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.