A Moscow Sunday

Sometime between Saturday and Sunday a plane went down east of Moscow. Sunday morning, one of Teresa's friends called. She said a colleague of theirs might have been on the flight. The travel agent had called her to inform her. I came out of the shower to find Teresa reading the news. A passenger list had yet to be posted. Her colleague's nationality wasn't listed among those in the crash.

The night before, another friend had invited us to her house for dinner. We arrived to find a spacious apartment overlooking the Moscow River. Gorky Park stretched up from the opposite bank. Other people arrived. Her friend had prepared burritos. She poured beer into our glasses and invited us to assemble our own, which she'd then toast in the oven. We drank and ate and got to know each other.

Soon, D—— began excitedly talking about karoke. Apparently our host had a singing game, and D—— was eager to try. Teresa and I looked at each other. Karoke had not been included in the invite.

We gathered around the PS2 and our host put a DVD into the console. D— became suddenly shy about singing into the mike. She offered to dance. Her friend protested when the mike was offered to him, but proceeded to demolish all of our scores (the next day, H— would tell us that he was a professional singer; he had sang in a band covering Russian ballads. We all suspected something was going on when he seemed to know all the words to the English power ballads featured in the game).

Just after midnight, we decided to go home. I had almost fallen asleep on the couch. It was my first night in Moscow, and I had barely slept on the plane. We thanked our host and took our leave.

Teresa and I walked H— home. We walked along the river, up to The Church of Christ the Redeemer (on a site which once housed the world's largest swimming pool) and then back to Teresa's apartment along the pedestrian mall of Arbat. I had remarked how the city reminded me at times of Paris, and a lot of Budapest. Arbat reminded me a similar pedestrian street in Istanbul. Teresa remembered the name of the area, but not of the street itself.

The next morning, took the metro to Izmaylovo, a market in the north-eastern part of the city. We paid our way into the souvenir market and walked past carts filled with tchotckes and posters. Teresa lead me to the side of the market where men grilled meats on large skewers. One offered me a taste. It was delicious. I thought about buying a skewer but it was still early and we were to meet her friends for lunch in a few hours.

Past the souvenir stalls we came upon the antiques market. Teresa bought a history of the metro and a set of knives. She had bought forks and spoons in the market and now her place setting was complete. Later, H— would look at the date stamped on the knives. 1947, she would note. Two years earlier and she wouldn't have been able to take them out of the country.

We left the market and walked around to the back through a vegetable and meat market. A little further on, Teresa bought some Tajik flatbread from a small stall. It was still warm and we devoured it. She lead me through a stadium and then into the immigrant market, which sold all sorts of clothes. The market was packed, and we had to step quikcly not to be run over by workers pulling metal trolleys. People pushed their way past, scurrying from one place to another through the narrow aisles.

Teresa pointed me to a non-descript entrance. We walked up a narrow flight of stairs lined with boxes and emerged into a simple Chinese restaurant. We found a seat, and soon her friends arrived. One confirmed the reports from the morning, and Teresa excused herself from the table. Returning, they talked about their colleague, and what they should do.

Lunch was comprised of a fish soup doused in chilis, mapo tofu, and hollow vegetables, with a spring mellon and pork soup. The food was delicious, but I found it difficult to eat. I was still adjusting to the time difference and the little sleep I had received in the past few days. I found myself drifting while everyone else ate.

After lunch we pushed back through the market towards the metro. At the gates to the souvenir market, a man tamed bears in a small fenced-off area. I noted how sad it seemed and Teresa concurred. At the metro, old women help up wares they were selling. We all descended into the marbled station.

Teresa and I disembarked near Red Square. We walked to the Bolshoi to see about obtaining opera tickets for the evening. The box office was closed, but scalpers offered us tickets for 1000 roubles (about $40US). We told them we'd think about it. We walked to Red Square and stood around a plaque marking the center of Moscow. People stood on the plaque and tossed coins behind them. A group of older women stood behind them to pick up the coins as they chimed to the ground; occasionally they'd snatch them from the air.

We walked to St. Basil's cathedral, where a group of parishoners sang as they circumambulated the church. Inside, it was a series of small chapels connected by winding corridors. The chapels were beautifull decorated and painted, gilded with gold. A group of men sang in one of the chapels as we wound our way around and through the multiple connected buildings.

Back on the square we saw a wedding couple, and followed them to take some photos. Oddly, they didn't seem to have a photographer of their own in tow. We decided to pause for a moment and ducked into the department store than lined one side of the square, opposite the Kremlin. We had tea. One of Teresa's friends called about the opera tickets. She was at the Bolshoi with her father and said that 1000 roubles was a decent price to pay. We asked her to buy some tickets for us.

We bought caviar and bread and walked back to the metro. Along the way, Teresa pointed out a small shop where she had her first meal in Russia. I said we should go eat there. We ordered a plate of meat dumplings to which Teresa added a small container of sour cream. We stood at a table and she explained that Russians ate everything with sour cream. She said she knew she had been here too long when she found herself putting it into her soup.

The dumplings were delicious. I asked her the name of the store, and she said it was "sandwiches." She said that in the past stores were all named for what they carried. One would be called "milk," another "meat."

Back at the apartment, we had the caviar over onion bread. Again, it was delicious. We sampled just a bit and then it was time to go. We were running late and so Teresa suggested we take a car. She said that any car was a taxi, you just had to bargain a fare. People who wanted to make some extra money or were bored would pick people up. I asked her the nicest car that had stopped for her. She said a BMW; the driver didn't even charge them.

We stood on the side of the street in front of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and soon a car stopped for us. He didn't know where we were going; neither did a second car. A third car stopped and soon cars lined up behind his. This one knew our destination and we hopped in.

At the Bolshoi, we checked our coats and received a set of opera glasses. The main theater had been under renovation for the past three years; our performance of Boris Gudonov was in a smaller, more intimate theater. We sat on chairs with light blue cushions. Just before the performance was to begin, students were allowed in to fill the seats. The music was and setting was delightful, but I was feeling the affects of lack of sleep and kept nodding off. The subtitles were projected on a TV screen to the side of the stage, but it was just far enough away to make it a strain to try to read them.

We took the metro back from the theater, getting off one stop past Teresa's stop to walk back across the river on a pedestrian bridge. From the center of the river, she pointed out four of the seven sisters, a group of buildings known throughout the city. Moscow University, lit up in the distance, looked spectacular, and the day of Russian experiences seemed perfectly capped.
Posted by eku at September 15, 2008 1:16 AM