Well what can I say… To be honest, nothing like the crazy first few days… I’ve officially been here a week now and I’m starting to feel very Russian. Today I had tea with lemon, while I ate Beef Stroganoff, while reading ‘The Russian Revolution’ by Trosky and I was cooling down a bit becuase I’d been walking around outside and because it’s a balmy -2 degrees I was sweating.
A couple of things have happened to make life a little easier – firstly I found a place called Traveller’s Coffee. The menu isn’t in English but it does have pictures and they can make a real cappuccino – chocolate powder and all. They also do frappes, but they call them “ice-dreams”. The best thing is, there’s one on the way home from work which is open till 11pm which also serves soups, salads, sandwiches, muffins, cookies and light meals. Basically, it’s an imitation Starbucks with full table service. It’s unusual to find sandwiches or muffins or cookies here, but they have them and they’re not the same as Australia, but they are definitely tasty. Their coffee is also available to takeaway! This is strange in itself (no one walks around here drinking coffee), they give u a straw for your cappuccino and you have to drink it v quickly otherwise it gets cold. On the plus side, there is a 20% discount for takeaway coffee.
I finally managed to change my few remaining US dollars – I tried in two other banks, but they wouldn’t take it because there was a slight (approximately 5 mm) tear along the centre fold at the top of the note. They told me to go to SberBank – I went to SberBank – they changed it for me and didn’t require me to have my passport either! I’ve also discovered that there is a bank on the ground floor of this building. I saw a sign advertising a bank, and I looked everywhere for it but couldn’t find it. On either side of the sign are two doors, which might look like they open a cleaners’ cupboard. They are marked with the numbers 102 and 103. They are the entrance to the v. small, but real Moscow Bank. On the outside it’s completely unnoteworthy, but on the inside, it looks like a bank! I had a bit of an explore around Krasnoyarsk and went to a bookshop nearby the other day. That was fun, although I had a headache by the end of it (too much Russian). I picked up a decent Russian-English/English-Russian dictionary – there were a lot of dictionaries that were Russian-English but not the other way around. I also found a biography of Hugh Laurie and a book by Jeremy Clarkson, but they were in Russian so I couldn’t read them. The few English books that were in the store were serious classics, like Shakespeare and Mark Twain.
I am finally managing to figure out the supermarkets, thanks primarily to the help and advice of locals who have been explaining things to me that I find confusing:) The supermarket near work is open 24 hours a day. In Kazakhstan, I held up the queue of people waiting to pay because I was confused with the money and needed to race to the ATM to get some more out. Here I’m holding up the queue because I forgot to get the girl to weight the fruit and veg or pelmini and put a price on it. They don’t do it at the register, they do it in the fruit and veg section and I keep forgetting.
I have also discovered that spring ice is more dangerous than winter ice. In winter, the ice is compact and hard, it doesn’t melt and it is full of divets from people walking on it. It’s made from compacted snow and there is still some on top. Consequently, even though it’s ice, it’s not that difficult to walk on. In spring, during the day if it’s fine, the ice starts to melt, so the top surface becomes water and then refreezes overnight. This means the next day, it’s very smooth, slippery (especially if it’s started to melt again) and there’s no snow. Even the locals slip a bit on that stuff! Around the city there are workmen everywhere, scraping the ice off the footpaths (it’s about 10 cm thick in some places) and clearing the snow off the gardens. Actually, I didn’t even know they were gardens until I saw some spindly little pine trees trying desperately to stand up straight – they were covered in snow (about 3 feet!). You can also see the different layers of snow, like sedimentary rock. It’s possible to see how many times it has snowed this year, and get an idea of how much snow fell each time.
I’ve got some more food in my house and am looking forward to a dinner tonight that is not instant noodles (I have pelmini – it’s like ravioli. There are big open containers in the freezer section full of it. You just choose how much u want and then give it to the girl to put a price on it before you get to the checkout. You can also buy some frozen berries this way). I have a couple of sausages and some cheese so I think I’m set for the weekend. Still don’t have a rope to hang my clothes on, but I have coat hangers, and I might move the couch so I can drape things over the central heating.
Got a reply from the bank in Australia today, telling me that I need to call them if I want to arrange any changes for my account. Tried to do it using their normal phone number, but it cost about 100 rubles a minute. You can get a meal for 100 rubles (about $3) and I didn’t even get to talk to anyone before I was cut off! I was talked at by a computer and then put on hold. I called them reverse charge (they have a number for this), with the help of Nastya and waited on hold for about 5 minutes being told my call was important to them. Finally got a person answered and sorted things out. They’re going to send me a chip which generates a single use password which I can use for my account. It’s not the end of the world, but I do wish I’d known about this before I left the country. A good time would have been when I went into the bank in person with all my ID and said, ‘I’m going to Russia and I need money, what do I need to do?’
They said, ‘Here, have a travel money card!’
They forgot to tell me that they would send a password to my Australian mobile number (which doesn’t work in Russia) in order to be able to use it!
Today I had my classes, and had a chat with the other staff. It’s another teacher’s birthday today (from Cameroon) and they got him lots of different types of croissants for a gift! Also am working tomorrow (Saturday) to compensate for not working on Tuesday. Tuesday is International Women’s Day and it’s a public holiday here. I love International Women’s Day – people give u all these presents, just for being female! They give you cards that say things like, ‘congratulations’. This always confused and amused me. Congratulations for what? I didn’t have any say in the matter! But there are lots of presents and a public holiday, so I like it. This week is also ‘pancake week’ here and they sell lots of blinni (like crepes). We don’t celebrate it much in Australia but it’s called Shrovetide. We have Shrove Tuesday where we have pancakes, they celebrate the whole week!
I’ve also started to learn Russian, on the advice of a friend because I was whinging about how I couldn’t understand anything and everything was so difficult. I now have a book at home full of vocab, a dictionary and I’m writing things down, trying to learn as much as I can. It’s going to take a long time…
Post Office 
Subway – they sell soup and measure subs in centimetres 
Writing on the memorial to Lenin 
Main square near my house complete with statue of Lenin 
Spring slush, anyone?
3 Years in Siberia 