Victory Day

         Victory Day, May 9^th, celebrates the end of the Russians’ participation in WWII (or The Great Patriotic War, as they call it), and is one of the biggest holidays of the Russian year. For a while I watch the parade (if such a word can really be applied to anything so grimly serious) on our jumpy little television, listening to the echo of the cannons on TV and outside the window.  
    The weather is so gorgeous it’s hard to reconcile it with the epitome of dismal we were experiencing a mere week or two ago: I am reminded of how I arrived in Moscow exactly a year before and exclaimed over the loveliness of flowers and blue sky and was told grimly that I should have seen it last week. Now I've seen firsthand the almost overnight transformation as the sky (finally) stopped dribbling snow and menace, the trees all burst into leaf in a single 24 hour period, and a veritable army of city gardeners ran about like shoemaker’s elves rolling out carpets of green grass and planting tulips. 

            With such weather it's impossible to stay inside, so I head out to join the crowds of predictably serious, silent and sober Russians, who all wear victory ribbons, are careful to keep off the grass, and bring to mind not at all celebrants on the 4^th of July. Instead of experiencing a sense of jubilation I am reminded of V’s quip that “a revolution without dancing is a revolution not worth having”, and wonder how exactly that applies. A Victory Day without smiling is missing, well, as an outsider I am hesitant to comment on what it might be missing, only that there is a definite sense that something is. 
           I don't catch the tanks on the actual street, only see them here and there from a distance, but I make it in time for the platoon of orange street cleaners gushing their way along in the rear of the parade while the police yell into their megaphones with a desperate urgency for people to clear the way or get wet. The severity of their tone coupled with their harsh-sounding Russian words and the loudness of the megaphone gives the impression that it's not street cleaners that are approaching but at the very least a rogue tank, if not the Germans themselves. 

     
           A smell of gunpowder, burning rubber and cinnamon fills the streets, which will linger well into the night, as I pick my way through wide, central lanes closed to cars and over the fanciful bridges that lead to the gold-tipped Cathedral of Christ the Savior.
          Nearly everyone, men, women and children alike, wear 1940s cloth soldier hats. Small children are often in full uniforms of the same army green cloth, or hold giant balloons shaped like tanks, or shoot toy guns at imaginary Nazis. In one of the most touching aspects of the day people carry placards with pictures of their grandfathers, or red carnations to give to the veterans they see with heart-felt thanks. 
         As the day wears on the drinking and joviality pick up, though the serious edge never fades. As with so much in Russia, Victory Day is a study in contrasts: it’s both a glorification of military might and celebration of peace, both a day of sorrow and remembrance and a hotbed of patriotic fervor.

        

The Food

I think my experience with Russian food can be nicely summarized in a few bullet points and an anecdote:

• Dill. Lots and lots of dill. Everywhere dill.
• Cметана. Aka sour cream, aka the white stuff that's also everywhere, unless that white stuff is:
• Mayonnaise. The main ingredient in most Russian 'salads'.
• 'Meat'. As in: this pirogi is filled with chicken, this one with potato, and this one with 'meat'.
• Tворог: pronounced tvorag, also known as cottage cheese, named after a dinosaur who is related to Godzilla (beware the творог, it's in everything). Actually I quite like творог.
• I've dropped two jeans sizes since coming to Russia*. 

And now for the anecdote: When I first came here I tried to seek out some tasty ethnic cuisine, my two favorites being Mexican (the thought of a proper mission sized burrito, possibly a chile relleno one, is literally making me salivate as I type; I've actually never had worse guacamole than I've had in Moscow) and Indian. Several people recommended a chain of vegetarian Indian restaurants with loads of different dishes you order from in a cafeteria-style buffet line. Sounds pretty good, right? Of course this turned out to be Russian-Indian, which meant a large assortment of mayonnaise based salads and other standard Russian fare to accompany the Indian dishes which did, admittedly, contain lots of familiar items. I happily and hopefully snagged myself saag paneer, papadums (each in its own little plastic bag, Russian style), dahl and various other friendly-looking things. Only to be disappointed by the tepid heat, the strange, unaccountably large hunks of undissolved spices, no naan bread, and also a general and quite acute lack of that normal Indian food specialty: flavor. Oh well, I thought. 

The strange thing was that everyone kept recommending the place and going on about how it's one of their favorite restaurants, but even after repeated experiments I couldn't find it to be particularly good, or indeed that excitingly different from the normal Russian offering of generic, bland food. I figured everyone had just been here so long that the restaurant was starting to seem flavorful and exotic by contrast. Then I went back to this restaurant today, for the first time in months, largely because I wanted to see if they had any incense at the attached Indian/health food shop because I figured if anywhere would have it they would (they didn't).** It was popular and bustling as always, even at 4:30 in the afternoon. However, this time I also really enjoyed the food. It was warmish, flavorful, and entirely noteworthy (despite the multitude of whole cloves swimming in my saag). Yes! I thought, I've come on the right day! They've gotten better! Everyone was right, this is a good restaurant! Then, of course, the thought occurred to me that has probably already occurred to you: either the restaurant has actually improved its cooking, or I've been in Russia too long.




*Though, to be fair, I'd spent most of the past previous year drinking a solid amount of beer, staying with friends who seriously know how to cook, and working at a rather sedentary yet hungry-making job.
** I eventually went way out to the only place I've ever found incense in Moscow, and bought some more there.

Meanwhile in Russia

"Freaking Out": one man band of excellence often near the Metro on a Friday night.

The incredibly beautiful Gorky Park skating rink--really more fairy-lit paths of ice, including areas with little food, tea and mulled wine huts that you can walk up to in your skates, bonfires and a mirror maze to walk through.

The Quintessentially Russian Metro Barriers

There is something quintessentially Russian about the ticket barriers in the metro. Some, it is true, consist of plexiglass gates that, in quite a sane and civilized manner, simply fold open when you tap your metro card. However, the majority of barriers work in a different manner all together.

These gateways are deceptively empty and open looking, but if you tap your card wrong, move too slowly, are out of credit, or fail to tap a card at all, a tinkling alarm sounds and a barrier  crashes out of either side of the gateway in a vicious attempt to trap you. This hurts. A lot. To the point of leaving bruises. In fact, the  barrier guards rarely bother pursuing people who have set the alarm off, probably assuming that this painful attack on the person's legs and sensitive bits was repayment enough for not properly paying the forty ruble metro fare.

The upshot is that a necessary step for entering most metro stations is, quite literally, paying a machine to not punch you in the cunt.

Voykovskaya

Welcome to Voykovskaya

The Voykovskaya Angel

Our building

Sunset from my window

The building across from my window

Fabulous ceilings

At first we thought the flat was some sort of '90s kitsch

But it turns out it's 2005

My favourite bit of new art from a spray paint artist

And some Russian hats

     

Things I like about living in Russia: A List in No Particular Order

• Once I've gotten past their serious-faced rarely-smiling exteriors, I've found the Russians I know to be some of the most earnestly friendly people I've ever met. I love my Russian friends.
• The enormous forests of tower blocks that comprise this city make me perpetually feel like I'm walking around on the bottom of the ocean.
• People park anywhere. Literally anywhere. As long as you leave your phone number on your dash you seem to be able to block in as many other cars as you need too. On the sidewalk no less.
• The way people are so often shocked and even oddly grateful that a foreigner from such an exotic place as America (where so much pop culture comes from) not only lives here but is actually interested in everything Russian and LIKES it here. It makes me happy to be able to show half the people I meet that all Americans are not terrible people, and the other half the people I meet that some Americans actually know about and care about Russia.
• Russians applaud in a rhythm after some performances. It really confused me at first. And when a slow song comes on, even at a club, couples often partner dance like twelve-year-olds at a middle school prom. 
• Not understanding what most of the people around me are saying, most of the time. It's actually kind of a relief not having to listen to everyone else's inanities--with that distraction gone I can much more easily listen to my own internal inanities. On the other hand...
• Trying to learn Russian is super fun. It gives me an enormous sense of accomplishment when I splutter through an entire conversation with a taxi driver or stranger, or actually manage to read and understand an entire poster.
• The fact that it's more or less just like living anywhere else, which is relieving in an interesting sense: yes, humans basically are the same everywhere. Not, actually, that surprising. 
• Riding the metro every day. It's dirty and loud, though the stations are extravaganzas of marble and chandeliers and Soviet art. Honestly I think the reason it doesn't get old is that I spent so much of my life in a tiny cornfield town that it's still pretty damn exciting to get on a train.
• Ice skating is a serious thing here. My favorite park now has a rink that's not even just a big space, it is almost trail-like areas that take you to little coffee huts where you can stop and have tea or mulled wine. 
• They have hedgehogs here. Yeah, that's right. HEDGEHOGS.

racism and homophobia. yes, they exist here.

People from home tend to ask: “But isn’t Russia super racist and homophobic? How can you want to live there?”

            And my answer is yes: yes Russia is racist, yes Russia is homophobic, at least to a greater extent than that to which I am accustomed. 

           There are the boys sniggering the “n word” over pictures in our textbooks. There is the boy saying Freddie Mercury died because he was gay. There is one of the summer camp directors banning a group of kids from using Conchita Wurst as their group’s celebrity. There are the two girls in my class reading their speech on immigration in their country: “we have many immigrants, Tajiks, Uzbeks, etc, they are very bad, they look at our women, they rape our women, 80% of crime is these foreigner. Russia would be better with one nationality.” There’s our security guard constantly questioning the presence of our Asian-British teacher. There's the cab company whose mobile app lets you call a "Slavic" driver.

            And to be honest, when I'm not in the mood for eliciting looks of shock and horror I generally tell random strangers that I'm from London. Though when I do cop to California or Florida or general America, after the initial shocked splutter about Obama, sometimes I can find some common ground or at least manage to talk a bit with the stranger, and I like to think that the person might go on to tell other people that today they met an American who was actually a pretty decent human being.

            And for each of these less than pleasant encounters there are an equal number that go: American! You’re American! It is my dream to go to California/Miami/live in New York. It is beautiful? I love America/Americans.

            And despite the overheard homophobic comments there’s also the occasional piece of writing by a student that says: “Conchita Wurst is the coolest, I don’t care if he/she’s a man or a women he/she’s my hero”. There’s the late night conversation with a camp counselor about how the gay night at a club is one of her favorite nights out, that it seems to her there isn’t actually anything wrong with gay people, that they are, in fact, great and should be able to be married or do anything else they want. There’s the fact that the group of kids voted for Conchita as their celebrity symbol in the first place.

            And for every cringingly racist comment that gets flung about in class there is often a counter viewpoint, such as emphatic responses of: “No, no! I don’t agree! Different cultures have good things, we can learn from different peoples. People shouldn’t come to Russia and be bad, but people are good too,” etc. Or I might have a discussion in which I point out that children of gay parents not knowing that they don’t have to be gay too is not one of the arguments that can rationally be used against gay parenting (unless said gay parents are planning to raise their child in a closet, and no one is arguing that that isn’t a bad policy). There is definitely room for dialogue on many occasions.

            And then of course, in spite of it all, there’s the pair of young men scantly-clad in short shorts in the shop, clinging to each other’s necks and giggling, who a dour looking middle-aged man has a perfectly civil conversation with over the frozen fish. Sometimes there’s a lesbian couple, or a mixed race couple, in the park with a baby stroller.  Sure these incidents are vastly fewer and further between than they would be in London, New York or San Francisco, but some of Moscow, at least, is trying.

            Yes Russia has a long way to go, and yes Russia is taking steps back as well as forward, but let’s keep supporting the people here who want more tolerance. And please, let’s keep showing ourselves and the rest of the world what it looks like when people allow more and more equality, in whatever corner of the world we might find ourselves.