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Been busy...
Jun. 11th, 2003 09:05 amMy internal clock woke me at 5 am Moscow time (7 am in Baikonur), but I managed to fall back asleep for 90 minutes, and soon after arising found myself downstairs for another one of those killer breakfasts. I left the hotel on foot immediately thereafter. I had to be back by noon to check out and meet Alla.
I turned right out of the hotel and then left on Kuznetsky Most and stumbled across an Internet salon within 200 yards (and a lot closer than the one Olga and I trekked to last night). My destination, though, was the Detskiy Mir children's department store at the end of Kuznetsky Most, across from the current headquarters of the FSB (formerly the KGB) on what is now known as Lyubianskaya Ploshchad (formerly Ploshchad Derzhinskovo). I figure if there is any place in Moscow where I can pick up something for Huntur, it'll be at DM.
DM opened at 9 (as did the Internet salon), and has an Internet salon in the building (which also opens at 9), which is where I'm connecting from right now. (It's interesting, BTW, that the computer at this Internet salon in Moscow does not appear to readily support Cyrillic.)
Tomorrow is a holiday, by the way, so I'm going to have to try to get as much accomplished today as possible. With my luck, all the places I want to visit tomorrow may be closed.
Since I had a great deal of time to kill before DM opened, I went for a walk (the scale in my room also told me that I've put on a few pounds in the 10 days I was in Kazakhstan, so exercise is good). I heard church bells and walked down the street just in time to catch the opening of the service at the Rozhdestvenskaya monastery.
The grounds of the monastery are in pretty sad shape. One building across from the church (which is protected by law as a historical monument of the 16th century) looks like a three-dimensional cutaway diagram of how things used to be built a long time ago (plaster on diagonally laid wood lathe), and there are bricks everywhere.
The inside of the church looks, well, old. The iconostasis displays a number of religious images, and there are what appear to be shrines everywhere. A nun approached me an asked me something I didn't understand that probably required a one word answer. Since I didn't want to get into a discussion while the service was going on, I shrugged and indicated I did not understand.
The choir supporting the priest was all-female, and it truly did feel as if flights of angels were singing in accompaniment to the service.
Another memory of this morning's walk was the sight of an armed policeman, across the street from the FSB building, using his traffic baton to play with a dog that was yapping at his feet. He was having a good time, and I smiled watching them interact.
The price here for Internet access is pretty much the same as it was at Ohotnyi Ryad last night: a ruble per minute. (BTW, I note during my walk this morning that the exchange rate has changed slightly, against the dollar. Ten days ago it was 30.00 rubles to the dollar; today it's pretty consistently 29.50.) The one major difference is this: at Okhotnyi Ryad, they give you a receipt with a login and password, and your times starts ticking once you're logged in. At DM, they assign you a machine, and by the time I got to mine and settled in, two minutes of the 45 I'd paid for had elapsed. Also, in true Russian fashion, the next person in line was assigned to the "next" machine, i.e., the one next to mine (as opposed to any of the other several dozen machines available).
Off to do some mail. More later.
Cheers...
I turned right out of the hotel and then left on Kuznetsky Most and stumbled across an Internet salon within 200 yards (and a lot closer than the one Olga and I trekked to last night). My destination, though, was the Detskiy Mir children's department store at the end of Kuznetsky Most, across from the current headquarters of the FSB (formerly the KGB) on what is now known as Lyubianskaya Ploshchad (formerly Ploshchad Derzhinskovo). I figure if there is any place in Moscow where I can pick up something for Huntur, it'll be at DM.
DM opened at 9 (as did the Internet salon), and has an Internet salon in the building (which also opens at 9), which is where I'm connecting from right now. (It's interesting, BTW, that the computer at this Internet salon in Moscow does not appear to readily support Cyrillic.)
Tomorrow is a holiday, by the way, so I'm going to have to try to get as much accomplished today as possible. With my luck, all the places I want to visit tomorrow may be closed.
Since I had a great deal of time to kill before DM opened, I went for a walk (the scale in my room also told me that I've put on a few pounds in the 10 days I was in Kazakhstan, so exercise is good). I heard church bells and walked down the street just in time to catch the opening of the service at the Rozhdestvenskaya monastery.
The grounds of the monastery are in pretty sad shape. One building across from the church (which is protected by law as a historical monument of the 16th century) looks like a three-dimensional cutaway diagram of how things used to be built a long time ago (plaster on diagonally laid wood lathe), and there are bricks everywhere.
The inside of the church looks, well, old. The iconostasis displays a number of religious images, and there are what appear to be shrines everywhere. A nun approached me an asked me something I didn't understand that probably required a one word answer. Since I didn't want to get into a discussion while the service was going on, I shrugged and indicated I did not understand.
The choir supporting the priest was all-female, and it truly did feel as if flights of angels were singing in accompaniment to the service.
Another memory of this morning's walk was the sight of an armed policeman, across the street from the FSB building, using his traffic baton to play with a dog that was yapping at his feet. He was having a good time, and I smiled watching them interact.
The price here for Internet access is pretty much the same as it was at Ohotnyi Ryad last night: a ruble per minute. (BTW, I note during my walk this morning that the exchange rate has changed slightly, against the dollar. Ten days ago it was 30.00 rubles to the dollar; today it's pretty consistently 29.50.) The one major difference is this: at Okhotnyi Ryad, they give you a receipt with a login and password, and your times starts ticking once you're logged in. At DM, they assign you a machine, and by the time I got to mine and settled in, two minutes of the 45 I'd paid for had elapsed. Also, in true Russian fashion, the next person in line was assigned to the "next" machine, i.e., the one next to mine (as opposed to any of the other several dozen machines available).
Off to do some mail. More later.
Cheers...
