It took a while, because my friend was concerned that we hit
the right tone with whatever we chose; the class our children are in has a fair
proportion of pupils with Russian parents whose expectations were for us to buy
something sophisticated and memorable as a ‘goodbye and thank you’ gift. I, on the other hand, am a hick expat who
loves Russia as much for it’s brash in your face kitchness and bling factor as
for it’s wealth of culture and history, so my expectations were somewhat
different.
Plus, if I’m honest, I don’t much care what the Russian
parents’ expectations might be; you can only please all of the people some of
the time, and in this case it seemed to me that it was more important to please
the teacher – who like myself is an expat, and without baggage about the
impressions other people might form of Russia from a simple end of year gift –
than to worry what message the gift might convey.
This seems to me to be a recurrent situation here: Russians
who are showing off their country are often very concerned with ensuring that
visitors know there is more to their capital city than matrioshka dolls,
Lenin’s mausoleum, and vodka. And of
course there is; far, far more. The
cultural opportunities available here are astounding, the number of museums
astonishing; hell, even a short trip on the metro will show you that this is a
city full of unexpected wonders and marvels.
I could wax lyrical for endless pages about the parks, gardens, art
galleries, walks, and exhibitions all within easy access of most people
here.
But these are all the experiential foundations of happy
memories, and we were looking for something to wrap up in pretty paper and
ribbons and hand over at the end of the summer term. Something that can easily
be bubble-wrapped at the end of the teacher’s posting in Moscow; not such an
easy call. So it was that when my
friend, thwarted in her search for something uniquely Russian that also ticked
the boxes marked ‘sophisticated’ and ‘affordable’, turned to me for guidance, I
had only one suggestion.
It’s not sophisticated.
It probably won’t impress the local culture vultures. But it is
memorable, beautifully crafted, and uniquely Russian, and whilst I’m not going
to tell you what we bought – it’s not yet the end of term – have a look at the
picture at the top of this post and take a wild guess...
