Moscow

Its been a while since we've had the chance to write updates, but Mariah and I are doing well and have made it through Russia and Mongolia and are now doing some R&R is Beijing for the next week. We have some catching up to do so let me start out with our time in Moscow.

We moved quickly through Moscow and in three days covered :
The Kremlin, St. Basil's Cathedral, The Red Square, Lenin's Tomb, and enjoyed a River Cruise to the University where there is an amazing lookout point.

All of these sights were interesting and are well documented in our photo section.

One interesting cultural tidbit we learned about is the Russian wedding tradition...after the bride and groom go to the court house to get married, they tour the city in a limo to a number of traditional sites to take photos with each other and their bridal party - drinking and making merry all the way. So, in St. Petersburg, Moscow and Irkutsk, we saw dozens of brides and grooms everywhere we went (check out the photos).

Our most enlightening experience while in Moscow, however, was the morning we spent with Dave and Fumiyo. To set the scene...we arrived in the morning with the Vodka Train tour group after a night on the train from St. Petersburg to Godzillas Hostel, probably the worst hostel we've stayed at (but that's not important - could have been worse). After arriving, Mariah called Dave & Fumiyo to figure out how to meet with them, and it turns out their flat in Moscow was less than one block from our hostel.

We first need to thank the Holley's for introducing us to Dave and Fumiyo while they were visiting California this past March. Dave is currently the Russian correspondent for the LA Times and Fumiyo is a "jack-of-all-trades," writing for journal publications in Japan and a freelance photographer. Between the two of them, they have lived and documented major events in Eastern Europe, Russia, China, Japan and have a combined wealth of knowledge and experience we were eager to learn about.

They treated us to a home cooked breakfast (a nice break from PB&J) and we sat around their dinning room table discussing Russian politics, history and the future of our increasingly global society. Dave was extremely patient and filled in the gaps from our secondary school Russian history lessons and brought us up to speed on the rise and fall of Communism in Russia, the current government under Putin, and Russian foreign relations with the US, Europe, Mongolia, and China. I won't go into the details now, but via email we would love to discuss in more detail our thoughts on Russia if you are interested. Our conversations with Dave and Fumiyo, combined with the conversations we had with our young Russian guides throughout the country about their perspectives on the current government and the future of their country/world, makes for interesting discussions.

All in all, we found very optimistic youth that are excited for change and eager to jump on growing opportunities and to adopt new ways that are more in line with Western European sentiments. In some ways, they are just waiting for the older generation of politicians - who spent most of their lives in a communist country - to transition out so the next generation with new ideas and great energy can transition in. In general, we were surprised to find that Russian cities had a very European feel to them- the shopping, style, music, technology, etc. felt very similar to our own.

On another note, we did get a chance to visit the Vodka Museum in Moscow, which would have been a failed endeavor (the museum was one room with some poor diagrams and a few posters on the wall) if there wasn't a complimentary shot at the end of the tour. :)

As far as Moscow night life...our guide, Natasha, took us out to one of her favorite bars in Moscow. The evening was nice, but the highlight was on the walk back to the hostel at 3:30am when we stumbled upon the grand opening of the new Harry Potter book (opened at 3:00am to coincide with the UK opening). It's incredible how some things are so universal - like the world's obsession with Harry Potter! This was a life saver because the next day we departed on a train to Irkutsk, which is roughly 3 days and 4 nights through the middle of Siberia. But after two days of solid reading (I disappeared from civilization and didn't put the book down), I was forced back to Crime and Punishment, a little contrast from Harry Potter.

One more sidebar...as requested by some of you, I did talk about literature with our local guides, Natasha in Moscow and Lera in St. Petersburg, and also Fumiyo. There was a general consensus that Russian literature and poetry focus more on how you say something, not what you say. This can mean long, laborious literary passages and descriptions that go on and on, which is one of the reasons why Crime and Punishment feels like a chore to read.

More to come soon from Mariah about the rest of our Russian adventures...

Until Next Time,
Eric