And Now, For a More In Depth Analysis

Ok, so, here we are. Everyone together? Great.

The flight to Amsterdam (as I previously mentioned) was great. Airbus 330, Northwest Airlines, Business Class...awesome. It was a really nice trip and after 9.5 hours and another hour of taxiing I arrived in the Amsterdam Airport. Slight confession Mom and Dad: I went into Amsterdam. I had time to kill and there was a train that ran every 10 minutes and took 15 minutes to get in to Amsterdam Central etc. So I went in, walked around, watched a city wake up, took some pictures, drank a coffee and then took the train back. Waited for awhile more and then boarded Aeroflot Flight 230...

Now, here's the thing with Aeroflot: it's terrifying. The captain and co-pilot are probably drunk. The stewardesses walk around constantly, taxiing, take-off, landing; constantly moving. Passengers, same thing. A guy got up and went to the bathroom as we were landing and...no one cared. In the US, that is like...law-suit city. Here...totally normal. Very strange.

Also the landing gear barely came up into the aircraft and only after making a ton of noise and shuddering around. Not entirely settling.

As for Moscow: first of all, there appear to be only 10 customs agents for the ENTIRE Moscow Airport. We landed the plane, everyone stood up and then we just waited in the aisles for 30 minutes while the walk way operators just stood there staring at us. Then we took a short bus trip and were herded into this building. Everyone was smoking. And then...we stood. For. Ever. Each person took about 3 minutes to go through. These were either the most diligent 10 customs agents in the history of customs agents or the most incompetent. I'm leaning towards the latter.

The flight's duration was 2 hours and 45 minutes. Which is coincidentally the exact amount of time it took from when the plane came to a complete stop to when I exited the Moscow Airport, Terminal Two. And I thought Seattle was bad...

Driving into Moscow itself is kind of a bizarre experience. One understands how depressing it must have been to live here during communism. The apartment blocks are uniform gray, uniform shape, uniform size and stacked up next to each other. Then suddenly you're passing 17th-century "town homes" of the Russian nobility and beautiful churches and an untold number of monuments. The difference between what this city was, what it became and what it has become is so clearly defined. There is no middle class in Russia. That niche in America that is filled with people who don't make a lot of money but still enough to buy what they want, make morgage payments and send their kids to state schools simply doesn't exist here. There are those who live hand-to-mouth and those who have so much money that they compete to see who can spend more on the exact same product.

The joke here is that there are two women at a party in Moscow comparing the exact same purse. One says, "I got this for $350 in Paris." And the other woman goes, "Ha! I got this for $500 in London." This is reflected in the absurd mark up of clothes and jewelry. But also in that these stores are empty because one someone has bought a bunch of stuff from a place, they grow tired of it and move somewhere else for shopping. Another example of this is restaurants. 2/3 of the restaurants in our 2007 edition guide books aren't open anymore. This isn't because they've gone out of business, but because the owner shut them down in order to operate another one. The nouveau riche get bored easily in this city and so restauranters will open one establishment and while it is thriving be building another one. Because, inevitably, after 6-12 months these places will no longer be considered GQ and will immediately lose their clients. But...if a new restaurant opens "Brought to you by the man who started The Fairy" then everyone will go there, even though they just got bored of The Fairy.

Weird.

Jerry would constantly be opening new restaurants and closing old ones here. Which would really dampen our style of going to Carnegies every week.

It's also strange because the streets are completely void of people. The department stores are completely void of people. it is kind of unsettling at first. Then you learn the true genius of the Russian system: crosswalks go under the street. This way cars don't have to stop and wait for pedestrians to cross...they can just keep driving. The department stores...not so much in the genius category...

But all that said the place is gorgeous. Our tour guide - Irena (Ih-raynah) - is wonderfully fluent, wonderfully funny and wonderfully knowledgeable. We drove around for a bit and she showed us the outer perimeter of Moscow before we left our driver somewhere and got into the true meat of the place. We visited the famous Church of Christ the Savior on the banks of the Moscow River which has an unparalled view of the Kremlin and Red Square (I will post pictures as soon as I find a computer with a USB port. By the way: isn't the point that they are supposed to be Universal?). At any rate, we went to all sorts of places yesterday (a couple churches and a convent) before we took a tour of the metro system.

Let me say this: New York, London, Paris etc. ain't got shit on Moscow. It is unreal. Each station looks like a palace. They have frescos. They have mosaics. They have bronze sculptures. They have stain glass. Each one has a different theme. Some are 150 meters in length and others are 100 meters underground. They are also pristine. And here's the kicker, a train comes every 2 minutes (1:45 during rush hour). Unlike in New York where if you miss a train you might have to wait 10 minutes, here you have to stand for all of 90 seconds before the light of the next train can be seen.

And the trains are pristine!

Amazing.

Last night Edward and I went to the Cafe Pushkin which is quintessential Russia. This place has been part of the social scene in Moscow for years and remains a classic establishment: protected from the frailty of trendiness. The waiters are dressed as they would've been in the 19th century. It was really fun. Also entirely civilized. We arrived at 9 pm and left at 11:30 and the place was packed the entire time. The meal was really good except for 2 things: one, vodka came with the first 2 courses and the 5th course (and I hate vodka), two the fourth course (ie main one) smelled like terrible body odor and tasted like dirty feet. To make up for this Ed and I used Elizabeth Taylor's (grandma not actress) technique of cutting it up into little bits and pushing it around consciously until it looked like we'd eaten half of it.

The other four courses were really good so...ya know...80% isn't bad. Then we got a tour of the upstairs. Which was cool.

Today we did the Armoury, the Kremlin, Red Square and the G.U.M. Department store. Yes I will be posting pictures of all these places and yes I will have stories to tell in person. As for now I will say the following: the Russians have an obsession with guilded and impractical carriages, the police are assholes, the police are scary, the Kremlin doesn't look nearly as imposing as I imagined, Red Square is beautiful, Lenin's tomb is weird, tipping more than 10% blows people's minds and they make delicious club sandwhiches.

I will elaborate a little bit on those later but I'll give a brief example of the police here. First of all they look like soldiers and always travel in numbers. They also are on power trips because they know we won't mess with them. In the US if a cop was being a jerk you could get his name and badge number and threaten to sue or something. Here, one has the impression that even if they were to take your camera and smash it on the ground you would just stand and say nothing. We had been warned by people who had previously been to Russia and by guidebooks that one should always have their passport and immigration/registration forms on hand. Turns out one should also have a copy of their passport on hand and if someone asks you for said passport, give them said copy.

As we were walking through the gardens near the kremlin a cop came up to us and demanded to see our passports and immigration forms (he already had one guy's passport in his hand and the guy was following him around looking terrified). We showed him our passports (we didn't understand the part about the forms) and he was looking all triumphant. Then our guide asked him if he was an immigration officer because otherwise he had no business asking us for these forms. He immediately let us go. If we hadn't had our forms he would have "fined" us, knowing we would try and bribe him more than the cost of the "fine" in an attempt to not be on record. Because, over here, bribery is totally acceptable...in fact it's expected.

Ok, I need a nap, words aren't forming in my mind at the moment.

Later tonight we might go to the most famous bathhouse in Moscow...where they hit you with branches to cleanse you...Russians are weird.

Cheers all,

Armen