Omg this
is so awesome! Im excited for next
ones!
Moscow Day 11
This weekend was a fun one. On Friday I went stopped at a bar/club where a Facebook event was going on. I managed to meet a couple people and it and even made a new friend, Olya. She offered to show me some spots around Moscow which will be nice.
After that I headed to a party at the Russian Language Lab where I’m taking classes. It was a blast! There was a DJ, plenty of drinks and a great mix of teachers and students from my program. I met some folks from Reuters, the London Times, the Turkish embassy and the Canadian embassy.
And then the militsiya (cops) showed up. I guess there was too much overflow on the street and someone must have called to complain. It happens.
Anyway, afterward a couple of the teachers invited us to a club. At this point the metro was shutting down, so we (me and some fellow fellows) were a bit sketched out about how to get back but figured as long as we stuck together we’d be OK. So off we went to Leninsky Prospect 88… pretty far outside the center of the city to club Pharoh.
It was a nice place… a kind of not-too-crazy club. They had a performance… a dance routine/lip synching by some transvestites. Not exactly what I was expecting, but the performance was actually quite good.
And after that some dancing and a few beers… and watched the bartenders put together some spectacularly fiery drinks - they seem to be the rage (although not for me as I don’t like to drink melted plastic from a burning straw!). And as things wound down at 5:00am, we plotted our cab strategy. Dividing up by neighborhood per cab, we crossed the street and began bargaining with they “gypsy cabs”. Unofficial drivers who want to make a quick buck. Not able to strike a deal at first, my group flagged a guy down and managed to negotiate 600 roubles to transport 3 of us to a couple different metro stations.
I’m glad I was able to sample the Moscow club scene. Of course, this is not something I expect to take in regularly.
Anyway, next weekend I’m off to Vologda (a city about 8 hours north by train) to meet with a company and take in a few sites. Should be interesting… taking the night train.
Moscow Day 6
I’m impressed with the Russian classes so far. The program is legit. I also lucked out because one person dropped out of my group and the ratio is one teacher to two students… always great to have more attention; will accelerate my learning. I learned how to say shoelaces today, shnyorki… and it turns out that kids used to say ‘shnorki v stakane’ while on the phone or the shoe laces are in the glass… code for parents are home so we gotta watch what I say.
Last night was righteous: went down to a friend’s place near downtown and met his sister who is a Muscovite; he also has Russian roots. We rolled down to the Kremlin and wandered around the outskirts of it for a while and chatted. Good time…
Will take some pictures at some point as some have requested… hard to find the time and keep forgetting my camera as I’m always in a hurry in the morning. Oh yeah, we also had our first lecture today at the higher school of economics. It wasn’t terribly useful. But at least on the way back a few of us hit a cafe right across from red square for a beer. Quite nice… lovely weather and sunny as we lingered until like 9 or so…
I keep misjudging the city and think things are closer than they are. It makes me late sometime, but thankfully others have been way later! Moscow is like Texas: everything is bigger there.
