“Slurping – the sound that suck calves make when you’re weaning them, or pigs at the trough, or Russians drinking hot tea. It isn’t racism from me, they don’t want to let the tea cool, or be ‘civilized’ and add milk. I was on a platzkart train from Voronezh to Moscow and my neighbours were all having breakfast and slurping tea. I’d fallen asleep just before midnight cheesed off. In the four bunk kupe next to mine a group of relatively well-heeled men and women in their mid-20’s were drinking tea and talking politics. They were liberal and very anti-Putin. Any other time I’d have an interest in their conversation, though when they kept commenting about a family from Tajikistan in the next kupe, I spoke out.” backpagefootball