Victory

Today is Victory Day, when Russia marks the anniversary of Nazi Germany’s capitulation to the Soviet Union in 1945. The Moscow parade is the most well-known highlight of this day, but military parades are held all over Russia. I set out for Kuybyshev Square here in Samara just before 10 a.m. to see the parade in this city. As my apartment here is in the downtown area, right near the square, it was remarkable how silent it was this morning when I opened the front door – no cars on the roads. Then when I walked around the house to get to the street, I found out that was because rows of police had lined up on either side and blocked off the entrance as well. When I stepped onto the pavement, an officer spun around and told me “This street’s closed. If you want to go the parade, follow the pedestrian route,” and pointed me towards Krasnoarmeyskaya ulitsa (Red Army Street) on my right, where groups of people were walking up. I got as close to the square as I could before encountering another barrier of police who were only letting those with tickets or superior officers get any closer. My view from Red Army Street was lengthways across the square.

The above video of last year’s Moscow parade gives you a similar idea of what went on today. After the clock chimed 10, I could catch glimpses of a silver convertible circling around, with a functionary inspecting troop formations. And I could definitely hear the shouts of “Ura!” from those formations after the official greetings and congratulations. As the marching got underway, those of us looking across could see definitely see representative personnel from the army and navy proceeding past the stands due to the flags they were carrying. The main feature for us were the military vehicles that rolled on out of the street right next to us – infantry fighting vehicles, rocket launchers and artillery.

They also brought out the older Soviet-era jeeps, flying the red banners.

After the parade, spectators were allowed onto the square for a concert of Soviet music and an air show with planes that looked like Ilyushins from the ground. Most of the spectators around me wandered back down the street at that time; the parade was clearly all that they came to see. I eventually made my way back to find that my road was still closed to pedestrians. Good thing my place has a back entrance that faces Red Army Street so I could sneak past the cops and write this post.

—

In other news, Elina and Rustam, my Russian student associates, invited me to a paintball game on the outskirts of the city alongside several more of their friends a couple of weeks ago. Getting to the place was… rapid – we took two cars, and the drivers made a race out of it across the slightly rough Russian roads. I was happy to be put into another situation where speaking Russian was pretty much the only option – the four elements of language proficiency (reading, writing, comprehension, and speaking) aren’t exactly correlative, in my experience. For example, I can read Russian text and comprehend Russian speech better than I can write or speak it myself, because whatever native Russian speakers write or say is exemplary use of the language, and all I have to do is understand the idea within it. I’d have to consciously think about grammar and vocabulary if I was writing or saying something. I’m betting that reading and comprehension always develop faster for people acquiring a foreign language, so it’s good to take a chance and try talking with native speakers, catching up with my speaking skills.

I’ve been paintballing before, a while ago, and I didn’t need to worry about not knowing any of the safety instructions. All of us got into the same kind of camouflaged overalls that they’d give you in Britain. The games we played over the course of the afternoon were a little different, though: instead of a “team deathmatch” style of play, we first had a match in which one large team took position on one side of the field and faced off against another team of about 5 people on the other side, who had to eliminate as much of the other team as they could from behind a lot of cover. The second match was “capture the (Russian national) flag”, with only one flag defended by a team while the other team tried to capture it.

Here I thought “capture the flag” always meant both teams having a flag. The PC game Unreal Tournament taught me so.

The third game was a “Pavlov’s house“-type match. My team had to defend a very rickety-looking house from the others. It was slightly distracting to hear the guys on my team shout slogans like “Everything for the Motherland!”, “Everything for Stalin!”, and “To Berlin!” during the match. Not entirely sure if they were being ironic or not. Or just looking forward to Victory Day.

And though the weather’s been great for several weeks now, “spring” only officially started on May 1 – the Day of Spring and Labour, as it’s been called in Russia since 1992. There were also celebrations of Kuybyshev Square on that day, but they were more low-key than today’s; there was a concert of what sounded like old-time Russian songs, which naturally appealed more to the old-timers in the audience. As well as that, there was a mass launch of sky lanterns from the banks of the Volga on April 28th, keeping to the spirit of springtime and new vitality.

Pretty.

Space Man

Nature has finally smiled on this part of the world by moving us from winter to early summer in the space of about a week. The city feels a lot different now the the river is actually flowing and I can walk along the street and see tarmac instead of ice under my feet. And I don’t need to go out in my winter gear any more.

Feels good, man.

Today happens to be Cosmonautics Day in Russia (and the International Day of Human Space Flight). One of Samara’s key features as a city of industry is its contribution to the Soviet and Russian space programmes – the State Research and Space Rocket Production Centre “CSCB-Progress” produced carrier rockets like the “Vostok” series, one of which took Yuri Gagarin into space, and continues to produce the “Soyuz” series. Tapping into my childhood dream of being a cosmonaut astronaut, I paid a visit to the Samara Cosmos museum a week ago on a quest for material for my year abroad written task. The place certainly wasn’t hard to find.

This is what it looks like.

Despite its prominence, the staff there obviously have their slow days – when I went, I was pretty much the only visitor. And although I stayed absolutely silent during an impromptu introductory speech delivered to me in Russian by one of the curators, she ended with “…and you’re a foreigner, aren’t you?” I still maintained that I understood Russian quite well, so they could explain all the items in their collection, which included spy satellites, propulsion systems, and models of spaceships.

Spy in the sky.

Samara’s aerospace legacy also extends to its Aviation and Cosmonautics University alongside the “CSCB-Progress” plant itself. The University has its own museum which was temporarily closed when I went there last, and I’ve heard conflicting information on whether the “Progress” plant is open for visitors. I’ll have to check them both out.

A linguist friend of mine here named Yelena had some more work for me recently – translating a German restaurant menu from Russian into English, or rather, improving the translation that had already been done. I might have well just done another one from scratch, because what I read was the worst translation in the world. I wondered whether they had just ran it through Google Translate, but Yelena pointed out that even a computer wouldn’t have come up with some of the stuff that was in there. Any readers ever heard of “potato kegs”? I thought they meant croquettes, but having never actually visited the restaurant or seen their food, I couldn’t be sure. Still, I polished it up as best I could, then gave it back for final proof-reading. My payment was in food from Жили-Были, a Russian restaurant styled like an old tavern. A nice bowl of borscht is always appreciated. It seems that people around here really go for Japanese cuisine as well; I could take a walk around the neighbourhood and find about five Japanese restaurants within a quarter-mile radius.

Yelena also led me to be introduced to some more Russian people: a girl my age named Elina, who was described to me as “the first, last, and best hope for Russian-Chinese relations” (as she also studies Mandarin Chinese alongside English at university), her boyfriend Rustam (or maybe her fiancé? I noticed rings), and several other members of Elina’s family when I was invited to their house outside the city for a winter barbecue. Gave me another great opportunity to be social and practise Russian while cooking shashliks and learning how to play durak. Integration among native speakers was always a priority objective that was emphasised at university meetings before setting off on this year abroad – and I’m usually quite an introverted guy, so I’m amazed that I’m actually managing to do it.

Aside from that, the Russian YouTube channels offer a lot of learning material. The channels of Mosfilm, a Russian film studio, as well Kinorussia offer a huge collection of classic Russian films to watch. ThisIsHorosho is a popular channel in the Russian-speaking world, and their videos have English subtitles to elicit vocabulary. Stuff like this is always helpful for people learning Russian – leave a comment if you’re reading this and you know more useful resources.

Decoding Russia

This is the article I wrote for Optima Study, an international education company based in Samara. Since I don’t have a scanner here, I’ve uploaded it old-school using a digital camera and then written over the words that were obscured by the flash… anyway, feel free to click on the image below and read it at your leisure.

Blog Post From The Underground

The temperature around here finally feels like it’s risen to slightly above the much more bearable 0°C, judging by how much ice has now melted and partially flooded the ground floor of my apartment building. Eventually, I’m going to have to start shedding the winter clothing and adapting to springtime. Funnily enough, although I brought one of those typical Russian ushankas with me, I hardly ever wore it even when the temperature was way below freezing – partially because the tuque that I also brought did a fine job keeping my head warm by itself, but mostly because the only Russians I’ve seen wearing ushankas are at least twice my age. I imagine I would have drawn attention to myself, walking around with one on, and I like to think that my efforts to blend in like a pro have saved me from a ton of problems.

In order to keep some momentum going during my time here, I signed up to a gym down the road which faces the Volga. Gotta have my steady endorphin fix, lifting weights alongside hefty Russian guys and then sitting back in a sauna, also alongside hefty Russian guys. Having said that, I notice that far more women lift weights here than I saw at my gym in Durham – I saw maybe one woman in the weights area per month back there, whereas many Russian ladies seem to be enlightened to the benefits of resistance training. For me, the aforementioned neurological benefit aids in staving off lethargy and the dreaded “psychological pressure”.

Perfectly illustrated in this old Soviet poster:
"Towards new victories in labour and sport!"
All kinds of motivational.

Sirry, one of my new foreign volunteer friends, introduced me to a couple of cool Russians last weekend, Peter and Sasha. Coincidentally, we all ended up going to the same building complex where my gym is to play пирамида (pyramida), or Russian billiards. I’ve liked to hang out at pool halls for years, so I thought I’d do pretty well. But a cue sport turns out to be tough as hell when the pockets are only around 4mm bigger than the heavy billiard balls.

A Russian billiards table.

On the other hand, we played a variant with practically no rules: any ball can be potted legitimately, just so long as at least one other ball is hit beforehand. And the rosewood-coloured cue ball only needs to be used for the break; afterwards you can use any one as the cue ball. A funny quirk of language was that the name for the spider rest in Russian is тёща (tyoshcha), which the dictionary translates as “a husband’s mother-in-law”.

"Pass me the mother-in-law!"

The next day, Peter invited us and another volunteer named Clara to his band’s gig at an underground rock club – as in literally underground, this isn’t the pre-glasnost USSR. As an aside, it makes me happy that people around here apparently share my taste in music – even one of the 15-year-olds in the English classes I was teaching a few weeks ago was a Beatles fan. Down in the club’s basement arena, the green hue of the stage lights illuminated Samara’s metalcore and hardcore punk scene. The turnout was pretty impressive and many were rocking proper punk attire. In particular, my shaved head provided the function of allowing me to resemble the other skinheads in attendance. Again, blending in like a pro. As to the temperament of the scene, my progressing knowledge of Russian meant I was able to discern one band frontman speaking out against racism, which he described as still being a substantial problem for the country. On that indication, I take it that I was among an alright crowd.

Once the gig got started, the crowd shifted to create a circular area in front of the stage, which I naturally anticipated to be the international signal to start a mosh pit (everyone likes a good mosh). But on that night, the style was more hardcore dancing – either because of explicit rules or an implicit understanding, or maybe Russians simply don’t mosh that much. Much fun was had by all anyway, I think – Sirry and Clara just seemed a little ambivalent to the whole metalcore deal.

Students at the academy here seem to opening up to me a little – while delivering a lecture on British identity and society, I talked a little about the status of the modern upper class and the Royal Family with a picture of Prince Charles in top hat and tails projected on the wall behind me; one of the guys called out “In the Soviet Union, the propaganda was that all capitalists looked like that.” The good old-fashioned class warfare continued when this classic video became relevant to the discussion – rest assured that I’m pioneering the art of joking about rahs in Russia. Also, my main contact here has started calling me by my diminutive name… I guess I’ll take that as a sign of acceptance.

Here’s some more Russian music to continue the Soundtrack, a little lighter than metalcore.

Exploring

Well, International Women’s Day was a pretty big deal over here – another public holiday, the Mother’s Day for Russian mothers and the Valentine’s Day for Russian women in general. Yellow mimosa was the flower of choice. It surprised me that my main contact at the academy didn’t seem to care for the day: she called it “дурацкий день”, then translated that as “a fool’s holiday”, which led me to think she was talking about April 1st. Anyway, her objection stemmed from what she called the gendered nature of the holiday, which puzzled me as it was a day for women, we already had one for men with Defender of the Fatherland Day, and it was another public holiday so we all got the day off. We got today off as well (apparently everyone decided working one day between a public holiday and the weekend wasn’t worth it). Still, can’t fault her for what seems like committed gender-blindness.

I was given a lead on a cohort of foreign volunteers in the city about a fortnight ago, right around Maslenitsa. Got a chance to see some more celebrations on the other side of the Volga, which we crossed on hovercraft (my second favourite type of craft, after spacecraft). Played games, ate more blinis, and tried to warm ourselves around the campfire and the embers of the Lady Maslenitsa figure. The weather was still bitterly cold; the whole “end of winter” thing that Maslenitsa represents probably won’t kick in for a while.

It was all very Wicker Man, though.

Also got invited to the volunteers’ informal meeting last week; as part of a wider organisation, they’ve all got their own projects to work on. Most of them hail from northern European countries, and I remain probably the only Englishman in the city. So far, they all come across as great people – we hit up Samara’s club scene after that meeting as well. I must say, the Russians know how to respectably perform when it comes to clubbing. One distinguishing aspect was that go-go dancers are apparently still around over here, and I thought everyone had left them back in the 80s.

In other news, the academy commissioned me to write an article about my experience so far and how I’ve been learning Russian over the past couple of years. I’ll see if I can post it up sometime, once it’s published.

Shrovetide

Yesterday was Defender of the Fatherland Day in Russia. While that is probably the most badass name for a public holiday anywhere in the world, for me that meant a day off to chill out and read some more Russian literature while Russian men were being doted on by their girlfriends and wives (I imagine). I took a walk around the centre of Samara at midday – I thought they’d have some processions on – but it looks like they put those off until Victory Day on May 6th.

Today was also a kind of holiday, which I was told about only yesterday by some students – Масленица (Maslenitsa), which my dictionary translates as “Shrovetide”. From what I hear, it’s a folk festival that pre-dates Christianity in Russia, when people mark the end of winter by burning a straw effigy of Lady Maslenitsa – who used to be called Kostroma, the East Slavic goddess of fertility. The academy here had their own celebrations, so I kind of had to come and see them. I made my way behind the building to the school yard, where a stage had been set up and a pretty sizeable audience had gathered around. Music was playing, and some pupils looked like they were getting ready put on a production: they had costumes on that made them look like court jesters, though I’m pretty sure that’s not who they were supposed to be. Their play soon got into full swing, during which a character was brought on with quite a considerable silvery headdress (Lady Maslenitsa, I guess?), although right now I don’t have much of an idea what that that play was about. Maybe I’ll find out later.

Anyway, as I was watching the festivities, one of my colleagues came over for a chat. One of the senior teachers had invited me over to where the faculty was standing, as she put it. So I strolled over to the group of Russian adults conspicuously standing on a carpet in the middle of the snow, which struck me as a little unusual. I mean, I’d only seen carpets used outdoors in films about medieval warriors. But I guess it’s a good way to indicate that you’re the important people in a general vicinity. My as-yet broken Russian managed to get me through a conversation about how everything was going for me at the academy, while the teachers farthest away from me broadcast what were no doubt words commemorating the day over loudspeakers. The microphone was passed along, getting closer to where I was, when a teacher asked:

“By the way, what’s your full name?”

Erm… you’re not going to do what I think you’re going to do, are you…?

“Because we’d like you to say a few words.”

You are gonna do that. Right. That’s great.

Good thing those years of debate competitions and making presentations in front of school classes vanquished my old fear of public speaking; I was able to wish everyone a good day and hope that they were all having fun. And I managed to start my speech in Russian, at least.

After that, a few students circled the yard on horseback, ceremoniously dressed (horse-riding seems to be a major thing here: the academy has its own stables, and some of the kids mentioned that they take it up as a hobby). Others walked among the crowd, passing out little straw crosses as miniature effigies to throw on the bigger bonfire.

The burning of the straw Lady Maslenitsa began after the horse circuit. For such a cold day, that fire burned pretty quickly. I couldn’t help but think that the flaming cross shape that was left behind would have pretty unfortunate implications on the other side of the globe.

As the celebrations ended, I ended up eating some blini pancakes with an Orthodox Christian monk, dressed in black cleric’s robes with a golden crucifix. He was also a religious studies teacher and told me a little more about the holiday. It’s similar to what would be called “Shrovetide”, as in the days before Lent, but Orthodox Lent always starts on the following Monday, rather than on Ash Wednesday. Kuybyshev Square near the city centre will have more Maslenitsa celebrations this Sunday – I reckon I’ll go and check them out.

Otherwise, everything else here is going well. I moved into an apartment nearer the academy a week or so back. Not sharing with anyone else this time, but the psychological pressure that my tandem partner in Heidelberg warned me about hasn’t hit me. Yet. Hopefully it won’t ever. I reckon if it was going to, it would have done so by now.

The English-to-Russian translation that I was supposed to be doing hasn’t happened as the teacher for that has been off ill. Funnily enough, that meant me stepping in as a substitute teacher for her English classes for a while. Right now, I’m giving lectures to university-age students about the many different aspects of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (the name of the country alone contains several). The lectures last an hour and twenty minutes, which seems like an eternity until you get on a roll and all your time disappears – I was attempting to explain centuries of history in my first lecture and was still talking about the Empire when time ran out. None of the students look willing to speak up either, but that happened at first in my substitute teacher role as well. I imagine they’ll open up once the ice is broken.

But now, Russian pagan metal!

Braving The Elements

After a brief stopover in Prague, where I added another entry to my list of hotel WiFi passwords (a guy’s got to have a collection), I took a Czech Airlines flight into the Russian city of Samara. Got immediately tested on my Russian by a couple sitting next to me, talking about the view of Prague after take-off. Three hours isn’t so bad for a journey – it takes that long to go from Durham to London by train – but the jet lag after flying through three time zones does your head in. Not helped by the fact that I can never sleep on planes flying east.

Everyone else seems to manage it.

When we flew below the clouds to approach Samara’s Kurumoch International Airport, I turned and looked out the window to see the broad outline of the mighty Volga river stretching across the landscape. It was totally frozen over. Stepping out of the plane put me into some of the coldest weather I’ve experienced so far – the temperature hovered around -20 degrees Celsius. It freezes your throat just to breathe the air in. Fortunately we got to passport control quickly enough, although the border guard didn’t let me through without some interrogation.

“What are you doing in Samara?” she asked harshly, in English.

“I’m studying Russian here,” I replied. I wasn’t going to joke about being a spy. After a sleepless night on the plane, the sudden inquiry had me a little rattled. I guess you could say it was a…

… chilly reception.

Anyway, it’s generally always best to give short answers when questioned by security personnel. That advice goes a step further in the event that you’re actually detained, when you should say nothing except ask for a phone call, then ring up whoever your contact in the area is.

But after a little more typing on her computer, she let me go through to baggage claim. As my flight landed pretty early in the morning, I’d planned to wait around for a while until I was picked up by Mikhail, the man who I’d contacted about accommodation in the city. Having said that, Kurumoch Airport was unlike any other airport I’d been in before: once you’ve picked up your bags, it’s straight out into the cold – you don’t get directed back into a terminal. Waiting outside wasn’t an option -even with all my winter gear on, it would have been pretty uncomfortable. There was bar across the street which wasn’t open, so I decided to head left to the main entrance of the airport. But it was the same minimalist deal inside: one short grey hallway with a security checkpoint at the end. I wasn’t exactly keen on dealing with more Russian cops, so I took a seat in the hall, lowered my gaze Assassin’s Creed-style, and hoped that no one disturbed me. A whole load of people arrived and helped me blend in a short time later. Among them were some of the world’s most fearsome-looking pilots, dressed in leather trenchcoats and black ushanka hats, with golden insignia and shoulder markings. I’d have thought they were FSB with fashion sense like that.

I successfully kept a low profile until Mikhail and his daughter picked me up after a while. As we drove back to the B&B he kept with his family, he told me a little more about the Volga, good places to ski in the area, and so on. I haven’t been skiing for a few years; might be fun if I got around to it here. Once we arrived, I had some tea with Mikhail and his wife Yelena, then crashed out.

The next day, I went to see the academy where I’ll be spending my time helping out and learning Russian. It rolls secondary and higher education into one place – those who get their full study course school-leaving certificate can go to university in the same building. Quite interesting since I don’t think we have anything like that in England. Getting there was pretty novel too: I take the tram from a station near where I’m staying and you buy a ticket from the conductor for 15 roubles once you’re on the tram, not before. Seeing some new approaches here already.

Everyone seems pretty nice so far as well. I’ve got some good dialogue going with my contact at the academy; she gathered some material together that I could use to tutor the other students here and took me to a viewing at a nearby apartment for me to stay at while I’m here. An English teacher with whom I’m supposed to be working got me into a translation class, only I’ll be translating from English to Russian instead of vice versa like the other students. She said “The reason you’re here isn’t mainly to work with English, it’s to learn Russian.” I didn’t really expect such resoluteness. Plus I managed to get some shopping done to sustain myself – bought a detective story by a Russian author named Andrei Konstantinov as well, to practise (it’s called Specialist – as far I as I can tell, it’s about the Spetznaz). So the situation looks promising right now, although it’s still early days. Samara might still throw some difficulties at me.

So to help myself and any other travellers out there remain tranquil in the face of a foreign environment, smooth funk will be deployed in 3… 2… 1…