As students advance in their study of Russian, they eventually encounter the words тоже and также, both of which can be translated as “also.” The difference between the two is complex.¹ But if you are a really sneaky Russian student, then you can sometimes avoid both words by using и. For instance:

¹ The best description of the difference between the two words I've seen for beginners is in Richard Robins's first-year textbook Голоса, pp. 123-124. For a more complete description look at Nakhimovsky and Leed's “Advanced Russian,” which gets to the essence of the topic in terms of theme-rheme.

Today we'll learn about asking “How long does it take to get to such-and-such a place.” Probably the easiest way is to use the phrase «как долго» “how long” followed by a unidirectional infinitive and the prepositions от/до. (От and до are usually used to mean “from” and “to” when talking about distances or times.) Of course, you will want to change the verb depending on the mode of transport:

If you want to ask about how long it will take on a particular occasion, then of course you can use either the past or future as well:

The phrase «сколько времени» can replace «как долго» in all those sentences and will mean the same thing.

Пельмени (pelmeni) are these tiny, delicious, uniquely shaped, dumpling-like bits of dough filled with a combination of meat, onions and various spices. The key to creating a perfect пельмень is to get the shape right, because no matter how good your pelmeni taste, people won’t give you credit if they look sloppy or deformed or fall apart in one’s plate. It might be a bit tough at first but it’s very simple cooking, so a little practice is all that’s needed (unless you have extremely clumsy hands like me). The original, Russian recipe that most people use requires the meat to be a trio of beef, pork and lamb that is than mixed with onions and black pepper. Пельмени can be fried or boiled in either water or bouillon (usually boiled) and must be served with sour cream—it’s essential for the full eating experience. I don’t recommend you buy preprepared, packaged ones at the store; they never taste as good as homemade. Overall, it’s impossible not to like this plain Russian dish when it's done right.

Пельмени topped with sour cream
Image taken from gotovim.ru

Here are some example sentences:

After their first week of class all Russian students know that и means “and”:

It's so simple, why the heck would anyone bother to blog about it? Listen carefully, my children: the word и will save you grief in learning Russian. For instance, once you have learned the word и, you never have to learn a separate word for both! For instance…

See how easy that is! And what's wonderful is that it's not only nouns that can be coordinated that way, but also verbs, adverbs, and prepositional phrases:

Actually the и can connect more than two words. In English, theoretically, we should only use “both” when coordinating two items, but sometimes when we are not thinking too carefully about what we are saying, we use it in constructions where more than two items are coordinated:

In Russian it's perfectly fine to coordinate more than two items with и, whereas in English if you use “both” in the context, rude pedants will correct you. I say “rude” because Mama taught us that we shouldn't correct the speech of other people unless they specifically ask us to.

Пластинка is a slang term for a грампластинка (gramophone record) and can be translated as record. Another popular slang term that is still around in both English and Russian is винил, which simply means vinyl.

Records were always a big deal in almost any household that had at least a tiny stray of affection for music and some type of a gramophone. Records of groups like the Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd and the Beatles were a huge deal amongst меломанов (passionate music lovers) because they were really hard to obtain, especially in the 60’s and most of the 70’s, the golden years of rock-n-roll. For example one of my relatives was allowed to occasionally travel abroad, and always brought back a couple of Led Zeppelin and Beatles albums for which people always offered him serious rubles. The main reason for this is because a lot of western music was considered to be ideologically inconsistent with the morals of the state and was largely frowned upon by the government. The biggest Soviet record label Мелодия (Melody), at first didn’t distribute certain albums and songs that were widely popular in the West at the time. In return, people found creative ways to get around this dilemma, like “burning” music onto records made out of large X-ray prints, known as запись "на костях" (recording "on the bones"). Fortunately by the mid 80’s, the restrictions began to faded off, finally warranting people to listen to what they liked and allowing numerous Russian rock bands like Кино and Зоопарк to go mainstream.

Image from livejournal.ru

Photo of a record "on the bones." The music was recorded onto someone's X-ray print. I think I'll make one out of my grandfather's lung shots.

Here are some example sentences: