Museums, Old Women, Gender Roles and Clubs

Worried that I would rot away in a boozy haze, I decided to go to the Hermitage, Russia’s No. 1 cultural obligation. I was told that one day just isn’t enough to see the whole thing, and I would just like to categorically disprove that; you can actually do it in less than two hours if you have no interest in what anything is or when and where it’s from.

In a summary for the iPod generation, it was like this: first floor – things ranging from old to very old from all the major civilisations of history. They’ve got all the big guns: Egyptian Hieroglyphs, Greek vases, Roman busts, as well as stuff from all the B-list civilisations like the Celts and Aztecs. It’s all very rare and in very good condition - top marks; second floor –religious paintings: Jesus on the cross, Mary with baby Jesus, Jesus on the cross, Mary with baby Jesus etc. If you like that sort of thing, go there, there’s fucking loads of it.

I didn’t make it to the third floor because me and my friends were late for the ballet (ooooooo mince), but I think I would have enjoyed it a lot more as its largely modern art, which I take as a byword for art you don’t need to know anything about to decide if you like it or not. Sadly, my favourite room was the photography one, where they have pictures of celebrities who I don’t even like, like Jamie Foxx and Nicole Kidman, but they are seriously proper famous though.

Moving on, I don’t know if what I’ve written so far has accorded with peoples’ stereotypes of Russia in general, but a one stereotype that is definitely true is that old Russian woman (babushkas) are fucking hardcore. I live next to a particularly scary babushka who frequently buzzes aggressively on my door, before berating me in incredibly fast Russian. When I say ‘I don’t understand’ in Russian, she seems to use it as an opportunity to breathe before starting again, so at least I’m helping her not die. Other words I like to use are, ‘what?’, ‘slower’, ‘could you repeat that please?’ and, if I’m feeling really confident ,‘yes I see’, just to pretend I have some idea what’s going on. 

The other day she was especially incomprehensible, but eventually I managed to glean from her that water was dripping out of my shower onto her husband’s head. Soz! Anyway, she decided to order a plummer for us, a notoriously dodgy profession in these parts, and my flat mate told me that if he came when I was here I was not to let him out of my sight. In response I made some joke about plummers and porn films which was obviously hilarious. The whole thing turned out fine, and now I can shower my brains out in Russia’s grimy, fishy water (when they say the tap water is undrinkable they mean it).

Now to gender roles again: guys ALWAYS pay for everything on a date. This manifested itself in an amusing but expensive way the other day, when I went on a date with what can only be described as a real-life girl. After our charming date in Russia’s very own form of faceless, omnipresent coffee shops (genuinely called ‘Coffee Shop’) she turned to me and said ‘do you want me to pay?’.  ‘What a nice girl’, I thought, ‘she’s actually offering to pay for me.’ Gallantly I declined, quite willing to split the bill, at which point she rapidly stuffed her cash back into her bag and was like, ‘no, no, it’s 400 rubles, why have you only put out 200’, before adding ‘and you should probably leave a tip’. In hindsight she’d obviously meant, ‘do you want me to pay for myself?’, which to my English sensibilities just seemed so ridiculous I hadn’t even considered it. I didn’t have the heart to tell her I’d misunderstood, or that I’d deliberately not gotten a drink so that I could wait to get a cheap one from a shop (not really a turn on), so I just paid.

Such a system is pointless in my view since the guy receives no gratitude, as the girl already expects it, and the whole thing only serves to reinforce archaic gender divides between men and women. Man buys stuff, girl looks nice, they get married and man is allowed to get fat, while girl stays thin in exchange for being bought more stuff. (And right there you have an exhaustive exposition of Russian gender roles, cheers everyone).

Or maybe I’m just bitter about having to pay £4 for her fucking latte.

In other news, Russian clubs also have an amazing policy (you decide in what way) called ‘face control’. This basically revolves around rejecting girls from clubs based on what they look like so that the high paying foreigners/nouveau riche Russian businessmen are getting the absolute best for the money they lavish on those girls. Think of it as a slightly more respectable, less coercive form of prostitution. Obviously I was obliged to go to one of these clubs for journalistic purposes, and the atmosphere was cattle-market like as expected. There were more beautiful girls per square foot than at a Duran Duran concert, all trying desperately to attract the men’s attention, whilst simultaneously trying to look like they weren’t. Very awkward. I asked one guy how his night was and all he said was ‘plohoi (bad) face control’ and gave a thumbs down. I left after that.

I should say the traditional nature of this gender divide does have nice, or at least sweet, elements. For instance, if you like a girl, whether it be someone you’ve seen in a cafe, a long-term girlfriend or a stalkee, it is tradition to present them with a flower as an expression of your admiration for their beauty or kindness or whatever, as well as your intentions thereafter. Isn’t that nice? It is isn’t it? But it’s also an absolutely piss easy chat up line if you can’t think of anything to say. And the fact is, in a wonderfully circular process, because the girls are old-fashioned, they love it. Having said that, I presented a Bar Lady I’d been chatting to with 3 white roses the other night, and she just said ‘cheers’, and then put them on the bar behind her – guess you need to have something to say too then...

Right, all for now. Having singularly failed in writing informatively about anything culturally high-brow, I’ll probably just to stick to writing about what I see on the street, in cafes and in bars, so look forward to more of the same. No book review this time by the way, but I am incredibly excited to announce the inclusion of a guest film review, written by fledgling journalist Stan Kazach, so please show him your support by giving it a read (as well as my own film and music reviews).

Do svidaniya,

Ronan Davidovich

More stuff about clubs because I think that’s a legitimate way to judge an entire country’s culture and values

Another highlight of my trip so far was stumbling upon a club where a cigarette company was doing a promotion night, handing out free cigs and badges. What? Badges? I think that company’s PR team may need to rethink what is meant by ‘target the younger demographic’. Having said that, they clearly understand the effectiveness of such a campaign is scientifically 10000 times more likely to succeed if you have fit girls handing out aforementioned badges. This largely explains why now I have a badge saying ‘Why Not?’ in Russian, which I use to cover up a hole in the crotch of my jeans (from an unrelated incident).

The fact that it is legal to hand out free cigarettes amazed me, but I suppose it’s not so morally reprehensible considering that the huge majority of Russia's population already smokes. However, allowing such promotions certainly does seem unfair considering that some time in the next year, the government has decided to increase cigarette prices by TEN TIMES in order to combat rising cancer deaths. That’s like suddenly deciding a child is too old for milk and then putting it on a shelf in plain view. Basically, if the Russian government doesn’t want something to happen, they just make it illegal, or impossible, and if people don’t like it then tough borsh (that makes no sense, it’s a kind of soup).

That is, although in economical terms Russia is firmly a capitalist state, in terms of freedom of speech and press they have most definitely regressed back to the Communist period. This is ironic, or maybe just surprising (whatever you think, no one actually understands the meaning of the word ironic and no one ever will. Ironic is so ironic that if you look it up in the dictionary it tells you the wrong meaning, which probably isn’t even ironic, ironically) considering that the opposite occurred under Yeltsin. The latter handled the economic transition into capitalism incredibly badly, completely failing to educate anyone as to what it actually meant (not saying it would have been easy), thus allowing a few opportunistic individuals to hoard 95% (let’s say) of the country’s wealth; but he at least understood the need for people to be able to vent their opinions and emotions, allowing for instance, talk-shows criticising his policies etc. Putin on the other hand, has overseen a huge boost in Russia’s economy (though how much of that money has filtered down to the people is another matter), yet essentially rules as a dictator, something he has largely been able to do through seizing control of the media and disallowing almost any form of criticism against him. Of course, freedom of speech in the everyday is basically allowed - I know most of this through discussing it with a Businessmen I teach. We had quite a funny moment when we started talking about Big Brother and I told him to ‘sshhhh’ as a joke, and he sort of laughed and then quickly scanned the ceiling for cameras. You can take the man out of Communism, but you can’t take the Communism out of the man.

Anyway, this bar I was talking about is also home to one of my favourite Russians, a DJ known as ‘Reject Monkey’. I tried to tell him that that sounds more like a thrash-punk band for 14 year olds, but he's simply incorrigible. Harmless I suppose, until he decided to spit a full mouthful of beer in my face while DJing, I think because I was wearing a shirt while there was dubstep on. By this logic, I should be constantly gobbing on him as he wears dread locks whilst having white skin on. He did come over to me to apologise, saying ‘it’s rock and roll man’ (by which I think he means ‘shit dubstep’), but unfortunately my Englishness got the better of me and I told him, with a smile and reassuring pat on the shoulder, how I didn’t, ehrm, well, you know, really mind at all, actually.

I suppose the only thing about the guy that serves to illustrate a broader point about Russia is his DJ name. Since Russia has had Western capitalism shoved down its throat in such a short space of time, understandably  there are things they get, and things they don’t. Sometimes they come up with cool names for stuff, like ‘Barackobamabar’, sometimes not, like ’Reject Monkey’.  It’s a country full of contradictions in general: on one hand they make fun of America’s gaudy, tackiness, and on the other I’ve seen a bright gold BMW 4x4, as well as a variety of other cars with tigers, naked women and guns spray-painted onto them; on one hand you see guys who ride round the city on bikes with speakers strapped to their backs blaring out d’n’b, which is pretty cool in a gangster kind of way, and on the other the same guys will strap multicoloured merry-go-round lights to their wheels, so that it ends up more like a bad NERD video; on one hand the fact that you are foreign means a bouncer will do anything to get you into a club, since he thinks you’ll spend money inside, yet on the other the more savvy club bouncers will also ask for a ‘priglasheniya’ or ‘invitation’ (which means ‘bribe’, because you’re not on the ‘guestlist’, and because they don’t ‘like you’). This random door policy all came to a head a few days ago when my friend tried to get into a supermarket, but was refused for being English. I’m pretty sure that’s the first and last time I will ever see someone denied the chance to buy bacon based on where they live.

As I’m slightly embarrassed about the recent club-centric content of the blog, I’ll make an effort to write more about museums and stuff next time. Of course, there’ll be more on clubs too, which is clearly unavoidable since I was once described by a Rugby boy at uni as ‘L-A-D positive’, which incidentally made me want to eat my own face*. Also, there are three more book, film and music reviews up, found through the corresponding tabs running across the top of the blog, go get em!

Do Svidaniya (that means ‘bye’ by the way),

Ronan Davidovich

*Jason Warren’s joke, a controversial up-and-coming stand-up

The other day I literally saw a man kill a dog with a spade!

Woah woah woah woah woah woah woah. A few things to clear up first. Such has been the dizzying response to this blog, without any coercion from myself, through facebook or any other means, a major issue has been brought to my attention.

The homepage IS ONLY ONE BIT OF THE BLOG!

‘Huh?’, ‘Wah?’, ‘Zoigs?’, I hear you splutter. That’s right, the tabs at the top, eg ‘About this blog’, ‘Ratings System’, ‘Music’ etc all have stuff in them too and will continue to be updated, so if you liked whatever post you did read, please read those too. Also, if you’re reading this and haven’t ‘joined the site’, please do so by clicking on the link on the right side of the home page, there’s a little google icon above it and also I will give you money.

Ok, now, as promised, another slice of sweet sweet Russian pie...

Firstly the title of this blog post is a complete lie but I thought it would be a good way to make people read it. In others news, in the past week I’ve been treated to a veritable shitload of the very finest superstition Russia has to offer, getting 4 ‘Shastlivi Bilyeti’ or ‘lucky bus tickets’ (which means the sum of the numbers on the right of the ticket equals the sum on the left). Despite my absolute faith in this concept, they unfortunately didn’t seem to have much impact on my luck as I still appear to be living in Russia. Apparently I missed out a crucial phase of my luck-getting, since in order to actualise the mystical qualities of mathematically symmetrical bus tickets, you’re supposed to eat them. Unfortunately this stands in contradiction to my own superstition – ‘death befalls he who eats anything not thrice sterilised in Russia’ - so I gave it a pass.

Then there was my trip to club ‘Vozduch’ or  'Air’. As you walk in, the first thing you see is a massive swimming pool shimmering beneath the open sky. You’d probably think that the combination of loads of pissed Russians, coupled with a swimming pool with absolutely no health and safety regulations, is an absolutely flawless idea, and you’d be right. Behind the pool was a beach area which led onto the banks of the River Neva, with the lights of the city shining from the opposite bank. The scene was almost complete when the MC started singing ‘What A Wonderful World’, complete with a Louis Armstrong singing voice. Unfortunately he couldn’t pronounce any of the words, so was just going ‘Warra Wazdaffu Wang’, over and over again, sounding more like Vic Reeves club singing than anything else. Another issue was that it was about 11pm at this point, so it wasn’t really the time for a lighters-in-the-air party closer. Not to fear, the MC quickly got the point and busted into a dubstep remix of Billy Jean, which was about as good as a dog with a bucket on its head*. Luckily my mood was maintained by two Russian rude boys flexing dance moves at one another, which looked like a mix between a really shit version of that Run DMC video and Street Fighter moves.

As this suggests, the Russians are absolute masters of incongruity in music. The club scene is like one giant iPod shuffle; songs don’t need to begin or finish, or have anything to do with each other, they just have to be really loud and preferably famous. On the other stage this DJ was playing a mash-up set, but since everything in Russia is already a mash-up set, an actual mash-up set is more like ‘guess what song I’m playing in 5 seconds’, or maybe ‘I bet you can’t dance to this without looking like a wanker’. Incidentally, if that was the name of the game, then me and everyone else in the club lost quite badly and repeatedly.

Another club based on a beach, ingeniously spying a gap in the market, is Club ‘Dune’. As can be seen from Club ‘Air’ (open-air) and Club ‘Dune’ (sand), the Russians have a habit of giving things straightforwardly descriptive names, possibly as a hangover from communism. So all convenience stores are called ‘food stuffs’, flower shops are called ‘flowers’, brothels are called ‘viciously exploitative human trafficking warehouses’ etc. Although this is helpful to quickly find what you’re looking for, it does take the mystery away a bit, and it makes things quite hard to find, like ‘yeah I’ll meet you by the shop’, ‘what shop?’, ‘you know ‘shop’, it’s near ‘flowers’’, ‘oh right ‘flowers’, is that near ‘brothel’, ‘nah its near ‘church’’ etc.

I will endeavour to post again within a week or two, in the mean time I’m just about to put some more book, film and music reviews up so why not read them? Come on.

Poka,

Ronan Davidovich

*I robbed this off Bo Selecta

Russia say's hi, she's fine before you ask, and even if she wasn't she wouldn't want to talk about it

Hello everyone. I've been meaning to start a blog for ages, and now I have, which is a happy coincidence. My first post is something I wrote about a month ago, but never got round to posting, so I'll hand you over now to my past self.

The first interesting thing that comes to mind is my trip to a Banya, a Russian bathhouse. Basically I meet up with this woman a few times a week for a kind of language exchange (she speaks no English so I just teach her words like ‘chair’ and ‘no, that’s racist’) and one day she invited me to one of these things. I obliged naturally and when I arrived she kindly remembered to add that it was a nudist, communal Banya and was wondering whether I was comfortable with this? I said something like ‘are you taking the fucking piss?’, though given my Russian it was probably more like ‘fuck my piss you are the taking’. After being met with a puzzled glance in return, I opted to pretend that what I had actually said was ‘yes, that’s fine’ and so off we went. It was actually a great experience, generic Far-Eastern monk music floated throughout the building, comprised of a changing room, shower room and Sauna, and generally the whole thing was genuinely and unselfconsciously ‘free-spirited’. The most awkward moment though was almost certainly when I partook in the traditional Russian Banya ritual, which involves having your naked body whipped by leaves containing mystical healing powers. I hope you can picture me lying face(and everything else)-up, being viciously stroked (paradox?) top-to-bottom by a profusely sweaty babushka, because if there’s no good anecdotal material there I’m struggling to see the value of the experience.

What else? My friend also saw a new genre of mime, which he aptly described as ‘air-penis’. This involved an unbelievably pissed Russian man, stumbling up towards a wall, attempting to take, and believing he had taken, his cock out of his trousers, and then proceeding to piss, holding a fat chunk of air, whilst all the while a dark circle emanated from his pants. Ha, you crrazy Russians, what will you get up to next? I've also enjoyed being able to walk underneath heavy machinery performing road works and being able to hale down literally any car as a taxi. You simply haggle for a negligible price and then hop in, though most of the girls I know here don’t use this form of transport, which I find so sexist. Are they implying no one wants to rape me? I’d rape me.

I can’t think of anything else interesting that’s happened but I promise my life here is really, really fascinating and that I'll have lots more to talk about ever so soon.

Thanks again for reading, keep your eyes peeled for media reviews and please link this to people who might not think it’s too vapid, even if it’s just so that I can officially list them as a follower.

Do svidaniya,

Ronan Davidovich