Cultural Tidbits

This will not come as a surprise to anyone, but we’ve encountered lots of little cultural differences . . . here are some of the observations various family members have made after our first 5 weeks . . . I thought these random tidbits would be interesting for you, especially if you haven’t been to Russia before:

Shopping . . .

• Most milk is sold in boxes, long-life, on the shelf, not refrigerated. There are a few brands of bottled milk (expensive), but you can also buy it cold in very thin plastic bags which may or may not be pasteurized. We’re going with the boxed milk 

• There is an entire aisle at our local grocery store dedicated to each of these – olives, mushrooms, fish, mayonnaise, tea (ok, there’s a little coffee sharing that aisle, too), chocolate.

• Checkout clerks do not place change or receipts in your hand – they always lay them down, even if you hold your hand out to receive them (reflex action for me that is taking a long time to remember not to do!)

• Large stores have security guards everywhere, sometimes one per aisle. They all remind me of “Men in Black.”

• Every receipt is slightly torn as it is handed to you (this is a complete puzzle to us!)

• Almost all the background music in every store we’ve been to is in English, including songs from the 60s and 70s, strengthening the assertion I made to our kids a few years back that the world has gone into a musical loop because the same songs are played over and over everywhere you go. It was bizarre and a little scary 😉 hearing “How Deep is Your Love” (Bee Gees) on the ice rink today)!

• In the parking lot of a large shopping mall, a modern snow plow was at work just a few feet away from a man tediously sweeping the sidewalk with a birch broom – what a contrast!

• Even though indoor temps are what we consider to be very warm, we seem to be the only ones who take our coats off when shopping. The few times we’ve tried to “blend” (ha!) by keeping our coats and hats on while shopping have resulted in us dripping with sweat by the time we reached the checkout. Other people seem oblivious to the heat, even in their furs! In seeming contrast, most people tend to go without gloves outside unless the temperature is below freezing.

Buses . . .

• Almost every bus has a conductor (usually an older woman, occasionally a teenage boy), who collects fares and has a reserved seat. If there is no conductor, you have to pay the driver. If it’s really crowded, you can pass your money from person to person all the way to the front, and your ticket (and any change) will be passed back to you.

• To get off a bus at a particular stop, you could press the “next stop” button, but it’s more cool to just stand in the doorway and expect the driver to notice you. Our level of coolness depends on how badly we really want to get off at a certain stop – so far, so good 

• Only two people in the Nizhny Vineyard church of 100+ people have a car. Because of this, almost no one carries a Bible with them on the bus, unless they own a compact version AND can read the small font size. As a result, the church office and pastor’s home come equipped with lots of regular-sized Bibles in both Russian and English. I went to-and-fro about this for a few weeks, but have landed in the I-like-bringing-my-personal-Bible corner, because I know where to find what I’m looking for, so stuff my 10-pound Bible in my bag and lug it along anyway, looking like a tourist but glad to have my copy of the Word with me.

Out and about . . .

• Just because a street has a crosswalk marked doesn’t mean the pedestrians have any right of way, unless there are 3 or more people crossing at the same time – the first time I was trying to cross at a zebra crossing with just one other person, I nearly got stuck in the middle of the very busy 4-lane road – yikes!

• Although Russians are for the most part immaculate in their dress, the environment is generally filthy. Mountains of accumulated winter refuse are starting to peek through the melting snow.

Protocol . . .

• It’s not official unless it’s written down. Even at the ice rink, everyone’s skate sizes must be written down before the attendant retrieves them one pair at a time from a few feet away.

Public behavior . . .

• Strangers rarely make eye contact or smile (similar to Australia in this regard – I remember noticing the complete opposite when I moved to Georgia). I don’t know if people think I am mentally unstable, but I still find myself smiling at people, especially old women and young children – can’t help it.

• Even though men here are very chivalrous when it comes to things like lifting heavy objects, other acts that we would consider “gentlemanly” do not seem to be part of the culture (e.g. opening doors, allowing a woman to pass first, offering a seat, etc.)

Repairs . . .

• We grab showers when we can, because hot water often goes out for hours at a time at really odd times as they have been fixing the pipes outside our building – this has been going on for weeks, not sure when they’ll be done. The place where they’re working has ominous amounts of steam rising up just inches away from the “sidewalk” (wooden boards placed over a sinkhole) . . . we always hurry over those!

• Astonishingly, when our phone service died this week, the repairman not only showed up within a few hours, but also fixed the problem within a few minutes. This is highly unusual, so we’re told. Normally this kind of thing would be a multi-day or multi-week process.

Water . . .

• You can get water delivered to your door – this is a huge blessing since city water is completely undrinkable and not easily filterable. Our water man hoists four 19-liter bottles up our two flights of stairs every week.

Relationships . . .

• It’s important to “drink tea” (always includes lots of food) together before a meeting, but when the meeting is to begin, all food & drink must be completely & rapidly cleared away.

• If someone is more than ten years older than you or holds a certain status (?), you’re supposed to use the formal language system, unless they speak informally to you or they’re a brother or sister in the church, and then you can speak informally, which you can also use with close friends and all children . . . we’re still flailing around in the language but thankfully are still new enough that we haven’t managed to offend anyone too much yet (or at least we’re so oblivious we don’t even know who we’ve offended and why)!

• Compared to Atlanta, there don’t seem to be very many children here – this breaks our hearts. There also don’t seem to be very many elderly men. You rarely see a father with a child, or more than one child in a family. The children we see seem to be accompanied by their mother or babushka (grandmother).

Civic duty . . .

• The focus on the Russian national election was quite minimal in comparison to the intense attention given to this in the U.S. electoral system. Several people I spoke with here seemed apathetic about voting in last weekend’s Presidential election. We did not see any signage, indoors or outdoors, indicating that there was an election coming up, or in support of any candidate. Last September when I was here, I saw one billboard encouraging people to vote for Putin (who was not even one of the candidates, as you know!) The media seemed to decide beforehand who the winner was going to be. Whether it was that directly, or a fatalistic approach to life, I don’t know, but it seems to have influenced some people into choosing not to vote (“why bother?”)