“I don’t think she really does anything,” she explains, bewildered. As if on cue, one of the club’s cocktail waitresses, dressed as a particularly sexy Snow Girl in a white miniskirt and white stockings covered in blue snowflakes, gives us all white rabbit ears to wear on our heads. In a flash, she forces Marina into a Christmas tree costume and arranges us all in a circle around her. Immediately, everyone in the dance club begins singing in unison, and it becomes clear that I am the only person in Russia that doesn’t know the lyrics to “The Forest Raised a Christmas Tree,” a traditional Russian folk song. I attempt to lip sync, but I’m not convincing.
