Kazan — summer 2010

Wow, what a day. Exhausting if excellent. After classes in the afternoon we had one of the best lectures I've ever heard in Russia in terms of lectures delivered to foreign students. It covered Russian criminal law, civil law and tax law. The speakers made excellent word choice in terms of selected vocabulary most likely to be understood by non-Russians, although of course with such a technical topic you can't avoid technical terms, and they paced their speech at a rate that was very sensible. Most likely the students didn't realize that because they are only in third-year, but compared to the machine-gun fire rate of other lectures and tours I've had in Russia, this was stellar.

Then we had a three hour break, during which I walked around the nearer portion of Lake Kaban. Took a zillion pictures, but I probably won't have time to go through them until the weekend.

In the evening we went to a play at the Tatar Theater. Very interesting. The play is in Tatar, but simultaneous translation is available by headset in Russian and English. The accent on the English translation at the beginning of the play was so thick as to be almost incomprehensible. The play itself seemed to use dolls/puppets as an analogy for the rich (especailly men) controlling the lives of the poor and women. I suspect Ibsen influence.

An amusing moment... we had a change of classroom for the morning. They blocked off a path on the second floor, so to get to some of the second floor classrooms, you have to go up to the third floor, cross, then go down another staircase. Ah, now this feels like the old Russia that I loved!

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