…as expressed in this scene from one of the best movies I’ve ever seen

httpvh://youtu.be/um2p4GlEbKg

Brought to you by a half-a-day off I wasted hunting down free DVD-ripping software that didn’t crash.

With toilet paper question solved you ask your host where the restroom is.

Communal (shared) restrooms.

After the Great October Socialist Revolution in 1917 the housing problem was solved by adding more tenants to the existing apartments sometimes leaving original owners with a small room in their previously spacious quarters. This went well together with some idiot’s dream of communal living but created lifetime of conflicts and misery which is still going on. The resulting apartment was called “kommunalka” which is simply a communal apartment. All my life from birth till age 22 I lived in such an apartment. First, our family of 3 shared an apartment with my grandparents (2 people) and my aunt’s family (3 people) and the apartment had a total of three rooms, one small kitchen, one shower and one toilet. Then we moved to a place where in a larger apartment five families shared the same common facilities sans the shower and hot water. Imagine for a minute your Christmas guests permanently moved into your house, then multiply the misery times 5 and you may get close to what the kommunalka was.
Communal leaving did not translate into shared fiscal responsibilities. That’s why when you approached the restroom you would see a number of light switches of all shapes and sizes, everyone had their own electric meter. Using your neighbors electricity was a huge faux pas, I don’t recall any fights in our apartment but we were “lucky” to have non-violent and mostly sober neighbors. Guests using lights other than their host’s would probably get a nasty look.
Hygiene problems were solved by each family owning a toilet seat. If you read carefully so far, you can easily calculate that our restroom wall sported 5 toilet seats and looked something like this. Needless to say that I did not anticipate the thirst of my readers for toilet stories, so the picture below is not mine.
In lieu of the toilet seat game some people resorted to climbing up on the stool somewhat resembling an eagle but, anyone who had seen me knows that I am not a contortionist and not a huge risk taker to perform something like that. Note: I don’t know who the model on this photo is, I am posting it strictly in the interest of truthiness.
Finally, clutching your precious square of toilet paper, with the correct light switch on and your favorite toilet seat in place you are ready for the act. Of course, I don’t even have to mention the need to mouth-breathe at all times, most places did not have any ventilation and deodorizing sprays were not available. My apartment had a window in the restroom so the smell problem was somewhat fixable. At times you would hear suggestive knocks on the door reminding you that you are not alone and other people have to use the bathroom, you are not in the frigging library, etc. Sometimes knocking on the door would become more intense indicating that your time has expired, or else. You get up, you use you allocated TP, you pull the handle and….nothing. We lived on the third floor and half the time we didn’t have running water. Years later the pipes were replaced and they found that the old pipes where completely clogged up. Until then we had to carry the water upstairs in a bucket like mythical Sisyphus just so we can flush it down the toilet. So if your host left around a bucket of water you breathe the sigh of relief, flush the toilet and exit into the crowd of people giving you evil eyes and nervously dancing by the restroom door.
Still, you are lucky you were able to use indoor plumbing. In most of the rural areas and old buildings in the city the facilities were outside but that’s a different story.
To be continued…

I had to do a double-take on this billboard today, it looked too much like graffiti frequently seen around the area.

The Holocaust Remembrance day falls on May 2 this year and in the few following posts I will publish several documents concerning the treatment of the Jewish population in my hometown of Odessa, Ukraine issued by the Romanian Authority which occupied Odessa from 1941-1944.

At the beginning of the occupation there were 80,000-90,000 Jews who did not evacuate from Odessa. When the city was liberated on April 10, 1944 there were reportedly only 600 left. Somewhere in the Odessa Region my 6-year old Father survived in the ghetto with help from kind people and lots of  luck. The area where he lived with my Grandmother was occupied by the Italians who were not very enthusiastic about being in the war and their relative reluctance to torture and execute the Jews might have resulted in more survivors than in the areas controlled by Romanians who proved themselves to be ruthless murderers.

Many places in Odessa and the Region have memorial markers where the executions were conducted, such as a place where over 25,000 Jews were burned alive shortly after the occupation started. Unfortunately, I never stopped or paid attention to them, probably like most people. I saw more memorial markers today, while researching this post, than I remember seeing when I still lived in Odessa.

The Russian text is found in the National Archives of the Odessa Region, translation mine. If I have time and patience I will also try to translate a personal memoir written by a survivor; translation is a long and tedious process, and even though I start with a machine translation, it still doesn’t always come out right. Feel free to let me know if I can correct some grammar or spelling errors.

Americans generally eat anything that moves (possum, snake, turtle, squirrel, etc.) with the side dish of anything that grows (sprouts, green beans, asparagus, etc). That’s why it always surprises me when my co-workers make disgusted faces and puking noises when I say something about beets. Why beets were chosen for the role of the hated vegetable is still unclear to me. What’s clear is the fact that they are delicious, slightly sweet, low calorie and help cure everything from cancer to icy roads.

I, on the other hand, love beets and eat them frequently. They can be boiled, roasted, steamed, microwaved and eaten in soups (readers of this blog already know about borscht), salads,by themselves and with other vegetables. My favorite simplest beet recipe is just shredded cooked beets, little bit of minced garlic, mixed with some mayo or sour cream. For a more complex but still easy to make salad I like vinegret (mine is not exactly like this guy’s recipe but he took better pictures).
So forget your childhood fears and on your next trip to the store buy a bunch of beets. You’ll be peeing red for a week!
For more recipes check out Alton Brown’s “Beet it!”
P.S. No matter what you’ve been told by crazy vegetarians, the root is the edible part of the beet plant, leave the tops for your pet goat.