Sunday Fun in the Rain

A rainy Sunday and we are loving it.  We were able to sleep until 7:30, a record for us for the past week. We also managed to get to bed early last night after a lovely party at the apartment of one of the AAS principals.  It was raining to beat the band last night but we didn’t have to leave our building to get to the party. There were about forty people at this potluck, all from AAS. There was great food in great quantity and decent wines and lots of beer, the preferred drink of the youths. They also like to drink Red Bull with vodka, which is their answer to Irish Coffee. It was nice to meet more of the teachers and to get to know some of the support staff in an informal setting.

This morning Cindy ran and I walked and it started to rain like crazy. I found shelter under an awning of an apartment building and Cindy was semi-protected by large trees with great canopies, but both of us were wetter than we wanted to be. It let up after only five minutes and Cindy ran home while I got some fresh bread for breakfast. We decided that our adventure for the day would be to go to the Euro Mall and look for a belt that Cindy needs.  This is a huge, very European mall directly across the street from the train station that serves Kiev and Eastern European countries. The Metro got us there in just under six minutes and we wandered around the mall looking at all the high-end stores and wondering who can really afford to shop there.  As well seasoned international travelers, you would think that we would have looked up the Russian word for belt before leaving the house, but it didn’t happen. We had to go to about four stores before Cindy could find a belt small enough for her.  I glanced around at all these skinny Russian women that look like they just left a modeling job and wonder who these belts were made for, but then I see an equal number of plump babushkas and realize that they are the market.

Once Cindy had found the perfect belt, it took another twelve minutes to pay for it.  There were no lines, just a lot of service intolerant staff.  There were four young ladies behind the cash register and they didn’t have a clue as to what they were doing. It was really hysterical to watch this farce, one kept looking under the counter, like there was someone under there that she needed to consult with about this huge sale of one belt. Two others were enthralled by something on their cash register computer, while the fourth kept running the barcode reader over the belt like a wizard incanting a spell.  Service is not something that comes naturally to Russians.

The Kiyevsky Rail Terminal is an architectural gem.  It is on the Moscow River and affords great views of the city. Large fountains and gardens surround it and the inside looks like a cross between a grand cathedral and a French rail station. There is even a bit of a French influence at the entrance to the Metro. It looks just like the Parisian Metropolitain.  There is a picture of it that I took with my cell phone at the online version of this blog or as an attachment to this. You can even see one of the Seven Sisters in the background.  

Moscow Metro

You can see for yourself how magnificent this place is by clicking on this link.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiyevsky_Rail_Terminal

After all of our shopping we found a little – well, a very large - café that had Illy coffee and had a delightful espresso macchiato to celebrate our successful shopping spree. On the way home we took some time to admire the fantastic mosaics and murals in the Kiyevsky Metro Station. There must be about fifty of them all over the place, truly amazing for a Metro station.  I’ve placed a few photos at the online site.

Detail of Mosaic in Kiev Metro

Kiev Metro

 We got home before it really started to rain again and dropped off our stuff and took care of a few odds and ends before heading out again, this time confined to the neighborhood. We went to the market to get Cindy some teatime things.  She wanted to be able to make tea in her office without having to trudge down four flights of stairs, so we got her tea bags, cubed sugar, UHT milk and some cookies - you can’t have a wet without a dry, or so my mother always said.  After our quick shopping, we walked over to the German Beer Hall, which is almost connected to the market and had a lovely little Sunday lunch.  Sunday lunch is a big tradition in most of Europe, but it doesn’t appear to be that big of a deal here. We were one of three couples in this cavernous hall, but that didn’t translate into superlative service. We did have a lovely German lunch, with Cindy opting for the smoked salmon and potato pancakes, while I had the Nuremburger wurst, which was really fried weisswurst, served on a bed of mashed potatoes with peas, fried bacon and fried onions.  I washed mine down with a lovely Munich lager and Cindy had a small glass of dark beer.  It was all divine.

We are home now and in for the day and getting things ready for our shipment, which we have been assured will be delivered tomorrow at five thirty.  We sent all of our stuff more that two months ago and even though Cindy made a detailed inventory list, we are still sure that we’ll be surprised at some of what we sent and some of the things we should have sent. I can always bring things we forgot back here to Moscow when I go to the U.S. in late September.

From CC:  The so-called perfect belt is an odd muted shade of green, but with a gray pantsuit it will be better than brown!  Now that we’ve looked up the word for belt, what we really need to learn is, “how do you say ___ in Russian?”  Actually I have a link and just learned that phrase, a bit late – somehow Russians just cannot figure out what you’re asking when you want the Russian word for something, even when you’re holding the thing in your hand and pointing at it (this has happened to me before).  Two clerks in two different stores spoke some English, and both times when I asked, “what is this called pa Russki?” (at least I knew how to say “in Russian”) they turned the belt over and tried to read what it said (leather, I believe) and then they tried to read the price tag, and we kept pointing at the belt and trying variations of “what is the name” “what do you call it” “ how do you say it” – and they had NO CLUE what we wanted to know.  ?!?!   One finally said, in perfect English, “We don’t understand each other.”  You got that right!

Ciao, Cindy and Wm