ConGRADulations

Congratulations Mims, you are now officially more educated than your big brother :-)

Russia Recap: Day 6

Thursday April 24th

During the night, our fourth bunk was filled by a guy who got on at one of the intermediate stops (which explains why the conductor was so adamant that we not set any of our bags on that bunk back in Moscow). While it would have been fun to check out the first class Spalny Vagon, the goal of having a good quiet night’s sleep from Moscow to St. Petersburg was achieved. Well it was achieved to the extent that you can get a good night’s sleep while having to get up at 5am (something neither Kristin nor I excel at) in order to be off the train when it arrived at 5:30—they don’t seem to like you hanging around the train once it arrives, so I guess sleeping in isn’t much of an option.

We were immediately grateful for our choice of hotel, Hotel Oktiabrskaya, which is right off the square in front of the train station. The main hotel dominates the square nearly as much as the train station, but we stayed in the smaller (and cheaper) filial branch of the hotel on a different side of the square (and I definitely recommend that approach to anyone making a similar trip). As expected, we couldn’t check in at 5:30am, but there were no problems checking our bags in their luggage room (including Joe’s who didn’t have a reservation at the now full hotel).

Baggage stowed, we followed a recommendation Joe had for a breakfast buffet at Marius Pub, which did an admirable job of replacing the breakfasts we’d become accustomed to at the President Hotel. It probably helped that it was the restaurant attached to a hotel whose price may have rivaled what we paid at the President Hotel. We scanned the Lonely Planet over breakfast and I confirmed my suspicions that none of the places we planned to go in St. Petersburg opened before 10am, including all of the theatre kiosks where we hoped to get tickets to Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake. After having Gamlet sold out in Moscow I felt we needed to get those tickets as early as possible, but the Lonely Planet was adamant that in order to avoid the Hermitage lines you needed to be there an hour before it opened at 10:30. We had a conundrum but eventually chose to avoid the Hermitage lines and try our luck with ballet tickets in the afternoon.

Joe set off to find himself a hotel while we leisurely explored Nevsky Prospect and the canals to fill the hours before the Hermitage opened. We eventually settled in “line” (a group sitting around) out front of the museum. As we waited, a man walked up to us—directly to the two of us—and said he had two tickets to Swan Lake that night that he needed to get rid of and did we want them? Too good to be true? I was skeptical, having bought counterfeit tickets to a Jaguars/Ravens game years ago, and having read Lonely Planet’s section warning about ticket scalping. It described foreign theatre-goers being embarrassed as they were forced by zealous babushkas to pay the difference between the Russian price and the foreigner price when they were caught with Russian tickets. My skepticism grew when we mentioned that we were actually looking for three tickets (Joe planned to rejoin us that evening) and he said he had a colleague that he could swap tickets with to get us three together. I examined the two tickets he had and felt they were legitimate at least (and confirmed the date, time, and show etc.). He was asking 500 Rubles (~$25) per ticket which was between the prices I’d paid for Don Quixote and Eugene Onegin. Eventually, we decided it was worth the $25 for us to know we had the tickets and not have to spend any more time that day dealing with them. We agreed to buy them and he went to make the trade with his colleague.

Being April tourists may have hurt us at several locations, but nowhere did it help more than the Hermitage. The lines discussed in the book never really formed and we were able to enter the museum quickly (after our ballet scalper found us inside at the ticket window with our three tickets). We felt even better about buying the ballet tickets when it turned out Kristin saved nearly $20 on her admission to the Hermitage. Most places had discounted admissions for students (and Kristin took advantage of them with her GW card as a doctorate student), but the Hermitage had quite a discount indeed. Free. I paid about $20 (and it was still a bargain) and Kristin paid absolutely nothing. Best deal in Russia. Photos are allowed in the Hermitage... but not coats. Every theatre and museum had a complimentary (and tip-free) coat check, but this was the first time I was turned away at the entrance and forced to check my coat. Photos for coats was a fair tradeoff, and if I'd been made to walk around barefoot it'd have been worth it. Like the Moscow metro, photos are the only way to capture our three hour tour (sans shipwreck :-p) of the Hermitage. As you’ll see, it was as much about the art of the Hermitage as it was the art in the Hermitage:

Hardly satisfied that I’d spent all the time there that I wanted, I knew I would have to save a deeper exploration for a future trip. We had time for a short excursion before we needed to get back to the hotel to check-in/shower/get presentable for the ballet. Kristin had been hankering to climb something since we arrived in Russia and we’d finally found an opportunity, the colonnade of St. Isaac’s Cathedral. I feared the view would cost nearly $16, but Kristin correctly surmised that the we could skip the $11 museum fee and go straight up the colonnade for $5. 262 mostly spiral stairs later, we had our view. St. Petersburg is compact enough that we could see nearly all of the main attractions from the top and get a good sense of the city layout.

Back at the hotel we met up with Joe so he could pick up his bags and learned we’d been wise to book our hotel in advance. Joe had spent all morning tracking down a room (ultimately ending up at an unmarked B&B up Nevsky Prospect). We planned to meet back up at Café Idiot for dinner before the ballet… but we never got there. Dinner and the theatre were a long walk back near St. Isaacs and we were running a bit late so we decided to take the metro. That was a bad idea. While less extensive than Moscow’s, St. Petersburg’s metro runs just as frequently is seems to be just as crowded per station. They also have the same problem if an escalator breaks down. And one did. We discovered this as we entered the large room at the top of the escalator. The usually empty room was overflowing with people, all funneling towards the two-by-two entrance to the escalator. Turning around wasn’t an option as the hallway poured people into the room behind us. The room couldn’t grow so as more and more people flowed in we just got cozier. The funnel soon felt more like an evil tube of cake icing with the back being squeezed and pushing us with more and more force towards the one narrow exit. I started to consider what might happen to us “icing” as we shot out of the tube and onto the top of an escalator. It wasn’t a pretty image, though perhaps not inappropriate if someone tumbled at the top. It was becoming increasingly difficult to stay standing (or to breathe) as each surge threatened to send us to the floor. It felt like only a matter of time before a squeeze from the back would come with enough force to topple those of us now in front. It was really starting to feel like that surge would be timed to coincide with our arrival at the top of the escalator. But we had to focus on standing, breathing and holding on to some bit of one another. Just before we reached the nozzle our grip on each other was broken. I watched one girl ahead of us get pinned to the metal railing leading to the escalator. It was all we could do to resist the surge just long enough to let her slide loose and get onto the escalator. Breathe. Stay standing. And then we were out. On the escalator. The pressure was instantly released and we were sliding safely away from the chaos. Mercifully, the escalator rode out horizontally for a good ways before descending, so in hindsight it was unlikely anyone would ever be the first domino to topple the whole set of us down to the bottom, but the danger of being trampled in that room was very real. We didn’t hear anything behind us so I can only assume that no disaster occurred but honestly I don’t know how.

As a result we missed out on Café Idiot and had to call Joe (kudos to Quad-band phones and AT&T for enabling them to communicate) to change our meeting to the theatre. No fast-food options presented themselves so Kristin and I found an Irish Pub next to the theatre and asked for whatever food they could have ready in ten minutes. Perhaps the Washington Redskins and William and Mary memorabilia above the bar was a good omen because in ten minutes we were splitting a delicious plate of that Irish speciality… Spaghetti Bolognaise. Still, we were cutting it close and the lights were flashing us to our seats when we arrived in the Rimsky-Korsakov Conservatory. That wouldn’t have been a problem if there were ushers to help us to our seats. There weren’t. When our seat numbers were taken in the Orchestra we realized we needed to be up in the balcony. Except we couldn’t find the stairs. We ran in and out of the orchestra and the lobby and pretty much everywhere we could find before at last coming across the one stairwell off in the corner. Up we went. Out into the Mezzanine. Which weren’t where our seats we either. We could see the balcony we had to get to one level higher. It’s just that the stairs didn’t go there. We puzzled over the M.C. Escher-inspired staircase for a bit before deciding that stairs did go up there… we just couldn’t get to them from the Mezzanine. No, to go up you have to go down. Back at the bottom of the stairwell, there was a separate stairway that intertwined with the first, skipped the exit onto the Mezzanine and led finally to our seats… at the very back row of the entire theatre. That section was pretty much empty so we opted to sit down at the front as the ballet got underway after waiting for the frantic Americans to find their seats. Watching this ballet made me realize how much storyline there actually was in Don Quixote… and confirmed what I had suspected: I’m not a fan of ballet. Rather than complain about wanting a story I should really just go see a play (or at least an Opera)! Still it was a worthwhile experience, if only to discover this peculiar stairway design—which incidentally had those of us on the balcony descending to ground level and then halfway back up again to the Mezzanine where the refreshments and restrooms lived during intermission. Hopefully you didn’t down your liquid refreshments on the way back to the balcony and then realize you now needed to go back to the restroom. You’d never make it. Might as well just piss off the balcony. Anyway did I mention the stairway they had in this place?

After the show it was still light out, despite being past 10pm. As we took a sunset walk home past all of the day’s monuments, I realized it was the latest that it had ever stayed light where I was at. That record wouldn’t be broken by the next (longer) day because I’d be headed back on a train to Moscow by that time. But before then Kristin and I still had full tourist wishlists for Friday. Probably too full… As an early birthday present to Kristin (and yes, because I wouldn’t have been there without her) I figured her wishlist took priority. What? You think I made that up just because today happens to be Kristin’s birthday? I can neither confirm nor deny that. But I can wish Kristin a very merry birthday. Happy Birthday!

<-- Day 5 ---- Day 7 -->

Russia Recap: Day 5

Wednesday April 23rd

On Wednesday I explored outside of the city. Well at least on the outskirts of the city. The metro came above ground to cross the Moskva River, and I passed soviet-era cookie-cutter apartment complexes. I’d originally hoped to work in a day trip to a Golden Ring town during my time in Moscow, but settled for my friend Dana’s recommendation to visit the 4-acre Kolomenskoe Reserve overlooking the river.

The novel I’m rereading, Edward Rutherfurd’s Russka, refers to it in one of its stories:

…Cossacks rode out to look at the tsar’s country residence at nearby Kolomenskoye. Sited by the Moskva River, it was a curious jumble of buildings—some wooden, others of brick covered with white stucco. Its tent roofs, onion domes, and towers flanked by ascending pyramids of kokoshniki suggested a silent, powerful peacefulness like an Indian temple. They returned to the city feeling refreshed.

I’d say refreshing is a good description. It helped that I didn’t have an agenda of things to see there and simply wandered the park for a few hours. Apparently it is frequently used as fairgrounds and I could see some of that infrastructure (including some quaint carnival rides). With no festival underway, most visitors (on a Wednesday afternoon at least) were women with strollers. Strollers, pigeons, and construction. Have I mentioned Russia tends to get renovated in April in preparation for May tourists :-p This time I didn’t care because I’d planned to enjoy the admission-free park, river views, and finally lovely weather and to only admire the buildings from the outside. Construction was no problem for any of that… so long as I avoided the benches with the “wet paint” (I assume) sign on them. I returned to meet conference-completed Kristin “feeling refreshed”.

On the way back to the hotel I made a detour to the Okhotny Ryad mall. It’s an underground mall near the Kremlin which Lonely Planet describes as “catering to all income levels”. In my international travels I try to collect foreign language copies of the French comic series Asterix the Gaul. I was excited to get one in Russian and having not walked by a single large book store I decided a mall was a likely spot to find one. I was wrong. I don’t know about the variety of the prices in the stores, but one thing Okhotny Ryad does not have is a variety of merchandise. The entire mall consists of three kinds of stores: clothing, shoes and fashion accessories. Aside from a food court there is literally nothing else. Nothing. Not that it’s small. Okhotny Ryad is three stories… of nothing but clothes, shoes and accessories. Okhotny Ryad nearly sapped the refreshment I’d soaked up at Kolomenskoye.

The one last thing Kristin wanted to be sure she did in Moscow was to tour the metro stations. That may seem strange in some cities (actually every city that I can think of)—some metros are worth riding once for the experience, but none that I know of are worthy of a station by station tour. Moscow is the exception. Absorbing Ivanov’s masterwork in the Tretyakov Gallery was my favorite moment of the trip, but the Moscow metro was my favorite thing about Russia.

The photos tell the story of the individual stations better than I can. Even beyond the aesthetics the metro system is impressive and I compiled some notes as well as a 10 top ten list of what I liked about it:

First, my few gripes:

• They do not let people walk stationary escalators as we do in DC (they are just closed off—and they got pretty upset at one guy who jumped the barrier and walked up).

• Unlike DC trains, they have no ceiling bar to hang on to in the area by the doors (where you are most likely to wind up standing when you get on a packed train). Hope you’ve got good balance.

• Escalator breakdowns are a serious issue. Chaos ensues. The remaining working escalators can get so backed up that entire rooms and hallways quickly fill with people. The force of the crowd pushing for the escalator can be terrifying, as well would learn…

And some random recollections:

• Each platform services only one line. That means lots of walking between platforms but less confusion.

• We saw workers with scrapers riding the escalators to remove advertising stickers that had been slapped on (we also saw a guy riding the escalators slapping them on).

• We ordered fare cards by going to the Kacca and holding up fingers for the desired number of rides.

And finally my top ten favorite (non-aesthetic) things about the Moscow Metro system:

10) Their lines have both a color and a number associated with them. They may not be friendly to those in wheel chairs (tons of stairs and escalators) but they take pity on the color blind.

9) If it isn’t so crowded that the escalator is packed two-abreast, they follow the (non-tourist) DC convention of stand right, walk left.

8) They do a fairly good job of crowd control by splitting walkways into two “lanes” either with separate hallways or temporary fencing. This works as long as the escalators are all functioning.

7) The metros have public trash cans. Well none on the platforms, but they have small ones right after the turnstile to deposit spent metro cards. They were the only public trash cans I saw in the city!

6) Many trains had an electronic station meter that would fill up as you passed each stop and blink to mark the upcoming station.

5) All the fare cards work like Smart Trip cards, just tap it on a pad by the turnstile to enter (and a handy display lights up with the remaining number of rides on the card).

4) The price is right. If you buy a 10-ride pass, each ride costs 17 rubles (about 70 cents) and all trips cost exactly the same, no matter where you go.

3) The escalators move fast. I’d say twice as fast as DC. Since the majority of their escalators are long enough to make Rosslyn’s seem ordinary, that speed is a good thing (just be careful getting on and off!). According to the Wikipedia, Park Pobedy has the longest single escalators in the world so we made a special tour detour to ride it.

2) Trains move fast too and we never once had to wait in the tunnel while a train ahead of us cleared the platform or because they were single-tracking.

1) Most impressive to me (rivaling even the aesthetics) was the frequency of the trains. Each track has a clock at one end of the platform with the current time and elapsed time since the last train left. During rush hour the average time between trains seemed to be 45 seconds. 45 seconds! At almost all other times it was between 1 and 2 minutes. The longest time by a considerable margin was one 5 minute wait on a Sunday night.

I ♥ Moscow Metro

Dinner at Café 44 was decent (but credit-card unfriendly—despite the sign in the window!), and after a fruitless search for Asterix in a huge bookstore that Kristin found near our Polyanka metro, we set off to test how well I had done buying our train tickets to St. Petersburg. We managed to navigate the rush hour metro with all of our luggage by utilizing the relatively emptier first or last metro cars, and got to Leningradsky Vokzal about a half hour before our train left. Well a half hour before we thought our train left. We found our train number on the wall-size electronic board, and with some improvised translating we decided the time was still 9:30, but we couldn’t identify a platform number. One other thing troubled me. There was one column we couldn’t identify. In that column was a single word after each train. I assumed these words meant things like “On-time”, “Delayed”, “Boarding”. Our train had a word that wasn’t on any other train on the board. Well it was in one other place: Next to our same train over on the arrivals side. I’m usually optimistic, but one terrifying likely translation popped into my head: “Cancelled”. That’s not good. Kristin turned to the information counter for an answer while I turned to the Lonely Planet. At about the same time we found out that unknown category was Frequency, and the words were “Daily”, “Odd-numbered Days”, “Even-numbered Days”, and yes “Cancelled”. But our train was chyotnye (Even-numbered days) not otmenyon (Cancelled). Phew. Before my mind could dwell much on the fact that our tickets were for Odd-numbered days… I got the thumbs up from Kristin who had been so friendly with the information lady that she actually led us all the way to the platform and our train (which had a different number than we thought, and this one did run on Odd-numbered days). This was typical of the trip where we’d stay true to our gender stereotypes: when in doubt I looked to the book/map and Kristin asked for directions.

Aside from not being able to translate our tickets well enough to know which car we were in (and therefore having to stop and check at every single car down the length of the train), our tickets and passports passed inspection and we found our cabin just fine. Joe had the same problem translating his ticket and actually ended up in the wrong cabin initially—where he made friends and was given a beer. When someone showed up to claim that seat, Joe found his real seat and as I’d hoped, Kristin, Joe and I were “vamistya” in the same cabin (and it seemed the fourth bunk was unused). I decided I liked the top bunk where both my luggage and my person were up and out of the way. As the train rolled out of the station we settled in and headed straight to bed to cram in as much sleep as we possibly could before our scheduled arrival in St. Petersburg… at 5:28 am.

<-- Day 3 and 4 ---- Day 6 -->

Happy Blogiversary to me!

Don't mind me, just wanted to take a short break from recapping my Russia trip to pat myself on the back for documenting the past year of my life. I know my mom appreciates it (Hi Mom, happy early Mother's Day), and I imagine it'll be a nice (or embarrassing) time capsule for myself someday. It was exactly one year ago that I posted this note, and so like my favorite retired blogger might say, Happy Blogiversary!

Since you've had the opportunity to learn about me this past year, I figure it is only fair for me to disclose what I've learned about you. Some of it is a bit disturbing (read on to see some of the searches that have led here). That's right, since about September of last year I have been tracking you while you read about me! Could you sense Google ogling you? They have a free Google Analytics service that has recorded the following:

Since September, 1,630 of you have visited 4,360 times and viewed 7,173 pages. You stick around for an average of 1 minute and 53 seconds.

Other than the main page, these are the pages you've read most often:

Note To Africa	246
Darrenisms	225
Facebook Freefall	122
I'd Climb the Highest Mountain	122
Gauley Lama	80

You've come from 699 cities (in 55 countries), with these being the top 5 (who do I know in Montreal anyway?):

Arlington	1047
Washington	879
San Francisco	186
Montreal	110
Falls Church	107

These were my biggest days and the posts that caused them (congrats Joel, your disaster Date Lab takes first place):
2/13/2008 Joel's Date Lab Debacle 74
12/19/2007 Holiday Party 62
1/2/2008 New Year's Cabin Camping 51
9/17/2007 Gauley Rafting 49

Those of you that don't know me most likely found this blog searching for something else (sadly there's nothing remotely useful here on anything but perhap the last item on this list):

1) 36 times you've wanted to know about "driving cross country"
2) 36 times you've asked about "Facebook's geography quiz" (with many of those asking how to cheat!—shame on you, learn some geography!)
3) 29 times you were looking for "skydiving shoes". My Keen's worked, but my one jump hardly qualifies me to recommend skydiving shoes.
4) 28 times you were searching for "behr deck stain". Again, a sample size of 1, but it's been a disaster for us. We stained it two years ago, then touched it up last fall, and this spring it's an embarrassment (I should post new photos)
5) 28 times you were looking for the quote "The Lord said Peter, I can see your house from here". This one baffles me. I know it as a line from a Roger Waters song, can that really be the source of all these hits (relatively speaking)
6) 27 times you came here for information on tying a "safety knot". They're important, keep searching
7) 23 times you wanted to find out about Hassan Bah in Doucki, Guinea. He's great! If you are in Guinea make the effort to visit him in Doucki and spend a few days hiking with him. My experience is here.

But the real reason I enjoy Google Analytics is because I can see what you searched for that got you here, and there are some funny ones (several frankly that I have no clue why they would link here). Since I'd rather not reinforce some of these searches I'll be posting a photo of this list:

Let's see what I learn about you before my second Blogiversary...

Russia Recap: Days 3 and 4

Monday April 21

With my one assignment complete, I had two and half days (and evenings) to kill before Kristin finished earning our hotel room by attending her meetings. I’ve always admired people who travel on their own, but felt it wouldn’t be something I’d enjoy. Therefore with the exception of a day in Dakar on my way home from Africa I’d never really traveled alone. Now admittedly that was one of my best days in Africa (which probably should have served as a clue) but I still wasn’t sure how I’d adjust to solo travel in a country where I’d just barely managed to buy train tickets despite all my carefully prepared paperwork.

As you may have noticed, I enjoy theatre, and figured it would be a unique opportunity to experience some Russian style. With the help of the Moscow Times (the couple of links on the left bar below “Calendar of Events”) I’d researched what shows I could catch during my free evenings. I’d brought a list of my options with me to the theatre kiosk which can be found in most metros. My second ticket purchasing experience of the day was considerably easier than my first, but only because the woman spoke English (she had a daughter living in Miami)… because all of my top choices were sold out (I’d figured I’d go see Hamlet hoping my familiarity with the storyline would help offset my unfamiliarity with Russian, but it was not to be). After some wrangling, even in English, I wound up with tickets to see the opera Don Quixote at the theatre inside the Kremlin (for $35) and a one-act play of Eugene Onegin (for $15) at the supposedly controversial Taganka Theatre.

Feeling thoroughly accomplished at ticket purchasing, I set out for my planned activity of the day: exploring the Novodevichy Convent. After a rainy Sunday at the Kremlin I was hoping for sun shining on my outdoor activities today. It rained. I guess it was appropriate for a convent, especially one that had served as a sort of prison (and now tomb) for Peter the Great’s sister and first wife. I was particularly excited to come here because the Peter the Great miniseries I watched during high school had left me with vivid memories of the treachery of Peter’s sister Sophia who’d been confined here. In fact the miniseries basically had the theme that it was Peter vs. the women and the church. Well today it was me vs. the rain and the construction. The main building (and resting place of Tsarevna Sophia) is the Smolensk Cathedral. It was closed for renovation when the Lonely Planet book was published (2006). Turns out it is scheduled to open…May of 2008. Still there are dozens of other buildings, churches, and bell towers in the convent so I figured I’d explore them. I figured wrong. I spent the afternoon photographing puddles and pulling on locked door after locked door (one that did open I realized quickly enough was leading to the nuns’ private quarters). Basically there were two buildings open to me (and the lobby of one church) and neither were particularly historic. They each held exhibits of religious artwork, which was quickly holding little interest for me. I had my lunch of bread and water (seemed appropriate) and set off for the cemetery around back. It was raining harder and I think I was almost relieved when I approached the gate and an extremely serious looking guard made an X with his arms and shook his head at me. I tried to signal “Do I need to go around to another gate?” and he made it pretty clear that whatever was going on in there today (there were some fancy black cars out front) I was not welcome inside.

Next stop was the Matryoshka Museum (the famous Russian nesting dolls). The museum was free, which frankly it should have been since it consisted of exactly one room with no English, and the oldest doll was from… 1950. Which isn’t to say I didn’t enjoy checking out the dolls that were there, and I realized that the set from 1950 with a woman holding a chicken under her arm would be perfect for me. In Indonesia one of my favorite photos is of a boy holding a chicken under his arm, and on my favorite day in Guinea I have a photograph with… a woman carrying a chicken under her arm. Not surprisingly the set in the museum was not for sale (that I could tell) but there were replicas in the extensive gift shop downstairs (it was twice the size of the museum). The prices were higher than Izmaylova market but not unreasonable for what I was willing to spend. Unfortunately the cashier said they didn’t take credit cards but I splurged and purchased my chicken-woman set with my dwindling cash. After I paid, I noticed the sign on the counter. The sign for Visa and Mastercard! I called her on it and she said the women who knew how to work the machine didn’t work that day. This was a common refrain. Lonely Planet may say Moscow is credit card friendly, but it sure wasn’t to me.

I had just enough time to swing by the hotel and change into some theatre appropriate clothes before setting off for Don Quixote at the Kremlin. Knowing how sensitive they were about photos of Lenin, I feared there would be issues bringing a camera into the theatre so I left it at the hotel… which proved to be my loss (and yours) as I missed some beautiful photos of the Kremlin and St. Basil’s at night (and if I was as bold as some other audience members, maybe even photos of the show). Inside the enormous soviet-feeling State Theatre I found my seat (once I deciphered the words for row and seat in Russian). It was actually in the 13^th row in the orchestra… and the absolute last seat in a row that probably spanned nearly a hundred seats. Still it wasn’t too bad and I settled in for the opera. It turns out the opera I was there to see was no opera at all. I was watching the ballet of Don Quixote. I’d wikipediaed the storyline at the hotel but I learned quickly that at best the ballet was loosely inspired by Don Quixote. Since I’m a fan of storyline, the second act was easily the best. Let me show you what I mean: The second act opened with more dancing in a tavern where Don drives away an unwanted suitor for the innkeeper’s daughter. He leaves for more adventures and ends up watching a play-within-the-ballet in some village. When an unwanted suitor emerges in the play, Don charges the actor, then the audience, then a windmill (the windmill wins and a—presumably stuffed—Don comes flying off the blades). Injured, Don heads home and collapses in a forest where he dreams of fairies… who dance. The act ends when Don awakes and some nobles show up. Here’s what happens in the third act: Don watches dancers at the nobles’ court. That’s it. That was the end of the show. Of course it is my fault for wanting a ballet to be an opera. Still it was a fun experience and I learned some things about Russian shows:

• People still call Bravo here

• There are encores and curtain calls at the end of each act (and even at the end of some dances)

• Many in the audience rushed to the edge of the stage during the standing ovation

• You have to buy your programs

• They broke the cardinal rule of encores! They returned once the house lights came on (and it was like their 4^th or 5^th curtain call at the point). This rule really should be universal (as should a limit of at most 2 encores). I’ll bring these up with Darren who is compiling a list of decrees he would enact if he were a benevolent dictator (maybe I should start documenting those along with Darrenisms).

Here’s the problem. When I was on my own I took far fewer photos so I decided to combine the photos for days 3 and 4. I use slideshows because Blogger’s photo insertion capabilities are unacceptably pathetic (all photos insert at the top and must be excruciatingly dragged down into place, no easy way to do captions, preview mode doesn’t match how it gets published etc.). As a result I only have one slideshow and planned to make one entry for both days (and that’s after spending a whole entry on the ticket buying). So. Consider this the end of act one (and as you’ll see it would be just like a Russian one-act). Go get some snacks, use the restroom and come back for act two (aka Day 4) when you are ready. Deep breath. On to day four…

Tuesday April 22nd

The sun came out! And I had a whole day planned inside at art galleries… I did walk to the first gallery, and I was rewarded. I crossed the Patriarchal Bridge behind my hotel and started photographing the Peter the Great statue, The Church of Christ the Savior, and the Kremlin Cathedrals in the distance. Then I glanced down at the bridge and noticed a huge padlock attached to it. Then another. Then I realized there were dozens if not hundreds locked all the way up and down the bridge. Many had names and dates and I began photographing them. Another photographer joined me shortly and asked me something in Russian. Since he also spoke English I found out he was asking me if I knew about the “lovelocks”. I didn’t and he provided me some background. He said the tradition started in some European country… maybe Paris, maybe Italy. It started in 1993 (the date was specific… if not the location). Couples would place locks on a particular bridge (or two bridges in the case of Moscow) to commemorate their love or marriage. It turns out the man I met, Alexander, goes around photographing the locks and has a website (http://lovelock.ru —which Google will translate for you) devoted to them. He seemed like a good guy (he tried unsuccessfully to adjust the settings on my camera to take a photo with both the lovelock and Kremlin in focus) and I’ve enjoyed exploring his website and seeing many of the locks that I remember from the bridge. It was the perfect start to what would be my best day in Russia.

I eventually found the Pushkin Fine Art Gallery (which has split into two galleries since the Lonely Planet was written). The Kacca woman was helpful and let me know that the Impressionists that I probably wanted to see were actually at the other museum next door. The highlight was finding my uncle’s favorite Renoir, “The Portrait of the Actress Jeanne Samary” and being reminded of the vast range of Picasso’s styles. I spent several hours enjoying room after room of artwork that I didn’t recognize by artists who I certainly did (Renoir, Picasso, Degas, Gauguin, Cezanne).

From there I went straight to the Tretyakov Gallery with room after room of artwork I recognized (well the styles at least) by artists I had never heard of. The Tretyakov has only artwork by Russians, but the styles are familiar, with portraits, landscapes, Impressionism, Cubism, etc. The Tretyakov also has laminated English pages in each room to carry around with you. I was engrossed. I spent all afternoon discovering new favorite artists and artwork. This gallery would only be in Russia, whereas the works in the Pushkin could be in nearly any major city. At one point I walked through an entire room of portraits, including several identically posed paintings of different people. I was confused until I came into the next room which had an entire wall filled with Ivanov’s masterpiece “The Appearance of Christ to the People”. All of the life-size portraits I had seen were merely studies for this larger work. I sat in the middle of the room to take it all in and looked at face after face that I recognized from the study portraits. The overwhelming size of the painting screamed “Russia!” to me, and quite unexpectedly I found that this was my favorite moment of the trip. In a photograph the scale and detail are lost and the only way to experience this colossal piece of art was to come to Moscow and sit in this room. I experienced that moment several more times through the gallery, seeing Surikov’s “Morning of the Steltsy” depicting a graphic scene from the miniseries (and history), and finding my two favorite artists Vereshchagin, with his photorealistic depictions of scenes of travel and war, and Serebryakova, whose candid scenes of her family life stood out from the rest of the modern works that I didn’t connect with.

I ate a solo dinner at the Russian chain Yolki-Polki, which was good, and a fun atmosphere (they decorate it like a Russian country cottage and the staff wear traditional outfits). It was gimmicky but I went with it since I was having such a great day. After dinner it was off to see the one-act play Eugene Onegin which I really hoped would not turn out to be a ballet in disguise. I guess it seemed a bit strange to watch a play in another language, but I remember seeing Peer Gynt at the National Theatre in Oslo during high school (granted what I remember is some of the staging where Peer escapes from the first act by climbing up the set which is built like a giant computer motherboard… perhaps it wasn’t the original interpretation of the play). Eugene Onegin (or Yevgeny Onegin in Russian) did not disappoint. While I barely picked up a word, I won’t forget the staging. The stage was a grid of eight rooms covered with curtains. The curtains served as screens to display the actor’s silhouettes, as musical instruments (when they slid them rhythmically during songs), and everything from togas to turbans to carriages (hard to explain) wrapped around the actors. One actor wore an “I ♥ Pushkin” shirt and delivered his lines while balancing atop a ball.

On several occasions the actors came into the audience. In fact Eugene Onegin himself (well if I understood who the characters were at all) came into the audience. I don’t mean he walked down the aisle. I mean he started shimmying down a row. My row in fact. He squeezed past person after person until he was 5, 4, 3, people away from me. Oh no! Did he somehow know I was the silly American who was sitting in a play without understanding a word? He had come to expose me. I prepared my “Ya Nye Pyenemayo Parusski” (I don’t understand Russian) response, and prepared for the humiliating laughter of the entire audience. I had survived the “Ass-Hole” chant as a Sox fan in the bleachers of Yankee stadium but how would I handle this? 2 people away from me. He spoke. The women next to me answered. Then he returned to the stage. I was not to have a part in this odd play after all.

The show sort of jumped the shark (as if I could tell) midway through when there was a crazed man draped in a polar-bear fur lashing out from a table in the middle of the stage. The second half dragged since the novelty of the staging was wearing off and I was now just not understanding the increasingly longer monologues. If it lasted as long as an American one-act, it would have been the best show I’d seen this year (nudging Argonautika which had a weaker second act) but it was a Russian one-act, and as such it went on for over two hours! By the end I found myself translating the program I had bought, which listed their other repertory shows… including “Gamlet” aka Hamlet. There is no “h” in Russian (there is a “kh”) and so they replace Hs with Gs. This can be pretty funny. As we learned at various points on our trip, Russians watch Gamlet, read Gary Potter, order a Gamburger at Makdonalds, and may be an alkogolic if they drink too much vodka…

<-- Day 3 Train Tickets ---- Day 5 -->

The Mission: Two train tickets to St. Petersburg

A short diversion before I continue the photo-accompanied daily recaps (I’ll document a couple Darrenisms to compensate for this photo-free post)…

On Monday, Kristin and I went to work. Kristin began her three day conference and I went to work on procuring train tickets for us to St. Petersburg. I clearly had the shorter and presumably easier (at least if I spoke Russian) job. We’d planned to purchase the train tickets before the trip, but I was unthrilled with the travel agency’s attempts to tie my visa support to the tickets (from which waytorussia.net liberated me), and then we were told by another agency that “all tickets on all classes of all trains are sold out” (which made me question burning bridges with the first agency…apparently I am not at my most cordial when I get up a 4am to have an email exchange during Russian work hours), so we were left to try our luck purchasing tickets in country.

I was well prepared. Joe let us copy his train tickets and I wrote out a note asking for two more tickets exactly like his, which the front desk crew was kind enough to translate and transcribe for me into Cyrillic (so what if you have to iron in the maid’s quarters with a friendly staff like that!). I followed Joe’s map to the Kaccas (ticket windows) in the Belaruskaya train station and was feeling pretty good as I handed first the note, then the tickets, and then a copy of each of our passports to the ticket woman. Everything was going so smoothly in fact that I felt emboldened to try to confirm that the tickets were first-class “spalny vagon” tickets with only two beds in a cabin. It worked. Not only did she understand my request (well, on my third pronunciation of “spalny vagon”) but I understood her confused question “vamistya?” (together with? if I remembered the lessons correctly) and was able to explain that yes Kristin and I would be “vamistya” in a two-person car but not “vamistya” Joe obviously. This was too easy!

And it was. After some clicks on the keyboard, her face registered there was a problem and she began explaining the situation to me. Shortly, it was clear I had no idea what she was saying (I got lucky with “vamistya”) and I sheepishly asked if she spoke English (at least I asked in Russian). She didn’t. This was going to be fun. In a mix of English, Russian and charades, I found out “this train no spalny vagon”. Joe’s first-class tickets weren’t as classy as he’d thought. Kristin and I really wanted to get the best night’s sleep possible on the leg of the train to St. Petersburg since we’d be busy touristing all day. To us this meant avoiding sharing a cabin with some of the boisterous vodka-fueled cabin-mates we’d read about before the trip (on the way back to Moscow we had no such qualms and had planned to get third-class platzkart tickets before we found they actually were sold out). I got across that I wanted to consider other trains that did have “spalny vagon” cars. She understood and spun her screen towards me. My consideration didn’t last long as all of those tickets were 25% more for one way than the round-trip tickets I was trying to buy. The ticket woman solved the problem by showing me the beds available on Joe’s train and pointing out that Kristin and I could travel in the same cabin “vamistya” Joe. Sold. We’d only have one stranger with us. One Russian couldn’t be that loud… right?

She went on to purchasing the return trip. Click, click, concerned face. We knew each other well enough now that I got a single word and a hand gesture instead of a string of Russian. I didn’t know the word but the gesture said “higher”. I guess the price had gone up since Sunday. She spun the screen to show me the new fee. God bless the Russians for using the same Arabic numerals that we use because although I couldn’t read much on her screen, I could see the new higher price and more importantly I could see what I was pretty sure was the date. 25.05. May 25^th. Not April 25^th. Now that would be a problem. Of course seeing this issue and conveying it to my charades partner were two very different things. I tried the most direct route of contorting my arm through the hole in the ticket window and pointing to the error. My Go-Go-Gadget finger wasn’t working though and I came up a couple feet short. Thankfully we had a good rapport by this point and she didn’t feel threatened by me reaching through the window at her (in hindsight that could have been a bad idea). What followed was a string of me saying “four” or pointing and saying “not four” (I couldn’t remember “five” in Russian). The problem was she took this to mean I didn’t want four people in my cabin! This was not going well. I smiled apologetically at the growing line of Russians behind me… and proceeded to spend the next five minutes looping through the number for four, the hand signal for five, and the arm signal for I-want-to-point-to-something-on-your-screen- but-can’t-twist-my-arm-through-your-window. Then I remembered the word “Date” in Russian was something like “Datee” (only afterwards did I learn that April and May are equally close cognates in Russian and English!). I tried that. Success! She fixed the date of the request and viola, the price matched Joe’s ticket once again. As I learned throughout the trip, the tourist season starts in May and therefore a May ticket is more expensive than an April one.

I purchased the tickets with the cash I’d brought (6,600 Rubles or about $280 total for the two round-trip second-class tickets). Like the rest of my experience in Moscow, they didn’t take credit cards. Tickets in hand I spent five minutes next to the counter matching every single name and number between our tickets and Joe’s until I was convinced that we had the right tickets (or that they were at least as right as Joe’s). Of course you’ll have to read the future entries to find out if the tickets actually got us to St. Petersburg and back… or if we wound up getting a tour of all those Russian territories I only know from playing Risk (Irkutsk, Yakutsk, Kamchatka anyone?)

<-- Day 2 ---- Days 3 and 4 -->

Russia Recap: Day 2

Sunday April 20th

Sunday was Kristin’s only full day (as a tourist) in Moscow. As such, we had a rigorous sight-seeing schedule to cover it all. Not that I’m a demanding travel partner or anything… :-p Thankfully, like the National Mall here in D.C., Moscow has all of their top attractions packaged in one convenient spot. In Moscow that’s The Kremlin and Red Square (which lives directly outside the Kremlin’s east wall).

After the President Hotel’s bountiful breakfast buffet, our first stop was Red Square, or as the language courses taught us Krasnaya Ploshad, which frankly was pronounced in the lectures as “Krasnaya bullshit” (I’m sorry, it sounded exactly like that to both of us). Needless to say we got some laughs out of standing in Red Square and telling each other Krasnaya Ploshad izdees (Red Square is here!). It’s here that Lenin lays embalmed waiting to greet us. He gets tired though so he’s only available between 10am and 1pm, and on Monday and Friday he’s out of the office altogether (it’s my understanding that’s when they wipe him down and touch him up). Apparently there is usually a horrendous line and we were nearly suckered into hiring a tour guide who supposedly could get us right to the front of the line. As it turned out the line was only about 10 minutes (on a rainy April day at least) and we actually were in line next to two guys who had been on the vodka tour with us the night before (perhaps they were actually hired to follow us… or we were hired to follow them). At any rate Lenin is looking pretty good; embalmed, but not as fake as some writings implied. There’s no talking (to him or anyone else) and they move you through pretty quickly so it’s only about a 15 second experience. He’s free so at least it’s a good value.

Next stop was the Armoury, which is essentially a history museum inside the Kremlin. You can’t enter or exit the Kremlin from the east side so we had to walk all the way around the Kremlin, past the tomb of the unknown soldier, an old looking section of wall, and the Alexandrovsky Gardens (which like most things in Moscow will probably look much better… and be much more crowded… next month). “April renovations bring May tourists” was a common theme throughout the trip, as you’ll see. But the Armoury was open and we made our noon timeslot (although Kristin was forced to forage for nourishment since I wouldn’t stop for lunch—she ended up with a ketchup-soaked hot dog that was none too appetizing). Like the rest of Russia, there was very little English in the museum, but you go through the gift shop on the way in (and out) and they sell an English book on the Armoury for about $8 (and they actually take credit cards!), so I recommend buying that as a guide and souvenir. Some of the more exciting items here were the actual throne where Peter and Ivan were anointed co-tsars, along with the crowns they wore (all of which was shown in the Peter the Great miniseries that planted the seed in high school for me to eventually take this trip). The Faberge eggs and Elizabeth’s 23 horse carriage also made this one of the highlights of the trip. When you go, explore the room of outfits worn by the clergy and look for the one which we swore was decorated with South Park-style people (sadly this one is missing from the Armoury guidebook). Maybe it really is from the South Park folks and they have it there like we have the Colbert painting at our National Portrait Gallery.

The rest of the time in The Kremlin was spent dodging the rain, ducking from one cathedral to another (half of which wound up being closed). Everytime we entered a building we hoped when we left the rain would have stopped... it was always raining harder. We did come across the impressive Tsar Bell (largest in the world), but failed to find a way to exit the Kremlin out onto Red Square (there were plenty of guards around to stymie each attempt down a new path we thought might get us out that way). So we did another half-lap around the outside of the Kremlin walls, where we worked up an expensive appetite.

After a $50 snack at GUM (the boutique mall that lines the whole east side of Red Square) we wound our way through St. Basil’s Cathedral. The outside is far more interesting than the inside where the highlight was probably realizing that there were multiple exits which meant they were forced to have multiple mini-gift shops to catch you on your way out. Each time we went a different way inside to be sure we had covered everything we wound up in a different gift shop.

Our last tourist destination was the State History Museum. Kristin and I were both uninspired by this museum and the highlight hands down was bumping into her co-worker Joe who had just bought train tickets to St. Petersburg… at the exact times we needed to buy ours for. I formulated a plan of getting a copy of them to take with me to the train ticket office on Monday. Kristin and I were so bored of the English-free second floor of the museum that we decided to skip out on the first floor (which we learned later from Joe actually had information in English!). Therefore it was all the more ironic to us when we exited the museum and heard a speaker enticing tourists inside… in English. In the museum’s defense it had been a long day and I’m sure had we hired a guide, or bought a guidebook, or started on the first floor(!) we’d have enjoyed it more.

Dinner was at the Lonely Planet’s second successful recommendation. This time it was the Uzbek restaurant “Eastern Quarter” just off Ulitsa Arbat. Their Plov was second only to Saturday’s Horcha on my list of top Russian meals. In addition to being delicious, dinner was cheaper than our afternoon snack! But I’ll admit that sitting at the café in GUM was a nice break from the non-stop tourist-a-thon… and from the rain. Since I’d be outside all day on Monday I was really hoping for some sunshine…

Kristin on the other hand had to prepare for her conference on Monday. An $800 a night hotel in Russia may have a spectacular view and great breakfast, but there are some things it does not have. A clock. An iron. No worries. Kristin called to have an iron brought to the room to undo the wrinkle damage that a 9 hour flight will do. The response: "No". And then instructions to go down to some other room number, where there was an iron. It turns out it was the maid's room, so Kristin ironed away while we looked around at all of the random knick-knacks (a table-top tree with fake $100 bills as leaves) and potential freebies (extra hotel slippers—which we passed on because President Hotel was written in English—but sadly none of their $150 bathrobes).

<-- Day 1 ---- Day 3 Train Tickets -->