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April 11, 2005

upcoming travels, smiling

A short summary of my travel plans for Scandinavia:

  1. Fly to Copenhagen Wednesday afternoon.
  2. Take a train to Lund.
  3. Check in to my cabin in the train hostel, and then check out Lund.
  4. At the conference, Rub shoulders with electronic publishing specialists from Sweden and Denmark, with a few from Finland, one from Italy, one from Ukraine.
  5. Take a train to Copenhagen.
  6. Check in to a hostel and check out Copenhagen.
  7. Return to Moscow Saturday morning.

No visiting me between May 9 and May 15. May 9 is the 60th anniversary of Victory Day, which will be a huge deal this year with visiting foreign dignitaries including President Bush. I plan to check out this once-in-a-lifetime experience. Note that the Wikipedia entry has a terse statement at the end about the occupation of the Baltic countries. This is a continuing source of tension in politics between the countries, and I even witnessed it at a personal level at the conference in St. Petersburg. Some say it marks the beginning of occupation, another says liberation.

Anyway, that evening I'll fly to Irkutsk and will return to Moscow on May 15. In addition to seeing Irkutsk and Lake Baikal, I'm going to be talking about racism in America at the American Center and searching the English-language Internet at the Internet Access Training Program center, both in Irkutsk.

Luckily I'll have Надя as a traveling companion for practicing English, Russian, and French (I've decided to start teaching myself the third, but I haven't gotten very far yet). She might also provide some interpreting for my second talk and more importantly will provide a spirit of adventure in seeking out nature tours, visits with practicing shamans, and what have you. Kudos to her for making the travel arrangements. I'm excited to see how bad the service really is on in-country Aeroflot flights. Almost as excited as for the opportunity to sleep in a train in Lund.

On the topic of smiling in Russia, the Wikipedia entry on Aeroflot explains that "The company used to be severely criticized for its bad service, especially in the first half of 1990s. Although service has improved since then, the hardest part was to train attendants to deliver it with a smile. In the mid-1990s the company even had an advertisement slogan: 'We don't smile, because we're serious about making you happy'." Apparently McDonalds tried hard to get their employees to smile too, but they resisted, saying "We'll just look like fools if we smile for no reason!"

Posted by kshawkin at April 11, 2005 10:09 PM

Comments

Wow, Copenhagen will be beautiful this time of year! Have fun!

Posted by: GZ at April 12, 2005 04:19 PM

Service at Russian airlines, at least judjing from Pulkovo (the St. Petersburg airline), is improving now. It was quite tolerable when I last flew back from Holland - the flight attendants were perfectly polite throughout the flight and very kindly warned people getting off the plane about the slippery stairs (in Russian, though, so I'm not sure the Dutch passengers got the message..).

On the other hand, I overheard a conversation between two women discussing a recent Aeroflot flight. According to them, when it was time for the passengers to fasten their seatbelts the flight attendant announced in a very stern voice: "Ремешки пристегнули!!" (something like, "come on and fasten your seatbelts, quick!":)))

Posted by: olga_kh at April 13, 2005 12:08 AM

typo correction:))
"judging"

Posted by: olga_kh at April 13, 2005 12:09 AM

oh, im often thought the fool for my idle smirk.

Posted by: eriC at April 14, 2005 02:40 AM

Count on me to make my first comment an academic one-re: your talk on racism in America-in my field, racism is defined as dependent on (social, economic, etc.) power. Therefore, if a minority discriminates against a White person, it may be unfair treatment, but it's not racism. Wondering what sort of definition you're working from and what definition your colleagues may have.

Posted by: Shihwe at April 16, 2005 09:20 PM

You know, I haven't gotten so far as to actually plan the talk. I was given a list of suggested topics, and this one was the least unappealing of them. (My favorite—and I'm being sarcastic—was "The politics of visas: an evil, but a necessary one".)

I welcome any and all suggestions and online references on this topic so that I can say something half-intelligent about it.

Posted by: Kevin at April 17, 2005 07:36 PM

My first week in Moscow consisted of me being preoccupied with biting the insides of my cheeks to keep from smiling all the time. Such an ingrained habit! But I wanted to fit in.

Posted by: Kate at September 1, 2005 05:48 PM