Cheating over a pool table.

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I woke up late today. By the time I was showered and dressed Michael had returned from the market. Not having any plans fo my own I went myself after lunch, to see how it compared to the others I've been to.

The Tver rynok is a long road that runs parallel to the river. On weekends both sides of it are occupied with stalls. Thousands of products are on sale from hundreds of people, from the very poorest babushki standing above a blanket with morsels on sale for just a few roubles, to tents with ladies selling woolly hats with sequins on, tarty underwear and pretend designer leather boots. There are men from the former republics - Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan - loading asian carpets out of and on to vans. People sell rats and puppies from horribly cramped cages, women fry lamb shashlyki and shaurmy, there are tattered paperbacks and out of date shampoos on sale from cardboard boxes. One man had replacement gun parts laid out in front of him. No-one minds you looking at their wares without buying anything but it is a very loud place all the same.

After an hour there I walked home. In the evening twenty of the students from the obshezhitie went to a billiard hall. It didn't feel right playing without my friends from Yaroslavl; I think I should hang up my cue for good as nothing will bring back to Evropa memories! As it was I lost at doubles, Christa and a Russian boy called Roman beat Kolya and myself. Strolling around the table felt better than talking with the overly-forward girls who had found us; I'm not sure what was more insulting, being asked "do you speaking in Russian?" or them asking me to say something in Russian, in a manner I might use to see if a toddler can count to five. By the way, I live here.

I escaped into the first taxi away, the idea being to walk back to the obshezhitie from the nightclub that some of the Finnish girls were going to. Once we were there it didn't take much persuading for me to join Anna-Maria, Tuuli and Maya in 'Zerkalo'. I was going to stay for one drink, but old Turkish Eddy left us on the dancefloor so he could play on the slot machines and I couldn't leave too.

Zerkalo turned out to be a Russian nightclub from most people's stereotype: very loud bassy music, bright lights and underage strippers on stage. After enough drinks the girls coaxed me into dancing, and I proved to be no worse that the dozens of teenagers in sports shirts with 80s mullets jumping around me. Techno music is hard to find your rhythm to - you know you're in trouble when the DJ is wearing a brown woolly jumper with a collared shirt underneath. We stayed until 3.30 then walked home. We sat in Maya's kitchen drinking tea and eating biscuits until almost 6. They even taught me a few phrases in Finnish, although it's good that the language is just a pleasant background sound.

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Photos

Work.
For those babushki who do not house foreign students, collect glass bottles from rubbish bins or work in restaurant or bar coat closets to make ends almost meet, they can sell things they have collected at a market.

Tverskoi Tsentralnyi Rynok.
The market, saturday afternoon.