As we stared at the large wall of booze, we met two men working who spoke virtually no English. Neither Sarah nor I were walking around in USA gear on that particular day, so they approached us in Russian. Having studied a bit of Russian on Rosetta Stone before leaving, I was able to respond in Russian when they asked how we were doing, but that was about the extent of my Russian-speaking ability. When they responded again in Russian, I apologized and said I didn't understand.
Instead of shrugging us off like I anticipated, both of the men laughed and smiled. "You know Russian!" one of them exclaimed. They asked, in broken English, what we were looking for.
"Good vodka," we explained, "Gift to bring home to our families." They didn't seem to understand, so I pulled out some random words from Rosetta Stone.
"For maya maht and braht and sistrou?" I said hesitantly (in my Russlish there, I was attempting to describe my family, so I said "For my mom and brother and sister?" Sorry, Dad - I couldn't remember how to say father!).
The men understood and quickly snapped the bottles we had previously grabbed out of our hands in favor of a bottle that looked like a Grey Goose bottle relabeled in Russian. I was a little skeptical, but it did have one key piece of English written on the bottle: "Made in Russia."
We thanked the Russian men and were going to head out, but they wanted to continue talking. One of them, who spoke a few more words in English than the other, asked us to tell him every word of Russian we knew. So, I spouted out a variety of random words: dog, cat, one, two, three, thank you, hello, doctor, etc. They seemed to thoroughly enjoy each and every word I shared.
After awhile, we eventually made our way over to the wafer cookies to replenish our supply. Once there, an older Russian man came over to us and pointed at the vodka bottles Sarah and I were now holding.
"Vodka very bad," he said sternly. We both looked up at him, not quite sure if he was cautioning us against alcohol in general or if we had been tricked into purchasing bad alcohol.
"They said it was good?" we replied. He sighed, clearly frustrated.
"No," he said, "Russian vodka very...make you sick."
We still weren't really sure what he was warning us about, but didn't want to seem ungrateful. So, again, we repeated that the vodka was not for us but a gift for others. He nodded and walked away.
Turns out, Russian vodka is much stronger than American vodka and that was what he was trying to warn us about! We recounted our alcohol store experience to some friends at dinner that evening, and they regaled us with their stories trying Russian vodka for the first time. Although neither Sarah nor I drank much in Russia, I think we were both happy to not have to learn that lesson ourselves!
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