The best of Russia

Went to an excellent photography exhibition yesterday in Moscow. It was called "The best of Russia". When we arrived with junior, in his pram, my heart sank when I saw the long ques at the single "Kassa" ticket box. This box was outside the building, it was, and is cold and snowing here. I thought to myself, maybe its like Slovak organization here in Russia. We used to live in Slovakia and they were hopeless at organizing those kinds of things. I waited in the warm with my son, while my Mrs waited in line for tickets, well she is the Russian speaker and we live in days of gender equality. The place was packed. The photo competition was put together by thousands of armature photos. These photos were sent in by people from all over Russia. Many were excellent. I have put a few on here for you although, they are photos of photos so I am sorry the quality is not so good.

What do you write on a blog? why write a blog? a question I often ask myself. Some people write about what they bought yesterday when they went shopping, what they ate in the restaurant, while others like me, try to write other more interesting things. I am not so sure any reader would be interested in what I ate for breakfast or what I did in the shopping complex or other mundane things. However, I try my best to write interesting things and its fun to write. With this in mind, and ignoring what I just said, my nose has been crusty since I arrived in Moscow, its been full of hard crusty, dry bogeys. I put this down to the city pollution. Or I assume that's the cause. The window sills are constantly black with a kind of dirty black soot. This must be from the car smoke.I am sure you won't thank me for sharing that with you but I feel better now for doing so.

We are due to have a break from Moscow. We are going skiing. As if we need to see more snow. Its been endless here. It will be good to have a break from here. I need to escape every so often. We will be in the mountains breathing in pure fresh clean air. Perhaps my nose will clean out and unblock while I'm away? I hope so. Spring will be here soon or should be here at the end of March. The photos on here are my favorites from the exhibition.

Teaching the Russians and spring time

I am not a stay at home dad totally. In recent months, I have taken to doing some teaching for hard, dirty cash. I had my own school in Slovakia and taught Slovak adults for six happy years. Mostly, they were a joy to teach, they had a great sense of humor and were forgiving of an inexperienced English teacher. I still keep in contact with many and miss Slovakia a lot. I must be honest, I was afraid to begin teaching here and I was afraid to teach Russians. I know you can't and shouldn't generalize about a nation, or a people, but I had heard they were hard and rather serious as students. This has turned out to be accurate information. The ones that I have taught so far, have had excellent English, some even sound English. Russians are highly educated, cultured and well read. I have found them so far to be serious a a bit humorless. Some are almost like machines. Teaching these types of people is not a picnic and I often dread going to the classes. They seem unforgiving and uptight. Perhaps this is what you can expect from people in a big city?

Despite this, I am happy to get out the flat and to mix with people and adults and its has done me a lot of good. Its a bit self destructive to stay locked up at home 24/7, although I am lucky to be able to raise my child in his early years. I am sure the teaching will be more fun in the future and perhaps I have been unlucky with the students that I have been given.Fingers crossed, it will improve.

Spring time, is a time when a young males thoughts turn to finding a mate or at least a shag. Girls peel off the layers of winter clothing and reveal pink flesh, rabbits dream of cavorting in the fields and making millions of other rabbits cavorting in the fields, new flower buds break through the hard ground and yield their petals as a gift to us all. Romantic ideals aside, all I wish for is that spring would arrive, my balls are frozen. At first, I was worried if any winter would ever come at all from what we are spoon fed about climate change but now its here, its been relentless, endless depressing. Snow, cold winds and icy streets and roads. "Muscovite's" are wrapped up from head to toe in all kinds of dead animals, while stupid British men like me, wear just a coat, no hat, no gloves, then wonder why we get colds and frost bitten ears.

Getting up in the mornings is hard when its still dark, its like leaving the womb, you have to, but don't want to. Light, please give me light. I plan to take up running, if I can get up early, to lose some of my excess winter whale fat. There is a small strip of green near me, they call it a "garden ring". These are small strips of green ring parks all around the city of Moscow that have been given the definition of  "parks"! Its really a long strip of dirt with a bit of grass and some trees, narrow and long. Dirty traffic shoots by on either side. I will go running when I can get up and if I can tear my body from the sanctity of my warm, comfortable, soft bed. Although I long for spring, warm weather and lighter mornings, I am told its baking hot here in the summer. Lets hope not, but I'll let you know dear reader.

Cars, cats and kids

This morning we had to take one of our cats to a vet, here in Moscow. The two cats we have, are in fact Russian. We found them ten years ago when Mrs Englishman was last posted here. She was here for three years, I joined her for six months and then returned to the UK as I was tired of having to get a visa every three months. One of the cats, we found in Benetton in the Gum shopping centre in Red Square, the other we found by a Metro station when it was - 26, I scooped her up and put her in my coat. These two cats have been to the UK, to Slovakia and now they have returned to their homeland of Russia.I must say vets seem cheaper here than the UK but are more expensive than Slovakia.

Tigger, the boy, has Cancer. His name comes from "Winnie The Pooh", He had a lump removed four years ago and now its grown back again. We went to one vet last week, but were later warned by a Russian friend not go there "as they operate on animals without putting them to sleep". I found this hard to believe, but Mrs Englishman would not trust them, so today we went to another vets in Moscow.

I went downstairs to the car with my son, to put him in his car seat. Parked in front of our car, was a car with the engine running, sending out dirty black smoke. The doors were locked and there was no driver. I strapped junior into his seat, sat in the car, turned the key and it would not start. Flat battery. I try again and again. Nothing. Junior is beginning to gently scream, while thick dirty smoke is blowing all around the car, I look through the windows, no sign of the driver where is he? Invisible, vanished? I push my car back from behind it to try to keep ours away from the smoke as it is going into our car and my son is inside. I send my wife off to find someone to help us. Eventually, my hysterical wife manages to find the man who runs the buildings who is a kind of doorman, janitor and community spy, and he starts the car using my cables connected to both batteries from his car to mine in a Russian British alliance of cooperation. We pay him 1,000 rubles and he seems pleased. My wife speaks some Russian but not Russian slang, which is impossible for her to understand. We smile politely at his comments although we understand nothing, we just feel relived to have a working car. We load the cat in the car and drive off to the vets.

My son is still screaming, the cat is meowing and my wife is screaming at me with the map held in her hand the wrong way up, telling me which way to go. Bart, our Sat navigation assistant, is having a bad day and sends us around a pond five times, telling us to turn right again and again. Eventually, with white hair and bitten finger nails, we find the vets. Mrs Englishman disappears down an alleyway with the cat, while junior and I wait in the car. Two hours later, and 3,000 rubles later, my wife returns to her nervous twitching husband with the cat and tests results. It has not spread and can be cut out, drama over. We must return soon so he can have it operated on.

I don't use my car made in "frog land" very often and as I have said before, my nerves won't allow it in the Moscow traffic, I only use it to go shopping about two times a month so the battery must get flat in the cold weather. I will now get into the habit of starting it every three days or so to charge the battery. Our car is a "Friday car" or so the manager of the car showroom told me with a total straight face, when I went to complain about it to him, after we bought it. It has had so many problems since we got it new, six years ago. We tried to sell it in Slovakia but nobody wanted it, so we bought it with us on the moving truck to Russia. It was lucky we did, as I cannot imagine life without a car in Moscow. Its very useful to have, if only to go to the big supermarket each month and to play "bash the chin" with other happy shoppers. Bash the chin with your shopping trolley cart, is a Russian national sport. I am not cat person, but you become attached to animals, even if they scratch you to bits and leave fur all over your jumpers. He may live longer or he may end his days in his country. We will see. I hope he will be OK, he is a good furry friend.

Its kind of ironic, as we started out on our "living abroad" life ten years ago in Russia and may end it here, as this maybe our last country abroad but I hope not, the idea of sitting still in one country for life, is not a prospect I want right now and we badly need to save more to buy a flat or house. Things in life often go in circles. Cat will be fixed soon, car is working again and kid is asleep... or was but is now screaming again. I must go.

Adieu dear reader.

Cabin fever

I don't know about you, but after a few weeks or months I go stir crazy in Moscow. I am not a city person at all. "Why are you living in Moscow then" you cry? well...good question! I'm here because of Mrs Englishman's work. I am here due to money. That's the cold, hard, brutal truth, that's a fact. I am not here for the love of Russia or for the love of Moscow. I do not like cities, (any city), I hate cities. Give me some green rolling hills, a lake or river and fresh air and I am a very happy bunny. Put me in a city and I am a caged animal pacing back and forth in my cage dreaming of my escape. I went on the Metro last night, at six in the evening and there were so many people that I was literally carried along crushed between sweating, fur covered, smelly bodies down the escalator to the train. It was my idea of hell. It's not natural, or normal. Economic necessity forces all to cities and to use city transport systems. It goes against nature, it goes against the natural order.

I have to get out the city, to flee, to run naked down the grassy hill, throwing my clothes on the ground jumping into a fresh lake, to wash the dirt and grime from my body and soul, to purify myself of smoky Moscow. This maybe a slight exaggeration and perhaps I need time on the shrinks couch or is it a mid life crisis? But that's how cities make me feel. I get cabin fever. I must escape and run to the hills. We are doing just that, in a few weeks and getting out of Russia for week for skiing in fresh mountain air. My idea of total heaven. After a few weeks of being in Moscow, that is how I feel, I wounder if I am the only one to feel like that? maybe you do to after living too long in a city?