Heather Worley Living in St. Petersburg, Russia
Hi everyone -
Here'e the latest issue. Hope you all enjoy!
Heather:)
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Sick
I truly, passionately hate being sick in a foreign country. It takes me
so long to convince anyone I'm sick, and then once I've done that, they start
telling things hurt that don't hurt, I start getting all sorts of folk remedies
and diagnoses, all of which are aimed at an illness I don't have. And
then, for the next week, every ten minutes someone will ask if I'm better
yet, as if they're expecting a sudden, miraculous recovery any second now.
I have a kidney infection right now. I know that's what it is, because
I've had them before, and this is what they feel like. But Natalya is
convinced I have a cold. (Russians will call anything "prostuda"!)
She says it results from wearing underwear that doesn't cover enough of your
stomach and low-rise pants. It makes your back cold, and then you get
a cold. Maybe this is true, but it's 20C right now. I've been wearing
open-toed shoes, no scarf, and no sweater (although I do wear my jacket) for
three days now, and I still sweat when I walk on the streets. Russians
are really paranoid about cold: I am still seeing people wearing fur coats.
I, on the other hand, am really paranoid about excessive heat, because I've
had sunstroke before.
She commented that she noticed Americans like to bathe in the morning.
She said, "Russians don't do this. It's bad to go out on the streets
right after you've bathed. It's too much temperature change for your body.
You're still cold from the bath." Being wet is also a bad thing here
- especially wet hair. Dr. Karriker blames everything from cramps to colds
on wet hair (even if it's summer) and swimming while you're on your period,
because then your ears are cold, and that's bad. This might actually be
true, but there's not much a curly-haired person can do. If you wash your
hair at night, when you wake up in the morning, it just sticks out in every
direction. There's no way to tame it. You have to wash it in the
morning.
The solution to kidney infections is really simple: water and cranberry juice
(100%, not the sugary stuff), but apparently no one here knows that. They
only eat cranberries because it's virtually the only food here, besides cabbage,
which has vitamin C. Maybe that's actually an American folk remedy and
we're having a paradigm clash...I don't know.* All I know is that I've
done it before and it's helped. But they tell me cranberries are not available
this time of year (which is funny - I swear I saw some at the market just last
week). Natalya came up with the idea that mashed potatoes would help -
it would soothe my stomach (which wasn't actually hurting, but whatever).
If you talk to women about being sick, they start telling you every person they
know who's ever had that, and you are supposed to consult with them and see
what they did to cure it. If you talk to men, regardless of what the symptoms
are, they just say, "Drink some vodka!"
Apparently, vodka is useful for some things. If you have a cough, you're
supposed to mix honey, ice-cold vodka, and hot water, and drink it immediately.
The honey soothes your throat, the cold vodka makes the hot water drinkable,
and the hot water causes the vodka to begin to evaporate into your lungs (as
you inhale), which numbs your cough reflex so you can sleep. This makes
sense. But taking shots with zakuski (anything you snack on to slow down
the alcohol) does not. I think Russian men just like to drink.
* I found out later that the cranberry thing is not an American idea...the nurse
at school advised me to eat them. :)
*****
Russian Animals
I've hesitated to write about this one for a long time because it's such a very
strange topic, but I've noticed that even animals here are different.
It wouldn't have occurred to me that people's behavior could influence animals
so much...
People in this city have way too many pets. In America we have this idea
that animals need a lot of space to run around and have fun. Most people
think that confining a cat to being an "indoor cat" is simply cruel,
and for dogs it's mostly impossible. Most apartments here are not too
big, but it's amazing how many people here have pets. And not just lap
dogs: labs and other big dogs. It's unfortunate that in SPB there is as
little green space in the city center as there is, because it means that what
green space that exists turns either into dirt or into a big litter box.
A lot of people here muzzle their dogs, but there are people here who take their
dogs out for a walk without a leash. If the dog starts to walk off, they
just tell it to come back, and it does, even if there are other dogs around...very
odd.
There are a lot of stray animals in Saint Petersburg, too. I don't know
if it's because there is no animal control, or if people just don't mind.
Most of the strays aren't very aggressive. There is a group of mangy dogs
that are always near my school who will walk right up to anyone standing still
for more than 30 seconds, lick their hand, and look pitifully into their eyes.
Most strays in America run away if anyone approaches them, but not these dogs.
There's a lady who feeds them every once in a while, I've noticed. She
gives them bones from the butcher shop nearby. There's also a lady
who lives in our building who buys raw meat for the stray cats who live in our
courtyard.
But here's the strange thing about stray dogs here. They look both ways
before they cross the street. I thought I was imagining this, but Adrianne's
noticed it, too. We actually saw one of the dogs near our school look
both ways, and even though there were no cars coming, he waited for the light
to change. This is especially funny because Russians have no qualms about
jay-walking, but apparently their dogs do. American dogs are really stupid
and will just run out into traffic, but not Russian dogs. Maybe some sort
of evolutionary process eliminated all the stupid ones. Russian drivers
stop for no one (except girls in tight skirts).
*****
Ona Nasha!
I started this list last week:
"Top Ten Ways You Know You've Been in St. Petersburg Too Long"
1. You drink your *first* beer of the day before noon.
2. Sunlight is an excuse to skip class.
3. You don't feel like wearing make-up, so you skip eye-liner and eye-shadow,
but you still wear base, powder, mascara, and lipgloss.
4. You actually like cabbage.
5. Anything that's over 500 rubles you count in dollars.
6. You carry a plastic sack with you everywhere.
7. You'd rather be late than leave the house with unpolished shoes.
8. You think of ten degrees Celsius as "hot."
9. Any distance less than two miles you walk, because it's quicker than
public transportation.
10. Even the Russians say you've gone native.
Guess how many of these fit me. ;)
Number ten, particularly, reminds me of a story. Over Christmas break,
Allison decided to see Europe. To get to the Eurail system from SPB, the
most convenient route is to take a bus or train to Helsinki, and then a boat
across the bay to Germany. So that's what she did. On the boat,
she assumed all of her cabinmates were Finns, being in Finland and all.
She opened the cabin door early in the trip, accidentally hit another passenger
in the hall, and, out of habit, said, "Oi. Izvinite, pozhaluista,"
(excuse me, please). She immediately felt silly - virtually no one in
Finland speaks Russian, although English is pretty useful. But as soon
as she's said this, she hears a woman behind her in the cabin gasp and say,
"Ona nasha!" It turns out her cabinmates were two Russian ladies
and a girl of Iraqi and Russian descent, so she had conversation partners.
Literally, "ona nasha" means, "She's ours," but perhaps
is best expressed in English by saying, "She's one of us." Russians
use this "nasha/nashe/nash" (depending on the grammatical gender of
what they're talking about) mainly as a positive attribute, and it can describe
anything: most often food, music, habits, and traditions.
One of the more sly ways to express disapproval of something is to say, "Eto
ne nashe," (That's not how we do it). While in some cases this can
be simply a statement of fact (often as I'm describing how things are done in
America), I've just as often heard it aimed against other Russians who are being
"neskromnyi" (show-offy). Many people say this about New Russians
in particular. I once heard a popular comedian described this way, although
in the case of the comedian, it was a contrast between Muscovites and Saint-Petersburgers.
Sometimes St. Petersburgers act like Moscow's a foreign country.
*****
Different?
I believe I've mentioned that sometimes I have difficulty explaining to Russians
that our two cultures are not that incredibly different. This often is
a result of them watching too many Hollywood movies, I think: Hollywood is not
real life. I think, also, it results from this weird moral superiority
complex Russian culture has. Academics in particular love to write about
this. When Constantinople fell to the Turks, Russia was the only officially
Orthodox country left, and this gave them a sense of spiritual destiny as the
keepers of truth. They started calling Moscow "the Third Rome"
(Byzantium being the second guardian of the true faith). Somehow this
complex spread to other areas of Russian life, and they are now all convinced
they are completely superior in every aspect of human relations: Russians are
truer friends, deeper lovers, nobler soldiers, have closer and more conservative
families, make the biggest sacrifices for a good cause...it's actually really
annoying and condescending, especially when they start comparing Russian culture
to cultures they know nothing about.
My professor, the same one with whom I had the conversation about talking to
strangers, told me that if Russians are friends with someone, they will do anything
for that friend. Their friend can drop in at any time of the day, without
calling, and often does, and that's fine. They can even call in the middle
of the night if they have a problem, and that's okay. And he knows that
in America it's not like that. If you want to do something with someone,
you have to schedule it two weeks in advance and everyone gets out their datebook.
(Funny, I don't even have a datebook...) So we, apparently, don't even
know how to hang out with people.
I'm not really sure what Americans he knows that live like that, but I sure
never have. When I was in high school, one of my two closest friends lived
about three blocks from me. We'd often call each other if we were bored,
decide to meet halfway, go for a walk, go back to her house, where she'd play
guitar and we'd write songs together, and then I'd go home. My other really
close friend, Vicki, and I would often get bored so we'd buy ice cream, drive
out to the middle of nowhere, and look at the stars. Or we'd go to the
Center of the Universe in downtown Tulsa and play board games. So far,
looks a lot like what I did this evening with some Russian kids...Roma and I
dropped in where Anton works, and he happened to be there with some other friends,
so we all went down to the river with some drinks, hung out, talked, called
some other people, met in a park, and then spent the rest of the evening hanging
out, chatting, and singing. The only real differences I see here are:
(1) the lack of alcohol in America, and (2) the lack of parks in Oklahoma, which
means you usually hang out at someone's house instead of in public.
I also remember when I was in high school that I would frequently come home
to find several of my friends already there. They'd get home before I
did and sit around and talk to my parents. My mom usually fed them scones.
(Everyone always said I had "the cool parents.":)) Two of them
actually had keys to our place. Robert was over there so much my dad started
giving him chores. And just like in Russia, any time there were more than
three males present, someone had to lift the hood of a car and have a huge discussion
about oil and carbeurators. And in college, it wasn't too much different.
I often remember my sophomore year that I'd go to bed, and Grant would call
and say, "Wake up! Let's go do something." Even though
there's nothing to do in Norman after 11:00 p.m., I would get up, and we'd drive
around for a couple hours and chat, and then go home. I've done that sort
of thing several times with people here, too. Once again, the main difference
I see here is the absence of alcohol. :)
There some other subtle differences, though. American high schools and
universities have a huge emphasis on extra-curricular activities, clubs, and
sports. High schools here don't have sports teams, and "clubs"
here seem really academically-oriented. They don't really have anything
like high school marching band. So if Russian kids are into these sorts
of things, they're usually either at a special school for it (i.e. a high school
with an arts curriculum), or it's something they do on their own. Their
after-school time isn't as structured.
There are a lot of people here (particularly in SPB, because it's a big city)
who don't move after they graduate high school. They get their higher
education in the same town they've lived in all their life, so they're not necessarily
forced to make new friends in a new city, and part with them again four years
later. A lot of people my age here have really close friends they've known
all their life they still hang out with - which is what it's also like in America
if you don't have to move. I had a couple good friends from home who also
went to OU with me, and by now we're practically family...I imagine I'd be a
lot closer to the rest of my high-school friends if we were still close by geographically,
too.
So youth, it seems, aren't that different. The difference, it seems to
me, is in adults. Remember I said that adults here never grow out of having
fun? It's also not unusual for adults here to call a friend, say, "I'm
bored, let's go for a walk," grab a beer, and hang out in parks.
It's much less structured than most adult "dates" back home.
As far as I can tell, the closest thing we have to this in America is the coffee
dates women have when they want to gossip. It's true that our adults tend
to be less spontaneous, but I think that's for other reasons related to the
modern American lifestyle, and this is just a generalization...it's not true
of everyone.
*****
Russophiles beware...
You start studying Russian in the United States, and all the Russians you meet
there say, "Have you ever been to Russia? You should go."
You come here, and then they all want to know if you're going to work here after
you graduate. You say you're thinking about coming back in the future,
and they ask if you're going to live here. Then they all want to know
if you're dating a Russian guy. Even if you say no, they say, "We'll
find you one! Your Russian will improve so much! And then you can
get married and start having little Russian babies..." (This conversation
resulted from my managing to order lunch in the institute's cafe...all because
I could say "tsitrusovaya bulochka"!) They suck you in, like
quicksand.
And it doesn't stop with the ethnic Russians. Professors of Russian language
in the US are like this, too. You go in for your advising appointment
to ask about whether or not you're eligible to take advanced grammar, and Emily
Johnson says, "Oh, and have you heard about Dr. Karriker's Russian Literature
through Film class? It fits right in with your schedule. And if
you're going to take that, you might as well go ahead and take Twentieth-Century
Lit. And of course, at that point, you're only nine hours away from a
major. You can take a class this summer and two more in the fall and you'll
only be in school one extra semester!" In fifteen minutes, you've
gone from three hours and a minor, to nine and a major. All professors
of small departments try this, but only the Russian professors succeed.
There are some more sinister examples, too. We asked Rachik (professor
at OU) once why on earth he picked Oklahoma, and not some place like LA.
He said, "Why would I go to LA? You might as well stay in Russia.
You get there, and some mafia guy finds you and says, 'Brother, let us help
you!' and then you never get out..." And another one of our OU students
had a friend who studied in Moscow, and her host family turned out to have mafia
connections. They drugged her one night, stole her passport, and tried
to get her to sign something saying she'd marry their son and take him back
to the US with her. She got out of it, thank goodness, but only after
the school bribed her to keep quiet.
I think this all comes from the really Russian tendency either to do something
not at all, or do it in a really big way. It's like the Alexander Column
on Dvortsovaya Ploschad' - it's not enough that it's a massive piece of marble,
it also has to be a free-standing structure. The thing literally has no
foundation, it just sits there in the middle of the square. Or like Peter
the Great - it wasn't enough for him to have a northern capital, he had to build
the darn thing on a swamp. Moderation is not something that comes naturally
to this culture.
So, be very careful about showing any kind of enthusiasm...Russians don't do
anything halfway.
*****
Rules
From Simon, in the US: "One difference that I noticed but I don't
recall you mentioning is a general lawlessness of Russians. Americans have an
almost built-in respect for laws, which sometimes makes them appear tame and
uninventive, but sometimes actually points to a much better organized society
where people know that their actions may influence others, and therefore it
matters what they do or not. I am not sure if it's just a
feature of a society that was in existance longer, or a national trait, but
this civil consciousness is one of the main things why I prefer living in the
U.S. Fortunately, in our days one does not have to abandon his culture if he
lives elsewhere."
I'm actually surprised I haven't said anything about this directly. I've
hinted at it, but this is a very complex issue. Forgive me if I get up
on my soapbox again.
Basically, it works like this: the only rules you have to follow in Russia are
the ones that aren't written down. Hold doors for women. Give up
your seat to old ladies. Wear tapochki (houseshoes) inside: no street
shoes and no going barefoot. Don't argue with your elders. You break
any of these rules and you are a bad person.
As for actual law, there is always a way to get around it, or simply ignore
it, or bribe your way out of it. And that's what a lot of people do a
lot of the time. I hesitate to say most of the people most of the time...but
that is probably not far off the mark, either.
The really crazy thing is that Russians are all aware that they're like this!
They know it and do it anyway. Sometimes it's because it's a matter of
survival, sometimes they just don't care. But regardless, if Russians
feel the law is too much trouble, or unjust, or sometimes simply inconvenient,
they break it. And you're not a bad person for doing it. It's just
normal.
It's not like in America, where breaking the rules is exciting, cool and rebellious.
(Although our big contradiction is this: it's exciting, cool, and rebellious
if you don't caught...if you get caught, THEN you're a bad person.) It
can't be exciting, cool, and rebellious if everyone is doing it. But it's
not like your uncool if you follow the rules: Russians just won't understand
why you're doing it. Why go to all that work? The authorities don't
care, anyway.
And it's true. The authorities don't care. The only time cops here
enforce rules is so they can take a bribe, and since Russians generally don't
know anything about their own law, they're rather powerless to fight back.
Americans have jokes about crooked cops, but I haven't heard too many of those
here. Humor comes from the unexpected, and people here basically expect
the authorities to be crooked. Sometimes there is an exception - e.g.
little old ladies who are big fans of Stalin, and are convinced he was perfect
and it was everyone around him who was bad.
A lot of foreigners who work here have frequent run-ins with the cops.
(I should mention that they are generally leave students alone, because we don't
usually have as much money.) They stop foreigners as they are coming out
of clubs, and before you can get into a taxi, they say they need to check your
documents, or some such nonsense. Usually one "searches" your
pockets for weapons or drugs while the other asks stupid questions. The
person is usually alone, a little bit intoxicated, and caught off guard.
A fellow student who works for the British consulate was telling us that once
he went to the police station to talk to a guy there who'd been arrested.
The police "found" a little packet of white powder on him, stole $500,
and were holding him in a cell while they "waited for the results of the
test." The interpreter they'd found was gently hinting, "Maybe
you left the money at home, or you spent it somewhere...are you sure you had
it on you?" The guy finally gave up and said, "Yeah, I think
you're right...I must have done something else with it," and within two
minutes they announced that the test had come back negative. Thank goodness
for the interpreter, or the poor fool would have spent the rest of his life
demanding his money back, and never gotten out of jail. Unfortunately,
this is pretty normal here.
This paradigm creates a lot of confusion for Russians who go abroad. Natalya
was telling me that when she was in East Germany with her first husband (when
she was in college), she saw a sweater she really wanted. They didn't
have the cash on them to buy it, so they were going to sell their radio, because
radioes were difficult to get in East Germany at the time, but easily obtained
in Russia. Unfortunately, this was illegal in East Germany. So they
talked to their host there, and he said no, there was no way, and he acted really
upset about it. And she said at this point, "You know how we Russians
are: rules, schmules. But the Germans aren't like that...they really want
to follow the rules all the time. If it says it, you do it."
The guy wanted to help them, and he understood that they hadn't meant to do
anything bad, so he arranged a way Natalya could write an article for the student
paper, and she took the money she earned from that to buy the sweater.
It's like a movie I saw about a little girl, about 8 years old, whose father
was Russian and mother American. It's fiction, but it feels really true.
The girl had never met her father before, but her mother died, so he flew to
America to go to the funeral and to figure out what to do with her. At
one point, he gets in a barfight, gets arrested, and of course he can't understand
anything the cops are saying to him (he doesn't speak a word of English).
They think he's kidnapped the little girl, and won't believe her when she says
she's not leaving his side because he's her father. While the cops are
waiting for a translator, he sits in the drunk tank, thinking they're going
to yank his passport and never give it back, and she sits next to him on the
floor. At one point, he comes up with an idea: I'll bribe the cop!
This is a good survival strategy in Russia, but not in America. Sure,
crooked cops exist, but they're more the exception than the rule. The
girl realizes what's going on and starts trying convince him with her fifty-word
Russian vocabulary that this is a bad idea. "Ne nado, ne nado!"
(Don't! Don't!) And it gets him in more trouble, of course.
This problem, unfortunately, is systemic. As long as the authorities are
not respected, no honest person is going to want to work in law enforcement.
As long as dishonest people are in charge, the distrust will continue.
This attitude also makes it really difficult to enact social change. In
America, it takes a lot of work to get a law passed, because once it's passed,
it takes even more work to repeal it. The American government hesitates
to pass laws they're unsure about, because you actually have to follow them.
In Russia, it's still work to get a law passed, but since they know no one's
going to enforce or follow them, a lot of stupid and conflicting rules are passed
for the sake of bribes or whatever. Then no one follows them, so they
pass rules that are even more strict and more stupid to make up for it.
It gets to the point where following the rules is actually impossible, assuming
you even know what they are. Rules here change all the time.
Generally, when laws are enforced, it's inconsistent, often the result of a
power play. The Khodorkovsky case was an example of this. This oil
magnate had been doing everything illegal everyone had done forever, and then
they arrested him for it. The western press had a fit. They said
Putin was just trying to clear out political opponents, the arrest was legal
but wrongly motivated, Putin just wanted a show trial to show he's going to
be tough on big business and big crime, and that Khodorkovsky should only be
tried if everyone else is going to be tried, too. It's the end of democracy
in Russia! they all cried.
They have a point, but on the other hand, the guy broke the law, and in a big
way, too. To have a democracy, you have to start enforcing rules some
time. The problem is that no matter when you start, it's going to be unfair...the
only way to be fair is never to enforce the rules, which is in reality unfair
to everyone. And if you're going to start enforcing laws, doesn't it make
more sense to go after people who actually are guilty, and who committed really
big crimes? The Supreme Court needs something to do other than lock up
pickpockets. Letting Khodorkovsky slide is silly - it sets a bad example.
"We'll arrest you, unless you make enough fuss," is what that says.
In systems like this, it's hard to get a real democracy going. Who cares
about having a voice if all of the officials are corrupt and they're just going
to make stupid laws you don't have to follow, anyway? It leads to anarchy,
or even worse, despotism. When there aren't rules, influence and power
control everything.
Unfortunately, having too much respect for the rules can also be bad.
Some rules truly are unjust, but people follow them out of fear. The problem
is that you have to know when to follow the rules and when to engage in peaceful
protest and non-compliance, or passive resistance. Blind adherence to
rules and authority is one thing that made the Nazis so dangerous.
Next Story: U Nas Veselee v Rossii