Greeting from Moscow and welcome to what I hope will be a fruitful 6 weeks in Russia! I arrived safely, if somewhat exhausted, on Tuesday morning after a 10 hour flight and yet another boring Jennifer Anniston movie. It has become an odd tradition of mine to watch Jennifer Aniston movies on planes, and this one was just as memorable as the last one I watched on a plane. But the name of the movie seems an apt title for this first entry. Nu ladno, as the Russians would say.
I am staying in a pre-revolutionary building very close to the American embassy and my accommodations are very much to my liking, as is my hostess! I have my own room complete with a real bed and not a pull-out couch and I have access to a kitchen too. But most importantly, the shower has a hot water heater so that when the city authorities turn the hot water lines off for maintenance, which will undoubtedly happen soon, I will still be able to take hot showers. Not only do I have access to hot water, but my hostess also has wifi, therefore I will not need to wander the city asking those most famous lines "U vas est vi-fi?" Not that there would be a problem finding wifi in Moscow.
If the start of my trip is any indication, this should prove to be a very useful 6 weeks. The driver who picked me up from the airport could have been the subject of an entire dissertation, or at the very least, a second book. His name was Igor, and he was probably in his mid 50s, and he was very much a gentleman and insisted on carrying my large suitcase for me, which weighed exactly 47 pounds, up 5 flights of stairs. When I asked if there was a lift, he laughed and replied "no, we do it the Russian way." He also joked that since I was so close to the American embassy that when the war between Russia and the U.S. broke out, I could run across the street with my passport and be safe. Of course he was joking and we had a great laugh about the Cuban Missile Crisis and the absurdity of it all.
We had what I think was a lovely conversation in Russian about his favorite topic - rock music! I say "I think" because my Russian is rusty and he did not speak any English. Seriously, I could not have asked for a better entry into Moscow. It turns out that his favorite groups are in this order Nazareth, Shocking Blue, and Led Zeppelin. For those of you who might not know Shocking Blue, they did the song Venus back in 1970. He told me their entire history and why they split up - it was like a Russian version of Behind the Music for Shocking Blue! Truly fantastic. What really caught my attention was his insistence that rock music must be sung in English, although he didn't speak any English. For him, if music was sung in any other language, it simply was not authentic rock. I also got to hear wonderful stories about the glory days of bootlegging during the Soviet period and how the music that they shared in the 1960s and 1970s was real music and not the "pop" stuff that is promoted today in order to make money. Today's pop music, Igor told me, has no art and only clogs the airwaves like trash.
So the beginning of the trip has been very nice indeed, notwithstanding the proliferation of Kesha music that seems to come from everywhere, except Igor's radio of course. I've finally recovered (almost) from jet lag and will venture to the Archive of Literature and Art tomorrow, and with any luck I will meet the archivist who has been so helpful and answered all of my questions by email.
The picture here is the view from my window. I will post more later......until then, cheers.
No comments:
Post a Comment