I come from Yekat

I was born in Yekaterinburg, Russia. Somebody had to. Yekaterinburg, or Yekat for friends, is the first city in Asia and the last city in Europe which makes it equally attractive to tourists, illegal immigrants, and drug dealers.

Ural as the region and Yekat as the first big town in the middle of that region started in many ways like Australia - as an exile for criminals and outcasts of the empire.

Now, I said I was born in Yekat, right? I told you a lie, sorry. I was born in Sverdlovsk, USSR. Yekaterinburg - Sverdlovsk - Yekaterinburg has seen lots of historic events on its way to the 21st century. Execution of the last Russian tsar Nicholas II and his family is one of them. Today you can see the beautiful Church-on-the-Blood at that place (in the picture).

In the Soviet years, Sverdlovsk was a closed for foreigners city. So, I met my first foreigner at the age of 19. I mean I was nineteen, not the foreigner. Why was it a closed city? Apparently, because since WWII Sverdlovites spent much of their working and leisure time producing excavators, bulldozers and other vehicles with caterpillars and/or vertical takeoff.

I decided to start this blog for two reasons. First, some people know nothing about my hometown and tend to think that Yekaterinburg is in the middle of nowhere. It's preposterous! The middle of nowhere is approximately 673.2 miles to the north of Yekat, somewhere around the town of Surgut. I know it for sure because my sister lives there. Second, because I have been chosen to take part in a program for university profs to visit the US on the American taxpayers' expense. So, I felt instantly obliged to the American taxpayers and decided to pay them off by this blog. I also hope that my friends and students may both enjoy it and contribute to it by asking all sorts of irrelevant questions about everyday American life and culture while I'm on the American soil. Don't fire your questions now! Put them down carefully and wait until March 16th.