Kholodno! Kholodno!

Yeah, so I've been slacking on the blog these days, but its not like you're reading it anyway! And I work too, you know, so I can't commit all my time to wandering around Russia waiting for funny things to happen to me.

A friend of mine was in town this weekend, for a business trip, and I tried to do some tour guide entertaining. I wanted to go out of town, to this place called Rostov Veliky, one of Russia's oldest cities with a beautiful view, but it wasn't in the cards. I"ll make it in a few weeks, so its not my loss.

During the week, I am in the archives. Right now I am working in 3 archives at once, because they all have crazy schedules, so you have to put several together to feel productive. My least favorite is definitely the archive of the former Communist party. I think the archivists are perhaps mad, that the Soviet Union collapsed on them, and so they yell at researchers to make themselves feel better. At least, though, they seem to yell at people indiscriminantly - old, young, Russian, foreign, men, women. Our fates as researchers and future academics depends almost entirely on "crazy Misha" a somewhat deranged archivist who controls our access to finding aids. He brings us finding aids for what HE thinks will be useful for our projects, NOT what we ask for. It is my mission in life now, to convince him to give me the finding aid for the Central's Committee's "upravlenie delami" if it is the last thing I do.

But I've met some German and Russian graduate students along the way, and in addition to my roomate, who is working at different archives, I will soon have a posse of freakish Russianists to surround me. Which is good, because no one else seems to get it.

Russia is strange that way. The friend who is visiting keeps asking me to "explain" certain things about this place, why certain things happen, etc., and the truth is, is that rarely does logic play a role in life here. I can't offer explainations most of the time, I can only shrug my shoulders and say "byvaet" which is the Russian equivalent of "shit happens". If you want logic and order in your world, this is not the place for you. Go to Germany.

I do have a funny story with which to regale you, my readers.
Saturday morning, I went out for my run, which happens about 3 times a week. It was cold, 40 degrees or so, and raining, at 9 am. I was in shorts, because my tights were stinky and dirty. I was fine with this. Yes, the legs were a bright red from the cold, but it was invigorating, and well, I'm a sweat-er, I warm up quickly. So I'm running through a small park in the middle of a wide street, and there is a totally old and hunched over old lady sitting on the bench. She really has seen better days, and its truly a sad sight, often. I was listening to music, but I could still hear my surroundings. As I run past her, she waves her cane at me and screams "kholodno! kholodno!" the literal translation of which is "cold! cold!" in reference to my scandalously exposed legs. If I get pneumonia, this would be why, according to the old lady sitting on the bench on Strasnoi boulevard.

When I got home and told my roommate, all we could do was laugh. Kholodno! kholodno!