Hi friends,
realizing
that this was the 4th week since I started this trip is somewhat
frightening. Is it ever true that ‘time flies when you are having fun’…
Mostly it
was a ‘routine' week with my classes and homework and yes, it’s still slow, but
there is progress. Several times I had to think about Mark Twain and his essay
about The Awful German Language. For those of you interested here the link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Awful_German_Language
Almost
everything he said is valid for the Russian language and I dubbed it the
Revenge for the German language. What makes it especially tricky is not only
the grammar (which in fact is similar to German, but has 6 cases and 2 versions
of verbs with a consequential myriad of endings which I mostly get wrong, of
course) but also the incredible wealth in words. So what is described in German
with one word could have 4 or more equivalents in Russian and for the learner it’s
difficult to find the nuances that may be hidden… Anyway, it will remain a
challenge but I’ll take it with a somewhat Olympic attitude in the sense of: I
can’t win but I want to participate…
But there
were highlights this week: the first one was a lunch at Priorbank with Sergey
Kostyuchenko, the CEO, and all board members followed by the second which was a visit to a children's hospice which is supported by the bank. It caters to terminally ill children, many of which have cancer in the final stages, the majority of which comes from the area of Gomel not too far (or better far enough...) from Chernobyl. It is located about 20 kms outside of Minsk in an old villa, with all the disadvantages of such a building including lack of space. But thanks to a group of foreign and local sponsors the facilities are very well maintained and purposeful. The plan is, however, to build within the next few years a larger center nearby which will cater to up to 12 children while presently only about 4 could be catered for stationary. Most of the 200 patients of the hospice are cared for at their homes as that is cheaper and also more desirable for the children and their parents. In the whole of Belarus about 1500 children are in need of paliative care. Should anybody be interested to help, please let me know, I have their account details.
The third which was
the dinner on Wednesday night with Dr. Stepic, Heinz Hoedl, Genna Yerokhin and
Andreas Engels and again the whole board after they had an apparently successful
supervisory board meeting (hardly surprising knowing how well managed the bank
is and how high the quality of their portfolio). It is really frustrating that
the political circumstances are as they are with all the consequences for our
business.
Thank God
(and Genna, of course) that Genna also delivered my rain trousers as this week
the weather changed for the worse. Nevertheless I once got soaked today on the
last 1500m before home as I was too lazy to put them on in time (bad risk
management).
The forth
highlight was a visit to the Linea Stalina, basically Stalin’s answer to the
Maginot Line after the experiences of WW I with by the way similar experiences
in 1941 as France
made in 1939. The fortifications were pretty much useless, as the Germans went
right around them… Nevertheless they were impressive albeit the Maginot Line
(which I visited a few years back) was technologically more sophisticated,
albeit equally useless. For those interested a link:
It was
started in 1920 and finished about 1938 after Stalin had reduced the army from
5mio to 500thsd to be able to drive industrialization. It started in the North
at the Finnish Border close to what then was Leningrad
and ended at the Black Sea in the South. The
location of the museum about 20 kms northeast of Minsk
also reminded me of the fact that until 1939 (Molotow Ribbentrop Pact) Minsk practically was a border town to Poland.
Ivan took me
there as part of a birthday present (the other part was a beautifully
packed CD collection of classical music) and was the interpreter as the student
that guided us didn’t speak much English. While we were there a contingent of
cadets (boys and girls) were also there. I was told that ever since WW I it is
custom in Russia that orphans are getting a military education and most of them
eventually will end up in military carriers.
The weather
was, at best, mediocre with a measure of hail mixed in. I had the opportunity
to shoot (albeit with blancs, the bang was the same) with some of those
historic guns, including, naturally an AK 47. We finally fled into the canteen
for some original military grub which actually was quite good, of course with a
measure of vodka (only for me as Ivan was driving and the local rule is 0.0).
That was
basically it as I chose to stay home in the afternoon due to the continuing bad
weather which makes motorcycling exceedingly unpleasant and unhealthy. This
condition continued today so I only made an excursion to a café with wifi to
download the ‘Presse’ on my iPad and promptly got soaked on the last 1500m before my home(see
above).
So that’s it
for today and I hope you all have as much fun as I (hardly imaginable)…
Till next
time…
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