Pre-Fairy tells - Gulag Ep.1
June 28, 2007
The nighmare begins.
Over a week ago, I landed in the former USSR, Moscow, Russia. What can possibly be said about this city that has not been said before?
Oh! I know: IT SUCKS!
The women, elongated stick figures with no souls, all suffer from the Carrie Bradshaw syndrome. As for the men, they have not yet discovered the use of deodorant or hair gel and are all proudly wearing mullets (mullets?). They're not at all what one would expect: tall, muscular and handsome men with blue eyes but more the stereotypical bad guys from the Bond movies, ready to bite off your head the minute you turn your back.
As if this was not bad enough, they're all completely and utterly miserable looking. Smiling here is nothing short of a crime. If you do smile however, you'll get arrested. The police will then rob you and kick you in the balls. You think I'm exaggerating? I am not.
If you happen to be black or gay, you don't even need to smile, they'll get you anyway. The all powerful police are everywhere and do whatever tickles their fancy. E.g. arresting passer-bys, robbing tourists, kicking the shit out of the coloured ones, raiding gay clubs, etc…
I arrived on a late sunny Wednesday afternoon to discover that my luggages was missing and that the flat – I had been promised – was not ready yet. For a week, I was stuck in a hostel that smelled like piss (Funny enough, the other people in the hostel were either black or mixed race; I guess no one wanted to rent to them. What an open minded society! I wonder if they thought of bringing slavery back into fashion) before moving into a cupboard on the 9th floor of a tower block surrounded by other grey tower blocks. (That's all they have here: tower blocks and more grey tower blocks! Russians have not yet discovered the "living room" either, a concept beyond them apparently! A living room: what for?). My luggages was nowhere to be seen and I walked around in the only clean T-shirt I had, a bright orange one my school had given me.
The teachers here quickly adapted to their surroundings and have become recluses, having apparently lost all social skills and forgotten the meaning or the word fun. Suffice to say that so far my efforts at making new friends have been in vain.
I'm having a hell of a time – literally! Moscow is a wider and uglier Paris (and you all know how I feel about fucking Paris) except I don't understand their muttering. People in the tube look miserable and quite frankly I'm starting to understand why. The Kremlin was a big disappointment; I felt as though I was in Disneyland Paris (FUCKING Paris again!).
I've already seen a corpse on the street which seems to be pretty common here.
A corpse. On the street. Perfectly normal!
I fear Moscow might be the end of me. I close my eyes and sing along to the Dreamgirls’ soundtrack, hoping to see the next ten months through. I can already feel its power faltering. Come girls, don’t let me down! Not now!
