“Party like a Russian…

..End of discussion”. These are words from a popular song by Robbie Williams, and as New Year’s Eve is close, we will speak about the way the Russians party.

Well, you know what? After I got today a message from my American friend that the only Russian celebrity he knows is Putin, and after I heard this “Party like a Russian” song with the words “Ain't no refutin' or disputin' I'm a modern Rasputin”, I have an impression that there are only two Russian celebrities - Putin and Rasputin, that the whole world knows. By coincidence their names sound alike, by coincidence they have something to do with politics, by coincidence their names are associated in the world (apart from Russia) with lots of clichés: “oppressor” and “warmonger” for the first one and “Russia's greatest love machine”(words from an old Boney M song) for the second one. I may only hope that one day the world will go beyond clichés and that Putin’s/Rasputin’s names, together with the names of other famous Russians, will be associated with more or less objective information. But…

… this is not the point. The point is: only 2 are days left till New Year’s Eve!!!

Skating rink on Patriarch Ponds

And New Year  is the most important holiday of the year in Russia (more important than Christmas for most people).

People usually celebrate it at home with a traditional meal: they cook different kinds of salads (not light salads for models, but mayonnaise-infused heavy salads) - “Оливье” (“Olivier”), aka “Russian salad”, “под шубой” (“herring under fur coat”), chicken or goose, potatoes, etc. You are supposed to have a lot of food on the table, the more you have – the better will be the year. Usually people cook so much that they can be eating the food they cooked for 31 December during the whole vacation period!

So, if you want to spend 31 December in a Russian way, do the following:

•           Wake up in the morning, full of energy. You will need it;
•           Buy and decorate Christmas tree (most people have already done it, but if you haven’t, you still have the chance to do it). You can leave it decorated till 14 January, when we celebrate “Old New year”;
•          If you spend the last day of the year as a Russian, you have already lots of food in the fridge. So, take it out and start to cook traditional Russian holiday food – it will take you from 2 to 4 hours, depends on how many guests are invited;
•          While cooking, watch favorite special New Year movies: “The Irony of Fate or Have a Nice Bath”, “Ivan Vasilievich changes profession”, etc.;
•          As soon as you have cooked everything, take a nap for an hour or start sending messages with congratulations or call the people saying “с Наступающим” (“s Nastupayustchim!”) – “happy upcoming year”;
•          Dress up and get ready to accept the guests;
•          At about 9 or 10 p.m. you will start eating with the guests, talking and enjoying the company, “seeing the old year off”. There will be toasts about the year which is about to end. The TV will be on, because there will be special new year programs that some of the guests will maybe even watch (not all of them, but still);
•          15 minutes before midnight  - make sure the TV is on! It is time to listen to the president’s speech. No matter what our political views are, every year 15 minutes before midnight we listen to the president’s wishes for the upcoming year. As soon as the speech is over, the clock tower on Red Square chimes, fireworks burst into the air and the New Year officially begins. Make sure you make a wish during the chime of the clock, it will come true! If you want to make a wish in a sophisticated way (and thus, there is almost a guarantee it will come true) – you have to write it down on a peace of paper, burn it, put it in a glass of champagne and drink the whole glass of champagne during the chime;
•          As soon as the New Year began, we welcome it by saying “С Новым годом” (“S Novim Godom!”) or “С Новым Годом, с новым счастьем!" (“To the New Year, to the new happiness!"). This is how the first toast of the year sounds;
•          You are supposed to hide your presents for the people with whom you celebrate under the tree. They will open it after the chime. If you celebrate in a company which includes children, they will believe that the presents were brought by Ded (not “dead”!) Moroz, the Russian version of Santa;
•          Now that you have “met the New year” in a proper way, with champagne and food, you can start the partying – dancing, playing, singing. Some people will do it at home, others will go to a club or join their friends for a party. Many people will meet at the square by the Christmas tree (no matter what city/town they are in) to continue the celebrations together – they will drink champagne and display the fireworks before going home/visiting friends/going to night clubs;
•          Stay up as long as you can – party hard and

Have a wonderful start of the year (and the whole year too)…!:)

Russians and the destiny

A couple of weeks ago I was watching a play in one of Moscow theatres (based on Anton Ponizovsky’s book «Обращение вслух» (I Am All Ears), 2013. The main topic of the book/play was the “mysterious Russian soul”. In the play, a number of different life stories of Russian commoners were told by those commoners and then discussed by four Russian people, who accidentally met in Switzerland. The four people, among whom there was a middle-aged guy who mainly criticized his compatriots, and a young guy, who was defending them, tried to discover the essence of ‘Russianness’ from those life stories.

There were many topics raised, and if you are interested, you can read the book/watch the play. But one of the ideas that I want to share with you today is the belief of most Russians in destiny.

The example from the play was the following: a girl loved a guy, very much. He loved her too. They saw each other from time to time, enjoying the company of each other. After some time he joined the army and was far from the place she lived. When the guy she loved came to see her for one day from the army, she knew he still loved her, but he did not say anything about future and marriage. She did not ask of course, women are not supposed to ask such things. So he left to continue his service, and she married another guy. She still loved the first guy, but she thought that since he did not propose, and she was of the age when people are supposed to get married, it was her destiny to marry the other one, who proposed.

The middle-aged guy from the play laughed at that woman – isn’t it stupid to rely on destiny in such questions? Isn’t it one of the most important choices in life? If yes, why then didn’t she at least proactively ask the guy she loved about his plans for the future with her?

White square, Moscow

Well, you know… I’ve heard some stories like this one, and I often hear from Russian people answering the question why they are not together with someone they love, or why they did not go to the university they wanted, or why they did not move to the place they wanted one short answer – “Не судьба” (“it was not meant to be”). I hear it often, but not always, because some people know that “destiny” is not something 100% predetermined, they know that we ourselves are responsible for our life, so "destiny" means circumstances we live in, and some of them we can choose (like partners for life, profession, etc.) while others we can not (parents, color of our eyes, place of birth). Yet in Russia you will often get that "не судьба" answer - probably, sometimes it will be so just because it is the shortest one:)

It is funny, but if I ask the same questions people from the west, they will more likely give a logic answer, explaining their choice – because they believe that their life and choices in it totally, 100% depend on them, not on some kind of external power.

Maybe our choices in life totally depend on us and we can logically explain them, or maybe they depend on the destiny. Anyway, I personally think that there is inner logic in our destiny (and for the definition of destiny - see above) :) 

Saying hi in Russia

Russia. Office in the morning. There are 4 colleagues sitting in one room. Another colleague enters and shakes hands with one of the four only. Why?

• He has already shaken hands with the others this morning;
• He does not know the others;
• He shakes hands with the colleague of the same level only.

Well, none of the above is true. 

The guy does not shake hands with the other colleagues just because the other colleagues are women.
So, normally, if a male colleague enters a room where there are 1 male colleague and 3 female, he will come up to the guy and will shake hands with him, and will say “hello” to the three women, maybe without even looking at them. If a guy shakes hands with a woman in Russia, then he is a foreigner.

How do women feel about that? Well… when I was younger, I thought that this is unfair: why do men get such a personal “hello” while women do not? So, I tried to shake hands with men and each time they refused, embarrassed, offering to kiss my hand instead (OK, this is a little bit archaic, so I did not accept the offer).
Now I do not try to shake hands with anyone. I just feel it is right the way it is. 
And I prefer my hand to be kissed instead of being shaken.

St. Basil's Cathedral, Moscow

Apart from this difference in male/female saying hi, women sometimes kiss each other on the cheeks, if they are close (guys do not normally do that to guys, but they can kiss women).
It is such a pleasure to be a woman in Russia, don’t you think so? 

PS: Special thanks to those male colleagues who did shake hands with me despite the rules. I appreciate it.