while John dipped a gourd like thing into the river and poured the crystal clear water droplets over Jesus’ head.   That’s sort of the idea I had of the Jordan River.

 People who believe climate change is a bunch of hooey should really visit the Baptism of Christ site, because that’s all your really need to see to convince you it’s real.  Time, you get the sense, has taken its toll.   You can see where the River Jordan might have been both deep and wide, and possibly somewhat chilly, but today it is a putty-grey silt bed, baking in the sun.  At the bottom of the riverbed is a 5 or 6-foot wide trough of cloudy scummy dishwater.  It’s just sort of lying there, stagnant.  It pongs.  A lot.

 The thing about traveling in the Arab parts of Middle East, is that you totally forget about Israel.  They make it easy, but there, on the opposite side of the hugely disappointing River Jordan was a whole bunch of barbed wire, taking itself very seriously indeed.   Some forty oversized Israeli flags, flapping insolently in the breeze, left nothing to the imagination.  There it was – Israel.  You could reach out your hand, if you dared, and you’d almost be there.  At regular check points, impossibly good looking Israeli soldiers, both men and women, in pristine military garb and mirrored sun glasses, stood to attention, semi-automatic weapons raised skyward, their unblinking gazes trained on the opposite bank: the site of the Baptism of Christ.

 Pectoral Cross wasted no time.   He eased off his lizard-skin loafers. Then unbuckled his belt.

 “Oh my God,” said the girl from Seattle, “You don’t think he’s going in…”

“Mommy, can I –“ started Velvet.

“Don’t even think about it.” I said.

 The Jordanian guide shook his head, started to intervene, clocked the Israeli soldiers who were fingering the triggers of their semi-automatics, thought better of it, and slowly backed away, motioning us to come with him.  Blue Fingernails now seemed to be all purpose and action.   She adjusted her kerchief, and stood like a handmaiden, accepting the large chunky Rolex Pectoral Cross carefully removed from his wrist.  She waited patiently while he eased off his jeans, revealing the teeny tiny Speedo.

 “Jesus Christ, I hope that guy has had a tetanus shot,” breathed the guy from Seattle, as Pectoral Cross strode purposefully, without any hesitation, into the cloudy rank River Jordan.

 An Israeli guard yelled something in Hebrew and made a shooing gesture with his hand.  We watched, rooted to the spot, while Pectoral Cross submerged himself completely into the rank, stagnant, cloudy dishwater of the River Jordan, not once, but thrice.  He then rose, resplendent in his teeny tiny Speedo and his cross, both covered with a fine film of grey silt, and his new sense of righteousness.  Cleansed of his sin, whatever it was (and I imagined it was epic, that sin), he languidly strode out of the silt bed of the River Jordan and joined Blue Fingernails, who had been busy shaking out a white silk shirt, fresh from the Aqaba Kempinski’s overnight dry cleaning service.

 Solemnly, Pectoral Cross donned the shirt, then, less solemnly he struggled to get his tight jeans back on over his silty wet legs.  Blue Fingernails took the empty Canadian Club bottle and filled it up with opaque water from the River Jordan, oblivious to the Israelis, now grouped together, using a megaphone to express their desire that we get as far away from the River Jordan as possible.  And so, even though it was uphill all the way, we bid a hasty retreat.

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This Post is part of The Stunt.

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Photo credit:  Henrietta Challinor.  All Rights Reserved.

Henrietta Challinor is a Moscow-based photographer.  Her latest exhibit, “Moments of Truth”  explored Russia in winter.  You can see more of her work at her website:  HFC Photography.

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Hey there readers!  The Stunt is back!  Join in to support me as I limp towards the finishing line of detailing all of Russia’s public and professional holidays, a project begun in 2009!

Have you got any funny stories of tourists traveling abroad?  Hit the comment button and share them with your fellow readers!

This time around, Revolutionarius Interruptus opposition is vaguely more interesting than last time.  Aging playboy Boris Nemstov is still vaguely on radar screen (though he needs to loose the black T-shirt look if you ask me – and no one ever ever does.)  Russians continue to ignore their Cassandra, Gregory Yavlinsky of Yabloko.  In addition to Soviet-era granite statue Gennady Zyuganov, who heads the Communist Party, and Russia’s answer to Glenn Beck, Vladimir Zhirinovsky of the Liberal Democrats (neither Liberal nor Democratic), we have Yale-baptized celebrity-blogger, Aleksey Navalny and the one my fellow Americans call “the New Jersey Nets Guy,” billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov.  My money was on Navalny (go ahead, call me an Ivy League elitist) until he went on a little hike with the ultra nationalist that has us all still scratching our heads.

Prokhorov looks likely to garner the 2-million signatures he needs to run in March and hehas released his political talking points on his web site.   Money clearly no object which begs the following question: teal…really?  And that picture of Vladimir Putin as Darth Vader lifted from Facebook?  Couldn’t do better than that?

I don’t know who is in charge of the campaign – actually, you know what?  That is a bold face lie – I do know who is in charge of the campaign — I know exactly who is in charge of the campaign.  Which is why I’m baffled by the clunky, overdramatic, and (sorry – can’t resist this) sloppily copy-edited content on Prokhorov’s English-language site.  This is a slick, cosmopolitan, take-no-prisioners crowd, but what can they be thinking?   His points are all over the place – some put him right of Genghis Khan, others left of Barney Frank, and a few locate the New Jersey Nets Guy squarely only one exit short of La-La Land.

There are admittedly some good, possibly great and frankly long-overdue agenda items:

-       Bring back direct election of regional governors and mayors.

-       Provide working opportunities for young mothers and those with large families.

-       Provide job opportunities and public facilities for the handicapped.

-       Encourage Russians to think as individuals, rather than “mass” or “society.”

In the “How’s that working out for you?” column we have:

-       Defense spending not to exceed spending on health care.

-       The creation of a single global currency based on the Euro and the Ruble.

It is these points, however, that really make me scratch my head:

-       Investment in culture is the driving force for the country’s modernization providing fresh stimulus for the economic development of the provinces.

-       President to leave his post voluntarily after 5 years.

-       Cancellation of the practice of early voting and absentee ballots.

-       Privatization of all state companies, with all funds channeled to the State Pension Fund.  (I’m no economist, but isn’t that robbing Peter to pay Paul?)

-       The consumer is the end-of-the-line taxpayer, not the producer.

-       Retirement age related (I think they mean pegged) to the number of children in the family.  (Huh?)

-       Only Higher Education in fields that provide skills the economy particularly needs is free.

Finally, because no one ever ever ever asks, here is some unsolicited advice:

-       With metaphors, you know, less is more.  (“A 21^st Century person is not a cog in some bureaucratic machine.  And we as modern Russians are no longer willing to march in lockstep to a tune dictated from above.”)

-       Hedge your bets:  Avoid calling the nationalists, or indeed anyone, “vulgar.”

Even in New Jersey.

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Dear Readers:

What’s your take on Russia’s upcoming presidential election?  Have you got a favorite horse in the race?  What do you make of retirement age pegged to the number of children?

“I don’t know,” I hazarded, “maybe a lot of beer and some ABBA CDs?”

Alexei sighed deeply and shook his head. I was instructed to watch and learn. Holiday parties must be lavish, must take place in glamorous venues and headline famous bands or celebrity hosts. No one cares too much about the food, and as for the drink: quality is emphasized over quantity. The target audience, I learned, are the upwardly mobile secretaries and downwardly mobile middle-aged tea ladies, who emerge from daylong marathon sessions at the hairdressers completely unrecognizable in gravity-defying up-dos and sateen cocktail dresses. Senior management, on the other hand, simply shrug on their jackets and make docile token appearances around the periphery of the event, lulled by the knowledge that once this is over, they can decamp to Klosters or the Maldives for three weeks.

“Alexei,” I shouted the first year, as a band called “Uma2Rman” hit chords that bounced off the marble interiors of the Tseretelli Gallery in Moscow. A normally silent driver, released from his duties by a team of outside drivers hired to drive our drivers, did a credible imitation of Mick Jagger, surrounded by admiring secretaries and tea ladies, “This is the tackiest thing I have seen since the Sound of Music bus tour in Salzburg.” He nodded happily.

“Alexei,” I wrote on a cocktail napkin, the following year, as we groped our way to the bar in the murky darkness of a hotter-than-hot nightclub called Rasputin. “Do this math: If you took what we are spending tonight, and divided it evenly by the number of employees at The Firm, do you realize that every single person could go, air-inclusive, on a week’s holiday to Turkey in a five star hotel?”

The final year I worked at The Firm, a multinational corporation was buying us out and honed in on our revels. They bought out the entire evening performance of “Cats,” which was experiencing a lackluster run that season at “The Young Komsomol Theatre.” I agreed with Alexei that it would be a disaster.

It was. The tea ladies and drivers sat stiffly in their holiday finery utterly baffled, squinting at the stage as they tried to figure out the gist of a non-existent plot, performed by actors dressed like cats for reasons they could not fathom, speaking words that made no sense at all. Alexei and I stood together at the back of the room, knocking back bad white wine and shaking our heads.

“This is a fiasco,” Alexei said .

“I think,” I said, “I think I’m going to write that book.”

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This piece originally appeared as an article in The Washington Post and Russia Beyond The Headlines on December 15, 2011.

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Readers, do you have a a corporate entertainment story to share with us!?!?  Have you ever been caught in a situation like ours?  Hit the comment button and tell us about it!

“I feel we should move our money,” I said to HRH during a commercial break, as we tucked into a stir-fry, assembled during a love fest between Rachel Maddow and Michael Moore, which had brought me up to speed on the Occupy Wall Street developments.

“Move it where?” asked HRH, who associates moving money with armored vehicles and a couple of drop outs from the Russian army with buzz cuts and ear pieces.

“It’s an Occupy Wall Street thing,” I explained, “yesterday, they encouraged everyone to move their money from big banks to smaller local savings and banks or credit unions.  I think we should do it.”

“Why would we want to do that?”  Asked HRH, “We are VIP clients at our bank.  I don’t want to move.”

“We need to stand in solidarity with the 99%,” I explained patiently, “the ones who aren’t VIP clients at their bank.”

“Why?” asked HRH,  “I like being the 1%.  Don’t you?”

“Dar-ling,” I said patiently, “the 99% are the good guys.  It’s the Wall Street fat cats who are the bad guys.  The protesters are trying to introduce a financial transaction tax to level the playing field.”

“Fantastic,” said HRH, raised in the best Marxist-Leninist tradition, “We had that political system – Communism.  Didn’t work out too well.  You can’t think a financial transaction tax is a good idea.”

“What do I look like to you – the short stop of the Citigroup softball team?” I retorted.  “It’s a teeny tiny tax – like 1 % of 1 cent on every dollar for these gazillion dollar transactions: Mergers & Acquisitions and stuff like that.”

“And where would the money go?” asked HRH.

He had me there.  Rachel and Michael were for it, as was Obama, so it must be a good thing.

“It’s…well, it’s certainly designed to ultimately benefit the global…you know, poor,” I argued meekly. “Listen, Bill Gates and the Pope are in favor of it.”

“Bill Gates can afford it,” said HRH, “and I thought you said the Pope was a Nazi male chauvinist pig.”

Vesti Nedelya resumed in the nick of time, with an update on Boris Bere—zovsky’s attempt to sue Russia’s richest oligarch, Roman Abramovich for $5 bn over some oil shares.  HRH grimaced; feeling as many Russians do that this is too much Russian dirty laundry on Britain’s cloths line.

“How does this financial transaction tax work again?” he asked.—

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This post first appeared  in print as an article in The Washington Post and Russia Beyond The Headlines on November 30, 2011.

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Readers, have you had a kitchen debate with a loved one?  Is your family divided on an interpretation of how to move your money?   What’s your take on the Occupy situation?  Weigh in by leaving a comment below!

St. Basil's Cathedral: The 8th Wonder of The World

There is an old Russian saying:  “Ремонт хуже пожара,” or “Renovation is worse than a fire,” which I thought was just an old Russian saying until two days ago.

That’s when they finished the renovation of our apartment building’s lobby.

HRH, (my “Horrible Russian Husband”) and I live in a modern building in a somewhat business enclave part of central Moscow.  Like most new buildings in Russia, during the initial construction period, the cheapest possible materials were used on the façade and the public areas of the building (the lobby and the stairwells.)  The theory behind this cheapskate approach is that the residents will get together and upgrade their own particular part of the building, deciding as a collective body in sort of a neighborhood association on a certain design style, price range, the kind of materials and which amenities they desire and can afford. Decisions such as uniformed neo-fascist thug security guard, versus helpless old lady with purple hair.

Our “podezd” or entry way was the last to do anything about upgrading the facilities, primarily because a lot of people were still renovating their apartments, and it was generally agreed that we should wait until all the “capital renovations” were completed.

I’m not sure what happened next – as I spent some time away from Moscow last spring and anyway, I’m never really encouraged to go to these kind of neighborhood association meetings, but suddenly, after months of picking our way through the rubble of the lobby, we began to see the new design of the lobby take shape.

And it became clear to me that many people had missed the neighborhood association meetings.

I also began to realize with growing horror that those who had gone to the meetings and approved the design scheme were either on some kind of very bad acid trip or had formulated their ideas of beauty and elegance in the lobbies of four star hotels in the Red Sea resort town of Hurghada.

The flooring is that sort of highly polished faux marble tiling honed and polished in a Balkan state that doesn’t QUITE fit together.  I’m betting ours was actually designed for the bathroom rather than an entry way, particularly in a country where ice and snow make slipping and sliding and landing on your spine on highly polished marble a very real possibility from September – April.

If you land on your backside, however, you will have an unrivaled view of the inside of our lobby’s cupola (we have no actual dome in our building, but we have the inside of a cupola.)  And maybe landing on your backside will be a good thing, as it could prevent you from knocking your head on the cupola – it’s that low hanging.  Around the inside is a mural made from what I now know is called “photo wallpaper” of The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World…plus St. Basil’s Cathedral: a design theme that may seem incongruous if you haven’t spent enough time in the resort towns of southern Turkey.  To me, it is a nostalgic reminder of the good ole days when Russia was only an occasional guest at what was then known as the G7.  I sense a large, and very ornate crystal chandelier will be installed any day now. Watch this space.

I have slight concerns that the large and ornate crystal chandelier could possibly clash with the imposing mural on the main wall across from the door, which overwhelms the visitor upon arrival:  a floor to ceiling “photo wallpaper” rendition of a mountain range, crystal clear lake, and lush forest that is either Colorado or Tibet but certainly no place in the Russian Federation.  It might be one of the natural wonders of the world, but I can promise you it is definitely not a wonder of wallpaper hanging.

The Tadzhik building workers, security guards, and a few of the building’s domestic workers all think it is a sucess fou.  They have spent much of the past few days photographing each other in front of the almost-completed masterpiece, which is why none of them appeared at all nonplussed when I turned up, Canon in hand.

Because pictures are worth a thousand words, I include a full photo essay of our lobby, which I encourage you to browse in the sober contemplation that you should always, always, always go to your neighborhood association meeting.  Even if you’re encouraged not to…

Comment gallery open…

HRH claims that he is also sorry he’s not home more since he often goes without lunch.

“You can’t skip lunch,” I said aghast.  When you work at home in your yoga pants as I do, lunch is a major highlight of the day.  “You have to eat something between 7 am and 10:30 pm.”

“Sometimes the Generalniy and I go for a steak,” he said, “but not every day.  And I can’t go to the canteen too often.”

“Why not?” I asked.

“Too political and too complicated,” he said, “If I sit with one of my subordinates, I’ll have to sit with them all in a rotation.”

“Let me pack you a lunch,” I plead, “last night I made Pasta Norma, which is even better the next day:  I’ll put it in something to keep it warm—“

“We’ve had this discussion,” said HRH shaking his head, “I’m not taking lunch to work.”

Yes, we have had this discussion many times, and yet I still don’t get why Russian men don’t brown bag.   HRH refuses to expand beyond saying, “it would be misunderstood.”  I keep at it, though.  I’ve purchased innocuous-looking insulated lunchboxes and cool packs, which sit on the pantry shelf, unwrapped.  I’ve suggested slim thermoses and chic metal “Tiffin boxes,” and been given a scornful look.  But I was genuinely hurt when he vehemently rejected my attempts to get him to drink more water.

Manly Water Bottles

HRH definitely wears the sweatpants in our family.   He swims, he fences, and he’s run three marathons (a fourth, I have declared, there shall not be.)    He also loves to sauna, which, like all Russians, he believes is the generic cure-all for everything from the common cold to stage four cancer.   I worry HRH doesn’t drink enough water.  During a recent trip to the US, I noticed that everyone carried large stainless steel bottles, which looked sharp, and seemed practical.  I bought a particularly manly gunmetal 40-oz bottle for HRH with both a  sports top and a sippy-cup lid so he could choose between the two.

“I cannot take that to work,” said HRH after I presented him with the water bottle, “It would be misunderstood.”

“In what way?” I wailed.  “You can fill it up with ice water and lemon and just have it on your desk!”

“People would not understand,” said HRH again without any explanation.

“People don’t drink water at The Difficult Start Up?” I asked.

“People drink tea,” responded HRH, “until lunchtime anyway.”

“And after that?” I pushed.

“After that,” said HRH, as he left for another 17-hour day, “we don’t need anything nearly so large.”

“And how about the morning after?” I prompted.

And HRH had the good grace to look thoughtful.

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This post originally appeared in The Washington Post and  Russia Beyond The Headlines under the title “Nyet To the Brown Bag” on October 27, 2011.

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Dear Readers!

Hope this is finding you all well in the middle of this autumn gloom!  How do you like our new name, new feel, and new address?  Have you had a chance to check out our other new roll out “The Mosocovore: Culinary Adventures in The Russian Capital?”   Everything you ever wanted to know about shopping for food in Moscow but were too busy to ask!  Be sure to head over there in the next 10 days to win a chance at our special inaugural giveaway…