One of my favorite parts of the tow was the introductory party on the tug with the Russian captain and his bride, who served homemade pickles, raw pork fat, and vodka on doilies she had knotted up out of random scraps of cloth. We couldn't speak to one another, but we could make toasts and gesticulate wildly to imply and infer the right moments to drink.
If your Russian tug didn't include vodka and raw pork fat, you got robbed.
Raw pork fat? Good lord . I’d down the vodka and then be dive off the stern never to be seen again. 🤢🤢
Ah, I was obligated to be a good guest, and eat what was on offer. It can be a bit of a novelty to swallow cubes of fat (without much in the way of chewing, which coats the inside of your mouth with a layer of fat), but the copious and frequent palate cleansing with vodka mostly solved that problem for me.