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One Day in Moscow: Hello Old Friend

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After our lovely time in Volgograd, we had to return to Moscow in order to get into Eastern Europe (to Kyiv, Ukraine). If you look at a map (or the map above how bout), you’ll notice that it’s a sharp backwards turn to go Volgograd-Moscow-Kyiv (it’s the part of the map that is like an A) and kind of silly when Volgograd to Kyiv directly would save hours and hours and make a lot more sense. But guess what’s happening on that route? CRIMEA. Can’t go through there! Ever since the Russian Federation annexed Crimea (in March 2014), pro-Russian protests in the region escalated to armed conflict between the separatist forces and the Ukrainian government. Thousands of people are fighting still and it’s very dangerous. Russia is, as uzh, very cagey about everything bad it’s doing, and it deny its presence in the region almost as often as it confirms that ‘military specialists’ are there. Russia is real trouble and we didn’t want to reward its terribleness with more tourism money spent there, but we had no choice so back to Moscow we went. 

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WELLLLLCOMEEEEE WELCOME TO MOSKVA
It was a pretty long train considering how close Volgograd and Moscow look to each other when you’re looking at the rest of the freaking inordinately enormous country. But the overnight train still was about 18 hours! Faaaack this country is TOO BIG. We didn’t get to buy out the other beds in our cabin this time because it was WAY too expensive to do that, like incredibly so, much more than we would ever consider and more than it cost to do it at other points in our trip. We found out soon enough why buying out the cabin was prohibitively expensive: IT WAS THE NICEST TRAIN EVER! omg! Just like when we trained to Moscow the first time, so I guess only the nicest trains go into Moscow. Holy crap, you can’t even. I couldn’t even! It was so nice I almost cried. I guess when you are on a train route named #001 you can expect it to be special. 
The seats/beds were a shiny, super clean red leather (assuming it was pleather), and everything was spotless. There was a very new TV over the window and we watched some SHIT that night! Like really really bad movies, the kinds whose rights are cheap enough to obtain for a Russian overnight train, that kind of bad. There were outlets by every bed, along with personal safes! Whaaaat! A meal was included in the ticket (nothing vegan but picked at the sides, but still, surprise free food!). There were toothbrush kits and slippers and WATER BOTTLES. It was heaven. Luckily, no one joined us in our cabin until the middle of the night. I mean not SO luckily considering we were already asleep but hey it’s better than having strangers around while we were hysterically laughing at the TV. 
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I CAN SEE RUSSIA FROM MY WINDOW
I can’t remember the name of one particular terrible movie we watched, but I do remember how I felt watching it, because Z took a picture of me hysterically crying. From laughing. It’s the most embarrassing picture of me ever so I am not going to share that with you but I will share the picture of the thing I was crying at:
Yeah it’s a baby in a slightly too big snowsuit, and I thought it was the funniest thing I’ve ever seen in my life, apparently, because I cry-laughed so hard I couldn’t breathe, and for a while too. Z was flabbergasted, he (like most humans I am sure) just could NOT understand what I found so funny. I don’t know it was just amazing! Maybe I was just delirious from being on an actually nice, clean train. No it’s just adorable too.

We arrived in Moscow the next morning pretty well rested, but not very clean. We needed to shower! Problem: We were only in the city until our next train that evening. We had only the day, so we did not book any lodging. Unfortunately, the train station we arrived in in Moscow did not have showers. So we found a nearby hostel, maybe 10 minutes walk away, and asked if we could pay to use the showers. We offered to pay the price of a dorm bed, which you’d think they would be happy to accept, right? The money for a bed but without actually losing the bed? Just ten minutes of water? It was SO difficult to get through what we actually wanted. JUST A SHOWER. THAT’S IT. No room, no bed. OH my god we waited by the front desk for AGES while the very young very notsmart employees discussed what on earth was happening. Luckily someone finally got it and agreed so we showered, one at a time, the other guarding our luggage in a hallway. It was super awkward but better than being dirty. Of course our towels then had to be packed up wet which is gross but we didn’t really need them anymore! 

Finally clean, finally ready to explore Moscow once again…except we didn’t really have anything left on our list! We had seen all the museums and important buildings and sights and stuff a few months ago! I know, months – can you believe it? It was kind of like coming home after all the crazy world we had seen, albeit a home where you don’t feel safe sooo. Anyway, what should we do? First order of business? GUM. Of course! Remember that’s ‘goom’, not like the stuff you chew, but the most famous Russian department store in Red Square. It’s super fancy with all the luxury stores but they do have the best, cheapest ice cream (for Husband) and that’s the first thing he wanted. And I was eager to go to the main floor’s fancy grocery store and pick up a few fun ingredients to bring home (we were at the point in our trip when we could buy and lug around souvenirs!!). Unfortunately, a televised event was happening on the main floor that day, so the grocery and well nigh everything on the main floor was cordoned off except for fancy people with VIP badges. Mad face.

We watched the happenings from the second floor landings for a while, bemoaning the fact that our fancy store was being kept from us. Or vice versa, really. But it was all worth it when the f-ing Von Trapp family started singing Russian folk songs. 
IT WAS THE BEST! So much fun! I would have joined them if I knew the folksongs and if it didn’t look so g-d embarrassing. I’m surprised Putin lets such gaiety occur in public places. This happened to be Rosh Hashanah (which OF COURSE I said all day was ‘Russia shana’ not that you could tell when speaking but hey now you know!) so I pretended it was for that. Merry New Year! 

My next order of business (my only real plan for Moscow) was to return to Fresh, the vegetarian cafe, for lunch. I was SO pumped for a big fun salad! Fresh wasn’t as good as I remembered, or as I had built up in my mind; after three months in central Asia I guess the dream of these amazing vegan salads had gotten too big to be matched by any reality. Still good, still good! 

We were really hungry and who knows when we would ever get back to Fresh or Moscow so we over-ordered as we do. We got this awesome salad with marinated tofu, sweet potato, goji berries and a seed and sprout mix, plus two burgers. I got the avocado burger which didn’t say anything about being one-sided bun-wise, but came without a top half. I was kind of mad but our waiter sucked so I didn’t say anything. Who leaves off the top bun? It’s not even open-faced just lacking. It tasted really great though. The cheese sauce was RG. 
We also had the BBQ burger, which comes with garlic mayo, banana chilies, and best of all onion rings! On the burger! (And also a top half of the bun.) We also got a side order of onion rings because when do you ever seen vegan onion rings? 
We also had a few juices and smoothies, which are fine at Fresh but nothing special. Way too expensive for the amount you get and not cold enough. But overall, it was a great lunch, the best in ages, and almost worth the time and money spent for this necessary backtracking. 

Across the street from Fresh is a fancy little grocery store that has a TON of vegan milks. They also have a bakery case and I saw that they had a vegan cannoli in there! 

As you can see, it says ‘raw vegan’ on the vegan desserts, including the cannoli. I was too excited in the prospect of an unexpected vegan dessert (and a cannoli at that!) that I momentarily lost my mind and forgot how disappointing raw desserts usually are. Ughhhhhh I mean it was fiiine but like, for a nut-and-date bar. I want to go to Philly, buy Vegan Treats cannolis (incredible), and go back to this shoppe and be like “I need to speak to the manager and the baker. Here, try these and learn from your terrible mistakes. Do not make them again. Also give me those cannolis back you only get a bite are you kidding me?”
After GUM and lunch were finished with, we honestly just walked around town all day! It was nice to not have to do anything in particular, although we felt a little weird not having a plan. And it was a lot colder than it was the last time we were in town! We had to wear all our clothes Joey-style. 
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We were gone so long it became fall! Moscow tries to butter you up with sights like this but then a foot away was a police barricade.
Well, we did have one thing on our list – buying souvenirs! Matryioshka, in particular – I had to get those Russian nesting dolls for everyone! This was indeed the best part of getting to return here, because this way we didn’t have to buy souvenirs at the start of our trip and carry them around for 3+ months! We did lots of location scouting, and there’s this tiny souvenir shoppe INSIDE a phone store right outside Red Square, and they have the cheapest matryioshka. There are tons of shoppes and tons of the dolls, but they are weirdly very expensive for how cheaply made they are. But they know everyone visiting Moscow wants them, I guess! 
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Could not fit this one into my bag but ohhh how much did I want to!!! You could fit inside this one! OMG YOU WOULD BE ONE OF THE NESTING DOLLS AHHH. (Don’t mind the closed eyes, it happens in 90% of my pictures)
I also bought hilarious chocolate that we found in a grocery store. Oh man it’s probably not that funny but we found it hilarious. It’s called ‘Plan B’ and I just love the idea of this getting confused with the abortion pill, oh my goodness. We picked the funniest one of the ones on display, because it was the funniest but also because it was accidentally vegan – the one with the picture of a working woman on it, and it’s TEQUILA flavored!  like to think they really meant to hammer home that working women who drink alcohol, ESPECIALLY tequila, should not have children. I also like the one with the woman searching for answers in the fridge, like ‘hmm maybe I shouldn’t procreate.’ Oh man this cracked me up. I bought the entire shelf to give to friends. I haven’t actually tried it yet but I will report back. 
I also got to enjoy my first ice cream of the entire summer! It was a Tutti Frutti (not sure if it was actually the same chain as we have all over the west or if Russia just was continuing its love of trademark infringement) do-it-yourself soft-serve kinda jawn and it was FRUIT SORBET so it doesn’t REALLY count, but still, it was a decent treat after months and months without ice cream. (Luckily, we were heading soon to the vegan ice cream capital of the world….) 
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I wanna say I got orange flavored and grape flavored sorbet swirls. I can say for certain that those are blueberries up top
So we had a pretty fun, really random single day in Moscow. It was fun to know our way around and remember things from the real visit, and to treat this day like non-tourists, just in it for food and shopping. It still had that weird vibe that I felt before, like it’s nice and all but we’re super being watched and/or controlled by state police. Moscow is a strange city to like because of all its political issues, but we do sort of strangely like it. 
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Bye, Red Square, it’s been real. (Real hard to get in because of the police barricades heyoooo)
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