So what're ya planning for Easter Break?

Back in February, when his colleagues at Pembroke Jr. Sr. High School were discussing Easter-break plans, someone asked eighth-grade German teacher Glenn Call what he had planned.

"Siberia," he said, "I think I'll go to Siberia."

Colleagues returned puzzled looks. By now the staff at Pembroke are used to odd announcements from German teachers Herr Schneider and Herr Call, but this one really seemed to beg an explanation.

"Well, there aren't many places left in the world where we're welcome," Herr Call explained. "Folks are chopping each other up in Malasia, in India, in Africa and in South America. Siberia is a relatively safe place these days and after all these years, I guess I'd just like to see it!"

It turns out that Siberia - located in the heart of Russia - is

not such a strange destination for Herr Call. Soon after returning from Viet-Nam, Herr Call spent some serious time at Yale University learning Russian. "Russian is a wonderful, melodic language and I really loved it, but those just weren't good times to visit Russia," he explains.

Years went by and under President Ronald Reagan times began to change resulting in the collapse of the Soviet empire.

Last summer, Herr Call participated in a month-long seminar at the Herder Institute at the University of Leipzig in Germany along with eight other American German teachers and ten German teachers from Russia.

"After English, the most popular foreign language in Russia is German," explains Call. "The current president of Russia, Vladimir Putin, a former KGB spy in Europe, speaks German fluently and the German connection is considered by many Russians as one of modern-day Russia's tickets into the twenty-first century."

They were tickled when I'd drop a Russian phrase here and there and we developed a great friendship.

When I realized I had two weeks vacation over Easter, I saw an opportunity to visit a place that had been on my mind for thirty years," stated Herr Call.

The flight to Moscow's Sheremetyevo Airport on the German airline Lufthansa was pretty perfunctory, although long. In Moscow, after taking two and a half hours to clear customs, Herr Call was picked up by one of his Russian friends, Sveta Nassedkina and her friend and was whisked off to an airport on the other side of Moscow for his four hour flight on Siberian Airlines to Kemerovo, in Siberia. Moscow is a huge city and it took nearly an hour at break-neck speed to get to Vnukovo Airport

After checking in, Herr Call left his escort and went through security without emptying his pockets, thus setting off all the alarms. A tired-looking agent manning the check-poiont looked up briefly and just waved him on. The weary look on his face seemed to say, "Go on, why

cause trouble?" Security was like this for the rest of Herr Call's time in Russia.

In the airport, Herr Call met two families from the Midwest who were traveling to Siberia to adopt children. He would run into these folks several times during his travels.

The flight to Siberia was interesting, to say the least. The plane was a three-engined TU-154 which appeared to have been built about ten years ago and not maintained particularly well during the course of its service.Herr Call sat next to a retired chemistry professor who struck up a lively conversation, distracting him from the rattling and creaking of the old plane as it lumbered its way half-way across Russia to Siberia.

Herr Call's Siberian hosts--the family Duschik--met him at the airport and they took him to his hotel in the middle of town. After checking in and freshening up a little, he was picked up by the family again and taken on a grand tour of the town.

The city of Kemerovo, located on the Tomsk River, about 200 miles from Novosibirsk, has a population of about 500,000.

Although there had been a coal-mining settlement there since the late 1800's, the town as it looks today was developed after the Second World War and most of the

buildings were modern although a little worn.

The weather in Siberia was about like it was in western New York when Herr Call left: slightly below freezing at night and slightly above freezing during the day. It was obvious that they had had a lot of snow until just recently.

While in Kemerovo, Herr Call attended a two-day seminar on teaching German sponsored by the German-Russian Federation in that region. Back in the late 1700's Catherine the Great had encouraged many Germans to move to Russia as laborers and so Russia is full of communities of native-speaking Germans

One of the most interesting things Herr Call observed about this town was the general type of people there. Located just east of the Caucasus mountains, these "Caucasian" people, on the whole, were much taller than usual, with light hair and very fair skin.

"It was an odd feeling, being in a crowd of people and not being able to see over everyone's head," observed the six-foot-three Herr Call!

One thing very different from life in the United States was the number of police of various kinds. In a small store the

size of the IGA in Corfu, he counted eight uniformed police. Every so many miles along any street there were groups of special police -- called "militia" and carrying sub-machine guns -- who randomly flagged down cars checked documents and questioned the driver and passengers.

Because of a typo on his travel visa, Herr Call spent a lot of his time at the district militia office while they tried to straightened it out. With an oblique reference to the old Communist labor camps in Siberia, Herr Call's hosts joked quietly that perhaps Herr Call might end up spending more time in Siberia than expected!

On the last day of his five-day visit to Siberia, Herr Call and his friends all piled in a big mini-van and headed two hours north into snow country and a vast open-air museum. The museum was dedicated to the original peoples of the area and featured replicas of old living quarters, huts and the like.

One particularly interesting exhibit showed how the original peoples "buried" their dead. They bundled them up and tied the bodies to tall poles, a practical solution in a place where the soil was frozen year round.

Carved into the rock along the vast Tomsk river were pertroglyphs dating back thousands of years.

Along with the ancient petroglyphs were modern "John-loves-Mary" graffiti notes carved in the same stone. The whole place was unfortunately completely unguarded.

Herr Call was deeply impressed by the vast expanses of woods in Siberia. The mostly-white birch woods had sprinklings of evergreens, making for a breathtakingly beautiful fairy-tale landscape.

Bidding farewell to his friends in Siberia, Herr Call flew back to Moscow where he spent the next four days visiting landmarks and various schools in and about the Moscow area.

At his first school visit, Herr Call was impressed at how well the 8th graders spoke German and English. The students were likewise amused at Herr Call's Russian. Asking why so many students were absent in his first class, it was explained that the normal number for language classes--even in the poorest of schools--was six to eight students.

Russian schools feel that language classes can't be effectively taught with larger groups than eight or so. This sentiment was expressed over and over again as Herr Call visited other schools and spoke with teachers and

administrators about teaching language in Russia and in Pembroke. Herr Call's hosts in Moscow were puzzled that he preferred to spend his short time in Moscow visiting schools rather than going to museums. "I felt I could get the best feel for Russian culture through the kids in the schools," he answered.

He did visit the famous Red Square, however. "It was an eerie feeling when I realized I was actually standing in front of the Kremlin, where Lenin, Stalin, Kruschev and all those nasties had held the whole world hostage for some eighty years," said Herr Call. "To think of the millions of people who had been brutally murdered in the name of that regime was just astounding. I stood there for a long time, almost afraid to breathe. When my host finally asked me why I was just standing there I just couldn't explain."

The school visits showed modern post-Communist Russia in a different light, though. In one elementary classroom, the students had prepared lists of questions for Herr Call. "We had quite a lively conversation back and forth," he reported. "The kids were cute and overall, it looked a whole lot like an American elementary classroom."

In another school, he was invited to lead a group of 12th-and 13th-year English students in a discussion of classics they had been reading, like Tom Sawyer, Alice in Wonderland and The Jungle Book. In yet another school, he was the guest speaker at a convocation where the students asked questions about life and school in America for nearly an hour. Of special interest seemed to be the Salt Lake Olympics the NBA and President Ronald Reagan

In a third school, he was interviewed for nearly an hour by four "philology" students who were planning on studying languages at Moscow University. In all the schools,

students were anxious to try out their German or English, asking for autographs from their American visitor as he walked through the hallways.

"Keep in mind, only twelve years ago, America was the Evil Empire to these folks," explained Call. "I was the first American most of them had ever seen outside the movies and this was quite an experience for them!"

President Reagan's name came up often in conversations with adults and students. He is widely held to be America's greatest president!

Easter Break and the visit to Siberia and Moscow was over all too soon, but Herr Call brought home many wonderful memories and not just a few new ideas for his students at Pembroke. "The Russian kids were wonderful, but I'm still convinced that I have the finest students in the world," said Herr Call with a big smile!