I took some photos when I was walking to the metro station the other day. I thought it might give you a glimpse of what my suburb, Kuzminki, looks like. First of all, there's sort of a park wedged between a couple of apartment buildings. I guess everything is wedged between buildings, but it depends on your perspective to decide who is wedging whom.
This next picture gets me laughing every time I see it. Before, there used to be a bunch of hate speech on the side of this garage. Thankfully, the graffiti crusaders against hate speech rose up against it. Just the fact that someone wrote "Nazi Scum" in English over the swastikas and other comments is hilarious. I have no idea where they learned it, and I'm not sure it's completely the right approach to opening a dialogue on how to stop the disparagement of racial and social groups, but I applaud you, Anonymous Graffiti Person, wherever you may be.
I haven't had a need for a huge quantity of meat yet, but when I do, you can bet that I'll be visiting this guy. It's probably a bit easier to be mobile as a meat vendor when the entire city is your refrigerator. He packs it up after a couple hours, and drives off to a new spot. If you go looking for him, keep an eye out for anti-anti-Semitism grafitti art, and you'll find him.
All those of you practicing how to read Cyrillic letters, here's your chance. There's some English mixed in, but how many companies can you decipher? This is at Ashan City, a mall located in the far northwest suburbs of Moskva.
Confusingly enough, the food at this mall is ten times cheaper than the food at the cafe inside the large construction store across the street. I wanted to save some money, so I went to what I thought would be a cheap mom&pop place close to the office where I hold some classes. Last time, I got 2 hotbogs (no buns), a piece of bread, friend potatoes and tea. For 8 bucks. I'm going to Sbarro next time; there, it's a buck for a slice. I have to ask my tutor how to order pizza, though. I tried to do that today, and failed miserably. The word for a slice of pizza is not, regrettably, the same word as for a slice of pie. I'll let you know...
When I'm not paying exorbitant amounts of cash to eat day old bread, I love to make this next food: pel'meni. I don't think anyone could live happily in Russia without it. The first bag of pel'meni that I bought tasted a bit like what I would imagine dogmeat to taste like, but this new brand is top notch.
It's simple, too. Just boil up some water, dump them in, stir, and wait till they start floating. Slop on some mayonnaise, and call it good.
To learn how to potentially save the world one pasta bowl at a time, please click here.
For some extra flair, you could add some sauce. I wanted to call this Pel'meni Bolognese, but it turns out bolognese sauce has to have meat. Pesto sauce comes from the word "to pound" (as in pounding basil leaves) and I'm not doing any of that, so pesto pel'mini is out, however pleasing to the ear it may be. Alfredo di Lello got to invent his own sauce, so I could call it Van Fossen sauce. Unless someone else out there is sauteing onion, garlic, tomatoes, and mayonnaise. Stranger things have happened.
My mom was asking about sending packages through the Russian postal system. I haven't had the heart to tell her yet, but last week the Russian postal system broke. There's probably a better way to say that, but that's what the office people at Cargill were lamenting last week. A manager wanted her secretary to mail a package to Ekaterinburg, but couldn't because "the post broke." Her response was the same as mine: "That's not possible." But apparently it is. Packages just weren't delivered in the city for a number of days.
Tune in next week for "How I Broke My Sanity on the Metro Elevators."
