Shvitz Me!

Ok, so, since the last time I posted I have been beaten by sticks in the company of naked men, seen a movie with Russian subtitles, taken the first step on my Trans-Siberian train journey and discovered that pretty women seem to always be attached to ugly gangsters.

Now to explain all of that...

After my last post Edward and I went to a Russian Bath (or Bahnya) and discovered a very strange culture that is a mainstay for men in this country. The bathouses are like social clubs and a lot of men (a hundred easy) gather in their local place and stand around naked while talking, eating fish or drinking beer. Throughout this process they will go into this absurdly hot sauna, hit themselves with branches and then leave, only to jump into FREEZING cold water. The signs are very serious when they warn this is not for people with heart conditions. No joke, my heart literally stopped when I got in the water, it is THAT cold and THAT shocking. A lot of people sort of scream in this intense, challenging fashion.

After that we ate at a vegetarian restaurant near the hotel which served Russian classics sans meat...which is an oxymoron but it's ok, we'll forive them.

The next day Ed and I went to this market which is kind of like the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul except colder. We spent the day touring around and looking at all the different things that were offered. There are a lot of fake watches, fake Soviet memorabilia, antiques, war souveneirs and the like. (By the way, I apologize for any misspellingsss the computr is going really slowly so as I type only every few letters makes it, then I delete to get back and only a few of those show up: I completed typing everything in this parenthesis before the first letter of it appeared).

Towards the end of the day we went and got lunch in this cafe that was so smokey and dark it seemed almost impossible for that to have happened without intent. As in: let's make the smokiest darkest cafe we possibly can...

That night we went to see the Swan Lake Ballet at the Bolshoi Theater near Red Square. Now, ballet requires backstory to figure out what is happening at the best of times, which is impossible when all announcements are in Russian. So it was an experience.

The next day Edward, Irenna and I continued our tour of Moscow. This was our last day and there was still a lot to see. We met at noon when we checked out of the Hotel Budapest and headed off to the Pushkin museum. We saw the Impressionist and Post-Impressionist building but didn't go into the main structure because there was a massive line and as Irenna put it: "When people talk about going to the Pushkin they mean where we were, not there." So we went and got a meal at an Azherbijani restaurant and discovered "kebab" does not mean what it means in the US...good to know.

After this we did an extensive tour of the truly massive museum of Russian Art. Very cool stuff, spanning several centuries and again, Irenna's knowledge was encyclopedic. A lot of what we saw was initially done as a form of mimicking the European greats, but eventually a distinct Russian style was formed.

This was followed by a movie to kill some awkward dead time before we left. We were picked up at 11 pm and taken to the train station. Let me just say: the Trans-Siberian railways are awesome. They go for thousands of miles and are COMPLETELY punctual...very unusual for those of us used to Amtrak's haphazard approach to timing. The train left at exactly 11:52 pm and we settled into our little cabin, which was quite nice despite being the size of a postage stamp.

This morning was a little rougher as we had to wake up early to get off at Nizhny Novgorod. Our driver picked us up exactly at 7:19 when we arrived (God bless Mir Corp) and took us to our hotel. Unfortunately there had been some misunderstanding and so our 11 o'clock tour which was supposed to start late enough to give us time to nap and eat, began at 8...not so much time to nap and eat.

Our guide was also much less talented than Irenna. She get's an A for effort but a D for execution. She is a preschool teacher and therefore repeats everything under the assumption we aren't following. At the Gorky Childhood Museum (a 5 room house where Maxim Gorky grew up) she said the following (best example): "Here against the wall are chest with drawers, chest with drawers, I repeat, here against the wall are chest with drawers"...Ed and I are literally standing right next to these..."Do you understand, here against the wall are chest with drawers". Yes, we got it, thank you.

There isn't actually much to see historically speaking, besides the Gorky Museums (3 of them) the crafts museum an the kremlin.

More to come later...