Getting in to Moscow

Arrived in Russia - smooth flight, a mere 9 hours 40 minutes. Loved seeing the flat farmland interspersed with mixed deciduous and evergreen forest, marked with the granite-white bones of birches.

Caught an "electrikaya" back to the city - a train which runs every forty-five minutes. The wind blew clouds across the station as we waited. I was surprised by the cold, in early September, and snuck my coat out of the bottom of my luggage. On the train women walked by offering books and magazines, soda and chips. Industrial buildings interspersed with countryside passed by the windows.

At the metro connecting station, we bought a warmed bread filled with seasoned and sauteed cabbage, my friend drank a plastic mug (complete with handle) of black tea.

The Moscow metro is rather logical: lines that radiate out from the center of the city, and a ring (about half of the lines' diameter) that connects all of them. My friend has a month pass, and we all ride on it. The turnstiles hurt if they close on you - like two mallets that swing shut!

I'm staying in her aunt's apartment, in the complex where "The Irony of Fate" was filmed. Security appears to be serious: one presses a pass to the entry door, then another entry door, goes up a very small elevator with a mirror (just in case one looks ridiculous and need to run back home), unlocks gate before the apartment doors, and via a three step process with two keys unlocks two locks on apartment door. It's a one bedroom, one bathroom apartment; a washer/dryer machine tucked next the toilet. There is a flat mown park across the street, and beside the apartment building, tucked behind another house, is a park dappled with birch shadow.

Went over to Olga's apartment - in a closed compound - and met her other US friend who will be with us. There we ate marinated garlic (!), marinated eggplant and red pepper (!!), and had tea (of course).

That evening we went out and met friends of hers from an archeological dig in the Crimea a few years back. Not one admitted to speaking English, although the language is given in schools. I struggled along with tangled Russian. We walked through the city for several hours with them, plaza after city square after park. We lingered a bit along the streets where The Master and Margarita begins, saw the trolley featured in the opening scene. The exchange rate is roughly 30 rubles to a dollar - and Moscow is one of the most expensive cities in the world. http://www.citymayors.com/features/cost_survey.html

We returned home to her parent's around 1 am, and had a light dinner (sliced cucumber salad, cubed beet and potato salad, more marinated veggies) and tea (of course).

I haven't bought anything besides a $2 dollar borscht soup, so I haven't felt shock at the prices (yet).

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Second day:

Slept soundly until 2 pm (6 am in the US).