Pan-Europe Voyage

We when had finished serving out our sentences in Russia and were released, my friends Tom, Nat and I decided to go back to England via the European railways. It was a four-day voyage that took us from Russia to Ukraine, then on to Germany through Poland and a brief stop in Belgium before finishing off in London St. Pancras.

This is a short account of our trip.

We said our goodbyes to our landladies and friends and got ourselves to the station. Some of our friends saw us off with hugs and waves and good intentions. We had some supplies with us as well. I myself had a litre of water, some M&Ns and some Haribo dinosaurs. Tom’s landlady had bestowed a cool bag of stuff for him; what seemed to be a whole dead pig in ham form, a colossal wedge of cheese and a hunk bread. All of it ingeniously kept cool with bottles of frozen water and some beers. Clearly I brought the useful, healthy amenities. We got ourselves sorted out in our coupe that we shared with a grumpy looking but quite affable Ukrainian man who was homeward bound and set off for Kiev at eight o’clock.

Voronezh – Kiev

As we were quite dazed and euphoric about leaving home, the first few hours of our seventeen-hour slog yielded many random and I daresay stupid comments and scenarios from everyone. You know the kind that someone says (or does), which is followed by a short pause as the lunacy sinks into the minds of those present, before guffaws and snorts of incredulity are emitted. We decided from the off that every time someone said or did something stupid it was to be noted down along with the exact time. Needless to say this got more and more intermittent as we lost interest and focus and slept. However here is what we gathered, as little as it may be.

20:16 – Bored. Take out shortbreads + pretend to be Scottish

20:36 – Pensive silence as we look out of window

20:38 – ‘Pastry beard’ – Tom, of Nat wielding pastry near her chin

20:41 – ‘Dream envy’ – Of Nat’s dreams

20:49 – ‘All the dinosaurs are going the same way so they can’t fight’ – me of my Haribo dinosaurs

21:00 – ‘You know when you see a field and you think…I could be in the middle of that’ – Tom, on fields

21:12 – ‘Chickens are funny creatures’ – Nat, pondering poultry

21:22 – Accidentally hand out secret questions and answers to bank account…insurance now void

06:30 – Border crossing

11:12 – ‘That’s f***king gay and bitch for battys!’ – Tom angry about something

Essentially pointless but it provided us with some mirth on this long and thirsty leg of our trip – I, for some reason, had thought it was only seven hours to Kiev and was rightly a bit miffed when I was told to add an extra ten hours and realised I only had one litre of water. Despite this clearly canyon wide gap in my intelligence, we arrived at Kiev safely and surely at one o’clock in the afternoon on the 25^th, eager to stretch our legs in the capital for a few hours until evening.

First thing we did was head, using Tom’s good positional sense of underground geography, towards the monstrous statue we glimpsed on the train whilst entering the city. We took the metro to somewhere in the right direction and started walking along the river towards the wooded area that surrounded the statue. As we ascended the verdant hillside we stumbled upon a large church complex that was all domes and iridescent gold. It was, with later help from wikipedia roaming, the ‘Kiev Monastery of the Caves’ and is a UNESCO World Heritage Site no less. It contains numerous architectural titbits from bell towers to cathedrals to underground caves and fortified walls. We passed, not quite effortlessly, through the complex complex on towards the statue, which was nestled on the far side of the ‘National Museum of the History of the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945’. The memorial complex itself covers about 25 acres on a hill overlooking the Dnieper River. There is the ‘Glory Flame’ (a massive torch), a site with old WWII equipment and vehicles and the boldly named ‘Alley of the Hero Cities’, which is a broad, open air walkway lined with statues and monuments culminating in a large sculpture in memory of the 1943 Battle of the Dnieper, two brightly coloured ‘hippy tanks’ and the statue of the Motherland herself. She stands at 62m on a base that raises her to a full height of 102m. She wields a 16m sword that weighs 9 tons and she also sports a 13m by 8m shield that bears the coat of arms of the Soviet Union. She is fully metallic and she shines bright in the sun, though is hooded and heavy with shadows in the shade. All in all she is magnificent.

After loitering beneath her mighty self for quite a while we decided we should head back leisurely in order to get to T.G.I Friday’s for dinner. We decided to walk a new, unknown way back into the town, seeming to forget that capital cities tend to be quite large. Knackered and sweaty we finally chanced upon a metro station that took us to the correct metro station – the grand ‘Independence Square’ – for the restaurant. However we then struggled, with some now apparently inadequate directions, to find the place itself. We proceeded to walk ten minutes up a beautiful main street, then back again, then ask for directions, find out we were looking for a slightly differently named square than we thought, then back down the road again until we found the right one. We then stuffed ourselves silly and waddled out. After a brief and relatively joyless interlude at a games arcade we made our way back to the main Kiev station in order to start our overnight ordeal.

You see, we had thought, perhaps unwisely, that instead of getting a youth hostel overnight – given that we had an eight o’clock – we could just sleep on the chairs in the main station for a few hours, which would be free. However it soon dawned on us that every cheap-arse commuter in Kiev had the same plan and there were no free seats – apart from one or too wedged in between a large, slumbering woman with drool making its descent slowly down her chin and a man who looks like he would rather punch you in the face and take your money than have a conversation. We trundled along with the most ridiculously heavy bags in existence and found a free strip of marble floor along one of the two main thoroughfares by the windows. This already was a bit irksome, but then Yura joined us.

Yura was an exceptional drunk creature who decided to bug us on and off for our 9 hour stint on the floor. Just as we settled down and got comfortable he wandered over with a bag and sat with us. He sat next to Nat. Tom was by Nat and I was on the far right so I didn’t have to talk to him. Nat did the very English action of humouring him, smiling and nodding politely to his slurred concoction of English and Ukrainian. He then asked if he could leave his bag with us while he popped outside. Twenty minutes later he came back and sat and jabbered away at us again. He went and came back again with another bag, and again and again, coming back drunker each time. We were starting to get annoyed by this behaviour as we needed to get some shuteye, but we put up with it. Then he started to get very annoying by serenading Nat and professing his love for her. He would then go and come back with some bread and vodka saying we should eat and drink.

‘No thanks’ we said, ‘really, we’re fine thankyou’

When the clock hands wandered past two o’clock, the camel’s back collapsed and the straw floated away. We tried to lie down in the sleep position in order to send a large hint, but he still came over, knelt down and mumbled away at us – his hot breath reeking of alcohol and poor manners. Nat got most of the bother because this old, crusty fifty/sixty something ‘loved’ her. He clearly did because after an hour respite from three to four o’clock he arrived back, Nat pretending to be asleep, asking to speak with Nancy! He came back once when we were genuinely on the brink of sleep and this pissed us off. We now plainly ignored him – he sat there giggling and musing on his life and the people he probably didn’t know – hoping awfully that he would decide to trundle off once more and try to stop a train with his face. He then left with his bags of cans and drink for a large period and we thought that was it.

How wrong we were.

Nat and Tom were at the loos when he came back and focussed his verbal prowess on me. It was 5:45-6 o’clock when he waddled up and explained how I should take his daughter’s number and come and visit them at his house by the sea (probably Black Sea), where there were lots of fish and mushrooms and forests. I smiled and nodded dumbly, wishing he’d stop breathing on me. He asked if I had paper and a pen. Of course I did, I’d been studying in a university for God’s sake.

‘No I don’t I’m afraid’, I said

He nodded slowly and then walked away down the walkway, talking to everyone he bumped into, clearly asking for the implements he needed to provide me with contact information for the most enticing holiday prospect ever.

About ten minutes later he came back, which disappointed me greatly as I had hoped that Nat and Tom would come back (clearly the bastards were pissing as slowly as they could) or that Yura had decided he could fly and had flung himself off the building. But no, here he was again. He proudly displayed to me the biro he’d acquired.

‘Still no paper though…’ I offered helpfully. He nodded intently and meandered off once more. I rubbed my forehead in strained disbelief. A couple of minutes later Tom came back, ‘Nat’s hiding downstairs looking at the times’, and was joined seconds later by Yura wielding a washing powder box. Tom looked on incredulous as our drunk proceeded to rip the box to shreds and then write a number down on one of the flaps of cardboard he had deemed fit for this information.

We accepted with a knowing smile and a thankyou and ignored him again. He said his goodbyes and finally left at 6:15. We’d had no sleep, but took advantage of his absence and legged it down to the platform that had finally come up on the board.

At eight o’clock after hauling our seventeen-ton bags downstairs, we boarded the twenty-five hour Kashtan train to Berlin – the longest leg of our trip.

Kiev – Berlin

The compartment on this train was far narrower than the one on the previous train, which made storing our six bags and ourselves a rather irritating and tricky process. But we got it done and we soon pulled down our rack of three beds – one on top of the other – and caught up on the sleep we so needed now thanks to Yura’s antics. We went to sleep until it was time for our border check for entry out of Ukraine and into Poland at 16:52. When we were leaving Ukraine we had to have a massive pit stop as they changed the wheels on the bottom of the whole train – for narrower rail tracks in Europe – by raising the whole thing up on stilts and running the old wheels out from under it and rolling the new ones in. Then we were travelling to Poland with its stunning flat, open grassland to look at.

18:05 – We played Fight Plane Challenge. Tom, in the Kiev station, had randomly bought a fit together plane with flashing lights and noises. The idea of the challenge was to see how quickly you could assemble the six-part plane from box to complete plane. Bronze medal went to a certain Thomas Harley of Great Britain with an average of 18.91 seconds, silver medal to Natalie Varnier of Holland with an average of 18.19 seconds, but gold medal went to Luke Darracott of Great Britain with an average of 17.40 seconds. It was completely childish but it kept us amused for about five minutes.

19:05 – Border control into Poland proper. Armed guards came onto our carriage and caught a cigarette smuggler, who had been hiding cigarettes in his compartment, behind the skirting board of the corridor and in the bin in the toilet. Hundreds and hundreds of cheap Russian cigarettes were confiscated and he was taken off…probably shot.

19:25 – Get our passports back and the armed border lady takes a shine to Tom’s surname. In Ukrainian she chuckled ‘Oh, Harley…like the bike’. We liked her.

We finally got to Berlin early the following morning on the 27^th after spending a nice night on the Kashtan.

In Berin we put away our bags in left luggage as usual and went off into Berlin, which I have decided is in my top five cities list.

1. Bath, UK
2. St. Petersburg, Russia
3. Berlin, Germany
4. Moscow, Russia
5. Hong Kong

This is all subject to change by the way.

We showered for the first time in two days at the insane Haupmanhoff station and revelled in the return of nice mannered, polite people. We then went off, with Tom as our guide, to act like complete tourists for the day.

First we glimpsed the magnificent Reichstag building, the Brandenburg Gate and the Holocaust memorial, where it was strange to hear our mother tongue spoke so freely. Then we checked out Checkpoint Charlie – see what I did there – and after that took the metro to Potsdammer Plass to have a meal of bacon and eggs with baked beans. After wasting some time in the Lego Discovery Centre we went to watch a film (Forgetting Sarah Marshall) as it had started raining and we needed to pass the time until dinner. Before our Cantonese meal we saw the Marx and Engels statue, the TV tower, a massive cathedral and the marine museum shop, then we took the metro back to the Haupmanhoff station and boarded the Deutschbahn to Belgium.

Berlin – Brussels

Our train to Brussels was an eight-hour overnight train in a compartment of six. The problem, right from the off, was firstly that it was cramped and secondly that, being an overnight journey, we would want/need to sleep and we couldn’t in the sit up seats we were in. We sat. We looked out the windows. We talked. Then we tried to sleep. Nat couldn’t. Tom and I only slept for a few hours before we decided, whilst rubbing our cricked necks, that we might as well ‘get up’ and change into the touristy t-shirts we purchased at Charlie’s checkpoint. And so we arrived at Brussels-midi…one of the worst main stations in the world.

It took us over an hour to find exact Euro change for the left luggage machines in a station where all the shops were not open early in the morning. I had to buy some tictacs with a twenty Euro note to disapproving looks from the person working behind the till. Every other left luggage machine/system we had used in the other countries gave change or had a person working there to help you out. On noticing this annoyance Nat muttered ‘the French clearly designed this place’. Having spent half a year in Paris with the appalling stations there, she was probably right.

So we had a drizzly, grey moaning couple of hours in Brussels. It wasn’t enough time to see anything worthwhile so we wandered around the area near the station. We had a very nice breakfast at a little eatery – that seemed to be the only one open at seven in the morning – and looked around at the buildings and a market for about two hours. Then we had to get back to the station, retrieve our bags, and sort out our Eurostar tickets.

Belgium – England

Not much to say here really. It was with great anticipation and excitement that we sat, scrunched into the tight Eurostar seats, looking forward to the prospect of dear England’s great, green bosom greeting us on the other side of the Channel tunnel. Whilst in the tunnel we timed the exact twenty-minute journey time through it and smiled contentedly at the chirpy, sunny faces around us. We noted two ladies – strangers to each other – who after five minutes of talking about the weather were swapping stories about their daughter’s new baby and their husband’s new electric shaver adapter and whatnot and suchlike. It seemed a shame that we were stuck with a haughty nosed, sour-faced Belgium gentleman who was reading ‘La Merde’ or ‘Le Frog’ and had ridiculously long legs.

We slid into London St. Pancras and launched ourselves with glee back into our most favourite and lovely and perfect country, nodding happily to the police and officials, coming to terms with the truth that we were finally, after months away, HOME.

The End Of All Things

‘In England we never entirely mean what we say, do we? Do I mean that? Not entirely. And logically it follows that when we say we don’t mean what we say, only then are we entirely serious’ – Alan Bennett (from The Old Country)

‘We should look long and carefully at ourselves before we consider judging others’ – Molière

‘No one can be as calculatedly rude as the British, which amazes Americans who do not understand studied insult and can only offer abuse as a substitute’ – Paul Gallico

‘No chord, nor cable can so forcibly draw, or hold so fast, as love can do with a twined thread’/ ‘You know, of course, that the Tasmanians, who never committed adultery, are now extinct’ – Robert Burton/ William Somerset Maugham

‘She’s beautiful, and therefore to be woo’d;

She is a woman, therefore to be won.’ – William Shakespeare

Not the usual low-quality poetry I know, but I thought I would put up some quotes that, on looking back on my time here in Voronezh, have all been very and all too relevant – especially in the last few weeks.

I mentioned in my last literary outing that I had a new American staying with me; well he stayed, along with the ten others – in different places of course – for two weeks or so. We didn’t see much of them while they were here due to the fact that they were studying at a different campus. However we did go out for drinks with them now and then. One such evening was on the День России or ‘Russia Day’, which is a holiday of national unity celebrated on June 12^th. On this day, in 1990, Russian parliament formally declared its sovereignty. The holiday was officially established in 1994. Initially it was named “Day of the adoption of the Declaration of Sovereignty of the Russian Federation”, which was crap and pointless basically so on 1^st February 2002 it was officially renamed to “Russia Day”…and it’s not very good.

A watered down version of the goings on during the Victory Day proceedings met us on Lenin Square. A lot of drunk people, a few stalls selling plastic tat, a stage – the same one used for the aforementioned V-day that had sat desolate on the square for a month – that hosted some truly abysmal acts also greeted us. However, unlike the patriotic grandeur and madness of victory day, the modestly named Russia day was as limp as Elton John’s wrist but not as musically potent. Anyway, we endured it for the sake of our American brethren, knowing that at some point there would be fireworks. There were. They were magnificent. A rising, ever-improving crescendo of explosions and colours boomed and splashed across the sky. At the climax the largest rockets detonated and made the heavens bright and our ears throb, whilst the Russian national anthem (one of the best in the world) pounded out of the speakers. Having learnt the words in our singing classes, we sang along and, even though we weren’t Russians, our hearts swelled somewhat. So, in conclusion, it was a triumphant end to a somewhat uninspiring ‘day’ – more of an evening. Much drinking and mirth followed the fireworks…we joined in of course.

Nights of little sleep, many glasses full of beer, hearty laughs and broken Russian conversations later the Americans had to leave for Moscow. We said our goodbyes and resigned ourselves to loneliness for the last two weeks.

There was an air of anticipation, as there always is near the end of these things, permeating through every action of daily life. The last two weeks really did tick along as normal. Nothing particularly out of the ordinary or notable happened. We had a final meal at Golf Tee Club, then a second final meal at Gulliver’s. We spent many nights in the pub watching the football tournament – my Italy eventually being kicked out by the dirty Spaniards. I continued working away diligently on my ridiculous essay in a vain attempt to reach the outrageous word count. Then we decided to go to the beach.

When I say beach, I’m sure the first image that flittered into view in your mind was of a sandy beach, it’s golden grains glowing in the sun, while the sea surf slaps at the shore. Or maybe it was a serene, shiny shingle scenario situated south of Shoreham. Ok I’m being an arse but the ‘beach’ in Voronezh isn’t really a beach. It’s a arm of sand that lies by the eerily still waters of the Voronezh reservoir…not sea.

Even though rain was clearly imminent in the sky – you know when it’s just looks angry and visually it’s a smudgy black/grey carpet of cloudy doom – we still decided a beach bbq was in order. So in two shifts we purchased a fair whack of burgers, buns, beers, crisps, and material things such as one-use bbqs, tongs, and a cool bag. We had two teams (due to the two shifts) barbequing. One team was Chris, Silvia and myself (team elite), and the other team was everyone else (team burn holes through one-use bbqs, not cook food properly, and generally suck at the tricky task of basically setting fire to meat until you can eat it). My team enjoyed a swift succession of unfairly tasty burgers, whilst team-crap struggled in vain to even get their fires going. Their downfall attributed to the fact that Sean had gone to fetch his girlfriend, which left Tom and the girls in charge. Sean, on his return, courageously tried to fix the situation with heroic levels of fan-flapping and tong tactics. The girls sat there saying it was Tom’s fault. Tom grumbled…even when he got his beer and burger. My team sat there, staying out of the way of the pandemonium safe in the knowledge that we had won. All we had to put up with were insults and incredulous cries as to how well we did and to how diplomatic we were with dishing out food and ketchup. Did I mention all of this was done in the rain and under an umbrella?

After eating we played beach football as the sun set. The buildings glittered, the empyrean burned and a rainbow arched over the sky – we saw the whole semicircle. Sean started a bonfire then all of us boys did what we do best…shirtless we strode into the nearby woods to find dead stuff to burn. Stuff that once was tree crackled on the fire as it grew in might and power. We talked and smiled as the embers glowed. Frogs and crayfish frittered about in the shallows of the reservoir. A distant thunderstorm growled in the distance as flashes of yellow lightning punctured the clouds. It was immensely pleasant.

A whole day without any water. No water for the Voronezh region. Rubbish, old pipes does this to a country said my landlady as she gasped incredulous that I live three hours from London. Cafes had to serve food on plastic plates…with plastic knives and forks. What a mess.

Went to the old book market with Laura and picked up ‘Elementary English’ (1948 and full of communist propaganda) for 80p after explaining to the man selling (who kept trying to speak to me in Italian) that I was an English student. As I left, he trundled up to me and offered me a 1938 soldier’s English-Russian war dictionary for £1. Obviously I bought it. Two remarkable soviet relics for under £2…bargain!

We ended our time at the university with some, rather stupid, ‘exams’. Old Vadim gave us a choice: either a сочинение (a small essay) изложение (exposition). I chose the former as I had already done it, as had Chris and Helen. The others, thinking it the easier option, chose the latter. We handed in our written pieces and were done with it. The others were taken into a room and were read a short story twice and then had to re-write it as best they could. In other words it was impossible. The next day, due to the unprecedented amount of errors in the изложение works, he decided the whole class should do it. As we started, we protested feebly as to its impossibility. The old man grumbled and gave us a gulag-sending look and decided to do a dictation –pointless. After that we then spoke about what we had just read/written, which was our oral test. The following Monday we had a very hard grammar test on verb aspect (imperfectives and perfectives) – Russian students you’ll know what I mean when I say it’s hard.

The very last day we had a small party in our honour, though earlier then planned as Tom, Nat and I were leaving a few days early in order to travel home through Europe by train. Cakes, sweets, cheese and champagne adorned the tables. There were toasts – I made one, being the ‘group leader’ and all – songs and certificate presentations and lastly goodbyes. And that was it. That was the end of our time at the Voronezh State University. I have to admit I didn’t feel too sad. Partly because I wasn’t really the same kind of student there as I was when in Spain and partly I wasn’t sad to say goodbye to anyone, as they were all the Bath lot. With the exception of Irina the secretary I had no emotional link to that part of the university. We also said goodbye to the great Luba and the magnificent Katya at the foreign languages faculty. Without their help we would have been sleeping in boxes outside, beaten up by the militsia, fined about £5000 for some stamp that we had forgotten to get at the public toilets after using them, or been deported back to the UK.

The end of all things. The end of Russia. The end of my Year abroad experience. It was the one of the best years of my life. Russia was one of the best experiences of my life. It contained the best and worst times. I saw the beauty in people and the nastiness in people. I learnt a lot about everyone, about myself, about the way things work. I matured. I have been on the tops of mountains, underneath waterfalls, establishing lasting connections and sampling new culinary delights. But I have also seen the darkness in people, been low and confused, not quite loved and lost, and had to deal with having a bucket shower. But this is life. This is real. Spain as much as I loved it was a four and a half month holiday with lectures. Russia was a different beast entirely. Russia was gritty, raw, remarkable and surreal. And we lived it. I lived it. And I’m better because of it.

The year abroad experience is one of the greatest things you can and will do. You won’t regret it. And if you ever moan or feel like giving up just remember to tell yourself to shut up and look at how lucky you are.

The End

Heat, Buckets and Trains.

Withered they walked along,

Along dusty paths covered with dirt,

Dirt that clung to them, to their sweat,

Sweat on their arms and faces,

Faces hot from the heat,

Heat, choking heat, and high temperatures,

Temperatures almost too great for this gang,

Ganging up on the heat they revolted,

Revolutions of sun cream, sandals and flip-flops,

Flapping brochures and cold drinks to help,

Help stop that horrid hot feeling,

Feeling horridly hot.

 

I realize that looks a lot like Byron, but it’s not, I swear…

 

The last fourteen days have been rather ok, with the wall of boredom (currently) a mere foot high shadow of its former self.

 

Small news items include: Helen, in a disgusting attempt to make us all feel bad, going back to England for a week and a bit; watching Indiana Jones and Prince Caspian in Russian; many of us printing off and handing out questionnaires that we created in order to help us with our essays; purchasing a new dictionary in the hope that it would inspire me to crack on with work; and saying goodbye to the one last remaining American.

 

The question tiptoeing around all of your lips, I’m sure, is why is it that it is £6.99 for a good bottle of Spanish Rioja, but the word green doesn’t rhyme with pernickety? I can’t answer that, I really can’t, I’m not qualified. Another question might be what have I been up to? That I can deal with.

 

We have recently had a period (about a week) when the temperatures have been oscillating around the 30° mark. This is obviously a dreadful state of affairs (quoting a certain Alan Partridge – ‘It’s hotter than the sun!’). Mankind wasn’t designed to endure temperatures above 25° during the spring time along the Thames. Fact. It’s just not biology. So we have been, collectively, blasted and scorched by the vicious power of the sun from the 19^th of May through to the 25^th. Mix the heat itself in a ghastly cocktail with the seemingly gratuitous lust that Russian roads possess to be dustier than the Sahara, a distinct lack of short trousers, a few headaches for banter, a flat that (conveniently) at the same time has decided to have no hot water for two weeks – leading to copious bucket showers – and you have I hope a glimpse into what I believe Dante was going on about in the 6^th circle of hell. It’s there, read it.

 

Eurovision, Eurovision, Eurovision. That was what Tony Blair said.

It is crap, but we love it. Every year all the rubbish countries get together and sing rubbish songs, give each other obvious points and generally have a blast. Britain is there, sighing to herself, wondering why she even bothered coming. Good song or not, nobody likes her anymore. Her only saving grace, apart from the marvelous language she speaks, is her companion and partner in crime Terry Wogan. As all the rubbish flitters by the stage – ballad, camp, quirky and rock ‘songs’ – Terry, in the name of Britannia, drinks. He gets more comfortable in his charming Irish skin and basically rubbishes the rubbish. This is why I watch it, why we watch it, and why, here in Russia, we watched it and had Tom’s mum send us text messages with quotes from the great man himself back in England. Classics such as: (As soon as it started after the introductions and speeches) “This is going to be a long night” and (referring to some dancers) “a couple of gyrating eejits”.

After arriving at Natalie and Natasha’s house we watched some Austin Powers, then, out of the large windows, we gazed at a massive thunderstorm that had been brewing outside and had decided to put on a show for us – all accompanied by “Ooohs” and “Aahhs”. Eurovision started so we cracked open some drinks and crisps and settled down. Britain performed second with a good song, that got no points, and Latvia was twelfth. I mention Latvia because that was where we got to in the proceedings before we were all (about seven extra to the two that live there) kicked out of the house. Not by the landlady and landlord, who were at the Dacha for the weekend, but by the ugly, arrogant, troglodytic boyfriend of the daughter (who didn’t mind our presence) of said landpeople. We left, in the rain, and grumbled about why they couldn’t be more like the English and not be a bunch of rude arseholes etcetera etcetera. A couple of hardy people went elsewhere to watch the end voting, but most of the group dissipated and went home. So that was Eurovision 2008. Apparently Wogan might stop doing it. If so, we’ll stop watching.

 

Brief Birthday Note: It is customary on the birthday – in most countries – of whoever it may be, that the guests buy the birthday girl/boy alcoholic drinks carry out orders/goads in the hope that said birthday girl/boy ends up inebriated.

 

It was my birthday on the 28^th of May – apparently the best day of the year according to the internet and many leather-bound books. I had a salad for lunch with some of the girls and they bestowed me with a selection of presents and cards, then in the evening I booked a table at restaurant called Eurasia, which was a bit of a disaster. Everyone got their food and enjoyed it; however my ‘steak’ (in a ‘honey and mustard sauce’) took an hour and a half to come and was literally a mangled looking minute steak with a piece of lettuce. On asking the waitress where the sauce was, she replied that it was fried in the sauce/flavour. I was suitably incensed due to the lack of any real, discernable taste on the meat, but instead sat there and grinded my teeth, stuffing the poor waste of cow into my chops. After the meal we went to a pub, where I was bought a few beers and then many, many shots of vodka. The last shot (number 8 of Russian sized shots) had a sugar lump in it. I was in such a state that I didn’t twig that the guys were lying to me when they said they had ordered a sweet & sour shot. Drink it, eat the sugar and suck on the lemon they said with cameras at the ready. I drank it, ate the sugar, sucked on the lemon and felt remarkably unwell the next morning.

 

I mentioned in the last blog about punching a hole through the wall of boredom with a trip to Moscow. I did this, and nearly destroyed the whole wall itself with the good time we had there. We left on the evening train on Thursday the 29^th and ended up returning Tuesday morning on the 3^rd of June.

29^th – Четверг/Thursday

After recovering from my birthday antics I packed my bag, watched a couple of films upstairs in Helen’s flat with a large bottle of water and watched the time tick tock away until the evening. At eight o’clock I leapt gazelle-like onto the number 120 bus and met Sean and Tom at the station. Sean had bought some supplies; chocolate, crisps and beer. We found our mile long train and trudged down to our carriage – number 22 of 22.

On Russian trains you either travel in a coupe or something called платкарт (platkart), which is basically open booths of four on the left part of the train with an extra two beds (one above the other) folded up along the other side. Our travel companion in our four person area was a nice young guy called Nikolai. He was a student traveling to work in America, taking a flight from Moscow. We gave him a beer, chatted with him and decided to play chess. A few games went by culminating in an hour and a half battle between me and Nikolai. The game ran into the night, the lights went off (apart from the dim security lights providing a little illumination), our lids became heavy but I finally managed to take the victory. I’m not very good at chess, so I imagine he wasn’t great either, but it was still the sort of conflict worthy of middle earth.

 

30^th – Пятница/Friday

Our train lumbered into the station at 7:50 in the morning but Sarah, the Bath student we were going to stay with, had thought it was later and sent me a text saying to meet her at a different metro station. We bought our ten journey metro cards in the horrendously busy metro station and met up with her at the allotted location. She took us back to her flat where we showered, unpacked, and prepared to go back out into Moscow. We took the metro down to Красная Плошадь or Red Square, and met up with Kelly (a Bath student who had gone there two days earlier), Nate and Kirby (two of the Americans from Voronezh who had yet to go back to the US) and a girl called Emma Lyle (later dubbed ‘that Lyle character’, she was a girl Kelly and Tom knew in Germany who was studying in St. Petersburg). We perused the square’s sights, admired the panorama of spires, walls and domes that made up the perimeter horizon along the tops of the buildings and rejoiced to be out of Voronezh. I made a solo trip with my camera into St. Basil’s Cathedral (for the stupid among you it’s the famous one with the onion domes); solo because the others didn’t want to pay. It was 100 roubles (£2) to go in and around, and £2.60 to take photos. I, being stubborn, believe the right to take a photo should be free, so I promptly paid for my standard, non-photo, entry ticket, shoved it into my trousers and walked in. I showed my ticket, walked round the other side of a pillar out of the sight of the lady who sat at the entrance nonchalantly ripping tickets in a bored manner, and started taking pictures without the flash. I walked through the cathedral taking photos in a confident manner and probably looked like the kind of person who had paid extra for the photo ticket. No one stopped me. So I didn’t pay extra. Bite me.

We had a beer, and then, after finding one already full, managed to have dinner at a T.G.I Fridays. Civilization! Steak! Tastiness! Blissfully expensive! This is the life!

 

31^st – Суббота/Sunday

I woke up early and walked Sarah’s massive lassie dog while the boys snoozed. They snoozed till midday, so I watched ‘There Will Be Blood’ on her plasma TV until they got up. When they got up we watched ‘The Bank Job’, went for a walk, took the metro round, and ended up having cocktails in another T.G.I Fridays. On the way home we met – I say met, we perchanced upon – an interesting character. He was stomping, like a giant, through the metro tunnels and corridors by himself. He was about six foot four and very broad. He had long black hair going down past his shoulders, tied up, and a bushy beard on his chin. He sported a black t-shirt, black jeans and a black leather waistcoat. From the shoulder pads of the waistcoat were artificial ferret tails – one on each shoulder that jumped up and down as he bounded along. Now the strangest thing of all was the thing round his waist. A leather belt, with a holster attached. In the holster was a large black revolver. We were first shocked, but tailed him to learn more. On closer inspection we saw it was a good plastic replica. Strange chap. Scary and strange.

 

1^st – Воскресенье/Sunday

We (me, Tom, Sean and Sarah) went for a walk around Old Arbat street in the afternoon and then proceeded to Hard Rock Café for a nice, civilized lunch (pulled-pork sandwich for those in the know). We stayed there a bit too long and had to get our skates on were we to catch our train. We left and went to the metro station. However, almost at the station doors, we glimpsed something irresistible. Like a moth to a flame, a pedophile to a play park, a mosquito to an arm on a summer’s day, a fat kid to a cake shop and a know-it-all to a smack round the head we were doomed. It was there, shining, welcoming and magnificent – The John Bull Pub. In Voronezh we had been dreaming of going to a pub so just one look wouldn’t hurt. We went inside and nearly died. It was a very good representation/replica of a nice English pub. After much jiggery pokery with what to do we decided to stay in the pub, buy a new ticket and go home the next day. I bought a strongbow (a cider in Russia!) for a hilarious £5.20 and the boys bought almost equally expensive beers. Sean managed to pawn off a five pound note to the barman for 250roubles. Tom then tried to buy (without avail) an ipod off the barman with a collection of pounds, euros and Swiss francs to the sum of fifty quid.

After a wander around old Arbat at night, Sean nearly buying a kitten for 200roubles, and a fruitless attempt at finding any decent food at 12 o’clock we went home.

 

2^nd Понедельник/Monday

After lunch we went and bought our new tickets to get home and then decided to split up and let everyone do what they wanted for a few hours. I decided first to go and see the main and frankly outrageous building of the Moscow State University (МГУ), which is actually a skyscraper (one of the seven sisters – Stalinist skyscrapers) in a sort of soviet kitsch-Empire state building style. Interesting fact: It was the tallest building in Europe until 1990. I then took the metro to see the Church of Christ the Savior, which is the largest cathedral in Russia and quite a sight with its expansive, chalky-white walls topped with sparkling gold domes. Lastly I went to the massive bookshop called Biblio-Globus, where I purchased a Bill Bryson book for posterity. We rushed back to Sarah’s flat, met her, packed, said goodbye and went to the station. We bought a couple of drinks, a kebab, boarded the rather empty train and set off back to Voronezh.

 

This blog has somehow gotten quite long.

On arriving back in the flat, Svetlana, exasperated as she had to go to work, explained to me that another American student called Taylor arrived at 2 o’clock in the morning and needed to be taken to a meeting place at 11 and could I do it. I did it, met the new Americans and finally allowed my new position of translator/helper sink in and thought with a slightly ironic smile, it’s good to be back.

 

I know I’ve moaned about Voronezh and I know I’ll moan more but that’s human nature and it can’t be helped. I have a pretty good feeling about these last three and a bit weeks. Maybe it is because I get to go home soon, maybe Moscow revamped my faith in this country, or maybe I just don’t really mind Voronezh that much at all, and it, in a strange way, has become a form of ‘home’. Who knows? Who cares? I’m here and I’m not going anywhere yet. Better just shut up, knuckle down and enjoy the last stretch of probable Russian madness.

Tick Tock. Tick Tock. Moving along.

Poem?

I usually write a poem.

If I didn’t would you care?

One about the Russia bear,

How it crushed my bedroom chair,

Making me suddenly aware

Of how I must take care

When going to the fair,

And seeing animals at te-

-rribly good prices.

 

 

Well hello. It’s been about three weeks since we got back from our little jaunt in the Kavkas and it’s been a bit of a bother having to go back to university and the comparative ugliness of Voronezh. However, needs must.

 

We’ve hit a bit of a wall since we returned. A high wall. A wall of boredom. The wall is made of old bricks, it is crumbly and not completely impervious to blows of interest, but it hangs around us just enough to annoy us most days. One of my friends back home asked me why I was bored in Russia and I responded as follows:

“Russia is not boring, Russia is fantastic and I wouldn’t have traded this experience for anything. Voronezh is not the best. Imagine being in Reading (or any large town, smelly dusty, etc) where no one speaks your language, nothing is written in your language, there isn’t that much to do, people don’t really communicate to you and it is an effort to get anywhere other than Reading”.

“Oh” he replied.

 

Don’t get me wrong, I am still having a good time, but we have been here approaching three months now and have done most things that would interest us. Many days whisper away into an indefinable mess of reading, drinking and ruminating over how very much we love and miss our beloved England.

The wall however has been punctured by some defiant clubs and hammers of the students here. Some have escaped to Moscow and Kiev, some to Holland and England. I myself intend to kick through a gap in the bricks and sneak off to the capital after my birthday in a week and a bit.

Smaller bullets and pellets have also peppered the wall of boredom the last few weeks to provide some small windows that allow dusty light beams of curiosity and diversion to stream through while many of us count the days until we say goodbye to the motherland.

Shortly after we got back to Voronezh from our trip, Anne White – our lecturer – visited us, which was nice. We met up with her in small groups of two and discussed how we were getting along, what we spent our time doing, how we found university and what we were planning for our projects. My own topic is ‘To what extent is there a difference amongst leisure pursuits between the younger and older generations in Voronezh?’ or something like that. And that will be 3000 Russian words thank you very much!

Shoot me now.

 

I also had my hair cut with the help of a Russian lady friend, which although not exactly fun, was quite an experience. For seven pounds the salon cut my hair quite respectively. Something that led me to chuckle slightly was that the name of the place was Фея, which in Russian means fairy. Now that little Cyrillic word I just wrote is spelt, in English, as Fea. Now, and this is what caused the slightly pathetic chuckle, fea in Spanish is the feminine form of the word ugly. Now isn’t that ironic…ish.

 

A larger hole was temporarily punched through the wall of boredom in the form of the День Победы (Dyen Pobedy), which is Victory Day – 9^th May. Russia, to be blunt, goes a bit overboard on this day. It’s fair enough I suppose, given that they won the war. From 11 o’clock there was a big parade of the infantry prowess on Lenin square (bespattered with tanks and old veterans) for forty minutes, which I struggled to see and photo due to the hundreds of people – such is the unluckiness of the cameraman. Then more processions down the main large street that runs through the town centre – Prospect Revolutsia. This road was closed off from traffic so one could stroll down it. Revolutsia is probably a couple of kilometers long and down it were many small stages where people danced and sang (the oldies dancing the waltz in front of a brass band was quite a sight), stalls that sold tat (my friend Nicky bought a red balloon that I tied to her wrist so I could spot her in the crowd), stalls that sold shashlik (the barbecued meat) and old world war portable canteens that gave out free food to those who waited. The food consisted of buck wheat, a bit of meat, some bread and tea with a healthy, optional splash of vodka to warm the cockles.

 

Quick V-day note: It is customary on this day for the ancient war veterans to bring out their old uniforms covered with medals and awards and walk around, often with equally ancient ladies on their arms. It is then also customary for families and their children to walk around with bunches of little flowers that they hand out to the veterans with words of thanks and praise.

 

In the evening, which greeted us with an enormous rain storm, there were more concerts and also some rather good fireworks down by one of the many squares.

 

There are hundreds more little nuances and sights that we saw during the day and that I could write about, but let’s move on shall we.

 

Another themed day was our, more or less (with the presence of one girl who lived in the house), Boy Day. This was the four guys – me, Tom, Chris and Sean – watching boy films, eating crap food and drinking beer on our day off. We started early. Tom and I purchased unhealthy supplies in the rain from a kiosk, met Sean at the base of his flat and took the lift up to the ninth floor. We woke Chris to incredulous exclamations of our arrival time – he not having been informed of it. We started comfortably with some BBC World in the kitchen, as well as sampling some 16 yr old Marmite that was found in their fridge. On opening we gazed upon the hard, set wax like cats who’ve found a new moving thing in front of them.

What to do? What to do?

What? Yes! Good idea.

Microwave. Burnt smell. Tar-like substance on bread. Not trying that again. Back in fridge.

 

START PROGRAM

Phase 1: Film//TOPGUN, Victuals//CRISPS + CHOCOLATE, Beverage//CARLSBERG

 

Phase 2: Film//LOCK, STOCK & TWO SMOKING BARRELS, Victuals//CRISPS, Beverage//CARLSBERG, BALTIKA-7

 

Inter-phase – Increasing purchases.

 

Phase 3: Film//SNATCH, Victuals//PISTACHIOS, Beverage//CARLSBERG, BALTIKA-7, TUBORG GREEN

 

Inter-phase – Slight increase in purchases + drunken play-fighting

 

Phase 4: Film//FIGHT CLUB, Victuals//PISTACHIOS, CHOCOLATE, Beverage//CARLSBERG

 

END PROGRAM

 

Yes…not our finest moment of healthy living or making the most of our time. Neither was it a shining example of how to lead one’s life. But it was a lot of fun.

 

That’s more or less what has been going on for the last three weeks. Obviously we have continued with our university program, which fluctuates from useful and interesting to ‘where be the rope?’ Helen also received a package, after five weeks of waiting, from her mother that contained wondrous treasures. It included English snacks, some personal wants and importantly two series of Peep Show, some films and, most importantly a small jar of Marmite for yours truly. We have also, in stages, been bidding farewell to our Americans friends as they finish their time here. It is a shame they have to leave, as we may never see them again unless we visit them in the US, but that’s life as old blue eyes said.

 

Anyway, I shall leave it there.

 

I’m checking my karabiner right now, putting talcum powder on my hands, tightening my ropes and breathing long and deep, focusing my mind and readying my grip. I intend to climb this wall, get to the top, see the view and cross over for my last month or so here.

See you on the other side…I hope.

Some fresh air – A trip to the Kavkas

Seven days away they went,

In the countryside were spent.

Energies and thoughts could vent,

Their bliss naught could dent.

 

Here is the special edition blog, the special report, the extra-long newsround feature, about our little jaunt to the Caucuses and the small spa town of Kislovodsk.

 

 21^st – Monday – Escape

We all met Sergei in the gloomy rain outside the University at about 11 o’clock in order to take a bus to a dingy, grimy, forlorn little station about 20 minutes from the centre. We waited for about half an hour, our train pulled up with a ‘toot’, we boarded, got settled and set off. The train trip to Кисловодск lasted 22 and a bit hours so we had to provide ourselves with enough food for three courses. Our landladies plied most of us with bags of sustenance – sandwiches, eggs and fruit – though we also purchased masses of beer and water, then some crisps to keep us happy. One doesn’t need to buy much before hand though as the train does make stops occasionally where the passengers can disembark and buy more items from kiosks; many of which prepare fresh breads or pasties (хишчини) as the train makes its steady, determined approach through the Russian wilderness towards the platform.  Also on the platforms market sellers and farmers and gypsies come out to peddle their wears; dried fish, ‘fresh’ crayfish and warm meat and cabbage pies and drinks are all up for purchasing at knock down prices. Much drinking and feasting occurred on this train trip. The voyage culminated in a litre box of wine being plucked from a portable drinks stall. It cost three pounds, was the only wine there, was in its own plastic bag, was called ‘Vadge Russia’ and simply had to be bought. We drank the sanguine liqueur with haughty faces and all sang Beatles songs allegedly under the snug influence of alcohol.

 

22^nd – Tuesday – Advent

We arrived at the charming but blisteringly hot Kislovodsk station (30 degrees and sunny on arrival) clutching all of our bags, smiling at our new home and allowing our lungs to be caressed by the fresh air they so dearly missed – our alveoli having previously been smothered by dust. Our accommodation? It was interesting. At once atrocious, disappointing and disheartening, but at the same time value for money, endearing and comfortable mostly. We were staying at one of the many, many, sanatoriums in the town – Sanatorii Semashko, named after the Soviet party figure who set the whole lot up. Gazing lazily at my tourist map of the place I count maybe forty sanatoriums in total, sometimes six or seven along the same street. Some are very large (like ours) with bold, strong names such as Sanatorium ‘fortress’, ‘victory’, ‘beam’. Some have poetic names like ‘dawn’, ‘knowledgeable’, and ‘spring’. Some are named after places ‘Kavkas’, ‘Elbrus’, ‘Moscow’ and people. Then, there are the stragglers with unassuming names such as ‘picket’, ‘electronika’ and ‘express’. It’s very interesting really I assure you. 

Sorry to digress there, back to our sanatorium.

 

On the face of it, it looked nice. It was a complex of buildings; one main one containing the rooms and bar and club (the hotel bit), a restaurant building and some administrative ones. However it was apparently the busy season so none of us were in proper rooms. Some girls were downstairs either in ancient rooms, including room 101 (an omen perhaps?), or a converted children’s play room. Four of us boys were lumbered uncaringly onto the seventh floor…the top floor in a Кабинет Врача, which translates literally as ‘Doctor’s Surgery’. We thought it was probably a GP consultation room back in the day, however there were some alien looking plug sockets that we reckoned used to show broken Russian legs or splintered shoulders on x-ray light boxes. We had no shower on the 7^th floor, and were told we could use the swimming pool communal showers down on the 2^nd floor…bugger that. We managed, in shifts, to use the girl’s showers on the 1^st floor, despite there not being a shower curtain or door lock to ensure a stress free time.

After our paid-for lunch (all courses for all days were pre-paid), of usually a curd cheese substance called Tvorog, soup and then a sorry piece of meat and carbohydrate, we departed on our first excursion.

 

We traveled, by way of hired minibus, to what is called the Кольцо-гора (Kaltso-gora), which is a stone ring/archway on a hill (12 metre diameter). Walking up the hill path to the lidless, empty stone eye, you pass lines of Caucus gypsies selling scarves and jumpers and socks maid from the hair of sheep and camels. At the stone ring you have a breathtaking view of the town sitting silently 6.5 km away, nestling innocently amongst hills and trees. You then, as legend will have you do so very often, make a wish.

 

Then, remarking upon the loveliness of the day, our guide decided that we push on to another landmark that would have been saved to a later day. We entered an autonomous region (a sort of Catalonia-Spain relationship), through an armed border crossing of sorts, called, I believe, the Карачаевский (Karachaevskii) region. We journeyed through hilly, shiny-green countryside in our tour bus to a little place hidden in the valleys and ravines called Медовые Водопады, which translates deliciously as ‘Honey Falls’. Honey Falls is a small area along a gash in the Earth with a sequence of five sweet waterfalls. The day burned hot and bright. The tumbling waters glistened and shone, and the spray cooled our red, unprepared faces. Watery beads of light hung in the sky as rainbows crept out from nowhere. It was literally breathtaking. Having walked through the river bed on wooden bridges and walkways, we climbed some steps to a café, lodged in the side of the valley wall. We drank ice cold Russian beers to the view.

Pool and drinks back at the sanatorium made a fine end to an exemplar day.

 

23^rd – Wednesday – Milling

The exploits today weren’t as spectacular, but were instead local and interesting. We took an excursion of the town with the same guide from the day before – she had impressively hairy legs. We visited a massive bas-relief of Lenin, and a sculpture of an eagle looking over the countryside and a monument called Cascade Stairs – a semicircular colonnade that had thousands steps running down from it – in a lovely park. Also in the park were tame red/grey squirrels that, on filling one’s palm with seeds, would jump on the hand and nibble contentedly before leaping back onto the tree eagerly awaiting more. I held one, stroked him on the back and head, and promptly added him high up on the list of charming wildlife experiences.

We also drove to a restaurant in the hills, where we had beer and observed the builders making a hotel in the style of an English castle. In the same hills we tasted sulphurous spring water, which, as waters go, left a lot to be desired.

We came back, ate lunch, relaxed and debated on our next course of action. The next move was buying wines and playing card games with some of the girls in the balmy but crisp evening. I purchased a local red wine, which was 17%, tasted more like a port and cost three pounds. Satisfied, I shared some with Sergei and proceeded to lose horribly at all the card games we dabbled with. Some of us then went, on a whim, for a шашлик (shashlik), which is barbecued meat that is so very popular in Russia.

 

24^th – Thursday – Tolkien

Today we awoke at 6:30 for our three hour bus trip to a snowy mountain range centered around the biggy called Домбай (Dombai). The scenery on the way was enough to rouse me from my droopy eyed state; it looked like the rugged wild of Wales around the Brecon Beacons or Snowdonia. The sanatorium had also kindly prepared us with comical, and very Russian, packed lunches: three tomatoes, and hunk of bread, a wedge of cheese, a slab of greasy chicken, three hard boiled eggs and some biscuits. I must admit, although some of our class were either put out at it’s simplicity/shoddiness or just couldn’t be bothered/didn’t know how to deal with it, I attacked it with glee. Gnashing off mouthfuls of bread and then cramming the mild cheese in too. Then, with my hands, butchered the chicken with a childish delight, and delicately de-shelled my eggs for minutes before stomaching them in seconds.

 

We arrived at the mountain region and were blown away. The wilderness and scope was like that of Canada; waterfalls spat out of arms of ice, pine trees hiding the shadowy contents of the forest, peaks splashed with snow and daubed with white.

To ascend the mountain we initially took a cable car, then later on, when it was decided that we were allowed to use the old, battered ones, we took chair lifts (the newer ones had stopped working). My lift buddy was Nat, a fellow lover of all things natural and scenic, and our joint enthusiasms mounted until, in a very childish and cheesy way, we shouted with joy into the wild wind; uncaring that the chair lifts on which we sat looked like they had been made with pritt stick on Blue Peter.

To describe the view is hard, as it was all view. Tolkien did it well enough in Lord of The Rings – It looked like Caradhras. We were surrounded by a crown of jagged peaks, all laden with snow. It was dramatic and massive and all-encompassing. It made the heart soar and laugh and you couldn’t spend enough time drinking it up with your eyes and camera. The sky was also cloudy, but cloudy above the tops of the mountains, so one felt boxed in by the beauty. We took a couple of chair lifts to the top, passing a mid-level area with stalls selling woolies, men offering rides on their snow-mobiles for money, and cafes where one could buy глинтвейн (Glintvein), a.k.a. Gluwein, a.k.a Mulled Wine, and we did buy, and drink, and giggle.

On the very top, hopelessly unequipped for the cold, Sean and I went for a walk in the snow as the others warmed their collective cockles in the summit café. We, Sean in his corduroy trainers, me in my Blue Harbour moccasins (left my boots at the sanatorium didn’t I), slipped, sank and slid our way along a ridge to get a view. Then our guide for the day, hairy legs’ son, came up, jokingly called us the two kamikazes, and led us to an awesome viewpoint. Thoroughly frozen and red-faced, we went back to the café and had a beer from the region; our hands and cheeks fuzzy and prickly from the temperature change.

Happiness bulbbing away within, we came down a level from the summit. We boys bought brightly coloured balaclavas to become the gay Chechnyan power ranger terrorists; Sean had pastel pink, Tom yellow, me baby-blue and Chris red. We kept them on for while, much to the enjoyment of the locals coming the opposite direction on the ski-lift. We do try and bring some humour to these people; we know they want to laugh. If the only time they’ll let themselves go is on a ski-lift on a mountain, then fair enough.

The drive back was snug and sleepy and without problem – apart from being pulled over for speeding at one point. At the midway toilet stop – a shed in the middle of a mountain viewpoint – the gold-toothed Caucus couple who were running a little pasty stall gave us some free food and drink (the drink being Ayran, which is a sort of sour yogurt/milk stuff), which was remarkably sweet of them.

Home, we played games, pool, table tennis, had some drinks and went to sleep.

 

25^th – Friday – Stagnation

The excursions on Friday seemed boring and puny compared to the giants of the day before. We saw an ‘underground’ sulphur lake, which materialized as a pool in a hole. I did like it though, the smell and the colours were bewitching, and the tunnel we walked through to get to it added an iota of drama, however an anticlimax did linger. Outside was the brightly coloured, bacterial, underground run-off coming out as a hot stream. Some Russians, sporting hideously minute speedos, lingered languorously in the natural pools, not minding the people looking at them.

We visited the spot where Lermontov died in a duel.

Then we left the spot where Lermontov died in a duel.  

Went to a disappointing park, which apparently sported English Style buildings, but actually sported buildings that were about as English as a Frenchman eating borsch, listening to Pavarotti, whilst mumbling to himself in thick, rural Chinese. Did have a nice ice-cream there though.

Was also the birthday of the Estonian boy, Allar (unfortunate name yes), so we went to an abysmal one room club called Космос (Cosmos), after spending time in the bar, for about 40minutes, as the sanatorium shut at one in the morning and we were somewhat disinclined to the idea of sleeping outside.

 

26^th – Saturday – Equestrian

On this day, another magnificent day, we rode Caucus horses through the countryside for two and a half hours. My horse was called Shartan, although I didn’t realize this until after we finished, so I had dubbed him Charlie-boy (Laura named hers Ewan to match). Riding a horse for the first time, unaided, I felt an intoxicating mix of caution, power and respect. My horse was lovely and obedient to me. He only almost flipped out once when another horse kicked him for getting too close (Meg’s slimy horse Diego), but when he reared slightly, a quick pull on the reigns and a ‘sshhh’ and a pat on the neck sorted everything out. Dismounting, the pain in my groin was outstanding and I now sympathetically understand the cowboy walk.

Back in the town, we went for a little stroll down ‘resort boulevard’ and flittered amongst the stalls and sights. We saw an eagle, owl and peacock combo that was used for tourist photos. We stumbled upon them at the end of there time outside. The little old man, dressed in brown, camera round his neck and flat cap on top started to pack them up. He had a taxi. He popped the owl and the eagle, an interesting union, in the boot and the peacock amusingly in the back. It was a strange mild mixture of shock and funny disbelief that we felt. He clearly liked his birds by the way he minded the peacocks tale and head but it still seemed unfair treatment of such fine creatures. As he drove away we chuckled at the silhouette of the peacock gazing in the staccato, avian, darty-head way out of the taxi window. One wonders what the passers-by thought…or what the peacock thought. And let’s spare a thought for our winged friends in the boot.

 

27^th – Sunday – Homecoming

Took the train home after buying unhealthy supplies in town.

 

So in a large nutshell, that was the Caucus trip. I pray thanks, if you’ve made it this far, for your patience in reading and hope you located yourself a faint morsel of interest.

Russia means ‘Get Stuck In’

The sun shineth,

The heat floors me.

The light beameth,

The rays lift me.

It’s not Russia sure,

And that comforts me.

Women relaxed and demure,

And that animates me.

A temperature not lasting,

And that angers me.

The old sound of coats fastening,

That really annoys me.

The wind and snow returns,

Freezing me.

Making new friends,

New voices pummelling me.

Travelling to what ends?

Seeing the world is the key.

 

This last couple of weeks have been…well…frankly bizarre. It has been a time of flying visits, celebrations of age, spending time with Russians and finding things to do in those moments when you think…’now what do we do?’.

 

Not too bizarre

 

First all I must mention the weather, which has been uncharacteristically warm for the month of March. Usually it should be still really cold, probably with babushkas sitting outside in small mounds of snow; whinging about life; cawing about the old Soviet days; emptying vast bottles of vodka as though water for a perishing man in a desert; a grubby, noisy dog, barking at anything with a pulse, next to her. But in fact it has been very warm. I have spent many a day in only my t-shirt, thinking whimsically to myself ‘my, my, I could just happily wear my flip flops right now’. But don’t do this. Sean did this and was publicly laughed at by a couple of Russians, sporting pointing fingers. Apparently, according to one of my classes, it is too early…far too early.

 

So, what of flying visits? Sarah (already mentioned), a Bath student who is studying in Moscow at the moment, came down to visit us in little old Voronezh. So we showed her the ‘sights’ and took her out for a steak at our favourite restaurant – Gulliver. Said restaurant is based off the story of the travels of the character himself. There is even a man dressed as Gulliver, who welcomes people into the establishment and he is about 7ft tall…not even joking.  Inside, and down the stairs, you can find probably the best steak meal in Voronezh. Called лангет, it is a beautifully seasoned and cooked slab of brilliantly cooked beef. It can be eaten ‘с кровей’, which translates literally as ‘with blood’ or with a different combination of preposition and ending, ‘without blood’. The steak itself is served with a parmesan potato gratin and a steak sauce. All this for a fiver is pretty good in my books, given that on another occasion we accidentally, via the collective misreading of the menu, spent 24 pounds sterling each on a hunk of Aberdeen Angus in a pub called Hans.

 

Celebrations of age? I hear you murmur and mumble quizzically. Yes we’ve had a wadge of birthdays. Most recently has been that of Meg. We booked a large table in an atmospheric room of an Italian restaurant and bestowed our gifts upon her. From the writer, she received a book – ‘Fanny Hill: Memoirs of a lady of pleasure’ – which i’m sure she’s itching to read. I also wrote a little poem in the inside flap so that my contribution to her wasn’t only a filthy, classic piece of English literature.

 

The wonderful social necessities that are affectionately called ‘builders’ by the thing known as the ‘public’ have been working away like little bees (Buzzia bumcrackus) on our flat building. Usually this wouldn’t concern me; a bit of noise now and then never hurt anyone. But when they decide to turn off the water in a flat where people live – people who like water and on occasion have been known to use it to clean themselves with – I get a bit irked. Still, I’m English, and I’m a Darracott, so I wasn’t about to be bested by a workman in a wife-beater, hardhat, and holding a cup of tea/large drill. Diligently I stood there in a bath, next to the lifeless shower head, with a colossal bucket filled with warm water (thanks to Svetlana and her help with this), washing myself as if camping in the woods. Afterwards I pondered my feral actions and decided it was actually a bit of a laugh.

 

Тир снаипер (Tier Sniper) is an indoor, fair-ground style, shooting range with air rifles. We’ve been going there a lot. I won a torch. I hold the current Bath student score record. I need a life.

Paid 4500 rubles for our train ride to the Caucuses on Monday; went bowling with some Russian girls…hard life; Dirk moved out of my flat due to his American colonel not wanting him living with an English speaker.

Thus concludes the not too bizarre section.

 

Bizarre

 

First off was the 4^th Annual Festival Of Russian Voices…or something like that. This was a four day festival that involved university groups coming to Voronezh from other Russian cities – Volgograd, St. Petersburg, Lipetsk etc – and performing. These were international students, mostly from Africa and China, but our American friends were also included. When I say ‘perform’ I refer to a plethora of talents that transpired before our eyes; from singing (well, and atrociously), dancing (ditto), poetry reading (not great), and plays. The whole shebang culminated in a show held in the Voronezh Theatre – very fancy inside – displaying the best acts from the previous days, coupled with assorted bits and bobs from professional dance and ballet acts. I shan’t write too much about this, as it’ll be a tad tricky to describe; safe to say the bad acts were endearing – hoards of people singing out of tune, people dancing and falling over etc – and the good acts were genuinely very good. Our American cadet friends also put on a sterling performance in their chalk white uniforms; starkly contrasted again the dull, dark green of the Russian cadets.

 

So now to the pinnacle of bizarreness that was my weekend in four acts, each part being spent with a different group of Russians.

Act 1 – The normal meet up…

This was on Saturday afternoon. I just met up with two girls (Dasha and Kate) from one of the classes I teach. Just had a beer, spoke some English and some Russian, and then left.

 

Act 2 – The Russian ‘home made’ party…

Natasha’s class put on a ‘home made’ party in the house of one of her students. This student whose flat we invaded was Shakir, a forty something Iraqi and probably one of the nicest people in the world. In the kitchen were two Hookas or Sheesha pipes, wafting apple and mint smoke into the air. In the living room was a table covered in beer and snacks (калмар - which is calamari – and crisps and things), music blurting out of a couple of speakers lying despondently in the corner and a selection of random chairs and benches. There were about of 13 of us overall; three English boys (‘prey’), one Iraqi man (‘savannah/jungle/killing zone’), and the rest Russian girls (‘predators’). The Russian girls smelt blood and they attacked. Tom and I were made to dance in front of everyone in a ‘dance competition’, completely sober, looking like absolute mugs, the girls clapping and laughing. I can’t say I really entered the swing of it, and in the end Tom ‘won’. Then later on, after more healthy consumption of Baltika and dried squid we were singled out for one-on-one/one-on-two dancing. Again, social awkwardness prevailed and Tom and I felt a little abused by the end of it. The word ordeal flitters through my mind. Then the Russians all left the party at about 11 o’clock and what remained was a pure, picture of insanity so common on this year abroad. We five English people sitting in Shakir’s living room, watching a debate about Palestine on BBC World, eating calamari and fresh fruit…

 

Interval – Sleep

 

Act 3 – Roller skating in the forest…

My other class decided, on noting the lovely weather the following day (Sunday), that it would be a good idea to take me to the forest to go roller skating. It was my first time roller skating, my previous experience was of the ice variety about 10 years ago, and I was nervous – no falling over and sliding over the ice…we’re talking bloody, painful, skin ripping carnage. All the Russians go to the forest at the weekend to skate and cycle, so they were all quite good. I’m the opposite. If you can, for one femtosecond of your time, imagine a drunken man stumbling over badly cobbled streets on a wet day, you can get an idea of what I looked like. However, I did not fall over once and I did end up having a tremendous time. We then celebrated my frankly outstanding achievement with a picnic of crisps and drinks, deep in the warm, flowery bosom of the woods.

 

Act 4 – Russian rock concert…

In the evening of the Sunday, on returning from the forest, we met up with a girl from Natalie’s class who wanted to take us to watch a band called Obe-Rek – a Voronezh band celebrating their 5 years together, in a sort of homecoming gig. However, Nat’s girl had to phone a friend in need, so she gaily ditched us on arrival. Fortunately there was a Russian guy who I had previously played tennis with to show us what to do. The band? Not bad, nothing outstanding, but ok. They were a kind of punk/fusion rock band. The lead singer looked like someone from the Foo Fighters, the guitarist from a metal group, the bassist from a Coldplay-esque band, the drummer from a skate park, the pianist from Radiohead/a concert hall and the backing singing (a fat, bald, blind man) from God knows where. We stayed for an hour and half and then our feet started to hurt, so we left. Went and shot some bullets. Had a beer in a beer tent and marvelled at the super rain storm.

Curtain close on my bizarre Russian weekend.

 

So, there we go. I know you all enjoyed yourselves, don’t pretend like you didn’t. If you actually didn’t like it, then, in the immortal words of my mama,

‘Go play in the traffic!’

A Blending of Days

There once was a group from Bath,

Who traversed the linguistic path.

They soon realized,

That when bored with tired eyes,

It doesn’t take much to laugh. 

Ok, so that wasn’t great, but I’ve never written a topical limerick before. I shan’t do it again, I’m sorry. Right, so it has been another couple of weeks and quite a bit has happened. In this second Russian blog, I shall explain a bit about the lessons we have, just to give you a flavour, and then carry on rambling about our exploits. 

For starters we have grammar and conversation practice lessons with an ancient man called Vadim Arcadevich Shkonikov. It has to be said that they aren’t the most useful or interesting classes at the moment; we are going over stuff we did in the first year and the second year – case endings and when to use them etc. The basic gist of these classes, with the exception of oddball exercises such as reading a Korean fairytale over and over and over again, is to go over really repetitive exercises from an impossibly old book that is literally falling to pieces – all the pages chatting away silently about the dawn of time and how great the glory days were when the primordial soup, Dave, made cocktails and threw great parties. Vadim is nice, looks a bit like Stalin, and moves at the pace of an untamed snail. He will oft finish a sentence and then pause, mumble something with a sigh, and then slowly say ‘Tak’, which means ‘So’. It seems like his ancient old heart is willing him to keep going, whilst his mind is elsewhere…perhaps with Dave. Bless him.

Next on the menu, the main course, is Viktor Yurivich Koprov, who takes us for translation (an optional course). We have only had two of these classes, and they aren’t the most fascinating for content, but I kind of like them. It is literally, go over the translation you did for homework, then have a look at words for the translation you are going to do for homework, then leave. He’s quite cool, with crazy, wispy, grey hair and a tiny, smiley mouth that bleats out Russian words often too quietly and quickly for me to understand.  

The dessert comes in the form of Tatyana Yurievna Yarovaya, our brilliant culture and history of Voronezh teacher. Lessons with her are a bit like story time. Like you are back at school, you don’t really have to care or talk or partake, just listen. She regales us with tales of how Peter the Great came to Voronezh to set up his mighty fleet, she reads us bits and bobs from children’s books, she let’s us read things out and take parts in children’s plays, and she does these things all in different voices. She’s like a drama teacher. It’s great.  

For the cheese and wine course we have, probably, the best teacher in the school – Sergei Victorovich Belkin (like the wireless adapter) – who takes us for singing (another optional one, but it’s the best lesson of the week – our friend Sarah visited from Moscow and got a shock as she was brought into the class to join in, still with her big bag as she had just arrived). He is the smartest, wryest, most switched on of the teachers. I think at heart he is an old romantic Russian; vodka, smoking, music, words, lyrics etc etc. He is the only teacher, maybe the only upper generation Russian we have met, who understands, uses, and revels in sarcasm…which, being British is great for us. He will play through and sing the song on his guitar, occasional breaking into classic songs from the 60s and 70s, then we all join in after. For some songs we split into parts, Chris, Tom and I are the basses, Helen is our alto and Nat and Natasha are our sopranos. Our group is the better singing group of the two apparently. I don’t know why…I think it is because we are better at singing… 

So that’s enough about the classes I think, if you want to know more you can’t, so stop thinking about it, and let’s move on. 

Last week the Americans left on their organized trip to the Caucuses, which we will be going on as well in April sometime. We were alone…

Why a blending of days then? Well, it has to be said that on the face of it there isn’t much to do in Voronezh without habitual repetition. Lots of cafes and bars have been frequented in the last couple of weeks; Spartak, Pivnitsa, Pivacee, Café Yevropa and others. As a consequence of the ‘city-syndrome’, where everything is spread out and hidden – in Russia, hidden within old soviet buildings, you have to really search to find things to do. In fact, only yesterday (29^th March) we went for a walk down to the river down through a really old part of town, which was really nice. The weather was nice and some greenery is starting to come back as spring cautiously approaches. We saw a couple of interesting things on our walk. For example a cat, stuck a little way up a tree, mewing for help having escaped from guard dogs. I tried to get the little thing out of the tree; I climbed up onto a branch and with a free hand tried to take it off the branch, but the little bugger didn’t want to come down and settled for just being stroked up on the tree; purring in his safety. Soon after an Okrana (ex-Lenin special police, now security guards) man said to get down and leave the cat, so I did. Also down by the river on the railings, were hundreds of padlocks. When a couple gets married, they put a padlock on the railings by the water, and it will remain there indefinitely. Strange, yes, but quite a nice idea and we saw some really old rusty ones that must have been there decades.
 

I went to tennis again with Sasha, and this time his neighbour Maksim. This time we took a Marshrootka; which is basically a mini-bus that has been converted into a quasi-bus/taxi service. It costs 7 rubles to go round the circuit of whichever one you opt to drive with. Note: 7 rubles is 14p! So we took this 14p-mini-bus with other Russians, round the town for half an hour until we got off at our stop ‘Eta ostanovka pazhalasta!’- ‘This stop please’ – and other variants resonating round the inside every so often. It was more or less the same affair at tennis this week as last time, although my arms ached from helping move cement at Svetlana’s dacha the previous day (I’ll come to this) so I became very weak, very quick and only lasted about 4 hours. For a break, we popped upstairs, had some tea and biscuits and looked in the fridge.

Hello! What’s this?

A bottle of vodka?

Yes it is, fancy a drop?

…yes.

So we had our generous shot of vodka, and more tea and biscuits. Then some of the other young Russians came upstairs and we ended up playing poker with kopecks and doing magic tricks with a pack of cards we found. Some may say that is was a surreal situation…that some would be remarkably accurate in their exploitation of the word. Strange, weird, odd, unreal, dreamlike, fantastic, bizarre or Russian I would have also accepted.  

Moving cement at Svetlana’s dacha? I can literally hear your screams for knowledge, for blank filling, I can feel your yearning to know what happened. The family I live with has a dacha out in the ‘countryside’ and it is still being built. They had a delivery of ten 50kg bags of cement coming in the afternoon, so Svetlana asked me if I could maybe go in the car with Sasha and help move them into the almost-house. I said ‘hell yeah girl!’, or ‘Da!’ as it translates into Russian. We drove for about 40 minutes out of the centre, dodging overly confident buses, navigating boiling seas of cars going whichever way they wanted, plotting routes in yoctoseconds in order to yank the car around potholes, whilst simultaneously avoiding hefty traffic.

At the dacha, having traversed the 4×4, off-road territory that makes up the main road to the dacha community, a truck pulled up and showed us the bags to be moved. I needed Sasha’s help, but he is quite a slight chap, so I was taking the brunt of the weight…and the buggers were heavy. As a consequence, my arms were pretty painful the next day when playing tennis. Sasha and Svetlana then did a bit of gardening and said I wasn’t to help; I was to look around and relax for a bit. Fortunately I found some unmelted snow and friendly little cat to keep me amused until they had finished.  

Quick Russian men and woman note: I do hope this note doesn’t offend anyone, but it probably will. It seems to be a rule, a rule and dare I say truth that has been individually noticed by every student here. A rule discussed at length. Russian women are possibly some of the most beautiful in the world. What seems to be true is Russia might one of the most consistently beautiful nations in the world. The frequency of jaw droppers walking down the road at any one time puts all other countries I have visited to shame (that includes France, America and Spain). Also they always dress superbly and hold themselves well, with dignity. The same really can’t be said of the men. I could use a tamer word, but I won’t, they are sort of hideous. In the brilliant words of my friend Nat ‘they really are from the other end of the gene pool aren’t they’. It seems like the gene pool for Russian women was partitioned from the other pools of other nations and carefully tended by gene pool workers making them divine, the pet project of genetic brilliance. If I may run with the metaphor, it seems the male gene pool was forgotten about, allowed to go septic, and had a menagerie of woodland beasties do their collective businesses into it. This is not to say that they aren’t nice people, even if spitting, fighting and being aggressive is the norm, they mostly are nice…they just seem to have fallen out of the ugly tree of life and hit all the branches…then landed on their faces. However, in fairness to the men, they are untouched by the babushka syndrome. The female gene pool is so heavily tended that it, after about 80 years, just collapses, like a supermassive star and the once vision of perfection is ruined.  

Two more pointaroos before I finish with a bang.

I started teaching English to Russians in the English Faculty of the University. I urge you to do this. Not only is another bonus for the old CV, but it’s pretty damn fun. I am teaching 4 groups of fourth years, so our age; about 13 girls in each one…shame isn’t it? Needless to say I shall have more things to say about this part of life here in future blogs I suspect.

Secondly, harkening back to the ‘finding things to do’ theme, I joined the gym or fitness club. I’ve been once, with Kelly, a Bath student, and some of the Americans, and it is very nice. Although the view is of a building site, which is rubbish, the equipment is at least brand new and it never gets very busy in there.  

Right, that’s all for now really. Oh, we’ve also had some nice snow here, which makes for dicey slushy, slippy trips to school in the mornings. I took some nice photos at least…they’ll go on Flickr for sure.

Until the next one then. 

BANG.

Baby steps. Russian steps.

The voyagers journeyed forth;

Unto the wind they went.

Tides of change battered them sideways;

No anger t’ward them was meant. 

Arriving at foreign stations,

The voyagers held their breath.

Greeting them were kind new faces,

On some mouths a whisper of meth. 

With care they spied their new homes,

Words fumbling and tripping from lips.

Looking forward to a new life in Russia,

Coats sealed up tight with hardy zips. 

That was in fact not a classic piece of Russian poetry like you are all thinking, but a little poetic, in a nutshell description of our journey here.

To be or not to be? That is the question.It isn’t the question actually. That is a stupid question. The question is how did we get here? And what have we been up to in our first week in Mother Russia? 

On the 6^th March we all met up at Heathrow airport, kitted up to the teeth with thermals, bulging bags, rosy faces and hearts and minds full of anticipation. We checked in and caught our plane and flew to Moscow – the flight included a hot meal. Arriving at Moscow airport, you must walk through – after collecting your bags – to the train station area (just follow the signs). From there you buy a cheap ticket for a forty minute trip into the centre of Mosow (as the airport is a way out of town). Your stop will be the end of the line at Pavletskaya staion. When we arrived in Moscow, a thick sturdy snow laced the land and made for a very pretty train ride. We chattered, relaxed and stared out the windows at the brown, grey and white painted landscape flashing past us.

Arriving at the large Moscow station, you must go inside, through the barriers and into the central concourse that leads to the outside. Here, those of the group that previously booked the Moscow-Voronezh train must leave out of the front of the building, walk round outside to the left and find the room/office/area (I didn’t go myself) – passports and e-tickets in hand – where you can collect the paper tickets. This done we navigated left luggage – which is downstairs under the main concourse, near the toilets – and grabbed a kebab and baltika. 

Our overnight train was a familiar affair after having journeyed from Moscow to St. Petersburg in the first year. Those of you who have done this will find it more or less the same – a small купе of four beds and a little table. The lady comes round, you show your tickets, you can order some lovely tea with lemon and honey and then you relax…for 11 hours. It got hot and clammy due to the closeness of our bodies, but we didn’t mind. We stared out into the night, with the lights turned off – staring at the bleak, muted white landscape that we crawled through. The occasional light or lamppost sending a fuzzy ball of illumination into the scenery. Then, with bumps and shunts and the clackety-clack of the train, we tried to sleep. 

Our wake up call came at 7:10 in the morning (March 7^th) – we had set off at 8:50 the previous night. Pulling into the station at about 8:00 we saw a huddle of Russians and Silvia – a Bath student who came, with Sean and Laura, in February. The first feeling, the first gut wrenching, soul gnawing feeling, was ‘I don’t want to get off the train, let’s stay on until Odessa and fly home’. It all felt in that instant, too big for us. It was like we had bitten off more than we could chew and then shoved more in our gobs because we had to. There was excitement too however. This excitement got us off the train and we met Katya – our lovely Russian fixer – and our families warmly. We all left for our homes.  

Quick accommodation note: I am living with a lovely middle aged lady called Svetlana and her son Sasha who is 19. He plays piano and guitar very well, and speaks English. Svetlana speaks no English. I, at the moment, am also living with an American called Dirk. There is a group of Americans here, all from West Point military academy. They are all fantastic. My rent is 11,500 rubles, which comes to about £230 sterling. My flat is cosy and warm and comfortable. I have running water, although don’t drink from the taps. I have a good shower. I have two dogs – Chip and Dimok to keep me company. And I am very happy here. If you are interested call 5-5-5…well it sounded like an advert. 

After a morning shower we all went to the theatre to meet Katya. She handed back our passports that we gave her at the train station and we walked into town. With her help we all managed to buy simcards. We then walked en masse to our part of the university – the international section. We were greeted by our Bath friends, the Americans, some Estonians and Chinese, and treated to a very surreal party consisting of blinis, tea, and speeches and plays put on by the students. Everything was followed by holding hands and circling round a burning effigy of a blond haired girl outside. Bearing in mind we were still drunk with lack of sleep we didn’t really get it or understand it. Went to a bar – Спартак (Spartak) – got to know the Americans and had some pizza. Walk home, sleep, dinner, sleep. 

 Quick Russian meals note: These mothers eat a lot. On an average day my landlady will make for breakfast of omelettes, blinis, and cheese on toast things with a cup of tea/coffee; for lunch nothing usually as you are paying for breakfast and dinner, but she’ll probably cook you something; and dinner a large bowl of soup, then a plate of meat and something carbohydrate and a separate bowl of salad – sometimes finishing with a dessert. On paper it sounds great, but it’s just so much food! However, Russian tradition is to leave a bit/some food on one’s plate. Finishing everything implies you have space for more. Also don’t be afraid to, early on, tell them what you do and don’t like.  

March 8^th – Not much happened. Had a walk round Voronezh, stood on the river which had frozen over – there were men out in the middle fishing! Ate a burger in MacDonalds (a cop out, but easy) and had a drink in Spartak. In the evening we went to a strange three floor Russian club. One funny thing about Russian clubs is ‘face control’. I hope it doesn’t mean, ‘is that really your face? Hahaha, no, no you can’t come in my club. Piss off ugly.’ It probably means if you look scruffy or messy they won’t let you in. Sean was hit by a taxi a couple of weeks ago and damaged his knee, so he is on crutches at the moment and as a result they wouldn’t let him in the club. Geoff, one of the Americans, who is also more or less fluent in Russian due to living in Belarus for 12 years, then went in the club to reason with them stating ‘his face is fine, it’s his legs’, but it was to no avail. He went to a bar with a few people, and we went into the club. 

March 9^th – Sasha invited me to play some tennis with him at a school. ‘Of course’ I said. I play tennis. It was everyone sharing one court, but hey, I could do with a couple of hours exercise. We were there for five hours. He drove us there in his 21 year old Lada, picking 13 year old Constantine (Константин) on the way. The premise, after meeting Nikolai Ivanovich the trainer, is that the one unmarked court is shared between everyone and anyone who shows up. They were mostly young; the youngest was 13. The oldest was maybe 65. We had a Vadim, a Dima, an Ira (a girl our age who is amazing at tennis), a Natasha and a Nikita all taking it in turns to play doubles. Because I was the first English person to ever come along, and probably a bit of an oddity, they kept making me play. They were overly keen to let me keep going. Happy to keep giving in that oh so Russian way – I ended up playing about 6 sets in a row. We drove home through a dingy, gloomy part of the town, quite a way out from where we live. Home through corridors of grim, grey blocks of soviet flats and broken roads. Everything bleak and desolate. Russians doing Russian things; getting on with life despite the lack of beauty. It might look better when the greenery is out in the oncoming spring, but for the moment I found a kind of beauty in the complete non-beauty and depressing surroundings I was being driven through.  

March 11^th – We all went to meet Viktor, the dean, at the University at 10 o’clock. He introduced everything to us in Russian and then went round each one of us, asking some basic questions to test our language. Easy things like where you live, brothers and sisters etc. I was made pseudo-leader of the group. Then we had a long, boring, grammar aptitude test. In the afternoon we met the very motherly Lyuba, Ann White’s chum, at the English department to chat about things – how we are getting and suchlike. Then we went with Katya to get our photos taken for our new visas – just a bloke in a camera shop with a 5.1 megapixel camera and a computer – it made me giggle. Massive dinner at home, followed by a lot of reading and music listening – you’ll do that quite often.  

March 12^th – Go to University, split into two groups, have a practice lesson. Go to ‘The Irish Pub’ for ‘lunch’. I had to wait 40 minutes for seven crap chips. Use the internet. Nat, Tom and Tasha come to my flat and we listen to the first half of ‘War of the Worlds’. Go home; ask my landlady how to make ‘Russian garlic cream’ (chopped garlic, cream cheese and mayo). Svetlana then showed me her old photos; old, frayed, black and white soviet time photos of her and her family. It was really, really…well…nice, and you could cut the nostalgia with a knife. Ended the evening by watching a badly dubbed film with Dirk…it was shockingly bad, you hear the Russian and the English at the same time (one male dubber for all the male characters and one female dubber for all the female characters…all emotionless) and almost at the same volume, so as a result, you understand near to nothing.  

March 13^th – Had our first classes today, but due to the length of this already gargantuan first blog, I shall save the academic information until the next installment.  

March 14^th – Tom and I conclude listening to ‘War of the Worlds’

Year Abroad video

http://www.dailymotion.com/lgwd20/video/x4dbpk_spanish-year-abroad_travel

Gin and melancholic

This is it. This is the end and inside I’m a mess. A busy, dizzy, whirling unrest of feelings pools within me.

On the strident, proud, adventurous side my heart says ‘a new chapter is dawning. You leave these Spanish lands to journey further a field into the bowls and bosom of another country. More people and places await you. Rejoice in it!’ whilst my head can’t wait to have a rest at home again, with my family and friends; no worries, cooked for, cleaned after and welcomed.

On the emotional, clingy, defiant in comfort side my heart says ‘ah, to leave friends…why? Don’t. These extraordinary people, these marvels of life. These wonderful places. The sand in your hands, the wind in your hair, the freedom betrothed to you by Spain. Never leave it!’ whilst my head wants to sit on the beach drinking fine wines and eating ice cream.

Alas, it is the end today. As I write this I have stuff all folded up waiting to be in slotted into a suitcase. A suitcase that this evening shall be flung callously onto an easy jet and taken back to the UK. I leave today yes, but what happened in this last month?

Well, nestled in amongst larger activities have been smaller nuggets of liveliness; such as various house parties, thrown both by Italians and by our British quarter; had my friend Jon come to visit me for a weekend, and showed him how to socialise in the Spanish way – getting home at 6 30; had new housemates arrive – three charming Italians; set up some tables in the living room and played ping pong – using a couple of twisted up towels for the net; had lunch up at the castle, having been driven up their on Rodrigo’s moped; had a go on Rodrigo’s moped, and much more.

 

This last month has witnessed our ‘exam period’, so we have been doing a surprising range of levels of work. For the credit-less Spanish course we barely revised at all, for the Russian exam, a couple of hours, for the publicity exam a few hours and for the prehistory exam…a lot!

You know how in Bath, and indeed England, there is that process before an exam. You are all outside whichever building the exam is in, furiously reading your notes as if in a few seconds the ink shall leap from the page and be lost unto the wind. You are expectant for the mass of people to start shuffling towards the exam room/hall that has just been opened by the invigilators. You leave your bag in a selected dumping area, taking out whatever pens you need or taking out your see-through pencil case. You then silently, making occasional ‘good luck’ eyes and smiles to friends, slink your way through the aisles trying to find your seat and number. You sit down. You know the rules: talk and you’re out, your paper ripped up in front of you; cheat and god help you. You have butterflies. You have a confusing collection of pages to be filled out, torn, stuck together, signed and joined and then you start the exam. In Spain, let’s just say, it’s a little different.

Russian exam: very casual. We went in ten minutes late and our teacher talked us through the whole exam. She also left the room for a few minutes to take a phone call…we could have cheated.

Publicity exam: more casual. Hundreds of students chatting and laughing beforehand. Exam starts 35minutes late.

The Spanish and Prehistory exams were more like ours, but still very relaxed. The down side I can see in the Spanish university system is that cheating must be so easy. Invigilation was minimal and you could have you phones out, bags at your feet. Furthermore, if people talked the ‘invigilators’ just did a ‘come on now, tut tut’, shaky head face and that was it! It was a) alarming because of it’s relaxed nature and openness to cheating but b) nice because not once did I feel pressured and nervous and I usually had a very clear head during the proceedings; my butterflies never emerged from their chrysalises.

 

This last month also saw Alicante’s Carnaval (pre-lent madness) come and go. This consisted of the whole of the Rambla – the main road leading up from the port – being closed off and book-ended by stages that would house live bands. Everyone, more or less, dressed up in ridiculous, random outfits – ranging from standard things like schoolgirls and pirates to groups of people dressed as UNO cards, families all dressed as babies and mops, and troupes of wizards and witches. It was surreal and random…but brilliant. On our stage there was a band that sang join-in-now songs, with hand gestures, dances and suchlike, to which we did join in. At the heart of the Rambla between the two stages there was a bar and a catwalk type thing where people could parade and show off their costumes – my favourite being a group of 4 adults (three men and a woman) shuffling in a line, dressed and made up as geishas, bowing to everyone as they went.

 

One humorous affair still lingers un-typed that I would like to tell you all about now because it made me giggle when looking back, however at the time was appallingly stupid and created a statement that upon uttering became one of my catchphrases that the others would from then on vocalise at any opportunity. I shall now recount the tale. Listen well; it’s a ripping yarn. 

For a while, maybe a month, we had been looking forward to the bullfight at Alicante. Philippe, our big Austrian friend, told us all about it and we said ‘yeah, February the 3^rd? Book the tickets man!’ So time ticked along, January came and went, bringing thoughts of home flittering amongst casual conversation, more potent sunshine and tourists with chalky legs waddling into my city yearning to be burned. February the 3^rd came and we all met Phil outside la plaza de toros. We then all divvied out our 20€ fees for the tickets and sat down. This was at about 3:45 with everything scheduled to start at 4:30. Strange, we thought, you’d think there would be more activity forty minutes before a big bullfight, maybe opening the doors or something. Oh well. We waited. Waited a bit more. We then journeyed into 4 o’clock territory, with still nothing happening apart from numbing buttocks.

“Okay guys”, chirped a forceful Austrian accent, “we’ve got to go to Catral”. Haha we giggled as he got up and started to walk away. “No really…the fight’s in Catral”. Silence reigned for a while along with some open jaws lolling about as is he had just proclaimed his imminent conversion to womanhood.

We talked to a Guardia Civil man (in his characteristic stupid hat) and he informed us a with a sigh and a shaking of the head that at 4:10 we were unlikely to make it to the fight in Catral on time, it being about 30km away. However we got out some money and went, begrudgingly to the taxi rank, determined to get our money’s worth. The time was now more or less 4:30 and the taxi man said it was 54 euros one way for a taxi and it took about an hour to get to Catral. Safe to say, we didn’t go there and we never saw the bullfight.

The one fact through all this that produced my aforementioned phrase is – through all this time of preparation and then having bought the tickets, how did Philippe manage to buy eight bull fight tickets in the wrong town, given that CATRAL was plastered all over the tickets…I was ‘literally flabbergasted’

 

Okay folks, that is the end of the Spanish year abroad blog. I hope it has been useful and insightful, frivolous and helpful. If it’s not been these things…then I apologise.

 

With a few goodbyes with promises of ‘I’ll see you in England yeah?’, a final bus ride out of town -almost choking up (you know that little sting behind the eyes and back of the nose) – and a two hour flight home, my five and a bit month sojourn in Alicante came to a close.

It was marvellous.