Moscow-
Red square, Lenin's body, Kremlin, changing of the guard, and nouvo riche! Moscow was big, big and expensive but very cool to be in the heart of former communist rule. However, one must not forget old habits die hard. Like not laying on the grass or walking across the street outside the lines. Alas, our host Anton was a funny and interesting character. We he lacked in domestic abilities he made up for in his humor and easy going nature. He used to work for a big Japanese firm as a manager but now teaches english to corporate people for 3 times the money. He has moved into a newer blockade style apartment (our rough calculations of the buildings in his area alone was 10,000 people living there) that seems to be built fast and furious. We shared space with him, his stepdaughter, Chasie the dog and Sasha the cat. He was not as inclined to show us around Moscow until we proded him but left us to explore on our own, which was just fine. He did pick us up at the metro station when we arrived and whisked us back on our departure. He like most Moscowvites is a wild driver, just get in and hold on!
The metro system in Moscow is also huge and in russian so it was hard for us to navigate at first but we got used to it. Because Moscow is so big the metro proved invaluable. The second day there we managed to sneek at the last minute to see Lenin's body, he has looked better and his brain was removed 50 years ago by Stalin to study it. We met the former mayor of East Lansing Sam Singh, who is also on the around the world tour about 1.5 years into it(the world is small) and a nice fellow named Ray who is from North Carolina but lives in Singapore so he can work on stem cell research without all the Bushie moral high gound crap US researchers have to put up with. Then off to "the Kremlin" or at least the one everyone in the west thinks of when they mention it. It was pretty inside the walls, kind of stiff but a bit of a letdown for me. Still it was cool to be in the heart of where communism was centered for so long.
Moscow was a nice city but three days were plenty for us. Anton helped us navigate the crazy russian train ticket system where you have to buy tickets at the train station and we were off for Ukraine. Some final thoughts on Russia-the european concept of queing is still hard for americans to get used to, and many people in russia who work in service areas seem very unhappy, maybe it was just us....Oh and we saw a great rainbow on our second night in Moscow (see picture). It reminded us of how wonderful this journey is for both of us! see you in Ukraine.
