Dividing My Time

Russian Dolls...A New All-Time Low!!

Here’s a confession.   My daughter Velvet and I are addicted to bad reality TV shows, which is out of character for us both.  I’m meant to be the brainy intellectual/witty writer type, and she is supposed to be the outdoorsy/horsey type.   We hide it well, but catch us on a rainy Friday evening, chances are we are curled up on the squishy sofa working out way through back episodes of “Jerseylicious,”  “SuperNanny” or my personal favorite, “Clean House.”  

Which is why we were both so excited for the launch of Lifetime’s new reality series, “Russian Dolls,” which chronicles the lives of a number of Russian émigrés to New York’s Brighton Beach.  We mixed up some cocktails (gin and olives for me, ginger ale and pomegranate liqueur for Velvet) and settled in.

Readers…. what a letdown!  The Gatsby this ain't. Not that I didn’t know that if there is anything worse than a vapid dyev in stilettos, it’s a vapid dyev in stilettos who has been air lifted to NYC or Laaaaaaaaaaannnndon, but “Russian Dolls” hits an all time new low.  Even this writer, who spends a fairly hefty portion of her working hours poking fun at contemporary Russian culture, was horrified:

 

Most of this week’s episode centered around Anastasia (which is pronounced by all and sundry like the cartoon Princess:  Anna-STAY-ZH-ah instead of Anna-stass-ee-ah) and her mother Ida talking over salat Olivier (and who gave that particular culinary disaster an entry visa to the USA I’d like to know?)

“What you want say to me?” asks Ida about Anastasia’s possible career moves, 

“Speech, Ma…I’m doing speech,” pouts Anastasia, running her acrylic nails through her ironed hair.  

“The counselor, she thinks I should do law.”

“And how you repay loans?” wails Ida.

“Ma!  Just leave me alone,” explodes Anastasia.

Mad Men it ain't.

Then there were the nervous jitters of 47-year old Renata (who looked like she was addicted to Valium) getting ready to belt out Alla Pugacheva hits at the opening of Brighton Beach’s newest club “1001 Nights,” under the Svengali-esque coaching of her husband Boris. Next week, we will be meeting Sveta who is, according to the voice over, “Biggest Bitch in Brighton,” (which has to be saying a whole bunch) while she launches a jewelry line. 

“This is embarrassing,” confessed Velvet, “These are like my people.”

Not if I can help it…they’re not.

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И так Readers,

Did you see “Russian Dolls?”  if so, what did you think?   Do we need to get up a petition to Hillary Clinton?   Could Vladimir Putin express his disapproval and get it off the air?  Does it bear any resemblance to émigré life in America?   

My Charter: Relevant for Your Monastery?

 Don't Take Your Own Charter to Someone Else's Monastery.

~Russian saying.

The piece below appeared today on the BBC's World Service website, under the "Strana Russia" section.  I've been writing for them since last summer, and it has been my first foray into publishing in Russian.  I've written about clutter busting in Russia, observations on carrying on a balanced conversation with Russian men, and the differences between Back To School in Russia and the US.   I was very taken aback by the number of readers who voiced their outrage that a foreign writer should choose to take on the subject of Russia.  Many called me uninformed, others called me rude, still more think me rude, disrespectful, and downright crazy.   I wasn't sure how to respond: it seemed unproductive (and incredibly time consuming) to post a response to each one, but some response seemed called for, and the BBC kindly agreed to post this piece.  What do you think?  Are foreigners equally entitled to publish their thoughts on an adopted country?  Is expat humor an insult to the host country? Please join the debate in Russian on the BBC's Russia Service site, or below, in English.

My Charter: Relevant for Your Monastery?

Recently, a reader of this blog warned me to lay off the satire about Russia, using a Russian proverb: “don’t take your own charter to another’s monastery.”   ["Со своим уставом в чужой монастырь не ходят.”]  What the reader was trying to convey was that no foreigner should never ever presume to write about Russia, and certainly never in a humorous or negative vein, even those who, like me, have racked up the numbers: 18 years living in the country, three heads of state, two coups, three financial crises, one Russian husband, four years working for Russian companies, and more than five thousand hours clocked behind the wheel of a car stuck in rush hour Moscow traffic.

It wasn’t the first time I’ve had my literary hand slapped for daring to attempt humor in Russia:

“We can’t publish this…it’s not respectful,” snarled one Russian editor in response to a lighthearted piece I wrote on the unsolicited gifts my husband and I have received over the years.    

“Of course it wasn’t,” I thought to myself.  “What is there to respect about a mobile phone case made out of zhel’, a Bohemian crystal vodka decanter in the shape of the Imperial crown, or an unfortunate plastic garden sculpture of ‘Happy’ from Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarves?”

“This is a humor column,” I argued, “you asked for funny things that happen to me in Russia.”

“Make fun of your own kind,” she advised.

I can’t accept this, since it represents a serious threat to my livelihood: I’m a humor writer and I live in Russia, so I write about the side of Russia I think my readers, will find entertaining: surly shop-girls, the curiously Byzantine hierarchy of Russian society, and the disconnect between Cyber-age 20-somethings and the older generation’s Soviet values.  Matters culinary: salad Olivier and salo, because, to the uninitiated anyway, these are intriguing, as is the quirky system of public holidays, and the unique Russian approach to health care.  

Once I dared to take on that national Russian obsession: the dacha.  I did not, in the accepted foreign tradition, couple the dacha with the concept of the Great Russian Soul.  I didn’t talk about capturing the elusive unique Russian soul in a spoonful of homemade jam, or on a whiff of smoke from the kostor, because, honestly, I failed to find any of that.  What I did find was mold, discomfort, and nuclear powered mosquitoes, so I wrote about those.  In response, I received a harangue from a vitriolic septuagenarian Russian journalist, writing from his own dacha, who called me “crazy,” which seemed needlessly histrionic.   Where is it etched in stone that foreigners have to be over-the-moon about every aspect of Russia and Russian culture?  Do I not have the right to express of Russian culture what Joseph Brodsky did of American: “some of it I find revolting, some awe-inspiring?” The airport, spitting on the street, and prime time television I find revolting in Russia.  And awe-inspiring?  A much longer list, which includes all the Silver Age writers, the Mighty Handful of musicians, September 1st, World War II veterans, the mysteries of the Russian Orthodox Church, KVN, Kvartet I, the incandescent brilliance of Russia’s scientists, academics, and artists, as well as the pompous gallantry of Russia’s male chauvinists, and the Wagnerian tenacity of a breed of women who force the likes of Hitler, Napoleon, and Genghis Khan to their knees.

What I’m hearing from my Russian readers, though, is this: when it comes to crafting humor about Russia, foreigners -- it seems – need not apply.  Elsewhere in the world, Englishman Peter Mayle is revered in France for his humorous tales of eccentric locals in the Luberon Valley.   In the West, we double over at Yakov Smirnoff’s hilarious take on life in America in his popular magazine articles, and embrace émigré writers such as Lara Vypnar when she produces a pitch-perfect grilling of self-absorbed American male wannabe novelists in New York City.

So is this a double standard?  Am I not as fully entitled to my take on my Russia as the “Beet Generation” writers are to their America?  I’m creating humor, not “contempt…and disrespect for another country, its people and customs.”  [“Презрение, цинизм, неуважение к другой стране, её народу и обычаям”]   Having spent most of my adult life in Russia, it doesn’t seem like the best use of my time to, as another reader suggests, suddenly shift my focus to “hot dogs, Pepsi, and baseball,” [о хот-догах, пепси и бейсболе!!!] or the ranks of what another like-minded reader calls the “obese-minded Americans, their unkempt American women, a boring game of game of baseball or that stupid holiday, Halloween.”  [“учных недалёких американцев, растрёпанных американских женщин, не следящих за своим внешним видом, скучную игру бейсбол и тупой праздник Halloween.”] 

“Russians in their soul cannot tolerate foreigners,” [русские на дух не переносят иностранцев] yet another Russian reader tells me.  But how, I wonder, does that reader square this intolerance, with the current sense of Russia’s national entitlement to many things, which by their very nature, necessitate foreign involvement such as hosting the Olympics in Sochi?  Do the trappings of global citizenship ask of Russians a new kind of tolerance to foreign commentators?  

Here we have all we need for a meaningful debate: an interesting issue, passionate readers, committed writers, and a well-established forum.   I invite you to join me for just such a thoughtful and considered debate.   What do you think?  Do you agree, as one reader observed that, “the Cold War is long over…relax. [Холодная война закончилась уже давно, расслабьтесь...].  

Can the Russian soul learn to tolerate foreigners?  

Does my charter have any relevance in your monastery? 

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This piece originally appeared on the BBC's World Service website in Russian under the title "Об иностранцах в России и "чужом монастыре" on October 13, 2010.  A link to the original piece in Russian can be found here.

Day of the Ground Forces of the RF/День сухопутных войск РФ: It'll Make A Man Out of You.

An army marches on its stomach.

~Napoleon Bonaparte 

Today is Ground Forces day in Russia!  Since 2006, the guys in the trenches are front and center each October 1st.   

Not being hugely up on military tactics, I thought I would instead devote today’s post to the issue of mandatory military service in Russia, which is something I know a bit more about, primarily because most of my Russian friends are beginning to grapple with this issue as their children approach the age of 18. I say children – but of course I mean, their male children, since mandatory military service is only for men, not women. All Russian male citizens must serve in the army for 12 months sometime betwen the ages of 18 and 27, unless they have a legitimate reason not to.  While changing one's gender might be seen as going to extremes to avoid conscription, this is Russia, and there are many things to keep the bands of military recruiters out on the streets, trying to round up all the available candidates.  

Military service in Russia was recently reduced from two years to 12 months, but that hasn’t done much to swell the ranks.  It remains, for many, a brutal first step in to the world of adulthood, with notoriously violent bullying and hazing, called dedovshchina (from the Russian word for Grandfather) of new conscripts by more seasoned soldiers.  I can’t think the food is up to much either, so all in all, it isn’t an ideal “Be All That You Can Be,” situation.  Russia is also actively engaged in military conflict down in the south of the country, so, for those who are not bullied to death, there is a very real concern that they might have to deploy to an active combat zone.

There are, of course, compensations.  Swimming in a fountain once a year for the rest of your life is right up there.  As is your eligibility to be a security guard once you get out.

If you ask a 40-something woman what her 18-year old son is up to, she might well respond, “Oh, he’s hiding from the army.”   This might well be accompanied by either a welling up of tears in her eyes (in which case, get ready to be asked for a loan) or a disgusted “tsk-tsk” noise and a Slavic shrug.  Both mean that the golden boy in question has failed to line of any of the acceptable legal exemptions from mandatory military service.  These are, in order of social acceptability: university or graduate education, which entitles you to either postpone your tour of duty, or take the option of becoming an officer for two years, which used to be a fast-track method to securing the lowest rung on the property ladder, but is less so today.   If you have two or more children (and don’t laugh this off:  the winters are very long, and cold and dark in a lot of Russia) this constitutes a permanent exemption.  The most popular excuse, however, and the one which is easiest to arrange if the recruit in question is not the brightest bulb on the sun tanning bed, is to obtain a medical exemption.  This is where the loan your 40-something friend will be asking for comes in.  If there is actually nothing wrong with you, then you have to purchase an ailment.  Doctor’s certificates testifying to a medical condition making it impossible to serve can be obtained for roughly $5,000.

A fourth option exists for those who cannot scrape together the money for a fake student ID or a medical certificate, and that is to join the murky ranks of the semi-legal strata of Russian society.  In the early days of perestroika, many parents sequestered their military-aged sons at remote dachas, or sent them in to the interior regions of Russia to hide out on farms or with distant cousins.  This is a dismal existence: always looking over your shoulder on public transportation to avoid detection, never being able to stay at your home address, many legitimate forms of work unavailable to you because you haven't completed your military service.

Russia’s elite make sure their children are either full time students, or that they reside abroad at the family’s house in Kensington.  And, I can’t say I blame them.  I think if I had a son, I would do everything I could to keep him out of mandatory military service.

HRH, however, disagrees with me – violently. He says the whole system means D students and petty criminals staff the Army at the lowest levels.  He thinks everyone should serve (which he did, from the ages of 17 - 24 first as a military cadet, and later as a serving officer).  So, it is a good thing we only have a daughter (though Velvet would love to be an Hussar).  HRH disapproves of hiding from the Army.  He thinks it is a sissy sort of a thing to do, and he gets very exasperated when he hears about people who are actively engaged in it.  Tolya, our driver, who did his 2 years, agrees:  “Everyone should serve,” he says simply, “well, unless they are unable, in which case, they shouldn't.  But if you can...you should.  It makes a man out of you.”

Happy Ground Forces Day to all of Russia’s boys currently in the process of becoming men.

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This post is part of The Stunt.

Photo by Jennifer Eremeeva. All Rights Reserved

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Hi There Readers!

I do not want to finish this post without mentioning the excellent organizations of soldiers' mothers who are lobbying to improve conditions for military conscripts in Russia.  The Union of the Committees of Soldiers' Mothers of Russia does excellent work, and you can read more about another group in an excellent article by Tatianna Shabaeva here.

What is your take on Russia’s mandatory military service? Are you a veteran of military service, or are you perhaps serving at the moment?  What’s it like?  Leave me a comment and let me know.  Thank you very much for stopping by and reading this post.  I have some other posts about other branches of Russia’s military you might enjoy:

Day of the Military Translator /День военного переводчика: Strategic Communication In The Line of Fire

Day of the Army Automobile Corps/День военного автомобилиста: The Right of Way

Day of Russian Guards Regiments/День российской гвардии: Boyhood Games to Military Might

 

 

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

Necessity is the Mother of Invention

~ Plato (The Republic)

  Today is the Day of the Inventors and the Rationalizers!  I crossed checked “rationalizer” in a number of online dictionaries and it seems that it can to refer to someone who re-organizes or brings modern, efficient methods to an industry i.e. Management Consultants.   Management Consultants, as I learned during my happy time at Russia’s National Carrier are creepy expat parasites, who, as HRH would say, are “You-zzz-eh-less” so I thought we might focus on the inventors.   

We have, of course, talked before about Russia’s past contributions to world technology…that Periodic Table of Elements thing, so I thought what we might do is focus more on Russia’s future inventors and innovators.

And what a great week to do so!  As all Russia-watchers, and many techno-geeks know, President Dmitry Medvedev, clearly off on good behavior, visited Silicon Valley on fact and fund finding missions for Russia’s  “City of Innovation,” Skolkovo.  Skolkovo, which is 20 kilometers from Moscow, was recently designated the site for Russia’s new innovation and technology center, where the focus will be on energy, information technologies, communication, biomedical research and nuclear technology.

Russia’s president is a real gadget geek and so this was like having lunch with all of the Disney Princesses for a 6-year old girl from Alabama.  He visited Apple, where he got a new 4G iPhone from Saint Steve himself (to add to the pirated and “cracked” 3G one he already had), he met with the Russian programmer Diaspora, about whom he expressed the (wildly unrealistic) hope that they would all return home and work at Skolkovo, and then, he visited Twitter, where he set up an account, and sent his first tweet, with an adorable typo.  He then proceeded to tweet the entire rest of the day, sending Twitpicks of the view from his hotel room, some random thoughts on Skolkovo, the good news that Belarus was going to repay it’s gas bill, and his latest tweet says he just met with David Cameron, and they agreed to stay in touch, and not just on line.

Having just worked my way through “Twitter for Dummies,” I was able to instantly “follow” the President. He isn’t following me.  Yet, but I am sure that will be put to right as soon as he gets home and synchs his contacts on the new phone with his iPad and his Kremlin hotmail account.  I sent him (unanswered as of yet) a tweet expressing my hope (in 140 characters) that he had enjoyed his cheeseburger with President Obama, and congratulating him on the cool press conference.   And you can send both President Medvedev and me tweets if you like as well.    We’re up to speed.

The President’s visit got a lot of coverage, most of it positive, some not, but the visit put Skolkovo firmly back on the top-five dinner party topics, from whence, frankly, it had slipped slightly, what with the initial rollout being not super duper PR, and the oppressive heat, and the BP oil spill and everything.  But, with companies like Nokia and CISCO pledging billion dollar investments into Skolkovo, we all wonder: is this the new hot place to look for a job?  Is the Innovation Technology racket the new Management Consultant racket?   Or do you have to, like, know something for this gig?

I’ll send you a hashtagged tweet if I find out!

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This post is part of The Stunt

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Dear Reader:

Had you heard about Skolkovo before you saw the charming footage of Medvedev at the Twitter office?   What do you think the Skolkovo crowd should focus on apart from how to contain the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, which a lot of us believe they already know, but what else?  Better ice machines and more powerful a/c are on the top of my list, since it is 93.2 degrees today (which is 34 degrees Celsius for the Metric geeks among you.).  Thank you, as ever, for stopping by.  Stick around, and read some other posts like this one:

Day of the Chemists / День химика: Russia’s Unquestioned Contribution to Civilization

Day of the Freelancers / День фрилансера: The Pajama-Clad Workforce

Day of the Ameliorators/День мелиоратора: Professionals From Fiction with Tough Rows to Hoe

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 Beer Brewers /День пивовара: Quantity Trumps Quality

"You can't be a real country unless you have a beer and an airline - it helps if you have some kind of a football team, or some nuclear weapons, but at the very least you need a beer."


~Frank Zappa

 Today is the second Saturday in June and since 2003, that has meant one thing:  Beer Brewer’s Day!

I’ve been writing, for my sins, a monthly cooking column about Russian food, which I don’t actually like to either make or consume, but I have found it interesting to learn that most dishes that we think of as “classic Russian,” are, in fact, not native to Russia at all. We don’t know that, because Russia has so claimed these meals as their own, that it doesn’t occur to us to question their origins.  Take Beef Stroganoff, which seems to account for an astonishing number of hits to this blog, which is French; or shashlik, which comes from the Caucuses, or, indeed, Russian pelemeni, which were brought to Russia originally by the Finno-Ugric tribes of the North.

And so it is with beer.  Russians certainly did not invent beer, in actual fact the Iraqis did (for all the good it did them), but today Russia is the third largest beer market in the world!  Russians stumbled upon beer fairly early on in the form of kvass which beer expert Michael Jackson argued is an early form of beer.   Kvass is a lightly fermented drink made from any old grain or stale dark bread, yeast, and flavored with berries and other fruits.  It’s mostly consumed in the summer by the older generation, whereas everyone consumes beer in Russia, 24/7, 365 days a year.  

Russians like their beer strong, and I was interested to learn that the strongest stout ever, was made for Catherine the Great, and called “Imperial Stout.”  The theory was that the high alcohol content of the stout ensured that the sub zero temperatures in winter would not freeze the beer as it made its way from Great Britain to Russia.

Today, Russian beer is a dynamic sector of the economy.  The national brands of Baltika, Siberian Crown, Stariy Melnik and others are never going to win any prizes for quality, but they remain viable because, in Russia, the main driver, as the economic geeks say, is quantity rather than quality.

I know this, because, like most women in Russia, I live with a beer expert.  

HRH is very fond of beer, and, because he’s been exposed to beer in countries like Switzerland and Jamaica where they focus more on the quality, rather than the quantity of beer production, he’s discerning.   He prefers European draft beer to American bottled beer, which he feels is on a par with Sprite or 7-UP in the beverage line up.  The happiest I have ever seen him was in the Sultanate of Oman, where we spent one Christmas.  Slightly concerned about our dwindling reserves of Duty Free gin and whiskey, we were invited to Christmas lunch by a charming couple, who ran the (tightly controlled) alcohol concession in the Sultanate.  Tipped off by our friend Annie, Debbie and Samir unearthed a case of Heineken, which they wrapped in festive paper and presented to him as the, hands down, best Christmas present he ever received.

So, to an industry facing possible crippling tax hikes and the ever-menacing specter of another government-sponsored anti-alcohol campaign (because the last one went so well), let’s raise a glass of imported Newcastle Brown Ale and wish the Beer Brewers a very happy profpraznik!

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This post is part of The Stunt.

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Author's Note:

The wonderful picture of Russian beer and dried fish (the peanut butter and jelly of Russian summers) was found on the Google by Mr. Kunglay. 

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Hey Readers!

How are you enjoying Beer Brewers’ Day?  Does your country have both beer and an airline?  Mine does, but both are pretty lame.   What’s your favorite tipple?  Leave me a comment and let me know!  Thanks for stopping by.

Did you enjoy this post?  Here are some others you might also enjoy:

Day of the Northern Fleet of Russia/День Северного флота России: Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?

Horse Shows: Don't Forget The Maps and The Martinis!

Russians En Route

Day of the Border Guards /День пограничника: Big Borders: Big Booze Up

Good fences make good neighbors.

~Robert Frost

Lock up your daughters and batten down the hatches...today is Border Guards' Day!   If you were thinking about invading Russia, today might just be the optimal day to do it, since all of Russia’s border guards will be otherwise occupied:  

photos courtesy of pics.livejournal.com/drugoi

 

Some Russian holidays we have seen, like the Day of the Defense of the Fatherland, are nation-wide extravaganzas where even the weather is micromanaged, while others, like yesterday’s All Russia Library Day pass with relatively little hoop-lah.  Today, however, is the first of our massive-scale casual piss-ups and one of the best of the genre.  

May 28th commemorates the day in 1918 when the Border Guards were officially formed during the chaotic days following the Russian Revolution.   The holiday was first officially celebrated in 1958 in the Soviet Union, and confirmed as a fixture of the calendar of the Russian Federation in 1994.  Though the window dressing of statehood may change, Border Guards and Border Guard Day traditions have remained. The day is spent in watching formal displays of the border guards military prowess, evening witnesses fireworks Moscow and all of the “hero cities, and between those two events, the border guards hold mini-reunions around the fountains of parks of major cities.   These are opportunities to hook up with friends one made during mandatory military service, share a few cocktails, and kick back.  Sort of like a high school reunion…on steroids.  

Russia’s border guards are responsible for patrolling and protecting the world’s longest border, which has very few natural barriers such as rivers, oceans, or mountain ranges to define them or add to the ease of protecting them, and thus the borders have ebbed and flowed over the centuries: retreating back in lean years, and expanding out in the flush years, such as after The Great Patriotic War, which, as we know, didn’t work out so well.

At the moment, Russia has 14 neighbors, and not all of them are the kind you could pop over and borrow a cup of sugar from.   Some of them didn’t bring a casserole over when the borders shifted in the 1990s.  Here they are in metric, because, as we agreed last week, metric is the way to go: Azerbaijan 284 km, Belarus 959 km, China (southeast) 3,605 km, China (south) 40 km, Estonia 294 km, Finland 1,340 km, Georgia 723 km, Kazakhstan 6,846 km, North Korea 19 km, Latvia 217 km, Lithuania (Kaliningrad Oblast) 280.5 km, Mongolia 3,485 km, Norway 196 km, Poland (Kaliningrad Oblast) 232 km, Ukraine 1,576 km.* Thanks to the Bering Strait and the Tsars needing a quick cash influx, Russia does not share a border with the US, but let’s not forget that Sarah Palin can see them from her house…which is always a cause for concern.

The Border Guards have a mixed agenda: some years ago, they were assiduously focused on keeping their own citizens inside the borders, which I, for one, feel they might want to revisit as a key concern.  Border Guards are always concerned with the wrong type of people getting in to Russia:  invading armies, undocumented workers, people who have spelled “Saint Petersburg” incorrectly on their three page visa applications, and, of course, people with leprosy.

But all in all, I like Day of the Border Guards.  It’s nice to see so many people who have so many concerns kicking back and enjoying themselves.  It’s nice to see them act human for a change…with unbridled frivolity and mirth.  It makes a change, as anyone who has ever waited in line at passport control knows…Border Guards don’t always roll out the welcome mat with unbridled enthusiasm…even for VIP guests like these…(this video is highly highly highly recommended and you need no Russian to understand it, the title reads, "Long Awaited Burger King") 

Happy Border Guard Day to all those who patrol and protect Russia’s borders!

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This post is part of The Stunt

Author’s Note:

*information on Russia’s borders courtesy of www.nationmaster.com

photo credits above

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Dear Reader:

Do you have a border-crossing story?  Of course you do!  Share it with all of us by clicking on the comment button below, and the one who can claim the longest wait at passport control will win a guest blogging gig here on Dividing My Time…until I stock up on those Russian Christmas Tree ornaments to dazzle the mommy bloggers with, that is.  Then we’ll be in warp factor nine!  Thanks, as ever, for dropping by on another Russian holiday!

Day of the Philologists /День филолога: Language Learners, Lovers, and Luddites

Arabians learn Arabian with the speed of summer lightening

And the Hebrews learn it backwards, which is absolutely frightening

~ My Fair Lady (Lerner and Lowe)

Today is the Day of the Philologists, and before you give up and click over to The Daily Beast, I’ll tell you what philology is: the study of a language, including grammar, history, and literary tradition.   Just like I surprised you when I said I knew a lot of military translators, you may be interested to learn that I also know a ton of philologists, and in actual fact, they are the same crowd.  Philology is what the military translators were actually studying at their various Departments of Philology, which they universally refer to as “Phil Fac,” making the abbreviation for “Faculty” rhyme with “truck.”  So witty.

Russians place a high premium on learning foreign languages, or making their children do so, which you have to applaud, especially as the US is so awful about this. Every very well-educated Russian my age has read Galsworthy and Faulkner in the original, and every well-educated Russian Velvet’s age has read The Twighlight books and Harry Potter in the original.  And, as we know, HRH is starting a book club.  Our godson, George, whom some of you met on the Day of the Divers, studies at a Chinese immersion school in Moscow.  I think this is very visionary of his parents, although his mother worries occasionally that the algebra isn’t up to much at the Chinese school, but we shout her down.   George also takes English, which he polished up last summer at American summer school.  We gave him a little Moleskin notebook, just like Auntie Mame gives to Patrick, saying,  “Every time you hear a word you don’t understand, you write it down and Auntie Mame will explain it to you.”  George’s notebook from July 20, 2009, reads:  road kill, sick! (Used as a positive interjection), awesome (also a used as a positive interjection, which I finally had to ask him to stop using), gnarly, grodey (which no one knew how to spell) Vitamin Water, and lurid (which I used to describe the large bottle of Windex-colored Vitamin Water he was interested in acquiring).  George’s mother is sending him to China this summer, and I can’t say I blame her.

Some Russians, of course, don’t ever bother to learn any foreign languages, even if they decide to permanently distance themselves physically from the Slavic-speaking world. This can work as there are parts of the US and UK where this kind of thing is not only tolerated but downright encouraged.  I was surprised, however, to discover one such Russian in Monterey California, which I don’t think of as an entrenched Russian Diaspora community.  The Russian was one of those bleached blond women called Natasha who ensnare and marry foreign men who aren’t, let’s face it, the sharpest tacks in the box.  I normally give that crowd a very wide berth, but my brother-in-law’s Mom, whom we call Tutu, had taught Natasha’s daughter (yes, she was one of those bleached blond women called Natasha who marry foreigners AND get the foreigner to adopt her kid AND get the foreigner to pay for a private school) who had briefly been at Velvet’s school in Moscow, where mother and daughter were in the holding tank before the fiancée visa came through.  Tutu had put this together somehow, saying that she knew a Russian girl called Velvet and bingo…one degree of separation.

Tutu is the nicest woman in the world (so typical – my sister gets the nice mother-in-law, the cool sister-in-law, their fun accompanying spouses and so on...NOT FAIR!!) and when we were out in Monterey visiting, she very kindly suggested we all get together with Natasha and her daughter, and went to what has to have been a lot of trouble to set it up.   Tutu meant well, and since I only have one brother-in-law, and he only has one mother, I had Firm Words with Velvet, advised HRH to develop a conference SKYPE prontissimo, so that, alas, he was unable to join us and I girded my loins for a long afternoon.

Natasha arrived in skinny jeans, mirrored sunglasses, a baby blue Lexus convertible (“Oh my,” said Tutu) with a GPS system and not one single solitary word of English, even though she’d been in the United States for two years, married, it turned out, to a Japanese-American peach farmer.  (“Oh my,” said Tutu.) “Ellen,” her daughter, who I sensed as “Elena” had aspired, but failed to crack into Velvet’s inner circle while at the school, had impressively achieved almost accent-less fluency in English.  She and I shared the burden of translating between Tutu and Natasha.

Natasha had naturally assumed we would spend the afternoon at a shopping mall, but Tutu is made of sterner stuff than her 4’2” frame and incredibly nice disposition would suggest.  We went to the Monterey Aquarium with her Membership Guest Passes.   As “Ellen” and Velvet played with the interactive expos, Tutu and Natasha carried on a lively discussion, through the medium of me, about California Real Estate.  The one exchange needing no help from me was this:

“And you live in….Carmel?” asked Tutu.

“Carmel Vall-EH,” Natasha quickly corrected.

“Oh My,” said Tutu.

Most of the Russians I encounter these days speak very good English.   If I could offer one tiny piece of unsolicited advice it would be this: to listen to your 9th grade English teacher, Mariya Ivanovna, when she tries to instill in you the dulcet tones of British English instead of the over-the-top American drawl you want to acquire.  Apart from the sound of a matrioshka doll being forced open, a Russian speaking American English is the single most annoying noise I can think of.  HRH and I refer to this kind of 30-something smart-alack Russian as a “Waaaaaaaaaaaaallllllll yew Naaaaawuh,” since they begin every sentence with this unfortunate phrase.

Since today is Philologists’ Day, I feel it is not amiss to offer a mini lecture to aspiring English speakers in Russia on how you can avoid some of the more annoying pitfalls in your quest to showcase your English to native speakers:

1.    Don’t start every single solitary sentence with the phrase “Frankly speaking.”  Had I not had doubts about your “frankness,” I now begin to develop them.

2.    Regarding articles such as “the” and “a:” when in doubt, include them, don’t exclude them, and this also goes for the verb “to be” in its present tense.  I realize you have neither of these things in your language, but when you articulate what you think are full sentences like, “This Moscow Metro,” or “you make me gin tonic,” it sounds funny.

3.    “Do I disturb you?” is not an acceptable salutation in English in person or on the telephone.   Don’t push your luck: of course you disturb me!! You disturb me deeply:  you don’t believe in iced drinks, you have a couple of very scary political skeletons in your national closet and, way way way too many holidays.  Way too many.

4.    Mariya Ivanovna was right:  use the English you learned in school.  Think (if you are over 35) Maggie Smith not Sarah Palin or (if you are under 35) Emma Watson, not Kim Kardashian.  Don’t say “Raaaaaaaaaaaaasha” to refer to your country, or “Mos-COW,” or, “MAAAAAAAAAA-scow” to refer the capital of your country. 

5.    Spend an afternoon focusing on the subtle differences between the English words “comfortable,” and “convenient,” which are the same in Russian, but mean different things in English.  This will avoid unfortunate consequences in future when you are trying to secure that crucial date with the not-too-bright foreigner.  Saying, “we meet with you 6pm…is it comfortable for you?” could possibly get you in trouble, though, of course, might just help you slide into home plate.

6.    Don’t start a sentence with “I want to say you,” Apart from being wildly and unacceptably grammatically incorrect, it is just a waste of my time and yours.  No wonder nothing gets done around here.

7.    Finally, eye contact.  You don’t need any vocabulary or grammar for this one.  Just eye contact.  Occasionally.   Every now and then.   

Happy Philologists’ Day to lovers of language everywhere!

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This post is part of The Stunt

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Dear Reader:

What language are you studying, and why?  Do you love it?   Do you agree with me that you should never ever start a sentence with"Frankly Speaking?"  If you are Ian W-M, did you notice that I got, "Oh My" into this post a few times.  Quite right too.  Whatever your thoughts, please do express them, by leaving a comment below!  Can't wait to see what you say!