Transpacific   Beverly and I have gone along the edge of the Pacific by water while sailing around South America and earlier, sailing up to Alaska. The only time we ever penetrated the Pacific area to any distance is on our flight to Hawaii in 1970. This transpacific flight therefore is totally new for me. My experience with long flights is at most several hours transatlantic New York-Europe or transcontinental New York-California. This was to be 11 hours 20 minutes, which was more formidable. My opinion of air travel being, at best, disdainful (see below) I decided to go business class on this leg. It was well worth it, as I was able to compare Korean Air’s service on this leg (Vancouver-Seoul) with its service two days later economy class (Seoul-Vladivostok), which was back to the usual airline cattle-car standards.

Cyrillic 10   

Note: There are two symbols, actually considered letters of the alphabet, since they once were vowels, that you can essentially disregard for our purposes. One is the soft sign: ь, which just indicates how to pronounce the consonant before it. If transliterated at all, it’s done with an apostrophe. The hard sign: ъ is rarely needed, but used to separate in a similar way that we may use a hyphen in “co-operate”. Actually, if transliterated at all, a hyphen is used.

Note: The manner of representing vowels in Cyrillic has separate symbols for a simple vowel as compared to a vowel that has a Y sound in front. А was simple, but Я is YA. Similarly, Е was YE. Continue to note the pairs as they come up.

Air “Travel”   I referred recently to the difference between travel and transportation, and I will elaborate here. We have the expression that “getting there is half the fun”, and it should be. Usually, travel by ship is genuine travel, travel by train, assuming use of the sleeping car, is enjoyable travel, driving a car cross country, your own or a rental, stopping when and where you wish, certainly fits in here. On the other hand, pressure-driving long-distance cross-country can be a necessary evil, but it is transportation, not travel. Long-distance bus travel is transportation, and inexpensively so, as Bev and I found out on the overnight bus from New York to Montréal’s Expo 67. Finally, the wonder of the 20th Century, air travel, has now degenerated, under far too many circumstances, to bus travel in the skies.

One genuine joy of air travel is looking down at the ground and recognizing, say, the outline of major cities, or the Grand Canyon. After a few flights, however, that gets “old”. You don’t see experienced travelers clamoring to sit near the window. Of course, the advantage of air travel is its speed, and that’s why we put up with it.

Air “travel” is trafficking in human freight. Take two egg cartons and line them up next to each other lengthwise, opening the lids outward. Look down the length of the space between the cartons. Then, the next time you’re waiting for the rest room at the back of a plane, look up the aisle, and you’ll again see rows of eggs from the back, all sitting in their little styrofoam seats with seatbelts on so they don’t break. This is the transportation of human freight.

If you still have your doubts, consider this. If someone has just come back from a boat or train trip, you might readily ask them if the boat or train was the best part of the trip. If someone just flew back from a week in Florida, would you seriously ask if the flight was the most fun part of their week? Air “travel” is a necessary evil of our times. Better food or service wouldn’t help all that much. We just wrap ourselves up as freight in a styrofoam egg carton and get it over with as quickly as possible to get on with the real travel at hand.

In this regard, going business class for the long stretch was a wise move, and it became close to pleasant. Economy class on the short second flight was same old, same old.

I was surprised to find that Korean Air has a VIP Lounge at Vancouver Airport that I wasn’t aware of, and by chance, I arrived with a few hours of extra time. This alone was delightful. You could serve yourself with an Asian soup, there was all sorts of sandwiches and other muchies, there were wines and bottles of sprits, should one be so inclined. It was an extremely pleasant interlude.

I did have a window seat, and after takeoff I had a beautiful view below of the snowy mountains on Vancouver Island and up the Canadian coast, so that basic joy of flight does still apply on occasion. Then the clouds took over. Although we were two across, those in the middle were three across. Do keep in mind that maps will mislead you if you draw a straight line across the Pacific. The shortest route is to cling close to the Alaska coast and, essentially, move along the north side of the Pacific Rim, which is what we did. Two meals and two naps, with reading, did fill the time quite quickly. Business class had the nice extras like hot towels. Most others took wine, but I was of course their best champagne “customer”. One of the charms of Asia was that the stewardess, on greeting the passanger, gave a bow. Just before landing, the Chief Steward came around and bowed to every passenger.

Cyrillic 11   

International Dateline   The flight had left Vancouver on a Wednesday at 14:20 (2:20 PM). With 11h20 flying time, we arrived as scheduled in Seoul well after midnight, to be exact, at 1:40 in the morning. Two naps do sustain one. But then we have to take the multiple time zones into consideration. (Time zone discussions here mostly ignore daylight savings time, which was a factor in some places.)

Vancouver is in the hemisphere with hours later than Greenwich, to be precise, Vancouver is at Greenwich minus 8. That means four more zones to the International Dateline, for a total of five. Seoul is in the hemisphere with hours earlier than Greenwich, precisely at G+9, which would be three zones from the IDL for a total of four. That comes to nine zones from Vancouver to Seoul, with eight time changes.

I had been picking up an hour at a time across North America, or, as I like to look at it, “reliving” an hour a day (which is why I like to go westward). By the way, the doctor on the train confirmed that it is healthier to go in this direction, since the human biological clock runs at between 26-27 hours. In other words our body clocks “feel” that a day is that long, so real days are already cutting us short. Living with 25-hour days comes closer to that ideal.

Anyway, after picking up an hour at a time, I was now going to pick up eight hours with these eight time changes. So instead of arriving at the 1:40 in the morning that it said on my watch, I was going to “relive” the late afternoon and whole evening, since eight hours earlier than that comes to 17:40, or 5:40 PM.

The only thing is, the evening I was going to relive wasn’t Wednesday’s. It was Thursday’s. I had “lost” a day crossing the International Dateline. Of course, it wasn’t lost, it was just the payback adjustment for having gained hours up to now, and the advance payback for continuing to gain hours up to New York. I would be gaining a total of 24 hours, and the payback for them came now, all at once.

Now, I had never experienced this before, and had never really understood why it works this way, so I sat down to try and figure it out. I always understand things better myself when I have a graphic image (remember my onion rings to describe latitude and tangerine wedges for longitude). Here is my explanation to myself, including a graphic image.

Noon is when the sun is right overhead. Originally every city had its own time schedule, based on its own local noontime. The coming of railroad schedules changed this, and standard time came about. Time zones are set up so that noon is roughly down the middle. What would be local times to the east are incrementally reduced up to a half hour at the eastern end, and extended up to a half hour in the west, so that there is a standard time across the zone. However, the half-hour changes at the edges of the zones result in a full hour’s difference between them.

Go to the border of any of the 24 time zones. Look east over the border, and you’re looking “into the future”, into the hour that’s coming; look west to see the hour that’s gone. Do this exactly at midnight, and you’ll be “seeing” from one day to another. Keep this thought in mind.

The misconception people have is that it’s the same day right now around the world. Depending on how early or late in the day it is, somewhere part of yesterday might remain, or part of tomorrow is already there.

Picture a huge globe in the middle of a room, taller than a person. Picture a roll of paper towels fastened at the International Dateline. It could be anywhere on the IDL, but let’s say it’s at the equator and the IDL. This roll has only 24 sheets, one for each hour of the day. This roll will be named Wednesday.

At midnight, the first sheet of paper moves westward from the IDL. Wednesday has made its appearance; everywhere else in the world it’s the old day. By the time six sheets are extended, one quadrant of the world is covered by Wednesday, up to mid-Eurasia. Six more, for a total of twelve, brings Wednesday up another quadrant, to Greenwich. When it’s midnight in Greenwich, the new day covers half the world, as does the old day.

Six more sheets, now 18, brings Wednesday to another quadrant, to mid-North America, fully ¾ of the way around the world.

By the time you’ve pulled out 23 sheets, it begins to get interesting. You are just one hour from being back to the IDL. Wednesday has almost conquered the world, but it’s also about to start dying.

An hour later, completion is reached. Wednesday is back to the IDL, from where it started. The snake “bites its own tail”, as it were. There is now an interesting equilibrium. It’s Wednesday everywhere, but just for that one hour. Looked at in reverse, when it’s noon in Greenwich it’s the same day everywhere on the planet.

One more hour moves up. Wednesday’s last sheet runs off its roll and the first sheet at the other end is torn off. Thursday has started to take over, and the process repeats itself.

I had said earlier that at the other 23 zone changes, you usually look across the line at another hour of the same day, except for midnight, when you “look at” another day across the line, tomorrow eastward and yesterday westward. At the IDL it’s the reverse. Only at midnight is the same day across the line. Otherwise, you “look across” westward at ... tomorrow, being pulled off the roll.

Now down to reality. When I left Vancouver, its quadrant was maintaining a dying Wednesday. Thursday had already come from the IDL to Seoul and its quadrant. If I overflew the IDL at dying hour X Wednesday, a-borning hour X Thursday was just appearing. So I really lost nothing.

As for degrees: Vancouver at 123 West (49) was my last stop in the second quadrant that had started in mid-North America, progressing up to 180 at the IDL, where I entered the third quadrant and the numbers started going down from 180, to my arrival in Seoul at 127 East (38). In other words, Vancouver is about as far east of the IDL as Seoul is west.

Cyrillic 12   

Here is a presentation of three final letters:

Note the feminine form; the English word Tsarina comes from German Zarin. Also note that Russian Царь and German Kaiser are both derived from the word “Caesar”.

Second: Russian has an I that’s pronounced back on the tongue. It is transliterated as Y.

Third: Russian has a YO, indicated by a modified E:

Finally, note that all Cyrillic lower case letters are “baby forms” of the capitals except for these seven: Аа Ее Ёё, but these vary just as the Roman letters do. Рр Уу Фф, where the capitals stand on their feet and the lower case sits down on the line. Бб probably varies the most, but still not all that much.

Korea   The only connection to Vladivostok from anywhere in North America was via a Korean Airlines connection in Seoul, so, since I needed to spend one night there anyway, I made it into two to get to see something. Being an independent traveler I could do that. Those on the rail trip that were having others do their work for them were usually at their mercy.

I have a strong sense of location, and sense the difference of being on the east or west coast of the US, with the ocean on the reverse side. Therefore, I had the feeling of the uniqueness of being on the eastern end of Eurasia, instead of my customary western side.

I don’t know what I expected, but it was a lush green area that greeted us, leading into a large urban (besmogged) expanse. I liked Seoul, and am pleased that it’s my introduction to Asia, yet it’s Asian enough that I didn’t feel nearly at home there as I do in Europe or North America. The city layout seems confused, and I never did get fully oriented, which is not only unusual for me, I can say it never happened before. I enjoyed most of what I saw there, yet I can’t place locations into the urban fabric, a situation that leaves my head spinning. All street signs were marked in English as well as Korean, and many people I came in contact with spoke English, but I never knew quite where I was. The populace seemed young and very hip.

My first misunderstanding, a rather pleasant one, was falling into a cultural trap, and I should have known better. However, I’m glad I figured it out on my own. As I was buying my KAL limo ticket into town, the woman asked where I would be getting off. I had taken two nights free on points at the Westin Chosun, and thought it should be quite nice, but I was taken aback when the woman said “Oh, that’s an OLD hotel!”. What I figured out was this: to the western ear, that statement is criticism. To the easterner, it’s high praise. This is an Asian culture, where one’s elders are respected. Why wouldn’t the oldest hotel in town be equally venerated? I knew I had figured her statement out correctly when I saw the hotel. It was eye-popping.

The Chosun was built, I believe in 1914. It had the first elevator in Korea. I can’t believe that the modern building dates from then, but maybe it does. It’s triangular, with each side bulging in concavely. On its grounds is a beautiful pagoda. The service was spectacular. The room had every bell and whistle: you pressed a button to light up a “Do not disturb” sign outside. When the complimentary newspaper was delivered on a rack outside, a light inside lit up to let you know. When the large bathroom mirror fogged up after a shower, the rectangle above the sink stayed mysteriously clear. I had one breakfast and one dinner at the buffet restaurant in the hotel. I was particularly happy with the breakfast. The offerings were both western and eastern, but I liked having dim sum and miso soup for breakfast. If some western hotels avoid a thirteenth floor, Asian hotels tend to avoid calling a floor 4, which some people consider unlucky, since the number four apparently sounds like the Chinese word for death. Go figure.

Having only one full day to see what I wanted to see, the DMZ and Seoul, I spent considerable time online months ago with e-mails going back and forth, trying to hammer together an appropriate program. I ended up with a morning tour with a group to the Demilitarized Zone, followed by a tour of Seoul with a private guide. It was pricey, but got done what I wanted to get done.

The DMZ is about forty minutes away, and you must take a special tour, because only tour operators’ buses are allowed inside. On the way, I was happy to recognize my first rice paddies on the side of the road. We first stopped at Imjin Gak, which is the site of the so-called Freedom Bridge, where captives were exchanged in 1953. No road or train has crossed the DMZ for decades, but one is being built right now, and I saw one of the three daily trains go by. We went to the next and, for now, last stop, but they are planning on having this route enter North Korea and eventually connect up with the Trans-Siberian at Vladivostok, running through trains from Seoul to Moscow. Plans are inching ahead. This was all interesting for me, not only because of an interest in trains, but because Vladivostok was specifically where I was headed the next day, anyway. We went to a high point where you could look down on the DMZ. It is well known that, since no people can go there, animals and plants are safe, and it is becoming a naturally wild habitat, with talk about eventually making it into a national park. Anyway, North Korea is now another place that I’ve seen from a distance, but haven’t set foot in (with Antarctica, Cuba, Haiti, and Albania).

Four tunnels have been found over the years, where North Koreans tried to infiltrate the south. It is estimated there could be up to twenty more, yet undiscovered. The Third Infiltration Tunnel is most interesting, and the one we went to see. They’ve bored a pedestrian access tunnel, but we took the cog rail tunnel instead. We all wore hard hats and sat in what looked like a series of very open roller-coaster cars that gradually descended down to meet the tunnel. The walls were just beyond one’s shoulders and hard hat. Down below, we walked up to where the tunnel had been plugged up at the North Korean border. The hard hats were useful, as everyone was stooping somewhat and would clunk their head periodically, as I did, twice.

Afterward, I had my private tour. Waiting for our car at a restaurant, I watched a large number of small octupuses in a fishtank, similar to how we put lobsters in restaurant tanks. I also got to taste some ginseng tea.

She took me to a Buddhist temple, and showed me how to bow properly. We walked through the Insadong crafts neighborhood, with specialties in ceramics and Korean writing and wrapping papers. We walked through the Namdoemun street market, the largest in Asia. Of the several palaces in Seoul, I took the tour of Chandeok Palace, from 1405, which is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Most of the rooms are separate buildings, and all in pagoda style.

I added two new Travelers Century Club locations on this trip. South Korea is # 102, and my next day’s destination, which the TCC designates as “Siberia (Russia in Asia)”, is # 103.

Cyrillic 13   You have now been enticed to discover the entire Cyrillic alphabet as used in Russian (there are additional and variant letters in Serbian, Bulgarian, and others). A discussion of the background of European alphabets is now appropriate.

At first glance, one would pose three alphabets, Roman, Greek, and Cyrillic. (Note that I will use the term Roman and not Latin as preferable, since when changing other alphabets into this one, the term “Romanization” is standard.) On more careful thought, I would come to a conclusion of fewer than three (but more than two). This point obviously needs some discussion.

It is incredible to watch the developments that led into these alphabets. We start with two ancient civilizations, Greek and Roman, each with its own alphabet. It is worth noting that even at this point, as the Romans “borrowed” elements of Greek art and architecture, they also “borrowed” letters of the alphabet, including alpha, beta, omicron, tau mu, and others. It is no coincidence that we see A, B, O, T, M in Greek and recognize them as our “own”.

At any rate, it continues to amaze that it was precisely on the sites of these two ancient civilizatons that two branches of Christianity developed, the Roman Catholic and the Greek Orthodox, and thereby, each branch of Christianity inherited its individual alphabet. Just analyzing the terms “Roman Catholic” and “Greek Orthodox” is an education in civilization in itself. You see simultaneously the names of the two classical civilizations, the names of these two branches of Christianity, and the names of the two alphabets.

Each branch prosetylized. As it did so, it spread its alphabet. All of Europe to the north and west of Rome became Roman Catholic, and the alphabet went with the religion to the languages involved. The breaking away of the Protesants had no affect on the use of the Roman alphabet, as the die had already been cast.

The Greek Orthodox also prosetylized, and the discussion gets interesting here. The Greeks saw as their territory the area to the north and east of Greece, primarily (though not completely) the Slavic regions. The Greeks set out to “Christianize the Slavs”. It is interesting to note that the Greeks didn’t reach all the Slavs. The Romans got to the Poles, Czechs, Croatians, and others first, and they are Roman Catholic (or Protestant), but not orthodox. If you doubt the importance of religion in language, note that Serbo-Croatian is, as I understand the situation, essentially the same language, with variations not greater than, say, Flemish/Dutch, yet the Croatians became Roman Catholic and use the Roman alphabet for Serbo-Croatian, the Serbs became orthodox and use Cyrillic for Serbo-Croatian, and Yugoslavia dissolved largely on that division.

You will have noticed how I slipped into that sentence that the Greeks used Cyrillic to spread Orthodoxy. This is precisely the point in my saying that the total number of European alphabets is more than two but less than three. Is Cyrillic the same as Greek? No. But it’s not all that different, either, and therein lies my tale.

In the mid-800’s the Greeks decided to expand Orthodoxy, and Cyril, who later became St Cyril, set out to establish an appropriate writing system for the Slavs. When I first read up on this a half-century ago, I came across some information I’ve believed ever since, but on re-evaluation I now believe is drivel. I remember reading that Cyril “borrowed from the Roman and Greek alphabets” to form the Cyrillic alphabet. What nonsense. It shows the importance of not believing everything you read, and of thinking things through. It is now clear that, if the word “атом” written in Cyrillic, is immediately recognizable to readers of the Roman alphabet, it is most certainly NOT because Cyril borrowed from the Roman, but because the ancient Romans had already stolen those letters from the Greek alphabet in the first place. Considering the lack of ecumenism to this day, how incredibly unlikely would it have been for Cyril to have borrowed from the Romans in the ninth century?

Cyril clearly took the Greek alphabet as his basis. Almost two-thirds of the letters in the Cyrillic alphabet are either Greek, or slightly modified from Greek. My earlier-quoted misled source, however, was right in that Cyril did go to the Hebrew alphabet for two letters, and then made up additional ones he needed. However, not only are most Cyrillic letters Greek, they tend to be the more frequently used letters, so the overwhelming impression of seeing a sign in Cyrillic is even more Greek than otherwise. Reading the Cyrillic word мотор is a totally Greek experience: mu, omicron, tau, rho. Reading Америка, everything is Greek but the и.

Greek and Cyrillic are two alphabets, yet considering their close history, I would say Roman is alphabet # 1, and Greek/Cyrillic is # 2a and # 2b.

[Before continuing the discussion of Cyrillic, this digression is too good to avoid. We have some odd names for letters, most notedly “double-u” for W, which if anything, is a double-V. You wouldn’t think Greek would do things like that, would you? Consider Greek mega (large), which we use in “mega-mall”, for instance; it varies as megal in “megalopolis”. For “small” we also use micro in “microscope” with the variation micron used as a unit of measurement. Now consider the two Greek letters omega and omicron. One is Big-O and the other is Small-O.]

It is also worth noting that the three alphabets have the greatest similarity in the capital letters, which, of course, are the original letters. Lower-case letters (and script writing) are later developments. Greek lower-case letters can differ surprisingly from Greek capitals, and sit back and analyze sometime how many Roman capitals change, some significantly, in lower case. Cyrillic lower-case is the most consistent with the corresponding capitals.

As to alphabetical order, Greek letters come first in Cyrillic, with only a few others interspersed. Towards the end are clustered the Hebrew and made-up letters.

I would say that three instances of modification, involving four letters, are the most interesting.

Corresponding to S, the Greek capital Sigma, Σ, is used in math. If you look at the toolbar of Microsoft Excel, you’ll see a sigma signifying “sum”. Sigma is open to the right, but has a flat roof and floor, and its left wall is pushed in. Cyril pushed the left wall outward instead, and rounded the whole thing, so that Greek Σ developed directly into Cyrillic С, believe it or not. There is no connection to Roman C, which was pronounced like K.

Greek L and D, which are Lambda, Λ, and Delta, Δ, lead an interesting dual life in Cyrillic. Look at the name Vladimir in two type fonts:

The first example is the more common of what happens to these two letters. Lambda and Delta each flatten their pointed roofs, stiffen their right legs to be vertical, and hang their left legs loosely to the side. Delta notoriously gains two tiny feet.

But in the second example, Lambda and Delta take off their Cyrillic costumes and show their original Greek character, although Delta retains its two tiny feet.

Also, the only way to write a script л is to put its pointed roof back on.

By the way, I chose a sans-serif font, Verdana, to present the Cyrillic alphabet to the worthy reader, since it’s simpler to read without all those extra little “flags”.

The last example goes to show how clever Cyril was when he came across a problem, which involved Beta. Capital Beta looks just like the Roman B, which shouldn’t surprise, since Roman B was “borrowed” from Beta. Words borrowed at that time that had Beta in them eventually developed into English “biography” and “biology”.

Then a strange thing happened to Greek. People stopped saying B’s and started replacing them with V’s. That shouldn’t shock too much, since B is a bilabial (lip-lip) sound and V is labiodental (lip-teeth), really quite close to each other. The only thing is, was that the Greeks continued to use Beta to spell their words that now had a V in them. As a matter of fact, in Modern Greek the name Beta itself is now Vita. If words had been borrwed after this change, we might have ended up with “viography” and “viology” instead.

When Cyril was working with his alphbet in the mid-800’s, this change had already taken place. Yet Cyril knew he need both a V and a B. What to do? He used Beta twice, once for each sound.

First, he used the original Beta for the new sound, V. So in Russian we have the name Vera as Вера. However, it is usually a shock for outsiders that the Russian name Варвара, which one would love to pronounce Barbara, is really Varvara.

To modify Beta into the B-sound that it had originally represented, Cyril, figurately speaking, took a pair of scissors to it and cut away the upper loop, flattening the roof in the process. And thus we have Борис.

A final point on this: the Greek alphabet starts out with Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta..., with the “G” notoriously appearing earlier than in the Roman alphabet. The Cyrillic alphabet starts out as ah, beh, veh, geh, deh... Note both that the “G” comes in the same spot as in Greek, but more interesting, Cyril put both his Б and his В in the position otherwise occupied just by Beta.