Friends

Following my awesome tour of The Bolshoi I returned to the hotel for a bit of rest before my first of two social engagements that day. The first meeting was with my Russian teacher, Ekaterina. The second one would be with my student Sasha. Ekaterina is the niece of two of my students, Nikolai and Marina and has been most helpful in trying to help me improve my Russian beyond its current boundaries. Sasha has been my student for about a year and always is fun and interesting to talk with.

I arrived a bit late to lunch with Ekaterina, which I felt bad about, but once again I underestimated how long it would take to get ready in this cold, snowy weather. Luckily she was very understanding and told me it was no big deal. She took me to a great Georgian restaurant, which served my utmost favorite Georgian dish if not one of my most favorite foods, Hachapuri, a kind of pizza but without sauce stuffed with cheeses inside. I so wished there was somewhere, anywhere in Seattle or nearby that served this wonderful food, but alas I’ll just have to keep coming back to Russia!!

It was wonderful to meet with her again (I’d met with her in person on my last trip in May). Over lunch we discussed her current PhD thesis, which was based around the creation of a new computer program for Russian language learners to better improve their reading skills, writing skills and listening skills. It was still a work in progress and was being tailored for all types of different levels of Russian. I look forward to testing the program myself and especially liked the fact that it would tell the learner why they made a mistake. So many online tests I’ve taken in Russian or exercises that I do don’t tell you why you made the mistake leading to frustration on the part of the language learner.

Ekaterina and I also were lamenting about how so many unique and individual cafes in Russia and especially St. Petersburg have gone out of business in favor of chain restaurants like Coffee House (a Russian café that is literally on every single corner!!) and others. And here I thought my hometown of Bellevue and Seattle were the only place where unique local restaurants were being replaced by global mega chains! Goes to show you there is nowhere immune to the evil tentacles of globalization. 

After discussing a wide range of other things including her recent trip to the Spanish city of Grenada, which sounded absolutely fabulous and a place that if I ever can break my addiction to travel in Russia that I’d like to visit, we said goodbye. I promised that I’d definitely continue my lessons with her. Unfortunately my mother’s recent health problems and my unhealthy obsession with the past election (which I’m still mourning) left little time to do lessons. But hopefully this time around I’ll do better at time management and find a place for lessons.

I returned to my hotel room a bit tired due to the last remaining remnants of jet lag trying to exert their power over me. I laid down for a bit and then got ready for my second social engagement, dinner with my student, Alex or Sasha. He was going to meet me at Pushkin Square about three blocks away from my place, where we would take the metro to his place. Meeting at Pushkin Square under the Pushkin statue is a common place for people to meet in Moscow. And why not, it’s a great landmark and you really can’t go wrong! Although I am very proficient on how to navigate the metro, which I’ve been doing successfully since 1991 when I was a freshman or 9^th grade and sneaked out of my hotel room at 6 am to ride the then Leningrad Metro blue line, Sasha insisted that he meet me in the city center so he could personally escort me to his apartment, an hour away by metro. I hated to put him out but since he was so insistent I gladly agreed.

The metro ride was a long one, nearly to the end of the orange line in the southern part of the city. Although we had reached his home metro station that didn’t mean we were there, we still had to walk 15 minutes to his apartment. We arrived without any drama, but his mother had been expecting us and wondered why we had been so long. She introduced herself as Svetlana and proceeded to give me a tour of their apartment. Russian apartments are amazing! The hallways and entrances to the buildings themselves are not very pretty. Often they are dark, foreboding and the elevators can look as if they’re ready to go out at any moment. HOWEVER, once you step inside you are in a whole new drastically different world! The apartments are always nicely furnished, very airy and definitely tastefully decorated. Sasha/Aleks’ apartment was no exception! It was very nice inside, very airy and definitely very welcoming.

Sasha and me at the dinner table

Following the grand tour we sat down to dinner. Russians always make sure you are well fed and this visit was no exception. Our discussions at the dinner table were all very interesting. Sasha/Alex had a huge passion for Great Britain and when it came to British history he could talk about it till as they say, “the cows came home”. If anyone ever needs an expert to explain Churchill’s reign and what it meant to the UK and/or the world Sasha is your man! He’s a genius!! His mother actually used to work in England and spoke about the stark differences between the UK and Russia.

Sasha's mom, Svetlana and myself

One difference she noted was how in the UK and of course as I noted in the United States people will often smile at complete strangers and even say hi or engage in polite conversation. Whereas in Russia you generally absolutely do not smile at strangers or really make conversation. This may be part of the reason Russia gets a bad wrap about being unfriendly. Russians are very much to themselves and believe that smiling at someone is quite weird and in one Russian’s words indicates there must be something really wrong with you! I try to remember this when I’m on the streets of Russia, but sometimes being from Seattle where people are super friendly and will always smile and go out of their way to be nice, it can be hard.

View of Moscow from Sasha's apartment.

 After hours of chatting about everything, we wrapped it up. I couldn’t believe it, but Sasha wanted to personally escort me home. I told him all he had to do was take me to the metro and I’d be good from there, but he insisted. So, we got ready and headed to the metro eventually reaching my place in what seemed like record breaking time of one hour, which meant Sasha would have to ride the metro home one hour. I felt bad, but there was no way he was going to let his honored guest ride home by themselves! Parting ways with Sasha made me feel very grateful for the awesome friends I have across this gigantic nation!

Sasha and me at my hotel, The Pushkin