I’ve been a bit absent on the blog recently – I’m thankful that Heather has been much more on top of things. While last semester felt quite relaxing (very sabbatical-ish), I (by my own design/fault) have been much more busy since the beginning of 2012.
One of the projects that has been taking up a decent amount of time is related to studying math and science secondary teacher education in other countries. I’ve been peripherally part of a group that seeks to make cross-cultural comparisons about math/science teacher education for several years, but only now has there been a need to do any work as part of the project. (I guess it doesn’t help that I volunteered to be in charge of some aspects of the work...)
But one of the perks of this project is the opportunity to do some travel. And last week was a rather significant perk – I had a work trip to Moscow for the better part of a week. This was my first trip to Moscow, and I was very excited. I was traveling as part of an official US delegation – sort of like I was part of the US government (specially the US Department of Education). (The #2 person in the US Department of Education was also part of this delegation – who is a very nice down-to-earth guy.)
The first step in traveling to Russia was getting a visa. Given our experiences with getting a Spanish visa (see earlier blog posts), I was braced for the worst. Had I been in the US, the US State Department would have handled/facilitated my visa application for me. But since I was in Spain, I had to do things myself. This included navigating the website of the Russian Embassy in Spanish to make an appointment and going downtown to the Russian Embassy with (what I hoped was the) necessary paperwork. Upon my first visit, the Russians were not able to find my name on the list of official of attendees to the meeting and thus they turned me away. A few calls to the State Department in DC and another appointment later (and with only a couple of days to spare), I was issued a visa.
On the whole, it seemed a bit surreal to be traveling to Moscow – I guess my teenage memories of the Soviet Union and the Reagan-era remnants of the Cold War were pretty strong. It didn’t help that I received repeated and dire warnings from the US Government about precautions I should take with my electronics while traveling to Russia. These included leaving electronics at home if at all possible and not using any of my normal passwords or email accounts (for me, traveling without electronics was not possible – I needed to travel with my computer for work and my iPhone for, well, I just needed it, although I did bring my ‘spare’ computer, on which I deleted all personal information and documents, updated my virus protection, and changed all of my passwords to be super-duper-strong). Instead, I was to create a temporary email account (e.g., a new gmail account) and only use it during my travels. The US government delegation members were not allowed to bring computers but instead were issued new computers and phones by the US Embassy in Moscow upon arrival; these phones and computers were subsequently wiped after the conference ended. The Harvard computer security folks that I spoke to felt that these precautions were a bit over the top and alarmist – who knows. But it is noteworthy that, just a couple of days after my return to Spain, the following article appeared in the New York Times, suggesting that these concerns were perhaps justified.
(I haven’t noticed anything weird upon my return to indicate that my electronics were somehow compromised, but who knows...)
There were two other factors that had the potential to impact the trip. The first was the weather. Europe was/is in the midst of a pretty extreme cold snap. In Moscow the day before I arrived, the low was -10 (°F). Even if I weren’t used to the relatively warmth in Madrid, this was COLD! And second, Russia is in the midst of political upheaval right now. Elections are coming and there are demonstrations frequently. The day before my arrival, there was a huge demonstration in Red Square. So it was shaping up to be an interesting trip!
I took an evening flight, through Munich, and landed at Moscow’s DME airport at 3:30 am. Taking the evening flight somewhat lessened the time that I was away from Madrid, thus slightly reducing the number of hours that Heather had to solo parent. In addition, arriving in the middle of the night was a way to minimize the impact of traffic on my travels in Moscow.
As I had been warned, and it is very true, traffic in Moscow is a complete nightmare. During the communist era, the government had tremendous control over all aspects of Muscovite’s lives. The government knew exactly how many people lived in Moscow (in the city, in different sections of the city, in the surrounding areas) and exactly how many cars needed to be on the roads. The highway system was built with these precise figures in mind – the government kept the number of cars to a minimum, only allowing as many cars to be made, bought, and sold as the roads could handle. But now that things have relaxed quite a bit, the population and the number of cars in Moscow has exploded and continues to grow at a fast rate. This means that most roads, most of the time, are bumper to bumper. The DME airport is about 30 km from downtown Moscow (about 19 miles). It routinely takes about 2 hours by taxi to cover this distance. By arriving in the middle of the night, my taxi ride from the airport to hotel was very smooth and took only about 45 minutes.
The conference itself was not especially exciting, although I did enjoy interesting conversations about math education and math teacher education with old and new friends from Singapore, Thailand, Korea, and China. In addition, my presentations seemed to be well-received.
Because of the cold, I wasn’t able to do as much sightseeing as I would have in the summer. But I still got to see some amazing sights, particularly the Red Square area (the onion-domed St. Basil’s Cathedral is really stunning in person – much smaller than I thought it would be). I also went to the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts – at least the section that had the impressionist paintings. This museum has quite an amazing collection of impressionist works, all displayed rather plainly and without much fanfare. For example, there is a beautiful Picasso there that recently went on tour. I saw it when it was at the Prado in Madrid, and the Prado made a big deal of it – sort of a special one painting exhibition, complete with special posters and signs, etc. But in Moscow, it was just one of a handful of Picassos on a rather plain wall. There were also a handful of Van Goghs that I don’t think I’ve seen in person that were great.
Because I didn’t do a ton of sightseeing, I tried to soak up the culture in other ways. For example, riding the subway was a very interesting experience. The Moscow subway stations are really beautiful fancy buildings, ornately decorated with fancy trim on the walls, columns, sculpture, etc. Imagine the nicest old parts of an old train station such as Grand Central or Union Station, but in every single subway station. Navigating the subway was challenging, since all of the signs were written in Cyrillic. I also went to an open-air market that sold all sorts of trinkets and souvenirs. I resisted the urge to buy one of those cool furry Russian hats but did buy each of the kids their own little nesting doll.
I also had some wonderful meals. I had borscht just about every night. This was my first experience with borscht, and I loved it. Not long ago, I used to say that the only foods that I really didn’t like were beets and sweet pickles. With respect to beets, I have no memory of trying and not liking them, but I just didn’t eat them. But while living in Michigan, I ate fresh roasted beets and realized that beets were very yummy. I’ve since been a beet lover but have never tried borscht. The borscht I had in Moscow wasn’t really beet-y; it was a rich beef broth with some thinly sliced beets. I’d like to try to make it one day in my kitchen. I also had very good stroganoff, a dish whose name I can’t recall but is basically meatballs inside dumpling and is eaten in a light chicken broth soup. I had very good brown bread, especially bread with these relatively large and very strong caraway (I think) seeds. I had several different kinds of other soups that were great – Russians seem to like to eat lots of different kinds of soups.
And of course, I had lots of vodka. I was never a big fan of vodka. But I had vodka that was served ice cold and was extremely smooth – it was great. I went the relatively cheap vodkas as well – and they were still nice. Interestingly, I noticed at several restaurants that, instead of ordering a bottle of wine, tables would order a bottle of vodka. The waiters would bring the bottle of vodka and one of those wine chiller buckets, and they would put the vodka in the wine chiller. The calculus of ordering a bottle of vodka just didn’t add up. I usually was out to eat with 2 or 3 other people. Unlike a bottle of wine (4 glasses per bottle), there are about 10 Russian-sized shots of vodka in a bottle. I didn’t think we could handle that much vodka!
I celebrated my 46th birthday during my trip to Moscow. It was a fairly ordinary day, with meetings and presentations at the conference. I was able to have a nice workout at the hotel fitness center and a nice dinner with colleagues (including the singing of “Happy Birthday” in English by representatives from the US, Korea, and Russia.
For the same reasons that I chose to arrive in Moscow in the middle of the night, I also left at a similarly ridiculous hour (my flight left at about 6 am). Because of worries about traffic (even in the middle of the night), the shuttle wanted to pick me up at 1:30 am. I got a couple of hours sleep before I had to get up and go to the airport. The taxi ride again took about 45 minutes. My flights home went smoothly and I arrived back in Madrid at about noon local time. Overall, it was a really wonderful and special trip!
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