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. 

Rude Russians

Back in 2008, when I was in New York on work and travel program, during a conversation with my friend John I said something which was not very polite and then apologized for being rude. I do not remember what I apologized for, but I do remember what he answered: “You are not rude, just Russian”. It was a good excuse, and I was relieved that it was not entirely my fault. And of course it was a joke, but as we say in Russia, behind every joke there is a grain of truth. I’ve heard very often that people from abroad think Russians are rude and/or arrogant.

Well, people that you meet on the street, at a supermarket or at a restaurant may seem rude to you, if you come from another culture. And sometimes they are (in any country there are rude people). But very often people come to the conclusion that Russians are rude just because we do not normally talk or smile to strangers that much. For example, today I met my friend at a coffee house, we went for a walk and had dinner at a restaurant later. In both places the waiters did not say hello to us, did not wish us a nice evening, did not ask us any questions (apart from “have you made your choice?”). They just brought us the menu and brought us the food. I guess that waiters who do not talk and do not smile could seem rude to people from other cultures, but to me it was the best way they could do their job: they were quick and the food was good, and I wanted to talk to my friend. It would even have seemed suspicious if they had started asking questions or talking about something with us.

Sign saying it is forbidden to talk to strangers (Moscow, Patriarch ponds)

Unlike in Moscow, when my sister and I were at a Vancouver restaurant, a very nice smiley waitress talked to us for some minutes about the weather, asked us what our plans for the day were, what we had done before coming to the restaurant, etc. First I thought she was a friend of my sister’s or a waitress she saw often at that place. Then I realized that this is how things are like in Canadian restaurants

When I was in France in 2006, twice a week I went to the same supermarket, and the guy who worked there always smiled to me with a broad smile and said “Bonne journée”. I was 18, it was my first trip abroad and in the shops in my town people did not say that to clients. So I thought the guy was secretly in love with me. Well, to my disappointment later I realized I was not that special: he smiled and said “Bonne journée” to everyone…

When I was 20, I read a book on psychology (something about positive thinking), where one of the exercises was to smile to people in the street. I took the task very seriously and smiled to about 7 people in the streets of Nizhniy Novgorod. The first 3 were guys and it was ok (they smiled back or accidentally on purpose showed their wedding finger). Another 3 looked at me as if I was mad. The 7^th was a woman of about 50 that started shouting: she thought I was laughing at her, and she had that reaction just because she did not expect a smile from a stranger.

The conclusion from this is the following: in general we are not rude. We just do not talk/smile to strangers that much. We keep all that for close people.

So…Dear John! If you read it, I have a confession to make. I, Tatiana Globa, was (maybe) rude in 2008. I am personally responsible for that, Please do not blame it on my nation:)

Meet A. Blok

If you live in Moscow and think where to go out of the city on the weekend, one of the ideas is to go to places like Shakhmatovo-Boblovo-Tarakanovo, which are associated with the names of Alexander Bloc, a major poet of the Russian Symbolism style, one of the most important poets of the Silver Age of Russian poetry, and with the name of the famous Russian chemist and inventor Dmitri Mendeleev, who created the periodic table of elements. All the three places are located very close to each other, and it will take you about 2 hours to get there from Moscow.

Shakhmatovo is the place where Alexander Bloc used to live, where he got his inspiration and wrote many of his famous poems, including the cycle of poems “Stikhi o prekrasnoi Dame” (Verses About the Beautiful Lady) dedicated to the love of his life, his wife Lyubov Mendeleeva. Here is one of the poems:

* * *

Shakhmatovo, November 2016

Мне страшно с Тобой встречаться.
Страшнее Тебя не встречать.
Я стал всему удивляться,
На всем уловил печать

По улице ходят тени,
Не пойму - живут, или спят...
Прильнув к церковной ступени,
Боюсь оглянуться назад.

Кладут мне на плечи руки,
Но я не помню имен.
В ушах раздаются звуки
Недавних больших похорон.

А хмурое небо низко -
Покрыло и самый храм.
Я знаю- Ты здесь Ты близко.
Тебя здесь нет. Ты - там.

Of meeting you I am frightened,
More frightened I am not to meet.
To wonder at all things I've started,
On all things a brand I have put.

On street the shadows are walking,
I cannot say - live or dead.
To the church staircase leaning,
I am afraid to look back.

People put hands on my shoulders,
But I don't remember the names.
Resounds the noise in my ears
Of recent funeral days.

And the dark sky is low -
It covers the sounds everywhere.
I know: You are here. You're close.
You are not here. You - are there.


With Lyubov (Lyuba) Mendeleeva, daughter of the chemist Dmitri Mendeleev, young Bloc often played on the stage of a small home theatre in Boblovo, the Mendeleev’s manor: he was Hamlet and she was his Ophelia. He loved her very much and said that there were only two women in his life: Lyuba and all the others. Unfortunately his married life was far from unclouded happiness: there was a love triangle between Alexander, Lyubov and Andrei Bely.

Blok had an influence on many famous Russian poets, and he was admired by his literary colleagues, such as Anna Akhmatova, Marina Tsvetaeva, Boris Pasternak and Vladimir Nabokov. He was not only admired by his fellow poets: many girls were in love with him, which was natural, as he was handsome, highly intellectual, and his thoughts and poetry made girls’ hearts beat. To one of them, Elizaveta Yurievna Pilenko, also known later as Mother Maria (Saint Mary) and who was a member of the French Resistance during World War II (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maria_Skobtsova) he addressed his poem:

***
Когда вы стоите на моем пути,

Такая живая, такая красивая,
Но такая измученная,
Говорите все о печальном,
Думаете о смерти,
Никого не любите
И презираете свою красоту -
Что же? Разве я обижу вас?

О, нет! Ведь я не насильник,
Не обманщик и не гордец,
Хотя много знаю,
Слишком много думаю с детства
И слишком занят собой.
Ведь я - сочинитель,
Человек, называющий все по имени,
Отнимающий аромат у живого цветка.

Сколько ни говорите о печальном,
Сколько ни размышляйте о концах и началах,
Все же, я смею думать,
Что вам только пятнадцать лет.
И потому я хотел бы,
Чтобы вы влюбились в простого человека,
Который любит землю и небо
Больше, чем рифмованные и нерифмованные речи о земле и о небе.

Право, я буду рад за вас,
Так как - только влюбленный
Имеет право на звание человека.

6 февраля 1908

***
When you are standing on my path,

Boblovo, November 2016

So full of life, so full of beauty,
And yet so wearied,
You only talk about sad things,
You only think about death,
You do not love a soul,
And you despise your beauty –
What then? Could I offend you?

O, no! I’m not an oppressor,
Not a deceiver or an arrogant man,
Although I know quite a lot,
And I think too much since my youth,
And I’m too occupied with myself.
You see, I’m – a writer,
A man, who calls everything by its name,
And steals the aroma from a living flower.

Just don’t talk about sad things,
Or reflect on endings and new beginnings,
I still dare to think,
That you are only fifteen years old.
And for this reason I’d like it,
If you could fall in love with a simple person,
One, who loves the earth and the sky more than
The rhyming or non-rhyming words about the earth and the sky.

Truly, I’ll be happy for you,
Since - only the one who’s in love
Has the right to be called a human.

February 6, 1908
By Alexander Blok
Translation by Andrey Kneller

Here is on of the most famous poems by Alexander Blok:

Ночь, улица, фонарь, аптека,

Бессмысленный и тусклый свет.
Живи еще хоть четверть века -
Все будет так. Исхода нет.

Умрешь - начнешь опять сначала
И повторится все, как встарь:
Ночь, ледяная рябь канала,
Аптека, улица, фонарь.

Some night and street, some chemist's lantern
Is bringing senseless weary light.
Well, nothing changes, that's one pattern,
Live extra twenty-five and find.

You die to start a life all over,
All things repeat as did before.
That night, cold waters at quay border,
That light, that street, that chemist's store.

“

”

"The night, the street, the lantern, the drugstore..." (1912)Translated by Alexei Parphyonov

You can, of course, find a lot of information about Blok and Mendeleev on the internet. They were prominent figures known not only in Russia, and they got their inspiration here, in these villages, not far from Moscow. So, welcome to get your inspiration here too :)

Dress code and democracy

Do you think women in Russia can dress like this (chose the right option):

•           to the office;
•          to a party;
•           for a date;
•           to a night club;
•          to take out the litter;
•           for a journey by train.

The answer is – all the options are possible: in Russia women can wear (and they do wear) short skirts and high (very high) heels everywhere.

When I asked one of my ex-colleagues what he thought was special in Russia and different from abroad, the first thing that came to his mind was women’s dress code. In his opinion, no matter what a woman wears (mini skirt or long dress, etc.) – she wants to be attractive. I promised that if I write about this topic I will tell the criteria how we girls chose what to wear. I was planning  to investigate the issue thoroughly and to draw a detailed decision tree after the investigation. And you know what… I got up this morning, opened my wardrobe, realized (again!) that I have nothing to wear and chose something more or less suitable to my mood.

I was getting dressed for the office, and well, I would have probably chosen a mini skirt, if it had not been snowing (yes, it is November 3 and it snows in Moscow). Oh, sorry. Snow do not stop us from wearing mini skirts. Did I think about the dress code? Well, apart from banks and some other places which have some special strict regulations about dress code, dress code is an elastic term. If you go to a conference for lawyers, you will see men wearing jeans and shirts, not so often – suits, and women wearing all kinds of skirts, dresses and trousers of all kinds of cuts, colors and prints (flowers, deers, Mickey Mouse, etc. are OK). 

So, mini skirt, suit or jeans, it all depends on the mood. And (with some exceptions, like, maybe, gym) there are no occasions or places or time when it is inappropriate to wear high heels in Russia. This is democracy. 



Photo by Ksenia Zasetskaya

Russian soul: getting to know, basic level

You have been living in Russia (or have been in touch with Russian friends/colleagues) for quite some time now, but you still feel you do not understand Russian people? Well, it is totally fine. It is just because of the "enigmatic Russian soul". So, if you want to understand better your Russian colleagues, partners or friends, you should probably try to follow some advice given below:

• start to learn about the soul by exploring Russia and observing ordinary people: if you think that by coming to Moscow you have seen the country, you are wrong. Moscow is Moscow, Russia is Russia. Just for you not to have a culture shock, first see Moscow and only then go to other places;
• when in Moscow, use the subway: if you go only on foot/by taxi, you will be able to see only touristic places, and it is not you goal: of course, visiting the Kremlin is a must, but the subway in Moscow is also special. Apart from looking at the old stations, look at people: some of them are just fashion stars:) https://vk.com/mmfshn;
• get to know the city with the locals: thus you will not only see the must-sees, but will learn more about the life style of a typical Moscovite; 
• if you have survived after seeing different parts of Moscow (not only the centre), you are ready for the trip! Take a map of Russia, close your eyes, chose the destination. It should be a small town, about 5 hours by train so that you would not be too exhausted after the trip, but it must be not close to Moscow (you can buy the ticket online on www.rzd.ru or www.tutu.ru, if you do not speak Russian); 
• get to know Russian culture: if you like to read, then read some of the books, that are truly Russian (the list of them will be in one of the following posts), go to the theatre, listen to famous Russian composers (e.g., Tchaikovski). If you do not like all that, you will probably like one of Leningrad's music videos, like this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=et281UHNoOU. Ask you Russian friend to translate dialogues from it so that you could understand what it is about;
• watch a movie: I do not know a single Russian who have not seen "Irony of fate" movie: this is about a middle aged guy who gets drunk with his friends in banya on New Year's Eve and accidentally goes to Saint-Petersburg instead of his friend: the rest of the story is quite touching, so if you like stories with happy endings and want to see a movie with Russian soul, watch this one;
• spend a day like a hero from a Russian fairy tale: enjoy yourself, do nothing. In Russian fairy tales and epic poems it happens often that a guy (Emelya, Ilia Muromets) is idling away his time while his brothers are constantly working, and not they but he becomes the hero because he catches a magic fish who fulfills all his dreams or conquers the bad guy because he is very strong. Follow their example: lie down, spare your strength, wait for magic to happen (I am sure it will be the most difficult tasks of all);

  

  The Bogatyrs (V. Vasnetsov, 1898). Ilia Muromets is the one in the middle.

• visit your Russian colleague/friend: you will see how people live. It depends on how close you are, but usually if you want to come to a Russian with a visit, you do not plan it long beforehand, For example, I never know who will call me and say that in an hour or so he/she will come to me for a cup of tea (in case I am home): receiving guests is a pleausre. not an inconvinience for us (if we like the guest, of course);
• try Russian food (like syrniki. pelmeni, pirozhki, Russian soups, etc.).

Hope that will be useful:) Please feel free to ask questions (if any).

Weekend à la Russe

It’s Sunday evening and the weekend is almost over, but - good news! – in 5 days there will be another one. So, how do Russians spend their weekends in summer?
 

Unless there are some plans in the city or special plans to travel to another place, most people leave the city (or town) to go to their dachas (if they are originally from the city) or to the place they are from (if they were born in one place and work in another).

Dacha is a summerhouse. Most dachas are located in dacha communities (where people do not live all year round, but just go on weekends or for the whole summer), others are in villages (where apart from dachas there are local people who live there all the time).

Flowers and herbs from the dacha

In summer the Russians like to spend their weekend fishing, going to forests to pick berries or mushrooms, going with friends and family to a picnic with shashlik (barbecue) by the river, enjoying the nature and the weather.

 We do not go to pick mushrooms/berries just because we want to eat them – you can always buy them during the season. But it is such a pleasure to wake up on the weekend, to put on something baggy and military-style (there are lots of mosquitos in our forests, so wearing such clothes you will not only be scary-looking, but also a hard nut to crack for them) and to go to the forest, breathe that smell, enjoy that beauty, look for the berries/mushrooms, sometimes for quite a time before you find the first one, make a competition with your companion who brings more of them home. After 4 or 5 hours you leave the forest, stop by the river on your way to swim and then come home, tired but extremely happy. You have lunch with the perfectly fried potatoes with mushrooms, then go to banya (Russian sauna) to relax.

In fact, the process of picking berries is very healthy: you make not less than 20 000 steps and you have to make squats hundreds of times for every berry (if it is wild strawberry, for example), so it is not only pleasure but also kind of sport. And aside from burned calories you breath in the smell of summer ecologically-friendly forest and then you enjoy the taste of the berries, which are so rich in vitamins and microelements.

 

Another Russian “sport” for the weekend is fishing. Well, this process is not that healthy – you have to sit on the river side for a long time (alone or together with a group of friends) and you have to drink lots of beer. It is OK if after fishing for some hours you come home without a fish (it is not the result, but the process that matters, same as with going to the forest). 

Fishing is for men, this is why I can not tell you much about that. They say in Russia that a woman at the fishing party is bad luck: you will not hook a single fish. And I want to bring luck, not bad luck. So I’d better meet you after the fishing with buckets full of water (this is of good omen in Russia :)

Russian village

If you travel to Russia for the first (second, etc.) time

(survival tactics)

First of all, be ready for disappointments: 1) we do not drink vodka all the time (some of us have never tried it, some of us  - like me - tried it twice in our lives, mixed with juice, at a party with Austrian friends), 2) KGB will not follow you – it even does not exist anymore. I will dispel other myths about Russia next time, today I will get you morally prepared for travelling to my beloved mother country.

Cathedral of Christ the Savior

·         Learn Russian or take a Russian-speaking friend with you, because not so many Russians speak English or another foreign language. Well, Moscow or other big cities are better, but if you go to a small town, at least download a phrase book on you phone. Do not repeat to Russians in Russia the phrase that some Russian friends of yours taught you when they were visiting your country– most probably they are swear words;

·         Do not ask a Russian “How are you”, unless you have an hour or so to listen to the answer. If to that question a Russian answered just “fine” or “good”, it means that 1) the person does not speak English or 2) the person does not want to speak now or 3) the person has experience in talking to foreigners;

·         Do not drink alcohol at all if you rent a car – drinking while driving (even a glass of wine/beer) is prohibited;

·         Be ready for long distances – if someone invites you to a dinner to his house and says “it’s close”, it may be an hour or more away by car/subway from where you are;

·         If a friend or colleague invited you to his house, do not eat beforehand: it is 99% probability that they will serve you a dinner. The rest 1% will at least offer you tea with biscuits or something sweet. If none of that happened – your friend is not Russian. If you are visiting a small town, the dinner will be substantial and they will be disappointed if you do not eat the food prepared especially for your visit. So, as I said, do not eat beforehandJ;

·         Take off your shoes when you come to someone’s house – we wear slippers at home, and not only after having shower (no need to bring your slippers with you though);

·         If you go somewhere by subway, and a woman on the opposite is closely watching you, do not think she is from KGB (remember: it does not exist), she is just interested – Russians are interested in foreigners and like to communicate with them;

·         Or – maybe that woman is watching you reproachfully because you are seated while an old woman is standing in front of you as there are no other seats available: we give places to the old and the pregnant. Girls also appreciate when a man gives place to them (even if they are not pregnant) – it is natural and polite, even though it does not happen often;

·         Be ready for all sorts of personal questions – it is OK if your colleagues ask you whether you are married or not, if yes, how you met your husband/wife, what books you like to read, where you go on vacation, etc. It just means we like you and we are interested. If you feel being interviewed and do not like answering such questions – just ask the person same questions and see how he/she will enjoy talking about himself/herself;

·         When in Russia, do as the Russians do – in my next posts I will tell you in more details what to wear and how to behaveJ  

“Next time you come to Moscow I will give you a romantic guide!” – I said cheerfully to my British colleague Fred when he came to Moscow office on business. Fred looked confused but smiled politely, as he was a gentleman. Well, I did not mean that some romantic person will escort him around Moscow, I just wanted to share with him a book where the most beautiful and romantic places of Moscow were marked. The conclusion from here is that even if we speak English, it is not always that understandable. So be ready to guess from Russian “English” what we mean.

Well, if you have any questions about travelling to Russia and survival tactics there, please contact me at tatianagloba@gmail.com, I will be glad to help. I still have that romantic guide (a book) that I can give youJ