Scribe, ut possis cum voles dicere: dices cum velle debebis (Pl. Ep. 6.29)

Wednesday, September 28, 2005

Moscow Day Eight. Honey, Honey

We decided to finally go to St.-Petersburg. Hadar really wanted to and i didn't object. We are young, our stimulation levels go up very quickly and we had quite enough Moscow (we as a unit; i could stay in Moscow and explore it for many months more).

Olga told Nikita about the "Bass Factory" infamy. Actually she just said "We were supposed to see a jazz band, but they replaced it ..." and Nikita immediately replied: "Мерзавцы!" (merzavtsy), which is Russian for "Scumbags". Not a very dirty word for Russian, but not one that you'd expect a fourteen year old to say in this relatively innocent context, if at all. We all laughed.

In the morning we went to the Kolomenskoe park. The park is quiet and nice. Now it's almost in the center, but once it used to be out of town and the Russian monarchs wanted to build their dachas there. For some reason they never completed the building, but the forests around it are nice. I really wanted to see squirrels; i've seen a lot of them in my life, but Hadar never saw one in the wild. It took us some time, but finally we found one.

We hoped that we'd find something baked there, but all the food stalls sold meat. I wish i could say that it smelled good, but it didn't.

There was also a big yearly honey market. Hmmm, honey fair in September, why could that be? Surely the Jews have nothing to do with that. Anyway, there was honey from all over CIS: Kyrgyzstan, Tatarstan, Bashkortostan, Don, Adyghe. It was nice to see that they bring the flags of their provinces with them - good to know that someone actually uses those flags. The honey was sweet. The dwellers are pretty good at making you come and taste and want to buy. It's like Camden - as long as you're there with money in your pocket, you'll keep buying and buying unless you catch yourself, shut your ears and run away.

We bought train tickets to St.-Petersburg at the Paveletsky station. Hadar didn't like the restrooms there.

City of BG, here we come!

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