What to Do With With a Family Who Won't Talk to You

The terminal time I went to America, I stopped in at a café for a coffee. While waiting for my bill of fare to get through, the adult female backside the counter smiled and said, "What are your plans for the weekend?"

And I said, "Uh, I dunno."

"The weather is nice, huh?"

"Certain is," I replied.

This is an case of small talk. Information technology's the mouth's version of drumming its fingers.

An attempt to do pocket-sized talk in Russia

Dorsum in Russia, I met my friend Elena for coffee.

"Why did you write that if you lot talk to Russiansthey might want to murder and eat you?" she asked.

"They practise! When yous try to talk to them with small talk."

"Not true," she said.

"Yep information technology is, especially with strangers."

She shook her caput and rolled her eyes at me.

"Right, so like when y'all're in line at the shop, if I were to randomly outset talking to y'all well-nigh something impaired, similar if I started telling yous near my day and how much I liked your blouse or the weather."

"No one would do that," she said.

I laughed. "Oh, oh yes, in America they exercise."

She looked at me, suspicious, every bit though I'd just said, "You know in America, people eat their own toes with ketchup."

The affair is, the only time a stranger has ever volunteered something random to me on the streets of Russia, it was a dainty old blind woman who said, "Oh, aren't you a handsome boy" before turning to the air beside my face and maxim "...and you too."

What Russians think about small talk

I asked a few Russians what they idea nigh small talk and received responses similar:

"I personally hate small talkers - why they are talking to me? Are they actually interested in my mood? Tin't they find out the weather on the internet? Are they going to ask some favor from me? Just get abroad or say what you want directly!"

And:

"Russians don't really see the bespeak of talking about obvious and banal things, it's just tiresome to us and is non a role of our culture."

Another Russian I spoke to thinks geography influences small talk: "Location ways a lot," he said. "I recall that it's all about the weather: yous merely don't talk much where yous only come across snow and darkness for eight months. Y'all can talk endlessly where the sunday is shining all the time and the vino is complimentary of charge."

The verdict seemed grim.

Simply I didn't desire to just take people's word for it, so I decided to go out and endeavor out some small talk on Russians. There's a store down the road with a footling café stand up in it where I get my morning coffee. The shopkeepers know me, when I walk in one volition say, "Hello my friend," and the other, "How are you?" but conspicuously doesn't wait a response. So, while waiting for my coffee I turned to the man behind the counter and said in Russian, "And then, the weather condition today, huh?"

He frowned at me, then looked over my shoulder at the pissing pelting and icy sidewalks of St. Petersburg in Jump and said:

"F*ck the weather "

"Are y'all talking to me?"

I did this in forepart of my friend Ivan at a café. The lady behind the counter had only handed me my latte and I said, "It's going to be a nice weekend, any plans?"

She straight-upward ignored me and I turned to detect Ivan frowning. "Are yous talking to me?" he asked.

"No, I was trying to have small-talk, you know, just talk with the barista."

"But yous have a girlfriend?"

"What? Yeah, no, only modest talk, y'all know, talk about something completely useless for the sake of engaging in chat."

He idea near it for a bit and and then on the walk back to my identify he said, "Sometimes I wish there was smaller talk, my friends are always talking almost such philosophical things." And then he added, "But it does happen sometimes, in the shop the other day I nigh forgot to buy a lighter for my cigarettes and the woman backside the counter told me about how all morning she needed a lighter but couldn't notice a working 1 and she believed she was cursed. Is this common in America?"

I said, "Aye, especially in the south. And very often when I'm in shops conversations will get stuck up virtually the weather, or the news, or some-such nonsense."

"Maybe, it'southward and then lone people can hide ameliorate. If yous're all talking all of the fourth dimension, then how would you know who is solitary?"

Big talks

If there are Russians who enjoy small-scale talk, I haven't met them.

On the contrary, Russians like big and sometimes very personal talk - y'all might meet a Russian, especially on the train or in a bar, and within a few hours be as thick as thieves.

I came across this in my quest for minor talk in the dingy Pushkin Bar. I was choosing a beer. There was only i other man in the place besides the bartender and he stood at the counter and watched me. At present, in America, I might turn to the homo and say, "How'south it going?" and he would nod, smile and say something similar, "Not bad, keen, some atmospheric condition we're having." And I'd say, "Yeah."

Merely when I turned to this man, who I afterward (much later) learnt was named Tim, and said, "How's it going?" something very different happened.

Five hours later I was sat at the birthday party of Tim's all-time friend in a identify he referred to as "a Soviet bar." I knew that Tim's father had been a full general in the military and that many people effectually town respected his family for his father's service. I knew that Tim could recite Shakespeare, considering he did, and that his mother had left his father when he was very young and moved into her ain apartment and that his begetter had died. I knew that he all the same lived with his mother and that surely, she'd honey me and surely, I was welcome for dinner and to stay the nighttime. Oh, and by the way, my name is Tim.

The thing is that small talk isn't a way of talking to someone, it's talking at them - at that place is no depth or purpose to it; it is like an awkward high schoolhouse dance to the final 30 seconds of a bad song with no rhythm. It is boring, and Russians tend to be annihilation just slow. Later, every bit I walked forth the street with an inebriated Tim, he began telling me near his time in New York City earlier we were stopped past an older woman.

"Female parent!" Tim cried.

"This is my mother."

The woman glared at me and then grabbed Tim by his jacket.

"Yous fool, what are you doing walking effectually in this cold. And you're drunk!!" she cried at him, then wrapped his scarf tighter around his neck. Tim swayed a flake, before breaking loose to go vomit into the snowbank.

I looked at his female parent, she at me.

I felt awkward. I said, "So, uh, the weather condition, huh?"

She frowned, "F*ck the weather."

Benjamin Davis , an American writer living in Russian federation, explores various topics, from the pointless to the profound, through conversations with Russians. Final time he explores what exercise Russians remember of Trump. Next fourth dimension he will explore gun ownership in Russia. If you lot accept something to say or want Benjamin to explore a particular topic, write us in a comment section below or write us on Facebook .

If using whatever of Russian federation Beyond's content, partly or in full, ever provide an agile hyperlink to the original material.

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Source: https://www.rbth.com/lifestyle/330182-small-talks-weather-russia

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