To and from Russia with love

Dominique has been invited to speak at a conference in Moscow in the autumn. She’s had a bit of paperwork to fill in as you can imagine. She needed to know the exact dates of her last visit to Russia. It was a school trip back in 2004. I received a message asking if I knew the dates (I don’t even know what day it is most of the time). Fortunately, I remembered blogging about the trip, so I told her to look it up. As it happens, I had blogged about taking her to the bus at the start of the trip and I blogged about collecting her at the end. I was really pleased that I could be of help.

If she’d have asked for dates from the last couple of years I’d have been no help at all.

Oh those Russians

Dom has gone off to Avignon this weekend with her boyfriend . They’ve been invited to a Russian wedding. When they met, they both met someone who can speak Russian – if you see what I mean. On the way to the station in the car last Sunday evening they were talking to each other in Russian. It’s a lovely language to listen to; like a cat purring. Reminded me of Illya Kuryakin ‘sigh’. Illya even has his own Wikipedia page!

Talking of Russia, Dom asked me the other day if I had heard anything of Spyke Martin. He helped her with her Russian homework once. ( Are you out there somewhere Spyke? – we miss you!). Spyke is a French Canadian, bear hugging, tomato paste loving, ex priest, last known to be living in Denmark. Has anyone any news of him?

Russian lesson

Today is the day where we learn a little Russian, to go with the soup. Contrary to popular opinion Cyn does not mean sin. ‘C’ in Russian is usually pronounced ‘S’, ‘y’ sounds like ‘oo’ and what looks like an ‘n’ is prounced ‘p’; so if you put that together you get Soup. Surprise, surprise!

As you’ve all been such good students, here is your reward.

Russian Soup

This is what I tried for lunch today – Russian soup. I managed to translate how long to cook it for, but Dom helped me with the rest. Like most dehydrated soups it was very salty. I wouldn’t buy it again, even if I could.