Бывает.

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I've been thinking about which parts of Russian life I haven't mentioned at least once in my diary. The first thing I thought of was the word 'бывает'. It roughly means "it happens" - what Russians say when something isn't done properly but no-one has the motivation to put it right. If a waitress makes you repeat an order three times then forgets it altogether, then бывает. If the woman in the post office refuses to give you an envelope - "there are none of them" - even though you can see some on her desk, then бывает. Russians are more easy going when things don't go their way and I amire them for it. The Finns and myself are learning, it's certainly a part of our sense of humour now.

So at 8 o'clock this morning the minibus that six of us were waiting for didn't turn up. We missed our field trip around Tverskaya Oblast' (a picnic at the start of the river Volga and a trip to the ancient town of Rzhev). All of us said the same thing: Бывает. We walked home again and went back to bed.

I watched an entire game of ice-hockey (I still can't just call it hockey) in the lounge in the afternoon. Russia beat Switzerland but not by as much as they should have done. Nothing seemed to be happening in obshezhitie so I also watched Zenit Petersburg beat Rubin Kazan 1-0 at football. I'm not rushing to do as much before tuesday as it's the little conversations with people, the little things, that I will miss the most.

I went for a walk with Ella in the evening. We bought a pop album from Azerbaijan from a kiosk and listened to it in my kitchen until 2 in the morning, just to hear what it is like.

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Photos

An attractive church in Tver.
If not Rzhev.