Yesterday was a blur. After arriving in Moscow on the night train, we were brought straight to the Vega Hotel, where we were able to get rooms pretty quickly at about 9am. Mine is on the 26th floor, so getting an elevator that doesn't stop on just about every floor is tricky (and everytime the doors open and people who are waiting see that an elevator is full, someone presses the button again and the doors don't close-- it's a marvel of Russian engineering). The weather here is mild, thankfully, so with an open window the rooms are not too bad. And the water in the shower is hot and pressurized like a fire hose...
One of my mantras here (that the others in the group have learned, it seems) is: There's one way and there's...(the Russian way). It's very easy to become impatient and even perplexed by the way Russians operate. I think the others in the group have come to appreciate that language isn't necessairly what separates us as a people; there is a cultural barrier that grays out occasionally (when things go smoothly in an almost Western sense), but is always there lurking under the surface. For instance...
Yesterday after the folk show in St. Pete, we had to get to the train station on time, so our guide arranged for us to have Subway (there is one on Nevsky Prospekt in the center of town) sandwiches, which she called and ordered ahead. Nothing is as it appears here, especially if it something familiar like an American restaurant. (A McDonald's here is a McDonald's, yes, but the customer service is WAY different-- Russian-- and the menu items are basically the same, but...well, you have to experience it to understand, I guess.) So, we rushed out of the theater to go to Subway. When we got out of the bus in front of Subway, so did our sandwiches. She had ordered them, gone to pick them up, then we went to there to eat (a good move, actually, because Subway sells beer and I was ready for a sedative by this point)-- there's one way, and there's... I wish I had captured the looks on the others' faces when they discover what kind of sandwiches our guide ordered. Apparently Russians think that Americans like ketchup on everything. How about something looking sort of like a an American sub sandwich slathered with ketchup?
Russia-- and Russians-- are full of contradictions, some amusing at first, some tiresome, such as ATMs that give out only large denomination bills that few places will accept because they can't (or so they say) make change. Last night at lunch, our guide gave me a 5,000-ruble note to pay for our lunches and dinners. The waitress begrudgingly gave me 3 1,000-ruble notes back in change that, again, had to be changed to give change to the others (????). This seemed like a laborious process for such a big, touristy hotel. I finally ended up at the money-changing lady's window-- she was on the phone and barked that I could only change one. So I gave the other two bills to two others who went back to her window to change them... Why? (Well, there's one way and there's...)
So, life goes on here in The Motherland. Everyone's well, and more than a few are ready to come home... We're off to Red Square today, so hopefully, I should be able to get up a picture or two. And I may even get a chance to see my friend Aleksei tonight.
That's it for now. Stay tuned...
