(no subject)
The Russian visit was entirely spent in Moscow, with one small side trip to a friend of A's place who lived about 50km out in a "village of dachas" (although his house is not a dacha as he lives in it full time).
More random thoughts and words:
* Russians have absolutely no idea how to drive, compounded by the fact that they have no idea how to build either a car or a road.
* Vodka.
* Russians really celebrate May 9th. Does anyone know what the significance of May 9th is?
* Russian women are hot, and also completely barking mad. They have no idea what colour to wear, so they wear all of them, usually in the extra shiny variations. The day of the floral print coat and mismatched floral print pants was only superseded by the metallic gold jacket and metallic silver shoes.
* Russian men are ugly, and never smile. Also barking mad, but not that you'd know because they won't spend the time of day with you for you to find out.
* More vodka.
* I had a much harder time with language difficulties and reading signs, mostly because they aren't printed the way you'd expect them to be printed. The signs on the train station don't make it immediately obvious where you are or where you're headed, until you're familiar with the secretive codes for them.
* The russian words for "entry" and "exit" look alarmingly similar.
* For those of you who answered "no" to question 2 above, May 9th is the day that Germany surrendered in world war II (or "the great patriotic war" as it's known in Russia). It's like Anzac day but 1000 times over. The entire city is plastered with signs celebrating the event, there are marches and parades and what not for a week or more before, and they day is celebrated more as a victory day than as a commemorative day (read: big party, much vodka, fireworks, bla bla). People here have a genuine connection with their war history past, and you're just as likely to find a kid on a train reading a war history book or a "boys own adventure" story book about a WWII happening as a marvel comic or listening to an iPod. Veterans here are genuinely celebrated as "heroes" rather than looked on with pity. You see veterans walking through the streets on the day bedecked with their medals and people will stop to take photos or give them flowers or shake hands and salute. It's quite a different experience and makes me feel a bit sad for the lot of the veterans in Australia.
* The moscow "METRO" train system is very good. Trains about half the size of the sydney ones but running about double the speed, and they run EVERY MINUTE most times of the day. You can get from one end of moscow to the other in about 20 minutes, even if you have to change. There never seem to be any delays and they literally scream along (read: take earplugs). Some of the Australian town planning folks need to be dropped into moscow for a while to see how you really do design a train system in a city of 10 million people and have it work all of the time every time.
* Even more vodka. I was offered vodka with breakfast.
* The cyrillic alphabet took a lot more getting used to than I thought. The main tripping points are letters that look the same as Roman/English letters but sound different. Like "B" is pronounced "V" and "C" is always "S" and "H" is "N" and so on. The weird looking ones like "bI" and "I-O" and the one that looks like an X with an extra line through it are easy enough to handle. It doesn't help that Russian is a language of prefixes and suffixes which means many words are extra long and looking for a station named "babushkinskaya" or "novorossiyiskaya" is somewhat daunting.
* Russians know how to eat. It seems every meal starts with some entree an then soup and then main and then bits and pieces of sweet things. Some of which are alarmingly good.
* "KBAC" aka Kvass needs to be imported into Australia. The fact that it's made from fermented rye bread probably won't help the importation process one bit.
* Highlights: Moscow circus. WWII museum. Borodino museum. Flea markets at Ismayalova and Arbat. Getting around the train system by myself unassisted by signs of any sort. Some of the "expensive" shops were excellent (one shop that sold shoes but had nothing in stock for less than $AUD500/pair) but also excellent were the cheap roadside food vendors. Parades, tanks, aircraft, bla bla bla. I took lots of photos, around 1000 I think.
More random thoughts and words:
* Russians have absolutely no idea how to drive, compounded by the fact that they have no idea how to build either a car or a road.
* Vodka.
* Russians really celebrate May 9th. Does anyone know what the significance of May 9th is?
* Russian women are hot, and also completely barking mad. They have no idea what colour to wear, so they wear all of them, usually in the extra shiny variations. The day of the floral print coat and mismatched floral print pants was only superseded by the metallic gold jacket and metallic silver shoes.
* Russian men are ugly, and never smile. Also barking mad, but not that you'd know because they won't spend the time of day with you for you to find out.
* More vodka.
* I had a much harder time with language difficulties and reading signs, mostly because they aren't printed the way you'd expect them to be printed. The signs on the train station don't make it immediately obvious where you are or where you're headed, until you're familiar with the secretive codes for them.
* The russian words for "entry" and "exit" look alarmingly similar.
* For those of you who answered "no" to question 2 above, May 9th is the day that Germany surrendered in world war II (or "the great patriotic war" as it's known in Russia). It's like Anzac day but 1000 times over. The entire city is plastered with signs celebrating the event, there are marches and parades and what not for a week or more before, and they day is celebrated more as a victory day than as a commemorative day (read: big party, much vodka, fireworks, bla bla). People here have a genuine connection with their war history past, and you're just as likely to find a kid on a train reading a war history book or a "boys own adventure" story book about a WWII happening as a marvel comic or listening to an iPod. Veterans here are genuinely celebrated as "heroes" rather than looked on with pity. You see veterans walking through the streets on the day bedecked with their medals and people will stop to take photos or give them flowers or shake hands and salute. It's quite a different experience and makes me feel a bit sad for the lot of the veterans in Australia.
* The moscow "METRO" train system is very good. Trains about half the size of the sydney ones but running about double the speed, and they run EVERY MINUTE most times of the day. You can get from one end of moscow to the other in about 20 minutes, even if you have to change. There never seem to be any delays and they literally scream along (read: take earplugs). Some of the Australian town planning folks need to be dropped into moscow for a while to see how you really do design a train system in a city of 10 million people and have it work all of the time every time.
* Even more vodka. I was offered vodka with breakfast.
* The cyrillic alphabet took a lot more getting used to than I thought. The main tripping points are letters that look the same as Roman/English letters but sound different. Like "B" is pronounced "V" and "C" is always "S" and "H" is "N" and so on. The weird looking ones like "bI" and "I-O" and the one that looks like an X with an extra line through it are easy enough to handle. It doesn't help that Russian is a language of prefixes and suffixes which means many words are extra long and looking for a station named "babushkinskaya" or "novorossiyiskaya" is somewhat daunting.
* Russians know how to eat. It seems every meal starts with some entree an then soup and then main and then bits and pieces of sweet things. Some of which are alarmingly good.
* "KBAC" aka Kvass needs to be imported into Australia. The fact that it's made from fermented rye bread probably won't help the importation process one bit.
* Highlights: Moscow circus. WWII museum. Borodino museum. Flea markets at Ismayalova and Arbat. Getting around the train system by myself unassisted by signs of any sort. Some of the "expensive" shops were excellent (one shop that sold shoes but had nothing in stock for less than $AUD500/pair) but also excellent were the cheap roadside food vendors. Parades, tanks, aircraft, bla bla bla. I took lots of photos, around 1000 I think.