I have quite a bit of news, kind of. :) I'm in San Antonio right now at my parent's house just hanging out for all of July. I went to Russia with the family and had an amazing time. I absolutely loved it! So when their mother asked me to go get a business, multiple-entry visa for a year for Russia, I said "OK!" We arrived in Moscow after an overnight flight and stayed for one night. The next day we went out to the country house that is SUPER old and in a tiny town, with maybe 10 houses in the whole village. There isn't even a grocery or a post office. There is a truck with a bunch of groceries in the back that drives slowly through the town pressing on the horn the whole time and if you want food you go out to the street. Or they just eat the food from their farms. It is really beautiful there and I'm happy I got to go. After the summer nanny got there and got used to the kids a bit, I got to go to St. Petersburg and Moscow. Unfortunately, I did not have a Lonely Planet, or anything in English except for a guide of the Kremlin in Moscow. My boss got me a flight to St. Petersburg, and a tour guide, and told the office manager at the office they have in St. Petersburg to give me whatever I wanted and pay for my train ticket to Moscow. I also got to stay in their apartment in St. Petersburg, that is in the best area, close to everything. I wandered around the canals and looked at all the old buildings and monuments. I went to this crazy museum (see Kunstcamera photo album) and to Peterhoff, these gardens and palace that make Versailles look like someone's small hobby garden, apparently. I've never been to Versailles though. I took an overnight train from St. Petersburg to Moscow and it was nice. What I really wanted to do was go to the dinner car and chat up some locals, but all the people in my cabin seemed set on going to sleep, and locked the door, so I figured I wouldn't disturb them by going in and out, especially since I was on the top bunk. There were 4 people in one cabin.
Moscow was much more of a "do-it-yourself" kind of adventure. I don't speak Russian, I don't read in Russian, and I didn't have internet at the apartment to look things up, since I also did not have a guide book. So I just lied when I said I don't speak Russian, because I learned to ask "where is Red Square" and "where is Tverskaya Street" and I know how to say things like "why are you crying", "what do you want", "do you want to eat". So I left the apartment one afternoon, after getting over my introverted nature and the fact that I most likely wouldn't be able to communicate with anyone over the age of 5, and walked to the big intersection looking for a taxi the whole way. I still had some money left over from what my boss had given me in roubles, but I wanted to conserve it. I went to the corner stand and asked the woman there if she spoke English. (So that's another thing that I learned to ask, if someone speaks English. Thanks Pimsleur.) She said no and I asked her for a map, in English, then in Spanish, and I couldn't remember in French. I pointed to one and she said "oh, cart", or something like that. I opened it up and it was written in Cyrillic, so I learned to read in Russian. I saw a woman who didn't look like she would be terribly burdened if I bothered her and asked her in my best Russian "Where is Red Square?" She replied correctly, as Pimsleur said, "Red Square is there" as she pointed to a point on my map. I took the bus to the metro station, bought 2 tickets at the metro station and went down the really long, D.C.-like escalator. I walked around following the signs with the red stripe on the train, since I needed the red line. I walked and walked and it seemed like a long time. I had no idea where I was going. There was a tunnel that split off into three tunnels like in the cartoons of things that get flushed down the toilet and have to decide which tunnel will lead them to the safety of the ocean, and NONE of these tunnels had signs. I went up the escalator thinking that my red-striped train might be in a different tunnel, but it turned out I just went up the exit, and despite my pleading looks and saying "pajalasta!" (please) repeatedly, the stone-looking guard woman made me pay again. So I just went down and sat on a bench at a platform having no clue where I was or where I was going. A train came and I tried to read what it said, and then read my map, and I stopped, thinking, "I don't know what train this is". I thought again and said to myself "What the hell, at least I'll be going somewhere and not just sitting here on this platform trying to read." So I ran on and it turned out that it was the right one.
Red Square was nice and big and... well... red! The bricks on the buildings were red and the ground was red. Lots of memorial stuff, most of which I could not read. I went to the Kremlin and got an audio guide in English which was really helpful. The churches and buildings there are all so old and big and beautiful. What makes them even more remarkable is that they survived WWII. Apparently 22 million Russians were killed by Nazi's. All of St. Petersburg was blocked and nobody could go in or out. For 2 years there was no food and many people died. There were people who would try to drive over the lakes and take people out in the winter when they were frozen, but the Nazi's started to bomb the lakes to break the ice. There is a special word in Russian for the people who survived those years with a small square of bread to eat that was given to them, but there is no translation to English.
Anyway, in the Kremlin I also went to the Diamond Fund, which is apparently the largest collection of diamonds in the world. There were definitely a lot of diamonds, but I was expecting to see big mountains that would require a dump truck to transport, but really, all you would need is a big bucket. They were indeed beautiful though. Some were rough, some were smoothed or cut, and some were placed in jewelry. Very beautiful stuff, but I couldn't even take my bag in, so no pictures.
This is where I met the Obnoxious American. I was waiting outside the metal detector to go into this big room with the diamonds and I see/hear this overweight woman coming up the stairs, so proud of herself and telling the guard "See! I did it! I don't have it anymore!" She comes to wait in line behind me and says the same thing to the female guard by the door, and opens her bag to show that she no longer has her camera or phone. The guard just nods her head and says something to me in English, "wait here" I think she said, and I replied "ok". The Obnoxious American says "you speak good English!" leaning forward with her hands in fists on her hips. I said "well I should!" She asked if I was American and I said yes, and automatically she goes to telling me her story as to why she is in Russia and her critiques of the Russian culture and people. She was there with a group of students she said, although I didn't see ANY students, or groups there, and she said she had bronchitis from the cigarette smoke and that the people were really sloppy. I tried to say in my skeptic voice, "not really", but she wouldn't let me get a word in edgewise. I tried to explain that it was probably the difference in vehicle emission standards that prompted her bronchitis, and to ask if she had ever been to Rome or to Greece, but clearly she hadn't, because Moscow is spic-n-span, especially compared to Athens. It's cleaner than New York! I think it would be safe to say that she had never left her home state of Ohio. Oh yea, and she had a ridiculous matching fanny pack and foam visor. Countries of the world, please don't think all American's are like this!
