November 9th

This is a picture of my Russia scarf which is much like my "Fakel" one. I am drinking mineral water in this photo to clear up any concern...

Again, this won’t be a very deep or informative post, but it’s another small blip from my life here. We went to my second home last night (the bar Pivasii) to watch the Chelsea-Manchester United football match. It was me, Stuart Coffee, his Russian friend, Olga, and Amy, one of the Brits who happens to be a huge Chelsea fan. Stuart and I had decided to take a night off after three rough nights of getting home around 5:30 AM. All of the staff at Pivasii know us and one especially, Alyona, has seen us at our best and worst, from day one to the present. Her favorite pastime is cutting us off when she thinks we’ve had too much to drink but then caving in. One night, one of our party asked for his 8^th or 9^th shot of vodka and she gave him a shot of beer (which he didn’t even notice because he spilled it all over himself…). She’s pretty awesome and she’s even dated one of our number for a bit. Anyways, as frequent customers we also get the perks of having a table reserved for us on the nights when there’s big matches on, and usually within two minutes of getting there Stu and I have two Hanz Wheelers (beer) waiting for us (that’s Ganz Beeler in Russian… no “h” and no “w” in cyrillic). Anyways, wow I’m off topic… So tonight, we waved off the beers and ordered Pepsi instead and told Alyona that we were not going to drink tonight. She was most pleased/shocked. After the game, we were just getting ready to leave and head home when I got a tap on my shoulder. Sure enough, Russian bro, inbound. He’d been attracted by my scarf which marks me as a fan for the local Voronezh team “Fakel Voronezh.” They were really good 20 years ago, but now they are in the lowly Russian Second Division with little hope of escape. There season ended with me unable to see a game, but I bought the scarf anyways. It turns out these three guys who were sitting behind me were HUGE fans and just had to invite me round to their table for a chat. I tried to fend them off because I’m never a fan of being alone with potentially bizarre bros, but they were mighty persistent and I eventually gave in. My Russian was on fire tonight plus one of the guys thought I had some sort of mental handicap so he spoke r-e-a-l-l-y slowly, which is not a bad thing in the least. Anyways, they talked to me about Fakel, taught me the songs (Sinie, Bilie, Lalalalalalalalalalala. Sinie, Bilie, Lalalalalalalalalalala. Ogooooooooooooooooon! This probably looks super easy, but each “la” and about half of the “o’s” had different notes so it was tricky). We moved from there to whether I would fight in Afghanistan if I got conscripted and then whether I would fight Russia if Obama told me too. And what if Bush had told me to? And why Bill Clinton was the best president ever (answer? MONICA!!!! That was awkward…). After that, I heard all about their take on why Russia, China, and America are the only superpowers (I agreed out of politeness, but I have my reservations about this statement, which I’ve heard before here). I was actually having a great time and when they insisted that we drink to football bringing people from different places together (something I totally agree with, more on that later. Until then: thank you Phil Baki for nurturing my love of that sport, it’s served me incredibly well in my time here) I readily accepted. We got four shots of vodka (again, I had to fight for them with Alyona who kept reminding me that I wasn’t going to drink tonight. The guys I was with were mostly just confused…).These guys were convinced that one shot of Vodka would just about kill me (honestly, at this point it would probably take about 6-7 to do me in) and they were just so impressed that not only could I drink it without melting, but that I didn’t even need juice as a chaser (only lemon slices). Not to be immodest, but I’ve been called a real Russian man enough times to make it slightly worrisome. I’m flattered and I am here to learn the culture, but I also don’t want to die at 50 of liver failure… Neither here nor there. So, at this point I’m in danger of spending the rest of the night hanging out with these guys against my better judgment when this random 40ish year old man walks up. I assume he’s a friend of the guys I’m with but he sits down and introduces himself to everyone. The Russian bros I was with had just gotten Russian bro’d. The irony was priceless. I was with a Pasha, Masha, and a Viktor, so when I introduced myself as Chris, this guy was just so confused (not a Russian name). Pasha said that I was from America. The man glares at me, spits on the table, says flat out: “I don’t like America. In fact, I hate America.” This is the first time anyone has ever said that to me here and I was quite shocked. He then proceeded to spend 20 minutes (probably longer but I stopped listening) talking about, point by point why he hated our country. It was mostly lingering Cold War stuff, as he’d fought in Afghanistan against American armed mujahedeen, probably enough to get anyone’s back up. He also mentioned us bringing Russia to its knees in the 90’s economically and supporting that traitor Boris Yeltsin. It was all pretty interesting, but he’d killed the mood of brotherhood and fun so I decided to get out. Never a dull moment…