Hold You In His Armchair / Coughs And Sneezles

Christ, I thought, this country is actually trying to fucking kill me.

No sooner do I kick one bout of being incapacitated from an averse reaction to "Surprise, fucking Russia!" then my fucking cough comes back and I get to be bent over double wheezing in what must sound very dramatic to my landlady's daughter next door. Actually, she's probably used to lesser Westerners getting a cold and turning on the melodrama by now, considering her family have been hosting clueless English speakers for the past five years or so. I mean, I don't even get yelled at for not wearing slippers round the flat or whistling indoors.

Further to my previous research, it turns out from some class notes I noticed artfully strewn across the bottom of my rucksack that if you whistle indoors somebody's going to straight up die. What the hell? Why do the Slavic house spirits (they totally exist, by the way. No, really, ask anyone.) hate whistling that much? Did they get run into Dick Van Dyke when he was pretending to be a Corkney? Did Dick Van Dyke even get to the Soviet Union? Did the KGB bring him in to record special vignettes deemed too awful even for the Dick Van Dyke Show / Diagnosis Murder to help crack particularly unyielding dissidents?

Actually, scratch that, it's completely ridiculous. Anyone who's exposed to a one-on-one rendition of "It's a jorly orlidie with Mary" will disappear into so deep and primal a part of themselves they'll be left an empty, gaping husk that even the most sadistic of government-endorsed torturers would take pity on, probably rightly fearing its animal retaliation if they do otherwise. I know that if our hypothetical dissident doesn't have an idiomatic grasp of English that far he's unlikely to appreciate the true awfulness of Dick Van Dyke murdering the Cockney tongue in his own inimitable-under-the-Geneva-convention way, but I like to think that on some kind of subatomic level you can just sense how hellishly wrong it is. Y'know, like when you see kids in the street here with mullets.

Look! I brought it back to Russia! I apologise for basically comparing Dick Van Dyke to a comedy Dementor, by the way - I don't want the Dementors suing for defamation. They've got a way of sucking every last penny out of you. (Is there Dementor slash fiction?... Oh for the love of God. Moving very, very swiftly on, before I get the urge to check for Dick Van Dyke X Dementor slash fic and Rule 35 myself.)

Still here? I would take that as an indication of my current levels of sanity after spending a week or two away from classes. On a practical life-in-Russia note, I thought it might be interesting to describe my experiences of Russian healthcare, as I'm still pretending I've got a series of theme for each post, though considering this'll make about three I don't think there's technically enough data points to make any kind of a trend. Oh well, what the hell! (... I don't plan on cutting anyone off at the waist, incidentally. Though crashing and burning into a mountain is a distinct possibility. Look, the stupid lit references are back!)

So, the first time I was ill I just had the standard chest infection thing that my pathetic, semi-asthmatic lungs love to sponge up given the slightest provocation. Not even my semi-automatic umbrella helped! Don't worry, they took the ricin needle out before I got it. It was cheaper. Just kidding, folks! It means it pops out but you've got to scoop it back in manually. Actually, do you scoop umbrellas in? I can't say I've ever had to talk about it - I usually just frantically try to squash-wrestle the whole thing back into its impossibly small bag while praying I'm not going to hit the "It's taking care of dissidents time!" (Chim chimmerney ch-) button and syringe some poor sod who's trying to get to his desk at the politburo on time while I'm attempting to negotiate not getting wet AND ALL FOR BLOODY NOWT.

In my defence I still claim that walking round in St Petersburg is at least two-thirds of the way to trying to breathe through a puddle. There is only one word repellant enough to describe the feeling of getting out of your nice centrally-heated flat/classroom (and yes, it is centrally heated because no-one has control of their own personal heating because Communism) and being lightly slapped in the lungs with the local atmosphere, and that word is moist. Yes, the atmosphere here is fucking moist. I'm pleased to report that that skin-crawlingly creepy word is just as phonetically repulsive in Russian, where it's vlazhny. (Here's someone with a stronger stomach than me pronouncing it.) Just roll either of those words around in your mouth for a bit (avoid the urge to spit/gag/retch, it's natural, and anyway, it's in the fucking air round here so you can't get rid of it) and you'll understand exactly why I wasn't at all surprised that after three weeks here it felt like my lungs were carrying at least a pint of fetid swamp water. BECAUSE THEY ACTUALLY WERE.

Now, when I'm at home, traipsing across the moors (the word rhymes with poor, not pour, and I don't sodding care what the local authority says - I had to look at that daft "Paws on the Moors" sign for five minutes before I twigged) and happily scowling at things (like the aforementioned sign that's meant to be promoting keeping your dog on a leash or something, not that that ever stops the bloody dee-dahs from coming round and letting them loose when they're not setting up their portable barbecues and scorching the grass brown on the flat bits by the road where they park their bloody cars three abreast because no-one lives out in t'sticks, do deh) (ahem), happy as a pig in muck (as I've literally never heard anyone say) I like to think I'm pretty much indestructible. The only times I can remember getting properly ill recently have been when I've been in the South (never a good idea) or when I've been here. My entirely sensible rationalisation is that both places want me dead quite a lot. And hey, a few more ill-advised KGB jokes and my convictions might just become 50% more accurate! But really, apparently Russians don't have a word for being paranoid (paranoiya being more of a technical term), because if you feel like everyone's out to get you and following your every move you're probably just paying attention. (You know where the In Soviet Russia jokes started? "In West, you listen to man on radio. In Soviet Russia, man on radio listen to you!" Stone the crows, that was a joke with actual wit before it became a meme? Colour me phlegmatic. Speaking of which...)

Anyway, long story short, I thought, right, I'm coughing up green stuff, let's get some antibiotics. One of the problems with not being in the British Isles/the EU is no NHS, which any number of I think well-meaning Russians and Americans have tried to convince me is a Big Government fraud designed to rob us of our hard-earned blah-blah (my usual reply is, "Oh, no, we already have that, it's called RBS) (burn!... from about 2008. Come on, they're allowed to have their politics and hairdos stuck in 1985), but seriously, guys, it's free healthcare. And by 'free', I do in fact mean 'free at point of use' as one enterprising Republican tried to catch me out on. Having our incredibly Socialist government (oh look, my cough's come back) doesn't actually mean they just wait for Mary Poppins to come back and - oh shit, Dick Van Dyke scared her away, didn't he? He'll have caused the fucking Apocalypse by the end of this post, I tell you.

But yeah, I rocked up to the shiny clinic called EuroMed in a bid to cash in on my insurance policy and whine me some antibiotics if I hadn't managed to catch the bubonic plague or something as well. After about an hour of the people on the desk trying to coerce my insurers to cough up (blood, stones, it's their job), which wasn't such a drag considering the large number of rather attractive young women in the lobby who were happy to exchange pleasantries in Russian about how annoying all this Bloody Red Tape is (British conversation skills are transferable? Result!), a very nice (male) doctor came out and ushered me into an examination room.

I started out in English, thinking I'd rather not fuck something up and end up leaving with fewer internal organs than I came in with because I put a stress in the wrong place (no, really, that's scarily feasible), but it turned out that it was easier to go for speaking-very-slowly Russian. Eek. Actually, it was fine, and I found that in Russian the word for "green stuff you cough up" is actually just "greenery" (oh Russian, you truly are the master language), and that like a lot of Russians the doctor liked saying "womit". I've really never got this - why do the hypercorrection on that? My dear friend Russian Mistress (about whom more in subsequent posts), whose English is so good it makes me and my friends feel fairly pathetic, still frequently says "wodka" - I mean, not only is it a fairly Russian word, I'm pretty sure it's one of first words Russian children learn, after "mama" and slightly before "all gone". Maybe she's just got Polish blood and she's too ashamed to admit to it - as should anyone from a  culture that can turn Vladimir (aka the scariest name in existence) into something pronounced Vwodek.

So after a battery of tests, including getting about three pints of blood drawn for testing (I felt like Renton or something. Also like if I breathed too heavily the needle would snap. Cue reciting a couple of Shakespeare sonnets in my head because nothing calms one down like the realisation you're a total pseud whose loss wouldn't leave the world a farthing the worse.) and having x-rays taken (Awesome! They did one of my skull to test for sinus inflation and I got a copy to use for my first album cover because come on, guys!) I finally got some antibiotics and some anti-inflammatory stuff. (Good to pop a few when talking to the Americans, actually.)

And then having paid my £80 end of the deal, I found out that in Russia you can get pretty much any drugs bar psychiatric meds over the fucking counter. So you know, I got a bit of swamp on my lungs and blew my medical insurance on some flashy tests and a batch of Doc Fleming's finest. On the plus side, it turns out I didn't have TB (good to know that TB jab isn't just a random spot on my arm) or any other particularly interesting diseases. The funny part is that my landlady had been saying for the previous week or so that she could go down to the pharmacy and get me something, though I thought this would be some kind of cruel and unusual herbal shit - which Russian Mistress has insisted on feeding me anyway this time round and it's fucking foul, in case you were feeling disappointed at the lack of Schadenfreudesfutte. Also, as it's Chinese, the name is given in English as "oral fluid", which gives an approximation of what it tastes like. Her friends looked on bemusedly as I laughed uncontrollably for about ten minutes. I pretended it was something you couldn't translate to get out of admitting how incredibly mature I am.

To be fair, if you go private back home you can get just as shafted - I dropped into a private clinic in London because I needed to get a same-day HIV test, because I'm amazing at getting things done ahead of time (not that you'd be able to tell by my update schedule over here or owt), and paid about £130 for having my finger pricked with a needle and the resulting drop of blood put in a little blue tray that stayed blue to mean I didn't have HIV. When I got the bill I went back and had some more free water from the fountain thing a) because if you average it out it it was definitely the most expensive thing I've drunk since becoming a student and b) to attempt to cool down my remaining boiling Northern blood. Fair, though, I suppose, they know their market and that we're pretty much a captive audience. Didn't stop me scowling a hole in the wall as I filled up my little plastic cup again, though, the bastards...

So basically, as always happens for us apparently not-long-to-be-loaded foreigners around these parts (as indeed happens at home too), I got sucked into something with Euro- in the title and got screwed out of a load of money. I just hope I don't have to use my insurance for something else, I've got no idea what I've got left and I'd rather not have to check. I suppose I should be thankful I got exposed to Mr Van Dyke's wallpaper-peelingly awful Cockney stylings before I got to Russia, really, because it kind of puts the populace's attempts to butcher my mother tongue in perspective. Though I did think I should have brought a hat to see that cover band murder Beatles to hide the blood pouring from my ears... Oh well.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to go fly a kite, despite the fact that no English person would ever, ever, ever omit the 'and' after 'go'. The power of (likethisonFacebookorDickVanDykewillhauntyourdreams) subliminal (doitnow) messages, (noIfuckingmeanit) eh?

While next time!

I think a wire got crossed somewhere. Also, I couldn't find my skull x-ray.

Wolf Me Down For Tea Tonight / Cabbage Soup

Bloody hell, another blog post? Must have been an uneventful week. I've been variously laughing at Americans (they're lovely really), waiting for the bridges to go up if I've stayed up past about midnight (or the first metro, at about half five), playing/teaching guitar (my cheap Russian guitar is also lovely, but cost and feels about a quarter of the price of my actual acoustic at home) and occasionally working at Russian. Y'know, when I've ran out of other stuff to do or something.

(Hoho, aren't we feckless arts students feckless. No fecks to be given here - I feel like I'm in some kind of Communist Father Ted tribute.)

Anyway, the main thing that I thought I'd talk about this time around is food. It seems to be most of what people want to know about when they're doing the politely-asking-about-your-year-off-why-haven't-you-got-any-proper-work-you-bastard thing over Facebook chat. Many have asked me whether the only sustenance to be had is actually various forms of cabbage soup washed down with vodka and the tears of the oppressed populace. This is emphatically not true - I provide the tears myself, on being faced with another bowl of lukewarm shchi with bloody buckwheat on the side.

Just kidding, folks! It's actually fairly passable. I opted to be in a homestay while I was applying for my neshing-out-of-a-year-abroad university course, so I get home-cooked food made by my landlady along with vaguely sardonic comments - I can't tell if they're genuine criticism or just being jokey. For example:

(Landlady has made some coffee for me in the coffee machine. The cup is standing there on the opposite side of the kitchen. As it's breakfast my brain has yet to wake up, hence the coffee.)

Me - (after a pause) "Is the coffee ready?"
LL - "Yes. I thought you weren't going to take it."
Me - "Oh, no, I just thought you were going to give it me." (considering she'd made it and laid the rest of the table)
LL - "Never do much for yourself, do you?"

What the fuck do you say to that? I mean, there's also the additional thing where I'm worried I've missed a nuance, or failed to take into account that my landlady can be absolutely bloody terrifying in the way that only a single mother of three can pull off (Hi Mum! I'll ring next week, promise?)

In the end I went "Well, I'm usually afraid I'll break something", to which she replied "Mm-mm". It's an infuriatingly noncommittal Russian noise (sort of a low-mid-low nasal tone thing, kind of a cross between "uh-huh" and "ah") that they make given any opportunity, and the worst fucking thing is I've started doing it in English as well. Also, when written down it's spelt "ugu", which is just ridiculous.

When I first arrived, I got what appears to be the usual Slavic thing of being sat at a table with approximately every item of food available in the surrounding area arranged alphabetically, with a few more that I'm pretty sure haven't been available since Soviet times and were defrosted just for show. The Slavs, apparently, like to put on a spread. So, wanting to show willing and avoid the silent look of female Russian reproach that I'm so familiar with from first year grammar class, I tried a bit of everything. I've got to say, some of it wasn't half bad. They do a thing with fried mushrooms that's actually pretty good (though I get the feeling I'd die if I ate it more than once a fortnight), and being quite into their soup I've been fed a lot of shchi (cabbage soup) and borsch (beetroot soup), often with some chicken or beef sitting in the bottom for flavour.

Comrades, they fucking love dill. I have no idea why - it has hardly any flavour and the main plus seems to be that you can grow it in a window box even if you live in a high-rise apartment (protip: that's pretty much everyone in cities). An indication of the slightly worrying dill-fixation is that the Russian word for dill is derived from the word for "to sprinkle" - yup, while we think of sprinkles as some kind of hundreds-and-thousands job that you put on your ice cream as a kid, to Russians it's a nondescript herb. Woot. There's a lot of dill-hate on the internet - just Google Dillwatch to find a Facebook group about it (that it turns out my tutor is on - awkward). I imagine if you lived here for a long time it'd get a bit irksome, but I personally found it more pissing off when some cheeky upselling waiter put ground cinnamon on my coffee without asking. Fucking nerve - and it tasted like ground sawdust.

Anyway, I had a point somewhere here. Oh, they like ketchup, too. And mayonnaise, which will be put in everything, along with sour cream. Considering the bitter cold (I caught myself thinking "Ee, it's cold out" on the way to the metro this morning, which given my Yorkshire antifreeze blood is saying summat) it's understandable that they put something fattening in whatever they're making - even the coffee machine at uni defaults to putting about three sugars in unless you use some kind of volume control thing to turn it down. When the heating came on in the flats one of our teachers referred to it as "a national holiday". Being still unused to this personal property thing (fun fact - Russians have no word for "privacy". Have a look at "kommunalka" on Wikipedia or just have a look at this to see why), Russians have no control over the heating in their flats. In Petersburg it's apparently a matter of mayoral policy to decide when the heating goes on, usually around the start of October, but often dependent on the average daily temperature thing in a manner that I eventually gave up trying to grok. The things I put myself through for both readers of this blog, eh?

So anyway, after a few weeks of diligently trying everything (homegrown cucumber seems to be particularly prevalent - not our weedy English type that we cut the crusts off and feed to toffs with weak teeth, but a full-blooded Russian kind that looks like an English pickle's older, nonalcoholic (lol) cousin) my landlady asked my why I ate everything mixed up. "Mixed up?" I asked. "Yes, you eat sweet things and then savoury things and then sweet things. That's not done here."

For fuck's sake, I thought, here I've been having to practically roll away from the table at breakfast and tea trying to fit in and it's all been for nowt. Take it from me, the worst thing you can hear as a foreigner in Russia is "That's not done here" (much shorter in Russian, of course, because they need to say it so often). Whistling in the street? Nope. Apparently you're supposed to be whistling away your money. Christ! There I was assuming that the fact that a grand (in roubles) is about £20 makes you feel a little rich and thus a little freer with your money (or the locals hear our attempts to speak Russian and assume we're a) mentally impaired b) will only go losing our money if they don't take it off us) was why we all seem to be broke by half time, but no, it's the fact that I sometimes whistle the solo from "I Am The Resurrection" when I'm waiting for the metro that means I'm destined never to be rolling in the Vladimirs. Actually, they put monuments in different cities on their notes - a thousand has one in Yaroslavl, for instance. Though I wouldn't be surprised if they start putting their long-serving politicians on there soon.

What's that? The we're-not-the-KGB-anymore are here to take me away for questionable attempts at political commentary? It's a fair cop.

While next time! (I hope)

Baked cheese is one of the good things.
It's like everything you wanted cheese strings to be when you were eight!