How to Outdrink the RUSSIANS

Editorial note: click on the pics to view in full, they appear not to fit in the column!

Visiting St Petersburg before drinking vodka...

Russians have a tremendous reputation, to the point that most people don't even include them when discussing comparative merits related to drinking. It's like they're on a podium of their own, disconnected from us modest Europeans in the same way that their language is abstruse and maybe even hostile to our own.

After having spent some time in the city of St Petersburg, and even having learnt a little of their idiom, I can say that their reputation is only partly deserved. The full picture needs some elucidation. I can testify that the Russians drink spirits with a fervour and a stamina no-one in Europe, or anywhere else I know, have a hope in hell of matching. The prime lubricant is, of course, vodka. The way they down it is insane, and that's the end of it. Shot after shot after shot after shot after shot. And while they do assume a certain euphoria, little if anything else in their demeanour would reveal them to be drunk. They don't stagger, they don't slur, they don't fall down, they don't lose the thread of their conversations, they don't stop doing whatever it is they're doing. They do earn a killer breath, true, and they dance like idiots, but the latter is only because they don't know how to dance - their technique is poor of its own accord, with no need for the inebriation to explicate it.

They're very strong on other liquors as well. Cognac, brandy, rum, you name it. The heavier, the better, usually that's the rule. Sweeter spirits, of the type yours truly most enjoys, are considered to be toothpaste, if that.



What really surprised me about the Russians, and what makes them not just accessible but even relatively easy to outdrink, is that they can't take beer. Other drinks of lighter kind, like cheap champagne, are also a barrier for them. I know this sounds absurd, but I've seen it happen with my own eyes, and with multiple individuals. Hell, I even drank a few of them under the table myself. On one occasion on the Nievska, we went out three of us for a pub crawl and within the third beer they were already whoozing. I couldn't understand what the fuck was going on with them as the day before I'd seen them down a bottle of whisky between the two of them and they were waltzing down the Prospect. (This is another common practice which, when going out drinking with Russians, you must at all costs AVOID: they usually buy a bottle of heavy spirits at a supermarket on the way to wherever they're going, and they down it as they walk, so that by the time they get there, it's all finished. Try drinking with them at that point, and you'll be so drunk by the time you get to your destination that you probably won't be allowed inside, never mind start a duel).

It was only later in the night that I figured that what had messed them up had been the beer. They were so unaccustomed to it, that even a couple of litres had sent them flying. Russians are the diametric opposite of the Germans: while the latter can take obscene amounts of beer, but they faint if someone opens a bottle of limoncello in the vicinities and they perceive its scent, the Russians can imbibe enough vodka (et similia) to kill an adult mule, but they flake when having to handle beer. More than that, they don't even have the culture, the understanding or the conception of what beer is. There's one video where I'm downing a litre-pint (a rather common exercise at the Oktoberfest), and it happened to be shot in Petersburg. You've got to believe that the people around me were literally gaping, even though my pace was much of an adagio. They reacted just like I did when I first saw them downing vodka, as it were.

...and strolling through St Petersburg AFTER vodka. Yeah, that's snow

When drinking with a Russian, take care not to begin with the spirits until as late as possible. Demand that no drinking should start until it is 'officially' sanctioned, that is to say, at the pub. Then buy the first and maybe the second rounds of drinks yourself, and use the auctoritas awarded to you by your generosity to make these beer or cider. Try organising a drinking game involving several glasses of beer and the downing of them (this will increase the likelihood that everyone will stick to this beverage later on, too).

Keep to these rules, and you'll see that the egregious reputation of the Russians doesn't make for such an invincible dragon after all.

Remembering Saint Petersburg

I was sitting in a bar off Nevsky Prospect - the Tower Pub, it was called - and I had my usual armament spread out before me: a porcelain tea-kettle, the cup, a packet of cigarettes tossed by the crimson tissues, the Tower Bridge box of matchsticks which I called my luck, and the blue Wordsworth Classics paperback of Crime and Punishment. I'd reckoned that now that I was in Russia was as good a time as any to catch up with my Dostoevsky, and I'd been taking it to the bar to kill my long daylight hours, alongside the poetry books I was meant to review for Jon.

Holidays as I like to enjoy them are more about the night-life than they are about the day, or, for that matter, the place. I saw very little of St Petersburg in terms of art and culture in my second visit (not that the city is lacking). I did flesh out the more transient world of discos and clubs, and that with a certain assiduity. By day, though, when no-one is about and you can't really do much without also spending much, the only thing to do is to find a pub, sit there with literature and some vice (alcohol, fantasies, cigarettes, sweets or an old sorrow), and let the mind go until it forgets about time. Eventually, you also forget that you are there to forget about time. And then you put the mobile phone on the table and send random texts to people you know. Their answers are shaken out into your blue digital window over the breadth of an hour or two or three - it makes no difference, by that stage you do not remember - and when the night folds over the city, you usually have a place to go.

I made it my policy not to socialise too much with the staff. I really needed a place where I could feel welcome any time I went, and I've found that often the best way to ensure a consistent good disposition from other people is to keep your mouth shut. Besides, I didn't want to look like I came there to look for friends. The only time I made some contact with others in there, barring the times when the sun was down, I was approached by someone else. There was a cul-de-sac at the end of the pub with some tables, where I usually sat on the padded benches against the wall, my things resting on the wood in front of me. There was the best light in that corner, and I'd been meditating there for the early afternoon. Somewhere further down my right, a bulky, curly-haired figure of considerable height and weight, dressed entirely in black, sipped a beer at the languid rate of a bradypeptic. Every two or three sips he'd light himself a cigarette, held like a sword of chalk on his clothes full of night.

'That's one of the most amazing books I've ever read,' he said to me, at one point when I was lost in my thought. He spoke in perfect English, with this skirled, slightly nasal voice. His finger was pointing to my Dostoevsky. I smiled at him, looking for a discussion of any type but the literary, and quickly changed the subject. Our exchange was tentative and broken - neither of us were over-eager for a conversation, but we did not disdain the distraction. I reasoned to myself that I had several turns of the clock to go and that it wouldn't hurt to spend a half-hour now in chat with this local. We spoke vaguely about our jobs and backgrounds, he said his name was Kyle, if I remember correctly, and he was Canadian. He'd come here to Russia for business (what else? But then I know what else), and he'd worked on a ship too, in some remote past when he had no money.

'Some time ago I was coming out of the metro,' he told me, 'and I was addressed by this beggar. A bum. And I said something to him in German and he replied, also in German. I was pretty riddled to find a bum in St Petersburg who could express himself in a good German language, with no accent and all, so I asked him, howcome you speak German? And he told me, I've been here since the war. There was snow and everything. He tells me this, he tells me, I've been here since the war, and I couldn't come back, and I've been in slave labour camps and all.' He said everything in pretty much a monotone voice. We'd both lit cigarettes as he was talking. 'And after that I came here to St Petersburg, and I had no papers and all, and I was stuck. There was nothing for me here, and even if I could go back now, there would be nothing for me home. And I told him, you poor bastard. I told him, you poor bastard. This was one guy who had been through some shit.'

There was a tone of genuine compassion in his voice, not at all marred by the note of humour which rang through it (it was the enjoyment of telling a good story). When his phone trilled he answered in Russian. 'Priviet, Vassily,' he said, and stood to pace about the lounge. It was a short while later that he left, leaving me his card. It had been a pleasant chat.

I returned to my Dostoevsky, ordering a fruit beer to go with. I walked out a few hours later and I reflected with no jealousy on how ordinary, even how easy it is to find tragedy in Russia. Maybe this characterises the country more than the cold and the snotty skies. Or maybe the two things are linked in mysterious ways.

I started crushing a line of snow as I headed for the hostel, my hands curled into fists into gloves into pockets, my forehead low under the fuzzy hood. Another time, I would have cherished the opportunity. I would have called it gratifying to have the chance to let him live on a little - I'd have been under the deterministic impression which tells a budding story-teller that stories redeem, that morality has a voice, that responsibility is fulfilled by words. I guess the bum's best hope is not to be under the same delusion.

History played around with him a little, and now the only enemies which deign him with attention are the parasites of myth. (That, and the cold, of course). If he knew that I'm telling his story, or that I have the power to lift it from the snow of memory, I'm sure he'd still get it backwards. His story is an invisible house of cards, which only makes sense because it is untold. Even if I could give him immortality, I wouldn't have the heart.

Post-script. The Tower Pub has a site. Ella disliked the place, disdaining it as 'boring,' though I suspect her disinterest was cultural in its origin. Those who wish to see the setting for this story can find out a little here: http://pub-tower.ru/