The Agony and the Irony

“Everyone sucks except me.”  Of my many conversations with my dearest friend I had last week, this quote keeps making me smile.  Living in a foreign country is far from easy, but at the same time it’s also refreshing and liberating, and well, easy.  There are days when you love everything about the country and then days when you want to book a ticket back home and swear off traveling all together; these are all textbook examples of Culture Shock.  The lesson the day is to keep breathing because at some point life just has to get better, or it just gets to the point where you want to laugh until you cry.

 

Last week all I wanted to do was make American style pancakes, and to make such pancakes you need baking powder, which is a simple enough ingredient and I’ve seen a million times in the most random of kiosks and mini-markets, but alas, when I really wanted it, could I find it?  No.  Of course not.  Because this is the agony of living in Russia- when you want something really easy you simply can’t find it.  Period.  I also had to go on an epic ground black pepper quest last week only to find pepper corns and nothing else.  I thought I was just having a bad day in the market because open air markets are the best places to find anything and everything you need, well, normally, but like I said before, if you have your heart set on it, good luck.  After going to 5 different booths looking for baking powder and ground black pepper I decided to take a break.  I managed to find cardamom, which is fairly exotic on this side of the world, but no ground pepper.  Ironic?  Yes.  Aggravating?  Completely. 

 

After taking a deep breath I decided that I was looking too hard.  I was thinking that perhaps it was like looking for your missing car keys, if you’re too desperate you will never find them, but if you just sit and relax for a minute their location will come to you, so in other words, I was hoping The Force would guide me.  The Force guided me a cheap hot dog vendor because I also needed to buy hot dogs; well, they aren’t really hot dogs but I don’t really know how to translate ‘soskii’ they look like hot dogs, but they aren’t.  The hot dog lady was really nice, as was the vegetable lady and after both of them felt like telling me their life stories, in Russian mind you, I was feeling really pleased with myself.  My annoyance of not finding pepper or baking powder was temporally resolved.  It’s amazing how great it feels to really embrace and truly understand someone in a different language.  Not just with simple words, but with real understanding.  At moments like this I feel truly connected with people around me, and I feel truly blessed to be able to move around with ease and confidence in such a strange place. 

 

Then I exhale as sumo wrestler babushka with dirty hair and three gold teeth pushes into me yells at me because…well, I’m not really sure why.  Then my moment of zen is gone and I remember that old people really do suck.  After Babushka Number One pushes past me, Babushka Number Two not only pushes past me in the opposite direction but actually sneezes on me.  Ew.  Now I’m really pissed and try to shoulder check her and she says that I’m being rude.  Really?  Let me clarify by saying that the market wasn’t even crowded.  There was plenty of space for all three people to walk comfortably.  But here, in Land of the Ironic, even though there’s lots of space people feel the need to bump into you and then yell at you for no reason. 

 

And speaking of things that people scold you about for no reason, my friend Gabriella was at the pool and the first few times she was there, she didn’t have a problem.  She thought that I had embellished the story about taking a shower before putting on a swimming suit and then taking another shower, but alas, her time had come.  She was scolded for not wearing goggles.  Is it anyone’s business that she’s not wearing goggles?  The guy posing as a life guard lectured her about how dangerous it was not to wear goggles.  Since there are always babushkii who swim without said eye protection I wonder if he scolds them too…but I doubt it.  Plus, it’s not there’s a sign saying that a person must wear goggles.  Sheez. 

 

I was firmly spoken to by not one, but three women for wearing open toed shoes when it was sixty degrees.  Somehow it’s okay for a girl to wear a mini skirt with five inch heeled boots, but it’s not okay for me to wear jeans with three inch open toed sandals.  Does this make sense to anyone?  If anyone should be lectured, it should be girl with amazing hooker heels.  She’s way more naked than I am.  But my toes were showing, and hers were not- perhaps toes are equal to boobs, showing a little toe is considered too sexy.  Such ironic and ridiculous social rules make me want to scream and rebel even more than I already do.  They are just too ridiculous for me to keep up with, and once I know them I just want to break them. 

 

At the height of such moments when you just want to scream, the best therapy is to call another native person with whom you can really let go and laugh and cry.  I never did find my ground black pepper or baking soda, but I did manage to find amazing tomatoes and edible hot dog things.  When I got home, my friend called me via Skype to rant about watching children peeing in the street and the fact that he got complimented for being unfashionable.  It was a lot of information to take in.  When he pointed out many people urinate in the street it suddenly because clear to us why you aren’t allowed to wear shoes in people’s homes.  It’s because they are covered in feces.  Ew.  And yet, it’s okay to teach children to go to the bathroom in the most random of places…so the circle just keeps rotating.     

The Toilet Seat Question

Dear Ladies and Gentlemen of the fine mini-continent of Russia,

I am writing to ask you a couple of questions which have kept me awake at night, the most pressing question is about the toilet seat: why do people constantly urinate on the toilet seat? When the bathroom is unisex then it would be very easy and even expected to blame men, because that's just what people do. There are times when I think that men just like to make a mess simply because they can and they don't have to clean it up. However, when you walk into a women's bathroom and there is a small puddle not only on the seat but AROUND the seat, this question just begs to be asked. Ladies, what on earth are you doing? It's not like it's a small target, and it's not as if we have male anatomy which requires some use of geometry, for goodness sake, it's just a toilet bowl. How is it possible to pee everywhere else except the place you're supposed to go? I have never seen such poor marksmanship, and I've even been to China and Mongolia. Say what you want about sitting on the seat, germs, bacteria, general ew-ness; but come on. Are you telling me that it's more sanitary to hang out in a room for a minute standing and inhaling methane fumes then simply using a napkin to keep the place dry? It's not like it's quantum physics or something. It's a toilet. It's not hard. You walk in, aim correctly and then leave. Viola.

Question number 2. Washing dishes without using soap. I find this highly inconsistent since everyone is so obsessive about washing their hands before eating. I've always figured everyone used soap for hand washing, and I'm going to continue to think that unless I see differently; but for arguments sake, let's just think that everyone uses soap when they wash their hands. This is a hint, just in case anyone out there only uses water and calls it washing. Back to the topic at hand, I have observed for many months people using their fingertips to rinse out tea cups using only cold water. Then replacing said cup in the cupboard. Then a stranger will come in and drink from this cup. I have seen with when invited to someone's house, where I was the stranger, at work....I shudder to think of recent cafes I have recently visited. In case we all forgot, cold water doesn't clean a darn thing. Period. It needs some help.

First, um, when it comes to washing dishes, the water should be hot. Then you need this magical thing called soap. It comes in bars and in bottles. Of course, dish soap comes in a variety of scents like lemon, lilac, even apple. Companies have made dish soap quite fashionable and stylish these days, even the bottles are pretty. Soap is used to kill germs and actually wash and hot water is supposed to disinfect the dish; so you see, cold water and fingertips aren't necessary anymore. This is only acceptable when you're in the mountains and near a creek or lake. Then this is completely fine. But here, in the civilized city, one should really use hot water and soap.

 

Please, my fellow humans in this great and civilized country, there is no war, no soap rationing or shortages of any kind.  Just use soap.