Seeing EK

We’re staying at the Moskovskaya Gorka (Moskovsyaka Hill) hotel which is not (again, NOT) in the center of EK. Rather, it is in an area of residential flats. Yesterday, it looked quite dreary in the snow, to be honest, but today the sun came out, the sky was blue, and everything looks better!

Our hotel is really quite nice. The rooms are comfortable – monochromatic, but comfortable. The lack of chromatic variety in the room is more than compensated by some of the people we’ve seen coming and going in the lobby. Fashion is alive and well, even in mud season.

The hotel serves a hearty buffet breakfast. There’s something for everyone. These last two mornings there has always been a basket of hardboiled eggs, potatoes, cold cuts, cheese, pickles, some kind of porridge, and Russian delicacies like cottage cheese pie, pastries, kafir, blinni and sour cream. Blinni are like crepes, but rolled up; today they were filled with cooked cabbage (better than it sounds!) and yesterday’s were filled with raisins. Kafir is a sour yoghurt drink that we have yet to try. Also, very important, is the strong coffee. Each morning we’ve tried something new, so by the time we leave we’ll have covered all the bases for breakfast.

This afternoon we were met by our facilitator and driven around the city a bit. We started at the Town Pond, really a wide, shallow spot in the river that runs through town. There’s a nice park on either side, and in warmer weather we’re told it is full of people rollerblading or enjoying the riparian lifestyle. Today we saw a couple guys icefishing and fighting off the icy wind. Brrrr!

We then went to the cathedral built on the spot where Czar Nicholas II and his family (the last of the Romanovs) were executed during the Bolshevik revolution. The house where the event actually happened was torn down by Boris Yeltsin in the 90s, but in recent years a cathedral was planned, designed and built on the spot to honor the memory of the Royal family. A service was in process when we entered the building. In Russian Orthodox churches you don’t sit, but you stand through the whole service. People also do not come and stay for the whole thing. While we were there the crowd churned almost constantly. There was a small choir that sung the service along with the priest, and the sound was hauntingly beautiful!

We swung by a supermarket to pick up some supplies. It wouldn’t normally be a noteworthy event, but our expectations were way off on this one. I know that we’re well beyond the days where supplies were limited and you took what was available, but I didn’t expect to see so much variety. Anything we could have wanted was available. We had to get our bags (backpack and purse) sealed in plastic before we entered the store. Except for that fact, and that all the labeling was in Cyrillic, this could have been any supermarket in DC.

Alexey’s daughter met up with us and we drove out of town to the “official” line between Asia and Europe. The monument is in a park up in the Ural mountains; well, here they are really hills, but apparently up in the North the Urals really are mountains. We took some pictures at the monument standing with one foot on each continent. In just a moment a freezing wind blew up and it started to snow! As we were running back to the car, three other vehicles pulled up and a wedding party hopped out for pictures. The monument is a very popular place for newly married couples to visit because legend says it is good luck in the fertility department.

As we were driving around, people kept pointing out all the theaters to us. Before we leave this week we are going to try to see something, like a play, concert or ballet. Of course whatever we can see will be in Russian, so we’re hoping for a concert or ballet – they’re easier to translate in real time.

Tomorrow starts the business part of the trip. We present our dossier and wait to see what comes. Keep fingers crossed!