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Actually we found out on the morning of the 12th
when our hostess Olga in the Siberian Village
Listvyanka on Lake Baikal told me that there had been
an accident with an airplane and a building in New York.
She said a very tall building and through further questioning
I determined that she meant the World Trade Center.
She kept saying "fell down", but I thought I didn't understand
the Russian correctly or that she meant part of it fell down.
We turned on the Russian TV- there wasn't a news program on at
that time- more of a morning show. They had no real clips-
instead they had an interview with filmmaker Paul Verhoven
who happened to be in Moscow and had a daughter living in
NYC whom he'd spoken to. They interspersed this expert
commentary with clips of disaster films. At this point I was
thoroughly confused and things were getting kind of surreal.
I woke up Jason and he got out the short wave radio that our
friend Andy had given us a s wedding present. We searched in
vain for Voice of America. We got glimpses of it, but at this point
even when we found signal it was the middle of the night and we
still couldn't really figure out what had happened because they
were interviewing leaders of South American countries for their
reactions. So between Paul Verhoven, VOA and our Russian
hostess we knew at this point that 4 planes were involved in an
attack/accident? With the world trade center and maybe in Washington
as well. Alot of people were presumed dead. That was about all of it.
Throughout the day we filled in the story from other people's accounts
and the opportunity arose to watch a real newscast with actual footage.
We finally believed that the buildings had in fact fallen down.
There were no phones in the village. We got back in touch 2 days later in Irkutsk.
-CK