Doing the Toursity Thing

I have been in Moscow exactly two months and 19 days. I have eaten at sketchy restaurants no tourist has ever laid eyes on. I have become the resident tour guide for things to do in Moscow. I have written a list naming the top 10 “Off-the-Beaten-Track” places to go in the city. Yet, I had not, until this day gone to the Kremlin and Armoury. Yes, I know, shocking. Hannah has not gone to, arguably, the top tourist attraction in the city. In my defense, I was waiting to go with Bimini when she made her visit so that we could do the whole squeely touristy thing together.

But, today I decided that I might as well do it now just to make sure I did it.
Of course, who was to join me in my adventures other than my trusty sidekick, Susan (better known as Heat Girl due to her inability to regulate her body temperature), and our dear, nationality challenged, 3rd floor friend, Francesca. (For those of you who are wondering, I am Static Girl due to the fact that my hair is constantly conducting electricity and blowing up my mp3 player... Oh, and Siren and the African Pocahonas due to my ability to lure sailors to their death and my unidentifiable looks. Trust me, its better not to ask...) Anyways, we headed off to the Kremlin, fur hats, matroshkas, and dancing bears in tow. We went to buy tickets, got yelled at and told we couldn't buy tickets because there are only specific times in which they may be purchased (at which point I waved my guidebook at them to explain that, because my guidebook is infallible, they were wrong and I was right). So, we went to another kiosk and were told that it was the wrong place to buy tickets at. We then headed off to ticket office number 3, found that, yes, we could buy tickets, yes, it was the correct time, and no, we don't get discounts because we are not “real” students. Apparently, our Russian student ID did not qualify us for the Russian student discount because we are foreign students studying at a Russian university nor did they qualify us for the international student discount because the ID was from a Russian, not foreign, university. Ah, don't you love that logic. Anyways, tiny little Hannah was getting slightly upset (I had a very sucky Friday, more on that later, and was just not in the mood). And, when Hannah gets slightly upset, her Russian dramatically improves as well as her ability to make a scene in public.

Needless to say, we got in with the highest possible discount (750RUR to 200RUR, yea!). Because of all our ticket office hopping, we only had time for either the Kremlin or Armoury, not both. We were going to do the Kremlin, but our bright, warm, and sunny day suddenly became cold, windy, and overcast so we went for the Armoury.
The Armoury, for those of you who don't know, is a part of the Kremlin that used to hold, you guessed it, arms! No, not the arms that are attached to your body, but arms as in weapons. Nowadays, it not only holds weapons, but also carriages and clothing of different tsars, lots of gold items, jewelry, and different types of fancy things, anyone of which is worth more than my house and your house combined. The carriages were very interesting, if very overdone (these people had no taste!), as was the clothing (the change in styles and evolving ideas of beauty was very neat to see). The weapons were also quite fun, though I think the jewelry was more dangerous just due to the sheer size of the jewels. The gold was, well, gold and got boring pretty quick.

However, the entire time I was there, I just kept thinking about how the royal families spent so much money on things like diamond snuff boxes and golden cups while their people were dying of hunger. It seems completely ridiculous and quite disgusting. But, it was fun to see once, although I probably wouldn't do it again. We got to sing A Barbie World in front of all the hot pink jewels to the delight of the tiny children; we devised a new way to kill people – drop one of the very heavy, gold and jewel encrusted Bible covers on someone's head; and set off the warning bells placed to keep people from touching the carriages, repeatedly, to our delight and the desjornias complete and utter despair. All in all, a fun time.

We left Francesca who had to go teach and walked the entire two feet from the Kremlin to the Bolshoi to stand in line for tickets again. An hour and a half and a stampede later, tickets in hand, we walked around the Red Square. The market outside the Red Square has just opened for summer (even though it snowed yesterday) and I got some really tasty honey bread from one of the vendors.

Then, we went to GUM to kill time until the show started. We saw the opera Madam Butterfly, which, unfortunately, did not live up to its fame. While we got seats this time, we still could only see part of the stage. It turned out not to be a problem as the sets were so simplistic as not to warrant a need to see the actual stage. The music was great, so I spent most of the opera sitting in my chair with my eyes closed. It was in Italian, so I had no idea was happened, but the music was nice. The players had decent voices, not the best I've ever heard, but they acted to woodenly (perhaps that was the point) it looked like they were doing a very bad job of the Robot (remember that dance?). Then, randomly, this half naked kid came in, walked around the stage slowly a couple of times, sat in a corner, and then repeated it. The whole thing was kinda weird... So, not the best opera ever, but not bad for a $.66 night. Susan and I have plans to go see another production on Wednesday, but I think we are going to try to stick with ballets from now on.

It's now about 2am, so I am going to go to bed and get some sleep before heading out with Jake for another market day tomorrow. Time to hone my bargaining skills...