Month: May 2009

Why do we travel? For work? For pleasure? Because we must? Because we want to? For me, even when it’s business, it’s personal. Which is how I find myself in the Romanian capital of Bucharest, what’s referred to as Little Paris for its neoclassical architecture and one time predilection for all things French. So, who got me to come to this gray and distant place?

This comes from the opening of the Romania episode of No Reservations, a food+travel TV series hosted by one of my favorite authors, Anthony Bourdain. While I don’t recommend watching the episode–it’s simply horrible–this quote captures my emotions quite well.

Unlike Ukraine, the Romanian air (as far as I know) is radioactive free. Sigh. I’m nearing the end of my stay, and as of yet have not gotten the full impression of Bucharest that I was looking for. I have to remind myself that it’s impossible to really know a city when I am only there for a handful of days, and when those days are spent working, it is hard to get a multi-faceted perspective. In that sense, being a business traveler has been bittersweet.

Hotel

I am staying at the Ramada Plaza in the northern, more suburban region of Bucharest. The overall decor has a very space-age-IKEA feel to it, with ultra-modern minimalist furniture and single-hued, ambient artwork. The staff is incredibly friendly, but the pool and fitness center are under renovation. Glad I brought my jump rope. I noticed, on the third floor at least, that a fire hydrant mysteriously serves as a doorstop. Can’t figure that one out. Oh, and my room smells like ginger.

Stray Dogs

There’s an interesting story behind this. In the 1980s, Nicolae Ceausescu, a now-executed Communist dictator, demolished a large portion of Bucharest homes. In classic megalomaniacal fashion, he used the newly razed area to build tower blocks, wide boulevards, and grandiose monuments to himself. While homeowners were rehoused in tiny flats, many of them were forced to abandon their pets. Naturally, the animals ran wild and do what animals do best–bump uglies and make more animals.

In 2006, an elderly Japanese businessman bled to death after being bit in the leg by a stray. Since then, the government rounded up hundreds of dogs and lethally injected them (which I have my own issues with), but despite government efforts, stray dogs still take over many-a-dark-alley at night. I can hear them barking now. Seriously. No walking alone after 5pm for this guy.

Erotic Massages

I’ll put it this way–this is the first map I picked up in Romania. Marvel at the irony.

13/15 ads on the map are R-rated. Really? There’s not much more to say here.

My first Tweetup

For all you non-nerds out there, a “tweetup” is when you meet someone in person that you originally met over the micro-blogging platform, Twitter. A few months ago, I was looking for web programmers to address a coding issue I had on my blog. I came across Adrian Diaconescu, and when I learned he had started a travel blog called Freelance Traveler, I knew that he was the perfect person to get in touch with. Thankfully, our schedules worked out, and Adrian was kind enough to take me to Caru’ cu bere, one of the few traditional Romanian beerhouses left in Bucharest–it’s been around since 1879!

Boy was it fun. We chatted about travel, Romanian politics, his work, my work, and yes, blogging. To compensate for all the nerdiness, we demonstrated ultimate manhood by ordering beers and meat. There’s just no other way, right? Below is a picture of mititei, a joyful blend of mutton, beef, pork and several flavor-enhancing spices. YUMMY.

Adrian, a big thank you for your company. Noroc to you!

(Noroc = luck, or ‘cheers’ in Romanian)

 

It was 8:26am. I wolfed down my tasteless–yet surprisingly fluffy–omelet and ran upstairs to make sure I had followed orders correctly. Closed-toe shoes…check. Passport…check. Camera, note pad, yogurt-covered raisins…check.

At 8:45am, in front of the Ukraine Hotel, at the heart of Kiev’s Independence Square, Catherine and I registered our names, paid our fees, and hopped into the back seat of a cushy, air-conditioned 15-passenger van. Sergei, one of the trip coordinators, poked his head through the main door to explain a few things before we left–that the trip would take 2 hours. That, in the van, we would watch a full-length documentary about Chernobyl. That the documentary was “90% OK” because it was made in America. We were also told to stomp our feet when reentering the vehicle as to minimize the amount of radioactive dust accumulation. And finally, Sergei playfully warned us that our guide within the exclusion zone was “working for the government, so don’t expect too much.”

The documentary was informative yet at times felt a bit too end-of-the-world. Here is what I learned: on 26 April, 1986, after a late night experiment, reactor #4 of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant exploded. Less than 24 hours later, winds had already carried radioactive fallout–400 times more than Hiroshima–as far as Stockholm, over 1000km away. That first day, the only fatalities were two firefighters that tried to put out a “strange fire” with water. They, as well as everyone at the time, had no idea how to handle the situation. One of the main takeaways from the documentary was that this lack of information, coupled with a secretive Soviet government, lead to massive amounts of unnecessary exposure.

I looked out the window. Springtime dandelions, birch tree forests, and clusters of wild chickens passed by under a cloudless sky. The documentary continued. I learned about Pripyat, a town that lies 3km away from the reactor. At the time of the explosion, 50,000 people lived in Pripyat, but it took days for them to evacuate. By that time radiation levels had altered the chemical composition of their blood. One man who survived the event confessed, “even today, 20 years later, I can still feel the taste of lead in my mouth.” Luckily, the only metallic taste I experienced that day was while chewing my felt-tip pen. A bad habit, indeed.

Today, 8 million people live in contaminated areas in Ukraine, Belarus and Russia. The war with the invisible enemy is certainly not at the level it once was, but because no official study has ever been put together, it’s hard to say how many atomic refugees there are.

At the border of the outer exclusion zone, our van stopped, and we passed our passports outside for registration. 10 minutes later, we pulled into an administrative building in the city of Chernobyl, about 15km away from the reactor. Our guide, Yurev, introduced himself and led us upstairs where he explained the geography of the exclusion zone. A member of our group was asked to read aloud the dos and don’ts of the day. It is prohibited to “drink liquors or take drugs,” “have meal and smoke in the open air,” and “carry any kind of weapon.” I think I could manage that.

On the drive towards the reactor, we stopped for last-minute snacks, and for a few of the more adventurous group members, local brewskies for the van. We piled periodically out of the van to take pictures and learn more about the geographic layout of the facility.

Quick anecdote: one of the group members, a witty British comedian who brought brevity to a place that certainly needs it, asked our guide why we weren’t allowed to take pictures of the main administrative building on the way to the reactor. The dialog was as follows.

Guide: Do not take pictures toward the building.

Comedian: Why can’t we take pictures of the building?

Guide: Safety.

Comedian: Safety?

Guide: Safety for you.

Folks, it doesn’t get any more Soviet than that.

Eventually we reached the reactor.

At one point, I stepped a few meters in front of the group to get a closer shot. Uniformed men hustled out of the above-pictured gate, pointed, and said something along the lines of “RussianRussianRussian…photographskie…RussianRussianRussian.” I turned around, walked back towards the group, and then our guide ushered us back into the van.

We then drove to Pripyat, the ghost town mentioned in the documentary.

One of the most eerie places in Pripyat is the playground. See the manhole in the foreground? Radiation levels measure 1,000 times higher over the contaminated asphalt.

We then went inside Pripyat’s school.

As emotional and creepy that Pripyat’s buildings can be, many of the scenes felt set up. A lone shoe on the amusement park bench. A perfectly positioned book against the backdrop of a dilapidated wall. These are the kinds of things that tend to happen, I guess, with the evolution of tourism. Alas, I took advantage and snapped a few shots myself.

The tour ended, and we drove back to Kiev. A few of us got together for afternoon drinks in Independence Square, which turned into a pleasurably raucous evening of drinks, dinner, and travel conversation. There was Catherine and myself, then Shields, a South Carolina native who currently lives in Afghanistan, Dave, a British engineer/mountaineer from Wales, and Dom, the British journalist/TV personality/writer. Dom is currently writing a book on dark tourism–visiting places like Cambodia, Chernobyl and Rwanda. Looking forward to its completion!

 

Здравствуйте! Как дела? Hello all! How’s it going?

I had a wild week in Belarus. A wild week of…working. Fortunately, between hunting down the prices of transmission fluid, iodized salt, and a number of other market basket goods, I managed to squeeze in a few hours of down time.

On the flight from Frankfurt to Minsk, I sat next to a Belarusian-born business student studying in Toronto. We chatted about Minsk, about Toronto, and about a summer he spent as a furniture mover in America. My favorite anecdote of his – running out of money and using his last $13 to buy sausages and 3kg of rice at a Denver supermarket. Atta boy! We continued to chat when the plane landed, but when I got held up at customs, we made plans to see each other later in the week and said our goodbyes.

The drive into Minsk was picturesque. Wide, lick-ably clean streets and monolithic Soviet facades, the grandiose aesthetic of Stalin’s massive post-war rebuilding. During WWII, Belarus was invaded by Nazi Germany and suffered greatly during the occupation; 25% of the entire population was killed, and by the time the war was over, barely a stone was left standing.

As we approached the city center, my eyes darted from window to window – rolling parks and river bridges, a wedding celebration, and because it was nearing May9th (Victory Day), banners and flags galore. My thoughts of Minsk’s troubled past gave way to the vibrancy of a modern city.

Some interesting facts about Minsk:

• At one point, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice called Belarus an “outpost of tyranny.” For the last 15 years, Alexander Lukashenko, a mustachioed megalomaniac known for controversial comments, has served as the Belarusian president. Yes, the KGB still taps phone calls.
• In 1986, the Chernobyl incident left a quarter of the country contaminated. To this day, effects are still felt in the southeast.
• All foreign visitors are required to possess medical insurance, which can be purchased at the airport if need be.

And now, a brief glimpse of activities during the week:

• I ate at Jomolungma, the only Tibetan restaurant in Belarus – of the 4 Tibetans in the country, all of them work there. The food was fantastic, and I enjoyed speaking with the multi-lingual owner about the history of the restaurant.
• Side note – the women in Minsk are breathtakingly beautiful. It’s like a supermodel breeding ground over here. The click-click of stiletto heels provided a quasi-erotic soundtrack to my week, and when it came time to price women’s lingerie, I made sure to take my precious time.
• I ate at Upteka, a pharmacy-themed restaurant bar that boasts a Cyrillic eye chart in the bathroom.
• My colleague, Catherine, bought $6 tickets to the ballet, but due to the language barrier, she accidentally bought tickets to a stage opera. We didn’t know this of course, until the show began.

The last night, though, was my favorite.

After a last-minute, unscheduled meeting with one of our clients, we rushed to a late dinner at Graffin, a local-dish restaurant with an atmosphere “akin to being inside Willy Wonka’s brain.” My choice of Belarusian ational cuisine was the draniki, or potato pancake.  For all members of the Jewish tribe out there, if you feel like eating latkes year-round, Belarus is the place to be! After dinner, Catherine and I were recommended one of Minsk’s 15 nightclubs, Club Africa. Apparently we weren’t pretty enough, because ‘face control’ wouldn’t let us in. That’s what you get with all these damn supermodels. Back at the hotel, Catherine and I impishly explored an attached business center after seeing a ‘dance bar’ sign on the door. Buzzed and curious, we sat down at the (empty) bar but decided not to pay for the ‘erotic dance show.’ After a few drinks, some businessmen came in and ordered the show, so while Catherine and I finished our drinks, we caught the first half of the show. Best part of the evening – the DJ, seeing me eye the pretty girls, looked at me, raised his arms and said, “After two weeks, they are like furniture to me.” Classic.

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Tomorrow I will post an update about Kiev, where I’m writing this post. Hope you enjoyed!