Uncertain Times

Even in the best of times, Russia is a strange place to be. But that is especially true these days as the value of the Russian ruble steadily drops and the economic situation worsens. The financial crisis had just begun when I returned to Moscow in September, but the ruble’s value is now half of what it was then. In mid-December, the Central Bank raised interest rates in the middle of the night in the hopes that it would prevent people from selling their rubles for euros and dollars. Instead, the ruble lost 11% of its value the next day. The currency fluctuations were so extreme that Apple suspended online sales in Russia until things stabilized and I lost track of the exchange rate. There was enough of a sense of panic that my flatmate briefly considered taking his life savings out of the bank, Russians started buying luxury cars because they were holding their value better than the ruble, and there was a run on buckwheat at the supermarkets.

At first it seemed like I was going to come out of the financial crisis unscathed. Expats were leaving the country in droves, but my dollar salary was going farther than ever before. My rent was effectively halved, Starbucks chai tea lattes no longer cost twice what they would in America, and it looked like an opportune time to splurge on beluga caviar. But then I got laid off.

I wasn’t joking about that caviar, i.e., the most expensive bite of food ever

With no job and only a few days until my flight home for Christmas, I wondered if I should pack my bags and leave Russia for good. I started sending my résumé out in a non-discriminatory frenzy; the following day I got a tentative job offer in Estonia. I was very close to relocating to another former Soviet state, but that seemed a little too erratic—even for me. In the end, my trip home was a visit and not a move.

When I landed at Domodedovo last Thursday, it felt different than my previous arrivals to this country. Normally, a nervous knot forms in my stomach when I touch down on Russian soil. It’s something of a cross between a fear of the unknown and a flutter of excitement over what’s to come. I was impassive last week—Russia had ceased to feel as frighteningly foreign, and likewise less exotic. In a country that is utterly unpredictable, I felt like I knew what to expect, and what I was expecting was grim and depressing.

Mother Russia, however, did not bowl me over with bleakness. Passport control was smooth and efficient, the sound of the Russian language was oddly comforting after three weeks away, and a Russian gentleman chivalrously sprinted my overweight suitcase up a flight of stairs when he saw me struggling to lift it. I walked outside to catch the train to the city center, where I was met with crisp winter air and the scent of freshly fallen snow. It was nothing out of the ordinary, but the train platform extending into a powder white forest reminded me that I was in Russia, a fact that always surprises me when I pause to think about it.

Sometimes I feel like I am looking back on the present from a place very far in the future, and I have a wistful pang of nostalgia for this period of my life. I still marvel at the strangeness of having ended up here, and it makes me sad that my time in Russia is drawing nearer to a close. But every time I tell people I’m moving back to the US this year, they tell me I have the look of a “lifer” and will probably never leave. Sigh...they might be right.  At this rate, my tenure in Russia is looking like it may last as long as a Putin presidency.

Grocery Store Throwdown

For the last five days, I have been hosting two of my best friends from college in beautiful Bellingham, Washington. As wonderful as my hometown is, Sasha is convinced that Washingtonians are terribly unfriendly. At first I thought that was unfair, but after a woman at the grocery store tried to fight me, I’m starting to agree.

On Wednesday evening, we found ourselves at the local Fred Meyer, a massive supermarket reminiscent of Wal-Mart. We were only purchasing alcohol, so we grabbed our goods and headed straight for the express checkout lane. Fred Meyer generally overwhelms me, and the New Year’s Eve lines were especially long, so I was annoyed to see that the woman in front of us had disregarded the 12-item rule. I turned to Megan and Sasha and grumbled, “Well I thought we got the express lane, but apparently not.”

My passive aggressive comment did not go unnoticed, and the woman in front of me whirled around to reveal face tattoos and a look of fury. “Do you have a problem? I don’t even have 12 items! Why don’t you go to the self check-out if you’re in such a hurry!” She didn’t stop there, and kept up her diatribe as she loaded more and more items onto the conveyer belt. Megan was thoroughly intimidated and tried to convince us to change to a different lane, but Sasha and I remained firmly in place.

“She’s crazy,” said Sasha loudly in Russian.

“She didn’t even count right,” I continued in Russian. “I see 15 items.”

It was pretty obvious we were talking about the lady in front of us, but politeness didn’t seem particularly relevant now. Megan was starting to feel left out, so she decided to interject with the only phrase she knows in Russian.

“Menya zovut Megan.” My name is Megan.

I burst out laughing, which did nothing to defuse the situation. Face Tattoo was now visibly shaking in rage, which was really hampering her ability to get her quinoa and black beans out of her grocery basket.

“Maybe I’ll see you outside,” she said, glaring straight at me.

Megan immediately stopped laughing, since she was convinced we were going to get knifed in the parking lot by a Washington hippie. Meanwhile, I was fairly confident that Sasha and her inherent Russianness could take a malnourished vegan any day, face tattoos or not.

“Lady, I don’t want to fight you over groceries.”

In the end, she did not wait for us in the parking lot, though I may need to find a new place to do my grocery shopping for the next week (we all know I wouldn’t survive a fight without Sasha to back me up). I never thought I’d say this, but I am really missing my local Moscow produkti and its snippy Russian cashier. She may not let me pay with large bills, but at least she doesn’t try to fight me when I grumble about her stupid system.

1995

In fifth grade, my teacher decided to have all of the non-native English-speakers come to the front of the class and teach the rest of us how to say “hello” in their languages. There were three Russian girls in my class, so that meant we all had to learn how to say “Здравствуйте.” She had them write it on the whiteboard, but even seeing “zdravstvuyte” in Latin letters wasn’t much help. We made a valiant effort, repeating it over and over until the classroom was awash with consonants.

“Is anyone saying it right?” asked our teacher.

The girls made us go around the classroom one-by-one until all 28 of us had thoroughly butchered their mother tongue. At the end, Anna turned to our teacher and said, “Jessie’s the only one who got it right.” I beamed with overachieving pride, unaware that this would be the last time I’d ever pronounce the Russian greeting properly.

A few months later, Anna and I were partnered up on a classroom task. She was wearing shiny, pointy-toed black shoes—the kind that Russian men are still partial to today. Apropos of nothing, I said, “Your shoes are stupid.”

“Yeah, well you need new jeans,” she fired back, pointing at the massive hole over my knee. And there it was, my first lesson in not messing with Russian females. They will always win and you will always feel inferior in your fashion choices. Now I wish Anna had taken me under her wing and taught me how to dress like a Russian girl back when I was 11—it would have saved me so much trouble now.

The mid-90s were bad for everyone (I’m in the middle)

An (Emotional) American Mountain

In Spain, a roller coaster is known as a “Russian mountain” (una montaña rusa). The “Swiss mountain” atop Monte Igueldo in San Sebastián is an exception—legend has it that Generalissimo Franco himself chose this unconventional nomenclature because he didn’t want to name anything after the Russian Communists. Meanwhile, here in Russia, you might think a roller coaster would just be called a “mountain,” but you would be wrong. To really confuse me, the Russians say “American mountains” (американские горы), and I  still haven’t found a Spanish mountain.  Whatever you want to call it, a roller coaster is the best metaphor for how I have been feeling about writing lately. It’s like, “Well this sounded fun at first, but now I can’t really get off because I’m plummeting toward the ground, so I guess I’ll just vomit instead.”

Spain’s Swiss Mountain (“mountain train” in Basque)
Photo credit: Donosti’s newest resident, the lovely Marti Buckley Kilpatrick

For the last month, I have been getting farther and farther behind on my writing schedule. The end of the week rolls around and I have yet to re-write another chapter. I go to the library, Lenin’s faded portrait looks down at me mockingly, and I stare at page upon page of mediocre writing that looks to have been written by someone who has never read a book in her life. It kind of feels like I’m attempting to put together a puzzle without the box that shows you what it’s supposed to look like—except I have 60,000 words instead of puzzle pieces. And I hate puzzles.

A friend asked me if I was suffering from Writer’s Block, which I don’t even know if I believe in. If I had to diagnose my affliction, it would be more like Writer’s Depression or Writer’s Low Self-Esteem. Or maybe just “Not Actually a Writer.” Whatever it is, it’s the kind of emotional state that makes me want to light my laptop on fire. I very well may have done that if not for the fact that the woman who monitors Hall 2 at the Lenin Library would likely light me on fire if I tried doing that on her watch.

Then last Wednesday, just as I was about to go to bed, I got an email from my first male critic that included feedback on the first 60 pages. There was plenty of stuff he didn’t like, but there was also a lot he did like—and even more surprisingly, plenty that I liked as well. I discovered sentences I don’t remember writing that were actually quite good, and some bad ones that I realized I knew how to fix. I spent the morning of Thanksgiving incorporating his changes (and hopefully making my male hero a little more masculine) and actually felt excited about writing for the first time in weeks. We’ll see how long the ascent lasts before I’m back to wondering why I ever decided to get on this stupid ride.

“Every so often I get a tug on my sleeve [to write fiction]. It’s kind of awful. It’s so hard. It means you’re going to be immersed in it for a very long time. When I get that nudge, I kind of feel like, ‘Oh, fuck.’ Because it means it’s going to be two or three years, and I’m going to have terrible self-esteem the whole time, until I get to the very last draft.” – Anne Lamott

“Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout with some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand.” – George Orwell

Pumpkin Pryaniki (Тыквенные пряники)

Photo credit: Liz

Pryaniki are the Russian equivalent of gingerbread, but unlike their American counterpart, they are not liable to break your teeth. Where the American gingerbread man is hard and flat, the Russian pryanik is soft and pillowy. I’ve had a thing for them since I tried one in Izmailovsky Park on a crisp, autumn day in 2005, but every single one I’ve had since has been store-bought, slightly stale, and mostly underwhelming. Even so, I got it into my head that I wanted to make pumpkin pryaniki, something of a Russian classic with an American twist. Problematically, there were exactly zero recipes on the internet for “pumpkin pryaniki.”

I would have had more luck if I had searched in Russian, but embarrassingly, that only occurred to me now. Instead, I started with this recipe for Pryaniki with Mint Glaze from Natasha’s Kitchen (one of my favorite Russian food blogs, and not just because she grew up in Washington, too) and then threw in a bunch of spices and pumpkin and made my own glaze because pumpkin and mint don’t really mix.

Normally, I wouldn’t bore my readers with my cooking endeavors and my terrible food photography, but there are a decided lack of pumpkin pryaniki recipes out there and I didn’t want to deprive the English-speaking world of these cookies. Both times I’ve made them, they’ve been devoured by Russians and Americans alike, and my friend Ksenia’s mother even asked for my recipe, so you know they’re the real deal. Without further ado, here’s the best thing to happen between Russia and America since…well, maybe ever.

Pryaniki Ingredients:
2 large egg yolks
2 cups sugar
1 cup sour cream
1 cup homemade pumpkin puree (you could use canned if you have no self-respect)
1 teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon white vinegar
½ teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
2 teaspoons ground nutmeg
1 teaspoon ground cloves
½ teaspoon ground ginger
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
5 cups all-purpose flour

Pumpkin Glaze Ingredients:
2 cups powdered sugar
2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
4 tablespoons whole milk (3.2% milk if you live in Russia)
2 tablespoons homemade pumpkin puree

Instructions:

1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C for those of you in Russia). Line a large cookie sheet with parchment paper.
2. In a mixing bowl, whisk together 2 egg yolks and 2 cups of sugar. When they’re good and mixed, add 1 cup of sour cream and 1 cup of pumpkin puree and whisk until creamy. 
3. In a small bowl, mix 1 tsp baking soda and ½ teaspoon vinegar (it will bubble). Add that to the mixing bowl as well. 
4. Add ½ tsp salt, 1 tsp vanilla extract, and all of the spices to the mixing bowl, then whisk everything together until well blended.
5. Slowly add the flour, about ½ cup at a time, to the mixing bowl. After the first 2 cups of flour, you’ll probably have to switch from a whisk to a spoon, and around 4 cups, you’ll just want to use your hands.
6. Once thoroughly mixed, lightly flour your hands and form the dough into balls about the size of golf balls.
7. Place the dough balls on the parchment papered cookie sheet and slightly flatten them. Bake at 350°F for 25-28 minutes, or until they are just beginning to turn golden brown. Remove immediately.
8. While they are still hot, dip each cookie into the glaze, which you hopefully made while the pryaniki were baking. (To make the glaze, dump all the glaze ingredients in a small bowl and mix them up). 
9. Spread the glaze evenly over the tops of your pryaniki (your fingers will work best here). Once glazed, place the cookies on a cool dry surface and let the glaze dry. 
10. Once the glaze hardens, turn the cookies over and glaze the bottoms. Make sure the glaze completely covers the cookie—it will keep them moist and delicious for a few days. When the glaze sets, serve with a glass of milk or tea and enjoy! 

I told you my food photography skills are terrible

A Lesson in Profanity

I was having dinner last night with an American friend and two Russians when the American lamented the lack of мат (Russian profanity) in her vocabulary. It’s not that she wants to swear like a Russian sailor, but she does want to be able to recognize curse words when she hears them in the street. Our Russian companions refused to teach her any obscenities, so she asked me if I could help her out. Over the years, I have picked up a few Russian expletives—hockey matches were a good start when I studied abroad, and then Dima filled in the gaps (Belka is on the receiving end of a lot of insults). But while I’ve learned many of these words, I don’t actually use them. First, cursing in Russian carries more weight than it does in English. Second, and more importantly, I remember how idiotic my Spanish students sounded when they tried to swear in English. They had no idea what they were saying and their phonetics were terrible—it was all “beach” this and “sheet” that. If you’re going to swear, you have to swear right.  And that’s just not something I can do in Russian or Spanish.

Even so, I wanted to share my basic knowledge of Russian мат.  “You know the Б-word, right?” I asked.  She did not, so I leaned across the table and whispered it to her like we were children. The Russians were highly amused—by my accent, mostly—and one of them decided to share a joke that made use of the word.  I missed the subtleties, but there was a male cat, his kitten son, and a whore. When he got to the punch line, my friend and I stared at him blankly, not entirely sure he’d finished telling the joke.

“You two really need to learn Russian,” he sighed.

Perhaps to prove that I do know a modicum of Russian, I jumped in with my next inappropriate phrase: “Go to the d--k!” That’s the literal translation of the Russian, but in practice, it’s more like “Go f--k yourself.” I picked up that choice phrase from a Spaniard in Basque Country, so it may have gotten a little convoluted along the way, but I think it ends up gaining something in translation. I wish I could export that to America, but alas, I’m trying to clean up my language.

You see, after reading my novel, my older sister pointed out that two of the main characters sound way too similar.  Stephie corroborated Melissa’s claim, highlighting a specific line of dialogue as an example.  Reading the line in question, I suddenly realized why they sound so alike—both characters talk like me. And I am way too liberal with the F-word.  I did a quick “Ctrl F” to see how many times I had used “f--k” or one of its derivatives, and was horrified when I got more than 50 results. Naturally, every utterance comes from one of these two characters. Those f---ers have been spending way too much time around me.

Cool Parents

Last month, while dining at my favorite Georgian restaurant, my friends and I started chatting with the Dutch-Canadian couple at the table next to us. They were spending three weeks in Russia, and visit about three new countries a year.  They were in their 60s, but looked a good decade younger—possibly because they travel far and wide and had a sense of adventure that was inspiring. The woman said that her advice was to live life without fear and to marry a Dutchman.  So Russia might be the wrong place for me on both counts.

I was thinking about how cool this Canadian couple was when I realized that my parents are actually pretty cool too—even if I didn’t realize it until recently. Growing up, my parents were not “cool parents.” Or at least not by any pre-teen definition of the term. My dad’s “beard art” phase was not one I would like to revisit, no one wants their parent playing a banjo at their sleepovers, and his bike spandex are still renowned among my childhood social circle. His antics bothered my mother less, even though she was the parent who laid down rules and doled out punishments. Pop, white bread, and television were strictly forbidden, and I even had a curfew when I was home for the holidays my freshman year of college. Years later, my mom learned that I had still managed to get away with a little teenage fun in high school and she was not amused. I swear she almost retroactively grounded me.

Harmonicas are even worse than banjos

My first memory of parental embarrassment occurred on my first day of kindergarten. One of the items on our school supply list was a blanket to sleep on at nap time. Instead, my mom burrowed into the depths of her closet and produced a woven rug she and my father had picked up in South America. When it came time for our mid-morning lie down, everyone rolled out snuggly, fleecy things emblazoned with princesses and dinosaurs. I hid behind the cubbies with my brightly colored Inca art and hoped no one would ask about my musty sleeping mat.

In retrospect, I’m not sure why I was so embarrassed by the rug, which actually has a pretty interesting back story.  In the 70s, my parents took a few belongings and their fairly terrible Spanish and headed down to South America for nine months. Between my dad (allegedly) getting bit by piranhas in Brazil and nearly getting arrested for public urination in Bolivia, it’s a wonder they made it back to America to get married. 

The parents before they were parents

Now that they’re retired, they’ve returned to their gallivanting ways.  They just finished the Camino de Santiago, a 500-mile pilgrimage across Spain, and are now in the Canary Islands visiting one of my dad’s best friends from high school.  I was Skyping with one of my best friends from college last weekend, and I mentioned that I’d just talked to my whole family. Stephie had dialed in from Seattle while my parents and Melissa had called in from a riad in Morocco. Lindsay was impressed by our global reach.

“I thought my parents were cool,” said Lindsay. “They just got back from two weeks in Turkey and two weeks in Sicily, and that included a stay at a pistachio farm.

“My parents just spent a week in Menorca visiting some Spanish hippies my dad caravanned across the Moroccan desert with two years ago,” I countered.

“Yeah, your parents might be cooler.”

And she doesn’t even know about my dad’s boxcar adventures or my mom’s visit to the Soviet Union, complete with a Communist Party convention in Leningrad.  But that might require an entire blog post of its own.

My parents in Finisterre, Spain after completing the Camino