Since we got back from Scandinavia, we've mostly been going about our daily lives and preparing for our next set of trips. The weather was remarkably cool and wet for most of July, with some days only getting into the low 60's - not that we minded.
Toward the end of the month, we rented the Embassy Dacha - basically a large cabin in a quiet green area in the suburbs - for a weekend with some friends of ours. The weather wasn't great, but we had a nice time just relaxing, grilling, and watching the kids play. Unfortunately I neglected to get pictures. It was a good chance to break away from the usual distractions as there was no internet and the TV selection featured almost nothing in English. That said, it did have satellite feeds from Somalia and several adult Arab channels, which as far as I could tell consisted of women without their hair covered. It wasn't that far out of town, but we felt like we were in another (more peaceful) world, so it was nice.
My big cultural experience was trying to purchase train tickets for our upcoming trip to Siberia without the help of a travel agency. Tickets only go on sale a certain period of time before the travel date, but seats can fill up fast, so it's good to get there as soon as their available, especially since the trips we are taking are rather long and we wanted to buy out a whole compartment. So I had to go to the train station twice - once for the international leg, which was available 60 days in advance, and then again for the domestic leg, which went on sale 45 days in advance.
The international tickets were no problem at all. I was frankly amazed that I got exactly what I wanted with little fuss. The purchase of the domestic tickets was a little more enlightening into local customs. First, every ticket window has it's own schedule. It is open during certain hours and goes on break at specific times. These times are posted in the window and that leads customers to shop around, trying to gauge, based on the number of people in line, whether they will likely get to the window before the next break. As part of this shopping around, they will also tell the last person in line to hold a space for them while they go and look for better prospects. This unfortunate person then tells anyone else who comes along how many "people" are in line behind them. But they seem to regulate one another fairly strictly. When I was in line, a man came up and was asking me when the next break would be at our window. Before I could answer, a woman in the next line (who had figured out I wasn't local) started shouting at him that he should not try to cut in front of me. While unnecessary, it was nice to see that rules are in place, even if it's not immediately apparent.
The next fun part is that waiting in line becomes something of a spectator sport. Since everyone is anxious about whether they will get to the window in time, they all listen in carefully to what the person currently being served is doing. When one couple kept arguing with the cashier about whether she gave them the right tickets, and then came back to argue about whether she gave them the correct change, there were concerted groans and exhortations, similar to what you might hear at a hockey game, and a collected sigh of relief when they moved on.
When I got to the window (with time to spare before the next break), I found myself face to face with a prime example of surly Russian customer service. I tried to be extra polite in the hopes of winning her cooperation, but she was unmoved. All domestic tickets are given in Moscow time, so you have to know the time difference of the place you are going to make sure you are on the train you want. I wanted a train at 8:00am local time at destination and she was telling me that the tickets were at 3 o'clock. Wanting to make sure that I would be on the 8:00am and not the 8:00pm, I asked if it was 3 in the morning. She said no. Confused, I started to explain that I wanted the train at 3 in the morning and she shouted at me that the train was 3 at night. I finally understood, she meant that it would still be the middle of the night in Moscow at 3am local time. Nonplussed, I retorted that it will be morning where we are going. I got a glare from the ticket woman, but some appreciative laughs from the onlookers behind me.
When I gave her our passports, she asked me for a translation. When I started to say that I didn't have one, she cut me off and told me to go get one. What I didn't get to finish saying was that our visas have our names on them using Cyrillic characters. And every time I tried to tell her this, she spoke more loudly that she must have our names written in Russian letters. I knew the crowd had my back so I finally ran out of patience and shouted at her that our names are on our visas in Russian letters so please just look at the visas! It was like the sun coming out from behind a cloud. She smiled, she was friendly, she was helpful, and she gave me my tickets and wished me safe travels. 18 months into our tour and I finally get how it works.
With our September travel plans in hand, I decided to take a long weekend in the beginning of August as work has been particularly atrocious of late. On the Friday, we took Aiden to the zoo, and he was suitably fascinated.
Stephanie and I were a bit confused by an enormous sculpture that seemed to involve animals, war, and scary kings. I still haven't figured out what it means, nut it was interesting.
Most of the animals seemed happy, but in August things warmed up again and this bear seemed particularly miserable.
When we got to the monkey area, I thought this graphic sign would have been useful throughout the park. Perhaps a picture of a giraffe eating a small child would have prevented the aforementioned gentleman from trying to have his daughter licked.
That weekend, we decided to take a day trip to the ancient city of Kolomna. Nearly as old as Moscow, and the sight of some historical events like the muster of troops by Dmitry Donskoy in 1380 presaged the first major Russian victories against their Tatar (Mongol) occupiers. And in 1547, Ivan The Terrible gathered his forces for the conquest of Kazan. Kolomna was even considered for a location of the capital instead of Moscow at one point. So a day trip to a place of historic significance, known for it's bucolic setting seemed just the thing.
We piled onto a decrepit electrichka (electric train), which was soon packed to overflowing with other people trying to get out of the city.
We arrived without incident, and most of the people got off the train before Kolomna. However, when we entered the old city gates, we were dismayed to see what appeared to be a sanctioned protest that looked like it would make sightseeing very difficult. People seemed to be forming a human chain around the old town, shouting slogans about the youth being Russia's power. We are well trained to be wary of public demonstrations, particularly those of nationalistic fervor, and we were hungry anyway, so we ducked into a restaurant to escape and find out more about what was going on.
After the very stereotypical rigmarole of being told that they were out of everything we wanted to order, we settled for our 2nd and 3rd choices. We eventually got our food and asked the waitress what was happening. She laughed and said they are holding a "flash mob" to rally support for the Kolomna Kremlin to be selected as one of Russia's 10 icons - a competition being run by one of the TV networks. I found the term flash mob funny since any spontaneous gathering would have to be approved by the authorities before it could happen.
While we were eating we heard the roar of airplanes and thought we were going to be bombed. Half the restaurant rushed out to see it. I went out to have a look myself and was treated to a flyover by Russian military jets. A group of pilots known as The Swifts. It was pretty awesome.
After lunch, armed with our new understanding, we thought it was a pretty neat coincidence that we got to be in Kolomna for this show of civic pride. We enjoyed an outdoor concert by the main cathedrals and just spent the day wandering the old town.
Kolomna has some very well preserved 18th and 19th century buildings and I thought that if you don't look too closely, their main street could be any downtown thoroughfare in a small town in middle America.
We also enjoyed some nice views of the confluence of the Moscow and Oka rivers, part of which made Kolomna such a strategic location in Russia's early history.
One of the great things about our visit was that the Kremlin walls were open to the public - which is ordinarily not the case. Great views abounded.
On our way home, we stopped for some famous local pastilles, made from apples and picked up a bottle of honey wine for later that evening.
There's a video of the jets and some of the concert for those who are interested.
On the way home, we discovered that Aiden had a very high fever and ended up having to take him to the medical clinic for tests, but it turned out to be nothing serious and he recovered just fine on his own. Unfortunately for one rude woman on the subway, however, I wasn't in the mood for her shenanigans. Pushing and shoving is routine when it comes to getting on the escalators, and usually I just roll my eyes and let it past. But on this particular occasion, I just couldn't stand it anymore. So when this middle aged woman shoved past me, I didn't get out of her way and her bag got caught between us. I didn't move. So she yanked the bag and turned around to start yelling at me. I cut her off with a look and being a foot-and-a-half taller than her, I leaned down to make sure she heard me and said loudly in Russian "The word you want to say is EXCUSE ME!!!" Of course this caused everyone to look at us, and it must have looked very bad for this huge man to be yelling at this little woman, but frankly, I didn't care. She muttered something about someone's whole life, and I'm not sure whether she was saying that she had never been spoken to like that in her whole life, or was cursing me with some affliction for the rest of my whole life, but I didn't care about that either. I did feel better, though.
More recently, Stephanie and I had a date night where we did a walking tour around an area of Moscow we really haven't seen. There were mostly some nice churches, and the weather was beautiful.
On our way through a park, we encountered a disturbing but powerful sculpture called "The Children: Victims of Adult's Vices". It depicts to children surrounded by personifications of adult vices like drug addiction, prostitution, alcoholism, child labor, sadism, ignorance, irresponsible science, ignorance, indifference, war, weapons trade, those without memory, poverty, and theft. It was really amazing - and if you can enlarge the second picture, you'll see that war is holding a bomb with a Mickey Mouse head.
We wrapped up our evening with a nice walk along the river with views of the Kremlin, and I was even able to get a great picture of the moon.
I had to manipulate the moon shot quite a bit to get the features to stand out so much, but was pretty amazed by what I could do with a point and shoot digital camera.
We are now packing to head up to St. Petersburg for a couple of weeks while I support the G20 summit, which should be both a nice change of pace and an interesting work experience. I'm sure we'll have more to share when we get back.
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