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.
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.
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