Riga mortis

Spring has gone nuts here in Riga. This is a very nice city, beautiful architecture, nice people, etc., but L says he doesn't want to go Kiev now as we've sort of done the "Eastern European" thing.

I know what he means on one level, coming here, I was well aware of its hideous Holocaust past. All the city's residents were forced into a ghetto and then killed in that ghetto. And then for good measure, the Nazis shipped another 25,000 Jews in from Lithuania and Poland and then *they* were killed.

There's a concentration camp tour right outside of town. Tonight, we ate dinner at kosher restaurant. It was a cozy place, but right behind the counter was a "Latvian Jewish Cemetery Guide" and a map of "Jewish Life in Holocaust era Latvia."



Here's the restaurant

The depressing point is this: you can't come to eastern Europe and not contemplate the miserably difficult truth. So we may be done for awhile. Not sure I'm really up for seeing the same scene in Ukraine.

Sorry to go so dark on a beautiful spring day, but the past here is inescapable.

NOT back in the USSR

NOW:


THEN:

Sorry to sound like the Estonian Tourist Bureau, but Tallinn, Estonia, is a wonderful medieval town, set on a hill overlooking the sea, with super nice people. That alone makes it as different from Moscow as you can stick a pin in. We are having a lovely rest and are sad to be leaving after three days. I'm not sure I would appreciate this town as much if it hadn't been after a Moscow winter, but I just find this town incredibly charming and relaxing. It's a mix of Scandinavian meets the "whew, we're not part of Russia anymore, let's party" sensibility.

Larry: they even served us beer at breakfast when we arrived on Sunday morning.

We are off to Riga, Latvia, tomorrow via bus. We have never traveled on a bus with Sasha before for five hours. Ought to be interesting. Please, let the DVD player batteries last...

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Blowing out of town

Finishing up Week 10 in the Russian capital and it's finally, L's spring break.

We are heading north to Estonia and then Latvia, with perhaps a day trip to Helsinki. I am weary of the cold, but of course, now that we're leaving town, the Moscow weather forecast is for 70 degrees, which is AKA The Larry Band of Comfort.

Today, L and I went for a walk in the almost-but-not-quite thawed Chisty Prudy (Clean Ponds) neighborhood. The ice had definitely thinned out, but it could still keep a beer bottle from sinking. As it's Friday, there were many Russians enjoying the balmy 48-degree weather and sitting on benches drinking beer. No open container laws here. Everyone appeared to be having a good time and behaving themselves. Fast forward to 10 P.M., and I'm not sure the scene will quite be the same.

Heat Wave at Home, Snowing here

We hear from our friends in California that there is a heat wave going
on.

Not here. We woke up to snow on the ground. No one in Moscow got the memo that global warming is happening.

Alison braved the weather, took a metro to the end of the line, and was prepared to for a Nordic walk with a new group. She got there and no one else showed up. The leader said she'd canceled this morning, and hadn't Alison gotten the email? Nyet. It still hasn't arrived.
Alison did the hike herself, through some tundra-like park. Then she
met up with Larry, to explore what we hoped was a cool art gallery at
the former Red October chocolate factory. After trekking through the
snow, which is a fancy way of saying that we got lost as usual on a cold day, the
guard told us that the art gallery was no longer open, having closed
two days ago. Okay, so it's not the end of the world.
After finding a warm place to have lunch, we went to Sasha's school
where we had seven people in a parent-teacher conference. Sasha
complains daily that she hates her school. It's all Russian, and confusing. Her nice
teacher only speaks Russian, so we had a translator, along with a few
staff members and Sasha at the meeting. After taking Sasha's testimony,
the bilateral commission adjourned for the day, issued a press release
and agreed to keep talking. Okay. What really happened is we all
talked, and came to no conclusions about what to do next.

This wasn't in in our parents manual.
Sasha is going on vacation next week, so hopefully it will work itself
out.

Mice Jumping out of Helicopters at the Circus

A truly memorable visit to our third Moscow Circus. This one is called the Durov Animal Theatre: http://www.ugolokdurova.ru/
It's most famous for its mice train. You read that correctly. It mildly intrigued us, but the description didn't seem to compare to the Cat Circus we attended a few weeks back. We were just two parents looking for a way to amuse a 5-year-old.

We were wrong about the mice train. We can't make this stuff up. Sasha broke the camera yesteday so we can't send photos. You're going to have to believe us, or wonder what we're drinking.

The scene:
Mice on small train enter stage left.
Mice train meets up with hovering helicopter (on a rope), carrying one bored chubby cat. Ladder drops down from helicopter. Several white mice climb up rope ladder to their own cat-free compartment of helicopter, safe for now. Helicopter crosses stage.
A few minutes later, mice drop out of helicopter, wearing parachutes. They jump into nets held by cast members. Bored cat begins to wonder what he's been drinking.
Act ends.

Sure, just your average day at the circus. Also a sommersaulting bear, four tigers, a raccoon, a "fire" put out by a crew of poodles. And Pomeranians double Dutch rope jumping. Then we went home in a snowstorm. It's late April in Moscow.

Spring, continued

This has been one of the high points of our Moscow residency. First, Spring busted out at all once--the sun has been out for four days, the temps are in the low 60s, and the whole town is in a good mood, at least by Russian standards. We're seeing flower bulbs in the parks, and fountains there have been turned on. We've also had visitors from New York, and played tour guide the past three days. Highlights of their visit included visits to Red Square and the Kremlin, and walking across the Moscow River to the Old Arbat, where costumed drunk twentysomethings played guitars, drank beer, danced and sat in the sun. It's a whole different city when the snow is gone and the sun is shining and the smell of fresh paint is wafting through the air. Alison claims she can tell it's lead-based paint.

We started this morning at the Tretyakov Gallery, in a neighborhood of winding streets and Old World Charm. The Tretyakov shows Russian art up until the 20th century.

Then onto a much-anticipated lunch at Cafe Pushkin, considered to be the one of the best restaurants in Moscow. You'd think you were in a nineteenth century building. In one meal, the Pushkin can change your entire perception of Russian cuisine. Here's some of the things we ate: quail eggs, giblet pate, herring, borscht with goose livers, sauerkraut soup with veal, and almond ice cream.

Our visitors are returning on Saturday, and we're looking forward to more adventures with them. Sunday, we're taking Sasha to another circus, this one featuring a mice train.

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