Russia Breaks My Brain
I don't understand this place, I just live here.
#15: Yankee Go Home
Wednesday, March 10, 2004
One Day in Bizarro-World:
Louis stepped into the compartment on the train bound for Ekaterinburg and greeted the two Russians already sitting there. Shortly thereafter, the subject of Louis' (and the other Louis he was traveling with) nationality was brought up, presumably as an explanation of any shortcomings in the Louis' language skills.
"I'm from Switzerland," Louis explained, "and my friend here is from France."
"No!" the first woman exclaimed, "Really? You're foreigners?"
"Yes. Really."
"Wow!" she said excitedly, without a drop of sarcasm, "I can't wait to tell my brother that I rode on the train with real foreigners!"
While this story comes from the Louis' trip to a more isolated city in the Ural mountains, it illustrates that contact with foreigners still holds quite a bit of novelty for many Russians. Despite the fact that so much of what is on TV, on the radio, and in the movies here is imported, in conversation you still get the impression that you're making a first impression on behalf of your home country. Even people who have some ideas about America (most often "New York!" "California" or "Miami!") are still often quite interested and inquisitive about what America (or whichever country of origin one may have) is like.
Finding yourself suddenly appointed Cultural Liaison often instills you with an odd sense of patriotism. I've found myself defending aspects of the US that I never realized I cared about before. But you want people to have the right idea (or at least, my idea) of what the US is like. Unfortunately, this semester has brought a glut of new American students who are making that a very difficult task, as many of them seem to embody many of the not-so-delightful stereotypes about Yankees abroad.
The first stereotype that I was generally defying was the idea that all Americans generally converse with each other at at least 80 db, and are stupid idiots. A few times I've even (and this felt a little weird) complemented for not seeming so American that way. But as of February there are two girls and a guy who are often in the cafe in the building where my classes are, and who sound something like a pack of hyenas going on about how much they want to eat at McDonald's that afternoon, or how stupid Russians can be (apparently they don't realize that most people in the room can understand what they're saying). The Russians tolerate them, but there's quite a bit of eye-rolling and quasi-nasty looks, all of which go completely unnoticed by the cackling trio.
Men Ching
Another interesting import has been a girl from Wisconsin named Men Ching. I guess because of her name and ethnic background, she was assigned to the predominantly Chinese dorm instead of the more expensive dorm where most American and European students are placed. The difference between the dorms is pretty dramatic. For example, my dorm has a TV in every room, while Men Ching's dorm has a shortage of toilet seats. She doesn't feel like she fits in there too well (which she says in one of the weirdest accents I've ever heard- think one part Valley Girl plus one part Minnesota plus two parts God Only Knows,) and so she instead spends most of her time in bars.
Every time I've run into her, she's asked everyone if they want to go for a beer, even if we're in the middle of class, or it's noon, or whatever. I think it's her way of being more Russian or something, since she has picked up next to no language skills whatsoever. (She goes to her private classes only when she has nothing else to do, which apparently pisses off her teacher.) Russian's haven't always been totally receptive to her though- once in a bar she was trying to walk off with a bottle of champagne, then dropped and broke it. A guy called her a bitch, so a Russian friend stepped up to defend her. The guy then punched the Russian girl in the eye, basically leading Men Ching to realize it was time to cool it at the bars for a little. "A little" in this case was 2 days.
She's really only been using St. Petersburg as a temporary base of operations though, taking lots of little trips to the surrounding area during this year off before she starts college. She tried exploring some of Russia via train, but gave that up since the Russian she was traveling with was deemed to be "too stinky and boring" to travel with anymore. On a trip to Sweden she met a number of Swedes who taught her some phrases to get around in Sweden with. At one point she showed her home made phrase book to someone in Stockholm who translated them for her: One that supposedly said "Please buy me a drink" was actually "Buy me a drink and I'll give you a blowjob." Another phrase translated to "I want sex with lots of boys right now." The girl translating this was rather shocked, and then wrote down how to ask for a drink in Swedish for her. This phrase was finally translated by the Swedes in my class when Men Ching returned to Russia. It actually said "Please rape and kill me." Thankfully, I think her pronunciation was so bad that she never actually said any of this to anyone.
Somehow none of this seems to bring her down though. She didn't seem all that offended by any of it, and happily started planning her current trip to the Phillipines for three weeks. I can only imagine what kind of trouble she'll get herself into there. Still, being around Men Ching seems like a cake-walk compared to the latest guy to arrive from the US. At times he has served as a reminder that no matter how bizarre Russia seems to be, the US can churn out its own nuts just as well. Generally he's just someone to avoid. His name is Mathew.
Mathew
Mathew is from St. Petersburg, Florida, which does nothing to explain why he looks like a Mafia thug's little brother who just didn't pack the muscle to join in the family business. He's in his 40's and is balding on top, which I guess he tries to offset by wearing a slick leather jacket and 3 cell phones all the time. He's actually fairly soft-spoken, although at the same time very aggressive in conversation, demanding to be told things even if the speaker is in the middle of a sentence. I've come to know him this well because he transferred into my class after bouncing through a few others, including a one-on-one course after the teacher refused to work with him anymore.
Why wouldn't someone want to work with him? Well, in my class he's had a habit of getting up abruptly and leaving the room for 20 minutes, presumably to answer one of his many cell-phones. Then he comes back and doesn't understand what we're doing any more. He'll interrupt the teacher, and if she doesn't immediately understand his question, he'll start to fidget and look around the room with a look on his face that says "God you're dumb. You can't even answer my questions!" If there was any doubt to his opinions, during breaks and after class he'll talk about how "screwed we are" because "our damn teacher can't even answer our questions." Everyone tries to politely offer alternative explanations, but very quickly ran out of ways to avoid mentioning the fact that he was basically skipping half of every class.
When the guy isn't in class, he's getting into trouble that Men Ching could only dream of. Somehow upon arrival, he met up with a guy named Remy, who instantly started scamming Mathew for all he could. Remy helped Mathew find an apartment, and then moved in by dumping more and more stuff in the apartment. Remy would also facilitate all contact with the landlord to seem like a legitimate tenant, even though all the money being paid was Mathew's. He also offered to help Mathew get a cell phone fixed, then demanded to be repaid for that favor 3 times, for a total of $250. I don't know why Mathew went along with this.
I think at the time Mathew was scared of Remy. Remy had somehow helped Mathew get his visa registered, claiming to be friends with an officer in the FSB (think KGB under a new name.) He then told Mathew that if Mathew didn't pay 3000 rubles, this officer would have him put away, because "that's how things are done here in Russia." Mathew later ended up meeting the officer in question (because the guy was actually friends with the dean of my department) who said he didn't know Remy at all. He made plans to change apartments finally to get away from Remy, but when Remy got word of this he started beefing up his threats. I think their last confrontation (after Mathew moved) was when Remy claimed to have a gun in a subway station, and was saying he'd shoot Mathew right there. Mathew finally called his bluff, and I don't think they've really seen each other since. Unfortunately, this is after Remy acquired the cell phone numbers of some of the other students in my class from Mathew, and has since made a few attempts to get involved in their lives, but without success.
After all this Remy business cooled down, Mathew seemed to hope his popularity around the department would go up. He didn't seem to realize that he had already become famous for being creepy for reasons other than Remy the Scam Artist. One story involved Mathew shoving a guy to the ground in a bar after the guy touched him on the shoulder. The guy was a darker ethnicity than Mathew, and so was judged to be at fault then thrown out of the bar. Then an Australian came over, patted Mathew on the back and asked him if he was ok. Mathew went into another rage, shoved that guy to the ground, getting him ejected as well. Mathew later insisted that he "doesn't normally do that sort of thing. They just kept touching me."
In his calmer moments, I've asked Mathew more about why he was here in St. Petersburg. Originally all he talked about was meeting girls here, and has invited people in my class to strip clubs more than once. He also likes to remind everyone that we should never forget how lucky we are to be able to be here in Russia. Every moment counts, he's said, to the point where he's concerned about wasting his time here when he's sleeping at night. But one day he confided in me that his interest wasn't women, but linguistics. He said that after 20 years at the same crappy job with a telephone company, he came here and just fell in love with city, wanting to stay and take on the challenge of Russian because it was, in his opinion, the "difficultest language you could find." Insert your own joke about the apparent challenges of English here.
Still, after that moment of sharing, Mathew seemed to decide that we, as fellow Americans, must be friends. One day after class, everyone had scattered very quickly, leaving us walking towards town together.
"So last night I went jogging, and I think I got frostbite on my penis," he begins.
"Uh, you went jogging at night?" I asked, trying to steer the conversation in a different direction.
"Yeah, I didn't realize how cold it was until I got home though! Then as I warmed up it really hurt, you know?" he said excitedly. I think at this point I think I was supposed to commiserate about my own frostbitten genitals or something. So instead I went back to the concept of jogging at night in the winter.
"Isn't it kind of dangerous jogging on the ice at night?"
"No, it's not so bad. Although lately I have been carrying chicken bones in my pocket just in case."
"...uh..."
"You know, in case I run into any dogs while I'm running, I can throw them the bones."
"...right."
"But I haven't seen any so instead I've just been carrying a bunch of rotting bones in my pocket for three days."
"Gotcha."
This seems to have been the peak of Mathew incidents though. Not long after that, he had another disagreement with my teacher, and decided that she hurt his feelings. He then skipped our Maslenitsa party (and thankfully my birthday toast, although strangely Men Ching was in the room at that point, taking the opportunity to tell me that I'm getting old) but instead spent the afternoon skulking around in the hallway just outside our classroom. My teacher invited him in to join the class, but he only came in for five minutes then left again. Just this week we were told he had changed groups again, to find something more challenging.
Clearly, as a group, we must be making the State Department very proud. Americans are still regarded with a decent amount of esteem, much more than more local immigrants like Georgians or Ukrainians. But still, there are those moments of diplomacy where you're not sure what sort of impression you just made.
At a little blini stand last week, the young guy behind the counter asked me a question I didn't understand at the end of my order. I explained that I didn't know a lot of Russian, something I have to explain with considerable frequency. He asked "English?" to which I said yes (in Russian.) He paused and consulted with the other two youngish people working there, then said "You born from America?" to which I also said yes. There was another pause and moment of consultation.
"America is very bad," he finally said, smiling.
I peeked at my order they were preparing to make sure that hostile sentiments were being taken out on my innocent blin. Before I could ask why, he said "Iraq!"
I nodded in recognition, and said I agreed, although he ducked back to talk to his colleagues so fast I'm not sure if he heard me. At this point I also wondered why he didn't try to say any more of this in Russian since I was answering in Russian a little smoother than he was speaking in English. I got my answer in his last explanation.
He said something in Russian very quickly, and then "Black Gold." He was beaming at this point. I was impressed- the vocabulary lessons for Russians must be amazing if that was the translation for "oil." I said I understood, and he gave me my food. We were both smiling as I left, and we even waved, although I'm really not how successful I was at communicating with him. Maybe I was to then go and pass the word along to my contacts at the American Embassy? Maybe he was glad I was sympathetic to his ideas. Or maybe we were both just excited to be speaking to a foreigner, and in their native language to boot. It is pretty satisfying sometimes, which is why I'm telling my brothers about it.
Soon Bizarro-World will be holding its presidential elections, which means there's a little extra strangeness in the air lately. Somehow all that has nothing to do with Badfighting, although Badfight appeared here around the same time as Democracy. I'll sort some of that out in the next email though.
Paka,
-Angry Giant
One Day in Bizarro-World:
Louis stepped into the compartment on the train bound for Ekaterinburg and greeted the two Russians already sitting there. Shortly thereafter, the subject of Louis' (and the other Louis he was traveling with) nationality was brought up, presumably as an explanation of any shortcomings in the Louis' language skills.
"I'm from Switzerland," Louis explained, "and my friend here is from France."
"No!" the first woman exclaimed, "Really? You're foreigners?"
"Yes. Really."
"Wow!" she said excitedly, without a drop of sarcasm, "I can't wait to tell my brother that I rode on the train with real foreigners!"
While this story comes from the Louis' trip to a more isolated city in the Ural mountains, it illustrates that contact with foreigners still holds quite a bit of novelty for many Russians. Despite the fact that so much of what is on TV, on the radio, and in the movies here is imported, in conversation you still get the impression that you're making a first impression on behalf of your home country. Even people who have some ideas about America (most often "New York!" "California" or "Miami!") are still often quite interested and inquisitive about what America (or whichever country of origin one may have) is like.
Finding yourself suddenly appointed Cultural Liaison often instills you with an odd sense of patriotism. I've found myself defending aspects of the US that I never realized I cared about before. But you want people to have the right idea (or at least, my idea) of what the US is like. Unfortunately, this semester has brought a glut of new American students who are making that a very difficult task, as many of them seem to embody many of the not-so-delightful stereotypes about Yankees abroad.
The first stereotype that I was generally defying was the idea that all Americans generally converse with each other at at least 80 db, and are stupid idiots. A few times I've even (and this felt a little weird) complemented for not seeming so American that way. But as of February there are two girls and a guy who are often in the cafe in the building where my classes are, and who sound something like a pack of hyenas going on about how much they want to eat at McDonald's that afternoon, or how stupid Russians can be (apparently they don't realize that most people in the room can understand what they're saying). The Russians tolerate them, but there's quite a bit of eye-rolling and quasi-nasty looks, all of which go completely unnoticed by the cackling trio.
Men Ching
Another interesting import has been a girl from Wisconsin named Men Ching. I guess because of her name and ethnic background, she was assigned to the predominantly Chinese dorm instead of the more expensive dorm where most American and European students are placed. The difference between the dorms is pretty dramatic. For example, my dorm has a TV in every room, while Men Ching's dorm has a shortage of toilet seats. She doesn't feel like she fits in there too well (which she says in one of the weirdest accents I've ever heard- think one part Valley Girl plus one part Minnesota plus two parts God Only Knows,) and so she instead spends most of her time in bars.
Every time I've run into her, she's asked everyone if they want to go for a beer, even if we're in the middle of class, or it's noon, or whatever. I think it's her way of being more Russian or something, since she has picked up next to no language skills whatsoever. (She goes to her private classes only when she has nothing else to do, which apparently pisses off her teacher.) Russian's haven't always been totally receptive to her though- once in a bar she was trying to walk off with a bottle of champagne, then dropped and broke it. A guy called her a bitch, so a Russian friend stepped up to defend her. The guy then punched the Russian girl in the eye, basically leading Men Ching to realize it was time to cool it at the bars for a little. "A little" in this case was 2 days.
She's really only been using St. Petersburg as a temporary base of operations though, taking lots of little trips to the surrounding area during this year off before she starts college. She tried exploring some of Russia via train, but gave that up since the Russian she was traveling with was deemed to be "too stinky and boring" to travel with anymore. On a trip to Sweden she met a number of Swedes who taught her some phrases to get around in Sweden with. At one point she showed her home made phrase book to someone in Stockholm who translated them for her: One that supposedly said "Please buy me a drink" was actually "Buy me a drink and I'll give you a blowjob." Another phrase translated to "I want sex with lots of boys right now." The girl translating this was rather shocked, and then wrote down how to ask for a drink in Swedish for her. This phrase was finally translated by the Swedes in my class when Men Ching returned to Russia. It actually said "Please rape and kill me." Thankfully, I think her pronunciation was so bad that she never actually said any of this to anyone.
Somehow none of this seems to bring her down though. She didn't seem all that offended by any of it, and happily started planning her current trip to the Phillipines for three weeks. I can only imagine what kind of trouble she'll get herself into there. Still, being around Men Ching seems like a cake-walk compared to the latest guy to arrive from the US. At times he has served as a reminder that no matter how bizarre Russia seems to be, the US can churn out its own nuts just as well. Generally he's just someone to avoid. His name is Mathew.
Mathew
Mathew is from St. Petersburg, Florida, which does nothing to explain why he looks like a Mafia thug's little brother who just didn't pack the muscle to join in the family business. He's in his 40's and is balding on top, which I guess he tries to offset by wearing a slick leather jacket and 3 cell phones all the time. He's actually fairly soft-spoken, although at the same time very aggressive in conversation, demanding to be told things even if the speaker is in the middle of a sentence. I've come to know him this well because he transferred into my class after bouncing through a few others, including a one-on-one course after the teacher refused to work with him anymore.
Why wouldn't someone want to work with him? Well, in my class he's had a habit of getting up abruptly and leaving the room for 20 minutes, presumably to answer one of his many cell-phones. Then he comes back and doesn't understand what we're doing any more. He'll interrupt the teacher, and if she doesn't immediately understand his question, he'll start to fidget and look around the room with a look on his face that says "God you're dumb. You can't even answer my questions!" If there was any doubt to his opinions, during breaks and after class he'll talk about how "screwed we are" because "our damn teacher can't even answer our questions." Everyone tries to politely offer alternative explanations, but very quickly ran out of ways to avoid mentioning the fact that he was basically skipping half of every class.
When the guy isn't in class, he's getting into trouble that Men Ching could only dream of. Somehow upon arrival, he met up with a guy named Remy, who instantly started scamming Mathew for all he could. Remy helped Mathew find an apartment, and then moved in by dumping more and more stuff in the apartment. Remy would also facilitate all contact with the landlord to seem like a legitimate tenant, even though all the money being paid was Mathew's. He also offered to help Mathew get a cell phone fixed, then demanded to be repaid for that favor 3 times, for a total of $250. I don't know why Mathew went along with this.
I think at the time Mathew was scared of Remy. Remy had somehow helped Mathew get his visa registered, claiming to be friends with an officer in the FSB (think KGB under a new name.) He then told Mathew that if Mathew didn't pay 3000 rubles, this officer would have him put away, because "that's how things are done here in Russia." Mathew later ended up meeting the officer in question (because the guy was actually friends with the dean of my department) who said he didn't know Remy at all. He made plans to change apartments finally to get away from Remy, but when Remy got word of this he started beefing up his threats. I think their last confrontation (after Mathew moved) was when Remy claimed to have a gun in a subway station, and was saying he'd shoot Mathew right there. Mathew finally called his bluff, and I don't think they've really seen each other since. Unfortunately, this is after Remy acquired the cell phone numbers of some of the other students in my class from Mathew, and has since made a few attempts to get involved in their lives, but without success.
After all this Remy business cooled down, Mathew seemed to hope his popularity around the department would go up. He didn't seem to realize that he had already become famous for being creepy for reasons other than Remy the Scam Artist. One story involved Mathew shoving a guy to the ground in a bar after the guy touched him on the shoulder. The guy was a darker ethnicity than Mathew, and so was judged to be at fault then thrown out of the bar. Then an Australian came over, patted Mathew on the back and asked him if he was ok. Mathew went into another rage, shoved that guy to the ground, getting him ejected as well. Mathew later insisted that he "doesn't normally do that sort of thing. They just kept touching me."
In his calmer moments, I've asked Mathew more about why he was here in St. Petersburg. Originally all he talked about was meeting girls here, and has invited people in my class to strip clubs more than once. He also likes to remind everyone that we should never forget how lucky we are to be able to be here in Russia. Every moment counts, he's said, to the point where he's concerned about wasting his time here when he's sleeping at night. But one day he confided in me that his interest wasn't women, but linguistics. He said that after 20 years at the same crappy job with a telephone company, he came here and just fell in love with city, wanting to stay and take on the challenge of Russian because it was, in his opinion, the "difficultest language you could find." Insert your own joke about the apparent challenges of English here.
Still, after that moment of sharing, Mathew seemed to decide that we, as fellow Americans, must be friends. One day after class, everyone had scattered very quickly, leaving us walking towards town together.
"So last night I went jogging, and I think I got frostbite on my penis," he begins.
"Uh, you went jogging at night?" I asked, trying to steer the conversation in a different direction.
"Yeah, I didn't realize how cold it was until I got home though! Then as I warmed up it really hurt, you know?" he said excitedly. I think at this point I think I was supposed to commiserate about my own frostbitten genitals or something. So instead I went back to the concept of jogging at night in the winter.
"Isn't it kind of dangerous jogging on the ice at night?"
"No, it's not so bad. Although lately I have been carrying chicken bones in my pocket just in case."
"...uh..."
"You know, in case I run into any dogs while I'm running, I can throw them the bones."
"...right."
"But I haven't seen any so instead I've just been carrying a bunch of rotting bones in my pocket for three days."
"Gotcha."
This seems to have been the peak of Mathew incidents though. Not long after that, he had another disagreement with my teacher, and decided that she hurt his feelings. He then skipped our Maslenitsa party (and thankfully my birthday toast, although strangely Men Ching was in the room at that point, taking the opportunity to tell me that I'm getting old) but instead spent the afternoon skulking around in the hallway just outside our classroom. My teacher invited him in to join the class, but he only came in for five minutes then left again. Just this week we were told he had changed groups again, to find something more challenging.
Clearly, as a group, we must be making the State Department very proud. Americans are still regarded with a decent amount of esteem, much more than more local immigrants like Georgians or Ukrainians. But still, there are those moments of diplomacy where you're not sure what sort of impression you just made.
At a little blini stand last week, the young guy behind the counter asked me a question I didn't understand at the end of my order. I explained that I didn't know a lot of Russian, something I have to explain with considerable frequency. He asked "English?" to which I said yes (in Russian.) He paused and consulted with the other two youngish people working there, then said "You born from America?" to which I also said yes. There was another pause and moment of consultation.
"America is very bad," he finally said, smiling.
I peeked at my order they were preparing to make sure that hostile sentiments were being taken out on my innocent blin. Before I could ask why, he said "Iraq!"
I nodded in recognition, and said I agreed, although he ducked back to talk to his colleagues so fast I'm not sure if he heard me. At this point I also wondered why he didn't try to say any more of this in Russian since I was answering in Russian a little smoother than he was speaking in English. I got my answer in his last explanation.
He said something in Russian very quickly, and then "Black Gold." He was beaming at this point. I was impressed- the vocabulary lessons for Russians must be amazing if that was the translation for "oil." I said I understood, and he gave me my food. We were both smiling as I left, and we even waved, although I'm really not how successful I was at communicating with him. Maybe I was to then go and pass the word along to my contacts at the American Embassy? Maybe he was glad I was sympathetic to his ideas. Or maybe we were both just excited to be speaking to a foreigner, and in their native language to boot. It is pretty satisfying sometimes, which is why I'm telling my brothers about it.
Soon Bizarro-World will be holding its presidential elections, which means there's a little extra strangeness in the air lately. Somehow all that has nothing to do with Badfighting, although Badfight appeared here around the same time as Democracy. I'll sort some of that out in the next email though.
Paka,
-Angry Giant