My friend is married to a Frenchman. She rarely visited Russia, but always alone. One day, my curiosity got the better of it, and I couldn't stand it. I asked why my husband didn’t want to come at least once and take a look at our Russian reality, evaluate, so to speak, our way of life with his French view. Or not everyday life.
A little hesitated and slightly embarrassed, she reluctantly admitted:
"Yes, he is afraid... It's always cold, he says. But he doesn't like... "
Without scarf
Paul, who grew up in Toulouse, which is 200 km from the Cote d'Azur, despite his marriage to a Russian, was never deeply interested in anything Russian except, in fact, his wife. Not politics, not the weather. At all the assurances that the summer in Moscow is not critically different from the temperature in Toulouse or Paris, he rolled his eyes wearily. You never know what they write on these Internet! When he arrives, he will fill up with snow!
But one day she persuaded him. Deciding that a little coolness would not harm the French body, he dared to go with his wife to cold Moscow. We crossed paths in a cafe and finally got to know each other. I asked him how he felt about Russia, how the weather, how everything in general. He was amazed at the renovated Moscow, which already several years ago was very different from pictures on French TV, and from the thermometer, which that day stopped at + 33ᴼС.
When they returned back, my friend wrote me a message on VKontakte that Paul on the very first working day with with burning eyes he told his colleagues that the jacket and scarf he had taken from home had never been in Moscow. needed!
Anecdotal mythology
I never cease to be sincerely surprised at the images of Russia in the eyes of foreigners. I had a feeling that the idea that here in winter and in summer the same color (white, of course), that everything is covered with snow, was powdered, and bears roam the streets - all this remained in bad bearded anecdotes and has long been covered with dust, mold and eloquent pictures from Instagram. But no, not really.
A few weeks ago, I read an article on an American website that
was dedicated to dispelling well-known myths. And there was such a myth: "There is always snow in Moscow." And the author talked about our real climate, illustrating with photographs from the Alexander Garden, taken on a summer day:
“Do you see this grass, this sun, these people who are resting in the garden? Do you think this is filmed somewhere in Australia? No, this is Moscow, this is Russia! "
Last week I was walking down the street, shutting my eyes from the sun and trying to peel my blouse off my back. She walked and thought: what if they all come here now! Everyone who, going to Moscow, takes a jacket, a scarf and remarkable courage.
© Asya Shutkova
