Dividing My Time

Transitions: E-Z Pass versus VIP Arrival

 

Dividing my time is more complicated than it sounds.  

I’m back in Moscow, and I’ve spent the last few days doing what I always do after a lengthy absence:  removing every single garment and (carefully labeled) plastic container from my closet, which for some reason is covered in about an inch of dust.  If you ever wondered why luxury handbags come with those soft bags, now you know:  to keep the dust off.   Then I had to empty the fridge and do whatever it is I do do to rid it of the sour smell that comes from what I call “HRH food.”   I put all the half-wrapped salami slices into sealed containers, I throw away the rotting radishes, and I banish all the food my mother-in-law imports as soon as I leave: jam, German pickles (yuck!) and synthetic faux creamer.

Having replaced batteries in absolutely everything from my computer mouse to my Sonic-care toothbrush, downloaded software updates for my sluggish MacBook, completely reconfigured my To-doist.com (never underestimate the empowerment of a good to-do list), I read Raisa the cleaning lady the riot act about not throwing out any ice while I’m here, and finally feel ready to get back to writing.

I’ve been on an enforced writing sabbatical since HRH came to Northampton for a week’s holiday from the Difficult Start Up at the Important Industry right before my departure to Moscow (a schedule line up I won’t be repeating any time soon) during which, he declared, he wanted to do absolutely nothing.  Except buy some new suits.  And watch Velvet in a Very Serious Horse Show she attended in utter upstate New York.  HRH forgot his driver’s license, which meant I did all of the driving involved.  And this pleased neither one of us.   HRH loves to drive in the United States, which he likens to playing a not-too-demanding video game.   Since we acquired Serena, our dulcet-toned GPS, we never worry about getting lost, and since my Dad (the car Tsar) generously arranged for and continues to underwrite an E-Z Pass, we are almost never stuck in traffic.

The E-Z Pass reigns as one of HRH’s top favorite things about America (along with Cape Cod Potato chips and the Hampshire Regional YMCA).  Being Russian, he likens waiting in line for anything as a sign of weakness, and waiting in line to pay for using a road completely unacceptable.  Each time we shoot through the E-Z Pass lane, leaving the other drivers to creep and crawl through the “CASH” Lane, HRH gives a grunt of approval.     I certainly found it handy as I pushed pedal to metal on the New York Thruway in order to make it to one of Velvet’s early morning jump offs.

Perhaps it was the E-Z Pass, or maybe it was the smooth execution of the Valet Parking I surprised him with at the Natick Mall, but HRH got it into his head that he needed to order a VIP Meet & Great at Domodedevo Airport for his return journey back to Moscow.    He also very generously determined that I should have the same treatment for my return three days later.  I did not demur.  When you’ve checked in three large duffle bags full of harmless kitchen essentials such as a vertical chicken roaster, and innocuous white substances such as 500 packets of Splenda and baking powder, the thought is always there that some Customs’ Official recovering from a long night, might just take it into his head to decide that the former is a sex toy and the latter a controlled substance.

I was thrilled, therefore, to casually stroll off the aircraft as my fellow passengers pushed and shoved, and did that thing that is not quite a run, but is a lot more than a walk, in a desperate effort to get to the front of the endless passport control queue (which is now even longer as we wait for the printer to print out the registration card).  Savoring the moment, I approached the bored-looking female with pockmarked skin and an inexpertly hemmed uniform skirt, holding up the “VIP-ЗАЛ” sign.

“Hello there,” I said brightly, “I’m your client!”

She regarded me with a massive amount of disinterest.

“Identify yourself,” she grunted.

She seemed surprised, but resigned when I produced the right documentation and she motioned me to follow her.   

Does anything say “You’re back in Russia” like the echoing “clack clack clack” of a female airport employee’s rickety heels on the tile floor?   We forged our way through the steamy departure lounge, full of Russians in tracksuit bottoms and tank tops heading off for package holidays in Turkey and Egypt.     Through a door, down a corridor, up a flight of stairs, down another corridor and up an additional flight of stairs I lugged my rollaboard full of cameras, computers, my Duty free swag (three bottles of PIMMS) and enough cooking magazines to last me two months.   We finally pushed through the final set of doors to the VIP Lounge.

I won’t belabor the point describing it, except to say I think that rattan, as a decorative motif in a climate such as Russia's is a mistake, and that, at the prices they charge for the service, a cash bar seems tacky, but as the Russians say, “It’s a sin to complain.”

Well, maybe just one complaint then…

It is nice to sit in a rattan chair and wait for someone to collect your three large duffle bags full of Splenda and vertical chicken roasters for you, but having to lug them up those two flights of stairs then through the entire arrivals hall, down the one tiny working elevator to get to the car which is parked in the dedicated VIP Parking space…that makes me long for my E-Z Pass.

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Priveyt Readers!

Have you experienced a VIP service in Russia?  VIP Sushi perhaps?  Or VIP Banya? What's your experience been?  Hit the comment button below and tell us about it!

 

Масленица/Maslenitsa: Parties, Pancakes, and Punch-Ups

With enough butter, anything is good.

~Julia Child

Today is the beginning of Maslenitsa, Russia's version of Mardi Gras!

I wrote this piece for one of papers I write for, but they went with something about bears in Trafalgar Square which I didn't feel was nearly as informative, nor indeed entertaining.  Looks like Olga Quelque Chose strikes again...So, here it is for fans of The Stunt:

There are a number of non-negotiables about life in Russia.   You can’t have the window open—ever.   You have to take your shoes off when you enter any residential dwelling—always.  And, if you plan to earn the respect of your family, you need to learn how to make bliniy or pancakes---well.  Particularly this time of the year.  It has eluded me, in the past but this year, I promised myself I would master the art of the elusive Russian pancake in time for Maslenitsa.  I rolled up my sleeves.  I delved into 19the Century cookbooks.  I cornered old women at the farmers’ market.  I contemplated calling my mother-in-law.

“I have to work today, “ said my workaholic Russian husband last Saturday.

“Perfect,” I muttered, “I need you out from under my feet.  I have to crack this bliniy recipe, and it is going to take me all day.”

“Don’t overdo it,” he cautioned hastening out the door.

“Don’t you dare have anything to eat,” I yelled after him, “because we’ll be having sixty pancakes for dinner!”

The pressure is on.  Maslenitsa is upon us! Russia’s riotous Mardi Gras: a week of partying, pancakes and punch-ups which celebrates the end of winter, the beginning of Lent, and the promise of spring.  Half-heartedly absorbed into the Russian Orthodox Calendar, Maslenitsa is really a tenacious rite of spring belonging to a much older, more pagan culture of nature worship, agrarian traditions, and a heightened awareness of the change of seasons.

Maslenitsa was originally pegged to the vernal equinox, that moment in early spring when the sun passes directly over the equator, making day and night equal length.   Of the four points of the calendar (the solstices and the equinoxes), the vernal equinox was most revered by ancient societies, because it heralded the return of the sun and life after the darkness and death of winter.  Many ancient monuments such as the Temple of Solomon in Jerusalem were oriented such that the rays of the vernal equinox sunrise would fall directly above the High Alter.  

Pagan Slavs interpreted natural phenomena in their religious worship with stories of human love and betrayal, sex and separation, and life and death.  In a popular myth reminiscent of Egyptian Isis and Osiris, Russia’s Yarilo and Morana are brother and sister lovers who represent life and death, fire and ice, and spring and winter.  Their courtship reaches a fever pitch during the summer solstice, only to spiral into betrayal in autumn, and separation and death in the winter.  Spurred Morana turns into a fearsome hag, spreading death and frost in her wake. Crops wither to dried straw as Yarilo retreats to the underworld. As spring returns, the faithful burned a straw effigy of Morana on top of the snow to call forth Yarilo back from the Underworld.   As the flames of the straw Morana crackled, pagan Slavs celebrated the return of spring by dancing, wrestling, and feasting on life-affirming pancakes, symbolic of the sun and eternal life.

Christians, ever-efficient recyclers of other people’s holidays, have nevertheless found Maslenitsa an awkward fit in the liturgical lead in to Easter.  In agrarian Russia, Lent served as a handy spiritual excuse for a Spartan diet as it excludes meat, cheese, oil, eggs, alcohol, and butter, all of which do a lot to spice up plain buckwheat kasha.  The forty days of Lent coincide with the period when the staples of winter stores had dwindled down to a bare minimum in Russia.  Nowadays, of course, you can get mangos and quail in aspic at any supermarket year round, but many Russians proudly go through “The Great Fast,” as a way of clawing onto some moral high ground and dropping twenty pounds in less than two months: both goals easy to achieve if you are subsisting on buckwheat porridge and cabbage soup. Maslenitsa contains the word “maslo” meaning butter, although some scholars argue that it is a more ancient version of “mysia pust’” meaning “empty of meat.”  Whatever the explanation, it is a time to gorge on butter, cheese, and cream, and is to Russia what Shrovetide is to the Anglo-Saxons and Carnival and Mardi Gras are to the Spanish and French: a public celebration of the return of light and warmth and the last gasp of fun and fat – and pancakes of course-- to be had before the onset of Lent.  

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This post is part of The Stunt.

This piece first appeared in La Russie D'Aujourd'hui and Le Figaro on February 16, 2011 in French under the title: "Les blinis sans états d’âme"

Photos (and pancakes) by the author.  All Rights Reserved.

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Hello Readers!

Have you had a pancake today?  Want to know the very best pancake recipe ever (much better than any of the ones posted that I've seen?)   Hit the comment button below and I'll let you in on it.  Not for the faint hearted!!!

To revisit a Maslenitsa that went horribly wrong, try this post.

Day of the Defenders of the Fatherland/День защитника Отечества: A Hymn To Him

As you spend February 23rd (Men's Day), so shall you spend 8th of March (Women's Day).

~HRH (and a lot of other Russian men I know.)

A friend, who is perhaps not the brightest bulb on the tanning bed, has just figured out the double entendre humor I use in referring to my “Handsome Russian Husband” as “HRH.”

“You know,” she said, “That can also stand for ‘His Royal Highness’. Like Prince William.”

Really?

The moniker HRH is eminently applicable to Russian men, who are all brought up by their mothers believing that they are, indeed, royal scions and therefore above such plebian and unmanly concerns like housework.  In Russia, they are still teaching Home Ec to the girls and Shop to the boys, with no reform in sight – and certainly not regarding the impending gender-specific public holidays.  In place of one messy, gender-neutral love fest on February 14th, Russians are suiting up for the very separate Men’s Day (February 23rd) and its companion piece, International Women’s Day (March 8th.)  

I’m a Russian historian, so I like to delve into the origin of national holidays. Men’s Day is very interesting.  Its full, and characteristically overblown, name is “The Day of the Defenders of the Motherland,” and it celebrates the 1918 rout of Kaiser Wilhelm’s forces by the just-that-day-drafted Red Army.  The name eventually morphed from “Red Army Day,” to “Day of the Soviet Army and Navy,” and in 1995, as part of a re-branding campaign to drop “Red” from everything, ended up as “Day of the Defenders of the Motherland.”  In HRH’s family, we take the 23rd of February very seriously indeed, since we are a military family:  HRH and Dedushka both served as officers in the Red Army – as did Great Uncle Boris, and several others, dating right back to that Red Letter Day in 1918.  Interestingly, this list also includes several gutsy great aunts and great-great grandmothers, who served, with distinction, in the Red Army as border patrol guards, field medical officers, and behind-the-lines guerilla fighters in Occupied Ukraine.  Nevertheless, February 23rd remains devoted exclusively to the men of Russia, who, ipso facto, are all obliged to defend the Motherland as part of their mandatory military service.  

On its current web site, the Russian Consulate in Houston, TX offers helpful guidance on the celebration of Men’s Day: “On this day,” it says, “the entire masculine population - from boys to old men - receive special greetings and presents. Women have a wonderful opportunity to convey their warmest and kindest feelings to the loved ones and to indulge them with sings (sic) of attention and affection.”  

Translation: Women: shop, cook, clean.   Lather, rinse, repeat.

HRH, in mufti, is not a force to be reckoned with on the domestic front, although he does open wine bottles, which, along with driving a car, is what well-brought up Russian men consider “man’s work.”  I once begged him to empty the dishwasher.  He sighed deeply, went to the sink, and stood, his back to me.

“Darling,” I said quietly.

“What – “ he barked, turning around to glare at me.

“Just that, the dishwasher, you know, is the appliance on your left.”

  HRH and Dedushka won’t be emptying anything except a bottle of premium whiskey this week – as we women convey our warmest and kindest feelings.  I’ve bought HRH a new super sonic corkscrew, Babushka has the sweet Sovietskoye Champanskoye warming up in the vegetable steamer, and Velvet is on dishwasher duty, so we are all set to indulge our Defenders with the royal attention and affection they deserve.

But I refuse to sing.

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This post is part of The Stunt.

This post first appeared as an article in Russia Beyond The Headlines on February 10, 2010.

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Hey there readers!

This may well have been the post that started me down the rocky road of profprazniks.   Did you have a nice men's day?   I decided to put all my chips on one number and spent a large part of Tuesday night making bliniy and all kinds of good stuff.  Then everyone got sick.  So now the house is full of food.  Any Defenders out there still looking for a good meal?

Old New Year/Старый Новый год: Enough Already!!!

 Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.

~ Popular saying, referencing Trojan War.

Today is Old New Year.  That’s right – Old New Year.   Old in the sense of “what used to be.”   As the leading (read only) chronicler of Russian public and professional holidays, I’ve explained the 13-day discrepancy between some Russian holidays, but for those of you just joining Dividing My Time, here is my authorized version of just how this discrepancy came about.

Old New Year is the final push to the finishing line of my Christmas marathon, which begins around December 10th, around about the time my friend Gail guilts me into buying a gazillion tickets to the Moscow Oratorio’s annual performance of Handel’s “Messiah,” and ends – deo gratis – tomorrow.   And not before time!  

While the Valentine’s Day décor goes up in the West at approximately 2 pm on Christmas Day, the Russians drag it out until the last gasp.  Today, at Goodman’s Steak House where Tancy and Tanya and I got together for a girly lunch, they still had Ella Fitzgerald singing “Sleigh Bells Ringing” full blast, which made me want to throw my 9 oz New York steak across a room filled with plump businessmen having catch up lunches with their secretaries.  Readers, it’s time to pack up Christmas and be done with it.  Lent is just around the corner.

In this spirit of de-cluttering and de-Christmasing, I attacked HRH’s staggering range of Corporate Gifts with all the relentless zeal of my new heroine, Clutter Buster to the Elites, Barbara Reich.   

Corporate gifts, like birthday gifts, in Russia have a culture uniquely their own, which has a lot more to do with the giver, rather than the giftee. Sometimes, when I can’t sleep, I run through some of the more outrageous ones I’ve encountered in my day.  The list was long as it was, but this year, it got a stunning new addition that no one could see coming down the shosse.  

I’ve written before about clutter busting in Russia (and gotten my hand nicely slapped for it) but at this rolling time of the year, as Dickens would say, there is a very real danger that one could end up buried under all this…seasonal bounty.  So, with that in mind, I offer, below, a practical guide for wives, trailing spouses and secretaries as to what you can expect to receive, and more importantly, what you should do with it.   

1. Shiny carrier bags with the logo of the giver emblazoned on the front:  

Disposition: empty these of their contents, being sure to remove the business cards stapled to them so you can remember to thank the giver.  Write the contents of the carrier bag on the back of the business card.  Collate with rubber band to give to your minigarch. HRH tends to not take this any further, but I figure this is his business.  

When the carrier bags are emptied, flatten them out and give them to your cleaning lady.  She will be over the moon and use them as you or I would use a tote bag for the remainder of the calendar year.   On no account should you use them to “re-gift” an item, because you won’t get any of the credit.  Duh…

2.    Booze:  

Booze at New Year’s is a wonderful barometer of how well you are doing professionally: the higher you go up the corporate ladder, the better the quality of the booze swag.   Russians, despite all the patriotic rhetoric you hear these days, are serious snobs about their alcohol, preferring the imported to the domestic.  So, if you got a wooden case of three bottles of really nice French red wine, you are doing well. If you got one bottle of Super Sladkoye (sweet) Shampanskoye, not so much.  

Disposition: Consume (in the case of the good wine, cognac, and scotch) or (in the case of the Super Sladkoye Shampanskoye or the Cough Syrup Cranberry Liqueur) re-gift down the social scale to those who will appreciate it.  The exception to this rule is vodka, which often comes in a witty custom-branded bottle with the firm’s logo on it.  Keep this and pour it into the hole in your car where the windshield wiper fluid goes and you’ll be all set.

3. Banya accessories:  

Newcomers to Russia are often surprised to find they’ve been given dried branches, felt caps, wooden buckets, a small wall thermometer, or a long-handled ladle as presents, but in no way should this be perceived as an insult or a slur.  Quite the opposite, these gifts indicate that the giver perceives you or your minigarch as a bit of a lad, one of the boys, and an all around good egg.  

Disposition:  If you have a sauna, then stick them in and put them to work.  If you don’t, hand them over to your driver, who will think that you think he is a bit of a lad.  No bad thing.

4-7:    The paper products/A5 junky diaries:

No Russian company worth its salt will go one year without producing an A5 diary, calendar, or outdated business card holder of some kind.  During my time at the The Firm, I tried to get rid of them, but no dice.   These can range from tasteful real leather blank books (and as you can see from the photo, some companies are wising up and producing A4 or letter-sized diaries) to the really heinous faux-suede stuff. As for the business card holders – another reason why, if you ask me (and no one ever ever does) Russia will never join the WTO – everyone knows you need a Rolodex to keep those in any kind of order.

Disposition: Cull vigorously, keeping the A4 ones for yourself.  Gift the A5 ones to the Accounting and Security Departments, who can’t seem to live without this kind of thing, and the faux suede ones to your driver.

8.   PR-shicki get creative:  

Sometimes the PR-schiki get creative and you end of with some one-off items.  These can be clever (a boxed set of really good Soviet classic movies) or tasteful (a silver-plated USB charger – my own idea one year), or downright silly like Christmas tree ornaments.  Who the hell wants a Christmas Tree ornament from ROSGOS something or other?

Disposition:  Think carefully about how you might use this on a day-to-day basis and act accordingly.  Re-gift if you possibly can, though you will have to do it down the social scale, since all of these items will be aggressively branded.   

9.   The inexplicable:  

Sometimes you just can’t fathom the mindset of the person in charge of this kind of thing.   I mean, who in their right mind gives a grown man and potential minigarch what can only be described as a doll?   A shiny, expensive doll, to be sure, but a doll nonetheless.  I can only think that in this case, the empty-headed, long-legged secretary of the Top Guy was allowed a free hand.  

Disposition: I give this kind of thing to my mother-in-law.

Happy Old New Year to All!!!

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This post is part of The Stunt.

*Part of an article entitled “So, Is this Christmas?” first published by Russia Beyond the Headlines and The Washington Post on December 15, 2010.

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Hey there readers:

What was your most outrageous Christmas/New Year’s gifr?  

 

Thanks For Nothing

         Velvet is itching to go to the stables and I sense a narrow window of opportunity. 

“I’ll drive you over,” I bargain, “if you write your Christmas thank you letters.”

“Mooooohhhhhhmmm…” she wails, “I’ll do them after.”

“Do them now,” I say, “Non-negotiatiable.”

“Can I e-mail them?” she pleads.

 “Certainly not.” 

 Velvet grimaces, but silently takes the list, box of writing paper and roll of stamps I have ready for her.   She slumps at the kitchen table and scratches away diligently, but unenthusiastically for forty minutes, occasionally asking how to spell “quilted” or “polartech.”   

In the car, Velvet comments that she never has to write thank you notes in Russia.

 “That’s true,” I say, “but only Babushka and Dedushka give you things in Russia, and you are always there with them, so you don’t have to write them a note…and anyway, if you did, it would probably never reach its destination anyway…what with the postal service being the way it is.”

 Velvet skipped off to go for a ride and I swung the car back towards home, contemplating the thank you note zeitgeist.   What makes me hold a gun to my daughter’s head and deprive her of leisure and enjoyment until she puts pen to paper to thank someone for a gift or a visit, a favor, or simply going out of their way? I suppose it is because my mother held a gun to mine, and her mother held one to her head…all the way back to the Flood.

You never ever get a thank-you note in Russia. Not even via e-mail or text, so you can’t blame it on the   They have no place in the strictly mercantile favor exchange in Russia.  A credit history is built up with favors rendered.   Direct debit involves sourcing someone who knows someone, who can get to someone who has what you need.   It never occurs to Petrov to thank Ivanov.  

Russians have learned, however, that many foreigners release favors for free: like the Dior scent sample sandwiched between the pages of Vogue, or the basket of hard candies at the doctor’s office.   So they help themselves.

In college, my Russian teacher, a recent arrival to New York from Odessa, got me to hire her absolutely clueless sister, who spoke no English at all, as an office assistant at the law firm where I did night typing.   A National Guide from the State Tourism Committee I’d worked with landed at JFK to find that her (male) sponsor hadn’t turned up (Mrs. Male Sponsor had found out), and she ended up living with me for six months.    One of HRH’s military school buddies had a sister on an exchange program at Syracuse.  We invited her for Christmas break, a three week period, during which she spent the entire time lying on the sofa, eating Cheerios, watching videos, never once offering to help with any domestic chores.  No thank you notes from any of them.

Bees Rees, the uncrowned Queen of Expat Moscow sent me a breezy e-mail requesting a command performance to meet with “a really gifted Russian colleague,” who wanted to explore opportunities in PR.

“No,” I wrote back, “And that does mean no – this is not be a diplomatic fob off.  The answer next week will be the same.  I don’t do that anymore.”

Bees, who normally has the final word on everything was flummoxed.

“Why?” she asked finally.

“You know, I am just fed up with doing things for a crowd who can’t put “thank” together with “you” when I do it.  A Russian wants something -- or decides that he or she can get something from you, so they beg, plead, wheedle, and cajole you in that slightly breathless voice.  They flatter you; say you are the only person who can help them.  You provide the necessary, and then, once they’ve got the contact, the quote, the copy or the e-mail of someone who can do even more for them, you never hear from them again.  I feel like used Kleenex. I don’t expect them to put a stamp on good stock writing paper, but an e mail or a phone call wouldn’t kill them.”

“Wow,” said Bees.  “Wow.”

I just say no.  I don’t help Tom’s 18-year old Russian girlfriend du jour re-do her resume.   I say “no” to Russians in the USA who expect me to take stuff to their relations in Russia.  “That’s why God invented DHL,” I tell them.  I’m done spending hours copyediting emails for HRH’s turbo-charged female relations to their boss’s boss.   

Thank you notes are never going to take off in Russia.   I once asked this Gorgon at a Russian company I worked for to send a personal thank-you note to a very senior executive from a Fortune 100 company for a face-to-face meeting. Olga Vladimirovna clearly felt it was a big waste of time but handed me this:  

[Company Letterhead]

Letter # 49/2001

LETTER OF THANK YOU TO ABC COMPANY

Respected Mr. O:

The General Director of XYZ company, Ivanova, Olga Vladimirovna, conveys her respect to you and your organization and extends her gratitude for the, carried out by you, meeting on 19.08.01 in the city of Moscow to discuss company ABC’s mutually profitable business negotiations with XYZ.

We assume that continued mutually convenient business partnerships will be in the future.

With Respect

Ivanova, Olga Vladimirovna

[Place for Company Stamp]

City:  Moscow

See what I mean?

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Ahoy There Readers!!

How did your Christmas go?  What is your take on thank you notes?  Outdated, old-fashioned and obsolete or never more charming and prevalent than in this edgy digital universe we inhabit?  Have you ever been on the receiving end of a Russian thank you note like Olga Vladimirovna's?  Weigh in by hitting the comment button below!

QHU9UZ9RM353

Always Winter, Never Christmas

 

“Meet me at the Diner for lunch,” said Joe Kelly over the phone  “I need to ask you something.”

I was happy to take a break from writing and oblige: lunch with Joe is always a treat.  A former linebacker from Ohio, he fills the strategically positioned hexagonal booth at the Starlight Diner with his effusive bonhomie most afternoons, massaging his iPhone and running his business between a cheeseburger and jovial encounters with his many friends.

“So,” he said after I slid into the booth next to him, “here is what I want to know – what is it like to spend New Year’s in Russia?”

“Armageddon,” I responded automatically. “You aren’t really considering staying here, are you?”

“I might be,” said Joe, talking a restorative sip of his Diet Pepsi.  “Tanya would like to go to her mother’s dacha, and she’s made it clear she’d like me to stay.”

Tanya, Joe’s longtime girlfriend is the original tough cookie -- like a titanium chip cookie.  If Tanya wanted a Russian New Year’s, she was likely to get it.

“Spending New Year’s in Russia,” I said, shaking the ketchup bottle vigorously, “is very much like working for a Russian company:  most expats try it once, and then give it up because it's way too dysfunctional and the food is terrible.”

“Tell me what you really think,” said Joe mournfully, dropping his head in his hands.

“I spent New Year’s in Russia once,” I said, “and almost got divorced as a result.”

“Seriously?” he asked.

“Seriously,” I said snitching one of his French fries and pointing it at him for emphasis, “It’s like Narnia – ‘always winter and never Christmas.’   No stockings, no carols, no wassail, no eight tiny reindeer – none of that.  Christmas, when it happens is in January and it is no big deal.   Do you really want to sit here on December 25th while the civilized world sips Bloody Mary’s and egg nog and opens presents, and you are at work where some beefy accountant called Olga makes you do your expense report --?”

“Jen,” said Joe carefully as I was in mid-harangue, “I am self-employed, that wouldn’t be my experience.”

“-- And then when you finally get to December 31st, you have to spend the entire day with your mother-in-law cleaning the entire apartment while she makes herring under a fur coat.”

“Is that the one with potatoes and carrots?”

“No, Joe,” I responded sternly, “herring under a fur coat is the one made from layers of beets, chopped hardboiled eggs, pickled herring, potatoes, glued together with polyester mayonnaise, all topped with grated cheese.”

“Yuck,” said Joe.

“Yuck doesn’t even crack the surface, my friend.  And then, when your husband finally – finally -- comes home after an afternoon of racketing around Moscow congratulating government ministers and police chiefs – he falls senseless onto the couch for about four hours until its time to get up and turn on the TV. And what’s on TV?  Russian variety musical shows, that’s what – hours and hours of cheesy Russian rock stars singing horrible music.”

“Well, Tanya doesn’t know any police chiefs,” said Joe grasping at straws.

“Not that you know of,” I cautioned, “but come New Year’s Eve, she’ll unearth some.  And then, just when you’ve had about enough, the horrible sister will arrive: the most self-centered narcissist in the galaxy, not lift a finger to help, and proceed take a four-hour nap.  And then you will begin to get why everyone is taking all these four hour naps around 9:30 pm, because you aren’t going to eat anything until 11 pm, and when you do eat, it will be herring under a fur coat and sweet champagne, and trust me – those two aren’t a culinary match made in heaven.”

“What happens at midnight?” asked Joe.

“Ah well,” I said, “the big dénouement is that President of Russia comes on and makes a five minute toast.”

“That’s it?”

I racked my brain.  “I think so,” I said, “Yes, that’s all, but you know I’m not sure.  I was so knackered from it all that I fell fast asleep at 12:01.”

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This article first appeared in Russia Beyond The Headlines on December 14, 2010 online.

Hey Readers!

Do you stay in Russia during what passes for Christmas and then through New Year? What’s been your experience?  Or do you sensibly flee?  Where to?

If you felt in synch with this post, try a few more like it:

Day of the Teachers and Workers of Nursery and Pre-Schools/День воспитателя и всех дошкольных работников: Moscow Moms and Pioneer Parents

Day of the Furniture Makers/День мебельщика: Let’s Hear it For The Swedes!

Hide and Seek

Hey Readers, a gentle reminder in this season of giving: Dividing My Time has been nominated  in two categories (Best Travel Blog and Best Humor Blog) in the 2010 Blogger's Choice Awards!  If you enjoy Dividing My Time, please consider voting by clicking on the icons to the right of this column, or by following this easy link  and this one too.  It’s quick, easy, doesn’t cost anything, and its really all I want for Christmas!  Thank you!

 

Day of the Constitution of the Russian Government/День Конституции Российской Федерации: We, the multinational people

 

We, the multinational people of the Russian Federation, united by a common destiny on our land, asserting human rights and liberties, civil peace and accord, preserving the historic unity of the state, proceeding from the commonly recognized principles of equality and self-determination of the peoples honoring the memory of our ancestors, who have passed on to us love of and respect for our homeland and faith in good and justice, reviving the sovereign statehood of Russia and asserting its immutable democratic foundations, striving to secure the wellbeing and prosperity of Russia and proceeding from a sense of responsibility for our homeland before the present and future generations, and being aware of ourselves as part of the world community, hereby approve the Constitution of the Russian Federation.

~The Russian Constitution, The Preamble

Today is Constitution Day in Russia!  On this day, December 12, 1993, the Constitution of the Russian Federation was adopted by a Referendum and has been the legal foundation for the country ever since.  

It always makes me laugh when I listen to the Glenn Beck/Sarah Palin worshippers defend leaving Health Care the way it is by saying things like, “We don’t want no socialism like they have over in Russia.”  They also say things like “Government, keep your hands off my Medicare,” but that is less germane to talking about Russia, which is, of course, a constitutional democracy, with elected officials who run the country.  This always blows people away for some reason.

The current Russian Constitution is the second of the country’s turbulent history, and replaced the Soviet Constitution dating back to 1918.   There was an attempt back in 1825 to get a Constitution, known as “The Decembrist Uprising,” in which a number of well-born nobles were upset when Alexander I died and named as his successor his younger brother Nicholas and not the elder, Constantine.   Nicholas was known to be a conservative, while Constantine favored adopting measures to make Russia a less authoritarian country.  Unbeknownst to the populace, Constantine had also renounced his claim to the throne when he made a morganatic marriage to a woman of common birth who did not meet the rigid criteria for Russian royal brides.   

The nobles and officers leading the uprising rallied 3000 supporters near the building of the Russian Senate on December 14 (December 26 New Style) and called for “Constantine and a Constitution!” which in Russian sounds like “Constantin i Constitutsia,” and many of the regular soldiers thought that Constitutsia was Constantine’s morganatic wife.   The rebellion was crushed and its leaders, many of whom were close personal friends of the poet Alexander Pushkin, were exiled to Siberia. Many of their wives bravely left St. Petersburg to accompany them into brutal years of depravity and primitive conditions.  “The Decembrist Wives” as they were known, were much admired and set, if you don’t mind me mentioning it, the bar rather high for what is considered acceptable loyalty in a Russian wife.

To get back to Russia’s present day situation, however, the Constitution is doing very well. It consists of 9 Chapters, a preamble and concluding and transitional documents.  All Russian presidents swear the oath of office by placing on hand on the Constitution and the original copy is kept in the Kremlin Library.

I thought it might be interesting for readers to skim a few highlights of the Russian Constitution.  The good people at kremlin.ru and Bucknell University, who provide English translations of Russia’s Constitution, make this task easier.

For someone like me, Article 44 is the key to the whole document, and the one I have memorized by heart in Russian.

Article 44.

1. Everyone shall be guaranteed freedom of literary, artistic, scientific, intellectual and other types of creative activity and tuition. Intellectual property shall be protected by the law.

2. Everyone shall have the right to participation in cultural life, to the use of institutions of culture, and access to cultural values.

3. Everyone shall care for the preservation of the historic and cultural heritage and safeguard landmarks of history and culture.

What this means, Readers, is that I can take pictures wherever I like, and so can you.  So the next time some lunatic security guard tries to stop you, just mention Article 44 of the Russian Constitution.  You can also add that the President of Russia, Dmitry Medvedev, a devoted shutterbug has said that people can take pictures wherever they like and, according to Article 80 he is the top dog:

Article 80.

4. The President of the Russian Federation shall be the head of state.

5. The President shall be the guarantor of the Constitution of the Russian Federation, and of human and civil rights and freedoms. In accordance with the procedure established by the Constitution of the Russian Federation, he shall take measures to protect the sovereignty of the Russian Federation, its independence and state integrity, and ensure concerted functioning and interaction of all bodies of state power.

6. The President of the Russian Federation shall define the basic domestic and foreign policy guidelines of the state in accordance with the Constitution of the Russian Federation and federal laws.

7. The President of the Russian Federation as head of state shall represent the Russian Federation inside the country and in international relations.

Here is another one, I find interesting:

Article 38.

8. Motherhood and childhood, and the family shall be under state protection.

9. Care for children and their upbringing shall be the equal right and duty of the parents.

10. Employable children who have reached 18 years old shall care for their non-employable parents.

According to # 10, all children over the age of 18 are obliged to care for non-employable parents.  I can’t think why this has not taken off in Russia, given its current demographic…I have to hope that, like the majority of Russian citizens, Babushka and Dedushka have not perused the Constitution to this level of detail.  Yikes.

So, in closing, the next time you hear someone faff on about socialism and stuff in Russia, remind them that Russia is a constitutional democracy and has been for seventeen years.

On paper anyway.

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This post is part of The Stunt.

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Hey there readers!

Can I implore you once again to take a moment and vote for us? Dividing My Time has been nominated in two categories (Best Travel Blog and Best Humor Blog) in the 2010 Blogger's Choice Awards!  If you enjoy Dividing My Time, please consider voting by clicking on the icons to the right of this column, or by following this easy link  and this one too.  It’s quick, easy, doesn’t cost anything, you don't have to use your own name and its really all I want for Christmas!  Thank you!

What do you make of Russia’s Constitution?  Did you know about it?  Did you know about Constitution Day?  Want to read more about recent Russian history?  Try some posts like these:

May Day / День труда: A Day of Solidarity

Russia Day /День России: No, It’s Not Independence Day

Day of the Russian Postal Service/День российской почты: Room For Improvement

 

Internet Day in Russia/День интернета в России: World Domination by Domain Handle?

 

The Internet is the most important single development in the history of human communication since the invention of call waiting.  

~Dave Barry

Today is Internet Day in Russia!    Great timing for Russia’s # 1 fan of Cyberspace, Blogger-in-chief (as he is known) President Dmitry Medvedev (http://twitter.com/KremlinRussia_E) who must feel like kicking back after a week spent kicking some (albeit long distance) ass, firing Moscow’s pint sized mayor, Yuri “The Long Armed” Luzhkov.  And not before time either.  Go Dmitry, Go!

I’m currently doing some half-hearted research on the concept of The Great Russian Soul at the moment for my too much-neglected book, and one of the things that keeps cropping up is Russia’s sense of a special mission to promote its Russianness within the global community.  This means they always have to be just that little bit different about every single little thing.  Like Christmas.  And Internet Day: although the rest of the world celebrates the Vatican-sanctioned World Day for the Internet (pronounced in Russian “Interrrrrrrrr-nyet”) on April 4th, the day of the ascension of St. Isidore of Seville (560-636 CE), (who is the current patron saint of the Internet), in Russia, we celebrate it today because some IT guys (called “Eye-tea-shniki”) decided we should.   Instead of Facebook (pronounced in Russia “feyssss-buk”) Russians have a total prototype called “V Kontakte,” which means “In contact.”  There are also lots of copycat retail sites such as ozon.ru, which sells books and if you squint looks just like amazon.com.   Last Spring, there was a huge hue and cry about the introduction of a Russian language domain, so that the endings read “.rf” rather than the more Latinized “.ru.” This was a pet Kremlin project and will, I feel sure, play a big part in ushering in total world domination.   Any day now.

Living in Russia, I count my cyber blessings daily.  I am old enough, and enough of a veteran of life in Russia to remember what life was like before the internet: endless tries to get a crackly international line on the telephone, no access to print media in English, no iTunes downloads of “Big Love” or “Mad Men,” and no Google or Wikipedia.  Awful…

According to my uber-reliable cyber buddy, Russian Sphinx, only 32.2% of Russians use the Internet, which seems woefully little for a country that has an almost monopolistic lock up on the cyber bride/dating concession.    This may be because the demographics of Russia lean heavily towards the over 70-s, who have not embraced the new technology with open arms.   This generalization, however, does not include HRH’s father, Dedushka, who is very much on-line.  All the time.   Great SKYPEr, Dedushka, as I have mentioned before.

Still, there is no lack of interest in Russia out there in cyber space, and this is brought home to me each and every day as I spend way too much time trawling my Feedjit roll to see who is visiting my blog, how they came to it, and what they are looking for.   The single biggest reason people come are searches (mostly from New Zealand or Australia) for recipes for Beef Stroganoff, but there are other reasons too.  Some particularly intriguing ones follow:

Madras, Tamil Nadu arrived from google.co.in on "Dividing My Time: Sex in Russia" by searching for Would you ever want to Have sushi with Portia and Daniel.

Vineyard Haven, Massachusetts arrived from google.com on "Siberian Pel’meni for a London Yummy Mummy" by searching for what do siberians eat frozen on a stick.

Makati, Manila arrived from google.com.ph on "Dividing My Time: American Women Married to Russian Men" by searching for Russian men tender kiss.

Philippine, Benguet arrived from google.com.ph on "Expat Book Club Euthanasia" by searching for anecdotes which tell something about euthanasia.

 Saint Petersburg, Saint Petersburg City arrived from google.ru on "Why I Hate Dachas, and You Should Too!" by searching for where to get a bikini wax st petersburg russia.

 Mississauga, Ontario arrived from google.ca on "Cool Cucumbers in a Pretty Pickle" by searching for can you sterile cucumbers.

 Brooklyn, New York arrived from google.com on "St. John’s Eve/Иван Купала: Ferns, and Fires, and Flesh: Oh My!" by searching for THORN WREATHS MARTYRS WORE AROUND LEGS .

Moscow, Moscow City arrived from google.ru on "Move Over Noho - Evidence of Same-Sex Marriage Found in Moscow" by searching for girls for marriage in moscow horses.

Melbourne, Victoria arrived from google.com.au on "Dividing My Time: Life in Russia" by searching for russian boom boom our guns are firing.

Elk Grove, California arrived from google.com on "Cool Cucumbers in a Pretty Pickle" by searching for pickles and russian culture.

Toronto, Ontario arrived from google.ca on "Day of the Inventors and Rationalizers (Management Consultants)/День изобретателя и рационализатора: Love To Hear Medvedev Go “Tweet Tweet Tweet!”" by searching for Hot Management Consultants.

El Mirage, Arizona arrived from google.com on "Dividing My Time: Equestrian" by searching for equestrian parade sharpie .

Perth, Western Australia arrived from google.com.au on "St. John’s Eve/Иван Купала: Ferns, and Fires, and Flesh: Oh My!" by searching for Aeroflot nude calendar download.

Happy Internet day to all of Russia’s bloggers, programmers, web site builders, on-line retailers, and, of course, to cyber-stud, President Medvedev !  Who is STILL not following me on Twitter.  Which, frankly speaking, hurts my feelings.

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This post is part of The Stunt.

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Dear Readers:

Are you old enough to remember the pre-Internet days?  What are the things you love or hate about the Internet?  What is your take on the sushi with Portia and Daniel…I fear it is perhaps not rated-PG.   Thoughts?

Thanks for stopping by Dividing My Time. If you liked this post, try some more like it:

Day of the Inventors and Rationalizers (Management Consultants)/День изобретателя и рационализатора: Love To Hear Medvedev Go “Tweet Tweet Tweet!”

Post Cards from the Edge

Day of the Cryptographic Service/День шифровальщика: Don't Russians Already Talk In Code, Anyway?

 

Day of the Teachers and Workers of Nursery and Pre-Schools/День воспитателя и всех дошкольных работников: Moscow Moms and Pioneer Parents

 Give me a child until the age of seven, and I will show you the man.

~Attributed to Francis Xaviar, co-founder of the Jesuit Movement

September 27th celebrates the teachers and employees of Russia’s nursery schools.   This is a fairly recent addition to the profpraznik line up, but I think certainly deserves to be as important as The Day of Knowledge and Teachers’ Day, since it takes a special kind of talent and patience to work with very little children, especially from September to June, when Russian children have to be wrapped up in four to six layers of undershirts, sweaters, tights, trousers, snow pants, parkas, hats, neck warmers, boots, mittens and so on.   Just try to take your kid to the bus stop on a mild April morning with one button undone, or hat askew -- you will be instantly attacked by a cadre of old ladies, all of them of total strangers, who will rake you over the coals in the vilest terms for exposing your unhappy offspring to imminent death.

Russia is a great place to bring up the under fives.  If you are working in the formal economy, you can employ a Nanny, who could be anything from a trained nurse, to a nuclear scientist, without taking out a second mortgage on your home.  She will consider it an inherent part of her job to potty train your child at 16 months, teach them the poetry of Alexander Pushkin at 2, and some interesting table manners which will later prove difficult to retrain.   In most Russian families, the primary caregiver is a grandparent, who wheels the pram out for the two mandatory walks in the -30° degree temperatures, produces borscht 24/7, and has the advantage of being free.  Grandparents, however, feel very free to tell the parents, nanny, and anyone else who listen, exactly what is wrong with their parenting or nannying styles.  That’s why it may come as something of a relief for parents to wrench their 3-year old from the grandparental stranglehold, and deposit them with the nursery school crowd, for the next stage of early childhood development.  This, according to some Russian officialspeak includes “learning the secrets of the world around them, and to love and protect their Motherland.” 

This is how Russian children get brought up, and if I’m honest, they are, on the whole, very well brought up indeed.   When it is “Parents’ Hour” Russian kids know how to, as my late Uncle Stephen used to say, “bust off.”   You don't get those epic  melt downs every five minutes, which force all of the adults to down martinis and enter into complex multi-lateral negotiations on “time outs.”  There is not, according to my friend Tatianna (who admittedly may not be working with all the data available for the Russian Federation), “any of that American Asperger Syndrome thing,” which means there are no four year olds off their meds.  

The contrast between Russian parenting and parenting in the US was brought home to me recently at a party I attended in Northampton.  I was over the moon to be invited  – it was by way of being the Pioneer Valley version of lunch at Windsor Castle with HM during Ascot Week.   I thought it would be a great way to meet people, which it was. 

The Pioneer Valley is, of course, a parenting Shangri-La.   This is where you come if you want to be a hardcore breast-feeder until your child is old enough to go to the Middle School (which in Northampton is the weak link in the public school chain, so many parents just keep on nursing right through 8th grade).   This is where you will feel comfortable if your family consists of two dads, two moms, a single mom, single dad, and all imaginable combinations of children who are biological, adopted, or products of maxing the genetic technology.  No one looks at you askance if you are one nationality, and your spouse is another, and if you choose to speak different languages at one another.   It is a great place, I thought wistfully, to bring up a bi-cultural toddler.  There might not be instruction on loving and protecting the Motherland (although almost all the kids had faded Obama ’08 T-shirts), but you can bike to school, learn Chinese, take a baby yoga class, and march in the Annual “Pride” parade.  I felt I’d sort of missed the boat as a Pioneer Mom.

And then I caught a whiff of Pioneer Parenting:  a woman I knew vaguely was trying to have a conversation with a friend over the quinoa salad.   She was dressed exactly as if she was on a Central Casting open audition for liberal Pioneer Valley 40-somethings: pre-Raphaelite hair with a touch of grey, no make-up, wire rimmed specs, dressed in clothes, which suggested she had either just come from, or was on her way to, a yoga class.   A six year-old boy tugged fiercely at the end of her asymmetrical JJill tunic, 

“Mom,” he whined, pawing her leg, “I want something to eat…”  

“Hey buddy,” said his mother, immediately interrupting her conversation with her fellow grown up, "what can I get for you?  How would you like…some of this kale salad?”

“A hot dog,” screamed the kid.

“Ethan,” (not his real name) said his mother, adroitly sidestepping what would have become a direct kick to her shins.  She bravely maintained her mellow singsong lilt, “I’d prefer you not have another hot dog, you’ve had three already…how about this lentil casserole?”

“I WANNA HOT DOG!” screamed the unhappy Ethan, kicked his mother squre in the shins, then opened his mouth and sunk his teeth into the soft skin between her thumb and index finger.  I looked around the party, thinking surely someone would intervene.   No one batted an eyelid.    I looked back to the mother, who was gently removing her hand from the kid’s mouth.

“Ethan,” she said calmly, still in that unbelievable calm, dulcet lilt, “now we’ve talked about this before. I'm asking you to listen.  Please, stop biting me.”

On second thought, Moscow wasn’t the worst place to parent.   Not bad at all…

Happy Day of the Nursery School Teachers and Employees!

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This post is part of The Stunt.

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Hey there readers:

What is your take on parenting these days where you are?  Do you think kids should learn the word “no” before they go off to college, or is that just last century fascism parenting?   Does your kid wear scarves in July?  Hit the comment button and let me know!   

Here are few more posts related to the “parenting” gig:

Oh, Do You Know The Muffin Mom?

Post Cards from the Edge

May Day / День труда: A Day of Solidarity

 

Day of the Russian Postal Service/День российской почты: Room For Improvement

Neither snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.

~ Herodotus (I know… I was surprised too)

Today we celebrate Russia’s postal system…or shall we say the potential that it represents?

A lawyer-type classmate of my sister’s (who I suspect is firing on a few too many cylinders) was recently posted to Russia and sent in some impressions of the country to his friends and colleagues.  Among these, he confessed to being really taken aback that a letter posted to him from Western Europe took almost 21 days to reach him in Moscow.

Myself, I was astonished that no one at his fancy-schmansy legal outfit had seen fit to warn him that, along with trolleybuses and the 10 pm evening news on TV, foreigners (and quite a few Russians) just ignore the postal system here. Not in any kind of morally outraged, angst-fueled boycott or anything, but rather as something we’ve given up long ago as antiquated, inefficient, and irrelevant.   As a recent article in The Moscow Times pointed out, if you want something in Russia, you need to hand-carry it in. An example:  I forgot my battery charger for my digital camera in the US when I came over a few weeks ago.  The first thing I did was to send out a note on Facebook to figure out which of my friends was next coming over from the US to Russia, and then asked a neighbor to send her the battery.  I’ll have it next week.  It did not occur to me to ask my neighbor to post it to Russia, and, as I’m on an austerity budget, there is no way I could afford the cost (four figures) of having it shipped via DHL, FedEx or UPS.   

“I can always tell when you are coming home,” says my mother, “when the UPS man comes three times a day.” And so he does, along with Chet the Mailman, and the tough cookie FedEx woman, bringing clothing, and books, and sheets, and towels and obscure pieces of kitchen equipment, and label maker tape and all kinds of things you can’t easily or cheaply access in Russia.  Then, I pack them in my TUMI bags and head over to Russia.   

Such as it is, then, Russia’s postal service was founded more than 300 years ago by…guess whom?  Peter The Great, of course!  In 1693, Peter ordered the first regular postal service to support (of course) the naval shipyard at Archangelsk, and the State Duma inaugurated the Day of the Postal Service in 1994.

About three years ago, I began to get a whiff of what seemed to me to be a concerted effort by the Russian Government to beef up the post office service.  It was almost as if someone at the top had seen that cheesy film with Kevin Costner “The Postman” (because they don’t strike me as the types to curl up with Il Postino) and said “First tier nations have a decent postal service… do something about it!” 

Here were the hints:  Andrei Kazmin, (who looks more like a rodent than any of the other oligarchs) the former head of Sberbank (the National Savings Bank) was put in charge of the Post Office, suggesting that either he had really screwed up or reform might be in the wind.  Next, you started to see commercials on television for the Russian Postal Service: wildly improbable, slightly unfocused scenes of sun-drenched (so likely) kitchens and fit and happy families overjoyed to be receiving newspapers, letters, cards, parcels from a jolly Slavic version of Chet The Mailman who they just let in their back door, which, needless to say, is the kind of thing that happens every day in Russia.  It was clearly a PR campaign, because, of course, the Russian Postal Service doesn’t compete directly with anyone.   About this time, I got into it, and wrote a column about how easy it was to walk in and buy post cards and stamps, encouraging a very skeptical HRH and his parents to send Velvet some mail at boarding school.   I’m afraid that they’ve been proven right:  Mr. Kazmin has stepped down and the Gorgans who run the post office have gone back to snapping your head off when you ask for international post card stamps. 

 

If you ask me (and no one ever ever ever does) if Dmitry Medvedev is really serious about beefing up Russia’s economy, he ought to put Skolkovo on the back burner and beef up the catalog mail order business:  I know for a fact that Russians are wild for LL Bean, Lands End, Eddie Bauer, Hannah Andersson, Eileen Fisher and that ilk.  I know because I’ve spent the last 17 years lugging that kind of stuff over here, which I would love to stop doing someday.  

Compare Russia and the US on post office statistics:

In 2009, the USPS handled 177 billion pieces of mail, compared to Russia’s 1.01 billion.  The Russian Postal Service employs 390,000 people, and the USPS 596,000.  Russia uses 450 postal vans, 17,000 vehicles and more than 360 flights, whereas the USPS deploys 218, 684 vehicles.

And, as Barack Obama will tell you, USPS is hurting.

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This post is part of The Stunt.

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Hello there Readers!

What do you think about the postal service where you live?  Is it efficient, or are you outraged by it?  Have you had any experience with Russia’s postal system, or did you sensibly just give that one a miss?  Thank you, as ever, for joining me on this romp through Russia’s professional holidays.  If you found the state Russia’s postal system depressing, perhaps some more upbeat posts are in order.  Try these:

Post Cards from the Edge

Day of the Canine Units of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia/День кинологических подразделений МВД России: It’s a Dog’s Life

Day of the Pacific Fleet /День Тихоокеанского флота: Keeping the World Safe From Right Hand Steering Wheels

Day of the Light Operators/День художника по свету (светооператора): The Lighting Wars

Let There Be Light

~ God

Today is the day of the light operators!  This includes people who design lighting for fireworks, rock concerts, shopping malls, and your bedroom.  On this day July 11th in 1874, Russian electrician Alexander Lodygin took out a patent for an incandescent lamp.  You can see the original at the Polytechnical Museum in Moscow.

Lighting is another one of those issues that makes me gnash my teeth here, particularly in my own living room, where we have gut-wrenchingly expensive recessed lighting which is about 4 zillion watts and, as the slimy contractor assured us, a dimmer was not possible (liar, liar pants on fire).  We also have a bookshelf enclosed in glass (HRH insisted because he planned – and I guess still plans – to purchase a library of Russian classics and he feared the dust) with florescent tube lighting on either side.   I don’t use either of these lighting fixtures, preferring instead the subtle play of shadow produced by the two interesting and tasteful metal light fixtures I chose, as well as lots of candles.

My father-in-law, however, just loves those bright lights.  About the first thing he does when he comes in to the house is turn them all on.   I go around and turn them off, and then he turns them back on.

This is how we keep the Cold War alive and kicking.

Today is also the Day of the Russian Postal Service and The Day of Fisherman, so be sure to head over to those where things are a little more comprehensive, funny, and worthy of detailed reading.

This post is part of The Stunt.

Hello there reader:

Did you find this illuminating?  Do you have annoying in-laws too?  What kinds of unacceptable behavior do they get up to in your own home?  Let it rip!  

Day of the Workers of the Federal Migration Service/День работников миграционной службы: Lambs to the Slaughter

Do you have any specialized skills, training or experience related to firearms and explosives, or to nuclear, biological or chemical activities?  If <Yes>, please explain.

~ Question # 32 on the visa application for US Citizens to the Russian Federation.

Here is another holiday, Like Day of the HR Managers, where I do not see us breaking out the Veuve Cliquot and the cobalt blue champagne flutes with the Imperial Seal.   Today is Workers of the Federal Migration Service Day. See, I can’t even work up enthusiasm for my customary exclamation mark.  

This is the crowd, as I have written before, who are making us run around Moscow trying to find a certified Latin- Russian translator, so we can have our college diplomas translated and apostiled, and have us combing the post-Armageddon landscape of southern Moscow to find the one rump-sprung clinic that is still testing for leprosy.  These are the clowns who change the rules about where and how to register your visa (once you actually get one and successfully enter the country) every single solitary time.   And, I have to assume that these are the Sadists who came up with that PDF version of the visa application, which is quite simply impossible to fill out on the computer. Go ahead, try to do it…click here and try and fill in one line without having to move your mouse and click on every single box.   See?

These people drive me to drink...and I can crawl there on my own, thank you very much.

People are always offering me back doors to Russian citizenship, and I just decline politely on behalf of myself and Velvet.  For one thing, Russia doesn’t have a dual citizenship agreement with America, or a number of other desirable first world locales like the EU...and all those Russians who think they are so clever (a number of HRH’s female relatives fall in to this category) in keeping their red passports once they get the new blue or burgundy ones should, I believe, be made to choose one and not the other, in tense circumstances by someone as unpleasant as Officer Noble, after a 26-hour flight.   Citizenship, Comrades, is not a travel document.   You can’t have a propiska (a residency permit) in a Moscow apartment, and vote for Barack Obama.  One or the other.  Not both.  Apart from anything else, you are depriving the poor Workers of the Federal Migration Service income, and driving the price of a one-year, multi-entry visa (for which you could get an entire new outfit at Eileen Fisher) for the rest of us!

The Federal Migration Workers are in charge of surveillance of labor migration, which is everyone from the Head of Proctor & Gamble in Russia to the Tadzhik street sweepers, and I always smile at the Tadzhiks and say “Good Day” politely since I feel we are essentially in the same boat.  It seems the Russians also think so, because the Moscow Times had a hysterical report on Friday about a little volume being created by Moscow City Hall.   This quite over-shadowed the other news of the day which I must just mention:  about the 65 meter penis painted on the underside of one of Saint Petersburg’s drawbridges on the eve of the Petersburg Economic Forum.   When raised, the drawbridge faced the Saint Petersburg HQ of the FSB, and that, to me, is genius on a scale you rarely see these days.

But to get back to the other story:  it seems the authorities at City Hall are coming up with an etiquette book for foreign workers visiting the capital.  This is A Bit Much, if you ask me, from a crowd who clear their nostrils of phlegm by pinching one side and blowing out the contents of the other.  Like on the main street, in broad daylight.

Is this woman getting ready to slaughter a lamb?

 

Is this man wearing his national costume on Tverskaya Street? 

The latter-day Emily Posts at City Hall, if you ask me (and no one ever ever does) could spend a little more time on re-working traffic patterns to ease the gridlock than telling me how to behave, but there they are, putting out this silly thing and issuing press releases about it all over the place.   The volume gets specific about some taboo behavior including wearing one’s national costume in public, which rules out jeans I guess, and LL Bean boots, as well as my North Face parka.  We are also supposed to refrain from slaughtering sheep in the courtyard, which wasn’t high up on my to-do list, but then my blood ran cold when I saw that we were also forbidden to barbecue on our balconies.

Oh Dear…

Congratulations to all of the Workers of the Federal Migration Service.

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This post is part of The Stunt

Photos by the author.  All Rights Reserved

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Dear Reader:

Have you ever applied for a visa to Russia?  Did you have to be medicated after you completed the application?  Did you try that PDF, and if so, do you agree it was created by a modern day Torquemada?   Do you know why I am so concerned about the barbecue rule???  (HINT: you’ll find the answer in one of the posts listed below!) Leave me a message of support below, or stick around and enjoy a few more posts like this one.  

More Blessed to Give, Than to Receive

Human Resource Department Day/День кадровика: 69 Pieces of Paper And Your Blood

Vivant et repulica…et qui illam regit!

Day of the Furniture Makers/День мебельщика: Let’s Hear it For The Swedes!

Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful. 

~ William Morris

Today is Furniture Makers’ Day!   Although this isn’t an official holiday on the calendar, it has been celebrated for the last ten years by the members of the Association of Furniture Companies and Woodworking Industries of Russia, formed in 1997.

 Most of the furniture in Russia, of course, is not Russian at all, but Swedish.  As we say in Russia:  “If there’s an idea, there’s IKEA,” and there is nothing quite like a day out at that island of Nordic calm to make you feel like the world makes sense again.  For 5,000 RUR ($158.92) you can perk up your house something fierce, with vases, candles, wicker footstools or stacking plastic boxes.  I love IKEA, in fact, my heart went thumpty thump when my cleaning lady told me we needed some new towels!  I’m planning a trip out there next week and I can hardly wait!!   

I love IKEA so much, I agreed to accompany Babushka  (HRH's mother) there to plan her “shkaff” that all-important floor-to-ceiling wall unit for the bedroom in her new apartment, a task neither of her (amazingly self-centered) children seemed willing or able to do.   Patiently, I followed her around the showrooms, marking down the items in the free catalog (“More Copies Read than the Bible”) for further consideration, had her choose the color and make, and then, at home, we logged on to ikea.ru, pulled up their “Build Your Own Wall Unit” program, which is the most fun you can have with your clothes on…well with Babushka anyway.   And for the next four hours the conversation went like this:

“Would you like drawers, here, or wire baskets?” I asked.

She looked baffled; choice never having been high up on the list of luxuries she’d enjoyed.

“I don’t know,” she finally said.

“How about a few of each?” I said encouragingly, and add them with a click of the mouse.

She got into it.   The magic is universal.  We debated whether she needed one long closet or could go double-tier for shirts and pants.   We had cups of tea while we decided whether the entire façade should be of opaque glass panels or solid white.   She deliberated over the wire basket/drawer debate a little longer, added some shoe racks, and moved the full-length mirror panel, but eventually we were done, and I hit the “CALCULATE and PRINT” button.  The printer spewed out a hard copy of the plan from the screen, a list of items with their warehouse identification number, as well as an invoice.

“Now, you just go into the store, and straight to the cashier,” I instructed, “and you pay them.  Then, and this is the most important part, you go to the ‘Home Delivery’ section and you ask for Delivery AND Assembly.”

“Oh,” she protested in that demurring Soviet “Assembly is not for the likes of me” tone, “I think Dedushka (HRH's father) can – “

“No no!” I said emphatically. “Dedushka and your son and a case of beer is not the way to go.”

Dedushka and HRH had often attempted to assemble IKEA furniture and the procedure was always the same: I bugged HRH about it three or four times, which he ignored.  When I started to become more shrill, he’d pull out the well-worn excuse that he’d lent the drill to his extremely slimy friend Ilya.  Changing tactic, I’d attack his weak flank, threatening to call in “Husband By The Hour,” a small service company that sends you a handyman to do all the things your lazy husband refuses to do:  hang pictures, paint a wall, remove an old sofa (for which you need two Husbands By The Hour) and that kind of thing.  HRH maintains that they are useless, which he pronounces “You-zzz-e-less,” and blames them for the fact that Velvet’s closet door had unmatched handles.  He cannot stick the Husbands By The Hour, so he gets in the most “You-zzz-e-less” person in the solar system – Dedushka – to come and help him assemble the furniture.

Dedushka tends to arrive in a suit and tie, which is how he was dressed during our entire move to a new apartment.  I think he thinks this is a clear indication to anyone who is interested that he is not accustomed to manual labor.   He and HRH change into the Russian guys–doing-chores uniform:  shiny tracksuit bottoms and striped navel shirts.  They have three or four beers while they unpack the boxes and lay out the parts.  

“There aren’t enough of the XYZ,” HRH informs me 37 minutes into the exercise.  Without even looking up from what I am doing, I say:

“Check again.”

Signs that they have found the missing parts and are getting on with it emerge from whatever room they are in:  heated arguments, the intermittent sound of a drill, and Velvet who trots into to the kitchen to ask for more beer.  It took all day.  But that is now a thing of the past.

Delivery AND Assembly: Because I’m worth it.

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This post is part of The Stunt

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Greetings Readers!

Are you an IKEA fan?  How could you not be?  Have you ever unpacked a box from them and found bits missing?   No, I didn’t think so.   But, if you have an IKEA story, and everyone does, click on the comment button below and let us know about it!

Or stick around and enjoy more posts like this one:

Hide and Seek

A Hymn to Him

Russians En Route

Добро пожаловать! Welcome BlogTrotters!

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?

 Or indeed, 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:

 
Moscow cityscapes:

 
 
 

 
 
 

 The women who made Hitler cry...

 
 
 A man who helped...

 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!

 

A Hymn to Him

    A friend has just figured out the double entendre humor in referring to my Handsome Russian Husband as HRH.

    “You know,” she said, “that can also stand for His Royal Highness. Like Prince William.”

    The moniker HRH is eminently applicable to Russian men, who are all brought up by their mothers believing that they are, indeed, royal scions and therefore above plebeian and unmanly concerns like housework. In Russia, they are still teaching Home Ec to the girls and Shop to the boys, with no reform in sight and certainly not regarding the impending gender-specific public holidays. In place of one messy, gender-neutral love fest on Feb. 14, Russians are suiting up for the very separate Men’s Day (Feb. 23) and its companion, International Women’s Day (March 8).

 

    I’m a Russian historian, so I like to delve into the origin of national holidays. Men’s Day has a full and characteristically overblown name—The Day of the Defenders of the Motherland—and it celebrates the 1918 rout of Kaiser Wilhelm’s forces by the just-that-day-drafted Red Army. The name eventually morphed from Red Army Day, to Day of the Soviet Army and Navy, and in 1995, as part of a re-branding campaign to drop Red from everything, ended up as Day of the Defenders of the Motherland. In HRH’s family, we take the 23rd of February very seriously indeed, since we are a military family: HRH and Dedushka (my daughter Velvet’s grandpa) both served as officers in the Red Army, as did great-uncle Boris, and several others, dating right back to that Red Letter Day in 1918. Interestingly, this list also includes several gutsy great aunts and great-great-grandmothers, who served, with distinction, in the Red Army as border patrol guards, field medical officers and behind-the-lines guerilla fighters in Occupied Ukraine. Nevertheless, Feb. 23 remains devoted exclusively to the men of Russia, who are all obliged to defend the Motherland as part of their mandatory military service.

 
On its current Web site, the Russian Consulate in Houston offers helpful guidance on the celebration of Men’s Day: On this day, it says, the entire masculine population,from boys to old men, receives special greetings and presents. Women have a wonderful opportunity to convey their warmest and kindest feelings to the loved ones and to indulge them with sings (sic) of attention and affection.

    Translation women: shop, cook, clean. Lather, rinse, repeat.

    HRH, in mufti, is not a force to be reckoned with on the domestic front, although he does open wine bottles, which, along with driving a car, is what well-brought-up Russian men consider man’s work. I once begged him to empty the dishwasher. He sighed deeply, went to the sink and stood, his back to me.

    “Darling,” I said quietly.

    “What,” he barked, turning around to glare at me.

    “Just that, the dishwasher, you know, is the appliance on your left.”

    HRH and Dedushka won’t be emptying anything except a bottle of premium whiskey this week as we women convey our warmest and kindest feelings. I’ve bought HRH a new super sonic corkscrew, Babushka (Velvet's grandma, of course) has the sweet Sovietskoye Champanskoye warming up in the vegetable steamer and Velvet is on dishwasher duty, so we are all set to indulge our Defenders with the royal attention and affection they deserve.

    But I refuse to sing. –

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This article first appeared in Russia Beyond the Headlines on February 24, 2010

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Dear Reader:  Thanks so much for reading this post -- it means a lot to me, as does your feedback.  If you would like to leave a comment, just click on the teeny tiny "comment" word below, and an easy-to-use pop up comment window will appear.   Thanks again!

Russians En Route

    
     

    There hasn’t been much news since I delivered Babushka and Dedushka into the dubious hands of Delta Air Lines at 4 am en route to their Caribbean cruise, Babushka complete with a three new Eileen Fisher ensembles (which I suspect she has secretly relegated to the “HRH takes back to Moscow pile,” and Dedushka clearly not using his Christmas presents I thought would be so useful: a TUMI document organizer and travel case, each with flaps, and separate zippered compartments and straps, and Velcro and convenient passport-sized slots and the whole nine yards.  I know this had been relegated to the “HRH takes back to Moscow pile,” as he was at a loss to locate one single thing during check-in.  This was stressful, as I had the car parked in the HANDICAPPED ONLY section of the POSITIVELY NO PARKING AREA of the curbside check-in.  A large TSA/Harrison Ford wannabe told me, “Ma’am, you are going to have to move your vehicle,” and I told him I was very sorry, but there was no way I could leave my elderly, non-English speaking, generally clueless, Russian in-laws en route to Miami on their own at curbside.  I pleaded with him to make the not-so-difficult leap of imagination that they were handicapped.   “Five minutes.” He said and lumbered off.

    

    “Where is your goddamn document holder?” I screamed, stamping my foot.  I sensed Babushka was up for a little female solidarity, but as usual, she was the one methodically going through the enormous, cumbrous, completely inappropriate faux Dolce and Gabana overnight bag they think is the ultimate in hand luggage.  She found the document in question and took charge, clasping it to her bosom, pushing Dedushka aside and stepping up to the check-in counter with the DNA that made Hitler and Napoleon gnash their teeth.  I stood in awe, and mused, on my way back to Northampton, that if people like Babushka weren’t forced all the time to pretend that people like Dedushka are really in charge, the world would be a much more efficient place.

    

    In any case, the sheet rock guy was right, and all the starm and drang of Christmas and New Year’s seems like a long time ago, now that HRH and I are ensconced in the lovely Sugar Mill (not it’s real name) in beautiful St. Croix.  And no news from the Royal Caribbean crowd, as I assured HRH, probably means good news.   I mean, if Haitian pirates had captured them, we’d hear from the pirates, right?

    On the way down, as I dozed in the plane, I was mildly musing about Russians abroad, which is the theme of the chapter I’m currently working on.  Since HRH first went on our honeymoon on a similar Royal Caribbean cruise we’ve been running into his compatriots in every corner of the globe.  I should pause here to note that Dedushka is a great one for brand loyalty: he once booked his daughter into the same hotel, in the same resort town, on the same island as HRH and me: where we were attempting to have that “first vacation after small baby,” thing.   Not that his daughter thought anything of it, since the world really does revolve around her. So Dedushka opted for a preference for Royal Caribbean.

    The Sugar Mill (which is delightfully free of any global hotel chain association) is a lovely old Sugar Plantation that has been turned into a golf and hotel resort. HRH and I discovered four years ago, and liked it so much that we folded it into our solidifying annual schedule.   I ask HRH every now and then if he wants to try another place, but he doggedly insists that he likes The Sugar Mill, and I agree.  It is incredibly laid back – no boom boxes or naval peircings, no discos or Jell-O shots, just a quiet, laid back crowd, sleeping on the beach, reading Wolf Hall or Vanity Fair, coming back from a satisfyingly energetic round of golf, or splashing about in the Grotto pool with their small children.  We usually hit it after American schools resume, so the property is half empty, and even quieter than usual, which makes the minor logistical responsibilities such as booking a table for dinner overlooking the ocean and the twinkling lights of Christiansted a synch.

    Or so we thought.

    

    I had booked the table overlooking the ocean and the twinkling lights from Northampton the previous weekend.  But when we got to the restaurant and announced our last names, there was massive confusion.   Were we are party of 3?  No, we assured them, party of 2.   It seemed we’d already been seated.  We assured them we had not been.   After a certain amount of fluster, the maitre d’ took control and led us to a just-vacated and hastily tidied table overlooking the ocean. As he pulled out my chair, and wafts of the conversation from the next table drifted over me, I solved the mystery of the snatched table: raspy immigrant Russian, tones born in the South of Russia and honed in the outskirts of Chicago and Brooklyn.  I exchanged amused glances with HRH, who raised his eyebrows and confined his speech to English for the remainder of the evening.  Was he recalling the 9th of May, 2005 in Malta, when he got sucked into a group of Russian tourists from Voronezh with 3 bottles of Chivas under the table and a continuous order for orange juice on top, who insisted he stay with them to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the end of World War II, prompting a two day hangover and a vow never to drink Chivas ever again?  

    Perhaps it was a reluctance to agree to, or even engage in the stream of abuse about The Sugar Mill’s food, and service, and general shabbiness that was Topic A at the table that should have been ours.  

Hide and Seek

    Here I am, once again, playing a reluctant game of hide-and-seek-in-my-own-home.  HRH’s parents have come from Russia to stay in Northampton for a week.   Funny thing about time.  HRH’s and my tantalizingly just-around-the-corner week on the beach in St. Croix will be woefully short.  This post-Christmas week with HRH’s parents is flowing like cement.    I’m exhausted from single-handedly pulling off Christmas, and I am having trouble womaning up to single-handedly pull off New Year’s Eve.   But I have to, because New Year’s Eve is the main event for Russians: as I pointed out in one of my columns, the Orthodox Christmas is on January 7th, and was not widely celebrated in The Soviet Union.  All of the Christmas trees, gifts and their emaciated version of Santa Claus, Dedushka (Grandfather) Frost have shifted to New Year’s Eve. 

    I cannot look to our own “Dedushka,” HRH’s father, for much practical help, although his entire time and energy is devoted to seeming busy, looking important, and asking us if he can help.  He can’t.   I feel he is a prime candidate for the chill-pill line of pharmaceuticals – like a quadruple hit of Zanax or Valium, which I yearn to slip into his morning muesli.   These might perhaps cut down on his constant fidgeting, the restless pursuit of a purpose or occupation, or his insistence on mixing the thirty-some English words he knows in with the forty German ones, no one else understands, with Russian, which is so clearly the lingua franca of this particular group.   I’m not sure about drugs though, since he is my prime suspect in the case of the rapidly disappearing cooking brandy, and alcohol it seems to have only further hyped him up: He’s underfoot everywhere, offering suggestions or authoritative supervision on the execution of things he can’t do, like drive.  Or cook.   He drove me straight to the cocktail shaker this afternoon as he tried to direct me backing the grocery-laden Subaru into our garage.  Backing automobiles into narrow confined spaces is not my primary skill set, but I don’t need a hyperactive non-driver getting in on the act.

    If Dedushka could use a chill pill, his wife, Babushka, (Granny) might find life a brighter proposition with the pharma forklift provided by Prozac or Lexipro.  Unfortunately, neither would even consider ever discussing mood enhancers with their primary care physicians, because that generation just didn’t do that kind of thing in Russia. You didn’t talk to anyone working for the State and keeping records about feeling a little down. Pity.  Babushka seems to bear the weight of the world’s sorrows on her back, and qualifies every noun with the adjective “poor.”  “Poor trees that were cut down and turned into firewood!”  “Poor oysters we are about to eat,” or “Lovely snow, but the poor stuff will melt later today.”  She is savvier than Dedushka, though very self-effacing, and she has wisely retreated into the abject misery of a stuffy nose.  I may teach her to Neti Pot just as a diversion. Still, she seems very appreciative of what she’s found here in Northampton.  Like Eileen Fisher and some really nice fish pate.  We had a longish time at my beauty salon where a very patient and nice stylist worked for about three hours to turn her Russian-salon florescent henna with green highlights into a lovely auburn with caramel lowlights.  This was ultimately successful, but she whispered to me somewhere into the second hour, “Is this going to be way too dark?”

    Babushka is more helpful because she can, and, unlike the men in her family, is prepared, to make a bed or wash a dish.  True, my new kitchen clearly intimidates her.  The pots are heavy, the knives are sharp, the gas stove is menacing, and most of the food she finds in the fridge is unfamiliar.  Still, she’s determined to be helpful, so I’ve ceded her the kitchen.  This, as any woman who has ever married a man with a mother still living knows, is the right and proper thing to do.  This is the right and proper thing to do even if you are way better at cutting up the baffling items in the fridge with the scary sharp knives, then cooking them in the heavy pots on the intimidating stove.   Even Nigella Lawson should do this.  I’m gritting my teeth as she drapes dirty napkins and soiled dishcloths across clean surfaces for reasons I can’t fathom, and I sneak in at night to put all of the inadequately-washed wine glasses through the dishwasher, but in general, I just give it all a wide berth.

So, I’m playing reluctant-hide-and-seek. In my own home.

    My friend Victoria, who also has an HRH, and three children under the age of seven, in Moscow knows all about hide-and-seek-in-her-own-home.    She is usually hiding from her own children or their many and varied nannies, trying to finish an article or get over a bad case of the ‘flu.  She barricades herself in the Master Bedroom.

    “En-suite bathrooms,” she says, nodding, “are the key.  If you can access a toilet and manage to stockpile food and drink, you need never see anyone.”

I haven’t played hide-and-seek-in-my-own-home yet in Northampton, but I play a great deal of it in Moscow.  Russia is a human resources rich country, and so I have a lot of “Help” in Moscow.  And I have to hide from them, due to an architectural flaw in my apartment.   With 20/20 hindsight, I see now that I should have been firmer about the – admittedly stunning – but completely transparent glass walls of the little study, where I am supposed to write The World’s First Funny Book on Russia.   These glass panels are a green light to anyone to rap softly, gesture wildly, and come in saying, “I’m not disturbing you, am I?”  And this happens all day long.   Even when there is a sign, in Russian, taped to the outside of the glass wall, with only two or three spelling errors, but nothing that would confuse the reader as to the general thrust of the message, which is to PLEASE let me get on with writing the World’s First Funny Book on Russia undisturbed.   

    Tolya-the-driver bustles in and out on HRH’s errands, which mainly consist of escorting electricians into my en suite bathroom (removing that iron-clad hiding place).  They all stop to have a cup of tea with the long-suffering Raisa, our cleaning lady.   Raisa, like any Russian cleaning lady worth her salt, is always up for a lengthy one way chat about her current automotive disasters, the deplorable state of her dacha, how expensive everything is, or the details of the latest in a series of endless acquaintances who are diagnosed with really gruesome fatal illnesses.  I never know what to say in these situations, except to repeat every synonym I can think of for “how awful!”  Russian, as the Russians say, is a rich language, so there are a lot of synonyms.   None of them ever seems quite up to the magnitude of Raisa’s tragedies, so I’ve got in the habit of dodging the bullet, by being up and dressed and out the door before she arrives.   Where to go was sometimes a challenge until the next-door Starbucks opened, and then where to write the World’s First Funny Book on Russia was painlessly and somewhat stereo-typically solved.   

    “Just ignore them!” HRH says.   “Write your book in the study, for Chrissakes!”  He, child of the “classless” proletarian revolution, has no qualms about behaving like Ivan the Terrible to The Help.  If he and a cadre of rust belt factory directors have had a long hard night with a case of vodka, he simply stays in bed until noon.  Rising, he dons his dressing gown and parades around the apartment, like a medieval boyar, smelling like a distillery, yelling at people on the phone, sending Raisa and Tolya scurrying away to avoid bothering him.  It’s dead impressive, and I’m deeply jealous.   Raisa will make him a three-course meal from scratch if he only hints that he’s hungry, whereas I’m next door paying 660 rubles for a “Venti skinny latte c dvumiaya dop shotiy.”  (Venti skinny latte with two extra shots).  But you know, at Starbucks worldwide, after they give you that latte, they leave you alone to get on with it.  They don’t start vacuuming the parquet floor just outside the glass panels of your stupidly designed study.

    This doesn’t seem to be an issue with the people who work here on the renovations to the house in Northampton, which is traditionally a place to which hedge fund managers flee to become contented stonemasons.  So, the electrician here is a really cool lady from Noho with a killer tool bag, the husband and wife team who have painted the entire house are really musicians, and my contractor (a sculptor) and the cabinet maker (also a sculptor) spend the day comparing Italian trattoria they know and love. I’m very fond of the sheet rock guy, who shares his thoughts on how sex when you are with your partner in the Caribbean is outstanding (a correct assumption I’m clinging to).  He really does need his own reality TV show.  I’ve got no problem wandering around the house if they are there, making them coffee, writing up in my loft as they work away, and I’d be delighted if they stayed all day.  “How wonderful,” I say, as they enthuse about the latest gig or exhibit, and then go and look up synonyms for wonderful.

    I’ve ceded the new kitchen to Babushka, but I still can’t work out what Dedushka should do.  Neither has he.  I feel its somehow not quite right to ask him to bring in some wood, although this is what I expect of any male guest over the age of 12.  I fear Dedushka will take offense: think I’m confusing him with the Help.  He clearly wants to have a long one-way chat and tell me all about New York, or San Francisco or some other place I know a lot better than he does.  So, I’m hiding.   I don’t think HRH’s parents have worked out where our bedroom is, and they can’t be sure if I’m up in the loft where HRH and I have our desks, which is where I’m hiding.  But Dedushka has wandered up, so I may need to go to Northampton’s wonderful public library to look something up.   Like the length of every single river on the planet.  And hit a Starbucks. Hard. 

And The Wall Came Tumbling Down

    I was so busy getting ready to come to Moscow, that I did not even think about being here for the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, despite the fact that this event, more than any other, has influenced the way I live now.   We were not, however, flooded with invitations to Black Tie celebrations here in Moscow, where it was very much business as usual.  The celebrations in our household were also muted and modest, partly defined by my jetlag, but also by HRH’s very mixed feelings about the events of 1989 and Berlin itself. 

    HRH, though Russian, was born and spent his childhood in Berlin, on what most of my readership would consider “the other side of The Wall.”  This is an era he remembers not with barbed wire and check-point Charlie, but as the halcyon days of his childhood.  He grew up in a tightly knit, privileged, expatriate community of Soviet diplomatic, military and other official families.  My mental image of him as a teenager is always superimposed against The Wall:  HRH and his trusty sidekick, Boris Stepanov – the enfant terrible of the Soviet Mission, who, at the age of 11, had already cornered Black Market in West German Comic Books, thereby laying the foundations of his current construction fortune.  I see them both dressed in unfortunately cut leather jackets, grimy Eastern European jeans, with unfortunate ABBA haircuts, furtively smoking purloined Marlboros before they race off to hockey practice.   

    I was moved by the celebrations, as, indeed, I always am by any well-executed world scale event management, which features Barack Obama merely hinting at the Declaration of Independence; but I kept my emotions in check, casting furtive glances at HRH on the other end of the squishy sofa, as we consumed the remains of some really amazing Bouef Bourguignon I’d made, and channel surfed in a delusory fashion.  We flitted between BBC World, who was covering the event in its entirety, to Euronews (Russian Language), who covered the event in chunks, interspersed with features of “where are they today,” nostalgia pieces about East Germans, and the Russian News Networks, who stuck to their regularly scheduled programming throughout the evening, and led the news headlines with the death of Nobel Prize Physicist, Evgenii Ginzburg.  This Russian restraint did not come as a huge shock to me.   This summer, I toured the Newseum in Washington DC with our 14-year old Russian godson, who spent the summer in America with us. I directed his attention to the eight panels of the Berlin Wall on prominent display near the entrance of the museum, flanked by flat screen monitors rolling continuous vintage grainy CNN footage of the Fall of the Wall.   He had absolutely no idea what he was looking at – none at all.    Hadn’t heard about it in school, hadn’t been told about it by his parents, hadn’t even seen any reference to it on TV.    

    No, it was very much business as usual in Russia – a nation, as I have written elsewhere, very into anniversaries and round numbers.  Third story on the headlines, despite the fact that there was President Dmitry Medvedev sitting on the podium – next to Hillary, chatting in the vastly more relaxed manner he always adopts at an away game.  I certainly hadn’t expected Berlin’s VIP Guest, Mikhail Gorbachev, would create any spike the Russian TV ratings, as he is on an exclusive away games only circuit – being perceived very much as the unfortunate relation who sold off the family silver.   Gorbachev has to go abroad for speaking engagements, to be fêted, and invited to feature in glossy Louis Vuitton commercials, showing him riding alongside the Berlin wall.   I love that image – to me it sums up brilliantly the last twenty years of my life: a conjunction of where I came in, and a generation’s lofty political hopes purloined into rank materialism.  I keep trying to add it to my collection of ironic things on our Moscow fridge, but HRH refuses to sanction it.   Russians as a rule don’t put anything on their fridges except faux wood paneling, and HRH doesn’t think we need to give the man who broke up The Soviet Union any space on our German double-door deluxe Liebherr.   

And, since he is the Berliner in this family… it’s his call.