Moscow
by Anna Potoczny

Tell a person that you're going to Florence and you'll hear the response, “oh, that's such a romantic city!” Tell someone that you're going to London, you'll probably get responses like, “Oooh, I'm so envious!” But tell someone that you're going to Moscow and all you'll hear are comments like, “isn't it awfully cold there?” and “for god's sake, WHY?!”

Would it disappoint everyone to learn that there is no reason why not to go, and more than enough to make you want to stay there forever? Moscow is a city where the extraordinary becomes just the norm and the mundane can become an adventure.

When I first arrived in Moscow over five months ago the driver that, thankfully, was waiting for me at the airport took me to what would become my home for the next four months—which is to say, a castle. I lived in one of the seven Stalinist skyscrapers, a gigantic building that featured huge numbers of Communist hammer and sickle symbols, as well as a healthy population of mice and cockroaches (though none in my room, thank god). Gulag prisoners built the skyscrapers so that Stalin could show off Communist might and every time I came “home” I felt an amazing connection to Russia’s history and people. Perhaps I could get a similar feeling by living in the Tower of London, but that route is hardly feasible, whereas living in one of the Stalinist wedding-cake buildings is possible for students, tourists, and citizens alike.
My first full day in Moscow, when I finally got past the feeling of, “Oh, my god, I’m in Russia and I don’t know if I can handle this,” I ventured out in search of toilet paper and an internet connection. I asked for directions from the babushka on my floor, only half of which I understood, and promptly got lost. After wandering around the outskirts of Moscow (Moscow State University isn’t really in the center of the city, though not far from it) for over two hours, I found: about a dozen stray dogs, an outdoor market of food and home goods, the nearest subway stop, “mjod man”—a man selling containers of honey on the hood of his car, one of the two permanent circuses in the city, and two women walking around drinking beers even though it was the middle of the day, besides the internet café that eventually became a daily stop for me and everyone I knew. In other words, I found enough people and things around me that proved just how different Moscow really is from my life in Ohio, and I couldn’t have been happier.
Once I mastered the metro, I found that there is absolutely nowhere you can’t go in Moscow, but that no matter where you are, it will take you at least thirty minutes or an hour to get where you want. Within just a month I managed to visit all of the must-sees, which left me time to see everything that I really wanted to see, not just what I felt I should. Of course I visited the Kremlin—the wall itself is beautiful, but going inside is a bit over-rated, unless you’re church-happy or like to fantasize that you’re in Putin’s place, working there. A visit to Lenin is altogether too short, but seeing the dead leader of Russian Communism is a sight that you don’t really forget. There are always a number of rumors running around in regards to Lenin and a couple of the current ones are that it's not really him, but a wax figure lying there and that his next monthly suit change will be to dress him in an Adidas track suit. St. Basil’s is gorgeous on the outside, but cold, dark, and clammy on the inside. Red Square is just plain amazing. The Tretyakov Gallery is wonderful for it’s collections of paintings by Vrubel, but seeing as I prefer 20th century art, the New Tretyakov, with its Maleviches and Petrov-Vodkins far surpasses the older museum. The Bolshoi Theater (bolshoi=big) isn’t really that big, and it’s not that comfortable, but it’s worth every second to see a ballet in the city where “fat” ballerinas can make bigger headlines than the president.
Of course, once you see all that, what else could there be to do or see in Moscow? Years’ worth of stuff, let me tell you. I personally tried to average one theatrical performance a week, be it ballet, opera, symphony, the circus, the puppet theater, a concert, or a skit show. Every performance was the most amazing that I had ever seen, except for all of the others, of course. Better yet, combine a few of them—the most talented individual who I saw was the puppeteer who performed the entirety of the opera Rigoletto by himself—both men and women’s parts; as both human and puppet. And he did it really well, no less!
Besides doing my best to get a handle on the arts scene, there is no dearth of places for the more decadence-oriented. Bars are somewhat infrequent, mostly because the beer that you can buy on the street is so good, cheap, and potent and you can drink it right outside, that there’s no reason to go to a bar. As for clubs—well, there’s something for everyone. My favorite happened to be a place called Vermel, which played more Russian music than any other place in the city, as well as anything from Elvis to Zorba the Greek. And at 5:30 a.m. when it closed you could come out of the club tired, drunk, and happy and look across the Moskva River to see the Kremlin and St. Basil’s—an absolutely magical sight.
What of the people in Moscow? I discovered that there are three types of women in Moscow: the healthy, normal-clothes kind; the straight-off-the-cover-of-a-beauty-magazine kind (enough of these to make us normal girls feel awkward); and… the babushkas—the scary old women who seem to make a living out of terrorizing the rest of the city and who generally have some combination of skin diseases and poor dental hygiene. I practically became superstitious—if a babushka crossed my path, it would no doubt mean something bad was about to happen because she’d most likely shove into me or reveal her hideous, witch-like mole in my direction or spit at me or something like that. *shudder* They still give me nightmares. And as for the men—well, but they were…. men—no particularly weird or intimidating categories here. Some of them will remain my friends for life and some of the men couldn’t be creepier if they tried. A good rule of thumb, though, is to stay away from any man in a uniform, for fear that he would ask to “look” at your documents and charge you a fine for some imagined problem. Authority figures, in general, are to be avoided, since like people everywhere, the Russians love to wield their petty bits of power.
The four months that I spent living in Moscow and visiting St. Petersburg, Suzdal, Vladimir, and New Jerusalem, all in all, was about four years too short a time to be there. And what could explain my feelings toward the city, than that Moscow is where my “dushá”—my soul—is.

        
The Lenin Library                                                     Security Guards