After lunch on Friday at SUM (not GUM) department store - pastries, coffee and chocolate - I returned to the hotel to resume my writer-in-residence role while Gail and Sue headed out via the metro to visit The Pushkin House Museum. Apparently, this did disappoint: no information in English to tell you what the various exhibits were, and it seems much of Pushkin's furniture was never seen by Pushkin himself but was brought in to the museum at a later date - obviously not from IKEA. But still.
Their journey home proved eventful. Exiting a metro stop that looked closer to the hotel G and S found themselves on an unfamiliar street. Like sensible people they asked directions and were repeatedly told to get to the other side of the road. Not such a problem you might think but in this case the other side of the road involved crossing a six-lane racing track. (Remember Edie Murphy's mad dash across LA's 101 in Bowfinger? Something like that.) I have mentioned the traffic situation here before - you have to see it to believe it: no lane discipline, every car doing 80 MPH, squealing and honking as they go. In Sue's words, " ... the other side of the road was the distance from Putney to Ottawa!" They eventually made it back to the Savoy, using a series of underpasses.
The journey took 40 minutes but did not cost 1000 roubles.
Gail pondering on the truism: if the shoe fits...
If you haven't been to Moscow you won't know how huge everything seems - the buildings, the spaces in between the buildings, the distance from one end of a block to another are gargantuan; Red Square could be a small principality, it may even be the size of Monaco. Gail says we are in Big Land, and given that our tallest member of the team is 5 foot 5, you can see why we feel like Lilliputians. There is a strongly European feel to much of the architecture, very reminiscent of Scandinavian cities, like Oslo, Stockholm and Helsinki.- pale greys, faded yellows and duck-egg blues being the main colours of choice. Moscow is beautiful.
As you know, we took in the Creation - sadly, not Handels's - in the evening and then found our way to a very cosmopolitan street with cafes on either side of the walkway, full of people enjoying enjoying the TGI Friday experience (thank-goodness-it's Friday). We chose a Cafe-Rouge look-alike for dinner. No one seemed to be interested in directing us to a seat but there was a girl sitting at a table, who looked as though she was in charge, and she gestured around the restaurant giving us the impression that we could sit anywhere. As the evening progressed, and she continued smiling and nodding at us, it dawned on us that she wasn't an employee of the restaurant at all but one of us. We felt a tad embarrassed but what can you do when you don't speak a word of the language. As she left, she had to pass by our table, which was awkward because she was loaded with shopping, more specifically, at least three large boxes of shoes. Well, shoes break down all barriers and we were soon treated to a display of gorgeousness (or is that recklessness) from Lanvin, Stella McCartney and Alexander McQueen. Email addresses were exchanged, promises to meet up the next time we were in Moscow, and the lovely Galina went on her way.
We like Russians.
No comments:
Post a Comment