Now that you all know how much a very single, very undateable heartbreaker I am, I’d love to tell you how I came to star in a blog. The year was 2014. I had just made the poor life decision of moving to Moscow, Russia in the same month that the Russians stole Crimea from The Ukraine. The exchange rate was 35 rubles to the dollar and I was about to be Scrooge McDucking it into bed, because that’s where I would discretely hide all of my money, of course. I stayed in Russia through an onslaught of sanctions that kept grocery store shelves void of any real semblance of cheese, and watched as the exchange rate crushed all of our hopes and dreams; 90 rubles to the dollar. My money was basically only good for buying up railroads and paying off jailers who wear top hats and monocles all before screaming fuck this game and flipping a table.
I decided fairly early on that I would fight the dairy withdrawals to avoid eating cheese made mostly of paper and soap, save up my rubles and live in an odd sense of comfortable discomfort. I was strangely content with staying in Russia, possibly because it didn’t involve living in the walk-in closet of my mom’s one-bedroom condo anymore. The problem that I then had to face was how I was to make friends, date, and get out of the suburban hell in which I had been placed. The usual, really.
When I accepted the job, they offered to set me up with an apartment shared by the current French teacher, not very far from the city center. Sweet. When I arrived, I was escorted to that not very far away apartment by a driver named Andrey in a large black SUV, missing some amount of his fingers. Okay. As we wound our way through identical apartment blocks and packs of wild dogs, I wondered where the city actually was? We finally arrived at a tall, nondescript apartment building and packed ourselves into the scariest elevator car I’ve ever been in. The overhead lights flickered on and off, each wall was covered in grimy graffiti and the doors rattled as we made our way up to the 20th floor. This is how I die, surely. I think that way too often.
I very quickly came to realize that I was at the tippity-top of one of the subway lines, meaning that I was tippity-fucking-far from the actual center of Moscow. My new roommate assured me that we would be moving in two days, and told me not to unpack. I was excited for the 5 seconds that I took me to realize we were moving two stops closer to the city center, and would still be a whopping one hour ride from Red Square (hence the impromptu sleepover with an old British man per a previous post).
Not long after getting settled into that ‘burb life, my BFF talked me into reviving the OkCupid profile that she had written for me when we lived in Korea. She wanted to meet someone back in the states, so I can only assume the dramedy that would ensue from me having an online dating profile comforted her through the process. That lucky bish went on a date with the first person she matched with, and the rest is history. Get it, girl.
The experience that I got out of the deal was far different. I matched with a Canadian expat whose decent banter talked me into a date. Lucky for you all, I’ve retrieved another Note from my phone that breaks down what happened next:
Preface: this was written while getting drunk an exile at the “bar” of a Mexican restaurant in Gdansk. They refused to seat me at a table and ignored me at the bar because I was eating alone. Don’t eat at Pueblo in Gdansk.
[Alright, it gets good reviews so maybe try it if you’re ever in Gdansk and dare get sick of being in pierogi heaven.]
Get talked into online dating again by the devil AKA my BFF.
Talk to the first seemingly attractive non-creeper.
Meet at cupcakerie, eat cupcakes.
Proceed to eat bottomless tacos at a bar — HARD SHELL. HARD TO DO.
Drink some beers.
Trust him probz too much.
Go on a walk along the river in the snow.
He is cheesy and asks: if you could do anything right now what would it be? Or something like that. I have horrible short term memory. So I just kissed him like I’m living in some damn romcom. If I had T Swift skills I would sing about it.
I have to pee so we burst onto a barge bar.
It’s fucking cold.
He thinks it’s funny to start a snowball fight and my engraved ring flies off of my finger.
He is chivalrous and searches for it, but it’s probably in the river.
Am I secretly the old lady from the end of Titanic?
I play it off like I don’t care, but I CARE.
He wrote a blog about me that I pretend I haven’t read that says he’ll never see me again yet he still texts me everyday and I love it.
Date 2: his friend’s acoustic set. Actually pretty cool but awkward to meet friends on the 2nd date. Find out my friend slept with his friend once and couldn’t figure out how to get out of his apartment.
Date 3: his place on a Monday night. Making out on a Victorian sofa (paint me like one of your French girls blah blah blah). He cock blocked himself. Ouch.
Date 4: I didn’t even ask where we were going. Met he and three guys at a Metro stop, took a little van-bus to the middle of nowhere and ate the most amazing Vietnamese food ever. Took too many shots of Beluga vodka and got nostalgic peeing in an authentic squat toilet with a stranger. Went to the mystery bar Holly and I went to on accident with funny middle aged Irish men and got face controlled* for being too loud in line. Went to a lumberjack bar instead! Rapped in the taxi. Learned he was an Avril Lavigne fan and screamed lyrics to Sk8r Boi at him while dancing down the street. Drank more.
Am I still alive?
*Face Control: when a Russian bouncer deems you too drunk and/or too ugly and refuses you entrance to da club.
That worked out so well for me. It’s possible that I continued to date him because he was still interested after watching me wash 5+ hard shell tacos down with Baltika on our first date, or because I literally just had nothing better to do and winter in Russia is so long. Either way, good times were had until really dramatic things like a late night meeting on a bridge and him inviting me out and then showing up with another girl and me sleeping with his friend after his friend had slept with my friend happened. But that’s neither here nor there.
Despite him waiting 10 dates to try to make any semblance of a real move on me and then pulling that douchebagerie in a bar full of people, we stayed pretty good friends. He was the platonic BF I never knew I needed; we went on friend dates to Curry Club, AKA all-you-can-eat-Indian-food and baked giant birthday cakes from Buzzfeed Tasty videos. One time his new girlfriend came home to us deep frying in a giant vat of oil, drunk. He even did me the solid of awkwardly trying to hook me up with his roommate from Oregon, and I forever gained a friend to chain smoke on a-definitely-not-up-to-code balcony and pretend we both had short term memory loss with. He also did me the not so solid of trying to hook me up with his best friend, which led me to walk-of-shame into parent teacher conferences wearing very short shorts.
While spending 5 hours trying to make a gigantic chocolate cake for no reason is up there on my list of fond Russia memories, our trip to the medieval village and home of Медовуха or mead, is the real winner. Even though getting there required five hours in the car with a Ukrainian who had no basic concept of traffic laws or speed limits, and breathing in the toxic smell of old whiskey oozing from my friend’s pores, we made it to Suzdal unscathed.
Bull ridin’ and boobies
Cowboy hat from Gucci
As the mead floweth, we took advantage of the private sauna behind our дача. It seemed more of less like any old sauna you would find in the states, with a couple of differences. First, when you exit the sauna to cool off, you tug on a cord to overturn a bucket full of freezing cold water onto yourself. From there, you go outside until your skin stops steaming, or you die of hypothermia, whichever comes first. This would be the point where men drink and chain smoke, and women eat snacks. Since that’s pretty sexist, I hid a bottle of mead behind the curtains to fight the patriarchy. Secondly, you keep a cold bucket of water inside of the sauna itself. This is where the birch branch soaks, waiting. The Ukrainian, clad in only a sweaty pair of tighty whities, volunteered to preform the age old ritual of beating me with said branch, and there in the heat of the sauna in medieval Suzdal, a hot (literally) Ukrainian smacked me very thoroughly from head to toe with a cold, wet birch branch. For my health. I probably owe him my life – after all, the sheer amount of mead that I drank that weekend should have sent me spiraling into a diabetic coma Wilford Brimley style. спасибо большое, мой друг.
A few days later, with a few bottles of mead in my checked luggage for good measure, I peaced the fuck out of Russia and like all good fictional love stories handwritten in German, another quality adventure had to come to an end.
Here to Pizza Party 