twenty-something years of "what have you been up to?"

Category: moscow life

  • not watching the olympics from a russian jail

    American olympic athletes probably wear technically the best water and wind-proof gear in the world, but they don't dress all adorable walking in the opening ceremonies, which for me is what really counts. For that, the Russians–who are all about spectacle and costume–get the gold. They always have amazing looking outfits during the parade. I've discovered the clothing is not exclusive to the athletes, you can buy it at Bosco stores all over town, there is a store next door to us.

    Bosco_spectacle and costume
    Last winter they had this that looked like a vest a fashion forward Mongolian girl would wear, appliqued, with fur trim down the front and around the bottom, it was to die for. This season, there is a little jacket Camille wants, it's got Russia embroidered on the back, it's cute, it's fleece, it's $200. 

    "I heard you can buy it at Ismilavo cheap," Peter says. Ismilavo is the all-Russian outdoor market. I've been there a few times and I've never seen it there and as you can see, it's pretty distinctive.

    Today at Ismilavo, Peter finds a guy selling fur hats wearing an official coach's jacket and starts talking to him. The guy describes some jackets, and finally says, "Come out to my car and I'll show you what I have."

    His trunk is full of official Russian olympic gear, with the patches and the labels and the hangtags and the real fur and the scrumptious fabrics and everything. He shows us warm up suits and the men's ski parka. Not what I'm dying for. Then he pulls out a ladies fur-trimmed jacket similar to the one I was petting in the store, but not in my size. "I have something else," he says, and dives back into the trunk. 

    I can't wait for the olympics, I love them. This will be our first time being able to watch another country's broadcast. The event I'm mostly looking forward to? Who out-patriotics who, Russia vs the US. As the guy searches in his trunk, I'm picturing us all in matching Russian olympic team hats, cheering for both sides.

    Then the three of us notice a car has just pulled up and someone is getting out to talk to us. The police. They ask to see the guy's documents, and Peter and I walk away, back inside the market to be amid the matroushkas and painted trays. I don't often get to end my stories, "And then the cops came."

    As far as the olympic gear goes, I think I'll just wait until after Christmas, when Bosco has huge mark downs. Maybe we'll get something by February 12th to wear while watching the opening ceremonies. I'll be the one waving the guilt-free flag.

  • thanksgiving moscow style

    Tgiving_insane

    We started off with French champagne and ended with making gingerbread houses. I now have a gingerbread floor. Hope yours was insane as well. More photos here on facebook.

  • late night thoughts on thanksgiving eve

    Isn't it amazing that a family from Texas is using my dad's French Canadian recipe for crepes every Sunday in Moscow? Biscuits are overnighting in my great-grandmother's Bauer bowl. We'll see who has the last word tomorrow, me or the tart crust recipe I'm using for pastry crust for apple pie. It's nice how I needed two egg yolks for the tart crust and then egg whites for the royal frosting–which I am still not over–for the gingerbread houses. But why does my royal frosting keep tasting like soap? Did I buy the sugar in Africa?

  • moscow does not believe in cheap bags

    For two years, in San Francisco, I proudly carried a purse that I found in the trash. And I got compliments on it.

    Normally I walk around Moscow saying, "Seriously Moscow?" to the mullets and the head-to-toe-leopard. You know your perceptions are changing when the $160 fur wristlets at Max Mara don't seem all that ourageous. I mean, that's worth it, right? Or should just I just buy two fox tails for $5 at Ismilova market and make my own? My thoughts about fur are totally twisted now, by the way. I try not to eat meat every day, but hey, fur, it's warm. In the store–I can't believe my luck! I find an adorable made-in-France-Repetto-bag at more than 75% off that makes me swoon. (If at least one article of clothing isn't patent leather right now–boots, shoes, bag, headband, corset-under-your-mink, whatever–you look like something is wrong with you.) I will be the girl with the huge super-soft-black-patent-leather-with-all-these-clever-ties Repetto bag, eeeeeeeeeee! And it's not so over-the-top that I can't look semi-normal in California next month. Then I stood behind this woman to pay.

    Birkin girl

    Okay, her boots are extra-cute, her all-navy ensemble is cool, but um, did you notice her bag? I did. I noticed the Hermes seal in gold when she pulled out 40K rubles in cash for her purchase. On ebay, right now? That pink ostrich Birkin is selling for $20K used. She bought a Christian Lacroix bag, which they put in a gorgeous embroidered dust bag and then in a box, and then in another bag. And the 40K rubles she paid? It's like $1000 plus change. Maybe she'll use the Lacroix as a trash bag? I dunno. Made me and my poor little originally $500 Repetto purse (no dust-bag, no box) feel…bohemian. Maybe I should use it to line a bird cage. And then throw it in the trash and dig it back out because it is so cute.

    I wish I knew where pink-ostrich-Hermes-bag-lady's garbage was. 

  • moscowvision 2009

    My Daily Photo Niger site was one of 500+ daily photo blogs at City Daily Photo. It was voted, by other bloggers there, in the six months or so that I did it, sort of as a good-bye to Niger, consistently in the favorite top ten.

    It made me so happy to see Niamey, Niger right next to Paris and London, and finally in the top ten of something that wasn't negative. I realize a lot of the visits were because Africa is so under-represented, and the novelty of Niger automatically made it a curiosity. Daily City Photo now has grown to over 1000 members, and I won't be alone in representing Moscow–if they let me in. But I hope my Daily Photo Moscow brings us all as much fun and camaraderie and sort of surprising jolts of pleasure that Daily Photo Niger did. A photo a day is such a good exercise for me, artistically and as a way to process the love/hate of where I'm living, that I am going back in and I'm taking Moscow with me. 

  • what not to buy

    Normally I walk to the closest grocery, Ramstore, because it has everything we need, you know, bread, yogurt, bananas, caviar-flavored potato chips.

    Chips
    Yesterday my friend braved the streets of Moscow and drove us to the American Women's Club Christmas crafts fair. I admired the carved Santas, and beautiful matrushkas, Lomonovsky porcelain, and I almost bought a pretty bird etching. I lingered over everything but didn't buy anything except my first piece of Russian jewelry. A lady selling amber had a couple Japanese women in a frenzy,  and I thought about Christmas gifts, but Peter bought a bunch of amber in St. Petersburg, and I couldn't remember our inventory. But there was one ring I couldn't leave behind. The design is sort of art nouveau, and in a sterling setting, two things I really like. The amber has insect wings trapped in a pretty cabochon bubble of yellow.

    Then my friend practiced her triple-parking moves on the ring road and we stopped by the fancy grocery store. Why do I never shop there? Beautiful lighting, beautiful displays, interesting imported items–penis-shaped pasta anyone?–my atm card worked at the check out and the cashier didn't insist on exact kopeks.

    I bought a huge pork roast for like $10 and the dairy and bread prices are the same everywhere. The French yogurts were a fortune, but a better treat than the Italian cookies I didn't buy. I bought two portabello mushrooms that were $7, and then I bought a butternut squash that cost even more than that. I drew the line at buying bananas there, knowing they would cheaper at my corner veggie stand.

    Today I walked to the veggie stand and bought bananas. Then the lady showed me this gorgeous mango. We had such good mangos in Portugal; I'd forgotten how much I miss them. So I bought a ridiculously expensive mango. Walking back to the house, I realized I just paid the same amount for the mango as I'd paid at the craft's fair for the beautiful amber ring. I dunno. Maybe I shouldn't have gotten the ring.

    IMG_0277

  • suffering under soviet dictatorship, not allowed to post pictures

    Can I blame the beautiful weather on the Secretary of State's visit? They seed the clouds here with cement dust–that's heathy right?–and the clouds are dispersed for important events. Monday it rained sideways non-stop. Then Tuesday and Wednesday, the two days she was here, were gorgeous. 


    At the Ambassador's residence, my friends and I sat in the second row at the Secretary of State's Meet and Greet. Then we were told she would be shaking hands with the people in the front row, so we moved up, right next the seats that said "reserved." Out the beautifully arched doorway we saw her car pull up and she got out right at the door. At the podium, the Ambassador is a good warm up act. Then Madame Secretary gave a lovely and appreciative speech about how the Embassy community is an example of Russians and Americans working together, a very nice message. Don't you love it when she plays acoustic?

    A minute into her speech, the lens cap of my camera dropped to the hardwood floor and rolled in the largest circuit a lens cap has ever made through a state dining room. Time stood still as it noisily wheeled past the podium inches from Hillary Clinton's black suede heels. She could have stopped it by stepping on it, but she ignored it with a professional focus. The official photographer watched it, horrified that might be his. I pointed at myself, and mouthed to him, "It's mine." It's still rolling mind you. It rolled so long, my friend had time to lean in and say, "It's going to roll back to you." And it did. Someone told me, secret service drew their guns, but held fire.

    My friends and I were a little thrown because after her speech we were the first she greeted. I got to shake her hand and I think it was brilliant, clever and original what I said to her. I said, "Hello." She's so gracious she didn't mention the lens cap.

  • health unit blood drive

    Blood drive
    Peter's Med Unit had a blood drive and was on Russian TV. But the lead man was on the road! Peter totally would have been a star if he'd been in town for an interview–intead of waiting around  to accompany the Secretary of State in her motorcade in Kazan. I was part of the media frenzy and cracked up when they poked the Ambassador in the arm and he said, "I think this is what they call the money shot."

    The Med Unit enjoys two of its 15 mintues of fame.

  • who me?

    My blogger friend Amanda the Expatress in the news. Please don't make me want a Kindle. I need to buy plane tickets for Chirstmas in California and um, more scarves it looks like. http://moscownews.ru/business/20091012/55390163.html

    Isn't it enough that we got to go to a screening of a movie and got to meet two Academy award-nominated film-makers yesterday? And that Peter is riding–flags flying–in the motorcade in Kazan this week? Tomorrow Madame Secretary is having a Meet and Greet. "I really like your music," I guess I'll tell her? Oh wait, wrong Meet and Greet.

  • moscow honeyfest

    This is my article I wrote for the Embassy newsletter about the honey festival.

    Honey guy

    Sore throat? Stomach problem? Blood problems? You must not be eating enough of the right kind of honey. The honey sellers at the 22nd Annual All-Russia Honey Festival have suggestions for just about every ailment that you may have. They believe that certain types of honey, depending on what type of pollen the bees gathered, have properties to treat just about every condition.

    For ages honey has been used in Russia as a form of homeopathy– the nutrients of wild herbs and flowers rub off on bees, and eventually find their way into the honey.  Powerful medicine taken in a cup of tea, or preferably right off the spoon, as heat may interfere with some of honey’s medicinal benefits. Which is another reason to buy honey fresh from the farm, not commercially pasteurized and packaged.

    At the fair, hundreds of sellers from across Russia offer every kind of honey and honey product that may or may not cure your problems. More than one seller told us that if it doesn’t taste good to you, it’s not the homeopathic remedy your body needs. Sunflower, raspberry flower, clover, buckwheat, acacia, linden, you can taste it all for free and decide which is the most therapeutic for you. Many of the honeys are labeled with their healing properties.

    Where to start? There are so many sellers. The incredible range of just the colors of honey is amazing. Which appeals to you? The clearest, the whitest, the blackest the most golden, the seller with the best smile or most hilarious apron? Many stands boast awards, and the honey at this fair has been inspected for purity. Cheery and talkative bee-keepers overwhelm with thousands of honeys, honey comb, bee pollen, and beeswax candles–every sort of honey product is available. (Crushed dead bees, anyone?)

    Most stands are decorated with pictures of the farm and the acres of wild flowers where the honey was harvested by the small-scale artisan bee-keepers themselves. One woman we spoke with had driven 24 hours from Central Russia with her truck full of honey. Father and son bee-keepers were eager to learn the names of the flowers in English, and explain the quality of their honeys using their newly-acquired words.

    One big fan of honey is Moscow Mayor Lushkov, who himself is bee-keeper, he may be the only mayor in the world who holds a patent for a cold-climate beehive. The festival venue has been changed from its place of years past, Kolomenskoye to Tsaritsino, another of the mayor’s projects. The festival flourishes in part because of his support.

    The festival is held by the Russian Union of Apiarists, whose main goal is to increase the number of small-scale beekeepers. Honey production has doubled in Russia in the last twenty years, but the bee-keepers aren’t keeping up with demand. Before 1917, bee-keepers had enough honey to export, but now supply falls short. Another goal of the Union is to teach the beekeepers business know-how. The Union hopes that by teaching business skills like marketing, increased distribution will lead to increased production.

    None of the stands were Sue-Bee-Burt’s Bees-commercial in any way. From the bee-keeper with a mouth full of gold teeth to the apiarist who boasted her two degrees in psychology, “but I’m still wearing this silly hat,” each bee-keeper was eager to talk shop about his or her farm, bees and honey, quoting the latest studies from “Bee Plus” magazine.

    The Russian cultural connection to the power of honey is evident in the warmth and enthusiasm of these bee-keepers. Part folk medicine and herbal remedy, part science, honey has proven antibacterial and antiseptic properties. Single flower honeys—whether from nettle, orange blossom or sunflower–have much more nutrition and character than the processed blended honey found on the grocery store shelves. Time spent walking around talking to friendly Russians representing the country from China to Siberia has it’s own therapeutic affects as well.

    Honey hut