Last week I tagged along with my good friends from Portland, the Captured Tracks band BLOUSE, in Germany for a few days. We met up in Hamburg before their set at Astra Stube that night, and I left them a couple days later after their Comet Club show in Berlin. Along the way, and in between sets, drinks and mischief, I snapped some photos.

Here’s a glimpse into BLOUSE’s life on the road.

BLOUSE playing at Astra Stube in Hamburg, Germany. The venue was small, the crowd a bit quiet, but a good time was had nonetheless. The show’s promoters were fantastic, keeping everyone’s bellies full of booze all night.

Charlie and Patrick at Astra Stube in Hamburg.

Post-show shenanigans. After leaving Astra Stube, the guys and I set out to experience Hamburg’s nightlife, finding our way to a divey and dark bar on Reeperbahn Street in the city’s infamous red-light district. We were all still under the influence of booze back at the apartment. Patrick tried to wind down by listening to some tunes before turning in.

Bunk beds in Hamburg.

Backstage at the Comet Club in Berlin the band did an interview with a local radio station. I’m not sure why everyone’s head is down except Charlie.

Charlie during sound check at Comet Club in Berlin.

Patrick during sound check at Comet Club in Berlin.

Charlie and Patrick chatting between songs at Comet Club. The venue was much larger than Astra Stube, and the crowd more lively. A group of American girls studying abroad in Italy – but on vacation in Germany – stood up front, singing along with nearly every song. Surprisingly, the Germans, too, knew many of the songs and even shouted out requests during breaks.

Patrick playing the bass line on “Controller”, with Paul on drums in the back. Unlike other stages during the tour, Comet Club’s came equipped with a fog machine, which emitted the stuff from right below Paul. Most of the night he was cloaked in a foggy haze.

Charlie singing “Ghost Dreams” at Comet Club in Berlin. She started off by confessing to the audience that she has nightmares often, hence the song’s title and lyrics. Misty played keys and sang backing vocals.

Despite not having a lot of time to check out the city of Berlin, everyone had a great time. The beer flowed all night after the show. At one point, in need of food, Charlie, Misty, Patrick and I set out in search of an all-night cafe. We settled with a fast-food stand. The girls ordered “something vegetarian,” while Pat and I asked for “something with meat.”

The next morning we parted ways. I made my way back to Hamburg to catch my flight to Kiev, while BLOUSE set off to the next city on the tour.

BLOUSE still has a few dates left on their European tour. You can find a list of the remaining shows here.

]]> http://borderland-chronicles.com/on-the-road-in-europe-with-portlands-blouse/feed 0 http://borderland-chronicles.com/torez http://borderland-chronicles.com/torez#comments Fri, 10 Feb 2012 18:03:48 +0000 Christopher Miller http://borderland-chronicles.com/?p=1927

Back in October I visited a group of coal miners in the eastern Ukrainian city of Torez who work at one of the area’s illicit coal mines, called “kopanki” in Russian.

These are photographs from that trip. The music is a 1951 song by Vladimir Bunchikov, titled “An Old Miner” (“Старинная шахтерская”).

You can see more of the photos in larger sizes over at Flickr.

“Kiev is, without a doubt, home to the world’s most beautiful women. A visit to Kiev is truly awe-inducing, it’s almost hard to believe that women this beautiful even exist. They’re also less intimidating and more friendly than their Russian counterparts. Check out Kiev in the summertime, when the Hydropark Island on the Dnieper River becomes a hot spot for sunbathing Ukrainian beauties,” Traveler’s Digest wrote.

The rest of the top five looks like this:

2. Stockholm, Sweden

3. New York City, USA

4. Buenos Aires, Argentina

5. Varna, Bulgaria

In case you needed further proof of the extreme weather conditions in eastern Europe, there’s this video that shows the Black Sea near the port of Odessa frozen over. The last time this happened was back in 1977.

Oh, and that creaking sound you hear in the video… that’s the ice.

You can see photographs of the frozen sea here.

I came across two very interesting articles this week pertaining to elements of Ukraine’s past and present culture.

The first, “A foreign affair: On the great Ukrainian bride hunt,” published in Harper’s Magazine, follows a man who goes undercover to learn more about the men that come to Ukraine in search of women to wed.

The second, “The Western Brand: The socio-cultural revolution of soviet mods against boring clothes, music and behavior in the USSR,” from The Ukrainian Week, explores the subculture of the stiliagi, a group of young, fashion-forward, progressive-minded individuals in the 1940s and 50s who copied the lifestyles of young people in the west.

I recommend checking out both.

Too cool for school. I mean that quite literally. With the temperature hovering around -24 degrees Celsius (-10 degrees Fahrenheit) this morning, most schools cancelled lessons all together. My school, however, thought they’d give it a shot and see how many students would show up.

In my first lesson of the day, usually a rowdy bunch of 28 12-year-olds, just 5 girls showed up. The teacher I work with was running around like a mad woman trying to figure out where everyone was while also dealing with parents of children calling her mobile to explain that they were keeping they’re kids home from school today. “It’s too cold to be outside today,” my partner teacher explained. “And some of the students live on the edge of town and would have to walk in.” (What’s funny was the number of phone calls from mothers worried their boys would catch their death if they were to go outside. Contrastingly, only a few mothers called to explain they were keeping their daughters home. And like I said, the students that did brave the weather to come to class were, in fact, all girls. I’m seriously beginning to question who’s tougher in Ukraine.)

Proof to the severity of this eastern European cold snap can be found with a quick scan of the international news. A Reuters story published yesterday reported that already 30 people have died in the past week. Most of those were homeless people, but still. I tried running some errands yesterday afternoon, but quickly gave in, turned back and went home when my snot and mustache froze just five minutes after stepping outside.

Being from the Pacific Northwest, I’m not used to this type of weather. We get rain, fog, and at worst maybe some sleet. But the temperature rarely drops below freezing, except for maybe a few times and during the night. Having spent the previous winter in Ukraine, though, you’d think I’d be prepared. But nothing prepares you for this extreme chill.

I’m home now, curled up in a blanket a few feet from my radiator. This is where I plan to stay for the remainder of the day. Maybe this afternoon I’ll make some mulled wine. Here’s to hoping it warms up soon.

While I’ve never considered myself to an expert on the subject of graffiti art, or even a huge fan of it for that matter, I’ve been fascinated with the Ukrainian graffiti art duo Interesni Kazki (Interesting Fairytales) since I stumbled upon their work on a building near the Kiev Pechersk Lavra grounds. In the typically drab country of Ukraine, it’s hard not to notice their work when you stumble upon it. The vibrant and colorful surrealist pieces are typically large and emblazoned on the side of a building. After finding that first one, I made it a personally mission of mine to track down as many as I could while running around Kiev on errands or while killing time with friends.

But Interesni Kazki isn’t just local; the guys have done pieces in India, Spain, Slovakia as well as many other places. Recently they visited the states to work on a project in Miami (pictured above) and exhibit their art at a gallery in Los Angeles.

If you like what you see here, and you have some time to kill, I highly recommend checking out the Interesni Kazki blog.

Interesni Kazki, Kiev, 2010.

Waone of Interesni Kazki next to one of his pieces in Kiev.

Aec of Interesni Kazki next to one of his pieces in Kiev.

If there’s something Ukrainians born in the U.S.S.R. pride themselves on more than their mosaics, it’s their cosmonauts. So I wasn’t so shocked during a visit to Konstantinovka to find the sides of bloc apartments along aptly named Cosmonaut Blvd. adorned with mosaic images of Soviet cosmonauts, including the renowned Yury Gagarin – the first human in space.

The buildings, built sometime during the 1960s, have seen better days. Many of the tiles surrounding the mosaic images have fallen off, leaving the building with a sort of scarred look. But the mosaics themselves remain mostly intact, if a bit faded.

After nearly two years here, I’m afraid a lot of the novelty I felt upon my arrival has worn off. Few things surprise me anymore. I’ve slipped into a life of routine similar to the life I had back in Portland. I think this would happen if you stayed anywhere long enough. But when I come across things like these images, remnants of a strange past – in this case, a Soviet past – that sleeping part of my mind that was once awed by everything around him is awakened.

“I live in the former Soviet Union,” I thought to myself when I saw the mosaics. “Wild.”

I’ve dabbled in off-roading, tried my hand at cliff jumping and grew up attempting an array of precarious tricks behind a speed boat on multiple apparatuses. But none of these things have raised my anxiety level and forced me to clench my teeth like riding in a Ukrainian taxi during winter has. Why I still opt to do it, I have no idea. I guess they still get me from point A to point B quicker than a bus, and I value my time more than my safety.

Winter in Ukraine means tremendous amounts of ice and snow, much more than this Pacific Northwesterner is used to experiencing. But it’s still not enough to halt traffic. Back in Portland, with any amount of snow on the ground, cars cease to move, sometimes right in the middle of the road. People opt to stay home, working remotely, or they call in sick. The media labels a storm that brings two inches Snowpocalypse.  School is cancelled and the fun begins. Here, though, life continues on as normal. Children go to school, people commute to work and taxis rage on the pockmarked streets, despite the facts that the roads aren’t visible and that they’re covered in ice and snow.

After spending a weekend away, tired, hungry and with a large pack strapped to my back, I chose not to wait an hour and a half to cram into a small bus that would take another hour and a half to get me home, and instead asked a taxi driver if he’d mind giving me a lift. “Of course,” he said. “No problem. This is my job.”

My first indication that this might have been a bad idea came just moments after we pulled out of the bus station parking lot, when slowing for a red light our breaks locked up and we nearly slid into the gas truck in front of us. As the light turned green I took a deep breath and wrapped my hand tightly around what a friend of mine likes to call the “oh shit” bar, or that handle just about the window of the front passenger seat.

We turned onto the highway, slightly fish-tailing, and the Lada began to make a chugging sound. Had this been my first cab ride in a Lada, I would have asked, “Is this normal?” But I knew that it was. A series of hills, dips and turns followed, each one more frightening than the last. At one point the snow was coming down so hard I couldn’t make out anything more than a few meters in front of us. I wondered how my driver could see where he was going. Was it simply reflex? Had he ridden these roads so many times he could navigate them in his sleep – in this? I hoped so.

The wind didn’t help. It blew like it would be the last time it would blow, with ferocity. My passenger side window kept getting smacked with drifts of snow and every so often the car would swerve, not because of the ice – though it did that, too – but because of the gusts.

I ran possible scenarios in my mind. We spin out, lose control and smack into a tree. I’d be OK, because I opted to wear my seatbelt. The driver, however, would go straight through the windshield. In another, I imagined an oncoming car losing control and crashing head on into the Lada, sending us flipping and rolling into an embankment. No one would have lived.

As we came over the last hill there was a small break in the storm, enough to make out the lights of a small village, which I recognized as Krasne. I knew that if we could make it to Krasne we’d make it home, to Artemovsk. We were just about there when another Lada pulled out in front of us.

There wasn’t much the driver could have done. If he’d have hit the brakes, we’d spin out and lose control, like in the first scenario. There would also have been a good chance of smashing into the rear of the other Lada. So what he did do was probably the best decision, though it scared me so much my entire body stiffened, and in that moment I think my heart may have skipped a beat. Instead of the brakes, he used the gas, accelerating and riding the shoulder of a road so densely covered in snow that I was uncertain where the road ended and the field began. Nonetheless, it worked, and we zoomed on by with no problem, except for a minor fish-tail the moment he hit the gas.

With my apartment in sight, I breathed a sigh of relief. When asked how much the ride cost, he answered more than what he’d originally said. “Because of the snow,” he explained. I felt like I should have gotten a discount. But there was no talking him down.

Sometimes the ultimate survival can be making it off a sinking ship, or living to tell about a harrowing adventure to the peak of a mountain. And sometimes it can simply be a cab ride home.

Before March of 2010 I’d never drunk instant coffee, never even had a taste. Sure, I’d had the cheap stuff. Folgers was a mainstay in my suburban childhood home. The garage was lined with the empty cans. My father used them to store nuts, bolts, nails and screws. As I got older, about high school age, I developed a taste for slightly better coffee, although I should say that it was my younger brother at age 10 who first asked for a French press for his birthday. It was rare for us then to drink coffee before school, but on the weekends we’d open a fresh bag of beans, grind them down for the press and enjoy a pitch black cup with our eggs and bacon.

By the time I entered college I was drinking two cups a day, sometimes more. Coffee was a necessary evil. Luckily, living in Portland, it was easy to get my hands on the really good stuff. I was a regular at Stumptown’s S.E. Division location, and from time to time I’d make it into the S.W. 3rd shop. My love affair with it continued a few years later when I moved downtown and got a job at Oregon Business Magazine. The office on S.W. Broadway wasn’t far from the Ace Hotel location, where I spent many a lunch hour sipping freshly pressed Hair Bender and preparing for interviews.

My palate used to quality java, I panicked when I arrived in Ukraine almost two years ago to begin my Peace Corps service and found my only coffee options to be Nescafe and Jacobs Original or 3 in 1. I knew that any coffee sold in small, one-serving packets at the check-out counter would never compare to the organic, dark-roasted grinds I had back home.

But you’d be surprised how well your palate adapts when your choices are shit and shit. Now, every morning with my two eggs over easy on toast, I drink a tall mug of it – and without cringing.

That said, there have been care packages from my parents over the past couple years that came with some of Portland’s finest coffee. And when they do, I make it last, saving it for those slow, heavy-eyed mornings when the snow drifts come up to my knees  and the thermometer reads just 10 degrees.