Impersonating a Carburator

Photo: Reining family game night champions.

Under Taylor's urgings, we have reinstated Family Game Night. At first, Larry suggested teaching the boys to play Bridge. This met with the same enthusiasm as me suggesting we all pitch for Family Cleaning the Apartment Night.

Since I hadn't anticipated this revival, our board games are half a world away in storage in Arizona, where they are probably slowly melting. There are no American board games in Moscow, so that left Cranium, the one game that made it into our shipment. Unfortunately, the long sea voyage had not improved its condition and the "sculpting" clay was hard. This was okay as long as you were trying to do a rock or a lump, but useless for anything else.

We divided into teams by age, which was a trifle unfair. With 25 years of experience communicating by looks and half finished sentences, Larry and I handily beat Taylor and Alec. We had life experience on our side as well. Alec had to draw a laundromat and Taylor, of course, couldn't guess it because he'd never been in one. Taylor did make it up with his masterful pantomimes, including sucessfully impersonating a carburator and a dead Ronald Reagan.

Larry and I were very good at almost every category. We knew the Titanic killed a lot more people than the Hiddenberg, I could correctly spell renaissance and Larry drew a curve with his eyes closed which I correctly identified as a monkey. In fact, our ONLY problem was the Humdinger where we were required to hum or whistle a specified song. Neither of us can whistle well. Every song we hum inevitably sounds like "In the Godda Da Veeda," even though that's never the right answer.

After beating our two bright and talented sons, Larry and I triumphantly sang "We are the Champions." If that's not enough to get Alec and Taylor to try Bridge during next week's family game night, I don't know what is.

Potter Predictions

Photo right: Two of Moscow's expert Harry Potter predictors.

Within three days, Alec, Taylor and I ALL read Alec's new Harry Potter book. Besides being obvious Harry Potter fans, the three of us are also great at predictions. Here's what we see for the final book:

Snape is not a death eater. It was Dumbledorf's wish that Snape kill him to prove Snape's loyalty to Voldermont. When Dumbledorf pleaded with Snape, he was pleading for Snape to kill him, not spare him.

Part of Voldermont's soul is hidden in Harry. That's why they are linked in so many ways. Of course, the only way to kill Voldermont is to kill all the pieces of his soul. That's why...

Harry dies in the final book. But he wasn't really the chosen one anyway. That honor belongs to Neville Longbottom, who will kill Voldermont.

The last book will probably be out in about 18 months, but remember you heard it here first.

Slipping Away

Moscow has a lot of expensive designer fashions sold in high end boutiques. They also have a lot of cheap clothes for sale held up by old ladies outside the metro stations. It's everything in-between that's difficult to find.

So I buy most of my clothes in the U.S. I've gotten pretty good at ordering clothes on the Internet for my visitors to haul over. I stick to brands I buy a lot and know fit well. For me that's Jones New York and Talbots. This summer, I branched out and ordered a DKNY skirt at TJMax.com.

The size was okay. I have another DKNY skirt I bought in New York in April so I knew it would fit. I love the style, a below-the-knee white guaze flowing skirt. It looked so carefree. My problem is that it is almost completely transparent, a little factoid I couldn't gleam from looking at the photo online.

My mother bought it to Russia in her suitcase along with Taylor's Waffle Crisp cereal and I first tried it on for her. "Cute skirt," she said. "But you need a slip with that."

A slip? I hadn't owned a slip since Taylor was born. Did they even sell slips anymore? I checked everywhere I went in Moscow, from the little kiosk selling pantihose in the pedestrian underpasses to the expensive department stores. No slips.

I did see a similiar type skirt in a store window and discovered their suggested way of dealing with the carefree sheerness. They emphasize it by wearing brightly colored bikini underwear. Trendy, I'm sure, but if I started dressing like that the family would have me committed.

My slip hopes heightened when we watched a DVD of the movie Mr. and Mrs. Smith. There was Angelina Jolie in a half slip! (How'd she get that? Did the wardrobe department have to make one for her? )

I went back online and found a store that sold slips. They costs more than I paid for the skirt. Of course, with no more handy houseguests coming to Russia, I couldn't pick it up until December, which is not the optimum time to be wearing white guaze skirts, especially in Moscow's winter.

Finally, I checked with my friends who gave me the very sensible idea of having a liner sewed in. I took my cute skirt to the tailor on New Arbat, pantamiming my problem. They agreed to do it, but I would have to bring in the fabric. So now I've gone from hunting for the elusive slip to looking for liner fabric. First I need to find a somewhere that sells fabric. Then I will have to guess in meters the amount of lining I'll need. After that, it's two more trips to the tailor to drop off and pick up everything.

Not such a carefree skirt, afterall.

Harry Potter and the Chocolate Factory

Alec and Taylor had their private tour at the Red October Chocolate Factory today. This small group tour required an amazing number of e-mails and phone calls, especially as I had to recruit at least three other expats to make up the minimum group size. But all that effort was worth it just to get this picture.

The boys came home jazzed, not only from being able to wear the attractive factory visitor attire shown, but also from eating their weight in chocolate.

Afterwards, we went to a large bookstore. Alec actually found them on an Internet search of English language book stores in Moscow and e-mailed them about the availability of the new Harry Potter Book. They emailed back yesterday they had 40 English language ones in stock and would hold one for Alec.

We found the store fairly easily. It was in the middle of book sellers central. Their English language section only featured children's books and everything ever written by Anne Rice, Sidney Sheldon and John Grisham. Okay, maybe we don't have Russia's great tradition of literature but I'd hate to think that these are the best examples of English literature. Unfortunately, there were NO new Harry Potter books.

We tracked down an English-speaking worker, who assured us that ALL the new Harry Potter books were sold out. Of course, being an experienced expat, I was politely insistent that they were holding a copy for us. About 15 minutes later, they dug up one from somewhere just to get rid of us.

Ka-Boom

Photo right: Alec, Taylor, Mark, Larry and Jeff not getting blown up inside the Seagram's Building in New York City.

I have an instinct for picking vacation sites that tend to get blown up. There was Kusadasi and Istanbul, Turkey where we went to June and New York where we went in April. Now there's Cairo and Sharm-El-Sheik, where we planned to go in October. (Don't look at me on the London bombings. It is not on my travel agenda!)

One of the best perks of living overseas is the opportuntity to travel. We're actually paid to go places twice a year. While I won't be taking the Greyline Tour through Iraq, neither will I sit at home all year in Moscow (which has also been the site of terrorist bombings.)

I have long been interested in Egypt. I've watched everything the Discovery Civilizations Channel had to offer on the subject of pyramids and pharohs. For me, Egypt is the trip of a lifetime. And with all the wonderful places I've had the opportuntity to visit so far, that's saying a bunch. On the other hand, no trip is woth risking the safety of my husband and son.

Taylor, who very much wants to go, pointed out that he crosses the street every day in Moscow. This truly puts him at risk, so I can see his point.

Photo left: Taylor, not being blown up, at the Topaki Palace in Istanbul.

Being Crafty

Photo: Don't look for me to start collecting Gzhel!

I took a break from touring with family to go to the AWO meeting. Many of my friends were planning a trip the following day to the factory town of Gzhel. This is where they make blue and white pottery of the same name. I am practically the only expat woman I know who fails to see the charm in Gzhel. It looks like the kind of stuff you'd see at a garage sale for 50 cents.

The AWO meeting featured a short presentation by one of the local charities the group supports, but most of the time was devoted to networking. That day, I made a deal to purchase Sarah's Kitchen Aid mixer, got an invitation for a private tour for the House on the Embankment and learned about a french bakery. In return, I added a few names of people who want to go on the chocoloate factory tour I'm organzing next week and gave someone else information on St. Petersburg B & Bs. AWO is sort of our substitute for the Yellow Pages.

Afterwards, Sarah and I looked for matrioshka dolls along Old Arbat Street. Sarah is in the throes of "leaving forever" shopping. Of course, having seen thousands of matrioshka dolls in the two years she's lived here, she wouldn't be happy with any simple tourist souvenir. With my input on the quality of painting, she bought a 30 piece, 2.5 foot tall one for $420. It would cost at least three times that in the U.S.

All too soon, she will be back in Houston, where her major purchases will be washing machines and lawn mowers.

Photo right: 30 piece matrioshka doll set.

Trains, Planes and Boats

Photo: Chase, Betty, Taylor, Nancy, Larry and Alec at Peterhoff, a summer palace.

Like most people in Moscow, we took the train to St. Petersburg. It's the same cost as the one hour flight, but you have to allow at least three hours for the hassles of getting to the airport, moving through all the lines and various checkpoints.

The train is five hours, but it's 15 minutes to the station, where you show your ticket once to the conductor outside your carriage and immediately board. Inside were wide assigned seats with plenty of leg room and you could walk around whenever you wanted. There were no inflight videos, but you get a nice view of the very green Russian countryside.

Alec and his buddy, Chase, were also heading to St. Petersburg via train. They were coming from Helsinki, Finland, where the night before they took an overnight ferry from Stockholm. After their months of independent travel, I was a little concerned about incorporating them into my tightly-planned tour for six in St. Petersburg. They ended up opting in for everything but breakfast. Much to my mother's concern, Alec, Taylor and Chase, usually chose to sleep in the extra hour, missing the free breakfast buffet of yogurt, toast, hard boiled eggs and "made-to-order omlets" which turned out to be scrambled eggs. Instead, the boys rolled out of bed about 10 minutes before our 10 or 11 a.m. meeting time, ready for whatever fabulous site was on that day's agenda.

It was interesting to me how different St. Petersburg is from Moscow. It was more gracious, both in architecture and because the cars didn't really try that hard to run you down. Like Venice, it is built on canals. But, after three days of seeing historical treasures, we were so tired, we dozed off on our Russian-narrated canal trip.

Moscow has a hustle-bustle feel with people rushing everywhere, literally crashing into you without a passing glance back to where you are now sprawled on the sidewalk. While both cities are doing a lot of renovations, St. Pete seems to be at least five years behind Moscow. They have lots of empty old buildings, even in the center of town. Rents are about half of Moscow's but the crime is much worse. Our guide confronted a pack of gypsies closing trailing us on a busy street and they fell back as we clutched our valuables to our chests.

Because of the huge tourist industry, there seemed to be a lot more people who spoke English. However, they are doggedly hanging onto their communist-era sullen service with restaurants that told us our order (which was directly off their menu) was too complicated and stores which had a three-step system of payment I hadn't experienced since the old Friendship Store in Beijing.

Most tourists are here for two days only, coming in on huge cruiseliners, and rushing from place to place. Our guide told us most people had only 60 to 90 minutes to see the entire Hermitage Museum. This is about the right amount of time to devote to the Rembrandt section of the Hermitage, leaving you no time for the other 90 percent of the "highlights."

The summer days are long here. It doesn't get dark till about midnight and it starts to get light again several hours later. While we crossed to walk on the shady side of the streets, the locals all stayed in the warm sun as if trying to store up fuel for the long, dark winter ahead when the cruiseships and the tourists disappear with the sun and the locals once again have the city to themselves.

Our Eyes Are Full

Photo: The Hermitage.

Going to St. Petersburg is like going to an amazing gourmet feast where there are hundreds of delicious delicasies, each meticulously presented. No matter how wonderful everything looks and tastes, after awhile you just get full.

From the stunning Amber Room to the beautiful St. Issac's Cathedral to the endless parade of Palaces, St. Petersberg was a feast of art, architecture and history.

The Hermitage, of course, is the crown jewel. While it is billed as the best museum in Russia, I think it must be the most fabulous museum in the world. (Only the Louvre might give it a run for the money.) We left after four hours and barely hit the highlights. But as my mom said, "My eyes can't hold anymore."

To compensate, I bought about a hundred pound coffeetable book on the Hermitage which Larry cheerfully lugged back to the hotel for me.

Crystal Clear

Crystal in Moscow is relatively inexpensive and most of my friends here have a huge supply. Carol, a shopping icon in Moscow expat community, uses her sauna as a crystal storage closet.

The best place to buy crystal is the town Gus-Krustalnyi, where they have several factories. Sara, who is moving back to the U.S. soon, was ready to make one last trip there to stock up. I was able to catch a ride with her.

Shopping in Moscow almost always requires mass expenditures of effort and a Gus trip is no exception. It takes about four hours to get there by car and the market closes at noon. So we left Moscow at 6 a.m.

Sara had a big shopping list. In addition to sets of white wine, red wine, champagne, cordial and highball glasses, she also bought about 30 different crystal assessories. As I am not leaving Moscow and have no place to store this stuff anyway, I was content just to look. (Even if I HAD a sauna, I'd use it for saunas.)

I did buy a nice crystal bowl for my mom and a small crystal covered tray (US $4) for Taylor. Tay, the typical spoiled expat teen, will appreciate his after school snack being served on crystal.


I fell in love with some cobalt blue trimmed wine glasses which I recognized as a knock-off Baccarat pattern. I was ready to buy them until I found out they were $30 each. While the locally-made stuff is about $3 to $4 a stem, these were imported from Germany, apparently to be sold in the middle of nowhere in Russia.

Sara filled up several heavy bags which were then dutifully carted off to the car by her driver. We moved quickly as we only had about two hours before the market closed. Did all these vendors have pressing plans for their afternoon? They couldn't stay open another hour or so?

Someday I will be leaving Moscow. I'll be back to Gus for my stocking up, probably with some new American in town who will watch in wonder as I fill up my bags.

No Mediocre in Moscow

Photo: Betty stuck outside the Kremlin.

I live in Russia. That means I live with arbitrary rules, unnecessary delays and incomprehensible processes. Most times, I accept it as a way of life. But occassionally, something will set me off screaming, "Does EVERYTHING here have to be so impossible!"

Yesterday, I tried to take Mom to the Armory Museum at the Kremlin. I knew from past experience, that the entrance lines were murderous in the mornings with huge tour groups. So we arrived about noon. There are several ticket offices outside the Kremlin, but only ONE where independent travelers can get tickets. After waiting in this special line 30 minutes, I made it to the window, only to be told that we couldn't purchase tickets now. We had to come back in an hour and stand in an even LONGER line.

The Kremlin Museum is the number one tourist attraction in town. Yet, it opens and closes several times a day and is only accessible by private tourists for narrow specific hours. As I impotently stomped out the office, I was approached by a tour guide who offered to get us tickets and take us inside with no waiting.

Her price seemed high and I told her to give us a minute. It's hard to do math when smoke is still coming out of your ears. She came back a few minutes later while I was still comparing her offer to the standard private guide cost. She offered to drop her price about 20% (which was about the going rate) and we accepted. She marched us straight into the Kremlin to the museum, where she got our tickets and conducted a thorough and interesting tour. Dazzled by the fabulous collection of unique historic treasures, I forgot how frustrating I get with this place.

There's no mediocre for me in Moscow. I continually swing back and forth between great experiences and bad experiences. No wonder, I sometimes feel a little off balance.

Market Mania

Photo: At the Izmalava Market

One of my favorite places to take visitors to Moscow is the Izmalava tourist market. This market has everything from old ikons to laser keychains of the Kremlin.

When my sister was here, she bought linen napkins and an amber necklace. Her husband bought a Soviet era magazine on buildings and their daughter got a Russian porcelain doll with a fur hat.

Looking at the huge variety, Brenda wondered aloud what our mom would buy on her upcoming visit. The answer turned out to be: everything. Yesterday at Izmalava, Mom bought linens, amber jewelry, post cards, nesting dolls, lacquer boxes and a fur hat. It was nice to be able to take her somewhere in Moscow with affordable stuff.

She wore her new amber jewelry out to dinner last night, meeting some of our friends. Dinner out in Moscow is not so affordable. Seven of us split five entrees, and we averaged 1.75 beers per person. No one had dessert and the bill was $80 each. On the other hand, the restaurant did give a complementary vodka shot with lemon sorbet and the ladies (all non-smoking Americans) were gifted with pink boxes containing cigarettes.

Moscow and Mom

It's fun to see Moscow anew through the eyes of my visitors. My mother is visiting me for three weeks. (I have already gotten in trouble with her for mentioning her exact age in a previous blog, so let's just call her a senior.)

In the seven days since she's arrived, we've: taken a city tour, ridden a ferry boat down the Moscow River, toured the Kremlin Palace, walked along a bit of both New and Old Arabat Streets, bought strawberries and cherries in the local produce market, explored Novodichy Cemetary, and taken a day trip into the countryside.

She was so exhausted, she insisted on taking a day off to wash her hair. (I honestly thought we were taking it easy.)

I especially enjoyed our day trip outside of Moscow. Each week, the International Women's architecture group rents a mini-bus, gets a guide and sets off to explore a different place outside of Moscow. We weren't very international this week. While there were a couple of Japanese women, a Brit, a Russian and a Norweigan, most of us were Americans, including six Conoco-Phillips wives. One of them had lived in Ponca City, my mom's home.

This week the group went to Polenovo's home on the banks of the Oka River. A well-known Russian landscape painter at the turn of the century, Polenovo designed the house himself, as well as most of the furniture. The house is filled with things he collected from all over the world, his paintings and the painting of his famous friends. The collection is amazingly intact.

This is because after the communist revolution, the peasants let Polenovo keep his home and possessions. He had a long history of building local village schools, supporting local theater and holding children's Christmas parties. The moral of that story is to be nice to the peasants as you never know who may be swept into power.

The place was made into a museum in the 1939 and it has always been under the control of a close family member who could be counted on NOT to loot the place, even when the government didn't pay them.

We ate our sack lunches on a hill, enjoying the fresh air and lovely view. While the trip wouldn't be in the top ten things to do in Moscow, it was a pleasant day out of the city.

Fast Times in Fine Dining

Unless you are a big fan of pickled everything, Moscow food is awful. This is why it is traditionally consumed with mass quantities of vodka. When eating out, we almost always choose foreign cuisine, unusally Georgian, Indian or American.

One of the best American restaurants is Goodman's Steak House. Decent Moscow restaurants are uniformly expensive. (This is what happens when one lives in one of the most expensive cities in the world.) Steaks at Goodman's run about $25 to $30. That's just the steak. French fries are $4, dinner salads are $6 and a small bottle of water to wash it down runs about $4.

The first time Larry and I ate there was with our friends on a Friday night. I had tried to order the double pork chop, which had been highly recommended, and was told it took 50 minutes to cook. As I was with a group of 10, I switched to lamb instead.

It turns out, it took 90 minutes to get our entrees. When the food finally came, Diane decide her steak was not what she ordered. She sent it back and told them to start over! This move resulted in her husband forever forbidding her from ordering steak in a group again.

Despite the delay, which are not unknown for this place, Larry really enjoyed his steak. So for his birthday, Larry, Taylor and I made a return visit. Not wanting to unduly delay our dinner, I ordered the pork chop as soon as the waiter handed us the menus. Larry knew he wanted the ribeye again so he also ordered immediately. Poor Taylor was left to follow suit.

"Now, how long is this going to take to get our entrees?" I asked. We weren't in a hurry, but I didn't want to spend another 90 minutes waiting for our food. We had appetizers and got our dinner about 40 minutes later, which is probably a record. As usual, the food was excellent.

Yesterday, after a morning touring the fabulous Kremlin Palace with my mom, I decided we should try Goodman's $12 business lunch specials. We met Taylor at the metro and walked past the American Embassy to the restaurant.

They brought us complementary appetizers of bite-sized hambergers with little American flags in honor of Fourth of July. (Mom was wearing white tennis shoes and a front pack, and we had requested seats in the always empty no-smoking section, so they knew we were Americans.)

As luck would have it, we got the same waiter we had Larry's birthday. As he delivered our soups or salads, he reported to me that Tay's hamberger would be ready in 12 minutes. He decided I must dine with a stopwatch. As I was busy savoring the most delicious mushroom soup ever made, he could take his time.

Happy 2nd Of July

The American Chamber of Commerce in Moscow holds the largest American Independence day celebration outside the U.S. About 20,000 people attended this year, including us. They had fireworks, lots of food, plenty of activities including a huge play area for little kids, and live Rock and Roll music. What they didn't have were Americans.

We were hungry when we arrrived so we had bought dinner at the TGI Fridays booth. There were no tables available so I pulled out my large "genuine Pashmina" shawl from Turkey and spread it on the grass. We couldn't see the main stage from where we were sitting, but we could hear the American Ambassador to Russia addressing the crowd over the loudspeaker in both Russian and English.

Then the National Anthem was played. We brushed the hamberger bun crumbs off our laps and stood up. Out of the hundreds of people in my line of site, we were the only ones STANDING. Something was wrong here.

American expats tend to be rabidly patriotic. (There's something about the day-to-day exposure to OTHER systems of governments that makes you a direhard flagwaver, regardless of how you feel about the current U.S. president or American policies.) If people weren't standing, then you had to assume they weren't American. I guess that explained why the signs were only in Russian and the food tended more toward shaskliks than hambergers.

Taylor had told me that ALL of his friends had left town. Apparently, he was right. This left only the ambassador and our family in Moscow to celebrate. This Fourth of July was going to be a bit different than the events of my childhood. First of all, the picnic was being held July 2 since July 4 is a regular work day. There was no homemade icecream or watermellon, although Baskin Robbins had a booth. And it was so cold we had to wear jackets.

One of the big draws was UMATHURMAN, the most popular rock band in Russia. We crowded the outdoor stage with all the young, excited Russians. My 75-year-old mother, Betty, was bouncing around with everyone else. I guess she had to travel halfway around the world to go to her first rock concert. But after the first songs, we left and she got her blood pressure checked for free at the American Clinic booth while Larry and Taylor wandered off to checked out the new Chryslers. We walked by the children's section where Taylor gave us strict orders to avoid making eye contact with any of the clowns.

The picnic was held on the extensive grounds of the Kuskovo Estate in Southeast Moscow. It was built by the richest family in Russia hundreds of years ago. After awhile, we walked away from the activities and strolled through the lovely grounds alongside a man-made lake. We stopped at the huge manor home where Mom snapped our photos, saying she was going to tell everyone back in Ponca City that THIS was where we lived in Moscow. (They'd never find out differently!)

We decided not to stay for the fireworks which wouldn't start until dark, about 10:30 p.m. On the way out, we got a free helium balloon and Larry showed us how to breathe in the helium and make weird sounds. Taylor thought this was hilarious. (But then he'd been spending the afternoon and early evening hanging out with his parents and grandmother so I think he was ready for a laugh.)