Russification

Thanks Granddad for  the Victory!

One month after our friendless and earwig-infested beginnings, we seem to have had an October Revolution of our own.  We are settled, dare I say it, with something resembling a life, job and friends and Friday tradition (breakfast in GUM, no less).  If settled is when you find yourself ordering Blini (pancake) sushi and knowing where to get the best “Beezness Lanch” (Loodi kak Loodi, incidently) then I am possibly there.  The obshejitye (residence) has elevated itself to new heights garnering more parties, cultural disparities and miscommunications. To the anomaly of third floor inhabitants we can now add: the man who talks to himself, a balladeer, 3 Belgians,  Japanese, German, Frenchman, Chinese, 4 Italians  and an ever multiplying number of  Koreans (with  very strange sleeping habits, non-existent we  suspect).

International comradery  of 3rd floor 

sushi making

To say we have successfully infiltrated the student body suggests an active role on our part. Adoption is possibly a better word (Diddly-eye for being Irish!) Students of the Literary Institute have proved to be just incredible- friendly and forthcoming and defiant of every Russian stereotype I had come to expect. With overtures immediately followed by invitation of some sort has meant no end to the progulki po gorodye(like walking tour of city), invitations to ‘guest’ and cultural experiences, of both the high and ‘folksy ‘ kind (we getting down with r peeps in other words).  Being students of the Lit, the invitations are little more interesting. Last night or friend invited us to cinema to watch cartoons which he had drawn (however thwarted last minute by the projector guy not turning up). Excitingly, we were smuggled into the Russian obschejitye to see how the other half live. We did not find paucity but a party, a hookah and an invitation to Rostov,which was to come into effect almost immediately.

  

Alya at Tsaritsino

 Between these junctures, we have had time to ‘take in Moscow’, the excuse for which was extended by my first visitors from home (yes, I think there’s a distant memory of that place somewhere... ) You only hope that when you have three days to communicate ‘Moscow’ that your visitors would get to encounter almost being knocked down by a manic motorist, crazy pavement driving and wily law bending with the militia on Red Square. Luckily, they got to experience this and some sights as well: the Bolshoi, Lenin, Yeltsin, Tsum, the Metropole, the Kremlin, MSU, the Arbat, Novodevichy Monastery (my autumn visit) and Ismailovskiyi Market (NOT complete with dancing bears and Soviet memorabilia as the guide book promised, but as it transpires, this was possibly NOT the famous Ismailovskiyi Market but a couple of stalls I came across near the metro station. Sorry folks!) With a bit more time (but I don’t think they minded too much) they could also have experienced 24 hour clubbing (and face-control of course), ska-punk gigs  (I have to say I was suspicious of a gig full of skin-heads offering discount to foreigners, but I shouldn’t have been) and the intimacy of 5am in Red Square with just Lenin and a lone guard.

Novodevichy Convent

Former KGB Headquarters-
R+M seem more impressed with Dyetski Meer
(toy shop, which is equallly as formidable really)

...and we somehow stumbled upon Yeltsin's discreet and
modest place of rest

GUM, Red Square and Morleys at night

Having foreign guests over is a cogent reminder of the need to speak Russian.  Although Roger seemed to survive just fine with just ‘peevo’ (beer), dealing with tickets, hotels and train stations requires a certain confidence in the language, a confidence which thus far has not been instilled by having to reading from school textbooks and being made to painstakingly repeat sentences in seminars. While on occasion you can surprise yourself by discussing Max Weber, or by successfully defending your innocence to a Babushka (whether the washing up was ours or not is not important. It is all practice), there are always those days when you inadvertently order 3 Mcflurry’s in McDonalds and finish beautifully by telling the waiter to F off(Stoboi) , rather than ‘I’ll have it to go’(Soboi).

Cathedral of Christ the Saviour

Sand Sculpting World Championship at Cathedral of Christ the Saviour

Not surprisingly, our current lack of language brings us no closer the enigmatic Russian soul. Although if I had to make a guess at this point I would say it has something to do with a devotion to literature and alcohol. The combination usually goes like this: our friend Sasha telling us on the way to a bar that he could only speak like a 19^th century novelist  after he spent a month locked up just reading Dostoevsky;  having beers with friends in the park of the meeting place for  ‘Master and Margarita’ in Bulgakov’s famous novel, being invited to drink in between lectures on a Monday morning,  or my favourite and most Russian day of all with our poet friend, Maxim: watching Soviet movies with intermittent shots of vodka and dressed herring cake, followed by poetry readings (that meant us stumbling through in our terrible Russian as well), after which Maxim and friend, Dima argued about politics and the Russian mentality, to be tied up nicely with the combination of minus temperatures, moonlight, a small orthodox church and ‘Russian Champagne’.

  

Aforementioned day with Maxim, Julia and Nil

Cleary quite far from Russian soul, we often find ourselves out of our depth, even when linguistic abilities allow some mutual understanding. Conversations too often dwindle into questions of marriage, strong men and children. When I suggested to an comrade the possibility of not having children he laughed ‘Visegda bugut dyeti’ (there will always be children) Our lecturer, who perhaps at home might be referred to as a little tapped, insists that we shall have Russian husbands before the year is out. This could well be another case in which Russia just knows, just as it did when I typed Ireland is the greenest country into Google Translate (Translation: Russia is the greenest country). I was told that the metro station would not accept my student card application as my hand writing was not Russian enough. At the counter the lady tipexed out my password ( which was in numerals) to something more to her suiting (after 8 failed attempts and more than 5 hours of queuing I was not going to question). Here you bend to Russia; Russia does not bend to you. When our inferior western immunity rendered us unfit, at first, to survive in Moscow, as miserable bouts of food poisoning and flu proved, the standard counsel was: nado priviknut (you need to get used it). So this month when I lost 2 phones and ended up with a broken I-pod and laptop, I just learned to get by.  When it is the coldest winter from 1000 years word has it, you live with that too... And so when Russia hands you lemons, you take them, perhaps to use in your vodka sometime.

First Snow

Probably best photo I've ever taken...
Whey It is Lenin in MacDonalds!

Pobyeg- (Russian Prison Break)- one of the things conspicuously stolen wholesale from the West, perhaps little more thrilling a Russian Prison

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=suZd545PuG8

Kak ya vstreteel vashu mamu- (How I met your mother!)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DvUg-GZJ3Gs

Chapter 1- the first two weeks

After Ikea

Pre Ikea

There was something familiar to me about being dropped off at an obschejitye in a seatbelt-less Lada. We spent the first day in shock, however, after somehow negotiating bread and water at the grocery store where we made our first enemy and learnt our first lesson about (post)soviet Russia- you don't leave your change as a tip. It will result in the worst of Russian insults- vyi bogatii ludi (rich people)?! The shock came not so much from the nakedness of our room (it was taken as a given that we would share) but the squalor of the toilets and general nostalgia for Stalinist interior design. Ukhovyortka (earwig) became our first ‘word of the day’ (sure way to become fluent within a year…). Fortunately it is a little thing (earwigs, maybe) that Ikea can’t fix and the colourful bed sheets and children’s’ plastic cutlery are a bright addition to the room. Although having heard of the want for a fridge, TV and cooking facilities and clampdown on electricity usage that our comrades in MSU endure, we have learnt to consider ourselves bogatii ludi.

Toilet

 

Kitchen

It is also thanks to a presumed snobbery and wealth that all foreigners are interned on the third floor, away from all Russian students. Suspiciously, though, they are the ones with a washing machine. The third floor has its own treasures though and we’ve made both friends and enemies of some of our co-inhabitants. ‘Showers are not homes’ was a 2nd invaluable nugget of information, gleaned from an angry middle-aged lady who makes me fear using the bathroom (the shouting has become a regular feature…). Generally people are friendly and patient and willing to put up with bad Russian for a couple of minutes though conversations terminated with nado naucheetsya (you need to keep learning). Our first friend was a doctor of philosophy who was content to talk James Joyce, Dostoevsky and the philosophical beginnings of Greece and Rome despite our confused faces. He said we were a good distraction to his books, but he whizzed of Kiev to give more lectures. The security men and babushka seem genuinely concerned for our health and regularly enquire if we are too cold (it is quite cold outside, but inside is toasty!) Another favorite guest was an insubordinate, who ran around in his underwear averse to the scolding of the babushka and the doctor. The resident circus folk are also supposed to be bundles of fun.

It is perhaps a consequence of our unnatural confinement that our permeation into college life has not been quite so successful, but this could also be due to the singularity of Russian students. In lectures students are possibly even more bored than their mentors and although lectures are held in intimate classrooms, sleeping is acceptable, as are public displays of affection, backchat, telephone calls and stroking your pet rat! As far as a dress code goes, the gothic black and trench coat look is always in vogue. Dyed ginger hair is all the rage and there prevails a preppy getup that would have Trinners proud. Thus our ineffective penetration into this hodgepodge is confusing more than anything else, although Antoin (from a successful friendship overture) perhaps by way of explanation queried why my eyes were such big black apples in comparison to everyone else. Maybe this peculiarity explains why there have been so many attempts made by strangers to photograph us (three in total) and why a lady at St Basils felt her memories of Moscow were best captured by two agape foreigners. She conceded in the end to take the photo with one of our cameras instead.

Myself and Julia in front of Basils
 A lady wanted to our photo with her own camera but agreed to take it with mine in the end

Being such obvious foreigners many things remain unintelligible. The price of food is one of these incoherencies. At one of the abundant daily markets we were charged €7 for four biscuits, yet one can eat blini, crab cake and aborigine-carrot roulades for less than €2 from the plush Yeliseevskiy Gastronom on Tverskaya. Gastronom no 1 sells some groceries like bread and sweets for cheaper than the hailed low-cost Pyatyorochka (meanwhile, though, perojki and borsht have become cheap and favourite staples). The food may be one enigma, but I was warned that should surprise you after a year in Moscow. Yesterday is probably the perfect example of this.

For a day that began with a earwig acquainting itself with my hand, yesterday transpired to be very enjoyable. We spent the best part of the (fabulous) day in Novodevichy Convent -an oasis of calm and beauty within the city. We joined a long row of couples to watch the sun set and the bogatii parade their dogs and children. Fleeing from one horrific public toilet (without plumbing) for the more opulent one is Tsum shopping centre, we managed trespass on an exclusive party for the fine young things of Moscow and their sugar daddies. Not settling for a lesser substitute we turned to Barclays bank across the road to encroach on more exclusive revelry (although we were semi-invited this time by my roomies new banker friend). Who says lowly Erasmus students can’t enjoy a bit of caviar, Cabernet and light strings music with rich Russian socialites (my roommate’s friend had to rush off to deal with some oligarch- “a rich, dangerous man”)?! The main attraction was a pioneering tea invention which made use of a sewing machine, a rubber duck and clothes hangers (funny, this did not seem the most surreal part of the evening). Our final engagement was a get-together in our Korean neighbour’s room with incredible food and pigeon Russian from all sides, only to be concluded with renditions of Amhrán na bhFiann, Danny Boy (among their favourite Irish songs) and ‘The Snowman’.

Novodevichy Convent

Couples only please

Rich people parade their sprogs

So while Russian society is still an impenetrable bloc, inroads have been made. There is time still to amend those finer points: foolishly stopping in the underground to take in the splendor, getting caught in metro barriers, getting caught in metro doors, being naively optimistic when dealing with Moscow’s vigorous red tape and accidentally stumbling upon Red Square when looking for a coffee shop (though to be fair this was our first day!) I guess for the time being nado naucheetsya.