Moscow in November

John & Steph
see all photos »

I just got back from a weekend in Moscow- what an experience! Moscow is just so…Russian! Well I actually don’t know too much about things Russian but I sure did feel like I was in a very foreign place. I went there to meet Steph & John, good friends from Santa Cruz. How cool it was to hang out with them, half way around the world from where our friendship began. They were there teaching yoga, so they were really busy but we did get in plenty of sightseeing- I was there for basically only 2 days- I arrived Thursday night and left on Sunday but I packed in everything that I wanted to do in that time. I saw the Kremlin, Red Square, dead Lenin (I’m on a roll, first Mao, then Ho Chi Minh, now Lenin), some wooden palace that doesn’t exist anymore, a naked Russian man (see photos for more on that), lots of beautiful Russian brides, and lots and lots of fur.

Fur
see all photos »

Being there was just so different- it truly feels like a very foreign country and I guess I just didn’t expect that so it was a nice treat- I was away for 3 days but it felt like I had gone to a whole other dimension! For one thing, it was COLD there. It is cold here, but nothing like Moscow. And when I was there it wasn’t even that cold! It gets to –35 Celcius! I don’t know how people do it but I guess that’s where the fur comes in. I think that about 80% of the people there were in fur of some sort. Men in hats, women in long, luxurious coats, I have never in my life seen anything like it.

More fur
see all photos »

And the women! My god they were beautiful, but in a very made up, high-heeled boot and fur-wearing way. Still, I saw some true beauties. Another one of my favorite things was seeing all of the brides in Red Square and GUM, the super-chic shopping mall. Apparently it is the place to go for wedding photos- I was totally in awe watching the whole scene. When you get married in Moscow in November you wear cream colored boots instead of shoes and, of course, white fur.

I think one of the most difficult things about being there, abut also what made it seem so surreal, is that not many people speak English, and everything is written in Cyrillic, very rarely is there translation. That makes getting around quite a challenge, especially if you’re me, lost all of the time anyway.  Steph & John got pretty good about learning the alphabet and sounding out things but that was a little advanced for me. The best I could do if I needed to get somewhere was to point to it on a map and look confused. Getting on and off the metro was just so funny- I would expect to be able to read a sign and I would look at it and just laugh. Making decisions about which direction to go would take a long time.

Steph does a much better job than I!
see all photos »

I spent an afternoon hanging out with my friend Adam from Berlin, who was actually there working too, so that was also really fun. We just shopped and walked around, and went for a  $15 tea. Moscow is incredibly expensive- some say the most expensive city in the world right now and I would guess that is just about right. $15 for a pot of tea of a little over the top.  Luckily we were staying in an apartment for free- I guess hotels are way out of my budget.

Anyway, it was a great little trip- really part of the reason why I moved here was so that short weekend trips like that would be possible- it makes all of the hard work worth it.