I Live in a Castle (and How I Spent My Holidays)

You guys see this picture on the top? That's the outside of my building. So yeah, I totally live in a castle, so there, you can keep your fancy mild winters, heating, hot water, and stupid daylight. I live in a castle!

Ok, it just looks that way from the outside. On the inside it looks more like a communalka, and even more on the inside it looks more like a hotel room, but we'll get to that show and tell later. First, let me tell you how my holidays went. I'll try to keep it brief, lest this become a novel of a post.

Christmas Eve:

Completely unexpectedly to me, I felt depressed about our departed mum, got called for an outing by the expats, and ended up hanging out with them at some bar until way to late. It was fun, but I had to get up for work the next morning. According to some Australian homosexual that I met, there's quite a swinging gay scene in this city, but all the men are, and this shouldn't be a big surprise to anyone that's been here, not very attractive. He even made a throw-up face when he was talking about it.

Christmas:

Party at the office. The company invited all of it's writers, sans Yulia. According to management, they were desperately trying to avoid the throwing of food and fistfights. This little tidbit clued me into the fact that I was about to be at a party surrounded by literary enemies of the family. Directly below is the famed secretary Ksusha.

Here is the party table. We've all seen this table before. In every freaking Russian household that we've ever been at.

I wasn't feeling well due to the celebrating from the night before, and tried to leave early. This was categorically not allowed, as apparently it is part of my job to socialize with the writers. At some point during the party, while I was talking to a writer, a fairly well known literary critic approached us and warned the writer that she should watch out because I was Yulia's daughter and might bite her. And that's if she's lucky. Ah, civilized discourse...
I later learned that the last time that she saw him, Yulia promised this very same critic that she would
a) rip out his crusty beard hair by hair the next time that she saw him, and
b) overturn a bowl of salat olivie on his head.
So... I don't know what the hell his problem was.

After this, I apologized, explained that I had high blood pressure (this excuse works like magic here) and went home. It was only about an hour and a half into the party, and one writer was already more comfortable on the floor rather than a chair.


New Years Eve was awesome! (I'm being really truly sarcastic here. It was actually the opposite of awesome). My father for some reason insisted that I accompany him and the family to some winter wonderland dacha where I will be lucky enough to get to mountain ski. He obviously doesn't know me at all. When we got there, it was pretty and white all over and -4 degrees Fahrenheit.

We got there sometime in the early afternoon. As more and more people arrived, it became very clear to me that I was like my father's Negro Daughter. People were very "Hi! So you're Polina! Yes, we've heard all about you already. You're Misha's other daughter." And big happy smiles permanently glued to their faces. That in itself made me feel a bit odd. I could just hear how the introductions might have come if my father was making them. "Hello, these are my two beautiful children, and this is my older daughter that none of you have heard of for the past 15 years." But that's not even the point. The point is that it was boring. On top of this, for the next two and a half days (this is how long it took me to escape this new level of ice prison) there was a very large, very loud television turned on at all times. People drank until 6 a.m., and the TV had to be on. You couldn't get away from this thing and it's idiotic sounds. Also, everything in this place, and in the way that these people chose to spend their time screamed bourgeoisie. So yes, as it turns out, my father is super bourgeoisie. As a friend of ours nailed it "these are people seriously traumatized by communism". So naturally, they have to have all the stuff that they see in magazines and on TV. My father just bought a second flat screen TV. For the kitchen. The fucking kitchen! They've already got one in the bedroom. When I questioned him as to why he felt that they needed an $800 television in the kitchen (when they already had a smaller one in there before and there's a goddamn economic crisis going on), his response was that this way you could see it no matter where in the kitchen you were. Ok, moving on.

Since I've escaped from that place, I've basically been doing nothing. That's right, nothing. It's called a vacation people. I don't care if I'm called a lazy degenerate. I've been chillin, sleeping a lot, and nesting. I've got a new apartment and needed to buy things for it and learn to cook and shit.
Oh, I was also supposed to go to Finland and work over the break, but decided not to do this and sleep instead. And I don't care. Stop judging me. I'm still adjusting to being in this country. Anyway, here are some pictures of my new place. See? You only get pictures because I was nesting and made it nice. For the pictures. For all of you. Damn, you guys are so ungrateful.

View when you first walk into the apartment:

That's Katya, my current roommate. She's leaving next month, so this is temporary.
If you walk to that door with the glass on top of it and turn around, you get this:

It's the kitchen/apartment door.


Here's the lovely view of our lovely window:

My bed:

My feet in my bed (it's cold here, so I spend most of my time in this thing):

Ok, here's the passageway to the bathroom, and the cutest thing about this place:

It says "WC" on the bathroom door. I think it's just adorable and makes me feel like I'm in a European hotel room.

And finally, a picture of our little bohemian coffee table. At long last I'm living like a poet. And me, in the kitchen/only place that has a sink, mirror.

I know that there's no winter vacation over there for the workforce, but I had a nice vacation and I hope that you guys all did too, even if you weren't actually on one.