Top 8 Things You Can't Do in Russia

This blog post is brought to you by the word нельзя (neel-ZYAH), roughly meaning, “No way, José.”

In Russia, you can’t…

1. Drink the water. Just like in Mexico, chugging the tap water is a Grade A certifiable bad idea. It’s okay to shower and brush your teeth with, but consumption is a NOvember GOrgon type deal. (Cool points to the first person who can identify the movie reference I just made. And Mom: apologies, but you can’t play. You and I share brainwaves so it’s not fair to everyone else if you guess the movie before anyone has time to think.) Most Russians have filtration systems, boil the water for a while before using it or do some combination of both. My host mom boils it, puts it through a filter and then puts it in a special jug reserved only for clean water before she gives any to you.

2. Wear shoes in the house. In Russia, as with Asian cultures, it is customary to take off your shoes and put on slippers, or tapochki, once you enter someone’s home. The streets in Russia are very dirty and everyone walks on them, so to avoid having all that grime on the carpet, people buy house slippers and keep their shoes in a special hallway by the door.

3. Get a plastic bag for your groceries without paying extra. So the perfect way to get a grocery store employee to yell at you is to attempt to grab a plastic bag. I know this from experience. Lemme tell you the story: I went to the corner market to get some snacks for school and after checkout, I realized that the lady hadn’t given me a plastic bag. She was helping another customer, so I decided just to reach around her and grab one myself. As I was fumbling for a bag, she turned around with the most baleful glare and said, “You have to pay for that! You can’t just take a bag, it costs X kopecks! What do you think you’re doing?” (Or something to that effect.) Confident I would melt under her vicious stare if I lingered, I apologized hastily, stuffed my snacks as well as I could into my pockets, and split. I felt like a hobo walking back to my apartment with food stuffed into my coat pockets, and I’m sure I had a shell-shocked expression on my face for a few hours. But, seriously! In the civilized world, when you buy groceries, they give you a bag so you can take them home! Silly Russians…

4. Cross the street without fear for your life. While this is slightly exaggerated, the spirit of the rule is true. Living in Russia for 3 weeks has made me appreciate the traffic laws in my home country – something I never thought I would say. In America, the pedestrian has the right of way. In Russia, the motorist does. Whether this is de jure or merely de facto law, I don’t know, but taking a stroll across a crosswalk when the light is green and you CAN GO is generally a nerve wracking endeavor, in my experience. Even if your collection of atoms has the right to exist in a forward linear motion in the middle of a designated ambulatory section of the road, a vehicle can and often will encroach or entirely invade upon your intended trajectory without overdo regard for your safety and/or legal privileges, requiring you to halt and reconsider your place in the world, as well as your desire to continue breathing.

5. Get onto Netflix.com. I thought the internet was the internet everywhere, but apparently, it’s not. When you get onto search engine websites outside of the United States, they recognize your foreign IP address. Sometimes, this translates to having country-specific websites shown to you. For example, when I was in Germany, Google was in German. In Russia, it’s in Russian, and the url is .ru rather than .com. (In case you are wondering, there is indeed a difference between Google.com and Google.ru.) Some websites, however, simply don’t work unless you are in the States. Netflix is unfortunately one of them. Apparently, there are legal restrictions about watching movies and tv shows online when abroad…who knew?

6. Judge the weather by looking at the sky. Mornings are almost invariably cloudy, but that does not mean it will rain, and it does not mean it will be cold. In fact, there are times when it is overcast, hot and drizzling at the same time. Worse is when it’s mostly sunny, drizzling and warm. The key to surviving the absolutely incomprehensible weather is mastering the art of layering clothing. Coat and scarf for the chilly walk to the metro, moderately warm shirt with decent undershirt that can be worn by itself if/when it heats up during the afternoon, and an umbrella or hoodie for when it begins to rain. And I thought Nashville’s weather was bipolar! St. Petersburg is, like, tripolar at the very least.

7. Take photos of many famous locations without paying upfront for the privilege. I’ve gone to several landmarks over the past couple weeks and have discovered that having a camera can be expensive. Let’s say you want to visit the wooden architectural museum in Novgorod and take pics of what 15^th century villagers lived like. That’ll cost you 50 rubles. What if you want to take non-flash pictures in the Hermitage museum? 70 rubles. The palace at Pavlovsk? GIMME YOUR RUBLES! These people demand money to step foot on the premises, and then they have the audacity (or the brilliant capitalistic sense) to require more money if you’d like to take personal pictures of what you already paid to see. This leads to tourists forking over wads of rubles, as well as to people sneaking precious and illicit pictures at the back of the tour group.

8. Buy peanut butter. It just doesn’t exist as Americans would recognize it. Finding any peanut butter is typically a Herculean challenge and has been the bitter topic of conversation in several of my classes. I wouldn’t call myself a die-hard peanut butter enthusiast, but consuming that nutty spread is apparently a big deal for some people.

Why stop at eight? Because in Russia, you can’t complain about more than 8 things at once. :-)