Wanderers' hijinks and pratfalls

In a virtual repeat of the first part of the day yesterday, I stayed at home for most of the day as well today. I say a virtual repeat, because the time I spent at home matched almost to the hour how much time I spent on Saturday, given the fact that we had an extra hour due to the clock being moved back from 3am to 2am early this morning.

Anyway, I accounted better for the time spent today trying to reply to my prospective hosts and potential friends in Israel and the Palestinian Territories. An exchange of e-mails with Roi and chats with Haithem and Liat Rogel helped me form the kernel of an itinerary by around 3:30pm. Knowing that one of the popular Russian films now showing, Nulevoy Kilometr, would be playing at 5-Zvyozd Novokuznetskaya (my cinema of choice recently, where I'd seen Dans Paris and Mongol as well), I start preparing to leave at 3:50pm.

Somewhere along the way, I shift from my computer and my cellphone to my wristwatch for checking the time. Confused by plumbing difficulties, I failed to take note of a missing hour and proceed to think in the old time. Having just 90mins before my rendezvous with Yulia at 6:45pm, I gave up going to the cinema, instead opting to have a late lunch. I hurriedly made myself corned beef and rice, which I share with Sarah and Maria. Hurrying to Voznesensky Per. 9, I set up a meet with Yulia in front of the boxed-up Tchaikovsky statue in front of the Conservatory. Since life often comes in pairs, Yulia and I head for Kvartira 44 along Bolshaya Nikitskaya 22/2 after getting cash at VTB and a money changer. This time, we sit at the upper level, across the bar. A striking short- and dark-haired girl waits on us as we whiled away the 30mins we had until curtain call. A grog and a martini bianco later, we're back into the 3 C streets, pretty much ahead of Ira, Yulia's friend, and her brother, Dima.

Yulia was for a while quite mysterious about the play we were supposed to see. (Admittedly, I was hoping for something like Griboyedov's Woe From Wit or Konchalovsky's direction of Strindberg's Miss Julia; after all, I had decided not to go to St Petersburg for a couple of Mariinsky performances when Yulia first invited me to accompany her more than three weeks ago. Even as of Friday, I was still drooling over the fact that soprano Anna Netrebko was going to perform at Tchaikovsky Hall for a paltry 600r. Why, in Salzburg, they might charge you hundreds if not thousands of euros to see her perform!) Anyway, it was pleasant to know that we were going to a real connaisseurs' venue, the Teatre Okolo Doma Stanislavskogo, to see Stranniki i Gusary (Wanderers and Hussars). Directed by Yury Pogrebnichko, the play starring A. Levinsky (not related to Monica, I presume) was tersely described by Yulia as being of a "philosophical" bent that is loved by very few of her friends.

Having psyched myself up for a long, complicated Russia drama, I and Yulia had to ring the door for them to open. As it turned out, the play was canceled. Yulia and Ira said there might have been an emergency among the actors. Anyway, we rescheduled for 15 November 2007.

In order to not end the evening too early, we decided to go Rolan cinema to catch the latest (and seventh) film of the Serbian director, Emir Kusturica: Zavet (Promise Me This), a French and Serbian co-production. A raucous romp in the Serbian countryside, this film is very simple -even naive- in mentality and execution. I didn't have difficulties in following this film in dubbed Russian. In fact, Serbian is probably close enough to lip-synch the actors' dubs. However, Kusturica's slapstick humor often falls flat; they are however a hit with certain members of the mainly Russian audience. As for eye candy, there's Marija Petronijevic, a young Bosnian girl who plays Jasna, the young hero's love interest. The summary from the Cannes official site is as follows:

"Tsane lives with his grandfather and their cow, Cvetka, on a remote hilltop. Except for their neighbor, Bosa, they are the village’s only inhabitants. One day, Tsane’s grandfather tells the young man that he is dying. He makes Tsane promise to go over the three hills into the nearest town and sell Cvetka at the market there. With the money, he must buy a religious icon, then anything he really wants, and finally he must find a wife to bring home. In town, Tsane easily fulfills the first parts of his promise but how is he going to get home with a wife before his granddad dies? That’s when he meets Jasna, who’s late for school as usual..."

After the film, I just take Yulia and Ira to Novokuznetskaya before going home. At home, I spend a couple more hours talking to my new guests, Philipp and Annegret. Have to turn in now as I have class tomorrow.

National Russian Youth Choir

My day was more than half done by the time I left the house. To begin with, I woke up not too early in the morning, around 9am. Then, and this is the part where I would do even David Copperfield proud, I just managed to lose the next six hours.

Granted, I may have come home late last night after seeing Shoot 'Em Up (2007), which stars Clive Owen, Paul Giamatti and Monica Belucci at Oktyabr. But waking up at 9am is a given on a Saturday morning. Maybe it was the time spend concentrated on writing replies to my requests for couches in Israel and the Palestinian Territories that took so much of my time. Or napping now and then most certainly didn't help.

Anyway, by the time I had gotten out, I had less than a quarter of an hour to get from here to 5-Zvyozd in Novokuznetskaya to see the multi-awarded film by Ramil Salakhutdinov, Kruzhenie v Predelakh Koltsevoy (2006). I don't know why Moscow Times described the film, whose English title is "Cruising the Ring Road", as having been shot in the 1970s and 1980s. To my consternation, this 112-min film was almost as sparse as a Dogme 95 film without the arthouse pretentiousness and intellectual-snobbishness rights to go along with it. Starring Dmitry Vorobyov, Elena Popova, Oleg Kovalov and Svetlana Pisminenko, it had some Cronenberg-ish elements in its telling of the lives of various Muscovites who are united, despite their social status and wealth, by the banality of their problems.

Anyway I almost barely finished the film, having had to rush out and get myself a ham-and-cheese bliny before passing by the flat, where I managed in 10mins to get my cardigan and invite Frederic to come along. To compound matters, there was an artificial traffic just in front of the Foreign Ministry that held us back for around 5mins. We managed to find parking on one of the Conservatory side streets before we met up with Lyolya and Richard, an English teacher in Moscow for 18 months now.

It was Lyolya who invited me to see the National Russia Youth Choir perform at Rachmaninov Hall in the Moscow State Conservatory of Music at 8pm last night. The concert, which was open to friends and relatives of the choir members, was entitled Khorovye Vechera Borisa Tevlina (An Evening with the Choir of Boris Tevlin).

The choir was just splendid, even to my exacting Philippine tastes. Conducted by National Russsian Artist and State Prize Laureate Boris Tevlin, the Chamber Choir of the Moscow Conservatory (composed of around 25 remarkable voice majors, including one from China and another from Vietnam) sang 16 songs in an intermission-free concert of 90mins.

The program is as follows: Vocalise (Narodniy Plach) from the film King Lear, composed by Dmitry Shostakovich; Sonnet 97 by William Shakespeare, How like a winter hath my
absence been, composed by K. Volkov and translated into Russian by S. Marshaka: Mne pokazalos, chto byla zima; and Bezhenka, a rendition by Rodion Shchedrin of a poem by A. Voznesensky. Other songs by Shchedrin, who is living in Munich with his wife Maya Plisetskaya, are the tremulous Kazn' Pugacheva, a poem for an a cappella chorus from the words of Alexander Pushkin in "History of Pugachev"; and Solfeggio.

(To follow)

Heiligendamm Diary

The Independent's Tony Paterson wrote the following article subtitled Dodgy tummies, rival joggers and the tricky etiquette of kissing Ms Merkel

* How many cooks does it take to spoil the broth? The Heiligendamm conference hotel where the G8 leaders were staying drafted in 60 chefs to cook for them. Unfortunately, President George Bush went down with a stomach ailment which kept him out of the summit yesterday morning. Polonium-210 was not suspected.

* Apparently the German cuisine went down fine with at least three of the summiteers. Bidding in the survival of the fittest stakes were Tony Blair, the French President, Nicolas Sarkozy, and the Canadian Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, who went running together on the beach on Thursday morning.

* M. Sarkozy apparently struck up an instant and extremely friendly relationship with Vladimir Putin when the two were introduced over dinner. Mr Sarkozy met the Russian President for private talks the next day and was later seen talking to him on his mobile phone between the formal conferences. French sources yesterday insisted that M. Sarkozy wanted to demonstrate that France takes Russia " seriously". That's something of a volte-face for the new French leader. He once bitterly criticised his predecessor, Jacques Chirac, for awarding Mr Putin the Légion d'Honneur, saying:" At least I don't decorate dictators."

* Mr Putin - who learned German during his Cold War time as a KGB officer in Dresden, where he is alleged to have spent much of his time drinking West German coffee and reading "colourful" West German magazines procured at hard currency shops - was able to converse with Angela Merkel in her own language. He also showed off his commitment to climate protection by being driven in an electrically powered car to the summit dinner.

* There are seven different ways to greet Germany's first woman Chancellor. Mr Bush kept it down to a handshake. Tony Blair, a one cheek kiss. Nicolas Sarkozy, double cheek kisses. Vladimir Putin - hand shake and half embrace. Romano Prodi, the Italian Prime Minister - half embrace. Mr Harper - handshake and a pat on the shoulder. Japan's Shinzo Abe - handshake.

* You can never be too careful - the Bush team even refused to let German officials open the door of the President's limousine that was flown in. Only Mr Bush's own bodyguards were allowed to do the job.

* Coca-Cola might style itself the real thing, but it was hard to find at the summit. Journalists were offered a local rival called Afri Cola. Organisers said there was no anti-American message behind the decision to give prominence to Afri Cola, which sells 12 million units in Germany each year. That compares to Coca Cola's 3.4 billion.

Shark options on a slow Friday evening

Of all the news articles I read today, one of the funniest was about a shark's "virgin birth". A genetic analysis by universities in Florida and Northern Ireland of the DNA of a female baby shark that died shortly after birth in December 2001 revealed that its mother, one of three female bonnetheads captured in Florida and kept without male company for three years in a Nebraska zoo, conceived her in a form of asexual reproduction called parthenogenesis. Popular culture previously came across parthenogenesis as an explanation of the way Velociraptors were able to reproduce in Steven Spielberg's Jurassic Park even though no males were kept on the island.

Memorable quote: "I would be concerned about a lot of other things than whether or not a female shark can get a date for an evening," he said.

Much ado about a tasteless, colourless liquid

Here's the entire text that appeared on 15 April 2007 in The New York Times of a funny article by one of my favourite French political analysts, Serge Schmemann, entitled Dispatches From the Front Line of the Great Vodka War now brewing in Europe.

There’s been a lot said lately about how the European Union has staved off war on its continent. Really? How about the great Banana War, in which the combined forces of the New World and third world were routed, and the European Commission boldly proclaimed that nothing with “abnormal curvature” could be called a banana? (Britons who persist in claiming that the European Union mandated straight bananas are just trying to malign it.) And even now the Vodka War is raging.

Unlike the Banana War, this one is strictly a civil war. In dispute is the definition of a drink that generates around $12 billion in annual sales.

The European Union would define vodka simply as diluted ethyl alcohol, which is, of course, what it is. That suits members like Britain, the Netherlands, France and Austria, which wring “vodka” from anything from grape mush to sugar cane. The quotes are important here, because countries of the Vodka Belt around the Baltic Sea, which have distilled the stuff for centuries and produce two-thirds of the European Union’s vodka, insist their traditional use of grains and potatoes to make vodka should be enshrined in the definition. All else, they insist, is mere regional swill, and should be labeled as such.

A decision is said to be imminent. For that reason, I would like to add my two cents. My qualifications are impeccable: I am of Russian descent. Yes, I know, the Poles claim they invented vodka, and the Finns used to claim in a memorable ad that “real Russian vodka comes from Finland,” but let’s face it, it is the Russians who are most closely identified with vodka, if only by virtue of the heroic amounts they have consumed and the suffering they have endured. Besides, vodka is a Russian word, a diminutive of “water” (before you adopt an ironic smile, be aware that “whiskey” comes from the Gaelic for “water of life”). The Poles may put “vodka” on their bottles, but among themselves they call it “gorzalka” (it’s “horilka” in Ukrainian), from the root “to burn,” which tells you something about their stuff.

My issue, however, is not with who gets to use what name for what in Europe. The Eurocrats in Brussels are paid princely salaries to decide whether feta has to come from Greece (yes) or how curved cucumbers can be (Class I cukes are allowed a bend of 10 millimeters per 10 centimeters of length, according to Commission Regulation No. 1677/88). My beef is with the whole brouhaha over a liquor whose greatest, and only, virtue is that it is colorless and tasteless.

The proliferation of premium vodkas, in ever fancier bottles and at ever higher prices, is understandable, given the decadence of the Western world. The endless debates about which vodka “tastes” better are less so.

Untold numbers of veteran vodka users from across the Eurasian expanse, around the Vodka Belt and up the Eastern Seaboard with whom I’ve raised an ice-cold shot are unanimous that all vodkas are divided into two, and only two, categories: pure and impure. The way you can tell is this: good vodka has no taste; bad vodka tastes like rubbing alcohol (if it tastes like brake fluid, it probably is and you will die).

The 80-proof stuff, the standard set by Czar Alexander III in 1894, is just right for extended abuse. The 100-proof vodka, which is 50 percent alcohol, burns the mouth and works too fast, but it can be fine-tuned by simply adding water.

All vodka-drinking peoples have scores of recipes for flavoring vodka, from the buffalo grass popular in Poland (Zubrowka) to the pepper-honey Ukrainian vodka that I particularly like. It goes without saying that vodka can only be drunk neat, just out of the freezer, followed by a tablespoon of caviar on toast. If you’re out of caviar, use a slightly bent pickle. As for the name, well, vodka is vodka is vodka.