Journal Entries
Tallinn - ho!
Posted Dec 10, 2000
In general, you hate travelling. Hate feeling uncomfortable and dirty, hate feeling obliged to rush around and look at anything even vaguely interesting. Hate it.
So remember, nay treasure, the fury with which you greeted the news that it was now necessary to leave the country in order to get a new visa. Closest destination: Estonia. The capital Tallinn in fact. Allegedly very beautiful. "Take a few days off. Travel around. See Estonia. Hey, why don't you potter over to Finland while you' re at it!" Ugh.
Imagine your satisfaction, therefore, when your window of opportunity was restricted to one day in Tallinn, overnight train there, overnight train back. In the circumstances, you were perfectly justified, having dropped off the application at the embassy and paid the extortionate fees, in doing nothing but wander the cobbled, rain-washed Old Town amidst germanic houses (steep roofs), taking a quick gander at the proper german catholic churches (spindly spires), grabbing something tasty to eat in a restaurant (never thought it was possible to make kasha actually taste nice), drinking endless cups of tea in cafes, watching the world go by and listening to people speaking a very Scandinavian sounding language. Endless entertainment there. 'Tea' is 'tee' ("teeeeeeeeeeeeeee"). 'Bar' is 'baar'. ("baaaaaaaaaar"). And it was superb to have two languages to fall back on for once. Although given how Estonians feel about Russia, it would have been better really to stick to English.
But it was very satisfying to discover that your Russian is now servicable for communicative purposes, wasn't it? Though, of course, also bad enough to induce amusement in your listeners at your hoplessly garbled endings. Officials, who had taken one look at your passport and winced to a man before tentatively enquiring if you spoke Russian, were soothed, and from then on everything went splendidly, if ungrammatically, along. I swear one of them gave you a clicky little bow in farewell.
On the other hand, maybe they have just been hanging around Estonians for too long, as I think it is fair to say that the inhabitants of Tallinn have comprehansively twigged that the best way to separate tourists from their money is to be nice to them. And sell postcards.
Ah, but admit it; it was rather pleasent to be out from under the opressive, impersonal, monolithic architecture of Moscow for a bit. Quaint is what you were raised on, after all.
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Latest reply: Dec 10, 2000
Tallinn - ho!
Posted Dec 10, 2000
In general, you hate travelling. Hate feeling uncomfortable and dirty, hate feeling obliged to rush around and look at anything even vaguely interesting. Hate it.
So remember, nay treasure, the fury with which you greeted the news that it was now necessary to leave the country in order to get a new visa. Closest destination: Estonia. The capital Tallinn in fact. Allegedly very beautiful. "Take a few days off. Travel around. See Estonia. Hey, why don't you potter over to Finland while you' re at it!" Ugh.
Imagine your satisfaction, therefore, when your window of opportunity was restricted to one day in Tallinn, overnight train there, overnight train back. In the circumstances, you were perfectly justified, having dropped off the application at the embassy and paid the extortimate fees, in doing nothing but wander the cobbled rain-washed old town amidst germanic houses (steep roofs), taking a quick gander at the proper germen catholic churches (spindly spires), grabbing something nice to eat in a restaurant (never thought it was possible to make kasha actually taste nice), drinking endless cups of tea in cafes, watching the world go by and listening to people speaking a very Scandinavian sounding language. Endless entertainment there. 'Tea' is 'tee' ("teeeeeeeeeeeeeee"). 'Bar' is 'baar'. ("baaaaaaaaaar"). And it was superb to have two languages to fall back on for once. Although given how Estonians feel about Russia, it would have been better really to stick to English.
But it was very satisfying to discover that your Russian is now servicable for communicative purposes, wasn't it? Though, of course, also bad enough to induce amusement in your listeners at your hoplessly garbled endings. Officials, who had taken one look at your passport and winced to a man before tentatively enquiring if you spoke Russian, were soothed, and from then on everything went splendidly, if ungrammatically, along. I swear one of them gave you a clicky little bow in farewell.
On the other hand, maybe they have just been hanging around Estonians for too long, as I think it is fair to say that the inhabitants of Tallinn have comprehansively twigged that the best way to separate tourists from their money is to be nice to them. And sell postcards.
Ah, but admit it; it was rather pleasent to be out from under the opressive, impersonal, monolithic architecture of Moscow for a bit. Quaint is what you were raised on, after all.
Discuss this Journal entry [1]
Latest reply: Dec 10, 2000
Kinoproby
Posted Nov 26, 2000
So you go to this concert to celebrate the life of Victor Tzoi, the lead singer of Kino, and suddenly discover that this country is indeed progressing in leaps and bounds towards commercialism. Forget the fact that the countryside is a monetary wasteland of subsistance farming for a minute, forget Vladivostok (surely the unluckyest city in the former soviet block), and forget industry...well. The capitalist spirit is alive and scalping teenagers in Moscow.
Having had the nous to get himself killed in a car crash in 1990, Tsoi's band was immediately imortalised as the greatest underground band of them all, mainly cos he never had a chance to sell out and make rock videos in tastefully-knit jumpers and a Sting haircut (Kinchev) or turn into my Dad (Uri-from-DDT). They have a wall on the Arbat. And everything. So it is ironic, isn't it, that not only have some cheesy dance act released a truly terrible affair where his voice soars over perhaps the worst dance anthum I have ever heard, but that the Kinoproby concert was a blatant rip off, designed merely as a puff to get people to buy the damm album of covers, most of which are a bit limp in the first place.
But hey. You want a review, you got one. Three hours of bands who come on and play one song each unless they are Zemfira or the Mumin Trolls who get two. Or Tansi Minus who inexplicably get four and drag on and on, each song played at a slower speed than the last, until you want to charge up there and push. Then, of course, a ten minute wait whilst they rearrange the stage, and during this time we are entertained variously by bits of a documentry of Tszoi's life; the guy from Assa; and the frontman from Auction whose job description in in the band is performance art. Sure enough, we got exerpts from his book of poetry, and so essentially the best thing about the concert was Auction, who didn't play. And Zdub si Zdub. But then I'm biased.
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Latest reply: Nov 26, 2000
The Office Party
Posted Nov 11, 2000
The grey sky hung low, pressing you into the ground, opening out the horizon and forcing everything around into small insignificance. Against this unpreposing canvas the reds and yellows of the trees glowed damply. Green grass was brighter. Buildings were whiter, and every little scrap of litter on the ground shone out in lurid advertisement. There was no wind, and no chill in the air. Instead you were wrapped in a gentle soothing clagginess, soon warmed away as the fires were lit and bottles of beer were broached. It was, in short, a distinctly autumnal kind of day.
First, of course was the enforced dash through culture; a trip around the New Jerusalem Monestry, undergoing, in common with every other Russian church at this time, extensive renovations. And just where are they getting the money for the hand-painted frescoes, re-plastered walls, gold-leafed cupolas and heavily-carved stonemasonry, eh? The highlight of the visit: a stone, emphatically heralded as an exact copy of the boulder which once covered the enterance of the tomb of Christ(a third of the original size, you understand). A solemn precession on irritable foriegners shuffled past, intoning "But how do they know?"
Then release. Into the park. Head for the windmill. Ignore the replica wooden peasents hut and chapel, ignore Patriach Nikon's home-in-exile, ignore the riverside baptismal platform, ignore the colourful wishing trees with their penants of hankerchiefs, scarfs and plastic bags. The beer has arrived. But there is little time to relax, for the entertainment the Boss laid on is spectacular. In the middle of a field, in the middle of the sodden Russian countryside, you are seranaded by a full brass band, complete with baton-twirling, bright-smiling majorettes in shocking blue and red uniforms. And then, still reeling from the incongruity of it all, the Russian singers come on, persuade a gaggle of capering lads to take bread and salt, chivy the company into the Spoon Game, and start up the endlessly popular Tunnel Procession, last seen played by teenagers on Red Square before a pop-concert.
And so to bed.......drunken staggering in the half-light, singing, whispering, collapsing.
I could remind you of the gossip. But.....
a
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Latest reply: Nov 11, 2000
TV moments
Posted Oct 23, 2000
So, there you are idly watching the programme "The Lost Regiment", the premis of which is to find out what happened to scores of people proclaimed 'missing in action' in various of Russia's bloody conflicts, crackdowns and general anarchy.
Among other distressing material, this appears to involve lots of footage of soldiers shooting each other interspersed with glimpses of forlorn headstones and the occasional helicopter. And as you watch you begin to realise that the backing track is hauntingly familiar. That it is, in fact, the theme tune to Red Dwarf, albeit played at a funereal pace and without the jaunty lyrics. Well, this seems a little odd, but eventually you reason that the Red Dwarf team could quite easily have nicked the tune from somewhere else and go to make a cup of tea.
Suddenly you are called back into the room by the unmistakable strains of Dr Who. Yes, they are still showing blown up bodies as the music bounces on.
You blink, and the music changes to The X Files, which, in your opinion, is a mistake. OK, so the sound editor has got himself a greatest sci-fi hits CD, but The X Files are really quite popular here. So you are not surprised that at this point we abruptly cut back to the studio for the next harrowing story.
Well, it amused me anyhow.
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Latest reply: Oct 23, 2000
Sol
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