Or, as it's said in the English-speaking world, Happy St. Patrick's Day! (A few days late, but give a girl a break, huh?)
As apparently the only person in my program, perhaps in all of Russia, proud of my Irish heritage, I decided to represent and wear my green jeans. The professor that I explained this to seemed rather puzzled that the color should matter for a holiday, but I think she just added it to the (presumably long) list of weird things Americans do. I had actually been planning to buy a green scarf for the occasion, but was unable to find a good one. Which leads me to the actual subject of this post: shopping in Russia.
As everywhere, shopping comes in many forms. In Russia, however, shopping for the same item at different stores can provide a vastly different experience. Excluding food shopping, which deserves its own explanation, one can buy stuff at a variety of places. The most obvious is the Western-style mall, complete with such stores as H&M, Zara, Adidas and Reebok. One of these malls is one block away from my class building, so needless to say, exploring has happened. The Galeria, as it's called, is a brand-new building that apparently only opened last year (the academic year students lament that it's become popular--they loved having their own private food court at lunch).
In terms that people familiar with the Boston area can recognize, the Galeria is like the new wing of the "Natick Collection", only bigger (4 or 5 stories and takes up close to a city block) and it has a grocery store, tailor, dry cleaner, pool hall/bar, TGI Friday's, a few sit-down restaurants and a bank in addition to the usual clothing, electronics and shoe stores. Shopping there is exactly like any mall anywhere in the Western world except that the signs are in Cyrillic and the prices all seem ridiculously high until you do the currency exchange rate calculation in your head ("3,000 roubles? what am I made of money? Oh wait, that's about $100, never mind").
The more Russian version of shopping is not evident in the city centre, which is one of the few reasons I'm glad to be living on the outskirts. As it's been staying light later (7pm!!) and I thus have more energy after getting off the metro at the end of the day (seriously, 4pm seems like noon!) I've begun exploring the neighborhood shops more. Something I've been meaning to do almost since I arrived.
Next to my metro stop is (what I think of as) a true Russian shopping center. In the complex are a few big stores, including Буквоед [book-va-ed], a bookstore that I'm sure will become my favorite place once I can actually read full books in Russian. Think of it as the Russian Borders/Barnes and Noble. There are a couple of other chain stores like McDonalds (with free wi-fi), something that from the outside looks like Target, and a few others, but most of the space is comprised of a uniquely Russian phenomenon--the tiny little hole-in-the-wall shop, amongst several others of its kind, that only sells one type of merchandise.
There are hat shops, shoe stores, fur coat closets, dress shops, and even a few shops that only sell men's dress shirts. The amazing thing to me about all these little places is the sheer amount of products they manage to fit into a space that's no more than 10'x10'. The most impressive of these is the hat shops. There are quite a few of them scattered around the 3 floors of the mall and except for the different women scowling behind the counter, you'd swear it was the same shop! Each has hats lining the walls, easily fitting 100+ into the tiny area as well as often having hat stands on the floor limiting your wandering space even further. As the kind of shopper who likes to feel merchandise and look at the price tags, but is also quite short by most standards, this set-up is incredibly frustrating to me.
Russians have a different system of shopping. When you see something you like, or want to look at, you ask the worker at the shop "девушка, скажите пожалуйста..." or "вы не скажете сколько стоит вот эту?" which literally translate respectively as "girl, please tell me..." and "you won't say how much that costs?" the polite ways of asking for help. The problem with this system, however, is that I'm still a bit shaky on my numbers in Russian and I'm also wary of letting people know by my accent that I'm not native. Of course, I'm sure my mannerisms give me away, but I like to pretend that I'm fitting in perfectly. I have decided, however, to get over my pride and buy one of those stereotypical "Russian fur hats" before it's truly spring so I can wear it for at least a few days.
A third and, in my view, stranger system of shopping here in Peter is Gostiny Dvor' (their transliteration). It used to be the site of a market where farmers and tradesmen would come with their goods. At some point in history, it got closed in and is now a huge building that covers a large city block. The odd thing about this place is that when they closed it in they basically made it into a continuous hallway. So to go from store to store, you don't window shop and then pick out where you want to enter, instead you actually walk through the stores on your way to things that actually interest you.
While wandering in Gostiny Dvor' last week, I experienced my first (that I know of) salesperson hovering to make sure I wasn't stealing anything. It was in a fur store, so I guess the merchandise is pretty valuable, but at the same time, what are the odds of me being able to walk off with something? Anyway, as part of my continual search for an affordable yet stylish yet stereotypical fur hat, I stopped in this store. Along one wall were a lot of hats, so I went over to get a closer look. The corridor that people walk through separated this small area from the cashier, but I didn't think that mattered. Five minutes later, when I just couldn't bring myself to pay $100 for a hat (is that normal for fur?), as I turned to leave, I noticed a rather surly employee glaring at me from the other end of the hall wall (about 10 feet away). Now, I hadn't seen her before this moment, but from her stance and the way she followed me with her eyes as I proceeded on, I'm pretty sure she'd been watching me for quite some time.
As a white girl from the suburbs, I've never encountered this attitude from a salesgirl before. I'm aware, of course, that this is often a major issue of racism in the US (blacks being profiled as likely to steal) but the distrust has never been aimed in my direction. Very eye-opening.
So that's my summary of Russian shopping, which I'm sure you were all riveted by. By the way, word to the wise: Russians often don't accept credit cards, even when the price is several thousand roubles. The tiny little shops in the mall near me don't even have machines that are capable of that sort of transaction, but more often than not, the salesperson just doesn't want to deal with the hassle.
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