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Category: Russia

Adventures In Cyrillic Senior Service

Adventures In Cyrillic Senior Service

In Russia they don’t slow down for much. It doesn’t matter if a tire has gone flat or they’re being shelled by howitzers, they absolutely refuse to stop. If the moon came crashing down onto the Earth I doubt they would even notice let alone care. Driving on a road in Moscow seems about as safe as Russian roulette with a shotgun. Trying to cross a six lane intersection without air support and someone laying down cover fire is downright absurd. Our friend on the motorcycle seems to be the only person to have noticed.

I’m absolutely positive that dedushka would not have made it to the other side. The only person keeping him from being turned into a pancake was motorcycle man. So we salute you anonymous motorcycle man, may your tires stay mended and your breakdowns be few.

[A massive thank you to the awe-inspiring Charles Schneider for gracing us with another video]

So That Explains It. Everyone In Russia Is A Plumber

So That Explains It. Everyone In Russia Is A Plumber


Me? I love plumbers. Anyone that can get a bowl full of finless brown trout to go away is aces in my book.

But of course many people have a love/hate relationship with plumbers. It may have something to do with their bills, which appear to consist of nothing but the biggest number a plumber can think of at any given time, regardless of the chore involved. Granted, they can’t think up a number as big as an ambulance-chasing lawyer or a vinyl siding salesman with a gold tooth, but they do pretty fair for guys with tenth-grade educations.

But bills aside, it’s the plumbers’ belief that “wood is strong” that usually gets everyone’s goats. “Don’t worry, wood is strong” is uttered by all plumbers just before they whip out a sawzall and cut out half your floor framing in order to get in a drain trap for you second floor bath remodel. They hack halfway through the carrying beam for the house to get in a tiny copper line for your icemaker. And whenever a homeowner questions them about removing enough wood for a high school pep rally bonfire just to plumb a sink, they all answer in unison, “Don’t worry, wood is strong.”

Or in this case, Не волнуйтесь, дерево является сильным!

[Thanks to Charles Schneider for sending that one along]

Great Moments In Cyrillic Firefighting

Great Moments In Cyrillic Firefighting

When I see that wonderful Cyrillic alphabet in the title, I always know what I’m going to get.

Well, not exactly what I’m going to get of course. I’m not a mind reader, and everybody in Russia is half out of their minds anyway, so mind reading might not help. But I always have a hunch that something wacky is going on just past the play button. I’m rarely disappointed.

Picture, if you will, the Russian Fire station. The phone is ringing off the hook. There is a wide assortment of supermarkets, apartment buildings, buses, trains, planes, trucks, cars, scooters, nuclear power plants, and mulecarts fully aflame all over the immediate area. There are pools of flammable hazardous waste leaking out of everything, and even the infants smoke. The Dalmation has three legs left from the last time they all got a notion to do something fun.

Sergei or Ivan or Ivor or Leonid answers the phone once in a blue moon, and yells over the frantic cries for help: Call back later; we’re busy out front.

[Thanks to tovarisch Gerard at American Digest for sending that one along]

OK, Hanging Off A Building By Your Fingertips Is Hunky Dory, But I Draw The Line At One-Handed

OK, Hanging Off A Building By Your Fingertips Is Hunky Dory, But I Draw The Line At One-Handed

Ah, so much nope. There’s no nope like Russian nope, of course. Kirill Oreshkin is billed as “Russia’s Spiderman,” but from what I’ve seen on these here Intertunnels, he’s “a” Russian Spiderman, not “the” Russian Spiderman.

Kirill Oreshkin likes taking photographs. Selfies, landscapes, the usual stuff—except his shots are captured atop some of the world’s tallest buildings.

Once Oreshkin gets as high as the stairs or elevator will take him, he often scales up scaffolding or other parts of the structure. The tallest building he has climbed to date is the Mercury City Tower in Moscow. At 338 meters (about 1,109 feet), it’s the tallest in Europe. Oreshkin is one of Russia’s extreme urban climbers, known to hang off the edge of buildings by only his fingers. He does all this unsupervised and without any safety gear.

“Using safety measures changes something—no one is going to recognize that you really risked your life,” Oreshkin says, adding that he knows what he’s doing is dangerous.

Oreshkin’s hobby started in 2008, when he began climbing to the roofs of homes and buildings in his neighborhood. He still doesn’t do any particular physical training, since he says it’s all about having the right mentality. He claims he was nervous about heights at first, and had trouble standing on the edge, which he now does with ease.

“It’s no longer about overcoming myself,” he says. “I just really like doing it. I like to look and study the city from different viewpoints.”

Climbing has become second nature to him. “What’s going through my head when I’m up there? Nothing special,” he says. “I just try to think about hanging tight and staying alive.”

[Thanks to the American Spiderman, Gerard at American Digest, for sending that one along. Well, he’s on the web, anyway]