Wednesday, March 21, 2007

Other things I saw during our today's (yesterday's) walk:

- The remains of a poster for Mikhail Yevdokimov's performance at the Moscow Youth Palace. Yevdokimov was a comedian whose sense of humor used to annoy me, and then he became the governor of Altai region, and died in a car crash in August 2005. It was his fault, because he was speeding like crazy, as many of them big shots do, but for a while it looked like they'd send the driver of another car, Oleg Scherbinsky, to jail for four years, putting all the blame on him. That didn't happen, though, largely because Russian drivers got together for a few protest rallies - and helped rescue the poor guy.



- The building in which Mykhailo Hrushevsky used to live - "a Ukrainian historian and statesman, one of the most important figures of the Ukrainian national revival of the early 20th century." The sign is in Russian and Ukrainian:



- Wacky wooden fairy-tale sculptures at the children's park near Frunzenskaya subway station - a Russian warrior fighting a jinn and Pushkin's cat and mermaid (I guess):





The park used to be named after Mandelshtam - not Osip the poet, but Aleksandr a Bolshevik. (Have to check this, though.)

- A sign for all kinds of car repairs - tyres and what not - and in the middle, there's a word that I suspect only Armenians and Armeniaphiles tend to notice (our subconscious doesn't let it go unnoticed, that is): khash, served at a cafe that's open from 11 a.am to 11 p.m.

Khash is this wild wild wild soup - do read the Wikipedia entry on it. I've eaten it once - in Iowa City, of all places. I would've enjoyed it more if they hadn't made me drink that obligatory shot of vodka - I've never been a good morning drinker...

5 comments:

  1. I made out car repair/ auto service and of course cafe, but I didn't know what khash was until I read about it, and then I I think I've heard about it. Auto service and cafe are words I already know. My problem is remembering new words. I was thinking 11 to 23 was the price depending on how much you wanted. :) but now I get that.

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  2. I suspect "warrior fighting a djinn" is Ruslan versus Chernomor.

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  3. chernomor... didn't occur to me... why is it that i see him as nothing but this nightmarishly huge head? very scary, still.

    (thanks for correcting me!)

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  4. mmm...khash...putting hooves to good use since 1000 B.C.

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  5. Funny, I just did a post Xas and other offal-based soups. Wikipedia has xas as an exclusively Armenian uh, "treat" but Azeris eat it up like crazy too.

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