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Cristina’s travels TAC 2015 Team Pushkin

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Ogrim
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Senior Member
France
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991 posts - 1896 votes 
Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, French, Romansh, German, Italian
Studies: Russian, Catalan, Latin, Greek, Romanian

 
 Message 169 of 297
24 November 2014 at 10:24am | IP Logged 
Just wanted to say I really enjoy reading about your experiences in Moscow. You could have a career as a travel story writer.

And of course I must congratulate you on your fantastic progress! It inspires me to work harder on my Russian, I also want to be in Moscow and see a play by Chekhov in the original, or discuss work and family and life with an Uzbek taxi driver. Keep up the good work!

Edited by Ogrim on 24 November 2014 at 10:24am

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Solfrid Cristin
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Winner TAC 2011 & 2012
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Norway
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Studies: Russian

 
 Message 170 of 297
24 November 2014 at 10:43am | IP Logged 
@Ogrim - Thank you! I must admit I had a fantastic time!
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tarvos
Super Polyglot
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China
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Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish

 
 Message 171 of 297
24 November 2014 at 12:17pm | IP Logged 
Serpent wrote:
Oops, and I was proud for being just 30 min late ;) And remember that
I was sure you were chatting with the "young man who wears glasses" that they sent to
pick us up.

Sorry for the marshrutka as well. Seemed perfectly normal to me ;) If/when you take
one again, don't take a seat facing the back, this should be more comfortable. As for
the tickets, normally they all cost the same*. Often people just sort out the change
between themselves, or tell the driver something like "со ста [рублей] за двоих",
meaning that the 100 rouble note is for two people who are travelling together or have
settled this between each other. The most common note in marshrutkas is probably the
50-rouble one, which nowadays typically covers just one ride (30 or 35 roubles), so no
explanations are necessary. As for passing the money along, I guess it's just seen as
an added responsibility that comes with sitting at the front (where you can easily
communicate with the driver, not having to shout or ask other people to tell the
driver which stop you need). I have to admit I often blatantly ignore this
responsibility and start reading or close my eyes.

*the main exception are the marshrutkas that go to airports and cost less if you just
travel within the city. Or for example, you may have noticed that Moscow State
University isn't right near the University metro station (and its territory is huge),
so I remember marshrutkas offering cheaper rides between the metro and several
university locations. I might be giving you completely obsolete info here though :D
Basically marshrutkas are far from perfect, but the system is very efficient.

Hehe I wouldn't be amused if my mum called me a pumpkin :P Even
колобочек is bad enough because to
her that's a cute fairy tale character but to me it implies I'm fat :D Солнышко is a
great option, and many animal names can also be used, such as зайчик, птенчик (from
птенец - baby bird), рыбка, ласточка (a swallow - ie the bird), котик. It's usually
more natural to add "my" - and the gender depends on the actual word/suffix, not the
person in question. There are many others but I can't come up with anything else right
now.


It's not my mother calling me this, but one of the nicknames I (somehow) got was
журавушка (for Cristina - this is from журавль - crane bird). I've seen a few other
bird-based variants as well - one of my friends used to always stay up late, so I
started calling her совушка (from сова - owl). I would sometimes get жаровонок in
return :)
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Serpent
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Russian Federation
serpent-849.livejour
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 Message 172 of 297
04 December 2014 at 3:42pm | IP Logged 
Solfrid Cristin wrote:
I also ordered a blinchiki with ham, to see what the difference between that and a regular blini was but I was unable to find any.

Forgot to reply - there's indeed no difference :-) Well, blinchiki may indicate a smaller size, but in general you can use them interchangeably. They probably used blinchiki in the menu to make it sound more cozy and home-y.
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Solfrid Cristin
Heptaglot
Winner TAC 2011 & 2012
Senior Member
Norway
Joined 5333 days ago

4143 posts - 8864 votes 
Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian
Studies: Russian

 
 Message 173 of 297
12 December 2014 at 12:39am | IP Logged 
@tarvos: Love your nick name :-)

@Serpent: Thanks! Then it was not just me being stupid :-)

DECEMBER IN OSLO

A week's visit by my Russian teacher and friend Olga has passed. The kids adored her, and I was happy to
speak Russian, and even my friend from Peru was delighted to meet her. We hope she'll come back often. :-)

Last week end was an interesting one from a linguistic point of view. On Saturday I met up with a retired
doctor from Kazakhstan, who I had met this summer. It says a lot about how busy this fall has been, when it
was the first occasion I had had since July to meet up with someone. She was very friendly, and very happy
to see me - I suspect she was a bit lonely, and of course I was really happy to meet a Russian speaker,
particularly since her only languages were Russian and Kazakh, so we had no choice but to speak Russian.
We talked for 5 hours, her daughter, who spoke Norwegian really well, also joined in, so we had a great time.
At one point we discovered that my Norwegian name - Solfrid - also exists in Kazakh - Kounsoulou - and
there is even a song about it which she sang for me. I responded by singing a Norwegian children's song,
because she very much wanted to learn a song in Norwegian.

And she invited me to go to Kazakhstan with her in May! Since Kazakhstan is at the very top of my list of
places I want to visit, that made me really happy and excited! I do not know if I'll be able to fit it into my
schedule, as I already have trips to St. Petersburg, Paris and Brussels that month, but it would be amazing if I
could. Visiting a country with someone who is local is always so much better!

We decided to meet up again soon, and that I'd help her to learn Norwegian, so we already have a meet up
for Saturday scheduled.

On Sunday I met up with some of my girlfriends, we were six girls, and six different nationalities - Peru, Chile,
Brazil, Singapore, Ukraine/Russia and Norway. I spoke masses of Russian and Spanish, and had a great
time. I thought it was a bit sad, though, that all of them had fairly heavy accents/grammar errors in
Norwegian, although they have lived here for 15-20 years and have been/are married to Norwegians. A
couple of them described how their lack of linguistic skills caused serious problems for them in their jobs.    
The Ukrainian/ Russian woman, who I had never met before, insisted, as had my two friends from
Kazakhstan, that I looked very Russian. In fact she said that I should go to Paris, as Frenchmen appreciated
my particular brand (!) of Russian beauty. So I guess that was why I got so much positive attention the last
time I was in Paris :-) I had believed that men had stopped seeing me because I was getting old, and now I
realized that it must have been the combination of old and overweight. Well I guess you do not need to be a
rocket scientist to see why that would not be a winning combination :-) I have started giving a bit more
attention to my appearance, actually bothering to use make up and high heels, and between that and the
weight loss I am getting more attention than I have for years. Most of it is welcome, though like I said, parts of
it was a bit overwhelming at the November meeting.

At this meeting in December I got an invitation to come to Jordan, from my Jordanian colleague. That would
have been quite normal, if it had not been for the fact that I had never spoken to my Jordanian colleague in
my life before. And his first -and only - words to me, as he gave me his card, were that I must come to
Jordan. He repeated the invitation as he left the meeting, and when I went to my hotel to pick up my suitcase,
I bumped into him again and he repeated the invitation a third time, this time in front of his wife. Mind
boggling. I consider myself a very hospitable person, and love inviting people to Norway, but it is usually after
some kind of interaction. It is not a conversation opener. And the really strange thing, is that I have been
getting these invitations for years, but never from the people I know, the people that are at my level, I get
them when I go to a meeting which is two levels above mine, and where a lot of the people are unknown to
me. I have been invited to India, Israel, Kazakhstan, Romania, Montenegro and Azerbaijan. The Romanian
one was very sweet, I had talked with him for an entire evening and when he told me that he had never been
to Norway, I invited him and his wife to stay with me, and he invited me and my daughters to stay with him
and his wife. Perfectly normal. On the other end of the spectrum we have the guy from Azerbaijan, who after
speaking to me for 4 minutes offered me a job in his railway, and said he could personally teach me Russian
in a month. Yeah. Not really tempted, but I was not particularly surprised either. There are sleaze balls
everywhere. The rest however do not seem sleazy, just nice, but I am still surprised at these invitations out of
the blue. I asked my Russian colleague whether he got those invitations too, and he just said that who would
invite an average Muscovite? A beautiful Norwegian woman, that was another matter, and that he was not
surprised that I got those invitations. I love Russians :-) However I knew who would invite an average
Muscovite: Me :-) I suspected however that getting him and his wife and two children here would have to be
prepared some time in advance, but since the idea of having a Russian for Christmas was fastened in my
brain, I contacted Tania who I met at the polyglot conference in Serbia. I knew that she had been learning
some Norwegian, and might be interested, and she's coming! She'll only be able to be here for a few days,
but I am looking so much forward to seeing her and speaking some Russian!

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Serpent
Octoglot
Senior Member
Russian Federation
serpent-849.livejour
Joined 6596 days ago

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 Message 174 of 297
12 December 2014 at 1:16am | IP Logged 
About getting attention:
Чтобы встретить жениха, девушка должна выходить на улицу веселая и накрашенная, потому что, если она идет грустная и не накрашенная, все сразу понимают, что она уже замужем.
Катя, 8 лет

("in order to find a husband, a female should use makeup and look joyful. if she doesn't use makeup and looks sad, everyone will instantly know that she's taken - Katja, 8 years old :D")

I think there's something we detect in people somehow. I've read interesting experiences on a forum for asexual people. My lack of interest in having a boyfriend is just temporary (although we say that "нет ничего более постоянного, чем временное"), but somehow I get very little unwanted attention.

Edited by Serpent on 12 December 2014 at 1:37am

1 person has voted this message useful



Solfrid Cristin
Heptaglot
Winner TAC 2011 & 2012
Senior Member
Norway
Joined 5333 days ago

4143 posts - 8864 votes 
Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian
Studies: Russian

 
 Message 175 of 297
12 December 2014 at 6:33am | IP Logged 
Serpent wrote:
About getting attention:
Чтобы встретить жениха, девушка должна выходить на улицу веселая и накрашенная, потому что,
если она идет грустная и не накрашенная, все сразу понимают, что она уже замужем.
Катя, 8 лет

("in order to find a husband, a female should use makeup and look joyful. if she doesn't use makeup and
looks sad, everyone will instantly know that she's taken - Katja, 8 years old :D")

I think there's something we detect in people somehow. I've read interesting experiences on a forum for
asexual people. My lack of interest in having a boyfriend is just temporary (although we say that "нет ничего
более постоянного, чем временное"), but somehow I get very little unwanted attention.


ROFL - Katja, 8 years old is very wise :-) and we have the exact same saying that you mention in Norwegian
as well - it was one of my mum's favorite sayings. I guess if there is one thing I have learned from Russian
and Ukrainian women, it is to make the best of what you have, and flat shoes, your hair in a bun, no make up,
jeans and over sized t-shirts - that is my favorite outfit - cannot exactly be called to make an effort. And has
not brought a lot of attention. The funny thing is I did not even realize that I missed it. In Norway it does not
really make much difference, as you do not get that much attention anyway - though I was in shock yesterday
as not one but two Norwegian men within 5 minutes opened the door for me and let me pass before them.
And after having lost nearly 25 kg even my ex noticed that I had lost weight. In Spain I was just happy that it
became less stressful, as the attention I got when I was young was way too much. The change in France is
interesting though, as I went from being invisible to getting a royal treatment. I guess I'll just have to enjoy it
while it lasts:-)
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Марк
Senior Member
Russian Federation
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Speaks: Russian*

 
 Message 176 of 297
12 December 2014 at 3:46pm | IP Logged 
Solfrid Cristin wrote:



I asked my Russian colleague whether he got those invitations too, and he just said that who would
invite an average Muscovite? A beautiful Norwegian woman, that was another matter, and that he was not
surprised that I got those invitations. I love Russians :-)

Вот это нужно прочитать Via Diva, которая не верила, что женщины получают больше внимания противоположного пола, чем мужчины.


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