moscow to gorky

the train has just started lumbering off and i'm seated with k on a bottom bunk. we share a cabin of sorts, as platskartny is 3rd class and there aren't any isolated cabins. moscow has been a great experience for me, dinner/lunch with beer and wine, pasta or curry - not a very budget type of living eh?

deric, our host and filipino diplomat, has been extremely hospitable friendly and engaging. i've yet to meet someone quite as generous as him, for he opens his house and heart to those who step into his house. I don't quite understand how one is able to be so trusting - it's not naivety, it's that self-belief in the basic good of man that I find hard to grasp. yes I do believe, but at the same time, perhaps my ingrained asian reflex kicks in and I get a little paranoid.

just yesterday (11/6), after a most interesting experience in the banya (self flagellation with birch branches, near self immolation and an extremely low heart rate), we went to a vietnamese market with deric and kirsten, a canadian soon-to-be environmentalist.

it's a strange sight. on entering a carpark surrounded with rust brown/red warehouses, you see no sign of life nor any vietnamese words. enter a door, and it's like the matrix (well not quite, but, yeah. anyhow...). stores selling clothes, fabric, shoes, manned by asian people, smelling just like asia. unreal. and walk into the wet-ish market and you see catfish poking their moustached mouths to the water surface for air. pigs cut up into all shapes and sizes, kangkong (a type of watercress I think), instant noodles, fresh eggs etc. well I think they are, since they're covered with a thin veneer of shit.

beef pho, thick robust oily vietnamese coffee, fried prawns, another bowl of pho with prawn and i'm stuffed. we head to the ski slopes, and walk down to the river where we meet 4 out of 700 malaysian students studying medicine in moscow. and that's just 1 uni. the last time I walked on whitish gravel close to the river, was at mystic sea port. man... the company at that dinner will be missed.

we headed back up to see the INCREDIBLY HUGE Moscow State University, where a pipe is built in winter for snowboarding stunts. this university is really big. it's a single building and I think it takes a good 10 mins to walk from 1 end to the other. apparently the roads there are straight, and organising drag races are a convenient wink and nudge away (to the police, that is). we stopped and happily shot pictures like typical tourists, and headed to a monastery (whose name I forgot) where the Regent Sofia was banished there and her advisors were hung in front of her window to remind her that rebellion was not an option. talk about tree decorations. we waited for the lights to turn on before heading to a bridge opposite (kiev?) vokzhal. apparently a chechen warlord stayed close to that area before he got assasinated.

we were all feeling thirsty (weak excuse) but we headed back, where we had baltika number 5,6,7,8, tuborg and some other beers. the bad thing is, I can't really remember how the 1st beer tastes in comparison to the 2nd, and so I would wish for more beer. (yet another feeble excuse. and I don't want hear about using more cups to contain each individual beer). my pregnant cravings for hot doughy sweet things emerged, and there I was trying my best to make a pancake of sorts with no egg, no milk, no baking powder, but just flour sugar and water. the taste came close, but it felt more like flatbread. but I am a simple man, so I was happy then.

k's attempt at candid photography just got rejected vehemently by another passenger. the old lady sitting opposite us gently and sympathetically refuses to be photographed. so nice of her, that cute old lady. I drew a map to show her where singapore and malaysia were in relation to vietnam and russia.

as the powerlines undulate and run together with the train, I can't help but feel that moscow was a bittersweet experience, of Puffy, of creature comforts, of generosity and a slow but steady adaptation to the city. we're now headed to nizhny novgorod, formerly called gorky, and k remarked that dinner of bread nutella and bananas, as opposed to hot pasta and dumplings is going to be a disaster. oh well, one can't be sitting in 1 position for too long, if not bed sores develop, no?

-l