Look, a seagull!

(Please back date to 3/7/13)

Have you ever watched a movie dubbed over in another language? I have seen plenty of foreign films spoken in other languages but they have always had English subtitles, they were never dubbed over in English. I am watching a black and white German film (I’m guessing from the 50’s?) dubbed over in Russian in the kitchen of the hostel. It’s the weirdest thing. I can hear the spoken German in the background as if the editors made no attempt to change that part, made no attempt to remove it or soften the volume. Instead there is a single Russian narrator translating all dialogue slightly more loudly than the actual actors. Isn’t that distracting? Is it just because this is an older film? I guess it doesn’t really bother me much - I wouldn’t understand it in German either. And this is the kind of film where dialogue is the film so I get nothing from context clues. I think it’s artsy, it’s hard to tell.

I like this hostel, I just scored a free piece of cake.

I also just received an email from Marina Avvakumova, Sasha Timikova’s (Sasha from my homestay in Ekaterinburg) sister who lives in a suburb of St. Petersburg with her husband Victor and her small daughter Katya. Sasha had told her I was coming to St. Petersburg and she contacted me and invited me out for a day trip to a village called Vyborg, located right on the Finland border, about a one and a half hour train ride from the the city. I don’t know much about Vyborg, but Marina says it is a beautiful village and an excellent day trip. I’m excited for that and a chance to meet her and her family and spend the day with them. Russians are so friendly!

I did go for that walk around the city today and I did make my way out to Sts. Peter and Paul Fortress. St. Petersburg is a great deal smaller than it’s big brother to the south and most of the more interesting areas for walking and sightseeing are centered around one, long, straight avenue called Nevsky Prospekt that cuts through the city north to south and ends in the Neva River, a river that dumps into the Baltic Sea. The avenue is wide and regal, lined by European style buildings from the 18th century and theaters and museums and restaurants and cafes. St. Petersburg is often called Russia’s gateway to Europe and it is obvious why. Moscow looked like Europe but St. Petersburg is Europe.

Nevsky Prospekt

St. Petersburg is famous for its European style of architecture

Since I got to the hostel so early, I decided to check in and relax in the kitchen (that looks like the kitchen from the set of Friends), check email, write, and plan a bit. I made some coffee and enjoyed the silence while the rest of the hostel guests slept away. Then I set out for a walk. St. Petersburg is an old port city, riddled with canals and waterways that branch off the Neva, all leading to the Gulf of Finland and ultimately the Baltic Sea so the city, historically, had become a huge shipping port. In fact, I saw and heard my first seagulls in months (Tianjin didn’t have any - too polluted I think). But since we are so well connected to the sea here, the city funnels in cold Arctic air from the Baltic which drops the air temperature to well below freezing. The combination of cold air, wind, and at times, snow, can be brutal here. Luckily though it was at least sunny when I first set out. I walked the length of Nevsky Prospekt, taking photos and taking in my first impression of the city. Another thing I noticed while on this walk is that there are a lot of tourists here - I heard a lot of non-Russian being spoken by camera toting pedestrians. Not a lot of English, but a lot of other European languages. It is kind of a comforting feeling.

I walked south until the major part of the avenue, then turned back north and walked the length to the river. Where the road meets the river, the space opens up to a very large circular square to the west of the street, bordered by the river to the north. This square is ringed by beautiful government buildings to the south to make that half of the space an oval shape, there is one of the largest monument towers in the world in the center of the square, and the Hermitage, a palace turned museum, one of the best in the world, takes the square’s northern border, separating it from the river. You feel like you’ve walked into the Colosseum when you walk into this square. Like lions will jump at you from behind while you’re taking photos of the Hermitage. I left the square, crossed the river at two points, and walked to Kronversky Island, famous as the site for Sts. Peter and Paul Fortress.

A view of the Hermitage

Looking out over the Neva River, Sts. Peter and Paul Fortress is just to the left

The fortress is famous for two things. Firstly, it was built by Peter the Great to be used as a stronghold point to protect the booming city of St. Petersburg in the south from the ever annoying Swedes to the north. For centuries, the Russian slavic people had been fighting in this area of Northern Russia against the Finno-Ugric people and more famously, the Swedes. Ownership of this region north of St. Petersburg has gone back and forth between the two peoples for a long time. After making some headway and beating back the Swedes, Peter the Great had the fortress built. But Russia made further headway in its campaigns in more northern parts so the fortress never actually saw any action. The Swedes were eventually beat back and held near the village of Vyborg (where I’m going tomorrow). The second reason this fortress is famous is because it became a political prison, holding some of Russia’s best known dissidents. It first held the wave of Decembrists, a group of young military officers that had tried to remove the czar from power and failed horribly. The Decembrists were captured and held here in the fortress. When walking around I found what is called the Commandant's House, a building that they used to prosecute and hand out sentences to the Decembrists. I stood in the room where many of the young officers were sentenced to death and many more sentenced to exile in Siberia, to places like Irkutsk (and the Volkonsky Mansion - where the museum that I visited and was followed around by elderly Russian women now stands). The fortress also held prisoners from other, less famous coup attempts. The prison held and then hanged Lenin’s older brother for his part in an assassination attempt on Tsar Alexander II. And after the Bolshevik revolution, the socialists turned the fortress against the imperialists and held many of the White Army prisoners there until the prison was closed soon after. So this place has some history.

The room where the Decembrists were sentenced within the Commandant's main office

I finished with the fortress, after a few hours of museum visits and general walking of the grounds and then wandered my way back through the cold to the hostel for a rest. Before I left Moscow, Yana had helped me score a cheap ticket to the ballet at the famous Mariinsky Theater in St. Petersburg to watch “Spartak” on Saturday evening. I figured ballet would be a great way to sample a bit of real Russian culture and this venue is one of the most famous in the world. I was assured that I could where whatever I wanted but I also figure I owe the venue a bit more respect than showing up with my traveling clothes. So after my rest, I bought a cheap, collared, button down shirt so that I will embarrass myself slightly less than I would have originally.

Tomorrow I have to wake up super early to meet Marina and her family at the train station, the same train station that will eventually take me to Finland, to make our way up to Vyborg, a Russian border village that’s historically more Finnish (and even more Swedish) than Russian. Apparently the old town is supposed to have historic Scandinavian buildings and seaport views. And I can’t wait to meet more of Sasha’s family!

The Usachevas

Yesterday was my last day in the city where Putin works. I had booked a train ticket (for about $50, not too bad) from Leningradsky Station in northeast Moscow to St. Petersburg for a train that would leave at 10 in the evening and travel through the night, arriving at 6 the next morning. So I still had a full day in the city.
The day before I had planned with Yana (a name by the way that looks really cool in Russian, “Яна”) to see the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, located near Christ the Savior Cathedral, to wander around the museum for awhile and then meet her grandparents for dinner at 2 in the afternoon.

The museum was nice. Where the Tetrakov Gallery from yesterday was a collection of fine art, mostly paintings, by Russian painters, the Pushkin Museum was a collection of various art forms, paintings, sculptures, etc. from around the world. Each room held a collection from a different region. One room celebrated art from ancient Greece, mainly sculptures, busts, and other Greek-looking stuff. The Egypt room was filled with hieroglyphic tablets and mummy coffins. Italy had a collection of Renaissance era paintings. It was a nice, relaxing way to spend a few hours. I can appreciate the art. I like art and the international collection here I thought was particularly interesting. But to be honest, I am far more intrigued by the stories of how these incredible pieces from around the world found their way into this museum in Moscow in the first place (and I am similarly intrigued by similar museums in the US and very likely the ones I will visit in Europe). These stories never seem to make their way to the museum exhibits. We kind of take it for granted that they just found their way in somehow. I don’t mean this in a critical way - that is not the point. I just think the story of this migration must be an incredible one. Undoubtedly many of the pieces of art were gifts, maybe diplomatic ones, from foreign embassies to the Russian government and are being housed in the Pushkin for public view. But I bet many of the pieces are old collections from old explorers. I know for a fact that many of the ones in the US are. Adventurers undertaking mind boggling expeditions for years at a time traveled to faraway, exotic places and brought many of these items back either to add to their personal collections, which were later donated to the museum, or as gifts to the government at the time to glorify the expedition. Traveling around China gave me a good look at some of this “pillaging”. There are hundreds of little museums around the country, areas famous for its Buddhist art or temples, where they often have little signs that talk about the art that isn’t there, the art that was taken by western adventurers. They will often say where the art is today, New York, Berlin, wherever. And then I would wonder if I had seen this art on a school trip as a child at one point. I don’t know, maybe. But I’d like to read more about these trips. Whoever went to Egypt and found these mummy coffins and brought them back to Moscow must have been an interesting person on an interesting trip.

A gallery in the Pushkin Museum of Fine Art

Whatever the case, the museum was really impressive and a great way to spend the morning. At just before two, we wrapped things up at the museum and took the metro south into the Moscow suburbs to an apartment complex on the edge of a large, beautiful park where Mr. and Mrs. Usacheva (Yana’s grandparents) live. Yana is quite close to her grandparents having lived with them for many years as a child in Normandy, France. When they heard Yana had a foreign friend coming for a visit, they immediately sent me an invitation to a big, Russian dinner - I’d never pass up an opportunity for free food, especially homemade food!

We were met at the entrance to the apartment on the top floor by her grandparents and were led in to the dining room to chat awhile. Yana’s grandparents are really nice! They are everything you hope grandparents would be - just the friendliest people on the planet. They were able to speak a little English but Yana did a lot of the translating. I got to tell them the story of my travels and a bit of my background. For the meal, we started with the soup and h’orderves. We had a classic Russian “clear” borscht, made without the beetroot that usually makes it red, and appetizers of bread and butter with red caviar (Russians eat this a lot in restaurants - basically orange colored fish eggs, very good), beet slices with butter, and olives, ginger, and fresh vegetables. Having heard that I enjoy beer (I do), they served me Heineken while the others drank a red berry juice. But it was proposed we try some Russian Champagne (or sparkling wine if you prefer - the Usachevas lived in France and don’t take issue with with name). The Russian champagne was very sweet. But after a few glasses of this, Mr. Usacheva astutely pointed out that the champagne was more appropriate for the women and that instead I should try some scotch whiskey, single malt, that he had. Not one to turn down good scotch I accepted the offer - and it was excellent! The main course of the meal was what I remember being called something that sounded like “she”. It was a sort of meatloaf that had been made with a mixture of beef and pork prepared in single portions rather than a loaf and served with mashed potatoes. Again, excellent. I ate until I burst mostly because I was told that they appreciated visitors who ate a lot and also because Mr. Usacheva had shared a Russian anecdote that described how old Russians hired new employees. They would invite them in, one by one, to a meal with the boss’s family. They asked questions while serving them food. The more they ate, the better their chances of getting hired. Something to that effect. So I ate a lot.

H'orderves at the Usacheva residence

A homemade meal of "she" and mashed potatoes

Mr Usacheva had served in the Soviet Army as a First Class Specialist when he was younger and then became an executive at Gazprom, Russia’s major oil company. While we were taking a look at some of the old memorabilia that they had around the room, he let me try on his military cap (cover) from his Soviet days. I took a picture with him while wearing it - it was pretty cool. He’s retired now. Mrs. Usacheva was born in Ekaterinburg during the evacuation of Moscow during the war and her family moved back to the city when it was safe. Now she is also retired and spends her time with various activities including singing with a traveling choir. Apparently she is quite accomplished.

Yana and her grandparents

Me and Mr. Usacheva, wearing his Soviet Army cover

Towards the end of the meal Mr. Usacheva presented to me a gift, a small diplomatic token, of a hockey puck from 1979 when the local team in Moscow were the European Champions. He is a big ice hockey fan and knows very well about the team in Boston, the Bruins, talking at length about the NHL. The puck he gave me is very rare and has the date and tournament written in Russian on the puck. I graciously accepted the gift. And before we left, Mrs. Usacheva packed up all the leftovers for me to take away and eat later on the train. The leftovers were much appreciated!

Thanking Yana and her family for the wonderful meal and experience, we left the apartment and I parted ways with Yana for the last time while I made my way back to the city and the hostel, to pick up my bags and head to the station.

The station, Leningradsky Vokzal, one of nine major stations in Moscow, and named after the city that it services (all trains departing here are bound for St. Petersburg) or at least the old name for the city it services (St. Petersburg had its name changed to Leningrad during the Soviet days, and then changed back in 1991), was really difficult to find and figure out. I found the area where it was supposed to be easily enough, but there were no easy signs to figure out where the waiting halls were or ticket offices, even in Russian. So after some strenuous wandering and asking, I found my way to the station platforms, where there still were no status boards, and eventually found my train by process of elimination.

All this time, through Russia anyway, I had pre-booked 2nd class tickets on all the trains. But this time, to save money and because I wanted to experience the 3rd class train cars at least once, I booked 3rd class which was pretty okay. They were very similar to all the Chinese trains I had taken (when I had places to sleep). At first I was picturing open wagons with folding cots like the ones that transported troops across Siberia during the war. I don’t know why I assumed they’d be like that. Instead they were 6 people to what would have been the equivalent of a 4 person compartment in 2nd class, and these compartments were all completely open, no closed doors, like the ones in China. There are two bunks of two beds each like the 2nd class trains and then one bunk of two beds along the far wall by the window to form an open box formation with two small tables in the middle to make up one compartment. I’ve heard that many women traveling alone on these trains prefer 3rd class so that they don’t unluckily get stuck in a closed compartment with three huge, drunk Russian dudes. And actually while I was taking the train through Siberia, I often wondered where all the women were. Apparently they were all in 3rd class. My 5 compartment area mates were all women. Four older women and one younger one and then me. And each compartment in my open train car had similar women to men ratios. But the ride was uneventful, we all fell asleep immediately and despite the hundred or so people that were in the car, it was silent the whole ride.

My train to St. Petersburg

My arrival to the train station in "Sankt-Peterburg" at 6AM

I woke up when the provodnistas turned on the lights and disembarked the train at 6 in the morning, this morning. I’m typing from my hostel now, a really nice hostel with a “Friends” theme, like the popular TV show in the US from the 90’s. Here, the receptionist speaks English and not all of the residents are Russian business men, so it feels like a real hostel, finally! I’m going to wander around the downtown area and maybe make my way to Sts. Peter and Paul Fortress, the original fortress that Peter the Great built to defend the city against those destructive Swedes. Oh those destructive Swedes!

Monroe in Moscow

I got my haircut today for the first time in three months, three months after I buzzed off my long, curly locks that I had let go in Chengdu. And it was no easy task. Simply finding a place to get my haircut here in Moscow (that wasn’t an overpriced Russian beauty salon) was challenging. But yesterday, walking from the metro station back to my hostel, I noticed through the window of one of the small shops on the street a more modest salon where there was a man inside getting his haircut. I decided I would work up the nerve to return here in the morning, which I did, and figure out a way to communicate with the ladies on how to cut my hair. This was the challenging part. I typed into google translate how I wanted my hair to be cut, trim the sides and the back, leave the top alone, prazhalsta, and left it on the screen of my iphone. I woke up early to accomplish the task. I knew the salon opened up at 8. I left the hostel this morning, full of confidence, and broke out into the streets of Kitay Gorod through rush hour pedestrian traffic, and made my way to the salon. I walked in the shop where little was going on at a little past 8 in the morning and all the middle aged Russian hairdressers turned to stare at me, waiting for me to say something. I just said, “strizhka?” which means, “haircut?” pointing to me head, looking kind of dumb, and one of the Russian women came up to me and with a very serious expression said, “shest’sot rublei” (600 rubles or $20). I said, okay, and she gave me a slight sidewards head nod indicating to me that I should follow her, her expression unchanged as if she could care less whether I accepted or declined the price. I sat down, she shampooed and washed my hair, and then I relocated to the hair cut area for my haircut. I showed her my google translated directions, she studied them awhile as if they didn’t make sense, and then without words handed me back my iphone and pointed to the seat. I figured she got the idea. She wreaked heavily of middle aged women’s perfume and cigarette smoke and she got to work on my hair as I sat in silence. She was thorough and to be honest, she did a pretty good job. I’ll probably be able to let this hair cut ride for several weeks (I’m kind of holding out for one of those traditional barber shops in Italy, where men with big mustaches trim away to manly perfection and then finish with a shave by foam and knife edge - is this an Italian thing or did I just make that up?)

And then I took a self guided tour of the metro. Why, you ask? Because Moscow has the most beautiful, fanciest metro stations in the world. It was one of Stalin’s few good contributions and following the Great Patriotic War (as Russians call World War II), the city built many of the metro stations that exist today. The city today has dozens of interconnecting lines that make the metro by far the most efficient way to go about the city. I had heard that several of them were so nice that they are worth going out of your way to see and so a popular thing to do is to spend a few hours and, with one metro ticket, 28 rubles (a little less than $1), see the best ones. Each metro station feels like it is buried at least a mile underground. There are no steps in most stations, only escalators because they run so deeply below the surface. And Muscovites are good at riding escalators. With the amount of people that stream through these stations during rush hour, they have managed somehow how to be civil to one another. If you want to stand on the escalator, you stay to the right, if you want to walk, to the left. If you stand on the left, you will get run over. Muscovites are good at riding in the metro cars too. Babushkas reign supreme here. Giving up your seat to older people is nothing new and in most cities this is standard, but in Moscow, if someone doesn’t give up their seat for a babushka, whether they saw the babushka coming or not, the babushka scolds them and cackles annoyingly until they move. They are not afraid to tell you when you are talking too loud as well. And getting around is not immediately easy for non-Russian speaking foreigners because although the metro system is well designed and very efficient (trains run through each station approximately every 30 seconds), there is no English. You have to work around the cyrillic names and general signs which for transfer stations, can be kind of complex.

But as I said, the stations are remarkable. I went out of my way this morning, which took me two hours, to visit six stations carefully chosen for their unique qualities. One is famous for its mosaics, one for its statues, stained glass, chandeliers, marble, and patriotic themes. It’s incredible, like walking through the secret underground tunnels of some old mansion. My favorite one was Komsomolskaya, known for its chandeliers. The trains run back and forth from either side of the platform and the middle of the station is separated from the tracks by arching walkways and marble walls. The middle portion of the station has marble murals of various Soviet themes and from the ceiling hang these huge crystal chandeliers. It’s beautiful. And as much as I enjoyed the stations themselves, I got equal pleasure from just people watching. Moscow is full of interesting people. Some elegant women like those I saw in Siberia, some trendy students, some businessmen on their way to work, all of them interesting. I used my new lomography camera down in the metro station and if it develops like I hope it will, the shots will be good.

Komsomoloskaya Metro Station, known for its chandeliers

Stained glass is featured in the Novoslobodskaya Metro Station

My favorite station, Komsomolskaya

I met up with Yana outside the Tretyakov State Gallery, the most famous art museum in Russian and one of the most famous in the world, for lunch. We were planning on seeing some art today. We would first hit the Tretyakov and then move on to see Garage, Roman Abramovich’s girlfriend’s gallery for the promotion of youth and contemporary culture. We went to a Russian, cafeteria style restaurant where I ate some red cabbage and potato salad, mushroom soup, and breaded chicken, and then we made our way to the museum.

This gallery is no joke. It is huge and features an incredible collection of classical works of paintings all by Russian painters of the 18th and 19th centuries. There is exhibit after exhibit of excellent pieces. It is the kind of place that you could easily spend an entire day, musing about the works as they make you contemplate on how it is possible that people can create such amazing things. Yana showed me a room filled with paintings of her favorite painter, Shushkin, who is famous for his landscapes of Siberian wilderness. His most famous painting is a close up of the taiga where three little brown bears are clambering over some downed trees.

A portrait of Pushkin, one of the more famous in the gallery

A large painting of Christ on a hill - it took the painter 10 years to complete

We walked out of the museum feeling fresh and intelligent and then hopped the metro back to Gurky Park where Garage had been relocated. I first read about the gallery and became instantly intrigued for two reasons. First, because the New York Times put it this way in their article “36 Hours in Moscow” published in September, 2010, “Luckily for artsy Muscovites, it has become fashionable for Russia’s billionaires to set up their daughters, wives, girlfriends or mistresses with galleries to keep them occupied. Garage is one of the few devoted to modern art, and arguably the coolest. Housed in a former bus depot, it is run by Dasha Zhukova, girlfriend of the Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich, and the editor of Pop magazine, the British fashion glossy.” I’m apparently an Abramovich fan now, so I wanted to see this. And second, simply because galleries in old factory buildings are good galleries. But I was slightly disappointed because the gallery had recently been relocated to Gurky Park to a newer, more dedicated building. It’s a nice building and a nice, classy gallery, but its no factory, anymore. We sat down to a drink of German glu-wine at the gallery cafe, and then paid for our tickets.

The gallery, for this month only, is featuring a film made by a young, contemporary artist that highlights the last moments of Marilyn Monroe before she overdosed and died in the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York. The exhibit is located in a huge warehouse with wooden planks for floors, fake snow piled on either end, cut in half by an IMAX-sized, transparent screen where the film was projected. The film takes about 15 minutes and runs on repeat and shows the various shots of the hotel room, emphasizing through various sounds and still shots of items about the room, the tumultuous last moments of Marilyn Monroe’s life. She can be heard reciting the last things she wrote in her diary, describing the simple surroundings of the room, sort of crazed. She writes and recites them over and over. At first, we thought we had been gypped out of 200 rubles when presented with a simple video, but the film was pretty powerful. It was a neat exhibit.

Afterwards we found a pub nearby to grab some food and few beers before departing. Tomorrow is my last day in Moscow, I’ve just booked a ticket to St. Petersburg that leaves the city tomorrow night around 11 in the evening. For my last day, Yana and I intend to go see the Pushkin Museum, another art gallery named after the famous Russian poet, then get a big Russian dinner at Yana’s grandparents’ house, and walk around Arbat Street, a famous pedestrian walking street in the city, before I hop the train. But tonight, well in a few minutes, I’ll be watching the great Manchester United, Real Madrid champions league matchup - one of the better match ups in the famous tournament. I’ve been waiting for this game for awhile.

Abramovich is everwhere!

Today was a day dedicated to the art of sightseeing and street wandering.  I picked up my guidebook, looked some places up I deemed worth seeing, and set out, ready to take Moscow by storm. My friend Yana would be meeting up with me a little later to help show me around.

I started relatively early by walking down and around Red Square to the south where the Moscow river snakes its way though the center of the city, east to west, cutting the city in two jigsaw puzzle pieces. This was the first time I had ventured down to the river. I walked the length of one of its banks and passed a few notable spots, the Pushkin Museum (named for the famous Russian poet and housing a number of famous paintings, sharing exhibits with the likes of the Louvre in France) and the Cathedral of Christ the Savior, a massive, newly built cathedral that dominates the skyline with several golden domes. The original cathedral was razed and torn down during Stalin’s purges and in its place was planned a 100 meter statue of Lenin, coordinated by Stalin himself, but the statue never got around to being built. A few years ago, the city built this cathedral to replace the old one and is more recently famous as the staging area for the protests for free speech led by the band Pussy Riot who were later arrested and are now imprisoned, famously.

Christ the Savior Cathedral

There is a beautiful pedestrian bridge made with masterfully crafted, blackened iron railings that crosses the river from directly behind the cathedral offering stellar views of both the cathedral and the Kremlin. In fact, this is the view, I am now realizing, that now exists on my magnet. The bridge crosses over a small island in the middle of the river where Red October, an old chocolate factory that was supposed to be closed and torn down in an earlier effort by the city to relocate its factories out of the city center. But the factory was spared and is now housing an excellent art gallery by the same name, and many of Moscow’s top and most expensive clubs. I would visit the gallery later but I continued on to the other side of the river and down the other embankment to a small park, well known because of its garden of weird, eclectic statues. There was a small section of the statues where a collection of statues of the old Soviet leaders and some of the original Bolsheviks exist. It was home to statues of such favorites as Lenin and Sverdlov (Lenin’s friend and leading Bolshevik from Ekaterinburg - in fact, during Soviet days the city of Ekaterinburg was renamed Sverdlovsk for its Bolshevik local, but then was changed back after the fall of the USSR - many train tables though still use the name Sverdlovsk when they really mean Ekaterinburg which tripped me up more than a few times...), but the park also had the only statue I have been able to find of Josef Stalin, Russia’s evil dictator. Russia has admittedly done a good job erasing that man from their history. But there is one statue (that I know of) and I found it today. His nose was smashed off.

The only Josef Stalin statue I've found in Russia, missing his nose

Just outside the park, in the middle of the river, rises a massive statue of Peter the Great standing by the helm of a ship, disproportionately smaller than he is, sailing in the sky atop an absurdly large pillar. I don’t know anything about this statue except that most Muscovites think it is tacky and I think it is awesome. It looks like Captain Hook’s flying ship in Peter Pan and Peter the Great is holding a huge scroll and appears to be yelling at nothing in particular, a crazed look of adventure on his face. Yana told me the sculptor was famous during Soviet times but no one likes him because he wouldn’t sculpt for the sake of art but on government commission.

Peter the Great meets Peter Pan

I then met Yana at a nearby metro station and she took me to the famous Gorky Park, named after a Muscovite poet, and is to Moscow what Central Park is to New York. I was informed that the park is actually owned by Moscow’s very own Roman Abramovich, the Russian business tycoon turned billionaire turned philanthropist who apparently has been doing good deeds for Moscow and good deeds for the world. I knew of him already because he is the owner of one of my favorite English soccer clubs, Chelsea, in London and has done some bold things with the club - with mostly favorable results. He also famously has a girlfriend who runs youth programs in the city (both Moscow and London) and created a modern art gallery and artistic culture haven in the north of the city in an old, abandoned factory. I plan on visiting this place tomorrow. Abramovich, after buying “Central Park” has turned it into one of the nicest places in the city. Each winter they set up an ice rink that winds its way along walking paths around the park. So its not one big circle, but a long line of paths so that you can skate around the whole park. A wooden walkway is built above portions of the rink so that you can watch the skaters below. Yana went on and on about the improvements Abramovich has made to the park and to city in general - he is popular with the city’s youth.

One of the pathways of the skating rink in Gorky Park

After we finished with the park, we hopped the metro to Yana’s university, Moscow State University which is also the best and most famous school in Russia. And it has an impressive campus, well worth the visit. Yana is Russian but she was raised in France, speaking both French and Russian as her native languages. She moved back to Moscow when she was a teenager and now speaks English fluently, her Spanish is pretty good (better than mine) and improving, and she even speaks some Mandarin (we met in Chengdu). Suffice it to say she’s a bright girl. Moscow State University is located on a hill in the south portion of the city on the southern bank of one of the bends of the Moscow river. Views from the campus offer panoramic shots of the city. The campus is dominated by one massive building that looks like the city of Oz (to me) which was commissioned by Stalin and built in the very tall, domineering Soviet style. It is quite impressive. She walked me around the campus a bit, we stopped in a cafe to warm up awhile, then we parted. We’ll meet up again tomorrow.

Yana by the Moscow River

The main building of Moscow State University, commissioned by Stalin

Me above the Moscow city skyline, outside of Moscow State University

But I headed back to Red October, the old chocolate factory turned art gallery. The gallery offers one large space with one large exhibit created by the famous contemporary artist Jon Meere, a German artist, who is also crazy. At least, you have to be crazy to create the stuff that he created within the exhibit. The space explodes with German, revolutionary themed pieces. Paint is smeared all over newspaper clippings and doll pieces and old German movie posters and skeletons and dinner tables and all kinds of weird stuff. He also made movies of himself in all of his creativity that are displayed throughout the exhibit. He’s crazy, let’s leave it at that. But he’s also famous for his work and has one awards all over the world. It was a pretty interesting exhibit.

The old Red October chocolate factory, now art gallery

A portion of Jon Meese's exhibit

But that was it. I left the exhibit after wandering around for an hour or so and I made my way back to the hostel a little early so that I could one, catch up on these posts, and two, start making serious preparations for the next few week’s worth of travels which I need to do shortly. I’ll let you know how that goes...

For Russian eyes only

I slept in to a pretty reasonable hour yesterday morning, I had stayed up very late the night before. The danger with hitting the local nightlife (especially in a big city like Moscow) while traveling is that you run the risk of sleeping the entire day away which ultimately takes away from the sightseeing experience (unless you’re here just for the nightlife). But, trying to juggle both, I forced myself to wake before noon and to set out. I munched on some leftover bread and cheese that I had from the day before and a yogurt, sipped my morning dose of coffee, and ventured out to the refreshingly cool streets of Moscow. I had a plan set in place: wake before noon, do a self guided walking tour of Moscow’s oldest, most scenic neighborhood of Kitay Gorod, my neighborhood, and then meet up with Shaun and Karen for a free walking tour in the city, the theme of which was vodka. I didn’t know what to expect with the free guided tour but I was invited, and who am I to turn down a free walking tour?

But first I set out to complete a two hour or so self guided walking tour of Kitay Gorod. The walking route was recommended from my guide book. Kitay Gorod, as I mentioned before, is Moscow’s oldest neighborhood, some of the architecture is the most interesting in this city, very European, pre-Soviet architecture. Kitay Gorod translates to China Town, but it’s not a China Town, there’s no Chinese anything, but I recently found out the word “Kitay” (meaning China) is the derivative of another word, “kita” which means, “wattle” and is in reference to the way the old city walls were built with earthen clay, a wall that surrounded the suburb and connected to the walls surrounding the Kremlin. Kitay Gorod is the sprawling neighborhood just to the northeast of the Kremlin. Anyway the tour was nice. I wandered through quiet, cobblestone side streets and past famous hotels and shopping districts as well as several very old churches. I decided to listen to the soundtrack of the new movie “Anna Kerinina”, an old Tolstoy classic, and an excellent, classical take on Russian music from its Imperial past. On my walk, I passed a small souvenir bench, set up outside Red Square on one of the small side streets and for 50 rubles (or about $1.30), I bought a small magnet with a picture of the Moscow cityscape. I decided that I would start to pick up these magnets whenever I find them in my travels as a sort of collection. This way I don’t have to buy (and carry) souvenirs. I decided to start doing this when I saw a cool magnet of Bobroviy Log, the ski resort in Krasnoyarsk. I now have one from Krasnoyarsk, Ganina Yama in Ekaterinburg, and now Moscow. I’ll keep my eyes open.

View of a side street lined with old churches, observed on my walking tour of Kitay Gorod

A side street in Kitay Gorod through a historical complex that now is home to expensive shops

After I finished the relaxing stroll around Kitay Gorod, I hopped the metro across town to the meeting place for the free vodka walking tour where I was supposed to meet Shaun and Karen. I found them without any problems and while we waited for the organizers to show up, we caught up and swapped travel stories since we had last met, in the train from Irkutsk. There are two branches of the Trans-Siberian line: one splits near Ekaterinburg and takes a northerly route to Moscow passing through places like Perm (which is the route that I took), and the other route swings to the south after Ekaterinburg, going through Tartarstan before ending in Moscow. Shaun and Karen took the latter. They had stopovers in Novosibirsk, a large Siberian city, where they participated in a local homestay, living with a local family for a few days, and then they stopped in Kazan, capital of Tartarstan, a region to the south of Russia, home of the famous Tartars, an ethnic group that was said to have been the eternal, mortal enemy of Genghis Khan when he dispatched some of his Mongol horde to wreak havoc on the western portion of Russia. The Tartars were eventually conquered (as was most of the world) by the Mongols and after the occupation, the Mongols breeded themselves into the Tartar population and so today, most of the Tartars are descended from the Mongols. Quick fun fact: Genghis Khan (Chingis Khan as he is more appropriately known) was proven to have so many “relations” with the women of the people he had conquered that he has over 20 million direct descendants of people living today. This was proven from a study done by a British research group who completed the study through DNA sampling (somehow....)). Anyway, their trip sounded cool.

While we were waiting for the organizers to arrive we met two Russian women, fluent in English, who found us and asked if we were participating in the tour. We said we were and they told us they represented the Russian, English language news television channel, Russia Today, and that they would be filming (with the help of their camera crew who hadn’t arrived yet) the tour for a television program they were hosting. So we were excited about that. Russia Today is actually pretty cool. They coin themselves on their website as, “the first Russian 24/7 English-language news channel which brings the Russian view on global news.” I’ve actually seen their programs before, usually in international hotels whenever I don’t feel like watching CNN or BBC. It’s how Russia sees the world and the programs are often very entertaining like for example they were going to do an episode on this tour designed for expats and travelers in the city. The organizers and the cameramen finally arrived with a group of about 10 or 12 other people for the tour. Altogether it was a group of about 15 people, mostly European travelers, and a few Russian, English speaking girls. It was a cool crowd. The organizers introduced themselves as natives of St. Petersburg and they give these free tours as a way to interact with foreign travelers and speak English - they were mostly university students. They had done tours in “Peter”, as St. Petersburg is affectionately known, with some success, but this was their first in Moscow. And then they described a little about what the tour was going to be about. Basically, they wanted to do a walking tour around central Moscow, visiting all the “local haunts”, the local vodka bars that had been servicing Moscow’s drunks since Soviet days. Some of the places we would visit were new, styled to be like the old Soviet drinking holes, but some were the originals themselves and we were lucky to visit them because usually they are strict on forbidding foreigners from entering, for Russian eyes only.

And we got a brief history of why vodka is so synonymous with Russian culture. To be honest, I remember basically nothing from the history portion except that way, way long ago, vodka was not popular at all in Russia until it was used as an herbal medicine. They used to mix the vodka with honey and garlic and was a “cure all” of ailments. Apparently one thing led to another and blam-o, everyone drinks it now. There’s a reason for the vodka stereotype, all Russians really do drink vodka. But to be fair, they only drink good vodka. Shaun had previously talked with a Russian guy about the types of vodka they drink and when he told him that he usually drank either Smirknoff or Stolichnaya when drinking vodka because they are cheaper in “Auzz”, the Russian guy laughed and said Russians wouldn’t drink vodka either if they had to drink that stuff.

So, we started walking. Our first stop was one of the originals. We sat down at a few tables, ordered a few trays of shots and some plates of pickles (all of this was free), and received a lesson on how to properly take the shot. To explain, you first make a toast (to whatever), raise the glass and bottom out the shot glass. Then you put the glass down, take a pickle, sniff the pickle, and then eat the pickle. So we did just that and it was awesome. I had gotten to know one of the Russian girls on the tour, Dasha, a student and fluent English speaker, and I asked her what the word was for “cheers”. At first she didn’t know, she said she didn’t think there was a translation. And then someone else, a foreigner replied, “it’s nostdroveya, of course”. Dasha said that was technically correct but that no Russian would ever use that word. They really don’t have a translation for cheers. Rather, they just make a toast, each time, and often the toast is as simple as, “to drinking”. I kind of like that but “cheers” is easier, you don’t have to think about it.

Shaun and Karen, listening attentively to our guide

My first vodka shot of the night

The group outside Kamchatka, the trendy vodka shot bar

Shaun and me during our interview with RT

The old Soviet era shot bar, usually reserved for Russians

The next place we visited was one of the new bars, styled as if it was from the Soviet days, but it had a new, trendy twist. Apparently, it is one of the hottest new bars in the city. It was here that Shaun and I got cornered by RT for an on screen interview (let me know if you find it!). They asked our names and where we were from, what we thought of the tour, and what we thought of vodka. It was short but pretty cool. Afterwards, we all ordered some shots at the bar and I ordered some Russian red caviar on toast, a popular dish in Russia (it sounds expensive but its cheap and delicious).

The last place we went to (there were others we were supposed to visit but we were lingering too long in the other bars, we were having a really great time) was the real deal. The kind of place that you can’t just walk into without a Russian. It was built during the Soviet days and was no more than a plain basement with white washed walls and some basic, standing tables, underground, beneath the street. Two women worked the counter and offered five types of vodka, all of them cheap. They were only sold by the shot. And they had a small menu of bar food. We ordered some pelmeni with sour cream (Russian dumplings) and some shots (of course). At the other tables were some highly intoxicated older gentlemen, swaying on their feet, bracing themselves with their table, eyeing us foreigners speaking English. At one point, an old guy with a long, white beard yelled something incoherent (even for the Russians with us) in our direction, probably irritated by our demon languages. It got quiet briefly and then the good times sauntered on. This place was awesome. We stayed for hours until closing time at 9. We and the drunks were kicked out by the two women working the counter, and we parted ways, thanking the Russian, student guides. I’ll keep in touch with some of the Russian students I met on the tour and I said a final farewell to my traveling buddies, the Aussies. They had a flight today to Minsk in Belarus as they continue conquering the world, Chingis Khan style.

All in all it was a really great time. My goal was to return to the hostel and get some sleep and do some more sightseeing today which I will begin in another post so that this one doesn’t ramble too long and you lose interest. So, see you in the next post!

The Kremlin

(Please back date to 3/2/13)

I had heard that Moscow was going to be different experience than with the rest of Russia. I had read an interesting article somewhere previously that put it this way. It explained that all the money generated in Moscow, stays in Moscow. All the country’s rich oil tycoon billionaires live in Moscow. And all you read about in the news is what Moscow has to say, what Putin and the Kremlin have to say (this is the main reason that I am so excited to see the Kremlin today). I also read in my book, “Travels in Siberia”, that the city has had such a problem of people wanting to move in (not just immigrants, but non-Muscovite Russians as well) in order to help bank on that wealth, that Moscow has created a permit system that forbids people, most of them, from living there. So Moscow for most non-Muscovite Russians becomes this unattainable dream city.

One question I am always asked by Russian people I meet is about what my impression is of Russian people now that I’ve been traveling through the country. I always said that I was pleasantly surprised by the hospitality of Siberians and although difficult to engage at first, once you take the time to try, they quite like to open up and help you out. And then when they found out I was heading west on the train and not east, most Sivberians told me that the closer I got to Moscow, the less friendly the people become because Muscovites have money (although I think this is often the case in most big cities of the world). I can’t say if that’s true or not, it is sort of transparent as a visitor, but I will agree, after spending the day yesterday and today walking around Moscow, people watching, sight seeing, that Moscow really is on a different page than the rest of Russia. It’s like they forgot that they belong to a whole other country. Very few Muscovites that I’ve talked to have been to Siberia. While Siberian Russians are classy and elegant (the women, I mean), Muscovites are hip and trendy. Moscow is full of architectural marvels where as Siberian cities have few. Siberia has a culture very much on its own (from the train folk, to the skinny bears, to the babushkas) but Moscow it appears belongs to Europe. This city and its people could easily be located somewhere in the Eurozone. Don’t get me wrong, I think Moscow is incredible. I’m relieved to finally be back in a place where I can sip coffee in a bilingual cafe and read an english language newspaper (The Moscow Times publishes a decent paper). Where waitresses don’t look at me funny when I can’t speak Russian. And obviously culture abounds here, but in its own Moscow Russian culture sort of way. I cannot wait to keep exploring (and I think I will stay a little while - at least until next thursday because I’d like to watch the Champions League matches that occur at midnight here on both tuesday and wednesday nights. I can easily kill a week in this city). There certainly is a lot to see.

With that said, I spent all morning and afternoon walking around Red Square, seeing the Kremlin and St. Basil’s Cathedral. I hopped out of bed, showered, and was out the door at around 10 this morning. I walked across the street to grab some breakfast and read up on my plan for the best way to see this massive area. I sat down at a small table in a large cafe, ordered some cabbage pie and an “Americano”, the most cost efficient of coffees, and read through my guide book. The cafe was playing American rhythm and blues from the sixties and was projecting over a large canvas screen on the far wall music videos from a Russian TV channel - Ke$ha was dancing in the background to what sounded to me like Louis Armstrong. The cafe had its own bar where two stylish guys were sitting, talking with the barkeep. They were sipping on a large glass of light beer, it was 10 in the morning. Satisfied with the breakfast pie and coffee, I set out for Red Square.

Since I had been wandering around the area the day before, I sort of new where I was going. I approached the Kremlin by its west gate, the Trinity Gate Tower. The Kremlin, when viewed from outside, is like a huge castle fortress, surrounding a large area on all sides by a large, red, brick wall. Along the Kremlin’s east wall is the sprawling Red Square. Red Square is nothing like the communist style square that is Tiananmen in Beijing, surrounded by Soviet style buildings in a very blocky, orderly way. It is very much a European style square of cobblestone, ringed by historic, non-Soviet buildings like St. Basil’s Cathedral with its onion domes and multi-colored walls. I paid for my ticket which allowed me to go into the Kremlin walls and into the main square, to observe the government buildings from the square, and then it allowed me entrance into the many cathedrals, chapels, and other historic buildings on the grounds.

As you can well imagine, the Kremlin is under high security. The security officers were swift at tooting their whistles at wandering tourists, herding them back into the main square like lost sheep. As you pass through the main gate and through the Kremlin’s high, red-colored walls, you immediately see all the most important government buildings in Moscow, all off limits to tourists. On the right is Poteshny Palace, now some office buildings, where Stalin used to reside. On the left is the Kremlin’s Armory and the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, and straight ahead are the official offices of the President, the Senate building, where Vladimir Putin works, and the old Soviet Communist Party headquarters building, the former Soviet Senate Building, now under reconstruction, to what purpose I’m not sure.

Just to be surrounded by these buildings that house the movers and shakers of the Russian world and where decisions that you read about in the news occur daily was a cool feeling. I get the same feeling when I’m in DC, surrounded by building after building that house people that are making decision that affect the world every day in some way other.

But once you get past the government buildings you can’t visit, you wander into the main square where all the cathedrals, towers, and chapels are, mostly built in the 15th and 16th centuries. Ivan the Great Bell Tower, with its high peaked, golden domes rises in front of you. Below the tower sits the world’s largest cannon, too large to be functionally practical I read, and what may be the world’s largest bell. Behind the tower are some cathedrals that house the burial caskets of most of the old Tsars and Tsarinas from Russia’s imperial past. The burial casket of Ivan the Terrible in the Archangel Cathedral was particularly interesting. And other chapels and museums that mainly house a collection of Imperial art work from the 16th century and other interesting items from that time period, like robes worn by the Tsars, their crowns, some furniture, etc. I took lots of photos.

The State Senate Building where Putin drinks his coffee every morning

The largest cannon in the world

The main square in the center of the Kremlin

Annunciation Cathedral

Ivan the Great Bell Tower and Archangel Cathedral on the right, home to Ivan the Terrible

A view of Patriarch's Place from an alleyway in the square, now an Imperial museum

A World War II memorial along the Kremlin's outer walls

I spent about three hours wandering around within the limits of where I could visit and then I moved on. I walked back out to Red Square. Yesterday, when I walked through, I had taken some photos of the ice rink that was set up in the middle of the square for public ice skating. The DJ booth from yesterday had been replaced by an ice hockey official’s chair and a broadcasting booth. I watched on for awhile as a youth ice hockey league game was being played. Little Russian kids were hammering each other onto the ice and into the walls - future NHL stars, no doubt.

A youth hockey game on Red Square

Then I walked over to St. Basil’s Cathedral on the southern edge of Red Square to walk through the iconic labyrinthian corridors of the famous cathedral. St. Basil’s is actually called the Intercession Cathedral, St. Basil’s is just one of four chapels that make up the cathedral. St. Basil was the name we associate with St. Vassily, an orthodox priest that correctly predicted Ivan the Terrible’s demise. Each chapel within the cathedral has its own spiraling tower rising well above the small room, filled with paintings and murals, that make up the space. Each chapel is connected by a dark maze of corridors that wander and wind through the cathedral, dimly lit by iron-clad lanterns. You sort of follow a route to the top of the cathedral and exit through a doorway from the outside that lead you down these grand steps to the square. It was a very cool place.

The maze-like corridors of St. Basil's Cathedral

Each chapel of St. Basil's was laden with intricate art work like this

Tired from the day’s activities, I walked back to the hostel, not far from Red Square, and took a rest. I was meeting up with Yana later for a late night of partying in Moscow’s nightlife scene. I was able to stream “El Classico”, the famous league play matchup in Spain’s La Liga between Real Madrid (my personal favorite) and FC Barcelona. The matchup occurs three or four times per year and attracts some of the highest watched ratings of any sports match in the world, these two teams easily being among the very best club teams in the world. So I watched it from my computer in the hostel (Madrid won 2-1) and napped.

I met up with Yana near the metro station outside the hostel and we walked to a nearby sushi bar to grab some dinner (sushi bars are apparently Moscow’s big thing these days) and then we went around to visit some of the city’s main bars and pubs. I don’t need to discuss anything in detail about the night (bars, clubs, Moscow, you get the idea) but I will mention a few things. The bars and pubs in Moscow are very similar to the ones in Boston and I’ve seen this style of bar and pub in very few other places. The bars and pubs are normal bars and pubs until late when the owners open up the place to big dance floors, spreading away the tables and chairs, DJ’s or live bands in the corners, and people squish and squeeze their way to dance in the middle. Boston’s bars do this because the city doesn’t really have a club scene. The bars of Moscow were awesome. But Moscow does have a club scene as well. But the club scene in this city services the city’s rich and famous, and I probably couldn’t get in to them even if I tried (based on my clothes - they were club appropriate but not billionaire club appropriate) but we avoided them mainly because the price of admission is well above my budget. They are the kinds of clubs that you pay thousands of dollars in for bottles of Vodka and private tables. Besides, Yana said the women in these clubs are snooty and we’d have more fun in the city’s underground bar scene. She was right, we did. We did hit one club though at the end of the night (well, early morning) called Propaganda which prides itself as the city’s first club, opened in the seventies, and caters to all types of people so it’s not very expensive. It’s also located directly across from my hostel so it was a nice exit to the evening.

All in all it was a great first day in the city. Yana has been an excellent and very helpful guide and I look forward to the many days to follow. Tomorrow, after sleeping in for a long, long time, I will meet up with my old train travel pals, Shaun and Karen, the Aussies, for what they are describing as a free vodka walking tour. You can’t go to Moscow without doing a free vodka walking tour, I’m told.

Vampires ride trains too

Still alive! I’ve completed the first major portion of my trip and finished the famed Trans-Siberian railroad here in Moscow. The end of a super long line of trains and it must be said, I’m trained out for a bit (but only just a bit). 

I arrived in glorious, uber-European, Moscow this morning after a reasonably pleasant train ride from Perm. I took the same train, No. 109, that I took from Ekaterinburg to get to Perm so I was well familiar with its departure time, a leisurely 3 PM. The train took me overnight so there wasn’t much to see but I think this last stretch was supposed to be the least interesting or varied portion of the trek anyway, much of it consisting of Moscow's suburban sprawl. My cabin mates in general were interesting ones, but all of them were solo travelers so they mainly kept to themselves. The guy next to me though (I had the bottom right bunk again, I’ve had the bottom right bunk on every single ride since Beijing, oddly enough) did try to spark a conversation which I was grateful for. He broke the ice by sharing some of his dried, salted fish that he had bought from one of the aggressive babushkas from one of the station platforms when we pulled to a stop for awhile. They were tasty. He had asked me where I was going and where I started from. He responded with a mystified, “whewfff”, slightly shaking his head in disbelief when I had told him I had taken the train from Beijing. Then he took out his laptop and tinkered with it for a while. Assuming our conversation was complete, I took out my e-reader and began to read more of “Travels in Siberia” which, by the way, I’m almost finished with and is turning out to be an excellent read, I highly recommend it. But then out of the blue he put the laptop in my lap. Startled a bit, I took the laptop and began to watch what he wanted to show me. The video was of a professor in a classroom talking to a small group of students in Russian. This looked like a recording of an actual lesson. But I didn’t understand any of the Russian and wasn’t sure why I was being shown the 45 minute long clip. His eagerness to show me waning, he reached over and with the keypad, skipped ahead 15 minutes or so and suddenly I understood what he wanted to show me. The professor had started to write English words on a chalkboard in the front of the classroom while students looked on. He made a diagram that looked like a tic-tac-toe figure and began to take an English verb and conjugate it in a different way in each of the nine squares. The students looked on and tried to repeat the words with the professor. This went on for about a half hour and I watched the entire thing, I was kind of hooked on it. To see an English lesson in Russian is a very interesting thing to watch. It’s a reminder that makes me glad (I’m reminded of this often) that I am a native English speaker. English is one weird language and a difficult one to learn, especially when your native language is so different than English, as Chinese or Russian is. I give them a lot of credit and it makes me want to try harder to learn languages as well. And I also realized, from watching this film, that I think I could never be an English teacher. It requires a lot of patience and a very thorough knowledge of how the English language is constructed, neither of which I can claim to have. When the film was finished, I thanked him for the entertainment, and then he rolled over and went to sleep.

Around midnight we pulled into a station in the city of Karov for about twenty minutes. My new friend disembarked here, two newcomers arrived, and then we were full up in the compartment. One of the new arrivals was a short man who smiled a lot. I’m pretty sure he wasn’t Russian. But I think he was smiling nervously, which I believe was a result of his not really being able to speak Russian (I could tell from his accent and his stunted responses to standard questions - some of which even sounded like English responses - yeah, sorry, etc.) and he looked and behaved a lot like I did when I took my first train and was surrounded by big Russian people. I’ve learned not to shy around these hardy, Russian train folks, to kind of plant myself down and own my territory within the compartment as certainly I have every right to do. They treat you like another compartment mate when you do that. But during my first ride in Siberia I was still a little shell shocked by how different Russian train folk are (they are indeed a different breed of folk) and by how difficult the language barrier was. But that hesitation only invited attention which made life a little uncomfortable at times. Anyway, I’m of hardy train stock now myself. This new passenger had a darker shade of skin than Russians, probably he was from central Asia somewhere and he mostly kept out of the way, clambering up into the top bunk and sleeping most of the journey. The other new arrival was an interesting fellow. He also kept to himself and was mysteriously gone from the compartment for much of the time. He was tall, very skinny, and very Russian looking. He looked like a vampire. He had sharp, crystal blue eyes and a sharp nose. And he came into the compartment wearing a very expensive looking leather coat, a gentleman’s fur hat, and wore a very fine suit made of silk with a black turtle neck under the jacket. Yeah, he was a vampire. He never said a word to anybody and after I had fallen asleep and woke up briefly around three in the morning, he was still wide awake typing on a computer in his bed. I guess he doesn’t sleep.

But we all pulled into Moscow station at 10 o’clock this morning. I was met there by Yana, a friend of mine who studied with me in the same program in Chengdu last semester. I had told her I was passing through Moscow for awhile and she graciously made time to meet me and take me to a hostel that she had researched ahead of time that she thought would be suitable (she said she couldn’t take me in her apartment unfortunately because her sister, who also lives there, is contagiously ill, and Yana herself even had to relocate to her grandparents’ house). But she will be able to spend a lot of time with me while I’m here and I’m happy to have a friend around, let alone a local.

I took a much needed shower at the hostel (trains don’t have showers) and then we set off to a cafe where I ordered a mushroom and potato pie and a big, dark beer. She joined me for that. Then I took care of a much needed chore with her much needed help. My bank card expired yesterday and a new one had to be mailed to me here in Moscow. It never quite made the address so I had Fedex hold it for me at a distribution center in Moscow and we went to go pick it up, successfully. (I had attempted this before actually. My bank mailed one to me when I stayed at the hostel in the hutong in Beijing. But as I described in a much earlier post, hutongs are the worst sort of labyrinths, addresses mean little in the hutong, and I wasn’t surprised when it never made it to me.) But now I can access money, a necessary part of traveling.

Yana went off to a meeting she had at her university (Moscow State University) and I went back to the area where my hostel is. My hostel is located in an apartment in the heart of the city center in one of the oldest districts called Kitai Gorod which actually means China Town in Russian even though there is not an ounce of Chinese anything in this neighborhood. But I’m within walking distance of about a billion cafes, food markets, and the famous Red Square. So I spent the whole rest of the day walking around and checking out the neighborhood. I will do a more dedicated trip tomorrow, but I wandered through Red Square today to get a sneak peek. It’s amazing and I’ll save a more thorough description of it later when I’ve had a better chance to explore. But when you think of Russian architecture, you think of Moscow’s Red Square. Here are a few preview photos to whet your appetite.

St. Basil's Cathedral, east side of Red Square

DJ throwing down Russian club music in a public ice rink in the middle of Red Square

The State Kremlin Palace in the west end of Red Square

It should also be noted that Moscow is warm (like above zero/above freezing warm). It snowed all day but it was the heavy, wet snow that one experiences in Boston around this time of year. Everywhere else I had been to in Russia was bitterly cold, streets frozen in ice. Moscow is a slushy mess right now. But this is a good sign for me and my future springtime travels.

So, Red Square and the Kremlin tomorrow. And I’m going to hit the Moscow nightlife with Yana and some of her friends as well in the evening. It should be fun.