Thursday 16 September 2010

End of the road..

So... this is kind of late, but I'm back! I haven't been doing the blog because... well because I only made it in the first place to avoid the question of 'how is Russia?' with a snappy reply of 'read the blog', ensuring that no one will take an interest in my life for ever more. I've actually been very surprised by the amount of people that have commented on the blog, so thank you for reading. I think I might keep this going and write about my time in New York and wherever else I end up.

I did enjoy my time in Russian- drinking, seeing family, hearing my mother tongue spoken everywhere and lots of old Ladas driving around all over the place. Seeing as I can't really go into details about the last bit of my trip, I will leave with a picture, done by myself. Think of it as a self-portrait if you want, I like to see it as a summary.


pictures speak a thousand vodkas

Thank you for reading, and I'll probably do something about New York soon... erm... bye.

Friday 20 August 2010

Ukraine

This isn't much of a post... just a few photos from where I'm at at the moment. So, in no particular order...









train station (some small town I briefly was at)


view from the town

This is from me and my cousin went to an old factory site. There was a load of buildings there that used to all produce something during the Soviet Union. Once it collapsed, the industry was ruined and this massive space was turned into a burnt out ghost town...









some breh fishing near mine

Lots of people sell fruits/veg along the river bank


My dad and aunt in one of their old classrooms.

Peasants travel like this.. no joke

where I sleep

Just a bit more flat..

the living room

the river where we go a'swimmin'

some more river..

central area of the town

typical bunch of flats near my grandparent's

This isn't much of a post... just a few photos from where I'm at at the moment. So, in no particular order...


the stairway for our flats

outside the flats

A little celebration for my arrival

My grandad and godfather

More celebratin'

A man walks into a bar...

I've been in Russia/Ukraine for about a month now. As well as my souvenir bust of Stalin (stern) and Ukrainian national shirt (jazzy) I have accquired a lot of Russian anecdotes while I've been out here... none of which seem to transfer into English. The structure of Russian and English jokes are very different. Thinking about it, to generalise in a topic as massive as humour is pretty difficult but it's worth a go. To me, it seems like a lot of English jokes are appreciated for their wit, usually using puns and just general word play. On the other hand, Russian jokes tend to focus more on people and sort of life inspired situations. A fair few English jokes tend to sacrifice reality for the sake of wordplay or whatever else, whereas Russian jokes tend to prefer drawing humour from relatable situations, drawing humour from misunderstanding or just laughing at people. There are jokes that are exceptions to this in both cultures, but I'm just saying that's what you'll most likely get if you ask an Englishman or a Russian to tell you a joke. Anyways enough of that shit, here are some Russian jokes:

Exhibit A

A boy came home from school and wanted to tell his family a new joke he heard. He went up to his mum and asked if she had time for a joke. 'I don't have time for your silly jokes, I have to lay the table' she replied, so he moved on to his dad. His dad didn't have time either though, and told him that he just wanted to sit and watch TV because he'd been working all day. So he moved on to his big sister, but she told him that she was going to see her boyfriend and didn't have time either. Having exhausted all options, but still really badly wanting to tell the joke, he went outside and saw a policeman standing there. 'Do you want to hear a joke?' the boy asked the officer. The policeman stared at him and said 'don't you see who you're talking to?'
'yes, I do' replied the boy, 'that's why I'll say the joke slowly and repeat it twice'.

Exhibit B

A man is sitting in a jail cell in a police station, when the night shift officer comes on and asks him why he's here. 'Well I upset too many people' replied the man. He explained to the officer that he never loses a bet, and that it got him in trouble. 'Never lose? that's impossible!' scorned the officer.
'No it's true' insisted the prisoner. 'Let me show you. Bet me something'
'Ok fine, I've earned $200, so I'll bet you $100 that you can't bite your own elbow'
'Deal' replies the prisoner and proceeds to take his fake teeth out and put them around his elbow. The astonished officer grudgingly handed over $100, but immediately announced 'I bet you $98 that you can't bite your own eye!'
'Deal' replied the prisoner and proceeded to take his glass eye out and place it between his teeth, popping it in in time to get his money.
At this point, down on his last two dollars, the officer was totally distraught. Seeing his distress, the prisoner took pity and said 'look, I'll bet you one last time so you can at least try to salvage your dignity. I bet you that if you let me piss on you, it will smell like Gucci perfume'.
Accepting, the officer went into the cell and let the prisoner piss all over him. When he had finished, the officer looked at him quizically. 'This just smells like someone pissed on me, I can't smell Gucci at all!'
'Oh, really?' replied the prisoner, grinning, 'here, have your $2 then'.

There ain't no knock knock jokes in Russian motherfuckers.

And yes, a lot of Russian jokes seem tend to take the piss out of the police.




You're probably staring at the screen pretty blankly at the moment- least I tried though, right?
In general Russians like laughing at authority in a way that the English do not. English humour likes to poke fun of authority, but in a way that does not really challenge it. On the other hand the Russians love ripping apart politicians, the police and whatever else comes their way.
I've always been of the opinion that you can either laugh or cry at a problematic situation. You can make jokes about how having one testicle makes you half the man you used to be and how you will never again be able to do 'the brain', or you can cry about your ruined manhood. I don't really know why that came to mind, but there you go. Probably cos I wanna put my balls on yo' mind so I can put them on yo' face later onnn. But yea.. laugh or cry. The Russians and Ukrainians exemplify this when it comes to politics, choosing to either moan about how everything is ruined or make jokes about what a bunch of idiots they all are. There's an excellent sketch show called '95 Kvartal' on TV over here, which is sort of like our 'Have I got news for you'. They rip the piss out of politicians and laws mercilessly, with a live audience that consists of normal people and politicians. Often the comic will look directly at a politician and make a joke about him, or a whole sketch will be based on mocking a particular politician/group. It is slightly uneasy when it pans to a shot of the audience, with everyone in tears and a solitary politician looking like he's about to order a hit on the guys on stage. In fact not long ago this would've been the case, thankfully though things have gotten a bit more civil over here in recent years. Or maybe they just have really good bodyguards? Either way it's nice to see that the people over here have some outlet for the frustrations that come from a totally corrupt government and police.

But yea, I've found it weird how I've got blank looks whenever I've tried translating jokes. It's to be expected I guess, I'm just hoping for a miraculous breakthrough in finding the missing link- a person here who understands English jokes and finds them funny, and an English person who's the same with Russian ones. My missing link is still wandering around somewhere, unaware of the world of lols and rofls I can provide for them.

Tuesday 17 August 2010

Ah life...

I've been here for a week and to be honest the time has flown by. I've been fishing, getting drunk, swimming in the nearby river, exercising, getting drunk, eating good food, playing chess and getting drunk (which is a total fail if you combine the two). The food here is totally fresh, the air is clean and the sun is bright. Most importantly, I have spent all my free time with my family and I have never been in such a loving and wonderful environment as the one that surrounds my grandparent's flat. The affection does not feel forced at all, there is no fakeness about it and there is not even the hint of aggravation from anyone. All in all it's wonderful seeing my family and living in the flat I (partly) grew up in again, even if it's only for 2 weeks a year. It's strange being in the flat and seeing all my old stickers that I put up as a kid, and remembering where I slept, where dad slept, where my grandparents slept and where I sat around playing with my little panda bear and transformer (my two favourites).

My grandparents themselves are a curious old pair. Grandad has spent the last 40 years working in a local brewery and when he's not working he generally sits in a corner watching the TV and mummbling occassionally about different topics of interest- which for him usually constitute of politics and football.. what a lad. My nan is a massive ball of love and stubborness. I remember when she met my first girlfriend- the minute she walked through the door my nan sped towards her, grabbed her cheeks and squeezed them together, kissing her whole face and mummbling in Russian about what a wonderful girl she was. When she was younger, she played in the Soviet basketball team and after that worked two jobs and was constantly doing something to provide for the family. She's extremely strict and stubborn, but only in matters where she feels something isn't proper (like me coming home after 10pm..) so it's pretty tolerable- at least you can calm her down with a kiss, a smile and a few kind words.

Unfortunately stressful decades have taken their toll on her and she has now adopted the shape and texture of a basketball, so she doesn't leave the flat too much. She is the epitome of the Russian farmer woman stereotype: big, bossy and in your face. She could definitely beat me up. My nan is the sort of person that has no idea what depression even means, and thinks that dyslexia is a type of mental retardation. In fact the only time I have seen her down this trip is when we talk about the past- about when I was a kid constantly between houses because both my parents had gone to England, and about all the things she's had to deal with. But I'm not going to bore you with my life story.

I like this place as a little getaway from London. There are no wankers walking around feeling that dressing up is the only way they can impose on you what a wonderful, intelligent person they are. Guys don't act like bitches and everyone is straightforward. People like chatting casually in the streets, and there is a general openess about emotions that is quite refreshing. There's a river and a forest at my doorstep, and my family and family friends all around.
Overall, life is good. I feel content being with my family and at my roots. I wish I could talk about all the other stuff that I've been talking about with people here, who I've met and what I've been asked to do. Oh well. I think I am off to meet a man about a dog again tonight.

Ah chess...

've been playing chess with my grandad a lot since I've been out here, and I got to realising that chess is actually a pretty good life lesson- namely in that it isn't always good to be impulsive. If you don't think about what you're doing in a game of chess, and just move however you feel, you will get raped harder than a schoolboy in a dark Catholic church. This might not seem a big deal for people who think things through, but when you constantly do the equivalent of breaking something and then hiding in the cupboard until it fixes itself it's actually pretty useful. To be good at chess you have to think several moves ahead, and the same seems to go for being a responsible and mature human being. My old Philosophy teacher once said that I'm missing the part of my brain that answers for delayed gratification- namely working hard on something to get a result in the long run. Possessing no foresight is great when you get a good surprise... but not so good in a lot of other cases. Having come to the realisation that I'm not just shortsighted in the physical sense, I'm going to treat everything like a game of chess and stop trying to stumble through situations on the momentum of my words and actions.

For example, I know this blog entry is gonna have a lot of you going ' |______| <<< care-box empty plz', but really it was written for a specific person... so my carebox isn't too full either. Yea that's right, beef.

In other news I've had one cigarette since I've been out here, and I'm chewing my fucking face off. I've gone through two packets of gum per day. Everyone here smokes, including my grandad, uncle and just about every mullet sporting, string vest wearing bastard on the streets. I've managed to sneak one fag since I've been here, and even that I had to smoke leaning out of my window looking like I was about to jump. It's not even that I don't want them to know... my parents know I do, and my nan seems to not care at all that she found a packet in my coat. It's just the preachy 'you shouldn't! it's bad for you!' and frowns every time I have one that I don't want to be dealing with... not really worth it.

Anyways sorry this was a pretty self indulgent entry, it's just how I distract you from the fact that I've done nothing interesting. All I've done out here is sleep, eat, read and try to correct my ridiculous t-shirt tan lines from Kiev. I'll do something cool soon, I promise.

Wednesday 11 August 2010

The strangest 15 hours so far...

What do you get when you put a Jew, an Orthodox priest, a Ukrainian and a Russian in a train compartment? A REALLY GOOD BLOG.

Georgia left in the morning, leaving me to hang around Kiev and meet a few interesting people, and I began asking around how best to go around setting up a bit of tourism to this gorgeous city. After dossing around for a few hours and getting the most impressive t-shirt tan lines in history- it literally looks like I had walked into a spray tan salon (or whatever they call the orange factories) and forgot to take my shirt and shorts off- I finally dragged my suitcase out to the train station. Train stations in the Eastern bloc are difficult places to navigate. Not only are there all these tricky non English signs all over the place, but you have to be constantly aware of all the thieves and tramps who always sleep at the stations and are just waiting to rob someone who looks vulnerable or out of place. Train stations out here are pretty well known spots for vagrants, petty criminals, prostitutes and parking attendants.

The trains out here are reasonably decent, which is a relief considering I was having to spend about 15 hours in one to get to my grandparent's house from Kiev. The compartments themselves have two beds at the normal height on either side of a little space with a table by the window, with two narrow beds above them, supported tenously by some kind of chain on on both sides. Coming into my compartment, I was hit by a sense of confusion and the smell of sweaty men. Everyone looked at me as if I should be doing something useful and not just standing there like a gormless fool. I kind of clumsily introduced myself as Georgei Alexandrovich (I was really getting into this whole Russian thing now), lugged my suit case in the bit above the door and sat down with the 3 topless sweaty men. Not wanting to feel left out on this topless fun, I took my shirt off and totally forgot that it was permanently imprinted on my red and white skin anyway. We got talking straight away and I introduced myself, saying I was a student from Smolensk and was coming to visit my grandparents. The reason for this is pretty clear really: a foreigner travelling by himself is pretty much an open ticket and at this point I wasn't sure what kind of people these guys were. Though I didn't exactly relish saying I was from Smolensk (see all the bitching about it in pretty much the rest of this blog), I kind of had to explain why it was that I couldn't speak a word of Ukrainian when they started talking to me. Ukrainian is a weird mixture of old Russian, bits of modern Russian and a sprinkling of fuckknowswhatelse- for example the word for 'helicopter' is 'hylikopter'- it's kind of like they took some words from an assortment of European languages and just said it in a funny accent with lots of 'yh' type sounds. I used to be able to speak it fluently before I moved to England, and fortunately I found that I could still understand a lot of it, so I didn't have too many problems with that.


My fellow passengers turned out to be interesting enough people; one was a lawyer from Crimea, and the other two were firefighters from Kiev. The conversation moved from sort of general stuff about their jobs and whatever to more things like politics. We talked a lot about how they'd been fucked over by old presidents and whoever else felt like it (What a cunt Yuschenko was! I wish I hadn't been convinced so easily' 'What does it matter, they're all crooks anyway?') to how they didn't feel democracy was any good for their country. The most senior guy in the compartment was one of the firefighters, named Mihal, and made a pretty typical point for a person from this part of the world- namely that no country is really a democracy. He argued that the individual doesn't really have a voice and generally made himself sound like he listened to a lot of Immortal Technique and was pretty vocal at anarchist meetings... though he didn't look the type. I say this is a pretty typical view because the majority of people in Russia and Ukraine still remember Soviet Rule, and have still not got it out of their mentality yet, the result being that they are pretty hostile to the Western style of government, unlike their children. Personally I don't see the benefits of bringing democracy over here, seeing as all it seems to have done is rob the weak of any kind of safety and siphon money to the west, but I'm hardly a political commentator to be going into all this.

At that point feeling that the conversation had turned a bit heavy, the two firefighters started laying the table. Out came a loaf of bread, some tomatoes, some salami and, surprise surprise, a bottle vodka and 4 shot glasses. The lawyer tried to say 'no thank you, it's awfully kind of you but I really can't eat anything, I've just eaten' and the like, but of course he was roped in along with me. Every one of the men had a pretty nasty looking switchblade with them, including the one I was given as a going away present, and it definitely felt as though there was a subtext of 'my dick is bigger than yours' going on with how big and sharp the knife was, and I couldn't help but feel that my comparatively humble and skinny knife and me were losing this game.
After a few shots me and Mihal decided to go for a smoke, which was a bit of a difficulty considering that this was a non smoking train. Turns out what people did was stand between carriages smoking their cigarettes, and if a policeman (there were several on the train) came they simply threw them in the gaps between the carriages onto the rails. No one gave a shit, and late at night I even saw the train staff walking around freely with fags in their mouths. Clearly the Ukrainians had decided that non-smoking trains were a bad gimmick, but mullets are still great... go figure.


So our journey continued over vodka and food, which really only served as something to do between shots. The conversation was pretty interesting and I heard some pretty interesting stories, including how Mihal had to kill a massive bear one day when he was hunting in the forest. Far from being a cool story for him, it was a sombre recollection of how he killed an animal that they prized and revered above any other as a Slavic symbol. He explained how he came across it feeding and it turned and charged him, and he shot him straight in the chest at point blank range ('Huge as a lorry that beast was! He turned instantly on the spot and saw me and began to charge!') and then skinned it- he still has the pelt.

At one point, right after some shots, once we were thoroughly pissed, two policemen walking past popped their heads into our compartment and said 'you guys seem decent enough so I'll just warn you, you know you're not allowed to drink alcohol on this train?'. At this point we all blurted out how it was just mineral water, pointing to the various bottles of the stuff lying around the place. Mihal did his best to act sober but the minute he started talking it all went wrong for him. He seemed to forget how to talk as he slurred out 'h-h-h-hone-honestly this is juuussst wa-waa-water', screwing up his face in concentration and blinking like a rabbit in the headlights. This was too much for me and I burst out laughing, but thankfully so did the officers. They just said 'ok well just don't make it obvious and it doesn't matter' and walked off.


So we continued through three bottles of vodka, a few kilos of processed meat, a couple of litres of beer and a fair few hours of the journey. The conversation varied a lot and included stuff like talking about the greenhouse effect, the industrial revolution, the difference in Eastern and Western European mentality and evolution, and was actually reasonably coherent considering we were all pretty tipsy. This may seem pretentious to most people in England, but that is simply just the kind of topics people over here talk about when they get together and to be honest I would prefer that over talking about the fucking weather and moaning about our lives any day. At one point I started arguing with all of them about evolution, because all of them were Orthodox and didn't believe in it. Mihal said that clearly it couldn't be right seeing as we have developed a higher state of consciousness than any other animal and monkeys aren't turning into humans. By the way, the reason I mention Mihail a lot and not the others is that there was a strict hierachy in this compartment. As the most senior, Mihal represented the views of both him and his friends and was never interrupted or dismissed in any way. The lawyer guy was just a bit boring and shit. Anyway yea so they didn't believe in evolution basically because their evidence against it was the human brain and no matter how I argued it made no difference. However, all this religious zeal was suddenly stirred in Mihal as a result, and he decided to call in an Orthodox priest... who just happened to be strolling past our room at the time. The man came in pretty damn nervous- as would be expected if you're walking into a room filled with drunk men arguing heavily and a load of knives on the table- and sat down on the edge, near the door. He was dressed in a long black gown thing, with a long beard and long hair as is a traditional sign of wisdom in the Orthodox church. His hair fell over his tiny eyes that were so milky I wasn't sure if he was perhaps blind or something. 'Thank you for coming to sit with us, father. We're all very honoured and would very much like to know what the bible says about evolution' said Mihal as he held his hand and looked at him intensly. Whether it was the surroundings or maybe he was just like that, the priest mummbled his way through genesis and stuff like that. Mihal, convinced that guy was a certified big deal who knew everything about everything, was satisfied with having won the argument and moved on to asking him question like 'I smoke and drink, does that mean I will go to hell?'. As we all strained to hear his mumbling above the roar of the train, I could see a look of realisation dawning on Mihal's face that he was asking for life lessons from a twenty- something year old, overeducated virgin. And so, with much ceremony the priest was dismissed from our compartment and we continued to drink, eat and talk shit.


Eventually we all got pretty tired and climbed into our beds. I took the top bunk because by that point I was totally sober, whereas Mihal was still very much wearing a lashmina (I think there is about one person who is still reading this up to this point, so it's fine to make private jokes yea?), and we all passed out pretty quickly. At night I heard a massive commotion outside the door to our compartment, and noticed the snoring had stopped and I could tell from the everyone's sillouhetes that no one was asleep. Eventually there was a bit of activity and things calmed down, and I found out later that a few people were arrested for some reason in the corridor outside ours. In my half awake state the scene in the dark compartment was highly surreal. The window was open and there was loads of lightning outside which ocassionally illuminated everything in the carriage, as well as the railway. The train was speeding along and the clank of wheels and gears and whatever else coupled together with the thunder and sparks made it feel like I was in some kind of giant factory or something. From then on I had a pretty fitful sleep, with dreams of being sucked out of the bed and through the window, and only managed to fall asleep for the last hour of the journey.


I was woken up in the morning by a very hungover looking Mihal and packed my stuff up to the sounds of everyone moaning about how their head felt. I said goodbye to the lawyer (who was the Jew mentioned at the very beginning of the blog by the way), because he was getting off at a later stop, and the three of us left the train. At the station I said goodbye to Mihal and the other guy, and grabbed a taxi to my grandparent's house. I came in, ate loads and promptly fell asleep.
It's wonderful seeing them again, as well as my little cousin, aunt and uncle. I'll try to keep my blogs coming, and hopefully they won't just be about how I'm eating, sleeping and playing chess with grandad all day.

Monday 2 August 2010

Who you callin' a faggot?


So basically today is the 2nd of August. What's so special about that you may ask? Well clearly something- or I wouldn't be writing this, would I?

Today is national paratroopers day. 'Big fucking deal!' you may blurt out as you read this, because I get you so emotionally wound up with my deep thoughts and language. Well I'll tell you. The reason why it's a big deal is because these are RUSSIAN ex-servicemen (the woman soldier joke hasn't caught on in Russia yet). These are drunk Russian ex-servicemen that have got together from one of the most notorious parts of the Russian army.

So today I have seen a lot of really loud guys walking around in a horizontally striped shirts, shouting and swearing and all the kind of stuff that happens when a bunch of guys get together. You might be thinking of those Jean Paul whatever perfume adverts, with that muscly guy prancing around with a stripy shirt and a funny hat, but you would be awfully wrong.


if this was made by the Russian paratroopers, it would smell of blood, sweat and come

This day is notorious in Russia for trouble- fights, damage and general destruction. The amount of police I've seen out today has been insane, as well as the heavy gunners- the Russian military police. Just during the day I've seen bottles thrown, women grabbed and getting their arses slapped the minute they walk past them, regardless of whether they're with a guy, their mum or whatever. Tonight is gonna be a massive shit storm all over town, so tomorrow morning will be interesting. The taxi driver I had today got a phone call from his daughter on the way to dropping me off today to say that she got water poured all down her top, accompanied by the equivalent of 'get your tits out for the lads'. Basically all in all, bad times if you weren't or aren't a soldier.

I've also noticed loads of prostitutes out in force today. You can tell the whores from normal girls because of how smiley they all are. Seeing as it's summer, all the girls are barely wearing anything, but normal girls here dress like pornstars (high heels and hot pants are a staple), whereas the prostitutes prefer dresses and to sit on park benches in groups of twos, smoking and making eyes at passing guys.

Apparently it's calmed down a bit compared to the stuff they pulled a while back ago- for example there used to be a few deaths each year.

Speaking of paratrooper I was told an interesting story/rumour that is a bit closer to home by an ex serviceman from England today. Apparently the paratroopers got so strong during the end of the 80's and beginning of the 90's that there were rumours that they were going to overthrow the government in England! Crazy. That's why they were split up into 3 sections, apparently.

Anyways, I'm off to Kiev next. This is when the trip will get really crazy. Stay tuned.