GwDGwDGwDGwDGwDGwDGwDGwDGwDGwDGwDGwDGwDGwDGwDGwDGwDGwDGwDGwDGwDGwDGwDGwDGwDGwD T h e G R E E N Y w o r l d D o m i n a t i o n T a s k F o r c e , I n c o r p o r a t e d Presents: __ __ 77777777777 888888888 _____ ____ _| |__| |_ 777 888 888 // | \ |_ __ _| 777 888 888 || ____ | || | | | | | 777 888888888 || || \ / | || | _| |__| |_ 777 888 888 \\___// \/\/ |____/ |_ __ _| 777 888 888 |__| |__| 777 888 888 777 888888888 "A Semester in Russia, Part 2" by Yancey Slide ----- GwD: The American Dream with a Twist -- of Lime ***** Issue #78 ----- ----- release date: 05-25-00 ***** ISSN 1523-1585 ----- [Yancey Slide, Head of GwD Undercover Operations, spent the spring semester of 2000 in St. Petersburg, Russia "studying." This is Part 2 of the declassified version of his account of the trip. Part 1 is gwd78.txt. Part 3 will be released as soon as it has been cleared by the GwD Council.] ...CONTINUED FROM gwd77.txt March 2 We saw Mozart's Requiem tonight. It was, in a word, absolutely incredible. That's two words, but one wouldn't cut it. The orchestra was the Mariinsky house orchestra, one of the finest in the world, and the choir was unmatched. The entire experience was beautiful beyond compare; the Mariinsky is one of the most beautiful theaters anywhere in the world, and the performance lived up to the backdrop. Afterwards, we went to the Idiot for coffee and camaraderie, and talked until the wee hours. Walking home from the metro, the sky suddenly exploded into a snow flurry, and everything was white and peaceful in the space of a minute. By the time I got home I was covered in snow and my beard was icing over. It was glorious. The entire evening was a perfect example of the best the country has to offer. March 4 Spent the day at Pavlovsk, one of the palaces around the city. It's about an hour and a half away from St. Pete by bus, and very pretty countryside. The palace was, well, just like all of the palaces, I guess. They start to blend in after a while; big and pretty and yellow. Lots of the imperial-age buildings are yellow, for no apparent reason. The grounds the palace sits on, though, were spectacular. It's a few acres of meticulously tended parkland, mostly forested with a few clearings and a handful of springs and streams and bridges. There are a few clusters of statuary scattered across the grounds, including one circle of the Greek pantheon that really impressed me. Small arched bridges and private chapels just past fields with tiny, frozen waterfalls made some of the best scenic backgrounds I've ever seen, and a recent snowfall was the perfect touch. March 8 Leaving on a night train, don't know when I'll be back again. Well, actually, I'll be back after spring break. After a few days in Moscow, we'll be flying to Hurghada, Egypt. I can't wait. Spent the night between Petersburg and Moscow, an entirely and disappointingly uneventful trip. I love the train stations. The interior halls are enormous caverns, bigger than airplane hangers and lined with little shops and kiosks with huge busts of Lenin in the center. Better than it sounds. The trains were much better than the ones to and from Tallinn: not too hot, and no border checks to wake us up in the middle of the night. March 9 Got into Moscow fairly early, and we went to our hotel (Hotel Belgrade) for breakfast. It was, I think, the worst food I've ever eaten. Truly abysmal. Unfit for human consumption. Bleagh. The rooms were pleasant, but we made a careful note to never, ever return to the cafeteria before we set out for Red Square. Overall, I'm definitely glad that I spent the semester in Petersburg, but I certainly liked Red Square. It's a rectangular cobbled city square, lined by St. Basil's cathedral, a museum opposite, GUM (an enormous shopping mall) on one side and Lenin's tomb on the other. Lenin's tomb was open, so we had to go through three layers of security - one to get into the square itself, one to get into the tomb, and a final check inside the tomb from some very attentive guards. There was less security at Sobchack's funeral, even with all of the dignitaries attending. The mausoleum is actually fairly tasteful, on the outside at least. The building is marble, I think, mostly black with red trim and a huge sans serif "LENIN" above the door. There are stairs on the outside leading to the roof; Red Square is lined with review stands and benches for the old parades and holiday marches, and apparently the big shots would attend on top of the crypt. Inside, visitors go through a couple of short hallways, and then around and in front of the big man himself. Our tour guide called him "Plastic Fantastic Lenin," and it fits, except I think he looks more like Styrofoam. He looks pretty artificial, regardless. He lies in state on a bier of filigreed iron and crushed velvet, flanked by two iron spears with heads worked into a hammer and sickle. It's impressive, but a little tacky. A lot tacky. Definitely an interesting experience, though. We all disagreed on it; some people thought it was respectful, some didn't, some thought he looked peaceful and natural, and some thought, like me, that he looks like he was stuffed like the birds in Psycho. We all agreed on one thing, though: it would be really cool if he were animatronic and waved at tourists. Or chased them. On a serious note, there's a serious debate over what to do with him. Removing him wouldn't be unprecedented, since Stalin was yanked from the selfsame crypt after deStalinization, but there's just not that much anti- Lenin sentiment around. It's hard to know what to do with the guy, I guess, especially since he's such a tourist draw. Afterwards, we went right behind the mausoleum where there is a small state graveyard for heroes of the Soviet Union. Big Bill Haywood is there, which was weird, and so is Yuri Gagarin. I was very excited to see his resting place, but a little frustrated. He only has a small plaque to mark his grave (which he may not even occupy, according to our guide), while Derzhinsky has a marble bust and a prominent spot with the leaders of the USSR. Only premiers and state figures who died in office are buried there, so Krushchev is absent but Stalin has a big plot and, of course, big wreaths and floral displays even in the dead of winter. It was disturbing to say the least. The rest of the square is wonderful, though. Basil's is smaller than I expected, but just as beautiful. The snow was fairly heavy, and I got some great pictures of the cathedrals and museums through the fall. GUM was just like any shopping mall, really, except one store had a display of an enormous model of St. Basil's worked entirely in the medium of Legos, complete with little Lego men sweeping snow from the cupolas. I was truly moved. We also saw the statue of Marshall Zhukov, the general who chased the Nazis out of Russia, and some other minor landmarks. After the excursions, we went back to the hotel for a much-deserved nap and a quick nosh at McDonald's, which was less interesting than one might expect. Dan, who apparently is something of a fast food gourmand, was thrilled that the hot apple pies in Russia are fried, and not baked. Personally, I thought they tasted disgusting regardless, but hey, McDonald's is McDonald's the world round. We rode the metros for a while, saw some of the city (the old Soviet Foreign Affairs building was spectacular. A huge, gothic skyscraper stamped with hammers and sickles and spiked with ornate towers and annexes designed, in Dallas' words, to tell people "This is not a place where your problems will be solved. Go away.") and finally wound up in the TGI Friday's outside Red Square for dinner. Nothing really remarkable about it, other than the fact that we ate there every day that we were in Moscow. Not terribly native of us, but it was good and relatively cheap and there were no beets or smetana- intensive dishes anywhere on the menu. March 10 Toured the Kremlin and the Armory today. The Kremlin tour was mostly a few cathedrals and landmarks. The only really spectacular sight was the first cathedral, which was covered on the inside with iconographic art. Literally not a single inch of space was left blank, and the patchwork effect was as interesting as it was beautiful. The Armory was a little more distinctive in terms of history, though. It's a state museum that, despite its name, isn't entirely devoted to military things. The first big exhibit was of courtly dress in the tsarist period, and was built around a huge glass case showing model after model wearing enormous embroidered and intricate dresses and men's jackets that must have weighed a ton. One of Catherine's dresses had a train four or five meters long. There were also displays of old arms and armor, from swords and shields to muskets and mortars. The most interesting exhibits were the diplomatic gifts, though. These are small but hideously expensive works of art and cultural significance whose only purpose was to be given to the ambassadors of foreign countries to show how powerful and magnanimous the giver was. They still do it today, but with less style. The British gave Russia a gold and marble lion three or four feet tall that must have cost a sizable fortune, but are clearly outdistanced by Finland, which gave one of the tsars a golden model of a castle the size of a writing desk engraved with each individual brick and loophole. Conspicuous consumption, indeed. After the Armory we had free time again, and we wandered the city for a while until we felt the need to eat. We found a good Chinese place, but as we were about to order Dallas noticed that the numbers we had thought were the portions measured in grams were actually the prices measured in rubles, and way to expensive for our blood. So we beat a hasty and totally undignified retreat to TGI Fridays, where the same waitress from the day before took our orders and condescended to us in English. Afterwards, we wandered over to look at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and wound up throwing snowballs at each other for half an hour on the outskirts of Red Square. It was a good sendoff to Russia for a while. March 11 We were up early for our much-awaited pilgrimage towards the sun. Eight there were, but only six sallied into the snow that day - Dan, Molly, Justin (sans beard), Virginia, Michelle and myself all bundled up for the last time in a while for the (supposedly) short trip to the airport. Megan was leaving a few days after us; she hadn't come to Moscow since she was entertaining her boyfriend in Petersburg and Claire, Justin's girlfriend, was flying from her studies in Italy to meet us there. We lugged our bags from the airport a block to the perehod (an underground street crossing), another block to the metro, and through the "crotch blaster" gates (Instead of turnstiles, the Moscow metro uses posts with sensors in them - if you pass the sensors without slipping in a valid card, barriers that seem timed and sized perfectly for slamming into some poor bastard's crotch come shooting out. It's funny when it happens to someone else.) down the escalator onto the trains and back out again and to another line and back out again and up a few flights of stairs at Airport station. We were tired and a little cranky by this point, but we had hours and we'd been assured that it was only a few blocks to the airport from the Airport metro station. Well, it was more than a few blocks, it was nearly a dozen. We finally stumbled up to an "Aero Vokzal" ("Air Station") and were ready to celebrate and/or collapse when Justin noticed that it wasn't even an airport. I'm not sure what it was, since it definitely had something to do with air travel, but we had to hire a couple of taxis from there to get us to the real airport. There's nothing worse than a cab driver who knows you're stuck. They wanted fifty dollars a cab to get us to the airport; by contrast, I can get from my apartment on the island across town to Smolney for about forty rubles, which is a little under two dollars. We haggled them down to twenty-five a cab, but they wouldn't go lower and we didn't have much of a choice. Megan told us later that if we'd gone to the right metro stop, we could have taken a marshrutka for fifteen rubles a piece, a little over fifty cents. Bleagh. When we finally got to the real airport, we were almost late but not quite. We got our tickets from the travel agent's representative, then settled in for the long, long, long wait. The train stations were so well run and efficient and clean and pleasant and spacious and convenient that I guess I expected the airports to be a little less, well, insane. The Russian service industry thrives on a kind of subtle yet monomaniacal misanthropy, and Aeroflot is no exception. We waited in line for the first security check, only to sail through the actual check by simply saying, "I have no money." We waited in line for passport stamps (Although Justin entertained everyone in line by having a truly bizarre argument in Russian with a five year old in front of us. "You are a pair of pants!" "No, you are a soccer field!" "Me? No, you are a horse!") We waited for the second security check. We did a lot of waiting. Once we finally got through it all, however, the inner airport was quite nice. We picked up a few things at the duty free shop, including an enormous three or four liter bottle of vodka that Justin dubbed "Captain Boris." (We never finished the captain, since we didn't really drink that week - somebody on the housekeeping staff at the hotel got a really nice tip.) The airplane itself was another nice surprise. Aeroflot international flights are definitely up to international standards. It was a little cramped, but no more so than an American flight, and there was a definite lack of fire, chaos, disease, or barnyard stock onboard in spite of all the stories I'd heard. The flight was uneventful, but when we landed, all of the Russians broke into applause. I guess it's a Russian thing. Hurghada was wonderful from the very first moments. When we stepped off of the plane, it was warm outside, but with a very pleasant cool breeze. They loaded us onto a bus for a fifty-meter ride to the terminal, where we joined a crowd of approximately every other person on Earth in a room the size of a small lecture hall. A man from "QT Tours" met us, showed us where to stand in line, and walked us through the rest of the normal airport stuff. QT Tours is a subset of Vann Tours, which is a subset of Partners Arkos, the company we got our tickets from. Or maybe they're subcontractors, I dunno. All I do know is that it's odd for a company that specializes in giving tours to Russians to call itself "QT Tours," since the letter "Q" doesn't appear in the Cyrillic alphabet and Russians have kind of a hard time with it. The larger group we were with was mostly Russians, business and mafia types. Very few Americans or British ever come to Hurghada, since Western carriers don't fly there. Many Germans and Russians, so we couldn't forget our language studies even on vacation. Having an American passport was a plus, though, since it got us waved through Customs without even a second glance. They never even bothered to ask us if we had anything to declare. When we finally finished in the airport, it was dark and downright chilly outside. We walked to some busses that were supposed to take us to the hotel, and had to fend off the most avaricious would-be porters I've ever seen in my life. I was walking towards the rear, not really paying attention, when I noticed that my bag was suddenly a hell of a lot lighter. When I looked up, another guy was carrying one of the handles. He wasn't trying to take it, really, just taking some of the load off. Still, living in Russia makes one a little leery of strangers, so I pulled the bag back. He rattled something off in Arabic, and actually started to try to pull the bag away from me. When he realized that I spoke Russian (I use Russian with strangers whenever possible, since I don't like standing out as an American), he told me that it was his job to carry bags "without pay." I didn't really believe him, but it took me a few minutes of tug-of-war to get my bag back. It's just as well, since "without pay" is apparently Egyptian confidence man cant for "without pay until we get there, at which point I will shout abuse at you until you give me at least five dollars." That's what happened to Michelle, but she's tough. She just shouted back until the poor sod left her alone. Picked the wrong girl to pick on, I guess. I did get taken for a ride, though. When we got to the busses and loaded our bags, a man I thought was the driver walked up with a huge wad of money in his hand and said, "Dengui pazhaluista," or "Money please" while pointing to a ten dollar bill. I figured it was the fee for the bus - actually, he told me it was the fee for the bus - so I paid up. I noticed Dan yelling at me, but couldn't hear what he was saying, and the clever bastard just pointed at him and then again at the money, telling me that I was supposed to pay for Dan, too. Since he had paid for visas I owed him anyway, but fortunately he stopped me before I gave that bastard more than another five. Of course he had been shouting that the busses were free; I'd like to think that rather than being stupid and getting robbed I paid fifteen dollars for a priceless lesson, but I'll be damned if I can think of what that is. Don't give money to strangers, I guess. I can't say it worried me much - we were in Egypt, and that was all that mattered. Egypt. [The original of this document can be found at http://chaos.greeny.org/~yance/] ----------------------------------------------------------- GwDweb: http://www.GREENY.org/ GwD Publications: http://gwd.mit.edu/ ftp://ftp.GREENY.org/gwd/ GwD BBSes: C.H.A.O.S. - http://chaos.GREENY.org/ Snake's Den - http://www.snakeden.org/ E-Mail: gwd@GREENY.org * GwD, Inc. - P.O. Box 16038 - Lubbock, Texas 79490 * -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- "What a distressing contrast there is between the radiant intelligence of the child and the feeble mentality of the average adult." - Sigmund Freud -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- -+- F Y M -+- GR33NY LIK3S mash3d p0tat03s MORE THAN FIVE YEARS of ABSOLUTE CRAP! /---------------\ copyright (c) MM Yancey Slide/GwD Publications :BRING THE NOIZE: copyright (c) MM GwD, Inc. : GwD : All rights reserved \---------------/ GwDGwDGwDGwDGwDGwDGwDGwDGwDGwDGwDGwDGwDGwDGwDGwDGwDGwDGwDGwDGwDGwDGwDGwDGwDGwD78