This week I have been watching The Idiot – the Russian TV adaptation of the book, and although the subtitles seem to have been assembled in a hurry, or by a Russian who doesn't know his English too well, often with big chunks of dialogue missing, it's a delight to watch and has made reading the book seem like a less daunting challenge. If only there was a way around the long confusing names.
However, the actor playing Prince Myshkin is the first good-looking Russian man I've seen, which is a bonus.
Other than that I went to the art gallery, saw some 'art' and some sculptures, that was after getting past the Frank Butcher in a Hawaiian shirt lookalike who I assumed was the 'manager'. They clearly don't get many foreigners going in to the art gallery as after the initial excitement and commotion of tying to communicate with the locals we ended up just saying 'take our roubles dammit and let us in, we don't care which Siberian artist we get to view', they seemed quite pleased that we were there, not least because they get more roubles from us for being foreign. Frank Butcher walked away with a grin on his face and we got to see some sculptures made of bone, the same kind that I've seen in the local department store souvenir section. There were some brass sculptures, one of which was of Pushkin, and the rest of whom were of other less well known people.... there were oil paintings of miserable looking men in snow, and lots of traditional Russian artefacts like wooden sculptures and dolls.
And.... more students have cancelled lessons, the heat wave has unsurprisingly changed dramatically into a cold front, with temperatures down to 10 degrees, and I've been invited to a dacha on Saturday. It's all go here, I can tell you.