Messages from Beyond

Hi!! sorry for being out of a couple of days. Quick update and sorry know pictures for a little while still. Igor and I were out at his grandmothers village, got up really early next morning and went out into the forest to pick mushrooms with his father and the dog :) There is no Internet in his grandmothers village and we were there for the better part of two days. then we were off to Minsk were there all day Tuesday. One of Igor's best friend from University Anton and his wife meet us and we all went to Antons home village in "Norich" not sure how to spell that one in Russian but try looking it up. It's the largest lake in Belarus. They have Internet but we all went hiking and playing at the lake so I didn't have a chance to write.

I have a lot of great pictures that I will post tomorrow when we are back at Igor's parents house in Zaslonava. The we are going to be out again for a little while as we are going with Anton and his wife Alyssa to Vitebsk. From there we are going to visit Igor's other grandmother in Orich where his brother will pick us up to go back to Zaslonava. So if you don't hear from me for awhile you will know why.

Love much and I have A LOT of wonderful adventure stories for you like:
off road bicycling on a 1950 bike
learning to ride a motorcycle
mushroom gathering
A real Russian sauna experience
getting caught in a thunderstorm
and much, much more!


Love,
Katie

Zahhhh Slonava

Where I am sure that there are many more affluent parts of Belarus, there is still very much a “Soviet” feel to the place, at least so far. Zaslonava is a small, military town, and when I say small here I mean...well think rural Wyoming kind of small town. It has maybe 1000 people. The houses here...well, there really aren't houses in Zaslonava, so the apartment complexes have left a lot to be desired, on the outside, derelict ad forgotten are the terms that most immediately come to mind. They look like every image of Eastern Europe you have ever seen, but on the inside they are much the same as any other modern European house. If you have watched the show “House Hunters International” (Natalie I know you have) that pretty much covers it, small but quaint and more than live-able.

Now, to dispel some rather unfair preconceptions of this former Soviet country, an probably all the others as well, but since I haven't been to any others I wont try and speak for that, here we go.

Things people think they don't have, but they do:

T.V. (yes, even flat screens)

New Cars (I saw a Nisson Juke parked outside of a house the next town over)

Phones (iphones, smart phones, all phones)

Microwaves

Refrigerator

Washing machine (no, sorry they don't handwash/beat their clothes clean)

Running water (though some of the villages don't that is true)

Flushing Toilets (again depends on where you are, smaller villages, no flushing just an out house)

Electricity (yes, everyone has it)

Internet (yes, they do, but WiFi, not so much)

the list goes on and on but those are just some of the main ones that I heard before I left, so I thought that I would just knock those out of the way first.

Things that you expected to see that you do:

Outhouses (yep, like the kind of the olden days and appearing the movie Shrek)

Trains (at least the ones in the countryside, pretty sure they haven't updated these since the 50's – I'll try to snag a picture for you)

Really old cars

Tractors on the roads

Run down looking buildings...etc, etc, etc.

I was almost surprised at how much it looked like that scene from “EuroTrip” when they arrive in the Eastern European town, minus the dog eating someones hand of course lol. Yes that was a joke, no, it's really not that bad. If you are missing the reference here, see clip . 

All kidding aside it really is a beautiful place. In many ways the countryside here and the little towns remind me a lot of the time we spent in Hungary. Sweeping grasses and trees line the horizon an pretty little lakes, rivers and streams flow peacefully around almost everywhere you walk. The striking thing is how quiet it is, at least in the mornings. No cars, or garbage trucks, ambulances, no people making noise, just the birds and the sound of the world around you waking up.

P.S. England, I am not sure how you got the wrap of having the worst teeth in the world, but you guys are cleared of that charge in my book at least.

ohhh the joys of travel

Well we arrived safe and sound to Frankfurt, or frankfurter as I've decided to call it. It took us nearly 30 minutes to make our way across the airport from concourse A, where we arrived to concourse C were we are leaving from for the second leg of our journey. Thankfully, we had about 2.5 hours between our flight, which really doesn't make much difference as they have just announced that our flight to Minsk has been delayed by an hour on its way in from Italy. So tack on an extra hour to our wait/travel time.

Oh well at least we are not short on things to do with the amazing portable technology we have these days no one should ever be bord, ever.

Leaving on a jetplane

And we off!!!

Dun, Dun Duaaaaa....

That's supposed to dramatic entrance music, in case you missed the reference.

So now that everyone is sufficiently freaked out. Thank you, Ukraine. Let's throw a little perspective on the geographical situation at hand.

Accurate and Sensible questions:

Isn't Belarus awfully close to Ukraine??

Yep part of it. Ukraine makes up the southern boarder of Belarus.

Didn't they just shoot down or otherwise crash a civilian plane there?

Yep.

How close is Belarus to where the problems are?

Good question, for this answer I will refer to this lovely map that I made to demonstrate. (Thanks, Google Earth!).

Look for the little White arrow. When you find it, that's Belarus. It's there, but it's hard to see.

Ahhhh, a little closer still look for the white arrow. it's pointing to Belarus.

Katie and Igor in Zaslonava (green arrow) or Minsk (red pointer guy), wayyyy far north of Crazy Town.

Now all this to say, that, Yes we are still planning on going on our vacation. Yes, I have already registered with the US Embassy in Minsk (there is an online system were you can file the details of your trip and they send them to the embassy closest to where you are staying). Also for some added piece of mind, I have included below the flight path and link to Lufthansa online flight route guide for you to make sure I'm telling you the truth of how the flight goes. If things start getting more spicy then of course we will re-assess, but let's hope that this cools things off over there instead of heats things up.

 http://lufthansa.innosked.com/(S(5d04gl55r30pszfgejfy3lzj))/Default.aspx?lang_id=en&country=uk

"Here Fishy, Fishy, Fishy"

A couple of weekends ago, we took a little trip up to Vicki's house and then a second trip on the 4th of July.

Plan: spend time with Vicki, play on the lake, do some finshin', maybe get some miles in on my new hiking boots, and anything else that we fancied.

We got in around 3:00 pm, greeted by some rather hot weather and Vicki's wonderful welcome. We had some dinner and some laughs then went to bed so we could get up in the morning and go out on Lake Shasta with Vicki and her Great! friend Jo.

We had a wonderful time and Igor caught our only fishy of the day. Not for lack of trying on my part. I snagged 2 that day and lost both before I could get them out of the water.

A couple of weekends later we went up again to spend the Fourth of July and watch the fireworks withVicki. We had a wonderful evening, Igor was ironically drinking white russians ;)

The next morning we got an earlier start and it really paid off. Jo took us out on her boat again, cause she is wonderful! and Vicki came too of course. We started out not so great with me nearly netting 3 fishies in about 30 minutes, but alas Shasta lake breeds a rare kind of gymnastic, arcobatic fish that can unhook itself mid-flight. Stupid fish.

Some time passes and Igor, of course and rightly so caught the first fish of the day (no picture because he already has one). Then on try number 4...KATIE CAUGHT A FISH! haha! but didn't really want to touch it. they kept telling me to put my finger in it's mouth...umm, yeah, you see the thing is... no.

All in all we had a really good fishin' day. We caught a total of 4 fish. 2 of me 2 for Igor and we lost a total of 6 fishies due to their magician gymnastic nature.

We had a wonderful time both days and on the Fourth of course, and are looking forward to coming to see Vicki again and maybe this time playing some golf, of which I promise there will be pictures, if for no other reason than as proof for Jane in heaven, that Katie has golfed again. :)

The Great Anticipation

Ooooo it's getting close now. Officially, less than a week before the great Belarussian expedition begins.

Passport?
Check!
Visa?
Check!
Shots?
Didn't need any, so...Check!
Seats Selected on the planes?
after some minor difficulties...CHECK, CHECK!

hmmmmm...

New toys to play with one the plane?
Check-ity, check, check.

Now last minute items, will be thought over in the next two days (hmmmm..) and hopefully procured over the weekend (REI trip baby! haha)

Does Katie have a packing list....uhh, surprisingly not yet, but it is formulating in the little spherical thing that sits on my shoulders as we, uh, not sure "speak" is the right term here but eh, "speak", why not.

ooh look at the pretty castle

Brace yourselves for more frequent posts from the "Blue-eyed Country" (aka White Russia, aka The country of Castles, known to everyone else as Belarus). It's the "Blue-eyed country" not because there are a lot of blue eyed people there, as was my first guess, but because of all the lakes. After finishing the blog keep playing with the google maps by zooming out and you will see why, just go west of Zaslonava.

Just some fun facts for you in case you want to look up some of the places that we will be.

Our flight stop in Frankfurt then on to Minsk (Capital of Belarus)

From there we are off to Zaslonava and Zamossa (sounds more like Za-mosh-e-a). I dare you to try and find that second one. Even Google maps, I had to have Igor help me. That being said since you know how to spell it you are at a distinct advantage, as my phonetically intuitive ear went for the more reasonable Zamoshia.

There are some other places that we will be visiting too, but for now try and find those bad boys. I will post a map pin pointing locations for you as we go.

Anyway, that's enough for you lovelies tonight. :) Keep checking back for new posts as the adventure continues!