#russian stuff

The same mangaka also adapted Camus' other famous book, The Stranger, in 2023.

Reminds me of when Dostoyevsky's "Crime and Punishment" got a (heavily abridged) manga adaptation in 2019 (by Hiromi Iwashita):

Maybe I'm just prejudiced, but I always feel like the "manga artstyle" in these makes for a very goofy combination with the subject matter. There's this incongruity in my head between the seedy, dour tone of the original books and the extremely clean, youthful look that mangaka tend to give their protagonists. (Forgive the overgeneralization - Japanese illustrators are not a monolith, I know, I know!)

Anyway, if anything, it's pretty nifty that these European literary classics are getting this sort of recognition in Japan. I may not personally vibe with the style, but I have to respect the effort; taking a book you like and bringing all of its scenes to life in a visual medium is no small feat.

handwriting is atrocious because all the letters are new shapes

handwriting is immaculate because of painstaking copying and care

This story happened to the author of this blog, so everything written below is quite subjective.

Anyway, I went to visit friends in Berlin. And I've found a Russian store named guess how — "Russia".

Store "Russia" Stuttgarter Pl. 36, 10627 Berlin The Russian grocery store "Russia" is located in Berlin's Charlotteburg district and is open 24 hours a day.

This store looks like a machine not only of time but of space - it feels like I was thrown back to the Russian provinces, such a real country store, even 20 years ago.

Eh, nostalgia – even though I am not that old yet. Still It's such a special place - the quintessence of everything Russian, including Tetya Galya, who in the cafe nearby to the store berates our government while her husband eating shashlik with Baltika beer - still the most famous Russian beer abroad.

And then I thought, what if my friends from Berlin taste a Russian beer? What would they say?

And I was expecting the following reaction:

- "Ew, what a disgusting thing you brought us, we're in Germany, the beer heart of the world and this universe." Very often, friends, there's an opinion that Russian beer (how shall I put it gently) is awful against the background of German, Czech, British, and any foreign beer in general.

But still I’ve decided to give this experiment a chance.

So, I have chosen the basis of the basics of Russian brewing - the company Baltika

Zhigulevskoye highest grade

Baltika 7 premium

Baltika non-filtered wheat ale

Prices - about the same as the average German beer - 1.5 euros per bottle. In Russia it would cost about 1 euro, so the difference is not critical.

First we tasted Zhigulevskoye. And I was already anticipating how after the first sip my friend was going to say: "No thank you, leave it to your russian gopniks".

But no! He liked it! (And he, believe me, knows a lot about beer).

"Good lager, full-bodied. But the same German beer will cost cheaper so it makes no sense for me personally to buy this beer, but in general it is tasty". Baltika 7 received the same rating.

But then my friend was really delighted with the non-filtered wheat ale Baltika!