Blogs from Tver, Centre, Russia, Europe - page 7

I felt slightly better today but still couldn't leave the flat. All that was left of the sickness was the soreness in my body, but the headache had got worse and I couldn't stop coughing. The most depressing part of being sick in Russia is having nothing around you to make you more comfortable. My mattress is rock hard and lies on top of a wooden board, my duvet doesn't cover the entire bed. When I wanted a hot bath and a shave to freshen up this afternoon all that came out of the tap was tepid, murky water. A cup of hot milk - the medicine that all the Finnish girls advised- is only just drinkable with two spoons of honey added to it. I got up in the evening and watched a variety show ... read more

The lecture this morning that I had cut short my trip to Moscow for was cancelled, to be replaced by an exursion to a kettle museum. To make things worse I woke up with a headache and a fever, feeling just as I had when I was ill in Yaroslavl in the autumn. I forgot to put my hat on for part of yesterday morning, and because I wasn't wearing a belt the freezing air reached my back too - Russian weather only needs to catch you out for an hour to make you pay for it. With a sore head and aching kidneys I trudged over the bridge with the other students. Spring is supposed to have arrived but the temperature is minus 9, and apparently it was minus 24 overnight. The museum was a ... read more

Spring will soon be here; the weather is getting closer to zero after four months below freezing. The sky is now usually cold blue rather than cold grey. Icicles are begining to melt, which means they are falling from the tops of buildings and crashing to the ground. Most places underneath rafters are taped off, but the post office isn't. A piece of ice the size of a chandelier fell only two yards in front of me, making a sound like crashing glass. I walked away feeling startled: if it had landed on my head I'm sure it would have done similar harm. Worse was to follow in the day, as I was re-acquainted with the Russian service industry. The peroxide blonde woman in the internet café put two fingers up and repeated 'dva?' in a ... read more

There was only one thing I wanted to do today. I was a boy who loves pancakes, in a country that loves pancakes, on pancake day. Today is the end of a very big Russian celebration. From Sarah Brown's email to me from Petersburg: "There's a festival this week called 'Maslenitsa', which is the Russian 'Pancake Week'. It started on monday and goes right through to sunday, which is the start of the fast before Easter. Traditionally something different happens each day. On monday a straw scarecrow is made, dressed in women's clothing, and carried around the neighbourhood by singing people. On the tuesday families invite friends around and perform a small concert/play for their guests. On these two days it is forbidden to eat pancakes ('blini'); this can only be done from wednesday, so on ... read more

There was a lecture this morning. Lyudmila Giorgevna spoke about Tverskaya oblast' (Tver region), especially the population. Of the one and a half million people here more than 90 percent are Russian. The remaining 142,000 come from the republics of the former Soviet Union. There are 3,500 hundred villages in the province with less than ten inhabitants. Some families in the countryside must have their own signpost. There are excursions each friday afternoon. Today we visited a museum of 19th century art. At the coat closet a babushka who was small and frightening even by the standard of most babushki took my coat from me, and exchanged it for a ticket and two dark blue shower caps. I was told they were for my feet so I brushed the snow off my shoes with them. When ... read more