Russians have, from the outset, a slightly bewildering obsession with the аптека (ap-tye-kah - pharmacy, drugstore; possibly Greek in origin). The set up involves a typically long queue (очередь oh-che-red) - the type seen everywhere else from the metro ticket booth (касса - kah-sa) to a toilet (туалет) at a nightclub (ночной клуб - noch-noi cloob). With the exception of the latter, such queues usually lead to a woman behind a small window with a wafer-thin gap to pass money through. They tend to look something like this.
Nowadays there are more Boots-esque style stores where you can wander about as you please and take stuff to the till. The old school variant has you in a mostly empty room with glass cases showing off the oddly-named and mysterious substances available for purchase - providing, of course, if you know exactly what you want.
The funny thing is - some of the time the patrons don't know what they want, and will grill the poor pharmacist for at least ten minutes detailing their exact condition - going as far in places as to go over the instructions packaged with whatever product they may or may not need. As you might expect, by the end of this, some might not even make a purchase. And yes, this has happened to me.
Now most of what I've said so far is bitchy and whiny but, in a roundabout way, I'm trying to highlight a rather unfortunate aspect about the healthcare industry in Russia. Along with teachers and lecturers, doctors and therapists are treated dreadfully here. Why? Along with a bunch of other reasons, there exists a belief that Russians know their own body better than anyone else, and they are the ones best qualified to deal with any ailment.
As a result, psychotherapists do not get the same respect (or money) as their Western counterparts, so it's not clear how widespread genetic mental disorders are in this country - especially those that may be as a result of alcohol abuse, and good grief this post has taken a dark turn.
Enough of that - let's look at some cool shit you can pick up in the pharmacies here! First up is this awesomeness called Nicoflex.
It comes in a tube and in Russian is called a мазь (mazz - ointment) If you're an idiot like me who has been dancing too much and ends up using muscles you didn't even know you had then Nicoflex is for you. It's basically Soviet strength Deep Heat and it works a charm. Stiff back? Nicoflex. Cramped calf muscle? Nicoflex. Eyes not watering enough? Forget to wash your hands after applying Nicoflex.
On a similar theme is... Ketonal!
Now that your ligaments feel as though they're on fire, it's time to pop some Ketonal for any leftover joint pain. Forget those shiny packets of neatly arranged Nurofen tablets; these bad boys come in a non-descript brown glass bottle. You just know that the dodgier it looks, the more effective it's going to be.
And what about something to keep your immune system going in the winter? I should note that, as of time of writing, it's currently -23 Celsius. Enter Аскорбинка (As-kor-bin-ka from ascorbic acid - y'know the vitamin C stuff).
Askorbinka are mostly aimed at kids and, naturally, completely laced with sugar. But it's okay because it's got vitamin C in it. They're fairly cheap as well, and make for a crappy treat at kids' birthday parties.
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In other news I've been at milongas non-stop since returning from Argentina, and slowly working my way towards becoming a local legend in the Moscow tango community. Also, one of the instructors celebrated her birthday at the school. No prizes for guessing where I am in the video.
As a result of my trip to Buenos Aires, I've also started hosting dinner parties here, which I shall elaborate on in the next post (no really, because it's high time I shamelessly promoted this stuff).
The exciting conclusion to my adventures in Argentina Day 8 The lessons begin
Decide to be gross and eat at mcdonalds for lunch. Wouldn't accept credit card. Hmm. Try to find a citibank. Also no go. Tried to go to Disco supermarket - card worked there before - but place is completely friggin' packed. Sunbathe for an hour. Head to meet maestro Damian, who taught me various bits about the close embrace. A bunch more lessons with him await.
Return to Disco later. Card isn't blocked, just can't withdraw cash it seems, or pay for Big Macs (not that I need to). Before evening of dancing I post the first week's worth of blog stuff.
Two milongas (yes, two!) were complete washouts. Ended up practically performing in front of a crowd on an empty dance floor with Irina in a place called La Catedral. Someone was taking photos, I think, so I'm probably on someone's facebook wall by now. Floor there sucks. Thumbs down. Studenty BoHo crowd more interested in watching people than actually getting up themselves.
Early-ish start tomorrow.
Day 9 Cleaning up my act
Damian is an unbelievably nice guy who, aside from dancing, also plays the piano, teaches at the Fine School of Arts, and used to paint - so much so that his house is strewn with his works. His place is also totally awesome. His main room has an enormous mirror and a perfect solid wooden floor for dancing on.
After a couple minutes of dancing, Damian sets about picking apart various issues I have. Doing the basic figure called the sandwich (wherein the leader closes his feet over one of his partner's, performing a kind of 180 turn and ending up on the other side), he noticed that I'm switching my weight too soon. You should always "plant" your partner before doing any particular movement to avoid losing balance and falling over like a prat.
As (sort of) said before "leader" and "follower" is misleading when talking about the actual actions. As a leader, you aren't just dragging your partner about where you so please. You have to "invite" the movement and, if she accepts, you follow *her* and *then* lead her - if that makes any sense. It's not so much caveman "me - go; you - follow". It's more "My darling, would you kindly accompany me on this horse drawn carriage and we can hold the reins together?" You're also translating this idea into your hips. I know this analogy makes no sense.
MOVING ON. The next chief issue was contact in the open and close embrace, and switching between the two. Problem with open was pressure in right hand on shoulder blade, problem with close was the lack of support by the right hand and the elbow interfering. Also, breathing out at the end of a figure.
Figures worked on included ocho cortado (walking around leg to pretty much force it into a cross), entrada/salida(?) with the left after a cross leading into a forward ocho with another entrada/salida on the right, step to the left placing right foot between partner's (thick in the middle!) turning their hips with the foot (and a bit of the upper body) closing feet and shortcutting into a cross, step to the left switch weight into a sandwich contact on the shins don't lean away from partner, back step with right sidestep left plant both feet lead partner into cross system and follow into a cross. Most figures focused on simply closing the feet, rather than trying to keep step with the partner. [Editor's note: upon review of this it makes no sense.]
Always the whole time in close embrace maintaining pressure on chest (but not too much! opening and closing doors!). Bad habit of side-stepping on my part.
Try to pick up suit on return home - still not ready, should be tomorrow. Back at flat, sunbathe for a bit. Snooze. Zhenya brings me money (woohoo!). Milonga later. Hopefully it won't stink like last night's.
Meh. Knocked Germany and Austria off the list. Returned home early, getting too busy. I think I'll go to Villa Malcolm tomorrow like last week. Good crowd there the last time.
Day 10 Miercoles Milonga
Class with Damian at noon. Focus on milonga style music. Three styles of music are danced to in Argentine tango: tango, waltz (3/4), and milonga (kind of 2/4 but over the course of 8 beats with stress on the 1st, 4th, 5th and 7th - not to mention an alternative 3-beat syncopation). Milonga therefore is faster. Quicker, smaller steps required. Learned five figures in total (consult scrawled notes made in coffee shop afterwards ad memoriam, might be able to force Anton into teaching them back home). Maybe tackle waltz tomorrow.
Despite recommendation, nearby coffee shop did not boast best of service. Finally acquired tailored suit. Set me back some 700 pesos in total (divide by 4-ish for price in dollars). Fabulous new shoes the other day cost me about 550 pesos.
Tried to go to another group class in afternoon, place was bare except for one couple, turns out dude giving private class, listing is out of date. Consult El Tangauta magazine more carefully next time.
Eat at another restaurant dad recommended [Editor's note: wrong one entirely, but still good]. Called El Establo. Large hunk of cow again. Will gladly fly halfway across the world again for meat of that quality.
Contemplating another milonga to break suit in. Another glass of malbec is required for decision-making.
What a waste of taxi time, at least I got a free ticket to Friday milonga at the place. Armenian cultural center is not that good a venue.
Day 11 Thursday Waltzing
Didn't sleep at all. People like making noise in this city. Short blasts of sunbathing for barely half an hour has left me red. Sun is very strong here. Wash other clothes. Too hot and stuffy.
Class in evening with Damian. Nearly turn up late because of traffic. I suggest a waltz figure. Damian takes it and expands on it. Also sacada followed by in-step for follower into a cross.
Main focus was on the lapis and how I should (probably) be getting used to the idea of returning to the neutral position. Consult post-session scrawled notes for fuzzy details. Damian says I should bring my camera tomorrow, so we'll record every figure we've done this week. Will probably post this as a second part of the diaries on Friday [Editor's note: fat chance].
Small party at Mike's tonight.
Party is great fun. Heading to milonga tomorrow at Fundacion Tango Argentino (hopefully).
Day 12 Filming Friday
Taxi to Damian's is a bit messed up. Slightly psychotic old git who at one point was humming really off-key to Radiohead (no, seriously). Swerved dangerously in front of everyone. Arrive in one piece. Definitely more terrifying than Moscow. [Editor's note: Mike told me at one point that Buenos Aires has one of the highest car accident fatalities in the world.]
Get camera set up, no need to scribble down notes, except for the title of my new favourite milonga track called "Papas Calientes" (literally "hot potatoes") by Juan D'Arienzo. Class is pretty draining. Crappy lunch in nearby cafe again. Now in possession of about 50 minutes of footage that may or may not cause the netbook to explode during the transfer :/ At least now I have a record of the major stuff.
Milonga starts at 10-ish. I have been informed that I should go to the venue Confiteria Ideal at some point. Apparently it's famous *shrug*
Milonga at Fundacion totally blows. Small and very stuffy. Head to La Catedral to meet Mike & co. Ends up being awesome. Live orchestra in attendance with some French beatboxer joining them as part of his "tour" (or whatever the announcer said). Whirled a Polish girl about for a bit in front of the crowd. Almost certainly photos of me on some website now somewhere making an arse out of myself. Eventually in bed at about 4ish?
Day 13 Moar souvenirs
Didn't sleep for shit. Apparently, if I understood Andrey correctly, 16 people were stuck in the lift. The max is 6, so I probably misheard that figure [Editor's note: no, this is actually correct upon chatting to the parties in question later]. Either way, they certainly spent half the night banging the elevator in an attempt to move/escape. Allegedly somewhere between the 3rd and 4th floor they managed to crawl out.
Afternoon we head to La Boca. Birthplace of tango allegedly (photos somewhere), so big on tourist shite.
More Russians have arrived to the group. Buy some fridge magnets. Lunch involves a huge amount of meat.
Everyone else is tired in the evening. Shrug my shoulders - stuff it - and head out to Villa Malcolm on Cordoba by myself. I only came here for three things anyway. Good dances. Knocked Korea off the list. Left after a sort of half-time interval that involved a pretty shit hot Korean dude in a suit pulling off an impressive milonga routine. Taxi driver there was Danny Trejo's long lost brother. Taxi back was another fucking psychopath who I'm pretty sure spent more time looking at his GPS than the road itself. Radio played Flash Gordon at one point. Uh huh.
Day 14 Sunday... uhh... sort of sucked
Knackered from last night. Wander off to local supermarket called Disco to buy lunch and a couple of beers on a whim, which completely knock me out for the rest of the afternoon. Napping is the worst. Wake up feeling like crap. Bump into other Russians, ask if they wanna milonga later tonight. Anton *finally* arrives (yet to see him, he's probably tired). At about 10pm the sky decides to piss its pants, so the milonga idea goes out the window (I wasn't about to ruin my new good shoes).
Day 15 Penultimonday!
Wake up earlyish. Actually kinda breezy outside. Use weird washing machine again. Halfheartedly begin prepping for tomorrow, which is when I leave. Class with Damian this afternoon, possibly meeting Mike one more time before I head off. We grab a quick cafe con leche before my final session with Mr. Essel. I ask him to focus on steps and balance. Enlightening lecture on extreme subtleties of the step follows, which I can barely wrap my head around. It all makes sense, but putting it into practice is a whole other ball game.
Phone runs out of credit. Thankfully bump into Zhenya and Anton at coffee shop around the corner. Milonga is unfathomably shit. Some sort of stupid referees. Should have gone to Confiteria Ideal. There's always next year.
Day 16 YAY INTERNATIONAL FLIGHTS
Wake up, pack up, Anton summons me to the roof to drink far too much beer in the blazing midday sun, then we go and buy nine pairs of women's shoes for me to take back home. Because that's, like, y'know, normal.
We lunch at some place called Meridian 58 not far from the apartment, which serves an amazing steak with some sort of pumpkin salsa. And more wine and beer.
Get my shit together, head for airport. Get the luggage wrapped up in clingfilm by one of those stupid devices for about twenty dollars, which is probably a lot less harder and cheaper than if you attempted to do so yourself in the kitchen. Seems sensible, considering the footwear I'm packin'.
Flight is incredibly delayed, but it's not so bad as it means the layover in Madrid won't stink as much. What's four hours, really, in the grand scheme of things? Look at trinkets. I eat some sort of excuse for a sandwich, which may or may not be the death of me. If I don't make it back to Moscow, I demand vengeance. There is a passenger wandering about whose eyelids look like they have been doing drugs since the 80s.
Little in the way to alleviate the sheer dullness of a four hour delay. Allegedly some sort of volcano warning.
Flight takes off, huuuuuuge airbus. Exhausted at this point.
Periodically re-open notebook to review footage from Damian's class. Sandwich from BsAs' airport still hasn't claimed my life. I am a god.
Get to Madrid, eat a burger, pay exorbitant sum for internet, yay skype and that boingo access thing. In spite of 4 hour twiddling of thumbs in EZE, there's still another 5 to go here in Barajas.
Gate changes about three times. Shitty airbus this time around. Very cramped [Editor's note: Russians have this horrendous habit of buying every single item in duty free and completely overloading the baggage lockers]. Nevertheless, the flight back from Shanghai has yet to be beaten. Food sucks, but Iberia are an okay company. Next time I'm booking my own flight with someone else.
Land in Moscow. Some sort of clusterfuck with the immigration thing. System has changed recently in that you no longer have to smudge your name across a crappy slip of paper that could be easily reproduced, they print them out instead with the necessary info filled in. All very well until the printer breaks or the computer crashes.
Get through, barely recognize my bag as it's shrink wrapped in green plastic, but I think it's mine. I hope. I'll be in trouble if it isn't.
Manage to waltz from one end of the airport to the other to get the express on time. I am typing this on the train to Paveletskaya Station. Almost thirty hours have passed since I set foot in Buenos Aires' airport. It is -10 degrees.
The following is a really bad attempt at keeping a brief account of my time here in Argentina. Why is it brief? I want to make it seem as though I am too busy with hot sexy milongeuras and only have the opportunity to type with one hand because I'm dragging some girl to the dance floor with the other. Normally this process of writing takes me far longer than it does for you to read it. This time around I'm just opening notepad and hammering down whatever I thought was funny. Expect gibberish and garbled syntax. Here's the first week.
Day 1 Flight to BA
[Joining me on my journey is Andrey, also at the same school as me, and Irina, who is from Nizhny Novgorod. Due to personal matters, Anton's arrival is delayed by about ten days :( The whole thing will last some 15 days]
Delayed at Moscow Domodedovo airport by one hour. Flights to Central Asian states aplenty, meaning there are Tajiks and Uzbeks everywhere. For some extremely weird reason - might have been the breakfast omelette - I break into a vicious sweat for about ten minutes and nearly vomit on the way to Madrid. Bought some swiss mega-adapter, so my camera and netbook will be with me throughout this little jaunt halfway across the world. Despite delay, arrive in perfect time for boarding. 12 hours of sitting about lie ahead. I really need a drink for this.
Nowhere near as bad as return flight from Shanghai, during which I had no netbook and nearly went nuts. Iberia are okay. Steer clear of the moussaka, and the red wine is like grape juice.
No problems getting through immigration (unless you're Canadian, American or Australian). Zhenya, our guide, meets us with a driver. It is a muggy 24 degrees on our arrival.
A forty minute drive gets us to our apartment building, which is in the swanky district of Palermo. Flat is sparse, but towels and soap are in abundance. Zhenya gives me a SIM card and we discuss other stuff.
I don't have any shampoo, this is my hair.
Day 2 Welcome to BA
Wake up, hair is still a disheveled clump on my head. It rained last night. View from my balcony.
Trees lining the street are somewhat of a novelty for me, having spent 3 years wandering Moscow's dusty pavements.
Meet my fellow milonguero/as for breakfast. One of them is having a couple of medialunas (lit. half-moons). A medialuna is a sweet croissant.
Stood in dog shit. Bought new tango shoes, very fancy. Tailored suit and trousers incoming next week. We drink two bottles of malbec over lunch. Beef is glorious. Shopping now. Wait, it's raining. Supermarket is called Disco. Try to take money out from ATM with my card, doesn't work - mostly due to the fact that I was guessing which friggin' button I needed to push. Credit card still works at the till.
Chill for the afternoon. Milonga in the evening. Didn't have glasses, couldn't see shit [Editor's note: Eye contact is vital during such events], still had some good dances, new shoes kick ass, nuts half-time performance by a professional couple, left my goddamn wallet on the table like a knobend, Andrey looked at my wallet and then at me as if I was a knobend when I came back to the table (quite rightly so).
Day 3 Settling in
Drag my ass out of bed. Lost my key, duh. Ended up leaving it in the door, security guard took it. Sheepishly march to admin, lady puts fear of god into me "someone could have come into your apartment!" even though there's a glass security door, a guard monitoring it, and five stories separating me from any potential bandito.
Call Mike. Meet for coffee outside, reminisce, talk about dogs, head back to his for lunch with his girlfriend. Sunburned. Ouch.
Another milonga tonight - hopefully getting dinner with Andrey and Ira. Beef!
No beef, huge chunk of salmon instead. White wine.
Milonga in old dance hall. Not as good as yesterday's. Ironically most of the people I danced with weren't Argentine at all. Italian, English, Asian/Australian, Danish and I forget who else. Get home at about 3 AM
Day 4 Friday hangover
Wake up feeling like crap. Need to get washing powder. Washing powder aquired. Washing machine sucks, gonna resort to hand washing shit from now on [Editor's note: He doesn't].
Cook pasta. Eat far too much ice cream because freezer is too small. Oops.
Heading out for class and milonga. Class lasts two hours. Milonga straight after. Not particularly wild on one of the movements that was focused on, which was a sort of amagi/kunita for the milonguera and a perpendicular side step for the partner.
Class made all the better by the presence of Fernanda, whose embrace I shall not forget for quite some time. Instructor guy was a teensy bit too flashy for my liking. Cool beard, though.
Milonga afterwards involved two encounters with Argentineans, a Japanese and Bulgarian. Head home early because dance floor gets way too packed, and have no patience to wait another hour for it to calm down. Bottle of Terrazas Malbec waits for me at home.
Day 5 Just Saturday
Sunbathe only a short while considering how red I turned in such a brief space of time the other day. Venture out on a little walk for an hour or so. End up on some main road (Avenue of the Liberator?)
with loads of trees and stuff everywhere.
Take a few snaps. Wander into some coffee shop by the zoo, order a chocolate alfajore which is similar-ish to Halva.
Waiting on early class tonight. Weekends are down time for milongas and lessons. If I can't get a personal instructor sorted tonight, gonna end up traipsing across the whole city next week to as many group classes as possible, if only for the fact that the quality of partners here is incredible compared to Moscow.
Turned up hour late for class (listing was incorrect). Met Damian Eselin. Apparently I'll be having a private lesson or two with him.
Milonga is a bit weak, but of all things Damian and his partner Nancy (along with another pair) are performing at this club. Rather than talk about the fact that it was not a young crowd in the slightest, I have videos of all their routines. Joy of joys is that the wifi in the apartment building is brill, and my upload speed is through the roof (sort of). Certainly way faster than Moscow. Anyway, enjoy.
Hang around flat til midday. Call Anton. Go to Parque Centenario to meet Mike. Eat a chorizo hot dog thing. Eat a churro. Eat some cake handed out by a couple of girls. "Spitting" trees. Attempt to buy souvenirs from flea market. End up settling on a set of nail clippers.
Drink a bottle of Quilmes local beer. Nothing exceptional. Might try and eat at the french brasserie tonight that my dad recommended.
A glorious chunk of cow is preceeded by a red tuna carpaccio. Creme caramel to finish. Wine with all three courses. I am full.
Did you know Game of Thrones (Игра пристолов - Ee-gra pri-stall-ov) is actually filmed in Belfast? Came as a surprise to me. Great show all the same. Like Lord of the Rings (Властелин колец - Vlah-stel-in koh-lets), but taking out the twaddle about magic and elves and replacing it with everyone constantly shagging each other or stabbing each other in the back. Sometimes both. What's this got to do with Russia? Not much. I just felt like putting Sean Bean's face up there, because the poor bloke gets an awful lot of flak.
The reason I have not posted in a while is due to various external factors and, while we are at it, why not blame the weather (погода - po-go-da) too for its sharp seasonal turn about? So far it has been mildly wavering above zero (нуль - knool), teasing the local population (население - nah-si-len-i-ye) before it decides to nosedive.
It might be worthwhile re-naming this blog Everything Tango. I have become so dedicated to both it and the school (школа - sh-kawl-ah) that I am now turning into some sort of teaching assistant. If there is a lack of leaders or followers - the politically-correct term for guys and girls - for the beginner classes, on more than one occasion I have been invited to stay behind to help out.
This is by no means a bad thing, because I am now getting an insight into what it's like to dance as a follower - or, more romantically in Russian, a партнерша (part-nyor-sha). The leader is known as партнер (part-nyor). That sha you see at the end is a common method of feminizing a Russian noun, and the end result is that it actually sounds much more romantic. "Leader and Follower" has a sense of imbalance. "Two partners" on the other hand touches upon the very heart of the dance.
So that is what has mostly been the focus in the past three months - outside of work and personal life, which I cannot post about because they have been so exciting that blogger alone would not be able to contain it.
What I can say, without causing the Internet to explode, is that I went back to Ireland (Ирландия Eer-lan-di-ya) in August (Август - ahv-goost) for my birthday. Upon my return I celebrated with another Leo (Лев - Lyev) in tango tradition at the school, wherein everybody takes turns to dance with the birthday boy or girl.
In defence of my then-terrible dancing, I had just gotten off the plane the day before and hadn't practised in a week.
And what's the end result of all this? I am heading to Buenos Aires next week on a sort of pilgrimage for a fortnight. Expect photos (фотки foht-ki) and videos (роллики - rawl-ee-ki) of me eating beef, drinking red wine, and dreadful attempts at speaking the Spanish language (испанский язык - Ee-span-ski yih-sikh).
Instead of writing another entry, I decided to go on radio to talk for longer than I would spend jotting something down here. It was for Voice of Russia, which is kind of like the Motherland's version of the BBC World Service in that it broadcasts across the globe in many languages. I took part in the program "Home from Home", the host of which interviews English-speaking foreigners who now live and work in Moscow.
You can either follow the following link to the site to listen to it there, or download the 25-minute show by clicking here (or right-click and click "save as..."). Try to ignore the musical intermissions (unless, of course, you like samba), and the fact that I sound like a bit of a twerp in places.
Benjamin Glover is from Northern Ireland. His school, unusual for Northern Ireland at that time, offered Russian, which he studied. He liked the language and went on to study Russian at university. After university he came out to Moscow three years ago and now works as a Style Editor at Russia Today. He has a range of interests and especially enjoys learning tango.
It's been both slow and busy for the past couple of months. Slow because of various factors (it's becoming too damn hot/humid for one) and busy because I can barely stop myself from going to tango class nearly every day. Seriously, we're talking 2-3 hours here during school nights, and I haven't even been to a milonga yet.
Part of the reason for this is because an Argentine maestro called Daniel Tuero (who has about 30 years of experience under his belt) came to visit last month for a three day seminar, so I decided to get as many classes in as possible in order to learn as much as I could. There's a whole bunch of vids of him on YouTube you can find. This is from a Moscow trip back in 2009.
Unfortunately the seminar wasn't the greatest in the world, as the overall skill level of attendees wasn't particularly advanced (продвинутая pro-dvi-noo-ta-ya), meaning Tuero had to keep things relatively simple. What was great, though, is that I booked a private lesson (индивидуальный урок in-dee-vid-you-al-ni ooh-rock) with him.
Yet as with any person who has studied or performed some sort of activity for far too many years, it was more of a philosophy lecture than me learning how to do something stupid like a backflip (those don't occur during normal dances anyway). Even though this is a no-brainer, Daniel pretty much reiterated that "it takes two to tango."
In other words, after watching me dance for a while, he explained that I wasn't thinking about my partner. On paper doing this is pretty obvious; in practice it can be quite hard, because there's a great tendency to want to show off and flick your legs around like a pillock - all the while ignoring the fact that you may not be leading properly, or that you're holding her in an uncomfortable manner, or that your posture is off, or that you're not even paying attention to her at all. I am guilty on all of these points.
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In other news I flagrantly abused my connections with another one of my friends and invited myself along to the Fast Five (Форсаж 5 Fore-sazhPyat) press premiere at Moscow's Oktyabr theatre, which is pretty much the major cinema in the center of Moscow, located on the Novy Arbat. Why would I do such a thing, you might ask? Two words: Vin. Diesel.
Excuse the lighting on this video, the cinema was a bit dark at the time, but the audio is fine.
Tagging along were first-timer Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson (of WWF fame) and regular co-star Paul Walker. As you can see in the video, it's kind of ironic that, despite The Rock's penchant for theatrics in his previous career, it was Vin Diesel who was hyping it up.
But what was even more bizarre was the fact that the person interpreting for the three was Dmitry Glukhovsky, who is the famous sci-fi author of the Metro 2033 series of books. In the video he introduces himself (in Russian) along the lines of "Well, yeah, I'm more known for writing those books - but I also like fast cars!" (In truth he's worked a bunch with Universal Pictures in the past helping out with localization).
As for the film itself, it's completely stupid. Totally and utterly utterly stupid. In a good way. I really haven't laughed so goddamn hard in the cinema in quite some time. Fast & Furious films are not high art by any means, and they don't pretend to be. It has also toppled 300 from the podium of "most homoerotic endeavor on the silver screen" too. I'm mildly concerned about Vin Diesel's physical condition, though, because in the film he looks terrible - and not as a result of his acting abilities.
And that "hint" Vin Diesel is referring to in the video? Yeah, they're shooting Fast 6 here.
As with most large cities, the origin behind the name of Russia's capital is rife with different theories. Most folk tend to point towards the principal feature of Moscow (Москва - Massk-va, the stress being on the first syllable edit: no it's not, it's on the second, whoops! If a vowel in Russian isn't stressed, then it's not pronounced the way it should. So, for example, an unstressed "o" sounds like "ah") - its river, which is called the Moskva River. Naming a city according to its proximity to a geographical feature isn't exactly inspired. Regardless, what's the root of Москва?
According to some ancient Baltic languages (possibly Mordovian or Finno-Ugric), Москва could have come - via a slight mutation - from their words for 'dark' or 'muddy'. Another simply points to 'bear-river'. However, I was told a far more entertaining tale the other day regarding the origin of Москва. But first a little preamble.
In 1147, Prince Yury Dolgoruky of Rostov founded what would be later known as Moscow and set up a wooden kremlin there (кремль krem-l). Nowadays when you say the word Kremlin, most folk will associate it as the center of Russian government. What it actually means is something close to the word 'fortress'. Even though it got burned down a couple of times, Moscow has always had its kremlin in the same place.
So, if we believe my friend's account, Dolgoruky for whatever reason allegedly had an obsession with the word мост (mawst) or 'bridge'. It's not exactly a complete stretch of the imagination, there's a great big river there, and the prince probably did want a bridge. Over time, Dolgoruky kept saying мост, eventually leading to him dropping the 't' from the word.
Then, one day, while he was standing by the river, a frog (лягушка - lya-goosh-ka) leapt up the bank and croaked. Seeing as this was a Slavic frog, he did not 'ribbit'. In Russian, the onomatopaeia for a frog's croak is квак (kvak). Dogs (собака - soh-bah-ka), incidentally, do not go woof, they go гаф-гаф (gaff-gaff); pigs (свиня - sveen-yah) go хрунь (khroon); horses (лошадь - low-shad) go огого (oh-go-go); but cats (кот - cot) still go miaow regardless of language.
Dolgoruky's "мос" and the frog's "квак" came together in that moment, and thus was born Москва.
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In other news, spring has decided to rear its slush-coloured head. Proof of this was demonstrated beautifully by a coworker, who suddenly noticed that his wristwatch actually had a glow-in-the-dark dial. It had been so gloomy over the past few months that it simply wasn't absorbing any light until now.
Tango continues unabated. There was a special concert a couple of weekends ago at the Central House of Artists, during which the instructors of the school I go to performed.
Also performing were two Argentine maestros, Omar Caceres and Vidala Barboza, who stole the show (sorry, Anton). The way they moved so fluidly on stage pretty much confirms that all they do in Buenos Aires is just drink and shag. Apologies for the autofocus on this one; my camera had a mind of its own for the first 20 seconds.
There are more videos from the event on youtube, which you can find by clicking this link.
No man drowns if he perseveres in praying to God, and can swim. - Russian proverb
Until last weekend I haven't been swimming (плавание plah-van-i-yeh) in at least two years. This is mostly due to the fact that I banjaxed my shoulder, effectively putting an end to any front crawl (кроль k-rawl) shenanigans, but I can still do the breast stroke (брасс brass) without any major repercussions. So where other than overpriced fitness centres can one go for a dip in the Russian capital, I hear you cry?
Well, there are far worse places than Чайка (Chai-ka lit. "seagull"), which is an open-air swimming pool (бассейн bah-say'n). Unfortunately, finding a decent picture of the complex is difficult, mostly because it shares its name with a rather famous - and incredibly depressing - play by Anton Chekhov. Fortunately, Google maps comes to the rescue.
What you might also be asking is why on earth is someone going to an open-air swimming in the middle of a Russian winter? To that I don't really have an answer. I have a picture, though, courtesy of Alexander Baranov's flickr account.
Admittedly the temperature at the time that photo was taken was -20 at night. The coldest I've been there was when it was roughly -10 two weekends ago. And no, the pool is not -10, it's about +25 in the water.
Typical of Russian bureaucracy, in order to actually use the pool, you need to go and get something called a медицинская справка (med-it-sin-sky-ya sprav-kah) which is a doctor's certificate.
Fortunately, you don't need to go to some small hovel on the other side of the city for the scrap of paper that gets handed out for nearly everything and would probably be simple enough to falsify. There's a special office inside the complex where three ladies sit doing nothing but processing said scraps of paper and taking people's blood pressure all day. A few more form-signings and payments at the cashier later, one eventually gets to the changing rooms, which is where things start to get really Soviet.
First off you have to forfeit your медицинская справка to someone sitting in a small booth in exchange for a locker token (don't worry, you get it back later). Once you find your locker, you'll be presented with an odd sight.
Unlike a typical coin-operated lock and key mechanism found elsewhere, Chaika's lockers have four dials on them, both on the inside and the outside of the locker door. On the inside you clunk the dials into whatever code you want - which you later match on the outside to open it. Obviously you don't have the dials on the outside be the same as the ones on the inside, but the trick is trying to remember whatever 4 digit code you came up with. On the upside it means you don't have to worry about having to dive down three meters to get your key from the deep end.
Now I hope you brought a plastic bag (пакет pah-ket)with you, as well as a pair of flip flops (тапки tap-ki), a swim cap (шапочка для плавания sha-potch-ka d'lya pla-van-i-ya), goggles (защитные очки zah-sheet-ny-ye atch-key), a towel (полотенце po-lo-ten-tsye) and some shower gel (гель для душа gel d'lya doo-sha), because you'll be needing all that later.
Before taking the plunge, like at any pool you need to take a shower. Usually showers have the valve by the pipe connected to the shower head. Not so in Chaika. The valve is on the floor, which you have to stand on to operate.
Getting into the main Olympic-standard pool is actually kinda cool, though in the West it might be seen as a gross safety violation. You step into a small pool connected to the outside ,which is obstructed by a barrier that you then have to swim under. I suspect it's primarily a measure to keep the cold out of the shower area.
So once you've stuck on your swim cap and swum under the barrier, you're out in the open. And you better keep swimming, because even though the water is warm, the air above is still pretty cold.
Once you're sick of the pool, it's time to hit the sauna, though that involves having to walk outside around the pool.
[Writing about a Russian sauna/banya requires a whole other entry, so we'll skip this part for now. ]
After leaving the sauna, take a cold shower and then head round to another, much smaller pool. Now don't worry, this one's indoors. There's probably a very specific name for this bit, and if I knew it I'd post pictures because of how awesome it is.
You can only exit the pool from one side, the other side is up against a wall. About three meters up the side of that wall is a sort of gutter from which blasts a torrent of water. There are about ten of these things along the length of the pool. It sounds odd, but for the full Chaika experience you need to stand under one of these waterfalls and let it beat down on your back and shoulders. Bizarrely, it's the same as if someone were massaging you, and is ridiculously relaxing. And then you go back into the sauna and repeat the process a couple of times, and then outside to another pool in the open to come down from the whole experience.
Hopefully, by the end of all this, you are not dead.
In closing and in keeping with tradition I leave with a video of "Russian Rocket" Alexander Popov, who set the world record for the 50m freestyle in 2000.
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In other news I was at an extremely odd recital at some performance artist's apartment last night. His name is German Vinogradov and he is a strange man. How I actually managed to end up at such a bizarre event should best be saved for another day, or wiped from memory altogether. I do not recommend looking him up on YouTube.
Also, Moscow's new mayor Sergey Sobyanin has come under fire for supposedly lax snow-clearing efforts in the capital. Already there are mumblings about the good old days of Luzhkov. I can't honestly see the difference between this year and last year's winter.
Edit (February 13, 2011): I managed to find this little gem of Tango instructors Anton and Anya practising a routine.
Askorbinka are mostly aimed at kids and, naturally, completely laced with sugar. But it's okay because it's got vitamin C in it. They're fairly cheap as well, and make for a crappy treat at kids' birthday parties.
