Archive for December, 2007
С Новым 2008 годом! Happy New Year! Posted by josefina on Dec 31, 2007
Everything in the West is already over – after the 25th of December – but it has barely begun in Russia. The week before New Year’s Eve is the busiest week of the year in the great Motherland that reaches from Kaliningrad to Vladivostok, meaning that a couple of days before the big holiday there…
Glintwein: The Magic of глинтвейн Posted by josefina on Dec 27, 2007
Even though non-Europeans miss out on lots of stuff, not to mention everything that non-Russians miss out on, I think the most serious of these must be not drinking глинтвейн [“glintwein”], known in English speaking countries as mulled wine. Since the Russian name for this hot beverage based on semi-sweet red wine obviously comes…
«Даниэль Штайн, переводчик» – Lyudmila Ulitskaya’s last novel? Posted by josefina on Dec 19, 2007
In Русский репортёр №26 [October 29th – December 6th 2007] I came across a short interview, in the magazine’s feature «семь вопросов» [seven questions], with writer Lyudmila Ulitskaya [Людмила Улицкая]. She recently received the Russian literary award Большая книга (Big book) for her novel published in 2007, «Даниель Штейн, переводчик» (“Daniel Stein, translator”). This…
Crime & Punishment – A New Take On An Old Book Posted by josefina on Dec 9, 2007
There’s a witty scene in a Woody Allen movie where he says: ”I took a speed-read course and read ‘War & Peace’ in twenty minutes. It involves Russia”. I’m sure that if he had been forced to read the equally important and famous classic by Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky he would have put it something…
A Little Note on “New Russians” Posted by josefina on Dec 5, 2007
Or maybe I wouldn’t call it a “note”, since it is just a few tiny bits of conversations that I’ve picked up from people around me. The longer I live in Russia, the more Russian people surprise me. I thought it would be the other way around. I thought that I would grow to…
The Russian Emotion: Indifference Posted by josefina on Dec 3, 2007
Watching the evening news in Russia can be an adventure all in itself – try to imagine a 30 minute sum-up of what has happened on one sixth of our planet – and you will easily be fooled into thinking that there are mafia bosses in black Armani suits, starving orphans and bombs going…