Entry 3: Borsch Tartare

Our journey began with finding our compartments, which proved to be slightly smaller than I expected/remembered, but otherwise pretty comfortable. All in all, there were 7 in our group -- 4 boys and 3 girls -- and, due to entirely counterproductive rules of decorum, it was allotted that all the boys should sleep together in one compartment while the girls would sleep in a different compartment with a complete stranger. It would look too bad for our organization, the reasoning went, if boys and girls in our group were to share a compartment... nevermind the fact that the consequences could be all the more dire. At any rate, the girls' roommate turned out to be a man named Renat, a Tatar construction worker in his forties (though he looked to be in his late twenties) on his way home to Kazan (what could be sketchy about that?). Upon finding out that it was the birthday of one of the girls in our group, he proposed that we celebrate in some way as befits a birthday celebration in Russia... I trust you, dear reader, can already see where this is going. Yes, he brought us vodka, and pickled mackerel to go with it. So we drank and talked for most of the night, with me serving as interpreter for the most part. Finally, as I head off to bead, one of the girls goes off with Renat and, as I find out later, makes out with him. Apparently, she had no intention of taking it any farther than the one minute it lasted, but he thought otherwise, hassling her and attempting to crawl into her bunk until she finally decides to seek shelter in our compartment. Well, I hate to say I told you so, but let's hope Learning Enterprises has learned its lesson this time.
At any rate, we found ourselves in Kazan the following morning and bid goodbye to Renat, who had had the good sense to simply keep quiet all morning and affect a look of remorse or some such other feeling approximating guilt. Kazan, as the reader may or may not already know, is the capital of Tatarstan, one of many autonomous republics within the Russian Federation that allows an ethnic minority to remain semi-independent and in control of its own affairs. The Tatars are a people of Muslim faith and Mongol-Turkic ancestry, descendents of the great Mongol horde that swept across the endless steppe in the 9th century and began demanding tribute from the native Slavs. I suppose the situation has almost come full circle now, as the Russian government allows the Tatar people to remain autonomous, so long as they render tribute in the form of taxes and otherwise generally comply with national demands. As a linguist, I was quite pleased to have the occasion to meet with specimens of the Tatar language -- which I had mistakenly assumed to be nearly extinct. Renat mentioned that the Tatar word for "thank you" was rakhmy, which I assume is derived from the Arabic rakhman, meaning "Lord". Moreover, in a small town called Agryz (a Tatar name, I assume), I also had the good fortune of seeing the language in print: here's a sign for a convenience store which reads ashamlyklar. I was very pleased to note that the word on the sign exhibits the vowel harmony (all the vowels are back vowels) and the -lar/-ler plural ending characteristic of Turkish and its relatives (I should note that the Russian is also in the plural). It's encouraging to know that ethnic minorities still exist and are able to preserve their language, traditions, and general way of life. As this is a topic which interests me greatly, our reader should expect to hear more about it in later posts...