Month: March 2010

Everyone is counting noses at school and work. I wondered why I heard sirens this morning.

Two or maybe four bombs exploded on the Moscow Metro during the morning commute. Nobody knows how many or by whom, although immediately the Chenchens are blamed, which I deplore.

The Kublianka metro is on the red line right in the very center of town at the Kremlin, a fifteen minute walk from our place. Hearing Park Kultury made my stomach clutch worse though. It's only two stops away, and was Stefan's stop when he was at the other campus. He rides the metro home from school every day on the red line, which stops at both Kublianka and Park Kultury. We'll have him come home by car until our brains wrap around this, the first bombing in Moscow since 2004.

Just knowing my eight-year-old is on the red line every single weekday was enough to make me feel ill. My heart goes out to anyone who had a loved one on the metro this morning and had an hour or a even a minute wondering if they were okay; let alone anyone who had a family member injured or killed, I don't even know what to say or think. Cashmar. Nightmare. 

The metro is so efficient, so good, I don't drive here. It's so impressive nearly every time I go, I take a photo. (Can you find the "Park Kultury" on the sign up there?) The metro is one of the best things about Moscow. Not today though.

Images of the Paris flea market can-canned through my brain when I heard there was an antique fair in town. Wow, I thought, that's something I'd really like to do! Peter's not home and I can get lost on the wrong side of the metro station, with Russians not helping me, and 100-letter street names and I'll end up crying and I'll drag in late and kids will be like, "Where's dinner?" 

Last December is fresh in my mind, yes, but I need to stretch myself!

Plus,I really want a chandelier. Or old Easter postcards or something. Forget Port Clingoncourt, I miss Goodwill! The directions to the fair are complicated, strange metro stops and Big Gryushyaski Street is not the same as Gryushyaski Street but I really need to get out of my well-worn comfort zone and explore this huge, weird city!

Wait, the fair is only one metro stop away. So much for exploring a new part of town, but that's cool, not as overwhelming. I carefully map out the unfamiliar-named streets in Cyrillic. Maybe I can walk, see something different, explore some new spots.

According to the website, the antique fair is right off of a park I go to all the time for our farmer's market/grocery store run–I've been there a million times. I never noticed a hall for an antique market; I hope I can find the building.

I don't know why anyone would take the metro, I walk to the park, it's maybe half a mile away. I don't see an exhibition hall or a sign or anything, which is not surprising. This is Moscow, you have to know someone to find out anything, and guess what? I don't know anyone! I wander through the farmer's market–wouldn't it be stupid if the flea market were here in the park? But no, it's not. I cross the street and wander the blocks around the park. I find a building with a banner, I crunch ice underfoot through an alley, a parking lot looks promising, but nothing. 
 
In Niger they say WAAW: West Africa Always Wins, and now I haven't found the antiques fair but I have made up a new acronym: RAW.
 
Well, I figured, since I'm here I might as well get bananas at the grocery store. Over the grocery store entrance is a banner that looks like the banner from the antiques fair web site. 

The antiques fair is in the mall where I go the grocery store nearly every weekend.