Around 6.30pm last Sunday, a dozen England fans rolled into a Nizhny Novgorod metro carriage belting out the English World Cup song, "We're on our way!"
The Russians in the carriage stared into space the way you do when silently tolerating mild annoyance in a public space. Drunken singing on the metro is nothing new to Russians.
After a minute the English paused, then they started back up again with a new one: “ROSS-I-YA! ROSS-I-YA!” Looking around you could see Russian faces light up with expressions of genuine delight. When the English finished, the Russians responded with a round of applause.
This sounds like one of those a-little-too-on-the-nose stories you see on social media where the replies all say "didn't happen". But it did happen and scenes like it have probably been repeated all over Russia over the last two weeks. These spontaneous fleeting moments of affection and respect and empathy are not going to bring about peace on earth, but they do leave everyone feeling a little better.
Every foreign fan and journalist you speak to in Russia talks about how great it’s been. The football has been magnificent. The Russians are friendly. The cities are beautiful. The transport works. The beer is cheap.
In that last sense at least, the collapse of relations between Russia and the West has directly helped to make the World Cup such a roaring success. The rouble has lost half its value since 2014, when successive waves of international sanctions were imposed in response to the annexation of Crimea and the war in Ukraine. The depreciation has made life harder for Russians, but for foreigners thinking in euros or dollars, Russia is a holiday wonderland where everything is half price.
A paralytic Russian threw a sweaty arm around my shoulders. (Russian friendship is hands-on)
One thing you notice about the Putin regime after a couple of weeks in Russia is how unobtrusive it is. It feels as though Russia’s president has a higher profile in Europe than he does in Russia; you can go days without noticing any sign of his existence. An alien wandering around Russia might guess the country was ruled by Lenin, judging by the statues you see around the place.
The atmosphere in Russia is very different from how it is in Kyiv, where you are constantly confronted by reminders of the bitter confrontation with Russia. For most people in this gigantic country, what goes on in the Kremlin might as well be happening in a different universe. Asking Russians about politics is a good way to feel like a bore. Most people show little interest in the subject.
Common language
There are exceptions. In Sochi, a Russian woman told a story of how her father, a retired submarine commander, had phoned her from Crimea around the time of the annexation in 2014 to say he had his axe in his hands and if this had to be his last weapon, he was ready to die defending his home from the Ukrainian bandits.
“But the Ukrainians ran away,” she laughed. According to her, the Ukrainian army was a rabble of teenage layabouts and drug addicts, and life in Crimea had improved a hundred-fold since the annexation. She was not the most impartial witness. Political talk gave way to vodka shots and soon someone was demonstrating one-handed press-ups.
People do often wonder what you as a foreigner think about Russia. At a bar in Nizhny Novgorod, a Russian slapped his table and demanded I join him and his wife for a drink. It turned out they worked for one of the political parties, one considerably to the right of Putin’s United Russia.
His English was bad and my Russian non-existent, but it turned out that we had the common language of pidgin German. He pointed at the groups of England supporters sitting around watching the football. “Here are die schreckliche English fans!” and contorted his face in mock terror.
Discovering I was a journalist, he launched into a riff on media lies. "Der Englische Presse sagt, "Russland ist Böse! In Russland kommt die Bären, kommt der Militären!" (the English press say, "Russia is evil! In Russia, here come the bears, here comes the army . . .") He was equally withering about Russian TV news, with its obsessive focus on Nato and geopolitical encirclement.
“Not all Russians love Putin. Maybe 20 per cent.”
He got 70 per cent in the election, I said. He raised his eyebrows mockingly.
We agreed that it was all just fake news and we were being lied to by the international elites. And yet, he also wanted to know how easy it was to move to my country of Iceland (like many Russians, he seemed not to have heard of Ireland) and how much a house there might cost. He loved Russia, it annoyed him that foreigners seem to enjoy doing Russia down, and still he felt the best thing for his family would be to move somewhere else.
On the first day in Moscow I met a friend in the media centre who told me that his paper had given him a special Russia-ready laptop so secure that he couldn't get it to connect to the stadium Wifi. No matter what you've heard in security briefings, soon your guard comes down and you're entering your data into online forms with the usual carefree abandon. Everyone is used to the surveillance society now. Who even cares if the FSB is monitoring your communications? They can get in the queue with Google and Facebook.
Sweaty arm
You are nevertheless primed for hints of the sinister. Checking into an apartment in Saint Petersburg, I was surprised to see that the Wifi password was "lolkek1488" – a reference drawn from the lexicon of American internet Nazis. 14 is for the "14 Words", a white supremacist pledge, 88 because the 8th letter of the alphabet is H, so 88 stands for HH - Heil Hitler. "Kek" is part of the same vocabulary. I took a photo of the password. I knew Saint Petersburg is reputed to have a Nazi problem. The fans of Zenit are notoriously the most racist in Russia – white knights of the north under the white nights . . .
That night I saw Russia beat Egypt and then went strolling off Nevsky Prospekt, where the Russians were celebrating the win.
I passed a little strip of the kind of bars where they approach you on the street and try to drag you in. Everyone seemed to be incredibly drunk. Lots of people were inhaling from big balloons filled with what I guessed must be laughing gas. You could buy them from the cars that had balloons tied to their wing mirrors.
A paralytic Russian threw a sweaty arm around my shoulders. (Russian friendship is hands-on).
“Where you from friend?” Ireland. “Iceland!” No, Ireland. “Ireland – Conor McGregor!” (If Russians have heard of Ireland it’s often because of McGregor).
“I am beautiful . . . Russian man!” he shouted.
We had been joined by a young couple who seemed to sense that I might need their assistance to rid myself of my first friend, who was now trying to get me to swear in Russian.
Say, “Grebanyyie pediki!”
I obeyed. The Russians laughed.
What does it mean, I asked.
“Fucking faggots”, they said.
My drunk friend pointed at a police car. “Say, politseyskiye pediki!”
I complied. They laughed again.
Next thing my friend was trying to get me to say “nigger”. I exchanged awkward glances with the couple. One of them leant over and muttered, “Typical Russian alcoholic.”
Thankfully a woman suddenly came up and dragged him away. Myself and the couple, who were students at one of the city universities, watched a skirmish break out in the crowd. “Typical Russian idiots,” the students said.
Conversation turned to the subject of laughing gas, which two of the three of us were eager to try. Then we watched as two people in quick succession inhaled deeply from the gas balloons, only to keel over and smash their skulls against the ground.
“Okay. Rethink,” said the gas-craving student.
Wifi password
Some Russians started chanting something at a passing Egyptian in a Mo Salah shirt. I could hear them saying Salah’s name. “What are they saying?” I asked the students.
“They are saying, ‘Where is Mo Salah? Salah is going home by train, in the cheapest place.” They listened again. “Salah is returning to his country by horse.”
I remembered the Wifi password – I should ask what they think about it. I showed them the photo I had taken earlier. They fell around the place laughing.
I didn’t get it. What’s so funny?
“Oh, this is funny Russian internet joke” they said, and took out their phones to take a picture of my picture to send on to their friends.
“A joke?”
“Yes, joke – very common password in universities, bars . . . I work at restaurant near Mayakovskaya, and it is also our password.”
I tried to get them to explain the mechanics of the joke, but this was pushing the limits of their English language skills. It seemed the joke was simply that it was amusing to force people to use this inappropriate password – like an edgier version of the joke where you give your LAN some silly name like “Pretty Fly for a WiFi”.
So you think my host is probably not a Nazi?
“No, I think this person is just good at Internet.”
Walking home I thought about how I’d jumped to the wrong conclusion. Although when a joke is this deadpan, how can you tell? It’s something to keep in mind about Russia – things here don’t always mean what you think they mean. But maybe we’re close to the point where nothing means anything at all.
