First Days

(Pictures follow the paragraph describing when they were taken)

I arrived in Moscow last Saturday afternoon and slept most of that day in the hotel my company had booked near the airport.

Early Sunday I took the train into the city, checked into a new hotel (Holiday Inn Sokolniki) and went to church with other international English-speaking Mormons. After church I had a great meal of borscht, buckwheat and cabbage salad at a cow-themed restaurant called Moo-Moo. A woman on the street was selling kvas (a drink made of fermented bread juice) but I wasn't quite in the mood for that yet. I figured I needed to stay awake so I took the metro into the city center, and went to Red Square and took pictures of St. Basil's Cathedral.

I also bought tickets to a ballet called The Dame of The Camellias at the Bolshoi (only to find out later that the actual theater is being restored and though it's the same ballet company it's not in the actual building of the Bolshoi Theatre).

(I particularly love the above pic becasue it represents Russia in so many ways: 1. The Russian Orthodox Church, 2. The building under reconstruction on the left with a piece of canvas covering it, painted to look like the building. 3. The sign for a choolate company called "Red October.)

I had a few hours to kill before the ballet so I took the metro to the Novodevchiy Convent and wandered around taking photos. It was a very peaceful place with fewer tourists than the city center. The ballet was nice. I fell asleep half-way through the first act which is typical for me, but that left me confused in the second act. It seems as though the female lead had several lovers and was dying of consumption. Her dances in the throes of the illness were amazing. Absolutely amazing.
Having stayed up a full day I figured I had conquered jet lag. I was wrong. Monday after my visit to the doctor (surprisingly uneventful--it was an international clinic) I took a five-hour "nap" in the middle of the day and Tuesday I got up at 6 AM. On Tuesday I took the morning to stroll through a large park near the hotel (Sokolniki Park).
While walking down a path in a pretty populated part of the park, I stumbled upon a woman in the middle of a topless photo shoot. It was weird because there were many people nearby--men, grandmas, and children and none of them seemed particularly interested in what was going on (with the exception of a few of the men). Anyhoo, the model covered up shortly after I arrived on the scene and I continued my walk. The big Moscow parks are amazing because they are basically just forests that are protected and while there are a few paved roads in them there are hundreds of crisscrossing trails that meander through the forest. It was a nice autumn day and it felt good to walk around.

After a lunch of a pound of donuts and some potatoes wrapped in fry bread I was feeling like a bit of a slob so I went to the hotel gym and worked out for a couple hours (running, lifting, swimming, and finally sauna). It was at this point that I realized that instead of trying to get a taste of Russian cuisine (there would be time enough for that in the next 2 years) I should let the company pick up the tab for some good European-style meals. So I went to the fancy restaurant on top of the hotel and had a most magnificent goat cheese and roasted vegetable salad followed by a delicious crab and shrimp risotto. It was a great day.

On Wednesday, I bought a ticket to go inside the Kremlin and saw what they will show tourists there. Mostly it's old churches and a nice park. All of the office buildings where the actual Russian government works were closed to me. Even still, it was very nice.

After that visit I went to Moscow State University and tried to sneak in telling them I was a professor at Cal (I was wearing my UC Berkeley jacket). That didn't work, but I did get a few pictures of the awesome looking building. By my estimation the students live and study in that one building. It is enormous and vaguely reminiscent of the Mormon temple that stands in the Oakland hills. I hope to be able to post some pictures sometime, thought I'm afraid that quality wi-fi is very hard to come by, so I may have to wait until I'm more settled for that. I ended the day with another fancy dinner (a tomato and mozzarella salad followed by red peppercorn-seasoned roasted duck with a rhubarb sauce and pumpkin polenta).

Thursday I mostly just wandered around downtown Moscow and saw the fancy shopping district and the main post office and a museum of the Russian national painter (not as interesting as one might think). It was a very low key day.

Friday I went to Izmailovsky Park which had the same feel as Sokolniki, only bigger. I got caught in a rain and hailstorm there and took the Metro while sopping wet back to the hotel where I dried off. I mostly just wandered around there after that.

Saturday morning I flew to Noyabrsk and stepped off the plane into an Autumnal tundra where I was taken to a hotel in the middle of the woods and left by myself.

I met a couple of ex-pats who are working for my company in a different division on the plane.
They both seemed like really nice guys and I hope I'll get to see them some as it seems as though there are very few other ex-pats here. In fact, I have been told that my segment doesn't even run jobs out of Noyabrsk anymore and that I'll primarily be working with a Russian company that my company recently acquired. And today I blogged about it all.

So there you have it. My first week back in Mother Russia.

And this as a conclusion:

(Don't swim in lakes or eat fish in Russia.)