Wild West

Without a doubt, scalping tickets is one of the most developed activities in Russia.

On Friday, I went to a hockey match between CSKA and Khimki. I got there 15 minutes after the game had started and the box office was already closed. Therefore, I bought a ticket from a scalper and paid a 20% premium, i.e., 2 dollars more. No biggie, but the damn scalper sold me a seat among the Khimki fans! The CSKA defense was playing really badly that day, and CSKA lost 4 to 8 (great ROI: 1 dollar per goal!). However, I kind of feared that the CSKA fans would get upset and try to beat up the Khimki supporters (including me, since I was sitting near them) -- but everything went alright in the end.

On Saturday, I picked up tickets for the Tennis Kremlin Cup finals at a scalping office. The scalpers' website had an English version, but the phone attendants only spoke Russian when I called during the week. After three attempts, I managed to speak to the manager, who tried to sell me $250 tickets! I finally settled for $27 tickets + $3 comission. They didn't have tickets for the qualifying rounds though, so I went to the official box office at the Olympic Stadium after picking up my ticket for the finals. To my surprise, the ticket I bought from the scalper was still on sale for the original price at the stadium! By the way, tickets for the qualifiers were dirty cheap ($2), which is probably why the scalpers were not carrying them.

I had two experiences where I managed to avoid scalpers though:

1) For the CSKA-Arsenal Champions League match, the scalpers were only selling $100 tickets, so we had the driver of one of the expats call the stadium and find out how to buy tickets from the official box office. It was well worth it: we bought seats for just $45.

2) I bought orchestra seats to see the Bolshoi ballet on November 27th, when Livia will be here. I reserved them on the Bolshoi website and then picked them up at their box office... which was surrounded by scalpers trying to sell tickets for a 50% premium!

Note: the day I bought tickets fot the Kremlin Cup was the first time I'd forgotten to carry my passport with me; I was really afraid to get stopped by a cop and being scalped, but fortunately nothing happened. It was a beautiful evening, and I really wanted to take pictures at Red Square but I chickened out. I took some pics at Lubyanka square (the headquarters of the former KGB) and Detsky Mir (a huge toy store) though:

A Sunny Weekend at Last (before I went to NY)

привет, my friend!

Last weekend was kind of chilly, but the sun shone almost the entire time. Therefore I took tons of pictures. I am posting some on this post, the next ones are posted in other ones.

The Kremlin

St Basil and one of the towers of the Kremlin

One of the towers of the Kremlin

Alexander Gardens near the Kremlin (the building itself is the Manezh exhibition hall)

The Grotto (sea cave), by the Kremlin walls, with a little military band getting ready to play. I had to pee, so I didn't really get to see them play.

Yet another one of the Kremlin

And this is a pic of my shadow

пока!

Sin City

Last Sunday (before going to NY) I did one of the last Lonely Planet walking tours, which was called the Church Walk. I walked about 2km around a neighborhood called Zamoskvorechie, and took tons of pictures of... churches. Judging by the number of churches I saw, I believe that Russians must sin a lot.

This St Clement's, from 1740, true baroque.

This is St John the Baptist, from the late 17th century

This Mikhail and Fyodor, also from the late 17th century.

This is St Basil, from across the river.

This a museum dedicated to people who drink too much, become sinners, and then have to go to church to repent. It was closed though...

This is the Ressurection Church in Kadashi, which houses a restoration center for other churches. Ironically, it was also under restoration.

These are from The Virgin of Consolation of All Sorrows Church.

This is Church of St Nicholas in Pizhy. See the lady kissing the idol on the left side of the entrance.

This is St Catherine Church, built to celebrate the enthronement of Catherine II.

And this was my favorite: Church of St John the Warrior, which is the closest thing you can get to St Basil.

There was a wedding going on at the Church of St John the Warrior, so I finally had a chance to take some pictures inside a church.

I kept on walking to some other areas of town, and snapped more pictures of churches.

This one was by the Sculpture Park (see post below)

This a colorful monastery from early 17th century.

This is the reflexion of the Cathedral of Christ the Savior dome on the windows of an old house.

Where the f-ck is Ecuatorial Guinea?

There were many mansions in Zamoskvorechie, some of them house embassies nowadays. This is the house of the French Ambassador, probably leased from the Addams Family:

And this is the Embassy of Equatorial Guinea. I bet one months' rent could feed many people in such a poor country!

I also passed by the Israeli Embassy, but it looked like a bunker (not surprisingly) and I didn't take a picture.

There were also some kick-ass houses being converted to modern condos:

And on this street there were some nice restaurants (and a McDonald's):

PS: In case you want to learn more about Ecuatorial Guinea, follow this link

Gorky

After the Church Walk, I passed by the entrance of Gorky Park. When it was created, it was called Park Kultury (Culture), but then Stalin changed to Gorky as part of his maniac project of naming everything after some commie figure.

Here is a pic of the entrance.

Nowadays it is necessary to pay some 50 rubles (25 cents) to enter the park, and there are many small amusement parks inside. This is a caroussel just by the entrance.

Museum of the Fallen (and Beheaded) Heroes

After passing by Gorky Park, I went to the Sculpture Park. Formerly called the Museum of the Fallen Heroes, it houses statues of commie leaders that were ripped from their pedestals after the end of the Soviet Union.

Here are 4 Lenin's, 1 Stalin and 1 Brezhnev:

Here is something really big:

Here are Lenin, Marx and Brezhnev:

This one is cool. It is a statue of Stalin, surrounded by heads representing millions of purge victims. It was NOT done during the Soviet days of course...

This is a huge fallen Stalin... literally...

There were also some news sculptures in the park. I am attaching the ones I liked the most: Don Quijote and Einstein (sitting next to someone I don't know)

Across the street from the Sculpture Park is the infamous statue of Peter the Great. This statue was supposed to be of Christopher Columbus and given as a gift to the US. When the Americans saw how ugly this shit was, they refused it and sent it back. The Russians then chopped Columbus' head off, rebranded it as Peter the Great and put it on the embankment of the Moscow river. The Cathedral of Christ the Saviour on the other side of the river.

Stalin The Maniac

привет, my friend!

On Saturday (before NYC) I went on a tour called Stalin's Moscow, which focused on the kind of architecture Stalin wanted to implement in Moscow and also got to talk about the purges.

So... Moscow was supposed the laboratory where the commies would build the perfect socialist city, and then spread such a joy to the world. Stalin had all main avenues widened, so foreigners would come and be amazed with such a magnificient city. That's why avenues are so wide now (I'll post pictures of avenues at a later date).

This is a building from 1912 that was moved on wheels about 30 meters on Tverskaya (the main drag of Moscow).

We then visited the House of the Embankment, which was built in 1931 as a model of future constructions in the socialist world. It is a huge building that was designed as a self-contained city, including day care, supermarket, theater, and a communal take-out kitchen (socialists would be too busy too cook at home). There were 505 apartments and 24 entrances!

The building is located some 100 meters from the Kremlin and was inhabited by many state officials at the time. It turned out that many of them ended up being killed by Stalin. Here's a memorial plaque in honor of 700 people who lived in the building and were shot under Stalin's orders:

It is estimated that over 25 million people got arrested and 3.8 million killed under Stalin's orders, 1.6 million killed just in 1937 (the bloodiest of all years).

пока!

Brazilian Imperialism

привет, my friend!

As mentioned in my post from July 30th (click here), there are quite a few Brazilian goods in Moscow.

The most prevalent are frozen food and chicken-stuff. I have been eating a lot of frozen pizza and chicken nuggets from Sadia. This a pic of chicken pizza with catupiry cheese:

I also bought some stuffed frozen chicken from Perdigao, which is called Fazenda (Farm) in Russian. Perdigao's stuff is certainly not as good as Sadia's, but the directions are also printed in English, which makes life a lot easier.

And today I saw a Volkswagen van with Brahma (#1 beer in Brazil) painted all around:

I wonder if Russians could also import some extra Celsius degrees from Brazil; today the temperature dropped to 12C (53F) -- and it is only mid-September!

пока!

It's Good To Be The King (or Count...)

привет, my friend!

This weekend I went to Kuskovo, which was the country estate of the Sheremetev family -- the richest aristocrats in the 1700's.

First of all, I may say I am pretty proud of myself for being able to get there: I took the subway until the very east of Moscow (I live on the west side) and, in a totally unfamiliar territory, found the bus that would take me there. And last, I was able to buy tickets to see all the exhibitions from a cashier who spoke no English whatsoever.

So, the estate was built by Count Nikolai Petrovich Sheremetev, who had 200,000 serfs (slaves). Among the serfs, there were some kick-ass architects, who designed and built the estate.

Because there were very few people at the time I visited, I managed to take many pictures using the 'timer' function. Therefore, I finally appear in some pictures.

This is me in front of the summer Grotto, built to resemble a sea cavern.

Some sections of the Grotto were decorated with shells and porcelain embedded on sand and stucco.

This is the orangery, which is a greenhouse where they could grow oranges year-around. Inside, there is now a beautiful ceramics museum, including some pieces painted by Kandinsky and others painted as Soviet propaganda. Unfortunately, I could not take pics inside...

This is inside the Dutch house, with tiled interior. Inside I questioned by the babushkas who work there, i.e., do I speak Russian, where I am from, how can I be from Brazil if my book was in English, etc. The whole inquisition happened in Russian, but I think I managed to answer most of their questions using my limited vocabulary.

This is inside the Italian Cottage. Note the babushka asleep in the background.

It had beautiful parquet floor, so I had to put on these fuzzy slippers.

These are different angles of the Wooden Palace. The palace is made entirely of wood, then plastered and painted to resemble stone.

These are inside the Wooden Palace. First one is grand hall, then the dining room, the play room, and finally the bedroom.

Afterall, the whole thing reminded me of the movie "History of the World Part I", where Mel Brooks plays Louis XVII. In the movie, the character does pretty much whatever he wants and always says "It's good to be the king".

пока!