What's that, Andrew? You want to know about the vodka?

I'm totally beat from a weekend of non-stop Russian lectures, so I'm just going to leave you with

a. this picture
b. a promise to tell you about it
c. the question of what exactly you want to know about foods, because right now you're looking at a long explanation of milk products (including the molochniye cocktail, or liqueur milkshake, but I'll save you the suspense: it's delicious) and not much else
d. and a final thought for today: Russians think Medvedev is hot.

Some terrible/strange/wonderful things

Recently spotted:

1. The eight-year-olds in our complex standing at the crossroads of paved paths, eating ice cream, laughing, and ... smoking cigarettes.

2. The jaguar-spotted Benz. Seriously, how popular would these be in the US? I'm all over this business opportunity.














3. If you were to imagine a hulking corporate building of evil, would it look something like...



THIS?


Danielle says yes.









4. The real highlight of our metro station: the giant container of Квас that sits outside day and night AND actually dispenses kvass. (What is that?) I am a little scared to drink out of this, but I desperately want to try it. (Deep breath, mom.)








6. Fake Hermes Birkin bags at approximately every fifth metro station. (What is that?) Please advise: color? price? Possible thesis topic switch?




7. The best, and the one you've been waiting for:

Yup that's me, in the hallway of Ekho. That expression is the closest you'll get to seeing me starstruck (except for the Jeff Tweedy concert circa 2002). For the first ten minutes I was so excited to be there that I couldn't understand what the editor was saying. As opposed to later, when I just couldn't understand what he was saying.









And yup, that's the location of Ekho's office, in the same building as Yedinaya Rossiya.

Your long-awaited metro guide

I've been promising a post about the Moscow metro, so today I went out and made an idiot of myself all over Moscow for you. Those of you who know all about this, please forgive me this rave and feel free to skip any of the following: the metro system here is AMAZING. Where to begin? First, the least discounted ticket you can buy, for 1 ride, is only 22 rubles, less than $1. When you buy lots of trips, each one costs about 50 cents. Second, the trains run every three minutes. And when they say the trains run every three minutes, it means they run every three minutes -- or sooner. That's right, for your benefit I timed them today. The stations are kept very clean, people give up their seats for the elderly, and everything is well marked (ahem, Boston). But really, the thing to love about the metro is that it's beautiful.


Let's begin at home. On the Zamoskvoretskaya line, our stop is Vodny Stadion, which you've already seen. Compared to, say, any Howard- Dan Ryan/95th stop, it's brilliant.

As is the next one south, Voykovskaya. But compared to all the other stations here, neither is anything to write home about.












Sokol is also a little blah.










Aeroport is the first really beautiful station along the way.









After it comes Dinamo, which I have done wrong by with this picture. Because Dynamo Stadium, home of FC Dynamo, is nearby, the other walls have little reliefs of soccer players. Between the two tracks is a high corridor that looks similar to those in some of the pictures below.


Next comes Belorusskaya, which is like the Belmont (or Park?) for our line -- you can transfer to the ring train here. Unlike those stations, the path to the transfer is just as amazing as the station itself.

Station:









Transfer:









Mayakovskaya is even more beautiful. I would say it's the best station between us and the center of the city.




























You think that you wouldn't get used to this kind of grandeur, but... you do. Tverskaya is only ho-hum.


It's all squat and functional, and I demand grandeur.


Actually, Tverskaya is very nice, and it has the transfer to Pushkinskaya, which we'll see later when I go to the purple line.








But continuing on the green line -- Teatral'naya is my favorite. It's splendid and beautiful and impressive, but mostly I love that you can walk over the tracks. Right over them. Like, you could drop things onto the train as you make your transfer. These two pictures show the path to get to the red line.

















After the transfer to the red line, the first station is Oxotny Riad. Nice, right?



I skipped Lubyanka, the next station, because it looks almost the same.

And because I was sitting across from the Russian Jason Siegal. What? I was curious.





Chistye Prudy has a beautiful park right outside (more on that later). The station is okay, too.















So after that short side trip to Chistye Prudy, I returned to the metro and switched over to the purple line, or what is properly called Tagansko-Krasnopresnenkaya.


Pushkinskaya does have a nice station, but somehow I managed to get a picture without ANY of the highlights, namely the bronze pieces (I don't know how to describe these, they're giant sheets on the wall) with quotations from Pushkin and cute little pictures of quills and country estates. And THEN, when you go to transfer to
Tverskaya, there's a giant statue of him in the hall.





Here is Kuznetskii Most (take that, Foster):






And then Kitai-Gorod,
with its fantastic columns.







My favorite art, though, comes from Taganskaya and Proletarskaya:


















Can't see this one well enough?
There you go.












Tsvetnaya was a pleasant surprise. First in the main hallway there's these lovely little windows.



But then at the exit:



Wow.


So enjoy your rides today on the CTA/MBTA/whatever Washington's is called/in your Honda/Toyota. I'll be on THIS:











One final note about the metro system. Some stations are much farther underground than we're used to. The escalators, however, are not broken into several shorter ones. No, no. You just ride one very long, very steep escalator. So steep, in fact, that I get dizzy looking up or down them. But for you:



(Ok, I cheated and shot it without actually looking. But they're really long, and did I mention steep? Like climbing a mountain. But without exerting any effort because Russians don't like to walk up -- or down -- the escalators. Escalators move so you don't have to.)

Morozhenoe, parts ii and iii

On each of the little ice cream vending carts there is the following model:



No way is that representative of what's inside the cart, right? Wrong. That is EXACTLY what's in the freezer. I knew from the moment I saw this, I had to have green. (What I actually said to myself was: Man, I have to try that zelyonoe. Some progress is better than none.)



The other day I did in fact try the green, which is far lighter in color than the model (disappointing) and pistachka (imagine my delight). I would say this rivaled the initial vanilla for robustness of flavor and creaminess. Although the pistachio was just as sweet, it tasted more like pistachio and less like plastic.


Today it was 63 degrees, which is not too cold for ice cream, and I was long overdue to try the red cone above. But the ice cream lady (who joked with me about global warming -- joked! nothing warms my heart like a Russian who thinks I understand enough of her language to do this) steered me away from the red cone to the "most tasty" treat, a white block on a stick. Gamely, foolishly, I went for it.



As you can see, I'm thinking, I don't know about this. That uncertainty persisted for approximately the first third of the ice cream bar because at first, it tasted sort of like the vanilla, sweet and fake. But underneath that was a flavor I couldn't place but which is probably akin to wet cement. Maybe I was prejudiced by how it looked. At any rate, that flavor eclipsed everything else. It was a cruel trick; this was not samoe vkusnoe at all -- it was samoe gross.




Thankfully, when I was two thirds of the way through the bar, it fell off the stick. I threw it away, left only with the knowledge that I had made the wrong choice.





A sad day for morozhenoe.

Oh yeah, plus this...

...article about building an elevated highway. The residents' responses at the end are also pretty great.

Tour Guide

Yesterday we met a very nice woman named Asya (or Asia, her preferred spelling) who took us to the Tretyakovskaya Gallery and actually led us on a tour through the museum, with the help of her guidebook, a prepared speech (!), and an electronic translator. Her English is excellent, but doesn’t include words like “washed out” or “peasant.” She also, by the way, answered my question about why people are always asking me for directions – no one who lives in Moscow actually knows how to get anywhere in Moscow, except within their own little area. Between the metro stop and the museum, which are maybe two blocks apart, she stopped passers-by to ask directions four times.


So you buy tickets for the Tretyakovskaya Gallery in the basement of the museum, which means that to get into the exhibits you climb this grand staircase in a huge marble hallway, full of beautiful chandeliers. You take an immediate right into Room 1 (they’re all numbered so you know where to go next, which is actually really useful). Room 1 is pistachio green, and completely packed, floor to ceiling, with portraits. They’re all hung from the ceiling, and there must have been three rows of pictures one on top of the other, maybe six or seven across per wall. The room is also completely full of people. Jam packed, like row upon row of identical, one-dimensional portraits are the highlight of the museum.


There were some communication breakdowns on our tour that not even the electronic translator could help with. This is less than surprising, given my and Danielle's laconic natures (ok, hers, and my modest Russian). So Asya wasn't aware, for the entire duration of the museum tour, that Danielle and I are in a Russian studies program. This meant that there was no way she could have known that Danielle is actually an expert on imperial Russian history. A sample exchange runs something like this -- Asya: “In this portrait, you see the fine detail of her clothing and more background than in some of the other paintings. This one is a portrait of Elizabeth, who as far as I know was Peter’s wife…” There’s a pause, while I take in the painting, Asya turns to walk away, and Danielle looks over at me. Then I think, Wait, that’s not right. I look over at Danielle, who’s just silently shaking her head at me. Between the two of them, I did okay; we saw a lot of famous paintings (including some from the Russian art project) and some beautiful ikons.


After the museum, we headed over the bridge to a park I don’t know the name of (Sara, help?). There’s a large sculpture at one end of the park, the subject of which is how adult vices affect children, to the tune of, we should protect children, who are our future. This is possibly the least controversial sculpture subject ever. At any rate, it depicts several personified vices in a semicircle around two golden children. Not really my style, but whatever, I’m interested. I’m more interested when Asya jumps the ropes, disregarding signs about not touching the sculpture, to translate each vice for us in turn (please note, they were already translated into English). The two older women behind us were all, “How shameful!” but I thought it was great.




P.S. Sabrina:

















Mumi!

Turisty

Yesterday Danielle and I hit all the high points of the Kremlin:

1. Ticket office, where the woman refused to honor my Harvard ID as a real student id, even though the sign (alas, only in English) promised a discount for foreign college students. A bilingual shouting match ensued, with me, pointing at my id: "It says student!" Please note what I actually said was, "It says студент!" as if that would help. And her saying, "ISIC only" very sternly. And then me saying, "The sign says student!" All of this took place through the tiny window at the bottom of the glass, which forced me to stoop awkwardly in order to talk to her (doubtless a set-up deliberately constructed to demoralize would-be troublemakers). We went back and forth for a while until I was shamed into handing over the extra 150 rubles.


2. I'm sure this is blasphemous, but this (the State Kremlin Palace) is maybe my favorite building there:




It's very downtown Cleveland 1965, which I know is not really the point here, but I still love it.












3. After the cathedral square, we moved on to “The Secret Gardens” (I can’t say this without hearing the only Springsteen song that makes me cringe). It was here, amidst the elaborate flower patterns and in the brilliant Moscow sunlight, that I had my first taste of Russian morozhenoe. It was magical; I don't know if you can tell, but that goofy look on my face is actually one of bewildered wonder.


How to describe the taste? There aren't true flavors -- one's first impression is simply of intense fakeness rather than any specific taste. This is quickly followed by overly sweet, delicious vanilla, like syrup (in my case -- there is chocolate as well). The texture is similar to a marshmallow's, but it's chilled. I imagine Russian children must believe that this is how clouds taste. For me, I would describe it more as... vicarious nostalgia.

[Actually, I'm thinking: I am totally trying all the other flavors.]

The only thing missing was Dimya; we could have a picnic and I’d tell him my views on free media. He would swoon over my brilliant analysis, buy me ice cream, and ask me to accompany him through The Secret Gardens. I would admire his navy suits, tower over him, and garble my syllables. We would be perfectly awkward to/for each other.


I won't bore you with the rest of the details of our tourist activities, but I will say that Annunciation Cathedral smelled like Widener's stacks, I really enjoyed the circa-1993 wedding gowns we saw, and the secret to Moscow fashion appears to be combining as many different trends as possible (Jodhpur/cargo/harem capri pants? Fabulous. Mullet/mohawk/braided rattail? Super chic.).

Gogol'

1. The Kremlin is closed on Thursdays.

2. I went out to Gogol' tonight (I picked it randomly but then realized Sara had also suggested it) to see indie rock bands (although I would call them straight "rock"; there was nothing "indie" about them) Polyusa and someone else, don't know who.















They were great, all angsty and head-bopping and enthusiastic. And loud.


3. 10 pm, broad daylight:















4. Number of times asked for directions: 2
Number of functional conversations in Russian: 2
A ∩ B = 0.

Day 1.5

Everyone:

1. Dima Bilan looks grosser than ever, maybe even grosser than you thought possible. The life-sized billboards of him certainly caught me by surprise. [If you don't know who he is, google image search, then thank your lucky stars you're not seeing what I am.]

2. I appear to look like I know what I'm doing. In approximately six hours on the street (to be fair, about two hours of that consisted of my loitering creepily in metro stations), four people have approached me to ask me something. Probably something legitimate, although I can't be sure. Possibly they all wanted information about how to get somewhere, maybe they asked what time it was, they might even have inquired about where I got my awesome shoes. But the point is, I have NO IDEA what they wanted, which leads me to number three.

3. I haven't the slightest idea what I'm doing here. I mean, I can use the metro, but that may be the end of my abilities. Make change? Nope. Light a gas burner from a match? Maybe one time out of ten. Use my cell phone? Absolutely not. This makes me somewhat hesitant to charge ahead with my interviews/carrying on a normal conversation with a Russian.


On the plus side:


Our kitchen is larger than mine at home.














My room is fantastic and contains...












a statuette of Ferdowsi!

















Our entryway: to the left the exterior set of doors, to the right Danielle's room. Straight ahead: Ten Thousand Persian Proverbs, General Linguistics, Means of Connection of the Signifier and Signified in Modern Tajik Literary Language, and so forth.