Pa-rouski

After a week of learning Russia (with Andre, the ski instructor from Courchevel, servicing the bling blingy Russian clientele) i thought i'd enlighten you with a crash course in Russian. You might need it at some point, who knows!

Lesson 1: ni znayou = 'i don't know and f**k off" = What you will hear a lot, common answer to a lot of questions such as where is the train station? what street is this? is there an internet cafe nearby? is this wine better than that one? do you recommend the profiterolles? etc...

Lesson 2: basic pronounciation!! half of the times A are O, O are A, E are YO or YE. For example, ovochi (my beloved greens) are pronounced avochi (unless it's ovachi!!? one of the two anyway). Other useful examples: spassiba (=thanks) is spelt spassibo

Lesson 3: half of the words (and 99% of street names and 76.8% of metro stations) have skaya at the end. If unsure, add -skaya to the end of each word and hopefully it will make sense!! Ex: excuse me'skaya, do you know'skaya if there is'kaya a funkiskiyi (masculine variant of -skaya) bar'iskiyi that serves-iskyi cheap-isky cockail-iskiy

Lesson 4: in Russian, if you're female, you're either a devuchka (young lady) or a babucka (granny). Nothing in between! Choose your camp!

Anyway, that's it for not but come back soon because... maybe... who knows.... there might soon be a comparative study in the pipeline between Tchaikovsky's (see -sky again, and i bet his sister was Tchaikovskaya!) Swan Lake as perfomerd by the Bolshoi (pronounced bAlshoi!) ballet and the Kremlin Ballet. After 4 years of binge drinking, binging on ballet is my remedy!