Night Train to Tomsk

There are two different kinds of sleeper cars on Russian trains. OK, there is actually a third type, the open-plan “platzkart” car, but I don’t have any knowledge of those beyond what my former students told me, some of whom rode the train for four days to get from Kyrgyzia to St. Petersburg. (Verdict: “Nightmare!” though others who didn’t ride as long said they can be lots of fun if you get a good group of people.) Of the two that I have ridden, one (“coupé”) has four beds to a compartment, two up and two down, and the other (“lux”) has only two to a compartment. I had “lux” accommodations on my trip from St. Petersburg to Moscow. I had a roommate for about ten minutes, until the train left the station, at which time the conductor came by and told my roommate he could move to an empty compartment. On the train from Omsk to Tomsk I shared a compartment with a woman in her late 50s (?) who was on her way from Italy to a small town about two hours away from Tomsk where her husband lives. (I didn’t quite catch why she was living in Italy, or maybe she didn’t say.) Five days travel in all for her, with lots of luggage, some in the luggage car and some not. She and her husband are Ukrainian by citizenship, but Russian by nationality. She was born in Nizhnyi Novgorod, but her family moved to Kiev in Soviet times for her father’s work, while her husband was a native Siberian. Both of them are working on getting their Russian citizenship, which will be pretty pro-forma in their case, but they still have to go through all the paperwork and bureaucratic slowness. In the mean time it has been hard for her husband, a graphic artist, to work because it is illegal for him to advertise his services, she told me, as long as he is not a citizen. She pulled out her ASUS laptop to show me some of his work, wall paintings for building foyers. When she found out I was an American she mentioned the current tensions between Russia and the US, but we decided that the problem was with our respective governments and not with the people. That’s a polite way to not talk about the issue, I think. I didn’t get as much sleep as I did on the train to Moscow. But I didn’t have the personal slice-of-life experience then either. I wonder what awaits me on my much longer ride from Novosibirsk to Kazan next Tuesday.

Train station in Omsk

I woke up to snow in the Tomsk region

After lunch with a member of the congregation here and a little walk around this part of town, I’m now settled into my hotel on the 5^th floor of one of the buildings of Tomsk State University. It’s a renovated version of a common kind of Russian hotel that I have stayed in a number of times over the years. It’s making me nostalgic and a little ashamed of ever having complained about places like this. My tiny towel? No problem. It got me dry this morning just fine. Leaving the key with the floor attendant when I leave during the day? No problem. That’s the way these places work. And I didn’t even have to give up my passport this time. (Rules for registration have change. I was registered in Omsk and had my passport back in a couple of hours.) Time to turn in. Tomorrow I preach and lead a communion service for the Lutheran congregation here.

View from my room

This is not the kind of shower I expected to find here. (Helen, remember our "lux" accommodations in Novgorod?)

Tea, coffee, water, juice, chips, and cookies for the next 2 days.

Seminar and Conference in Omsk - October 6-9

It's been a very busy two and a half days here, with very little time to write a blog. The seminar went well, and everyone seemed happy with the conference as well. The conference was a cooperative effort between the Lutheran Church and the university in Omsk. There were papers from university students and faculty as well as from pastors and leaders in the church. The day ended today with a reception with lots of food and drink, and plenty of toasts Russian-style. I told Bradn that the Russian toasting culture used to put me off. It seemed unnecessarily formal and a little contrived to me. But I have changed my mind. At least in situations like this, where people have been working together for quite a while and gotten to know each other well, it is a chance to express sincere thanks and make a connection that our (American) culture doesn't often allow. What I'm saying is that I think that we should have more parties and more toasts!

View from the church to the south

A view from the same window to the southwest

A view of our quarters toward the kitchen that I though was the former bishop's. It turns out that there is an identical kitchen on the other side of the building.

A view in the opposite direction

The Lutheran Center in Omsk

The south wing of the complex houses classrooms, a kitchen, living quarters, and church offices for the Evangelical Lutheran Church in the Urals, Siberia, and the Far East. By geographical area it's the largest Lutheran synod in the world.

Outside of the east side of the sanctuary

Anton leading one of the sessions

Seminar instructors partaking of Russian kitchen culture

Bradn eliciting opinions at the end of the seminar

Anton (right) with students of the seminar

Pastor Evgenii Lukinov, one of my student my first year in St. Petersburg

Students and instructors of the seminar

Opening of the academic conference

Co-president of the organizing committee

Attendees hear the opening greetings

Greetings from the Russian Orthodox Church

Dr. Anton Tikhomirov, President of the seminary in St. Petersburg (and also on of my students during my first year) gives one of the introductory presentations.

Bishop Otto Schaude

Professor of Architecture at the university

Musicians from the Omsk Latvian Club

Lunch at a local restaurant

The evening spread

Toasting

Pictures from the Other Side of the World

A few pictures from the past 24 hours.

 

Bradn leads the opening session of the seminar.

 

 Bradn prepares for Morning Prayer in the sanctuary of the church.

 The altar with symbols of the harvest

A view from the balcony

Two different graphics from my presentation this afternoon.

 

Crossings folks will recognize the drawing on the left.

Anton Tikhomirov, one of the 3rd year students in my first year of teaching in Russia, went on to study in Germany and returned to Russia with his doctoral degree in theology to become the president of the seminary. He flew in this morning from St. Petersburg, via Moscow.

Half Way Around the World

 

I arrived in Omsk from Moscow about 24 hours ago after a late-night flight and promptly went to bed. I slept for about 7 hours until about 2:00 p.m. local time. Omsk is 12 hours ahead of Central Time in the U.S., so that puts me half way around the world, and only one hour behind James in the Philippines. (I know. Go look and a world map and explain that one to me.) 

I wrote a nice long passage just now about my flying experiences in Russia, but somehow that all got lost on blogspot’s interface – even though I repeatedly clicked save as I was writing. So now I’ll write using Word and then copy and paste. Lesson learned. I do not find blogspot’s (or blogger’s) interface intuitive, just for the record. (Can you tell I’m not happy?) So that will have to wait now, as I need to spend time preparing for my portion of the seminar this morning.

We began our two-day seminar last night with 8 pastors and lay people from various places in Siberia, with one more expected today. Bradn kicked things off with an introduction to the nature of the Lutheran confessional documents, and what a "confession" is anyway. That's a word that translates pretty well from English to Russian, with all of its various nuances, as far as I can tell. The students had what I considered good responses to our initial questions, and some interesting observations and questions of their own. I was buttonholed after the opening session by one of the students who had been to St. Louis in 1996, and he told me his long (and very interesting) story of how he came to be a Lutheran, from his Ukrainian mother having him secretly baptized in the 1980s and the complications of having a Muslim Tatar father, through his experience with the Russian Orthodox Church and his unlikely encounter with German Lutherans in Siberia.

I’m going have to leave it at that for this morning and get to work. I’ll try to get some pictures up before long.