THE END IS THE BEGINNING ETC ETC.

'Na konets'

You may have noticed that I haven't posted anything on this weblog since September. That's because I've done remotely connected with Russia since September. So, until I get round to writing up my final notes and experiences, you can consider this weblog dead, or ar least in deep hibernation.

Thanks for reading.

James

I DIDN'T THINK MY WEBLOG WAS THAT SHODDY

Hello. I had this site recommended to me. Apparently it's just like mine except professional. So if you want to read some stories about Russia by someone who's actually there, check it out. Plus he's got lots of pictures. Whereas I have two.

http://www.peterabryan.co.uk/

YES, I AM A COMPUTER GENIUS

You may not believe this, but I actually did a little bit of coding to improve my weblog. If you look at any of the entries on this blog, now you'll see a little envelope symbol by the title, after 'Posted by James'. If you click on this envelope, you can forward the entry to a friend. Cool hey?

You are not, however, according to Blogger, allowed to use this feature for 'excessive self promotion'. Whereas me writing about myself day-in, day-out is fine.

Also, incidentally, if you click on the word 'Posted' itself then you can read the entry in a separate page. And if you click on a photo you can see a big version. This is all very high-tech.

Isn't it ironic that my weblog suddenly gets really cool when I've got nothing else to write about?

'KHARCHO!' 'BLESS YOU!'



When I was living in Moscow I had great fun rummaging through the cupboards in the flat as they were all full of junk from the 1970s. One of the treasures I uncovered was a postcard series which featured traditional recipes from all the corners of the Soviet Union. Each card had a picture of a dish on the front, and a recipe on the back. I took the card for my favourite dish, a Georgian lamb soup called 'Kharcho' (Har-CHO), back to England with me.

Anyway, last night I cooked it for the first time, following the Russian cooking instructions. And the finished dish was edible! It had prunes in! And it actually cost quite a lot to buy the ingredients!

If anyone would like the recipe for Kharcho, just let me know. I'd scan the other side of the card in too, but it wouldn't help unless you could speak Russian, and then you'd be better off just asking a Russian how to cook it.

APOLOGY

Yes, there's been quite a while since posts. Um, a couple of months. I even started to get complaints, surprisingly from people who see me on a regular basis. So, sorry about that. But now there will be photos (with enthusiastic captions!) so I hope that it compensates.


RUSSIA SIEGE

The school seige was terrible, that goes without saying. I don't know if you noticed, but the BBC captioned it 'Russia seige', which I suppose is true on several different levels.

Of course there is going to be a crackdown on civil liberties in Russia, and more government-backed murders in Chechnya. The parallels between what is happening in Russia, and what is happening in the US, are pretty clear. I'm sure that the same process would happen here too, if we had a 9/11 or a school siege of our own. Think of how it would affect the ID card argument.

I've been working on a parable. Here it is.


MY PARABLE

A man was stung by a bee. So he took a big plank and smashed the fuck out of the nearest beehive. Well, of course, he got stung a lot more. 'I knew that was going to happen,' thought the man. 'And it proves I hit the right beehive, and that I was right to hit the beehive. My mistake was not hitting it hard enough.'

OH MY GOD IT'S FULL OF PICTURES



No, it's not a mirage brought on by excessive vodka; I have just worked out how I can post pictures to the weblog. So here is one of me in my old flat at Planernaya in Moscow. I think it was taken in late spring.

Isn't it a glorious place to live? Gareth is still there, lucky boy. Have a good look at the tasteful bedding. And the decorative wallpaper. Now that's what I call the high life. Oh, but don't even ask about my hair - I was just about to have it cut.

THAT WAS RUSSIA

To clear up a bit of confusion... I am already back in the UK, but I have such a backlog of Russia stories to write about that I'll probably be posting on-and-off for another month or so! The trouble is, you can either live your life or write about it - but not both at once. For the past month or two I've been living my life, and now I'm back in England I have time to write about it. Does that say anything about the two countries? Probably not; just about me.

As you might expect, my departure from Russia - for what may be the foreseeable future - was not uneventful. She wouldn't let me leave without a crisis or two to remember her by. I'll write about it now, even though it'll put my weblog out of sync. I'll trust that you won't all be too confused.

Anyway.

As part of my contract, I had a driver booked to take me nice and safely from my front door to the airport, which is outside the city to the south. As it happened, the driver turned up five hours before my plane was due to fly, and such un-Russian time-keeping started to make me suspicious.

About twenty minutes into the journey, the driver, Artyom, who I know passingly well, said:
'James. I have very busy day today. If it is okay I will drop you at the train station and you get fast train to airport, yes.'

Normally I wouldn't be too happy about this, but as I knew the driver and had taken the very efficient, quick and clean airport train before, I agreed. Of course, this meant that we now had to drive into the centre of Moscow rather than round the ring road. It also explained the five hour buffer the driver had allowed.

We got within three hundred yards of the station and the traffic ground to a halt. Five minutes passed; ten; fifteen. We inched forward a little and could suddenly see the problem - a tram had come off its track and veered over into the incoming traffic, blocking two lanes. It was obvious that we weren't going anywhere for a while, and though I still had three and a half hours until my flight, I only had fifteen minutes until the train to the airport was due to leave.

Artyom made a split-second decision. He drove the car up in front of a builder's yard, jumped out, and started hauling my enormous suitcase out the back of the car. 'Come on, James! Run!' he implored, and started to leg it down the street with my handluggage, leaving me to handle 'the beast'.

Now I doubt you've ever run down a busy, potholed pavement with a 30kg+suitcase on wheels chundering along behind you. Even worse, it was one of those very scenic but completely impractical streets with trees planted every 15 metres right in the middle of the pavement. It was like Ultimate Pinball, although I think I did well only running over three pedestrians, a small dog and myself (twice).

I made it to the train, retrieved my handluggage, bought a ticket, and was seated in a carriage before you could say 'angry mob'.

The next obstacle to a successful journey home was the check-in desk. A BA staff member took me out of the queue to a special frequent flier zone just because I had an 'e-ticket', which was nice, and I was even assigned a staff member, 'Tanya', to look after me. Inexplicably, there was a camera crew hovering around but I ignored them long enough to heave my suitcase up onto the conveyor.

'Thirty five kilos, sir,' Tanya said, unbelievingly. 'I'm afraid that our absolute maximum is 32.' And I know from experience that you often have to pay excess on anything over 26.

So there I was, opening my giant suitcase on the floor of the airport. What could I take out? Aha - my jacket. Never mind that I was already holding my winter coat and the temperature outside was a balmy 25. And I was wearing my thickest jumper and jeans just to bring the weight down. And look - my towels! They're heavy.

I removed my towels and checked my bag - hovering around 32 and a half kilos - without being charged excess. At the time I assumed it was because I was boarding with the magical e-ticket (which either gets me privileges, or creates confusion, depending on whether the airport staff know what the hell it is). There was another possible reason, which came to light later.

But in the meantime, I was left on the ground floor of the airport with a trolley stacked with - one very large piece of hundluggage, one winter coat (I was wearing my jacket), and six assorted fluffy pink towels. There was no way I could go anywhere without at least securing a plastic bag for the towels. After begging the BA desk for one (which was unsuccessful), I had an idea. It's the kind of idea that always seems to be original and unique when you yourself have it, but later you realise that not only has everyone else had it before, so have you. The idea was to buy something small from a shop, and thus get a plastic bag with the purchase. Genius, eh?

The only flaw in my plan was that I was on the ground floor, and the shops were on the first. The only was between the two seemed to be by escalator, and have you ever tried getting a trolley onto an escalator? The only alternative - carrying all my handluggage by hand - was promptly ruled out after the first attempt resulted in towels scattering to the wind. It's only now that I realise the irony of having handluggage that is impossible to carry by hand. Although trolleyluggage isn't as catchy.

At this point I had the realisation that the likelihood of me getting the towels to the plane were slim, and even if I did so, there was little chance that I would be allowed to board with so much luggage. So I decided to bin the towels. But could I find a bin in the airport? Of course not. It's an airport. Again, I had several options. I did consider leaving the terminal briefly to dump the towels in a bush. But I thought that that would like highly suspicious and probably end up with me being arrested. I also thought about asking my friendly friend at the BA helpdesk to dispose of them for me, but one look at the condition of the towels (remember - they had been on the floor, and not machine washed for six months) and I decided not to inflict that on him. Even though he couldn't get me a plastic bag.

To cut a very long story long, I finally managed to buy a newspaper from a kiosk and stash the towels in that. That was the last major obstacle but I was then nearly scuppered by my own idiocy.

When I had checked my bag in, my personal assistant Tatiana told me that I would be boarding from Zone C, Gate 3. After I found a bag for the towels, I looked up to see Gate 3 written boldly on the sign above me. I of course followed the arrow round to the left to the gate. Now stop me if I'm wrong, but a good way to number gates and zones would be like this:

Zone A Gates 1-5
Zone B Gates 6-10
Zone C Gates 11-15

- and so on. Instead, this airport had decided to number them like this:

Zone A Gates 1-5
Zone B Gates 1-5
Zone C Gates 1-5

- and so on. So in fact there were a number of Gate 1s, Gate 2s, Gate 3s. And I had the right gate number but the wrong zone, and therefore the wrong gate. Of course, I didn't realise this at the time. 'But there are security checks,' I hear you say. And you would be right. And on this particular day, the security check involved me trying to give my documents to the officials, and the officials waving me through.

It wasn't until I was past security that I realised that my fellow travellers were all, how should I put it, a little bit darker-skinned than me. They looked neither particularly English, nor especially Russian. Just to be on the safe side, I decided to double back and ask one of the officials where exactly this flight was going.

'Uzbekistan.'

Oops.

Fortunately I had time to leave this gate and find the real one. Once again I went through the security checks - slightly more rigorous, but again not objecting to me having three items of handluggage. Oops, I bought some cigarettes for my mum so by this time I had four.

I got to the gate itself only to be greeted by along table filled with champagne glasses and other refreshments.

'Have some champagne, sir,' one BA staff member offered.

It turned out that BA were celebrating one year of flights from that particular airport (earlier, they had flown from Sheremetievo in the north). Perhaps this was why I hadn't been charged for excess, especially with a camera crew hovering.

In the end, I made it back home without further adventures, and even managed to stash three of my four bits of handluggage precariously in the overhead locker without them falling and injuring my fellow travellers.

FIVE GO TO SERGEEV POSAD, OR, YES I AM A BIG GIRL'S BLOUSE

I mentioned in passing that Gareth, Anthony Ian and I went a while ago to visit a friend of Gareth's, Marina, who had invited us to stay and look around her home town of Sergeev Posad for the weekend. SP is one of the towns of the Golden Ring, that historical region to the North East of Moscow. You may remember that I toured round part of the Golden Ring with my dad in May, though due to technical difficulties we never made it as far as Sergeev Posad.

Even among the Golden Ring towns, Sergeev Posad is special, in that it is the centre of the Russian Orthodox Church, and home of the Patriarch, head of Russian Orthodoxy. Think of it as a kind of Russian version of the Vatican City. But without a history of deals with the Nazis.

The three of us met up with Marina in Moscow (you may remember that Ian was having a nosebleed at the time), and took the train a couple of hours out to Sergeev Posad. Marina actually comes from the next town along, the rather less significant and dynamically named town of 'Farm' (in Russian; probably not many rural peasant farmers there speak English).

As it was already evening, we decided to head straight for Farm and look around Sergeev Posad the following day. Surprisingly, there wasn't a great deal to see in Farm and Ian had even stopped bleeding so Marina suggested a barbeque in the woodland by the edge of the lake. This is a typically Russian activity (it involves breaking things, burning things, destroying nature, meat, and drinking), so we gladly accepted.

Three of Marina's friends joined us for the barbecue and our first task, as dictated to us by Marina, was gathering wood for the fire. All Russians are expect fire builders and so Marina took charge of that, while the rest of us went back and forth lugging armfuls of firewood and worrying about snakes.

A much greater peril than snakes, however, in the Russian forest, is mosquitoes. They are big, they are hungry, and they swarm. Our barbecue, as I have said, was on the banks of an admittedly very beautiful lake and so with all the water the mosquitoes were even more numerous than usual.

I was walking back to the fire with an armful of wood when a particularly huge mosquito - about the size of a daddy longlegs, and this is not poetic license - landed on my hand. I gave a little squeal and tried to swat it with my other hand. This other hand, I had forgotten, was holding firewood so all I managed to do was hit myself on the head. I dropped the wood in a heap - the mosquito still hadn't moved - and swatted the thing as hard as I could. It exploded in a great splat of what I hope was my own blood. I must admit it - I screamed.

Gareth was nearby, also collecting firewood, and this is what he heard:

SQUEAL! I see the mosquito.
THONK! I hit myself on the head.
CRUMP! I drop the wood.
SLAP! the mosquito is dead.
SCREAM! I am a big girl's blouse.

I then come staggering out of the wood with my bloody, swollen, hand held out in front of me like a loaded gun.

"Bloody hell, James, what's wrong?" asks Gareth with concern.
"Mosquito," I reply.

THE SEVEN PLAGUES OF IAN - PART TWO

I did not mention it before, but Ian does not have much luck with metro trains. Once, when he was on a train with Gareth and I, he failed to even make it off the carriage at our destination before the doors shut and the train whisked him somewhere else. Gareth and I were left on the platform looking gormless and wondering if Ian had the sense and the ability to find his way back to the station.

Another time, his shopping bag split just as he was stepping off the train - resulting in oranges and other (unfortunately round) foodstuffs rolling about on the carriage floor. There we were, the three of us, desparately scrabbling about between peoples' feet trying to retrieve fruit before the doors closed.

From the time of my previous post, Ian's luck continued to be poor. He managed to get assaulted in a train station late at night, misplace his passport, and break our front door for a second time. Somehow, though, he managed to make it all the way to Kazan for a job interview. Wonders never cease... at the moment he is working up in Zelenograd in Moscow Region for Language Link. Zelenograd is widely known of the Stevenage of Russia. Looks like Ian's luck isn't improving...

THE SEVEN PLAGUES OF IAN

Let me introduce you to Ian. Ian is an English teacher who has been working down in the sunny Russian resort town of Sochi, on the Black Sea. He is English, like myself, mild mannered and bespectacled, like Clark Kent, and is an old friend of my flatmate's. In fact, Ian is staying with us at the moment. Oh, one other thing - Ian is the unluckiest man in the world.

Ian had to leave Sochi under a cloud. His boss refused to let him take all the holiday time that he was owed; Ian went ahead and took it anyway; he was sacked, without being payed his previous six weeks' wages. The school he worked at also tried to confiscate his passport in order to cancel his visa, and held his property under lock and key until he handed over his documents. Eventually, with the intervention of the police, Ian recovered his stuff (though not the money he was owed). And after a couple of months teaching privately in Sochi, not receiving a regular salary, he decided to come to Moscow and try his luck. Never a good idea as far as Ian is concerned.

So Ian arrived at our flat on Thursday evening, feeling a little under the weather. He woke up the following day with full-blown flu, and spent the next 48 hours sleeping on my broken sofa rather than looking for employment as planned. On Sunday, feeling a little better, he decided to get up and take a shower. In the shower, he managed to - somehow - knock several shower tiles off the wall which smashed in the bathtub and cut one of his feet wide open. He spent the next twenty minutes bleeding over the kitchen floor.

Once he had stopped bleeding, he came out with me and my flatmate Gareth to meet a Russian friend of ours, Marina, who had invited us to visit her home town for a couple of days. While we were sitting on a bench in the metro station, waiting for Marina, Ian's nose started to bleed. It continued to trickle blood for the next hour and a half - when we met Marina, when we bought train tickets, when we got onto the train, when the train left. Ian spent most of that day with a ball of tissue held to his face.

Since then, Ian's bad luck has been less dramatic but it has continued. This morning, for example, I asked Ian to venture out into the communal corridor of our block of flats to throw our rubbish down the rubbish chute; when he came back, thirty seconds later, he was unable to shut or lock the door. Somehow, merely through his touch, the door had warped and now no longer fitted the frame.

My flatmate has a theory that Ian's bad luck has been replicating, in random order, the plagues visited upon Egypt in the Old Testament. We've had the rivers of blood, for example! In fact, Gareth even blames his piles on Ian's coming.

Either that or Ian's boss in Sochi is in league with the devil, and has placed a curse him which will haunt him for the rest of his days.

Ian still has twenty four hours with us - what more damage can he do? Watch this space.

MY OLD MATE PETE

I realise that I haven't written anything about my trip to St. Petersburg in the May holidays with Julia and her family. That isn't because it wasn't interesting (and eventful), but because I'm busy (and lazy).

To begin with, we very nearly missed the train after going to the wrong station. It was only after I asked a Georgian fruit-seller that we realised our mistake and hot-footed it to the adjacent station. Well, three of us hot-footed it and the fourth limped pathetically behind, draging Julia's mother's huge suitcase.

Then, hot, sweaty and out of breath, we totally miscounted carriages and sat in the wrong compartment. So we were ejected from that and had to walk from one end of the train to the other, along the inside - practically jumping from carriage to carriage (there is a little metal walkway between them, but you can see the ground rushing between your feet). Suitcases are not good at jumping.

Having eventually located the correct compartment, we arrived in St. Pete's with little trouble and found the hotel surprisingly easily (the fact that I had stayed there the previous spring may be connected). Then we ran into problems - Julia's sister, Blake, hadn't been registered in Russia within three days of her arrival, and Susan, her mother, had left her immigration document in Moscow.

Receptionist: Where is the immigration document for this woman?
Me: At home.
Receptionist: Can you pop back and get it?
Me: At home in Moscow.
Receptionist: A-a-a-ah.

So there was a tense hour or so when we were sure that one of our party was to be deported and a second send back to Moscow with her tail - or rather, an outsized suitcase - between her legs. But the ever-friendly and helpful Russian service staff didn't let us down and somehow smoothed over all the problems with the visa office.

Our party had a rude introduction to the realities of Russian city life early on in the trip. We were sitting in a cafe on the main drag, Nevsky Prospect, at a window table. Suddenly one of the girls gave a gasp and we all turned round to see, on the street about six feet away from us (but luckily with a window in the way!), a gang of gypsy women and children mugging a group of elderly tourists.

The gypsies forced one of the male tourists onto the floor and succeeded in getting hold of his wallet; but as the gypsies fleed, a woman, evidently the wife of the victim and from her expression absolutely furious, grabbed a gypsy woman and began to punch her in the face! It was only after the intervention of the tourguide that the gypsy woman managed to flee, leaving several possessions and items of clothing of her own on the pavement!

TBC

THE BREAST IS YET TO COME

Another anecdote about my flatmate, Gareth. This one's a corker.

Julia's elder sister, Blake, was visiting from the States. It was her second night in Moscow and the three of us, plus Gareth, were sitting in a bar. It was the first time that Gareth and Blake had met and so they were making polite conversation, as you do.

Blake had been telling Gareth about her ten cousins on her father's side.

'I like girls with big families,' Gareth replied. Only he doesn't always speak very clearly, and Blake was certainly unused to his accent. So she heard him say:

'I like girls with big fumblies.'

Totally unphased by this, the consummate conversationalist, she replied:

'Oh, but Julia's are bigger.'

I hope that you've read my dad's account of our adventures in the Golden Ring. Well, if you thought that we had some problems, you should hear what happened to my flatmate. This is his story (in my words, because he is Welsh).

Gareth had decided to spend the holiday week way down in the south of Russia, in Sochi, on the Black Sea. That's a day away, at least, on the train.

So Gareth headed down to Sochi on his own. Travelling alone, he didn't want to bring a lot of cash with him, but that was okay because he had his debit card. Arriving in Sochi, he went to withdraw money only to find that he had been locked out of his bank account.

The previous week he had tried to access it on the internet but had got his password wrong three times (did I mention that he is Welsh?). The website had informed him that he was consequently locked out but he assumed that he was locked out only of the internet banking - not the entire account and that they had cancelled all of his cards for good measure!

So Gareth was stuck in Sochi, with ten roubles to his name (about 20 pence), a good twenty-five hours on the train away from Moscow, and a non-transferable ticket home for travel in ten days time! Not only that but his pay-as-you-go Russian phone had run out of credit and of course he had no money to buy any more...

I am mildly impressed that he made it back to Moscow, alive, well and with a tan (and a bottle of home-made Caucasus wine no less).

A guest blog from James's Dad:

It only Hertz when you laugh.....

I've just returned home after a few days in Russia visiting James and doing a bit of tourism. We decided to hire a car and James came out to meet me at the airport where I had arranged to pick the car up from Hertz who, amazingly for the world's largest car hire company, only had a single desk on the end of a row of desks run by car hire companies I'd never heard of. And the Hertz desk was locked and empty! Still, after a while Olga turned up and we started the simple process of doing the paperwork. This involved the writing of copious documents by Olga interspersed with her having to run off across the concourse at regular intervals saying "back in 5 minutes". After several of these interludes we reached the point where I'd signed more autographs than Beckham but we had a car key. Off we went to the car park to find the Renault that had been allocated, only to find it wasn't there. The four of us (James, Julia, Olga and myself) wandered around the miles of tarmac for some time before Olga went off for "5 minutes" and returned 15 minutes later with another key.

Now, I'd quite fancied getting a Volga or, at the very least, a Lada. The end result was that we got 60% of a Volga - a Volvo. And very nice it was too, and for the time being in pretty good condition.

To cut a long story short, off we went to James's flat which involved driving round the Moscow ring road. I'd heard lots of horror stories about Russian drivers but I have to say that 99% of them were fine. The other 1% were as daft as a bottle of crisps but, overall it was better than driving in Minchinhampton - where I live - where a pensioner in a Nissan Micra can strike fear into the bravest of men whilst attempting to park vertically up the war memorial.

The following morning James and I went off to visit the Golden Ring - a series of historical towns north of Moscow. And very nice it was too. Visited a couple of towns on the first day and stayed overnight in a great hotel.

Three Wheels on my Wagon......

The following morning we took the wrong road. No worries, as we worked out that we could continue the way we were going and meet the right road further along. Yeah, right.
As we got into more rural countryside the quality of the roads got worse. And worse. Avoiding the potholes was akin to doing the Giant Slalom at the Winter Olympics and in the end they got us.

Entering a small town it was impossible to avoid the potholes as there was one giant one that went across the whole road. Flat front tyre. Damaged wheel rim, and a temporary spare wheel which would last about 5 minutes. James spoke to a taxi driver who gave us directions to a tyre place. We couldn't find it but another guy showed us the way.

The tyre place was a shed run by a 12 year old boy who had perfected the sharp intake of breath but did his best to help us. He bashed the rim about with a large hammer and found a second hand tyre which fitted. Cost? About £8. Good stuff and off we went again.

After another 30-odd miles we reached the city of Ivanovo. Whatever you do, don't go there. It is, without doubt, the most depressing place I've ever been to - actually through, because we didn't stop. It's rumoured that the sale of razor blades and rope have been banned there to help reduce the suicide rate.

Having got through Ivanavo we decided to stop for something to eat. We found a large restaurant (total seating of about 250 people) in the middle of nowhere and the staff of several dozen served us. We were the only people in there. The downside at this point was that the tyre had gone flat again and we were now on Plan G, which we hadn't yet formulated.

The people who ran the restaurant took it on themselves to help us - great people - and the owner instructed a guy who had been delivering soft drinks to take the wheel off and go and get it repaired. Off he went, leaving us sitting in a restaurant with only a full sized stuffed bear for company (oh, and a giant live hawk who lived on a perch outside the front door) and our car up on a jack outside.

Half an hour later the drinks delivery man returned with the wheel fixed and put it back on. The wheel had been balanced and it all looked hunky dory, although the second hand tyre from the kid in the shed was still in use. Total cost was 850 roubles, about £17.

Anyway, we then went back to Moscow - a short trip of about 250 miles - and returned the car to Hertz. Well, sort of. The security man at the car park entrance had never heard of Hertz so James went into the airport while I hovered around tidying up the boot to make it look like nothing had happened. The missing wheel trim was a bit of a giveaway but you never know what you can get away with unless you try.

James returned some time later and said that Olga would be "5 minutes" which was a real surprise and when she turned up we finally got rid of the car although she couldn't get it OUT of the car park. At this point we made our excuses and left.

The upshot is that, so far, Hertz have not charged me anything at all. My guess is that it will either stay that way or my credit card will be debited for the rental, a new wheel and a new tyre. Only time will tell.

A much shorter anecdote here.

I was walking around the (admittedly rather dull and residential) part of Moscow that I call home one night with my flatmate. It was pretty late, about midnight.

Now, you might not know but Russia is full of little roadside kiosks that sell all sorts of stuff pretty cheaply, from fried chicken to knick-knacks, but more often than not the kiosks just sell alcohol.

Well, we had just passed one of these little kiosks when a great big articulated city bus pulled up beside us. We were surprised to even see a bus so late. We were even more surprised to see the driver jump out and buy a bottle of beer from the kiosk!

He then jumped back into his bus, and drove off, beer in hand!

It makes you proud to use public transport.

Wow - I haven't written anything here for a while. A few people have even started to complain! My brother suggested that it's because I'm finally 'going native' and just don't notice all the strange things happening around me. Trust me - I still do! But sometimes I'm too busy having things happen to me, to write.

So here's something from a little while ago.


UNORTHODOX EASTER

Julia wanted to experience a Russian Orthodox church service so I suggested going on Easter Sunday to the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, which is the newly-rebuilt and very impressive church in the centre of Moscow.

The four-hour service actually began midnight on Saturday night so we turned up at the metro station at about 11.30.

"I know which exit it is. Follow me!" I proclaimed, smug in my geographical knowledge of the metro system. It isn't often that I get to be smug about things like that, so I was feeling particularly warm and fuzzy as we walked along the station platform, deep in conversation.

Suddenly I was shaken from my warm fuzziness by a Russian military police officer shouting at me through a loudhailer: "Stop! Stop and leave through the opposite exit!" I looked up to see a quite formidable police barricade set up in front of me, manned by three heavily armed officers (we're talking sub-machine guns).

Naturally we left through the opposite exit, quite hurriedly.

We walked round to the church, getting there a little before midnight. A huge crowd had gathered outside the church, blocking several busy roads. We fought our way through the crowd, which was surprisingly young, and split pretty evenly between men and women. Actually, it was a good cross-section of society, with little old Russian grandmothers, groupd of young men drinking beer, couples...

Suddenly the church bells began to toll midnight. Easter Sunday! As some of the crowd dispersed we could get closer to the church itself. Soon we came across another, much larger and again manned police barricade, this one preventing anyone from approaching the building. At one point in the barricade an officer was letting through an incredibly small number of people. What was this? A one-in, one-out system? Moscow: the only city in the world where you can saunter into any old club but you have to queue for churches.

What could we do? We waited for around twenty minutes, finally realising that the chances of us actually getting into the church before the metro closed were minimal.

*

It was only later that we found out that the main man, Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin himself, was due to attend the service that evening and that was the reason for such high security. I don't know what it is about that guy - he seems to follow me about wherever I go.

PARK KULTURI

On Saturday Julia and I went to 'Park Kulturi', Moscow's very own 'Park of Culture'. Opposite the Central House of Artists and in the historic heart of the city, I was expecting somewhere refined, beautiful and, well, cultured.

I wasn't really expecting a fun park. Which is what it was.

Also, it being the start of April and a little nippy over here, it was also almost deserted. None of the rides were open either, which is a little bit of a drawback in a fun park. I'm glad the entrance only cost 50 roubles...

So Julia and I were in the park. We couldn't go on any of the rides, so we decided to get something to eat. The nearest food stand was a kiosk selling fried chicken, and the menu went something like this:

Chicken soup with noodles 30R
Chicken wings (4) 70R
Chicken leg 60R
Half a chicken 90R

...and so on for a page and a half.

We went up to the guy serving, whom opened his little hatch.
'Two chicken soups please -'
'Sorry, no soup.'
'No soup?'
'No soup.'
'In that case,' I continued, two portions of chicken wings -'
'You want chicken?'
'Yes...'
'Hmmm. Maybe. Chicken'll take some time.'
'How long exactly?'
'Twenty minutes. Maybe half an hour.'

Russian fast food!

In the end we went to a bar inside the park that had a more comprehensive lunch menu. It also had a Mexican theme, complete with oversized plastic cactuses (cacti?) and wagon wheels. I'm not sure that the Russians who designed the place had much of a grasp on the Mexican way of life, as there were also several large reindeer dotted around the place.

Perhaps most bizarrely, the bar had Leffe on draft for only 90R (less than two pounds).

This isn't really Russia-related, but I wanted to tell you anyway.

My hair had been looking rather shaggy, and when my boss started making Austin Powers jokes every time I walked into the room I knew that it was time to get it cut. Not being a big fan of barbers, I was pleased when Julia told me that she had worked in a salon in Portland for a while and would happily cut my hair for me.

So it began. I sat in Julia's bathtub while she set about trimming my mop. There was no mirror to see her progress, so you can imagine that I was a little apprehensive.

'Just a trim, then, Julia, okay?' I asked.
'I was thinking, something kinda more rock n' roll.'
'Er....'

A couple of minutes passed, and Julia was still cutting my hair with, how can I say, quite a lot of vim.

'This is pretty easy! And fun!' she exclaimed.
'I thought you'd done it before?'
'No, I never said that.'
'Didn't you use to work in a salon in Portland?'
'Yeah, I was a receptionist. But I watched how they did it.'

Great...

Although - and I am relieved to say this - the finished version does actually look quite good. Even Kostya didn't mock me too much.

GHOST STATION

At the moment I am quite excited about the discovery of a 'ghost station' on my metro line. You've probably heard of similar phenomena (if I can call it that) on other metro systems. I know that my brother and sister-in-law know of a few on the Tube in London.

My own ghost station, here in Moscow, is an unfinished station that the Soviets started to build back when the line was first being put down. But the chosen location of the station was changed during construction and the original was abandoned before it was ever opened.

The reason I had known nothing about this station was because, quite obviously, it isn't lit. But recently I was on a train and just happened to be travelling through the station at the exact same time that a second train was travelling through it on the other side, in the opposite direction (the plaform is obviously open, like most on my line). The lights from the second train briefly illuminated the station and gave me my first view of it. Spooky! It makes me wonder how many years it has been since anyone has stepped on that platform. Does the station ever even have a name?

MANEZHNAYA WHERE?

I hope I didn't confuse anyone with my last post. The fire at the Manezh made it onto international news, though only briefly I hear.

The Manezh is (or was) quite a famous early-19th century building just off the Kremlin, which rather symbolically and spectacularly burnt to the ground on election night. Perhaps it was an accident (it's not the only important building in central Moscow to catch fire in recent months), or a protest, but most likely in my opinion it was a deliberate tactic by the government to divert media attention from the elections.

Incidentally square next to Red Square is called Manezhnaya square, after the building. The Manezh was architectually special because it used a cunning system of beams to remove the need for internal supports. This made it ideal either for its initial use, as a riding school and parade ground, or for its final use, as an exhibition centre and gallery.

I happened to be in the city centre on the evening of the fire and saw the whole thing almost from the start. The roof of the Manezh was made of wood so the fire spread incredibly quickly. Groups of Russians stood around, agog, until the police moved them (and us) on. More enterprising locals turned up with crates of beer to sell, and the public toilets made a killing. The emergency services seemed to do little to tackle the blaze, although later reports said that several firemen had died tragically and heroically. I don't want to be cynical.

Incidentally, I walked past the burnt-out remains of the Manezh several days after the fire. The roof is completely gone but the outside walls are still standing. With its large arches it looks more like a Roman ruin than anything. I hope that the authorities leave it standing. I doubt they will.

WHEN PUTIN WON HIS SECOND TERM

When Putin won his second term
his men had guns and moved us on
and glass gave up and stone gave in
and metal was all molten

The sky was red it fell like rain
we saw them let the Manezh burn
the world was full of fire and flame
when Putin won his second term

OUR MAN IN VOLOGDA

I am back from Vologda.

It was a city of a third of a million but felt like Wokingham. Though obviously not in every respect.

I will now list everything of interest in Vologda, in roughly decending order:

1) the world's oldest statue of Lenin, from 1924. The statue is also lifesize, which doesn't make it a very impressive monument (Lenin was, I now know, rather short). But they'd stuck him on a big pedestal to compenstate. Though now you really have to crane your neck to see him. He looks a bit lost up there to be honest.

2) a Christmas tree carved from ice, and a big children's slide made of blocks of ice. Julia, who came with me on the trip, slid down this (the slide, not the tree!) and scared the bejesus out of all the little kiddies.

3) some nice wooden buildings in the centre, that people still lived in, and looked about to collapse. The irony being, they had probably looked that way since they were first built hundreds of years ago.

4) a cool statue of a bloke on a horse (with no plaque so I don't know who he was). But he was overlooking...

5) ...the river Vologda. It wasn't very big. But it was totally frozen over. I fell on my backside several times, indeed once slid along on it for at least three metres, and amused the ice fishermen. The small children would also probably have laughed had Julia not scared them about an hour before.

6) no phone reception. The first place in Russia I've been to where I couldn't get a signal on my mobile.

7) a very unbusy art gallery in an old church in the city Kremlin. The gallery only displayed pictures by one artist, and he wasn't even from Vologda. And the gallery staff (all seven of them, for two of us) were so flummoxed by actually having visitors to the gallery that they forgot to charge us foreigners' prices.

8) the local club. To celebrate the highly romantic Women's Day, the club administration presented Julia with two separate and different porcelain models of frogs having group sex. One of these now has pride of place on my TV next to the statue of a bear being intimate with a sheep (a present from my Welsh flatmate).

9) lastly, and least interestingly, the town made their own potato crisps, which Julia liked. And all the restaurants cooked with garlic in every dish, which I approved of.

A strange world, isn't it?

VOLOG-WHERE?

This weekend is yet another three-day holiday weekend (International Women's Day has rolled round again), so I am off on a jaunt. This time the destination is Vologda, a mid-sized and more than slightly obscure city about 9 hours north-east of Moscow (yes, I'm sick of this southerly, mild weather). It's on the river, er, Vologda. Which is easy to remember.

Why Vologda? Well, a friend from last year, Hugh (whose name unfortunately sounds very similar to the Russian for 'penis'), strongly recommended that I pay a visit. Now is my chance. Well, we are catching the overnight train tonight (Friday), and come back during the day on Monday. Actually, that'll be the first time I've ever made a long train journey in Russia during the day. I might actually see something.

Vologda. Famous for its wooden buildings, churches, and lace manufacture. Sounds like my kind of town! Anyway, I'll let you know.

This morning I caught a central line busker playing the DangerMouse theme tune on his accordion.

THE STRANGEST SIGHT I HAVE SEEN TO DATE IN MOSCOW

It was 9.30 on a bright Tuesday morning. It was a novelty for me to be awake at this time, let alone in the centre of the city, but I was planning to visit the foreign-language bookstore to pick up some graded readers for one of my groups.

So I was walking along one of those mostly pedestrianised old cobbly streets in the Theatre District. Up ahead on the right was the bookshop, and on the left the map shop, which I also wanted to pop into. Only there was no way I could go into the map shop because of the large mob of angry citizens milling around outside it.

This was no ordinary mob: there were young men, old women, mothers with children. All of them were shouting at each other, pushing, shoving, gesticulating. There were also two middle-aged women leaning out of a high first floor window above the map shop - whether it was part of the shop or a private shop I really couldn't say. These two women were also shouting and gesticulating. There also appeared to be some kind of robe dangling down from the window into the street below.

In the middle of the mob there was a TV crew, complete with cameramen and reporter.

After a minute of this a police car pulled up. It didn't have the sirens on, and indeed the police officers seemed content just to watch the mob from a distance (which I was doing), while smoking (which I wasn't doing). It was only when one of the younger members of the mob started shoving a rather frail old lady that the police felt compelled to intervene. The young man, once he saw the police approaching, started quite hilariously to sidle off and pretend that he wasn't involved. However, Moscow's finest were not fooled. But as soon as they grabbed the man, half the crowd started shouting, 'It's not fair! He's not to blame!'

In the middle of this rucus, the two women in the window took the opportunity to pull up the rope that was dangling down from their window. As it ascended I saw that an incredibly large and full shopping bag was tied onto one end. The bag made its painstaking journey up the side of the building. Slowly the crowd turned to watch - even the policemen seemed to forget about the young man they had seized.

Oh no! The bag wedged itself under the window ledge and wouldn't climb any higher. Half the crowd shouted for the women to pull harder, the other half for them to let it down again. It was like some demented quiz show. The women decided to pull harder but - disaster - the bag split, raining down tins of food and items of fruit, mostly bunches of bananas, onto the crowd below.

The crowd were not to be deterred even by aerial bombardment from baked beans and bananas. Indeed most of them reached for the fallen fruit and started lobbing it at the window. The two women in the window responded with encouraging words - 'Come on! Throw it! You can do it!' but whether they were being supportive or defiant I haven't the faintest idea.

So that was when I was treated to the strangest sight I have seen to date in Moscow. Bananas pinging off walls, off gutters, bananas bouncing back onto policemen, into windows. It was an early morning theatre district banana fight. Fantastic! And I still don't have the faintest idea what it was all about.

*

So, I'm still in this crazy, violent city where metro trains explode and leisure centres collapse. What the hell am I doing here? What are any of us doing here? Why is Rich here? Gareth? Julia? Liz? Anthony?

Moscow is a fantastic place to be. I hope that the story I just wrote shows you that. If you still don't understand why I'm here, then I don't think there's anything else I could say to you.

JD.

SPECIAL GUEST BLOG POST ABOUT HATS
by Julia Davis, who I should say is American


So, this analysis is about hats. You know the big furry things you see on top of the heads of Russians in movies, thinking to yourself 'no one would actually wear something that ridiculous in real life,' here's the news: they really wear them. And not just one or two people, they're everywhere. Honestly I thought it was strange until I began to understand what was going on: The Russians are competing for Biggest Hat. Now for those of you not in Moscow this may sound like a simple, uninteresting competition, but as an inhabitant of the battle ground I can tell you it is quite a show.

But first let me say that not everyone is involved in this highly complex War of the Hats. As with most any Russian competition, those who do not have a shot at winning simply choose not to compete. This is announced by
going to the other extreme and having a small, knit hat that fits tightly to the skull (in these cases it seems the scarf
must be quite big, nearly swallowing the head, but I haven't quite figured this one out yet).

Anyway, for those who can afford or have the ways and means to hunt for some large, furry animal to stick on their head the competition is on. There are several ways of winning Biggest Hat. The men usually opt for
the straight ahead approach and simply kill or buy something that perches just above the ears and hope that it's big enough.

The general form of the hat can be made bigger by getting an extra furry skin or by finding a long-haired animal whose tuffs wave in the wind. Color is also an issue. Some, confident in the size of the hat, wear a simple black furred beast. Others, perhaps trying to trick other contestants into thinking their hat is bigger, wear wild colors. I have seen orange, red, purple (on a woman - I'll get to that) and, for those who are really going for it, combinations of these abominations.

Now, in the category of color it seems that women have more freedom than men, being able to pull off (used loosely) all sorts of crazy business. For goodness sakes, I have seen yellow. A big, poofy, yellow fur hat?I would have run screaming in the other direction but I was too busy pissing myself. The women also adhere to a differently formed hat. Not the traditional shoot-it-perch-it-top-the-head that you've seen in movies. For the women it is more of a
buy-it-wrap-it-round-the-head-like-a-hood. This gives the advantage of having more material to work with. I have noticed it is important for the fur to stick out in every direction as much as possible thereby drastically increasing the size. Also, some women supplement with poofy, furry tails that hang from the hat and are wrapped about the neck like a scarf. These women are usually front runners.

Now, I hear you ask 'How can you be sure this is a competition? Maybe they are just cold.' To that I say, 'pfaaagh. cold my arse.' These folks are warriors. If you have ever seen the look on a man's face as he strolls down the street, his hat towering above all others, you will know that Hats are serious business. Or a pair of eyes swiftly scanning the metro car to see if anyone's hat is bigger and the look of triumph when they confirm that, indeed, they have the Biggest Hat. How that triumphant look can turn to despair when a Bigger Hat boards the car. I have seen Russians running blindly from hats that seriously out size their own. Babushki board a packed metro car and immediately be given a seat in deference to the size of the Hat. Occasionally, when there are two men with equally sized hats in the same car, one will get off and board the next car up so he can be alone in his victory. Yes, in Russia Hats are serious business folks. I just wanted to let you know.

HEAD, SHOULDERS, KNEES AND WHAT?

Okay. Pop quiz.

What's the name of the walky bit on the end of your leg?
And the name of the joint connecting the leg to that bit?
Your arm bends in the middle. What do you call that?
And where your fingers bend. What do we call those knobbly things?

I hope that you answered, in this order: foot, ankle, elbow, and knuckle.

I have been trying to teach my Russian students vocabulary for parts of the body, only to be hampered by the fact that Russians either don't have a word for a body part (foot!), have it but can't remember it because it's so obscure (ankle, elbow), or worse, don't know if they even have a word for it or not (knuckle).

It seems that, in Russian, everthing from the hips down is 'leg'. There's also little distinction between fingers, thumbs and toes (if you want to talk about toes, you have to say 'fingers on your feet', which is quite a scary mental image).

On the plus side, there is a word in Russian for the back of the head, which is something I'm pretty sure we don't have in English.

NEW COAT

I have bought a new coat. I actually look like a Russian now, rather than a downhill skiier who got a bit lost trying to find the Alps.

I knew the type of coat I wanted to buy. I asked a couple of acquaintances who had recently bought coats how much they had spent, giving me an idea of a reasonable price. I went to a clothes market that was recommended to me. I found a coat I liked. I tried it on. It fitted. I asked the price. It was, indeed, reasonable.

I agreed the price. But no! The market trader wasn't having that. He was so offended I didn't haggle that he started haggling with himself.

"3,300 Roubles."
"Okay. I'll take it."
"No! 3,200 Roubles. That's my final offer!"
"Okay, okay. I agree."
"No!"

I felt so bad for the bloke that I was tempted to start haggling the price up.

EAT YOUR HEART OUT JAMES EARL JONES

I have discovered a new and lucrative sideline to my teaching career, courtesy of the translation department of Language Link. One of the girls there, Jo, got me a contract recording the English language voice-over for a short film. So I spent one afternoon last week in a recording studio in North-East Moscow laying down my part.

I am sure you are dying to know what future blockbuster it is that I was working on. It is yet to be titled, but it concerns mineral deposits in a Siberian lake called Kuchuk. I am sure that it will take the box office by storm.

Actually, the text that I read was so full of scientific terminology that I doubt I understood much more than the Russian recording studio staff.

Me: What's this? 'Astrakhanite'? How do I pronounce it?
Russian: How do you think you should pronounce it?
Me: Er. Astra-KHAN-ite? AST-rakhanite?
Russian: Yes, one of those. In three, two, one...

Also, I'm not sure who translated the text from Russian in the first place but it wasn't exactly racy. I recall that it began: "Lake Kuchuk. A meridionally elongated body of water...." Plus I had to read it at an incredibly fast pace - four pages of typed A4 in nine minutes, including pauses. So I sound more like a horse-racing commentator than anything. "LakeKuchukameridionallyelongatedbodyofwater!"

The recording studio was a converted flat, and we had to keep stopping the recording while the neighbours flushed their toilet, slammed their doors, did the vaccuuming... Russian professionalism at its best.

Still, for some of us, fame beckons.

IDENTITY CRISIS

Hello. I'm still alive.

So, I went back to England for Christmas and New Year. I realised then that I am slowly turning into a Russian, doing things like: shaking the hands of everyone I meet, even friends old and new; taking my passport with me to change money.

Either that or I am turning into an American. People are 'guys', holidays are 'vacations', everything is 'sweet'. I think I know how is at least partly to blame for this (and no, it's not South Park). And did you know that Americans don't use the word 'fortnight'?


A SMALL BUT ILLUSTRATIVE ANECDOTE

This, er, vacation, I took the brand new high speed train link between Moscow city centre and the airport for the first time. I was impressed to see that the airport had two platforms, inbound and outbound, which they had cunningly numbered 1 and, er, 4. Some things never change.