Day 23-24

Under the headline of today’s Izvestia (so far as I can tell Russia’s main/only newspaper) “Why Should Russia Bail Out America?” lies a pretty good idea of how Russians have reacted to Obama’s scrapping of the missile shield in Poland. Like giddy school children who’ve finally beaten the overbearing bully across the pond. They’ve managed to turn Obama’s conciliatory proposal to work jointly with Russia to make a “sleeker” missile shield into America saying: “we can’t do this on our own and we need help.” Classy. Well, you can hardly blame them (well I suppose you can). Anyways, I say “Russians have reacted” and by that I mean, “the Russian Press has reacted.” The Russian populous is, I’d say, even more blissfully ignorant than the average American. I was given a satisfactory reason for this from my friend Sasha (short for Alexander, of course). He said: “When you’ve been force fed the party line for 70 years, it’s singularly unpleasant to then be called upon to read two sources of news and then have to decide which one is the party line.” Make sense? No, it didn’t to me either… So anyways, Russians have managed to avoid this unfortunate dilemma by merely reverting to one single source of (most likely) state approved news. The big news agencies also have the advantage of being able to draw their stories from non-assassinated journalists, a luxury that many alternate news sources cannot boast of (sorry, quick Putin dig, couldn’t help it… I mean, sure, he saved a helpless cameraman from a Siberian Tiger last year with his bare hands, but he’s not THAT big of a deal). As I’m writing this, I also realized that I have never seen a single city newspaper in my time here, unless it’s simply hidden under all the Cosmopolitans at the news stand. But, in all seriousness, there is not a whole lot of variety out there as far as news goes. I’ll try to do my best to get the Russian perspective on news from now on.

Voronezh Moment of the Day

Staring: the act of looking intently at someone completely without tact, regardless of whether or not they can see you back. Considered rude in America, a matter of common practice here in Voronezh. I can’t tell whether everyone does it, or whether it’s just SO shocking to see two Americans talking in a café that you have to turn your whole body around in your chair so that you can get a good long look-see at the biggest spectacle since Sputnik flew over. I was flattered for the first week, but today was the tipping point. I was in the café with one of the Brits and at some point during our stay, everyone turned to stare at us at least once (yes, some did need a second glance to confirm that their ears weren’t deceived). There’s nothing like seeing out of the corner of your eye a couple at a table literally stop eating and talking to turn and look at you with slack-jawed surprise. I mean, I understand that this isn’t Disney World, but for goodness sake, did the two girls next to us really need to jerk their thumbs at us, take occasional peeks then jabber excitedly to each other? Apparently so. I imagine it would be even worse if it was more discreet, but I have a 30 dollar bet that at some point a Russian walks up and takes a picture of us. I think I’m going to win too. That’s it, just a little pet peeve that may explode into full blown mania at some point. As we say here: ER (eto Rossiya; this is Russia).