November 25th--A long day of travel, bookended by cool buildings.
Since my train only left at 1:05, Sebastian and I went up to a cathedral and convent complex to the north of the hostel in the morning. It was really interesting, but was all closed (Sunday) and being ripped up with reconstruction in the front.
The hat!
As we walked back down to the train station, we started seeing police officers everywhere. In the fifteen minutes it took to get to the station, we saw maybe 100 officers. We were briefly stopped by one, but he let us go when we didn't speak Russian. Also, we walked past two policemen who turned and stared at us for 50 yards down the street.
Neither of us had any idea what was going on, and it was disconcerting. You're supposed to be reassured and feel protected by the police, but they made me feel extremely uncomfortable, as we got suspicious stares from many of them.
Later I learned that there was a political rally that day, and 12 people were arrested. Fairly large numbers of people protested Putin and his increasingly authoritarian government. In any case, I missed it, as i got on this fairly awesome looking train and went to Moscow without really any hitch.
We went through all kinds of small snow-covered villages and enormous forests. The change from urban to rural was incredibly quick.
And when the train stopped in Moscow, I was dumped into a city much larger than I had somehow imagined. My guidebook says that the metro system transports over 8 million people a day. That's an insane figure--that's the entire city of Chicago getting on the metro every day.
I had tried to find an English map in St. Petersburg, but none of the stores had one, so I was in the same position of finding my way around with a Russian map. However, it was much easier because I've started to be able to read the Cyrillic alphabet. No formal study, just looking at things, comparing them to the English, and making connections. I don't know all the characters, but I know enough to find street names that have been given to me in English, find certain businesses, etc. It's a cool feeling.
For instance, one of the ones I figured out early on was "restaurant", which is "PECTOPAH". The "C" is an "ess", the "P" an "r", the "H" an "n". That's the only one I can do with an English keyboard, but you get the idea. A lot of Russian words have Germanic or Romantic roots when you translate them into our alphabet.
As I stepped out of the metro station near my hostel, I saw these buildings:
And then, right across the street, a building that doesn't even belong in reality, but a comic book or Gotham, the Stalinist skyscraper.
The building is infinitely more impressive in person, the top lighting up the low clouds and glaring down at all the people below. I wish I had had a tripod or a better camera to get a picture.
After some confusion and reorganization at the hostel by the mostly MIA manager Ivan, I settled into a room with Oscar, a talkative ex-Marine from New York, Ross, a hippie from North California with huge dreadlocks and a Russian wife who hadn't paid his taxes in 8 years, and a diminutive Russian who dressed in all black, spoke no English, and hogged the hostel's one computer, playing obnoxious techno remixes while saying nothing.
It's life in Moscow, what can I say.
Since my train only left at 1:05, Sebastian and I went up to a cathedral and convent complex to the north of the hostel in the morning. It was really interesting, but was all closed (Sunday) and being ripped up with reconstruction in the front.
The hat!As we walked back down to the train station, we started seeing police officers everywhere. In the fifteen minutes it took to get to the station, we saw maybe 100 officers. We were briefly stopped by one, but he let us go when we didn't speak Russian. Also, we walked past two policemen who turned and stared at us for 50 yards down the street.
Neither of us had any idea what was going on, and it was disconcerting. You're supposed to be reassured and feel protected by the police, but they made me feel extremely uncomfortable, as we got suspicious stares from many of them.
Later I learned that there was a political rally that day, and 12 people were arrested. Fairly large numbers of people protested Putin and his increasingly authoritarian government. In any case, I missed it, as i got on this fairly awesome looking train and went to Moscow without really any hitch.
We went through all kinds of small snow-covered villages and enormous forests. The change from urban to rural was incredibly quick.
And when the train stopped in Moscow, I was dumped into a city much larger than I had somehow imagined. My guidebook says that the metro system transports over 8 million people a day. That's an insane figure--that's the entire city of Chicago getting on the metro every day.
I had tried to find an English map in St. Petersburg, but none of the stores had one, so I was in the same position of finding my way around with a Russian map. However, it was much easier because I've started to be able to read the Cyrillic alphabet. No formal study, just looking at things, comparing them to the English, and making connections. I don't know all the characters, but I know enough to find street names that have been given to me in English, find certain businesses, etc. It's a cool feeling.
For instance, one of the ones I figured out early on was "restaurant", which is "PECTOPAH". The "C" is an "ess", the "P" an "r", the "H" an "n". That's the only one I can do with an English keyboard, but you get the idea. A lot of Russian words have Germanic or Romantic roots when you translate them into our alphabet.
As I stepped out of the metro station near my hostel, I saw these buildings:
And then, right across the street, a building that doesn't even belong in reality, but a comic book or Gotham, the Stalinist skyscraper.
The building is infinitely more impressive in person, the top lighting up the low clouds and glaring down at all the people below. I wish I had had a tripod or a better camera to get a picture.
After some confusion and reorganization at the hostel by the mostly MIA manager Ivan, I settled into a room with Oscar, a talkative ex-Marine from New York, Ross, a hippie from North California with huge dreadlocks and a Russian wife who hadn't paid his taxes in 8 years, and a diminutive Russian who dressed in all black, spoke no English, and hogged the hostel's one computer, playing obnoxious techno remixes while saying nothing.
It's life in Moscow, what can I say.
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