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Two things.

First thing: one of the consequence of having a French parent is that I have spent the last fifteen summers or so in lovely Languedoc-Roussillon. And, yes, in my experience, the French...

My mother is French.





I am British, and - I'll grant you - we are the worst in the world for the grab-you-round-the-throat variety of binge-drinking. But British men drink lager, which...

What I find odd about the Russian psyche as opposed to that of, say, the French is this notion that lots of cheap alcohol is necessarily better than smaller quantities of decent stuff.

Drinking...

If you feel you can trust the Russian media, look at

http://english.pravda.ru/economics/2001/06/08/7257.html

with its (faintly illiterate) headline 'RUSSIA IS ONE OF THE TOBACCO MOST SMOKING...

That's what we call anecdotal evidence. Russian men die in huge numbers of cardiac/respiratory conditions caused or exacerbated by both heavy smoking and heavy drinking.

I would never pretend...

And people wonder why the life expectancy of Russian men is the same as it was 150 years ago... :roll:

I think that сигареты refers to Western-style filtered cigarettes - Malboro etc - whereas папиросы are your untipped cheap variety. That would explain злые папиросы.

I'm very willing to stand...