Побеждённые Панихида

I found the other painting, finally. For some reason it isn't in the Tretyakov collection on-line, but it is definitely by Vasilij Vereshchagin - "Побеждённые Панихида"

Yesterday, I mentioned bribes, which make the Russian world turn. Unlike in America, people will and do take bribes for the most petty things, and there have already been two experiences with bribes here that I know of. The first happened to a classmate of mine when he was in the car with his host father. They were pulled over for speeding outside of Moscow (where most of this happens) and from what I understand, the host father was asked, "Would like to pay 2000p or 500p." Given this circumstance, it' easy to see why Russians put up with bribes.

Evidently, the officers in Moscow, especially near the tourist areas, hate their jobs. Bribes are most easily taken from drivers, and tourists don't drive here - plus it's pretty difficult to get away with that sort of thing in the city, even with Russian citizens. Putin loves to claim that he's cleaning up corruption by nailing an officer here or there for taking a bribe so that he and his cronies can keep dealing in American-style, big-business-contract-type bribes. Add to this that officers aren't paid much (a philosophy similar to paying waiters less than minimum wage with the expectation that they will get tips), and you get a lot of jealousy between the city patrol officers and the ones in suburbs/country.

The second bribe I was present for. This one occurred at the Novodjevichij Cemetery. When we got there, we were told that the cemetery "closed" at 5:00 and we had arrived at 5:30 (nevermind that the posted hours had it as being open until 7:00). Sasha, the professor from the advanced class was with us; he turned around and put his finger up telling us that he would "handle" the situation. He entered the gate and one of the guards closed it behind him. About a minute and a half later Sasha re-emerged with a smile (as did the guard) and we were informed that we had three hours to explore at our leisure. The bribe we later learned was 300p - just over $10. It's amazing what people do for a little extra cash here.

Sunday was spent at the Kremlin. Honestly, I wasn't that impressed and don't have much to write about. However, it was pretty awesome to see the graves of Ivan the Terrible's father, grandfather, and great grandfather - as well as the place where Ivan himself is buried behind the three fathers and on the other side of the iconostasis in the Archangelsk Cathedral. Also buried there is Dmitrij Donskoj, after whom the monastery across the street from me is named.

However, those were really the few redeeming features of that tumultuous place of constant destruction and rebuilding. And now for some gratuitous pictures of churches:

Sun and cross have finally combined for me to take this kind of picture, which I've been trying to do for over two years now. This is the Cathedral of the Archangel.

The Cathedral of the Assumption, where the Tsars were crowned (even when the capital was in Peter, they had to come here to be crowned).

Ivan the Great bell tower and belfry, where the Tsar-Bell was supposed to go.

This is actually a palace if I remember correctly. The strange crosses with the half-moon face up are also on the churches at the Donskoj Monastery. They symbolise the defeat of Islam by Christianity - the purpose for the construction of the Donskoj Monastery. Not really sure what they're doing here though.

Here are the other two slightly interesting objects in the Kremlin - the Tsar-Bell and the Tsar-Cannon - neither of which were ever actually used:

There was a fire in the city while the bell was still in the casting pit; water was poured over the cooling bell to fight the fire; the bell broke (practically shattered actually - there are cracks across the entire thing) and was never rung.

This monstrosity is simply to large to be used. I'm also pretty sure the balls there are hollow because it was WAY too expensive to cast them.

Кремль и Крепость

I had a pretty busy weekend with two planned excursions and one spontaneous, so I'll try to keep my comments as brief as possible.

First on Saturday was the Tretyakov Gallery (actually, the Russians now call it the Tretyakov State Gallery). This is one of THE places to go to see Russian art. You guys know me, so you know that I'm not really one for the visual arts. However, I am one for GOOD art, and the stuff here was pretty amazing. Unfortunately, our Russian tour guide treated us like native, fluent speakers, which most of us are not, so I didn't get as much information out of this tour as some of the others. I don't really want to talk about the art too much, but with one exception, here are links to my three favorite pieces in the gallery:
"Рожь" Ивана Ивановича Шишкина
("Rye" by Ivan Shishkin)

"Шипка-Шейна" Василия Василевича Верещагина
("Shishka-Sheina" by Vasilij Vereshchagin)

"Ночь на Днепре" Архила Ивановича Куинджи
("Night on the Dneiper" by Arkhil Kuindzhi)

The fourth, I believe, was also by Vereshchagin, but I can't remember the name and it doesn't seem to be in the online collection for some reason. There was a General standing behind an Orthodox priest in the left foreground. The priest had an incense lamp and was blessing this vast field. The field itself takes up most of the painting and is covered in light shrubbery with bare branches. There is a light dusting of snow on the ground. Barely visible and painted as if to resemble ghosts instead of interred bodies are the corpses of thousands of soldiers, neatly lined up in rows among the light shrubbery. This one was definitely one of my favorites, if not my favorite.

After eating a not-so-great and over-priced lunch in the gallery cafe, we trekked on the Metro to the Novodjevichij Monastery and Cemetery. This is where I entered my first Orthodox Church here other than Christ the Saviour, and I must say that I was blown away. It was the Cathedral of the Virgin of Smolensk (Смоленский собор). The decoration in these things in breathtaking and the churches of Novodjevichij are exceptionally so. However, there was another element to these places that first caught my eye in the Cathedral of the Virgin of Smolensk, which pervaded throughout every other church or monastery building I entered and is the inspiration for the title of today's post.

In Russian, the world кремль (Pronounced "kreml'," although we say "kremlin" in English) means something along the lines of "citadel." "The Kremlin" is simple Moscow's kremlin and all Russian signs for it say "Московский кремль" ("Moscow kremlin"). Every major city has it's own. The other word in the title is "крепость" ("krepost'" - "fortress/defense"). The reason I bring this up is because monasteries here are fortress - mainly for defense against the Mongols. The Donskoj Monastery across the street from me and Novojevichij used to be the Southern outer defenses of the city, which used to be primarily contained in the Kremlin on the opposite bank of the river.

Each monastery has a set of outer walls as fortification, but it's inside that struck me as amazing. Inside the Cathedral of the Virgin of Smolensk I noticed large square holes on the inside of EVERY door. Not just outside doors, but every door. These are so that the doors can be barricaded and the churches fortified in the event of the Mongols breaking through the outer walls. The windows are narrow and very high, like twenty or thirty feet high, and the garrison would build scaffolding during a siege so that they could utilise the windows similarly to murder holes. I was also told of a story where the garrison built an entire second floor near the ceiling where they hid out (these churches are extremely tall usually, in order to accommodate this practice). The Mongols, frustrated that they couldn't reach those hiding up there, lit fires in the sanctuary and suffocated the concealed garrison.

This was not confined to churches either. There is a large building on the monastery, which is now their primary museum. First, it seems that before it was made into a museum, the two floors were not connected - in order to reach the second from the first, it would have been necessary to go outside. Second, there are large holes in the walls, probably 2x3 feet. Third, more barricades.

The barricades basically make it possible to note how important each room was by noting the side of the door the barricade was placed on. For instance, there is an entry hall, and two rooms branch off of it. There is a barricade on the outside door in the room, but the barricades for the other two doors are in the other rooms. Then, through one of these rooms is a fourth room - the barricade for that door is in the fourth room. So, if Mongols break in through the main entrance, the garrison is waiting to fight in the first room. They do a fighting retreat through the second door and blockade it, while continuing to fight through the holes in the walls. The Mongols break through the next door and the garrison does another fighting retreat into the final room, while continuing to fight through the next set of holes. Additionally, there were barricades on the windows and thick inner shutters. Needless to say, the care taken to fortify every possible entry the every part of this monastery completely blew my mind. It's even defended by a bend in the river on three sides, making it a very telling indicator of the terrors of the Golden Horde.

After exploring the monastery, we went to the cemetery nextdoor where many famous Russians of all varieties are buried. Prokofiev, Yeltsin, Kruschev, Scriabin, and (I think) Przhevalsky are all there, just to name a very small fraction. I was only able to see Prokofiev (kind of disappointing and depressing, really) and Yeltsin (by accident - as I said, there are a lot of famous Russians here) because I had to get back home for dinner, but I will be returning and with a camera.

I also need to talk about bribes, but my battery is about to die and this post is already super long, so they'll have to wait for another day.

Кинофестиваль

Well, it seems I spoke a little too soon about the Georgian food. It was good - don't get me wrong. It didn't make me sick either. So I guess it's really a combination of everything I ate that day because I definitely ate EVERYTHING that day. That night I was awoken by a strange feeling in my stomach, which continued for most of the rest of that day. I had to turn down food at breakfast (they feed me so much here), and I skipped lunch entirely. Honestly, by the time dinner rolled around on Thursday, I still wasn't particularly hungry. I just had this weird feeling in my stomach all day that seems to have been a result of a massive bolus of food that my body simply could not process all at once.

Enough about my bowel movements on the public domain and now about Soviet housing. I live in a pretty nice apartment by Russian standards. We have two bedrooms, a dining room, a living room, a kitchen, toilet, shower/sink (separate room), and a small office, which was probably designed as a third bedroom. So, I'm living pretty comfortably with Iosif, Marina, and their dog Bonita (a male - I would say that Romance genders escape them, except that the general rules for word gender are the same in Russian as most other Indo-European languages. That is to say, I have no clue why they named their male dog with a feminine Spanish adjective). Given these higher standards of construction, I was surprised at a series of mishaps in the past 48 hours.

Wednesday, I came home to find that there was no hot water (вода нетичёт). No big deal, right? I've taken cold showers before. However, what I didn't count on was the fact that the ground temperature is lower here than in the US, meaning the pipe, which in the US means "not-hot" water pipe, here means "freezing-cold" water pipe. That is to say, I had early signs of hypothermia by the time I was done. This situation continued for about 36 hours, but thankfully I only had to take one cold shower.

During those 36 hours, I was sitting at home when Iosif came in from walking Bonita (Bonya). He had used the lift to get down (seven floors), but in the time it took him to walk the dog, the lift had quit working. It was at this point that Iosif made a joke about him having to pay me to live here since everything was breaking. Perhaps he spoke too soon.

While Iosif was cooking dinner a few minutes later, I was watching and giving updates on the football match (New Zealand and whoever they played last), which at this point had about three minutes left. Then the cable went out.

The fourth issue is evidently a non-issue I've been informed, but it's frightening nonetheless. You see, washing machines are rare, dear investments here. We have one in the apartment, but I'm not allowed to touch it. If I have clothes that need washing, I give them to Marina and she does it for me - not a bad system, honestly. The problem is that they left me in the apartment alone with the machine running, and although I knew it was loud from prior experience, I was quite surprised to hear a loud bang followed by several smaller bangs. Upon investigation, I found the machine practically walking itself across the bathroom. Of course, I called Iosif, who knows enough English to understand what I was trying to yell through the phone over the noise of this machine - half in Russian, half in English. His reply, "Oh yes, the machine is jumping again, yes? It does not damage anything right now? OK, it's fine. I have had words on this matter with Marina before. I will return now." Nevermind the fact that this thing was practically trying to attack me and trap me in the bathroom.

I'll leave that matter there because I went to the Moscow International Film Festival today and ate some Central Asian food. I don't have a lot to say on this matter really. Actually, I have a small query - if anyone knows what's in Tashkent salad and Ugra-osh, I would be very much obliged if you told me. That's what I ordered (because they were the two things that I had the least idea what was in them and obviously still haven't got the slightest clue), and it was delicious. The film we watched was Воробей (Sparrow), one of surprisingly few Russian films there. It was a pretty slow arthouse film - not that I have anything against arthouse, my issue is with the slowness and general boredom that pervaded the movie. Additionally, when I watch a Russian movie I expect an unhappy ending, but this movie was quite anti-climactic. Minimal plot resolution and really minimal plot development. Disappointing really.

UPDATE:

I found a recipe for Tashkent salad, although I don't think mine had any egg or mayonnaise:
http://recipes.wikia.com/wiki/Tashkent_Salad

Занятие по Сергею Медведеву

(и грузинский ресторан)

Yesterday (Tuesday) our second class began, and we have it two days a week only from now on. Our professor, as you may have already guessed if you can read Cyrillic, is Sergej Medvedev. He claims that he isn't related to the President, but Iosif is quite insistent to the contrary. They may not be immediate relatives, but Iosif says they're all from the same family. Either way, my professor's father was a very high-ranking CPSU member in the Central Planning Committee of the Politburo, which explains why he was able to go to Columbia for his education. He speaks English fluently with a VERY American accent (although it's still fairly evident that he's Russian, he frequently sounds like he could simply be from a different English-speaking country like Scotland or Zimbabwe), and he could easily fall into the category of the "Most Interesting Man in the World" from the Dos Equis commercials. That is to say, he's competing in the Tour d'Alps in a week or two, no big deal, and he has his own TV show, and he's pretty well known around here and in general.

However, it was his lecture that was even more interesting still. Without boring you guys with details, he talked about the expansion and retraction of the Russian state and its application as a model for the rest of society. This man was able to completely shake my world view in a matter of minutes and I was completely OK with it. Needless to say, I'm going to enjoy this class.

Today, we went to a Georgian restaurant for lunch. Now, I'm not going to say this was the best food I've ever had, because that would be ridiculous and invaluable. However, I will say that this was SOME of the best and most interesting food I've ever had, and I'll definitely be getting more while I'm here. These people have an almost entirely different concept of food as we do in America. There was a lot of walnut, cilantro, and coriander in most of the dishes, and I nearly ordered a dish that at least had the Russian word for tobacco in the name. What we did get was amazing (as a small disclaimer, I remember few of the names, but I'm going to describe everything as best as possible). First to come were these two small appetizers. One was some sort of pickled eggplant, thinly sliced and wrapped around a pasty substance. I wasn't paying attention when I ate it because I was just so hungry. There was also a substance called Лобио (Lobio) with it. It came in these half-fist-sized balls of a fairly solid light green paste with pomegranate seeds. Primarily this is composed of greenbeans (evidently with the pods, as it was slightly stringy), pine nuts, walnuts, cilantro, and various other things all pureed into the paste.

Next came what I think what called Хачипури (Khachipuri) of two types, which tasted relatively the same. Basically, these are Georgian pizzas. The crust is a light, bread-ish crust, which bakes in the oil from the cheese they put on top to form a slightly fried taste - очень вкусно. The cheese used in these and almost everything else with cheese seemed quite similar to feta. It was probably a little softer and quite salty with a higher moisture content as well, but one of the best cheeses I've ever had. We also got these large ravioli or won-ton-type things. In my honest opinion, they were fairly ordinary, but still quite tasty.

For the "main course" I had Харчо (Kharcho). This is a soup of sorts, although I also wouldn't hesitate to call it a stew either. I think if you imagine a thick tortilla soup with large chunks of tomato, rice, and lamb (I think - and they used proper stew meat; i.e. the fatty chunks that were removed from larger cuts to make them leaner), then you'll have a pretty good idea of this. There was also a considerable amount of parsley, not used as a garnish, but actually part of the flavouring of the dish, which I found interesting and ultimately - delicious.

I'm very pleased with the culinary experience I've been having here. The nightmares we hear in the US about Russian food are simply not true.

Всё нормально

There isn't a whole lot to add today. Class went basically as it should have. Some of you know that I've been keeping a private journal as well as this. Yesterday I decided that from now on it will be in Russian only so that I can get some extra practice composing (and to celebrate the decision, I had a stroke of inspiration to write four pages).

Tea is a huge part of life here, and we drink tea usually about three times a day. It's weird though, they don't brew it like we do. Sure, if I want some of the different flavored teas, there are bags that I can use for that. However, there's also this pot that sits on the counter all the time. Tea is poured out, and water is poured in to replace it. The thing is, this tea brews ALL DAY in the pot. There's a little mesh cup I the top with tea leaves - fairly normal. But the water is always touching this mesh and brewing the tea. So it's a little like the way Italians make coffee - a small amount of a much stronger brew, to which hot water is added to dilute it to the proper concentration. It actually makes for some really good tea; I was a little surprised at first.

Also, for the last tea time of the day (about 9.30 or 10.00 at night), there's a whole production. We usually have strawberries or cherries or both, and then some heavy biscuits and little candies. The candies however, are another little oddity. They're called карамель (caramel), but it's not what we think of it. Their caramel is a hard candy, although still not what we think of as hard candy either - it's slightly softer and opaque, so the sugar was heated to a higher temperature than our caramel, but not as high as our hard candies. That's not to say that any of this is not good. I could probably say that I prefer it in fact because it's so tasty and it's the main time that the family sits and talks. Evidently, this is normal here, because the other people have been having similar tea times, although I don't think many of them are as enthusiastic (people who don't usually drink tea, for instance will worry about the caffeine's effect on their sleeping patterns. I'm more worried about the Sun honestly, since today was the longest day of the year - still is actually, and will be until 11.00-ish). Anyway, I'm rambling.

There's been this jar sitting on the windowsill in our kitchen the entire time I've been here. It's filled about half-way with a brownish-orange liquid and covered with cheesecloth, folded a few times. On top of the liquid is floating a fatty looking substance with layers like a biscuit, which fills the entire surface area of the liquid in the jar. Through the cheesecloth you can smell this pungent vinegar-like substance. Hopefully you get the picture and can understand why it took me until Saturday morning to finally ask Marina what the heck that thing was. Perhaps you've heard of Russia's second national drink - Квас (Kvas) - a semi-alcoholic (fractions of a percent alcohol) "soft-drink" made from stale bread crust. There are different flavors, I think, and some places make their own, so it can be pretty hit or miss depending on where you get it. Evidently, the Kvas at Jolki-Palki (the restaurant we ate at a few days ago) is "nectar from the Gods," to quote one of my classmates. Most of us aren't particularly excited about it, and I haven't gathered the courage to try it yet - nor do I have any desire to do so, honestly.

Back to the jar. I was told that the substance in the jar is like Kvas, or brewed like Kvas - something like that (so I'm guessing, it's slightly alcoholic, and brewed from whatever the floating substance is, which I still thought was bacon grease or something along those lines). But that does nothing to explain the smell, until she says that the floating substance is a "mushroom." Now, first off, I've never seen a mushroom that big - this is probably a 3 or 4 litre jar. Second, it has had to be sitting in there for a LONG time for it to look like a decomposing biscuit. Which brings me to a question. WHO IN THE WORLD would think of such a drink, much less make and drink it?

Будешь чаю?

UPDATED - see pictures below!

The title of today's post is the question I get after nearly every one of my meals at home. Strictly translated, it means "Will you be of tea?" Fortunately, Russian is an accommodating language, with a complexly inflected grammar system, which allows questions like "Will you be drinking a little bit of tea (after the meal/now/etc . . .)," become the two words you see above. That is, "Ты/Мы будешь/будем попить чаю?" becomes, "Будешь/Будем чаю?" and there are no problems with understanding. It is for this reason that both Latin and Russian are frequently cited as some of the hardest languages in the world to learn - although in my opinion it's simply because English grammar rules have been so completely oversimplified after years of input from different language families (the rules being simplified each time to accommodate Germanic languages and then Romantic inputs). Inflection actually makes a whole lot more sense grammatically than the strange system of word order that we use.

Today, however, we did the tourist thing. Our first of a series of excursions. We had a bus tour of various places in the city (in Russian), many of which I was surprised I still hadn't been to, but that I'll definitely be going back to. Park Pobedy was the first. It's a huge plaza in the South-East of the city. There are a bunch of different monuments there, but the largest is the one that the Soviets built (of course) after the Second World War (Вторая Мировая Война). The focal point of this is a HUGE bronze obelisk. For those of you who have seen the obelisks in Rome, multiply the typical one by about three and you'll get this monstrosity. It's also reminiscent of the Greco-Roman world in two other ways. The first is a statue of Nike (Goddess of Victory) and two small Gods hanging off the top of the obelisk. The second is a progression of battles that the Russians were involved in that goes gradually up the obelisk - like the columns of Trajan and Marcus Aurelius, only not in a ribbon around, but straight up the side.

I also FINALLY went inside the Church of Christ the Saviour. This place really has no parallel in the world that I know of. As soon as we entered the sanctuary, I got the same chilly feeling that got upon entering the Cathedral of Maria degli Angeli (formerly the Baths of Diocletian) in Rome, only this time that feeling lasted almost as long as we were in there. It really was amazing, and it blows my mind that Stalin and his cronies would even think of destroying such a building, nevermind actually doing it. Photographs were forbidden, but even if they hadn't been, I wouldn't have taken any. I'm always uncomfortable taking pictures of sacred areas and tend not to do it. I did however take some nice ones outside (to be posted later, when I have a little more time).

Otherwise, I don't have a whole lot more today. Spending the rest of the night watching football.

UPDATE:
The obelisk at Park Pobedy. Sorry, I didn't get any of the details on it. There's a museum there that I may return to, in which case I'll re-photograph.

Panorama from the plaza at Park Pobedy. MGU is visible on the left (the large "wedding cake" with a large stile on top. One of these days I'll write an entry about the seven sisters - hopefully after photographing them all).

This is a monument called something along the lines of "Children are the Victims of the Vices of Adults." The name is much shorter in Russian (because of inflection). I actually really like this bit of art for some reason - it was pretty impressive and I could probably do a whole entry on it at another time.


And finally, what I've been talking about ever since I got here - Кафедральный Храм Христа Спасителя. Now you can see what I've been talking about, and why it's so awesome. The statues on the outside are plastic. The bronzes from the original are in America of all places and a few are in the Donskoj Monastery across the block from my apartment here. When they rebuilt the church, they did the statues in plastic because bronze and marble would disintegrate fairly quickly in Moscow (in addition to being insanely expensive).

Прогулка по реке

Well, today I finally have some pictures. I haven't been taking a lot for two reasons (really one). The first, is that it makes you look like a tourist, and quite frankly, I don't think that's safe in the neighborhood around the Academy. The second, is that it makes you look like a tourist, and tourists who aren't in the Red Square, Kremlin, or Alexandrov Gardens are very likely to get there passports and documents checked, which can lead to large bribes and so forth - things I'd generally like to avoid. So today, since we have Fridays off, I went to the park across the street and took a few pictures of the river while everyone else was at work and the Militsiya wasn't out patrolling the area yet.

Before the pictures, however, I must say that there are two things I don't think I'll ever get used to here. The first, is the uniforms. I'm pretty sure that every government employee, except for people with technical jobs (like the street cleaners and other people who work for Гормост), has a military style uniform. So they are everywhere, and I still haven't been able to figure out who's from ДПС (police), who's ФСБ (FSB), and who's in the army (actually, the real military guys are pretty easy to spot when they're in dress uniforms, but FSB officers frequently wear camouflage fatigues, making them harder to distinguish, but ridiculously easy to see).

The second thing is couples making-out . . . EVERYWHERE. They're on the Metro. They're one the escalators. They're on park benches, buses, trolleys, trams, and trains. They do it as they're walking down the street and sometimes even in restaurants. I probably wouldn't mind it that much if it wasn't literally everywhere I look. Making it the second most frequent sight in Moscow for me (the first being аренда, which translates as "space for rent").

Now for the pictures (click for larger versions):

This is on the way to the bridge I use to get over the river and get to school every day. No real significance, except that I just looks so cool.


Андреевский мост (St. Andrew's Bridge), which I use every day to get to my Metro station, because of a fluke of construction, which prevents me from using the other two, more convenient stations on my side of the river. Evidently, it lights up at night, but the sun sets around 11:00 here and I don't usually have any business there after 8:00 AM, so I've never seen it lit up.


And this is my view EVERY DAY on my way to school. I tried to get a picture of the Church of Christ the Saviour shining in the sunlight, but as you can see, it was partly cloudy, and the sun wouldn't cooperate. However, if you look to the left of it, you can see another church with shining domes, and the churches in the Kremlin in the center are also shining. The Church of Christ the Saviour is probably the coolest building I've ever seen, even though the one in this picture is a reconstruction of the original. This one stands on the former site of the world's largest swimming pool - a wonderful result of central planning.


This is a panorama of the river on the other side of the bridge, so looking South, towards MGU (which for some reason isn't visible, despite being one of the taller buildings in Moscow). The two funky towers with big metal objects on top is the Technology Ministry, or something like that. I can't remember exactly how Iosif put it. The next photo is taken from the embankment on the left.
Unfortunately, it's a little out of my way to see this, so I can't go there every day (although now I have a panorama), but this is the area around the Frunzenskaya Metro Station (how I get to school) from the Pushkinskaya Embankment. Behind the camera is a house, which used to be outside the city, where Pushkin evidently composed a lot of his poems. It's now some sort of library, Iosif couldn't really explain how it works, but it's there . . .

As I said, it's not always safe to take pictures, so most of the places I've been describing look nothing like this, but hopefully you get the general idea of the contradictions and beauties that are Moscow.

Ёлки-Палки

Today has been a fairly normal day, with a few exceptions. The normal will come first. We spent a considerable amount of time talking about money and tipping in class today, which is actually quite interesting. Evidently, Russians don't like to make change and a lot of us have been getting very nasty looks when we pay, for example, with a 500p bill for something that costs 257р. Just as in America, they prefer you to give them 507p, and then they can give you the easier change of 250p, which uses three bills, instead of 243p, which requires six bills and two coins. However, it's hardly our fault. One girl in the group had a bill of 800.13 (800 rubles and 13 kopeks). For those of you that don't know, one dollar is about 30 rubles, making Russian money a little like Monopoly money - especially when it comes to kopeks. So, it's a little ridiculous that the store would even worry about 13 kopeks (about half a cent), but in her case they wanted her to give exact change.

Now, personally, I wouldn't have minded giving an extra ruble (coin) if I had one and telling them to keep the change (because it's quite a hassle to keep up with kopek coins - they're half the diameter of our penny and probably cost many times more than they're worth to mint), but in this person's case, she didn't have a one ruble coin, so she paid with a 1000p note. In America, this might have drawn the question, "Do have an extra dollar/quarter/etc . . ." but here, it just draws you a nasty look. The other problem is that all the ATMs give 1000p notes, so it's actually necessary to go into the bank and exchange the money for smaller bills, since paying with 1000p is also very frowned upon anyway in almost every situation. Tipping complicates this because often, your waiter will just take your money and pocket the change, so when paying with cash, you have to make sure you don't give more than you're willing to give as the tip.

I would like to take this opportunity to write about some of the other things I've seen here in Moscow that would never happen in America. For instance, this morning in the crosswalk under Leninskij prospekt I saw a homeless guy playing the accordion. If I had any coins with me, I would have emptied my pockets for this guy, he was that amazing, and if you've been reading, he wasn't the first excellent musician I've seen in one of the crosswalks.

As I'm writing this I'm also watching TV. There was just a commercial for a Raid product (the insect repellent/killer) that you plug in next to your bed to keep bedbugs away.

There is also a large number of stray dogs here. I knew that was the case before coming, but I didn't really take it seriously until I got here. They aren't (usually) combative or unfriendly, in fact, it's quite the opposite. They usually just look like miserable, lonely, mangy creatures, but they can be very well behaved. When we went to get cellphones, there was one sitting at the entrance to the store. It didn't make eye contact and look at people with "the eyes." It actually behaved quite like the people here do - observant, but in that distant way that makes the eyes look cloudy. I'm still a little uncomfortable around them simply because I don't know what they're going to do if they're walking towards me, but so far I can just ignore them and they keep doing their thing.

Today for lunch we ate at a real Russian place (and yesterday too). Chains, but real Russian food nonetheless (probably equivalent to places like Applebees and Golden Corral in America). Today it was Ёлки-Палки, where I attempted to order a Russian beef stew and others ordered various pirozhki. After about five minutes, the waitress came out to tell us that they were out of the flavors of pirozhki that some people ordered. About ten minutes later, the same thing occurred - leaving them with the choice of just pirozhki with meat, or pirozhki with apple. Next, people's food started coming out one plate at a time; not a big deal, it's always better to have fresh, hot food than cold food that's been sitting out for a while. However, I was stuck sitting there watching the food come out, watching people eat, watching people finish eating, even watching people start to pay. But of course, still no food for me. It was at this point that we were finally informed that the beef stew I had ordered had also "run out" and that I would have to change the order, so although I was on the point of cancelling the order entirely, I ordered the safe and quick pel'meni . . . which still took about twenty minutes to arrive. So after our conversation this morning about change and tipping, we decided we would get a little revenge by paying the last few rubles of our nearly 1500p bill with one ruble coins and an assortment of kopeks.

There's more I could say, but I don't feel like typing anymore (I need to limit my English usage), so I'll probably do another one of these as I get more of the stranger things to write about.

Печень

Today was the first (sort of) day of class. We met in Yugo-Zapadnaya and had an orientation to ANE and a brief lesson. This was my first time actually going to the school, so it was a little startling. It's also not in the building I thought it was in, so that was quite disorienting. The Academy was founded during the Soviet Union as a school for upper-level party officials to learn communist economics and such. Now, of course, they teach a more Capitalistic approach, but the architecture and interior decorations make it very obvious what its former purpose was. I'll also take the time to reiterate the theme of underground tunnels. There are four buildings on the ANE campus and most are connected to at least one other by an underground tunnel, eventhough they're right next to each other.

We tried the in house cafeteria for lunch where I had an interesting experience. There were many choices for meats and I saw "печень курици" ("pechen' kuritsi") on one of the labels. "Kuritsa" means chicken, and "pechen'" looks like it comes from "печь" (pech'), meaning "oven"/"to bake." So, logically, I thought it was baked chicken (nevermind that it was a dark brown color, I thought that was just because of the sauce). Unfortunately "печень" and "печь" are two very different words. I had in fact ordered . . . chicken liver, cooked with onions. It was actually pretty good, and thankfully I realised what I had done well before sitting down, so it wasn't like I bit into it expecting chicken meat and instead got chicken liver.

It turns out, that for many people, this weekends holiday did in fact extend through Monday, and since everyone returned to work today, the Metro was insanely crowded. So crowded in fact, that occasionally it was not possible to leave the train at the correct stop. I also now know what it's like to spoon someone in public because of the crowds and the pushing. Even after class when I returned to our apartment, it was still quite crowded, so I just stood against the wall until my stop came.

Other than that, today was largely uneventful, except that we went to probably one of the shadiest markets I've ever been to. Russians are famous for bartering and outdoor markets. Eventhough it was raining again today, the markets are still out there. The one we went to was behind some dirty building in the Yugo-Zapadnaya neighborhood. The combination of rain, nasty and poor drainage, and smells from the various things sold there (like rotting fish - I'm sure it was the way it was supposed to be; it just didn't look appetizing though) gave it an almost third-world feel. I actually think that's why Moscow feels like such a strange city - it frequently gives off that weird third-world vibe, eventhough you know you're in one of the most industrialized countries in the world.

Anyway, there's a lot more that I could say, but I don't want to overburden my readers with information. If there are any specific questions that you guys want answered/places you want me to tell you about, just e-mail me. I'm here for seven weeks, so I'm sure I'll have time to get around to it.

Уважаемые Пассажиры!

It seems I spent a very large amount of my day today underground. Not only is the Метро the most extensive subway system I've ever seen, but many crosswalks are underground, so as not to hinder the flow of traffic. In the large squares and intersections, this can make for very interesting navigation techniques as you try to calculate the angles and turns inside this vast system of tunnels. The largest one we were in was probably at Охотный ряд near Red Square. It stretches for at least half a mile; has multiple entry/exit points; and I'm pretty sure there was an entrance to the Okhotny Ryad Station there as well - if not, it is not uncommon for these crosswalks to have Metro entrances in the Center and some have entrances to multiple stations. Hopefully, you get the idea - you can appear and disappear underground almost anywhere in the Center by slipping into a Metro station or an underground crosswalk. One last thing though; when we were at the Alexandrov Garden, we took a tunnel to the Lenin library and inside there was a sextet of musicians playing Vivaldi. I am so glad that Professor Goldberg let us stop to listen because they were excellent.

Otherwise, I explored more thoroughly today with the group of students I'm studying with than yesterday, when I rode a троллейбус around the Kremlin with my host. We got off at the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour (which has a very interesting history if you ever want to look it up) and walked back to the apartment from there via an outdoor museum near the New Tretyakov Gallery. They have a lot of new statues there, but most interestingly, this museum is where they sent a lot of the statues of Soviet leaders that were torn down.

Today however, we did more on foot instead of by trolley. For some reason Red Square is closed currently, but we went to look at it anyway. Good thing we did too - there was a man outside it with two monkeys on leashes dressed in human clothes. It was a very strange sight. I now have a phone here as well and I'll post the number as soon as I figure how billing works. I really don't want to have to pay a ton for long distance calling - calling is already complicated enough here. We also ate our first Russian fast food at a restaurant called "Теремок." I had a блин с грибами и сыром (a blin, or Russian crepe-type thing, with mushrooms and cheese).

Finally, I had to find my own way home. A lot of the other students are concentrated in certain parts of the city, but no one really lives near me. After exiting the Metro, I found that I had turned left instead of right and ended up walking about twice as far as was necessary. I knew exactly what I had done right as I did it, but I wasn't in a particularly nice part of town and I'm pretty sure I was being followed at one point, so I didn't want to give away that I wasn't familiar with the area. Буду знать. Next time I'll know.

Замоскворечье

UPDATED (pictures of my room here)



It took a while, but I'm here. I was fine with the flight until about eight hours in, when it started getting tedious and the last hour was probably one of the longest of my life. I still think watching the sun set and then rise thirty minutes later is one of the coolest things in the world - and no, I'm not so far North that I can do that on a daily basis here. Sunset, I think, was about 11:00 PM last night, and when I woke up at 7:00 this morning, it was well after sunrise.

After spending less then 30 minutes in customs, I spent nearly 2 hours in van with three other people in the group getting dropped off one by one. I can only imagine how much time the two people who were left when I got out had to spend getting to their summer home. Sheremetevo Airport (where we flew in) is actually the closest one to town at about 11 km I think, but we all live on the opposite side of town. Thankfully, my neighborhood, Замоскворечье ("Zamoskvorechie"), which means "Acros the Moscow river," is precisely what it's name implies - directly across the river from the Kremlin, Church of Christ the Saviour, etc . . . (although our apartment is a little further down from being directly across, it's still close to the center and not nearly as far away from things as some people are). Yesterday was also a national holiday (they're a bit of a predilection here). I can't remember, but it may or may not extend to Monday. It's their День Независимости or "Independence Day," which meant that the streets were even more crowded than usual, despite the fact that dacha season is starting and many people have left the city for their summer homes.

After a walk through the Neskuchnyj Sad across the street yesterday, I found myself fading very quickly, so I determined to take a two hour nap before catching the US/UK game at 10:30 PM local time. Only when 10:30 came around I was still tired, so I went back to sleep - looking up the scores after I finish this.

So, in short, I'm in Moscow. It's pretty cool (actually, I should say it is REALLY HOT AND HUMID). Much different from what I was expecting, but very cool nonetheless.

Lame Duck

I thought about posting this a few days ago; then I realised that the next 36 hours really are my lame duck period. I'm pretty much packed, so there's nothing to do until tomorrow when I go to the airport and then it's sitting on a plane for ten hours.

I've been completing a farewell tour of sorts for the last two and a half weeks or so. Two weeks in SC is great way to send myself off. 1000 miles driving, and about 25 miles each of running and biking - I'd say I performed pretty well for being on vacation. Here are a few pictures:

Red-tailed Hawk eating a rabbit

Flags on Church St, SOB in Charleston

Charleston Harbor on the day we biked downtown (sorry for the blur, Blogspot's uploader degraded the file extensively; if you click on the picture, you'll get a pretty good view of the harbor and a Yang Ming container ship pulling out of dock)

I don't have a lot more to say right now except that I'll do my best to post within a few days of getting to Russia - I really have no idea about how accessible the Internet will be.