The Russian Life

---

Just before I left my friend Catherine told me that I'll have days where I'm wondering what the hell I'm doing and they can turn out to be the best days of the trip, which is what happened on Thursday.
I was wandering around looking for somewhere to eat and came across a British pub. As it is difficult to find restaurants or bars in Moscow (because of the different alphabet they use) and because I hadn't met an English person (and still haven't) I thought I'd pop in for a pint. As I ordered my drink the Russian guy next to me, Kirril, started speaking to me. We got chatting and he turned out to be a really nice guy. He told me his son had been to England to study and he invited me to go round to his home the following day so his son could practice his English and because having an English person in the house is a special event. Naturally, I assumed he was a homo so I decked him, but then I realised he had told me about his wife and children so I accepted as I thought it was a Michael Palin-esque thing to do.
I met him at the metro station near his home in one of the suburbs and started walking to his house. We first stopped off to buy some blatantly illegal CDs with MP3s on them, and then he just walked up to what appeared to be a random car, opened the door and got in. It turns out it was a taxi but it was the worst car I have ever seen by far. It was an ancient Lada and even had lino on the center console. So we got to his apartment which was in a high rise block of flats. The inside of the building was a mess so I assumed the apartment was going to be a hole but it was a really nice apartment with Plasma screens everywhere, a bathroom you would expect to see in a flash hotel, and it had views all over Moscow. He introduced me to his son and daughter, he was 17 and she was about 4 and really sweet. We sat down to have some traditional Russian food - salted mushrooms, cabbage, onions, shrimps, tomatoes, soup, meatloaf with horse radish and, of course, Vodka and beer. We had a couple of courses and then, bizarrely, had a break so we could sing Karaoke! That seemed a perfectly normal thing to do.
Then Kirril's brother came round to see the English man as he was also fluent in English, and then Kirril's really good looking wife came back from work and made us some Russian coffee. We basically spent the day getting hammered and it really was an absolutely brilliant day.
On my way back to the hostel I popped back to that British bar and got talking to two Russian girls and they took me to a nightclub, which was basically just the same as you would see in England, other than the rows of tables which gave it a slight canteen feel. Unfortunately I am now badly hungover as a result.

---

Comments

[Megan]

nightclub
Um, you're missing the details of the nightclub and the 2 girls!