Москва Слезам Не Верит

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Добрие Друзя,

Translation of the Subject Line: Moscow Doesn't Believe in Tears. It's the title of a 1980 movie that actually has very little to do with myself, but it does have "Moscow" in the title, which is fitting because this email will talk about nothing but my trip this weekend to....Moscow! (Also, I really hope you appreciate the cyrillic typing, because it takes me forever. I'm like an old woman with a typewriter - I have to search out every letter). But, on to the journey!

I traveled to Moscow on Friday after class with my friend Jake (also a U of C student studying here - we were in the same Russian class over the past year) on the suburban train, affectionately dubbed the "Eletrichka". The train itself takes about two and a half hours but seems infinitely longer because of the hard orange plastic benches on which it's impossible to find a comfortable position. It's quite the experience - the train is packed full of people and their things, and on various locations people pull out bottles of vodka and cans of beer. Vendors periodically stand at one end of the train car, yelling over the hubbub of the rattling train and loud conversations. They sell anything from semi-melted ice cream (which I bought) to cell phone cases to rain ponchos to toothbrushes.
After two and a half hours, we finally pulled into the Leningradsky Vokzal, the train station for everything running between Moscow and Petersburg. We went straight to the Metro which was in itself astounding. The system itself is amazing - Take a gander at the attached map. In addition to maintaining beautiful (and clean!) stations, trains come every three minutes. The metro carries on average 8.2 million of Moscow's 12.6 million people every day. Many of the stations were (conveniently) built as bomb shelters during the Cold War, making them incredibly deep. The amazing thing is that people can still (somehow) use cellphones on the trains.
I should mention at this point that my friend Jake and I were still traveling with Sasha, a Russian student studying English at the institute where we're studying Russian. She happened to be going to Moscow at the same time as we were, and (very kindly) offered to help us buy tickets and get us where we needed to go. Without her help, things would have been very much slower and more complicated. This point was proven when she (and her cousin) decided to let us find our own way to the hostel where we'd made reservations. We ended up walking around for about half an hour longer than necessary, due to our own incompitence with directions (although I'll blame this on Jake, who decided that he would take charge of the map). When we got to the hostel, they hadn't received our internet reservation, and had overbooked for the night. While they scrambled to find us a place to stay, Sasha and her cousin offered to let us stay with them for the weekend, an offer which we gratefully accepted. So, we ended up staying in the Moscow suburbs for free! It was definitely a step up from the original plan.
That first night we ate on Old Arbat street, a famous pedestrian avenue that was home to several youth movements in the 60's. As we soon discovered, the area has lost much of its original flavour and is now mostly just a touristy street with lots of souvenier stands and kitchy photo ops. We did get to see, however, the grafitti-covered wall dedicated to Viktor Tsoi, a rock musician and icon of youth culture who died in a car accident in 1990. We wanderd down Arbat, through the Alexandry Sad (a beautiful garden beside the Kremlin), to Red Square, where we met with Sasha's friend Anna (who had also been with us on the Elektrichka) and her boyfriend Illya. Illya had lived in the US and the UK for awhile, and worked as a tour guide, and offered to show us around downtown Moscow.
But I should backtrack a minute, to Red Square. I'd already had out my camera and was snapping away for awhile, as we saw more and more astounding and beautiful architecture. I told my teacher when we came back to class today that Moscow was a very Russian city, an idea that didn't quite translate. What I meant to communicate is that Moscow is incredibly unique and striking. Alot of major cities tend to look alike, and alot of national capitals are beautiful, but not necessarily distinctly national, if that make sense. For example, there's nothing that's necessarily distinctly American about Washington D.C., except things that have come to be American. They've mostly been borrowed from somewhere else, all with a certain (western european) idea of what a capital ought to look like. There are alot of Classical motifs that first appeared elsewhere. Moscow, on the other hand, is distinctively and traditionally Russian. There's no other place I've been (including Kiev) that compares with it. Red Square is a space that in my mind captures something incredibly unique. Keep in mind, I don't at all mean to criticize DC - on the contrary, it's one of my favourite cities to hang out in. This is just to clarify what I felt about Moscow in general, and Red Square in particular.
I don't know if I can fully communicate what I felt when I walked through the gates of Red Square and saw St. Basil's Cathedral for the first time. I'm sure you all know what I'm talking about, but in case it's not coming to mind, I've attached a photo (not mine, alas, I forgot my upload cable) so you can see what I'm talking about. I remember distinctly that at one point in my childhood, I saw St, Basil's in either a picture or a movie, and said to myself, "I want to go there some day." While I realize that fulfilling a dream at 21 isn't that impressive, I must say that it is the first place that's struck me so strongly. When we first visited Perce Rock in Quebec, my mom told me about the feeling. She said, "I know it's not the most impressive place in the world, but I remember seeing it in my 8th grade geography text book and thinking that I wanted to go there, to see it in person. It's an amazing feeling when something like that happens." I think I felt something similar. There was a great exhilaration, at more than just the beauty of the thing, and marvel at more than just the feat of construction. There was an exhilaration at having somehow arrived, having accomplished some almost forgotten goal. I would bask in that feeling forever, if I could, but the problem with traveling is that so much of the joy is in the novelty of it. I desperately want to go back to St. Basil's to go inside, and I'm sure I could look at it every time, but I doubt I'll ever again grasp that same feeling of marvel.
We walked around a little more that night (enough to make me regret having brought the cute shoes instead of the practical ones), and then returned to Sasha's cousin's flat. I never really figured out how exactly he was related to her - Russians call every relative "брат" or "сестёр" (brother or sister), no matter how far removed they are from the nuclear family. We hung out for awhile and watched Die Hard 4 (in Russian - all I really grasped is that Bruce Willis got beat up alot, had a daughter, and hackers were trying to destroy America). Sasha's brother commented that it was funny many American movies were focused on trying to save America, when no Russian movies talk about saving Russia.
The next morning I got up early and braved the Moscow Metro (by myself!!! Quite the accomplishment, if I may say so myself) to go meet my cousin, Andrew, who was in Moscow in the middle of a Trans-Siberian adventure. He, very kindly, allowed me to tag along with his tour group for the day, which was alot of fun. It was weird to speak English with strangers again, after being confined to a group of 7 of us who speak English in Tver. Anyway, we stood in line for the Mauseleum for a good hour in the pouring rain - I was very glad I'd brought my umbrella. When we finally got inside, the guards hushed us and we walked past Lenin's body. It was really strange, actually - the building itself is really strikingly modern, built from red and black granite and marble (picture attached) - Lenin, however, looked vaguely orange and slightly like he was glowing. I also saw the graves of Stalin, and Kalinin.

Well, I think this is plenty for a first email about Moscow. If you've read this far, you deserve a prize! There's alot more to say, and I'll try to send along another update soon. As far as Russian goes, my language is gradually improving. I spent this weekend talking in a mixture of Russian and English, as Jake and I want to improve our Russian and Sasha wants to work on her English. Often she'd speak to me in English and I'd reply in Russian. Comically enough, this has resulted in the deterioration of my English. Jake and I joke that we no longer speak English, we just speak Russian with english words. When I tried to speak Spanish for Sasha (because she wanted to hear what it sounds like), only Russian words came to mind, making my spanish far more broken than my Russian. I also often subconsciously fill in Spanish words when I come to a gap in my Russian vocabulary. In my next email I'll try to finish the gaps in the Moscow trip and write about the fascinating world of Russian cuisine!

Much love to all, and keep emailing me with all your own adventures!

-Lauren

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