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

Category: moscow life

  • tsaritsino

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    The metro stop shares a name with the Tsaritsino Palace, Catherine the Great's never-finished-left-to-decay-famously-vandalized dacha. Catherine was never happy with the palace-away-from-the-palace and dismissed her architect before the place was ever finished. Tsaritsino has been a romantic ruin since 1775. The structures on which alpinists used to practice rock climbing have been restored, or rather finished to the specifications of Moscow's current Mayor. 150 rubles, ($3.50) lets you wander the halls, which I have to do next time I'm there. I just saw the building on our way to the honey festival, which was on the grounds. Thanks for letting use your yard, Catherine.

  • and so it begins

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    "Today is the first day I need my cold killer," says Stefan. It hailed and he means his coat.

  • tonight in moscow

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    Remember when I rode on the plane to Moscow with the band members of Papa Roach and talked to them and they were really nice? This billboard is right by our house and every time I walk by I obnoxiously point out they are my best friends. The show is tonight, what are we doing sitting around here?

  • old skool style old school

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    Tanya, is not only a relative, but also one of my best friends. She left the then-Soviet Union half-way through her senior year because her parents defected. She hasn't been back since. Buildings whisper secrets and shout greetings, "My dad lived here as a little boy until his father was taken away." "My best friend lived in this building!" She's been visiting with her relatives and renewing her childhood friendship with the Three Bears painting at the Tretrikov Gallery. Everything is at once familiar and unfamiliar, the time traveler's life.

    I am thrilled to have her here in Moscow. And not just because she can read menus and metro stops for me. I've been crazed with work, and haven't been able to get away much, but yesterday she wanted to find the apartment she grew up in. I figured that might be the moment of a lifetime so I took off with her.

    We wandered past the ring road, and suddenly, after not really recognizing anything in the neighborhood where we live, Tanya seemed to know where she was. She found her apartment where she lived with her parents and grandmother. She found the window her dog almost fell out of. 
     
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    Then silently she walked around the back of the building, down a street, through a corridor, down an alley to a totally hidden building where she had taken ice-skating and ballet lessons–choreography, she corrects–for years. It was obviously a kid's hang out, I can tell by the soda bottles and candy wrappers in the trash. We weren't sure if we could go in , but what's the worst that can happen? They don't let us in?
     
    Inside, it's clearly still a rec center. Tanya explained to the lady guard at the desk that she had skated here as a child.  In the nice weather, there are tennis courts, in the winter they flood the tennis courts to make the ice rink where Tanya skated. We sat and watched kids get ballet-with-a-racket Russian tennis lessons. We went and hung out at the iron gate where parents would peek through to watch Tanya's lessons. Tanya once got her tongue stuck on the gate and had to have someone pour water over her mouth to unstick it.

    Then she wound her way through the streets to her school. We tried to get in the building, but this time the guard gave us the typical Russian "It's impossible," shake of her head and wouldn't let us in. Then Tanya flashed her "guest of the embassy" badge and the guard softened and went and got the principal, who kindly showed us in.
     
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    Tanya demonstrated how she and her little girlfriends walked arm in arm at recess in a circle, talking, contributing to the worn path in the parquet floor. Her biology classroom is unchanged. The cafeteria, where she ate lunch every day from first grade to that last half of high school, is exactly the same. The stove looks like it's been cooking soup since long before Tanya got there. It can and has survived any number of cultural revolutions. Tanya left the Soviet Union and wasn't allowed to write letters or contact any of the people she walked the halls with arm in arm for her entire childhood. She is time traveling, I'm along for the ride.

  • it took 862 years to look this good

    The ring road was closed to cars today–walking home after a latte at the French bakery today was such a pleasure with no whizzing traffic. Moscow's celebrated its birthday hard–here, let me pour you a shot of vodka, everyone else seems to have had one–and the amount of sparkle defies description.

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    In the park people danced arm in arm, and those guys in shiny suits actually danced like cossacks. While people partied, this church, in same park, sat quietly in the September sun.

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  • kremlin palace

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    This last one is the view from the Kremlin, flags along the bridge for Moscow's birthday weekend. That building you see in the far distance is Moscow State University, it's super far away, but huge. If you don't get tired walking the 20 miles of halls, maybe the five miles around the base will do it.

    It's beautiful here in Moscow, we are having Marin County weather, brought by our friends visiting from Marin County. Adorble Torri is hitting the bottle here pretty hard, luckily it's yogurt.

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  • r&r here we come

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    What have we learned, our first year in Moscow?

    The Metro moves 9 million people a day, and every single one has pushed me.

    The happy lamp is used everyday.

    How to say carrot. (Now I'm working on learning treedsats-voisem, my shoe size.)

    A food called "cottage cheesy miracle" tastes like yogurt.

    Learning very little Russian will not impede your success in making friends in high places, as long as you go to the American school. Camille's  best friend moved into a new apartment "But the walls are still being carved," she tells us. Oh, I hate it when that happens. And this morning I asked Camille how Alex got them all from school to his house for the end-of-the-year-sixth-grade-party and she tells me "Limo." 

    You can still buy a pickle from a barrel.

    Three inches of new snow calls for three-inch heels. Silver leather pants optional. 

    This is a country of readers–people walking down the street reading, reading on the metro, every farmer's market has a used-book stall–the literacy rate is 99.4%. I however, am functionally illiterate. 

    I'm happy when I figure out a word and discover it's an english word: "best seller" written in cyrillic. Or when a restaurant is named something I can figure out: Kroshka and Kartoshka, "Crumb and Potato,"or  "Yolki Palki" –which means Christmas trees and sticks but Peter's dad always said it to mean, "Boy Howdy."
     
    Our closest metro station: Krasnopresnenskaya, it's even better in Russian: Краснопресненскауа.
     
    Russia's  got a long to-do list–art, ballet, chocolate, maybe we'll get lucky enough to go back to St. Petersburg and we can see the room where Rasputin was poisoned, shot and tied up, also still need to see the Tetryof Gallery. And maybe I'll really buckle down and learn the numbers eleven to twenty.

  • russian not russian

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    Peter and Nina speak Russian they learned from their grandparents. Nina, being the oldest child in the family, has always been considered to have the best Russian. Peter, having spent nearly every weekend among hunters growing up, has a certain, um, colorful edge to his Victorian Russian.

    Nina has a friend here that she's been sort of dating. I love it that they use the Russian formal "you" with each other, they "vous" each other. However, after an evening having a very nice dinner in a fancy restaurant, when M. drove her home Nina said, "Boot me out on the corner." 

    Peter once told a driver to "Kick me out on the coals."  (The word coal and corner, you can hardly hear the difference.) "Let me out on the corner," is new vocab for both of them.

    Nina also told her friend that she was learning her way around the metro by telling him, "I'm starting to recognize the Metro." Oh! That's the metro! I know it now! That's not a grocery store! That's the metro!

    Not knowing the word for a bunch of bananas, Peter has asked for both a branch of bananas and a pile (steaming implied.)

    Also be very careful with the word "finish." 

    Russian bridal couple in a park in St. Petersburg.

  • kolya! i can see you.

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    Cool cafe down the street with ever-changing collage. "The one who doesn't know the secret keeps the secret best," says the drawing with the girl.

  • one of the sistahs

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    Peter's sister Nina is visiting and it's great. No matter where we are, Niger or Russia, she comes to see us so we can watch the American Idol finale together.