One thing I love about living in Russia!
Is the drift I feel back to the old days in America. One example is when you buy food items…
Literally everything is available, but usually the so called western standard food types are in small amounts and mostly always unsold…
If you go to a normal large chain grocery store, you will find carrots from Israel and such, but they are in bags, clean as a whistle and perfect. These carrots do not sell and are expensive. But! Next to them in a huge bin is carrots from Russia….These carrots sell like crazy…
These carrots are covered in dirt, bent, broken and ugly.
Ugly to a westerner, but beautiful to a Russian. The only way to get good veggies is if they still are covered in the original dirt that they cam out of the ground with. This is true and ten years ago, I was stunned at the mess that veggies are kept like in a store…
The huge supermarket has the equivalent to a roadside stand of fresh picked veggies. Not cleaned, not perfect and definitely grown nearby in most cases. Thus in Russia, even the grocery stores are very seasonal in what they carry…
Packaging image does not mean anything about what is inside…
The reason this came to mind right now is about something I just bought. I just bought a pastry for 10 rubles and on the sealed package was a picture of the Russian famous evaporate milk fillings; made from evaporated sweet condensed milk. This is a taste treat delight to Russians and can be found in plentiful supply everywhere…
I bought it, it was cheap and I wanted a treat. I walked home and decided to eat it. I opened it and expected that thick creamy and hardly enough to tantalize your senses, sweet milk. Instead I got a huge supply of apple filling…
I looked at the wrapper and looked at the inside of the pastry and smiled. For that is Russia in a nutshell. You never know what you are going to get at anytime, any day and anything. Russians accept what they get and are happy that they got it. I smiled because the pastry was tripled filled with apple pie filling and if I had the other as it said on the wrapper, it would have been a tiny amount…
Should have bought ten at that price…
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Another thing that amazes me is that Russians stand in lines.
They queue and they queue even when the same exact item is next to them. Good example is this…
You could have two places that sell cheese right next to each other and or maybe it is a place that sells bread. The exact same bread and or cheese and the price is exactly the same…
The Russians will all queue up at one place. They stand in line and wait their turn. Silently and not at all unhappily. Russians know that the line they are in is for the best cheese or bread, but is it?
Well in my experience after looking around. The same truck supplies both places and the same people own both places, thus the food is the same and I have watched the cheese being taken from the less busy store, out the back door and in the back door of the other store. Thus, the cheese and or bread is the same…
Don’t get me wrong; the cheese is priced good and is an excellent product. I just go to the empty line to buy it… 😉
Even in the Big Village I shop at when at the Tiny Russian Village. They have a truck that sells out of bread everyday before noon. Get there early and wait. The bread comes from the bakery right across the street and if you go to the bakery, you never wait…
Russians young and old wait in lines and it is not because they have to. It is because of something inside of them keeps them doing it. You can shop all over Russia and find this phenomenon going on. Be it for cellphones and or bread…
A market in Russia is a good example; You can go to one shop that usually has what you need. They are out at this moment. They holler at the shop across the pathway and get it from them. Everything is interconnected and interwoven. Usually one store is surrounded by many of the same stores and they all have the same products…
I guess it is a social kinda thing. You also know that they will not run out of cheese, for they will just get more from the store next to them. Win win for everyone, I guess?
Vova called!
Vova from the Tiny Russian Village and he wants to know when I am coming back to the village. Looks like he is missing me and I hate to tell Svetochka this, but Boza and I are missing the Tiny Russian Village very badly…
It is a Catch 22 for me and for Boza. We want to be with Svetochka, but both Boza and I are already suffering from the Big City life. Boza needs his freedom to run and I do to. I am limping again and Boza and I both need the fresh air and water of the Tiny Russian Village. It is just better for him and I. I have to weigh many things and if I could just get Svetochka in the village with us. Life would be perfect…
I think I have become Russia!
Maybe I will write a post about this fact? later…
I wrote the opening pages to a book.
A book that just went to print. It was not much (three pages,) but what I wrote, made me think…
I realize that I love America, but the America that I love is gone!
Sometimes we have to let go those we love the most!
Letting go has been a part of my life since my dad died when I was young…
WtR