About Last Night...

So last night was the first time I performed a tango dance in front of a crowd of people. Admittedly, just friends and students from the school were in attendance, but still. Enjoy. The song is Francisco Canaro's waltz "Corazon de Oro", which translates as "Heart of Gold" (I think).

No Pain, No Gain Pt. 2

There is an expression in Russian - Какая муха тебя укусила (ka-kaya moo-kha tib-ya oo-koo-seal-ah) - which literally translates as "What bug bit you?" but means something closer to "what's the matter with you? or "what bit you on the ass?".

I wish I knew what had sunk its fangs into me while I was walking around the Moscow Country Club's golf course one evening last summer, because it surely couldn't have been an insect, or букашка (bu-kash-ka). One potential suspect is the слепень (sleh-pen) or horsefly.

Go away

Getting bitten by a horsefly isn't pleasant. I last encountered these assholes back in Sarapul, my friend's Siberian home town, several years ago. Unlike a mosquito (комар - koh-marr), which just sort of stings a moment after it's long since buggered off, you can actually feel (well I certainly did) these arrogant bastards digging into your flesh. A victim's vengeance can be swift, however, as they don't fly very fast.

Nonetheless, it didn't seem as though a horsefly was the culprit, because I ended up feverish that night. A couple of days later I had to go to the doctor's for antibiotics (антибиотики anti-biotiki) as my right hand (правая рука - prah-va-ya roo-ka) ended up swollen to the point where my knuckles were no longer visible. So yeah, don't go anywhere near Russian nature.

Also contributing to last summer's countryside hijinx was a trip out to a place called Ruza. It's roughly a hundred kilometers west of Moscow, and you have to grab a train out to the small town of Tuchkova first before getting a taxi the rest of the way.

Once at Ruza, the local kids summer camp, or лагерь (lah-ger), was hosting a tango marathon called "El Huracan".

There some other bloodsuckers decided to feast solely on my feet, which is exactly what you want when you're dancing for three days straight. Regardless, the three days I spent there were marvelous and exactly the kind of weekend I needed. If it's not clear from the previous video, the dancing was all outdoors in a marquee at this summer camp.

But not content to limit my injuries to mere insect bites, I managed to screw up my left shoulder (левое плечо - leh-vo-ye pleh-cho) briefly. Way back in 2003, I did a magnificent job of yanking my left arm out of its socket (вывих плеча - vy-vikh pleh-cha) with the help of a cartwheeling pratfall on a dry ski slope. For those who live in countries with snow, this is what a dry ski slope looks like.

Yup

Dry ski slopes are a series of hard plastic spikes arranged in a diamond lattice with water sprayed on top, letting you (barely) slide over them. They are also the most miserable things you'll ever see and nothing like proper snow (снег - snyeg). 

Since that time, like Mr. Pringle said, once you pop, you can't stop, because dislocations don't work the same way as broken bones do. In most cases when a bone (кость - kost') is broken, it grows back stronger, but dislocations don't get that Wolverine luxury. The glenohumeral joint is not load-bearing, which makes it inherently unstable. Get yourself into the right position like, I dunno, tumbling face forward downhill after tripping over a slalom pole and breaking your fall with your left arm, and ta-dah! Your muscles in that arm are now screaming in agony and you're not allowed any morphine until the x-ray is done. To top it all off your muscles are now weaker, increasing the chances of it happening again next time you decide to windmill your arms about.

I did eventually get surgery, leaving me with an awesome scar, followed by months of physiotherapy not unlike in the previous post. Of course, in my idiocy I ended up popping my arm out again a few years later.

Since then there's been one or two close calls - at tango class of course - but nothing requiring a trip to the hospital with me screaming like a girl. As much fun as it is, I think I'll stop talking about my medical ailments for now.

I'm on instagram nowadays. I don't post anything artsy. Mostly posters for shitty bands who - as mentioned in the U2 concert post a while ago - can only make money nowadays by touring countries who for some baffling reason still have some misplaced nostalgia in them. 

Go on  - name ONE of their songs, and no googling

Failing that it's pictures of my neighbor's sweet ride.

Periodically I end up leaving my umbrella hanging on the handlebars while I unlock the front door and then forget to pick it up again. To date, the umbrella (зонтик - zon-tick) has still not been stolen away from me those nights I've forgotten about it, which only goes to show how bad ass his bike is.

Let's Dance

Not me, I'm afraid.

In light of International Tango Day, I was interviewed (again) over the phone by Voice of Russia about Moscow's tango scene. Click the following link to listen to me prattle on for about fifteen minutes.

http://english.ruvr.ru/radio_broadcast/35614392/97661017.html

And as is tradition, take a listen to Zum by Osvaldo Pugliese.

No Pain, No Gain Pt. 1

In a paradoxical twist of fate, or “ирония судьбы” (ee-roniya sood-bee lit. "irony of fate"), my physical problems that I made mention of last post have likely arisen from tango classes, but coincidentally the terminology used in tango is extremely useful for explaining your problems to Russian doctors. So how about another long overdue language lesson?

First up – although this took place last year and isn't all that exciting – I was having problems with my muscle (мышца – myshtsa) in my calf (голень – goh-len’) or икра  (i-kra). Officially, it should be икроножная мышца (ikronozhnaya myshtsa) - although to be even more accurate the calf muscle is actually made up of three different muscles, and therein lay the problem.

My technique in the way I was stepping – in tango one of the key elements is a толчковый шаг (tolch-kovy shag), a “pushing” or “thrusting” step (derived from толчок – tol-chok) – was slightly off. Ideally, you are meant to propel yourself forward using your thighs (бедро – bed-roh, which for some reason I keep getting mixed up with ведро – ved-roh – which is “bucket”).

For whatever reason I was using my heel muscles more than my thighs, stemming perhaps from not wanting to stand on my partner's feet (столкнуться - stawlk-noot-sya) as I moved forward. The proper technique involves making sure you stand on the inside part of your feet, which is referred to as внутренняя часть стопы (v-noo-trenyaya chast’ stop-iy), and that you have открытые стопы (otkrytiye stop-iy – open feet), and that your heels are together (пятки вместе – pyatki vmes-tye). If you’re lucky, after a few weeks you’ll have blisters (волдыры – vol-dyr-ee, though rarely used in speech) on your big toes (большие пальцы ног – bol-shiye paltsy nog) that will later become calluses (мозоли – maw-zawl-i).

As a result, muscles in my right calf were getting used more than they should and, if I understood the physiotherapist (физиотерапевт – fizio-terra-peft) correctly, the way those muscles met led to spasms (спазм) because of a build up of lactic acid or whatever. This manifested itself when I was suddenly struck by a painful cramp walking around the center of Moscow one summer day. Being a big girl, I instantly thought I had a torn muscle, or разорванная (razorvannaya) мышца.

Thankfully it turned out there was no injury and I was prescribed some stretches (вытягивание – vy-tyag-ivan-iye), that ointment stuff back in a previous post, and a few massage (массаж - massazh) sessions during which the physio poured paraffin wax over the affected area. 

Not pictured: my foot

The second thing to give me grief was my back (спина - spi-na) for similar reasons, although of course my instant conclusion was that I had slipped a disc and would be forever crippled. Ironically, probably much to the joy of my parents who had berated me for slouching, the MRI (магнитно-резонансная томография magnito-rezonansnaya tomografia, or just MRT) revealed that my back was, in fact, almost completely straight (прямая - pri-maya) as a result of a year's worth of constant dancing.

The issue lay in the fact that along the length of your spine (позвоночник - poh-zvo-noch-nik) there are a whole bunch of muscles connected to the vertebrae. Now ideally the muscles in the lumbar region before meeting the rib cage (грудная клетка - grood-naya klet-ka) should only flex back and forward, while the turning stuff is done further up. Somehow I was breaking that rule and twisting the muscles that should not. So, of course, back to the doctor to get a referral for the physio.

It only dawned on me later at the medical center I use that the reason their physiotherapy department has the slightly odd title of травматология (trav-ma-to-log-i-ya - traumatology) is because it's a warning. The main word in травматология is trauma. Mood music and soothing wax were no longer going to cut it.

Not quite there yet

The words "massage" and "therapy" in this context are misnomers; those two are meant to evoke the idea of relaxation. In my first stint at traumatology I was held face down while an unsympathetic small woman jammed her elbow (локоть - law-kawt) into my backside. My wails did nothing; "Yes, I know, just a little bit more," as she pressed harder down on the back of my thigh for another ten minutes. And then more stretches. 

This time round they involved me mostly lying on the floor thrusting my hips into the air while another small woman demanded I keep sticking my ass up higher and my head tilted forward. "Look at belly!" she commanded in broken English while making me hold an exercise ball with my arms and legs.

The Catch-22 here is that, while an hour's worth of such exercises every day might seem torturous and make you look like a prat, the thing is that, even though they hurt if you do them, your back or leg will still hurt if you don't. The upshot is that you keep up with the former in the hope that it will eventually not hurt any more.

Those three months of dry humping an exercise mat do eventually result in a happy ending - but unfortunately it's a slow one with no fanfare. The reward comes gradually, like when you sit back up after spending the past five minutes making your pelvis (таз - tazz) and chest point opposite directions for the umpteenth time to find that, hold on, that one thing in that bit there doesn't feel off any more. And then once you've fixed yourself all up, you go and do something stupid like crack one of your toes off a metal chair leg...

Next time: the dangers of the Russian countryside and the secret to seducing women. 

Buenos Diaries Pt. 2: Diary Harder

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.

Welcome home.

Buenos Diaries Pt. 1

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.

There's a whole bunch more on my youtube channel.

Day 6 Souvenir Sunday?

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.

=====

Next time: the lessons with Damian begin...

Winter Is Coming

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).

Oh and maybe dancing.

All We Hear Is...

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.

Home from Home

Tags: World, Radio, Russia

Sam Gerrans

3.07.2011, 10:58

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. Читать далее Source: Voice of Russia.

What's In A Name?

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.

You Know When You've Been Tango'd

I guess I should own up to those scant few who don't already know: I have been going to tango lessons for the past month or so.

It's part of an attempt to make up for me not going to the gym any more, though ironically the practice hall is even closer than the gym to my apartment. The school is called To Tango, and it teaches the Argentine form of Tango. The school even has a website. Here's a picture of instructors Anton and Anna ripped from the site:

Anton is a fantastically cool guy, and he also speaks English, which is useful seeing as I'm the only foreigner in attendance. Unfortunately, Anton has been on tango sabbatical to Buenos Aires for the past few weeks, leaving us to Gennady and Lena. I don't have any pictures of Gena, but he has danced far longer than Anton, so the class is in good hands.

So why bring this up now? Well, the past two lessons have made me realize that I can't possibly dance in a crappy pair of dress shoes for much longer, so I went out and bought a proper pair today. Hopefully these will stop me from ruining my knees.

Shiny.

Tango is... challenging, but it sure as hell is fun and I heartily recommend it to you all. Even though I suck right now, at least I'm picking up various dance vocabulary along the way, such as: осанка (oh-san-ka) which means "posture"; ось (oz) which means "pivot" or "axis"; шаг (shag) which means "step"; and поворачивать (po-vo-rah-chi-vat) which means "to turn" among many others.

So far I'm only doing the basic technique classes (базовая техника, baz-oh-vai-ya tekh-ni-kah) once a week, which last two hours. With time I'll maybe join the other group classes later in the week, and pluck up the courage to take part in a milonga. While it might sound like a dignified event, from what I gather with conversations with classmates, folk just get shitfaced and dance with each other for three or four minutes at a time.

And in that time, you live, you love, you die - or so Gena tells us.

Play us off, Gotan Project