Russian Blog

Watching the evening news in Russia can be an adventure all in itself – try to imagine a 30 minute sum-up of what has happened on one sixth of our planet – and you will easily be fooled into thinking that there are mafia bosses in black Armani suits, starving orphans and bombs going off just around the block from your house. When I switch on the TV in the country where I have willingly spent the past three and a half years of my life, I tell myself: “I’m such a bad person; I deserve to be living in Russia.” In order to protect oneself from the reality of life in an illogical country of strange and mysterious chaos any given individual will sooner or later form a deep inner sense of indifference. It’s not just me – the Russian language is full of constructions from which it is obvious that there is a long tradition of not caring here, all the way from Kaliningrad to Vladivostok.

The most polite way of saying that you don’t care is to say: мне всё равно, which literally translates into “it’s all the same to me”. And it is just as courteous to tell a fellow Ivan (Иван), or if you’re already Vanya (Ваня) with him doesn’t matter, that: мне нет дела до этого, which could roughly be interpreted into “to me this is no matter”, since дело means “matter, affair, business, deed, act, cause, or case”.

Or maybe I wouldn’t call it a “note”, since it is just a few tiny bits of conversations that I’ve picked up from people around me. The longer I live in Russia, the more Russian people surprise me. I thought it would be the other way around. I thought that I would grow to understand Russia and Russians more and more the longer I lived here. That this country would seem comprehensible and sensible to me after a couple of years. But no. It is still surprising. And I was rather surprised when I arrived here. Not to say shocked. I was almost shocked, as a matter of fact, but I thought it would pass with time. I was wrong – the astonishment I feel toward this country and its people has continued and will, most likely, never come to an end.

There’s a witty scene in a Woody Allen movie where he says: ”I took a speed-read course and read ‘War & Peace’ in twenty minutes. It involves Russia”. I’m sure that if he had been forced to read the equally important and famous classic by Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky he would have put it something like this: “I read ‘Crime & Punishment’ in twenty minutes. It involves murder.” Even though I personally think it is always a good time to discuss this forever contemporary and ever breathtaking masterpiece today there is in fact a real motivation behind such a discussion. Last week первый канал [the first channel] started airing the TV series based on the book with the same name and last year the respected and almost classical already writer Борис Акунин [Boris Akunin] published his project in two volumes called «Ф. М.» [F. M.]. The foundation for his novel is an abrupt discovery of an unknown first version of “Crime & Punishment”, which is not yet known to the science of philology and humanity and therefore worth millions and millions of dollars. It triggers a string of murders and unexpected twists in our modern day Moscow as well as takes us bit by bit through the “first” version of the classic piece, with not Raskolnikov as the main character but with Porphyry Petrovich, the investigator, instead. It is rather a fascinating take on the well-known tale but lacks both stylistic and inspirational grips in the parts that take place in the 21st century. To say anything more, like for example that instead of Raskolnikov it turns out that Svidrigaylov is the murderer, would be ruining the whole experience for anyone intended on reading it.

Maybe some are scratching their heads now and mumbling to themselves: “Now what was it about again?”

In Русский репортёр №26 [October 29th – December 6th 2007] I came across a short interview, in the magazine’s feature «семь вопросов» [seven questions], with writer Lyudmila Ulitskaya [Людмила Улицкая]. She recently received the Russian literary award Большая книга (Big book) for her novel published in 2007, «Даниель Штейн, переводчик» (“Daniel Stein, translator”). This award is the most “pricey” award for works of fiction in Russia, and the receiver of it gets three million roubles. In the interview she explains that this novel might be her last one, since it takes many years to write such a serious book, and that she definitely won’t be publishing anything new in the year 2008. After being such a prolific writer for many years, and after the huge work she put into her last effort, she of course deserves a break. Anyone who has read this masterpiece would not argue with such a decision, even though after reading it the reader feels a hunger for more, for more of this kind of writing, and, of course, for Ulitskaya to write more books of this kind. I swallowed it during one week in August after my roommate, an American missionary and a Russian language and literature mayor at Ural State University, gave it to me and said it was the best book she’s ever read. After I finished it I said the same thing and we enjoyed many long conversations together where we discussed not only the big questions about faith, life, history and politics that are posed in this work, but also the structure of it. Despite not lacking in any way when it comes to plot, characters and general idea, it is the structure of this book that makes it truly stand out. It is structured as a compilation of letters and journal entries and interviews and memories and other small notes from different times, written by different people about themselves and about others. The reader is only allowed to see the bigger picture bit by bit, only after every reading the story in small pieces do we begin to understand more and more about Daniel Stein and the people surrounding him. This makes the novel practically impossible to put down, because you keep thinking ‘well, I bet this next passage will only be a page or two, I could just as well keep going…’ And before you know it you’ll have finished part four of the five parts and start to get worried that it you’ll be done with it in a day or two if you don’t slow down.

Even though non-Europeans miss out on lots of stuff, not to mention everything that non-Russians miss out on, I think the most serious of these must be not drinking глинтвейн [“glintwein”], known in English speaking countries as mulled wine. Since the Russian name for this hot beverage based on semi-sweet red wine obviously comes from the German word Glühwein [“glowing wine”] most Russians think this to be a German drink. I don’t doubt the fact that Germans drink glintwein, but I do know that we Scandinavians drink it way more than they do. In Sweden it goes by the name of glögg and is only allowed to be served in Swedish society during the month of December, and then only up until the last day of Christmas, the 26^th. In Russia the rules are not so strict. As soon as the first snow falls, which occurs in some places here already in mid-October, it is alright for anyone who would like to do so to buy a bag/bottle of cheap semi-sweet red wine, pour it into a pot on the stove, mix the spices and drink away. Glintwein in still served in Russian restaurants as late as in early April, if there’s still snow left on the ground that is. This gives the lovers of mulled wine, including myself, one more reason to love Russia – here the season is more than six months long. And at the moment we’re at the height of this glorious glintwein season, right in the middle of its most intensive period, which is late December – early January. Unlike Scandinavians and Germans, who are known to drink glintwein like it’s nobody’s business, Russians have their own way of approaching and approving it. They consider this drink to be good for your health and an excellent way of keeping any kind of disease away. And what better way to warm up when it’s minus thirty outside than to drink a glass of sweet, spicy and hot wine? Bring a thermos of glintwein with you when you go skiing or ice-skating and you’ll find it to be an outstanding method of kicking back afterwards.

You haven’t been to Russia in the winter if you haven’t tried glintwein. You can order it as you would any other drink at most cafés and restaurants, even though it is not always written on the menu. If you can’t find it then all you need to do is ask: «А у вас есть глинтвейн? Горячий? Крепкий? Ну, так что же, дайте мне, пожалуйста, стаканчик глинтвейна…» You could also, like the Scandinavians do, buy a bottle of ready made glintwein at larger grocery stores. However, those bottles are still kind of a rarity in many Russians cities, especially smaller ones. Not because Russians drink less glintwein than Scandinavians. No, that’s not it. Russians prefer to make their one. If you’ll take a closer look at the section of spices in any given grocery store, be it very small even, you’ll notice small packages of ready made mixes of spices especially made for glintwein. Usually they’re called just that – «Смесь пряностей для глинтвейна». A package generally costs less than 10 roubles and can cover up to two litres of glintwein. After a while, though, after enough long winters in Russia, you’ll come up with a way of making glintwein all on your own, no ready made bottles or packages needed. If you don’t come up with it yourself, then you’ll sooner or later most likely run into a Russian who’ll teach you their own ‘secret’ recipe. 

Everything in the West is already over – after the 25th of December – but it has barely begun in Russia. The week before New Year’s Eve is the busiest week of the year in the great Motherland that reaches from Kaliningrad to Vladivostok, meaning that a couple of days before the big holiday there is almost no food, alcohol or candy left in the stores. Despite the old Soviet days of дефицит [deficit] being long gone… Every place you go to is crowded to the very limit – from those parks for children with ice-sculptures in the center of every town to big capitalistic-style malls out in the suburbs. Everyone is trying desperately to get their hands on that last perfect gift, as well as finding enough chocolate and champagne to last up until the middle of January (which is when Russians celebrate Старый Новый Год [Old New Year] according to the old calendar used before the Bolshevik Revolution).