Today I’m the featured blogger on Blogtrotting! This is very exciting and it is my pleasure to welcome you to my blog and the country where I spend a lot of my time: The Russian Federation. This post will give you a little bit of the skinny on me and Russia, as well as Me & Russia: a long-term, somewhat choppy relationship, which for better or worse, and richer or poorer, is set to last a lifetime. I've left a few breadcrumbs to follow to some classic posts via links, and I hope you'll stay a while and browse.
I’m an American who fell in love with Russian language, history, and culture when I was a bored 13 year-old and read Robert Massie's “Nicholas and Alexandra.” After The Wall came down, I majored in 19th Century Russian Studies, graduated, and set sail for Russia just in time for the main act of perestroika. To my extreme shock and horror, Russia in 1989 looked nothing like “Nicholas and Alexandra." You could have knocked me over with a feather. I almost left, but it was all too compelling to give up. So, here I am, 17 years later.
In 1992, I settled down in Moscow with the man who would become HRH (which, in addition to meaning “His Royal Highness” can also mean, depending on my mood, “Horrible” or “Handsome” Russian Husband.”) After a suitable interval, we were joined by our daughter, Velvet, who, at the age of six months made it abundantly clear to us that her life would be dedicated spending as much time with horses as possible. To better facilitate this, we’ve sent her to school in rural Massachusetts and we now divide our time between Northampton, MA and Moscow, and when people ask me what I do, I tell them, I'm a Pony Mom. We have many frequent flyer miles, but not enough to fly through volcanic ash.
We are an eclectic extended household, which includes some stock characters such as HRH’s parents about whom he says: “They’re trying,” to which I respond, “and that’s not all they are…” our housekeeper, and our long-suffering driver. If that seems like a lot of staff, well, Russia is a human resources rich country.
“How do you like living here?” Russians ask me all the time. “It’s never dull,” I tell them, and it isn’t. Everything you try to do takes strategic planning, on-the-ground know-how, and sheer guts. What for example, would you do if confronted with this situation?
Or this one?
Though I am pretty sure you would know what to do in this situation...
“What has been the best thing about living in Russia for seventeen years?” asked an American lawyer.
“Smoked salmon,” I replied promptly.
“What can’t you get in Russia?” people often ask. The answer used to be everything from A-Z, so much so that I would play that game “I packed my grandmother’s trunk…” when I couldn’t fall asleep. Today, it’s just zip lock bags and Eileen Fisher. Yes, I’ve seen a lot of changes.
My blog is about finding the funnier side of life in Russia, which isn’t always easy, but incredibly satisfying when you do. Even the Russian TV Guide is funny. I found a guy so desperate to find a girlfriend that he dressed up in absurd clothing and was photographed in a truly tacky 18th century palace. You don’t see that every day, but you can see him here.
I have a thing about the Uniformed in Russia. I also am on a mission to chart all of Russia’s professional holidays, which include everything from the Day of the Cosmonauts to Customs’ Workers Day (and how I am going to find anything nice to say about them, I don’t know...stay tuned!).
Moscow is a huge sprawling city that has very beautiful parts of it, like the Moscow Kremlin, and some really awful parts of it, like the raw open wounds of chaotic construction all over the city. It’s a brusque, businesslike place, where traffic is often gridlocked and the weather is often grey. Moscow doesn’t welcome you with open arms, but you can find a lot of interesting things if you are willing to look. I take a lot of pictures in Moscow of the things I see – mainly the things that stand out at me as very ironic, very funny, very sad, or very typical of the Russian approach to life, which is often a combination of all of the above. I hope you enjoy having a look around.
I love to cook, and living in Russia, oddly enough made me a good one. I prefer to shop at the Farmers' Markets, which isn't for the faint of heart, but the best place to get fresh produce, meat and fish.
It is hard being a photographer in Russia, because very few people want to have their pictures taken, especially people in uniform, which is why I really treasure these shots:
The women who made Hitler cry...
And the most enduring image of them all...with the ubiquitous crane...
Author's Notes:
Photos by Jennifer Eremeeva, with sincere thanks to the administration of Dorogomilovskaya Market for allowing me to take pictures of the farmer's market.
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Dear Reader: I close my posts by thanking readers for stopping by, and telling them how much I value their feedback about Dividing My Time. If you would like to leave a comment, please feel free to click the comment button below. This is especially true today, when I look forward to welcoming new readers! I would also like to thank Blogtrotting for their interest in featuring this post: Большое вам спасибо: Russian for Thank you very much!