More exploring, couple of good days.

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Saturday was a pretty great day. We all headed out about 10:30 in the am to Izmailovsky Park where there is this enormous flea market. I'm not kidding when I say enormous. It was really quite overwhelming. Everything you can imagine, and even a few that you can't, is sold there. Most booths are really cool desirable souvenirs, and some booths are just people's junk out of their houses. I got lots of cool pictures. I found this great courtyard where they were having two weddings, and one of them had rented this ridiculously cool looking limousine. I found a couple more t-shirts, got tag teamed by an older Russian couple trying to sell me watches (I didn't buy), and just genuinely had a great time walking around enjoying the sights. There clearly seems to be an affinity for Russian war memorabilia, because there were a bunch of booths that seemed to be all about it but then lots of discussions at these booths with serious men inspecting items with magnifying glasses and having serious conversations. The fact that I have zero room in my bags and don't want to be hauling a bunch of stuff all over Europe has kept me from buying a lot of stuff that the kid in me really was all ready to buy, like all those fighter pilot helmets with cool glasses and relic gas masks.

After the flea market I deviated from the group on the metro and found this station with all these bronze statues. I had heard about this one from people in our group. There are two statues of dogs that people rub, touch and speak to for good luck as they pass by in the metro. So their noses have rubbed all the way down to the brass. It was fun to just sit and watch the Moscovites interact with these statues. There were also a couple of rooster statues that had been rubbed a lot as well but not nearly as much. From there I went on down the blue line of the Metro to the Park Pobedy station where the longest escalator is found, and when I thought all the previous escalators I had been on in the metro system were long, this one put it all to shame and probably more than twice their length. It was more than 3 minutes ride from bottom to top. That station put me out at Victory Park, which had been one of our stops on the bus tour, even though we had only stopped for like 15 minutes. So I had plenty of time explore. There was some sort of volleyball tournament going on, so the entire region was packed. Plus there were a bunch of fountains and people were out in force on one of the first warm days in while, splashing around and enjoying being near the water. Victory Park is a memorial park dedicated to the year 1945 when Hitler and the Nazis were defeated, so there are lots of statues and what not commemorating that. Mostly it was just fun people watching and taking pictures.

From there I noticed on my map that this food market I had heard about, Dorogomilovskiy Market, wasn't too far away, so I decided to go there and check it out. Um, can I just say way cool. I walk in and about fall over from the smell of meat and fish because the first third of the whole huge building was all fish and meat, just lying out there. I was immediately hit up by every vendor to come buy their stuff. I saw more kinds of fish that I never even imagined all lying out there, and every kind of meat and shape and size. Then beyond that was all fruits, vegetables, nuts, spices, dried goods. To the side of all that was another section of individual stores like a mall only more crammed together that offered all sorts of wares from clothes, to cloth, to shoes, to toiletries, etc. But it wasn't done there because outside there was row after row after row of additional stores and shops. Most of them were locked up or in the process of being packed up since I had gotten there rather late in the afternoon. Then I walked from there down the street a few blocks towards another metro station and found more markets set up in a similar fashion but dedicated to hardware, housewares, construction, etc, and on the other side of that was a huge clothing section, and then down the street was an enormous flower section. I was beginning to be overwhelmed with the magnitude and variety and expanse, but it was fun.

I made it back to the dorm just in time to head down to the MXAT for a production called Kizhe which was quite fantastical to watch. We didn't really have much of an idea what the play was supposed to be about; the synopsis we received was more a historical context for the play. But it was still fun to watch, some parts were very confusing, but all in all it was enjoyable, at least I didn't doze off, which has been know to happen, though a number from our group did. I don't think we were the only ones that found it fantastical, absurd and maybe just a bit outside the realm of understandability because when the show ended and the lights came up on the audience, they all just sat there. I think the stage manager tried to get a clap going but it didn't take, so there was a good minute of silence before I think they really realized that the play was over.

We got out of the play at just after 9 pm, but we wanted to hang out near Red Square because that day was Russian Independence Day and there were going to fireworks at some time. Someone in our group got the idea to go up and relax in the O2 restaurant which was on top of the Ritz Carlton hotel. First of all the Ritz is the most expensive hotel in Moscow (apparently that is where the US president stays when he visits) and so it was a bit amazing going in there. The restaurant at the top was roof top with glass walls all around so the views were astounding. Disappointingly though, my camera battery tied on the first picture I tried to take, so I will have to go back and get some good pictures. But it was amazing just relaxing up there as the sun begin to set and the lights all around Red Square and the Kremlin began to come on. The fireworks, however, were less then sensational. Just when I thought Russia did everything big, this was a total dud. No grand finale or anything and they lasted less than a few minutes. I guess they aren't that excited about their independence.

Today I was up and off to church. Our boat tour got postponed to the last Sunday we are in Russia so I was glad to be able to go. It was really refreshing. I sat next to senior missionary couple from Provo and it turns out that he had family that was from of all the places, the Basin, which those of family will recognize as essentially the suburbs (haha) of Oakley. Then during the introduction of one of the meetings, come to find out there were 3 guys there from Idaho. A bunch of return missionaries who had served in Russia were there with BYU as they were Russian language majors and studying there over the summer. What are the odds of running into these people in Moscow Russia? The world just constantly shrinks for me and continues to surprise me. Although the entire meeting was in Russian I did have people who were kind enough to translate most of it for me. It was really nice.

From there I walked around that neighborhood a little and stumbled upon a previous neighborhood that I had already been too. It is really nice to be exploring and come across an area that I have been to already because it starts to put the city as a whole in perspective and makes it a lot more manageable then what it started out to be. I hopped the metro to head back to the dorm since we were meeting to go to Stanislavski's home studio for a tour at 3:30. I was cutting it a little close and then when I got of the metro stop, apparently a massive storm had moved in and it started to rain. I got about half way to the dorm when the floods hit and it was ugly. I had to take cover, and then it started to hail, and then it was over a few minutes later, pretty intense. But it cost me the meeting of the group and that is why I am typing this now, because I missed the tour. I'll have to see if I can go there on my own sometime and pick it up.

I have lots of pictures, I hope they are enjoyable. I had fun taking them.

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Photos

Flea Market 4
Dude sleeping on the job, quick take his rugs!