10th October: Routine

We are halfway through week six and the cold weather is gradually starting to set in. The rain has been almost relentless since I flew back and there is a distinct chill in the air, ready for the first snow which is predicted to fall towards the end of this month. Nevertheless, there’s still a while to go before the real winter snow comes – the snow that falls in November and remains until the spring.

The weather hasn’t allowed much opportunity for running lately, but I have been able to continue with my gym classes, sampling as many as possible before choosing my subscription. After my class on Monday I braved the rain and walked to Cocktail Bar, where a group of us were meeting for drinks. After the Your Bar fiasco it seemed like a good idea to find a new local – and Cocktail Bar represented a good compromise, with cheap drinks (half price cocktails on a Monday) and a dance floor upstairs. It was a good night and it was only the thought of my early start the next day that dragged me away at 3am.

Of course, getting through Tuesday was still a struggle and I didn’t feel much like doing anything exciting that evening so just caught up on work and watched some weird Disney programmes and Kyle XY in Russian. I’d intended to go straight home and sleep after class, but as Ben offered to show me a supermarket where I could buy my fruit cheaper than at the market, I decided to tag along for lunch, especially as they’d decided on the Georgian place off Kirova. This time, instead of eating upstairs in the log cabin area, we were shown downstairs to the proper restaurant, where the tables were big enough to accommodate us. It was hard not to feel out of place at first, when our coats were taken and we were shown to our neatly-decorated table, the only customers in the room. But, never being short of conversation, we quickly livened the place up (with the help of the westernised music channel the restaurant had on loudly in the background).

Today’s lunch was definitely slightly less traditional as we decided to eat in the pizzeria around the corner from the university, as the guys wanted to be done in time to get their hair cut Russian-style, an unfortunate craze that seems to have hit the group. Within a couple of weeks I’m sure all twenty-odd of them will be sporting the severe Russian shaved head that seems to be the fashion here (although we can only be thankful that they didn’t choose that other disastrous Russian trend – the mullet). The shiny leather jackets were bad enough.

This pizzeria is becoming a regular haunt – cheap, fast and local – but today we inadvertently experienced another interesting culinary phenomenon when Ben, requesting chicken on his pizza, was misheard and instead confronted with a cinnamon pizza – a surprising addition, but by general consensus not actually as disgusting as it might sound. At least it provided a bit of entertainment. But while the mix-up between курица and корица is understandable, it does make you wonder why the waitress thought a customer would be more likely to replace pork with cinnamon than chicken on a pizza. The strange Russian mentality strikes again.

The plan for tonight is to go and see Taken 2 at the cinema with Akob and Yana, although they seem to have difficulties with organisation so at the moment I’m simply going by Ben’s guess that we’ll meet at around 6.30 outside Lenin. I haven’t seen the first one of the Taken films but I’ve heard this won’t be a problem, and that it’s good; at any rate, it’ll be a good opportunity to practice my Russian, and the cinema tickets are only 100r (£2) on a Wednesday anyway. Cinema is another thing that’s surprisingly cheap over here, as I would consider cinema trips more of a luxury than good food and clothing – but then again, who am I to question Russian logic.