This morning I went to Kopeka, the local universam (supermarket), and bought some supplies. Not the most riveting thing to do, but certainly worth commenting on, in the socio-cultural sense.
Russian stores come in many varieties: at the most fundamental is the 24-hour produkti, a tiny walk-in store with glass cases full of sausages, pre-packaged blini, ice cream, candy, and cheese. Behind the cases are wall-to-wall shelves of alcohol and a whole galaxy of cigarettes. You step inside the produkti, place your order with the shopkeeper, and get your goods handed over. Sometimes the shopkeepers are bored out of their minds and latch onto your funny accent just to have someone new to talk to; sometimes they're haggard and angry (especially late at night, when they've been dealing with drunks for hours and hours). We teachers have a favorite produkti, literally two steps away from 1649 school, where we go for supplies between classes.
Three days ago I got thrown out of this shop because the shopkeeper was outside having a smoke with her friends from the fruit stand. Even though everything was locked in cases and she was standing 10 feet away, the produkti was CLOSED, by God, and she was damned if I was going to stand in there and wait for her. So she threw her cigarette down, marched in, and expelled me by force. Pretty funny, except that I was seriously jonesing for peanut-butter halva. Stymied, I returned to 1649 School, waited 20 minutes, and then went back and bought it, no problem at all.
Such is the produkti way.
The next store level up is the universam, also known as the supermarkyet or gipermarkyet. Every time I see the latter, I get a strange vision of Dear Ronnie's toothy visage, but there's no arguing that the selection is better. The key thing to remember is that you have to stuff your bags into a lockable cubby by the door before you go in, lest you be suspected of shoplifting. Once inside, it's a babushka scrum, especially in the sour cream, egg and produce sections. By the rules of the game, you can ram carts, but not people – the correct thing to do is shout, 'Coming through, coming through!', wait while the Red Sea of apple-squeezing, egg-checking humanity parts approximately 13 mm, and then squeeze through, trying not to catch your wheels on anything. Kopeka suffers from a serious dearth of carts, which I think must be deliberate, to avoid total traffic breakdown. It's difficult for me though, being an American who was raised to regard shopping carts as one of the natural rights of man. I usually waltz into Kopeka, hit the produce section, and then remember that I only have two hands, whereupon I'm forced to go out and scavenge in the parking lot for an abandoned cart. Other people hover, vulture-like, at the end of the checkout lines and snag carts as soon as they're pushed through.
Plastic bags are also scarce, but I kind of admire this, because people keep old bags in their purses and resuse them till they're tattered rather than pay the 5 kopeks or whatever a new one costs. I do it too, except when my flatmate and I running out of trash bags again.
In terms of food, I can find most everything I need at the universam (except spinach and tzatziki). Russian food suits me; I could, and pretty much do, live off pelmeni (little boiled meat and potato dumplings), cabbage, apples, chicken pancakes, pickles, cheese, and fresh bread with creamy Russian butter. To wash it down: kvass, a mysterious, medieval beverage whose taste can be summed up as 'bread-flavored Coca Cola,' and kefir, a salty yogurt drink nothing like the overpriced, fruit-flavored swill guzzled by locavorous yuppies back in Chicago.
Alcohol I'll barely mention, because it goes without saying that it's ubiquitous. However, the canned-alcohol industry is fascinating, because it's not really caught on in the US, whereas in Russia you can select from such novelties as ½ L 'Gin and Tonic,' various kinds of syrupy coffee-based concoctions that promise 'not less than 8% alcohol,' and my personal favorites: 'Taste of Whisky Cola' and 'Super Hooch.' The former is exactly what it sounds like, cheap whiskey and generic cola, conveniently premixed; the latter is a grapefruit or cherry flavored energy drink containing equal parts booze and caffeine. Super Hooch is something you try once on a whim, and then not again. Ditto for the spiced 'Black Russian' coffee drink. I have a vague memory of drinking one of these once and then spending 5 minutes trying to explain to someone how it tasted exactly like Christmas, 'but not in a good way.' Then I was sick.
Another western decadence that Russians have successfully expanded upon is the potato chip. Unlike the Canadians, who also have novel chips, but in lousy flavors like ketchup, Russian potato chips are actually delicious: they come in various cheese flavors and a pleasant pesto/mozzarella combination, along with the standard salt, dill, etc. The shashlik flavor, however, is a glaring exception: shashlik means 'barbeque' and the shashlik potato chip tastes like meat. Meat. Not barbeque seasoning, but slightly underdone meat. Like deep-fried slivers of Alpo. For travelers planning a visit to Russia, but not yet conversant in Russian, it would be worth your while to learn the Cyrillic alphabet, just to avoid the culinary atrocity that is shashlik potato chips. You have been warned.
