A few more things

Hello chaps,

So today I went to a mushroom festival. I’m not even kidding. There were giant inflatable mushrooms and everything.

 You could buy all sorts of things, like babushka-made woollies (where the babushka matched the things she was selling. She was a great advert for it!)

 You could also buy such tasteful items as a chopping board with Putin on it. Or with cats on it if you preferred. Russians love cats, almost as much as they love mushrooms.

As well as a camel, which actually seemed very happy to there.

I have discovered that mushroom soup tastes best when simmered in a giant cooking pot over hot coals. Perfect. I can’t even articulate how delicious it was, if a little under seasoned. Also, appearance is no reflection of taste when it comes to Russian food. Russian soup is largely water, oil and big pieces of vegetables and the occasional oat, which I’m told looks unappetising but I’ve never really been the biggest judge of such matters.

I’ve also discovered where to get the best hot chocolate in St Petersburg. I wish I could tell you it’s in some indie alternative coffee house – you wouldn’t have heard about it, it’s pretty underground. Alas, I am not pretentious enough to carry this one off – it’s in a chain of coffee shops called “Shokoladnitsa”. It’s basically hot melted chocolate syrup that is incredibly rich, with which they give you a glass of water to wash it down. I like mine with whipped cream. Annoyingly enough, for you lot at least, I’ve not yet got around to getting a snap of it as every time I’ve had one, the desire to just get stuck in has been too much. This just means I’ll have to go back and have another.

Quelle dommage.

It occurs to me that I haven’t mentioned the latest episode involving babushki (plural of babushka). This was a particularly good one. On having lunch of cheese soup and blini, my attention was drawn to a group of about 7 20-30 year old guys wearing biker jackets involved in a scuffle outside of the window. There are a lot of market traders from Central Asia around Sennaya Ploshad – so from Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan and I think Georgia and the Caucasus. (On a side note, if anyone fancied taking me there, I would absolutely LOVE to go - especially to the Caucasus. Maybe when fewer Westerners are getting kidnapped…) I almost began to feel a little uncomfortable, the sight of grown men being in any way violent brings out the shrinking violet in me and I tend to want to make myself as scarce as possible. That was until I saw the babushka, whom it emerged was being pulled off one of the guys by one of his companions. It was as if it were a pub fight scene in Eastenders and someone somewhere was saying “leeeave it aaaat” (say it in your best cockney accent). I was therefore mildly amused by the sight of one babushka, who was about half the height of all the men, taking on all seven or so of them single-handedly. She slapped one of the men square across the face, which really surprised me and proceeded to chase them all away. A few of them returned, looking rather sheepish, tails between their legs. The babushka then returned to her workplace, incidentally being the café in which I was eating my lunch, as if nothing had happened.

Babushka 1 – Young men 0.

I’ve also found a rather nice jazz bar. I know, cultured these days, me. This provided welcome Western relief to the end of a rather tough week. It is called Dom 7 (house 7) and looks onto the Church of the Saviour on Spilled Blood. It has live acoustic jazz on a Friday night and sells blini, even at 11 pm.

Lovely.

I would like to thank Jason Mraz for having got me through this week. The instrumental at the end of “Who’s thinking about you now?” has saved my sanity. I would strongly recommend his album “Love is a Four Letter Word” to anyone feeling homesick in Russia, or anyone whose ears are in need of the sonic equivalent of caramel.