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Just a couple absurdities:
On Saturday we met a friend of a friend named Dima who is a Sociology student, writer, and all around swell fellow. He was collecting signatures in protest of the recent closure of the European University in St. Petersburg. The official reason, as in the recent attempt to close the Moscow House of Journalists, is fire safety–apparently a recent tactic bullying and/or closing insufficiently submissive institutions. Among the list of violations is a spiral staircase (the building was built in the 19th century, I believe) and some other architectural quirks, but due to the building’s historical status, Dima says, it’s impossible to make modifications in compliance with the “regulations.” But of course, this isn’t about fire safety, it’s political. The university was involved in a project regarding the observation of elections and aiming to reduce rigged votes; as you might imagine this is rather unpopular. The University’s foreign connections and reliance on international funding most likely doesn’t help.
Among the week’s posts over at Johnson’s list there’s a summary of some of the ways in which counter-terrorism is used to restrict speech. “Extremist language” and insulting public officials are offenses punishable by fines and even jail time. This is of course a serious issue, but there are some really crazy examples of its implementation. Right now there’s a case against the author of an article called “Putin is our good Hitler” which makes bizarre favorable comparisons to Hitler. There was also apparently an incident where somebody compared Vladimir Vladimirovich to a phallus, but my favorite is the following:
Article 282 [of the Russian constitution] prohibits the incitement of hatred or enmity “if these acts have been committed in public or with the use of mass media.” Dubrovskiy cited the case of Stanislav Dmitrievsky, who was prosecuted for writing an article critical of Russia’s handling of the Chechen war. Dmitrievsky was charged with extremism, in part, for not capitalizing the “p” in a critique of “Putin’s regime,” although in the Russian language a name is not usually capitalized when used as an adjective, Dubrovskiy noted. Experts in philology testified that this non-capitalization was intended as extremism.
As I’ve mentioned, I’m a big fan of Echo Moscow who not only sports one swell logo but also debate that tends to be more critical (and lively) than not and usually featuring at least several points of view, sometimes even opposition leaders who get considerably less space in other outlets. All this in spite of a 66% share holding by Gazprom who, if you’ll remember, is now lead by the future President, Medvedev. At any rate, I’ve noticed that very often during the day the station runs long, awkward infomercials about Erectile dysfunction. I’ve often wondered if this is some kind of campaign to undermine the credibility of the station, or at least drive away listeners among the masculinity obsessed male population.
Joking, of course, probably
On a completely unrelated note, I’m gonna go ahead and parrot Hertzberg’s link to an article by the historian William Miller for all those Obama nay-sayers and skeptics.
So last weekend I made my 4th trip to Moscow, Eric accompanying. This time a round I actually managed to see Lenin (he’s very waxy looking and they don’t let you stand still to look at him), and walked a great deal of the city on foot. In the very very bitter cold. It was so cold that when at 4 am we stumbled out onto a completely empty Red Square, swaggering not just a bit, we discovered Ice in our beer. Refreshing.The cold also drove us to frequent steaming beverage stops around the city, particularly in the period between our the end of our sleepless train ride at 6 am and the beginning of Lenin’s working hours (10-1, daily). Unfortunately it’s quite difficult to find a decent, cheap cup of joe in Moscow to say nothing of the incomprehensible difficulty we had finding a place open at the apparently ungodly hour of our arrival (all I’m saying is that shit wouldn’t fly in New York or Chicago) Insult to injury: we found a bunch of “24 hour” establishments but were slightingly rejected by the rather bored wait staff; apparently “round the clock” and 24 hours don’t apply to Saturday mornings. At any rate, we finally settled for some over priced breakfasts and some pretty mediocre coffee at Shokoladnitsa, in spite of my giddy suggestions that we break our McDonalds fast and visit the first golden arches in Moscow that were climbing over the horizon as we walked towards Pushkinskaya Square. The next stop was a Koffee hauz, which was even more over priced and considerably less satisfactory. Having blown something like 40 bucks in our first 4 muscovite hours, we went into cheap mode and dined twice at Sbarro where a 4 dollar combo gets you soup, a slice, and a beverage (a rather swell meal combined with maybe an extra slice and several relatively inexpensive Sbarro beers).
Everytime I’m in Moscow I like it a little bit more, but all the same I’m always happy to return to Petersburg. It’s a crazy, stunning city. The massive, totalitarian “Seven Sister” buildings built under Stalin punctuate the skyline along with steeples and nowadays extravagant billboards and light displays. The streets wind, bend and jut up hills and on each, the nominal “buildings” turn out to be coursed through with alleyways, substreets, and courtyards. Finding hostels and back alley bars is the beginning of an adventure for the uninitiated, but that’s sort of the whole fun. It’s a city that rewards the wanderer. Also, Muscovites seem to ask for and give directions much more frequently than Petersburgers. Which urban group is actually the friendliest is still sort of up for debate, although our friend Lena explained that Muscovites are friendlier because they are stupider (literally “from the village/country”) while Petersburgers are educated, cultured people. It seems nobody that came to age reading Dostoevsky feels much inclination to greet strangers with cheer.
At any rate, it turns out I’m headed back to the great red city next weekend to take my Foreign Service exam…
In other news, Elza leaves for France tomorrow. We’re planning a farewell party tonight and then some kind of Balkan style dirge to the airport, perhaps even boomboxing some of Maria’s gypsy music. Eric jets the next weekend. Everything is sad.
2/19/2008
There’s always copy of the Nevksy Times plastered to the side of a building on one of my daily routes around the city. I haven’t yet stopped to read the paper in detail, but I always notice the headlines and the full color pictures which are almost always being scrutinized by a bent-over pensioner. After Bush’s final state of the union they chose one of the many well timed shots of the shrub’s ugly face with the headline “Swan song for an ugly duckling.” The Putin frontpages come just short of declaring him молодец and recently, of course, Medvedev has been making appearances amidst golden-smile babushkian praise. At any rate, todays photo showed a flock of birds scattering over some decrepit apartment buildings: “Even the birds are abandoning Kosovo.”
As for a more official Russian positions on the declaration, Radio Echo Moscow has been pretty much non-stop discussing the matter the last several days. My personal highlight was an irascible duma deputy claiming that Kosovar identity was pretty much created ten years ago by American special agents and part of an attempt to weaken the Slavic-Orthodox community. He went on to blast (in what’s pretty much the standard argument here) the hypocrisy of the west for allowing Kosovo’s independence as some kind of exception when similar situations exist all over Europe (and here he named the usual handful: Basque country, Northern Ireland, Northern Cyprus). This seems to be the party line: that Kosovo is no exception and that this now sets a precedent for the independence of a whole bunch of other antonymous, and that this threatens the territorial integrity of Europe (which he also aligned with the clandestine aims of the United States). A bit later I caught him talking about Crimea, which is now a part of Ukraine thanks to Kruschev who, in the words of one of my professors, “woke up one morning” and decided to gift the Black Sea territory to the Ukrainian Republic of the USSR. All this of course much to the chagrin of Russia, who points to its large Russian population, linked history history, and swell vacation qualities in its querulous claims. At any rate, prompted about the status of Crimea this deputy started to rave about how that was an entirely exceptional situation due to the historical relations to Russia and the Russian speaking population and etc etc. The hostess chuckled as she asked, “Just like Kosovo?”
Which is to say, sadly, that it’s clear the extent to which this situation is in part yet another tool of the Russia-West geopolitical game, totally departing from the grounding it migh have in a people’s sovereignty and the history of a country, a region.
Of course, the Kosovo situation is certainly real complicated. In spite of the class I took a year ago on the Balkan crisis visa vis language, history, and politics I’m not really qualified to say much except that tangling with issues of sovereignty mixed up with the last twenty five years of Balkan history and in the context of the Russia/Europe/US/China geopolitical dynamic is making my head spin.
And Putin, if you didn’t hear, boldly declared the other day that Russia would “do something” if the west recognized Kosovo. Maybe just empty threats, but I sure don’t feel rosy considering all the rhetoric and action about raising an armored fist to the west (massive defense spending, bomber flights, a stray missile here, a snubbed treaty there). But really, All of this posturing is ultimately going to hurt Russia, or at least the majority of the population whose problems with minimal wages, microscopic pensions, and etc might be somewhat alleviated by the buckets of oil and gas cash that’s being spent on the military.
Speaking of, Eric and I just listened to a radio debate between Gari Kasparov (Chess grand master, Other Russia) and Vladimir Zhrinovsky (flamboyant nationalist, and LDPR presidential candidate). The topic was something like is Russia’s fate with Imperialism or Democracy. In the midst of the resulting, and totally expected, yelling match Kasparov went on his usual case about the complete absence of a democratic climate in Russia while Zhirinovsky (probably agreeing the democracy doesn’t exist, albeit all for the better) claimed that Russia needs to become an Imperial power more or less possessing the strength and willpower to bomb and seize the world as might suit its needs. In that respect, he said, Russia should be like America.
On the subject of democracy, it makes sense to point to the coming presidential elections. The shocking thing is that you’d hardly know there’s an election in Russia in two weeks if you arrived in the center of Petersburg tomorrow. Even the newspapers and Radio are pretty passive about the whole thing. I’ve seen exactly zero campaign advertisements apart from the generic government posters informing people that the election is on March 2nd. This is especially jarring in comparison to parliamentary campaign a couple months ago. While then, like now, the result was absolutely clear beforehand (pretty much for the same reason, Putin’s support of United Russia then and his appointment of Medvedev now) there was at least some semblance of a normal political process and a legitimate fight for the 30% of votes that weren’t defacto going to Putin.
Apart from the guaranteed result, the meaninglessness of this election has to do with the options on the ballot. If you’re not going to vote for the handsome successor, you get to choose between Zuganov (Communist party), Mr. Zhirnovksy, and some guy nobody has ever heard of. The communists have their solid 10% and Zhirinovsky has his block of (crazed? Amused?) followers, but for the rest of the folks not frothing for Putin this is essentially no choice at all. As to why there’s no liberal candidate, Kasparov dropped out after reasonable concerns for his personal well being and safety while the former prime minister Mikhail Kasyanov (apparently a pretty corrupt and unpopular fellow) was quite rudely prevented from registering as a candidate. So most of the opposition is meekly shouting to boycott the election while the rest of the population either doesn’t care at all or is absolutely confident about the results to the point of not caring. And so there’s no need for anybody to fuss about with campaigning, debating, transparency. Just some stump speeches every now and then where Medvedev makes overtures of western liberalism while Putin shakes his fist and frowns.
Actually when Eric and I were in Moscow this weekend we saw our first campaign poster, a massive several story billboard next to the Kremlin. Of course, it featured Putin and Medvedev smiling, practically arm in arm. No names, just the tired proclamation of victory for Russa.
They’ve got it worked out real swell, actually: when Medvedev becomes president, Putin will take the Prime Minister’s post, and the current Prime Minister Zubkov will slide into the executive position at Gazprom (largest company in Russia?) vacated by Medvedev. Snap, crackle, stable transition of power.
My apologies for boring the few family members that are probably still reading this, I guess I haven’t written in a long time and all of this stuff has been stewing in me. I’m not going to cast too many judgments on the regime itself (save, I guess, the patently unproductive military posturing of which of course the US is equally responsible), especially as by all accounts life is a pretty much a hell of a lot better here than ten, fifteen years ago; but I’m absolutely with Kasparov when he points to the absence of democracy and danger thereof. Really it’s even worse than that; it’s (once again) no longer even necessary to pretend that it exists, a far more dangerous position as shapes not only the tangible political achievements of a people, but their very ability, desire to aspire. Cynical realism, man.
Which of course brings me to the US elections. Living here, watching this process unfold and growing attached to people whom this all concretely effects I’ve absolutely come to appreciate the political system in my own country. For all its faults minor (superdelegates, seriously?) and major (lobbys, the electoral college, really stupid issue pandering) in American politics there is at least efficacy in theory and sometimes even practice. This is all the more so with the current race, regardless of who wins the democratic presidential candidacy. It’s incredibly meaningful to me-an only recently politically conscious fellow living in a country of increasingly meaningless politics-to watch an election campaign where there is not only an enormously significant choice, but one in which it viscerally feels compelled to get involved because that involvement is meaningful. I mean, really, feels this way: on the other side of the world; on our night train to Moscow I didn’t catch an ounce of sleep in part on account of this feeling. And yes, Obama has a great deal to do with this, and it is meaningful that in this election be it McCain-Clinton or McCain-Obama people of my political persuasion feel like we’re voting for someone instead of against. But really, and sorry for the corny 4th grade civics, for all of my love of this foreign country and my beliefs in world citizenship over nationality (barflys, citizens of the world, unite!) whenever I manage to catch up on the election I get down right excited to be an American and decide, just maybe, that i’ll get involved in all of this when I return.
Ok. I am done now. I think. There’s some other stuff on my mind like my friend Sasha who’s going to join the army later this year and the Aleksanyan situation, but I guess that’ll just have to come another time. Also to come: adventures in Moscow with 80 year old corpses, chain coffee shops, and freezing beer. I bought a bunch of DVDs today (Among some real swell looking Russian titles, I picked up Juno and Atonement) and I’m feeling like cuddling in front of the warm movie glow of my laptop with antillies and a nice cup of French press coffee (I win).
My stomach is grumbling and I just payed 20 dollars to ACT for the Foreign Service Test Study Guide.
But Steven Malkmus just assured me that Richard Avedon would approve.
I have no idea what any of this means.
Also, keep up the good fight, Mr. Obama, you’ve got the Russians behind you, apparently.
So, right, Kazan.
When we began planning our trip Kazan we decided that we’d make at least one trip out to one of the surrounding towns. Before the Golden Horde took over, the area was populated by the Islamic civilization of Bulgar and the ruins of their ancient capital at the Russian town of Bolgar seemed like a swell choice for an excursion. In addition several Russians in Petersburg and on the train seemed to insist that we see Raifsky monastery and so we spent Sunday and Monday in this way.
Unfortunately or us information-saturated folks it’s a little difficult to wind up in a place where there are no clear train, bus, etc schedules and everybody has a different recommendation for how to get there. First we tried the train station, then the hotel told us to check out some parking lot behind the Pyramid entertainment complex, then some guy in the parking lot told us to go to the bus station and catch a cab, and finally the woman at the information desk told us that we could catch a bus to Bulgar down the street at the river station (That’s the abridged version; I think in the mix we hit every node of inter-city trasport in Kazan excluding the airport). She charged a fee of 3 rubles (about 12 cents) and gave a receipt. Procrastinating, naturally, we put off Bolgar till Monday and decided to catch a cab to the Monastery.
The day was gorgeous and our spirits were high, except for yet another futile attempt to find breakfast. Within twenty minutes we had stopped by the two cafes within walking distance, the first being a dim lit trailer next to the station with no heat and a fishy smell (pirogi in grease stained-cardboard boxes and a glowering bundle of a babushka); the second turned out to be, we decided, one of the most expensive in Kazan. A half hour later we’d found only a cozy castle-themed coffee shop with 12 sorts of coffee but no food and our attempt to buy some snacks in a convenience store ended in a weird exchange with some Kazan Babushkas. Giving up, we opted for a Schwarma stand on some corner. Eric took a single bite of his microwaved burrito-esque Schwarma which sent him howling in frustration to the trash can. I avoided the rotten meat, but my “Pizza” wasn’t a whole lot better. So we cut our losses, hoping for some delicious monastic baked goods and head back to the station for a taxi.
Around pretty much any station or airport there are always shady looking guys muttering things about taxis and drivers, but in Kazan they form a more cohesive group and they tended to be good deal more aggressive. “Куда ребята? Поехали!” As we learned latter, they don’t just stand around and shoot the shit together, they have a whole operation to control fares, scam the highest prices, and ensure even distribution of fares. When we’d approach a single driver we’d be surrounded instantly by another handful of grizzly guys: Afrika, Chef, Povar. After deciding whose turn was up they’d all agree and then insist that whatever location was unreasonably far away and demand an outrageous fare either “by the meter” or flat out. It’s obviously standard to negotiate fares and avoid getting taken in Russia, and Eric and I are rather well seasoned at this game, but we’d never encounter the organization and assertion of the Kazan drivers’ mafia. Actually, as Eric puts it, it’s more of a Taxi cartel where the organization binds a group of self-employed drivers so that the prices stay high and work gets distributed all around. Nevertheless, in both of our dealings with the drivers we cut their initial prices in half and ended up paying pretty much exactly what we intended to pay, although in both cases this happened because a driver broke rank; apparently nobody wants to let the prices slip (especially not from two American kids) in front of the boss, Chef.
In our Journey to Raifsky, we ended up with Ded Kolya (Ded is something like Pop). After we’d refused all of the Mafia’s offers (beginning with an outrageous 1400 r), and started to walk away several times, he got us to sit in his rather nice-looking car saying something about the meter. Away from the group, he explained that he’s an old driver and couldn’t show weakness in front of the younger fellows in the group. Accordingly, he agreed to our price but gloated to the Chef that he’d taken us for 800. We talked for most of the 30 Km out to the Monastery, and when he found out we were English speakers he insisted on calling his daughter and putting her on the phone with me (“she’s tall, beautiful, smart, teaches English at the university”). She was a little confused and so we, unfortunately, didn’t discuss our wedding plans, but she called back a little later excited that we might be able to help her open an English teaching school in Kazan. It broke my heart to dash her dreams… Later, when I mentioned that I’d been to the Sergeiv Posad monastery near moscow. Kolya looked up at me with what’s got to have been the most sincere gaze in Russia (was that sparkle a tear?) and in a cracking, wispy voice told me that it was there thatYuri Gagarin crashed and died.
On account of the stellar weather (minus 8, pristine snow, sun) we got a lot out of the highway through the surrounding villages and stretches of birch and pine forests. Clusters of carved wooden houses by the road and enormous rolling plains. The monastery itself was quite pretty as well, although on account of the previous day’s holiday it was loaded with people and felt a bit like an amusement park. Apparently in the adjacent lake the tougher, braver (or more fervently religious) souls break through the ice and bathe. Two days later on the train home our neighboring Babushki explained that the holy aura of the place is such that nobody’s ever gotten sick from bathing. They also told us (although the more logical of the two was laughingly skeptical) that the frogs around Raifsky don’t croak because a former head of the monastery prayed to god to bring the Monks relief from the nighttime croaking that interfered with their prayer. My favorite things were the baroque (that is very much not in the Orthodox style) and rather brutal painting of hell in one of the cathedrals and the hordes waiting in line for holy water. There was an ice-sculpture garden but we opted out on account of the line. But really, again, the best part of the whole trip was the journey and the forest and the fresh air. We walked the four kilometers to the highway from the monastery as the sun was setting and then hitched a ride back to town with a guy who was driving into Kazan for the night. Later, over Pizza and Beer, we debriefed and shot the shit about Ded Koyla, Jazz, girls, Arendt, the Primaries and etc. In all, four hours at Stingray Pizza (it was even tastier sober).
If Sunday’s experience ended with all sorts of fuzzy feelings about good hearted, soviet-nostalgic drivers, Monday was a completely different story. After yet another screwy search for schedule information we discovered that we were way too late to catch the erratic bus to Bolgar. Hedging our bets with the snowy weather and the same crew of taksisti around the bus station we decided to arrange a driver to drive us, wait, and then drive us back. This time the cartel put us with Afrika, and remembering our bargaining experience with Ded Kolya we didn’t pay attention to the outrageous prices demanded in front of Chef. Afrika wasn’t having any of our negotiations though so we left for more bargaining with the Chef (Probably for the better, as this was one strashnii looking fellow, sunken bloodshot eyes and gold teeth). In short, Bolgar turns out to be a great deal farther than we thought meaning we’d have problems with fading daylight in addition to the bloated fare. After apologizing to a very disappointed Chef, we set out to try some of those 12 sorts of coffee reassuring ourselves that we totally made the smart decision.
Which was all well and good, except that when we were already a good ways from the station an old Lada rolled up to us and a rotund, choleric driver ran out agreeing to our original price and promising to have us to Bolgar by 2:30 and claiming to know all the sites. With a shrug we were in. The following 6 or so hours were some of the most interesting of my entire stay in Russia. Our man, Valerii, is the sort of Russian Chuvak I’ve encountered only fleetingly until now, but with whom it’s probably essential to interact if you want something like an understanding of that mysterious Russian soul. Well, sort of.
In the first place, the trip was an entire lesson in Russian profanity. Valerii swears like a ticked off, piss-drunk sailor even when he’s in a good mood. As you can imagine, it just gets more interesting when he starts to vent about, say, the fact that there’s absolutely nothing and nobody good in Russia. Or, making homage to Stalin, about how the country needs to be led by an iron hand (“Все и здесь хуйня, нам нужна, блядь, железная рука!”). In his view, Russia’s filled with Obmanshiki; everyone looking to cheat everyone else. All the same he explained that in Petersburg live “Cultured people,” and that city, for him, is called Leningrad. He even corrected me on this point. When we stopped for lunch he drank a glass of sour cream as if it were milk. Like most drivers, particularly of taxis, Valerii has a very loose interpretation of traffic laws and reasonable land speeds, although comparatively he turned out to be a rather safe driver. I was watching the road rather nervously on account of the by this point really bad snow, and I’d say he had a reasonable sense of caution and risk under the conditions.
And really, the conditions were quite terrifying. At several points we were driving across empty stretches of land (I’m not sure if it constitutes steppe…) with wind and snow pummeling the car such that pretty much nothing 10 meters past the windscreen was visible, including oncoming headlights. I felt the snow blowing through the cracks in the door. And so from this we got something like a taste of a genuine Russian snowstorm, with all of the itenerant literary references. Further, we saw yet another part of the countryside, the steppe and the vast forests punctuated with isolated clusters of houses. The only connection to what felt to us like civilization being our two-laned road and (thank you electrification) the power grid. We passed a still functioning Kolkhoz (collective farm), at least two ruined churches, and a horse-drawn sledge. Although we saw all this safe and only half-frozen from behind the Lada’s window, I’ve got a much better sense of what it means when Russians talk about Деревня, the village (here I’m mostly thinking about one of my teachers, Larisa who liked to put our trifling complaints about Russia into a bit of perspective, “Outdoor plumbing and minus twenty degrees”).
When we agreed on the ride, Valerii either didn’t understand us or himself engaged in a bit of deception because it turns out he doesn’t know anything about or in Bolgar save a church about which he started to talk incessantly as we neared the town. He claimed that everybody knew this place, that they come from all over just to see it, and that he’d driven scores of foreigners (Americans, Japanese, French) out there. When we finally arrived (around 3:30, with the sun pretty much already setting) Valerii pulled up to the church pointing and exclaiming as if this was our destination. To the gnomish caretaker that hobbled up to the gate he yelled to open up, open up because he’d brought two Americans to see the church; this guy then led us on something like a tour of the dim, cluttered interior. It was something like a tour because he pretty much knew nothing about the church and its icons, except for the miracles they bring to those who kiss them-things like quiting smoking, birthing children, getting married, controlling your anger. More like superstition than faith, which it seems is at least in part the legacy of Christianity’s interaction with pagan faiths and superstitions which has been a part of spiritual life here since Vladimir Christianized Rus a hundred years ago. Needless to say Eric and I didn’t do any kissing, not even when given permission to kiss the exposed finger of the Church’s very own martyr who turns out to be a tartar convert who they, of course, beheaded. Valerii, however, got excited by the opportunity. He waddled up to the casket, made some mess of crossing himself, and bent over to plant a juicy one only to realize that this was clearly not proper procedure. “Правильно??” “Нет, нет!! As we tried to figure out how to politely leave the church, the caretaker and an eerie old woman who was there praying began to explain how the miseries and sins of the world came from the fact that people aren’t orthodox. They named natural disasters, man-made catastrophes, and all kinds bloodshed. “Those people wouldn’t have driven planes through those buildings if they had been orthodox.”
Accordingly, we figured it’d be unwise to ask these folks for directions to the Muslim ruins and when we finally got back out to the car it became clear that Valerii intended to drive us home, having reached our destination and seen the church. When we said that we wanted to see the town and the ruins, he started to swear and claim that he’d done us no wrong and shown us all we wanted to see, all that we’d agreed on. He also didn’t seem to be aware at all of the ruins or the ancient civilization. When I explained that it was an ancient city he responded that all the cities around here are fucking ancient. It later occurred to us that Valerii probably never studied anything about ancient civilizations in Russian lands, much less anything about an Islamic civilization. From his point of view, these two crazy Americans wanted to go to Bolgar and the only thing that anyone could possibly want to see in Bolgar is this church. В чем проблема? Anyways, he grumblingly agreed to drive a bit into the town and began a running, Mat-laden, commentary: “there’s a fucking church, here’s a shitty magazine, that’s the goddamn center.” We asked what people did here and he responded with something like: they work, they drink. He had no interest in finding any ruined tower by the Volga, and as it was already totally dark we gave up and started to head back.
Valerii’s swan song was about halfway back to Kazan when he pulled into a gas station, demanded we pay him right away so that he could buy gas, and then started to ask for more money, “давай ребята по-человечески.” Pretty irritated at this point, I refused and he, naturally, started to bargain. Again swearing at our categorical refusal, he left us for a bit in the car, came back huffing, and we rode the rest of the way back, a good 100 km or so, in complete silence. During this time Eric was stealthily hiding his money and valuables on his person and I, less concerned with my personal safety than the insult of the situation, started to think up my own mat-laden (but logical and compelling of course) arguments I was going to give him when he started to demand money once more. But Valerii tried neither to rob us nor to dispute the money situation, he simply dropped us off on an ambiguous corner somewhere in Kazan grumbling that he wasn’t going to take us any further. Once we’d oriented ourselves and trudged back to the center we of course headed to Stingray.
On the train home we sat next to two babushki, professors of mathematics at the university in Kazan. At first we were all quiet but when the whole train, in particular a certain muzhik around the corner, burst into a chorus of snoring we felt united by our wakefulness and the humor/repulsion of said fellow’s snores. They were amused by Antillies and then for some reason started retelling Pushkin short stories to us. In the next five hours they’d explain the origin of the Russian gesture for drunkenness (a flick below the chin; according to them during Peter the Great’s attempt to force the country to abstinence government officials who were allowed to drink could use the secret gesture in pubs to receive hard alcohol), taught me a lovely proverb (Cудьба играет с человеком и человек играет на трубе; Fate plays with man, and man plays the trumpet), argued about Gogol (Drunken madman or exceptionally creative mystic? There are good cases for both sides, it seems), and told us the story about the monastic frogs which led into another argument (faith and god vs. science and reason). They got absolutely tickled by our Russian, in particular when we’d say something grammatically correct but lexically strange. Later, when Eric fell asleep and I settled into my music they brought out an mp3 player and split the ear buds. Listening to all kinds of world music they would softly sing along to the music. “Music is our youth” they explained to me. These are the kind of women that wink and chuckle. Along with Ded Kolya, my favorite acquaintance from the trip.
Not wanting to disappoint our parental friends, we decided not to drink the bottle of Vodka left untouched from the journey to Kazan; we waited until the lights went out and the Babushki were safely snring and then drank several beers together in the darkness. It was positively Russian zen with the train rhythms, the snowstorm, the forest, and the snoozing cabin. Two solemn beers and all due reflections on the eve of the end to a swell trip.
And then when we arrived in Petersburg, sick to death of the train-bought instant potatoes and noodles, Elza came over, Eric roasted a whole chicken and we drank the leftover vodka. No drop left behind.
