One day in Rostov

This week I didn't have the best time. The reasons are as follows

1) I had a lot of problems with clients for my English lessons cancelling on me, leaving me with a lot less money than I had expected;

2) I went through an existential crisis where I wondered whether the reason for me feeling like I wasn't progressing as fast as I wanted in Russian was because I have too high standards, too little time or I just feel like I'm not progressing when it's late at night, I'm tired and said exhaustion is making me incoherent, raving, and unable to communicate even in English;

3) I received a lot of weird messages from rude people on the internet (oh, mamba. The home of the hysterical, sex-deprived and emotionally-hungry) , including more than one individual asking whether I would be interested in cross-dressing for his entertainment (only if I could provide my own woman's clothes, of course) and a person who told me they had a mental block that meant they couldn't kiss, only spit;

4)  I was unsure about when to leave Krasnodar. Theoretically, I have permission to stay until June, but I'm starting to feel a whole year here will be too much. It's hard to make good friends with Russians (they work far too many hours and are almost never free) and I feel like I've gone as far as I can. But the flights back after Christmas are booked, so I have to come back for at least a month or so. A part of me is thinking of moving to St Petersburg in Spring (i.e. when there is actually sunlight), but this will require bureaucracy, flights back home to the UK, money and lots of planning;

As a result, when the tiredness made me want to cry and almost dispel my cat for its incessant meat-hunger, I decided to go to another city for a while. Hence my day trip to Rostov. Having woken up at 4am to deliberately get on a 6.50 train that I had looked up on the internet, I discovered that the 6.50 train never existed. Perhaps a mistake on my part, perhaps just one of those inconsistencies of Russian transport: this is, after all, the country where, having got on the tram that has '7' written in huge bright letters at the front, the conductor then tells you that it's actually travelling on the 'eighth route'. That is provided she remembers to say the station names at all. In any case, having been sent to 4 separate ticket desks, I finally succeeded in getting a ticket to Rostov, leaving earlier than expected on the 'suburban' train to the 'suburban' train station (I had no idea what any of this meant). It turned out to be fine and take me to the 'suburban' train station, which, coincidentally, is in the city centre, right next to the 'main' station. It turns out 'suburban' wasn't the correct translation, not that it stopped the signs in the train station for being translated that way.

'Passengers of the suburban message'. Sounds like the title for a bad rock band for disaffected teenagers from some Parisian bandelieue. Thanks to my dear student, Marina, for the photo. 

 I ended up reading Confucius at 7 am in a very cramped train bistro and drinking overly-sugared tea. Pretty comfy, really. The bufet lady, obviously dressed up for the important task of selling Mars bars and beer to migrant workers, was wearing huge heels and seductive make-up. Oh wait, that's normal dress code here. Russian woman, as a rule, try to be a lot more sophisticatedly dressed than Westerners, even if all they are doing is buying milk or pickled cabbage.  In any case, just when 4 burly soldiers had entered the bistro, there was a temporary power cut in the train lights: the train kept going, but the corridor lights went out, leaving us in the sexual darkness of one lamp on the bistro bar. To summarize: four muscly soldiers and a seductively dressed young woman in the almost-darkness. Not gonna lie, I felt like I was in a sex dungen. Pity it only lasted 5 seconds. 

 I arrived in Rostov, after 4 hours, with nowhere to stay, no friends in the city and no idea of where the 'suburban' train station actually left me. I decided to just get on the same bus everybody else seemed to be getting on, pay 15 rubles and stop if I saw somewhere pretty. I saw a typically shiny onioned Russian orthodox church and decided to get off. It was really quite impressive, and almost up to the very walls of the church were the innumerable stalls of the 'Central Market', including some  Orthodox icon shops, endorsed by the church itself. 'Really helps the image of the church,' I thought cynically, 'Selling goods and haggling right up until the doors of the sacred building. The capitalism of Christ.'. 

Somebody at the market left an upside-down cup on a blue chair on top of some cardboard in the middle of the street I didn't asked who it was for and what liquid was turned upside down only to vanish and become absorbed into the layers of cardboard, but I did ponder.

At this same market, I soon witnessed a woman laughing hysterically whilst selling raw fish and another old broad selling clothes on coat hangers: including coat hangers that were being held my her mouth. She was quite a beaut. 

Having bought a hat and gloves to greet the bitter, dusty wind, I found wifi and decided to log in to a site to see who would like to show an Irish man around the city. About 90% of people I wrote to didn't believe I was actually a foreigner given that a) there are practically no Westerners in this city and b) Westerners are expected to make a mistake in every second word when speaking Russian, given that it is a complicated language for those who don't have declension, perfective and imperfective tense systems and beautiful Slavic sounds in their native language. Nonetheless, after about 2 hours. I was being shown the city by Anton: a gay man from Rostov, who had studied philosophy at University, dreaming of becoming a professor infecting the youth with passion for knowledge and touching the edges of human mental gymnastics, but soon gave up realizing that the professors at his university were discouraged, ageing and not sure of the answers themselves. Not to mention, badly paid. In any case, he decided to become a chef and is now training, dreaming of emigrating to Sweden.

'I'm a Russophobe. I don't like life here, at all. I plan to leave, and luckily, my boyfriend supports me, even though he probably won't come with me.'

I asked him why he had chosen his boyfriend: whether they had some sort of deep intellectual connection, a passion for knowledge. After all, apart from the history of Rostov and the impressions it had made on my new friend's mind, we had been touching some pretty 'deep' themes.  He replied that no, his boyfriend was quite dim when it came to these topics, but he had concluded that an intellectual connection wasn't necessary for a long term relationship. After all, the keys to happiness and security aren't discussions about Kant (you can get that with friends, if necessary), but unconditional love and the ability to 'take someone as he is'. He also said that he didn't ever get tired of seeing him, which, I must admit, is a very good sign: I can't think of anyone I don't ever get tired of (sorry for offending every single one of my friends. The truth is I don't love any of you, at all. In fact, I despise you all. Go cease to exist in the ditches of your own filth.). I concluded that it sounded pretty good, especially given the fact that the boyfriend had concluded to 'appreciate every moment', not to hold Anton back, to be patient, and to love for what there is. I got a bit sentimental to be honest.

The abandoned building

Along the way, Anton showed me an abandoned, crumbling building with magical waters that managed to keep a constant temperature of 15 degrees all year long. Having heard these messianic words, I decided to immediately start worshipping walls, I threw myself naked into the water and baptised myself in the church of the fundamentally fantastic facades.  No, but really, I barely touched that water. It was cold in the air and I didn't want to become moist.

By 8pm, the hostel I had phoned in the morning still hadn't got back to me, so Anton invited me to stay at his house. I arrived pretty late, had tea with his mother, asked questions about the Soviet Union and then watched them smoke on the balcony, looking out on to the metropolis. 

The next day, suffering from a nose bleed and sleep deprivation, I walked the city, spent to much time on the internet, bought an etymological dictionary of the Russian language, ate pancakes and left.

Another city visited, another Oblast', another friend. 

I never did figure out whether this was just a random collection of exposed piping or a monument. I photoed it anyway.