Last night we went to the Museum of Soviet Arcade Games, which is now located in a big ground-floor space on Baumanskaya, right near the metro of the same name. (When I read about it in Very Short List last year, it was still off in the basement of a dorm somewhere.) It did not disappoint: we were given 15-kopek coins to play all the old machines that have been collected from around the Soviet Union and repaired and I was in heaven. I especially appreciated the test-your-strength-by-pulling-a-radish game, which is based on an old fairy tale that I taught in my Russian 1 class. It’s about a grandfather who wants to pull out a radish but can’t and so calls his wife over to pull him pulling the radish, but then they can’t pull it together, so they call over their granddaughter, etc., until finally they have a whole line of humans and beasts helping. They finally get it up with the help of the mouse, I believe. (There is a refrain that goes “жучка за внучку, внучка за бабку, бабка за дедку,” and so on.) Anyway, you try to pull the radish here and get evaluated as a mouse, a cat, a granddaughter, etc., based on how hard you pull.
My only regrets about our otherwise enchanting visit: 1) I was really bad at the traffic symbol quiz (“викторина”) in which you are supposed to choose the correct traffic symbol for a given issue on the road; and 2) I did not get to have the cream soda (made on demand) from the carbonated water machine. I have loved those carbonated water machines from afar for years.
Notes
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