A Belated Letter To Moscow

Dear Moscow,

I went to you about a month ago, and I know it’s probably a bit belated, but I wanted to let you know how I spent my time there.

I drank lots of Jaguar brand malt liquor/energy drink with other Americans. We then proceeded to get lost a lot while walking around/trying to find something we were looking for. We usually ended up finding an alternative that was twenty times better than we ever anticipated.

I went to the American embassy where I kinda met the ambassador. I had to be escorted everywhere and the Russian police check your passports before the embassy officials do. They have a nice swimming pool there. The meetings were pretty boring, though. I’m glad I’m not an American citizen living there, though. I think I’d go crazy.

Hotel room parties are always super fun, buying cakes from disgruntled ladies at corner stores is also fun. We gave Helen a sweet nickname but we forgot it almost immediately, and it still eludes us to this day.

There are way too many portraits of aristocracy in the one Tretyakov gallery. The other Tretyakov gallery had a lot of bad modern art, especially in the non-permanent exhibitions. You should make it clearer if we’re supposed to play with the radio controlled cars or not. We were afraid that one of the old ladies who mind the galleries was going to yell at us.

Seeing one old-lady-gallery-watcher aggressively on the prow was funny, especially when she would yell at little children for eating instead of yelling at the parent that was holding their hand. This became even funnier when juxtaposed with her coworker on the other side of the room who was sound asleep in her chair. I love foils.

I got to play the banjo, that’s always a plus, even if there now is somewhat embarrassing video footage of it.

Red Square is beautiful, but I don’t understand why everybody wants to stand in line for five hours to see Lenin’s preserved body. It’s pretty creepy to look at a dead guy. Most Russians seem to agree with me.

I’ve figured out your metro system. It’s a good one. I like the really long escalators. A lot of them make me think about space stations.

Visiting children in elementary schools is heartwarming, especially when they practice their English on you.

All of the old ladies selling things at subway entrances in a sort of slipshod flea market form is rather funny, until you learn that they are doing that because they invested their life savings in these products and they really have no other means of survival. Then it’s sad.

The fact that people can still smoke in hotel lobbies makes me think of movies with people smoking in hotel lobbies. Usually, they are black and white.

Your hotel receptionists are pretty and extremely helpful. They way they react when given flowers (even though they were given to us in the first place) is magical. I can’t remember the last time I saw someone tear up with surprise/confusion/happiness.

I was the last one to leave, so I got to ride with some folks to the airport I hadn’t seen since I arrived in Russia. I almost got nostalgic, it was where I first set foot here two point nine months ago. I then got to ride back to the hotel and then to the other airport. I feel like I covered a lot of ground.

Yours,
Keith Birthday