In Which Moscow is Visited

05.11.2008

Alright, this is going to be one long ass entry, so I'll try to make it as exciting as I can.

Saturday I basically just stayed in, except I went out and bought chocolate for Tatyana since her birthday was on the 4th. Came back and got ready for Moscow...

First ride on a train. Spent the night in a compartment with Bryan, Ilana, and Elizabeth. That was terribly exciting. It was actually a really nice business car. Just a tad cramped, as expected. Unfortunately, I got NO sleep, so when we got to Moscow I was exhausted. At like 6 am ... music started to play over the intercom. Some Soviet ballad. Ilana woke up and said "... Is this a joke?" It was quite fantastic.

Basically we spent the entire day wandering around Moscow on walking tours with the BEST tour guide of all time. He was probably in his 50's and had the best Russian smoker's voice of all time. And he was pretty lewd. We were at a church, and he was talking about the architecture... He was going on about how most say that Russian church architecture was heavily influenced by Mosques, THEN he started talking about how the roots of Russian architecture was in PAGAN PHALLIC CULTURE. And started talking about how the spires and domes of the church resembled a PHALLUS. I DIED LAUGHING. NO ONE ELSE UNDERSTOOD WHY?! I was IN LOVE with this man at this point. He mentioned pagan phallic culture at several other points in the tour, too.

Unfortunately, halfway through the day I got a sinus headache WHICH IS STILL PLAUGING ME AND MAKING ME MISERABLE. I overdosed on Tylenol. Literally.

Also, TWO different restaurants said they didn't have enough tea cups for our group (?!) so apparently they don't drink tea in Moscow, since these fucking restaurants were HUGE. What the hell? In any case, I saw St. Basil's Cathedral and Lenin's Tomb. That was exciting. Though, Lenin's tomb was more like a haunted house than I thought it would be. What I find mildly amusing is that the GUM, which is Russia's largest and most prestigious shopping mall is RIGHT ACROSS Red Square from Lenin's Tomb. LUCKILY, NO ONE CAN SAY HE'D BE ROLLING IN HIS GRAVE. BECAUSE HE'S IN A PERMANENT WAKE. HAHAHAHA! Bastard communists.

My overall impressions of Moscow by the end of the day:
-I was shocked into more appreciation for Petersburg: Moscow is dirtier, more crowded, more SUFFOCATING, and just overall more nerve-wracking than Petersburg
-People are more rude, less attractive, and less well dressed
-Even the stray dogs are rude. I have never been barked at by a stray dog in Petersburg -- Indeed, they are all QUITE SWEET. But while walking down the street in Moscow, a stray dog came out of NO WHERE and started violently barking at me and followed me for like 30 feet. I thought it was going to attack me, but luckily it didn't.
-The metro works on a rather rude principle. See, Petersburg works on a turnstile system -- You insert a token/swipe your card, and you are allowed to pass through the turnstile. Moscow... works on a system of PAIN. You try to walk through, and your legs are CRUSHED by two panels that come out of NO WHERE if you don't swipe your card. I avoided this fate, luckily.
-Something I found interesting, and Emma and I both agree: Many people say St. Petersburg is a very 'European' and "Western' city, while Moscow is more 'Russian.' I am not going to claim to be acquainted with the Soul of Russia!, but I felt Moscow to be more of a modern Western city. By far. If anything, the way Moscow is ORGANISED is European: It's centred around a square. St. Petersburg is centred around a single street. Most European cities are centred around a square. And that very detail determines the organisation of the city, I feel. There were also a hell of a lot more tourists in Moscow, and more foreigners in general (Then again, I was just there on tours and such, so that might be why I thought that)

Basically, by the end of the day, if I could have hopped on a train and go back to Petersburg I would've been happy to do so. But, I'm glad I didn't.

Oh, and, we stayed in a hostel instead of a hotel. I was with Ilana, Emma, E.B. and Vika (the Russian tutor). Blah blah

Next day we took a ttour of the Kremlin. Which was ... much shorter and more boring than I thought it would be? Then we were supposed to take another walking tour along the Arbat and other streets, but we couldn't find our tour guide so we just kind of wandered around. On the Metro, Bryan found a sticker that was making fun of the "День Народного Единства," which was the Russian holiday on the 4th (Day of the People's Oneness... or something... like that). It says, “Мы идем на русский марш, наци - это т-а-а-ак сексуально!" (We’re going to the Russian march, because nation [nationalism] is SOOOOO sexy!) and has a bunch of rainbow colored men wearing bondage harnesses. Basically, the gays of Moscow made a bunch of anti-Nationalist posters and put them all over the metro. I’ll talk more about this later in the entry.

That night we went to a Russian circus, which was right in the heart of the city. I realised I haven’t been to a circus in a hell of a long time. At first I was really apprehensive (USUALLY BECAUSE OF THE MASSIVE ANIMAL ABUSE?!) but this was actually prretty damned awesome. The only part that bothered me was one act where they had bears doing tricks, and ... yeah. But, the first part was a bunch of really hot guys doing neat horse tricks. Then they had a bunch of neat acrobatic things. Then a woman with cats (domestic cats) and that was just boring and dumb. I’m not going to bother describing the rest, but, at the end, their last act was a bunch of men wearing white fur and doing gymnastics with a bunch of white furry SPITZES. IT WAS SO AWESOME, AND ADORABLE. (P.S.: Clowns speaking in Russian are FUCKING TERRIFYING).

After that a few of us went to a nearby cafe, “Shokoladnitsa,” where I had hot chocolate and a slice of honey cake. Which was expensive, but well worth it. Normally I don’t drink hot chocolate ... indeed, I didn’t here, either, but someone told me to order it ... and uh ... Russian hot chocolate ... isn’t like ... Cocoa. It’s MELTED CHOCOLATE In a CUP. it was DELICIOUS. mmm.

Next day was free day, for the most part. I still had a massive headache, and Emma felt like crap, so we wanted to do someething low-key. SOooo ... we took a tour of the metro! And went to 28 different stations. Which were, for the most part, BEAUTIFUL. My favorite stations were Belorusskaya, Kievskaya, and Ploshchad’ Revolutsia. The first two wwere just plain beautiful. Ploshchad’ Revolutsia was neeat because each side of the platform wwas lined with arches and gigantic bronze statues, all depicting some aspect of the “Revolution.” On one side it was military, with many different proletariat-looking revolutionaries carrying primitive grenades and guns and such (One even had a pet dog, and apparently it’s a tradition to pet the dog’s snout for good luck, which I did). The other side was a sort of cultural revolution, with statues reading books, playing sports and... holding children. I don’t know. Anyway, it was fantastic. Many of the metro stations were creatively themed like that -- Mendeleevskaya, for instance, had lighting in the shape of different cells, and then artistic charts of CELL DIVISION on the walls. I won’t go into detail on the rest, because there were just too many stations to do that.

Then that night we went to the Tretyakovskaya Gallery, which was a FANTASTIC art gallery of all Russian art. (Ben, Jenn, I bought you both something, here). Then we went home that night and I died in classes, today.

Alright, so, November 4th: The holiday. There were several different marches in both Moscow and Petersburg, apparently. In Moscow there was a “Nashi” march on Red Square, which is Putin’s youth movement. There were also several neo-fascist marches, and BRYAN SAYS there was a gay right’s march at the same time but I don’t believe him. I’m going to have to find a news article or something. But then again, that sticker Bryan found means there is some sort of effort in that area, in Moscow, anyway.

I have a lot more I want to say, but I can’t remember most of it and I’m getting tired of talking about Moscow already.

I have to write a 5-7 page paper by next Wednesday on the prompt, “What, in your opinion, was the most defining moment of the Cold War?” I’m not 100% sure of what I should write about. I think I’m either going to talk about Malinkov asking the West to invite the USSR into NATO, or .. uhm ... the tragedy in either Hungary or Czechoslovakia (I can never remember which one happened first -- I know it happened in both countries, but yeah). I’m not sure if I can rattle on for seven pages about Malinkov, though. I hate talking about NATO, so maybe that’s out. I don’t know. But I’m going to get started on it, tomorrow.

Unfortunately, I didn’t get many photos of Moscow (mostly because it was HIDEOUS) because I didn’t really FEEL like taking photos most of the time, due to my headache.

Oh, right, so Proposition 8 passed in California... That is ... disappointing. to say the least. And elminates basically any relief I had with the 'democratic' victory. ah well