Award-winning Multilingual Arts and Culture Blog Since 2006
I‘ve seen them doing the same thing in Manchester, although those were usually the arrows pointing to the next “just opened” vintage shop or fair. In Moscow, though, they use the pedestrian passages to advertise services. These range from a clairevoyant to the Thai boxing and yoga. I will be updating this post now and again, if I find something peculiar.
 |
| Thai boxing, Kung Fu, Yoga |
 |
| Happy St Patrick’s Day 2011 |
While wishing a happy St Patrick’s Day to all my Irish friends and readers, I’d like to share with you a great photoreport from Sarah from The Daily Nibbles blog. She and her mother visited Dublin in 2010 and had a tour of the Guinness factory. Along with a few interesting facts you will see a lot of photos, two of them are below to tease your ale buds.
 |
| Guinness Production Cycle |
Speaking of beers, I have so far been disappointed with Stella Artois I drank here in Moscow. Although it was bottled, not canned, the taste was distinctly different. If I understand anything about beer production, my inkling is that the Russian distributor must be adding water to the beverage. In this sense, we have done to Stella what the English had done to the tea, according to George Mikes: by adding milk to tea, they turned the flavoursome exotic drink into a tasteless beverage. Making Stella more “watery”, I’d say, is a much bigger insult.
Still, there is at least one ‘proper’ Irish pub in Moscow, which I will visit very soon. I’m not sure about Guinness as such, but I am dying for a good pint of beer.
As they say, you can take a girl out of England…
Those who know George Mikes’s How to Be an Alien will spot a paraphrase of one of the book’s chapters. If Naturalised draws on the experience of a new British citizen who was born and bred in Continental Europe (Hungary, that is). Although I am very similar to Mikes in this respect, having been born in Russia, it’s been a few years since I was naturalised in the UK. Now I came to spend some time in my country of origin, so it is no longer a question of “if”, but a question of “when”: how does one feel WHEN they are the nationals of two countries.
I also continue living in a bilingual environment, in fact even more so now than when I was in the UK. So, here are some “preliminary findings” of the process of moving back and forth between the country of origin and the second native country.
1. Russians and non-Russians alike ask me how I “adapt” to Moscow. I have no idea if Americans returning to America from France, or Japanese returning to Japan from England are being asked the same question. At any event, this is a peculiar question: how do I adapt to my native city? I wonder if this indicates our usual attitude to our place of birth: that, one, we take it for granted, and two, that we have to eventually find it unsettling, unfitting, uncomfortable, and thus to move to the pastures new where the grass is greener.
Taking the fact that our life is what we make of it as a premise, I suppose that I don’t want to adapt to Moscow. There are certain things that I have taken up, while in the UK, that I have no intention to drop now that I’m in Moscow. Say, waving “thank you” and smiling to a driver who stopped to give me way; or smiling. By doing so, I want Moscow to adapt to me. There can only be two outcomes. Either I eliminate negative people and hang out with those who share the same views, or I make a difference to the lives of Muscovites, and little by little they pick up certain good things from me.
2. Someone I have been working with recently has made a point about my strong British accent. I was quite thrilled. One, this means there is no trace of Russian accent in my English. Two, this means that I have spotted, exercised, and made a habit of using the “original” version of the English language.
The upside is obvious. The downside recently demonstrated itself in my dealing with one Moscow translation agency who used a “native speaker” to check the translation. The target language was English. Imagine my state when I found out that the speaker corrected the spelling of “honour” and “manoeuvrability” from British English to American English, and actually marked those as errors!!! This happened at the test stage of a prospective project, so I chose to withdraw from it, purely due to the lack of clarity. For other projects I will now be asking, which version of the English language they wish to use, American or British. However, the general feeling is that of a complete lack of understanding the difference. Language-wise, the attitude to the English language seems to be “it’s English, anyway”. Strictly speaking, a lot of foreigners make no difference between Russian and Ukrainian – an insult to both Ukrainians and Russians.
3. Just like there is a percentage of people who live in the UK and hate it but absolutely don’t plan to leave the country, so there are Russians who, it seems, choose to daily curse the Fate for dropping them “in the middle of nowhere” (in Russia, that is), who see “no way out”, and who nonetheless plan neither to move, nor to try and make a difference.
And I suppose this is the biggest problem I have to deal with. I understand that it has more to do with people’s culture, than a particular country. There is indeed a group of people who have such a negative frame of mind that they manage to find something bad in just about everything they come across. They are never happy, but they can never suggest another way of doing things that would make them happy.
My advice (to myself, too): run away from those people – FAST!
The story that was recently covered by Le Figaro, has started in Moscow in around 2007 when Valery Alekseev decided to break out from his comfort zones, using the “Extreme Rhetoric” method by Olga Semenetz. To help people say goodbye to their complexes, Olga suggested to roll the toilet paper around their necks, to descend to the tube wearing a crown, or to ask silly questions to every other person. Valery went further: he put a sticker on the back of his car that read: “Searching for a wife”, with his phone number below.
Little did he know that, one, this attempt to liberate himself will become a starting point for a mass quest for one’s other half. And, two, that this is exactly how he’d actually find his wife. As we know, some things come dancing into your life when you know you want them but you are not actively searching. Alina Gryazeva, a Russian living in Germany, contacted Valery for permission to use his idea in her own country of residence, as a husbandhunter project. He agreed; soon Alina was inundated with calls from prospective German husbands… but decided to visit Valery first. After many days together, the couple decided to take the stickers off their cars: the hunt was over. They found one another and soon got married. Le Figaro reports that Hollywood is interested in adapting their love story to screen.
And in the meantime in Moscow people took the spousequest as a real way to find their other halves. According to Russian Reporter, not all phone calls or approaches are made by possible spouses themselves. Sometimes it can be a girl’s mother who enthusiastically “sells” her “article”:
“Are you being serious?” – a woman in her fifties asked. – “Very well then. I have a daughter to give away. She’s a very good girl, I can assure you. Yes, she was married. But – at least she’s got the experience. She’s got a baby, the baby is beautiful. The bride isn’t very young: she’s 32, but looks great. Besides, you don’t need a very young girl, anyway: how can she be a good wife?”
Other times a girl herself could be very straightforward:
” – What are you parameters?
– Well, you know, you’re not buying a sausage in the shop. Even if I told you my parameters, they’d hardly tell you anything about me as a person.
– Yes, you are right. In that case, please be honest and answer just one question.
– Sure.
– Are you fat?”
Funnily enough, for some onlookers these stickers have a helping hand, allowing them to break their own comfort zones. One business-lady decided to dial the number after she realised that she felt weak. Naturally, she didn’t like the feeling, so decided to confront it head-on.
Now that Russia and Germany have tried this, it may be the time for other countries and nations to have a go. I do wonder, though, what it would be like in Italy: I heard traffic in Naples was a murder…
I hope you are enjoying the regular (daily) pearls of wisdom from great people of our huge planet. Coming up this month are articles for Moscow Churches and Moscow Architecture. The idea for the former series sprung up from my fairly recent interest in the church space; the idea for the latter was suggested by one of my friends who has a keen eye for architecture. He indicated that I should pay a particular interest to the early Soviet edifices, so this should make a bulk of the series. However, living in the UK and watching how old buildings are being converted to accommodate the needs of contemporary society has made me watchful for all the similar changes in my native city.
My work on a few side projects is also moving forward nicely. This is an absolutely amazing year, folks!
And before I leave to hunt for things to bring to you, let me share one of my favourite tunes by the inimitable David Bowie. Hands down, England (Britain) does produce unique talents, and given that I’m British also, I am proud and happy.
You have probably heard about Moscow’s atrocious traffic jams. I have to visit my house 30 mins earlier because I must allow for the fact that it may take me 10-20 mins longer to get from my house to the closest tube by bus. In my district we don’t suffer from a lack of buses. In fact, after 7 years there are two or three extra buses connecting my district with the metro stations and/or other districts. But we do suffer from the abundance of cars, lorries, and trucks, and when they organise a perfect traffic jam you cannot help but learn the lesson… and take extra time to get to where you need to go.
The embankment in the photo was photographed shortly before 9pm on Wednesday and doesn’t look too crowded, but I can promise you a photo in the broad daylight that will show exactly how dense the traffic can be here.
And you can also see the Kremlin wall, the Presidential Palace, the Archangel Cathedral, and the Ivan the Great Bell Tower and Belfry.
In the video beneath this paragraph you will see the monument to the Conquerors of Space with the Memorial Museum of Astronautics located in its basement; the Ostankino TV Tower (it is barely noticeable but you can see the silhouette right next to the Monument); the entrance to the VDNKh; and the Cosmos Hotel.
Towards the end of my photo ordeal I was blessed with a great shot. I am amazed myself when I look at it, all the more so as I have no idea how what I saw with my eyes was also captured by the camera. Either way, here is an Ostankino streetlight.
Not unlike Paul Arden in his book, I failed to find a better caption for this photo, so please feel free to offer your ideas. The photo is that of the Institute of Oriental Studies in Moscow. The balconies on the opposite side of the building are fine, wherefore I believe the state of this side has to do with the recent snowfall in Moscow that was followed by rain and led to many trees literally collapsing under the weight. Seems like buildings suffered, too…
 |
| London, 2004 |
The photo in London was taken on a film camera (affectionately known as a “soapbox”) in April 2004; it was the day when I walked from Fitzroy Street through High Holborn and via St Paul’s to the Tower of London.
The photo in Manchester was taken in 2007 on St Patrick’s Day, if I’m not mistaken.
 |
| Manchester, 2007 |
And the photo in Moscow was taken in the first two weeks of October 2010.
Each of them is peculiar in their own way, but I particularly love how they document the passage of time (London, Manchester) and how the past and the future rise to each other’s challenge (Moscow).
 |
| Moscow, 2010 |
I took these photos of the building of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Smolenskaya Square on the day of my birthday in December. My father and I were walking down the Old Arbat Street, wrapped up in the winter chill and fog.