Week of DOOOOOOOOOOMMMM!!!

Sorry I haven't updated in a while, I've been busy trying to shift the black cloud of dooooom that has been loitering in the region of my head for the past few days. (and in an entirely unrelated matter, my parents were visiting) Here, in no particular order, are some examples of dooom that I've been affected by recently:

• My drink was spiked and I collapsed and had to be carried out of the club, that was the fatal night that I was separated from my ipod, phone, credit card, and contents of my bag.
• The tunnel in the metro collapsed (the dooom cloud also affects those around me)
• The flat that I had organised for my parents fell through, twice, and it looked as though there were going to be 8 of us staying in a small 3 room flat for almost a week.
• The flat that I eventually found, last minute for the 'rents was very very soviet, there was food that had seen better days in the fridge and clothes in the wardrobe. The day that my parents were due to leave, having agreed with the landlady that they were going to be there until the evening, herself and her son moved back in before noon. My mum rang me to say that the son was blaring mtv all over the flat and she wanted out. Cue a hungover madcap dash to pick up the parents from the flat.
• It took over an hour and a quarter to buy four return tickets to St Petersburg, we were the only people in the ticket place so that time does not include queueing.
• Thought I had escaped the cloud of dooooooom in Petersburg as the weekend went really well, until we turned up to the train station for our trip home and our train wasn't there. Beware, anyone who is travelling to Moscow from St Petersburg, although there is a station called 'Moscow Station' where every train is in fact going to Moscow, there might be a tiny letter on your ticket denoting that your train has in fact left from Finland, will briefly stop in a station on the other side of town and carry on to Moscow. You won't need to worry about how long it will stop for because you've missed the train anyway. Neither I, nor anyone I've spoken to about this, has ever heard of trains to Moscow not leaving from 'Moscow Station'. My parents had to be in Moscow yesterday to catch their flight home. Anyhoo, long story short, we attempted to bribe ourselves onto the next train and, shockingly, it didn't work. The russian-speaking member of the party may have burst into tears on the platform from sheer frustration. We managed to buy ticketsfor the next train, my parents in 2nd class and us in 3rd class and things were looking up. We settled my parents into their 2nd class compartment, and went to our carraige to be told that we were on a different train and what were we thinking. So we waved the parents off and bought a bottle of champagne to celebrate a total cock-up and then almost managed to miss our train. There is a russian system of train numbering where the higher the number the better the train. My parents were on train number one, theoretically the best train in Russia. We were on train number 236, not the best train in Russia. You can imagine the rest yourselves.
  
• My parents taxi managed to get lost on the way to the airport yesterday, I live on the airport road, its a straight road on the motorway. The third time that they passed the same IKEA i got a panicked call from my dad, wondering if they were ever going to make it to the airport. I think my dad is mystified as to why I love this city so much.

I think I've managed to shift the cloud of doooooom, by reading this post you have agreed to a legally binding contract taking on aforementioned cloud of doooooom, if you have any problems you can talk to my legal representatives.

My phone, my ipod, my credit card, my house keys and myself were all upsettingly parted from each other on Saturday night, it was a painful experience. Just to let anybody who may have been texting me that I'm not ignoring you, I'm just phoneless. Should be remedying the situation soon.

The tunnel that collapsed in the metro is on our line, two stops from where we live, miraculously nobody was hurt. The beautifully Russian reason for its collapse was that there were guys drilling without a permit up above the tunnel and they drove a concrete cylinder into the tunnel, hitting a train and causing a fire. What a country!

Spot where the Irish live! It was actually only up yesterday but if you can't hang a giant tricolour out your kitchen window on Paddy's day when can you? We were invited to the embassy yesterday, managed to arrive too late for the food and had to make do with large quantities of free guinness and jameson, it was a struggle I tells ya! What with the Ireland-England rugby game this evening and the Paddy's day parade tomorrow (yes, they shut down a major street in Moscow so everyone can pretend they're Irish, nice!) we are having quite the Irish themed weekend.

Its warmer in Moscow today than it is in Dublin. How are those light snow showers treating ya?? Our snow is meeeelting....

The boots were saved, following a madcap dash through rush-hour metro traffic, for those of you who were losing sleep over their safe return.

A fine example of Murphy's law: last night myself and my friend were walking to the metro station, discussing the hazarous footpaths in Moscow at the moment. The ice and snow is melting during the day and then refreezing into lovely patches of black ice. She mentioned that she regularly falls on the street but has never really hurt herself. Like a fool, a fool I tells ya, I said that I had only fallen once this winter and hadn't really hurt myself. The words were barely out of my mouth when we hit a patch of black ice, Rachel slipped and I tried to grab her and she knocked me over like a skittle, the two of us fell pretty hard (I landed on my poor defenceless computer!) and the two policemen standing about two metres away just looked at us, god forbid they would ask us if we were ok or help us up from our fallen turtle impressions. If it had been womens day they might have but they don't have to pretend to be chivalrous anymore. So two bruised knees and two bruised egos carried on their merry way.

In other news, Slobodan Milosevic is probably going to be buried here. They love him here, the russian media was full of glowing praise for him, they thought he was a misunderstood genius and that the Hague is a murder machine. I don't really get Russian logic sometimes....

I've just dropped in my favourite pair of boots to the metro-adjacent shoefixer (cobbler?), after I'd handed over my babies I got a whiff of vodka off him and thought that they were in trouble, he said he could re-heel them for me and I should pick them up at six. I said that actually six didn't suit me and would he mind awfully if I picked them up in the morning. He repeated in no uncertain terms that I was going to pick them up at six or the consequences would be dire for my poor booties (he didn't actually say they would be dire but I got the strong impression that they would be destroyed or sold if I wasnt there at six on the dot, not a minute before, not a minute after!) So basically my plans for the day have been scrapped because I have to save my shoes later.


Russia, the homeland of customer service!

This morning I was rudely awakened by the dulcet tones of the Spice Girls blaring through from next door, followed by 'Oh Come All Ye Faithful', in latin, accompanied by what sounded suspiciously like a mouth organ. An hour and a half later, I'd been subjected to more Spice Girls, the Corrs and various opera classics, all sung along to very loudly by our deep-voiced neighbour, I was up. This was the same person who played 'O Sole Mio' on repeat for 3 1/4 hours the other night nearly driving Anna mad in the process. When does it become acceptable to bang on the wall to voice your annoyance???

Today was women's day, proudly described by our wizened russian teacher as 'the day when women get a day off, they can go for a walk while their husbands clean the dishes' (from the meal that their wives have cooked). We got a day off, missing a three hour class with said old lady in the process, not too shabby. Apparently, according to Irish radio (thanks Rory!), the police here who stopped women for minor traffic offences today gave them flowers instead of fines. All I had to do was steal a car and I could commit some minor traffic offences...

You couldn't swing a cat on the metro without hitting a tacky bunch of flowers being cradled by a smug girl but the holiday reeks of insincerity here. In a country where almost 40 women A DAY die at the hands of their partner and there are no laws against domestic abuse (a husband is perfectly entitled to beat and rape his wife, she is his property after all) it seems ever so slightly hypocritical to buy the missus a bunch of carnations and continue on with the beating as normal. Sorry, end of feminist rant...

I think we have a few holiday free weeks now, boo!

I know I'm crap, and thanks to John Bloxham and Aisling who reliably informed me that I hadn't been updating in a while, I've just fired myself and am currently interviewing for a replacement. Had quite the interesting weekend, went out for 'one drink' that ended with myself and my new favourite half american/half cypriot (moscow is awash with 'em, I swear!) sneaking in to the flat at around the 5.3o mark, trying to be quiet and finding my hedonistic flatmates still up drinking in the kitchen. Naturally we went straight off to bed and myself and Alesia DIDN'T crack open the bottle of champagne in the fridge...ahem.

Saturday dawned bright and sunny, much like Sinead's mood when she arrived on our doorstep at 10.30 in the morning from Saratov. We weren't quite so bright eyed and/or bushy tailed but we made rashers (the last of the stockpile) and eggs and tea and discussed all that was wrong with the world. There was a pre-paddy's day irish pub crawl planned for saturday night (it was all in the name of serious journalism, honestly!) Unfortunately after the 20 or so willing participants were installed in the first pub, our spiritual home in this neck of the woods, with its reasonably priced drinks and free, yes free, irish stew, leaving didn't look like it was going to happen. The other 3 pubs were either faaaar away or prohibitively expensive. So an executive decision was made to stay put in said pub and consume more long island ice tea, whaddya mean there are four litres of alcohol in this, it tastes just like coke...

Then all 20 of us hopped on the last metro and crashed a party, some of us knew the people throwing the party, most were just well wishers. A fun night was had by all, concluding with one member of our party being extricated from the grip of a pervy russian dude, the person in question was maintaining that she would catch up to us and was going to hang out with the long haired dude that she had never met before. Just after she gave him her number she was fireman's lifted outta there and we were on our merry way.

We have a grand total of three days off this week, we always have tuesdays and thursdays off this term and wednesday is 'women's day', god bless russia and her random holidays. We have just finished maslennitsa, in the grand fashion of never doing things by halves, russia has pancake week instead of just a tuesday, nice. Though this means that lent has started, I'm not giving anything up because I'm not a quitter.

Person we love today : The lady who works at our vegetable stall, who asked me how life is treating me today and then said that she loves seeing myself and Anna because we are always so happy. It's always nice to get a compliment when one is buying potatoes. Can I bring her home?

Person we don't love today : Our ageing Russian teacher who blathered on for SEVENTY MINUTES non-stop in our class today. And its an oral class. She asks questions and then when you are opening your mouth and inhaling to start your answer she'll launch into the answer that she's looking for. I almost jumped out the window to ease the physical and mental pain I was in to have to put up with her.

Anyhoo, it's 3.20 am here, not entirely sure why I'm still up, off to bed for me....