March 25, 2001 (Day 18): Intourist Hotel, Moscow – 11.30pm
The clocks moved ahead an hour last night for daylight “savings” time. We knew the time change was coming soon, we were happy it did not occur on a day that we had to catch a train. As it happens, we didn’t figure it out until about 3.30 this afternoon.
Health: good. A couple aches in the legs but that only indicates I should perhaps stretch a bit more often.
Started the morning with an unimpressive breakfast at the hotel. It is not as good as it was at the Hotel St. Petersburg; the staff is grumpier, the food consists of more diverse shades of gray, and the coffee is far more frightening. The advantage that this hotel has over others is the location: we are right across from Red Square and the Kremlin. Otherwise, there is nothing special about the Intourist.
Approximately 8 million passengers use the Moscow metro system each day.
Another cold and blustery day. Watching the weather on the TV, it appears as though there is this bubble of cold air that has been pursuing us since Sweden. We conducted a dry run to the Yaroslavskya rail station, where we will catch our train to Beijing. We wanted to know the challenges that we would face trying to get ourselves and our stuff there. It was not too bad. We were on the same metro line, so we did not have to change trains, and the metro exit was near the station itself. Since there are three major rail stations in the same area, it was helpful to determine where we needed to go when we were not hauling our stuff around.
Today was spent touring the Moscow Metro. I have heard stories about how ornate and artistic some of the metro stations are – and it was a good opportunity to get out of the weather. The stations on the circle line (route 4, the brown line) were stunning. No two stations were the same. Mosaics, Roman columns, murals, and statuary color the platforms in various combinations. While the Mayakovskya station is frequently held as the best example of this, my personal favorite was the Kievskaya station where the platform was arranged like a colonnade in an art gallery with the entry to the platforms being between wide pillars. Each of these pillars was decorated with mosaics outlined with fake frames that were part of the columns themselves. My favorite image was at the Smolenskaya station where a Soviet hammer and sickle decorated the walls above a row of slot machines.
Sufficiently thawed from our expedition to deepest Moscow, hit the supermarket at the Irish Center to stock up for the trip to Beijing. Afterwards, we wandered the Arbat, checking out the kiosks and being checked out by the vendors while looking for the ideal souvenir. As omnipresent as the fur hats and matryoshka dolls are a lot of Soviet era memorabilia: pins, faux medals, T-shirts. I was hunting for a sword and shield medal, the insignia of the KGB, but did not find one at a price I was willing to pay.
Dinner tonight was Georgian. The restaurant was in an apartment complex. Not hard to find, just followed our noses and others who were presumably heading the same place that we were. The food was as excellent as we had been told it would be. Lacking a better way to describe it, I would say it is very similar to a lighter version of Indian, with similar ‘warm’ spicing of the food. As seems to be our tradition, we were adopted by the waitress who, through universal gestures, indicated she would look after our culinary interests since we were clearly not clever enough to order ourselves. Our only major requests were the bread with the cheese baked in and a bottle of Stalin’s favorite wine. The bread was excellent, the wine good, although a bit sweet for my tastes.
While it is common at restaurants to expect guests to check their coats, it felt here as though it was particularly encouraged to ensure none of the guests were packing heat. The house band serenaded us with such Georgian classics as the Bee Gees’ “How Deep is Your Love.” They performed at a table close to us, inspiring one serenade-ee to get up and join in the concert, singing and dancing. The singing was impassioned, the dancing curious. At one point, he lay down on his back and drummed his shoulder blades on the floor to the music. Needless to say, he was very into it, although I suspect the empty vodka bottle and beer bottles on his table fueled his enthusiasm.
And, to make the experience complete, ABBA was played over the speakers while the band was on break.
The Oscars are upon us. The insightful reviewer from Talking Movies on the BBC (Tom Brook) has predicted that the Best Director award will go to either Ang Lee, Ridley Scott, or Steven Soderbergh. Considering he listed three of the four directors up for the award, his genius and expert opinion seems suspect.
Excerpts from Anna’s journal included.
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