Snow was falling, snow on snow...*

*yes, I know it's a Christmas carol but read the post and you'll see why it fits...

I pity Moscow's street cleaners; it's snowing outside. Again. Just this morning as I was driving along the highway I noticed that the banks of dirty frozen sluck (my new word, do you like it? It's a cross between 'slush' and 'muck' , which is what snow turns into after it's been hanging around in this city after a couple of months) had disappeared from the middle and the edges of the road. We could even see what will one day be grass again in it's place - amazing!

Now, that transformation doesn't happen overnight. Well - it does, actually, but not unassisted. There are thousands (somewhere around 10,000, I believe) of street cleaners working year round to keep the streets of Moscow clear. In the summer they become litter patrols, gardeners (Moscow has a lot of municipal landscaping), and drive the fleets of trucks that spray the roads to keep the dust down. In the winter, well of course it's all about the snow. It strikes me that that job must be particularly thankless; the only time it gets noticed is when there's a problem which admittedly is rare.

So anyway, there they were, late last night probably, shovelling snowy shit (sorry but there are 35,000 wild dogs in Moscow and as I was tweeting with Tim over at 'Bringing Up Charlie' recently, they do not carry their own baggies to clear up after themselves) into the back of lorries to clean up the city in preparation for Spring, and then today?

This.

I mean, I find it depressing enough...

In other news, I've been guest posting over at Slummy Single Mummy's blog. Want to know what I REALLY think about the female natives here? Go check it out...

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Shopping Around, Moscow Style

I popped into a certain Moscow store this morning for the quickest of pit-stops to pick up two packets of breakfast cereal (total cost; 340r) and came out 1 hour later, 4,500r poorer. That’s approximately £96, or $150 dollars. And all because I needed a couple of packets of Weetabix. How did that happen?

Now, if you live in Moscow (or perhaps, even if you don’t) and are responsible for doing the weekly shop for a family of four, at this stage you will probably be thinking “That’s not bad. I wonder where she shops?” but the thing is, I didn’t do the weekly shop. This was just a top-up trip.

Food shopping in Moscow may not be as expensive as in cities like Tokyo (a friend visiting there recently speaks in hushed tones of finding a punnet of 6 strawberries on sale for $200), but it’s not easy to do if you are at all budget-minded.

This is - for the time being at least the blog of an expat. So I freely admit that whilst I do on occasion frequent the kiosks and markets you find everywhere in Moscow, my food shopping is done mostly at supermarkets or hypermarkets. Life, I’m afraid, is just too short – especially in the cold weather – to traipse from one stand to the next in pursuit of a stall holder who actually takes the tomatoes you’ve asked for from the perfect and glossy specimens on display, rather than from the bargain basement poor relations (bruised, wrinkled and spotted) nestling out of sight behind the counter.

However, that does not mean that I frequent the chandelier-decked stores at the premium end of the market instead. There’s profligacy, and then there’s shopping for your staples in some of the swankier supermarkets on offer in Moscow. No, generally I join the masses at a certain French chain of hypermarkets, which may be less ruinous on the pocket but is not for the faint-hearted. I have been known to walk into one of the bigger hypermarkets here, take one look at the chaos inside, and turn around and walk out again, unable to face it.

Mostly, it seems to be Russians who shop in this outlet. Certain expats of my acquaintance pale visibly when I mention it's name, and I have to admit that if one’s only experience of a Russian hypermarket is of a late afternoon or weekend visit, I can see why. Russians en-masse can be formidable enough, but come between a babushka mid-afternoon and her choice of banana in a self-selection fruit and veg section and she won’t be the one carried out on a stretcher.

So I do my shopping early, when I can. And when I can’t? Well, if you should find yourself in downtown Moscow at a hypermarket carpark, and notice a woman sitting behind the wheel of her car chanting ‘Om... Om... Om...’ before gathering up her assorted plastic bags and entering the fray, don’t judge me please...

This post first appeared on my other blog, 'Diaries of a Moscow Mum' over on The Moscow Times Online

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Silent Sunday

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Could do better...

Yesterday was not my finest as a mother.

I am feeling like a complete heel for two reasons. Firstly, I nearly forgot a long-planned tea party in Boy #2's class where they presented their findings on 'Animal Habitats' and showed their proud parents (or at least - the proud parents who made it on time) the books that each of them had created about their preferred animal.

Luckily for me a good friend with a daughter in the same class noticed my absence - and Boy #2's long face - and phoned just in time to ask if I was coming. I think I made the quickest school run ever, and turned up just in time to earn a beaming smile from my son, and to learn the reason why spiders have been the topic of conversation for the last couple of weeks in our house.

Whisper it softly, but I'm not keen on the creatures. Unfortunately, Boy #2 appears to have mistaken the slight edge of panic in my voice whenever I'm forced to discuss them for enthusiasm. If I have to see one more picture of a Goliath spider*, or retell him the story one more time of a friend who, whilst living in the Australian outback, used to shut her car windows and drive as fast as she could to try and rid the hood of Huntsman spiders* creeping towards her (they had had been sheltering in the engine of her stationary car but once the engine started, decided to climb out through the radiator grill and menace the driver), I may not be - well, very happy.

* Note - do NOT click on either of the above links if you have any kind of phobia about creepy crawlies. I think I went above and beyond the call of blogly duty just finding them, frankly - and was very careful not to read the text or check out the pictures too closely when I did...

Anyway, that was Mothering Fail #1 today. (We are of course discounting the raised voice this morning when both Boys had to be reminded for the third time to Put. Their. Snowpants. On! because frankly, I think that was merited. It was either that or resort to calming chocolate, and 8.05am is too early to break into the stash of Green & Blacks, even for me).

Mothering Fail #2 was yesterday evening, when I was far too testy with Boy #1 after bathtime as he overfilled a glass of water, from the cooler. I mean, it was a glass of water, for chrissake. Only a glass of water! So some went on the floor. Does it really matter? No. Whatever happened to my usual mantra; 'pick your battles'?

Snapping at kids just before bedtime; never good practice. Not a 'good mother' thing to do. And so I went upstairs, metaphorical hat in hand, to apologise to my older son. After we made it up, I was left to dwell mawkishly on how my sense of perspective / proportion / patience (all the 'p's, it seems) seemed to have made a joint decision to knock off early. It's no excuse, but it had been a long day and as bedtime approached all I could think of was trying to sit down at the computer and make headway with various jobs* I hadn't had enough time to finish due to an unscheduled airport run with my husband first thing.

*Not the least of which was trying to make blogging / freelancing / part-time employment work more effectively for me and which - as with so many things - I've been de-prioritising for far too long. More of which on another post...

I think I need to take a big dose of chill-pills and repeat as follows:

Check your diary every day. And - breathe...

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Of course, life in Russia is ALWAYS like this...

A friend sent me a link to the youtube clip below (thankyou, C). I love it. And I would just like to say that yes, this probably is for real; planning a surprise like this for a bride is not inconceivable here. Provided the groom has the cash to pay for it, obviously.

It was filmed at Sparrow Hills, a famous view point across Moscow where newly married couples often come to have their photographs taken on their special day, usually arriving - along with the wedding party - in limos like the one shown in the clip (although they are usually adorned with a giant pair of linked gold wedding rings and flowers on the roof).

Enjoy the feel-good moment...

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Oh, the things you see when...

...you're out for a forest walk on a snowy day in suburban Moscow...

I don't think either of those photos need written embellishment, do they? Just sit back, click on them, and enjoy...

Although, if I could just point out the bootees...?

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On the tickly issue of wearing fur in cold climates

Fur coats: now there's a divisive issue. Or, at least, there's a divisive issue until you come and live in Moscow for a winter or two.

Growing up, and in my twenties and thirties, I was adamant that I would never wear a fur coat. All those supermodels claiming “I'd rather go naked than wear fur” had it spot on as far as I was concerned. “Why oh why would you wear the skin of an animal when there were perfectly good man-made alternatives available?” was my take on the matter, and I stuck to that argument. It wasn't hard, mind you; not only was there next-to-no fur available in the shops I frequented in London, but it's easy to be holier than thou about these issues in a climate where it rarely gets colder than minus 2 Celsius.


And then we moved to Moscow in January 2010, slap bang into the jaws of the coldest winter in a decade.

Oh boy.

Unsurprisingly, I found my attitude to fur shifting. Not only does it do the job nature designed it to do — keeping the wearer warm as toast — but you see it everywhere. This is surprising to me, because as anyone who has wandered through retailers in Moscow selling them will know, a fur coat does not come cheap — a new one from a high-street store will set you back anything from $1,000 to $30,000, depending on the quality of fur you want. So, it's not a purchase to make lightly. Devotees will tell you of course that if you look after it properly, a fur coat will last you a lifetime, but doing that brings it's own set of additional costs — there's the cleaning, and then the over-summer storage in a special facility. And yet, if you take a ride on the Moscow metro today, I guarantee that between 20% and 50% of the adults you see will be wearing fur.

Repeated exposure to anything changes perception, and halfway through my third winter here I'm a lot less judgmental on other peoples' choices to wear a fur coat than I used to be. Suddenly, the sort of comment a visitor to this city made to an acquaintance of mine on learning that the fur coat the latter was wearing was the real McCoy — “You should be ashamed of yourself!” — starts to sound not only incredibly rude but also more than a little blinkered. Live through a Russian winter yourself before judging other people's ways of staying warm, would be my advice to any new arrivals.

In the interests of full disclosure, I still don't wear a fur coat myself. I can kid myself that this is because my ethics are still intact, but it may also have something to do with my innate belief that, more often than not, they make the women wearing them look somehow middle-aged (a state I am far to close to to mess about with). And I'm afraid that I have to admit that if the sheepskin shearling coat of my dreams suddenly popped up in my price range, I too would be clad in the skin of an animal.

Obviously, my supporting rationalization for this purely hypothetical choice would be that since, as a confirmed carnivore, I eat lamb, I can see no reason why I shouldn't wear sheepskin. So it's lucky for my ethical sensibilities that mink, sable or chinchilla pie aren't on menus too...

This post first appeared on my other blog 'Diaries of a Moscow Mum' over at The Moscow Times online....

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