Judith

All I knew about her was that she was from Alabama, had never been outside the United States, and would be the only other Rotary Ambassadorial Scholar studying in Moscow with me this year.  I hadn’t been able to figure out how she’d gotten the scholarship if she didn’t speak Russian, but tonight we finally met, and I found out.

Judith is a student at Auburn.  An aerospace engineer.  She plans to be an astronaut.

I’ve never met anyone over the age of five who ants to be an astronaut.  I’ve never met anyone with a concrete plan of how to go about becoming one.  I’ve never met anyone with a plan so specific and precise that it contains within it spending a year in Russia so that she can communicate with her fellow international cosmonauts.

I’ve never met an astronaut I didn’t like ).

 

ВДНХ

Up, up, and away!

Yuri Gagarin at BDNKh

BDNKh

These photos from Sun Day were taken at the All-Russia Exposition Center, or ВДНХ.  ВДНХ happened to be close to where I lived when I was in Moscow the first time, and it was one of my favorite places in this city.  That’s because it’s so weird.  This gigantic park is a great monument to the Soviet astronauts and the different republics that made up the Union.  It’s eerie to see this incredibly massive structures dedicated to either a), Russia’s victory in the space race, which took place over 40 years ago, or b), a mighty empire that doesn’t exist any more. 

 

Some of you are coming to visit me in Moscow.  I cross my fingers and send out all the positive energy I can muster so that we have as beautiful a day as I did.

Rebellion

Monday, September 22 2008 Somewhere on the streets of Moscow

 

“If you are a free [wo]man, then you are ready to take a walk.”

Henry David Thoreau

 

Another title for this entry is “Sun” Day, Part Two.   Today is Monday but the skies are clear, the sun bright, and the weather lady says it’s going to be a beautiful day.  So I’m sorry, grammar test and grammar class.  There will be plenty of dark gloomy days in which I will happily sit for hours and conjugate verbs. 

Today is not one of them.

 

Today is a rebellion.  I woke up and felt that I was tired of my relentless immersion in the Moscow life.  I was tired of trying to blend into the crowd, disappear into the Muscovite mix.  Today would be recovery.  Today I would not even try to do so.

 

Коричневый – kor-EEch-nye-vi – is the Russian word for brown.  There’s actually not a lot of brown in this city.  The skies are mostly grey (except for today), people pretty much wear black.  City sleek is a la mode this year – earth tones, not so much.

 

For most of my life, I followed the black paradigm – I didn’t even own anything brown.  Not until, that is, I moved to Durango and Melissa taught me the wonders of this other neutral tone.  Through it I actually learned to appreciate bright colors – orange, red, yellow. Lime, purple, berry. 

 

Colors I don’t wear a lot here.

 

Today is different, though.  Today the sun is shining, and I dance down the street  in my brown sweater and brown capris (and no, I am not kholodno (cold), thank you for asking).  The only things I wear that are not brown are my shoes, and those happen to be my purple Nikes.  Those shoes were made for walking.  And if I am a free woman . . .

 

Once upon a time I was horribly self-conscious of my clothing making me stand out in a foreign country.  In the years since I’ve learned a few things.  One:  when there are thirteen million people in a city, only one of them is you.  The other 12,999,999 people don’t really give a damn what you look like.  Two:  if you have 365 days in a city, it’s okay to only blend in for 364.

 

Three:  the rule of recovery, which any cyclist knows well.  If you want to ride at your strongest you have to take a minute every so often to recover your heart rate.  Out here, I have to take a day to absolutely be myself in all my American/Coloradan/Denver/Durango-an glory.  Doing so will leave me all the more refreshed for the day after that, when it’s time to return to grammar class, Russian tests, and the world in front of me.

 

Rebellion is celebration.  And we’ve all got to party once in a while.

Big Dictionary

The Good Book

 

To Professors Lavine, Yastremski, Malik, Romanov, Petrova, and Ivanovna:

  To my teachers and mentors of Russian, I apologize and I confess.  Only this afternoon did I finally do that which you all did not ask, but required of me long ago.  Not until this day have I ever owned a big, heavy, comprehensive Russian dictionary.   

   For some reason, in the seven years I have studied, learned, and loved this language, I never got around to buying one.  I owned a copy of the small teal Oxford Russian Dictionary, which for me was a book of magic.  Somehow, no matter how complicated the word I sought, it was always somewhere in the pages of this book.  So great was the power of this little dictionary that, at the end of this past semester, when the original teal copy finally fell apart, I bought the same edition. 

   Today, no more.  I went to Dom Knigi on Tverskaya Street, I handed over my credit card, and in exchange I was given a gigantic Oxford Russian Concise dictionary.  This dark blue monster now dominates my desk, its power mighty, its draw great. 

   Seven years, and no, I have never owned the big Russian dictionary.  I don’t know why.  Call it laziness on my part; it is probably so.  Извините меня.  But I’m in Russia for a year now.  And I am now the proud possessor of a gigantic dictionary.  Seven years.  It’s time to get serious about this.

“Sun” Day

Sunday, September 21 2008 Around Town 6 p.m.

The weather lady said it was going to be a beautiful day, and she wasn’t kidding.  The sky is clear, the temperature has hit 60, and there is actually a special law in Moscow that says you can’t study for your grammar test when the sun is shining.  After all, you never know when you will see it again. 

So while you can, descend upon Red Square, Aleksandrovsky Sad, the Kremlin, St. Basils.  This is the day they take the photos for postcards, so make sure you bring your camera too. 

Time to take a walk downtown

Two girls walking near the Kremlin on the first day of fall

A boy bikes down a hill in Aleksandrovsky Sad, the park that rings the Kremlin walls

To Jeff Chase – L’Oreal is Watching You

Kremlin, Lenin’s Tomb, St. Basil’s Cathedral at Sunset

13,000,000

That is the correct number of zeros I need to tell you the population of Moscow.  Actually, thirteen million is only the official population count of the city – it doesn’t count the people who live in the city without registration, or the homeless.  These numbers pit the population at closer to 17,000,000.  Correct number of zeroes again.

Po Gorody (Around Town)

Sunday, September 21 2008 Streets of Moscow 4 p.m.

I lived in Moscow for four months in 2003, and I’ve been here for almost a week and a half now, but today was the first time I ever rode by car into, and around, the city.  This afternoon, upon our return from Gagarin, and after the consumption of a delicious melon, my friend Katya and her boyfriend Misha offered to give me a ride home.  And then, while we were stuck in one of Moscow’s many traffic jams (yes, even on a Sunday) they decided to give me a tour of the city. 

 

There is actually a very good reason for my never having been in a car in this city before.  For one, the Moscow Metro happens to be one of the best, fastest, and most reliable in the world.  Second, driving in Moscow is not the fastest way to get from one part of town to the other.  There are 13,000,000 people in this city, and even though only a fraction of them are on the road at one time, there are not enough roads to move people from one part of town to another.  Third, driving in Moscow is one of the scariest experiences in the world.  The streets make the craziest New York City rush hour look relatively tame.  The insanity is different from that in Italy, when drivers maneuver crazy-small cars around incredibly tight corners and through incredibly small spaces.  Moscow roads are wide, and big – four and five lanes, on each side – and they are packed – day and night – with speedy drivers dismissive of things like lanes, signaling, etc.

 

But today the three of us dove together into the madness.  Misha put a CD of the Russian punk band Leningrad into the player, and Katya turned it up when the group played a ska version of the James Bond theme song.  The trumpets played, the trombones blared, the drum beat was strong as we careened up the road along the Yauza River, back down, up the hill to Kitai Gorod, past Lybyanka, and down to the Moscow River where today the gold domes of the Kremlin shone bright.

It would have been a good day for a marathon, but it was a great day for a drive.  

 

There is something surreal about driving in a car through the streets of Moscow.  You have to suspend your belief in everything, especially the fact that you will be smashed annihilated killed-to-pieces at any moment.  But on a sunny fall afternoon, there is also something fantastically thrilling about the whole experience.  Being buried in the back seat with my nose glued to the window was one of the most unforgettable experiences of my life.  Between navigating, strategizing routes, and arguing, I realized pretty quickly that Kat and Mish would not be able to answer my questions about what we saw.  But on my own, I gradually recognized some of my old haunts and favorite streets.  I began to understand how the land above the underground train runs from one neighborhood to the next. 

And I was finally, for once, at last able to picture this city that enthralls me.

Кухня – Kykhnya

Kitchen.

I should have also discussed Russian kitchens earlier.  I probably forgot because the kitchen in my dorm is pretty small, and not a place I really hang out.  This is an incredible “жал – zhal”, or shame, because without a kitchen I am missing out on one of the most important cultural experiences to be had in this country. 

 

The kitchen is holy territory in Russia.  It is first of all the warmest place in the house, but it is also the place where talking takes place.  Under the “krasnii ygol” (“holy corner”, where there is often a small ikon of a saint) over cookies, konfeti (candy) and a cup of tea families and friends discuss their days, their lives, their dreams.  Late into long winter nights the discussion also turns towards the philosophical. 

In Russia, around the kitchen table grand ideas and eternal questions are conceive and created.  And as you all know, Russia has a few of these to its name. 

 

I didn’t realize until this weekend how much I missed not having a true Russian kitchen within my immediate reach, but I am lucky enough to have a community of friends with kitchens of their own, to which I am so grateful to be welcome. 

 

This whole entry was a long way of saying that these photos are from an evening in the “кухня” of the “дача” of Vladimir, Galya’s partner.  In them you see Katya, Galya, Vladimir, and “я” (me).

Dacha September 2008

Taylor and Katya, along with Mama Galya, in a happy reunion in Gagarin

   

Дача – Dacha

Saturday night – “Za” Gagarin

 

I should have mentioned – a “dacha” is a sort of cottage on a bid of land outside the city.  Everybody in Russia has one.  They are not the most glamorous of places – they are more like a small cabin-like retreat where people have gardens and grow vegetables.  But especially for those who live in Moscow, they are worshipped as a place of escape.

Za Gorod

Za – Beyond

Gorod – City

Za Gorod – Out of Town

 

 

Saturday, September 20 2008 Gagarin – 2 p.m.

Those who know this country best will remind all who visit that Moscow is not Russia.  It’s not even close.  In reality, Russia consists of two parts – Moscow, its first-world capital, and Russia, a third-world country.  This weekend I left the glitter and dazzle of the big city and traveled “za gorod”, beyond the limits of Moscow Region to Gagarin, a small town in Smolenskaya Region.       

 

If the name of the town sounds like the last name of Russia’s first astronaut in space, that’s because it is.  For 290 years this town was known as Zhdansk, but once Yuri Gagarin made his famous ascent “za Earth” his proud hometown took on his name.  Today Gagarin is a town of 40,000 people, three of which happen to be related to my dear friend Katya, which is the reason for our visit.

 

I first visited Gagarin with her in 2003, and even though this past weekend was my third time in town I still have not been able to get over how drastically different it is from Moscow – and not different in a good way.  The buildings are all old, grey, leaning over to the side as if they wish they had a cane.  Streets are in disrepair.  There is zip, zero, no industry in Gagarin – literally no way to make a substantial living (and I’m not talking a lot – I’m talking more than the $500 a month that is the monthly salery of most people here).  Old shriveled women shuffle down the streets or push decrepit rusty bicycles loaded down with socks to sell in the market; defeated looking men hunch behind stacks of potatoes and onions; an eternal cigarette dangles from their lips and smoke reddens their eyes..

 

In the midst of this despair I have become lucky enough to meet some of the warmest, most hospitable, most good-hearted people ever to have been on this earth.  Gagarin would be a cold town if the apartment of Galya, Katya’s mama, wasn’t so warm, welcoming, and bright.  The land would seem empty but I’ve been to Olga and Lenya’s (Katya’s aunt’s and uncle’s) dacha, and I’ve seen (and tasted) the green miracle they’ve been able to make of their vegetable garden.  

 

Much of my spirited love for, and defense of, Russian people, comes from my past aquaintence and current friendship with these people.  Together we’ve talked, we’ve laughed, we’ve picked apples, we’ve shared both vodka and vino.  And in the process we’ve learned a bit about each other, and learned we aren’t as different as we may think. 

 

Gagarin is not Moscow.  But really, one can only take so much of Moscow, before the glitz and glamour gets under your skin and you want to go to a place where you can smile with people, just be with people, and just be yourself.