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Dear Russia,
I write to you today as a concerned lover of music. Whilst I am by no means a fan of Michael Jackson, even I hate what you've done to Billy Jean. I won't go into the club remixes of Numb and Boulevard of Broken Dreams because it makes me too angry. So, on behalf of music fans everywhere, stop it. Now.
Regards
Paul x
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Sorry, had to get that off my chest. Anyway, I realise I've been pretty bad at this whole blogging lark. It's a good thing I have no intention of making a career out of it.
Since I last wrote a piece, quite a lot has happened, not least significant of which is the fact that the snow has melted and spring has well and truly sprung. It's quite warm at the moment. (Despite this, the Russians insist on walking round in jumpers and coats.) It snowed pretty regularly up until the end of April, and it even snowed on my birthday. I also got pelted by horizontal rain that day. Russian weather is weird.
I've also had two reading weeks, during which I've been to St. Petersburg, Moscow (twice), Kazan and Nizhny Novgorod. I loved St. Petersburg. I didn't really like Moscow - don't get me wrong, it's a nice city, it's just a bit busy and expensive for my liking. Also, the buildings are hideous. I wasn't in Nizhny Novgorod long enough to really form an impression, but it seemed nice enough. Kazan is definitely my favourite place in Russia. The people there were (for the most part) really friendly, the food was nice and the weather was beautiful. I think it's fair to say the weather certainly helped with my assessment of the city. I'd speak more about the reading weeks, but it would take too long and I can't be bothered.
While we're on the topic of travelling, I will take the time to mention sleeper trains. In principle, they're a good idea. You can get on a train from Yaroslavl at about half ten in the evening and rock up in St. Petersburg at about midday the next day. Superb. Just don't expect much for your money. The beds, or shelves in Russian, are pretty basic. You get given a roll-up mattress and a pillow, some bed linen and a blanket. On our first journey, we caused the woman sat in the window bed a great deal of amusement as we tried, unsuccessfully, to make the beds. In the end, she offered her help and made the beds for us. If you're expecting to get much sleep, you will probably be disappointed. The trains are noisy and rock about in the night, meaning you get woken up fairly frequently, occasionally after dreams about earthquakes. If you're tall, you will be forced to sleep either with your legs hanging out of the end of the bed or in an uncomfortable curled-up position. If you're in the top bunk, you're probably in a better position for sticking your legs out of the end of the bed (as long as you're not on the window bed), but you'll have to go through the humiliation of trying to figure out how on earth you get up there first. Still, the trains get you where you want to go eventually, so I can't complain too much I suppose.
Today is 15 May, which means I have only 5 days of my year abroad left. Scary. Part of me wishes I had signed up for the 18 week course because I feel like I'm just getting in to the swing of things, and the extra five weeks would only help my Russian. The other, significantly larger part of me is rather relieved to be able to get back to England where food is normal, you don't need to worry about the aspect or prefixes of your verbs of motion and where my family is. On the subject of food, you'll be lucky to get anything that isn't buried under any combination of dill, salt, sour creme or oil.
So, what have I thought of Russia? Well, I wouldn't want to live here permanently. I didn't like the place to start with because of the weather. It was cold all the time, the weather was miserable and so were the average people on the street. As it started warming up, so did peoples' temperaments and my attitude towards the city. Yaroslavl is not a bad place to live by any means. It is, however, a little boring. If you're a fan of churches, you're laughing. The place is full of them. If, however, you find that after the first two or three churches it is intensely dull looking at slightly different buildings, all you're left with is the bars, coffee shops and partaking in the ancient Russian past-time of gulyating, or going for a stroll. All of that is fine, but even that gets dull after a while. That's not to say I dislike Yaroslavl. It's in a decent location for casual tourism during the reading weeks, eating out is relatively cheap and the people are happy to let you practice your Russian on them. It's just a little boring.
Anyway, I'm sure there's more I could write, but I'm going to leave it there because I'm bored of writing. I will hopefully be seeing some of you soon, so you can ask me more about Russia then.
Tschau
Sunday, May 15, 2011
Monday, March 14, 2011
Crossing Russian Roads: A Guide
Crossing the road in Russia can be a confusing and, at times, terrifying ordeal for foreigners. Most of this confusion and terror is misplaced, and can be easily dispelled by following my simple guide.
Step 1: Identify the type of road you are attempting to cross.
There are two types of road to cross; those with traffic lights and those without. Those without traffic lights are identified by a sign depicting a man crossing the road and white lines on the road. Those with traffic lights can be most easily identified by the lack of a sign. If you are attempting to cross a road with a traffic light, go to step 2. If you are attempting to cross a road without a traffic light, go to step 4.
Step 2: Identify the colour of the light.
There are two types of traffic light; the classic red man/green man combo, and; the red/amber/green combo usually reserved for drivers. Once you have identified the colour of the light, go to step 3.
Step 3: Waiting and crossing the road.
If the light (sometimes this resembles the shape of a human, sometimes it is a circular lamp) is red, you should wait, not cross as it is technically illegal and carries a fine (and it's dangerous, etc.). You'll find many Russians do anyway, so long as there aren't any cars and the police aren't about. If the light is green, you're good to go, and you can cross the road. Some traffic lights have a helpful countdown indicating the amount of time you have left to cross the road. On those that don't, either the green man will start moving quicker, or the light will blink at you when you have three seconds remaining. Once you have completed this step, go to step 5.
(Please note that drivers in Russia are not the best at observing red lights, and will probably go if no pedestrians are crossing.)
Step 4: Choose your method of crossing.
At a pedestrian crossing without traffic lights, you have two options;
1) Look in both directions, cross and pray any oncoming vehicles see you and stop (which they usually do).
2) Wait for a Russian to come along and cross with them.
Russians usually employ option 1. If the road is busy, they usually employ a variation on option 2, and wait for a large group of people to assemble so that oncoming drivers have no choice but to stop. Once you have chosen your method of crossing (my choice varies from day to day), it is advisable to look both ways and cross before you change your mind or your crossing partner (who is often unaware of his/her role in this) has gone. Once you have completed this step, go to step 5.
Step 5: CONGRATULATIONS! You have now successfully crossed the road. I hope you found this guide helpful.
Step 1: Identify the type of road you are attempting to cross.
There are two types of road to cross; those with traffic lights and those without. Those without traffic lights are identified by a sign depicting a man crossing the road and white lines on the road. Those with traffic lights can be most easily identified by the lack of a sign. If you are attempting to cross a road with a traffic light, go to step 2. If you are attempting to cross a road without a traffic light, go to step 4.
Step 2: Identify the colour of the light.
There are two types of traffic light; the classic red man/green man combo, and; the red/amber/green combo usually reserved for drivers. Once you have identified the colour of the light, go to step 3.
Step 3: Waiting and crossing the road.
If the light (sometimes this resembles the shape of a human, sometimes it is a circular lamp) is red, you should wait, not cross as it is technically illegal and carries a fine (and it's dangerous, etc.). You'll find many Russians do anyway, so long as there aren't any cars and the police aren't about. If the light is green, you're good to go, and you can cross the road. Some traffic lights have a helpful countdown indicating the amount of time you have left to cross the road. On those that don't, either the green man will start moving quicker, or the light will blink at you when you have three seconds remaining. Once you have completed this step, go to step 5.
(Please note that drivers in Russia are not the best at observing red lights, and will probably go if no pedestrians are crossing.)
Step 4: Choose your method of crossing.
At a pedestrian crossing without traffic lights, you have two options;
1) Look in both directions, cross and pray any oncoming vehicles see you and stop (which they usually do).
2) Wait for a Russian to come along and cross with them.
Russians usually employ option 1. If the road is busy, they usually employ a variation on option 2, and wait for a large group of people to assemble so that oncoming drivers have no choice but to stop. Once you have chosen your method of crossing (my choice varies from day to day), it is advisable to look both ways and cross before you change your mind or your crossing partner (who is often unaware of his/her role in this) has gone. Once you have completed this step, go to step 5.
Step 5: CONGRATULATIONS! You have now successfully crossed the road. I hope you found this guide helpful.
Tuesday, March 1, 2011
How do you say "how do you say that in Russian?" in Russian?
I am now 7 days in to my 88-day stay in Russia (not that I'm counting), and I can honestly say they have been some of the most bewildering days of my entire life.
My khozyaika (the woman I'm staying with), Elya, and her husband, whose name I think is Valerya, are really nice but absolutely mental. I don't speak to the husband very often, but when I do, it's usually about ice hockey or football. I speak to Elya quite a lot. Or at least I try to. My Russian is pretty crap at this stage. Elya is fully aware of this, so she is employing the time-honoured method of speaking slowly, loudly and with lots of ridiculous and unhelpful mimes in an effort to make me understand. I'm employing the far more successful method of using a dictionary. This makes conversations far longer than necessary and probably a lot less entertaining to the neutral observer, but it works. Regardless, it's still been very frustrating. My target is to be able to conduct reasonable conversations with Elya (and indeed any Russian) by the time I leave.
My room is better than I thought it'd be. It's reasonably big and very warm. I have one of the fabled sofa beds, a desk and a TV. I can't understand most of what goes on, but I enjoy it simply for the fact that one of the channels seems to carry a lot of English football. Last week, I saw Arsenal v Stoke (well, I saw the first half and fell asleep at half time), I'm watching Chelsea v Man United as I type, and I've just seen an advert for Arsenal v Leyton Orient tomorrow. They were supposed to have the Carling Cup Final on Sunday, but they had ice hockey instead. I was annoyed at first, but I've since decided it was probably a blessing.
The food has been... different. It's been nice, for sure. One of my favourite dishes so far has been blini - or pancakes. Just amazing. I also like them because the word on its own can also be an exclamation similar to 'OH SHugar!' Russian food will definitely take some getting used to, though. I'm already looking forward to a bacon sandwich on 20th May.
So, one thing I was asked a lot before I left was "where exactly is it you're going?" Well, I'm in a city called Yaroslavl. It was founded in 1010 by a prince named Yaroslav who killed a bear with a poleaxe. True story. I wanted to publish a map with this, but my МТС dongle is arsing around and won't let me zoom the map out far enough for it to mean anything to anyone. So you'll have to do a Google Maps search yourselves. So, what's it like? It's nice. It's very cold but it's nice. My concern is what will happen when the ice starts melting - more specifically, my concern is that it will freeze again and I'll be forced to attempt to walk on sheet ice. That will not go down well. Those of you who have experienced my sense of direction will not be surprised to hear that I have very little idea of where anything is. I'll probably have it all figured out in approximately 82 days.
The course has been pretty good so far. The oral lessons have been great so far because the teacher has been fun to talk to - whereas Liudmila extracts information from you, Larissa gives you a topic and just lets you talk. I'm not so keen on translation or mass media at the moment, as both lessons just seem to involve being spoken at and attempting to digest the information thrown at me. Critical reading seems like it will be fun. We haven't had a grammar lesson yet, but I imagine they'll be a right bundle of laughs.
Finally, how am I doing? Well, I'm fluctuating between being completely at peace with the world and feeling totally and utterly overwhelmed. I've lost count of the number of times I've considered hopping on the next train to Moscow and flying home. But I'm going to stick it out because I know I'll regret it if I don't, and I figure it'll be a right arseache to sort out anyway.
So yeah, that's my two kopecks for now. There will doubtless be future updates.
Poka!
My khozyaika (the woman I'm staying with), Elya, and her husband, whose name I think is Valerya, are really nice but absolutely mental. I don't speak to the husband very often, but when I do, it's usually about ice hockey or football. I speak to Elya quite a lot. Or at least I try to. My Russian is pretty crap at this stage. Elya is fully aware of this, so she is employing the time-honoured method of speaking slowly, loudly and with lots of ridiculous and unhelpful mimes in an effort to make me understand. I'm employing the far more successful method of using a dictionary. This makes conversations far longer than necessary and probably a lot less entertaining to the neutral observer, but it works. Regardless, it's still been very frustrating. My target is to be able to conduct reasonable conversations with Elya (and indeed any Russian) by the time I leave.
My room is better than I thought it'd be. It's reasonably big and very warm. I have one of the fabled sofa beds, a desk and a TV. I can't understand most of what goes on, but I enjoy it simply for the fact that one of the channels seems to carry a lot of English football. Last week, I saw Arsenal v Stoke (well, I saw the first half and fell asleep at half time), I'm watching Chelsea v Man United as I type, and I've just seen an advert for Arsenal v Leyton Orient tomorrow. They were supposed to have the Carling Cup Final on Sunday, but they had ice hockey instead. I was annoyed at first, but I've since decided it was probably a blessing.
The food has been... different. It's been nice, for sure. One of my favourite dishes so far has been blini - or pancakes. Just amazing. I also like them because the word on its own can also be an exclamation similar to 'OH SHugar!' Russian food will definitely take some getting used to, though. I'm already looking forward to a bacon sandwich on 20th May.
So, one thing I was asked a lot before I left was "where exactly is it you're going?" Well, I'm in a city called Yaroslavl. It was founded in 1010 by a prince named Yaroslav who killed a bear with a poleaxe. True story. I wanted to publish a map with this, but my МТС dongle is arsing around and won't let me zoom the map out far enough for it to mean anything to anyone. So you'll have to do a Google Maps search yourselves. So, what's it like? It's nice. It's very cold but it's nice. My concern is what will happen when the ice starts melting - more specifically, my concern is that it will freeze again and I'll be forced to attempt to walk on sheet ice. That will not go down well. Those of you who have experienced my sense of direction will not be surprised to hear that I have very little idea of where anything is. I'll probably have it all figured out in approximately 82 days.
The course has been pretty good so far. The oral lessons have been great so far because the teacher has been fun to talk to - whereas Liudmila extracts information from you, Larissa gives you a topic and just lets you talk. I'm not so keen on translation or mass media at the moment, as both lessons just seem to involve being spoken at and attempting to digest the information thrown at me. Critical reading seems like it will be fun. We haven't had a grammar lesson yet, but I imagine they'll be a right bundle of laughs.
Finally, how am I doing? Well, I'm fluctuating between being completely at peace with the world and feeling totally and utterly overwhelmed. I've lost count of the number of times I've considered hopping on the next train to Moscow and flying home. But I'm going to stick it out because I know I'll regret it if I don't, and I figure it'll be a right arseache to sort out anyway.
So yeah, that's my two kopecks for now. There will doubtless be future updates.
Poka!
Friday, January 28, 2011
*points at the word 'cat'* "So, what does this say? Antonia?" "Ket?"
Only German children can sound like they're offering you horse tranquilizer while talking about felines.
I'm really sorry I've been so crap at updating this. I can more or less guarantee I'll be doing this regularly again at the start of my stint in Russia.
On a similar note, as you may or may not be aware, I'm nearing the end of my time here in Dresden. I only have a few weeks left before I go home for a quick turn around and head off again. Although that turn around is going to be quicker than I'd like as my flight to Moscow is at 9.30 in the morning. This means I'm either going to have to stay in the night in London, or I'm going to have to talk my dad into driving me to the airport at ridiculous o'clock in the morning. Either way, it's not particularly ideal. But never mind.
School hasn't actually been that bad in recent weeks. I've even started enjoying myself in some lessons. The two 3. Klasse and 4. Klasse groups are fine, the former being better than the latter. The problem for me has been the LAS groups. In Germany (or this school, at least), kids who end their second year with low scores in one or both of German or Maths have to take the third year over two years. On the few occasions I've been with 3/2a, they've been fine. 3/2b have their moments. Sometimes, they're brilliant. Sometimes they really aren't. Recently, they've been okay as the two 3/2 groups have been shoved together for a few weeks so the two tutors can cover another teacher.
Unfortunately, 3/1 haven't been all that much fun. One group has different kids in it every week as the remedial classes clash with English. This means that we end up having to run over old ground by either repeating a lesson or explaining a concept to a kid who missed the last lesson. The other group is pretty consistent, but they're horrible. One kid has behavioural issues, and the other kids seek to exploit this as much as possible by winding him up something rotten. Well on Tuesday, the kid snapped; he threw his pencil case at another kid, burst into tears and started screaming a series of expletives. That wasn't all that much fun, to be honest. So yeah, I really pretty strongly dislike working with the LAS. Fortunately, collectively they take up only a third of my time.
I'm going to miss Dresden. It's actually a really nice city. My German has improved so much just because I've had to use it every day. When I first got here, if someone spoke to me, I would stare blankly at them, now I just answer. Usually with 'wie bitte?', but it's still an answer.
I'm going to leave it there. There are so many things that have happened that I haven't written about simply because it would take too long and, frankly, I can't be bothered. No doubt these stories will surface at some point when I get back to Sheffield. Speaking of Sheffield, I do want to get back to see everyone before I go to Russia. We'll see what happens with that.
Tschüßi
I'm really sorry I've been so crap at updating this. I can more or less guarantee I'll be doing this regularly again at the start of my stint in Russia.
On a similar note, as you may or may not be aware, I'm nearing the end of my time here in Dresden. I only have a few weeks left before I go home for a quick turn around and head off again. Although that turn around is going to be quicker than I'd like as my flight to Moscow is at 9.30 in the morning. This means I'm either going to have to stay in the night in London, or I'm going to have to talk my dad into driving me to the airport at ridiculous o'clock in the morning. Either way, it's not particularly ideal. But never mind.
School hasn't actually been that bad in recent weeks. I've even started enjoying myself in some lessons. The two 3. Klasse and 4. Klasse groups are fine, the former being better than the latter. The problem for me has been the LAS groups. In Germany (or this school, at least), kids who end their second year with low scores in one or both of German or Maths have to take the third year over two years. On the few occasions I've been with 3/2a, they've been fine. 3/2b have their moments. Sometimes, they're brilliant. Sometimes they really aren't. Recently, they've been okay as the two 3/2 groups have been shoved together for a few weeks so the two tutors can cover another teacher.
Unfortunately, 3/1 haven't been all that much fun. One group has different kids in it every week as the remedial classes clash with English. This means that we end up having to run over old ground by either repeating a lesson or explaining a concept to a kid who missed the last lesson. The other group is pretty consistent, but they're horrible. One kid has behavioural issues, and the other kids seek to exploit this as much as possible by winding him up something rotten. Well on Tuesday, the kid snapped; he threw his pencil case at another kid, burst into tears and started screaming a series of expletives. That wasn't all that much fun, to be honest. So yeah, I really pretty strongly dislike working with the LAS. Fortunately, collectively they take up only a third of my time.
I'm going to miss Dresden. It's actually a really nice city. My German has improved so much just because I've had to use it every day. When I first got here, if someone spoke to me, I would stare blankly at them, now I just answer. Usually with 'wie bitte?', but it's still an answer.
I'm going to leave it there. There are so many things that have happened that I haven't written about simply because it would take too long and, frankly, I can't be bothered. No doubt these stories will surface at some point when I get back to Sheffield. Speaking of Sheffield, I do want to get back to see everyone before I go to Russia. We'll see what happens with that.
Tschüßi
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