Russians are rather tough to surprise about a lot of things. I realized this when I was riding a packed bus back to my neighborhood on a Saturday night with another one of the teachers, who was holding a toilet plunger. He was having some problems with the plumbing in his apartment and needed to borrow the American Home plunger. We though about getting a taxi so as not to been seen carrying such a thing on a crowded bus, but then his Russian girlfriend assured us that no one would find that overly strange.
That got me reflecting on all the strange things I've seen people carrying here in Vladimir. Building materials and car parts are the most commonly carried weird things. People get onto the bus with all sorts of wallpapers, moldings, and tools. The other day, a guy got onto the bus with two windshield wipers in his hands, and I saw someone lugging an exhaust manifold and a big muffler down the street just yesterday. The other day, a guy jammed up next to me on the bus had a big, grimy, black rubber o-ring seal for something that I really hoped wasn't plumbing-related.
Another strange thing you'll see is all kinds of food items. I remember seeing an old woman struggling to get off a trolleybus drop a massive fish (at least two feet long), completely unwrapped, onto the bus floor. Or I've seen many people carrying big jars of all sorts of pickled things on the bus. And, come to think of it, I've been part of this weird phenomenon--I lugged two cooked turkeys into the city center by bus when we had our Thanksgiving celebration.
As a middle class slowly arises in Russia, people are buying cars, but still a large percentage of Russians don't have access to a car, so people make due using public transportation. That results in seeing strange things like someone carrying a vacuum cleaner on a bus (seen it) or my favorite--gruff-looking old guys decked out in winter gear carrying all the tools for ice fishing on the bus (those guys usually smell terrible, too). And the cool thing is that people here are surprisingly nonchalant about it; they understand your situation.
That got me reflecting on all the strange things I've seen people carrying here in Vladimir. Building materials and car parts are the most commonly carried weird things. People get onto the bus with all sorts of wallpapers, moldings, and tools. The other day, a guy got onto the bus with two windshield wipers in his hands, and I saw someone lugging an exhaust manifold and a big muffler down the street just yesterday. The other day, a guy jammed up next to me on the bus had a big, grimy, black rubber o-ring seal for something that I really hoped wasn't plumbing-related.
Another strange thing you'll see is all kinds of food items. I remember seeing an old woman struggling to get off a trolleybus drop a massive fish (at least two feet long), completely unwrapped, onto the bus floor. Or I've seen many people carrying big jars of all sorts of pickled things on the bus. And, come to think of it, I've been part of this weird phenomenon--I lugged two cooked turkeys into the city center by bus when we had our Thanksgiving celebration.
As a middle class slowly arises in Russia, people are buying cars, but still a large percentage of Russians don't have access to a car, so people make due using public transportation. That results in seeing strange things like someone carrying a vacuum cleaner on a bus (seen it) or my favorite--gruff-looking old guys decked out in winter gear carrying all the tools for ice fishing on the bus (those guys usually smell terrible, too). And the cool thing is that people here are surprisingly nonchalant about it; they understand your situation.
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