I went out with Marta to meet up with her roommate Eva for some form of lunch after class on Tuesday. Eva is Swiss-German. They are nice to walk with because they don’t complain about walking far distances, and more than that, actually enjoy the exercise. At some point during our walk, we started talking about the difference between German and Swiss-German. She said Swiss-Germans can understand Germans but it doesn't work the other way. She then stated that Swiss-German writing has no rules, which I think is crazy and maybe not what she was trying to convey, but I'm not worried about it. It sounds like the best language ever!
Marta is so silly and lively. It is really refreshing to have her bouncing around all the time. Even when she’s complaining about how hot it is or that the sun is even out, she still makes me smile. My little Polka.
I skyped with poppa bear after I left my lady friends. I love my dad so much.
I got home and had a quick dinner with Irina. She asked if I would be home and I said when? She said she was going to the Banya and wanted to know if I would be home while she was out (to know whether she should bring her keys). I said I wasn’t sure. Then she kind of laughed and asked if I would want to come. I was quite enthusiastic and said yes. She looked a little surprised I had actually agreed, and happily said “great!”
After gathering the Banya necessities, she told me to bring my keys and leave my passport. This would then mark the first time ever being out of the house without all of my identification. It is illegal, if I haven’t already mentioned, to go anywhere in Russia without your passport (or photocopy of it), your visa if you’re a tourist, and a copy of your registration with the city. Police officers stand on sidewalks, in the metro, outside restaurants…basically any place they choose, and if they do a random check for ID and you don’t have all of the appropriate documentation, first of all they’ll rob your ass of whatever money you’re carrying with you (they’ll probably do this anyway even if you do have your documentation), and then carry you off to prison. My friend Max was taken advantage of in the worst way last Friday. He was coming to the metro to meet a group of us, and upon exiting the metro he was stopped. They took him into a side room, showed him a long list of rules, took 500 rubles from him and sent him on his way. He got on the escalator to get to the ground level of the station and as he got to the top, another officer pulled him aside to see his ID. I have never seen them pull a female aside and ask for her ID. It has always been young men, and usually if not always, it’s been those with darker complexions.
The police force here is very much like the one I encountered in Mexico. Fernando, my host dad when I lived in Tecolutla, described attempting to change it in a most hopeless way: “It is like trying to climb up a waterfall”.
So the Banya… it went a little like this: find a cubby in the “locker room”, get naked, walk into a big communal shower area, get wet, get in sauna, get out of sauna, exfoliate and rinse, get back in sauna and hit yourself all over, or have other people whack you, with leafy branches to “open the pores”, get out and rinse, sit in the locker room and recuperate from the beating you just received/gave, get back into shower, repeat the beating in the sauna once more, rinse off, exfoliate, rinse off, wash your hair and exfoliate again, then…call it a day.
I felt like I’d gone through a right of passage that all Russian girls go through when they enter adulthood. It was quite beautiful.
We walked home, and the feeling of exhaustion was mutual. I fell asleep within the hour and felt better than I could remember in a very long time.
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