Conclusion: Being the Russian General Consul for Bonn is the best job ever

  Once again, my apologies that this blog post is a bit late.  On Tuesday, September 7th, 2010, I had quite possibly the most fun I will ever have at a General Consulate of the Russian Federation in Germany.

   Ok, let´s backtrack.  Every year the BUKAs get invited to visit the Russian Consulate in Bonn for meetings and dinner.  This year was no exception, so on our last night in Bonn, we thirty BUKAs prepared for our last big hurrah in Bonn. 

   If you ever receive an invitation to dinner at the Russian Consulate, you may first ask yourself, "What should I wear?"  According to Herr Friedrich von Matzahn, keeper/handler/counter/babysitter of the BUKAs, smart casual (which by the way does not translate into German) is the appropriate attire for the Russian Consulate.  Given the tense (for lack of a better word) relations that often exist between our two countries, the American BUKAs decided we should up the smart and down the casual, so we all put on our nicest clothes in hopes of making a good impression.  Little did we know we were about to meet:

Jewgenij Schmagin, Consul General of the Russian Federation in Bonn, Germany, and yes, he does always have a shot of some sort of alcohol in one hand while he wildly gesticulates with the other.  Mr. Schmagin has been on the job for three months, a fact which he restated about 25 times over the course of the evening.  After meeting Mr. Schmagin, who is incredibly friendly and hospitable, one can only imagine that his previous post was as Consul General to a summer camp.

    First the Consul General served us cookies and sat with us at a long table and basically repeated in more or less terms how happy he was that the Cold War was over, how much relations between China and Russia have improved in the last few years, and how, all things considered, he thinks the US is an okay place anyway...  He then delivered a speech in which every sentence included some variation of the phrase: You cannot imagine how big Russia is.  It went something like this:

  "Dear Chinese, American, Russian and German friends, you cannot imagine how big Russia is.  Russia is so big that we can hardly imagine how big it is ourselves.  Russia is so big that we need to spend many days on a train to get from one side to the other.  Russia is so big that we are on two continents.  Russia is so big that at the same time some places are very very cold while other places are very very hot.  Russia is so big that it takes up nine time zones.  Russia is so big that in some parts of Russia the day is beginning while in other places it has already happened.  Now that you have been in Germany for some time, you are maybe thinking, oh my, Germany is big.  Tell me, do you think Germany is big?  Is Germany big?  Certainly you are all thinking, my, Germany is quite big, yes?  (we are all staring at him confused until finally the head of the Humboldt Foundation, a soft-spoken man to the right of the Consul General in the picture above says:) Um, no, Mr. Consul General, everyone is well aware that Germany is actually a very small country."

   Then the Consul General proceeded to give us a tour of the Russian Consulate, which he reminded us multiple times is technically part of Russian territory.  "Now you have all been to Russia."

Then he fed us lots of wine and caviar and the Bishop made a toast.

Then he taught us how to play Gorodki, a traditional Russian game in which you throw sticks at a target.  (It was somewhere around round two of Gorodki that we realized dressing up for the Russian Consulate might have been a mistake).

Then we had a cookout, during which the Consul General insisted on serving all of the Americans hamburgers (sort of a low blow, but being as he was consuming vodka like it was water I figured stereotype shmereotype).

Then it was time for traditional Russian singing and accordion playing.  And then the Consul General decided that each of the four countries represented should take the stage and perform a traditional song from their country.  The Russians went first, and performed a traditional folk song.  Then the Germans performed, and I swear if I had not known better I would have thought they had rehearsed.  They broke into different parts and sang in a round and had harmonizing, and it was just really really organized. Then the Chinese sort of kissed up and sang some Russian song from the 1950s that is very popular in Chinese translation.

  

 See what I mean?  They were pretty proud of themselves.  All the while the Americans were having our usual "oh shit we missed out on a solid nationalistic song-singing education" moment.  What could we sing?  Yankee Doodle?  Too cheesy (heh, macaroni, get it?).  She´ll be comin´round the mountain?  Too folksy.  

   And then suddenly, we knew.  The song that said it all.  The song that perfectly explained our existence as Americans in Germany, as Americans at the Russian Consulate!  The song that said, so what if we are the fattest country on earth!  So what if we export hamburgers like it is our national pastime!  So what if the closest we get to a folk culture education is square dancing in middle school gym class!  So what if we call football soccer!  So what if every time we try to play the Russian stick throwing game our sticks accidentally get lost in the woods!!!  We stood together, shoulder to shoulder, counted off and began:

First I was afraid, I was petrified, kept thinkin I could never live without you by my side, but then I spent so many nights just thinkin how you did me wrong and I grew strong and I learned how to get along...

By the time we hit the chorus to I Will Survive the accordion had joined in and the Consul General was dancing.  It was like every bad wedding DJ, drunken karaoke mistake, Bar Mitzvah hallucination all melted together into one perfect cultural exchange.  It was a proud moment in BUKAdom, a proud moment for America, and I dare say, a meaningful step forward  for Russian-US relations.