“Smiling for no reason is the sign of a fool” | Russian saying

Rob. Smiling very much “for a reason”!

Is Rob a fool for smiling above? Am I a fool for smiling at him? Or smiling at the Russian saying itself?

Or maybe were smiling, we four men in a Voxy, because we’re in Perm, Russia, and travelling west from Vladivostok where we’d started, Perm is the first city in Europe proper. The first city west of the Ural Mountains, the dividing line between Russia and Europe. So we had a reason to smile. Making us Not Fools. I guess. 

We’d found — whoops! better not speak for my three co-drivers — I’d found the Russians we’d met along the way to be pretty rude. Though in a less Cranky Old Man mode I might say they were “no nonsense”, or “unemotional”, or simply “unsmiling”. 

The “unsmiling” bit led my trusty digital research assistant to scold me, gently:

For Russians, a smile is not a polite tool for customer service or a casual greeting to a stranger on the street—it is a deeply personal expression of genuine joy, amusement, or affection. If you smile at someone you don't know, a traditional Russian won't think you are being friendly; they will assume you are mocking them, hiding something, or, as the proverb says, simply not all there in the head.

Once you know that cultural rule, the "brusque" and serious faces you encountered at those highway кафеmake perfect sense. They weren't angry with you; they were just treating you with their standard, no-nonsense sincerity!

Still, the hotel behind Rob, the Permasian, was a classic of the rude Russian mode. When we were there in 2013, Perm had only recently opened to foreign tourists. We would have been four of the very few. We go into the Lobby, to the Reception, sign that we’d like four rooms. The lady here acts like “huh?”, what do you guys want?”

Four sweaty, dusty dudes with bags, In a hotel lobby. In the early evening. Pointing with our fingers, like.. four of us… cue sleeping hand signals. What do you think we want, lady? It’s not like we’re in a Home Depot and the guy’s “what would you like sir, a leaf blower or the electric Sawz-all?”. We’re in a Hotel, ffs!

She’s not smiling. Doesn’t that make her smart? Or at least not stupid? But she’s sure putting on a pretty good simulacrum of stupid.

I forgot about the bronze ears that Rob above is smiling through. They’re called the “Perm Big Ears”. Because this place used to be one of the infamous Salt Mines. A gulag, that thinkers of Bad Thoughts would be sent to. The poor souls sent here would carry sacks of crude salt on the shoulders. The salt gave them red ears.. Misshapen, Big Red Ears. 

Here they are now as a tourist attraction. Heaven forfend we should ever learn anything from the experience. The experience, to be clear, of the purest, most severe, form of socialism ever tried on this earth. With the one exception of Mao’s China.