I couldn't breathe and I began seeing stars, and I thought I was going to die, but I managed to squeeze out with just a broken hand and three broken ribs, as I found out later from the x-rays. — jamalrob

Glad you're still with us.

Enjoyed the rest of the telling too.

Thanks :grin:

A few weeks ago my wife, a Muscovite, and I drove down a country road near Vladimir, trying to get to the Church of the Intercession of the Holy Virgin on the Nerl River, but we never made it because the car got stuck in the mud on a slope at the edge of a steep drop. Long story short, while I was trying to push the car from behind it rolled back and pinned me against a telegraph pole. I couldn't breathe and I began seeing stars, and I thought I was going to die, but I managed to squeeze out with just a broken hand and three broken ribs — jamalrob

Fucking hell. Coincidentally, a couple of weeks ago my car also got stuck going up a country road on a steep slope. There was only me so I couldn't push it myself but five minutes later a burly local pulled up beside me and asked if I wanted a hand. Luckily, I didn't end up nearly killing him and he got me on solid ground. See, that's how you do a happy ending. Try harder next time!

See, that's how you do a happy ending. Try harder next time! — Baden

Thanks. You're really helping with my post-traumatic depression and shame, I must say. :wink:

:lol:

Fascinating stuff. Hopeful to hear more.

Holy cow. Glad you made it safe and sound.

I never visited Russia; but, they are struggling to modernize. I don't entirely understand Russia for the matter as they are one of if not the most resource rich countries in the world.

And, to add, they didn't think highly of China during their heyday as a communist state. Oh how have the tables turned.

In August, when the weather was still hot, I went to the MAKS air show. We didn't want to pay to get in to the airport like you're supposed to, so instead we found a spot by the river that runs alongside it. We sat there cooking shashlik and drinking beer, along with a few hundred other people who had the same idea. I didn't know until recently that the barbecue is an integral part of Russian life, probably even more than it is for Americans and Australians. (Shashlik originated in the Turkic cultures of Central Asia and the Caucasus, and found its way to Moscow in the 19th century)

We watched awesome Russian bombers and fighter jets tearing the sky apart. Sometimes I wanted to cover my ears but chose to suffer the incredible noise so as not to look like a soft Westerner. I met a man originally from Minsk, Belorussia, who had come down the river on a boat from Moscow that morning with his wife and children. He wanted to practice his English and drink whisky with me. He apologized for having Irish and not Scotch, but I didn't mind.

He asked if I was spying for the CIA. Two other people asked me the same thing that day. Although it was a joke, it was also an expression of patriotism. And my wife, who is no militarist or supporter of Putin, was full of patriotic pride in the technology, in the bravery of the pilots, and in the respect that these displays of military power engender in foreigners. The patriotism here is not always uncritical of those in power, but it's fundamental. Maybe it's a lot like American exceptionalist patriotism ("the greatest country on earth"), because there's an assumption that Russia should be the leader of the world or at least up there with the other great powers. To me this seems to be in tension with the widespread desire for better public services and infrastructure, but what do I know?

Also like America, patriotism here is not often associated with an ethnic nationalism. At least, this is not mainstream or traditional, and natsionalist in everyday speech pejoratively denotes far-right chauvinism. Rather, this patriotism is, I suppose, continuous with the inclusive (or imperial, however you look at it) patriotism of Soviet times. A trivial example: a few Russians I know, both men and women, young and old, have expressed pride in the fact that Russian women are particularly beautiful, and they put this down to the centuries-old mixture of ethnicities.

Incidentally, Moscow is more multi-ethnic than I'd expected, and they're cultures I was almost totally unfamiliar with. Tatars, Uzbeks, Armenians, Georgians, Azerbaijanis, and others. And (shhh) they all have more interesting food than the Russians.

When my condemnations of Putin or Stalin or the Tsars become too passionate, after too many vodkas with my wife's friends and family, someone will usually complain that I'm exaggerating. I appreciate that it's galling to see a foreigner trashing your history and I'm usually careful about complicated issues that I'm largely ignorant about (in my defence, I'm always criticizing rulers rather than peoples or nations), but there's a tendency for them to get defensive and say things like "yes it was bad, but other countries have done bad things too" and always "we won the war", which is sometimes an attempt to minimize the bad stuff.

There is a Russian guy I know who I try to avoid. I can't quite work out his politics. When he went to Spain he was most interested in visiting Franco's tomb to pay his respects, he argued with me in defence of Franco, and he's vehemently anti-communist and anti-socialist. So he might be some kind of a fascist, but then it must be hard to be a fascist in the country that prides itself on beating the Nazis. On the other hand there are fascists and extreme nationalists in Russia, so I guess they reconcile things somehow.

When I don't manage to avoid him, my wife, acting as interpreter, now chooses not to translate anything controversial between us. I resented this at first when I found out, but it's probably for the best.

Fascinating stuff. Hopeful to hear more. — Noble Dust

Thanks ND.

Glad you made it safe and sound. — Wallows

Thank you for the kind words, pig boy.

Enjoyable reading, in the sense of being interesting and well expressed. While reading, it occurred to me that I typically don’t enjoy reading long posts on this forum.

my wife, acting as interpreter, now chooses not to translate anything controversial between us. I resented this at first when I found out, but it's probably for the best. — jamalrob

Hilarious.

Love these.

As someone who's had only the briefest nervous excursions outside his own cultural milieu (& I'm only talking about the American South ) this is premium vicarious living.

(That said, the previous inhabitants of my current apartment were a doctor and a mail-order bride from [somewhere slavic] so I like to imagine I have some spiritual connection with eastern Europe.)

Sometimes I wanted to cover my ears but chose to suffer the incredible noise so as not to look like a soft Westerner — jamalrob

How intense is the pressure to be traditionally masculine? If there is a lot of pressure, is it lessened if you're a foreigner or the opposite? Do Russians have stronger ribs?* I've grown very comfortable with the reflexive self-mocking of masculinity that gets you through in middle class liberal America (and EU europe?) and I think it would be jarring, for me, to be an environment that very straightforwardly celebrates traditional masculinity. But is the Russian premium on masculinity overemphasized over here?


*Or no? The most famous Russian-American I know died in strangely similar circumstances. I'm glad you fared better. Plus I imagine that's a pretty handy (and well-earned!) warstory in terms of the proving-you're-not-a-soft-westerner thing.

How intense is the pressure to be traditionally masculine? If there is a lot of pressure, is it lessened if you're a foreigner or the opposite? Do Russians have stronger ribs?* I've grown very comfortable with the reflexive self-mocking of masculinity that gets you through in middle class liberal America (and EU europe?) and I think it would be jarring, for me, to be an environment that very straightforwardly celebrates traditional masculinity. But is the Russian premium on masculinity overemphasized over here? — csalisbury

I've thought about these questions but I'm not clear about the answers, and I don't trust my impressions. I've spent most of my time in a megacity so what does that really tell me about Russia in general? And I can't speak Russian, my social circle here is small, and I haven't really made any male friends independently of my wife. But I'll try to say something about it...

Yes, of course the Western impression is exaggerated, but it's definitely a thing. I can say with confidence that all the Russian men I know have deeper voices than me and that there's a premium on how much vodka a man can drink. Otherwise I'm not sure. Gender roles are pretty traditional. In saying that I'm not saying that women are expected to be housewives while men bring home the bacon, or anything like that. Maybe it's more superficial: the Russian women I know are forceful, supremely confident, totally independent, and successful, but at the same time they're very feminine and expect men to be traditionally masculine in some ways, to at least act dominant. She might make more money than him, but he's gotta pay the bill at the restaurant and fight off bears to protect her, that kind of thing (sounds like a weird restaurant, I know).

My wife and I kind of take it in turns to pay at restaurants, and when she pays, without thinking about it she surreptitiously gives me her credit card so it looks like I'm paying. So, it's deeply ingrained (it just feels wrong to her to be seen to pay) but at the same time superficial (it just feels wrong to her to be seen to pay).

By the way, in saying it's superficial I don't mean to denigrate it. How we behave in public, how we conduct ourselves, is important.

Modern feminism, the MeToo movement, and Western PC culture are widely mocked and derided by Russians, especially women. It's probably true that the state media deliberately encourage this ("next up, it's time to laugh at the Americans again"), but it's far from being a top-down thing. From the point of view of some of the Russian women I know--and bear in mind I'm over-simplifying things to the point of unfairness just to make the point--women who don't know how to handle lecherous men are idiotic or weak, and if a man goes too far, which is inevitable, you get over it and stop whining. What's important to them are the practical things: equal opportunity, reproductive rights, childcare, and easy divorce; they don't have time for victimhood. Being raped, unless it's particularly violent, is merely an annoyance. So there's a kind of female macho thing, and it has good and bad sides.

Maybe Russian women are under pressure to be feminine, but those I've spoken to don't seem to feel this as an unwelcome pressure. They're proud that Russian women "look after themselves", for example, meaning they spend a lot of effort, time, and money on how they look.

Anyway, as far as I can tell I've passed the masculinity test. I don't know if that's because I resemble a bear.

Or no? The most famous Russian-American I know died in strangely similar circumstances. I'm glad you fared better. Plus I imagine that's a pretty handy (and well-earned!) warstory in terms of the proving-you're-not-a-soft-westerner thing. — csalisbury

Ha, you're the third person to tell me about that unfortunate guy since my own brush with death.

Yeah my story is all right, but...it's weird. It doesn't feel good to think or talk about it, about the details of the incident, which I didn't really go into in the first post. Others around me, especially my wife, have already mythologized it. In this myth, I'm the hero trying to save her life (she was in the car). But I don't know if it was like that. I don't really know what I thought I was doing. It was certainly stupid, reckless, useless: I had already satisfied myself that the car couldn't really fall off the edge, and how could I imagine that I'd be able to stop an SUV from rolling down a slope? Was I doing it just because I thought it was the thing to do, even while knowing I'd fail? The most horrific thought of all, aside from the stuff about death and serious injury, is that I was making a show of being a real man, and yet failing, which makes me a pathetic fraud, acting inauthentically under the Russian pressure to be masculine. I risked my life for nothing, and that makes me feel guilty, because in doing so I risked causing pain and sadness to people who love me. In fact I did cause my wife pain because she was so worried for me.

So...normally I can turn my experiences into chirpy charming self-deprecating anecdotes, but this one still tastes bitter.

How intense is the pressure to be traditionally masculine? — csalisbury

Back in the bad old days when I had a real job, I taught some Russian students and noticed some fairly strong distinguishing characteristics, including masculinity, and also:

• Leadership skills and confidence high in both sexes
• Strong in-group preferences
• High levels of professed religiosity (religious symbols and so on. How that translated otherwise into behavior, hard to say).
• A very pronounced 'cool' factor among the males.
• Females very no-nonsense/direct.

If anything the Russian male students gave me the impression of being most like pre-60s American youth—Marlon Brando, The Wild One type era. They tended to stick to themselves and were all special handshakes and dark looks outside their circle unless they liked you in which case they could be very friendly. I got on well with two in particular who I taught and who went on to become President and Vice-president of the students' union (Putin and Medvedev, I called them after that :) ) so when I met them in the canteen, they would invite me to sit with them and then their buddies would automatically think I was in the in-group and do the whole cool thing with me (which was a little jarring because it was hard to leave teacher mode behind and I'm not sure I wanted to much as I was flattered by the treatment).

As it happened, one of those two was very homophobic, which was again jarring for me because he was also a very nice guy and I didn't find out he was an extreme homophobe until after I had formed that strong impression of him. I won't go on about that tangent except to say that after three years in a liberal British university environment, he got over it.



Sounds to me you had no obvious good choices and very little time to decide so you acted on impulse, which is unpredictable and resistant to analysis by nature. People have done a lot worse. I recall a movie, the plot of which involves a father who when with his family on a skiing holiday and faced with a sudden avalanche runs away without ensuring their safety. They all survive but then have to deal with his reaction. I'd rather be mythologized as a hero than face the prospect of being seen as a coward for the rest of my life. Having said all that, it's got to be an extremely unsettling thought that your reaction could have had even more negative consequences than it did. Give it some time to process.

Sounds to me you had no obvious good choices and very little time to decide so you acted on impulse, which is unpredictable and resistant to analysis by nature. People have done a lot worse. I recall a movie, the plot of which involves a father who when with his family on a skiing holiday and faced with a sudden avalanche runs away without ensuring their safety. They all survive but then have to deal with his reaction. I'd rather be mythologized as a hero than face the prospect of being seen as a coward for the rest of my life. Having said all that, it's got to be an extremely unsettling thought that your reaction could have had even more negative consequences than it did. Give it some time to process. — Baden

That works for me! Appreciate it.

In many ways that dynamic reminds me of 'redneck' culture in Maine. My habit is to drink in dive bars in Portland, and that's usually the crowd there (I'm huddled in the corner).That thing of being feminine when you're 'out' with your man, though forceful and independent in general especially seems similar.

The 'redneck' thing breaks down along class lines - but not always. There's what's called 'redneck rich,' guys who grew up poor but started a towing business or something, or the sons and daughters of the same. Support for #metoo (as well as, say, BLM etc), on the other hand, tends to correlate with a certain level of cultural capital, or, failing that, with middle-class aspirations. It's a shame because the legitimately good aspects of #metoo quickly become less important than its function as a signifier of class membership, which is then rejected on principle.

I suppose the difference is that, in Maine, all this is in conscious (defensive?) opposition to a 'dominant' culture which seems exactly the inverse of what you're describing (at least in the regions you've visited.)
---
I very much second what @Baden said (the avalanche movie is Force Majeure, by the way, one of my faves.)

I'm picturing a west euro/russian version of the white teacher /inner city student dynamic so popular in movies over here. Down to handshakes. But, I mean, your Russian students sound fucking dope--- besides the homophobia thing of course.

That said, I also remember pretty high levels of homophobia in middle school and high school growing up. Like, 'that's gay' and 'faggot' were pretty standard fare. I still use 'that's gay' today, with friends from that time, with self-aware irony/nostalgia. (It's ok because some of my best friends are people who blew me.)

But I'm guessing, describing your student, you mean like actionable, violent homophobia though?

Stuff like that - likeable person, deeply unlikeable qualities/beliefs- is so jarring. I have an uncle who I love talking to. Very eccentric to be sure, but genuinely thoughtful and interesting. Every now and then, say something that reveals a very subtle, delicate sensibility that he can't have copied, that seems sui generis. But, I found out living with him a winter in the south, he's pretty racist. Not like what-a-millennial-calls-racist, but like 'there's some inherent difference, you'll see' racist. And then you just have to figure out how to fit those two halves together when relating to them. And, it's like - it sucks they think those things - but you're not going to just stop appreciating the good parts of their company.

Yeah, casual homophobia wasn't even questioned in my own social circles growing up. But this was more ideological. The student got very upset with the idea that the university was allowing a gay parade and with horror he produced a snap he'd taken of the rainbow flag flying over university buildings. The gays are spreading their gayness! The air is turning gay! And he had the weird idea that complaining to the student office might be effective in anything other than making him look like a dick. When I put to him the old chestnut "What if your son was gay? What would you do?", he got really angry and said he'd "kill him", which was so ultra-dramatic I almost laughed. And all the time, yes, I'm aware that I like the guy and he's in most respects a good guy, so I was way more patient and helpful than I would have been with almost anyone else who'd say that stuff. Re your uncle, that type of thing is happening to me more and more. I find myself unable often to coherently put people together (e.g. my closest real-life friend at the mo' is a social conservative nationalist Trump sympathizer; though also economically left and very empathetic). But then why shouldn't it be like that?

Anyhow, I've just about spent my knowledge of Russians. Looking forward to hearing more from jrob.

I see what you mean about redneck culture. It's not like that here at all. The macho culture, in which toughness is cultivated among both men and women, is pervasive and doesn't signify class.

Talking of class, I'm not sure how it works here. It's certainly nothing like Britain, where class is determined or signified in multiple other ways than money and power. For example, I'm told that there is very little variation in spoken accent among Russians, across society and across the country. And I haven't noticed any snobbery, although there's a high degree of respect for success in the professions, in art and science, and in business. But it looks like one's social status is entirely independent of one's origin, all else being equal (but practically, one can be born into a dynasty of former KGB or Party apparatchiks).

Regarding homophobia, many of the liberal Russians I know don't consider themselves homophobic, but they'd be seen as such by Westerners. They say that Russia is not as homophobic as the propagandist Western media likes to portray it, and that "we have our gays here too" (in the typical Russian patriotic paternal manner), and that they have their own night-clubs and sub-culture--but they're suspicious of or baffled by things like Gay Pride and the public assertion of homosexual identity. It could be that they're simply unaware of the level of oppression faced by gay people in Russia, or they think it's a minor issue.

I very much second what Baden said (the avalanche movie is Force Majeure, by the way, one of my faves.) — csalisbury

Yeah it's been on my to-watch list for some time.

Looking forward to hearing more from jrob. — Baden

Recently my adventures have been limited to sitting by the window looking at the birds while I convalesce, but I'll see what I can do.

(also - hoping that at some point you'll drop some man-on-the-street accounts of what modern Russia's like. ) — csalisbury

FWIW, I've never been to the Democratic Federal Republic of Russia, but I have recently watched some high quality Russian-made Netflix movies set in Moscow. Even taking into account that these are fictional accounts, I was surprised at how the Muscovites were portrayed as very much like 21st century decadent American capitalists. Same unbalanced economic power. Same teenage angst, and hip-hop-gangsta behaviors. Even the police read their rights to suspects while arresting them.

Of course, one of these was a sci-fi conscious-robot story set in the near future, where most robots are slavish humanoid household appliances, and people who don't have such androids tend to display typical human tech-phobia. In other recent movies, the characters also seem like Americans with authentic Russian accents, and ready to do business with Westerners. Make of that what you will. Is the Americanization of Russia a change for the better, or . . . ?

However, I suspect that the farther you get from fast-paced high-tech Moscow, the less things have changed for ordinary citizens since the good-old days of Soviet Russia. Although most former peasant stock now live in cities, they are probably the same old down-to-earth folks as before, with no strong political opinions, other than a conservative bent that finds Putin's Make Russia Great Again program acceptable. My general impression is that intellectual and liberal ideas are tolerated, if not exactly encouraged. Of course, my long-range second-hand view could be wrong. :smile:


PS__On Quora Forum, I find the insights of Dima Vorobiev (former Soviet propaganda executive, now free-lance Quora poster) to be pleasantly frank, unbiased, and enlightening.

Thanks to the Russian President's ukaz decreeing that foreigners can stay for [visa expiration date] + 185 days, I've been happily stuck here in Russia since January (thank you Vladimir Vladimirovich). I'll have to leave next month so now seems like a good time to update this thread.

I first went to the Caucasus in early March. That was a fascinating trip, but in this post I'll write about my most recent visit to that region, a holiday in and around Sochi that I've just got back from.

Sochi is a holiday resort in the South of Russia on the Black Sea, at one end of the Caucasus mountains and very close to the border with Abkhazia (or Georgia if you choose not to recognize Abkhazia's independence). The coastline here is sometimes called the Caucasian Riviera, and together with the nearby Crimea it's the only warm water coastline in Russia. The climate is humid subtropical, and high forested mountains rise up just inland. It's a beautiful part of the world, and quite strange. Imagine a Soviet Monaco.

One of the books I had with me was a history of Russia, but it failed to cover the one subject that would have given me an insight into the surprising experiences I had while I was there: the Soviet tradition of taking your allotted two week holiday in a Black Sea sanatorium.

Soviet sanatoriums, which were also popular in Communist Eastern and Central Europe, were different from Western European and American sanatoriums (or sanitariums), which were mainly for chronic illness or mental disorders. The Soviet ones were more like holiday health resorts, but with more medical facilities than you would associate with a Western spa. I knew a little about them through my interest in modernist architecture, but I didn't know they were still a part of Russian life: that some of them are still going, that there are modern hotels that offer the same treatments, and that Russian attitudes to holidays and health are still informed by the tradition.

The system of sanatorium holidays was based on an ideology that combined patriotic dedication to hard work—which could only be ensured with an annual two week rest—with the ideal of a healthy lifestyle supported by natural therapies and "wellness", preventive medicine, strict diets (with no alcohol), and moral and intellectual edification. This was meant to contrast with the decadent bourgeois practice of going on holiday just to have fun.

Being a decadent Western (petit) bourgeois myself, I had intended to consume a lot of rich and unusual food and alcohol. The area produces delicious wine, seafood, figs and cheese are abundant, the local bread is as good as any French or Italian bread, but different. Lamb from the mountains is marinated and grilled over wood and served with plum sauce.

And that's what I did while we were in Sochi itself, in a hotel by the sea that I had booked. But for the second part of the holiday we moved to another hotel, this time in the mountains. My wife chose it and I didn't know much about it except that it looked nice, was surrounded by mountains, and they demanded a negative COVID‑19 test, which kind of impressed me.

On our first day at this hotel I got a cold, and my wife suggested I visit the inhalatorium downstairs. My normal strategy against colds is like Field Marshal Kutuzov's successful strategy against Napoleon: do nothing and it'll go away. But I went along with her suggestion, and I was curious anyway. It turns out there was a kind of hospital downstairs, staffed by various medical specialists.

When the procedures were over and I'd taken the plastic tube out of my nose, my wife said she'd made some more appointments for me over the next few days and I could cancel them if I wanted. I didn't cancel them but I did resent the imposition, even though it was well-meant. I hadn't expected all this. Had it been intentional deception on my wife's part, or did it seem so normal to her that she hadn't thought to mention it? In any case, my own feeling is that I don't mind going to doctors but I don't want to do it when I'm trying to relax and enjoy myself. It began to dawn on me that there was more to this holiday than I'd been led to believe, that this was some kind of modern-day sanatorium.

And that's pretty much what it was: true, it wasn't called a sanatorium but a "medical spa hotel"; we weren't assigned the accommodation by the state; the services were not free; I could drink wine if I wanted (tellingly though, vodka was unavailable); and our daily timetable was not set by the staff. But otherwise it was definitely in the sanatorial tradition. The mineral water on tap and the oxygen cocktails at the bar all began to make sense.

As with the Soviet sanatoriums themselves, it wasn't all quackery. These were real doctors. I had a few diagnostic scans, general checkups and consultations, all of which seemed pretty legit. Turns out I need to lose weight, eat less salt and fried food, and drink less alcohol, or else I'll be at risk of heart attacks down the road. On the one hand, they would say that. On the other hand, they're probably right. It shouldn't have been a surprising diagnosis but I was shocked and disappointed, and became a bit depressed about it, which made me even more resentful.

Then I got gastroenteritis. The result was that I was stuck in the room most of the time, on a diet of gruel, plain rice, sauceless chicken breast, and herbal tea. And I couldn't drink coffee or alcohol. My mother-in-law had unexpectedly followed us to the same hotel, and she and my wife ganged up on me to make me comply with these rules.

Through sheer force of will I recovered after 24 hours and eased myself back to holiday decadence. My mother-in-law said that if I was going to drink so soon after my gastrointestinal troubles—which she did not advise—it should be Armenian brandy, which was okay with me. Of course, I couldn't get brandy in the hotel and had to go to a nearby cafe. Incidentally, the biggest name in Armenian brandy is Ararat, but Mount Ararat seems to be in Turkey, and only visible from Armenia, so I don't know what's going on with that.

The biggest surprise came on the last day. I was due for another ultrasound check and I was expecting it to be the bladder and maybe even some gentle genital examination, but as I was undressing, my wife translated one of the doctor's questions, which was along the lines of "are you sure you're okay to do this now?" I saw the instrument by her side and asked, "is that an anal probe?" Indeed it was. For a moment I felt panic, but realized that backing out now would have been lame, and I had to start getting tested for prostate cancer anyway.

Lying on my side with a large and bulbous plastic transducer up my ass, I said to my wife, who was watching the whole thing, "this is the best holiday I've ever had". We all laughed, and afterwards I went straight out and had three Armenian brandies while waiting for the airport taxi.

In case you're wondering, my prostate is fine and I have a flawless rectum.

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The Rosa Springs Hotel ... offers treatment at the highest sanatorium standards in its own Health Center, specialized in health improvement through water using the healing mineral springs of Krasnaya Polyana.

The balneological direction of the hotel was not chosen by chance. It was in the Rosa Springs building during the 2014 Winter Olympics that the medical center was located with the latest diagnostic and treatment facilities for Olympians. The healing effect in the mountains of Krasnaya Polyana is achieved thanks to a life-giving combination of two elements - the sea and the mountains: ionized air has unique healing properties. — Rosa Springs Hotel

The tension between turning to nature for health and conquering nature through rapid industrialization and urbanization was inherent to the Soviet project at its origins. As I reveal, the health resort was cultivated as a place apart from the politics and mass mobilization of the city. Yet it encouraged popular attachment to the native land, and provided important benefits to the population, and so had a stabilizing function in Soviet society and culture, ultimately supporting the Soviet project. — Geisler, The Soviet Sanatorium: Medicine, Nature and Mass Culture in Sochi, 1917-1991

The photo below is of Druzhba Sanatorium, one of the famous Soviet-era Black Sea sanatoriums.



https://www.calvertjournal.com/features/show/9100/holidays-in-soviet-sanatoriums-ussr-tourism-photography
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanatorium_(resort)
The Soviet Sanatorium: Medicine, Nature and Mass Culture in Sochi, 1917-1991

Thanks to the Russian President's ukaz decreeing that foreigners can stay for [visa expiration date] + 185 days, I've been happily stuck here in Russia since January (thank you Vladimir Vladimirovich). I'll have to leave next month so now seems like a good time to update this thread. — jamalrob

Isn't your wife Russian? Doesn't that get you a permanent visa?

Yes she's Russian, but no, just a three month visa. But they're changing the rules, so soon I'll be able to get longer visas. It's a big hassle so I hope they hurry up and introduce the changes before I apply for the next one.

Georgian wine is a bit of a thing in NYC, but I had no idea about Abkhazia. Fascinating. Hope you were able to imbibe some inky Saperavi or maybe some minerally Krakhuna (if you prefer white).

I like Georgian wine but in Sochi I was drinking local Russian (Krasnodar Krai) and Crimean wine.

I'm not familiar with Russian or Crimean wine. I'd be curious to know more.

It's great.

That's all I've got. I'm no connoisseur.

I've heard tell of cloyingly sweet wines from the area. But the word "sweet", in wine talk, is almost like the word "god" in philosophical discussion. People tend to think a wine is "sweet" when it's actually just fruit-forward (there's essentially no residual sugar in the wine). And so...while a philosophical concept might not be "divine"...it might be... "god-forward"...at any rate...

All I want to know is if the wines were "god-level" sweet...or if they were only... "god-forward"....

God-forward. I'm not keen on god-level sweet.

There's a lot of crappy cheap god-level sweet Russian wines, but there are some good ones. Krasnodar Krai has the perfect conditions and many of their wines produce reactions like, "daahling this is simply divine!"