Crayfish for sale on the sidewalk.
A neat wooden-fenced basketball / soccer court.
Friendly pack of dogs outside my building.
A decrepit former church, half now used as a photo store.
Another view on the ex-church.
Friday, August 13, 2010
Monday, August 9, 2010
The Elixir of the Peasantry
People often ask me what I eat while I'm training, if there are foods I choose for pre-race, in-race and post-racial nutrition. I tell these people they're asking the wrong question. What you should be asking is, "What do you drink?"
The answer, as any reader of this should know by now, is kvas - a hearty, low-alcohol beverage made by fermenting black bread. It's the perfect balsam to rehydrate the weary soul of the proletarian athlete. It's like Guinness made an energy drink.
There are two types of kvas - the mass-produced kind you buy in the store, and the kind you find on almost every street corner being sold by old women. They taste different - the first is more like beer and cola, the second like beer and hard apple cider. It's because the first is really a type of soda that has been made to resemble brewed kvas, whereas the second is actually fermented and brewed alongside beer at the local brewery.
To celebrate the Obama-Medvedev love fest, Coca-Cola was offering Kvas for a limited time in Whole Foods stores in New York. More infos here.
If you are a resident of New York and see this, I will pay you back warmly and graciously and maybe even with some money.
Kvas fermenting in a jar
The answer, as any reader of this should know by now, is kvas - a hearty, low-alcohol beverage made by fermenting black bread. It's the perfect balsam to rehydrate the weary soul of the proletarian athlete. It's like Guinness made an energy drink.
There are two types of kvas - the mass-produced kind you buy in the store, and the kind you find on almost every street corner being sold by old women. They taste different - the first is more like beer and cola, the second like beer and hard apple cider. It's because the first is really a type of soda that has been made to resemble brewed kvas, whereas the second is actually fermented and brewed alongside beer at the local brewery.
To celebrate the Obama-Medvedev love fest, Coca-Cola was offering Kvas for a limited time in Whole Foods stores in New York. More infos here.
If you are a resident of New York and see this, I will pay you back warmly and graciously and maybe even with some money.
Sunday, August 8, 2010
Samara, no hotspot of soccer talent
So I decided after last week's mind-numbing 0-0 draw against Spartak that I would give Samara's soccer team the Wings of the Soviets another try. Unfortunately, yesterday's game confirmed the Wings ferocious mediocrity as they unleashed a storm of half-manliness on the unsuspecting Moscow team Lokomotiv.
Despite the fact that we had a two-man advantage for the last 25 minutes of the game - that's right the other team got two red cards - our players were unable to score a goal, and barely mustered a single respectable shot from their tired little girl thighs.
Resorting to other measures, the fans made their own excitement. Little did I realize that when I approached the ticket counter and asked for "a seat in the western bleachers for 200 rubles" I was actually asking for "a seat between two rowdy bands of gopniks ready to throw punches." After a bitch slap, a taunting hair rustle and some harsh words, a couple beefy dudes started jumping the rows to my right and hitting each other. I managed to snap this blurry photo of the police breaking it up as evidence:
There was one hero in the game - the Wings goalkeeper, Eduardo Lobos of Chile, who managed to stop a penalty in the first half and thereby save his team from even further humiliation.
Despite the fact that we had a two-man advantage for the last 25 minutes of the game - that's right the other team got two red cards - our players were unable to score a goal, and barely mustered a single respectable shot from their tired little girl thighs.
Resorting to other measures, the fans made their own excitement. Little did I realize that when I approached the ticket counter and asked for "a seat in the western bleachers for 200 rubles" I was actually asking for "a seat between two rowdy bands of gopniks ready to throw punches." After a bitch slap, a taunting hair rustle and some harsh words, a couple beefy dudes started jumping the rows to my right and hitting each other. I managed to snap this blurry photo of the police breaking it up as evidence:
There was one hero in the game - the Wings goalkeeper, Eduardo Lobos of Chile, who managed to stop a penalty in the first half and thereby save his team from even further humiliation.
Sunday, August 1, 2010
Extreme training
I normally go on runs in the evening to try and avoid the heat, but today as I was sitting in my boxers feeling the sweat slip down my back I decided I might as well run and feel the sweat slip down my back. Besides, with our current heat wave what's the difference between a 7pm run at 95 degrees and a 1pm run at 100 degrees?
Sticking to the shade it actually wasn't that bad. About halfway through the run, the water in my bottle already felt like tepid tea rather than something refreshing. Luckily I found one of those old hand-pump faucets by the side of the road and gave myself a cool shower on the back of the neck.
The stats -
Oh, and much love to the guy who sprayed me with his hose as he was washing his car. This one was for you!
Sticking to the shade it actually wasn't that bad. About halfway through the run, the water in my bottle already felt like tepid tea rather than something refreshing. Luckily I found one of those old hand-pump faucets by the side of the road and gave myself a cool shower on the back of the neck.
The stats -
- Number of drunken, passed out men: 1
- Number of strays: 4
- Chased by: 1
- Number of new anti-NATO graffiti: 2
Oh, and much love to the guy who sprayed me with his hose as he was washing his car. This one was for you!
Don't worry!
A new grocery store opened around the corner from me and I walked in to check it out the other day. They were fully stocked except for a few shelves near the registers:
The sign reads: "Here there will soon be alcohol."
The sign reads: "Here there will soon be alcohol."
Saturday, July 31, 2010
NATO hater strikes again
This time 100km away!
I was wandering around the office in Sukhodol and what do I see painted on the sidewalk?
It's a little faded, but it reads:
I was wandering around the office in Sukhodol and what do I see painted on the sidewalk?
It's a little faded, but it reads:
"War = NATO
1941 = 2010?
Wake up."
Scenes from Samara, 4
"Europe's biggest mosque" in Samara. This city also claims "Europe's biggest public square." Having seen both of them in person... I'm skeptical.
Medvedev oversees business in one of our offices.
Our driver catches some z's.
Where else but Russia can you see this combo? Tucked in collared shirt, camo pants, leather handbag, plastic sandals. Rock on sir, rock on.
Friday, July 30, 2010
Preliminary results
My job involves doing 5-15 interviews a day, talking to Russians and immigrants, usually at markets. Some of the results from the survey are interesting in and of themselves, but I can't probably talk about those without violating one of the many forms I signed a few weeks ago. But I can start a tally of the strange but recurring things that happen to me as I try to fill my daily quota:
1. Mercifully.
- Number of times I have been asked if I am married: 5
- Number of times I have been asked by a woman to marry her and take her back to New York: 2
- Number of times I have been offered help in finding a mistress: 1
- Number of times I have been asked to show my passport to prove that I am American: 2
- Largest number of people who have surrounded me as I attempt to conduct a one-on-one interview: 8 (all male)
- Number of times I have been asked for money: 3
- Number of times I have been compared to Phillip Kirkorov:
1. Mercifully.
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
Бузулук
There was an article a couple of months ago in Kommersant Vlast', one of the more popular Russian weekly news magazines, about what it means to be a "province" in Russia. Basically, the article concluded, it meant anything outside of Moscow and St. Petersburg. No one outside of Russia has heard of Samara - some recognize the name as the girl from The Ring. "Samara is already provincial" one of my coworkers said today. If Samara is provincial, I don't know what you call Buzuluk, a city of 90,000 I visited today, 2.5 hours from Samara and only about 6 hours from Kazakhstan. "The sticks," I guess.
View Larger Map
It's even hard for my Russian colleagues to imagine living there. One kept tripping up on the name, mixing it up with Buguruslan, also about three hours away. As we arrived into the city, he said to the other three of us in the car "Wow, they have civilization here. And they even have cute girls," he said, pointing out the window. "We have everything here," our local guide for the day told us. Half an hour earlier she had told us to stop and eat at a roadside diner because "there's no place in the city." Her pride must have swelled as we rolled into Lenin Square.
Yesterday I visited a couple of similarly provincial towns - Surgut, Sukhodol, Sergievsk. I think the best comparison is to American frontier towns. These are places that were constructed as outposts of the Russian army on the way to the Caspian in the early 18th century. The current drought has added to the atmosphere. Everything is a faded yellow and the streets are dusty. The markets close around 3pm, and you get the impression that by 4 you might see tumbleweed in the streets.
Despite the fact that these are relatively "new" cities by comparison to Moscow or Novgorod, you get the impression that they are old in the sense of abandoned, living in the past. The roads along the way are lined by abandoned farm equipment and burnt out buildings. The tractors and machinery you do see in use are rusty. At one crossroads there stood a monument some 20 feet tall which proclaimed in big block letters "THE COLLECTIVE FARM - ONWARD TO COMMUNISM." Last week a Russian acquaintance complained that Samara was still stuck in the 90s. It could be worse, dude.
The clients were mostly sellers in the market, as usual, hawking Chinese-made underwear and t-shirts. As I interviewed my first client, a young man came to inspect her table of boxer-briefs. He pulled out a pair of black ones with red lips imprinted on the crotch and "Place for Kisses" written in Russian across the fly. Discussing the merits of this design didn't faze the woman or her daughter who worked the neighboring stall. Nor could she be persuaded when he offered 130 rubles instead of 140 (~ $4.75).
Yesterday client income was more diverse - I met a woman who oversees a restaurant-banquet hall-hotel-road stop complex, and later with a woman who sells dried fish by the side of the road. The latter took me to a small shack behind her stall and lay newspaper on a wooden bench before I sat down. She told me she needed 200,000 (~ $6600) rubles for a car. Later she asked me if life was better in the US. "Yeah," I said honestly, "I like Russia, but it's better in the US." She asked me if "even black people" live comfortably there.
The issue of prices and relative levels of comfort and black people comes up a surprising amount. One of my coworkers said that he wished he he could get a 4% loan on a car or a 6% loan on a house - like in the US - so that he could live like "a normal white person." I spoke to an Armenian cobbler today who, laughing, said that life was hard in Russia for "us negroes." But he was jovial, had a pretty wife, and was one of the few people I met who seemed content. For him, Russia was already a step up. I think there was a bit of resentment in his voice when he asked if there were a lot of Armenians in the U.S. - the United States of Armenia, he called it more than once - but only a bit. I don't think there's a lot of work for cobblers in the U.S. anymore, anyway.
View Larger Map
It's even hard for my Russian colleagues to imagine living there. One kept tripping up on the name, mixing it up with Buguruslan, also about three hours away. As we arrived into the city, he said to the other three of us in the car "Wow, they have civilization here. And they even have cute girls," he said, pointing out the window. "We have everything here," our local guide for the day told us. Half an hour earlier she had told us to stop and eat at a roadside diner because "there's no place in the city." Her pride must have swelled as we rolled into Lenin Square.
Yesterday I visited a couple of similarly provincial towns - Surgut, Sukhodol, Sergievsk. I think the best comparison is to American frontier towns. These are places that were constructed as outposts of the Russian army on the way to the Caspian in the early 18th century. The current drought has added to the atmosphere. Everything is a faded yellow and the streets are dusty. The markets close around 3pm, and you get the impression that by 4 you might see tumbleweed in the streets.
Despite the fact that these are relatively "new" cities by comparison to Moscow or Novgorod, you get the impression that they are old in the sense of abandoned, living in the past. The roads along the way are lined by abandoned farm equipment and burnt out buildings. The tractors and machinery you do see in use are rusty. At one crossroads there stood a monument some 20 feet tall which proclaimed in big block letters "THE COLLECTIVE FARM - ONWARD TO COMMUNISM." Last week a Russian acquaintance complained that Samara was still stuck in the 90s. It could be worse, dude.
The clients were mostly sellers in the market, as usual, hawking Chinese-made underwear and t-shirts. As I interviewed my first client, a young man came to inspect her table of boxer-briefs. He pulled out a pair of black ones with red lips imprinted on the crotch and "Place for Kisses" written in Russian across the fly. Discussing the merits of this design didn't faze the woman or her daughter who worked the neighboring stall. Nor could she be persuaded when he offered 130 rubles instead of 140 (~ $4.75).
Yesterday client income was more diverse - I met a woman who oversees a restaurant-banquet hall-hotel-road stop complex, and later with a woman who sells dried fish by the side of the road. The latter took me to a small shack behind her stall and lay newspaper on a wooden bench before I sat down. She told me she needed 200,000 (~ $6600) rubles for a car. Later she asked me if life was better in the US. "Yeah," I said honestly, "I like Russia, but it's better in the US." She asked me if "even black people" live comfortably there.
The issue of prices and relative levels of comfort and black people comes up a surprising amount. One of my coworkers said that he wished he he could get a 4% loan on a car or a 6% loan on a house - like in the US - so that he could live like "a normal white person." I spoke to an Armenian cobbler today who, laughing, said that life was hard in Russia for "us negroes." But he was jovial, had a pretty wife, and was one of the few people I met who seemed content. For him, Russia was already a step up. I think there was a bit of resentment in his voice when he asked if there were a lot of Armenians in the U.S. - the United States of Armenia, he called it more than once - but only a bit. I don't think there's a lot of work for cobblers in the U.S. anymore, anyway.
Sunday, July 25, 2010
Politically Motivated Hooligan Strikes Again
"NATO - Death" and assorted Nazi imagery
"NATO - get out of Russia" (I know, it's small and hard to see)
"Death to capitalism" (kind of off topic but whatever)
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
Red Heat
Remember that movie Red Heat where Arnold Schwarzenegger plays a Moscow narcotics officer named Ivan Danko and wears Soviet muffin hats and speaks Russian with the alacrity of a Time and Temperature recording? "DA SVIDANYUHHH, TOVARISH." Anyway, they were showing it the other day on Russian TV which was great because, for once, it meant that some of the scenes in an American movie weren't overdubbed. And the movie is surprisingly relevant, as the head gangster complains to Arnold "Why are you always picking on us Georgians?"
Here's a great scene from the movie with some Russian obscenities.
I found myself sympathizing with the governator because, actually, his job for the role and my current job are quite similar - they both involve speaking Russian phrases we're completely unfamiliar with and trying to make them sound natural. It's not often in English that I use a phrase like "loan repayment rate" and I think I'm having a hard time pulling it off in Russian.
The other day as I was interviewing a quiet, roundish Kyrgyz woman, a scruffy man with a red t-shirt approached me and asked what I was doing. (This isn't so unusual - people see you in the market talking to one of their neighbors and they're immediately interested. I've been asked if I sell sim-cards, or if I work for the police.) Then he asked why I speak Russian strangely. I told him because I'm not Russian, I'm American. "You mean your parents are Russian and you live in America, right?" "No," I said. "What, you're pure?" "Yup."
Then he asked me to show him my passport. I politely declined and tried to continue the interview. But now I know that was my mistake. I should have thrown him across the room or ripped off his fake leg and extracted a bag of cocaine, then said a one word phrase like "Hooligans" in an English-Austrian accent before I threw him naked out of a banya. Next time.
Here's a great scene from the movie with some Russian obscenities.
I found myself sympathizing with the governator because, actually, his job for the role and my current job are quite similar - they both involve speaking Russian phrases we're completely unfamiliar with and trying to make them sound natural. It's not often in English that I use a phrase like "loan repayment rate" and I think I'm having a hard time pulling it off in Russian.
The other day as I was interviewing a quiet, roundish Kyrgyz woman, a scruffy man with a red t-shirt approached me and asked what I was doing. (This isn't so unusual - people see you in the market talking to one of their neighbors and they're immediately interested. I've been asked if I sell sim-cards, or if I work for the police.) Then he asked why I speak Russian strangely. I told him because I'm not Russian, I'm American. "You mean your parents are Russian and you live in America, right?" "No," I said. "What, you're pure?" "Yup."
Then he asked me to show him my passport. I politely declined and tried to continue the interview. But now I know that was my mistake. I should have thrown him across the room or ripped off his fake leg and extracted a bag of cocaine, then said a one word phrase like "Hooligans" in an English-Austrian accent before I threw him naked out of a banya. Next time.
From the annals of donkey parasailing
If you have yet to see it, please amuse yourself while observing due respect for the suffering of the poor animal by watching video of some leotards sending a donkey parasailing in the south of Russia:
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
Scenes from Samara, 3
My street.
Children playing in the courtyard.
The words on the right read: "graffiti is fridom".
Waiting for the bus.
Went to the soccer game, FC Krylya Sovetov Samara (translates as "Wings of the Soviets") versus CSKA Moscow. Samara was ranked 6th going in, CSKA 2nd. Despite the amazing team name, we lost 1-0.
CSKA fans get rowdy (and 3rd degree-burned?) for their victory.
Scenes from Samara, 2
A fruit/vegetable seller on my street.
A FINCA billboard.
Kirov Market, where a lot of our clients work.
Some guys playing ping-pong after they closed their stalls.
A guy pushes shoe boxes on a cart at the market.
Sunday, July 18, 2010
Scenes from Samara, 1
The courtyard outside my apartment.
The embankment and beach. Stretches for two miles.
The line outside Zhigulevskoe Beer Factory for discounted beer (35rubles / ~$1 per liter).
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