Around the Bloc: My Life in Moscow, Beijing, and Havana - Softcover

Griest, Stephanie Elizondo

 
9780812967609: Around the Bloc: My Life in Moscow, Beijing, and Havana
Softcover
ISBN 10: 0812967607 ISBN 13: 9780812967609
Verlag: Random House Publishing Group, 2004

Inhaltsangabe

Desperate to escape South Texas, Stephanie Elizondo Griest dreamed of becoming a foreign correspondent. So she headed to Russia looking for some excitement—commencing what would become a four-year, twelve-nation Communist bloc tour that shattered her preconceived notions of the “Evil Empire.”

In Around the Bloc, Griest relates her experiences as a volunteer at a children’s shelter in Moscow, a propaganda polisher at the office of the Chinese Communist Party’s English-language mouthpiece in Beijing, and a belly dancer among the rumba queens of Havana. She falls in love with an ex-soldier who narrowly avoided radiation cleanup duties at Chernobyl, hangs out with Cuban hip-hop artists, and comes to difficult realizations about the meaning of democracy.

is the absorbing story of a young journalist driven by a desire to witness the effects of Communism. Along the way, she learns the Russian mathematical equation for buying dinner-party vodka (one bottle per guest, plus an extra), stumbles upon Beijing’s underground gay scene, marches with 100,000 mothers demanding Elián González’s return to Cuba, and gains a new appreciation for the Mexican culture she left behind.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

STEPHANIE ELIZONDO GRIEST has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, the Associated Press, Latina, and Travelers’ Tales. As a national correspondent for The Odyssey, an educational website for kids, she once drove forty-five thousand miles across America, documenting its history. She now runs an anticensorship activist organization called the Youth Free Expression Network out of New York City. Visit her website at www.aroundthebloc.com.

Von der hinteren Coverseite

Desperate to escape South Texas, Stephanie Elizondo Griest dreamed of becoming a foreign correspondent. So she headed to Russia looking for some excitement--commencing what would become a four-year, twelve-nation Communist bloc tour that shattered her preconceived notions of the "Evil Empire."
In Around the Bloc, Griest relates her experiences as a volunteer at a children's shelter in Moscow, a propaganda polisher at the office of the Chinese Communist Party's English-language mouthpiece in Beijing, and a belly dancer among the rumba queens of Havana. She falls in love with an ex-soldier who narrowly avoided radiation cleanup duties at Chernobyl, hangs out with Cuban hip-hop artists, and comes to difficult realizations about the meaning of democracy.
is the absorbing story of a young journalist driven by a desire to witness the effects of Communism. Along the way, she learns the Russian mathematical equation for buying dinner-party vodka (one bottle per guest, plus an extra), stumbles upon Beijing's underground gay scene, marches with 100,000 mothers demanding Elian Gonzalez's return to Cuba, and gains a new appreciation for the Mexican culture she left behind.

Aus dem Klappentext

Desperate to escape South Texas, Stephanie Elizondo Griest dreamed of becoming a foreign correspondent. So she headed to Russia looking for some excitement commencing what would become a four-year, twelve-nation Communist bloc tour that shattered her preconceived notions of the Evil Empire.

In Around the Bloc, Griest relates her experiences as a volunteer at a children s shelter in Moscow, a propaganda polisher at the office of the Chinese Communist Party s English-language mouthpiece in Beijing, and a belly dancer among the rumba queens of Havana. She falls in love with an ex-soldier who narrowly avoided radiation cleanup duties at Chernobyl, hangs out with Cuban hip-hop artists, and comes to difficult realizations about the meaning of democracy.

is the absorbing story of a young journalist driven by a desire to witness the effects of Communism. Along the way, she learns the Russian mathematical equation for buying dinner-party vodka (one bottle per guest, plus an extra), stumbles upon Beijing s underground gay scene, marches with 100,000 mothers demanding Elián González s return to Cuba, and gains a new appreciation for the Mexican culture she left behind.

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1. Moscow Manifesto

FROM EACH ACCORDING TO HIS ABILITIES, TO EACH ACCORDING TO HIS NEEDS.

—Karl Marx

They say the first rule of traveling is packing only what you can carry for half a mile at a dead run. I had every intention of doing this back home in Texas, but my barest essentials filled two huge suitcases and a potbellied backpack. While I could not actually carry all seventy pounds of my luggage, I could push and shove it for small distances. So that’s what I did at Sheremetyevo Airport, from passport control to baggage claim to customs. Beyond the exit gate was a mob of onlookers who exuded my first whiffs of Moscow: a scent of equal parts vodka and sausage, leather and tobacco, sweat and strife. For one brief moment, the crowd’s collective attention focused on me, taking in my lumberjack hiking boots, Michelin man down coat, and wire-rimmed glasses. “Inostranka,” they murmured my nickname for the next half year. Foreign girl. Then the beefy guys in tracksuits and gold chains turned back to their cell phones, the fashionable girls—impeccably dressed in floor-length furs, knee-high riding boots, and fluffy hats—lit up another round of slender cigarettes, and everyone else resumed their stoic stances. I navigated in, around, and through them and emerged smelling vaguely of sausages.

Seeing no other place to sit in the concourse, I plopped down on the floor beside my fortress of luggage to wait for the other exchange students in my group. Within an instant, an ancient woman was hovering over me. She wore thick woolen tights beneath her layers of housedresses and hand-knit sweaters; her silver hair was covered with a brightly colored kerchief. Russians call these walking, talking historical artifacts babushki, or grandmothers. When I grinned at her, she latched on to my forearm with an iron grip and plucked me up. “The ground is too cold to sit on. You’ll freeze your ovaries,” she scolded, then shuffled away so I could ponder the damage done to my unborn children.

Five bleary-eyed Texans soon joined me. Gerad, who was returning for his second semester, ventured outside to look for the van scheduled to meet us at noon. The rest of us—who hadn’t slept in thirty-two hours—collapsed in a heap. After an hour had passed, I joined Gerad in the parking lot. “Where do you think our driver is?”

“Passed out on the couch at the dorm,” he replied, then pulled out a wad of rubles and handed me a 10,000 note. “Why don’t you call Nadezhda?”

Nadezhda was the Muscovite I’d befriended two years before, during her exchange program at my university in Texas. When we’d talked earlier that week, she’d promised to meet me at either the airport or the dormitory, depending on her work schedule. She’d know what to do—if I could find her. I wandered back inside the airport and found a smoky room with a row of plastic red phones stacked atop a counter. Transactions appeared to go through a sour-faced woman seated behind a desk, so I got in line behind three burly men with olive skin and five o’clock shadows. When one cordially asked how to call T’bilisi, the operator glowered. “The instructions are written on the wall! Can’t you read?”

The Georgians mumbled their apologies and ambled over to the phones. Then the woman set her ice-pick eyes on me. I dropped the 10,000-ruble note on her desk and darted off to the nearest phone before she could yell. True to her word, the instructions were pasted on the plexiglass partition, but I couldn’t decipher more than two consecutive words. Hoping for the best, I simply picked up the receiver and dialed Nadezhda’s work number. A woman answered after a few rings.

“Allo? . . . Allo?”

“Hello?” I asked in Russian.

“Allo? . . . Allo!”

“Hello, is Nadezhda there?”

“Allo? . . . Allo! . . . Gospodi!” Then she hung up. It seemed she never heard me.

I got back in line, this time behind a handsome young couple who paid for their phone call, split the change, and walked out the door without ever unlocking their lips.

“It didn’t work,” I told the operator.

Pursing her lips so tightly they disappeared, she asked why I hadn’t followed the instructions written in plain Russian on the wall. After I explained that I was somewhat illiterate in her language, she grunted and told me to press something—only I didn’t catch what—when I heard a voice. Then she shooed me away.

I returned to the phone and tried again. This time when the woman answered, I pressed nine, as that’s what usually gets punched in America. She still couldn’t hear me, though, so I pressed one, then zero. Nothing. I started pushing all the buttons frantically. She hung up.

I took a deep breath and retreated to the line.

“Why didn’t you press three?” the operator bellowed.

“Why three?” I asked plaintively, then returned to the phones.

This time no one answered at Nadezhda’s office, and I let it ring a long, long time, my index finger hovering over the three key. Feeling strangely defeated, I retrieved Gerad’s rubles and headed back to my posse. How was I going to survive in a country where I couldn’t even make a phone call?

Another two and a half hours passed.

“Well, guys, it looks like the welcome wagon ain’t coming,” Gerad broke the news. The options that followed were gloomy. The airport was located in the northernmost tip of the city; our dormitory was south of center. The Mafiya-controlled taxi cartel would charge about $70 a head—a price none of us could afford. Public transportation was cheap, but how could we get twenty-one pieces of luggage on and off buses that didn’t come to complete stops? The only other option was for Gerad to return to the dormitory alone and try to find our driver—meaning the rest of us would have another two- or three-hour wait.

We were about to vote when I heard my Russian name, Stesha, shouted across the concourse. I turned to see Nadezhda running toward me. I whooped for joy, but something stopped me from jumping into her outstretched arms. Last time I saw my friend, she looked like me: hair bedraggled, Levi’s ripped, feet sandaled, nose pierced. Now she was draped in fur and riding boots and sported a sleek new haircut.

“You’ve changed,” I breathed.

“You haven’t,” she quipped before throwing her arms around me.

Nadezhda had spent the past hour and a half waiting on a couch back at the dorm. When she realized the man crashed out beside her was our driver, she woke him up.

“He’s got a hangover, but he’s waiting right outside!” she announced cheerfully.

We piled our quarter ton of luggage into the van and clambered aboard. The van lurched out of the congested parking lot and joined the throngs of trams, trolleys, buses, Ladas, and bulletproof Mercedes-Benzes belching exhaust onto the snowbanked highway. Mile after mile of concrete apartment blocs whizzed past, each so randomly placed, it seemed Big Brother had dropped them from the sky. Women chatted on park benches; old men shared dried fish and beer over tree stumps. Kids wore so many layers of winter clothing, their limbs stuck out like a starfish’s. Fat gray crows flitted about in pencil-thin trees; the dogs being walked beneath them were, without exception, big, mean, and ugly. (That whole year, I never saw a dog smaller or gentler than a Rottweiler.)

As we approached downtown, the past century of Rus- sian history came into view. After...

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Verlag
Random House Publishing Group
Erscheinungsdatum
2004
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0812967607
ISBN 13 
9780812967609
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
416
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
Purmerul LTD
https://strengholt.nl/en/

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