Russian 101: Водка

Remember my mention of the helpful cognates I’m encountering on my adventures in Russian? Well, here is one I’m sure no one is surprised to learn: Водка (n Vodka).

Before travelling to Bishkek, my friend David gave me Colin Thubron’s Lost Heart of Asia, an account of his trip through Central Asia in the early '90's. At the beginning of the book, he tells quite a few tales of getting caught up in drinking sessions, his guides and travelling companions red-eyed, slurring their words, etc, etc, etc…About a quarter of the way through the book, he’s no longer mentioning excessive consumption of alcohol, or any alcohol consumption at all. I figure our friend Colin has figured out a way to avoid this fast track to cirrhosis altogether, and is spending the rest of his book bonding with his new friends over shashlik instead of vodka toasts. Later on in the book, perhaps sometime after Uzbekistan, he is in the middle of describing another proverbial night around the fire, fingers greasy from shashlik and eyes cloudy from the smoke. “Then,” he writes, “we realized we were out of vodka.” Of course.

This reminded me of the stories of my Turkish teacher in Istanbul, who was always reminiscing about his days in Tashkent, where to decline a drink of vodka was as unthinkable for the Uzbeks as it is for the Turks to refuse to sit down for a tea with a friend.

I have no strong affinity for vodka, but there is something about "vodka culture" that is difficult to not find intriguing.

I hesitate for fear of speaking too soon, but aside from the cheap and abundant liquor, there are less obvious signs of post-Soviet drinking culture in Bishkek than I had anticipated. Bottles of empty beer cans at bus stops – no. Adolescents at night clubs passed out at the bar – of course. Business men and women drinking a can of beer on their way to work – no. Compared to Ukraine it seems almost puritan. Drunk policeman, eating in the same restaurant as you, trying to engage a table of foreigners by shouting who knows what while laughing hysterically, yes. Or maybe I should withhold judgment for the time being.

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In my pre-Bishkek research, I came across the following piece of odd information in the Central Asia Lonely Planet:

Remember, in Bishkek you are never far from a shot of vodka. For those too
busy to actually go inside a bar, most street stalls sell ‘kiosk shots’ (also
known as juice grams) of vodka or cognac for 5 som a nip.

Never mind that this was talking about street stalls, I couldn’t help but imagine that this important societal role was filled by a specialist: an old, quiet man, sitting on the side of a road with a table, bottle of vodka, shotglass, and dirty rag. In short, a vodkaci.

I kept my eyes peeled during my first week in town, not because I fancied a vodka shot in broad daylight, but because my American upbringing has left me absolutely fascinated with the sociological nitty-gritty of drinking in public (and legal prostitution).

After a week without success, my flatmate Daniel and I set out to locate this elusive vodkaci on Saturday. Yes, it really is that uneventful here.

Unfortunately, we could not find the devoted vodkaci of my romantic daydreams. We instead settled for going to a small kiosk selling snacks, soda, and a wider selection of alcoholic beverages than your local Wal-Mart.

Unable to translate “kiosk shot” into Russian, and certain that “juice gram” was just another piece of Lonely Planet garbage, we asked the woman in the kiosk for a “small vodka.” Actually Daniel did, while I tried to hide around the other side of the bus stop.

She knew exactly what we were getting at, and gave us a small plastic cup with foil as a lid (think: the plastic cup of water you get in-flight). This cost 14 som, a bit more than the “5 som a nip” promised in the L.P. This cup held 100 cl. I’m not so great at metric conversions, but that seems a bit more than a “juice gram.”

Currency conversions, on the other hand, are a bit easier: 35 cents. Given that Daniel and I split the foul liquid of our sociological experiment, that is about 17.5 cents each.

Foul, foul indeed. But all in a day’s work as an unemployed studientka, getting by one cognate at a time.