Last week saw the rise, and sudden demise, of our new
favourite local ice-hockey team, СКА. We found out they were playing a game
that could potentially be their last and bought tickets for it with a couple
hours to spare, luckily grabbing the last 5 left together in the stadium. Turns
out that getting to the next round involves playing the same team for the best
out of 7 games. This was one that we had to win or risk being disqualified. To
celebrate this, СКА had put out free t-shirts (in a size XL to fit even the
most sturdy of Russian vodka and borsch drinking men) and inflatable clangers
that worked as an effective dancing accessory. The musical theme to the game
consisted of 20-25 seconds of music (namely “Simply The Best”) combined with
throwing our inflatables around violently, and then 1.5 mins of serious game
time. The interval provided us with the cheerleaders doing a routine (no
pyramid to our grave disappointment), a bit of sumo wrestler racing and a blimp
from the sponsors flying over the ice. Unfortunately they lost to Locomotive Yaroslavl
on Friday evening, thereby ending my interest in ice-hockey until next winter.
The most interesting part of our reading week was the Monday
evening spent at the circus. We were the only people above the age of 16 there
without children under the age of 6 with us, but we still managed to take full
pleasure in the popcorn/candyfloss stand. The circus is staged in a typical big
Russian building, but is set to look like you’re in a big red tent as you walk
inside, setting the scene rather well. The show started off with some dancers
and some not-so-impressive backflipping and cartwheeling, until some girl came
in and started dancing on a rope 20 feet in the air. No harnesses; every drop
had my heart in my mouth. It was all very elegant and the music very
reminiscent of Adele. Needless to say, they had to ruin it by having 2 clowns
doing some stupid sketch to entertain the under 4s after every act. Luckily the
kid behind us took advantage of enjoying this by squealing in our ears for the
entirety. We left for the interval with a sense of disappointment at not having
yet seen the bear on the motorbike as is on the poster. Luckily our chanting of
bear bear bear bear bear throughout the skipping dance was enough encouragement
and suddenly this big brown bear rides out on a motorcycle for a few laps
around the ring, soon replaced by another bear doing roly polys, then
cartwheels, then riding a bicycle, ending in it driving a big pink BMW. Words
cannot begin to describe the emotions running through my mind as this happened.
It was a mixture of hilarity, sadness, shock and pure euphoria. It was pretty
sad to see those big animals being made to parade around a tent for our
entertainment when they should be playing in a forest somewhere. The tigers
weren’t nearly as impressive as the bears. They had them jumping through
flaming hoops, but generally they tended to tease them into growling. We got
the feeling that they are actually pretty tame because they definitely knew
where they were meant to be and what they were meant to be doing at every given
time.
Yesterday we went to the zoo and the price of £2.50 left us
with low expectations of what to expect. We were very pleasantly surprised at
the range of animals; also leaving us with the question of how they got hold of
some of them. Unfortunately it was quite sad to see some of the bigger animals
like the puma, leopards and tigers in such small cages. We did see them being
fed and most of the animals did have trays of what looked like food from a
local столовая in their cage, but the bigger animals were just pacing up and
down without stopping for enough time that it’s very easy to imagine they’re
feeling claustrophobic and would much rather be in the wild. Comparing it to
London zoo where most animals do have a pretty accurate representation of their
natural habitat, some of these animals were in a cage maybe 15 foot by 4 foot, with
maybe one piece of aparatus to climb. I also just made those measurements up; no idea how big they were, but the space was definitely too small for them.
Not being the biggest appreciator of art, I normally stay as
far away as possible from art museums. However, we went to the Russian Museum
this week and it was one of the best things I’ve ever seen. The only way I can
think to describe it is that it was paintings of actual things in an abstract
kinda way, sometimes. Probably not entirely accurate and definitely not a quote
for their brochure but the paintings of the things that was sometimes accurate
was highly enjoyable and I’ll be recommending it for years to come, as long as it stays the same.
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