Went to Peterhoff yesterday. Probably the prettiest looking place I've been to in Russia. The fountains are amazing....too bad I forgot my camera at school or else I would have some awesome pictures.
Post Peterhoff, Dasha and I went to SPBGU (St Pete's State University) to visit her friends. Dasha Travels an hour and a half each way to get there three times a week. I complain when I have class on the far side of campus, but really we have tons in common. So Dasha figures that she'll introduce me to her friends, we'll talk for a minute and then head home. What she drastically underestimates is the inter-molecular man-force that I like to call "beer bonding." The law of "beer-bonding" states that "where by any two men drinking beer, sharing more than five words of a common language, and a sporting event meet in concurrence, friendship is guaranteed to ensue." We spent three hours there watching the Zenit match, drinking beer, and watching reruns of "How I met Your Mother", which is a hilarious show I should add. If you like sex-pun driven rom-coms about successful but emotionally inept thirty-somethings, you should really check it out.
So we head home around 5 because I need to grab my stuff from school so I can do bits of HW today. Кирюша and Артем come with us on the train back into the city. On the way they ask me if I want to go out for a beer. I sigh heavily and feign indifference for Dasha's sake (she's uber-Orthodox and dislikes when I drink...did I mention how much we have in common?) and then obviously, cordially agree. We find a nice Georgian bar to grab some shashlik and beer. We also manage to find the only bar in town where ЦСКА fans are hanging out. CSKA is one of the major Moscow clubs and the sworn enemy of Zenit. Now regardless of your fandom, would you really want to spend time hanging out in the only bar with Red Sox fans in the Bronx, or Yankees fans in Southie? (by the way that's some horrible New-England sports bias there, but I cater to my readers, what can I say?).
We order some beers and a big platter of shashlik. Shashlik is essentially just grilled meat and potatoes, but the beauty of it is that each of the post-Soviet countries that makes it makes it differently, with different herbs and sauces. This shashlik was Georgian and absolutely bomb. The problem is that service in Russia is horrible because so one tips. No one tips because service is horrible. Any way we go through three rounds of beer before the food comes, one round during and two rounds after. That's a good amount of beer.
During that time, a few really awesome things happen. I will put them in order numerically for you:
1) We make good friends with the CSKA fans and they decide that since we don't care who won (in reality we all rooted to Zenit, but white lies save black eyes) that they would pick up our tab. This was great.
2) I had enough beers that conversation between me and my two non-English speaking friends became more natural. I speak better, freer Russian when I'm drinking.
3) We realized that this Georgian beer was like 9% alcohol by volume and that if any of us wanted to make it home we had to cut ourselves off.
4) My program director called me. This happened immediately after number three, which is fortunate since had number three not happened I might have made the jump from jovially tipsy to well and good drunk.
Marina was calling me to tell me that she had gotten in contact with her former student who plays American football for the Neva Lions, who have invited me to come practice with them today. Obviously I agreed because it seemed like a good idea then. I'm not as sure of that now, but that's not the point. The rest of my night went smoothly, went to McDonald's for free wifi, got some salty beer snack and listened to the first half of the Colby game. Unfortunately none of that was able to put off the inevitable:
I am currently curled up in my warm bed with my laptop defending myself against the bright lights and loud noises of the outside world. My head feels like it weighs a ton and my tummy just feels sad. Its 11:30 so I think its time I brave out into the world. Fortunately Valentina is cooking up a storm of salty starchy food to ease my woes. I'll just keep fighting the good fight.
ramble on,
craig
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5 comments:
if only 20% of blogs were as entertaining as yours...
you know what they say, ten percent of blogs control 90 percent of the hummor
"hummor" - isn't that a joke of a car?
sounds like, once again, it's fun to be craig
A paternal question occurred to me this morning. If drunk people, as seen by sober people, are less funny and charming than they think, is "How I Met Your Mother" really funny and how much better does your Russian really get?
you might be too far away from college to remember, that drunk people are, for the most part, very funny to sober people. They're mostly harmless and hilarious. The Russian probably doesn't get better, but it almost certainly is less restrained by worries about making a fool of oneself. therefore, there's probably a fair amount that can be learned from the freedom a few beers provide.
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