This morning I finally figured out how to operate our train’s sink. It was a major accomplishment for me as up to this point, I had been using our bottled water as my main source of water. It involves pressing directly up on the water nozzle for the sink. Sadly, this tends to end with the water spraying everywhere except on my hands or wherever I’m trying to clean.
In any case, we arrived in Moscow bright and early in the morning. We immediately went and purchased our tickets for St. Petersburg. Max and I decided to purchase SIM cards for our phones so we could access the Internet (other than over my Kindle) while we were in Russia. Sadly, there was some miscommunication as we ended up on a non-unlimited data plan and quickly ran out of cash. We managed to get this handled later. We took the metro. The stations are tiled beautifully from the Soviet times.
We stayed at Max’s aunt’s apartment. This was a different aunt than before, as this one was on vacation when we arrived. However, her kids were staying there. They are all in their early 20s - Alexei, his fiance, and Alexei’s younger sister. There was also an interesting contrast between the common areas of the apartment building and the actual apartment itself. The common area smelled really bad (like excrement) while the apartment was clean, well furnished, and generally very nice. Max explained that this happened in Soviet times because no one was really responsible for the common areas as all buildings were government owned. We all took showers (thank goodness for hot water!) and headed out to the center of town, near the Kremlin.
The weather was a bit erratic that day - it would flicker between sunny and sudden downpours. We found ourselves caught outside the Moscow public library when a sudden downpour flooded through town. I thought it was appropriate for the environs - we were standing next to a giant statue of Dostoevsky. We headed over to Arbat Street and began the process of selecting souvenirs. I ran into a Lenin impersonator who wanted cash for pictures, so I decided to stop and take pictures with him for irony’s sake. I asked him why he needed money for the communist revolution and he said that they were still building up their supplies.
We ate lunch at a Georgian place (the country, not the state), and acquired a few chotchkes in the forms of Russian military stuff, a Russian fur hat (same as all the Russian leaders wear in all the movies!), and a copy of Brothers Karamozov in the original Russian. On our way out of the bookstore, I noticed that there were two seemingly-identical apartment buildings facing us. However, one had some messed up windows and generally looked in poor shape, while the other one was gleaming and new. What Max thinks happened was that the developer decided to create a building that looked exactly like the old Soviet building but with a much nicer facade. And they succeeded!
Late in the afternoon, we managed to make our way just outside Red Square, where we managed to pay the most for the least inspired service and beers ever (probably around $15 a beer). We were tired early, so we retired to the apartment. One interesting thing I noticed was that even in non-touristy parts of town, there are currency exchange places everywhere. This is apparently the product of massive inflation suffered in the late 90s, when people would immediately take their salaries and convert them into dollars.
We ate dinner with the cousins. Later, Alexei drove us over to the outskirts of Moscow, where we saw one of the many famous palaces of Peter the Great. They had an amazing multi-hued fountain, much like the Bellagio in Vegas. We walked through the woods near the palace for quite a while until I felt like falling into the lake. Alexei then drove us around Moscow (midnight is the only time when traffic is clear), showing us the sites, but I had already fallen asleep as I was exhausted.