Fyodor on Tour

The disaster day feels like it was a long time ago now. Maybe I’ve grown up a little bit since that momentous Friday. It was one of those days that was so exquisitely awful that it makes you think ‘at least all the other days of my life can only be better than this’. I’m not making a word of this up, how could I? It’s too ludicrous to be fiction. It started with a tour of a school. I’m still not sure how they managed to drag me into doing it. A month ago, Zuzana and I did a presentation in one of the more striving (see also ‘pushy’) schools in the city. The English teacher was very grateful to us for doing the presentation, and thanked us by taking us to see the headmaster. Now if I were to direct a gangster movie set in the heart of Siberia, and I cast this headmaster as the head honcho of a mafia/cartel/super scary crimey gang, I would definitely be criticised for overdoing the character. People would go ‘did you see that new gangster movie? I mean sure Marlon Brando was a bit...

The blog! The beautiful blog! I’ve neglected my blog, so bogged down am I in boring bureaucracy. Sorry about that... And also for neglecting the blog. I’ve got a lot to update you on. I mean I’m writing this in Armenia. How did I end up here? Well… … you’ll find out in like five blogs’ time but for now here’s some unrelated stuff. In theory, Krasnoyarsk is the ideal city to be based in if you want to travel around Russia a bit. Situated bang in the middle of the country, it’s only a couple of thousand kilometres from Novosibirsk, Lake Baikal, and the Altai mountains. And if you want to venture all the way to Vladivostok or St Petersburg, well, you’re already halfway there. But a thousand kilometres is actually rather a long way (whatever the Russians say), and getting to any of those places on the train would take you at least two days. Zuzana and I were fortunate enough to kick off our travels beyond Krasnoyarsk with a manageable, expenses-paid trip to the small town ...

Zuzana and I have been giving presentations in local schools, unis, and youth centres. Considering how few people here seem to have met foreigners, we figure it’s a good way to expose people to different cultures and the like. I was slightly caught off guard when a pensioners’ club sent me a message on VKontakte requesting a presentation on ‘social welfare and the lives of pensioners in Britain and Slovakia’. Apart from the obvious fact that a pensioners’ club very decidedly didn’t fit the target audience of schools, unis, and youth centres, there was the small problem that Zuzana and I know literally nothing about social welfare and the lives of pensioners in Britain and Slovakia. But how could I tell these people that? ‘Zuzana and I know literally nothing about social welfare and the lives of pensioners in Britain and Slovakia’, I wrote back after some careful thought. I received a response before I’d even closed the tab: ‘what’s your telephone number?’ Now in England this sor...

It wasn’t just any pumpkin. It was the heaviest, ugliest, most enormous, bulgy, orange horror show since America’s incumbent President. If we’d bought it at the farm shop next to my house back at home, we’d probably have walked away with a bill in the quadruple figures. Max and I had to cut the thing into four just to fit it into the family sized fridge/cupboard, where it took up every inch of space, forcing me to down the entire two litre carton of multifruit juice that I’d just bought. That multifruit juice was meant for breakfasts. It was one step too far. This meant war. I set myself the challenge of using the whole pumpkin in meals that week, and suddenly all hope of getting any work done over the next five days vanished before my eyes. Max suggested starting with a pumpkin kasha. Kasha is porridge. Normally we make it with buckwheat, but this time we experimented and tried wheat. Wheat porridge with bits of pumpkin in it. And, at Max’s insistence, a generous portion of sug...

Sunday was my last day with mum and dad. They flew home early on Monday morning. I was keen to fit in as much as possible, so I asked to meet them at their hotel early in the morning. We had a quick breakfast at my favourite cafe, and then I virtually dragged them onto the bus to Stolby. Although they’d found their way to the national park earlier that week, I was really keen to show them certain viewpoints before they left, and those viewpoints were about a two-hour walk from the entrance to the park. Mum and dad did a very admirable job of not moaning as we practically jogged up into the hills and then I proceeded to get lost in a poorly planned attempt at a shortcut. The only good thing that came of this was we found a rock formation under which the Krasnoyarsk Bolsheviks had their secret meetings before the Revolution, and I also got to show mum and dad my new party trick of getting birds to land on my hand. After re-tracing our steps all the way back to the first ‘stolb’, I cha...

On Saturday evening, the museum next to my office stayed open all night. This happens once a year to mark… well, nothing in particular as far as I can tell. The night also had a theme – ‘negotiators’. Let’s just say it wasn’t an un-confusing night. INTERRA was asked to organise an ‘event’ as part of the museum night, which had to be in line with the theme. So Zuzana and I sat down together and brainstormed, and here’s what we came up with:            Brexit            Hostages            Haggling (Krasnoyarsk’s Chinese market?)            The Apprentice            Charades As much as we’d have loved to have made a game out of Brexit, we felt like that had already been done by British MPs, so we decided to work with the charades theme in the end. Our idea was to send all the groups who came to our ‘event’ to o...

Yesterday I moved house. To say it was a nightmare would be a gross understatement. Packing was easy, it lulled me into a false sense of security. Mum and dad lent me their suitcase, so I didn’t have to individually roll every item of clothing into tight cylinders and compress them into my suitcases as I had on the way here. I even had some space left over in the third suitcase, which I blithely filled with the watercolour painting which some randomer generously gifted me in a bar a few weeks ago. Encouraged by this minor and totally needless success, I decided to try to cram all the non-perishables in the kitchen into a strong plastic bag and bring them as well. And some perishables too… So, at exactly the time I told Kiril to drop by and pick me up, I was ready with three suitcases, a rucksack, and a plastic bag, all full to bursting. I gave Aygul my address in England so that she can write to me when she moves to Poland, gave her a hug, and then breezed out the door. Actually...