I celebrated my birthday in the new apartment last night with some coworkers and a few others that we know from here and there. I've rarely held parties, and this afternoon when I awoke to the faint smell of half empty beer cans and feet, I was reminded why it is I don't do this more often.
Our rubbish shoot is clogged with something or other, as has apparently been the case for months now, so the apartment now smells of empty beer cans with nowhere to go. On the bright side, I moved all of the empties to the kitchen and closed the door, so only a corner of the apartment smells like yesterday. The issue with the rubbish bin ought to be resolved some time in the next couple of weeks. The current solution, of walking all of our garbage down the street and dumping it in a trash bin behind a sketchy park, is really not okay at all. Until the day comes that I actually am, I refuse to live like a homeless person.
On the table beside me is a large vase overflowing with some lovely flowers that I received from one of my coworkers. When a couple of the girls at work heard that it was my birthday yesterday, they wanted to come visit me at my new apartment on their lunch hour. Of course, I had no idea what my address was, so we decided that it would make more sense for me to just visit them. This being Russia, and Saturday being my birthday, I could not just go to work empty handed, so I brought in a cake and we celebrated together in the staff room on their lunch hour. I'm not really sure why it is that you have to buy your own cake on your birthday in Russia, but that's how it goes so I played along.
Overall, I give this birthday an A-. It wasn't quite the experience that waiting for the sun to come up over the Danube in Budapest with my CELTA buddies was, but it was quite nice for what it was.
Our rubbish shoot is clogged with something or other, as has apparently been the case for months now, so the apartment now smells of empty beer cans with nowhere to go. On the bright side, I moved all of the empties to the kitchen and closed the door, so only a corner of the apartment smells like yesterday. The issue with the rubbish bin ought to be resolved some time in the next couple of weeks. The current solution, of walking all of our garbage down the street and dumping it in a trash bin behind a sketchy park, is really not okay at all. Until the day comes that I actually am, I refuse to live like a homeless person.
On the table beside me is a large vase overflowing with some lovely flowers that I received from one of my coworkers. When a couple of the girls at work heard that it was my birthday yesterday, they wanted to come visit me at my new apartment on their lunch hour. Of course, I had no idea what my address was, so we decided that it would make more sense for me to just visit them. This being Russia, and Saturday being my birthday, I could not just go to work empty handed, so I brought in a cake and we celebrated together in the staff room on their lunch hour. I'm not really sure why it is that you have to buy your own cake on your birthday in Russia, but that's how it goes so I played along.
Overall, I give this birthday an A-. It wasn't quite the experience that waiting for the sun to come up over the Danube in Budapest with my CELTA buddies was, but it was quite nice for what it was.
2 comments:
Nice one... :)
Garbage.. Totally normal situation in Russia. I grew up having to walk with a bucket of garbage every day to bins outside of apartment building. That was my family duty, until we moved to the apartment that had a rubbish tube.. Many older building still work that..
Birthday cake.. You got away easy. You were not supposed to buy your birthday cake to bring it to work. You were supposed to bake it. Like it was supposed to be with girl scout cookies in US. Now they also buy and resell it, instead of baking. Times change, I guess..
With all the "In Soviet Russia" memes the cake thing is not overly surprising to me. The police do not seem to be much different than here though, they always look for the least white suspect.
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