The Vladfather

A colleague of Shane's used to spend a lot of time in the Soviet Union, back when it existed, and he gave us a list of Russian mathematicians to contact while we're here. We spent our first day in Khabarovsk with Shane's colleague's friend Vladimir. Communication was sort of hard, but I got some Russian practice and we got a very thorough, if a little strange, tour of Khabarovsk. We took a boat ride on the river and saw a bunch of churches and had an odd but good but tiny lunch of scallops wrapped in bacon. Vlad had already confirmed that we eat meat and things like crab ("We eat everything," we tried to explain), but when the dish that he had ordered arrived, he looked confused and sad and disappointedly explained "Meat," pointing to the bacon, and "not meat," pointing to the scallops. I wish I spoke Russian well enough to explain that basically anything wrapped in bacon is good, or to understand what he thought he ordered. Khabarovsk has a huge labyrinth of a city museum where Vlad tried to get us a guided tour in English, but the guides only spoke Russian. Some of the exhibits were self-explanatory enough (like the animal/natural history section) and once in a while I could get the gist of what the guide was saying -- both good, because Vlad kept getting too excited about the exhibits to even bother trying to translate. It was pretty cute.

The Khabarovsk riverfront is really pretty, especially by Russian standards. The other thing about the (Amur) river here is the big bridge (about 4km, I think) that crosses it slightly outside of town. Vlad didn't really need to drive for an hour through tons of traffic just to drive us across the bridge and back, but now we have seen the bridge up close and personal.

In addition to Vlad and the bridge, Khavarobsk has a lot of German-style beer halls. I'm no expert on German sausage, but it seemed pretty good to me, and it was nice to drink beer that's not super light. The Irish music playing was a little off, but their hearts were in the right place.