Life in Russia: A Comprehensive Guide in Dialogues

There are days in Russia when you hear the distant echo of the carefully scrutinized dialogues and situations from your introductory textbook and think, “Wow… it’s a good thing I learned that.

Please act out the following situations in pairs:

1. You have been invited to a restaurant but learn that most of the cafй’s in town are reservation only. You must go to the cafй in advance to reserve a table for two at 6 o’clock. You have heard that you must pay 500 rubles to secure your table. At the restaurant they are amazed by your foreign name and do not remember to ask you for the money.

2. You have just arrived in Russia and need an apartment. You must call the apartment agencies and describe to them the sort of apartment you need, the location, and your ideal price. Be sure to ask how much they charge for the finding fee.

3. Your Russian friend has invited you to go bowling. Ask him for directions on how to get to the alley, and find out how much money you should bring.

These are pretty basic situations for which the textbook prepares you pretty well. There are, however, some unforeseen variation in day-to-day Russian life

4. You have heard about the harsh Russian winter and decided that you need adequate footwear. Your Iranian friend offers to take you to the street market to find a pair of boots. At the market, you are told by the merchant lady that your shoe size does not exist in Russia and that you should settle for something three sizes too small for $100. Also, the only shoes available are shiny, pointed, leather loafers with a thin layer of fuzz inside. What do you do?

5a. You have arranged to meet a representative from the apartment agency at two outside of a potential apartment to take a look. It is a half an hour later and she has not arrived. You call and she instructs you to enter through the locked door and take a look at the place yourself. You see big piles of filth and trash everywhere. Apparently people just dump their trash out the window. You follow and man through the locked door and see a big pile of what appears to be dog feces in front of the first apartment. You hope it’s not yours. You wander the winding, gloomy stone corridors inspecting the addressless, apartment doors, all of which have holes in them, some of which appear to only be fences. You get lost and worry that you’re going to die in this Soviet-era nightmare of an apartment complex. You go back outside and call the representative, who laughs at your and says something about the internet. Eventually she arrives and lets you in. You wonder through a million scenes of lower-class family toil until you reach a shabby looking apartment with nothing in it. Do you want it? No. Neither does the young couple who’s also waiting inside. The owner is disappointed.

5b. You have been offered an apartment by acquaintance from work, outside of an agency. She offers to show you it at 6:30. You are to meet her next to the biggest wooden ruble in the world. She shoes you the place. It’s incredible. Enormous. Clean. Spacious. Washing machine. Incredible view of the most downtown part of the city. Turns out it’s way too expensive. “Maybe you can find a roommate?” she suggests”. In order to give you the chance to think and show any potential roommates, she gives you the key to hold onto for a while. You start to mull over some likely candidate from your foreign friends, because no Russian college students live in their own apartments. Later it turns out that a Belgian named Dima might just take you up on it. But who will sleep on the couch bed in the main room? Also, there is an incredible library with complete collections of many of your favorite authors. Also, the ladies son is the one who took you bowling in dialogue 2, and he takes the key back the next day.

6. You are preparing a presentation at your local American Center, where you have been asked to give lectures from time to time. The topic is American liberal arts colleges and student life. You go eat shashlyk with the son of the person in charge of the American Center and later friend on the Russian friend site. You arrive at the American Center to establish the time of the presentation and learn that somehow the word got out that you were in a rap group in college. They want you to rap at the end of your presentation about liberal arts education. You’re not sure whether hip hop was one of the original liberal arts but figure you’ll do your best. You get nostalgic and poor some out for your hommies back in America.

7. You are invited to a restaurant/bar on a Saturday evening by your international friends. You are denied at one cafй, where it turns out, yes you do need to make reservations. You are an optimistic young foreigner, and you and your cronies decide to try your luck at another cafй. After an endless wait, everyone enjoys one beer. It is 11:30 and you decide you had better leave to make your midnight curfew. Some Germans invite you to go to a club, but you a select crew of goody-two-shoes decide to hike it home. Unfortunately, the bill takes forever and you are delayed 15 minutes. When you finally arrive home, it is 12:15 AM, past your curfew. You, a Belgian, a Swiss girl, and a Korean girl take a collective gulp and ring the buzzer. A stern, old Russian woman bursts out the door spitting condemnatory remarks. You decide to speak on behave of your friends and explain that you do not yet know how long it takes to walk back from the center. You explain the business about the tip. She’s not having it. “You have come to a foreign country to live. There must be order. I’m going to report you to the Rector. Give me your ID’s. Don’t tell me you tried to make it home in time young man, you always say that”. It really is your first time being late. She accuses your terrified Korean friend of smelling of something. You ask what. She says booze and accuses the poor girl of being drunk. You try to explain that you only had one beer each, that the Korean girl only had half of one. Then you decide to cut your losses and head to bed. You wonder what will become of the Germans. Later the Germans knock on your door and invite you to watch crappy American chick flick dubbed into Russian in your room. You figure, “Why not?”

Yes, yes, these are the situations encountered in everyday Russian life. About a year ago I decided I would like to become an editor for foreign-language textbooks for college students. I figure I should start collecting these sort of situations to better prepare America’s future generations of Russian scholars for real life in Russia.

But really, things are going very well here. I’m meeting more and more people. I’m very excited for my first day of teaching tomorrow. I spent all day preparing for my lectures on entertainment in America and for my presentation on liberal arts colleges and rap. For those of you who would know Sombrero Fallout and are in the neighborhood, I’ll be performing the hit single “Pickles” in its entirety at the American Center in the Scientific Library at 34, Prospekt Lenina. It starts at 4:30! Just kidding, I don’t think you’ll be able to make it. But maybe there’ll be pictures all the same!

From a sweaty internet cafe filled with possessed gamers with love,
Jason