Vomit Comet Mk 2

Just a small update on my remarks about Austrian's colour scheme for its seat headrests. I flew back from Chisinau to Vienna yesterday business class (no big deal; you get a bread roll and some ham and cheese rather than a packet of crisps) and noticed that "up front" the headrests were all a tasteful shade of light grey rather than the kaleidoscope behind.

Anybody got any thoughts about the social thinking behind this observation?

The trip back to Kiev was codeshared with Ukrainian International, thank goodness. UIA might have some old aircraft, but at least they cook a good meal for you and this one was no different. So, top tip, get the FF miles, but fly with somebody who will look after you!

Inequality

You see strange things in this part of the world that make you scratch your head. This morning I visited a lab that the EU has given €200,000 of equipment to. The very expert staff are as poor as church mice and the Government cannot afford to put new lab furniture into this new building.

Tonight, I am sitting on the terrace of a restaurant enjoying an evening meal. A young couple, not more than 25, probably nearer 20, arrive in separate cars. He is driving a Range Rover, she drives a Mercedes. Where does the money come from?

Chisinau the long way round

Well, here I am in Chisinau, and I have to say it is a “tick”, my 48th country (or is it 49? I’m not going to count again), but it took a while coming.

Take a look at the map. Chisinau is very close to Kiev. Odessa, about 100km down the River Dnister, is a hop and a skip from Kiev, about 55 minutes by Aerosvit on a good day. But for some reason (and it can only be political) there is no direct flight from Kiev to Chisinau. So we have to go via Vienna. That’s halfway home!

Austrian is the carrier. Have you been recently in an Austrian plane? The seats are basically green, but the headrests are in red and yellow and maybe another colour or two. It reminds you of vomit, or (if you’re that way inclined) a bad trip.

So first I went to Vienna, and I have to say I had one of the very top bad airline meals. A sandwich filled with what seemed to me to be a mixture of tapenade and mozzarella cheese, of such intensity that it was difficult to even eat a quarter. Absolutely disgusting.

Only an hour’s wait in Vienna, but whilst there a storm came up and there was a bit of thunder and lightning. Now these days I’m a good flier but lightning is what I draw the line at. So it was a very quiet plane listening to the safety instruction as the rain beat on the fuselage of the (absurdly small) Canadair 100 jet.

But we got off and we got here and now everything is great. Of course. First impressions? Well, Moldova goes to great lengths to insist it’s not Romanian. Oh no. But the language looks like Romanian, sounds like Romanian. Which is good because being a Latin language I can start to understand what’s going on without having to look closely at Cyrillic script.
Anyway, you can forgive a lot when the time is 9 in the evening, the temperature is 28, and everyone is chilling out. Café society, Eastern European style is OK.

The Three Lyudmilas

I’ve written before about the pleasure of making friends with those with whom you work-and, on our counterparts’ side, those people whom you might otherwise not even meet.

Just one such group are the three Lyudmilas-the conveniently named lab staff of the Minsk Central Water laboratory. I had arranged to meet them for supper on the middle night of my stay in Minsk. As it happens the formidable boss Lyudmila couldn’t make it, but that left me with Lyudmila S and Lyudmila N, both real experts at their job and both having visited us at Ombersley as part of professional visits to the UK. Lyudmila S is completely self-taught in English, yet now I notice that she is very confident and almost perfect when she speaks, in her heavy Russian accent, just like James Bond’s Russian girlfriends do.

We met on what, I was told, was the first warm evening of the year, when we could sit outside and eat. We talked that mixture of the professional and the personal that old colleagues tend to – how much more equipment had they got, how many new grandchildren had I got (one more, as it happens) and, of all things, we talked about the credit crunch; it is affecting Belarus as greatly as at home, even though their economy is much more controlled than ours. The answer, of course, is that they make things which they export to us-and we’re not buying.

But after the customary shashlik and salad supper it was time to go. I wasn’t ready to finish the evening so on the way back I called in once more at one of the most poignant memorials I have seen. Most Belarussian memorials are very large and stuck on the top of mounds, but not this one. Now almost hidden at a road junction and surrounded by young trees and, more bizarrely, by modern apartment blocks, there is a small depression in the ground, about 50 metres in diameter. It was here, on 2nd March 1942 that thousands of Minsk’s Jews were marched and shot. The same thing happened on that day all over Belarus, as you will know if you saw Natasha Kaplinski’s Who do you think you are.

On the steps down to the bottom there is a heart-rending bronze sculpture depicting adults and children walking down to their deaths, accompanied by a fiddler at the rear. At the far end is a small memorial and an inscription in Russian and Hewbrew. So, a few minutes of contemplation gave a sobering end to a very pleasant evening, remembering that not that long ago such terrible things were happening all over Europe.

Minsk

After two days in Kiev, trying to rest up whilst finishing my report, I take the well worn trip to Borispil airport for the one hour flight to Minsk. Belarus is the only country I visit that you cannot make your visa arrangements at the airport. Ukraine and Georgia, they let you in with a smile; Armenia and Azerbaijan, it takes a bit of money but, hey, you’re in. Moldova, I don’t yet know about, but I haven’t been told it’s a problem and somebody’s bought my flights. But Belarus, it’s a trip to the embassy in Kiev, answer a 34 item questionnaire, provide a photo plus the not insignificant sum of $115 (for two days!) and they put a visa in your rapidly filling passport.

But everything is easy in the terminal and here we are, in this magical world where the communist ideal never dies. And I must say, I find it difficult to decide how I really feel about Belarus. Your first impression is that nothing is out of place. The fields are neat and cultivated, not always the case elsewhere. The villages look tidy. And when you come into Minsk it’s really striking that nothing is out of place, no litter, everything ordered, nothing broken.

Things start going wrong at the Hotel. 10 minute wait at the reception desk where everything is painfully slow. Then they want you to pay before you stay. But you can’t just pay the receptionist. Oh no. She directs you to the cashier. And she, like all cashiers I have met in Belarus, has not yet gone on the customer relations course. Hatchet faced, barking out instructions, slams receipt on counter, no word of thanks. This is more like it!

These are the contradictions that you get in Belarus. Constantly. And it’s not easy to deal with, because you’re never quite sure when you are going to get the smile and the friendliness and when you are going to get the surly face. Except for the cashiers; you know where you are with them.

I am in the Hotel Belarus, a 22-storey place in the middle of a big riverside park right in the centre of the city, I have stayed here before, 7 years ago on my first trip to Belarus, and wasn’t impressed. But now at least the rooms have been refurbished and the place is quite comfortable, so my two days stay won’t be a problem at all. Except for the weather. On midsummer’s day the skies are leaden and I’m seeing the first rain of my mission. So I’m watching the Silverstone Grand Prix instead of having a beer in the park.

Back to Kiev

My Caucasus trip has come to an end. In truth, I didn’t get to see much of Yerevan-I was there 48 hours and had to do two laboratory visits, visit the Environment Ministry and write up my work, so a late night’s work, no meals out and no sightseeing. Pity. Yerevan is said to have the most lively cultural scene of the three countries.

Back to Kiev with Armavia and, fair play to them, they provided me with a virtually new A319 after the rickety old A320 two days earlier. And back to what passes for normality in my peripatetic life; Victor our driver at the airport, Kyryl waiting to let me into the apartment and, best of all, the news that Marcella has decided to do some pasta for us this evening.

Marcella is from Bologna and denies the existence of Bolognese, so we are greeted with the smell of basil when we arrive and sit down to conchile with a tomato and pesto sauce, washed down (in part!) with a bottle of Georgian red Inessa had given me, and with Armenian apricots for afters. Did you know, the botanical name for the apricot is prunus armeniaca? And, one more guest at the meal. Ilia, Bulgarian hydrologist and my boss two years ago in Eastern Ukraine. It’s a small world, this consultancy business.

Yerevan and Mt Ararat

Another travelling day today. It’s goodbye to Rafig and Baku, and off to the airport. As I watch my driver negotiate the traffic there are two overriding impressions of the Azeri driver; they like to “give it that” with their horns, and they will always make five lanes out of three. Apart from this seeming mayhem, the drivers seem fairly relaxed; I don’t see any road rage, large or small.

So, my route today is to Yerevan via Tbilisi. There are no direct flights because Azerbaijan and Armenia do not have relations because of the Nogorno-Karabach issue. How many of you can cast your minds back to the early ’90s and remember this bloody dispute over a small bit of shared land. Every bit as horrible as Bosnia, and still unresolved.

Anyway, for this reason I have a 5-hour stopover in Tbilisi airport before getting on an ancient A320 for the short and, as it happens, quite brutal hop to Yerevan. There’s a bit of thunder about and, as we pass over the lesser Caucasus, things get quite bumpy.

But salvation was to come. As we dropped down towards Yerevan we were rewarded with the most amazing view of Mt Ararat, completely clear in a cloudless sky. Absolutely breathtaking – a 5000 metre mountain climbing sheer from a plain with no other peaks around it other than its 4000 metre brother at its side. I have said it before – this is one of the wonders of the world. Come and see it!

An Azeri Wedding

Most of the time, I realise how lucky I am to do this job and to see what I see as I travel. However, just once in a while I strike it really rich.

Just such a day was 15th June, a holiday in Azerbaijan, being its Day of National Salvation. It is an auspicious day to get married and, I am told, many people close to Government choose that day for their children’s marriage.

A couple of days ago I was told that I had had an invitation to attend a wedding reception-strange, but why not?- and so after a fascinating few hours’ sightseeing we arrived, in what passed for this consultant’s best clothes, at the place where the reception took place.

I could immediately see why it was OK for me to get an invitation. The room was absolutely vast and we were seated on table 40. As most tables sat about 20 each you begin to get the picture. There seemed to be more waiters than we usually have guests at weddings. There was full video, with two roving cameramen and-unbelievably- a boom carrying a high level camera. A 12 piece band added to the festivities.

The food was amazing. Salads and cold meats were on the table and every so often a waiter would come and add a tiny new course to your plate-I lost count after 15. Everything was washed down with whatever the guest wanted; I was drinking red wine but my fellow guests were drinking Cognac. Absolutely no expense spared.

And then the music started, deafening and hypnotic and the local dancing got going. I can’t begin to do it justice, but the nearest I can describe it is Greek dancing, with arms held up at shoulder level, often with men dancing together and ladies dancing in another group.

After every dance somebody got up and made a speech in praise of the bride and groom (seated on thrones on a dais by themselves at the head of the room by the way). One spectacular speech was by the American Ambassador, who delivered it in what I was told was perfect Azeri, and then it was her honour to lead the next dance, which she did with great panache. I’m beginning to have to change my ideas on the delivery of American Foreign Policy! The United Nations Ambassador and the local MP was also there but, as we were a bit late, we missed the Prime Minister-after all this is a big day and he had a lot of weddings to attend.

We met the bride’s father who, inexplicably, promoted us from table 40 to table 36, but we finally left before we could get further promotion; I’m afraid after a very long weekend of work and play my liver could take no more.

I was later told that, because it was a wedding for the rich and powerful it was all rather restrained. Restrained!! Rafig said that next week a nephew of his was getting married and it would be a simple affair. Now that would be real fun!

An Azeri Meal

Rafig, my country manager here in Baku, had promised me a proper Azeri meal and so on the Sunday evening he took me from my hotel to a restaurant in his locality. To call it modest was to do it a favour: a fairly dingy place with a scruffy back yard was the place for our meal. But Rafig knew the form.

We were joined by Farda, an old friend of mine; I first met him almost exactly seven years ago on the day I arrived for the first time in Azerbaijan. He was the country manager on my first job and is a good friend of Inessa, the Georgian I wrote about earlier. Both Rafig and Farda are academics at Baku University who make a good living attaching themselves to projects such as mine. Our last guest was an Iranian who was described as Farda’s post-graduate student. As he was the oldest person at the table this took some explaining. It turned out that he is an ethnic Azeri Iranian and I learned that there are more Azeris in Iran than there are in Azerbaijan.

All of them had at least a bit of English so communication was OK and when it got into difficulties Rafig was there as a translator.

We started with the Azeri staples of fresh herbs; spring onion, basil, dill, coriander and tarragon, eaten like salad leaves. On the table with it was soft sheep’s cheese and rock hard, pungent goat’s cheese-ifyou have ever been this way you will know what I am talking about. Then pickles; gherkins, pickled plums, olives and tomatoes. But this was really the hors d’oeuvres.

Next we had grilled lamb chops garnished with whole small grilled aubergines and tomatoes. Then the bits of chicken we would never ever eat, stewed with tomatoes and onions. By this time I was wilting a bit, but Rafig said “one more dish”. As it came, he presented it as lamb’s lungs. Ah well, I thought, when in Rome…… He chose the best bits for me and I bit into it, and found that there had been a bit of a translation problem; it was actually lambs liver, wrapped in caul fat, and very nice it was too.

All of this was washed down with three bottles of very pleasant half-sweet Azeri red wine between the four of us. That wasn’t at all bad, especially when I think I had the thin bit of those three bottles! Delicious and memorable.

Exploring Baku

My hotel, the AzCot is a real find, an oil magnate's mansion from the late 1800s, very central, just off the main piazza, Fountain Square. The rooms are comfortable and smart and the public rooms have been furnished with real care. This is not normal consulttants' territory.

To cap it all they do an English Breakfast and it's the real deal! OK, maybe the sausages wouldn't be seen in my local butcher's but on the other hand the tomatoes were to die for, and the eggs, beans and bacon were OK as well!

So, suitably fortified, I took time off on Sunday morning to explore this city for the first time in five years. And what changes there have been! In my memory, Baku was quite a dowdy, sprawling city, but there has been a building boom since I was last here which must be as active as any except for the behemoths like Dubai or Shanghai. The impressive thing is that everywhere the buildings – old and new- have been faced with limestone, the glorious mellow stone that I associate with the Cotswolds.

And everywhere new parks have been built and each one with its own fountains, so walking in this city is a real pleasure especially early on a weekend when the opportunity to be mown down by a car is marginally reduced.

But the real joy is the old city, a UNESCO site. So much money has been spent restoring it, and everywhere there seem to be smart small hotels and, of course, an utterly refreshing lack of traffic.

Baku

Thursday, and another travelling day. I left Betsy’s at 1130 for the airport. Two small snippets along the way; I was going down the cobbled street towards the Old City and an ambulance was ahead of us going very slowly despite the blue lights. Halfway down it dropped into an open manhole right in the middle of the carriageway and got itself stuck. I noticed it had a woman driver, and a male taxi driver hooted in derision at her. The whole episode was very Georgian.

Then I noticed that the way to the airport, the only good way out of the country has been re-named George W Bush Avenue. How very apt!

So on to Baku and I must confess I felt cheated. The way that the planes usually go is to fly due east until they get right against the Caucacus mountains and then head south to Baku. Because they use turboprop airliners and they fly lower than the mountain tops, this is one of the great white-knuckle rides of the aviation industry.

But today it was the boring route-south east down the Kura valley and in from the South over the Caspian Sea; all barren parched countryside and flat as a pancake.

I was put straight to work in Baku, seeing the head of the Ecology Department of the Environment Ministry, and then it was back to a very nice hotel by the side of the UNESCO World Heritage listed old city of Baku. It’s not Turkey, but not so you’d notice the difference.
And it was here on a balmy midsummer’s night that I had my dream meal of pickles, salad and shashlik. I ate like a prince and tipped like a moghul and still came away not more than £10 poorer.

Inessa and Eka

One of the joys about my job is meeting and working with local experts, and forming friendships with them. Two such people are Inessa and Eka, who worked with me on the Kura Basin project in Tbilisi between 2002 and 2004. Inessa was the Country Manager and Eka was the office administrator.

Since that time I haven’t been back to Georgia until now, but I have kept in touch with them through emails and Christmas cards, and I couldn’t possibly go back to Georgia without trying to meet them.

And so it was that old colleagues met up for some supper together and to talk about the old times and what we have been doing since. Eka has just become a mother, which for somebody of her talents seems no big deal; she is combining this with running an eco-tourism NGO and being a project officer for a German charitable foundation. Inessa has just completed a two-year assignment on another EU project for my employer Mott MacDonald and so is getting some well-earned rest.

We ate delicious khatchapouri and shashlik on a terrace overlooking the monumentally ugly new Presidential Palace by the side of “our” river Kura and talked about things. They told me about the events of last August and how tragic it was; Eka’s mother and sister briefly became refugees when the Russians bombed their home village. Even now, Eka must make a 5-hour detour to get to the village because the route through South Ossetia is no longer open to Georgians.

It was a strange evening because personally these two lovely ladies are thriving on their chosen path in life, whilst they grieve for their country.

Those Microsoft Moments

None of us who are on the run can do without our trusty laptop, and we are always looking for a wireless internet connection that we can hook on to.

Everything is so useful-we can do all of our work, keep in touch with our bosses and colleagues (who in my case are in faraway Kiev) and, of course, we can keep in touch with home-at this moment I am just about to tune in to Prime Minister’s Questions on the BBC iPlayer.

But doesn’t it make you sick when it all goes wrong so many miles from home? Here’s a case in point. I arrived late on Monday night here in Tbilisi, booted up the laptop, plugged in the internet and immediately got one of those download requests. My ISP, BTInternet were offering me a new improved Broadband Helpdesk experience at the press of a button. So, 10 minutes later it was all downloaded.

Try the emails first of all-open Outlook Express. I found that I could receive emails but not send them, so half my communications were stuffed. Of course, I could revert to webmail but I also use OE as a filing system of what I receive and what I send, so it’s all a bit difficult.

But hang on! I now have an all-new BT Broadband helpdesk experience! So I went through the process and the software said - guess what - it couldn’t fix it for me and gave me a phone number to ring.

So there I was yesterday afternoon sitting in a hotel room in Tbilisi, ringing a UK 0800 number and talking to Harsh and his colleagues in Bangalore using Skype. God Bless the Technology! But an hour and a half later Harsh and chums found that they couldn’t help me and suggested I buy a new version of Outlook Express. So for the time being I’m making do, before I get home and start to write letters to BT telling them what lousy software engineers they have to send out stuff which produce such glitches.

And then this morning I had another Microsoft moment and one which most of you will empathise with. I had a 1030 taxi booked from my hotel and so I shut down my machine at 1015. “You have software updates” it said on the shutdown screen.

Eleven!

They say a watched pot never boils. Windows chugged along downloading these updates, until 25 minutes later it let me have my computer, and the rest of my life, back. Profuse apologies all round and off to work.

Tbilisi

So, after a couple of days in Kiev and my briefing, it’s off to Tbilisi. I remember to the day the last time I was there; Monday 22nd November 2004, the first day of that winter in Tbilisi. I left there for Kiev in the evening and happened upon the Orange Revolution. But that’s another story.

So, back to today. As soon as I got to the airport, I knew I was on my way to Georgia. The Georgians are wonderful people; kind, generous, passionate, impulsive. What they are congenitally incapable of is queuing. At the check-in desk, at security, at the gate, a crowd of people all milling around, changing places, pushing in, chatting away. But hey, remember all the good things.

Rules in general are basically unGeorgian. So at security there was a forlorn pile of vodka bottles and shampoo containers which had fallen foul of the 100ml in a sealable plastic bag rule. Because this was Ukraine and Ukraine is proud of being European, almost EU, so rules were rules. It would all have got through in Tbilisi.

And onto the flight. Our carrier was Ukraine International, a proper airline, unlike some that I will be flying during this next month. (Top tip; when flying to Amsterdam fly Ukraine International. They codeshare with KLM so you get the airmiles, but you also get a decent meal, unlike the rubbish that KLM now serve up.) The usual stuff as we landed at Tbilisi; loud applause as the flight touched down, the sound of mobile phones being switched on even as we were still doing 100mph, and people standing to get their luggage out of the bins during the taxi to the stand. All part of being Georgian.

But then the real surprise. More or less the nicest terminal I have been in, absolutely brand new, no queue at immigration, no visa, no immigration card, just the latest technology. Two minutes and I was in. Ten minutes and I was looking for my driver.

When I had left five years ago just about every car was a Lada, but here I was, being ferried to my hotel (Betsy’s, try it!) in a Land Cruiser and cars around me were Opels, Daewoos, Mercedes. How times have changed. But that’s not all. The Georgian drivers I left five years ago were the most frightening in the world, or at least the world that I have inhabited. Now all I saw were people obeying the speed limit, passing on the outside and stopping at traffic lights. Have Georgian men had an operation since I was last here?

So here I am, full of anticipation about the work and reinforcing my memories. I remember that I have had one of the greatest moments of my life here. On my first visit in 2002 I was staying with my team leader Rieks (a very Dutch Dutchman) and he asked me if I wanted to go to an evening of folk singing and dancing. Of course I agreed, but imagined a bar with people with one hand over their ear pounding out the Georgian version of sea shanties.
Not at all! What we were going to see was one of the great dance companies of the world, the Georgia National Ballet Sukhishvili, 40 women and 20 men, on the biggest stage I have ever seen at the National Theatre with the President (then Shevardnadze) in attendance. The three hours I spent there was a thrilling introduction into Georgian culture, amazing athleticism and grace. Absolutely unforgettable and if you ever see that they are dancing in one of Europe’s great cities go and see them!

Kiev

Sunday 7th June

So it’s back to Eastern Europe after a gap of 18 months, during which time I’ve managed to become a political activist, market gardener and a winemaker. But it’s back to the real stuff – chemistry - now, advising government organisations on monitoring systems for rivers.

In the next four weeks I will visit Ukraine, Belarus, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan and – a first for me – Moldova. But first I head to our HQ in Kiev, a city I know and love, having more or less lived there in 2006 and 2007.

There is always a frisson of excitement and nervousness as you start a new project. What if there’s nobody to meet me? Will I be stranded? Of course, all the angles had been discussed in the previous week and sure enough there was nothing to worry about. The first person I saw in the terminal at Kiev was the project’s trusty driver Victor.

Now Victor really is trusty, always on time, which is very unUkrainian of him. I was once told why he is punctual. In a previous job he worked for a top Oligarch. This is an open blog, so I had better not name names. He was once, as usual, late. He was taken to one side and told “Next time you’re late we will kill you.” He didn’t know whether they were joking or not, so he felt better be safe than sorry. So it’s our gain.

On to the office and more familiar faces. Steve the Team Leader. This is the fourth project I have worked for him. Kyryl and Natalya, office manager and country manager-last time I saw them they were our clients in the Environment Ministry, so they’ve come over to the other side. And hotshot Italian lawyer Marcella, who has written the textbook on water law. Once again, an old friend and colleague.

I once tried, on a train from Slavyansk to Rostov, to out-country Marcella. I counted 46 countries I had visited (it’s now 48). She got to 77 before getting bored with remembering them all.

I’m off to Georgia tomorrow, so I had just a quick walk round Kiev to remind me what I had missed. But everything was as before, except the prices and exchange rate. The euro now gets almost 11 Hryvna, up from seven 18 months ago. But prices have gone up accordingly, with our restaurant meal 50% more than last year.

One thing I noticed was a queue outside the Pinchuk art gallery. Victor Pinchuk is another oligarch, married to the daughter of a former president, and is one of the foremost collectors of modern art in the world. There is a Damien Hirst exhibition here, called Requiem. I can guess the material! Anyway, it was good to see a long queue of (mostly young) people waiting to get in. Another image; somebody looking in through the plate glass window of the gallery. But not a real person; unmistakably an Antony Gormley naked man.