Balalaikas in Syria

My friend Alexander, who is Russian, told me an interesting story about a trip he made to Damascus, in Syria, a few years ago. He was working in a city in the heart of Siberia as an interpreter for a dancing group, composed of boys and girls aged between about fourteen and seventeen. They were a very professional dancing group, as they’d all started dancing at about the age of six, and had been training intensively since then, every day, learning many different types of dances, so it was very impressive to see them. It was a real pleasure for my friend to work with them, and to see them dance so often. Every time he looked at them, he couldn’t help admiring them, as they danced so magnificently, better than many adult dancing groups that he’d seen.

Anyway, they travelled to Damascus in July or August, in the middle of summer, so it was rather hot in Siberia at that time, about twenty-nine degrees Celsius, so everybody was sweating. He said to them before they left, “Don’t forget where we are going, we’re going to Damascus, very close to the desert, and it’s going to be something like forty-seven or even fifty degrees.”

When they arrived at the airport, however, and got out of the plane, they didn’t believe that they were in a desert region, as they all felt a little bit chilly! When it was announced at the airport that it was just eighteen degrees, they couldn’t believe their ears.

The next day, however, the heat wave came, and it was blistering hot. The temperature reached forty-seven degrees, and so during the day it was almost impossible for my friend and his group to go out into the street without staying in the shade. They could walk along covered walkways, or stay under the canvas awnings of cafes, but it was absolutely unbearable to be in the open.

My friend said that during the daytime in the summer there it is just like a dead city, with nearly empty streets with only very few people walking here and there and no other signs of life. But when the sun goes down, at about nine o’clock in the evening, life there really begins. All of the people come out into the streets, the cafes and restaurants open, and the social life starts. They go to parties, visit each other, buy, and sell things, go to the cinemas – everything starts at nine in the evening and carries on until about two or three in the morning. For my friend it was like an upside-down world, as in Siberia everything closes at about nine, life finishes and everybody goes to bed.

Another thing that surprised Alex was that whereas in Russia it’s very unusual for children to go out with their parents to restaurants and to places in the evening, in Damascus it’s normal. The children may be three or four years old; you will be sitting and drinking and talking, and the children either sit down next to their parents or, more usually, run around between the tables and play. This was so unusual for my friend to experience, especially as Russia had been so restricted because of the Iron Curtain and he’d never had the opportunity to travel abroad before.

Their dancing tour was a great success. They were in several cities – Damascus, Aleppo and two or three more, and in each place that they danced the audiences went wild. They applauded and called for encores again and again and again. They were accompanied by a small group of musicians playing Russian instruments, balalaikas, and this was very unusual for the local people who were mostly Arabs, as their music was absolutely different, so they were altogether amused, amazed and thoroughly entertained.

They were especially successful in Aleppo, as thirty thousand Armenians live there. Armenia was a republic of the Soviet Union, and when they learnt that a group from Russia were playing, and also that they played music by Khachaturian, the famous Armenian composer, they flocked to the performance. They were fantastically well-received. The audience applauded and encored them many times and were very enthusiastic, maybe because they liked this music so much and felt a deep connection with it.

They stayed in a beautiful five-star hotel, with luxurious facilities, swimming pools, huge four-course meals, top-class service, and things like this, and that was such a surprise for my friend, who had never been out of Russia before in his life. It was an absolutely fantastic experience for him, one of the greatest experiences of his life.

Balalaikas in Syria

1. Where did Alexander travel?

2. What was he doing then?

3. How did those teenagers become professionals so early?

4. When did they travel to Damascus?

5. What was the weather like in Siberia when they left?

6. What did Alexander warn his group about?

7. What surprised them when they arrived at the airport?

8. What was the temperature like the next day?

9. How could they get around in the city during the day?

10. What was Damascus like during the daytime?

11. When does life really begin?

12. What do the locals do in the evening?

13. Is such a vivid night life typical for Siberia?

14. What was another thing that surprised Alexander?

15. Had he travelled a lot before this trip?

16. How did the audience meet the group?

17. What was unusual for the local public in terms of music?

18. Where were they especially successful?

19. What could be the reason for that?

20. Whose music did they play among others?

21. How did the audience receive them in Aleppo?

22. Where did they stay?

23. What facilities were there at those hotels?

24. Why was it such a great surprise for Alexander?

25. What did he think of that trip?

Balalaikas in Syria

Training 1

My Russian friend Alexander made a trip to Syria some years ago. He was working in a city in the heart of Siberia as an interpreter for a dancing group, composed of boys and girls. They were a very professional dancing group, as they’d all started dancing at about the age of six and had been training intensively since then. Every time he looked at them, he couldn’t help admiring them, as they danced better than many adult dancing groups that he’d seen.

Training 2

They travelled to Damascus in the middle of summer. When they arrived at the airport, however, it was announced that it was just eighteen degrees, so they couldn’t believe their ears. The next day, however, the heat wave came, and it was blistering hot. The temperature reached forty-seven degrees, and so during the day it was absolutely unbearable to be in the open.

Training 3

During the daytime in the summer Damascus is just like a dead city, with nearly empty streets with only very few people and no other signs of life. But when the sun goes down life there really begins. All of the people come out into the streets, the restaurants open, they go to parties, visit each other, buy and sell things, go to the cinemas – everything starts at nine in the evening and carries on until about two or three in the morning.

Training 4

Their dancing tour was a great success. They were in several cities, and in each place that they danced the audiences went wild. They applauded and called for encores again and again. They were accompanied by a small group of musicians playing Russian instruments, balalaikas, and this was very unusual for the local people, as their music was absolutely different, so they were altogether amused, amazed and thoroughly entertained.

Training 5

They stayed in a beautiful five-star hotel, with luxurious facilities, swimming pools, huge four-course meals, top-class service and things like this, it was an absolutely fantastic experience. This was so unusual for my friend, especially as Russia had been so restricted because of the Iron Curtain and he’d never had the opportunity to travel abroad before.

Lost and Found

I’ll tell you about the time I spent living in Norway. I had a girlfriend when I was there named Helga, and we used to go away sometimes to her family house, which was two thousand metres up in the mountains, and a very good base for skiing. We used to go up the mountains with a rucksack and skis on our backs, spend the day skiing, and then come back down and sit by the fire, and then Helga’s Dad would beat me at chess: he’d just trap my king and I’d lose…

I was in Norway because I was working as an archaeologist, specializing in mediaeval archaeology, in the town of Trondheim, which is nowadays not that large, but was the capital of Norway in the Middle Ages, when Norway had a large empire, which included the Shetland and Orkney Isles, Ireland for a while, Iceland and Greenland. So, it was a very rich town, and we dug it up, and there was a lot left from those times. We were not sure why there was a lot left, but a lot of old pots, and old leather and wooden articles survived. We found loads, especially things like forks and spoons, everyday objects.

We found a lot of rune-sticks, which was very exciting. What we were digging up was generally bits of wood, chips and chunks, and some of these lumps of wood had runes on them. Runes are a kind of writing which was used in Viking and mediaeval Norway. They are often thought to have been magical symbols, and in fact they may have also functioned in this way, but primarily they were used for simple writing, as they didn’t have paper but had tons of wood. The symbols are made up of straight lines, because if you have a knife and a piece of wood, this is the easiest way to make letters. Obviously, you couldn’t write books, or long texts, but it was a good system of conveying messages.

The content was often quite mundane, things like “Thorsson made me” or the alphabet, which is called the “Futhark” as the first letters were F-U-T-H-A-R-K. There was one strange one with something about Jerusalem written on it, which we couldn’t work out. Some of them were just wrong, I mean what was written on them was gibberish, just letters that didn’t really mean anything. These were all found in the rubbish, you see, and we think that there may have been people learning there, in kind of runic schools, where people had to write the alphabet twenty times and things like that.

We had buckets of water, and when we found something, a little piece of wood or something like that, we washed it and took a close look to see if there was anything there. Any runes we found were written down, and as it wasn’t in modern Norwegian – the runes were written in mediaeval Norwegian- someone had to get a book out, first of all to find out what letters the runes represented and then to find out what the text meant.

We found a lot of objects that we couldn’t identify. We found a very nice thing one day. Sonja, a Swedish woman who had been digging in the corner, suddenly said, “Whooah, look at this”, and carried this thing towards me. From a distance it looked just like a little piece of wood, but when it was about a yard away, I could see that it was a little king from a chess set. It was really, really exciting. To find the king was nice, not a pawn or a bishop, for example. We were really lucky that it came out in a lump, and we didn’t scrape his head off, as we were cutting sections of earth to examine one section at a time, and Sonja had spotted his head sticking up out of the ground. I think somebody had cut off his nose by mistake, but the rest of him was intact. The find more than made up for my losing my own king so many times!

Lost and Found

1. Where did this story take place?

2. Where did Thomas and his girlfriend use to go sometimes?

3. What did they use to do there?

4. Who would usually win at chess in the evening?

5. What was he doing in Norway?

6. What did Trondheim use to be?

7. Why was it a good place for digging?

8. What did they find there?

9. What finds were especially exciting?

10. What are runes?

11. What were runes used for?

12. Why did the Vikings prefer wood to paper?

13. What are the runic symbols like?

14. What could be the reason for that?

15. What about the content of their finds?

16. How did they explain that some of the texts did not mean anything?

17. What did they need buckets of water for?

18. What language were runes written in?

19. How did they manage to find out what they meant?

20. Who found the most interesting find?

21. What did it look like from a distance?

22. What did it turn out to be?

23. What was lucky about this find?

24. Was it absolutely intact?

25. What did Thomas feel about this find?

Lost and Found

Training 1

Thomas spent some time living in Norway. He and his girlfriend Helga used to go away sometimes to her family house, which was two thousand metres up in the mountains. They used to go up the mountains with a rucksack and skis on their backs, spend the day skiing, and then come back down, sit by the fire, and then Helga’s Dad would beat Thomas at chess: he’d just trap his king and Thomas would lose.

Training 2

He was in Norway because he was working as an archaeologist in Trondheim. It was the capital of Norway in the Middle Ages, when Norway had a large empire, which included the Shetland and Orkney Isles, Ireland, Iceland and Greenland. So, it was a very rich town. They dug it up, and there were a lot of old pots, and old leather and wooden articles left from those times.

Training 3

They found a lot of rune-sticks. Runes are a kind of writing which was used in Viking and mediaeval Norway. They are often thought to have been magical symbols, but primarily they were used for simple writing, as they didn’t have paper but had tons of wood. The symbols are made up of straight lines. Obviously, you couldn’t write books, but it was a good system of conveying messages.

Training 4

The content was often quite mundane or just the alphabet. Some of them were just wrong and gibberish, just letters that didn’t really mean anything. These were all found in the rubbish, and they thought that there may have been people learning there, in kind of runic schools, where people had to write the alphabet twenty times and things like that.

Training 5

They found a very nice thing one day. It was a little king from a chess set. It was really, really exciting to find the king, not a pawn or a bishop, for example. They were really lucky that it came out in a lump, and they didn’t scrape his head off. Somebody had cut off his nose by mistake, but the rest of him was intact. The find more than made up for Tomas’s losing his own king so many times!