A Cautionary Note on the Perils of Drinking Vodka With Russians

At some point between Vladimir and Nizhny Novgorod, Katie and I decided to go and explore the train and to try and see what the quality of the food was like in the restaurant car. Walking down through the endless carriages we were stopped in surprise by a young gingerish bloke who heard us squealing nonsensically in English. This ginger fellow turned out to be Mike, a British former soldier and current wanderer who, strangely enough, had done his TEFL course with Oxford TEFL in Barcelona last year. After initial discussion of travel plans, unknown language journals and learner profiles, the three of us ventured down to the café car, where we made friends with the staff - two brothers from Irkutsk named Sergei and Alexei and a girl named Anna. Through a combination of bad Russian, mime and drawings, we managed to hold a conversation, and were then of course introduced to the most Russian of all customs; that of downing alarming amounts of vodka. Now, a single shot in Britain (and most other places) is 25ml, but a single shot in Russia is at least the equivalent of an English double. As we downed them in the traditional Russian fashion, Sergei kept bringing more (all for free), and despite our protests of ‘nyet, nyet,’ it was not really possible to refuse. The following picture shows the result of too much vodka:



Fortunately we eventually did manage to convince Sergei that we really didn’t need any more vdka, and so whilst we were fairly drunk fortunately Katie and I weren’t hung over in the morning (though we do have the accolade of being harder drinkers than a former soldier as Mike didn’t emerge until quite late the next morning). Being hung over on a hot, moving train is not an experience I’m keen to have – I’ve been hung over on a plane and that was truly horrible. Anyway, Katie now also has an admirer in the form of young Alexei, who despite being only 22 is lacking quite a few teeth (vodka is bad, kids), but who hopes that Katie can be prevailed upon to move to Irkutsk and have little Siberian babies. I fear he may be disappointed, but one never knows…..