July 31. Seven Trips.

I go out when my couch surfer goes to work and get back home when she is back too. I write in my favorite coffee place, caffeine doesn't make up for flawed inspiration, then I buy myself a cellphone and call my friend Ann. We meet in front of a shopping mall and I am sorry I am too late. I must have lost a lot of weight because she immediately notices my straw appearance. It's no big deal: on our next meeting I will have lost a lot of hair. We hang out in a park and talk about the past year. I learn we've not changed much, from the outset. Change still in the phase of enzymes. Ann surprises me by taking me to a genuine German beer place for dinner. I've seen a "Bierhalle" in Irkutsk, the Russians seem to like it. We share a plate of Bratwurst and three glasses of good draft beer.

July 30. Moscow.

Early arrival in Moscow Kazanskaya station. Walk around that station looking for the internet. O how dependent I have made myself. Don't swear. Buy a cup of hot water and sit for a moment outside the station building in the drizzling rain, observing three women putting a raincover on a pram. See the long line at the metro ticket window. Buy a ticket to the Lenin Libary and finally find a coffee place where I can connect to the internet. Sit on a wooden chair with a sore ass for many hours. Finally I get my blog updated and some writing done. I spend the whole day in "Le Pain Quoditien", my favorite place in Kamergenski street, close to the Red Square. They have internet and I can contact my couchsurfer. She lives with three friends in a flat southeast from the city center. We have a beer together and I sleep well on the floor.

Kiev #1. мистер снек.

The trainride was comfortable, and the other three guys on the bunk beds in my compartment were very friendly. They offered me some cold chicken for dinner. We spoke in some kind of Russian-English that I came to like as the train rushed to the Ukrainean border. We went to bed, only to sleep a few hours. The border crossing was not spectacular, but weary. Instead of being haressed and arrested by some Russian special forces, highly trained to recognize foreign travelers who don't register their stay or have other irregularities on their paperwork, and take them in to squeeze some good money out of them. Didn't happen. A friendly Russian lady just took my passport and gave it back after ten minutes, nodding that everything was fine. My fellow travelers congratulated me 'officially' and welcomed me to the Ukraine. After another hour however, the Ukrainean border control wanted to see my id, too. As I handed it to them, with a kind smile as always, one friendly uniformed man became suspicious, and looked to my photo and me, slowly nodding his head, then signaling me to come with him, to his colleague who was to give a second opinion. So it went through my head "what if they don't recognize me? What if I turn out to be a different person than the guy in the passport? But he was me, wasn't he? Yes, but he couldn't proof it. And the passport guy looked much younger than I did, too. So they'd take me to a cold prison cell, connect me to strange equipment and make me very sad."
...Fortunately, this colleague said yes, that's him. To cut the story short: if you travel to the Ukraine with an old passport (without fingerprint id) make sure your picture looks like you. Shave yourselves, for example, because that was of course what I had forgotten to do, and my ridiculous tourist beard gave the highly trained border guard a hard time in comparing me to my photograph.

So, Kiev. The climate was cool upon my arrival at 5am. Fortunately, we found a cafe where we had some breakfast. Then we parted, and I walked around the station, ate an apple for 1 griven (about 10 eurocents; the griven dropped during my stay), and went to the cafe again to write. The waitress would not allow me to sit without drinking more coffee than I could endure, and wanted to send me out. I gave her a concise English lecture on moral code and general hospitability, the coffeehouse rules and a codex of courtesy principles every human being should obey, which of course was buried unattendedly in the cafe rumours. I thus let it be, and went outside.

The morning grew older, and I decided to take the metro to the center. There are only three lines, and the system is similar to Moscow, so I felt comfortable with it right away. I bought a blue chip to enter the system (price: 2 griven; a few weeks ago it was 1/2 griven. Anyone remember the last fourfold rise in public transportation fares in the Western World? Exactly). I got off near the Maydan, the central square, in the most expensive shopping district (all the fancy names were in the shopping windows). It had a touch of Paris, I felt. Anyway, my backpack began to feel heavy, and I stepped into мистер снек (mister snek) to have a sandwich and write.

Moscow #3. A Tsar Park and Stalin Towers.

My last day in Moscow had come; the train to Kiev was already booked (thanks to Ann!) and I had opted to see some more things in this amazing city. My original plan was to visit some cities of the golden ring, north east from Moscow, such as Suzdal and Vladimir, but I decided to skip that this time, due to the weather condition. But I'll be back...

First I took the metro to Tsarinskaya, a large park of the tsars, located a few miles south of the Red Square. It was very impressive and wide. Many Moscovites came here to walk with their children and it was peaceful. A handfull of classicist buildings were scattered in the huge area of the park, and I also enjoyed them. Inside there was an exhibition about Marlene Dietrich, which I skipped. I had lived 2 years within one block of her birth place, so it would have been interesting. But my Russian was still very poor.


After that I went to вднх ("vudinga"), another metro station where an array of pompous Stalinist buildings attracted some tourists like myself. I gazed at the monument for world's first astronaut, Yuri Gagarin in 1961, a bent thin concrete obelisk with a rocket on top of it. I walked through a gate resembling the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, but less sophisticated, and entered a typical Stalinist pyramid. I was surprised to find Disney and Pixar figures in front of it, and a shopping mall inside. I ate a blin (pancake) and wrote a couple of pages on a cup of bad coffee.

Mascha, my new host, cooked a very tasted rice-meal with seafood. I went to bed early...

... and woke up early to go to Kievskaya station, where my train to Kiev would leave. I sat down in a small cafe and took out my notebook, just as always. The intake of some coffee resulted in the output of a few pages written, but after an hour or so, the lady began to ask me to leave since I sat without consuming anything for too long. I ate some meat dish; it tasted not bad. I had a hard time ordering it, even after studying the menu I had to guess what I was going to get, but that was funny too, in a way.

I moved to a more luxurious place opposite the station. In a mall of several storeys with glass facades and coffee bars on different levels, I waited for Ann, who came to say me goodbye. After a good conversation we wished each other good luck, and she accompanied me until the train compartment, in accordance with Russian tradition. She could tell by their faces that my company for the night were friendly people. She'd been right about that, I found out later.

And so the train to Kiev left the station...

Moscow #2. Great Art Collections.

The next day I visited the Pushkin museum, where I saw another vast collection of European Art. Especially the Dutch floor caught my attention, and in front of Rembrandt's Old Lady I just had to spend several minutes. This canvas is just so great!

After the visit of this remarkable collection, I met with Aleksey and Ann, and we went to a nice bar, where wine and some Russian dishes accompanied a nice conversation.

I spent a few days in Moscow, and wrote most of the time, so I can be short here. I had a great time, got to know Moscow life because I lived in a flat with two very friendly Russians with whom I could speak about literature too. I read Jack Kerouac on the road, and wrote a couple of pages. I remember a huge pretty luxurious shopping mall, and I understood that in this city most wealth of Russia is concentrated indeed, and I didn't even see the real upper end diamonds and sportscars.

But I had promised myself to "do" some more culture, and so I went to the Tetryakov gallery one of those days, the other big museum in the capital, which has a reknowned collection of Russian impressionism. I wasn't aware of this the time I entered the museum, and was surprised several times when I saw the works of Perov, Schedrin, Sakrasov, Sunikov, and others. I compiled a list of my favorite paintings, just like I did in the Hermitage - so if you want a visible illustration of my taste, I'm sure the depths of the world wide web will provide it.

щедрин - sleeping Endymion (1779)
C.ф. щедрин - arbour coverd with vines (1828)
C.ф. щедрин m- terrace on the seacoast (1828)
Perov - blind musician
Perov - the snow-maiden
Perov - portrait of Dostojewski
Sakrasov - the rooks have come (1871)
Sakrasov - country road
Aivakovskty - black sea (1881)
Repin - taking a rest (1882)
Sunikov - portrait of Syrokovska as a child (1888)
M.A. Vremel - demon seated (1890)
Ivan Tserevich - grey wolf
Nesterov - girl by the pond (1923)
Ulyamov - Chistye ponds (1900)
Serov - portrait of Derwitsch with child
Serov - girl with peaches
Korovin - Boulevard des Capuccines

It was interesting to follow the development of impressionism throughout the 19th century. I could do it together with Olga, a fashion designer and quite a work of art herself.

Moscow. Puh-ha!

I arrived savely in Moscow. And met many nice Russians.



The first night I stayed in a hostel, for a change. Ann had given me the adress, and it was - for Moscovian measures - very cheap (650 rubles). I took a good shower and had some coffee, before walking around in the center. Ann showed me a luxurious shopping mall, the Red Square and the Kreml, from there I walked through the park, where I saw the monument of a soldier with an eternal flame and very stiff guards. In a supermarket I bought some cheap dry Russian bread because my roubles had gone out, and biting on it I crossed a bridge over the Moskva, with a view of the Kreml on the right, and the most important Russian Orthodox church on the other side. I walked on, shared my bread with a beggar on the way, passed the Bolshoi theater opposite Revolution Square, and went back to the hostel. Enough for a first impression of this giant metropole.


There was a German guy who started talking about dubious business deals of selling Champion's League tickets on the black market and erotic affairs he had with a girl in Russia. He kept talking and talking about it, and I kept nodding dimly. I wish I had the presence of mind to look him straight in the eyes and say something like "yes and yes and I have been in a brothel too where they offered me booze and coke and pussy all for free o yes so what is the big deal tough guy tell me you think yur something yo i'm not yur daddy" but I don't have that type of presence of mind. Anyway, there also was a Nigerian man who was a relieve because he was silent and made a serious impression.
I got a little bit hungry and cooked myself some couscous other guests had left there, and put in chopped black olives, salt, pepper, soy sauce, sugar, dried persil. And it actually tasted pretty good. @Survival Manual: how to cook something out of nothing, a recommendation for philosophers because a) they tend to think about nothingness and b) they tend to see nothingness when they open their wallet, if they have one.

That night I updated this blog and saw on the internet (cnn.com) what had happenend in Mumbai. I kept staring at the live coverage, in a remembrance of 9/11 until 4 am. Then I went to bed.

Working days until Moscow.

The next couple of days are not so interesting for the reader, I guess. I just wrote and wrote. In the morning at the kitchen table, in the afternoon in a cafe, and the last day in a huge bookstore. That is a nice story though. Max helped me to buy a train ticket to Moscow online. The train left late at night, and I had to spend my last day in St Petersburg waiting.

But just as if some angels from a Hermitage canvas had followed me, there was a 24 hour bookstore at the other side of the street, with a cloakroom, with good coffee, and with a live music act. This was a promotion concert and an interview with a electric violin player, who really got some tough electronic beats from a drum computer and he let his fiddle howl through my reading of Hemingway. Not exactly my pair of shoes, but I enjoyed the experience. My writings grew a few pages that night, and I was content when I fell asleep on the night-train to Moscow.


One more thing. On that train I met a group of football supporters, who were on their way back from St Petersburg where they were at a game between Juventus Torino and Zenith St. Petersburg. They were supporters of Juventus, and members of its Russian fanclub. O how they loved Italy and the handsome football players. I sent an old Laura Pausini song, la solitudine, via bluetooth to a mobile phone.