It is unusual to NOT plan the soiree weeks in advance.  We did, sort of, but we didn’t start shopping until Wed…Tues night a little.  Olga (who is wonderfully magical!!) found a 12 kilo (26ish lbs) turkey for us.  There was going to be 11 of us FOR SURE eating and another 12-15 guests.  Pretty much all the turkey except for the legs (wtf??) were GONE in about an hour.  There were all the traditional fixin’s…not necessarily in their traditional form…cauliflower was served just not with a cheese sauce because…there is no cheddar cheese here.  There is also no cream of mushroom soup or delicious crunchy french onions for green bean casserole.  But we still had green beans!!!  We also had some amazing Korean sushi and a fabulous Chinese mushroom dish that were good before we found the sesame seeds and UH-MAZING once sesame seeds were added!

The day was spent preparing and cooking all the stuff.  Everything was ready at about the same time.  I’m not quite sure how that happened we really didn’t PLAN it…but it was great!  And then our guests started to arrive.  Svetelana and Roushlan brought their kids, Diana and Arthur (clones of their parents, and sooo cute).  Tatiana, Sergey, Loesha and Nikita.

Once the turkey was decimated, what turned out to be the “first wave” headed home.  Stopa came by to learn about “this turkey thing.”  He was very confused because he thought that the English word for a country was Turkey.  “It is.”  “So why THIS is turkey also?”

And so the “second wave” began!

There was much theater in the past weekish.  La Boheme at the Mikailovsky Theater.  The production design was beautiful but the lead voices were weak.  The Marriage of Figaro at the Mariinsky concert hall.  BEAUTIFUL, AMAZING voices!!!  Nice, simple set design and beautiful costumes in really odd color choices.  The countess had a lovely asymmetrical dress in the most heinous shade of coral.  When she sang her solo in the garden with a blue light on her, it went a gross fluorescent color.  Then the count wore a dark mustard suit.  Together it was very strange.

Last night was The Nutcracker at the Hermitage Theater.  Mary (aka Clara) has a magical dream!  A dream with NO Sugar Plum Fairy…wait…WHAT??!  There’s a Pas de trois where there should be the dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy!  Of course there were also bats in this version?  Don’t get me wrong, it was very lovely!  Just unusual.  AND it ended with Mary waking up, hugging the Nutcracker doll and holding it up ala Phantom of the Opera ending.

There are 2 weeks left.  We have our OWN performance next weekend.  Our Baron Muchausen exploration.  9 scenes, 9 writers, 9 directors…1 actor.  I’m optimistic but it’s been a unique creating process.  Pretty much all of the 9 are designers…the support people.  It’s incredibly difficult to think complete, TOTAL world AAAAAAAND make it mesh with at least the bit before yours and after yours.  Ow!  My HEAD!

I’m hoping to get to Finland but time is getting really tight.  I still have to figure out how to get all these Christmas presents home!! There are some REALLY GOOD ONES!  I’m gonna be SO PISSED if the Mayans are right and I don’t get to give these presents!

But that most important part!!!!  The thankfulness…the appreciation.  I am DAILY thankful for my friends and family, my incredible neighbors Dan & Ginger, my experience(s) here in Russia, the adventures I’ve been afforded and even the crappy shit that has happened and the people who have removed themselves or have gone from my life.  Without all those things, I would not be who I am or where I am at this very moment.  I am thankful!

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I’m from California with the greater part of my life spent in central or Southern California. There is a consistency in weather in this area that is glorified by visitors and taken for granted by locals. Not just the “70 degrees and sunny…every. day.” But also that the sun comes up around 630a and sets about 630p (later in the summer). So, this waaaaaaaaaaaay north-ness of the moment is messing with me far more than I could imagine.

I am up by about 8am everyday.  That’s when I wake up.  If I go to bed at 5a I might be able to sleep til 10 but not necessarily.  8a here is as dark as midnight!  Not, if I wait 15 minutes there will be a little daybreak.  BLACK!  And the sun doesn’t start to come up until closer to 10a so my head starts to think, ok, NOW you can start getting things together…except the day is close to 1/2 over…  I never doubted that SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder) because I work in theater, there’s been plenty of times I enter the cave of theater when it’s barely light out and leave when it’s completely dark.  A couple weeks of that and you’re a mess but, I’m usually working and so that takes a different kind of toll.  THIS is just bizarre.  It’s kind of like being permanently on Nyquil.  I want to sleep at odd times, I can’t quite remember the day trying to figure out the general time is pointless and everything is just a little hazy.

I’m not really a fan of this.

The Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood was built (1883) on the site where Tsar Alexander II was assassinated and was dedicated in his memory.  There is a large canopy that was built over the site to symbolize the holiness of the memorial.  The  church is incredibly ornate inside.  It is no accident that the church resembles St. Basil’s Cathedral in Moscow (the Tetris building), the Spilled Blood has almost as many mosaics as St. Basil’s.

Spilled Blood – 7500 square meters   St. Basil’s – 7700 square meters

And I’m talkin’ MOSAIC!!!  Not the…oh, I have some chipped cups I should smash up and spread goo between on a table mosaic but 1/4″x1/4″ tile mosaic!!!!  …times 7500 square meters…that’s a LOT of little bits!  It is exquisite though!

And then as we left the sun was setting…THIS is why people paint!

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I finally made it to the Hermitage last week.  This is my one regret of the trip so far…NOT making it to this museum MORE!!  It’s FREE with an ISID!  But it’s always something…

The weather was SOOO weird that day!  It was cold and rainy-ish when we left for the museum.  We took the metro because it was just TOO cold to walk.  When we came out of the metro it was DEFINITELY raining as we got closer to the Hermitage it started hailing.  We had to wait in line outside to get tickets and it stopped raining, started again, then the sun came out bright and shiny.  We went into the museum and about an hour or two later it was snowing like crazy!!!!  Maybe this is how weather works, but I’m from the California COAST where it doesn’t snow unless there is cosmic weirdness!

History…the Hermitage is a museum made up of 5 buildings and contain the finest art collections in the world.  Catherine the Great founded it in 1764 and the museum has been public since 1852.  The 5 buildings that make up the Hermitage are:  the Winter Palace (home to Russian emperors and tsars), the Menshikov Palace, Museum of Porcelain, Storage Facility at Staraya Derevnya and the eastern wing of the General Staff Building.

Basically, it’s a HUGE place with a lot of cool stuff in it!  And it’s likely that if I’d gone every single day for 3 months I might have been able to see everything…but not likely.  I went for 5 hours and only got through a fraction of the Winter Palace.  There is so, SO much but the architecture is amazing!  I really can not wrap my head around the piles of money it cost to build palaces of this nature or the cost of upkeep!  And some of the rooms are so gorgeous, why would you NEED others to go to?  Why wouldn’t you just spend your entire life in the one room overlooking the river with peacock clock in it?  Ok…maybe a 2nd room…if the peacock clock did indeed ring every 15 minutes that would likely cause me to have some mental instability.  But anyway…

It was hard to pay attention to the works of art because I was tripping on the ridiculously high ceilings with stuff all over them and columns and columns and more columns and fabulous stair cases and chandeliers…oy…

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“In Europe and America there’s a growing feeling of hysteria.  Conditioned to respond to all the threats in the rhetorical speeches of the Soviets…”  ~Sting

I was rather intimidated about going to Moscow.  Excited…but nervous.  I’m not entirely sure what it was that made me so unsure but I was going in any case.  I arrived and all anxiety was for not!  The city is AMAZING!  St. Petersburg is more beautiful than I could ever describe but Moscow…is like…times 10!!  Italy looks like the Universal back-lot at every turn, Moscow is Disneyland!  So many bright colors and gold and steeples.  A lot of the metro stations do not have the name of the station where it can easily be seen on the train and the announcements are sometimes muffled but it is not difficult to get around.  Truthfully, I think the Moscow stations are even more grand the St. Petersburg stations.  I’m trying to locate a book for both cities.

Junmei found an incredible apartment for 5 of us to stay in that turned out to be across the walkway from the Moscow Art Theater, a block from the Operetta Theater and 2 blocks from the Bolshoi.  This means that Red Square was basically at the end of the street.  AWESOME!  AND it was affordable!

The first night the 5 of us (Amanda, Brittany, Junmei, Sojin & I) went and had a nice dinner at a Chinese restaurant.  ALMOST went to Starbucks that night but…saved it for the morning and went on a walk around the area instead.  Tons of cool shops in the neighborhood.  A giant bookstore that turned out to be the biggest/best in Moscow for Art books and stuff.  (I didn’t make back there during open hours 😦 …like I need MORE books…).  Best find of the night though, was a grocery store that had PEANUT BUTTER!!!!!!  Yes, I paid $15USD for 2 small jars, 1 creamy, 1 chunky and truthfully I should have bought 4 jars!

The first day we, of course, had breakfast at Starbucks (OH!  Glorious Mocha!!!  BREWED REAL coffee!  I will never take you for granted again!) and met Danila at the Bolshoi Theater.  We were unable to get inside unfortunately.  Instead, we explored Red Square and the Kremlin Armory Museum.  The amount of wealth is overwhelming!  Mother of pearl handles on hunting shotguns, miles and miles of gold & jeweled “Alter Gospel” covers, a new carriage for every year and cups out of EVERYTHING…nautilus’, narwhal tusk, coconuts…  The oddity of it is how many people were likely employed to construct these pieces of ostentation.  The intricate design, the detailed carving, ALL the gilding and jeweling.  While the product was excessive and over the top, MANY people’s livelihoods were supported.  It was just a strange revelation.  There was armor for children and horses…of course, the horse armor was displayed on a taxidermy horse in a glass case.

We went to Zoya’s Apartment at the Moscow Art Theater that evening.  This was an exceptional theater experience.  It is listed as, “A Tragic Farce in Three Acts” by Mikhael Bulgakov.  (Side info…it played on Broadway in 1990 for about 2 months and starred Bronson Pinchot.)  A lot of projection seems to be used in Russian theater…maybe it’s all of European theater.  The whole set moved forward and back onto a rotating platform so while there was box of a set (4th wall open), the whole set revolved and scenes took place outside “the apartment” and was REALLY outside the apartment…often you could glimpse the story still happening inside.  It made for a very unique experience.  It was a musical, so there were some fun songs, great voices and, of course, tremendous costumes all Art Deco inspired.  The party scene/opium trip(?) was really well done.  But the death scenes were what I thought was most unique.  One character jumps out the window but it was a very romantic moment with her walking out to the edge of the stage, removing her shoes and leaving the stage.  However, when the rich man died (neck slashed with a hand fan!), he fell on the floor and the set began to move.  He walks to an outerwall where there is a rug and chair like inside but 90 degrees on the wall.  He stands against the rug and a projected spot expands across his face and across the whole wall like a pool of blood.  Incredible!

Halloween = shenanigans!!  Amanda and I went back to Red Square in the morning.  Me in my Soviet Wonder Woman costume, Amanda to take the pictures.  It was FREAKING COLD!!!  It was dripping too but the temp was on the positive side.  Like 2 degrees, I think.  We started at St. Basil’s and worked our way out of the square.  There was a camera crew at St. Basil’s.  We ignored them…BUT once they were done they began filming us.  There were a lot of triple takes from passersby…then there were phone pics.  We moved to the bandstand and took pics in front of the 1942-2012 banner and took some pics there.  Still…people stopping and snapping pics.  Then a car starts racing across the square.  It’s a police car.  Wow!  He’s moving pretty fast!  I wonder what’s going on?!  Weird…he’s headed THIS way.  Nothing weird over here!  Oh…crap…  And he stopped in front of US.  (In Russian)  WHAT ARE YOU DOING???!!  Uh…umm…erm…<shit…where did I bring my passport?  Where’s my visa?  crapcrapcrap> …Halloween?  Russian-blahblahblah-Russian AREN’T YOU COLD?  Yes (and a little scared)!!  More-Russian-carry on!  And THAT was my big Halloween scare.  TOTALLY worth it!!!  We finished up a few more pics then went home to change.

We spent the afternoon at the studio of designer David Borovsky.  It was preserved exactly as he left it the last time he worked in his studio in 2006.  He was truly an artist!  Then to a theater space that is located in Stanislavski’s fathers tile factory.  It was a beautiful building, adapted for it’s new needs.  Steel factory tiles (from another factory) cover the floor of the lobby.  The lighting is very industrial but stylish.  Ceilings have been raised or lowered to adapt the stage area.  Paint choices are made to make people feel welcome.  There are more toilets in the womens room than the mens room to supposedly alleviate lines!!!  A lot of thought was put into this theater and it is very beautiful.  We did not get to see a show here though.  We saw Opus Number 7 at an unpronounceable theater.  The 1st Act was very interesting it was a commentary on WWII and the images were very relate able.  The 2nd Act was about a child pianist and communism.  I didn’t really get it but apparently it was poignant for the Russians.

Thursday we prepared to come back to St. Petersburg.  It rained!!!!!!  We went to Christ the Savior Cathedral.  This is where Pussy Riot performed and was arrested for hooliganism.  It is beautiful!!!  I am not a religious person, but I do appreciate the artistic value of a beautiful church.  There are paintings EVERYWHERE!!!  There is also a casket covered with glass holding silver and gold boxes of bones but…to each their own.  I have Julian McMahon’s underwear in a box at home…kinda the same thing, I suppose.  I just don’t tend to light candles and weep uncontrollably at the site of said undies.

…and then the train ride home.  200 kilometers/hour.  I *LOVED* Moscow and will GLADLY return there anytime!!

*there may be some FB duplicate pics.    

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