Moskva (mit video!)

So here we are, almost packed and ready to go home! Over the past few days I tried to gather my overall impressions of this country (and when I say country, I obviously mean the capital and the other capital, which is all I saw), but I'm not sure I succeded.

When I come home, I'm gonna eat: broccoli, cauliflower, leeks, carrots with their greens, collard greens, mustard greens, Asian greens, rainbow chards, kale, red kale, curly kale, lacinato kale, peas, potatoes, sweet potatoes, fingerling potatoes, beets, rutabega, celery root, celery, mushrooms...basmati rice, arborio rice, short grain brown rice and long grain brown rice, wild rice, risotto, quinoa quinoa quinoa, and all the beans. Kiwis pears bananas oranges apples grapes, apple sauce. And I am not gonna eat: cabbage, buckwheat, and bread. I don't want to see any bread, not even whole grain bread, for at least two months! Tea I will drink, tea is universal and always tastes good, especially this little thyme tea they have over here.

 

"What if the water that came out of the shower was treated with a chemical that responded to a combination of things, like your heartbeat, and your body temperature, and your brain waves, so that your skin changed color according to your mood? [...] Everyone could know what everyone else felt, and we could be more careful with each other [...]. Another reason it would be a good invention is that there are so many times when you know you're feeling a lot of something but you don't know what the something is. Am I frustrated? Am I actually just panicky? And that confusion changes your mood, it becomes your mood, and you become a confused, gray person. But with the special water, you could look at your orange hands and think, I'm happy! That whole time I was actually happy!"

[J. S. Foer, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close]

 

Moscow 2013 * My Soul is a Cow

Happy New Year from Moscow! I took the train from Petersburg, but it wasn't a "very Tolstoyan experience" because the train was so modern that it felt like being on a plane. Police everywhere. I was sitting with a family with two kids, a sweet well-behaved little girl and her evil younger brother. Their parents gave me chocolates and tangerines, and everyone was happy drinking tea. In Petersburg, on the cab to the station:
Mr. Driver: how are you going to get to your hotel in Moscow?
Anna: I'll get a cab?
Mr. Driver: they are so expensive in Moscow, it's not like here (of course...).
Anna: then maybe I should take the subway.
400 rubles, do svidania.

But then I was tired and had a headache and it was snowing and cold and Russia is usually so cheap, so I jumped into the first cab I saw and...2500 rubles pazhaluista. You guys do the math...

Friends

"Oh, you're leaving already? You're not even gonna have a(nother) little cup of tea?"

Ermitage - Part Two