First Weekend in Moscow

5 Sept 2010

Another day spent running errands and exploring Moscow. I was the only person in the group who has never seen any kind of subway or metro, so I took the Metro tour and tutorial very seriously. I know a lot of people have heard this before, but the Moscow Metro stations are so incredibly beautiful. Most of them I’ve seen so far are made of marble, have chandeliers, large silver letters engraved with the names of the stations. The system is really incredibly easy and reliable, probably one of the few things you can honestly say that about in Russia. The next event of the day was my favorite – buying our cell phones! My phone only cost 650 roubles ($21!) and it looks like a toy, which is actually pretty fun, and definitely a throwback to simpler middle school times when I had a similar phone. Russians, like Americans, love to text (called SMS here) so I’m sure I will be thrilled with cell phone culture. Following that, Matt, Jenny, Katrina and I got lunch at a street shawarma (sic) stand, which was crazy delicious and also quite inexpensive. We all passed out until it was time to use the metro (by ourselves!) to get to dinner, which we had with a bunch of Russians our age. I loved meeting them – all the Russians I’ve met have been really fun-loving, and some have even scolded me for being too serious, saying Americans care too much about studies and work and should just enjoy their free time. Our first weekend here happened to fall with great timing – last night was Moscow’s birthday, which from what I can tell is about as big a deal as the 4^th of July (though there are certainly more ‘4^ths’ to come- Russia has a lot more holidays than we do.) We walked in a complete circle around the Kremlin since Red Square was closed for the celebration, and ended up between St Basil’s Cathedral (the famous Easter-egg-looking one) and the Moscow river when smoke machines started up over the cathedral, the bells started ringing, and then tons of fireworks were shot up above the river. It was so thrilling, and a great “Happy Birthday” to the city! We waited out the crowds in Coffee Haus (where I again accidentally spent $5 on black tea without noticing, I really need to work out my conversion rates!) and then headed back on the Metro right before it closed. When I came up the elevator, Vika, Katya and Igor were there, and oh man, I’ve never received such a warm welcome from people I had met the night previous. Vika and Katya screamed “NINA!!” and Igor got up and hugged me (which must have been impressive, because Katya teased him that he liked me), and they asked all about our night and insisted I share my V Kontakte (Russian Facebook.) After messing around on the internet and listening to Beyonce with them for awhile, it was suddenly 2 am, which sent me trotting off to bed after another incredible night in Moscow.

Moscow:

-          Noisy

-          Dirty

-          Tiny kiosk shops line pretty much every main street, metro station, underpass

-          Has the most amazing clubs

-          Actually does have a drinking age (21 for hard a, though it seems you would have to look like you were 12 to get carded)

-          Is expensive if you do Americanish things, but you can also get a crepe with cottage cheese from a street vendor for $1.50 if you know where to look