Lettuce Entertain You

(get it? get it?)

To fully understand the depth of this multi-faceted food adventure, you need a little background info. Since arriving in Russia, I have yet to eat a salad. A salad, by my standards, must contain more lettuce than oil or vinegar (pasta/chicken/egg/fruit salads are in a delicious category of their own and don't count). Every time I tried to order a salad, I got the same combination of chopped cucumber and tomato drowning in oil. So I eventually gave up and figured it would be a long 7 months before I tasted a fresh salad.

Imagine my excitement when I found lettuce at the grocery store last week. Even better, it was positioned conveniently next to cherry tomatoes, peppers, and cucumbers — everything I needed to make my own salad. I purchased the ingredients and went home, thrilled by the idea of what I was about to create.
But the lettuce was even better than I could have predicted. Back in the US, when you buy lettuce, you just get a bunch of leaves. Here, apparently you get a whole POT:

It's perfect! Once I finish this lettuce, I can grow some more and have an unlimited supply!

Best Holiday Ever!

After the disappointment of maslenitsa, I wasn't sure what to expect for International Women's Day. Luckily, it more than exceeded expectations: while the holiday is on March 8, the entire weekend is devoted to celebrating all women in Russia. It's sort of like Valentine's Day and Mother's Day rolled into one...and multiplied by 15 — flower stands set up shop around metros, city officials put up huge signs on billboards, and random strangers on the street wished you a happy women's day.

My friends and I kicked off the weekend by seeing the original Russian film, "Любовь в Большом Городе" (Love in the (big) City). We were expecting a spin-off of Sex and the City, but it was much, much more.

While most of the guys on our trip copped out and didn't give the girls the gifts men are expected to give on this celebrated day, Fit-Kult once again pulled through and gave me a free backpack. This so-called international holiday does deserve international recognition, and I fully intend on bringing it back to America.

I love you like a fat kid loves...caviar flavored potato chips?

I've had several food mishaps since arriving here. I guess it's to be expected in any country where you don't really speak the language, and I should consider myself lucky that I haven't accidentally ordered anything too horrifying.

Two of my major mishaps have occurred at Teremok, the McDonald's of the blini world. In an effort to be healthy, I tried to order buckwheat at Teremok, but the first time I did so, they didn't have the kind I wanted (all I recognized in that name was "зеленой," which means green, so I figured there'd be vegetables in it). I settled instead for две сосиски, two hotdogs, and got a pile of buckwheat with two hotdogs on the side. I'm not quite sure what I was expecting, but it was a little more substantial than what I ended up with. The next time, I got the зеленой one, which had a bunch of other words in the description that I didn't know and was too lazy to look up. Turns out those unknown words meant pâte and pickles, and the зеленой stuff was little flecks of what might have once been scallions. Pregnant women, take note of this dish; for the rest of the world, it is best ignored.

My favorite mishap took place at a major bookstore on Nevsky Prospect within the first week or two of arriving here. I ordered горячей шоколад (hot chocolate), and received...literally, hot chocolate. As in, melted chocolate that I think was supposed to be extra chocolate for the fondue dish. The waitress smirked as she set this dish down in front of me, and my roommate and I watched as she hurried off to snicker to her friends. I'm certain they were discussing my order because I saw her point to us several times. Turns out, the melted chocolate was delicious and was finished in a matter of minutes.


Another wonderful invention involving chocolate was found by my roommate at the grocery: chocolate cheese. While the idea is ingenious and has enormous potential, it needs some work before it becomes a wild success.

Lastly is something I'm not sure I would categorize as one of my own mishaps, though it certainly is on someone's part. Russian Lays tends to be a bit more creative with its chip flavor than American Lays. Luckily, my roommate has been quite enthusiastic about sampling every flavor of chip known to Russia,
which has spared me from having to buy them myself. All in all, the flavors are pretty accurate, with the exception of red caviar, which tastes more like butter than anything else.

You can take capitalism to Russia, but you can't take Russia to capitalism...?

I read somewhere that your headphones are among the filthiest things in your possession. Being too lazy to actually clean mine, I settled for two sets: my gym headphones that I can sweat in and my "walking" headphones."

Unfortunately, this meant I had 2 sets of American headphones to break. And, in true Sarah fashion, I have broken both in the short weeks since I arrived here. My first, my walking pair, was easily replaced for 300 rubles (35R/$1) at the first kiosk I found. The second required a little more work....

Upon breaking my second (and more important) pair of headphones within a week, I realized I needed to walk to to the closest metro station, the center of life here, to search for an electronics store. Having found a promising-looking store, I went in, pointed to two sets of headphones, and asked whether I could examine them further.

The guy in charge replied, yes, I could, but that another store had a better selection and that I should go there instead. When I asked for further directions, he put a "be back in 5" sign on the cash register (completely disregarding the other customers perusing the DVD collections) and motioned to follow him. I followed him down the hall, down the stairs, and out the front door...and he finally pointed me to another store where I could find better (and cheaper) headphones.

...I guess capitalism hasn't quite made it to Russia yet.

Worst. Holiday. Ever.

Holidays are big here: since we've arrived, I've literally seen/heard 5 different fireworks shows. But the holiday I was most looking forward to (even more so than Women's Day), was Maslenitsa. Maslenitsa is sort of like Mardi Gras, except it lasts all week and involves a lot more eating and a lot less flashing. Any holiday in which you're expected to eat as much blini (like crepes) as possible has to be good, right? Wrong.

The celebration culminates on the final Sunday of the week. In St. Petersburg, this means there's a big fair-type festival at a park, which we decided to attend for the cultural experience. We took the metro to the park and, with great anticipation, bought our tickets and walked in. Our first tipoff that this was not going to meet expectations should have been this:
I'm not sure if this picture does it justice, but take a minute and look closely to find everything you can that's racist about this image.

After walking around for a few minutes and determining that there was in fact nothing to do, other than watch a man standing around on stage, we got in line for food. In preparation for the delights of maslenitsa, we had fasted all day and as such were more than ready for hot, savory shashliki (steak kabobs), followed by sweet blini. We picked the shashlik stand with the shortest line and waited, certain that our treats would be ready soon.

Fifteen minutes later, we recognized that my earlier judgment about capitalism in Russia (see next post) had not been off-base. The shashlik stand was a one-man operation: he grilled the shashliki. Then asked the customer how many that customer wanted. Then waited patiently as the customer paid. Then asked if the customer wanted bread or ketchup. Then moved on to the next customer. Even worse for us was that each customer, seeing how long it took to buy a single shashlik, bought 6 or 7 at once, so he had run out of cooked shashliki long before we made it to the front of the line. After a second round of this, only a few people stood in front of us, so we were certain to get shashliki this time around. But no — luck was not with us. Before putting another set of raw shashliki on the grill, the man lit up a cigarette and made a phone call. Then he walked off. At this point, we determined that he was out of shashliki altogether and had decided that leaving was the best way to prevent a riot from the hungry customers. Having spent an hour in this line with nothing to show for our efforts, we left in search of different food.

Maslenitsa does have some interesting traditions, I'll give it that. It's a holiday to celebrate the arrival of spring (so the fact that it occurs in late February is inexplicable), but blini are eaten because they are round and in the shape of a sun. One tradition I haven't quite figured out yet is the burning of scarecrows: one of my professors explained the meaning behind it, but I still see it as somewhat reminsicent of a KKK rally.

Before

After


All in all, it was a waste of an afternoon, but at least we did get to witness some traditional Russian pasttimes, such as sledding, in a chair, on a flat surface. Man these guys know how to have a good time.

In Soviet Russia, Ball Bowls You

Apparently bowling is a high-class sport in here. So, upon receiving a rather lukewarm response to the announcement "We're going bowling Friday!" (see right), our program director pointed out that our mad bowling skillzzz (perfected in the likes of Helen Newman Lanes and Upper Valley Lanes 'n' Games) would be a great way to impress the Russian ladies.

The bowling alley is part of a mall which closes at 9, so we couldn't actually get into it. After creepily finding our way in through the parking lot/side door (shouldn't that have been locked?), we discovered that Russian bowling alleys have two saving graces:

1. cheap beer

2. SUSHI BAR

Sadly, the beer wasn't cheap enough to make up for the boredom of bowling, and we left early into the night for a locale with cheaper beer.

She's a Maniac, Maniac on the Dance Floor...

Let me preface this post by saying that I have never, ever been to a dance competition. Sure, I've seen some gymnastics shows and watched skating on TV, but never dance. Luckily, in an effort to broaden my horizons, I decided to change this last Monday.

One of our program directors, Elena, who is one of the cutest adults I have met in my life, is an amateur hustle dancer. No, she's not a hustler...apparently, the hustle is a mix between salsa and some obscure dance I can't remember the name of. She let slip at dinner one night that she was participating in dance contest at the end of February, so we of course had to attend.
I was expecting something out of Dirty Dancing 2: Havana Nights and hadn't prepared myself for Dirty Dancing 3: Patrick Swayze in a Sailor Outfit. When we arrived at the dance studio, the coat check was full and had closed, so we draped our coats over our arms and tried to enter. Turns out bringing your coat inside is a big no-no, at least at this particular dance studio. The ticket collector 1. wouldn't let us in with our coats then 2. had to verify with the coat check that it was indeed closed then 3. went on a personal mission to find a new coat check area, only to discover that 4. the one upstairs was also full. She then 5. found a new coat rack, 6. pulled out of a remote closet somewhere in the studio 7. allowed us to hang our coats and 8. finally let us enter. We were worried that we'd missed Elena's dance but luckily had about half an hour to spare, as everything in Russia runs at least 45 minutes late.
In the meantime, we amused ourselves by taking pictures of the wide variety of outfits Russians thought appropriate to wear to a dance competition:

– suspenders

– hot pants (held up by suspenders to keep the skin-tight shorts from falling during a particularly energetic move)

– frilly...spandex?

– 80's-style prom dresses

– sweatpants

– halloween costumes ranging from lingerie to sailor outfits

– dayglo ANYTHING

As you can see, some contestants chose to match

their partners, while others threw on their Sunday best:

And finally, last but not least: our all-star. Not only did he manage to change outfits for every new song, he managed to change GIRLS with his outfits. He started out in a red spandex devil(ish) outfit, changed to a flowered hawaiian shirt with tiggght jeans, and ended with the winning outfit you see above. To top it all off, he had a skullet (think mullet but bald). In my book, any man who can rock a skullet and get that many girls is a real man.