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Падежи: everything you ever wanted to know about Russian cases! Posted by josefina on May 14, 2008
Today I woke up to find hundreds of posters taped up on the walls inside of the dormitory building where I live. Though the service adverticed by Tomas Life Coaching is clearly not directed at me (it is actually rather unclear as to whom it is directed, but I guess we shouldn’t get further…
(Only True) Legends & Myths About Putin Posted by josefina on May 11, 2008
The day after Victory Day I went to a local grocery store in my neighborhood where I saw this magazine with a cover picture from which I could simply not tear my eyes. It must have been the combination of buff arms with a hat on a gorgeous horse and that carefree facial expression…
Another Part of Tomsk: the NKVD museum Posted by josefina on May 5, 2008
Томск [Tomsk] has a population of half a million and is located in Siberia, but since Siberia is a big place one is quite in the right to ask – where exactly? North-east of Novosibirsk by five hours by commute train, to be precise, the city is seated two hours north of the Trans-Siberian railroad…
Yeltsin gets a street, Dostoevsky gets married & Russian soldiers commit suicide Posted by josefina on Apr 24, 2008
Politics, huh? Russian politics are great, very entertaining and at times rather frightening – just not my shot of vodka, if you get my drift. When I started out as a ‘watcher & commentator on Russian life’ [particularly from a Siberian point of view] back in 2005 at the tender age of 20, I was…
Only in Russian: Хлопотать! Posted by josefina on Apr 21, 2008
Once in a while you come across a new word in a foreign language that just grabs a hold of you hard and refuses to let go for a long period of time. This word can be as plain as vanilla ice-cream, but it is more often than not an exotic word, and frequently also…
Random Russian Reports Posted by josefina on Apr 17, 2008
For some reason whenever I’m searching for some interesting piece of news from the Великая Родина [Great Motherland] to comment on here, there’s nothing even remotely interesting to be found on any of the many abundant Russian news sites. I’m not just trying to find a news story to comment on in a purely ‘journalistic’…
20th Century Russian Lit Reading Tip: «Зависть» Posted by josefina on Apr 14, 2008
Sometimes the lists of books assigned for you to read during the course of a semester for a class at an institution of higher (or middle) education can make you feel anything but excited or even a tiny bit thrilled. Usuallly the student asks himself (or herself) the following question (given that the class being…