Heather Worley Living in St. Petersburg, Russia
Hey everyone -
First of all, I'd like to say thank you to everyone who is being so patient
in waiting for replies from me. I'm approximately one week behind in replying
to emails right now. I've been having to spend all of my internet
time searching for a plane ticket, but it looks like I may actually have one right
now, slava bogu.
This issue is written off the cuff, so to speak, so it might be a bit more disorganized
than others. I'll try to write some more next week...
Heather:)
*****
Weekend
I had a truly horrible evening Thursday, and spent most of Friday near tears,
but that's over with, thank goodness. Friday I took a mental health
afternoon, skipped my French class, and went to hang out with Anton at work.
He bought me a gin and tonic and a Bounty chocolate bar, and pointed out that
it's better to find out now than later where you stand with someone. I
had to admit he's right. That combined with the weekend at the dacha
fixed everything, and I'm back to normal.
We left around 11:00 Friday night, stopping at Lenta (sort of like a Russian
Super Wal-Mart) on the way to buy food for the weekend. We got
to Zhenya's dacha at about 4:00 a.m., and for some reason, everyone decided
we needed to eat. So we ate, and drank, and went to bed around
5:00. Saturday, we girls just lazed around (and fixed lunch) and the guys
attempted to dig a greenhouse up and move it about 20 meters. They never
really finished it, though, because they kept taking breaks to nap or "work"
on their cars or whatever.
Saturday night we spent in the banya. Zhenya's neighbor Dima appointed
himself Overseer of Heather's Alcohol Consumption, so I spent most of the night
switching out my beer with someone else who had an emptier bottle, on the
sly, of course. It's just too hard to drink beer on a full stomach.
Each bottle is like a whole loaf of bread. More than one and I just
want to puke...
Sunday most everyone woke up after noon, we breakfasted at 3:30, ate lunch at
7:00, and then hit the road. There were plans to go to the drive-in when
we got back, but we stopped approximately every 15 minutes on the way home for
various reasons - mostly so the guys could admire the work they'd done on their
cars, I think - so when we got home everyone was too tired.
*****
U Nas Veselee v Rossii
While we were in the banya Saturday night, I was comparing Russia and the US
with Zhenya's little brother (whose name I can't spell, so I won't even try).
He, like many Russians I've talked to, wanted to know what we do for fun
in the US. I said we go to clubs, to the movies, to each other's houses...that
sort of thing. But we don't have anything like the banya. Nothing
that is even comprable. We have saunas, sure, but a sauna is
not an entire social event. It's just a sauna. And he said something
I've heard so many times since I've come here: Russia is much more fun.
Russia is more fun. Lots of Russians say this, whether they've been abroad
or not. Vitya (who I met a couple weekends ago) said he's been to Western
Europe, and while it was pretty, it wasn't very interesting. As he
put it, "all the adventure's gone." I think this sense of adventure
is part of what draws a lot of the ex-pats who move here. They're
not like the ex-pats who move to Spain or Italy, who just want to relax
and sun themselves on the beach. Every day in Russia is a new adventure,
and Russians are also much better at having a good time, I think. They
relax much better.
We also started talking about how Russians spend money. He said, "In
the West, you save money to buy a house or go on vacation or whatever.
Here, we earn money and immediately spend it all to go to the dacha. And
our priorities here are different. If you save money, you save for a dacha,
and then a car to get to the dacha, and then an apartment in the city.
But really, this makes sense. If you think about it, you live almost half
the year at your dacha." And he's right, in America, the proper
order is car-house-lake house. Here, it's the other way around.
In a way, this makes a lot of sense. It doesn't make sense to save money
in a savings account, because who knows where the ruble's going, so you might
as well spend it. In the early 20th century, when the Bolsheviks collectivized
agriculture, dachas kept people alive. The collectivized farmers skipped
work to tend to their gardens, because they knew that regardless of how hard
they worked on the collectivized farm, all the food was going to the cities
to keep the factory-workers fed. There were some years the country produced
more in private gardens than on big farms. Historically speaking, it makes
sense to grow your own food here - every time there's an economic or governmental
upheaval, food is either ridiculously expensive or nowhere to be found.
And there seems to be a lot of upheaval here.
Nowadays, the garden isn't really very economical - you'll spend more on gas
to get to the dacha than you would just buying the food outright, even with
Russian food prices being the way they are. In comparison to salary levels,
food in Russia is about twice as expensive as in the United States, except
for fruit, which is four or five times more, but it's still cheaper than growing
your own. (These are St. Petersburg prices...in small towns, prices are
different, of course.) The fresh fruits people grow here on
the dacha probably are smart, money-wise - fruit in this country is not
cheap. And besides, even if you can buy jelly in the city,
the homemade stuff is much, much better.
*****
Corruption
I really don't want to turn this into a forum for talking about corruption in
Russia, but I thought I'd put this in here. This weekend I had a
first, namely, the first time I've bribed a Russian cop.
We got stopped on the Moskovskoe highway, ostensibly one of those document/insurance/driver's
license checks. Anton hasn't bought insurance for this year, so the cop
wanted a bribe. Anton talked him down to a 100 rubles, but he'd spent
the last of his cash on gas, so I paid it. This seemed fair to me - normally,
in America, I would have gone in on the gas money. Here, I just pay the
bribes.
Also, my dad sent me this in reply to last week's issue: "A teacher
I had when I was in High School had lived in the Chicago area. She told
me that it was common to carry a $50 bill clipped behind you drivers license.
When a cop stopped you, you handed him the license and the $50 and said nothing.
You got you license back with a warning. I have never heard anyone say
they did this kind of thing anywhere in the US but Chicago and NYC. I
wouldn't even think of trying it here. First, it would be a felony if
they convicted you of attempting to bribe an officer. Second, it would
be felony if they convicted you of attempting to bribe an officer. And
third, it would be...."
I've heard they used to do something like that in Montana. First, there
were no speed limits on the highways (there are so few people, it wasn't really
a safety issue). Then the federal government said if there are no speed
limits, there is no federal funding for state highways. So they made the
speed limit 95 mph. The government made them lower it to the standard
75, so they just didn't enforce it. The government made them enforce it,
so the cops started collecting five-dollar "fines" on the spot.
Everyone kept several fives or tens tucked in their visor. So,
technically, there was a fine, but nothing was reported to the insurance
company (which is the real expense). I never really heard how this turned
out in the end, so if you're in Montana, don't try it based on my stories.
I'm not really sure if this counts as corruption. It's more like an entire
state rebelling against the federal government than corruption, per se.
It's a very American thing to do, really: following the letter of the law, but
not the spirit of it.
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