1. Food and drink
This seems like a good place to start as I'm now having my last beer and meal in Russia right now. At T.G.I.Friday's at the airport. I can see Andrea rolling her eyes. :-) Kim and I were pleasantly surprised with the Russian food. We were a little nervous we wouldn't enjoy much, but I think I speak for both of us when I say that most of what we had was good, even tasty. A couple meals stick out in particular: obviously the one cooked by our Russian hostess (see Suzdal blog), our first experience with pelmeni (meat or mushroom filled dumplings, a little like tortellini), the Georgian meal was a win for me, and also a random encounter with chiburekki (a fried turnover filled with veggies and/or cheese or meat, a national dish of the Crimean Tartars). I also had various beet and borscht soups, hot and cold. Yum. I've discovered a love for beets. Sorry I wouldn't eat them when I was younger, Mom! Another favourite of mine was beef stroganoff (it is quite popular). Kim was a fan of the blini, small thin crepes. We both were addicted to a pelmeni restaurant in SPb, we must've gone at least 3 times. I will admit we had one failed attempt to eat at McDonald's; our plan was thwarted by the mass of tourists in the Kremlin area who had the same idea. :-(
Dessert usually left something to be desired, but we were happy with ice cream bars and drumsticks. Kim enjoyed the occasional pistachio drumstick while I stuck to a more standard vanilla-ice cream-on-a-stick-covered-with-chocolate treat. Kim made a point of trying what we've been calling "Societ ice cream", basically a jam packed ice cream cone (photo below).
And beer. Nothing was particularly amazing, but if you bought it at the store the price was right. About $1.25 for a tall can of strong beer. My standard was Baltika 7. Most of the time I was just happy with something cold. As I'm sure you know, Russia is not famous for its beer, but rather it's vodka. I did indulge a few times, once in particular when our waitress strong-armed us into not one but two bottles.
One minor annoyance was the tap water....which we couldn't drink. Some of our hotels had free drinking water, but we did have to buy a fair bit of bottled water. Reminds me that I take a lot for granted in lovely Canada!
Overall, Russia passes in the sustenance department, solid and liquid. :-)
2. Washrooms
It's only logical this topic come next. Kim and I saw it all. The nice toilet, the hole in the ground, the toilet bus (yes, an actual bus), the port-a-potty (and even chicken in a potty on one menu). We only had to pay a couple of times, and it was cheap - about $0.75. The only thing I had a hard time with was remembering to not flush the toilet paper, but to throw it in the garbage can. And now that's enough on this topic.
3. Russian museum ladies
If you ever meet a Russian woman over the age of 40, from Moscow or SPb, you should ask her if she works at a museum. The answer is probably yes. I think half of the women in the country work at museums. And these ladies are tough! Who needs security when you have a frightening woman to yell at you in Russian for misbehaving. They sit in and patrol every room in the museum, making sure you have paid for photos, making sure you're not touching anything, telling you to get off your phone. We only had a couple run-ins with these tough brods. One was deserved as I foolishly touched a sculpture (it was an instinct). Kim got smacked by one in a church, but we have no idea why. She was minding her own business. The highlight was definitely seeing one flip out at a tourist in the Hermitage for touching a large egg suspended from the ceiling. Awesome. We did get harassed a couple of times for taking photos, but we just showed our pass and everything was ok.
The moral of the story? Mind your Ps and Qs and you'll be fine. :-)
4. Making change and buying things in general
Kim and I never mastered the subtle art of exchanging money in Russia. They seem quite particular about what kinds of bills and coins customers use to purchase goods. It's a little ridiculous. For example, Kim tried to buy a bottle of water that cost about $1.50 with a bill worth just over $3 and the lady refused. Somehow we managed, but it wasn't always easy.
5. Random and unattended metal detectors
This is another interesting mystery. We walked through a lot of metal detectors, in stores, the metro, train stations. Each time they beeped and nobody did anything. Hmmmm...what's the point of having them if they're not patrolled?
6. Wacky translations
There are a few examples below of the *many* funny translations we saw. I appreciate the effort of restaurants and tourist venues, but the results were quite often disastrous. This was an almost bottomless source of entertainment, especially for the translator in me. :-)
7. The "sexy" photo pose
And finally the sexy photo pose. Not sure that this is particularly Russian, but it sure was common. Girls everywhere were putting on their sexy expressions and striking their suggestive poses for the camera. And this was happening in the strangest places. I couldn't leave without one of these photos of myself, so Kim humoured me and took a photo of me in a (not-at-all) sexy pose in the Red Square on our last day.
Photos below:
Sbarro: creating tasty emotions? What does that even mean?
Live beer (draft beer, I presume)
Pelmeni at a place we frequented in SPb
Pelmeni on our first day. We were so hungry and it was so delicious.
The metro map
See the latte description for milk scum
Russian McDonald's
Mmmm beer
Beef stroganoff. Another delicious meal.
No touching. Or no high fives or low fives as Kim and I liked to joke.
Kim and Soviet ice cream
Random burnt out car
My sexy pose
Delicious beet soup
Clean up your dishes
At a coffee shop called Nice People
Chiburekki
The infamous Chicken Tobacco (no tobacco involved)
A typical washroom sign
That's it for Russia! Now begins the long journey to Belfast....
TTFN
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