A Tale of Two Saturdays

(This post has been hanging round my neck like a dead weight for a month. Finally, I've gotten rid of it.)




I had a brilliant day on Saturday [sometime at the beginning of February?]. I stumbled out of bed at 6:30 a.m. and leapt on a metro for the Aeroflot office, to try and take advantage of their famous bi-yearly sales. Last year we got tickets to Azerbaijan for 100 squids, this year we decided on somewhere in Russia. The metro was worryingly busy for 7:30 a.m. on Saturday morning - but, arriving at the Aeroflot office (on Kuznetskiy Most street, above), where in September there'd been a man with a clipboard taking down names and already 20 people queueing, this year there was an empty snow-covered street, Jennie, and a cleaner and a single grumpy night guard inside the office. As more people showed up later, they said there were probably less people as it was so cold. Please, I thought, it's only like -5 and this is RUSSIA. Very kindly, Jennie fetched tea from the local Kofe Haus...




Anyway, 80 pounds later, and we have our tickets to Ekaterinburg, in the Ural Mountains. A few million people live there, and it's where the Romanovs were murdered in 191-something. I don't quite know what to expect: My Russian teacher wasn't overly enthusiastic, but LP waxed on about its many museums (and there's even an "Outside Ekaterinburg" section). Anyway it's only for 4 days, and always good to see new places. The other option was a spa resort called Mineral Waters, but it's close to the Caucasus (i.e. Chechnya) and people say it's dangerous. Esther also booked some tickets to a Siberian city called Perm, of all things.




(See how happy Esther is that she's going to Perm?)

Saturday continued with the now traditional we-got-cheap-ish-Aeroflot-tickets celebration of blini (Russian pancakes covered with cheese, chocolate etc.) at a restaurant called Pirogi, and then I snuck over to Red Square and St. Basil's for a quick peek-a-boo.




(GUM shopping center on left, St. Basil's at back, the Kremlin on the right.)




(St. Basil's.)


At that point, my mechanical device for measuring the passage of time alerted me that the moment had come to meet my friends in Gorky Park for ice skating. Jennie and I decided an 80s/"Fame" look would be absolutely the coolest way to go.




The park is massive, and they flood all the paths with water, which then freezes. So you're skating around through trees, past cafes and fairground-game stalls, rollercoasters and big wheels, people playing ice hockey, an ice-disco set off to one side, a massive coliseum-like racetrack to the other. It's like a small town on ice, and all the while there are hundreds-upon-hundreds of other skaters falling over or (more often) pulling off impressive tricks around you.









(Esther here has, not to put too fine a point on it, fallen flat on her arse.)

It was slightly nightmarish at points though -- the system of getting in and hiring skates is very Russian-poor-planning. An enormous crush of people develops at the single door to the skate-hire room, some half a foot higher on toe-slicing ice skates, and once you get inside the temperature is a sticky 30 degrees warmer than outside. It's wet, slimy and dirty from the muck people track in, and you can barely move for people pulling off their skates or waiting for the cloakrooms (though even clearer sign you're in Russia: choice of different styles of skates).

To make it worse, Jennie lost her key in one of the cloakroom queues as she was trying to retrieve her bag. So there we were, on our knees on this disgusting, filthy floor, surrounded by a forest of skate-clad legs, looking under benches and shovelling around the muddy plastic bags that seemed to accumulate there, sweating like nothing after 2 hours of skating. Anyway, finally, somebody found the key by their foot, and we escaped. We vowed never to return, but actually, I'm going back next week [I went back, my ankles hurt, we left early. However, here's a photo of the miraculously empty hire that day - entirely more pleasant.]





After, 10 or so of us went back to Jennie's for one of her vegetarian-food extravaganzas. She lives near a metro station called 1905 Street - a reference to the attempted revolution. As with most stations in the Moscow metro, its has some pretty cool design features, in particular the signs that let you know what station it is. I think the little sign above the station name is that of a crown being toppled.





Jennie and Mogs cooked at the party, and there was mulled wine, Soviet champagne and general niceness.




Look, Irene and Esther are enjoying the general niceness.




Oh, and Pietro, my flatmate, and I, had a great flatwarming at the end of January - we're Flat 29, Entrance 4, No. 56 Prospekt Mira. The sign is above our local metro station - Prospekt Mira. It means 'Avenue of the World', and it's where the Olympic stadium was built for Moscow 1980.

The flatwarming was already 4 months too late (we moved in October), but nevertheless it needed to take place. We shopped for supplies in an busy outdoor market as it snowed, and where the meat and fish simply lay uncovered and unrefrigerated as the temperature was already way below zero. He and his Italian friend thankfully handled all the cooking (if it was me, the party guests would have gotten pesto pasta).




The party started at 6 p.m. and ended at 11 p.m. as that's when our landlady, Olga returned, and it was in the flat's living room, which also doubles as her bedroom, that the party took place. We had guests from four countries, and an Icelandic viking. Kind of. He's a reenactor, and introduced himself as "Gunn," though it's really Vlad or something.




(Yulia and Alice are having fun at this point. Adela at this point, and only this point, was not.)




(Mogs reenacting a Celtic chin-grab move with Gunn.)