D4: Overview of Rus

The weekend is over and for some reason I think that time flies here in Moscow. It feels like I haven’t been here for long, but already I’ve done and seen so many things. I’m fairly comfortable on the metro now, and I’ve kind of figured out the Marshrutkas. Marshrutkas are little vans that follow the same route as the public transport bus. It costs between 20 and 25 rubles, depending on the ghetto-ness of the van, but either way it’s slightly less than a dollar per ride.
Transport chews up a lot of your day here. The metro is convenient but it takes me about an hour to an hour and a half to get anywhere in the city. It’s almost like it takes up the entire area from Dayton to Columbus, which may be more accurate than I realize.
Class is probably the worst part of the whole deal. It’s 4 hours I could spend doing other things and learning the language, not worrying about poetry or ancient history that I don’t care about, nor is relevant to Russian society these days.
Other than class, it feels like I’m constantly learning. Sometimes Ira (25 yrs old, daughter of host mom) will get to talking about Soviet things that she remembers, or current government corruption. It’s interesting to hear how bad things were, even though I would still say they are far from good.
To describe Russia, in total, is difficult. Try to imagine the bad part of Dayton OH, filled with college kids (or older people of roughly the same mentality), but 50 times bigger. There’s a whole Russian mentality of “if it’s not mine then I don’t care” which leads to a nearly rule-less society compared to America. For example, a lot of public things are broken because no one owns them except for the government, but the government doesn’t care if they don’t use it, so it just sits there broken. There’s a building near Ira’s apartment which used to be a big circular restaurant on top of an apartment complex, but it caught on fire and they don’t feel like rebuilding it.
There’s also a mentality of “whatever you do is your own fault.” For example, I went walking on a bridge the other day across one of the rivers in Moscow, and inside there were gaping areas where the steel supports were, but they weren’t roped off or anything and people were climbing over them (myself included) since it was easier walking on them than around. In America I could imagine just one idiot falling through the crack for the whole thing to be shut down and/or roped off. Here, if you fell, no one would care because apparently you were stupid and shouldn’t have been on it in the first place.
The language portion of the trip is coming along. Talking with Iulia is always difficult because of the extreme language barrier. She knows absolutely no English, so if I can’t explain something in Russian, I just have to stop trying to talk about it. Spending time with Ira is great because she introduces me to a lot of her Russian friends, and she speaks English perfectly since she studied at Oxford. Occasionally she’ll come to Iulia’s and sit with us and translate a few things so it’s not always so difficult. Iulia is the nicest person in the world, but it’s so difficult to communicate that I often find myself just sitting in my room if I’m not out doing other things.
Meeting Russian kids (?) my age is working out pretty well. It’s interesting to see the gap between Iulia’s generation and Ira’s. The young Russians are heavily Europeanized, while Iulia and Russians older than her are often what I would consider more traditional. That doesn’t mean that Ira and other >30 year old Russians aren’t Russian, because they very much are, they just have HDTVs, most of them have cars, their own flats, etc.
It’s also interesting to see Russians and their relationships. They have a lot of the same problems as Americans, as I’ve seen first hand already, but in a lot of ways they are extremely different. Public Displays of Affection, to throw back to 8th grade harassment talks, are extremely common here. Russians often are lying all over each other in the metro, kissing on escalators/benches/whatnot. They also make sure to stare at each other when they talk (even friends) which is still semi difficult for me. If you tap your fingers or look away while they are talking, they constantly ask you if you’re not interested and if they should just stop talking.
Russian women, even ones my age, are extremely hospitable when you’re inside their flat. They have all kinds of coffee/tea (an issue I’ll talk about shortly), snacks, and full meals ready to go. If something isn’t ready, they won’t hesitate making you a huge meal. Just the other night, I met a girl for the first time and she made Ira and me chicken with gravy and mashed potatoes and some kind of salad thing. In my opinion, a lot of girls, and American really people in general, seem to be more independent/concerned with themselves. Friends are also extremely offended if you attempt to pay for something. If you bring alcohol to a house, that’s normal and maybe even expected, but if you attempt to pay them for something you use or eat, they get pretty upset. On the same note, friends never exploit each other or expect hospitality, and always return any favors. In the area of hospitality and friendship, we could probably learn something from the Russians.
Concerning coffee and tea, well, it’s everywhere. Every Russian has one of those plug-in boiling pots. They drink a ton of tea (chai, but not the spiced kind, it’s just what they call any type) and coffee. The coffee is either from a French press, which is more old-school and not very common, or those instant-coffee ‘turds’ as one American student called them.
Russian kitchens are often very small. They have one or two pots, a pan, and that’s about it. They don’t have washing machines but are offended if you attempt to wash your own dishes. They often wash things out and put them right back on the stove. From a culture based around fast food, I’m still getting used to this time commitment every time I want to eat something. Aside, I did eat Subway today, and it was kind of gross.
Apart from their kitchen, Russians are very proud of their washing machines. Just the other night, I saw how impressed Ira was at her friends new clothes washing machine, and how proud the friend was. It’s almost like some kind of “I made it in the world” symbol. But don’t expect Russians to have a dryer, because even though my host mom has a washer, a BMW, 2 HDTVs, and a Dacha (summer house in the woods), she doesn’t have a dryer.
Speaking of BMWs, some Russians are crazy rich. They get there from exploiting the government in some way, it seems, then paying people off not to check up on them. An example would be creating a biomedicine research firm, then using government money to put in your pocket and keep inspectors away. After all, who really knows anything about Biomedicine that works for the government. I don’t understand why Russians buy cars though, because traffic is horrible. Russians call a traffic jam a “cork (пробка/probka)” and they are all over the city. There don’t appear to be many enforced rules on the road, and every Moscow traffic accident seems to be either just a ding or extremely horrific. I’ve already seen upside down cars (with a person in it trying to get out while the cops talked) and cars that more resembled accordians. Russian parking jobs are equally hilarious because there are no meters and no rules. They park on sidewalks most commonly, on the sides of streets, across streets, you name it. They often block one another in and I couldn’t begin to tell you how the first person would ever get out.
But that’s about it for now. I’m sure I could talk forever about these past 3 days, but I just wanted to get something down so you all could read it. There’s tons of funny stories still, but I wanted to give you an overview of what it’s like here. As far as stereotypes go: Americans drink more vodka than Russians, Russians do rarely smile and often will shove you out of the way if you’re not going fast enough, yes it looks like there’s random super models walking around and yes most Russian girls/women constantly dress up like slutted-out college girls, they do eat a lot of pickles and radishes, they are scared of even numbers of flowers, you can see the moon from here, and no they don’t have bears for pets.