My friends met me out in the terminal and we had a joyous reunion. Liliya, Alisa, Max, and Maksim were all there to greet me. It felt just like old times. Alisa’s dad brought his Land Rover to take me to her flat, and I knew I was in Russia when I saw that he had a baseball bat and a bottle of liquor in the pockets of the back seat. I jokingly asked if he played baseball, to which Liliya responded “it is for defense.”
Alisa lives with her Mom in a Soviet era apartment block, built probably in the mid 80’s. It’s a comfy place with two bedrooms and another bed in the living room (where I’m sleeping). Alisa’s mom had made us Borsch, which I struggled to put down. It was good, my stomach was just a bit unsettled from being tired and from eating pills all day. The bathroom (shower and sink) is separate from the toilet in the typical Russian fashion, and there are potted plants sprawled out across every windowsill. I’ve mentioned this before, but Russians love flowers and greenery more than any other group of people else I’ve ever seen. There are as many flower shops in Moscow as there are pharmacies, which is to say that there are flower shops on every single corner.
The floor of Alisa's apartment has holes in it where you can look down and see the concrete base, so I have to be careful so that I don’t get my foot caught in there. The walls were bare and the drapes were made of that kind of old-lady lace in Grandma’s house. It’s not that I usually notice stuff like home décor’, but it’s so glaring in Russian homes that it always catches my eye.
It’s funny because in so many ways the flat is so distinctly Russian, with all of the typical layouts and quirks. But then all of the bathroom appliances are new and very Western and have that girly lime green and pink color scheme. The front door is wooden and modern—replacing the Soviet bank-vault door that the neighbor still has. Alisa has enough girly foo-foo make up and shampoo stuff to rival any girls’ back home.
Anyway, when I got there I went to sleep for a few hours. Alisa woke me up around 9pm and we went and met a bunch of old friends at one of the “Il Patio/Planet Sushi” restaurants that are all over Russia. It’s an interesting setup in these restaurants. One side has a Japanese theme and the other side an Italian theme. You go in and tell them what you’ll be eating—or what most of your party will be eating—and they sit you accordingly. You can still order the Italian food when you’re on the Japanese side, which is funny because the waitress will come deliver your spaghetti wearing a kimono. You can also order cigarettes off the menu, of course.
As usual, we took forever to order and forever to eat and then sat around at the table for another hour or two chatting. We probably took 3 and a half hours to go to dinner, but that’s normal here.
Here I am, back at my second home.
Day 2:
I took two Benadryl last night and slept soundly until 11a.m. Alisa woke me up so that we could make blini, or Russian pancakes with her friend Yuliana. We made a stack about 7 inches high, which is pretty big because Russian pancakes are wafer thin. It was another lazy and lengthy meal with ice cream on the pancakes and tea.
We went to Yuliana’s house after a while and I drank some more tea in the stuffy kitchen and sang a commie song on the guitar for Yuliana’s mom. They had a tiny teacup Chihuahua that was the smallest dog I’ve ever seen. It was mean too and growled like crazy when I touched its pillow (which Alisa said was “his girlfriend”). I don’t really care for those kind of dogs.
There was a cross-stitched picture of a bare-breasted woman hanging on the wall and when I started laughing at it Yuliana’s mom said, “that’s me!” Interesting! I guess I don’t understand who the hell cross-stitches naked pictures? I mean, naked paintings or black and white photos are tasteful sometimes, but I thought cross-stitching was pretty much reserved for bible verses and pictures of English gardens. Apparently it’s a respected artistic medium in Russia, go figure.
We went skating that day down by the WWII memorial park. I bought some apple cider in the little café and as I was walking to the table in my skates I spilled it all over my hand and scolded my thumb
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Alisa asked me later if we had skating rinks at home and I said that we only had one. She started laughing hysterically and when I asked her what she was laughing at she spits “One!? You have only one?! We have hundreds, probably thousands. Every school, every neighborhood has one!” I guess that’s funny.
We went and ate at a Central Asian restaurant and I got talked into ordering some big dumplings instead of the spicy fajita looking thing, which was a little disappointing. We somehow got stuck sitting underneath a huge projector screen playing ridiculous Russian music videos. Every single video was just a series of clips of fast cars, shots of the male love interest doing something manly, like boxing, and then the almost-naked cute girl singer dancing suggestively against a fast car or her male love interest. It’s a formula but somehow none of us could stop watching, even when they replayed the same set of videos twice.
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