russia... a land of drink, but not of broccoli

This afternoon I made the trek to the big grocery store at the mall - the walk is so much more enjoyable in the sun than in the snow! I needed to buy some dental floss and I wanted to buy some broccoli, and the Real is the only place where I've seen either of these things (I haven't been able to find either at any of the grocery stores or fruit and veggie stands around our house). I've been wanting to make a delicious looking salad that I found the recipe for on everybody likes sandwiches, a wonderful blog that will definitely appeal to you if you love food. YUM. Unfortunately, there was NO broccoli... I'll have to bus downtown to the market - I will persevere though! I want to make this salad!! Dental floss, on the other hand (way less exciting than broccoli and a chance to make a yum-salad) I found... so exciting. This is my life in Russia.

I've had a lot of comments about the ghetto-ness of a picture I posted on facebook of an apartment block around here, so I thought I'd take some more pics - the buildings do not seem to get better with the weather. So, voila.




I've also been meaning to post this picture of the vodka aisle in the grocery store - the alley devoted to beer is also pretty extensive, but this is just the vodka.... crazy. I think the cheapest bottle is around $2? It's pretty small - maybe 500ml. I guess that's why it's so cheap. Right... High class vodka like Absolut is mega-cher, and we've found a pretty good bottle (for about $8)that we call Imitation Grey Goose because the bottle is a designed in the same way Grey Goose is - a knock off that is indiscernable (at least to me) from the original. I'll just claim that I can't remember what Grey Goose tastes like, or if I've ever had it (or had too much.)

This is ALL vodka...

I know that Russia is known as a country of hard drinkers... but I didn't really know anything about alcoholism here - there is SO much information about alcohol consumption, but here is a brief run down. Alcoholism is tabbed as the reason why life expectency for men here has dropped to 58, and maybe this is why: "Many Russians labour under the misapprehension that beer is a soft drink, and that’s the way it’s marketed. To compound the problem, vodka is cheaper than most soft drinks..." I wouldn't disagree about the seeing beer as a soft drink thing, and the cheapest vodka is similar in price to a two litre bottle of Coke. I saw a lady drinking a beer in the parking lot today, waiting with her cart of groceries.... and there are always people in the park, at all times of the day, drinking beer... young and old, male and female, stroller-pushers and non-stroller pushers alike. Annual alcohol consumption, in litres (of pure alcohol) per head here is 15; the article didn't cite any statistics for Canada, but to put this number into perspective, Australia's measures in at 9.8 and number of litres per head in the U.S. is 8.4. In another article I found this statistic (last one, I promise) - in 2006, 12 billion litres of alcohol were sold in Russia, 75 per cent of which was beer! Vodka accounted for 16 per cent of sales, hard liquor and wine eight per cent and cognac one per cent. So! Even though I don't think that Russia will ever shake it's vodka-touting image... beer has made it's way in there too - maybe a vodka in one hand and a beer in the other? I'll just take the beer thanks...