It’s a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood

I don’t actually intend to write a whole lot for this time around. Primarily, I just wanted to show you all some photos that give you a feel for daily life in Moscow. I do this for two reasons: 1) I’m really beginning to enjoy capturing the more ordinary aspects of our adventures here in the city, and 2) my brain is not functioning well enough to roll out an entire reflective entry at the moment. Plus, I know you all enjoy the photos. So here they are with little or no explanation. This first one (arguably my favorite from the trip thus far) depicts Joey squished in between some intensely Russian Russians in the metro several days ago.

After our balalaika concert on Thursday, we walked across a bridge spanning over the train station that hosts transit to and from Belarus. At night, the city often has this smoggy purple color. Moscow has barely any skyscrapers though, so you never feel too closed in.

A contemporary art museum a ways down from the Arbat is currently showing the work of Darya Dostal, an artist who works with composite photos and multimedia. This brick face image was included in the collection we saw, which displays the facades and arenas of Moscow in all of their bizarre (and color-enhanced) glory.

Various other blurbs I’ve written have probably  mentioned the metro more frequently than any other reality of the day-to-day here, but the fact of the matter is that transport via the Moscow Metro is nothing if not ubiquitous. I get on these trains (and see stations like this) at least twice a day. Often, we don’t wait on the platform any longer than 4 or 5 minutes. Watching people in the underground remains one of my favorite things to do. Which becomes obvious once I get giggly during rush hour–an experience that would make any Midwesterner either die laughing or die, period.

Dozens upon dozens of parks and walkways stretch through the city, both in the center and the outskirts. More often than not, the wide pathways are made of packed dirt and get plenty muddy once it rains for an afternoon. Lots of people here own dogs, but when they walk them, they let them off their leashes! The dogs also have no problem either running you over or tripping you.

Although giant swimming pools can be great, Christ the Savior Cathedral has recently been reconstructed since its original demolition during the Stalinist era. This cathedral is particularly enormous, but especially once we’re in the city center it’s not too uncommon to see two or three domed Orthodox churches from a single street corner. I this particularly like this picture because the a mother and her daughter (I’m merely assuming that’s their relation to one another) give the image a sense of scale. So yes, those doors are BIG.

Anyways, we are off to Saint Petersburg for a week as of Monday. GRINT has finally granted us a much-needed midterm break, not to mention a break from lovable, dirty Moscow and our grueling Russian lessons. I would imagine getting through that whole week in these tiny posts will be difficult. Until then!