I got a call from a government agency seeking Russian speakers to work as tour guides or assistant tour guides for Russian tourist groups. Anyone interested should contact me and I am to forward them the names. Pays $120US a day!
TransAero is now flying direct to Cancun from Moscow, I think they are flying in once or twice a week. Each flight comes with around 300 Russians on it.
Russians are an odd lot, generally boorish by most western people's notions of politeness, tough as you have to be to have lived through the awful things they've had to endure, and thoroughly cynical: lawyers and correspondents from the west don't hold a candle to them on that count. Their jokes reflect all of these traits, and can be extremely funny, but usually require reproducing in Russian for the point to come across right. Interesting to talk with, if you can get past the cynicism, and loving to sit up till all hours debating almost anything you can think of, almost all of them armchair philosophers when warmed up by a little vodka, their men make Mexican machismo look like kindergarten stuff.
@V: LOVE Russian people! Was surrounded by them when growing up in Stockholm. Pretty straight forward, and not afraid to tell you what they think of anything and everything - me like Actually went fishing in Russia quite a few years ago. We tagged along a childhood friend when he was going to visit his uncle. Went all the way to Vladivostok.. A VERY interesting place to say the least.
See if you can recall an interesting event, or impression, you might share with us. I've almost got too many, and it's hard to know what others might find interesting to hear: it all fascinated me, at the time. I lived very close to the people for three years, actually living with Russian families for most of that time, as part of the project I was working on. When I first went there to live, 1992, it was before there had been any economic renewal following the twenty year slide downward in their economy that started under Brezhnev, and accelerated under subsequent leaders. I, along with others who had permission to live there, was given ration coupons with which to buy certain staples at a discount, like pasta, sugar, etc. The main feature of the diet was its monotony, especially in winter, when we lived on pickled cabbage, pickled tomatoes, potatoes, and some hard salami which we were lucky to get because the family I lived with had a family member who worked in a meat processing plant: part of her salary was paid in production from the company. This was still during the time in Russia when, if you saw a line, you got into it, then asked what was being sold because you assumed something scarce was on offer, and whatever it was, you'd probably want one, or more. This is boring, so I'll mention one thing that is not. I lived in an extremely northern, and cold part of Russia: it froze hard there, and did not thaw again, from the first of November to the middle of March. Baby carriages were of a special type, with large wheels and built high off the ground. They were also built in a way so as to insulate the baby, inside. These were too large to wheel into the stores, so mothers just left their babies "parked", outside, alongside the front wall of stores, in a row of baby carriages, with no one in attendance. That's how safe it was, and how confident the young mothers were that their babies would be there when they came back. Following the downfall of the Soviet Union, social solidarity began to crumble, and in a few years serious crime had began to appear in all strata of society: I doubt I'd see this practice if I went back, today.
One of my daughters-in-law is Russian, born and raised in St. Petersburg. She, a sister and her dad moved to Germany in the 90's. Whenever she and her father are speaking, I always ask my son what they're fighting about. Usually the answer is they're not fighting, just having a conversation. To those of you who are Star Trek fans, it always seems like two Klingons in a death match. I've glad I've never seen them angry with each other.
Passion, for life You made me laugh, Mixz1, I hadn't thought about that for a long time. Yes, they are much like Italians, in this way. Their emotional life seems far more activated than, for example, Americans', who may come across to them as not caring about things very much. I saw more fistfights on the streets of Russia, between two grown men, than I've seen in my entire life.
If you were here, you could perhaps experience some of my wife's borsch. She's not Russian, but she learned to make a mean borsch during the time we lived in the former Soviet Union. Too bad she didn't learn to make plov....
