Depressed? You're in the right country. The weather is miserable, public transportation is miserable, and life, which somehow manages to be at once both stagnant and chaotic, can at times be realistically described as miserable as well. At their best, these oppressive characteristics give Russia a breathless, rather romantic quality. They can even be a welcome respite from all those don't-worry-be-happy platitudes that can drive a naturally somber Westerner to utter madness at home. You won't catch anybody around here saying "Smile -- it can't be that bad!" or "Look on the bright side!"


Nor, on the other hand, will you catch lots of mopey Russians moaning about how depressed they are. Depression, or at least the act of discussing feelings of depression, is reserved purely for outsiders. Russians are just as depressed as anybody else, but they are masters of the internalized emotion. They keep it to themselves. But don't worry -- there's a reward for all that reserve. No point in sucking it up if you can't spit it back out, after all. There's a lot of bad news out there, and someone's got to deliver it. No problem. Russians love to be the bearers of bad tidings.


This point can be illustrated by returning to the unhappy topic we left off with last week -- the telephone. As bad as using the phone is here, it turns out there's something even worse: not being able to use it, because it's been turned off. I'm not into laying my soul bare to the public, so let's just say this has happened to someone I know. The amount of grim I-knew-it satisfaction it inspired in the neighbors was incredible. And the glee that good, close friends took in predicting how much it would cost to have it turned back on was almost gruesome. "I heard it's about 2 million rubles," said one, grinning from ear to ear. "That's about $700, you know." Thanks, Euclid.


Setting aside the decommissioned phone, the unfortunate party briefly turned her attention to a daily horoscope, one of those quirky little missiles that in other parts of the world addresses potential bad news in vague terms like "challenges" and "setbacks," and here hits you over the head like a lead mallet:


"Your day will be upsetting and full of alarm. People around you will be unfriendly and cold, and there will be many conflicts and arguments. The unpleasantness that awaits you is primarily work-related, but it could be complicated by health problems. The reasons could be physical overexertion, an exhausting workload, and an overly emotional and not always adequate perception of events. Money also causes conflicts."


This is without a doubt the world's unfriendliest horoscope. Why even bother getting out of bed? But the astrologic wizard who plucked it out of the stars probably got a big kick out of it. His own sign presumably got a much better deal.