Russian Billiards

Bit of a wild Sunday last week (after Metro and shopping). Sasha’s girlfriend (Lada) was in town from Russia  he wanted us to meet her and do something. As I may have mentioned, Kharkiv, is not a tourist destination an there is no a lot to do, especially in the colder months when it gets dark at 4.30pm. So options for entertainment are a little bit limited especially if you don’t have transport. Mum even commented to me that all she seems to see us doing in my blog is sitting at tables, eating and drinking......... well yes, that is what we do,,,, and do it well!!!!! On my home visit, I will be purchasing board games, card games, DVD’s etc.

So we all met at 1pm and walked up to “Paris”, a rather nice looking eatery, which was closed.......... opens at 2pm!! Luck of the Irish!! Given the cool weather, we opted for an Italian feast of Pizza & beer and “shark attack”. It would take a while to explain the shark bit, so just let me say that I had a very nice cocktail which was red and had gin in it. This mixed with beer was making me feel ..... very happy, sweetie darling sweetie!

Sasha.......... what can I say!!... One of a kind and beautiful

By this stage, it was getting dark & Dima (our lovely local) explained that 5 minutes walk up the road would find us a pool hall. I’m thinking, this is going to be easy for me. I play pool with dad every Sunday!! We walk in and there are small tables for playing pool and full size tables......... for playing Russian Billiards! What the @#&* are Russian Billiards we ask?

After we ordered a round of drinks, we decided that pool was the easy way to go first up, so it was Russian speaking verses English speaking.... i.e. Michal and myself verses Sasha, Dima and Lada. Michal and I whipped their arses.... Thanks dad for all the practice! Next port of call...... I needed to wee. So Lada had investigated the toilets and I asked her opinion of them. Lada doesn’t speak English at all, so she picked up my camera and grabbed my hand and into the loo we went!

Yep I used it twice !! And survived. I must admit, I loved the look of pleasure on the guys faces as they came out relieved, compared to the girls faces which were expressing “ I cant believe I just used that... but try and act normal as you walk out”.

Back to Russian Billiards. This game is slow. You play on a full size table, but the pockets are smaller than normal and the balls are bigger than normal as we know in Aus. All the balls are white except one Maroon one. The aim is to get as many balls in for your side as you can. I can tell you, even if you have a ball right in the corner of the pocket, it takes extra skill to sink it. You have to be so precise! So I am thinking that If I get good at this game, that when I get home, I will be able to beat dad every Sunday at pool because it will be so much easier !!! Look out dad.

Hopefully you get an idea of the size of the pocket to the ball

Thanks for the pics Michal x

Now after a few more beers, we decided to call it quits. This is about 8.30 at night so it is still early, but because it is dark, it feels late.So waking back. my apartment is the first stop. “Come up and have a Vodka” I proudly say thinking my lovely bottle of “Relax” that I bought just yesterday, would last me until I went home in June next year. We decided that you cant just have vodka alone, you had to have beer as well, so I asked Dima if he would go down and buy some beer. We now have beer and vodka, cheese and bread and I can say that after the second vodka shot, I don’t remember much :-) Needless to say, we all had very sore heads and were extremely tired for the following two days. Berocca didn’t even help...... did it Michal?

me and a couple of mates

Nice warm hat

New taxi's... Eee will appreciate this
Bit of a long story, so I will try and navigate so you keep up with me. PMU provides transport by bus for PM employees living in the city to and from the city each day to PMU 45 minutes out of town. I think the reason for this is that the factory used to be in the city and then they re built it just outside the city ring road which is sort of an industrial estate but there is not much industry actually there. Sort of like moving the factory in Moorabbin to somewhere like Campberfield or there about.

The trouble for us (STA’s) is that the buses stop in the city centre which is about a 15 minute walk in the dark for some of us in the morning and at night (snow, ice and lots of people that don’t speak English). I wasn’t particularly happy with catching the bus, so we have had regular taxis (equivalent of Hyundai excel or similar) each morning and night that pick us up and drop us at our doors for $UAH 80.00 or 10 bucks each way Aussie dollars which we have been paying for. Anyway, we figured $10 each day for a taxi for nine months was going to eat into our Per Diem allowance, so we negotiated, with PM and we now have taxi vouchers. The trouble is, we can only use these vouchers with a particular company and this company only uses Volga cars. Now I dont know much about cars except for Holdens and Fords so I googled Volga...........

Volga (Russian: Волга) is an automobile brand that originated in the Soviet Union to replace the venerated GAZ-M20 Pobeda in 1956. Modern in design, it became a symbol of higher status in the Soviet nomenklatura. Volga cars were also traditionally used as taxi cabs, road police interceptors (not bloody likely), and ambulances.

Not sure about High status.....These things are a solid as a brick $#^% house and must weigh a ton, so you feel sort of safe (depending on the driver, last nights one was almost suicidal). I’m not sure what sort of engine they in them, but the first cab we had hardly got out of third gear the whole way home. Even the semi’s fully loaded, were pulling way from us on the ring road! Going up a steep hill near home, I swear I could have walked faster than this thing. Last night it rained quite heavily and going through the “dams” that form on the road, was not an issue for these Volga’s, straight through them like the water is not even there and sprays everyone standing on the footpath waiting for the bus !

Anyway folks. Mum has been complaining that there are no pics of me on the blog, just other people, so tonight I have flooded the blog with me....... Hope I havent bored you to tears !!!!!!

Inna an I at art exhibt

On Metro

You may have noticed that I have managed to put a pic of me on the header of the blog ! I thought this was quite cleaver of me until I saw Michal's blog and he has rotating pics on his. So I have asked my IS guy to help me reach the same milestones so I can brag about my technology advances, but my IS guy is a bit busy tending to his own hard drive. Postcards, maps of Kharkiv and rotating photos have been promised. Stay tuned.... N..& GOM. Postcards hopefully on their way ... very personalised with me and Lenin. New home address please N so I can send them.

At this point, one month in, I want to thank two very special people for helping me with the language barrieres and just being there in times of need....... at the checkout of a supermarket when the girl starts talking and you have no idea what she is asking., or simlpy telling the taxi driver where we want to go. Easy for you, but impossible for me.  Dima and Sahsa. You have been so helpfull from the moment I walked through the office door. True gentlemen and a credit to your yourselves. Thank you from SAM...

To my IS guy, its fun......  and I hope you fix your hard drive soon so you can provide some service to your customers..

That is all  for tonight folks

xm

Love to M&D.... Miss you & Sooty xxx