Ass and Foot: My experience travelling in traditional platzkart style

In November 2013 my friends and I decided to travel to Kiev, Ukraine during our reading week. Since the cheapest and most traditional method of travel is to travel by train in third class (platzkart), we decided to book it.

I was so excited to travel on a sleeper train again. I’d travelled on one once before when I was fifteen and travelling from Hong Kong to Beijing. It was such an amazing experience; I just ate, read and slept. Heaven. Platzkart, however, was a completely different experience!!! I have no idea why I’d just assumed it’d be the same. Even just googling the word ‘platzkart’ comes up with posts titled, ‘Platzkart Hell’ and ‘Nightmare in Seat #37’ etc. Looking back, I should definitely have researched them beforehand. I obviously would still have travelled platzkart, but I would at least have been a little more prepared.

I kept a diary while I was on the train so you can get a good idea of what I was thinking and experiencing! It’ll be like you’re there with me... lucky you...

And yes, the title ‘Ass and Foot’ does probably give you an idea of what you’re in store for.

Ukraine is two hours behind Russia, but I've kept all of my entries in one time zone (Russia's) in a bid to keep things simple.

5^th November 2013: From Moscow to Kiev

7.30am – I’m currently sat on the elektrichka to Moscow. We left our accommodation in Tver at 5.40am this morning to allow us to get the 6.54am elektrichka to Moscow. Surprisingly the journey’s pretty busy and there are several unappealing smells in the air. 

(I can’t believe we were complaining about the smells on the elektrichka, little did we know what we would be smelling in platzkart!)

*I took a break from diary writing for the first half hour on the train, because I am incapable of doing anything in a simple manner and managed to cause a bit of a commotion when boarding the train.  I spent the first half hour cringing, almost in tears, wishing I was elsewhere. This is why:

We boarded the train and my god, there were beds everywhere. Everywhere! We thought we’d booked bottom beds, but it turned out that we’d ended up with the top bunk beds. Excellent. The people on the bottom bunks had already sat down and made their beds up which meant that we had to manoeuvre around them to sort our beds out. My bed had three sets of bedding piled on it. The woman in the bed below Stefka’s was really nice and told the man below mine to help me move the bedding sets.

Oh hello there commotion! Is it time for you to rear your ugly head? Yes? Great.

This kind Ukrainian man didn’t realise that I’d just put my litre of fanta (in a McDs takeout style cup) on the edge of my bed while I put my bags down. He knocked it off. It crashed to the floor and fanta splashed out ALL over the aisle, our little dormitory, just everywhere. I have never seen fanta coat so many surfaces. It really was the worst situation. We were already a source of amusement on the train, because it’s not very common to get foreigners travelling platzkart, so everyone was already staring at us and then the silly foreign girl went and spilt her drink. Then the tutting began. The heavy sighs and dirty looks as people tried to cross the river of fanta to get to their beds. Then a Ukrainian babushka started shouting at me. I wanted to curl up into a little ball of cringe and just roll off the train.

I do not speak Ukrainian. I do not understand Ukrainian, so stop shouting at me IN UKRAINIAN. I know you’re indicating that you want me to mop it up, but I’m on a fucking train, where exactly are you expecting me to magic a mop from?!

I decided to go to the toilets to get some toilet roll to mop it up with. After pulling on the toilet door for a minute or two (while still being stared/scowled at, might I add), I realised that the door was locked (they only unlock them during transit). So I had to go back to the fanta lake and just deal with it.

I rolled out my mattress, climbed onto my bed (read: coffin) and hid from the babushka, who was still loudly making comments about me.  Once on my bed I apologised to the people below for the spillage, and they just laughed and said it was fine. Phew.

 (The conductor eventually mopped it up)*

1.30pm - I am currently lying on my bed. I have literally half a metre of space to lie in between my bed and the shelf above. Luckily it’s not driving me mad at the moment because I don't mind being all contorted, so I can just about sit up, but I can see this getting old very soon. 

The view from my bed

Stefka on the bed opposite me

Hannah Anderson (left) was the only one out of our
group to get a bottom bunk, so we were able to seek refuge
on it from time to time. It allowed us to sit up straight for a few
minutes, but it wasn't much cooler.

4pm – I have had two hours sleep I think, but I’ve just woken up because it’s too hot. Far too hot. It’s like that exhausting heat that makes all movements a huge effort. I can’t move, I am so hot. We’ve been through 2 passport controls, one leaving Russia and one to get into Ukraine. They’re quite intense. I got told that I needed to be sat on my bed during the control, but due to the lack of space above me, it’s really awkward talking to the officials with my knees either side of my head...

4.56pm - The lights went down and someone's just bumped into my foot ahh. Personal space please?! Ha this reminds me of my friend Kristina who travelled to Kazan and was woken up by a man who was squeezing her foot for absolutely no reason, before just walking off. If someone does that to me I’ll freak out.

5.30pm - The lady in the bed below’s phone keeps ringing and her ringtone is ‘Strangers in The Night’. It’s making me laugh.

6.15pm - I forgot where I’d heard ‘Strangers in The Night’ and started singing it to Stefka. Then I remembered that it’s the woman below’s ring tone and that’s why it’s in my head. She’s definitely heard me. Awkward. I’m going to hide in my bed.

6.25pm - People keep walking through the aisle trying to sell things and they’re also trying to sell things through the big windows when we pull up to stations. They’re selling strange things like teddies, toys, dolls, dried fish and apples.

I’ve decided I’m just going to lie still on my bed while I try to cool down. The lights keep going off so it’s quite difficult to read my book. Anderson has just given me some Pringles.

6.35pm – The heat on this train is really something. I’m just lying, flat on my back all clammy, too exhausted to move. I don’t usually get claustrophobic, but I’m getting a bit like I just want to get the eff off this train. Or at least sit up!!!

7.00pm - There is an overwhelming smell of B.O coming from a nearby man. Excellent. At least we haven’t got too long left now.

*Really strangely (and I can acknowledge just how strange this it), I really don’t mind the smell of B.O. I’m assuming it’s one of those acquired scents like petrol or nail varnish etc? But it’s just not a smell that usually bothers me. This smell, however, was even managing to turn my stomach. The eye-watering/can-taste-it-in-your-mouth strength was just too much.*

7.10pm - We have realised that our journey is an extra two hours long!!! We didn’t take the time difference into account. We thought that when our ticket said arrival time 7.19pm, it would be Russian time. We didn’t click onto the fact that the departure time would be in Russian time and the arrival would be in Ukrainian time. So it’s only 5.10pm in Ukraine right now, meaning we’ve got another 2 hours left!!! Ahhh!! I can’t actually believe that we thought we’d be getting off in 9 minutes, and now there’s another two hours!! THAT’S ALMOST ELEVEN HOURS ON THIS TRAIN! Can’t sleep, it’s too hot, can’t move, it’s too hot! This is not fun! Why didn’t I bring shorts to wear!!! Get me off this train!!

*I was completely and utterly too hot and bothered to write anymore. But you can imagine how those two extra hours were...*

9^th November: From Kiev back to Moscow

7.40pm - We’ve just had quite a hard time trying to board the 7.16pm train and the conductor was really apprehensive about letting us on. We think it’s because the border officials ripped half of our visas off and kept them, when we were on our way into Ukraine. She seemed to be really bothered by this. She just stared at them, kept us all to one side while she let everyone else board and then reluctantly let us on in a this isn’t over kind of way. Urgh! This type of thing really stresses me out! At least we’re on it now. Just a little worried about crossing the border back into Russia!

It was pretty easy to find our beds this time. Once again we’re on the top beds, but at least this time we knew where to get our mattress from and how to sort our beds. I’m currently sat on the lady below me’s bed. I don’t have my bedding yet, but she’s already got hers so she invited me to sit down, which was really nice of her!

7.52pm - She’s just asked me if I’m Hungarian! Haha! 

9.06pm - The smell on this train is really overwhelming. Like, seriously. The absolute nicest way to describe it would be to say that it smells like ass and foot. A lot. It’s like ten times the strength of the journey here and that was BAD. At least it’s not as hot as it was. My bed runs alongside a window, so maybe that’s why I’m marginally cooler?  

9.28pm - I keep burying my face in my book so I can smell ‘new book smell’ instead of ass and foot. It works for a few seconds. This is the reason that I do not and will not ever have a kindle. Stefka has a kindle and what does she have for a bit of ass and foot smell relief, nothing. You can’t smell a screen, Stefka!! Okay, I need to stop writing now so I can bury my face in my book for the next hour or so.

10.15pm - I’m having a bit of a curtain war with the woman in the bunk below. She obviously wants the curtains closed because she’s trying to sleep and she doesn’t want any lights zooming past her window, understandable. I, however, would like the curtains open a little. Not a lot. Only enough so I can fit my hand through and hold onto one of the window bars as I sleep. My bed doesn’t have one of those little cot bar things to make sure that I don’t roll over and fall off my bunk, so holding onto the window bar as I try to sleep is giving me a bit of comfort. But this woman below keeps sneaking the curtains back together whenever I take my hand off the bar. Like now. I’m writing this, so my hand isn’t on the bar, and I can see her slowly sliding the curtains back together. Sneaky fox!!

11.24pm - ICE CREAM. Those crazy sales folk who board the train and roam the carriages trying to sell bizarre things have just managed to make our journey bearable for 6 minutes. One of the ladies was selling ice cream. WHAT A WOMAN. She knew that we were all sweaty and overheating, too heat-fatigued to move. She saved us! Also when we asked her what flavour it was, she just said, “белое” ('beloye'= white) haha. White isn’t a flavour silly lady.

10^th November 2013

2.17am - The conductor has returned given us our migration cards, so we must be getting close to the Russian border.

2.19am - We can’t work out how to fill in our migration cards. Purpose of visit, is it purpose for going to Ukraine, or going back into Russia? Leisure or Education? Dates, does this mean our Ukraine arrival and departure dates.. or original date arriving in Russia and future leaving date? .. or date leaving Ukraine and Russia departure date? We are confused. I think it’s because we know it’s an important document and we don’t want to get it wrong. I’m going to hold off on filling it in until I’ve asked the conductor.

2.21am - Everyone else decided to fill in their form and now we think they’ve made mistakes. My form’s still blank, but the conductor seems to be hiding from us.

2.46am - hahaha I spotted the conductor and because I was the only one out of my coffin bed, I had to run through the carriage to catch her before she vanished again!! It was one of those moments, when you get there, she looks at you and then suddenly you think, ohh my jeez what the am I going to say?! How on earth am I going to explain all of our queries to her in Russian? (She didn’t speak any English). Anyway, somehow I managed to converse with her. Meaning I had to break it to her that our annoying group of foreigners needed 5 new forms. She did not take it well.

3.00am – The conductor keeps checking on us and shouting, “Кошмар!!” (‘koshmar’= nightmare) when we do something wrong. She also upgraded it to ‘Mamma Mia’ when things got really bad.  I didn’t even know that Russians used that as an expression!! The women in the beds nearby keep hiding their faces under their blankets whenever the conductor mutters кошмар at us, because they’re laughing too much at it. So much awkward!! 

4.14am - Man, it smells so bad. It is so clammy and it just smells so, so bad. I feel like I'm trapped in a tin of stench and someone has put that tin in the oven. 

Please take note of all of the overhanging feet contributing to the smell.

As you can imagine, this also contributed to the smell.

5.37am -  We’ve done our border checks now. Thankfully we had no issues! I’ve slept for a little bit on and off, but not a lot. We’re due into Moscow at 9.06am, making this train journey about 14 hours long. To be honest, it’s been a lot more bearable than the first journey!! I think I’m going to try to get a few hours sleep now before we get into Moscow. 

9.52am – By some miracle, we’ve just managed to run and make it onto the train back to Tver!! We literally got on it minutes before the door closed. Also, it seems to be a fancier train. We thought about going to Red Square or for breakfast somewhere in Moscow before catching the elektrichka back home, but Stefka, Jordan and I agreed that we’re all too tired and would love nothing more than to just get home.

*Funnily enough if we had have just nipped to Red Square, we would have seen this gent nailing his testicles into the ground!  http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-24896784 

I’m actually a bit gutted that we missed seeing his protest first hand, but that being said, I was so tired that I probably wouldn’t have believed what I was seeing anyway!*

If you ever travel platzkart, I urge you to pack shorts and a vest top to change into, take a lot of water (you will be thankful for the hydration) and be prepared to spend hours on end breathing in some of the foulest, warmest, most pungent smells you'll ever have faced.

I'll leave you with this self-taken photograph of Jordan's face, which manages to perfectly sum up his and all of our feelings about travelling platzkart...

XxX

GOODBYE TVER: The things I'll miss and the things I won't miss...

Part of me can’t believe I’m actually typing this, but... my time in Tver has drawn to end!!  It barely feels like any time at all since I was sat, stressed out in my living room, with all of my clothes sprawled out over the floor in a desperate attempt to pack. I’m currently sat on my bunk bed in Godzilla hostel (Moscow) looking at the pile of suitcases and bags in the corner of the room. I am so excited to be coming home. Beyond excited! My friend Hannah and I can’t help but look at each other and shriek in excitement more or less every ten minutes. There are obviously things that I will be sad to leave behind though, namely the people. I have met some lovely people while I’ve been in Tver and the thought of having said goodbye to them makes me feel all emotional! While I’m yet to fall in love with Russia, my heart belongs to the beautiful friends that I’m leaving behind here.  Thank you so much. You have given me an amazing three months.

Goodbye Flat 24!

I decided that during my last few weeks here, I would do as many things as I could, which is the reason why I haven’t posted in so long. I went ice skating... and fell over spectacularly. Over a week later and my knees still appear to be getting more and more bruised!

I’ve ‘graduated’ from Tver State University!! This was, of course, after sitting numerous surprise exams; being told about them either on the day or the day before! Luckily, all of my grades were quite good, which was a nice feeling and meant leaving on a happy note, academics-wise.

Certificate of completion

I’ve been to the circus. I know the circus is always a subject of controversy when animals are involved, but I thought I would check it out anyway. Sometimes, even when you’ve heard other people’s negative views on things, you need to see them for yourself in order to form your own opinions. This was one of those times.

I’ve faced packing dilemmas that I never thought would cross my mind. I found myself doing things like staring at my full bottles of shampoo and conditioner thinking, ‘well, I can’t pack you, you’re far too heavy. So... do I wash my hair more often this week, or just use more shampoo and conditioner when I do shower?’.  Why was I ever having this conversation with myself?!

I had the absolute most amazing leaving drinks send-off, along with Stefka, who was leaving the following weekend, and Jordan and James, who flew back last night. It was probably the best night out I’ve had in Tver.

Manchester Students Unite! 

My friend, Hannah, from Yaroslavl’ came to stay with me for a little while!

On Tuesday 26^th November, the time came to leave Tver, because we’d decided to spend our last few days here, in Moscow. Hannah and I set off for the station at 4.45pm to catch the 5.45pm train.  We thought we’d give ourselves an hour so that we could get some food before we got on the train and basically just play is safe;  the train times have been known to change unexpectedly. The night before we left Tver, it started snowing. There were a good few inches of snowfall overnight, which made for a pretty difficult journey to the station. We boarded a tram to the station, thinking it’d all be plain sailing from then on. We were wrong. About 5 minutes into our journey, we heard a bit of a thud and our tram came to halt. The woman driving the tram got out of her little pod and ordered us all off the tram. We all looked at each other like, what?! It had taken us long enough to get all of the bags onto the tram. As we got off, it became very apparent that a car had crashed into the front of the tram.

Please take note of car attached to front of tram in the background

Russia may be a lot of things, but it is never boring. We then had no choice but to continue on foot. I can’t thank you enough Jordan, James, Kristina, Frances and Saidi!! Your bag carrying/pulling/dragging skills were amazing and we genuinely would have missed our train without your help! 

Now that we’re in Moscow, we’ve been filling our days as best we can. 

GUM shopping centre looking all Christmassy!

We’ve been to red square every day and we’ve finally been to see Lenin! Which was underwhelming to be honest. You basically enter a fairly modestly sized room and you walk up some stairs onto a raised platform, where you walk around Lenin and then down the stairs again. You have to be constantly moving, no stopping for a look, so in the 8 seconds that I had to walk past him, I didn’t really get to see him for very long at all. We also went to a vodka museum, which was pretty interesting. However, they did promise us a free shot of vodka during our tour and that wasn’t offered to us at any point.

They had a massive collection of vodka brands and bottles (as one would expect from a vodka museum, I’m sure). My friend pointed out a beautiful pink bottle of vodka on one of the shelves. It was called ‘GIRL’, and the slogan underneath read, ‘FOR GIRLS ONLY’.  Well ladies, I don’t know about you, but personally I do not drink vodka unless it comes in a pink bottle. Sometimes I won’t even settle for that, unless it comes with a rainbow and a pocket sized unicorn and a pack of lady tissues for my lady emotions. (I know this kind of advertising isn’t limited to Russia.)

We also got to have our last Moscow meet up with Kristina and Frances, which of course came with its own tearful goodbye. <3

Over the past three months, I decided make a note of the things that I’ll miss/things that I won’t miss after I leave Tver. Enjoy!!

 THINGS I WON’T MISS

1. The silverfish in the bathroom. Countless times I would see them scurrying about on the bathroom floor. Even now in Moscow, I’ve just been chased around the shower room by one that was trying to climb onto my foot.
2. No matter how much we cleaned, our flat was always dirty -especially the skirting boards!
3. The acts of racism, homophobia and hypocritical attitude towards it.
4. Sexism-Even in our textbooks and reading exercises there would be blatant sexist comments and phrases thrown in there for good measure. Here’s an example of one of the sentences we were reading in a text about future careers, ‘I like science and maths, but I cannot become an engineer, because that is a man’s job’.
5. Shots come in 50ml here. I think I’m right in saying that 50ml is double the size of the shots we get in the UK? That is TOO MUCH for one shot! It takes me about three attempts to finish it. Three long, painful attempts.
6. Having to walk to the pump whenever we needed water - Not being able to drink the tap water was a pain at first, but we got used to it after a while. The only problem came when we didn’t realise we’d used up all the water in the evening and then the following day we’d have no water for chai! Nightmare!
7. Showering and then realising that the water you’ve been showering in is brown. This happened a few times. Also, there would sometimes be metal fragments in it. Not ideal.
8. Not being able to have a bath. We didn’t have a shower curtain and the shower head wasn’t fixed to the wall, so we had to sit down in the bath tub, holding the shower head in order to shower without soaking the whole bathroom... that is the closest thing we got to a bath and I’m a girl who likes her baths!
9. Waiting 30mins for the kettle to boil every time you need a cup of tea. This took some getting used to and was the biggest pain when we only had 30mins between classes, so we couldn’t even nip down for chai. Exceptions were made towards the end of the semester though, when we just brought our freshly made chai up to the second class with us.
10. The glacial speed of the internet. It came and it went. Don’t get me wrong, I was really grateful that we had wifi in our accommodation, but I have to admit, I’ll be happy when I have my high speed broadband back!
11. The babushkas in my accommodation- terrifying. All of them, terrifying. I thought one of them wasn’t too bad (the young one), but she screamed at me last week because our hallway was making too much noise, and I happened to walk past her at the wrong time and feel the full force of her wrath.
12. The babushkas in the shops- customer service is not a thing here. At all. If you were in a position where you serve the public, then that’s exactly what your job is. To serve. It is not within your job role to make small talk, be polite or smile at the customer. You simply need to serve them as quickly as possible. It’s not seen as rude in Russia, it’s simply all that is required of them in their job role.  As a foreigner though, having worked in customer service and having been taught certain phrases to say to customers when serving them/to at least make conversation or even just SMILE, I find it a bit blunt to have zero customer interaction when at the till point.
13. Disorganisation! Things do not run like clockwork here. Lots of ремонт (repairs) about and shops скоро открытие (opening soon) with no date or indication as to when they’ll be finished or open. This was particularly sad because there was a Cinnabon shop taunting me in Tver, because it was ‘скоро открытие’. It was ‘скоро открытие’ for the whole three months that I was there. It still remains unopened.
14. Not being able to buy spirits in a supermarket after 9pm -especially if you fancied a spontaneous night in/out that involved alcohol.
15. Awkward grammar lessons. The worst lesson of the week was grammar. Sorry, but it was. It was just a class spent completing exercises from a textbook and not being taught anything new. We’d not even reached verbs of motions by the time we’d left, because we’d been so busy recapping all of the basic grammar, like cases. Very annoying. The grammar lessons at Manchester are so brilliantly taught that they had well and truly set the bar. A bar which was not even almost met in Tver.

THINGS I’LL MISS

1. Everything being within walking distance- My flat was on the first floor of my building and lectures took place on the second floor. Sometimes I would leave my flat with seconds to spare before the start of my classes and still be the first person there. There was also a 24 hour supermarket less than 5 minutes away!
2. Free cloak rooms- In all clubs/bars/restaurants there are free cloakrooms. This means that you can layer up for your walk to the venue and then strip off once you get there. On some wintery nights, it was definitely needed! This also gave us the chance to carry both heels and flats with us, which meant no heel-in-hand-bare-footed-walks home.
3. How cheap everything is! The beer, supermarkets, restaurants etc. On one of my last days in Tver, I went to a cafe and ordered, a ‘soft scramble’ (a fried egg on toast with cheese and bacon..ish), a freshly baked croissant with jam and two glasses of champagne. That meal totalled 190 roubles, which is about £3.80. I’m yet to find somewhere that offers something similar in England.
4. Bread- The bakery in the Perekrestok supermarket sells the tastiest, freshly baked breads. I was eating so much bread that for a short period of time, I had to limit myself to one day a week when I was allowed bread. Bread Sunday. My will-power only lasted for two weeks though before I needed my daily bread fix again.
5. Lectures starting at 10am. Man do I love a lie in!
6. Having a three day weekend... every week! No explanation required as to why I’ll miss this!!
7. People thinking we’re interesting because we’re English. I met several people who had been studying English for years, but had never spoken to a native English speaker before, so they were quite keen to chat to us. Understandably, this happened less often in Moscow though. Rather the opposite in fact. Even when trying to speak Russian, they would often reply to you in English. It would appear that not everyone loves a trier!
8. Being able to speak English and have the people around you not understand. This was amazing. There are very few places nowadays where people don’t understand English, so this was such a novelty. It felt like we all had a secret language.
9. Crazy dancing – We did this frequently. We stood out as foreign anyway, so thought we’d embrace it. We even made up dance routines during drunken evenings in and we would do them during drunken evenings out.
10. Champagne and vodka. As you can imagine, incredibly cheap. Bottles of ‘champagne’ for £3 or less and the same for vodka. With vodka, however, I learnt that you should spend at least £5 on a bottle of vodka if you don’t want to be horrifically ill the next day. If anyone recalls my Vodka We Need To Talk post, then you will know why.
11. Sleepovers – I’ve not had a sleepover since I was about 11, so having the opportunity to slide our mattresses across into neighbouring flats for sleepovers was so much fun. More fun than as a child though, because these sleepovers involved wine.
12. Movie nights – Everyone loves a movie night.
13. Awkward grammar lessons - Some of these lessons were so awful, that you had to laugh. There were so many awkward silences and just generally awkward situations floating about. I added this to the ‘miss’ list quite early on though, thinking that the lessons would get better... they didn’t and instead they generally just got more frustrating, so that’s why it’s also been added it to the list of things that I will not miss.
14. THE PEOPLE. Meeting so many people from so many different cultures was so interesting! I didn’t know that there would be Finnish, German, French, Columbian (etc) students studying in Tver too, because I thought it would just be RLUS students! It was so exciting to get to meet everyone.
15. The funny graffiti  - I’ve taken a lot of pictures of the graffiti I found. Mostly the random English words which were dotted about! I’ll upload them all in a post soon.
16. It being acceptable to drink vodka on its own and also to be able to just order a glass of vodka in bar without the barman/woman looking at you like you’re Drinky McDrinkerson.
17. Being able to use the word ‘кошмар’ (‘koshmar’ = nightmare) to express my distain for a situation. You can put so much emotion into it that saying ‘nightmare’ in English simply won’t do.

I’ll be touching down in London town (sorry couldn’t help it) at 5.45pm this evening!! EEK! And then I will fly to Manchester and touchdown at about 9pm, hopefully. While in England, I’ll write up my posts about Kiev and Chernobyl and anything else that I feel is mention worthy.

So to sum up, THANK YOU FOR HAVING ME, TVER! It’s definitely been an experience that I won’t ever forget!! Now, please, for the love of god... someone hand me a roast!!

XxX

Halloween, The Great Escape, Stray Dogs and Ukraine

In about 5 hours time I will be in a taxi on the way to the train station to start my very long journey to Kiev, Ukraine. I thought that since I’d be without internet for the rest of the week, I’d write a little update now. If anything, it gives me something to do with all of my excited/nervous energy!!

First on the agenda is a little bit on what I promised I’d write about in my last post (Expect; free meals, girly sleepovers, early Halloween, bar friends):

Free meals - We are really lucky in the fact that not only does one of our lecturers from Manchester University come to visit us to check how we’re all getting on, but UoM also pay for us all to go out for a meal. I researched the best restaurants and Joe went and booked us a table at Fortuna, which is an excellent restaurant about a 5 minute walk away from our accommodation. I couldn't wait to make the most of getting a feast, especially since I'd had eggs and spinach for dinner for two nights on the run before.The food in Fortuna was excellent, topped only by the company. It was the first thing we’d done just as Manchester students and it was lovely to have a catch up with everyone.

My starter was Жюльен на тарелке which translates to
Julien on a plate. It's not as impressive a name in English.
It was chicken and mushrooms with mozzarella in a
white wine sauce, wrapped in puff pastry.

Main - Beef Stroganoff 

Dessert - Mille Feuille (ish)

Girly Sleepovers - Stefka and I were lucky enough to get invited to Kristina and Frances’ flat for the sleepover of the year. It was a genuine girly sleepover, but this time with alcohol. We dragged our mattresses into their flat, because even though we live about two metres away from them, it’s not a real sleepover unless we actually sleep over. We watched films, drank champagne, ate caviar like true Russians (vom) and danced to our treasured 90s pop. We also made up a dance routine, which we now proudly whip out in clubs. The locals think we’re amazing dancers. They don’t say it, but we can see it in their eyes...

Sleepover snacks

Kristina made us 'Special Breakfast'.
They are the only ones here with a
toaster, this was such luxury.

‘Early Halloween’ - One of the occasions where we whipped out the dance routine was at Horoshii Povod. On this occasion we were going for our friend Robin’s birthday. We didn’t realise that Horoshii Povod was celebrating Halloween a week early though so we were a little underdressed. However, good old Tver had us covered by the way of a face painting station. Drunk and like a fool I got my face painted (I also slept in it and scared Stefka when she woke up harhar). It was a brilliant night. I even asked the DJ if I could dance on the big speaker...which is funny, because I am an awful dancer. I have no idea why Russia was celebrating Halloween early, but I was happy about it. Especially since real Halloween was a bit of a letdown (see below). 

Facepaint with the Finns

Speaker dancing with Rachael

Bar friends- I woke up after ‘Early Halloween’ to find that a lady called Ekaterina had given me her number and written St Petersburg on it. I was wracking my brain to figure out who she was and what I’d arranged to do in St Petersburg(?!). Then I remembered that I was sat next to a couple of Russian women who I decided to become friends with. They didn’t speak English so I delivered my best drunk Russian and eventually, after befriending these ladies, I agreed to teach Ekaterina English once I move to St Petersburg and she’ll show me around the city. I have no idea if this will happen, but watch this space.

My friend managed to snap this picture without me noticing.
That's me in deep conversation with my new Russian friends.
Ekaterina is out of the shot, but that's her neighbour, Olga.

Second on the agenda is Halloween:

Soo Halloween fell on a Thursday this year which was excellent for us, because we always have Friday’s off, so Thursday is always our going out night. A lot of people had planned their costumes in advance, but I was rubbish and thought I’d just decide on the day. I thought that if all else failed, I could wear all black and do some crazy make up of some sort. We found this amazing shop, which is a bit like a Russian version of TK Max.. but with a lot more fur, lace, spandex etc! I should take some sneaky pictures of Russian fashion to upload onto here at some point, because, man, it is something!

I originally picked up black leggings and a baggy black top, but then I passed this red dress which was only £2 and it claimed to be Vera Wang, so I couldn’t resist it. I decided that I’d be a ‘zombie bride’ type creature, compete with a bouquet of dead roses (thanks Russian uni halls for having dead flowers in vases everywhere, it’s not creepy at all). We came home and started on the makeup and the champagne. I then decided to customise my ‘dress’ which wasn’t the best idea when tipsy. On reflection there was definitely a bit too much boob on view!

The night was a bit of a shambles really for the following reasons:

1.     We somehow got locked on the university campus and had to break out.

I threw my bags on the ground and decided to
roll under the gate. 

This is me, enjoying freedom.

The Great Escape: Tver 

2.   Russia doesn’t really celebrate Halloween, so wandering around all dressed up did make us stand out as foreigners and it also stopped us getting into a few places. (Mainly the boys though, because some of them decided to go as stereotypical 'Gypsies', so they were wearing sweatpants.)

Stefka, Kristina, Frances (deceased pin-up girls) & Me

3.     We ended up in Chicken House once again.

I got in trouble for taking this photograph.
"Photography is forbidden in Chicken House!"

The thing I love about the clubs/bars here is that they all have free cloakrooms. This means that if we are wearing going out clothes then a ‘beer jacket’ isn’t required, we can take actual jackets!!  Being cheeky Brits, we take advantage of this. Over my little dress I had tracksuit bottoms, ugg boots, a ski jacket and a rucksack to put them all in once I got to the club. This did mean stripping off around the corner from each club though, which was a bit awkward. I got caught putting my tracksuit bottoms back on after our group got rejected from Zerkalo (low point) and a beautiful French man thought that I was going for a wee on the street. So he stopped everyone from walking past me, telling them all that I needed privacy!! I was like, I’m not that bad!! Hahaha!!

Since then we’ve been enjoying the start of reading week. I’ve been out to lunch with some great friends and explored around the Volga. 

Stefka, the Volga and a stray dog that adopted us. If you're looking for a word to describe the expression on Stefka's face, it's terror.

It was a troubling time. We thought Chenkov (I named him) was going to be with us
forever.

We went for a spontaneous night out to Horoshii Povod on Saturday night, which was amazing at first, but it ended quite badly and didn’t show Russia in a brilliant light. It’s probably best that I wait until I am back in England to write about that though. I’ve decided to play it safe.

Third and finally we have Ukraine:

I am seriously excited to go to Ukraine. Like I said at the start of this post, we leave in about 5 hours and then we’ve got a two hour train journey to Moscow, where we’ll be meeting our friends from Yaroslavl’. We’ve then got a 9 hour train journey to Kiev! I can’t wait! I love sleeper trains. I’ve packed all of my books and snacks (even though I did ‘accidentally’ start eating them before, m’bad).

We’ve booked to go on a day tour of Chernobyl on Friday as part of our trip. This is the thing that I am most excited about, but the more I think about it, the more nervous I’m getting. I’ve spent the last few nights researching it and it has proved quite difficult reading.  I know that it will be incredible to see an abandoned city and I can’t wait to learn more about it, however, I also know that it will probably be a very emotional and thought-provoking tour. I’ve been told that the radiation we’ll be exposed to should be no more than that of an x ray or transatlantic flight and we get checked for radiation multiple times during the tour, so all should be well on that front. (I hope!!)

Wish me luck!! Hopefully I won’t return with an extra limb or glow-in-the-dark skin or anything.

XxX

Moscow 10th-12th October

I thought I'd have a go at recording a video blog instead of writing a post this time. Before I tried this, I didn't realise how difficult it actually is to vlog!! I now have a renewed respect for anyone who vlogs.

I've tried to keep it brief, but it's still about 13 minutes long, so pour yourself a brew and get cosy.






Obviously, a lot has happened since then! Yet again, I have left it too long between updates -sorry! I will make sure I upload a new post this week to fill in all the blanks! Expect; free meals, girly sleepovers, early halloween, bar friends and more.

XxX

How to Keep Busy in Russia

(Sorry, I realise that I haven’t posted about anything other than food in almost four weeks! Now is definitely the time to catch you all up. I’ll try to keep it as brief as I can! I was going to record a video blog, but since I spend most of my time here makeup-less and looking like a foot, I thought I’d spare you that ghastly sight for the moment.)

PUB CRAWL

I’ll start off way back on 13^th September when the International Office organised a pub crawl around Tver for all of us international students. The pub crawl was such a good idea, because it gave us the opportunity to get to know some of the other international students. We had several challenges to do during the pub crawl but the only one we managed to do was to drink a shot of vodka. Now, I absolutely HATE drinking straight vodka!! I used to occasionally do it in my teen years and the memory still sends a shiver down my spine. Also, a shot here is 50ml. Therefore, it probably goes without saying that it took me about 4 attempts to drink it and I then had to sit still for about 5 minutes afterwards to make sure that I wasn’t going to vom. We got off lightly though, because we were actually challenged to order this mystery vodka, which turned out to be horseradish vodka! Luckily our pub didn’t have any, so we had to make do with plain vodka (there is a God).

Most of my lovely pub crawl group!

Unisex door sign, it kind of speaks for itself
really.

My vodka shot with a
white wine chaser

ZERKALO - Night Club
After the pub crawl, some of us decided to go to Zerkalo, which is a club in town. I’d never been before so I was definitely up for it.  It was about a 15 minute walk, during which we were stopped by a homeless man who wanted money off us to buy weapons...! Crazy Russia.

Once we got to the club, we walked past a plant pot, with a pair of legs coming out of it and a sign on it saying, ‘Y нас есть Face Control’, which means, ‘We have Face Control’. Basically, Russian bouncers use a thing called ‘face control’ to limit who gets into the club. If they don’t like you/don’t think you’re attractive enough/don’t think that you’re dressed well enough then they will just turn you away and say, ‘Face Control’ in a thick Russian accent. It’s usual for this to happen in the big cities like Moscow and Petersburg, but I didn’t really expect it to happen in Tver.

Entry to the club was £2 and the drinks were fairly cheap too! Zerkalo itself is a pretty modern club with a good mix of English and Russian music. They even played Ricky Martin and The Spice Girls. That being said, they got points deducted for remixing The Spice Girls. You do not mess with perfection, Russia.

I’ve noticed that in Russian clubs, men definitely rule the roost. They will shove women out of the way without a second thought. If you’re stood in the way and a man wants to get past you, move or be moved. I’m definitely not used to this and it’s not something that I care for. Also, something that I’m not used to is the number of pole and cage dancers around the club. They don’t even get any attention. They just blend in with the flashing lights and rest of the furniture, it’s quite sad really.

This was one of the standard Zerkalo club night games that they do. The week before they had a 'hard-on' competition
where men lay on the floor and women had to come up and give them a lap dance, and the girl who was the first to give the guy a hard-on won. None of  us understood the game in this pic, the guys just started lifting up the girls' skirts while we all just awkwardly watched on. It just felt so out of place. The lack of respect for the women was disgusting and I couldn't help but cringe.. and heckle. 

TOILET VOCABULARY

I was really disappointed to discover that a huge section of much needed vocab seems to have been missed off my Russian learning so far! Toilet vocab. Girls kept speaking to me in the ladies and I had absolutely no idea what they were saying. Not a clue! One woman started talking to me, so I did the very polite British thing that we do when we don’t hear what someone’s said, I just did a little laugh and hoped she hadn’t asked me a question! Her response to this was to ruffle my hair and say 'Молодец!' which means, ‘Good for you!’... even now I can't figure out what we were talking about and why she ruffled my hair. It made me laugh though.

ICE-HOCKEY

The following day we went to an ice hockey match. This also cost £2 with a student discount card, thank you Russia! I’ve never been to an ice hockey match before and the atmosphere was amazing. It was Tver vs The Titans. We lost at penalties, but it was a great match.  Tver even had their own ‘cheerleaders’, who I thought seriously lacked enthusiasm. My main highlight was probably when a cheerleader fell over and dropped her pompom during a routine and had to jump up and continue with only one pompom. I laughed a lot.

MY BIRTHDAY!!
The following Friday (20^th Sept), I reluctantly turned 22! I awoke to find that the flat had been decorated in ‘Happy Birthday’ banners and before I’d even woken up properly there was a glass of champagne in my hand! By 11am I’d already been through two bottles... but I shared them with Saidi and Stefka (sort of).

Tiger cake time

The craziest, musical cat card I've ever seen

Then all of the students on my floor came in to my flat with a cake and sang happy birthday, while I sat at the table slowly getting more drunk and more glittery. We then went to the cinema, where I fell asleep during the film (thanks champagne!) and in the evening we all went to Zerkalo again (I know, we need to try other places!!). I had such an amazing day. I was completely overwhelmed by the effort that everyone went to and by the birthday wishes and beautiful gifts that I received. I’m not really one for soppy messages, but I couldn’t have asked for a better day! Thank you all for being a part of it ♥

The majority of  the lovely people who made my day super special!

And of course huge thanks to Stefka xx

MOSCOW

Last Sunday (29^th Sept) I went on the organised trip to Moscow to see the ballet. We went to the Kremlin and saw the Nutcracker -it was absolutely incredible. I fell asleep during that too though. I have no idea why! Apparently sleeping at inappropriate times is just something that I do now?! Anyway, it goes without saying that Moscow is a beautiful city. The architecture is stunning and the amount of western shops did make my heart squeal a little after a month away from them. I’d been looking forward to going to Krispy Kreme for my much-needed doughnut fix for weeks leading up to this trip (as I’m sure anyone who follows me on twitter will know). Sadly it was not to be. Svetlana, our tour guide, hadn’t allocated dougnnut time into the schedule for some unforgivable reason. I had to leave doughnut-less and with a broken heart. I’ll be going back to Moscow this weekend though, so don’t worry about me. I will be dozen deep in heavenly little nuts of dough soon enough!

Saint Basil's Cathedral, Red Square, Moscow

THE MUNDANE MADE INTERESTING

I’ve done some more everyday tasks which would be boring, if they weren’t so Russian. Here are a few:

- Purchased a blender. Ordinarily that would be a hugely uneventful task, yeah? Well not here. Locating the store was easy, locating the blender was also easy, buying the blender.. easy. The difficulty lay in taking the blender out of the shop. There was a man on the door, checking receipts like they do at Costco. He checked our receipt and then called over a young man who took our blender away. The young man then came back three times with different blenders, before they all realised that it was the first blender that we were supposed to have all along. Who knew?.. WE KNEW, THAT’S WHY WE BOUGHT IT! Then walking home the most surreal thing happened. I was with three of my female friends, one of them carrying the big blender box as we walked home. Then five big, hairy, leather jacket wearing, moustache sporting men walked past us. They were probably aged 50-60 and looked like they’d climbed out of The Godfather. I just so happened to glance over as they walked past, in time to see one man lift his hand from his side, stretch out two fingers and go ‘shoooooop’ straight for my friend’s vagina. (He actually made the shoop noise!!). Well why not? I mean, she had both hands full carrying the big box. She’d left her ladyparts unguarded; of course you’d go straight for a through-the-jeans-finger. FFS RUSSIA. She managed to jump to the side and the men just walked past as if nothing had happened. We all just walked home like. What. The. Fuck. Just. Happened. That’s the thing about Russia, it’s not just in Zerkalo where men rule the roost, but I’ll save that for another post.

- Second and final mundane task was going to the market. It’s on every weekend and it’s the place for everyone to get their fresh fruit, veg, meats, kittens etc. Yes. I said kittens. And puppies too. Chickens, hamsters, turtles! I only managed to get one picture of the some of the kittens, because the Russians don’t take too kindly to photography! It took all of my self-control not to buy them all.

One of many boxes of kittens at the market

The meat section of the market is something out of the ordinary too. We walked in to see men wandering around with huge axes ready to chop the carcases that were just lying around on big tree trunks. We saw horns coming out from under a table...a cow's head. It felt like we were in an abattoir! I would have taken pictures, but judging by how the Russians with kittens responded to my camera, I didn’t want to anger those with axes.

If you’ve made if this far, well done and thanks for sticking with me. I’m almost done, I swear!

This weekend has been a rather reflective one. I’ve had the flat to myself since Stefka went to Veliky Novgorod for the weekend and Saidi to Moscow. I watched Eat, Pray, Love and it made me realise how little I’m actually experiencing here in Tver. If anything, I’ve almost completely lost my passion for food and I’ve lost that all-important wanderlust. Over the past few weeks I’ve felt pretty out of touch with myself which is completely the reverse of what I was hoping to get out of this year. I just currently have a huge amount of want in me and I’m waiting for Russia to deliver. I want more. So I’m going to have to start looking for it. Whatever it may be.

XxX