Heather Worley Living in St. Petersburg, Russia
Khristos Voskres! (Christ is risen!) (Russian Orthodox Easter is
the same day as Western Easter this year...)
I actually wrote all of this last week and just never got around to going to
the internet cafe as I'd said I would. I also never really got around
to doing homework. But I had a lot of fun. :) Roma's mom invited
us over for home-made pelmeni Monday night, and we sat around and chatted and
watched home videos together. Tuesday I dropped in to Anton at work, and
we compared "free" countries. Wednesday night I actually did
homework, and then a group of us attempted to go roller-blading in the park,
but we were so late that the rental place was already closed. Thursday
night I went out with Anton, Ksusha, and Bormatukha (his real name is Zhenya).
We drove around in Ksusha's car until 4 a.m., stopping every once in a while
by a river to sit down for a while and chat. (I still haven't figured
out why they were so drawn to the river - it's really cold there at night!)
Anton also gave me an insider's tour of the soccer stadium, because half his
family works there, in various capacities.
Friday night, Heidi left for Moscow, and we all took her to the train station.
It was chaotic, of course. She was still out with Roma when the driver
came by to pick her up, Anton and Ksusha's car had broken down so after missing
their meeting time with Heidi and Roman they were in a panic that they wouldn't
make it on time to see her before she left, and of course Roma had let his cell
phone time run out so no one could get hold of them. However, it all worked
out in the end, everyone found each other, and Heidi made the train on time
with all of her stuff. The craziness has its benefits - it keeps you distracted
long enough that you don't drag out a long goodbye.
I spent this weekend at the dacha again. We went with Vitya, Roma's boss.
I met his twin brother, Yura, last week at the party, so now I'm having trouble
keeping straight what I've discussed with whom. But I do remember a particular
conversation I had with Vitya Saturday night. He asked us if we have Russian
banyas in America. I said no, but there are saunas. (In the Russian
mind, there are Russian banyas and there are Finnish saunas - the difference
being that a sauna is dry heat and a banya is wet heat and also much more fun.)
He wanted to know if they were private or public, and I said usually public.
And then he said, "Really, you don't have banyas?" I said no.
And then he said, "Dikie lyudi," (wild people) while shaking his head.
I wasn't sure if he meant them for having a banya or us for not having one,
so I said, "Us or you?" He laughed, and then I remembered that
that's how Russians often describe themselves to foreigners who've witnessed
Russian merry-making. :) After that we talked about the role of the Russian
Orthodox Church in politics, and the democracy and free market that we hope
will arise in Russia.
I also tried snow-boarding for the first time Saturday afternoon. The
weather wasn't so great, and we got there kinda late, but it was fun.
I'm eager to try again sometime. Yura told me he thinks it's easier than
skiing, which I think is funny - everyone in America says exactly the opposite,
and we also have a stereotype that it's for teenage punks, not middle-class,
middle-age entrepreneurs. (He and Vitya run an advertising business in
SPB.)
I slept too late Sunday to join in on the egg-dyeing, but I made the soccer
game. After that everyone just relaxed, and then we headed back to the
city. Vitya fixed a fabulous dinner and then drove us home. I took
a long bath to wash off all the dirt from the country, and then I went to bed.
All in all, it was a great weekend.
What follows is what I wrote last week. Again, my apologies for taking
so long with this! And for the resultant non-chronologicity (is that a
word?) of the whole thing.
Love to all -
Heather:)
*****
The Dacha. Time is on my side. It's a Free Country.
I spent the weekend at the dacha with Roman and his friends, and it was just
beyond fabulous. Roman and I waited until Heidi got off work to leave.
The three of us rode the train together. We played cards; he beat us at
BS, and we beat him at Durak. We drank beer and chatted for a couple hours.
It was great.
When we got there, they'd already gotten everything ready for a huge party for
Kostya's parents. They both had birthdays this week, although this was
for the dad's birthday. There were over thirty people there. His
dad, Seryozha, told me they were all old friends from over 25 years before.
They all used to go rock-climbing together. Upstairs there was a long
table set out with at least twelve bottles of alcohol, eight huge pots of cold
salads, home-made pickles and mushrooms, sausages, and various other goodies.
We ate, toasted, and then the games started. Roman was game leader.
They did a Mad Lib sort of thing; they did some kind of alliteration word game
everyone was to drunk to continue; there was one of those games where lines
from songs supposedly express some subconscious attitudes; one game everyone
had to compliment a physical feature of the person sitting to their right, and
then in round two you had to kiss whatever you'd complimented. I embarassed
Roman by complimenting his shoulders. This drew a lot of "opa!"s
(it's not just the Greeks who say it!), he blushed, and then all the middle-aged
women advised him to stand taller and show them off more. Also funny was
Buz, who complimented his older brother Kostya's teeth to be funny (he's missing
a front tooth). After they played Forfeits - everyone puts in an item,
and then when your item is drawn, you do whatever the leader says. I danced
a tango with Natasha (Seryozha's wife). At this point, the organized activities
were breaking down, so the guitar came out, people just chatted, and then started
to go home.
At several points during the party, Seryozha tried to have a serious discussion
with me about what I should take away from this experience. Our conversation
was hampered by his drunkenness and his unsurety as to my language skills (he
asked about every three minutes if I understood what he was saying). He
kept asking how much I know about Russia, and told me I shouldn't listen to
the young people because they have weird ideas, and many times told me not to
think Russians are "wild." That's all I could really get out
of it. The rest of it was rather focus-less. Then one of the ladies
told him to leave me alone and she started a story about a Englishman that stayed
with their family a long time ago, and that was interrupted by Roma calling
me downstairs.
Actually, this has happened to me at every party I've been to here - at some
point, the host, rather drunk, attempts to have a serious philosophical conversation
that could easily be titled, "What you should know about Russia today."
All the women tell him not to harass me, he insists he's not harassing and this
is very important. And I never really understand what it is they're getting
at, although I can understand what they're saying. And then the hostess
gets drunk enough that she's no longer embarassed to test out her English, which
is always perfectly understandable although she will insist that it's just horrible.
Downstairs, all the women were trying to tend to Heidi's ailing stomach, among
other things. While we went out to the lake to drive around on the ice
(seriously), she played backgammon with the older men (and won the game with
a double sixes, by the way!), and looked at the old B&W pictures of camping
trips they were passing around. After our drive on the lake, we saw the
headlights for the other car, so we hid in the dark and then Kostya tailgated
them and flipped on his lights to freak them out.
It was Anton, Ksusha, and Andrei arriving from the city, and we started a separate
young people party in the entry room on the first floor. Heidi was kinda
tired, but she didn't want to go lie down by herself, so we bundled her up,
set her down in a chair, and she dozed while we hung out. (We took her
to bed after the charades game.) We played charades, and then a game in
which everyone takes a puff from a cigarette and then passes it on, trying not
to break the ash, and then the loser has to do some sort of dare, all of which
involved wearing your pants around your knees, oddly enough. Then we played
spin the bottle, and then to the banya. We were in the banya until
6:45. At one point a conversation about Freud got started, from there
to a discussion of "what is normal," and then everyone decided they'd
had enough and we left.
When we came in, one of the older men was asleep in the banya, and he stayed
there the whole time. I thought we should wake him up...it seems irresponsible
to leave someone in that much heat for an extended period of time, even if,
as they said, "he will do what he wants to do." But oh well.
Heidi and I slept in a neighbor's house (one of the sisters of the hostess,
Natasha). I laid down to sleep at seven, and Heidi and I woke up at 11:00.
We went to the other dacha for some chai and buterbrod, but neither of us really
wanted to eat much. We basked in the sun for a while, and then both took
naps. I woke up around 4:30, just in time for a soccer game. Everyone
played - moms and dads and kids.
Afterwards, we went back to the dacha, ate a bit, and began to pack. As
I rode back I thought a lot about Russian friendships - these people have been
friends forever, and even though they're all middle-aged, they had a great party
and stayed up half the night having fun with old friends. Adults in Russia
never grow out of having fun, which I think is great. Roma actually told
me that you could invite any of those adults to a disco and they'd dance and
it would be great fun for everyone. And Russians are big on making their
own fun - they play instruments, do parlor games or board games, go for a walk
or even just talk with people. It's really genuine memory-making all the
way. And I know all the kids my age, in twenty years, will be hanging
out with each other at their dachas, with their kids, doing the same things
their parents are doing now. If I had to compare it to an experience I've
had in America, it could only be Thanksgiving Day and a family reunion all together.
***
Okay, now, putting the horse after the cart, I will talk about the week before
and how I met all these people. On Wednesday of this week one of Natalya's
former American students, Heidi, came to stay with us. She just had a
big conference in Moscow and is now in Saint-Petersburg to make connections
with these people and to meet up with old friends from when she studied here.
She and Roma were really good friends when she was here. Natalya introduced
them (he was in her English class), and then Roma introduced Heidi to all of
his friends that he hangs out with on a regular basis.
Thursday afternoon, Heidi and I went to Roma's house and hung out with him and
Anton. It was good fun. They showed us some videos Roma and Andrei
had made. Roma is a surprisingly good actor. He played the two or
three characters in the movie, and all really well. It struck me when
watching these how modest he is (skromnyi, to use the Russian word). Most
drama people in America, when hanging out with other people, try to be the funniest
one in the group, or make the smartest comment, or say it more dramatically,
or even just be louder; in short, anything to be the center of attention.
It's really annoying to hang out with an entire group of drama people, because
they're all like that, so the conversation, rather than being relaxing, has
the air of a neck-and-neck contest. It's draining. When they're
the only one in the group who wants to be the center of attention, it's fine
as long as everyone else is uninspired enough to let them control the flow of
the conversation, but otherwise they're kind of obnoxious. And he's not
like that at all, although he is definitely a spazz.
They also showed us a video of Roma's birthday party, which was also at the
dacha. They divided everyone into three groups, and each group had to
re-tell the story of the three little pigs: one through opera, one through a
play, and one through ballet. It was incredibly to see how creative the
plays were, and how everyone participated and had a lot of fun.
One thing Heidi pointed out to me is that the home video thing is a really Russian
thing to do. In America, it's the stereotypical joke of a boring host
- the person who dragged out their vacation slides - but Russians almost
without fail bring out the pictures or VHS cassettes whenever they have guests
over. I actually think it's really fun.
*****
Who would have thought that time is culturally defined? This was something
I'd forgotten about. I always thought morning meant "before noon,"
and then after that came noon, afternoon, evening, night, midnight, and then
morning again. It's not really that simple.
One day, Allison's host sister told her that she slept really late - until "dvukh
chasov utra." Literally, this translates as "until two o'clock
in the morning." Allison thought, "Geez, that's not really that
late. That's actually really early to me." But her host sister
counts everything that before 3 p.m. as "utro" (morning), and apparently
you can do that here.
I think it's because Russian language doesn't have a word that means "afternoon."
Afternoon in English is pretty strictly defined - afternoon comes after noon.
Russian has utrom (in the morning), dnyom (in the daytime), vecherom (in the
evening) and nochyu (at night). You can also say noon and midnight if
you want, but people here don't really use it that much. And the a.m./p.m.
distinction is completely useless. In fact, I noticed once when watching
a dubbed film that they'd translated 12:02 p.m. as 2402 hours -
12:02 p.m. is two minutes after noon, and 2402 hours is two minutes after midnight.
Besides the language of time, there's also the attitude towards time.
People in America love to tell stories about "Latin time," i.e. the
tendency Mexicans have to show up to meetings approximately two to three hours
late. Things here don't always start on time, but it's nothing like
that, thank goodness. Things are just a bit more relaxed here. Professors
don't like students to walk into class late, but other than that, it's not quite
as strict as American time.
We had the time change a week and a half ago, but apparently, it was not the
same week as America did. I just found that out this week. I think
about half of SPB was waiting for the American time change - the only clocks
that have been reset are the ones in the metro and government offices.
*****
Anton frequently brings up various facts about American life that he's learned
from movies to receive confirmation that they're true. For instance, he
once said, "I heard that in America you can only drink alcohol if it's
in a paper bag." I told him, no, the truth is that you can't drink
alcohol on the streets at all, and people only put it in paper bags so others
can't see what it is. He said, "And you call that a free country.
In Russia we can drink wherever we want." It's his new favorite phrase,
"And you call that a free country." In Russia you can smoke basically
anywhere, you can easily find copyrighted material for very cheap, you aren't
required to wear seatbelts,etc. You can buy fake stickers for your car
instead of actual insurance, and then just bribe the cops so you don't get arrested
(a very economical solution - the sticker costs a dollar, a bribe three dollars,
and actual insurance - a hundred dollars a year).
Then I started telling Anton that in America, you don't have to have propiski
(a residence permit) to move. If you want to move, you can just move.
If you want to get a job in Russia, you have to have a propiska for that city.
It's very difficult to get one for Saint-Petersburg or Moscow, so there's a
black market for them. One of the girls at school was telling me today
that if you don't have an SPB propiska (as she doesn't), you can't check out
books at the public library. So when she does research, she has to do
all her reading in the library - which is kind of a hassle. Universities
here don't generally have amazing libraries like we do in the U.S., and there's
no interlibrary loan, and not everyone has really great access to the internet.
The free access we have to information in the US is phenomenal, but I hadn't
realized how phenomenal until I came here.
The propiski are noted in your passport. Russia has a system of
internal passports, and then a separate passport for traveling abroad.
From the outside, the Russian passport looks like a normal passport, but inside
there is only information about your address, your family, your job, etc.
It's like a Social Security card, ID card, and birth certificate rolled in one.
Pavel, a student at the Nevsky Institute, saw my passport once, and he said,
"What? You only have stamps from other countries in yours?"
I said, yeah, we don't have internal passports like they do, in fact, only about
10% of Americans have passports. Russians laugh at this - in Russia, the
only people without passports are bums.
The next question after this is always what we use for ID. The answer
"driver's license" is always sort of surprising for them. Anton
also wanted to know why the American government doesn't want to keep track of
where everyone lives. What if they want to arrest someone? Where
would they look? I told him that, first of all, criminals usually try
to avoid obvious places, like their house, if they're on the run, so that doesn't
always do too much good. Secondly, when people get jobs and pay bills
and things like that, they have to give an address, so they government can always
find them that way if need be.
The funny thing was that every time either Anton or I would give an example
of what we think makes a "free" country, rather than impressing the
other person, the other was of the opinion that this "freedom" simply
leads to chaos.
***************************************************************
Rabota - ne volk, v les ne ubezhit! - Work is not a wolf, it won't run off into
forest! I.e. it's okay to put it off a bit. (Thanks to Sergey Kenunen of New
York for contributing this one!)
Next Story: There's no place like
home. Oil money. Grazhdanskii brak. US/Russia.