1st Night in Samara

My first night in the student hostel was an interesting one. Because I had slept all afternoon, I had to force myself to go to bed at midnight in an attempt to get myself on some sort of acceptable schedule normal for humans. So, I turned out the light and lay down on my back, the sweet sounds of Lenny Breau playing on the computer beside me, the blue light from the screen bathing my face (probably with some sort of nasty cancer causing rays).

It wasn’t long before I realized that my bed has a missing spring on one side, and so my right hip gets to dip into a hole. This is not comfortable. But I arrange myself as best as I can, going through those things we all go through when trying to find the best possible position for any given imperfectly balanced bed. That went on from midnight until about 6 am, at which time I got up and gave up, not, however, without grabbing the odd hour of sleep in between position changes.

My restlessness was accompanied by a chorus of dogs, but it wasn’t just any chorus, it was a chorus that seemed to move around quite a bit, sometimes appearing to be right under my window, sometimes migrating to and coming from another direction, or from farther away. Sometimes a single dog barked in a long succession of angry warning barks and was answered by another dog who spoke in responsive explanatory but equally angry barks. Occasionally a bark would break into a howl, and sometimes that lone howl would be joined by the howls of many other dogs, and sometimes it would resolve itself into a receding line of lonely sound. Again, occasionally, a fight would break out, and a melee of two or three or more dogs would start snarling and biting and growling, a occurrence that would lead to inciting yet another pack of dogs to start barking. I had wondered, when I saw the dogs yesterday afternoon, if the back yard of the student hostel was a regular hangout for them, and apparently it is.

It occurred to me, more than once, that someone needs to get out there with a shotgun.
From time to time, though, the dogs would wander off somewhere else, where I couldn’t hear them, and so there was quiet, for a while. It seemed to be at those times that the music or talking or laughing or all three from some other student room would start up. At one point, probably at around 3 am, it sounded as if someone was hammering a nail into the wall below my room.

Later on the 8th
I meet Ksanya at 11:30 in the lobby. I have lost my gloves; at least I can’t find them anywhere in my room. I must have dropped them on my way up yesterday, and the chances are someone has found them and considered themselves lucky. They are great gloves for the cold, and it is cold here.

And so Ksanya is taking me to the mall across the street where I will buy some groceries. As I said earlier, the roads are packed with snow, and it is cold out, about -21 or so. Lying in the snow bank beside the road is a smallish dog, frozen solid, and, well, very dead. I ask Ksanya about the dogs. Why there are so many wild dogs, she tells me, is that there are not good laws about looking after your dog, so people get tired of their dogs, and push them out in the street. And there is no one to look after them. And of course by the light of day I can see that the dogs are attracted to the six garbage bins, filled to overflowing, that are right outside the building where I am staying.

Ksanya, I discover, is in the last year of her masters degree in Philology, the study of language. She speaks English very well, and tells me that she also speaks German, and of course, Russian. She is from a town 60 km away, and hopes to leave Russia when she has finished her education. She has a friend from the Cameroon, who she met through the internet, and who is teaching English in Thailand. What do you think of that, she asks me? I think what she means is what do I think of her going to Thailand to teach English, but I’m not sure, so I change the subject. Ksanya is responsible for me while I am in Samara, so I’m sure there will be other opportunities to pursue such subjects. For now, we are at the grocery store in the mall, and she asks me what I want.

Toilet paper. Sooner or later I am going to have to capitulate and use the bathroom. A hat. I left mine in Vancouver. Gloves. Dropped them on the stairs yesterday. A small kettle for making tea. Two oranges. Two yogurts, a small loaf of black bread, four slices of cheese. Two salads, one with lox and the other with beets. A cup for making tea in. That’s it. There is no fridge where I am living, so I must make do with the few things that I can jam up against my frosted single pane window. The store is close enough that I can come back easily, and there is another store even closer that has a few items. I have a feeling though, that I will be eating a lot of yogurt and bread here.

The mall, though, is an extremely modern one, and includes familiar chains such as The Body Shop. Well, that’s the only one I recognize, but the other stores in the mall include the usual clothing and shoe boutiques. Yes, there is obviously money here, although you wouldn’t know it from the residence washrooms.

The grocery store where Ksanya takes me is large, about the size of the SaveOn Foods in Nanaimo, and has about the same range of goods, including a deli where I bought the two prepared salads, at Ksanya’s suggestions. Russians, you know, she tells me, we eat lots of salads, and so I buy these two salads. On our way back to the residence, as we walk past the dead dog again, Ksanya tells me that there have never been other Canadian international students here, and that very few people speak English. But then she thinks that maybe there are some American and British professors in the English department, and she will find out. I had kind of figured that the numbers of English speakers in this area would be few, given that Samara is not on the Trans Siberian route.

My purchases cost me 1000 rubles.