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i'm just back from russia, or as just back as i can be before i'm bothered to write this. it was another refresher of my esteem for my home country. what i always find most amazing about the place is the amount of characters - stereotypical, hilarious, or simply interesting - to be encountered.
there is my uncle, the most decent person i've met in any country; my 93-year-old great gran who still is all there, a great example of the simple, unyielding old folks that britain somehow seems to lack; my step-grandad who, having downed the best part of a bottle of vodka, starts alternating between accusations of ugliness and lovability in everyone while swinging an occasional finger into my eye before sinking his head to the table; a friend of the family dubbed 'archimedes', an ambivalent and, to me, enigmatic man with a down-to-earth, simplistic mind yet many speculations about life, a laugh that's easy to emerge but laced with sadness and an outward 'lone wolf' mentality broken by longing for a relationship; among many more.
my thoughts also return to that so classic train journey of three years ago, accompanied by two of the most downright stereotypical macho drunks who, sipping vodka sunrise to sunset, eventually got scammed out of their year's pay and on my exit from the train implored me repeatedly to 'respect my mother'.
where do all these fascinating people come from? is it a result of proximity to and origins in a yet distant culture to me, or a phenomenon specific to my extended family? i certainly saw less of these in moscow, though maybe because of dilution with the west. the answer, i shall lazily conclude, lies somewhere in between and slightly north.
-krring
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