Ahh, beloved internet cafe, complete with your bitchy attendants, tough guy security, and nerdy computer game players, where would I be without you...

Ahhh....Baltika Seven and Eight, well made Russian beers that provide a tasy haven from the pervading schwilliness...

So, where shall I begin.

Well...I heard a techno remix of some elvis in the internet cafe tonight, but that's not really news....

Hmm...there was some friction between my hostess and I yesterday...

It all actually started two days ago, when I got back from the hockey game, she claimed to smell a terrible stench. She noticed it immedeately upon returning, but I couldn't smell a thing, which suggested it might be me (but more on that later).

So, yesterday, while I was at school, apparently she cleaned and aired out the house completely, but it didn't totally get rid of the odor. Anyways, when I got back from looking at all the hotels in town, she told that she figured out that the smell, which I still hadn't noticed, but apparently was so bad that her neighboor complained she was becoming nautious(!), was coming from my dirty laundy, which on Sunday she had told me I had to do at the laundromat about a mile and a half away. She explained that she could wash my clothes if I paid her, and that she, unlike me, never lets dirty clothes sit for a long time. Of course, I had actually washed my dirty clothes the day before, and then they had spent the night at the university, so they couldn't have been the cause of the mystery odor (запах). Anyways, soon afterthis, she lectures me on not yet having gone to either Rostov or Nekrasov's homes, to things that I'm fully planning on doing as soon as I find someone with whom to go. Of course, some of this may be brought on by the fact that I was looking at hotels, and the implicit statement that my family has the money to stay in hotels and travel. It must be hard for the pensioners of this town, who can't afford to travel, to see bussloads everyday, of senior tourists from western and central europe.

I over heard her on the phone yesterday saying, "What a world we're living in today. We're not living; we're just surviving." In Russian, it's sort of a play on words, since the word for surviving, or living through, is made by adding a prefix to the word for live. ("Мы не живём, мы выживём")

This generation really does have a tough time. When I was eating lunch in the tiny university cafeteria today, there was an old, old pensioner there, because she wanted to buy the cheap food. When she got to the front, the woman who serves food there, who is a classic russian country woman, very plump, with dimples that are seriously at least half an inch deep, told her that the cafeteria was for students only. The pensioner, obviously lying, responded that she was a mother of a student (old enough, to be a grandmother of a college student in America, or a great grandmother of one in Russia--people get married sooner here). Anyways, after the pensioner repeated several times that she was a mother of a student (Я мать студента), the woman, warning sternly that this was the last time, finally let her buy some borsht and bread. (The cafeteria really is cheap, I got a piece of pork, mashed potatoes, a cabbage priogue and hot tea for less than one dollar). When the woman went and sit down with the food, the cafeteria worker commented to her coworker, "Did you see that old hag (старых), coming in here, and saying she was the mother of a student?"
What I'm trying to say, is that privitization, while clearly a neccesary step for RUssia, has put its seniors in a horrible spot. What we shouldn't forget, is that this is the Soviet generation. Someone who is say 80 right now, was born in 1925, nine years after the revolution, and just when STalin was really solidifying his grip on power. Their parents died or were sent to the gulag in STalin's purges, their friends died in WOrld WAr II, or they starved, working themselves to death on the home front, and then after that, they built the Soviet Union up again, creating a massive system of state owned industrial property. Then, in the nineties, they saw the significant wealth of the state, that they helped build in a utopian vision, distributed unevenly to those who had the best connections. Two crashes of the ruble, Latin America/Weimar Germany style hyper inflation in the early nineties, and a full on market crach + currency devaluation in 1998, depleted the funds of those that chose to embrace the new capitalist banking system. And now a still strapped for cash russian state continuies to cut their benefits, so that the government maintains a positive budget, and doesn't lapse into the type of that dept it did in 1998. It's just sad that this Generation was asked by their parents to sacrifice their lives for the good of their country, than, asked by the state to build a utopia, and then was again, they forfeit the benefits that they worked to give their parents, to help build a strong economy for their children and grandkids. It's no wonder they miss the days of communism.

The younger generations of course, love capitalism. I've come to the realization that about 85% of the women in YAroslavl have either died or highlighted hair, more often than not platinum blond. It's almost the official look of town, platinum blond with brown roots.

So today I played music with a friend namded Bek. Bek is from Checnya. I walked with my guitar the mile and a half or so to his house, through not the best neighborhoods in town, and finally arrived at a somewhat downtrodden apartment building (which means nothing in a country where 80% of the urban population lives in downtrodden aprtment buildings). SO much energy was invested into building up this country, and then so little invested into maintaining what was built. Anyways, Bek plays piano and guitar, and we rocked a little bit, and chatted. I think his favorite band is Deep Purple. He loved to use the auto functions on his keyboard which were pretty cool, and he treated me to a nice version of Europe's "Final Countdown" and also made himself the third Russian/'whatever you want to call him' to sing me that crapy Aerosmith song from a couple years ago... (Don''t wannna close my eyes........Don't wanna fall asleep, cause I'm missing you, and I don't want to miss a thing) What crap! Anyways, we had fun together. He lives with his brother and another roomate. I believe his parents are still in Grozny. One of his other six brothers lives in Vienna. His brother basicaly forced me to accept a present of a russian-made pair of sunglasses that looks clear inside and tinted outside. They're pretty ugly, but it's the thought that counts, right?

Anyways...I should get going, but you might be interested to know that Rimma Andreevna told me that Yaroslavl has a municipal heating system. I guess they boil hot water at a central point(or points) and then pipe it to people's radiators. This would all be fine, except they don't turn it on until October 15th. With nighttime lows expected to hit freezing in the next two weeks, its going to be damn, damn cold. Oh well, it will put some hair on my chest, which is allright, as long as it doesn't put anymore on my back.