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Russia Breaks My Brain
I don't understand this place, I just live here.
#06: ...so for my birthday we're just going bowling.
Thursday, October 30, 2003

Ok everyone, I think this is the last part of the Bizarro-World Marathon week. While there's naturally more silliness happening here all the time, I figure we're caught up enough for now. Unless something happens with that bear I always see down the street while on my way home...

So last time we left off with the trip to Moscow. When Kristin and I got back, we bascially wanted to sleep before preparing for her birthday party on Saturday night. It actually felt pretty good to get back to St. Petersburg from Moscow, as it definitely had the feeling of "coming home," somehow. It was nice.

Anyway, there was lots to be done for the party. We cleaned her apartment, bought a lot of food, some booze, and then went to work cooking for most of Saturday. For the most part we made various dips with lots of cracker things, plus some...tortilla chips?

There's a kind of flatbread here called lavash that very closely resembles flour tortillas, only much much thinner and wider than what you'd normally make a burrito out of. Still, when you fry 'em up, they make damn good tortilla chips. Naturally, these surrogate tortillas are one of the reasons I am still functional here.

So Kristin made some salsa (not too spicy as Russians are huge wimps about spicy food it seems) and I fried up a lot of chips. We then arranged the house for maximum party potential, leaving space for people to hang out, dance, etc. Food in every room (ok, not the bathroom) (I was voted down on that one). And we had all the music figured out for the night. Everything promised to be a pretty kickin' party.

Except that we Kristin invited Russians, not Americans. When people started arriving, it was a bit awkward. They brought gifts and flowers which was cool, but when I mustered up the russian to offer some people a beer or something, they turned me down. I thought it was bizarre. I've seen tiny 80-year-old women drinking a beer while walking down the street on a Sunday morning here, and yet at a party the beer was being turned down because "not everyone was there yet." To make things more confusing, Kristin's friends all wanted to set up a table in one room, and set everything up there, preperations be damned.

Finally, when everyone had gathered around the table, champagne was poured and it was time for a toast. It was also around this time that I realized that "Birthday Party" in Russia does not mean "put on fun music and rock out all night a la House Party III." What we were supposed to do was eat and purpose numerous toasts to the birthday girl, so while Kristin and I were confused by the table at first, the Russians were confused by the music and lack of table. They were also pretty interested in the food.

Especially the chips and salsa. For a number of reasons. One, they had no idea how we made them. They were amazed. They loved them, and all the chips were gobbled up pretty quickly. The other amazing thing about them was that I, being male, had cooked them. Some of the girls apperantly said something to the effect of "I need to get one like him," while the boyfriend of Kristin's friend Natasha, Dima, whom I've hung out with a number of times, pretty much teased me about it. In a friendly way. But I was still a little thankful for the langauge barrier so as to avoid getting into debates about "women's work." At any rate, it was fun to see people being so excited about chips and salsa. (As if there were ever any reason for doubt. Imagine what nachos would do to these people?)

Ok, back to the toasts. While I couldn't understand the bulk of what was said, there were a number of bilingual folks there who translated them for me. They were really sweet. Even people who hadn't known Kristin that long had very nice things to say, which of course made it all the more awkward when I was supposed to lead a toast. I couldn't think of anything I'd dare attempt in Russian, and was at a total loss since most toasts I'd ever heard growing up consisted of "To Whoever!". I think everyone understood though, since most of Kristin's friends have been very supportive of my struggling language skills. They also didn't seem to mind too much the loud hip-hop or dance music blaring from the next room while conversations continued.

I think in the end it was a success. Everyone seemed to have a good time, was well fed, etc. Probably not the standard birthday party by any nationality's standards. (Oh, we had a Swede and a Norweigen there too, so we had 4 languages to sing Happy Birthday in) (And the Russian Happy Birthday Song makes the American one sound like a used-car jingle. It's awesome.)

The next day (Kristin's actual birthday) her roommate Nicole and I took her out for sushi. And everyone knows how great sushi is so I won't go into too much detail except for one thing: the wasabi. I'm guessing since spicy stuff isn't super popular in Russia, the wasabi is free. As in extra wasabi is free. As in I made such an intense pile of wasabi paste I thought I'd lose conciousness once or twice. It ruled.

Oh, and it was snowing all day. Yep, we've had our first snow, although thankfully things have warmed up a little since then. I'd like to maintain my sense of denial about living this far north as long as possible.

And finally, to wrap up this email, a random quote from one of the local english-langauge newspapers: This article was about how home-mortgages are just catching on, but there are still some difficulties associated with them...: "New home owners may also discover that a prison inmate has a right to live in the house on their release." There is no further explanation in the rest of the article.

So that's been the scene here recently in Bizarro-World. But there never seems to be a shortage of strangeness here, so I'm sure you'll hear from me soon. I'm not planning on doing anything like my roommate...who has completely vanished....

(how's that for a cliffhanger?)

paka,
-Angry Giant