Serpent's cyclic log

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Re: Serpent's cyclic log

Postby rdearman » Fri Jun 16, 2017 3:53 pm

zenmonkey wrote:
Serpent wrote:there are some pics from the gathering on my instagram :D
https://www.instagram.com/serpent849/ more pics from Bratislava and Vienna are coming, but I'm done posting pics from the event itself.


Those are great!

Pretty cool, you got out more than I did I think.
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Re: Serpent's cyclic log

Postby Serpent » Wed Dec 20, 2017 1:13 am

I have a confession to make. Russian managed to slip back into my online life via a travel forum (awd.ru) :oops: I joined it over a year ago, mostly to browse their list of external competitions (those where you can win tickets, a hotel stay etc). I've been meaning to post about this in the thread about "what you can't avoid in L1", and initially I did my best to stick to the topics that I genuinely can't find on a non-Russian site, like visas for Russian citizens, flights from Russia, Russian airlines, those aforementioned competitions. However, they also have a section that is very much like our logs here - travel reports. I read only a small percentage but it's still a huge time sink. But-but-but they're just too wonderful :shock:
I thought I'd at least share some links here, mostly those with an unusual style.

Italy: Rome, Adriatic coast. Extremely colloquial and funny writing by a mum of two whose family is just discovering the joy of not relying on package tours.
Madrid and its surroundings. The specific post is simply a delicious description of a meal, reminded me a lot on Como agua para chocolate. It was written by the forum member's wife (who does have her own account but rarely uses it). His own posts are great too. They're a Belarusian couple from Minsk and you can also easily find their posts about Belarus, Poland, Ukraine (no registration needed).
Portugal. I just love this user's excitement and honesty about any problems while travelling.

And yeah, Serpent849 with over a thousand posts is obviously me :oops: To some extent this definitely has to do with vanity. But I did help quite a few people I guess. My New year's resolution is to use that forum less. I'm sorry to say that it probably did cause me to neglect HTLAL sometimes.
BTW, I only realized recently that awd stands for "all world drive" :lol: Criiiinge.
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Re: Serpent's cyclic log

Postby Iversen » Thu Dec 21, 2017 9:23 pm

First I read the Portuguese travelogue - marvelous photos and also interesting text - and then I wondered: what do those Russians write about Denmark? Well, Denmark is coupled with Sweden, but I did find the relevant part of the forum and spent at least an hour time reading about things like the visa formalities to get into the Schengen area, and gosh ...it looks as complicated as the things we have to do to get a Russian visum, including obtaining letters from hotels and other things. I also read about a ticket that permits you to travel from Copenhagen to Scania (Skåne) and back. I have travelled on the same ticket a couple of times, and it is quite entertaining to read about such practical things from the perspective of foreign tourists visiting my home country (and Sweden) for the first time. I haven't had time to delve into travel information and other texts about more exotic destinations, but there is a lot to take from, and it is a good supplement to my usual fare of Wikipedia articles.

So thanks for the link.
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Re: Serpent's cyclic log

Postby Serpent » Fri Dec 22, 2017 2:42 am

Glad you enjoyed :) I think there used to be a common Scandinavian subforum but then there were so many threads about Norway that it was separated from the other two. Also, there's a section for multi-country travelogues (mostly by car) and there should be more Denmark there. Very few visit Denmark without going somewhere else, whether Sweden/Finland or Germany/Poland.

BTW, a word of caution - the forum is heavily optimized for search engines, which is reflected in many section and thread titles. For example even the offtopic subforum is called не туристический* форум (non-tourism forum), to attract hits for the opposite ie tourist forum :D Similarly, no Russian would ever write Швеция Дания форум unless they are googling (or yandex'ing).
*нетуристический usually implies a lesser-known or lesser-visited place, one that is not full of tourists. Can be one that is underrated or simply hard to access/expensive and not seen as worth the price by most. Even if the meaning is obviously different, I don't think it's considered correct to write the не separately.

As for Schengen visas, nowadays a simple printout from booking.com etc is normally enough. Here's a fascinating story of a young woman who booked a hotel in Odder for 20 days (in order to get a visa), while she was actually going to stay with a friend. The embassy called her twice (this is really uncommon) asking if she really plans to stay there. She ended up admitting the truth and getting the visa :D
Poland is a major exception btw, because it's so common to pass through the country on the way to somewhere else. Your booking has to be partially prepaid.
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Re: Serpent's cyclic log

Postby Serpent » Mon Jan 15, 2018 11:43 am

Atarion wrote:thanks
hm you have very intresting english-style in your expressions and what is your native country? I mean country where you born.
Atarion wrote:хм. не знаю как это по английски будет, россия-то большая. вы какой национальности?
Personal questions are generally offtopic and can be intrusive too. your best bet is to ask them by PM or in a personal log. (that's not an actual rule, but they may be deleted from regular threads)

i'll answer here. (in english what you mean is usually described as ethnicity i think. or nationality, but people often confuse it with citizenship)

as many people from the former ussr, i'm a bit of everything. i was born in moscow, and so was my mum. my dad was born in belarus, and so was his mum. she also has some polish ancestry, and likely jewish too. she got married in moldova, to a russian man from siberia (and he is the person i ultimately got my surname from). his mum also had some moldovan heritage but we're getting to a murky area which i don't know almost anything about.
my other grandmother was born in kazakhstan, evacuated from moscow during ww2. i was lucky enough to know my great-grandparents, they were from ryazan area and from the caucasus respectively.
my grandpa was born in moscow.

culturally i feel a strong connection to finland but i'm not aware of any ancestry from there... who knows :D

so as you can see it's all over the place (though moldova and kazakhstan kinda mean more to me than to my grandmothers themselves - they don't have any identity tied to these places... well i don't either, but to me they're an important part of my heritage)
...none of which presumably has anything to do with my english :P apart from the fact that i identify as european more than anything specific, and my english is largely british, with some influences from non-native europeans :P any "unusual expressions" i use here are likely to be linguistic terms though.
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Re: Serpent's cyclic log

Postby Serpent » Tue Mar 06, 2018 1:17 am

discovery of the day: the Belarusian for potato (бульба/bulba) sounds very much like the spanish for vulva. https://forvo.com/word/vulva/#es
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Re: Serpent's cyclic log

Postby MamaPata » Tue Mar 06, 2018 8:15 am

Well you're definitely not going to forget it!
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Re: Serpent's cyclic log

Postby Serpent » Tue Mar 06, 2018 1:27 pm

I knew the word бульба, it's well-known even among those who don't speak Belarusian... I just never pronounced the Spanish word aloud :shock:
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Re: Serpent's cyclic log

Postby Serpent » Thu Sep 06, 2018 6:03 pm

https://www.palloliitto.fi/videot/maajo ... ueleirilla
An interview with the Finnish national team's cook/catering supervisor. Mostly interesting because it's subtitled in standard Finnish (kirjakieli), but he also speaks pretty clearly so it's interesting to compare the subtitles to what he's actually saying.
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Re: Serpent's cyclic log

Postby Expugnator » Fri Sep 07, 2018 2:00 pm

Serpent wrote:Mostly interesting because it's subtitled in standard Finnish (kirjakieli)


Kirjakieli would literally be bokmål in Norwegian... ;)
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