Chapter 3: Welcome to the Old World

Theme song: Вальс из х/ф "Ирония Судьбы" - М. Таривердиев

I awoke (or was awakened?) groggy from my nap, around 3:30 pm. Though the date hadn’t changed, it felt to me like an entire night had passed since my trip; arriving in darkness probably only enhanced this effect. It was time to eat and go out. My nana and uncle were determined to take me shopping, having evaluated the wardrobe I packed as insufficiently warm.

Our meal of the afternoon differed little from brunch. As I mentioned in the last entry, having meat with breakfast is definitely more typical of country living; my friends confirmed that their morning meals are usually more of a snack – oatmeal, yogurt, bananas, or глазированый сырок (sweetened soft cheese encrusted with a thin chocolate-y layer; delicious). I found my uncle was an exception. He would often eat a hearty breakfast (sometimes consisting of dumplings or turkey broth), probably because of a hectic schedule that may or may not allow for a sit-down lunch. While boiled meat tends not to be what I crave first thing in the morning, it is definitely more advantageous to eat a solid breakfast, if time permits. Daytime and nighttime temperatures usually vary by as much as 10 ^oC (~20 ^oF), which means that the morning trek to work or school may occur in much lower temperatures than expected for the day. Additionally, the body not only needs more calories to function in the cold, these also need to come from substantial sources. As I told a friend via Facebook, “Nothing like a rich fatty broth to help face the -20 ^oC cold.”

Milk with 6% fat content. We normally settled for 3.2-3.5% but I was just amused that this existed.

Another attribute of the Russian winter diet that becomes more prevalent the further one gets away from large cities is a lack of fresh vegetables. Interestingly, none of the locals seemed to really notice it, but as someone who loves fresh green veggies, I can attest that there were not enough. Plant products that were easy to find: potatoes, carrots, beets and other root veggies, yellow onions, garlic, white cabbage. Plant products that were either not for sale everywhere or were not always good quality: zucchini, cucumbers, tomatoes. Plant products I don’t remember seeing at all: lettuce, bell peppers, broccoli, celery, radishes (?), green onions, etc., etc.. In all fairness, fruit were available in much better selection; and in keeping with the season, sweet-tasting mandarins were in blissful abundance. Luckily for me, vitamin deficiency was easy enough to avoid by relying on our national recipes. Russian cuisine is ripe with salads that use “winter” veggies as the base, while fermented cabbage and pickles fulfill a craving for something juicy and crunchy. There were also canned peas and corn, on top of the frozen vegetables I think I remember seeing in stores. All in all, though occasionally missing some foods, I did not mind the situation too much. Moreover, I was amused by rediscovering why it’s impossible to be a vegetarian in most parts of Russia. Not only was the selection of vegetables limited, but I had to think of creative ways and make a conscious effort to include them in my diet. …Because it’s so much easier to just boil some пельмени¹ and call it a day.

Typical dawn, around 10am. View from our kitchen window. The green building is a kindergarten/pre-school.

But returning to observations of Day 1 in the homeland: So. Many. Cars. There were at least 3-4 times as many as I remembered seeing before my departure in ’03. Our дворы² were jam-packed with them, quite a few of the parking spaces improvised. The bloated number of cars was the single most apparent change, reflected by many aspects: wider and better highways, designated parking lots and (multiple!) car dealerships. My uncles jokingly boasted that they now even had “real traffic jams.” I wasn’t sure whether to delight or despair at this new extravagance. Because gas is relatively expensive in most parts of Russia (the price comes out to about the same in $/gal, but the income there is 3-5 times lower, on average), owning a car is still a bit of a luxury. On one hand, it could mean an overall increase in the quality of life and income level for the middle class, now that more of them could afford a vehicle. On the other, it’s a triumph of consumerism, getting more people hooked on the oil needle. And it’s not necessarily a bump in salaries that has churned out more car owners, but the sheer increase in car availability. The domestic market is unpopular, so until foreign dealers opened up plants all over Russia (Nissan, Ford, GM, Peugeot, Toyota and others), decent cars all had to be imported and were therefore even more expensive. Nonetheless, some positive aspects of this auto-boom are apparent: much better and continually improving infrastructure, more jobs and a boost to tax revenue. And given the country’s size, any environmental fallout is conveniently easy to ignore. (For now...)

We hit up a couple of clothes stores to scoop out the prices and a shoe store where my uncle bought me an awesome pair of Finnish fur-lined leather boots as a belated birthday present. My footwear was actually adequate, but such boots are impossible to find in the US. (Though now that I think about it, Minnesota might be the place.) I also got a pair of black pants that looked like a more fashionable version of ski pants and proved a very useful asset over time. As I figured out that same day, the double layer of jeans and woolen tights was clearly not cuttin’ it. We passed on feather and down jackets, partly because we didn’t really see any we liked much, and partly because, well, I would have no use for one here. They also shed feathers over time and were generally more expensive over there. It just didn’t seem worth it. Besides, my Canadian sheepskin coat with raccoon fur on the hood seemed a bit special: raccoons are endemic to North America.

Finally, we headed back just as the last store was closing, and my jet-lagged self finally got to pass out after an eventful first day. But more importantly, my caring relatives probably felt a little more confident in preventing pneumonia and frozen appendages in a girl who thought she came prepared for the winter that awaited her 13^o of latitude north.

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1 - meat dumplings

2 - courtyards