Fyodor on Tour

The only downside to my parents being here is the infuriating ease with which they can communicate. I’ve been studying the language for two and a half years: bashing out essays on Russian literature, enduring hours of withering glares from disappointed professors, and cramming words like ‘egg cell’ and ‘living wage’ into my head. My parents learned the alphabet and a few basic phrases, and they get along just fine. Every now and then one of them will stop as we’re walking past a cafe and sound out its name ‘C-u-b-a… huh, so Cuba in Russian is Cuba?’ Cafe, coffee, restaurant – they’re all pretty much the same word in Russian as in English. Learn the words for water and toilet and you’ve pretty much got all you need to survive. If someone’s saying something at you in an accusatory voice, you just need to go ‘oh sorry I don’t speak much Russian. But I can say apple!’ And all will be forgiven. My mum is also a master of the art of mime. She managed to convey to some women behind...

On Friday, mum and dad arrived in Krasnoyarsk. They took the trans-Siberian railway all the way from Moscow. It took three days, but they prefer a relaxed train ride to a stressful flight. Not sure the trans-Siberian was all that relaxing (especially seeing as they don’t speak Russian), but they seemed pleased with the trip when I met them at the station. They were desperate for a shower, but otherwise happy. We went to my favourite cafe in Krasnoyarsk and had omelettes and mushroom soup, and then mum and dad checked in at the hotel and had their long-awaited showers. They also showed me the stuff they’d brought me from England. I was very glad to see that they’d brought some wintry socks, as well as a lush scarf from my grandparents in Portsmouth (thanks Nan and Grandad!) They also brought a veritable mountain of chocolate and sweets, which was very, very welcome. Oddly, the thing that made me the most nostalgic wasn’t the Cadbury or the Haribo, but Bilar, a Swedish candy which...

‘Now who can give me an example of some English food?’ I ask the students of School 152. Blank stares.  'Very good.' I say. 'That’s right, we got nothing. But Russia doesn’t really have national food either does it?' ‘How about pelmeni?’ Someone offers. ‘Pancakes and sour cream?’ ‘Cheese cakes?’ ‘Ooh, or draniki!’ ‘Minced chicken cutlets!’ someone shouts from the back. I take some time to work out what I want to say, then ignore that and tetchily say ‘Yeah well we’ve got chicken tikka’ instead. There’s an expectant silence, and I know what’s coming. ‘What’s chicken tikka?’ someone asks at last. ‘It’s like a curry, but creamy.’ The class looks at me like I’ve just told them that, in my country, poo is a delicacy. Curry with cream. Suddenly I see all the hypocrisy of my disgust at pancakes with cottage cheese. ‘Curry is a national dish in Britain?’ the same brave girl asks again, after a long, uncertain pause. ‘Alright smart-ass it d...

I got another shawarma last week. I’d just gone to the gym for the first time in a very long time, and I was starving. The largest size – ‘mega’ – cost just over £2, so I went for it. There was an ominously long preparation time, and then it emerged from the kitchen like the monstrous consequence of a science experiment gone wrong. The serving woman dropped it on the counter and gave me a disdainful smirk. ‘Hmm, said Kiril, ponderously, ‘it’s just a baby size’. I did a double take. ‘Please tell me you’re joking? You think this is small?’ ‘Ah no sorry. I meant it’s the size of a baby human.’ The mega shawarma baby didn’t just have the standard chicken, vegetables, and sauce inside. Whatever maniac was working in the kitchen had also put chips in it. Now I enjoy a good double-carb dish as much as the next guy, but in a wrap this size, it was verging on sadistic. It took me a couple of efforts, and I even considered taking it home for the next day’s packed lunch, but I’m very...

I might be wrong, but I don’t think I’ve told you about my trip to Kiril’s dacha yet. If I have, do me a solid and pretend I haven’t. Can’t be bothered to look through previous blogs, and I think my memory’s going (aged 20 – I had a good run). Almost two weeks ago, Zuzana and her mentor Lena invited me along to a board games evening at Lena’s friends’ place. Kiril and Masha are Master’s students at the main uni in Krasnoyarsk. Neither of them studies English, but they both speak it excellently. Also, Kiril has a car, which scores him lots of friends points. The games night was fun, although we never got round to playing the games because we were so preoccupied trying to make pancakes in a pan which had lost all its non-stick (I’m gonna go ahead and declare myself Pancake King for achieving that… although only after about two hours of trying). By the time we’d cooked all the pancakes/pancake scraps, fried some mushrooms, filled the pancakes with them, and shallow fried the finish...

Krasnoyarskers heat their flats to outrageous temperatures. Whoever controls our entire block’s heating decided to turn it on sometime back in September, and it seems to be a binary kind of deal – full whack or nothing. I got into the habit of getting up at least once a night to stick my head out the window into the freezing night air just to cool down. I was willing the cold Siberian winter I’ve heard all about to hurry up and come… which it now has. But last week it still hadn’t, so I was thrilled when I found a reason to leave the flat/sauna and head out to a folk concert. I love folk music. I didn’t realise I loved it last year, but coming to Russia has given me a renewed appreciation for it (for some reason), and now it’s my go-to genre. A guy called Ivan who had some tenuous relation to the organisation where we work invited me and Zuzana to a live concert in the same edgy bar where I went with Olga just after I arrived (the one with the swing). An unusual combination...

It’s official. I’ve been on a VIP list. I managed to bag two free tickets to a film at the fanciest cinema in Krasnoyarsk. A friend of a colleague is involved with the film festival. I went with Olga, because I hadn’t seen her for a while. We sauntered in five minutes late and I said to the woman at the desk ‘*a cough cough*, I believe I’m on the uh… the guest list.’ It was kind of disappointing that there were only five other people in the cinema, but it still counts as a VIP list, so I don’t care. Nothing can take that away from me. The film was called A Dog Called Money. It was a gentle, contemplative documentary about the work and travel of musician PJ Harvey. Music + travel = a sick film. It’s obvious really. There were the occasional bleak scenes, but even these managed also to be uplifting, or even funny. In one scene, a black teenager from a rough area on the east coast of the States gave the cameraman a tour of his neighbourhood. Pretty much every spot he pointed ...

On Thursday, Zuzana and I went to see a panel discussion on ‘volunteering culture’, held at the very swanky ‘International Exhibition Business Centre’ (is it just me or do those words not go together?) The panel consisted of representatives from the ministries of culture, tourism, some volunteering groups, and an Orthodox priest(?!?) The ‘Brief Session’ (because that’s totally a legit description of an event) was aimed at young people in volunteering. The centre was massive, like the inside of the Death Star. We followed signs for the ‘Brief Session’, and ended up in a big lecture theatre filled with military scouts and some people wearing suits. The idea was to encourage young people to help with volunteering. It was part of a bigger ‘patriotism festival’… … Yep. The representative from the Ministry of Tourism, while trying to show how important volunteering was for the tourism industry, essentially said that ‘foreigners drop a lot of rubbish in our beautiful national p...

I’m developing something of a KFC addiction. It’s one of the few things that isn’t even that cheap here. Also, it’s as culturally bland as you can get. Nice one me. I justify the expense by telling myself I’ll walk home and pick up some chicken and fries on the way, that way I’ll save 26 rubles on the bus fare. So on Tuesday evening, after a busy day at work, I did just that. I tend to lock up the library on Tuesdays, because I run French club until closing time. At French club, we discussed French musicals, which involved me sporadically bursting into renditions from Les Mis and Notre Dame de Paris. My audience of two looked unimpressed, but I can tell they enjoyed it really. When I'd handed in the key, I went out the staff entrance, which overlooks the Yenisei. The moon was shining like nobody’s business that night, and it looked beautiful reflected in the river. I wish my phone camera could do it justice, but it can’t, so y’all are gonna have to come to Krasnoyarsk an...

One of the most impressive buildings in Krasnoyarsk is the monolithic, many-columned ‘Legislative Hall’. I guess it’s probably where a lot of the local government decisions get made. It looms over Swing Square and the Central Park, and, in combination, these three places manage to feel like a bit of a centre in Krasnoyarsk’s generous urban sprawl. On Saturday, the front of this building was lined with tall, dark green fir trees. But as my bus passed the Legislative Hall on Sunday, I noticed a huge, industrious team of workers, gear, and vehicles pulling these dark green firs up, and putting blue-green firs in their place. It was a distressing sight. A veritable army of workers in bright orange jumpsuits were working ever so diligently. On the left-hand side of the row, you could see the blue-green firs newly planted in their plots of fresh earth. In the middle of the row, cranes mounted on trucks were lowering yet more blue-green firs into newly emptied beds, guided by workers y...

On Friday, I took a bus all the way to the other end of town – a place called Oktyabrskaya. I was meeting some friends here, and then walking to a place called ‘Torgashinskiy Khrebet’. It took an hour and a half. Only here’s the thing – everywhere in Russia is called Oktyabrskaya. It became obvious that I’d got the wrong Oktyabrskaya as soon as I got off the bus and saw that none of the ten people I was meant to be meeting was in fact here. Not one. I opened the transport app on my phone and typed ‘Oktyabrskaya’ again. Then I scrolled past about fifty Oktyabrskaya cafes, hotels, bridges, and districts, before finally finding ‘Oktyabrskaya bus stop’. But, to my dismay, I now saw that there was not just one ‘Oktyabrskaya bus stop’, but three. Three ‘Oktyabrskaya bus stops’. Which town planner could possibly have decided that it would be a good idea to build three bus stops with the exact same name – a name, by the way, which is also used for bus stops in every other Russian city as fa...

On Friday, I went on another walk in Stolby with the wonderful Eldar. I knew this was going to be a bit of a trek, but I think perhaps I underestimated quite how long it would be. The path took us up a gravel track (gravel in Russian is ‘graviy’, which is kinda confusing because did they get it from the English or not? Couldn’t it at least be ‘gravil’ and then there’d be no room for confusion?). Then we climbed up onto a boardwalk which was lined with pictures of all the things that could kill you in the national park. The boards were evenly spaced so that, just as the trauma of seeing a picture of a snarling brown bear was beginning to subside, you’d be put back in your place by an image of a wolf glaring right at you. On the way up, we saw a woman being taken down in a stretcher. After a slightly intimidating array of unidentifiable but very angry looking mammals, I was relieved to see some pictures of rather cute looking bugs. Eldar pointed some out saying ‘these are parasite...

I decided to give a talk on Brexit at this week’s English Club. It seemed like a good idea at the time. I just thought it was an interesting, quintessentially British topic, and that maybe people in Krasnoyarsk might want to hear a Brit’s opinion on the whole thing. Two weeks ago, we discussed sports, and twenty-two people came. So this time, I made sure to put out extra chairs beforehand, anticipating being inundated by curious Siberians. Three people turned up. One girl just stared at me blankly the whole way through, as I tried to succinctly outline British politics over the past four years. The other two made a good effort at seeming politely interested. By the time we arrived at Theresa May, I was starting to lose interest myself, by the first Brexit deadline, I understood just why nobody in Russia is remotely bothered about the whole thing, and by the time Boris had tried to prorogue parliament, I was losing the will to live. After the club, Eldar, Elena (a newcomer to...

Once upon a time, I used to get up at 7:00 every morning. As I remember it, this wasn’t too challenging. I had one of those bunk beds with a sofa on the lower level, and I’d leave my alarm clock on the sofa, so that when it went off, I had no other choice than to get out of bed, go down a level, and turn it off. If my memory serves me right, I used to fling myself lithely out of bed and into mid-air, do a graceful twist so that I was facing the frame of my bed, reach out and grab it, swing towards the space between the bed (upper level) and the sofa (lower level), let go just as I was on the perfect trajectory to land softly in an upright seated position against the cushioned back of the sofa, and turn off my alarm just seconds after it had begun ringing. All of this was executed as a sort of learned reflex, so I would do it with my eyes closed, and even learned how to kick my blanket off in preparation for takeoff in a semi-conscious state as soon as I heard the first beep from my ...

I’ve just read an article by the BBC entitled ‘Russian alcohol consumption falls steeply’. According to a recent WHO survey, it fell by 43% from 2003 to 2016. Isn’t that mental? 43%! And it comes just as I was about to write an entry on Russian drinking culture. How thoughtful of them. I remember sitting in my neighbours’ kitchen a couple of days before I left for Krasnoyarsk, and being asked how I was planning on getting around the centrality of heavy drinking to Russian culture. I’d already been warned by friends (and professors) that not drinking wasn’t an option in Russia. Leaving a full bottle on a table, they said, is considered offensive. So if someone gets out a bottle of vodka, you’d better chug it before you leave or you might have some angry-ass Russians following you out. Now this may well have been the case in the Soviet Union, and even in the early days of the Russian Federation, but it seems to be the precise opposite case now. Much like beards (which are disappoi...