yesterday was a german day. first off, we bought a few second-hand illustrated german books on arbat street.
then we saw a german-style pub emitting cheerful bavarian tunes with an arrow pointing to it that read 'на берлин' ('to berlin' - they used to write that on soviet tanks towards the end of the war).
then at a grocery store i saw a kid watching slot machine demo. the demo featured playing cards, coins, a grinning nazi officer opening safes filled with golden bars and holy grails, and a busty kath-the-radio-operator type girl dressed in a short-skirted nazi uniform. kid's mother left him by the screen after a second's hesitation, and joined the queue. the short demo ran over and over as he stared at the screen, sometimes laughing and jumping with exitement, until she returned with her groceries and took him away.
then we talked about an old friend who studied deutsch and spent some years in germany working for consumer electronics firms like bosch. we used to call him nazi for that and for his hitler-style haircut, and he often referred to germany as his 'naziland.'
then i took a burgher-style shot of natasha dressed in an old german dress holding two german tankards captured during ww2.
then in the evening i watched
metropolis emma_loy downloaded from the internet.
and that was the end of that day, as drab and scheußlich as most of my days lately, but unique it its germanness.