Arrival in Moscow

My plane, an Aeroflot-owned 777, took off from JFK airport at around 3 pm. I was nervous, partly because I'm not used to making long flights, and partly because in the months since I purchased the tickets several people had informed me that Aeroflot's safety record was not exactly flawless. Thus, although I had been awake since 7 am, I was unable to get any sleep.

Unfortunately, the movie-showing mechanism was broken, so watching a movie wasn't an option. Fortunately, I had picked up a copy of the 'World of Crosswords' magazine (a 'Games' spinoff) I picked up in the airport. By the time we landed I had completed twelve or thirteen. (OK, I cheated on some of them.)

One feature I hadn't seen before that I thought was neat (at first) was that they displayed various maps and information about the flight on monitors around the plane. For instance, there was a world-wide map which showed the planned route and how far along you had gotten; this would switch to a readout stating what time it was, how long the flight was projected to be, how many miles the plane had travelled, etc. For a while after takeoff and before arrival there was another screen which displayed in addition the plane's speed and its height above the ground. The displays would alternate between English and Russian, so I got to see what different cities' names looked like in Cyrillic.

As I said, I thought this was pretty neat. Until takeoff, when I realized that some of this was information I really didn't need, since it led to me second-guessing what was going on. "Are we supposed to be dropping this fast? Jesus, we're travelling quickly! Shouldn't we be slowing down more? MY GOD, WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE!" Fortunately this was all internal monologue, as I probably wouldn't have enamored myself of my fellow passengers (or Aeroflot itself) if I actually started screaming that out. (I had the same experience on the trip back; I'm not sure how many repetitions it would take to make me view the changing numbers calmly and dispassionately.)

Anyway, I arrived in Moscow at just past 7 a.m. local time, or around 11 pm biological time. I was a little worn out.

After travelling through passport inspection and customs, which went largely quickly and easily, I was met at the gate by Sarah and Volodia, my hosts. They took me to a place where a van would come and ferry people to and from the airport; this took us to the Metro, which took us pretty close to their apartment.

There were a few things I noticed during these journeys--nothing big, but as Pulp Fiction reminds us, it's the little things you notice most. First, when travelling on the roads there's a pretty omnipresent and heavy scent of gasoline. I'm not sure why this is, whether it's that many of the cars are in poor shape or it's the poor quality of the gasoline (my guidebook claimed that gas is routinely watered down and is pretty low octane to begin with).

Second, the metro. The thing I noticed first about the metro was that to get to it you had to take these really long, tall, and fast escalators. It had never really occurred to me before that escalators might go different speeds in other countries; these seemed frighteningly fast at the time, but after a couple of days it seemed pretty normal.

We got to Sarah and Volodia's apartment and I unpacked. In general, when you enter someone's apartment in Russia you're supposed to remove your shoes and don slippers (so I was told, at least; I didn't visit many other apartments.) While I unpacked, I was advised that it's considered unwise to drink water in Moscow before it's been boiled and left to sit for a few hours; Sarah and Volodia's usual routine was to put the water through a Brita filtration pitcher, boil it in the evening, leave it to sit overnight, and pour it into a glass jar.

At this point I wanted to go to sleep, but knew that that would be a bad idea. For one thing, it was a beautiful day out; it was sunny, and warm enough to wear shorts comfortably (I know this because I did). Since weather in Moscow is extremely changable, I didn't want to miss more of the sun than I needed to. Also, my time there was limited. Sarah encouraged me in these lines of thinking, so we set out to Red Square, which is the place that Sarah usually takes first-time visitors because it's so clearly a Russian place. (Volodia was unable to come along, as he had to go to work to help move their offices to a new building.)

Visiting Red Square and environs

My guide book said that the nice thing about Red Square is that it's always open, unlike the museums, cathedrals, etc. that you might want to visit. This is basically true, but there are times when large parts of it are cordoned off and you aren't able to get as close to things as you'd like. That was the case when I first visited it. Still, it was pretty amazing.

We walked from the metro station and encountered a long, somewhat ornate brick wall with a big spire sticking out over it. (The wall contains the Kremlin, on which more later.) Then we come to the entrenceway to the Alexander Gardens. On one side of the gardens is the continuation of the Kremlin walls; in front of that is the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, which is guarded by a two-person honor guard that changes hourly. (These guards used to be stationed at Lenin's tomb; Yeltsin moved them to their present location. Since they're not really dressed for bad weather, there are a couple of little huts they can move into if it gets too cold.)

On the other side of the garden is a bunch of fountains, restaurants, and stores which have been put together recently. This was put together by Moscow's mayor Luzhkov. There are a bunch of statues based on Russian fairytales. It's kind of tacky, but apparently has become a popular hangout for twenty-somethings and younger.

Continuing on, you reach the Ressurection Gate, which is a large structure composed of two arches with tall spires on top and a smallish chapel in front. The original gate was built in the 16th century; in 1931 Stalin ordered it destroyed (as part of a campaign to get rid of Moscow's religious buildings), and it wasn't rebuit until this decade. (Overall the structure is pretty imposing, but I could do without the chapel.) In front of the gate the center of Moscow is marked with a brass plaque; there were a bunch of people getting their pictures taken while standing on top of it. Behind the gate...

This is the real stuff. The most immediately noticable thing is St. Basil's Cathedral, which was built for Ivan the Terrible in the sixteenth century. It's really indescribable; I'd say that even pictures don't really do it justice. It contains nine chapels of varying sizes, each topped by a tower and an 'onion-shaped' dome; each of the domes is decorated in a different way. (One has yellow and green stripes spiralling from the tip; another has green and white stripes that come down virtically from the tip; some are covered with little pyramids; etc. etc.) In the middle is a tall spire topped by a gold-plated onion dome. I'd never seen anything like it before.

To the right of St. Basil's is more of the Kremlin wall. It's along this part of the wall that you can see Lenin's tomb. It's sort of pyramid-shaped, which seems appropriate, and is constructed out of rectangular boxes. Sarah and I got in line to see him, but we weren't allowed in because I had a camera. (There's a place where you can check your camera, but we had trouble finding it, and I wasn't all that psyched about seeing Lenin's corpse anyways.)

I'm told that Yeltsin would like to get rid of Lenin and bury him someplace. However, neo-Bolshevists are very opposed to the idea and have threatened to blow up Moscow's monument to Peter the Great if this happens, so for now he's staying there. A bunch of notables are buried behind the tomb, including Yuri Gagarin, the first cosmonaut, and there are busts of most of the leaders of the Soviet Union (up to Chernenko; Kruschev is the only one I specifically know is missing. (I'm basically going by the guidebook here since I didn't actually see any of this.)

Opposite this is the Kazan Cathedral, another structure that was destroyed by Stalin and rebuilt recently. It looks (architecturally) like an ancient cathedral, but is clearly brand-spanking new (unoxidized metal, shiny paint); this caused some slight mental dissonance. The original was built in 1636. Pyotr Baranovsky, an architect, secretly recorded plans of the building when Stalin ordered it destroyed, making its accurate reconstruction possible. (Baranovsky also saved St. Basils; when Stalin decided to take it down to allow tanks to enter and leave the square more easily, Baranovsky threatened to cut his throat on its steps unless the plan was changed. Stalin let St. Basil's stand but put Baranovsky in prison for five years as punishment.)

Finally, there's GUM, which is a sort of three-story shopping mall, built in the 1890s on the site of a building which had previously been used for trading but which burned down in the early 1800s. It's mostly filled with outlets of various multinationals; there's also a big fountain in the center, though when I visited it was turned off and filled instead with a bunch of kids participating in some sort of contest sponsored by LEGOs. (I took pictures of this.)

Red Square contains some amazing buildings, but I think the thing that struck me about it was the sense of history; even the shopping mall has historical roots going back hundreds of years. Buildings from different eras are all very close together; some of the cathedrals are from Tsarist times before the westernization that started happening with Peter the Great, then there's Lenin's tomb from Soviet times, leading up to the more recent shopping center with the statues of Russian fairy-tales. This type of contrast is something I saw many times during my stay.

After our arbortive attempt to get into Lenin's Tomb, we decided we were hungry and went looking for food. I'm bound to say that ultimately we ended up at S'Barro's. I got a slice of pizza 'with meat', which was OK. At this point I had been up almost twenty-four hours and had to decide whether I wanted to continue exploring; I decided that I did.

We finished lunch at S'Barro's, where I discovered a clock that said what time it was back in New York--more information I could have done without. Then we left Red Square and did some exploring nearby. (For those who have a map of Moscow or are familiar with the area, we were in Kitay-Gorod, northwest of Red Square.) In a fairly short period of space we came across a number of monastaries and churches, all in the old Russian style. Then we passed a large, two-story pharmacy with large pillars and frilly detailwork; inside a big marble staircase (which had a bust of Lenin in the corner) led to the second floor.

Not far from the pharmacy was the headquarters of the secret police. There used to be a statue of Felix Dzerzhinsky (founder of Chaka, the original secret police of the Soviet Union) in front of the building; when the Soviet Union started to fall apart, his statue was the first to go. (I believe that I was told that he helped support some pro-children organizations; as a result of this there's a large children's store across from secret police headquarters in his honor.)

Moving right along (and I'm skipping a little bit here, I think), there's a large modern hotel with a raised circular driveway. Sort of inside and underneath the driveway are a nice church and a palace, the latter of which has been turned into a museum. Once we figured out how to get down, we bought tickets and checked it out.

The palace was built in the sixteenth century by Nikita Romonov, Ivan the Terrible's brother-in-law. My memory of this is fading; I remember that the top floor was where the unmarried daughters in the family spent most of their time spinning wool and otherwise occupying their time, and that the stairway up to that floor was narrow and extremely steep and involved going under some very short arches. The Romanovs lived here until one of them was elected Tsar after a period of chaos known as the "Time of Troubles", after which they moved to the Kremlin.

After this side-excursion we reentered Red Square quite near St. Basil's, which allowed me to get a better look at it from close up. It didn't disappoint; it was as cool-looking as it had been before.

Finally, we took the metro back to Sarah's place. On the train over we could see the White House, which is the seat of government; the prime minister and the Cabinet are located here. (It used to be the home of the Supreme Soviet.)

Then we went to dinner with some people Sarah worked with, also expatriates (one American, the other English). I had borsch, a.k.a. beetroot soup, which was quite tasty; I forget what my main entree was. (For some reason, soup and salads are generally served with sour cream, which is called 'smyetana' or 'smetana' in Russian. It actually tastes pretty good that way, though it's not a practice I plan to import to the U.S. For some reason English-speaking expatriates in Moscow seem to always refer to sour cream as 'smetana' even when they're otherwise speaking English; perhaps it's to distract them from how much sour cream they're eating. Later on I'll talk about the mayonnaise situation.)

The name of the restaurant was (approximately) "Diadia Vania", in English "Uncle Vania's". This is where I had borsch with sour cream, etc. The placemats in this restaurant were a reproduction of a children's alphabet set from Soviet times which relates the struggle between the worker, the tsars, and the capitalists, with the workers (of course) ultimately winning. It's neat; for the letter, um, "sh" (sorta looks like a w, fifth-to-last letter in the Cyrillic alphabet), there's a picture of a hydra-like creature with three heads: one, that of a capitalist (you can tell because it's wearing a top-hat!), another is a dignitary of the Orthodox Church, and finally a tsarist head wearing a crown.

After dinner, it was back to the apartment and to sleep.

Sidenotes: Water and Toilets

First, there's the issue of water. As noted, people living in Moscow don't trust the water and won't drink it unless it's been boiled and left standing. I'd never been in a situation before where water wasn't pretty much there for the taking; there this was not the case. So drinking water at home was OK, but you had to be careful not to use up your supply (particularly if you're a guest); and in a restaurant water is not served unless you ask for it, and then, of course, it's not free. I never realized how much water I drank until I visited Russia.

When I returned from Russia, for the first couple of days I drank a _lot_ of water (aided, of course, by the fact that it was in the 80s and even 90s). It was very enjoyable.

Second, there's the issue of toilets. (God only knows what it says about me that I find this interesting.) Some of the toilets you find around Moscow are the standard kind you'd find in most any home or public facility in, say, New York. Most, however, are of a different design: though the seat setup seems normal, your waste falls onto a slight indentation in the porcelain below rather than into a conical pool of water. Then, when you activate the mechanism (generally by lifting a handle on the top of the toilet, but there are other setups), water comes down and washes everything into a hole toward the front of the toilet.

I suspect that this type of toilet uses less water than the ones I'm used to. I also suspect that they're more hygenic; I read in the Straight Dope a month or so ago that 'standard' flush toilets expel a mist of water and the matter it contains into the air when flushed, and it seems like these would be less prone to that problem. On the other hand, I think that they tend to be a little smellier, simply because not everything is kept under water all the time.

Visiting the Kremlin

So. On Monday both Sarah and Volodia had to work. I was uncertain as to my ability to make my way around Moscow without a keeper, so Sarah suggested that she call a couple of college students she knows and see if any of them would be free to show me around. She was successful in doing this, so Anya (not to be confused with the EarthWeb intern) showed up around ten AM to take me to the Kremlin. It was raining fitfully, so Sarah loaned me an umbrella.

The Kremlin is one of the traditional centers of government in Russia (the other being St. Petersberg, which was abandoned early on in the Soviet Union for various reasons, the most pressing being that it seemed likely that the Germans were about to conquer it). It's surrounded by a brick wall which itself used to be surrounded by a moat, but that's no longer the case. This was intended to keep hostile people out, whether foreign or domestic; nowadays the main result is that you have to buy tickets to get in and see everything. (You have to pay extra to see inside the things that are inside the Kremlin, which we did.)

Most tickets (and a few other services) have three seperate tiers of costs. First, there's a rate for students. Second, there's a rate for native Russians. Finally (and generally highest by a large margin), there's a rate for foreigners. So we purchased a student ticket and a foreigner ticket. When we went to the gate, however, the guard gave us a little trouble; he asked to see Anya's student I.D., and when she produced it said (in Russian, so I'm relying on her translation here), "You're a night student. You can afford a regular ticket!" After a little discussion he added, "Anyways, you're working as a guide!" But finally he let us in. (When Anya translated this for me afterwards, I said, "That doesn't seem right", but she seemed to think he had a point.)

Anyways, the Kremlin. The Kremlin is filled with cathedrals and palaces, several of which have been turned into museums. Part of it houses the government and so is off limits.

Outside the buildings (and so free to see with a basic entrance fee) are the Tsar Cannon and the Tsar Bell. Neither has ever been used for anything, but they're pretty cool looking. The cannon has a lion's face below the barrel and various other ornamentation--pretty ornate. The bell is similarly cool-looking and is really big. A chunk of it broke off at one point; the chunk alone weighs eleven tons (according to my guidebook) and is a little taller than most people. I think one or two people could live somewhat comfortably (during the summer at least) inside that bell, but the opening left by the chunk has a wire screen blocking it off.

All of the Tsars up to Peter the Great's half-brother Ivan V are interred in the Cathedral of the Archangel, which seems to be fairly well packed with them. We found this to be kind of disturbing and didn't stay long. In general the interiors of the cathedrals are covered with gold and multicolored pictures; it looks really impressive. When I looked closer I realized that the pictures weren't that great (at least by my standards); they weren't really realistic, for instance. Even after that realization, though, the interior as a whole looked positively awe-inspiring. I wondered if an improvement in the artistry of the individual pieces (a la Sistine Chapel, maybe) would take it to another level, or whether those details weren't really important; it's hard to say. (Unless I actually see the Sistine Chapel; then I might have more of an opinion.)

On the spires of the domes of most of the cathedrals are the cross of the orthodox church. It basically looks like a regular cross, except above the main horizontal bar there's a second horizontal bar maybe half as long, and below the main horizontal bar there's another bar that's diagonal, something like this:

   |
  -+-
   |
---+---
   |
   |/
   /
  /|
   |

On some of the curches, however, the bottom crossbar is related by a crescent moon lying on its back. (Don't worry, I won't inflict any more ASCII art on you.) This generally marks cathedrals raised to celebrate victories over the Tartars, who were Muslim.

At around noon we checked out the Armory Palace, which houses a museum and lets you in for timed one hour and forty-five minute intervals.

We checked out the second floor first, mostly. It contains a Russian gold and silver collection with items from about the twelfth to the sixteenth century. There were a bunch of bible covers, which were hugely ornate affairs; sometimes the books they contained had patterns engraved into their sides, which I thought was neat. Also old silverware sets; generally the forks had two long, sharp tines. There were a bunch of things that looked like large model metal boats, complete with masts, sails, and in some cases sailors; after peering around the collection descriptions for a while we discovered that these were in fact drinking-glasses; there's a sort of spout at one end which I guess you put in your mouth. ("What if one of the sailers fell off? You'd choke!" Anya pointed out to me. I was a little more baffled by the mechanics of cleaning the things.) All in all, it was difficult to believe that anyone had ever eaten using these things, but I guess they had.

There were a bunch of Faberge eggs there also, but we largely gave them a miss. (Anya confided that she had never really seen the point. The tsar and tsarina traditionally gave each other one as a gift every year starting in 1884 until the end of the Romonov dynasty.)

Also on the second floor were weapons and armor. The main thing I remember about the armor is that a lot of the helmets had basically the same shape as the onion domes on the churches; I don't know to what extent that's coincidence. Something that surprised me was that there were a fair number of firearms (pretty frilly ones, come to that) mixed in with the armor and other weapons; I had thought that armor pretty much went out once you started having guns. The later armor may have been mostly ceremonial, but I wouldn't quote me on that. (Since I've returned, one person has told me that most armor was ceremonial by this point. Another has told me that armor would probably be somewhat effective against guns of the era.)

The first floor had a bunch of court clothes, mainly worn by various rulers of Russia or close relatives. The main thing here that was a little freaky was the size of the waists on the dresses; really, really small. I think that as the empresses got older they allowed themselves to get more comfortable. I hope so, at least. Geez.

There's a collection of crowns and thrones, generally encrusted in jewels and whatnot. Me being me, I mainly evaluated them by how comfortable I thought they would be. All the crowns looked pretty uncomfortable, and some of the thrones did too, but a few were nicely cushioned and looked like they would hold ones weight nicely.

Finally, there were the carriages. Mainly pretty big ones, with lots of pictures and gold paint and decoration. (Anya told me that these were the equivelent of fancy sports cars nowadays. This made me picture a sports car and cover it with fanciful pictures of naked cupids and gilt and such.) Again, cleaning these can not have been easy. For some reason most of the carriages had one wheel with a large diameter, say around six feet, and another maybe half as large (both decorated in the style of the body of the carriage); any engineers out there want to take a stab at why?

Another feature of the carriages were that if you got too close to them, a light would go off and a voice would speak asking you not to touch them. Some people seemed to delight in teasing them.

We left after about an hour and a half, checked out some more cathedrals, and took off for lunch, this time at a native pizza chain whose name I forget. Having dined lavishly off the salad bar and left a miniscule tip, Anya returned me to Sarah's apartment and left for her classes. I had forgotten Sarah's umbrella in the restaurant.

Sarah returned and we ate in (Spanish rice with salad and sour cream, as I recall). Then I went to bed.

Exploring Moscow

Sarah was allowed to leave work early on Tuesday, so the plan was for her to accompany me to the Tretyakov Gallery, which contains works of Russian art from the early 12th century to the early part of this century. (Art for most of this century are kept in a seperate building, technically also part of the Tretyakov Gallery, which I didn't visit. There's also the Pushkin gallery, which is supposed to contain an excellent collection of western european art. I didn't visit that either.) At 2 pm we were to meet outside the gallery, have some lunch, and do some exploring.

The main things I remember from the Tretyakov are some landscapes that I liked quite a bit. (Unfortunately, I didn't make a note of the artists.) There were several pictures and maybe a sculpture or two concerning Ivan the Terrible; there's a very famous painting (done long after the fact, I'm pretty sure) of him just after he accidentally killed his own son during a fit of temper; he hit his son in the head with an iron bar, and the picture captures him holding his son in his arms with a look of anguished sorrow on his face, the opulent room disordered by their fight. I spent four hours at the Tretyakov and considered it time well spent.

After lunch, we went to a long, thin, unnamed island which is just south of the Kremlin and is between the Moscow River (sometimes called the Moskva River) and a drainage canal. There's a nice view of the Kremlin from one of the bridges, and there are a couple of nice surprises tucked away, namely a small but brightly colored Church of St. Nicholas and a candy factory (the Red October candy factory). I ended up buying basically all of my gifts at the candy factory; you can get nifty tins (in the shape of treasure chests or whatever) and the chocalates are pretty tasty, too.

You also get to see one of Moscow's recent semi-infamous eyesores, the monument to Peter the Great.

Peter the Great hated Moscow; arguably he built St. Petersberg (and moved the capitol there) so he could get away from it. So it seems a little silly to have a monument to him in Moscow, particularly since there are a bunch to him in St. Petersberg, including some pretty famous ones.

But fine, he was a very important guy and made some major changes to Russia, so a monument may well be in order. Here's what the monument is. (Pay attention, because I couldn't figure out what the guidebook descriptions meant, and even after seeing the thing I was a little puzzled.)

The whole thing is cast in bronze or some similar metal. It's probably not as tall as the Statue of Liberty, though it might be if her arm were taken off. At the bottom there are a bunch of smallish ships stacked on top of each other. (Peter the Great being very interested in developing a navy and seaports.) Then there's a large frigate on top of all of them, including mast and rolled-up sails. Standing in front of the mast is Peter the Great, holding aloft a golden rolled-up scroll.

Since everything except the scroll is the same color, Peter sort of blends in with the mast and sails behind him; he's certainly not recognizable. The monument is tall enough that you can see parts of it from some distance, but mostly what you can see is the top of the mast and the topmost sails, which divorced from the rest of the monument are completely baffling. The significance of the scroll escaped me. (He's not known as a lawmaker; the main lawgiving I remember him doing was that he levied a tax on beards to encourage people to shave like the western europeans did.)

Sarah told me of a friend of hers whose father visited and simply _loved_ the Peter the Great monument and visited it every day. It was very embarassing. The people responsible for the monument are Moscow's Mayor Luzhkov and his favorite architect, a man named Tsereteli.

Another structure that dominates the skyline in this area is the Cathedral of Christ the Savior. This is another cathedral that was destroyed by Stalin and recently rebuilt. Stalin had a plan to erect in its place a tower taller than the Empire State Building which would have on top of it a statue of Lenin taller than the Statue of Liberty; according to my guidebook beams of red light were supposed to shoot out of Lenin's eyes (!!). This building was then to be surrounded by a ring of smaller skyscrapers. However, the high water table meant that the ground wasn't sturdy enough to handle that size structure (although many or all of the surrounding ring of smaller structures were built). Ultimately Stalin turned the area into an outdoors heated swimming pool, which was very popular and gave off huge clouds of vapor in the winter. Luzhkov decided to rebuild the cathedral, to the delight of the Orthodox faithful. I'd have to say that it's not the nicest looking of the Moscow churches, but it is really really big.

We then returned to Sarah's apartment. The apartment building she lives in was built during Stalin's time; buildings built during that time are considered desirable because they were built to last. (Which is not to say that they haven't begun to deteriorate, but they're still quite livable.) Buildings built during Kruschev's time are considered much worse, as they were put up quickly and weren't really built to last.

Sarah and Volodia live in kind of an interesting area; as previously noted, the White House is pretty close by, for instance, as is one of the Stalinist skyscrapers mentioned earlier. Furthermore, it's a site that's targeted for development, though how much will actually end up happening is a matter of some speculation. Currently what's been built is a several story pedestrian bridge, completely enclosed and filled with expensive boutiques. (As always, one wonders who actually shops here. The answer while we were there seemed to be: nobody. The general suspicion is that something corrupt must be going on [that seems to be the default suspician in Moscow], but who knows?) If you make it to the end of the bridge, you get to see a model of what the future Moscow will look like, with the developments in this particular area lit up. Lots of skyscrapers, etc. It's pretty interesting.

After this little exploration, we returned to the apartment, had a little dinner, and went to sleep.

More sidenotes: The Cyrillic Alphabet

A few notes about Cyrillic.

The Russian alphabet has 33 letters. It was invented by two monks (one named Cyril) who came to Russia to convert the natives to religion and invented a written language to aid them in their task.

The alphabet goes as follows:

a, be, ve, ge, de, ye, yo, zhe, ze, ee, ee kratkaye ('short ee'), ka, el, em, en, o, pe, er, es, te, oo, ef, ha, tse, che, sha, shsha, tvyor-di znak ('hard sign'), yeri, myah-kee znak ('soft sign'), e, yoo, ya (you can also see what the letters look like if you want.)

The question is, of course, how hard is it to learn a new alphabet? The answer is that it's not that difficult. Sort of.

Basically you can very quickly get to a stage where you remember what all the letters look like and sound like, but I found that throughout the whole trip I was reduced to sounding things out and then figuring out if I recognized the sound. In an effort to become more fluent in this area I took to trying to read every single advertisement I came across; this was easier then reading, say, a book since many of the terms were similar to ones in languages I was already somewhat familiar with. For instance: "K...o...m...p...yoo...t...ye...r...Oh! It's a computer store!"

In addition, there are different forms of the letters; if you're writing them out (as opposed to seeing them printed) you write in a sort of cursive which changes many of the forms. (Similar to the Latin alphabet, really; cursive 'l' doesn't really look anything like a lowercase printed 'l'.) For instance, the letter 'ee' looks like a backwards capital N. (The lower case version of 'ee' is just a smaller version of the upper case.) When you write it, though, it looks like a lowercase u. Another confusing one was 'te'. Printed, this looks like an upper-case T; written, it looks like a cursive m. Since italic or scripty printed Russian tends to borrow from the written forms, this often caused some confusion on my part.

What was interesting to me was the sounds that are represented by a single letter in the Latin alphabet but not in Cyrillic, two big ones being "J" and "W". ("H" sort of has an equivelent, but the sounds are somewhat different; it's more like, say, the 'ch' sound in 'Bach'.)

Since there's no J in Cyrillic, how would you write, say, my first name? Different strategies were attempted. For instance, on my invitation (which was required to get a visa), it was rendered as 'Ya-k-o-b'. On the visa itself, it was written 'D-zh-a-k-o-b'. This is probably as close as you're going to get. (This leads me to think that the name Yakov is probably related in some way to the name Jacob, though I may be influenced by the fact that the Cyrillic letter 've' (sounds like V) looks like the Latin letter B.)

How about my second name, Wolf? The best solution here seems to be 'oo-o-l-f'. (No W, right?)

The tricky part for Gibney, my third name, is the 'i'. I had thought that the proper rendering would use the letter yeri, which has a sort of a short I sound; I was assured that this was not the case, and that the proper rendering would be 'G-ee-b-n-ee'.

My visa rendered 'Haller' as 'H-a-l-l-ye-r'. The problem is that there are several equivelents to the letter 'E' in Cyrillic; typically when translitering people just use the letter 'ye', which looks like an E, but in my opinion it's not always the appropriate one. Instead I'd use 'e', which looks like a backwards epsilon, sort of.

I think to some extent the Latin alphabet has been used for specialized things in Russia. (For instance, in a lot of churches you'll see latin phrases written using the Latin alphabet.) It's pretty rampant now, particularly in advertising. When the Soviet Union first fell and Western stuff seemed really cool, I think a lot of multinationals tried to cash in on that by leaving their product names untransliterated; some have continued that route. Others sometimes use the transliteration but do so inconsistently (Pepsi is an example of this). Then there are firms that seem to always use the transliteration (McDonald's, for instance). Usually in this case no attempt is made to translate the concepts; it's strictly a sound-by-sound translation. (I don't remember a good example of this, but I noticed several while I was over there.)

Finally, some companies have tried to cash in on Russian nationalism. They do this by opening companies in Russia and starting seperate lines with Russian names and ad campaigns. There's a American-and-English-owned cigarette company that does this, for instance. One of the ads shows an American astronaut on the moon looking surprised to see a gigantic package of Russian cigaretts popping out of a crater. The slogan is, "Anything's possible."

Exploring Russia with Volodia, and a concert

On Sunday, despite not having slept on the plane, I managed to stay up until 9 or 10 pm. For much of the day I had that nasty "I've been up all night" feeling, where you feel kinda grimy and unwell and it seems like your body is just in the wrong cycle. Monday morning, I was woken up at 8:30 am, and I stayed up without any real problems until between 11 pm and midnight. Similarly the next day. Also, I felt a lot better than I had the first day. To sum up, I thought I had this jetlag think licked. Tuesday night I got to sleep around midnight.

On Wednesday, the idea was that Volodia would be able to leave work early. I would sleep in a little and would meet him in a metro station at around 2 or 3 pm; he'd call me around noon to let me know what his schedule was like. I would spend the morning and early afternoon resting, reading, writing postcards, etc.

In fact I slept right through until Volodia called at around 12:30. Lord knows how late I would have slept if he hadn't woken me.

Fortunately I had time to write a few postcards. Then I was off for my first solo encounter with the Metro.

I found the Metro somewhat confusing, but I think that that was largely a function of me having trouble recognizing sixteen-letter station names in Cyrillic. Also, each station has different names depending on which line you're taking (the idea is that each line stops at a different station, but that some stations are connected in other ways, say via stairs). An additional complication (which I didn't have to deal with, fortunately) was that there are two pairs of stations with the same name; apparently there was a time when a line was temporarily shut down, and another line was set up and was given the same station names for the part that was parallel to the old line. There are subway maps that help you figure all of this out.

The metros are very far underground; after you punch your ticket you go down some pretty impressive escalators (as previously mentioned).

A nice feature of the metros is that each station says the name of the line and lists the next four or five stops along that line (the list is different for each side of the platform, of course). The decor of the metro stations varies pretty widely; Kievskaya station, which was closest to the apartment I was staying at, has a bunch of mosaics depicting Russians and Ukranians working together under the benevolent gaze of Lenin. There are art deco stations, functional stations, stations with a lot of bas reliefs, etc.

I met Voldia and we took the Metro to Gorky Park, whose full name is "Gorky Park of Culture and Rest". The rest part has to do with recreation, and the Park Kultury [Culture Park--but you knew that] metro station has a bunch of bas reliefs of people skating, playing tennis, doing acrobats, etc--confusing to me before the whole Gorky Park thing was explained to me. Gorky Park has been converted to an amusement park which includes a simulated ride in an actual Soviet space shuttle knockoff--a space shuttle which actually took off and orbited the Earth before the Soviet space program went to the back burner.

Volodia had had some ideas for some things to do, but it was revealed the previous evening that Sarah and I had already done most of them. So the plan was to go to a concert hall and get tickets for that evening, then cross through Gorky Park and take a boat ride up the Moscow River, then take the metro back to the concert hall and see the concert. Then go home.

The boat ride was nice and restful. There were nice views of the Kremlin, the church of Christ the Savior, the (yuck!) monument to Peter the Great, and various other historic buildings.

The concert was difficult to describe. The group's name was 4'33", a reference to a John Cage piece in which the musicians are all completely silent. Apparently they do a lot of soundtracks for independent-type films; during the concert the leader said they had just finished recording the soundtrack to a documentary.

The group consisted of a piano player, a trombone player, a trumpet player, a clarinetist, an electric guitarist, and an electric bassist. The pieces tended to be pretty similar sounding; typically they'd play a repititious vamp on a fairly simple chord structure which would occasionally change. Typically each piece included a gimmick, some of which were pretty successful, others of which didn't really do it for me. (For instance, one piece started with the trombone player playing just his mouthpiece and making it sound like a duck. That actually worked pretty well. Another good gimmick had the trumpet and trombone players playing their instruments by pounding the palms of their hands against the mouthpiece of their instruments, making for a neat percussive sound. One that didn't work had some of the band members playing those plastic tubes that you whirl around your head to make a sound; it just wasn't that interesting.)

The sound of the group was kind of interesting, but it was so repetitious that it actually sent Volodia to sleep at one point. (He hadn't heard the band before and was going on word-of-mouth.)

Things improved when they were joined by a two-person folk duet called 'NeTe'. NeTe was composed of a woman, who sang, and a man, who also sang and additionally played a bunch of traditional Russian instruments. The combination of the two groups seemed odd conceptually, but it worked; I think that both of them together sounded much better than either of them individually would. Even after NeTe left the stage, 4'33" seemed energized and were more interesting to listen to. At the end of the concert I bought a CD, which featured both groups playing together. I'm not sure how often I'll play it, but I'm happy to have it.

After this we met Sarah outside the Kievskaya metro station and went out to eat. This involved catching a cab.

There are officially licensed cabs, but people don't use them much in Moscow; more typically you just flag down a passing car, do a little bargaining, and they'll take you where you want to go. This isn't really recommended for tourists, but then again neither is taking the official cabs, really (you're likely to get overcharged in either case, particularly if you don't set the price beforehand). It works pretty well, but it has its shortcomings; after we'd driven a little while the car we were in ran out of gas. Fortunately, he had some extra in a gas can.

I don't remember much about dinner. Afterwards we returned to the apartment and went to sleep.

More Sidenotes: Politics

I forget exactly when I had this conversation, though I think it might have been in St. Petersberg. We had been talking, I'm not sure what about, and the subject of Gorbachov came up. (Gorbachov, as you're probably aware, is not generally very popular among Russians.) I said something like, "I think his first public campaign was against alcholism, right?"

This was acknowledged as true; it was his first major act as leader of the USSR,and a fairly unsuccessful one. One of my companions, who was in college at the time, said that you could get in big trouble if they caught you with alcohol in your rooms.

He went on to say that, as part of the campaign, they closed down a lot of vineyards.

My other companion expressed the opinion that that was stupid. First, to try to attack head-on the problem of alcoholism in a country whose culture is very alcohol-based (by closing vineyards, etc. rather than public service announcements, etc.), and second to do it by attacking wine, when vodka was the real problem drink.

The first person responded that attacking vodka wouldn't be possible, since then the people who supply the grain for the vodka get involved, and all the tax money from the sale of the vodka is lost, etc. In fact, he said, the whole reason that the vineyards were closed were to increase consumption of vodka, which then would increase tax revenue from its sale.

"Wait a minute," I said. "Are you saying that the whole point of the anti-alcoholism campaign was to increase the consumption of vodka?"

He was.

I don't know if this analysis of the situation is actually accurate, but I thought it was interesting that the theory could be made and that it was accepted as completely possible and really not something that deserved much comment.

Exploring Moscow with Sarah, and in particular Tsaritsyno

Sarah was able to take all of Thursday off, so the plan was to do a little more exploring of central Moscow (and visit the Red October candy factory outlet again now that I had some money), stop by Sarah's workplace quickly, then check out the Tsaritsyno on the outskirts of Moscow, then meet up with Volodia, and finally take the midnight train to St. Petersberg.

It's already a bit of a blur, but I remember we saw the Moscow Hotel, which was built during Stalin's time. Two plans were made up for it and Stalin was supposed to sign the one he liked better; misunderstanding what he was supposed to do, he signed both. No-one wanted to go back to him for further instructions, so each plan was used for half the hotel; it's therefore somewhat asymmetrical.

We also saw the Bolshoy Theater, which often has political events or protests going on in front of it (though not while we were there).

Finally, we visited Sarah's workplace, a newspaper. Interestingly (to me at least), it's a completely Mac-based shop. It's in a building that houses a bunch of newspapers; in order to get in you need a pass (Sarah had called earlier so one was waiting for me), which is good for one visit only.

After that, we went to the Tsaritsyno, which I enjoyed a lot. It's basically a park. Originally Catherine the Great intended to have a summer palace built here, similar to her St. Petersberg summer palaces, and work started on it in 1775. ('Tsaritsyno' means "Emperess's Village"; previously the area was known as Chyornaya Gryaz, or 'Black Mud'.) The buildings were mostly completed in around 1785, when she ordered the main palace destroyed and rebuilt by a new architect. The new structure was worked on until 1797 when a war with Turkey necessitated that the funds spent on it be used elsewhere. Though originally built outside of Moscow, Moscow's expanded since then and now it's safely within the boundaries (if that's the right phrase to use).

The result is kind of a bizarre area; some of the buildings are completed and are actually in use (for example, the opera house), while others were never completed and are in ruins (notably the main palace). There are also a lot of nicely-kept lawns, rivers that people fish from, etc. It's a popular picnic place in the summer. The main palace is a very popular place for kids to explore; we checked it out. I'd never been in ruins quite like that before.

Apparently it was customary when designing an area like this to create some prefab ruins. Ironically, the fake ruins were one of the structures completed, and if you wander off along one of the paths you'll come across it. The ruins themselves are kind of in ruins; you can see some places where the old, grey stones have fallen away to reveal the underlying brick.

It's probably not to everyone's taste, but I enjoyed visiting there, and while I can't say it's a must-see if you're in Moscow and have some free time I'd recommend checking it out.

We wandered about for a few hours, during which time I took a fair number of pictures, then headed back to the Metro station. After a quick stop-off at the Red October outlet, we returned to the apartment, packed up, and went to the train station.

Journey to St. Petersberg

If you take the train to St. Petersberg during the day, I think it takes about four hours, or maybe six. The night trains travel slower, however, and take around eight hours. I think this is to facilitate sleeping and perhaps also to ensure that you don't show up in St. Peterberg at 5 am with no place to go and nothing to do.

The sleeper cars were actually decently nice, considering that you're sleeping on a train. There are four bunks. A short while after the train leaves the conductor comes around to rent you sheets; according to train rules you're not supposed to sleep on the bunks without sheets. The price of the sheets varies from trip to trip for reasons that are somewhat mysterious, to me at least.

I asked Volodia what would happen if you didn't want sheets (the whole thing seemed odd to me; why not just include the cost of sheets in the ticket?). Volodia said that it was probably up to the conductor. He said that during Soviet times they probably had a quota for how many sheets they had to rent; nowadays it more acts as a way to get the conductors some extra cash. (This perhaps helps explain the varying prices of the sheets.) I'll note that on the trip back there was a guy in our room who didn't rent the sheets and (in violation of the rules) just slept on the bunk without them.

I got to sleep pretty easily and only woke up once during the night, at 3:30 am when the train stopped for some reason. I had trouble getting back to sleep after that, mainly because one of the other people in the room was snoring pretty loudly.

First Day in St. Petersberg

St. Petersberg is a 'modern' city; it was built in the early 18th century, as apposed to Moscow, which was first mentioned in writing in 1147 and was probably around much earlier than that. Also, it was built by Peter the Great as a specifically 'European' city. So there aren't a lot of the onion-domed cathedrals around (to be precise, there's one that I saw, and that was started in 1882); there are instead a bunch of palaces and European-style cathedrals and such. Indeed, one of my first impressions of St. Petersberg was that you couldn't toss a rock without hitting some kind of impressive-looking historical structure. (Apparently if I had gone further outside of the center of the city I would have seen a lot of recent buildings built during Soviet times, so this initial impression was exaggerated.)

We decided to walk from the train station along Nrvskiy Prospekt into the heart of the city, allowing us to see a fair number of sights along the way. The Kazan Cathedral being one of the big ones; it's a large U-shaped structure with a dome at the base of the 'U'. It wasn't immediately recognizable as a cathedral, but, um, that's what it was.

My favorite site on this little walk, though, was a nifty statue of Catherine the Great surrounded by sycophants. She's standing in the center, fully twice as tall as any of the people surrounding her, and they're all sitting around the base looking like this is the most fun they could possibly be having. They're all actual courtiers and such, too; their names are inscribed beneath their feet.

Another thing about St. Peterberg was that it was built as a port city on the Gulf of Finland. To emphasize the nautical nature of the city and perhaps to make it more European, he ordered built many canals. (One of the city's nicknames is 'the Venice of the North'.) In general the canals aren't used for much and never have been, apparently. (Probably partly because of the cold.) But they were the first thing we explored, as one of the first things we encountered was a tour boat, and we decided to take it. This was nice, because we got to see a lot of the places that we would later explore: the Winter Palace, which houses a part of the Hermitage collection (on which more later); the Peter and Paul fortress, which houses the oldest part of St. Petersberg; and the Church of the Savior on the Blood, the aforementioned St. Basils-styled cathedral built in 1882 on the spot where Tsar Alexander II was assassinated (hence the name). (Peter the Great would be horrified.) This is a pretty cool-looking cathedral; though it's clearly inspired by St. Basil's, there's something about it that makes it look more modern; possibly because it's more symmetrical and the base is more rectangular. There are insets on the walls with the crests of all of the cities that contributed to its construction; I took a picture which (accidentally, because at the time I didn't realize that this was what was going on) includes Moscow's square. (Moscow's crest is St. George slaying the dragon. I don't know why.)

Also on the tour boat were a bunch of other English-speaking tourists (Americans and Australians, I think). I spent a fair amount of time wishing they would shup up, which was probably not really fair. (The people who sat behind me spent some time comparing Block Island with Martha's Vineyard.)

The boat tour ended, and we went to lunch, which I don't remember much about. Then we want along to check out the Winter Palace.

There's a cool series of trapezoidally-shaped arches that lead you to the Winter Palace. I took several pictures of them. The palace itself, to my philistine eyes at least, looked pretty much like all of the other palace-type buildings I'd seen around, externally at least.

As previously noted, the Winter Palace houses part of the Hermitage, which includes that as well as two other buildings, all of which are connected. Basically we're talking about a truly huge collection of European art, so extensive that even with all of the space afforded by the three buildings only a small portion of the art is ever on display. Sarah and Volodia asked me if I wanted to check it out; I said I did, but it then conspired that neither of them particularly did. What ended up happening was that Volodia went off to try to buy some new glasses and Sarah and I spent two hours inside the Hermitage, affording us the chance to see maybe 1/100,000th of the collection. It was still worth it.

The artwork itself was pretty cool (basically we looked at pre-Renaissance Italian art and the Hermitage's Impressionist collection), but the palace interior itself was enough to blow me away. The sheer artistry, detailwork, and incredibly expensive materials combined to make a series of very impressive sights. I tried to imagine what it would be like to live in such a place, but I couldn't make the leap of imagination.

After the Hermitage visit, we met up with Volodia (who hadn't found any glasses he wanted to buy) and went wandering off again.

Peter the Great has inspired a bunch of monuments, many of them pretty bizarre-looking. I've mentioned previously the huge, hideous Moscow monument to Peter the Great. In St. Petersberg, there are a few others that I got to look at; there's one which shows him reading a book and standing in a boat which he towers over. According to Volodia and Sarah, the Soviets didn't like how nonproportional the statue was (what with the boat being tiny and Peter being pretty big) and had it destroyed. However, years before that a copy had been made and given to another country, and recently they made a copy of that and put the second-generation copy up where the original had been. So that's OK.

The best monument to Peter the Great is generally considered to be the Bronze Horseman, which I also saw the first day in St. Petersberg. Pushkin wrote a poem about it entitled "The Bronze Horseman"; I tried to find a translation online but was unsuccessful. As I understand it, the statue (and metaphorically both Peter the Great himself and St. Petersberg as a whole) is characterized as strong, steadfast, and able to withstand strong forces, but not necessarily as being human or admirable.

There's a monument which is not particularly impressive or eye-catching, but which is still pretty neat. It's a blue square on the side of a building with white stenciled printing over it; underneath it is a sign which says that the monument is dedicated to the survivors of the 900-day seige of St. Petersberg during World War II. (Germany surrounded St. Petersberg and constantly shelled it for almost two and a half years; during the winter there was a small supply line over the frozen lake to the east of St. Petersberg and that was it. Towards the end of this period, I was told, people started eating the paste off the back of wallpaper. 670,000 citizens died before the blockade was broken.) The stencilled printing says, simply, "Citizens! In the event of artillery fire, this side of the street is the most dangerous!"

We saw some other sites, had dinner, and headed to our hotel in Peterhof.

Visiting Peterhof

We got into Peterhof a little before 11 pm, but it was still pretty bright out (the days get long very quickly in St. Petersberg, it being so far north). Our hotel was in the midst of a little park and was a historic building; apparently it was where the ladies of the court and their servents would stay during the summer.

Here we ran into a little snag. As previously noted, most places have a two-tier (at least) pricing structure, with one price for foreigners and another for native Russians. Well, here we were, three of us, and we wanted two rooms, a single and a double, but the double was going to one native and one foreigner. The receptionist was very confused; she kept referring to Volodia as 'the translater' and ultimately insisted that the two foreigners had to share a room. (The conversation was all in Russian, so Sarah and Volodia had to tell me what was going on.)

Finally, we agreed to this, figuring that once we had the rooms we could trade. However, it turned out that the room reserved for the Russian national was not only cheaper but also a lot crummier. This didn't seem acceptable, so Sarah and Volodia went back to do battle with the receptionist. She had no idea how to handle the situation, and finally called up the owner of the hotel (who was probably asleep--it was getting late) to find out what to do. Ultimately we got another room, paying a little more for it.

The next day, the plan was for Volodia to visit his great-aunt, who lived in Peterhof; Sarah and I would explore Peter the Great's palace (also in Peterhof); and we would meet up at Volodia's great-aunt's later on, then head back to St. Petersberg.

The palace was amazing. Well, I should say that we didn't actually go into the palace, but instead wandered around the grounds outside. This area is often compared to Verseilles, which I've never been to, but maybe it gives you and idea of it. The dominant theme is fountains; there are rows of fountains of mythological creatures and events, decorative fountains of abstract design, fountains that look like a bunch of ducks being chased by a dog (with things contrived so that it sounds like the dog is barking), and trick fountains that squirt you if you step in just the right place. It's all gravity-driven.

Walking around the gardens was very nice and restful, though it was raining a little. After exploring for an hour or two, Sarah and I headed over to Volodia's great-aunt's apartment.

She lives in a communal living arrangement. So she has her own living area, which is basically one room, and shares the kitchen, etc., with a bunch of other people in similar circumstances. She didn't speak any English, but she seemed like a nice, good-tempered woman with a sense of humor about things. She kept urging us to eat more and to take more mayonnaise for our salads ("Don't worry! I have three jars, see?").

She talked a little about World War II. She grew up speaking Yiddish, so she could also understand some German which is apparently similar, and so she did some duty as a translater, although I think she also manned some anti-aircraft artillery. She talked about being in Germany and coming across a sick child; the Russians wanted to help cure the child, but first they had to convince the Germans that they weren't going to do any harm, which they managed to do.

Since she's a war veteran, she gets a much higher than average pension; she gets a little more than a thousand rubles a month (1000 rubles being equivelent to 40 American dollars at the time I was there). You start getting a pension in Russia at 55 if you're a woman and 60 if you're a man; the average life expectancy for a man is 59. The minimum pension that you can get is 300 rubles a month, which is about twelve dollars. (Though in Moscow if you get less than 500 rubles the city gives you enough to make up the difference.) It is these figures that make me believe that communal living arrangements for the elderly must be very common. (Note, however, that things grown or made domestically are cheaper than the excange rate implies; still, it's got to be tough to make ends meet.)

I had assumed that she lived in the communal living arrangement to save expenses, but recently Sarah told me that this is not the case. It turns out that there was (and probably still is) an acute housing shortage during Soviet times, which is when many people were assigned their apartments (there not being privately owned housing at the time). So the government would put a lot of people into communal housing arrangements, and you could put your name on a waiting list to get into something better (which you might or might not eventually actually get). In the early nineties people were allowed to privatize their apartments for a small amount of money, which a lot of people did; others still rent from the government (at much less than market prices), and a few rent private apartments, though few people can afford this.

Sarah believes that at one point Volodia's great-aunt was getting close to getting her own apartment, but she elected to pass it on to her adopted son, so now she's stuck in the communal arrangement (since she can't afford to buy or rent an apartment at market rates).

She gave me a little book about Peterhof and some postcards, and we headed back to St. Petersberg.

Second day in St. Petersberg, and returning home

By the time we left Peterhof it was already the middle of the afternoon, so we had to figure out what it was we wanted to do in the limited remaining business hours. We decided to go to the Peter and Paul Fortress.

As you enter the fortress, which is the oldest part of St. Petersberg, a sign tells you in English and Russian what the rules are while you're there. Interestingly, where the Russian says, "No bathing suits", the English says, "Do not wear a bathing suit or go naked." Those wacky tourists, who knows what they'll do if you let them.

The Peter and Paul fortress contains the resting place of most of the tsars from Peter the Great on; in particular the last of the Romonovs (as well as their servents, who were executed with them) were reburied here after their previous resting place was found. Some of the more popular tsars have little metal plates next to their tombs where offerings can be left.

There's also another statue of Peter the Great in the fortress, one which makes him look like a total freak. He is portrayed as having a tiny head, spindly legs, skeletal hands, and is wearing enourmous square-toed shoes. According to my guidebook, some people are offended by this monument, but apparently some don't mind it as there were a number of bouquets strewn about his feet.

We also saw an arch where they marked the heights that major floods had reached since the founding of St. Petersberg (minor ones being too frequent to keep track of). A sight we missed was the dungeon where Peter the Great's son was tortured to death on his father's orders (he was suspected of treason).

After that we were quite hungry and had a nice, leisurely dinner. We then did a bit of wandering and saw a nifty statue of Gogol and one of Pushkin. Finally, it was time to return to Moscow.

At 11 pm we left St. Petersberg, getting into Moscow at around 7 AM. From there we went directly to the airport where (after some confusion on my part as to what lines to get in) I got on the plane and returned home. So ended my journies to Russia.