Back to life in our little slice of Moscow trying to speak a language I'll never quite understand. After a successful, yet jet lagged adventure to the market, I thought I had not lost all linguistic ability. Then at 7:30AM (who knows what time for the brain), I was jolted out of bed by the water delivery man. Now for the Russian test sans coffee! Last time the water folks had come in typical Russian fashion, I had no clue about what the total bill would be and they had no change. I still find this a bit weird--vendors expect you to have correct change and get fussy if you don't have it. Of course, these guys didn't have any change so they said next time I would pay 500 rubles less. That doesn't mean this gets translated to the next guy.
So try explaining in a language you don't quite speak without coffee (ok, I'm from Seattle!), that the last guys didn't have change and you need to pay 500 less. The delivery guy thought I was quite amusing and figured I had just woken-up! He even laughed which is more than I've experienced from most Russians when they hear me speak. Usually it's confused looks and frowns. Needless to say, the water guy gave up and wrote "bezplatna" or free on the top of the bill and headed out. Well, my Russian got me something--laughter and free water!
Here's an old picture from Easter that I meant to post ages ago.
This little chapel is to the right as you come up from our Metro. We got a big fluffy blanket of snow Easter afternoon.
1 comment:
I remember many similar experiences. It took us two months to get our cook to understand we didn't want any caviar. "Xorosho. Krasni ele Chorni?" That's all we could get, in spite of our mangled Russian. You need to tip (bribe?) the second water guy to get him to come back more often! lol
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