This Day... This Day is the Worst Day.

Holy Moly what a freaking day.
So I’ve spent ten hours wandering Moscow today. 10. I had one half hour break I think, and whatever breaks come from scoring a seat on the Metro. The excursion this morning was just a walk around Moscow’s Second Ring, pretty much just to get a feel for the city and get some air. It was pleasant. Hot, but pleasant. I learned a couple cool things – when McDonald’s opened in Moscow, working there was so prestigious that you had to know someone in the government or mafia pretty much to score a job. The excursion ended at about 12:30 (just seeing that time written down is boggling my mind considering I’ve JUST NOW ended my ill-fated post-excursion stroll.

Basically, I have two friends with birthdays coming up, and considering the Russian mail system is really sketch, I wanted to get them presents today so I can send them into the great unknown as fast as possible. Katrina and I wanted to check out Old Arbat, the famous souvenir district, after we swung into the Church of Christ the Saviour (SO SO BEAUTIFUL AND ORNAGE OMG). We grabbed some Sbarro and went in search of the one store on Arbat that our director told us was by far the cheapest on the street. We did succeed in finding this place – indeed, the prices were low, and I’ll definitely be back. The store is great, the sales staff, well… So Katrina and I were checking out these cool wood wall hangers painted with famous Soviet era propaganda posters (friends, don’t be surprised if you end up with one of these for Christmas. As Russian students, we were super interested to know what they actually said. I had my phone-dictionary out and we were working them out when suddenly the shop lady who had been watching us came up and scolded us. In Russian, she said something close to “Ladies, you should buy these because they are pretty. Don’t translate them! You should not take these seriously, they are not true, so it’s not important what they say. Don’t translate them!” Um, I have no idea what this woman’s deal was. Yeah, Katrina and I were speaking English, but I can’t imagine we looked like such clueless Americans as the woman who was downstairs trying to buy a Samovar (which are illegal to export) with US Dollars in huge denominations. Did she think we wanted to get these little posters to finally expose that Russians still believe in GodLenin? Seriously, lady.

I left without buying anything, mostly because I feel weird buying something in the first store I come to on any given shopping trip. John turned out to be right. A lot of the other stores had prices double those at the store he recommended (most notably, a $40 talking Cheburashka doll.) Katrina and I made it to the end of Arbat, where we parted ways – she went home, and I decided to try to find the street market we saw on an excursion last week. I headed down into the red line Metro and had my experience with Drunk Russian #1 of the day. He was dirty and old and drunk, but came up and politely asked me where a certain station let out with remarkably unslurred speech. I used my Drunk Russian Avoidance standby protocol of just saying “Ya ne govoryu parussky” (I don’t speak Russian) but he wasn’t letting that fly. Probably because I said the sentence in perfect Russian. But then he just started asking me why I was in Russia if I didn’t speak it, to which I replied “Ya izuchayu” (I’m studying), and this pretty much entirely blew my I-don’t-speak-Russian cover. “’Izuchayu!’ You don’t speak Russian, what a joke. Do you like it in Russia?” “Yes, I like it a lot.” “But America is better?” “No, I don’t think so. I like big cities, and Moscow is beautiful.” He then looked taken aback that I would like Moscow as much as America, and then asked me what station I was going to. Then I sort of remembered myself and said I forgot, and that I was pleased to meet him, and then scuttled down the crowd to get on a different wagon than him. Though I must say, of all the Drunk Russians to accost me today, he was certainly the nicest. If I didn’t have this crazy pre-conceived notion about homeless Drunk Russians, I’m sure he would’ve been a delightful conversation partner.

So I took the train down to Universitet where Katrina told me the street market was, but I quickly got alarmingly lost and I returned the way I came back to the Metro as damage control. My backup plan was this giant flea market that they hold by Sportstivna station, so I took the Metro back two stops to find that. After taking a really roundabout way, I ended up at the market at 4:05, and evidently they shut down at 4 because I arrived in the square amidst a whirlwind of dislodged mannequin limbs and carts piled about 9 feet high with bags, pushed by shirtless men (Drunk Russians.) Feeling now slightly dejected, I decided a last ditch effort to check out Respublika, the big Borders equivalent near my school. Managed to get to the right station (a miracle, by today’s standards,) but then proceeded to get quite lost trying to find Tverskaya from Belorusskaya Station. This is seriously really pathetic, as any of my Moscow friends reading this will realize. Seriously, Tverskaya is Moscow’s biggest boulevard. I could see it. But I couldn’t get to it for the life of me. I started muttering English swears under my breath and stomping around a little, but I finally found the right street. I then became thoroughly convinced I was on the wrong street anyway. I was feeling pretty steamed until I FINALLY saw it on the other side of the street. I spent about a half hour there, and found some potential b-day gifts, but again decided to keep looking, since they had the right category of things I was looking for but not quite the right selection. Respublika is a chain, so I checked out  their location map and found one on the street where I live. Deciding to check out one more store today, I went back through the perehod (underground crosswalk) and had my encounter with Drunk Russians #2. These ones were a crowd of 3 or 4 street musicians that were packing up. One came at me shaking a knit hat full of coins and saying, “Beautiful girl, don’t you want a musician as a husband? We make excellent husbands. Come along with us, we are much more talented and romantic than your boyfriend.” This Drunk Russian was unfortunately pretty cute, so I was blushing against my will, but maintained a quick stride and snooty posture, not looking at him, though he still ran after me blabbering about our happy future until I got to the stairs on the other side. Fast forward to the Metro back to my street… I was sitting next to a man reading a Kindle, and on this Kindle I looked over to see the cover of a magazine called “Wood Мэстер», or “Wood Master, a magazine about carpentry. I am unfortunately secretly a 13 year old boy, so at the title “Wood Master,” I unfortunately laughed audibly, and this Not Drunk Russian looked at me super pissed off, and literally moved down the train to another seat to get away from me. Oops.

This Respublika on my street was still 9 blocks away… ouch. However, after coming that far I wasn’t about to let up, so I trotted the 9 blocks and successfully found it… only to find that location didn’t even carry the category of things I was looking for. At least the shopkeeper, who looked like a Russian Dillon Doyle clone, was super nice about it. Pissed, I came back out to the street and was quite promptly accosted by Drunk Russians #3. Oh my, were these Drunk Russians drunk. The drunkest. A crowd of 4 super wasted, like arms-around-each-other’s-shoulders-and-staggering wasted, who stumbled at me crying “Ах, Красивая девочка (pretty girl,) bluhbluhblahblehbelchblah” I directly gave them a disgusted look and literally jumped over a small trashcan to run away from them.

And so ended my adventures of today… I won’t call it the day from hell, but….

Oh, I almost forgot to tell you about Drunk Russians #4… I opened my window to toss my modem onto my windowsill (the only way I get a signal,) and these Drunk Russians in the park (About 16 years old, classy) spotted me, and every few minutes I can hear them yell “Oi, Rapunzel, c’mere, why don’t you?” I seriously must have accidently showered in Drunk Russian pheromones today…..