the most exciting news is that the snow has started! yay! cue much excitement from everyone (also cue me dashing around a very confusing and unnecessarily large shopping mall trying to find boots which i had been putting off doing for forever) it keeps on melting and turning to slush though, which is getting a bit irritating. yesterday was an unbelievably warm 10 degrees (considering the day before itd been around -3..) rather weirdly it seems to get warmer overnight since it snows during the afternoon and then proceeds to melt overnight, leaving you with freezing slush to tramp through in the morning... hopefully itll sort itself out properly soon though.
anyway. moving on from weather updates, stuff has continued more or less as normal, class was really fun for the last few weeks, we had an (astonishingly) cool swiss banker guy in our class who was a lot of fun and also a czech girl who was so nice i could forgive her for the fact that her russian was amazing on account of the fact that she basically only needed to speak czech and only change her accent..
have signed up for another 3 months of language classes now, and received in return a terrifyingly large invoice, but im currently looking for my own apartment to try and reduce that.. despite moscow having the highest real estate prices in the world, and even higher for foreigners, seems like rent prices have fallen 20% over the last few months due to the economy going tits up, despite which the language school has decided to raise their accommodation prices after january so im conviced i can do better by myself..nastia has once again most kindly offered to help, which is a total godsend since ive been listening to other expats telling me about how they found their apartments which included horror stories of the real estate agents wanting 1 months rent in commission (and at $4k a month thats no small change), people letting apartments that weren't legally theirs to let, selling apartments without any warning and kicking you out..etc etc..
attempts at being more cultured have largely been unsuccessful though we did make it to gorky's house museum last week.. it was pretty cool, very art nouveau although on getting inside we realised none of us knew anything about gorky or what he'd written apart from the little blurb in the guide book so we concentrated instead on laughing at the massive felt slippers we were given to wear over our shoes which made walking basically impossible and we resorted to skidding across the parquet flooring and taking sneaky pictures of the bits where photography was verboten instead and then hiding from the grumpy babushkas who were on the look out for such childish behaviour....
impact of the economic crisis has started to manifest itself in food prices as well.. restaurants seem to be the same, possibly because they dont want to reprint their menus, but ive noticed a pretty hefty price increase in the supermarket so ive started having to buy chicken still on the bone and disecting it myself and other such hardships. luckily alcohol is still as cheap as ever so have been having some fun nights out...
Ive also been attempting to watch russian tv lately... made an amusing discovery that at 10pm a message flashes up on the screen of the main channels saying 'are your children at home?' presumably as a sort of benign curfew attempt by the government but pretty bizarre all the same.
ive also realised that while i have commented on russian womens fashion sense, i have neglected to draw to your attention to russian male fashion and i feel the time has now come to introduce you to the russian concept of the manbag:
for many weeks when i was first here, i thought that russian men were simply very chivalrous and carried their girlfriends handbags for them. as the weeks went on though, i started to notice that men were carrying these bags regardless of whether there was a woman with them or not, and that in restaurants they dipped into them for their wallets and mobiles, forcing me to come to the realisation that they were in fact the mans own bag.
Requirements for a russian manbag are as follows:
1. the manbag should ideally be large, with a designer label on it (fake if necessary)
2. small bags are acceptable only if they are of the ladies evening clutch bag variety
3. diamonte, flower designs, shades of pink, and other embellishments are all entirely acceptable and even desireable
4. while across the shoulder varieties are acceptable, the usual choice is worn on one shoulder, in the crook of the elbow, or carried in the hand when the strap design is too small to allow for the arm to pass through it
5. although colour and designer labels are, as previously mentioned preferred, colour coordination with the rest of the mans clothing is not, thus allowing the bag to stand out even more in its incongruity. most common will be a particularly girly looking pink shoulder bag, with a gold chain shoulder strap, coupled with a leather studded biker jacket and army boots or alternatively, full business suit
6. under no circumstances are any of the manbags described above viewed as remotely gay, and if one were to suggest as such to the wearer, this would probably provoke a fight
if the opportunity presents itself, i shall produce photographic evidence.
in the meantime, i attach
for your enjoyment, putin & medvyedev kitch:
1 comment:
well I suppose the manbag is progress. I always used to find it difficult to cope with when the men I was with would offer to carry my handbag.
My experience was that those who did, were often not as chivalrous as they seemed, and it was difficult to make a quick get away if they were holding your bag.
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