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

Why we've stopped eating at the canteen..

My meal

Every now and then we decide to take advantage of the university canteen and we nip over there for some cooked food. I always like to play it safe with mashed/puréed potatoes of some sort and occasionally I go for some meat. Below you'll see pictured my potatoes and a ball of meat, accompanied by another slab of meat with cheese on top. The ball of meat didn't taste too bad, but it had these thick white chunks in it. I pulled one out to study. It looked like a strip of chicken.. it was fat.  And the slab of meat was pork, so tough that it bent our forks hahaha!

Please note the white chunks you can see in the unidentified meat ball

-"Stefka, could I please try your soup?"
*watches Stefka pick the bone out of her mouth
and then picks the rest of them out of her soup*
"...Actually, never mind!"
(Stefka's photo)

Marikki's food remains. Marikki chose a fish option which came complete
with a huge section of bones, photograhed on the top left hand
side of the plate.

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

Food Update

I've worked out that my staple diet here is cheese sandwiches.. this post doesn't reflect that. But I have found lots of interesting things..

Russian potato chips. Russians seem to
love sour cream and onion or some
kind of variation of that. Finding other flavours
has been a challenge. I think these are pretty much
the Russian equivalent of Quavers.

No idea why Ice Age have their own brand of crisp,
but these are salt flavour. And salty they definitely are. 

Very similar to Crunchy Nut Corn Flakes

Ketchup. Decided to be adventurous and not buy Heinz.
We also decided not to read the packet, this one contains
meat pieces. Strange!

Bacon Lays and (unsurprisingly) sour cream and 'greens' Lays.

I bought these in the uni canteen. I was going
to have them with either rice or potatoes, but
the lady just handed me my plate and moved on
to the next person. The steely look in her eyes told me
not to interrupt her. I think(/hope) I'm right in saying
that these were fish. In Russia when it comes to
meat etc, ignorance is bliss.

Closer shot of the fish cake balls

First cake that I've had that was actually
quite nice. Pastry with vanilla cream and nuts.

Excitedly bought these thinking I'd found
doughnuts. Technically they were doughnuts, but
they had nothing in the middle. They were just dry
balls of bread in the shape of doughnuts with a
scarce sprinkling of sugar. It broke my heart.

Once again, the 'faux-nuts'

 

Decided to give the hot dog sausages a try. They're hugely popular here.

Hot dogs again, but this time with the traditional plain pasta.
Last time I was in Russia, I was given these sausages and
plain spaghetti for breakfast almost every morning, so this took
me back!

The Sausages - 'Dad can!'

Cheese triangles! Manages to make toast in the oven today
(no toaster and no grill in our flat) and have this cheese
on it for lunch, not bad!

I'm too fussy to have pâté here, but Stefka bought some.

Stefka also bought Smetana, which is sour cream.
This is served on almost everything.

While I waited for the pics above here to load I went shopping
I bought 2 bottles of Baltika (70p each), 1 bottle of
Stolichnaya vodka (£5.40), 1 bottle of Kalinka vodka (£5.40),
1 bottle of Mirinda (£1), 1 bottle of fresh fruit juice (£1.50),
1 half loaf of bread (£1) and a Magnum/Russian version called Magnat
 (80p) which is not photographed because obviously it got
eaten on the way home from the supermarket.. in the rain.
When a 500ml bottle of branded beer is cheaper than a loaf
of bread, you know you're in Russia.

Managed to find a doughnut that actually had a filling. Sadly, it was an
over-sugared strawberry paste/jam.

Canteen lunch. Chicken, potatoes, chocolate milk (because I am 5)
and a sugared bread roll filled with poppy seeds.

Quick soup. Very salty.

BEANS ON TOAST!

English food happened. It was needed! I saw Heinz beans and NEEDED to buy them, you know, 'cause.. beans. I even managed to find half a loaf of 'American Sandwich Bread', which is seemingly normal, but it does have a two month expiration date... I'm not even going to ask what's in it to make it last that long!  So tonight I enjoyed beans on toast (well bread, because we don't have a toaster or a grill) and a good cup of tea. I then sat and watched Coronation Street, to make the occasion even more British.

The Mighty, Mighty Beans

Note: Ugly cat mug never leaves my side

XxX

Hairy pizzas, finding out the hard way what is meant by 'эксперта' and how I've unknowingly come very close to poisoning myself...

Today is day 10 in Tver. I feel pretty settled now, I’ve met some lovely people and I’ve gotten into a bit of a routine, which I like. Life here is interesting and everyday is different. Yesterday, I planned to go straight back to bed after lectures, yet it ended up being my most productive day so far. I'm not feeling well at the moment, even after eventually managing to shake the hangover-from-hell that I had on Saturday, (without any help from my stuffed cabbage leaves I’d like to add –thanks Russian cuisine!) I’m not feeling fantastic. I’ve got the ‘freshers flu’ type thing that’s going round everyone here at the moment and it is so draining, especially when every lecture is as interactive as ours!

I’ll explain the title of this post, bit by bit:

The Hairy Pizza...! - I am fussy enough with food as it is, so when picking the mushroom off my store-bought, packaged, branded pizza I didn’t expect to find a long white hair buried in the cheese. The worst bit is, after a few ‘ew hair’ squeaks, I still cooked it and tried it! And that hair definitely belonged in the 'should put you off' category. 

See, look how appetising it looked once the hair was removed!
The pizza did taste awful, but it looked okay.

I know my Mum will be reading this with her head in her hands, sorry Mum! I’ve been brought up in a very, very clean environment, especially when food preparation is concerned and I even somehow manage to keep this up at uni, but here it’s different! I’ve lowered my food standards significantly! I’m currently eating something in my sandwich that I’m told is ham, but I’m not so sure. However, it’s tasty and it was the best pick of the meat section in the supermarket so I’ll allow it. 

Anyway, to brighten this hairy pizza story up, I managed to order takeaway pizza yesterday with some friends and the help of Diana! 

After being told that there are pretty much no takeaway places here, it was a nice surprise to be able to order something nice and not have to cook. We also timed it well, so it arrived just as the guys in the flat opposite were about to start a game of centurion (a drinking game where you drink a shot of beer every minute for 100 minutes), so we sat with our pizzas and watched. –Very funny!

During an explore we actually came across a Papa John's!! It's not open yet, and probably wont until after we've left
but it's very exciting to see something Western here joining McD's and Baskin-Robbins.

The 'эксперта' Confusion -  Okay, so like I've said in past posts, the language is slowly falling into place, but there are still bits of information that get lost in translation every now and then! My first lecture here was a Russia Today lecture and if I’m being honest, I understood the key things like the yearly temperatures in Tver , its square footage, population and so on, but I pretty much missed what the homework was. And it wasn’t just me. We all did! The Russian overload during that lesson must have definitely taken its toll. We’d been given a newspaper article each and together we’d decided that we were supposed to summarise it for the class. But that didn’t explain why he kept saying, ‘Hannah, James and Frances’ while he was explaining it. Anyway, my article was horrendous (from an English-girl-trying-to-understand-Russian point of view anyway)! It was about the 800^th Anniversary of the founding of a town in Tver called Rzhev. It had words like ‘legislation’ and ‘financial infrastructure’ in it... I wasn’t a fan. Anyway, this morning I walked in and got called up to the front to do a presentation on it, I was given a whiteboard pen and everything. It didn’t go amaaaazingly, but it was fine.  At least we’ll all be more prepared for next time! 

Miscommunication leading to possible poisoning -  Before coming to Russia, we'd been told about the tap water. Some people said use it to brush your teeth only, other's said it's also okay to use boiled, however yesterday we were told by the Russian lecturers here categorically NOT to use it, boiled or not! Apparently it can make you really ill... shit! We also did a bit of research online and yeah, we reeeeeally shouldn't be using it! I've been boiling it for the millions of cups of tea I've been drinking, cooking with it, brushing my teeth in it, everything short of actually drinking it straight from the tap! If we wanted cold water then we'd been buying it in, but for everything else, we'd been using the tap. Apparently it's not the water itself, in most cases it's due to the awful, awful quality of the old pipes that it travels in. It does smell strongly metallic and it's got a very high iron content so, although it runs clear (...now, was originally a bit brown when we moved in, but obviously, we didn't drink it when it was brown), it does leave brown stains behind in the sink if it's left dripping. We've now been pointed to a pump across the road where we're to get our water for boiling and cooking with, and the lecturers have said that they all drink that water, and we can too if we're brave. I'm not sure how brave I am just yet. I normally take my water in cup-of-tea-form anyway! 

I took a trip to the pump today to refill my water bottle. This is all completely different from what life's like at home, but it's amazing!! I love it. 

The Water Pump

Refilling our water bottle. Yes, this is my
life now hahaha!

At the start of this post, I mentioned that I'd had a my most productive day yesterday! I'll leave you with a few pictures to show what I got up to! 

I went to the international office and got my student card!
OH PRIVYET DISCOUNTS!

I registered at the University Library and I've decided I'll be
going there for German and Chinese and possibly French lessons
while I'm here.

I actually got this a few days after I moved in, but it fits in with the
theme of Uni related cards. This is my propusk and it's what I need
to flash at the Babushka's who sit on the door of our accommodation
whenever I enter the building. 

Russia is CRAZY for cats, and
I found this ugly cat bag. I am slowly
becoming a Russian cat lady.
But don't worry, I haven't
bought it... yet.

I went to a place called Anti- Café on my way
back from the library which is affiliated with the university.
 It's where we're supposed to go to meet locals/internationals
and practice our languages! I went with Stefka, Anna and
Rebecca yesterday and it turned out to be really funny! We
played games like Jenga, took advantage of the all-you-can-eat
biscuits and had conversations with locals in English, French,
German and Russian. 

XxX

Cabbage does NOT cure hangovers.

If ever I'm hungover, I usually crave stodge. I'm talking Chinese food, Dominos Pizza, French sticks, basically just all the carbs. In Tver I haven't found anything so far that fits this brief, other than potatoes and the food from Chicken House, but I'm not a huge fan of Chicken House. So last night, I finally felt well enough to get some food and decided to go to 'Pan' in search of some mediocre mash.

In the queue I felt hungry. I felt brave. I chose puréed potatoes and pork, but also ordered 'Голубцы' (Golubtsi) which are cabbage leaves stuffed with meat and rice. WHY did I choose them. I literally have no idea. I think I was suddenly overcome with a wave of bravery and ravenous hunger and I wanted to eat something more Russian. This definitely wasn't a good idea. I just felt so ill once I sat down with my tray of food. Also, if you know me well, then you'll know about my aversion to certain food textures etc so stuffed cabbage leaves were definitely not the right choice. On another day maybe. Definitely, DEFINITELY not when hungover. Stick to plain foods!