The Walk Home

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 and see it for yourselves.

Title: Moon on Yenisei; artist: Theo Normanton; composition: accidentally pressed 'take picture' when trying to put phone away

For some reason which I just can’t get my head around, Tuesday night seems to be THE night in central Krasnoyarsk. The streets were teeming, and I saw loads of those people who are juuuuuust past young and leaning towards middle age who feel the need to dress ridiculously well on a night out and make themselves look like berks.

KFC was buzzing too. It seemed like everyone had the same idea as me, and who can blame them? It was Tuesday night after all. Treat yo’self. My chicken ‘stripsi’ (strips) took a good fifty seconds to arrive, and I was almost drooling by the time I picked them up and ran out onto the street like a… like a westerner with KFC:(

As I was devouring my fries and trying to decide whether barbecue or garlic is the sauce to rule all sauces, I saw a silhouette walking in the opposite direction to me. He was in the shade of the buildings along the side of the road, so I couldn’t be sure, but he seemed to have an assault rifle strapped across his back. I squinted. Every city has its quirks, but an assault rifle? That just seems excessive, even by artistic standards. I mean, if I were making this up, you’d probably say ‘oh Theo, stop being such a drama queen about Siberia, Russia can’t be all that different’. But I’m not making it up. At least, I don’t think my eyes were deceiving me. As he passed me by, I (very, very casually) turned my head in his direction and saw that he sure as hell had something very gun-ey strapped across his back. I turned my head s l o w l y  back towards the road ahead. After about ten seconds, a faint pain in my neck alerted me to the fact that I still hadn’t quite centred my head, as it were, and it was kind of stuck staring 45 degrees to the left of where my body was facing. I did my best to look flippant as I turned it another notch to the right.

But it’s hard eating fast food on the move, so I decided to stop at a comfy looking bench and eat them sitting down. Soon (when I only had four chicken stripsi left), a guy in a tattered jacket and big heavy boots, with hair even messier than mine came up and sat down next to me.

‘Do you mind?’  he asked. I considered getting up and eating the rest of my chicken on the way home, so as to avoid uncomfortable chat. That’s what the sensible, English Theo would do. But I’m in Russia, and I need every chance to hear and speak Russian that I can get. He tried to get me chatting, with very unsuccessful results. I think he thought I was really tough, because there’d be long pauses after every burst of speech, and I wouldn’t say anything, and then he’d look at me like ‘woah this guy only answers me when he feels like it’, but actually I just hadn’t registered that there’d been a question. We established that he was ok, I was ok, I liked KFC, and it was a cold day. Then we established that he wanted a beer, and that I didn’t have any money. Then he asked me if I had a ‘melochki’ and I told him I didn’t know what a ‘melochki’ was. After a little game of charades, involving gestures and fragments of words, we worked out that ‘melochki’ means petty cash. I shook my head, but offered him a chicken strip, which he took. Guess KFC is a universal language.

The railway bridge is always my favourite part of the walk home. The absence of buildings in the railway means that you get a clear view all the way down the line to the peaks in Stolby national park. If I run out of ideas for the blogs in the next few weeks, my game plan is to bombard you with pictures taken from the railway bridge. Heads up.