85% and 100C, aka home-made vodka and Russian Banya

So I've actually been out here for over 2 weeks now, which is why the posts are coming so rapidly. I'll calm down soon, but for now this blog is the biscuit, and I am spunking my thoughts all over it. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soggy_biscuit). I gotta say... I only put that in because I was amazed that had its own wikipedia page. I just spent about 30minutes clicking through all the links from that page after linking it here. I recommend http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_penetration_dildo - it's practically an instruction manual. OH FUCK, GEORGE FOCUS.

Yea so umm Russia...

Now that the mental images have cleared I remembered what I was going to write about.

What I've noticed walking around in the evenings here is that everyone is always drunk in the evenings. It's always a party, and everyone's invited- just boyb plz k?

Occasionally this leads to problems... like the time that a guy got bottled and kicked in outside my apartment. However, mostly it's all a pretty nice affair.

One evening a group of us were invited to a Russian Banya. This is kind of like a steam room, but oh so much more. The place we were going was built by a man called Petrovich with his own two hands. He literally did everything. The pine that the building was made of was taken from a nearby forest- Petrovich went and chose the trees himself, chopped them down, took them home and stacked them. The gaps between the pine were sealed with moss, just as a traditional Banya is supposed to be. It was a gorgeous piece of work, and something that any Russian man would be extremely proud of. Petrovich himself is an extraordinary character. He had colon cancer and began building the Banya then, until he was on his deathbed. They managed to operate on him and save him, but left a massive scar down his stomach as a reminder of his mortality, a subject on which all his confidence and determination seemed to fade. He spoke with passion and confidence, and was really charismatic- the sort of person who is just a natural orator. He later told me how he used to smuggle vodka and cigarettes into the west, seeing as both were much cheaper here.

Anyway, Nikolai (the ex fighter pilot), my dad, a guy called Paul that was the boss of the company I've ended up working with, and I all went to Petrovich's house in the evening to relax after a day running around. We bought a couple of bottles of vodka and some birch branches (we'll get to them), and after getting a quick tour of Petrovich's house, went to the baths.

The whole thing is pretty ritualistic and has a lot of significance for many Russians. The baths are the Russian man's ultimate sanctum. Women have to bathe in separate groups, and negative conversation or action is not tolerated. In fact, if an act of violence is committed within the Banya the owner has to take the roof off, sand the walls down until it is all completely fresh, and put a new roof on to cleanse it. The whole tradition of weekly trips to the Banya has been going since about the 13th Century, so the whole thing is a very old and ritualistic event.

So anyway, inside the Banya there was a small room with pine benches and a long table, with loads of food on it, and beyond that a cold room with a shower, and then the actual sauna room. The benches were in a step system, the idea being that on your first trip you start at the bottom one, and work your way to the top, where it's hottest. You have to put on caps when you go in there, otherwise the heat gets to you way too quickly. So in we went, three Russians, an Englishman... and me. The heat when you get inside is ridiculous and for the first few moments I felt like I had to get out. It was about 80C at that time, as it hadn't been heated up fully yet. The 5 of us looked like a bunch of down and out smurfs, sweating so much that you literally had to just scrape it off you. My body went into overdrive trying to cool itself down, and it looked like there was an invisible shower above my head...pouring sweat down me.

After we got out we all got a bucket of ice cold water poured over us in turn, and after many manly grunting noises like 'UUAAARRRRHHH' accompanied by the rapid shrinking of cocks and the retreat of balls into the body, we all decided it was time for some food... and vodka. The food was lovely and all of it was home-grown by Petrovich. We proceeded to snack and knock back vodka shots, each shot accompanied to a toast along the lines of something like 'to our health and happiness'. Obviously the one poor English guy had to have everything that was going on translated for him by me, and I felt like I was doing the dubbing in some kind of experimental foreign film as we talked about what happiness is made of, what being a man consists of and what are respectable things to strive for in life.

Morals, the state of the country and the people, life stories and jokes flowed as we repeated this whole process of Banya, cold shower, food and vodka twice more, with everyone getting more and more animated as we went past the first bottle of vodka.

The next time we were in the relaxation room Petrovich bought out his distillation device to make vodka. The one he bought out was a mini one, purely for the purpose of making individual shots. It looked kind of like the whole filtration/distillation process that I remember from Chemistry. Finally a practical use for the bullshit I had to endure in school. As we chatted the wine began boiling, and drips of pure spirit began dripping into an empty shot glass at the other end of the device, the stuff that alcoholics have wet dreams about. This stuff was 85% and tasted pretty much like surgical spirit. It burned the shit out of your mouth. If normal vodka was a party in your mouth, this stuff was a bunch of guys turning up to the party in blacked out cars with baseball bats and beating the shit out of everyone and everything. It's the sort of stuff that if you drink too much of, you go through being drunk and come out on the other side where you think you're sober, but a different person. It was the shit, basically. After drinking one of those, normal vodka felt like sipping on some mineral water.

Knocking back one of these each, we all went back into the sauna room in our jolly smurf hats, unaware that Petrovich was about to inflict more pain than Gargamel could ever conceive was possible.

pussy

Once we were inside and sweating like a bunch of sausages in a synagogue, out came the birch branches. If this were a computer game, these branches would be a +5 magical weapon with extra slash damage, with a chance of fire damage on every heat. The Englishman, Paul, decided to go first- which was pretty odd because he had done this before, and therefore knew what was in store. Hearing the occasional 'fuck''cunt' or whatever, I figured it was probably a bit painful, but no biggie. The scene was as surreal as a Dali painting though... well almost. There stood a 50-something year old Russian waving a bunch of birch branches above his head and slapping them down on the body of a naked Englishman, lying prostate on a bench in a room that was about 100C by now, with 2 other men and a George watching in smurf hats and a towel.

After seeing the scene unfolding in front of me, I thought of Josh Eves' mantra of 'when in Rome' and decided to show my naked arse to the assembly of sweaty men and get ready for my whipping. Apparently the trick is to shake the branches in the air before you bring them down on the body, because then hot air gets trapped between the leaves. Considering that Petrovich wasn't smacking me hard at all, the sensation felt like he was pouring boiling water all over my body when the branches came down, and at first it was genuinely pretty agonising. It was as if the heat went all the way through to my bones in sharp needles. He repeated this whole process all the way up and down my body and as soon as he was done I jumped outside and dumped a bucket of cold water over myself, before my skin melted off.

We then continued drinking, eating and talking, and repeated this whole process another two times, each of us taking it like a man at least twice. THIS ISN'T GAY. YOU'RE GAY. By this point we were all pretty thoroughly drunk, apart from my dad because the fun sponge doesn't drink, and the scenes became comical. Barely seeing straight, I had to translate a conversation between Nikolai and Paul about hunting or something- in which, in a true drunk manner, both of them went completely off topic and seemed to talk about different things. The night continued in this manner, by the end of which the scene between Paul and Petrovich reminded me of a little story someone told about a wedding between a Pole and an Englishman. The problem at this wedding was that the Pole's father didn't speak any English, and the Englishman's father didn't speak any Polish. However, after a bottle of vodka the two seemed to be communicating perfectly well, seemingly understanding and relating to each other like true family. Similarly, the more vodka we had, the less I had to translate for Paul, until by the end he was nodding and agreeing as soon as Petrovich said anything. In fact, after the 3litres of vodka we had they seemed to be practically long lost family.

After about another 4 shots 'for the road' we left the house feeling amazingly clean and fresh. It felt like all of the crap that had built up in my body had been totally removed and I have never felt that clean before. The whole experience alone was enough to warrant me coming out here. During the process the guys talked about it being a cleansing of spirit and body, and at the time I just dismissed it as a load of overly reverent crap. However, after experiencing it properly, I knew exactly what they meant. The good food, good conversation and good company was really wonderful. I have never felt so at home, comfortable and closer to a group of strangers than then. Afterwards it really did feel like had been cleansed, body and mind. It seemed that after experiencing such total relaxation it was impossible to harbour any negativity, even for a morally retarded person such as myself.

It was a really wonderful experience, which can't be communicated anywhere near as effectively as when it is being experienced. I'm going to make my own Banya in England I've decided.

The diving bell and the diseased double headed eagle

There's a French film called 'The diving bell and the butterfly'. It's about a man who has a stroke and when he is revived develops 'locked in syndrome'- a condition where he is totally paralyzed and unable to communicate- only his eyes still working, but his mind totally healthy. Understandably at first he is totally horrified by this total inability to do anything, but soon learns to cope with it. He begins to use his imagination to escape from his condition. In this world he spends time with his love, relishing life and experiencing as many beautiful moments as possible- the instances that people remember for the rest of their lives for their total perfection.
I feel like I'm in a diving bell too at the moment. There is so much about Russia that I would change. I'm not adopting some kind of British colonial attitude of 'our culture is better than theirs', but there is intrinsically a lot wrong with how people treat each other here. For example the mindset of businessmen and entrepreneurs in this country. They seem to base their whole aspirations for wealth around the outlook that the exploitation of anyone they possibly can is not only acceptable, but the only way to really achieve their ultimate goal. Everyone tries to fuck everyone over out here. Being a country that is relatively new to capitalism- not even a full generation through- the general population has absolutely no concept of 'value for money'. The result is that the type of rip offs being attempted are pathetic beyond belief. You order a portion of chips for £2, and half an hour later you get a portion that wouldn't fill a child. You buy a six-pack of eggs and half of them have gone off, etc. These are obviously very petty examples, but I'm using them to show a mindset rather than as individual examples. Once you buy something 'it's your problem', and nobody is going to give a shit unless you're some sort of big deal that could hurt them. There exists a strong hierarchy here, in which money is at the top and human decency is at the bottom. People are still not used to the idea that the individual's concerns are important in a democracy.

This lack of voice is at least bearable if the oppressed are able bodied people who can somehow scratch a living, but the whole situation is amplified when one considers the pensioners of the country. I am absolutely disgusted and horrified to see old men and women sleeping on park benches, walking around begging or selling small bundles of flowers or something similar. They are unable to work and the government routinely tears the pittance they get in pension from their withered old hands. Landlords exploit them- telling them to pay for an apartment that they had bought decades before, or refusing to do simple and routine maintenance to the building that they pay for simply because they know there's no one they could turn to for help.
It is these people's position that is most prominent in my head, and I can't begin to explain how horrible it feels when you've just eaten a big meal at a restaurant, enjoying your after meal cigarette when you see an old woman shuffle by with a bunch of flowers for sale- half bent and withered. I was so close earlier to walking up to an old lady who was sleeping on the bench in the park on a pile of rags and asking her how I could help and try to sort something out for her when I realised how totally insensitive it would be for me, a person who can't really help her, to get her hopes up that her situation could possibly ever change and that there could be more for her than what she currently has. I could get her an apartment and give her a decent amount of money, but what then? The minute I'm gone and that money is dried up she is back in the same situation sooner or later. Unfortunately charity needs to start from home, and there's no use in trying to keep someone afloat if you drown yourself. So I kept walking, and it made me feel awful. There's not been much else in my mind since apart from this stupid impotent anger and frustration at these sorts of situations.

It reminded me of my grandmother in Ukraine. Before this summer when both me and my dad started making enough money for more than just a hand to mouth existence, this frustration was even more accute and stiffling. It threw me into depression seeing them struggle the way they did, trying to live on a total of about £80 a month. Before this summer when dad ordered some new ones to be delivered to their house, they had slept on the same mattresses for 38 years because they couldn't afford to replace them. My grandmother worked two jobs and my grandfather did 16 hour shifts. Last summer when I was at theirs she said some of the most horrifying words I could ever hear from her: 'I have worked and struggled for 74 years. When am I going to start living?'. This example is the norm here, and if anything they get by at least better than a lot of other pensioners. They have my aunty and uncle to look after them financially and physically, whereas most don't even have that.

There is no support for the down and out here. If there's nothing to gain from them, they are abbandonned. People have developed this parasitic, animalistic attitude where those who are no use to furthering their own agenda are not even considered as the same order of human as them.

To bring this back to my introduction, I feel like I'm in a diving bell now. I want to shake up this whole fucking system. I want to stop every single black car with tinted windows, pull out the people inside, feed them to the stray dogs and give their belongings to the tramps. But I can't. And I never will be able to. I am a nobody with no voice in this system as much as anyone else. The only difference is I am only dipping my toes into this shit, not lying in it.

I read a book called 'The death of Ivan Illyich' by Tolstoy not long ago. The main character was a terminally ill judge. Throughout his life he did things that were considered proper for a person of his position and ability. He married into a good family, worked well on his career and bought himself a nice house and took pride in decorating it. He maintained work friends and occassionaly played cards. His relationship with his children and wife grew colder and colder throughout this whole process until his illness. Finding there to be no cure for it, he began to have to deal with the idea of his mortality. As he looked back at his own life he realised that he had completely wasted all of it on his reputation and material gain, and that what really mattered was to be a compassionate and selfless human being. He died happy in the knowledge that he had realised this, and full of pity for those around his deathbed who didn't know what he now knew. The clock has begun ticking, Russia's deathbed flashes through the collective mindset more and more.

Ah life...

Today I've decided to not go to work. I can't be bothered, so I slept in for about 6 hours. Since my life at the moment basically consists of work, food, blog, sleep in that order, I think today I'm going to eat things in my boxers in front of the laptop and occasionally fall asleep.

The reason for this kind of routine is basically because there is just not much to do here. There's a cinema, but I don't feel like watching badly dubbed Western film or below par Russian cinema (with a few notable exceptions like Day/Night Watch). There's other stuff I'm sure- like mullet care and growth classes or something, but that's not really my style... yet.

pictured: my sexy, sexy culture

The other reason for not wanting to go out is the weather. It is boiling at the moment, with the sun roasting the ground to at least 30C every day. When I was in Moscow it was 42C.

The result of this is that I have experienced what life must be like as a fat person- except I don't see everyone as massive walking bits of food, my self esteem is ok and I don't breathe in a funny way. However, I do feel constantly tired if I do some physical activity and I break into a sweat over the smallest tasks- like walking.

On these overly sweaty walks I have noticed some things about the city I'm at. They're not particularly amazing observations, but they amuse me a bit. First of all, a lot of men here have mullets. Proper ugly looking redneck shit (see above picture) that just looks amusing. What's most surprising is that these ridiculous looking creatures actually manage to pull really hot women. Loads of horrible looking guys with any combination of mullet, beer gut and bloated face manage to completely over-chick and get ridiculously hot girls. The only explanation I see as feasible is that the length of their mullet either corresponds to the length of their cocks, or their beer gut is an indication of how much money they earn.

There are good sides to these potential gold diggers though. The women here seem to have a certain joie de vivre and always take care of how they look ridiculously well. They're always done up really nicely and you can tell they make an effort every time they go out. The other bonus is that a lot of them seem to have got their fashion sense from pornos- so the trend is usually small, tight fitting clothes and high heels with almost everything and in any situation. It's nice to just walk around with all the girls looking so nice and tarted up, even if I'm not interested in them. It makes the town seem nicer.

The best thing for me is that, as a result of how goonish the guys look, I feel like I am totally immune to ridicule out here. The other day I was with an Essex boy that I work with. We were standing there, chatting when a guy who was walking past us said 'oh you are from England? How do you find Russia? Jolly good?' in his best possible imitation of an English accent (which to be fair was quite good and conjured an image of the symbolic Russian bear sipping a cup of tea and wearing a top hat). As we considered smashing him in the face, we both looked at him and burst out laughing. In front of us was a weedy guy with squinty eyes, hidden behind wiry glasses. His mullet reached down to his shoulders, and his trousers up to his bellybutton. He was clearly a master of ridicule- both of other people and himself, truly someone who was dedicated to their cause. He looked like he spent a lot of time being really tough on internet forums, and wasn't someone you'd want to fuck with if he was behind a keyboard. So we left it at that, thinking that it's true that a picture can say a thousand words.

It's great because I can dress however I like, behave however I like and still feel like I am totally immune to their judgements. I could drag my toilet out into the middle of town and sit on it taking a dump. As I sit on my porcelain throne I would laugh at the goons with their mullets and attempts at pimping out Lada cars.

Do we have a deal?

Where I've been working recently is having issues with deliveries for equipment. Because the company is English, the Russian logistics company in charge of it is making a meal of it all and has been holding stock for about 3 weeks now. Companies go into liquidation and sell our equipment to each other, ask for bribes to deliver it, deliver it only in parts and just outright sell things. It's getting sorted, but fuck is it annoying.

One of the guys at work did tell me an amusing story when we were talking about it though. This man was an ex fighter pilot (he used to fly Migs... COOL), and is now the site manager. I was explaining the situation with the things we need, and he told me a story about a company that made double glazing.

Apparently this company got an order from Moscow one time for a few windows. They made them and sent them off. Soon after the boss got a call from the clients. They told him that the windows were smaller than the dimensions they ordered. The boss told them to use some foam and essentially told them to fuck off in a polite manner. The Muscovites called again and got the same response, and again once more after that. I don't think that guy knew the saying 'third time lucky', but now he has an intimate knowledge of it. Soon after the third phone call, a bunch of guys came round to his office in a black, tinted car. They found the boss and pinned him down. They flipped him over and showed that bottle of expanding foam up his arse... literally. They then proceeded to pump the foam through his arse and left.

That's business in Russia. 'I'm going to fill your arse 50cm full of foam'

'how about 20?'

'I won't go lower than 40'

'Make that 32 and you have yourself a deal!'

It's literally like these people try to fuck themselves over. By being unprofessional dicks they lose business, and in the case of the window man- the ability to use his intestines properly or walk.

imagine...

Life ain't all bad...

So dad and I have an apartment out here. It's cheaper and better than staying in a hotel- substantially cheaper and more space and privacy. It's basically a massive Soviet throwback and looks kind of like my nan's one.

this is what I eat

this is where I wash my cotton panties

this is the view from my balcony, which is gonna collapse soon

this is where I watch wonderful Russian TV

This is where I brush my teeth and stuff, and re-enact bits of the Saw films

this is what I see when I wake up

I feel like I've bad mouthed Russia too much in these last few posts. It's not all bad at all. Just the place I'm staying at is a pretty small city (350,000 people). Also, the smaller places aren't as nice for English speaking tourists, who are likely to get fucked in the arse by local con-men so hard that all they can ever see again in their eyes is their wallet and dignity moving rapidly away from them.

Cigarettes are dirt cheap (£1 for 20... they don't even bother selling 10's), alcohol and food isn't bad, the women are very attractive and the streets are clean and pretty crime free in the way of petty things. Also, the money is all hundreds and thousands (thousand roubles= roughly £20) - which makes you feel like you're playing monopoly... makes blowing your money a lot more fun.

Underage sex, blackmail and logs in the toilet

Hello again. How was your day? I'm joking, I don't care- I can't even hear you respond. Another day, another story from the old country. The sex tourism continued with the English guys, they chased pussy like their life depended on it. I can hardly blame them though- when a bunch of red-blooded males come to a country that is filled to the brim with good looking women, what else can you expect?

So, another one of the English guys (we'll call him B. here) decided that he wanted some Russian tail too. So one day after work he came to the cafe we always eat in after work and spotted a very cute waitress called (J) - nice body, kind of petite, and a sweet face. The next day we came in and he bought her some flowers and I asked her when she came off work so he could give them to her. I remember one of my teachers seeing me coming in to 6th form with flowers for my first girlfriend and him saying 'once you get them flowers once, they'll always expect them'... how right he was. After spending an infuriating night basically having to go on a double date with him, this Russian waitress (J.) and her friend (S.) and having to awkwardly avoid a few attempts by her friend, he managed to get what he was after - some fleshy Russian flaps (I assume they were fleshy from the shorts she was wearing, I can't really confirm though... I'll ask tomorrow if you want?).

Sexy

Unfortunately for him, it all went more tits up than Bono's attempts at being a morally superior human being from then on. She started asking if this meant she was his boyfriend and if she could go visit him at work. We do 12 hour shifts of manual work being well macho. She then wanted to sleep over for the rest of the time he was here, and her friend did not understand when I said 'NO' (literally sat her down and explained that it wasn't gonna ever happen). Obviously this poor boy was scared shitless considering this girl was offering something like a bastard version of marriage after sleeping with him for one night. She even called him 'my husband', only partly joking I think. On top of all this, we then found out from another waitress that she's actually 17- which is underage in Russia (see other post for why that is BAD). Strangely enough once we found out she was only 17, we ended up having to treat her very nicely and taking her out for meals after we got back from work.

Thankfully though she's disappeared for now, but her final scene beats anything from a Shakespearian play. J. and her friend, S., had come to B.'s room in the hotel and we were all sitting there and chatting. Suddenly both of them disappeared to the toilet and didn't emerge for about 20 minutes. We joked that they were taking a shit together or whatever, and when they finally came out I took them downstairs to explain that this has all gone far too far, and would you nice freaky bitches vacate our hotel room (see 'Hoes in my room' by Ludacris for details). When I came back upstairs I found that the girls had been in the toilet together because one of them had actually decided to 'drop some friends off at the pool' and when they dragged me into the toilet to see, I was greeted by one of the guy's aftershave and two massive logs of shit floating side to side like a railway line in the toilet. From then on the girls have disappeared (for now) and the only thing that is left of them is memories of that horrific accident in the toilet... oh and there was no toilet paper that they could've used.

not for you, slags.

There was loads of begging and saying J. had nowhere to stay and whatever, and general manipulation. But thank god that's over with. On the bright side, it's also got rid of a part of my job that I really didn't enjoy as translator- which was chatting up Russian girls for them. That experience has put them off for life- those bums don't look as nice once you see what comes out of them, and what goes on in the brains behind those pretty faces.

On Russian women and their evils....

Russia. So now me and dad have come back for a while to our homeland. Dad has been out here for a month and a bit already- he's been working here helping a few Western companies not get themselves in any shit here... which is a lot more difficult than it sounds, considering at times it feels like the whole country is trying to stick a massive fist up your arse. 'Oh the goods are being held at customs?' you say as you feel one finger slip up your arse. 'It'll take three weeks to receive' you begin to gasp as another two fingers ease their way in. 'You want how much?!' you scream as the whole hand and arm disappear up your colon. That's his job. My job is a translator (which means babysitter out here) and I've decided to do some manual work at the site when I'm not needed to earn some extra money and break the day up a bit. As a result of spending a lot of time with English builders, I've developed an idea of what it is like to be English here- and I'm so glad I'm not in their situation. From not being able to communicate with anyone, apart from each other, to being treated as a meal ticket for any opportunistic local- there is absolutely nothing that I envy about them.

There are spotters always hovering around them when we sit in the central part of town for a beer and a chat, but they remain blissfully ignorant. One example was what happened the other day. We were in the central park of the town we're staying in. A man walked by who was clearly a bad spotter, seeing as even I saw him. All of a sudden 15 minutes later a group of cute girls park themselves close to us and start smiling at us. I've been taught that that is a sign that now is a good time to leave. It's common practice for criminals over here to lure people in using gorgeous girls to a quiet spot so there isn't any hassle and their guard is down. So when a group of attractive girls started coming on to them, after they had just spent the last hour speaking loudly in English, I wasn't exactly shocked. I wasn't totally sure though and didn't want to seem like a paranoid fun sponge so I obliged and went over and helped them talk to each other. They chose one guy out of the lot to talk to and wanted to go for a walk- me and him and three girls. Bear in mind that it was sunset at this point too by the way. Eventually I convinced them to take all 5 of us with them, thinking we were just going to walk around the nice and open public park. As we walked, the tall one with black hair out of the group split off and went on the phone- making sure I was out of earshot, and another one of them suggested we go see some sights about 15 minutes away and then go to a club. Knowing full well my poor English flowers would be torn apart and trampled in a Russian night club, where they didn't speak the language and know how to behave, I had enough and said we needed to get back to the hotel and left the girls there. This might seem ridiculous behaviour to someone from England, but when you're treated as a walking bag of money by some people this kind of excessive paranoia is very important.

I've been told stories of underage girls here being given apartments or hotel rooms to bring back guys and have sex with them. After a certain time the girl would start ripping her clothes and hair, scratching her body and screaming during sex. The police would then burst in on queue and arrest the guy for raping a minor. Then the guy is faced with a choice of being thrown in a Russian prison.+, where they destroy people who touch underage girls and do horrible shit like castration and so on, or bribing the police with a massive sum of money to forget about the whole situation. That's how some officers earn some extra income. As well as this possibility, they could quite easily be leading us into an ambush or would blackmail the guys after they had sex with them and found out they were underage... or they could just be nice girls! Don't worry, I joke.

pure evil

So yea, I had my reasons. What I found wonderful though was how totally oblivious the guys were to this situation and were so genuinely surprised when I decided to change our plans. Clearly the wonderful thing about using girls for this sort of thing is that all the blood flows to the victim's cock and all sense of fear or common sense is washed away in the process. Thankfully it all ended well, with the only bad thing being a bit of blue balls for the boys.

Anyway, I think this wall of text is enough for today. Tomorrow there'll be a story about blackmail and massive logs left in the toilet.

Beginning of the road...

I've been meaning to start a blog for a while now, but could never really think of a good way of starting one... and still haven't found how, by the looks of it. All the cool kids are doing it though, so I figured I should start to, seeing as I'm as cool as....as a guy who sells cucumbers in a fridge.

yo

The reason for me finally biting the bullet and starting one today is because at the very least I have something interesting to talk about beyond the usual topics that litter so many blogs.

Nobody cares about a stranger's life, but who doesn't care about sex, travel and adventure? I'm not promising a mixture of pornhub, one of those documentaries about foreign countries that you see on bbc and something with Bruce Willis in it- but just pretend I am and keep interested.

There have been so many moments here in Russia where I've thought 'I wish some of my friends in England could see/hear this'. So... let's start from the beginning.

For the off chance that someone who I don't know very well actually reads this I'll just give a little background to myself. I was born in Kiev, Ukraine- but I have always considered myself Russian and still do. I was born right before the collapse of the Soviet Union so technically speaking I am still Russian. It's complicated and unimportant really. Basically now I am a British citizen. I've spent the last 13 years of my life in England, but have one foot in the Russian community and one in the English. As a result I've always been pretty culturally challenged- never quite feeling like I share the same views as my English friends, but not really finding any satisfaction amongst the Russians. That used to bother me a lot, but I've stopped caring now and am just thankful for the good friends I have, despite whatever differences in outlook or culture we have.

I've come over to Russia for a month on business and to see my dad and other family members now. Russia has always been a very dangerous country for everyone involved. During the 90's it was totally fucked, when the Communist government fell apart and people ripped the country's resources and wealth apart as they privatised everything and created a massive gap between the rich and the poor.

We were piss poor when I was a kid and hunger was never far off. A lot of my meals came from a nearby school and my aunty, my grandad and grandmother, my parents and me lived in a small flat all together. This kind of setup was pretty common for people in my part of the world, and I'm saying it purely to build a picture of how a lot of the Soviet bloc evolved from the 90's to now, not for sympathy or something. Of course everybody hated it and fortunately enough my parents were some of the few that were able to get out to the West. So off they went and left me with my grandparents and aunty for three years a few days before my fourth birthday. They worked and sent money back as often as they could. Eventually they got enough money together to get me over, so that's how I got to England.

Anyways enough of my life story, hopefully the other stuff on here will be more interesting. I'm off for some food and I'll give this another go soon.