Heather Worley Living in St. Petersburg, Russia
Hi everyone -
This is the latest issue. Enjoy!
Heather:)
*******************
All right, last week.
Once again, my only Tuesday class was cancelled, due to PR week. Apparently
they needed our classroom for a conference meeting or something.
Wednesday I had class! Russian and then French. Yay!
Thursday I had a class, but the teacher seemed quite shocked to see six Americans
who want to translate texts into Russian simply materialize the fourth week
of school. I can't blame her.
Friday, I had my Russian class, and then our French teacher told us ten minutes
into class to go home in honor of International Women's Day, which was Monday.
This seems to make sense - after all, our class is 100% female. So, doing
the math, I had five "paras" (a para is two academic hours, which
is how long one class is here), which is ten academic hours, each of which is
40 minutes long (unlike the 50-minute academic hour in the US), plus ten minutes
of French - 410 minutes equals 6 hours and 50 minutes of class. I really
should complain about this to OU's Study Abroad Department. At least next
week I will be able to start on my written project. One of the fifth-year
students is doing some sort of linguisticky, Russian-English something-or-other,
and I'm going to be collaborating with her one it.
Tatyana Yurievna told us about a horn concert on Friday night. She said
it's a unique St. Petersburg tradition, and the tickets were only 100 rubles.
She has a friend who plays in the horn choir, so she was going and told us she
could meet us to show us where it is if we'd like to go. I decided to
go. I'm trying to spend as little time as possible in the house, which
is difficult when there really aren't any classes to go to and it's too cold
just to wander aimlessly about the city looking at parks and monuments and puddles.
Besides, there was a farewell party for the Belgians a block away that started
right after the concert would end.
The concert was enjoyable, but I can see why it's a uniquely St. Petersburg
phenomenon. There was an ensemble of 17 musicians (although there can
be up to 40) all playing either one or two horns (although only one at a time)
ranging in size from a kazoo to an alpenhorn (those things on the Ricola commercial).
Each horn plays one note, so the effect is like that of a bell choir.
They played marches and Russian folk tunes and classical pieces by composers
such as Mozart and Weber. Unfortunately, the room was very cold, so at
some moments the chords didn't quite blend due to the instruments going sharp.
The emcee was incredibly enthusiastic. In between pieces, while the musicians
were trading out one horn for another, she gave us some history of horn choirs,
along with some of her commentary. Horn choir music, before its recent
revival two years ago, hadn't been heard since the coronation of Nicholas II.
I don't recall the details, but they arose because some royal someone said,
"we need music," and some music director said, "okay," and
came up with the horn choir, and everyone thought it was really cool.
From then on, they were obligatory at big royal events. It then fell out
of style when the Communists came into power - too many capitalistic associations,
I suppose, besides which, it's a rather high-maintenance ensemble. And
they failed to recognize the inherent group-mindedness of a horn choir.
The emcee feels the horn choir is a great example of Russian collective spirit,
because each musician must forget about his ego and play with the group in one
voice. She talked about how it warms the heart and fills the Russian soul
with pride, etc., etc. Allison and I had a very difficult time not laughing,
but it's good we managed to hold it in. In this big, empty room there
were fewer than twenty people in the audience, and the echo would have been
rather frightening. It probably would have woken up the man in front of
us who fell asleep, too.
The emcee did tell a joke. In the olden times of horn choirs, each
musician played only one horn. Never two. And whatever note you
start out on is the one you play for the rest of your life. Two men who'd
seen each other at horn events ran into each other on the street, but never
having been introduced, they didn't know each other's names. The first
one simply said, "Hi, C#!" The second replies with, "Good
to see you, B flat!"
Okay, ne poluchilos'...so it wasn't a good joke, but it was much more entertaining
than the gushing, and it gave us a chance to release the pent-up laughter.
After that, Allison and I walked over to the university the Belgians attend
for the farewell party. We could only stay until 11:00, since that's their
visitor curfew, but it was fun nonetheless. I got to see Stijn bickering
with his girlfriend's sister - she'd gripe at him in Russian (even though he
theoretically doesn't speak a word of Russian), and he'd snap back in English.
I got to see the rest of the Belgians again, which was quite fun. I got
to speak Russian with a French girl.
At one point, Allison and I found ourselves in the middle of the room, which
is the worst place to be because you're always in someone's way. A guy
walking past bumped Allison and said, "Izvinite" (excuse me), so she
replied with "Nichego" (no problem), and then he said something to
her in French. She looked a bit lost, so he said in English, "Do
you speak French?" And she said, "No, but I speak English."
And he said, "Where are you from?" "America."
"Oh, I thought you were French." And then he continued on his
way. We don't even know where he was from...but it was rather amusing.
After all, why start with "izvinite" if you think someone's French?
The guy from my host mom's English class has been acting really weird lately.
My host mom has always said he's a "neobyknovennyi chelovek" (unusual
person) to explain some of his more bizarre behavior, e.g. his failure to show
up for five of his finals despite his obvious intelligence. He says he's
just too busy. One would think the draft deferment for students would
be incentive enough to find the time. I think he's just a flake.
Natalya's new explanation is that he must be a gypsy - smart, capable, but refusing
to be nailed down to anything, including his own education. Something
about his big brown eyes and general wildness. "His last name is
Vorontsov, a very old, very Russian name, but you never know...it seems to me
there must be some gypsy blood in there somewhere." I suppose this
is the stereotypical equivalent of our saying someone has "an Irish temper."
Anyway, to console me and occupy some of my free time, of which I have plenty,
she decided to introduce me to Spencer, an American studying at St. Petersburg
State and living with one of her friends. She told me his program is with
other foreigners, so he only hangs out with Americans, and he's out all night
basically every night. Then she called her friend and the two host moms
put us both on the phone. Unfortunately, he was sick, probably due to
all the partying, so I guess we'll have to wait to invite him over for tea.
She also thought she'd introduce to a botanist friend she has, but he's currently
in Moscow for some sort of botanical festival - magnolias or ferns, I forget
which.
Russian women seem really eager to marry me off. I really like the orange
marmalade rolls in the cafe at school, but for some reason I can never pronounce
"tsitrusovaya" (citrus) correctly when I want to order it. I
managed to on Friday, and the cafeteria lady said my Russian was really good.
I said maybe so, but I still need to improve a lot. She had the perfect
solution: "You can find a Russian man, and get married, and then move to
Russia, and then you'll have plenty of opportunities to learn." Ay
yi yi.
I'm not sure why so many Russians assume that because I want to learn Russian,
I want to be Russian. Maybe because there aren't too many foreigners who
really can speak Russian well, so they assume if you want to, you must have
a really personal reason, and what other personal reason can a 23-year-old girl
besides thinking that Russian men are really wonderful? After all, there
are Russian who women learn English so they can marry foreigners...
I know a lot of girls here who are dating guys they like but aren't particularly
taken with, but they'll stay with them as long as something better doesn't come
along. And they think this is normal. They don't necessarily tell
their boyfriends this, but among women it's sort of understood. Natalya
told me one time that it's better if the woman isn't in love with the guy; the
guy should be in love with her, that way she has the upper hand in the relationship.
That's one reason she was worried about her older daughter's marriage to the
Egyptian guy - she thought Alisa was too interested in him. This sounds
really sad, but honestly, the American fairy-tale approach to love is a lot
less practical, and are illusions like that really healthy? I know so
many girls my age who still think one day they will meet Prince Charming and
he will make everything wonderful. Not growing out of that just leads
to disappointment, but this other approach seems to me a bit too jaded.
However, maybe it makes sense in a country where a man is economically necessary
for survival and the man-to-woman ratio is perennially off-kilter. (If
Putin wants a population boom, he really should end the war in Chechnya.
Russia has had some major war, often on her own territory, basically every generation
for goodness knows how long.)
Sunday morning I went to church again for the first time in a very long time.
Every weekend for the last two months I have either been out of town (Spain,
and then Pskov) or sick. It was good to be back. I realize how much
more of the service I am understanding than I was in September. Now, I
only have problems with isolated words, whereas in September I still didn't
know the word "blagoslavit'" (bless), which comprises about fifty
percent of the prayers. There are some odd things about being in a doctrinally
equivalent environment in a different language. For example, she prayed
that people would be salt and light to the world around them, and it sounded
odd. I sometimes translate things I don't understand in my head to see
if I can dissect the metaphor, and in doing so I realized it was word-for-word
what we say, because it's straight from the New Testament. I guess we're
so used to hearing some phrases that we don't think about what they mean.
(Incidentally, I wonder how this metaphor works in Russian. The light
part makes sense - people here appreciate light, because it's so darn dark in
the winter. But Russians don't really put much salt on things. Not
even on potato chips. I ate at McDonald's, which cooks things according
to the American recipes, but I've gotten so used to lower-sodium foods since
I came here that after eating the fries I felt the top layer of my tongue had
been burned off with a blowtorch. Maybe they should retranslate that passage
as saying "dill and light," or "sour cream and light," since
that's what Russians flavor everything with.)
While listening to the sermon, I heard the pastor say, "Where your _______
is, there will your heart be also." In the blank was the word "sokroyische,"
which I'd never heard before, but since I knew the verse, I figured it probably
meant "treasure." I couldn't find it in the dictionary later
at home. And then I realized it was "sokrovische," which means
"treasure." Russians have a really weird tendency not to pronounce
"v" if it's in the middle of a word between two vowels. It's
like it's too much work or something. So, for instance, "pravilno"
(correct) is pronounced "praalno" more often than not.
In fact, Adrianne learned this word in Russia, not even aware that "pravilno"
is the real word, so when she said "praalno" in class and the teacher
corrected her pronunciation, she was really confused.
I've also noticed that, in most cases, you can with very little effort say an
entire sentence in Russian and not move your mouth. In fact, once I was
watching TV, and the character on screen was talking, but I thought it was an
off-screen character because he wasn't moving his lips at all. And then
I realized the person he was talking with was a woman, so it had to be him doing
the talking. Maybe this is why Russians are not too fascinated by ventriloquists
like we are...it's just not that hard.
After the service we all had tea and munchies to celebrate International Women's
Day , and then Allison, Sarah and I went to lunch with Elene, a girl from Switzerland
who is studying at a high school here. She knew little more than the alphabet
when she first came in August, and now she can communicate. She's one
of those Europeans who speaks about eight languages and has plans to learn more.
Allison and I went to find some shoes after lunch. Everything's on sale
right now. There was a sign in the store, "When returning or exchanging
shoes, please have your passport on you." Why they need this, I don't
know. But it seems that in Russia, you can't do anything without a passport.
You need them to pick up packages from the post office, change money, buy a
train ticket, etc. It's their universal identification, the way we use
driver's licenses. But to return shoes?
We also went to see a movie (sort of) last night. It was the Cannes Lion
Awards, given to creative advertising (TV commercials). It was really
interesting to see which commercials were popular with a Russian audience and
which ones weren't. Most of the car commercials didn't translate too well,
I suppose because Russia doesn't really have a car culture. The exception
was the Honda Accord commercial with the rat-trap series of tasks made
of car parts. The American Budweiser commercials didn't go over because
Russians don't really have an underlying "beer is a manly thing to drink"
assumption. None of the commercials with American football players were
popular. Other things that are sort of silly that we'd think are funny
didn't work either - for instance the French Nike commercial with a guy being
chased by a chicken. Allison and I laughed alone through that one.
The "got milk" commercial didn't work. It was a little kid following
his dad around and having premonitions, a take-off, I suppose, of The Sixth
Sense. He'd say, "don't cross the street" and then a streetlamp
would fall over, "Stop," and the bridge in front of them would collapse,
etc. The last scene, he says, "Don't eat the cake," and a minute
later the mom rushes into the room screaming "Nooo!" And then
you see that the milk carton is empty, so there's no milk to go with the cake.
In Russia, when you eat cake you drink alcohol or tea, or at kids'parties, maybe
something sweet (although kids here all drink amazing amounts of tea, too),
but not milk. I've never seen milk on a restaurant menu here. So
I don't think anyone even got it.
What did work? All the commercials in which the joke was based on either
sex or birth control. That seemed to translate well. I think the
best commercial by far, and judging from everyone else's laughter, they'd agree,
was a Belgian commercial, simply becauses the ending was so unexpected.
A man is grocery-shopping with his young son, who keeps putting candy in the
cart. The dad says no, the son puts it back in, the dad says no, the son
puts it back in, the dad says no, and then the son begins screaming and yelling
and running around and breaking jars, throwing supermarket displays across the
aisle. Meanwhile every customer in the store is staring at this man.
Then the screen blacks out, and a message appears: "Use condoms."
The NHL "hockey makes you tough" commercials, in which men who watch
hockey on TV are shown being able to endure increasingly painful ordeals as
the season progresses, were also very popular.
Also most of the ones involving soccer worked okay.
Monday was International Women's Day. It's a huge holiday - professionals
don't work, schools are closed. It's like Valentine's Day and Mother's
Day combined, except that men also have to honor their daughters and sisters
and co-workers and teachers and aunts and grandmothers and every other woman
they know, or else they are officially a cad. I don't know if it's actually
called "International" anymore - most things here just say "Happy
8th of March," "Happy Women's Day," or "Happy Spring Holiday."
It was a Soviet tradition, so they named everything based on the assumption
that communists everywhere were celebrating, and eventually, when the whole
world became communist, everyone would celebrate. I think the only non-ex-USSR
state that celebrates is some country in Africa - Angola or something.
My host family celebrated by having wine with lunch, and Evgeny did all the
cooking and the dishes.
I went out with Allison and Adrianne, and all over the city were couples out
taking a walk together, or men alone heading home with flowers and wine.
(What Lera told me about March 8 is funny. She said, "It's great.
All the men are drunk," and seeing my puzzled expression, quickly added,
" - with flowers!") Lines at the flower shops were a mile long,
and they were emptying out fast. On Srednii Prospekt on Vasilieskii Island,
three flower shops opened up last week just for March 8. At every metro
station and market were little babushkas selling mimozy - little, polleny, puff-ball-shaped
yellow flowers. Apparently they always bloom just in time for March 8th,
and at no other time of year. Some random guy we passed on the street
said, "S prazdnikom, devchyonki!" (Happy holiday, girls!)
The restaurant we ate at gave all the women customers free champagne.
And, like all holidays and weekends here, neither traffic nor public transport
was nastily crowded.
I commented to my host mother that it seems to us American students that Russians
have a lot of holidays. She said Russians say the same thing.
***************
Anything's possible in Russia. At least, that's what the Russians tell
me. Maybe they're right.
Some newspaper clippings:
"From the children's home - across the border.
The city ZAGS director Galina Bogdanova brings some interesting figures: in
the previous year foreigners adopted 481 Peterburg children, but Russians, only
423. More than any other country new parents were from America - 284.
Also adopting Petersburg children were 68 couples from Italy, 32 from France,
27 from Spain, 19 from Switzerland, and 17 from Finland."
This explains why I met so many people in Spain who told me they have a cousin/niece/coworker/friend
who'd adopted a Russian child. This bodes ill for Putin's hopes to increase
Russia's population.
"Some are married and some are - well...
There are always more married women than married men. This axiom was again
confirmed by the All-Russian Census, the final results of which became known
last week (see site www.perepis2002.ru). 50.13 million Russian women declared
they were married, but only 36.57 Russian men called themselves married."
First of all, I wonder why this is an axiom. Does this happen often?
Secondly, how is there a difference of 13.5 million marriages? Theoretically,
a man marries a woman, so for every married man there should be one married
woman, no more and no less. I'm trying to come up with creative solutions
for this discrepancy.
1) Bigamy. This is illegal in Russia, but maybe it happens. But
not so often, I would think.
2) Separations and engagements. The woman says they are still married,
because they have not technically divorced, but the man counts them as divorced
already because it's in the works or he plans on calling his lawyer tomorrow.
On the other side, the bride says she's already married, because she will be
by the time the census counters receive the form in the mail, but the groom
checks "single." Still...13 million?
3) Death. Maybe some widows are still counting themselves as married.
4) Mail-order brides. A woman is married to a man who does not fill out
the census, for example, to a man not holding Russian citizenship. There
are a lot of women who marry foreign men, but most of them leave Russia.
5) The Russian census takers bought all of Florida's old butterfly ballots,
and a lot of people got confused and checked the wrong box.
************
In other news...
Putin fired the prime minister. Everyone thought he would wait until
after the presidential elections, which are next Sunday, March 14. He
said he wanted the country to see how the new government would work before the
elections. (A bit arrogant, but really, no one else could possibly win.)
Some people think he did it to raise interest in the elections. If fewer
than 50% of the voting-age population votes, there has to be a second election,
and right now he has so little competition that everyone feels voting is a waste
of time. The doomsayers think he did it because he's autocratical, and
is hoping to consolidate power by putting in a politically weak new prime minister
he can control more easily. It is true that the new guy wasn't on anyone's
short list - in fact, he was the ambassador to Belgium or something random like
that. Others feel that Fradkov's distance from the Russian political scene
is an advantage - he has no ties or political debts to any of the current bad
guys, such as big business, the mafia, and Yeltsin's old cronies.
A lot of people complain about America's two-party system, but you have to admit
that it prevents situations like these, in which everyone thinks someone else
would be better, but can't agree on whom, so there are twelve candidates with
less than 6% each, and the one no one really wants doesn't even get 50% and
yet still wins. At least in our system of voting for president, if you
absolutely hate a particular candidate, voting against him is effective.
***************************************************************
Ty uvazhaesh' menja - pei! You respect me - drink!
Next Story: The "disappearance" of Russian culture. Back streets. Language.