Moscow

Moscow turned out to be more of a surprise than I thought it would. After a week in St. Petersburg I got this notion of modern Russia as quiet, kind of slow paced, and generally nice. It's not that Moscow isn't nice, it's just much bigger, with lots of people, cars, noise, happenings and it's just so different from St. Petersburg.

Everyone was warning us about traffic, and I thought it would be just like traffic in, say, Los Angeles. Not really. One can seriously spend 2 hours trying to get somewhere while that same route would only take 10 minutes without traffic. I'm surprised that people aren't using alternate routes - perhaps there aren't any.

Curt is getting annoyed with how expensive everything is here. Me too. I'm just in denial - there's no point in thinking about it and spoiling the vacation. But indeed everything we have to pay for regularly is over the top - taxi rates, restaurant food, internet access at the hotel. However, if we weren't lazy tourists, we could use the subway (which is cheap and fast), eat simpler food - either by buying groceries or off the street prepared foods, and walking across the street to a cafe where WiFi is about $20 a month vs. $40 a day in the hotel. Just like anywhere else, tourists are paying much more than locals - think Hawaii.

I'm cheaper than Curt - I refused to pay $40 for Internet access and be hooked on my Outlook emails. Yesterday we found out that there's a PC in the hotel's atrium which provides free Internet access - and here's the new post. :) I wonder if Curt will be spending the next few days here or keep paying the insane rates.

Last night Olga and I went to drop off a present to her relatives who live in the outskirts of Moscow. I bet it would take us 90 minutes to get there by car, but the subway ride was only about 30. That was awesome. Plus you get to walk from the station to whereever you're headed.

We've been walking a lot here. It's fun and I really enjoy it. I've never been excited about hiking - it's too boring, while these urban hikes give you a lot of things to see, many options to sit down and have a cup of coffee or a glass of beer, and if you feel tired you can always take the Metro (subway) back. When we come back I want to set up these hikes with Curt, Allora and Olga - in the city - and see if it will be as good as here now.

One thing that is consistent between St. Petersburg and Moscow is how calm people are. Nobody is running, although Olga seems to think it's just our perception because we're vacationing. I like it here just the same. Generally I didn't think I would like it as much - we kind of went here thinking it would be good to just visit the place like we would go see Rome or Paris, but perhaps it helps to speak the language and be amused at how much things changed over the course of the past 15 years.