I’ve been traveling a bit, and I’ve seen a restaurant (chain) in Ukraine. There aren’t a lot of them, but I’ve seen a couple. They are called:

CCCP

Now, I’ve always known this as “C” “C” “C” “P”. Yet, the funniest thing happened the other day, and I had an epiphany regarding the spelling (born out of my naivety about the spelling).

To the average English speaker this spelling appears perfectly “normal” (standard). But it just so happens that these are also standard Cyrillic letters. In the Russian alphabet there are 36 letters, and the majority (or at least it seems like the majority) of them look different to Latin characters. But in Cyrillic, “CCCP” actually transliterates to “SSSR” (Latin).

CCCP stands for “Союз Советских Социалистических Республик”

Again, when transliterated, it would look (in Latin) like SSSR. When translated, it turns into USSR due to it being the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

I guess I find it funny that I always thought of the Soviet Union as the U.S.S.R., and I always wondered why it had also been occasionally (in my part of the world) referred to as CCCP. I figured CCCP was Russian, but I didn’t know why or how it translated. I suppose I would have expected CCCP to LOOK different if it were written in Russian (Cyrillic letters)… but alas, it does not – and the characters look “normal” to me.

Are you seeing where I’m going, or am I losing you?

Anyhow… the funny part of this story is that I openly displayed my ignorance in front of some Ukrainians (this, after being here nearly 3 years): I said “How about we go to the “C” “C” “C” “P” Cafe for lunch. The Ukrainians looked at me — obviously, and COMPLETELY, confused. You could see in their eyes that this stimulated persistent signaling from one side of their brains to the other – like an Olympic ping pong match – over and over again: they just couldn’t figure out what in the world I was talking about. Literally 10-15 seconds later……….  someone finally put it together.

“Oh, you mean ‘SSSR’ Cafe.” And I said, “no, I mean ‘CCCP’.” Again they looked at me puzzled… and after about 5 seconds I realized my complete and utterly embarrassing blunder – I felt like a total idiot. You know… one of those frail moments that strikes usually capable individuals every now and again – and you realize you have just made a complete fool of yourself in front of people you would really rather have not done that in front of.

I didn’t put together that    CCCP = SSSR.

With good reason, this has turned into a long-standing joke, and even the Ukrainians for the rest of the ~2 week trip began referring to the Cafe as “CCCP”.  Each time they said it, they laughed, and then looked at me.

Fantastic. I love that feeling. A(nother) Stupid American in a [former] Soviet country – sounding like an idiot.

Ahhhhhh……….

I suppose everyone has silly moments. This was definitely one of mine…

I caught four random individuals standing in front of the CCCP Cafe