I watch TV and I'm proud of it

A friend posted on Facebook about her cable box breaking, and lots of people rushed in to tell her how she should stop watching TV and spend more time with her family and read more books and walk on beaches, etc. etc. Bleah!

I read books. I spend time with family and friends. I play sports and games and go hiking and have plenty of social interaction. I also like watching TV. After I got back from my very long trip, I realized my DVR had filled up and stopped recording a few weeks before, and I was sad.

I guess my point is that in my mind, there are lots of things to enjoy in life, and one of them is TV, and I get annoyed when people are all self-righteous about TV being evil.

parents are crazy

Apparently New Yorkers are sending their three-year-olds to test prep classes. I distinctly remember my parents being cranky when I refused to go to SAT prep classes, but I'm not sure I would have been stubborn enough to protest had they tried to send me to some kind of class at the age of three...

what's old is new

We got back from our RTW trip a couple of days ago, and I kind of expected it to be a downer to go back to the old routine. Interestingly, it's been kind of fun; there were quite a few things that we couldn't or didn't do while we were travelling, and it's nice to do them again.

For instance:
- At work there are many buildings, and some of them are quite far apart, so there are bicycles for general use. I got on one yesterday to ride to another building, felt a little weird, and realized I hadn't ridden a bike in nearly three months, when normally I do several times a week.
- I drove to work the second day (D drove the first day) and had a slight scare when my car took longer to start than usual. I guess I'm luckily it started at all, after so long. I'd also forgotten that I actually quite like driving.
- Although we did go to some grocery stores in other countries, we were only able to buy snacks and other ready-to-eat items like bread, yogurt, and instant foods. I look forward to my first trips back to Trader Joe's, Nijiya, and Marina!
- We also didn't get to cook while on vacation, and I realized this morning while rummaging through my freezer and fridge to put together breakfast that I actually missed the whole process of planning, cooking, and eating freshly home-cooked food.
- Yes, I'm a geek. I enjoy having fast internet access 24/7. Enough said.

Tantris

On the last night of our trip, we had dinner at Tantris, a Michelin two-star restaurant in Munich.

The interior was very modern and boldly colored, with interesting lighting:

The table was set with very cute silverware. The knives were super thin but still effective, and the forks and spoons were asymmetrical (the forks had varying tine lengths, and the spoons were tilted slightly to the left, which was awesome for us right-handers but I imagine would have been annoying for a left-handed eater):

There was a 5-course option and an 8-course option, and at first we were leaning towards the 5-course, but in the end we went with the 8-course because it looked much more interesting.

We started with the cocktail of the day; a slightly alcoholic fresh quince drink with Italian soda. It was light and yummy. Soon after placing our order we were served a basket of three breads; one tasted like country French, one was plain white, and the last was one of those very heavy nutty German breads. I liked the country French best, and had to stop myself from eating several pieces of it.

The amuse bouche was a baked pikeperch with cucumber, dill, and cream sauce. They said it was baked but I swear it tasted fried (yes, I actually tried cooked fish), the crust was so good:

We had two options for the first course:
- Terrine of duck liver with figs, celeriac and confit duck breast
- Roasted lobster with marinated pumpkin and apple

I chose the lobster and D chose the duck liver:


With the exception of dessert, this was my favorite course of the evening. The combination of ingredients and sauces was amazing...as D said, there was a "lot going on" but unlike some busier dishes at other restaurants, the flavors actually went together. The lobster was tender and juicy, the thinly sliced pumpkin and radish had great texture, and there were at least four sauces on the plate. The dominant one was a tangy, lemony sauce that acted like a dressing for the vegetables. Then there was a green herb-y sauce that tasted like it might be basil, a white creamy sauce, and a couple dabs of a sauce heavily spiked with fish eggs. Finally, there was a little mound of apple compote. Yum!

Although the main component was different, the duck liver was actually prepared similarly to the lobster, very artistically with lots of sauces and garnishes. It was served with crostini, and D said he liked it very much.

Next came scallops with roasted Jerusalem artichokes, mushroom puree, and curry cream. The scallop itself was good, and the mushroom puree was amazing; I haven't seen mushroom prepared that way before anywhere. However, the curry cream was a bit salty, and I found myself wanting to eat more bread to offset that:


At this point we were supposed to be served red mullet with spinach, cabbage ravioli and port wine verjus. I had asked for a substition earlier, since mullet is fish. To my surprise, I was offered a medallion of veal with artichokes and radicchio risotto. Score!

The veal was quite yummy and I didn't mind the artichokes. The risotto was okay; the texture was not the best I've had, and it was again salty. In fact I think my most consistent complaint at Tantris was that the food tended to be saltier than I like.

D had the mullet, he said it was also a bit salty, and although the skin of the cabbage ravioli was good, the filling was only so-so:

After that, we were served a simple oxtail broth with strips of cut up "pancake" and what tasted like mirepoix (onions, celery, carrots):

The soup was rich and flavorful, if also a bit salty, and the strips were fun to eat.

For our last main course, we had saddle of lamb au gratin with beans and eggplant couscous:

I don't know what "saddle" means, but to me it looked like two parts of the lamb; rack and loin. I liked the dressing on the loin; it was tomato-y, fruity, and tangy. The eggplant couscous was so-so (I'm not a big eggplant fan), and the lamb rack surprisingly had less flavor than the loin. The meat itself was very good quality; no game-y taste at all. However, it seemed to be medium rather than medium rare, which I prefer. Despite that, I think this was my second favorite savory course.

For our cheese course we were served Taleggio (Italian), Chaource (French, cow's), and St. Maure (French, goat's):

The cheeses were accompanied by apple and fig compotes:

The cheeses were all quite good; my favorite was the Taleggio, while the Chaource seemed a bit bland. However, I would have prefered more variety, as all three were soft cheeses.

The first dessert was a coconut souffle with pineapple ragout:

Early in our meal, I had noticed the waiters talking to each other to speed up our service, once they realized that we ate really fast (especially by European standards). Shortly after we finished our cheeses, I noticed that one waiter subtly swung by to peek at our table, realized we'd finished, and hurried back to the kitchen to let them know. Several minutes later I saw him checking his watch, presumably to see if the souffle was ready yet. Great service all around.

Anyway, the souffle was marvelous. The texture may have been the best I've ever had; it was light and fluffy but sprang back when bitten, and it was just the perfect degree of sweetness (coconut desserts are often too sweet). The pineapple ragout was a nice flavor contrast, adding some tartness to the dish.

I thought there was no way that a sorbet dessert could match that, but the "chilled quince soup with sorbets" looked and tasted a lot better than it sounded. I really never knew how much could be done with quince, before this meal. The soup combined quince with champagne, and as a result was pleasantly frothy. The sorbets were pressed together in a pyramid shape, with very thin layers of I think chocolate in between. The flavors were lime, plum, and (of course) quince. Under the sorbets there was a scoop of chocolate mousse:

I know that sounds like way too many flavors in one dessert, but trust me, it was delicious.

Finally, we had a nice assortment of petit fours:

I thought the yellow one was key lime pie, but it didn't taste very tart. It had an almost carrot cake-like texture, and tasted nutty, but I couldn't place the exact flavor until I saw pistachio powder at our breakfast buffet the next morning. That and the raspberry tart were my favorites; there was also a coffee cake, a grape and cream tart, a vanilla bean cream puff, and a jam buckle (again, couldn't quite identify the type of jam). Very nice.

Overall, the food was quite good. I would say that several dishes were saltier than I would have liked, but not so much that it overwhelmed the other flavors. The biggest strength (food-wise) was ability to combine lots of tastes in very creative ways. However, I would say that the service was even more outstanding. The waitstaff were polite, friendly, efficient, and good at anticipating needs. Then, after the meal, we were given a free ride back to our hotel, in a gorgeously-appointed BMW, complete with new car smell. Amazing.

winding down

We're now on a train going from Berlin to Munich, so that means we only have a few days left in our trip. We've previously been to Western Europe several times before, so things are already feeling much more familiar. (In fact, I was even in Germany once, but it was nearly 15 years ago, and we only really did a Rhine cruise that time.)

I thought I would do another retrospective post now, covering our experiences in the Middle East and Eastern Europe. The past five weeks have been more interesting, more tiring, less comfortable, and more exciting, in comparison to the Australia and Southeast Asia portion of our trip. We've spent less time outdoors, and much more time learning about history and international politics. Some highlights...

Best Airline
As with the hotels, the airlines declined in quality during the second half of our trip. Egypt Air was by far the worst; nearly every flight was over 30 minutes late (4 out of 5), service was poor, and the airplanes were old and shabby. Royal Jordanian, Turkish, LOT Polish Airlines, and Air Berlin were all okay, but Lufthansa edged them out, with slightly better service.

Best New Foods
During the second half of our trip, we had the opportunity to try a lot more "new" foods. Although we ate many tasty dishes in Australia and Asia, those foods were more in our comfort zone, as they were similar to things we had eaten before. Also, as prices were more expensive than in Asia, we ended up eating at more home-style places rather than at fancy restaurants. Anyway, it was fun to discover some new favorites...

Our top five (plus one that made D's list but not mine):
- Middle Eastern mezze: All over the Middle East, meals start with a selection of appetizers they call "mezze". They reminded me a bit of the side dishes that you get at Korean restaurants. D's favorite was the baba ghanoush, mine was the hommus, and we both enjoyed the parsley-based tabbouleh. Also common were tahini, fried meat dumplings, and some yogurt-based dips. And, the omnipresent pita breads were something else; light and airy and usually fresh out of the oven, they were delicious even by themselves.

- Russian blini: D had been skeptical about blini, because in the US it's always served with cream or cheese. In Russia, you can have blini with anything, and during our week there, we did. My favorite was of course the "salmon caviar" (ikura), and D liked the pork and horseradish combination best. Also good was a similar pancake dish in Poland, which came with spinach.

- Herring and beet casserole: One day in Moscow, we ate in a shopping mall food court. There was a dish that looked like it had beets in it, and lots of people were ordering it, so D did too. It turned out to be salty pickled herring on the bottom, with a kind of beet salad on top. I was horrified. D loved it. To each his own.

- Meat jelly: I don't know the real name of this dish, but it basically consists of small meat strips congealed into some kind of gelatin-based substance. That sounds kind of gross but it's actually kind of similar to an Asian dish, and the Russians do it very well.

- Polish stuffed duck: On our first day in Krakow, we saw "traditional stuffed duck" on a lunch menu. It didn't have any other description, but we're both suckers for duck and anything that says "traditional", so we ordered it. Yum! The braised duck came stuffed with meat (only thing better than meat is more meat!), was accompanied by roasted apples, and was topped with a current or cranberry sauce. Delicious.
- Smalec: In Poland, instead of getting butter with your bread, you get "smalec", which is a pork lard-based spread. It tastes like liquid bacon. (In case you can't tell, that's a good thing.) Plus, I often felt like I was eating more lard than bread, and we still never managed to finish more than half of what we were given. Mmm, lard.

D also discovered bircher muesli on this trip; it was in pretty much every hotel breakfast buffet, although it wasn't a traditional food in any of the countries that we visited. I guess vacationing Europeans are everywhere, and they have to have their breakfast foods, just like the Americans have to have their cereal.

Best Museum
We saw many, many museums during the last few weeks, to the point where often very good displays would fail to impress us.

However, three of the museums that we visited were simply outstanding:
- Egyptian Museum: The quality and quantity of the ancient Egyptian artifacts was stunning. I felt like the museum, huge as it was, was simply not large enough to properly display the entire collection. Later I read that there were multiple new museums under construction in Cairo, and that some of them would be housing some of the items currently located at the Egyptian Museum. We spent two hours inside and saw only the top highlights (granted, it was crowded and hard to move quickly). I imagine one could spend at least three or four days wandering around in there.
- Kremlin Armory and Diamond Fund: The Armory ticket cost twice as much as the Kremlin Museums ticket, which was the first sign that the Armory would be an memorable sight. We liked the horse carriages best, but there were cool things everywhere; the Faberge eggs, crazy elaborate jewelry with gigantic gemstones, different household items totally encrusted in gold (e.g. a gold-plated castle used to burn incense), and much much more. In addition, the Diamond Fund is inside the Armory; we had to buy an additional ticket, but then we got to see the 189-caret Orlov diamond, the 88-caret Shah diamond (inscribed in Arabic), a variety of other giant gemstones, Russian imperial crowns and regalia, giant gold and platinum nuggets, and more.
- The Hermitage: By the time we got to Saint Petersburg, we had seen a lot of excellent museums, but the Hermitage was unique. The paintings, sculptures, and other items on display were quite impressive (the European section especially), but we were most struck by the Winter Palace itself. Each room was lavishly and beautifully decorated in a different style, and the entire palace has obviously been painstakingly restored and is in great shape. We spent nearly three hours enjoying both the ambiance and the exhibits.

Honorable mention goes to the Warsaw Uprising Museum; the displays were extremely creative and well presented, although the artifacts were not as unique or historic. It's a great place for non-museum types, as it's very modern in style and generally seems to cater to the ADD segment. The Pergamon Museum in Berlin was also nice; it has several very large gates and altars, and we were particularly impressed by the Ishtar Gate.


Best View
We sometimes avoid tall buildings because D doesn't like heights, but I did manage to drag him up to a few places with good views:
- Burj Al Arab Skyview restaurant: This one was actually D's idea, because it was the only way we could get into the Burj Al Arab at all. We had a delicious afternoon tea there while looking out at the ocean and the man-made Palm Island nearby.

- Movenpick Aswan panorama bar/lounge: The lounge was only on the 13th floor, but it gave us a 360-degree view of Elephantine Island. We happened to be there at sunset, and it was lovely. The drinks weren't bad, either.

- Saint Issac's Cathedral: It was really cold up at the top, as it was early in the morning and the winds were pretty strong that day, but we managed to stay up there for a good 15-20 minutes anyway. Great views of Saint Petersburg, including the Admiralty, the Winter Palace, and much more.


Best Natural Scenery
In Dubai, we went on a "sand dune bashing" tour which gave us a glimpse of the gorgeous desert outside of the city. The untouched dunes went on forever, and of course the tour was timed to take place during sunset, so the lighting was perfect.


Honorable mention goes to the Dead Sea resort; we really enjoyed floating around while basking in the warm sunlight, and also to the felucca ride we did in Aswan, which I thought was much more fun than being on the sundeck of our cruise ship. I like small boats.

Best Man-Made Sights
I'd heard a lot about the "indoor ski resort" in Dubai, and although it was not as large as I'd expected, it was more striking because it was located inside the Mall of the Emirates, which I hadn't known. Since it wasn't a very difficult slope, we didn't bother to ski it, but it was cool that we literally were sitting in a second-floor restaurant looking out on the mountain.

We also quite enjoyed our visit to the Wieliczka Salt Mines outside of Krakow. When I'd heard "salt mines", I'd thought that we would be looking at big caves, but I didn't realize that the miners had carved statues, monuments, chapels, and even a cathedral into the rock salt.


Finally, we got to hear a lot about the Aswan Dam while we were in Egypt, and it has certainly made a huge difference to the lifestyle of the Egyptian people, but I must confess that the sight of the dam itself was less than totally amazing. I thought it deserved a mention, though.

Best Ruins
We saw so many ruins during the Middle East part of our trip that at one point D declared himself "ruin-ed out". Then we went to Petra, and it turned out that we were still fascinated, spending nearly two days exploring the "City of Rose".

My top five:
- Luxor and Karnak temples: After seeing Luxor Temple and Karnak Temple on our first day in Upper Egypt, we were wondering why we'd bothered to go to Cairo at well (right, those pesky pyramids). Even after seeing Edfu, Kom Ombo, and Philae over the next few days, my favorite was still Karnak; it seems the grandest and most imposing. Or, maybe I was more easily impressed back then.

- Valley of Kings: Despite being super crowded (and despite me hating people), we had a good time visiting the tombs in the Valley of Kings. We stayed so long in the tomb of Ramesses III that the security guards yelled at us to move along. Between the Valley, and the other West Bank sights (Colossi of Memnon, Temple of Queen Hatshepsut, Rameseum, and...), it was a very memorable morning of sightseeing!
- Abu Simbel: The logistics of getting to and from Abu Simbel from Aswan (via Egypt Air, with both flights being delayed) caused us some amount of stress, but both D and I agreed that in the end it was the right decision to go. I also decided that if the headache and hassle had weeded out even half of the potential visitors, I was glad that it was a pain to get there. As for the temples, I think the photos speak for themselves.

- Petra: Jordan had been a late addition to our itinerary, mostly due to the logistical difficulties of getting to Amman (not available on our RTW ticket) and then from Amman to Petra. In the end, not only was Petra as amazing as expected, we also enjoyed Jerash (Roman-era ruins), Karak (Crusade-era ruins), the Dead Sea, and all the Jordanian hospitality. I highly recommend a visit to Jordan.

Surprisingly, the Great Pyramids did not make my list. I wonder if that's common for people visiting Egypt, or whether I'm just weird.

Best Temple/Church/Mosque
We continued to see many many temples, churches, and mosques during the second half of our trip. Many of them were very beautiful, but Saint Petersburg's Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood stands out in my mind. The Biblical mosaics all over the interior are just gorgeous; much more impressive than any of the mosaics we saw in Jordan or in the European museums. I'm not religious at all, but I can certainly appreciate great craftsmanship (craftspersonship?) and artistry. Amazing work.

Most Educational Experience
We very nearly didn't go to Auschwitz because we knew it would be so depressing. In the end, we decided that learning is an important aspect of travel, and we went. As expected, it was a gut-wrenching experience, but also very educational and worthwhile. I was a bit surprised but also heartened (after our many negative experiences with fellow tourists) that nearly everyone was respectful and orderly during the visit.

Poland in short

We only spent five days in Poland, but it was time well spent!

A few quick hits:
- What a difference a few degrees makes! Russia was interesting and I'm glad we went, but I felt sluggish the whole time, due to the freezing weather. Poland was only a few degrees warmer (highs around 5 C) but we were much more energetic and able to wander around outdoors for hours at a time.
- It's really amazing what Poland has been through, and how they have managed to rebuild and grow. Between the Nazis and the Communists, the Polish weren't really free until 1989. In the last twenty years, they have significantly improved human rights and free speech, transformed into a market economy, built impressive museums and memorials, joined NATO and the EU, and more. Remarkable.
- Polish people seem to tend towards dry humor, but are often very funny. At the Wieliczka Salt Mines, our guide would often say something, pause for several seconds, and then say something else that made us realize that the first thing had been really funny. At the Uprising Museum, the guy collecting tickets pretended to be mean and unfriendly for a few seconds before cracking a grin and becoming really helpful.
- Polish food is a combination of really yummy and more questionable stuff. I did not like the dumplings at all; they were way too doughy and bland. The Polish sausages (kielbasa!) were very tasty and my only complaint was that they start to get heavy after awhile. The "smalec" homemade lard on bread is the best invention ever, I could eat the fermented rye soup every day, and the cabbage fried with bacon/pork is delicious as well. I prefer Russian desserts, though.

name change

I found it shocking that 50% of Americans think that a woman should be legally obligated to change her name when she marries. I guess, despite my relatively high level of cynicism, I have yet to realize the degree to which American society likes to butt into other people's business. It's so depressing every time I realize that we suck.

gay parenting

I thought this article from the New York Times Magazine was really interesting. It examines the similarities and differences between children of gay and straight parents. The key observation is that children of gay parents tend to grow up less restricted by traditional gender roles and are generally more tolerant and flexible. There is also a mention of same-sex parents being better at equal parenting, which I guess makes sense. Anyway, food for thought...

In most ways, the accumulated research shows, children of same-sex parents are not markedly different from those of heterosexual parents. They show no increased incidence of psychiatric disorders, are just as popular at school and have just as many friends. While girls raised by lesbian mothers seem slightly more likely to have more sexual partners, and boys slightly more likely to have fewer, than those raised by heterosexual mothers, neither sex is more likely to suffer from gender confusion nor to identify themselves as gay.

More enlightening than the similarities, however, are the differences, the most striking of which is that these children tend to be less conventional and more flexible when it comes to gender roles and assumptions than those raised in more traditional families.

There are data that show, for instance, that daughters of lesbian mothers are more likely to aspire to professions that are traditionally considered male, like doctors or lawyers — 52 percent in one study said that was their goal, compared with 21 percent of daughters of heterosexual mothers, who are still more likely to say they want to be nurses or teachers when they grow up. (The same study found that 95 percent of boys from both types of families choose the more masculine jobs.) Girls raised by lesbians are also more likely to engage in “roughhousing” and to play with “male-gendered-type toys” than girls raised by straight mothers. And adult children of gay parents appear more likely than the average adult to work in the fields of social justice and to have more gay friends in their social mix.

visiting Auschwitz

Yesterday, we went to Auschwitz to see the site where the Nazis murdered millions of people, mostly European Jews.

We'd had a good experience with Cracow Tours the previous day, so we went with them again. We were picked up at our hotel by mini-bus around 9:15am, transferred to a central location where we got on a big bus. It was certainly a popular tour as the bus was nearly full.

During the hour-plus drive from Krakow to Auschwitz I, we were shown a video featuring footage taken by the Russian Red Army when they liberated the camp in 1945. (Auschwitz consists of three actual camps; the original Auschwitz I, the largest Auschwitz II Birkenau, and the smaller Auschwitz III Monowitz, strategically located near a Germany factory so they could use the prisoners as forced labor.) As expected, it was a disturbing video, and between the video content, the somewhat bumpy ride, and the lack of circulation in the bus, both of us were a bit queasy when we arrived.

We spent nearly two hours touring the barracks and exhibits at Auschwitz I with a local guide, Simon. He was informative, opinionated, and had a strong local connection; his great-uncle had been imprisoned at Auschwitz for "political" reasons, and his wife's grandmother had nearly ended up inside as well, after trying to give food to some of the prisoners. Luckily for the grandmother, her husband had managed to bribe the SS men into letting her go.

Looking at numbers like "3 million Poles" or "6 million people", we know intellectually that it's a lot of people, but it's hard to get a real grasp on the scale of what happened there. Some of the exhibits helped a bit; there was a 30-meter long display filled with two tons of human hair (the Nazis shaved women's heads and used the hair to make blankets and jacket linings), another of thousands of eyeglasses, one of several thousand suitcases (representing a single train of arriving prisoners, when trains arrived multiple times a day), and more.

We also saw suffocation cells, starvation cells, standing cells (about a square meter, in which up to four prisoners were forced to stand), a gas chamber (where up to 3000 prisoners could be murdered at a time), a crematorium (where over 300 bodies would be cremated every day), mass gallows, a courtyard where shootings were carried out, lots of barbed wire fences, small huts where SS men would stand in inclement weather, and the infamous German "Work will set you free" sign over the gate of Auschwitz I.

Simon told us some stories; he's met several survivors of Auschwitz, and even now, they are badly scarred by their experiences. One woman can't stand striped clothing, because they were forced to wear stripes. Another man saw a funeral shortly after leaving the camp and couldn't reconcile all the crying and mourning with "just one coffin". Some former prisoners have severe reactions to white smocks, the German language, and other triggers.

We heard about a priest, Father Kolbe, took the place of another prisoner in a starvation cell, and when he failed to die after having been starved for several weeks, the frustrated SS men shot him to death. Later he was canonized by the Catholic Church and made a saint.

Simon also told us about a woman who was an obstetrician, who gave illegal abortions to women who arrived pregnant. Visibly pregnant women were immediately "selected" for death, but women who were early enough in their pregnancies might escape initial detection. Once they started showing, they would be killed, so the abortions allowed them to perhaps live longer. For the prisoners, often the only goal was to survive another day.

Several hundred people tried to escape Auschwitz, and some succeeded. In one successful attempt, four prisoners who had good "jobs" managed to steal SS uniforms and guns, and actually walked out of the camp posing as high officials. The Nazis punished escapes and escape attempts severely; if one person tried to escape, ten people from his/her barrack would be killed, to serve as a warning. There were also attempts at rebellion but none succeeded.

We saw walls and walls of prisoner photos, mostly political and non-Jewish. (After 1942, when Auschwitz evolved from a labor camp into a death camp, most Jews were killed immediately and not registered and photographed.) When prisoners arrived in the camp, 75% were "selected" for instant death by gas chamber (the elderly, the sick, children, pregnant women), and the others were sent to the labor camps to work 11 hours a day on a daily diet of 1500-1700 calories. Auschwitz II Birkenau (which was huge, 425 acres and ten times the size of Auschwitz I) was built using the forced labor of these prisoners. Those who worked generally lasted only a few months before dying of exhaustion, starvation, and/or disease.

There were only a few latrines in the camp, and prisoners were only allowed to use the facilities twice a day; once in the morning and once at night. Because of starvation diarrhea, prisoners ended up soiling themselves regularly, and as a result, typhus, dysentery, and other diseases were rampant. The Nazis actually avoided the toilet areas because they were afraid of catching the diseases, leaving one area where prisoners could more safely communicate and effect black market transactions of items found on dead bodies and in suitcases of arriving prisoners.

The belongings of the prisoners were sorted, cleaned, and sent to Germany. Gold teeth were melted down, clothing was disinfected, and jewelry and valuables were extracted from various hiding places. Belongings which had not yet been sent away were stored in storehouses which were nicknamed "Canada" by the prisoners, as Canada was considered a land of plenty. On the signs that we saw, the storehouses were actually labelled "Canada I", "Canada II", etc.

There was an exhibit with photos which attempted to document the degree to which the prisoners were starved. One woman weighed about 23 kg (50 lbs) when she was liberated. In the photos of her four months after liberation, she still looked completely emaciated. Several prisoners died after leaving the camp because they tried to eat normally, and their stomachs could no longer deal with the food.

After looking at the exhibits at Auschwitz I, we went to Auschwitz II Birkenau a few kilometers away. There was no museum there, only empty barracks, but the vastness of the place was much more striking. The Nazis destroyed much of the camp when they realized the Russian Red Army was advancing on them, but there are still ruins that go for miles.

By the numbers: about 6 million people, mostly Jews, were killed by the Nazis in concentration camps during World War II (of course, many more died outside the camps, in battle and otherwise). Other groups which were targeted were: political prisoners (Poles, Russians, and more), gypsies, homosexuals, and other "undesirables". About 1.3 million of those were imprisoned at Auschwitz, of which about 1.1 million died. Only prisoners at Auschwitz were tattooed with registration numbers. Before the war, there were about 3.5 million Jewish people in Poland, which was nearly a third of the population. About 3 million Polish Jews were killed by the Nazis in the camps, and many others must have fled, because there are only tens of thousands left today. Jews were sent to Auschwitz from all over Europe; France, Austria, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Ukraine, and other occupied areas. Great Britain escaped this fate, as it was not occupied, having won the Battle of Britain. In one particularly brutal period, half of all Hungarian Jews (over 400,000 people) were sent to Auschwitz and murdered in a period of only 56 days. Overall, about 6 million Polish people died during World War II, which is about 20% of the pre-war population.

A variety of political and ethical questions remain. Simon seemed to think that the Allies should have taken action during the war to bomb the camp, the train lines, or otherwise break the mechanism and delay the killings. Others question the local population and ask if they were not anti-Semitic, why they didn't do anything to help. In one heated exchange, a person on our tour accused Simon of spreading propaganda and actually compared the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to the atrocities committed by the Nazis, which I thought was ridiculous (and I think the rest of the group did too). Godwin's Law, indeed!

It was true that Simon had a strong anti-Soviet bent; he told us "anyone who says Poland accepted Communism is lying", and also mentioned that his great-uncle who survived Auschwitz only to be imprisoned by the Communists later. But, I imagine Poland suffered quite a bit during the Iron Curtain days, so his animosity is likely justified.

Anyway, Simon handled the situation pretty gracefully and proceeded with the rest of the tour. As I told D later, it's possible that Simon had a biased view, but it seemed to be a very Polish view, and that's why we're in Poland; to hear about that viewpoint.

In the end, we were both glad that we had gone to Auschwitz; it's one thing to hear in clinical terms about millions of people being killed, but it's yet another to hear the stories and see the possessions and the eerily normal-looking brick barracks.

additional impressions of Russia

There are a lot of police in Russia, kind of like there were a lot of military all over Jordan. The police don't have machine guns, though. Our tour book says to avoid attention from police, but generally they seem pretty nice and their uniform hats (the cute fuzzy ones) make them look approachable. The one police officer we actually talked to (for directions) was friendly and helpful, although he spoke no English.

People in Saint Petersburg don't walk nearly as fast as in Moscow, and they are somewhat less fashionable. This gives the whole city a more laid-back feel, which I like much better.

It appears that although they dress well, Russian people don't bother with fancy hair that needs "work"...pretty much all the women just have long, straight hair. I guess as soon as you walk out the door and put on that hat, you have guaranteed hat hair anyway.

Everything opens late here. The major tourist attractions open at 10 or 10:30am, in contrast to Egypt where they open at 7 or 8am. Part of it is probably that the sun doesn't come up until 9am or so, but I'm guessing there aren't enough tourists to justify opening earlier, either.

It's really quite necessary to learn the Cyrillic alphabet to get around here. For instance, "Restaurant" is spelled "Ресторан" and only a very few will have the Latin spelling on their signage. We might have walked right by Cafe Literature without being able to read "Литературное кафе". Street names are similarly untranslated, and less popular museum exhibits are often labelled in Cyriliic-only, as well. At the Hermitage, I stared at a sign for awhile before figuring out the artifacts were from Сирия (Syria) and Ирак (Iraq).

There are cloakrooms everywhere. Every time we walk into a restaurant, a cafe, a museum, or whatever, the first thing you do is go to the cloakroom and leave all your outerwear. In return they give you a claim tag It never costs any money, and they'll store all kinds of stuff; in the Hermitage they stored D's daypack along with his jacket.

first impressions of Russia

I'd been prepared for Russians to be grumpy and possibly hostile, especially towards Americans, but most everyone that we've met so far has been really nice. The guy who picked us up from the airport was smiley and helpful (as soon as he saw us he pointed at his jacket and said "outside! cold!" so I dug out my fleece), and our bellboy was super friendly (turns out he's going to Egypt on vacation next week). For dinner, we ventured out to a nearby cafeteria-style restaurant called "Mu Mu", and one of the guys behind the counter turned out to have excellent English, so he followed us from display to display, explaining what everything was and helping us pick our dishes.

Anything involving process takes forever. When we were in the immigration line, the pace was something like one passport every three minutes. There were at least ten people in front of us. However, Russians are pretty orderly and respect lines; the ticket line for the Armory (at the Kremlin) was not well defined but people managed to stay in order. We were chatting with some other tourists and apparently the non-Armory part of the Kremlin has been closed for three days straight, and no one could figure out why (the ticket lady helpfully told us "Kremlin closed!"). Later our concierge told us that they're preparing for some kind of festival for the first week of November.

Interestingly, US passports seem to carry some clout here. (I would have thought the opposite.) We got through immigration very quickly compared to everyone else (maybe one minute instead of three) and once we showed our passports and told them where we were from ("California") we were not required to put our luggage through the x-ray machine, even though everyone else on our flight from Istanbul seemed to be doing it.

Two black guys got picked on by security while in line; they had to show lots of extra paperwork and went to another room for awhile. Not sure what was going on there, but we had been warned about possible racism, so I'm thinking that's a distinct possibility.

There are lots of Asian-looking people around, but they all seem to speak Russian perfectly, so it seems they're locals and not tourists. Twice, we were approached by people speaking Russian asking for directions. Maybe our scarves, hats, and gloves make us blend in enough that we could possibly be mistaken for locals? Odd.

However, only about half of the people on the street are wearing hats these days. I guess barely sub-zero isn't considered very cold around here. There are definitely lots of women running around in spike-heel knee or thigh-high boots and short skirts, with about a foot of skin exposed in the middle. Did I mention it's sub-zero out there? Yikes.

Russians walk VERY VERY fast. I thought I walked fast, but I'm the slowest person on the street. Honestly, New Yorkers have nothing on Muscovites as far as speed goes. One girl (four-inch heels, tiny skirt) stopped to give a panhandler money and was still walking faster than me). No wonder they're skinny here.

Russians are also very tall. I think the guys average something like 6'3". It's harder to tell with the girls because they're all wearing such high heels, but with heels on, they probably average around 6'0" too. Apparently I'm a midget who walks too slowly and needs new shoes.

Oh, and according to D, the Russians have taken over the "hottest girls" award for this trip. I think generally they look a little pouty but they're certainly tall and model-thin and very trendy.

In the tourist areas, lots of people speak a little English, or at least understand it. Outside the tourist areas, people speak no English at all. At the train station, several people were trying to be helpful but literally could not tell us whether to go "left" or "right". One policeman ended up walking with us for awhile in the direction we were supposed to go, because he couldn't explain it to us. Nice of him, though.

The Metro is quite nice and very comprehensive, covering a lot of ground. The stations are all decorated differently, and the trains run constantly; on a weekend in the middle of the day, the trains were coming about every two minutes. The longest we've ever waited is maybe four minutes.

The Metro is pretty cheap (22 RUB = 70 cents) but everything else is very expensive. We spent 700 RUB (> 23 USD) on a cafeteria-style dinner, entrance fees are like 500 RUB per person (18 USD) and we were also quoted a taxi price of 500 RUB for a relatively short drive (we opted for Metro).

It appears that glasses are relatively uncommon in Moscow. The entire day, I spotted maybe two women wearing glasses, and maybe twenty men. This is out of hundreds, maybe thousands of people that we passed in the subway, on the street, etc.