Start of the second journal entry.
After the rather long day's (or was it days'?) journey to reach Moscow, I didn't feel the need to start off at the crack of dawn with my sightseeing. Even more justification for sleeping in was I had already made plans with a colleague from work to hit some of the sights on Sunday. I am not even sure what time I woke up on Saturday, but at some point I did pull myself out from under the blanket and I made my way down to the gym - after all, I needed to establish the regime for my morning ritual! I had great expectations of taking a nice relaxing sauna after riding a stationary bike or plodding along on a treadmill. Managed to fulfill the prerequisite physical activity, but didn't quite meet with success with the sauna. Turns out the sauna was not in the men's locker room, but out by the pool and I didn't bring my bathing suit with me. What a disappointment!
I generally avoid eating in the hotel and choose to find sustenance outside, but I was already quite hungry (since I managed to miss dinner the night before - believe it or not!), and I opted to dine "in". It was quite a nice buffet: an assortment of cold meats and cheeses, cereals, fruit, pastries, and blini (Russian form of crepes) with a nice assortment of juices along with tea (with water from a samovar!). To be honest, I think the real reason I tend to avoid eating breakfast in the hotel is most establishments have buffets for the morning meal, and I find it very difficult to stop eating!
Even though I was here 25 years ago, it is surprising how little I remember of the city so it is extremely fortunate I armed myself back in Poughkeepsie with my reliable tourbook - The Lonely Planet Guide to Moscow. Given my arrangements to tour the Kremlin and Novodevichy Cemetery on Sunday with Alexey, I opted to follow one of the LP's recommended walks for my first foray around Moscow. First I had to find the metro, and I have no rules against getting help from the hotel's concierge. Turns out, it is just a 10-minute walk with only 2 turns; even after a long haul and who knows how much (or more accurately, little) sleep, I managed to find the entrance.
I checked the Lonely Planet guide for some information on the metro, trying to figure out what would be the most economic option for buying metro tickets given I am going to be here for just about a month. LP listed some multi-ticket packages, but it didn't mention the monthly special I remember getting when I was a student here. This "one pass" ticket was good on all forms of transportation (metro, trolleybus, tram and bus) and was quite a bargain. Checked around the ticket window, and eventually I found the list of options, and my little "one pass" was still there! Not quite as unlimited now as it only allows for 70 trips on the metro, but still the best buy.
The metro has aged a bit since I was last here (but then again, so have I), and the station's could use with some refreshing, particularly around the entrances and exits. However the metro still outshines the NYC subway system. One afternoon, I'll have to make a project of just photographing all the interesting art-work and decorations in the system. And within two minutes, I was on a train towards the center of town.
Just a few stops down the line, I was in Kitai Gorod, which from modern Russian translates into English as "China City", but there's no General's Tso Chicken here! Actually, the Russian word has an older root from the word for "waddle", which refers to an early fortification. This is an older section of town (right off of Red Square, so I had to be careful to not accidentally wander into Lenin's resting place since I was saving that for Sunday).
Usually when I head out of town and I'm going to be away for a while, I try to find an Orthodox church at my destination. If I remember, I ask the local priest for a recommendation, or if I forget to do that, I check the phone book. However, during just this little 2 hour walk around a rather small section of Moscow, I managed to visit 3 Orthodox churches, and I didn't even go into all the possibilities! Shouldn't have any problems fulfilling my spiritual needs during this trip.
Another big change from my previous visit was the lack of the Hotel Rossiya, which used to be one of the largest hotels in the world (from what I remember). Years ago it could use with some renovations, and I guess they finally decided to do something about it. However, instead of simply giving it a face lift, they decided to complete raze the building and construct several smaller facilities on the same foot print.
With the first tour complete, I started to circumnavigate around Red Square and the outside wall of the Kremlin and came across the Central Exhibition Hall, which housed the exhibit "Light to the World" - a display of various icons and other religious articles. Sounded interesting to me, so I popped in. Much to my surprise, I caught the end of speech by Patriarch Alexey of All Russia. Had no idea what he was saying, but the rest of the crowd seemed captivated.
After finishing with the exhibit, I zipped back to the hotel to get ready for dinner. Back in December, I met Tanya (the niece of a friend from church), and Tanya works at the Anglo-American School here in Moscow. Before I left New York, we made plans to hook up for dinner and it sounded like it was going to be quite an evening. Our destination - Old Havana, a Cuban restaurant on the other side of town. The agreement was I would join her group of 5 all female co-workers from school if they didn't mind if my head hit the table during the meal. As it turns out, didn't have to worry about going face down in Old Havana, and not because I got a good night's sleep. Turns out dinner included a show, and what a show it was! A fairly large number of performers (both male and female) performing various Latin flavored dance numbers, and it seemed as the night went on, the amount of clothing on the performers grew less and less. There were several acts and during the intermissions, some women worked the diners hawking their goods; first round was some overly priced maracas; second round, some Che Guevera-style hats. That saleswoman was quite persistent that I needed such head gear, and even though I could use additional hats, that one was just not my style. And I had to be quite forceful in stating my position before she finally decided to leave our table.
Before the dancers shed all their clothes, our group decided it was time to leave. And who was at the exit bidding the departing guests good-bye? The hat lady! I thought for sure I was not going to get my coat out of the coat-check, but her stern demeanor softened enough to allow me to depart unscathed and fully decked in my outerwear.
A quick car ride back to the hotel, and the first full day in Moscow came to a close.
On Sunday morning, I made my way down to the gym with my bathing suit tucked under my arm for the post-work out schvitz. Turns out not only is the sauna not attached to the work-out room or the men's locker room, it isn't quite attached to the pool either. It's located up a staircase, past the massage room, where it separates into the men's and women's room. As I walked past the pool, I noticed a sign board with the average air and water temperatures of 27 and 28 degrees centigrade respectively (leaving the conversion as an exercise for the reader) along with a warning that there was no life guard on duty and people entered the pool at their own risk. Surprising - those messages were only in English! I guess only the American are litigious enough to require a lifeguard at every pool.
I was the only person up early enough to enjoy the heat, so I had the whole place to myself. In the traditional enjoyment of a banya (Russian sauna), the occupant takes a plunge in a snow bank after exiting the sauna. If you don't have a pre-existing heart condition, this sudden change in temperatures supposedly enhances one's constitution. Luckily this banya does not have an external access, so we have to replace the snow bank with a quick rinse in a shower stall. Two things I find amazing about this whole process: first, how long it takes to cool down after just a 10-minute stay in the heat (even after the cold water rinse), and second, how fast your heart starts to pump as a result of the cold water rinse!
With the foundation for my morning ritual established, popped back upstairs for a quick breakfast of tea and the complimentary cookies housekeeping leaves every day and then rushed back down to the lobby by 10am to hook up with Alexey. I got there a few minutes early and stood by the door reading my Lonely Planet Guide. There was a guy sitting on the couch by the door, but he didn't resemble the picture of Alexey in the internal IBM directory. I stood for a while, he sat for a while, and as you probably already figured out, we were indeed waiting for each other. Looks like I might have to update my picture in the directory as he thought I didn't resemble my current entry. (OK, I wasn't in a wet suit with a scuba mask around my neck, but I am still bald and bearded - fairly good parameters for a match!)
As promised, Alexey took me to the Armory within the Kremlin, where there are rooms filled with some of the treasures from the Tsars. This is where (25 years ago), I saw my first Faberge egg, and from what I remember, there was a large display of Faberge items. However, part of the collection must be on loan or traveling as there were a rather limited supply of those gorgeous works of art this time.
Unfortunately, the ticket to the Armory only allows you to visit the Armory; you can't wander around anywhere else. Once we finished with that session (you only get 90 minutes), it was back online for another ticket that allowed us access to the Kremlin grounds. Turns out there are different tickets for that portion of the Kremlin, too, and the ones we got only allowed us onto the grounds and not into the churches and museums within the Kremlin. Didn't feel like exiting the Kremlin to wait online (again) for yet another ticket, so for this first visit, I had to settle for just walking around the outside of the building and strolling around the grounds (while ensuring I didn't stray off any designated path, in which case one of the many militsioners would inform me of my transgression with a shrill call of a the whistle).
Several times already in these notes, I've mentioned a previous trip to Moscow I made back in 1982. As it turns out, there was one more brief visit to Moscow in 1993. In the summer of that year, I participated in an EarthWatch trip to St. Petersburg where I counted dead trees in various forests around St. Petersburg. (If you want more details on that, I'll send them in a separate note). After the EarthWatch project, I popped down to Moscow for a weekend before returning home. On that trip, I once again visited the Kremlin, and the most striking thing I remember was the dual pricing scheme for tickets to the Kremlin. Locals and residents of the former republics of the Soviet Union paid one price, and all foreigners paid a much higher price (from what I remember, it was about 10 times more expensive).
This time, every one pays the same price. However, foreigner still get dinged when it comes to renting the audio guides as the Russian version is always cheaper than all the other languages.
After the Kremlin, we strolled around Red Square, then across the Moscow River for a slightly different view of St. Basil's, the Kremlin and Red Square. On my previous trip, if, for some reason (as if being surrounded by people speaking Russian wasn't enough), I needed a reminder that I was actually in Moscow, I would head to Red Square to gawk at St. Basil's and the Kremlin wall. I have a feeling I'll be repeating that journey many times during this stay, too.
Alexey had to leave around 6pm to hook-up with some friends, so I made my way over to a Georgian restaurant for a quick dinner. (Service is rather quick when you are the only diner in the establishment; looks like the Russians usually eat a bit later in the evening). By the time the check came, jet-lag caught up to me and I was ready to head back to the hotel for some rest.
End of the second journal entry.
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