Lady D and the Circus

Riding a Circus Pony

The Travelling Siberian Circus

The circus has arrived in Tomsk! And not only is it in Tomsk, but it is just by my road and therefore I am living about 50 metres away from two large Siberian bears, monkeys (who tend to be dressed up), some kind of huge snake, a hilarious clown and most importantly, some ponies! I persuaded someone to come with me to see the spectacular travelling circus, and we joined the audience of parents and small children, munching on popcorn and eager for the show. Wow, it was brilliant. Yes it was a very provincial circus, and far from the ‘Cirque de Soleil’, but this made it even more special, and the lack of ridiculous health and safety rules and political correctness was very refreshing. The clown stole someone’s popcorn, snogged someone’s wife and jumped on a man. The ‘strong man’ juggled three chainsaws (after demonstrating how efficiently they could saw logs) and rolled up a frying pan just using his hands. Three dogs rode a horse, and later male members (oh so sexist) of the audience were asked to try and vault onto the horse as it sped around the ring. One of these lucky men unfortunately had not realised how tight his trousers were which resulted in a large split on his bum to the audience's amusement. This was followed by a man flipping backwards from one horse to another as they were cantering (Biddy- this would have been your highlight). Then came the bears. Two magnificent looking bears caught balls thrown from the audience and danced with poodles in their arms. (And for anyone concerned for the health of the poor bears, I can assure you that they looked cheerful and very loved, and at least they were not in a cage like the ones I saw when I first got here.) Overall, the performers were brilliant I got so keen that I asked to ride the horse around the ring in the break. I could not resist.

A sneaky shot of a bear

Apart from my wild Saturday afternoon’s entertainment, we have been busy socialising with the Russian students and teachers that we have met, and I have landed myself some tutoring work. It seems that being a native English speaker has some great advantages! I am getting more and more settled in though some things I doubt I will ever get used to. The staring on the street continues, and Zoe’s host has declared that I look like Lady Diana, or as he says ‘Lady D’ for short. Another thing is pedestrian crossings. Frequently my life flashes before my eyes as I consistently fail to notice the difference between a zebra crossing and a pedestrian crossing. If a driver sees someone crossing the road, you would expect them to slow down. Here, they speed up and beep their horn. If you are really lucky, they will swear at you (even if you are on the supposed zebra crossing). I recently found out that ‘jay-walking’ is illegal, and can cause you to be deported from the country. So I may be coming home a lot earlier than intended!

Last week we went to visit the beer factory and the sweet factory. The beer factory was actually really quite impressive though sadly the guide honestly informed us that the beer is not actually good enough to sell further afield. The sweet factory was very interesting. It felt like we had gone into a time machine as we watched a team of women quite literally making sweets and stirring great caldrons of caramel. The investment into new machinery had evidently been kept to a minimum since the Soviet years and I must admit the quality of «Красная Звезда»'s confectionary reflected it.

To finish off this post, here is a Russian joke. 

(The humour is different here too, so do not expect to find it funny.)

The Sweet Factory

Идёт медведь в лесу, (A bear was walking in the forest)

Видит трактор горит, (He saw a tractor on fire)

Сел в трактор, (He sat in the tractor)

И сгорел. (And he burnt)