Moscow/City

Unlike this guy, I experience preemptive nostalgia. So the last few days, or sometimes weeks or even months, before I leave a place take on that special glow. This is usually wonderful: it makes pleasant things bittersweet (so I really try to enjoy them) and unpleasant things bearable (I have in mind here mainly the cold water affair -- really not so bad after a long day on the metro). Just keep this in mind when you're tempted to roll your eyes at the following.

Yesterday Kostya and I met to exchange gifts, and then we got a bite to eat. I have to admit I was apprehensive. He speaks very little English, I find men on the whole more difficult to understand, and finally, what did we have to talk about? I needn't have worried about the last point -- we covered:

a. Joe Biden in Ukraine and Georgia

b. Chechnya

c. the Gates debacle

d. Russian stereotypes

e. the Cuyahoga River

f. Kazakhstan in comparison with other Central Asian republics

g. tomato-growing and attendant problems, именно raccoons -- "енот," in case you were wondering

h. why Russia and America don't get along

It was a good test of my conversational Russian, and I understood at least the gist of everything above. I also hit a career high for ice cream consumption, which due to aforementioned phenomenon, did in fact taste sweeter than usual. But the best part was that, because of the Blue Beret festivities (who are they? -- be warned, it's more than you ever wanted to know) and subsequent mutual fear for my safety on the metro, he drove me home. There is, in my opinion, very little that compares to being driven through a city at night at high speed (excepting, ahem, my doing the driving). It's a great way to see the city, it's a special treat after the metro, and it's summertime. This was made even more, скажим, interesting than usual by the fact that Kostya kept pointing out his various projects while driving, bringing us alarmingly close to the guardrails on the on-ramp. Someone who can talk on his cell phone, shift gears, and point out nighttime attractions all at the same time is a guy after my own heart. So what did we see?

Moscow City, where he proudly showed me the largest digital clock in the world, lit by his company. Here is a hilarious entry about it.

His other project was construction crane on top of a building; these are semi-permanent fixtures now that the crisis has called a halt to a lot of building projects. It was outlined in neon blue. Tacky? Actually no. It's a crane -- anything's an improvement.

These are all newish buildings towards the center. Out by me it's all strip mall-type neon lights. Look, I know you think it's ugly and modern. And if you're like Andrew Biliter from the link above, you might add cheesy AND dystopian (only here is that combination even possible). But I think it's gorgeous.

But that's not all; the glow extended much, much further. I also:

1.had TWO great interviews, one set up just hours in advance. However, when I arrived at the second one on time -- a minor miracle in its own right given that this organization had two different offices at the SAME address but actually in two different buildings (yeah, that's what I've been trying to tell you) -- I asked for a glass of water, and in the midst of changing the water cooler, my interviewee pushed a plastic piece into the bottle, at which point I watched as all five office employees attempted to retrieve it with any number of implements, including a ruler, tongs, several knives, and fingers. Needless to say, the interview was a raging success.

2. bought all the souvenirs I could carry, including one fantastic purchase that the recipient will probably be less excited about than I am, in which case I'm keeping it. You know something strange is going on when I'm able to tolerate Arbat Street.

3. had another heart-to-heart with another Russian. Как ни странно, the Cuyahoga River did NOT come up. Weird. Also, it's not fair that I've only just discovered poppy-seed blinchiki.

4. found the Baltika rainbow in my supermarket after all,

5. saw the sky glowing across Leningradskoe Shosse,

6. opened the broken door to my apartment building to find the whole staircase smelling of flowers, and

7. discovered a use for the abandoned washer.

Oh Moskva. Never has one woman loved you for so many of the wrong reasons.

One unrelated thing [Q: Unrelated to what, Lizakhon? This whole post is a jumble of things. A: Oh please, this post is about how amazing Moscow is, AGAIN. This paragraph, on the other hand, is about the bad news for Dmitri Anatolyevich]: Danielle and I went to see the Faberge Exhibit at the Pushkin Museum of Art Special Collections Museum [Q: How was it? A: I am strangely seized by the desire to own a cigarette case. That is to say, fabulous] and it was there that I first noticed the striking resemblance Nicholas II has to a certain leader close to our hearts. It's uncanny. Apparently I'm not the only one who has noticed this: Look at this! It's incredible! No wonder Putin is more popular with the Russian public. Don't worry Dimz, you're still #1 with ... me.

If you were the Baltic Sea and I were a cup.

Okay. I might have been just the slightest bit wrong about Petersburg. I will review the evidence, and you can judge for yourself.

Exhibit A. My friend Charlie is working there for the summer. This means that we got to hang out a bunch, and the following took place:

a. an interview with a drunken Russia at a little market. Charlie, whose version of the evening's events you can read here, doesn't give credit where it's due. Mostly to his own patience. He must've talked to this man for 10 minutes, in the course of which d.r. asked six times, "Do you know Russian?" (Answer: Obviously.)

Not only was this accompanied by hand gestures, but the man grabbed Charlie by the shoulders and shirt, gave him a lecture about his beer choices, then proceeded to get out his ratty notebook and write down Charlie's information. D.R. also lectured him about a city tour and some other b.s. I couldn’t hear because it was a man-only, confidential chat. Charlie is completely right that I got a kick out of it. I made no effort to help him; instead I documented events for you (and for YOU, readers of Charlie's blog who never get to see him in action):

b b . b. an evening at the Irish pub where they played a lot of western music, in the course of which I realized I’m not the only one who really digs this:

c. viewing of St. Petersburg's bridges at night. The bridges are illuminated when it gets dark, and then a bit later, around 1 am, portions of them are raised for big boats to pass underneath. It was pretty spectacular. Look here:

and here:

Charlie illustrating how the bridge mechanism works:

And here's what I would have done if Charlie weren’t so common sensical (“uh, sure, if you want to fall in the Neva”).

But Lizachka, you’re saying. Charlie is not a permanent fixture of Petersburg. That doesn’t really count. That's not very nice of you, but point taken:

2. Peterhof. Yes, it's true: this is one of the most beautiful places I've been. And I almost didn’t go. Thank you to those of you who expressed in no uncertain terms what a life-altering experience it could be (that would be Olya and Olya) and no thanks to everyone else.

So Peterhof is Peter the Great’s summer estate, which has been greatly expanded since he designed it. It was wrecked during the war but there’s been extensive renovation. If I lived in St. Petersburg, I would be a regular visitor. Also, I would get married there, preferably to an oligarch who would buy me a piece of the property before fleeing the country.

Let’s discuss at great length.

So when you get off the boat

you see in front of you a long boulevard with a canal. At the end of it are huge fountains and the palace at the top of a hill.

Wow, you think. How wonderful. Well, Moscow-jaded veebs says that. You would more likely gasp in awe and start making plans to move here. But wait! On the grounds there are both wooded areas

and more than one nice beach.

Here’s one of the brides.

This is a landscaped terrace on the outside of the one of the smaller palaces.

There are a series of gardens around the palaces, and this one

included a fountain that was suspiciously similar to the one in Millennium Park (open mouth spouting water, unpredictable timing, low water level and all). I suspect whichever jerk designed it ripped this one off.

This fountain, without any machinery, rotates.

Here's the view from the steps of the palace looking out towards the Gulf of Finland. We did a tour inside the palace but a. you’re not allowed to take pictures there this year and b. those kinds of overly ornate baroque/classical rainbow rooms leave me kind of cold. My favorite part of the tour was actually going underneath the palace to see the fountains' internal workings.

From the spot in the picture above, I walked down a short set of stairs and then back underneath the black and white floor to get into the stone passageways. After you go through the pipes, you come out to stand at the level of the fountain itself, a place that is not only covered in water but constantly getting hit with the spray from other fountains. It was like Louis XIV's version of a water park.

[Don't look too closely -- I'm frowning for some reason. I really don't know.]

Not sure yet how you feel?

How bout now? Are you ready to come visit?

Exhibit C/Begrudging Admission: The people in St. Petersburg are much nicer than Muscovites. Maybe they’re in a better mood because their city is prettier or maybe they’re just used to tourists, but it was a pleasure to have people smile at me when I spoke with them in a way that didn’t convey contempt.

Exhibit D: the Dostoevsky factor. How could I not be charmed by a city that was home to such fantastic artists? Like Jpey, I snuck some illegal pictures.

Dostoevsky's study.

There were a lot of other contributing factors, like four days of glorious weather with only a wayward rainstorm, cheap cab rides, charming waitresses, and the color of the Hermitage – oh wait.

Exhibit E: The Hermitage. I guess maybe from watching Russian Ark (what's that? -- ugh, it still makes me shudder), I had this image of the museum as a dreary, dark place. But it’s actually incredible. So the Hermitage is the biggest museum you can imagine, set up in the winter palace of the tsars. Lots of rooms are exhibits themselves, but what’s really astounding is the breadth of art contained there. There’s some incredible statistic about how looking at piece of artwork a minute for the rest of your life wouldn't cover a fraction of what's there.

Here’s what it looks like from the outside:

Inside it alternates between disgusting (full of tourists/opulent) and amazing.

Finally, I'd like to draw your attention to two things. First St. Petersburg's anti-corruption campaign takes the form of these stylized ads. Here the fist is crushing "corruption." Moscow, not surprisingly, has nothing along these lines.

Second, look what I found on the shelves of my local bookstore.

Just to really underscore the difference between the cities, the night train back to Moscow was waaay less interesting/wonderfully old fashioned than it sounds/Cary Grant made it out to be, and the conductor hated me. Now that I think about it, she was probably from Moscow.

So I'm back home, where I can scowl all day if I want to, bitch about grimy streets and bad weather, obsess about the state of Russian media, and not have to worry about tourists getting between me and morozhenoe.

Dear Everyone: you were totally wrong about Petersburg. [At least for now.]

Yesterday my parents and I arrived in St. Petersburg on the express train from Moscow. Wait, let me back up:

1) Yesterday I had several experiences that were truly the first unpleasant ones I've had in Moscow. There was
a. the two hour bus ride (non express) to Sheremetevo 1,
b. the realization that I was at the wrong terminal and needed to get to Sheremetevo 2 in negative 1 hour to meet my parents on time,
c. the shouting match with the marshrutka driver. It was not about the price or about how many large suitcases we had. It was oddly enough, about how much Russian I understood, with me rather unconvincingly arguing my point by shouting -- no, literally shouting -- I DO UNDERSTAND RUSSIAN! And him shouting, "POORLY!" And me shouting, lamely, "WELL NOT EVERYTHING!" It was just like being 12 again, only with a smaller vocabulary. And finally,
d. moldy yogurt. You know by now that there are approximately four foods in Russia I love, all of which are milk products. And come on, yogurt, really? It's already got bacteria in it, plus a load of preservatives, and I get -- and accidentally eat some of-- a moldy one?

That's it, Moscow. The honeymoon is over. You can take your reliably terrible weather, your grimy pigeon-strewn sidewalks, your disappearing Lenin picture, and your quickly rotting produce and keep it, because I'm done with you. You couldn't even show up and look decent for my parents? That's it; you're not the only game in town. I'm leaving for Peter!


2) And I did, on the 16:30 express with my parents. We arrived in broad daylight at 10 pm and were met by someone from the hotel, who drove us down Nevsky Prospekt towards the hotel. Our conversation consisted mostly of him explaining Russian-American interactions: "Putin. From Petersburg. Gorbachev. Friends with Bush. Yeltsin. Clinton. Monica Lewinsky. HAHAHAHA."


3) But the point is, as we drove down Nevsky, the central road in Petersburg, the different colored buildings all lit up with the last real sunlight of the day, the trolley wires kind of glowing in a way that made them look less pedestrian, the crowds of people everywhere, I felt a little twinge. It didn't go away immediately, so I prodded it. What was that little ache? Was it...homesickness? Oh my god, I thought. I miss grimy old Moskva. No one misses Moscow. It's like missing the grippe, or your middle school boyfriend.


So here we are. I've just compared Moscow, city of my dreams, seat of Russian power, and arguably home to the most crazy/beautiful women on earth, to your middle school boyfriend. Things are in a sorry state. More pictures, etc. when I've regained my equilibrium.