The Banya, Oh My, The Banya

Dear Readers,
Friday last, I experienced a true Russian banya, or bathhouse. The banya is one of the best in the city (located near the ulitsa 1905 goda metro station, for those of you playing along at home). I had no idea what to expect so this was a completely new and truly foreign experience. So my Russian friend M1 and I enter the banya and find a reception area that would be familiar to any American woman who has ever gotten her hair or nails done. A waist-high, circular glass display case encloses a lone woman with a note pad and a cash register. Behind her is another glass display case containing banya-related products for sale. The woman takes our money (about $20 for 2 hours) and directs us down a narrow hallway and through a set of double doors. OK. I open the doors and no lie, it was like I walked into the most famous scene from Basic Instinct, because directly in front of me sat a woman in a towel (and that's all) that was way too short to accomplish its mission of not freaking me out. And, the woman did not have the sense that God gave her to cross her legs. Trying to avert my eyes from that train wreck, I look around for somewhere to rest my eyes. But the entire room looked like a Mormon's idea of a porn movie; everyone was naked or semi-nude, but doing the most mundane things -- drinking tea, chatting with friends, etc. So at this point I am thinking, um, maybe this is not for me. Then our "hostess" showed us our assigned location. Which was just an upholstered bench in the corner of the room. It took me a minute to realize we were supposed to undress right there, no screen, no curtain, no nothing. By way of explanation, my friend M1, who's English, I thought, was superb told me just three things about the banya:
1) You must bring a bathing suit,
2) You must not bring a hat,
3) You must bring shower shoes.
Unfortunately only the last thing was true. So I pull out my bathing suit to change into and she looks at me like I have two heads.
"What's that for?"
"Because you told me to bring it"
"Well you don't need it. Besides where is your hat?"
"What hat, you told me not to bring one"
"Did I? You really need a hat".

So then our hostess brings us these things, smaller than a sheet, bigger and thinner than a towel. They are really cute and have a cute cartoon figure on them with a saying that says "Mal i star, vso lubit par [old or young, everyone loves the steam]. We change into these "palatensia" and wait for the steam to be ready.

In the meantime, we purchase veniki or birch leaves. I will get to them in a minute.

While we wait, our hostess gave us a quick tour of the banya. Basically divided into two areas, the dry area and the wet area. In the dry area, are the dressing rooms, which in addition to the benches had several small, private cubbies -- shielded by curtains. The cubby rooms also have benches and small tables. In the center of the dry area, there was a large table where tea was served. In a small side room, off the main area,there was a manicure/pedicure station. The wet area was basically a large square open room with showers on near right side, the actual Russian banya (and a Finnish sauna) on the far opposite side and akvamassag on the far left side. Beyond this room were more showers and a wading pool.

After the tour, we went back to our area and waited for the steam to be ready. Then the steam lady calls to us in this high-pitched (like she had been doing helium, or something), sing-song voice. Everyone runs into the wet room and crowds around the door. Because we were trying to buy a hat for me, we missed the initial steam call .

By the time we got to sauna, the door was closed. It is very bad form to be late to the steam, so we had to bang on the door for some time before someone deigned to open it for us. We get into the room, which is dimly lit and made completely of wood. It has "stadium seating" with a large platform at the top. The room is crowded with at least 50 women, mostly nude, all with hats on, natch. Interestestingly enough, there was also a golden-haired, chubby girl of about 9 in the banya with a ready smile and a fond curiosity for me (which was returned). The steam lady was dressed like a sailor or a marathon runner with a striped shirt and panty/shorts (or shantys or ports).

Everyone is sitting or laying on the risers or at the platform at the top of the risers. In the banya, the higher up you go the hotter it is. For the first round ,we stayed at the bottom riser. The steam lady blended some aromatics in a little plastic bucket, then she whipped the contents against the walls all around the room. You are supposed to duck and cover your eyes, so none of the concoction gets in your eyes. Then she starts to prepare the steam. She goes over to the oven, opens the door, scoops up panfuls of water from a big bucket and throws them into the oven. After doing this a while, she asks for feedback from the group. Up until this point, the banya, has been deadly quiet, no one has been talking at all. Now everyone gives their opinion, more steam, less steam, the steam is fine like it is. After some sort of consensus is reached, the steam lady takes a big sheet thing and whips it around in the air. After she does this about 4 times, the banya gets extremely hot. The weird thing is, I honestly never saw any steam, I mean I was sweating and had a sheen of some sort of liquid on my skin, but the banya did not seem to be even as steamy as my shower at home. Anyway, we steam for just a short while longer, and then round 1 was over.

We left the banya (our veniki were still soaking so we did not use them) and headed for the showers. We showered and then went into the wading pool. The 9-year girl was there. She looked at me with the universal expression of "I dare you" and cannonballed into the pool. So because I am a mature professional woman of a certain age, I gave her a look that said "You are on" and I too cannonballed into the pool. Which simply proves that you are never, never too old to be an idiot. The water temperature was far, far north of shockingly cold, just south of excruciatingly cold. My breath was literally taken away. The water was so cold that swimming around didn't really generate any heat, it just made different parts of your body cold.

However, on balance, the wading pool was a great experience. Skinny dipping is one of life's overlooked pleasures. And because I was so hot from the steam room, the cold was refreshing. After the wading pool, we went back to the dry room, ordered tea and pelmeni and waited for the second round of steam (II). This time, we immediately respond when we hear the steam call. As I huddle around the door and wait to enter, I realize that I am looking forward to the steam room. I like the dimness, the heat and the fragrance of the room, the quietness, almost reverence of the crowd. I feel relaxed and refreshed, mentally and physically.

This time the veniki is ready. Veniki are just birch tree branches, with the leaves attached. The veniki are sold in a dried form, then are soaked in a bucket of water until they are softened. People then beat themselves (or their friends) with the veniki at the end of the steam. For those of you who have ever been threatened or actually beaten with a "switch" (you know who you are), this sounds distinctively unappealing. Let me tell you it is nothing like the nightmares of your childhood. In fact, being hit with the veniki is actually more like another, more pleasant childhood memory: jumping in the leaves in autumn. The veniki is formed mainly of birch leaves spread wide and flat. Soaking makes the leaves extremely tender and supple, and they smell good too. When you are beaten by the veniki, the smell and feel of it is evocative of jumping into a pile of freshly-fallen leaves, not the dry crusty ones, but the ones that still have their autumn color and shiny coat. (For those readers who did not grow up in the deciduous tree zone, just play along). My friend M1 and I took turns beating each other at the end of steam II. It felt wonderful.

At steam III, I am addicted. I love the ritual of it-- how it is a quiet, intensely personal but communal experience. I love how it clears my mind and my skin. After the banya, my skin is glowing. I go home and have the best night's sleep I have had in Moscow.

Dear Readers,

Another full week has passed by. I still have not fallen in love with Moscow yet. Truthfully, I think that ship has sailed, because if Moscow could not ensnare with her charms in the summertime, there is truly no hope that I will fall in love with this place in the winter. Even the natives don't like the winter. They respect it, I mean it has won at least two wars for them, but they don't really like it. It is cold, dark, long and brutal, sort of like life here, except life just feels long. OK I have lined up some rants -- observations, really -- about my newly adopted city

Spitting
Everybody everywhere spits. It is horrible, disgusting and omnipresent, sort of like sour cream, which I will get to in a minute. If CSI came here to solve a case, that would have to arrest 10,000 people on the DNA evidence alone. I don't even try to avoid stepping in it anymore, I just try not to think about and do everything in my power, never, ever to fall down to the ground. I will take the legs out from under a babyshka (old grandmother) before I let my hands or face touch the ground here. I am still trying to determine some casuality for all of this spitting. Are Russians genetic saliva overproducers? Is the pollution, what? I mean there has to be a reason, for the sheer pervasiveness of this nastiness. I will keep searching.

Russian Food -- Smetana and Zelen (Dill, Parsley, etc)

Since I have been here, I have lost 10lbs -- about 4.5 kilos. The weight loss can be equally attributed to 1) the walking, the damn walking. 2) " Moscow's Revenge" 3) the food itself.

Russian food is effective in curing hunger, but it is not particularly tasty food. It tends to be a bit bland and very fatty. Sour cream and mayonnaise are like culinary superstars, add dill and parlsey and green onions and you've got the starting 5 of the Russian national team. I keep threatening to write a science-"fact"ion story about what happens to Russian society when all the dill just disappears one day. I think they seriously would invade India (one of the largest producers of dill) if this actually happened.

People Watching
Moscow is one of the best cities in the world for people-watching. My friend B. said not only can you people watch, but you can pick a topic -- man-purses, shoes, hair etc. However, there is a caveat, making direct eye contact in public is a social no-no in Russia. Russians take direct eye contact, at best, to be rude, at worst to be an outright threat. Smiling, that peculiar American response to everything, makes the eye contact faux-pas even worse. At that point, the will think you are danger and a blithering idiot (or you want to get married). Maybe these two are adonakovi (the very same). A quick note about man-purses. The male American fellows refuse to carry them, but time is a patient hunter. What is a man purse you ask? It a purse carried by men. In all fairness, the government pratically forces men to carry man-purses, because you must in addition to money and subway pass, carry at all times your passport. Since passports (internal and external) are far to big to be placed into a wallet, men are left with a dilemma, where to stash their stuff. Some men have opted for the man purse. I have seen beautiful, study black leather Kenneth Cole man-purses that look oh so suave and I have seen some kind of wrist strap having, 8th-grade girl type of man-purse that looked oh so silly. I would have said gay, but gay people have better taste that that catastrophe. The carrying norm is a strap across the body with the purse laying on the hip. Straps straight down from the shoulder sends a message that sounds a lot like "dork" because "dorak" in Russian means idiot, or dummy.
And I need not revisit the wrist strap issue.

The Russian Belt
As I people watch in the metro, I have come to a startling conclusion. Somewhere in this vast country there are thousands, no hundreds of thousands, no possibly millions of 8 year old girls that are running around stark naked, no shirts , no pants. Why you ask, because every woman in Russian over the age of say 14 wears all of her clothes about 4-8sizes to small, no matter what size or age she is. This leads to the naked 8 year olds. I am afraid that my 7-year old daughter will get jumped here, not because of the color of her skin, but for her CareBears rainbow T-shirt.

This obsession with overly small clothes also creates what I call the Russian belt. Because their shirts are so small (even in the arms length and size) and their pants are so tight, a 2-4 inch band of skin at the waistline is exposed for all to see. This is the Russian belt. Almost all the women wear it every day. I don't have proper statistics, but if you spit on the ground in front of the metro 50 belt wearers would step in it, before it dried.


I will post some more pix tomorrow for those interested in the high-brow cultural side, and there is one, of my adventure here. As always, keep the comments coming. Thanks for reading.

They Like Me, They Really, Really Like Me

Dear Readers,
My sincere apologies for not posting for two full weeks. Last week I was sick with "Moscow's Revenge". No further details are necessary and none will be provided. The prior week was simply quotidian (look it up, you have the entire internet at your disposal, for gosh sakes).
So here is the great, earthshaking news that drew me out of my Moscow funk, figuratively and literally, to do an update post. No, not the G-8 summit, we don't like them, they don't like us, tensions are rising, blah-blah-blah. Go out, push aside your morals, buy into the the Rosneft IPO and move on. Just be sure to dump the stock before the elections in 2008 :-). But, I digress.
The really important news is that the babushkas in the building stopped me today and initiated a full-fledged conversation with me. They even asked me my name and when I told them "Shura" , they immediately shortened (or elongated it, whatever) to Shurokha, which means little Shura and is very friendly. They also told me that I was beautiful. They truly are my new best friends. So now me, Tamara, Nina and Vanya are the very bestest of pals and I look forward to the day when I can understand more than 40% of what they are saying. I am dead sure that they cannot understand more than 10% of what I say in Russian.

This development is so ironic because I was just lamenting the supreme unfriendliness of the Russian people with an ex-pat friend of mine. She was in total agreement, and we griped about the situation for more than an hour. Then, like magic, the building welcoming crew invites me into the fold. So now, my faith in the Russian soul has been restored, at least partially. I will keep you posted when I finally fall back into love with Russia.

I am going to St. Petersburg, the place that caused me to fall in love with Russia in the first place. I am excited and nervous about going back. It will be so thrilling to the see the changes to "my Russia" and see all the things that have not changed (and will never change -- Kazansky Sobor, Alexanderplatz, The Admiralty, The Neva). On the other hand, St. Pete's is a dangerous city now. The local government rounded up all the skinheads this week, to prevent an incident from occuring during the G-8 summit. That means they will be nice and rested when I show up on Friday.

On to brighter topics, I met with the President of Alfa's Retail Bank and his deputy. The meeting went well and I believe that my intership there will be very interesting, challenging and meaningful, or at least I hope that. I will let you know if I start work sometime soon, as was suggested in the meeting.

Meantime, I am slugging away at school, trying (in vain for the most part) to learn this God-forsaken language. One of my friends from school said "Why don't Russians understand me? I speak Russian and they cannot even understand their own language!!". Obviously, he said this in jest. I am just so frustrated with my progress. I was so good at this in college (way back in the last millenium), I thought, well I will just dust off the cobwebs and let it rip. Well, I dusted off the cobwebs and there was nothing underneath. All of my Russian language mojo is gone. I am not sure where or when, but it is definitely gone. So that was a real setback. So I stewed for a week or so, but now I am back on track. I bought a childrens book called Sasha and Masha (Sasha is the boy) and I read that every night. I also study 10 verbs every night to try and catch up on vocabulary. Nouns are easier, you can use words to describe nouns or even show pictures or examples. I defy anyone to describe the verb "explain" or "suggest" or "reconsider" or just plain "think". And because Russian is a highly verbal language (verbs drive the language) getting them right or "owning" them as I describe it to myself, is critical.

I hope to have some awesome pix from St. Petes next week. Going forward, I will be updating my blog, just weekly (Sunday nights -- cause lord knows, I don't have any football to distract me). If there is something pressing or interesting, I will update it real time, but everyday is just too much. There isn't enough really interesting stuff to make a daily update feasible.

Please remember to post comments. I love getting feedback of all kinds. Also I am on Skype --shereeinrussia is my name.

Three Men and Some Babies

Dear Readers,
A full week has passed since my last update. I have lots to share with you all. First, some housekeeping, I have changed the settings on my blog to now allow comments. Please keep your comments coming, it is wonderful to get feedback from friends and strangers alike. Also, for friends, please download Skype if possible. It is a wonderful tool and you cannot beat the price, free.

Now, back to Moscow. OK, the first of the three men is a dear sweet person who helped me out on the metro this week. The metro turnstile ate my card (there were still 3 rides left). So I am at the turnstile -- 5:30 pm, height of rush hour, screaming for the lady (devuyshka) to come and help me. Now I do not know what the turnstiles are called in Russian, further I am not sure if they are male or female ( it matters) and I am not sure which aspect of the verb "to take" to use. So my options are

1. He took my card (1 time and done)
2. She took my card (1 time and done)
3. It took my card (1 time and done)
4. He took my card (in the process of)
5. She took my card (in the process of)
6. It took my card (in the process of)
7. Just keep screaming devuyshka, devuyshka, and hope she decides to stop ignoring me.

Enter the hero. A mop-topped, dark-haired man (who looked suspiciously like Screech from Saved by the Bell) starts giving me instructions in -- God Bless him -- English. He offers me his metro card to make it through the gates. I refuse because I want/need my own card back, complete with the 3 rides still left. This guy, did I mention it was rush hour, waits patiently until I come to my senses and realize that devuyshka is sticking firmly to her policy of ignoring the screaming black woman at turnstile 6 -- yeah, I counted them. So I take his card, resist the urge to kiss him, thank him profusely and accompany him to the escalator. During the ride down, he tells he he is an actor here in the city, that he has relatives in Chicago and that he has been to New York a few times for work, but there are far fewer opportunities to work in the US theater than in Russia. I thank the young man again because in addition to getting me on the metro -- my destination is forgotten already -- he provided another aspect of the Muscovites. He was kind to a stranger for no other reason than kindness itself. Rare, sweet, necessary and appreciated.

Sidebar for a funny story about a person that cannot rise to the designation of man. OK on another day as I was walking back from the metro, I came up on a person of the male persuasion walking just in front of me. I am to his left and behind him maybe 1 full step, maybe less. So we are walking and this guy just lets one loose, right in my walking path. He doesn't look back, doesn't acknowledge the event or me. Just I am thinking, maybe he just zipped his jacket really fast, causing a noise that resembles flatulence, he does it again. At this point, I wise up and cross the street.

Second man. Last Friday, a few of the fellows eat dinner at the restaurant literally across the street from my apartment. The place is the absolute best. The food (and the cook) are wonderful, the prices are very reasonable and the ambience, well that is the best part of the story. The place is small, maybe 8-10 tables, with very nice white tableclothes and good silverware. There is only one waiter to cover the entire dining room, but since there are never more than 3 tables occupied, it is not that big a deal. The waiter is superb, by any standards. He is attentive and smart and funny. The ambience of this restaurant is created and maintained by the flat screen TV mounted to the wall, the bartender (man #2) and his love for soccer. On this night, Argentina was playing Germany. My little dinner party eat and drank to the full volume blast of the game. It was like we came over to his house for dinner and the game. The staff was polite and accomodating, but the game clearly trumped all other considerations. When the bartender saw that we were half heartedly rooting for Germany, he challenged us to a bet, if Germany won, he would buy us a round, if Argentina won, we would by him a round. And so it was on, we stayed for a full hour longer until Germany finally triumphed. In that hour, we made a new friend (please don't ask me what his name is) and gained a new neighborhood hangout. I finally feel like I am a part of my new neighborhood. Now I have place to go where somebody knows if not my name, than at least my face. I am grateful to the bartender for initiating me into the neighborhood. I will be a frequent customer and hopefully a good friend.

Today, at noon, Roman (a fellow in the program) and I met at a cafe near Arbat street to study. Neither of us had had breakfast, so we ordered soft drinks, salads, entrees and desserts. The total bill was 1700 rubles or ($63). That is a little steep for just two folks, no alcohol. I took at closer look at the bill and realized that one item had been charged at 590 rubles ($22) -- a glass of fresh squeezed pineapple juice (large) Roman ordered. He was sure it was just a typo and called the waitress over to make the correction. She shook her head and said that the charge was correct as it stood. Roman then asked for the menu to check the price, the waitress brought back a little insert that said the juice cost 295 rubles ($11), but told us that was the price for the small and, in fact, the large glass of juice cost $22. BTW, before the bill came, Roman mentioned that the juice was quite tasty and advised that I get one. :-) Long story short, the manager came and reduced the charget from 590 to 295 rubles. But, let this story be a lesson and a warning. If anyone is wondering why Moscow is the most expensive city in the world, here is an excellent illustration of your answer. I have never even paid $22 for a glass of wine. It was a very surreal experience.

Finally, the babies. Some of my friends are expecting babies (Rachelle, 7/4), (Annie 9/11) and just wanted to give them a shout out. I am definitely sad that I will miss their births, but I promise to be in-country for their first birthday party and Christmas.

OK, I must do some homework now. I look forward to your comments and Skype calls.