Cris in Paris: mayo 2008

I have been a couple of days thinking about how to write about Moscow...
Russia is too big for a short post, and three days are not enough to be fair to the city, but I will try to explain a little bit how was it.

The trip to Moscow started long before the 1st may. It started when I arrived to Paris in october and began to look at the world map. I have always wanted to go there, somehow the stories about the part of my family that emigrated there, had kind of weight during my childhood. So, by december I had already bought the flight and got a couple of colleagues to go with to visit my friends there: Paco and Mèrce.

Getting the visa was not as difficult as we had thought, being invited by them I didn't even have to pay. Getting there was a little bit more difficult... that's what happens when you travel with a serious company. Lufhtansa made us lose one day on our way to Moscow... (this never happened to me with all the low cost flights I have taken!)

But there I was! Brave (and a little bit unconscious) as I am, I found myself lost in the underground from the very beginning. I had to say that I was lucky that two guys decided to help me (in their 20s, with a beer in their hand hehe).

I tried to avoid them but they were kind of insistent and they could speak a little bit of English. So, trusting them, and trusting the girl next to us, that couldn't stop laughing at the situation, I followed them. There I learnt from them, that speaking English is something they don't like to do, cause it is (still) the language of their enemy, but they are curious about everything and knew loads of things about Spain (even though I found them a little bit confused about the relation between Spain and Mexico..)

Finally I reached the civilisation, that is the team waiting for me: Mèrce, Paco, Rodrigo (Bucharest), Isa and Jon (Berlin), Dani (Dusseldorf) (and a little bit later the last two: Gonzalo (Berlin) and Paula (Madrid))

From the beginning I thought that I hadn't expected that Moscow was so capitalist-like. There are not big differences from Western Europe. They drink Long Islands and Cosmopolitans too!
But I still could point some things that shocked me. Religion is one of those. I was surprised to see people so young and so devoted in the various cathedrals and churches we entered. I really thought comunism had finished with all that, but it is still a religious country. The second big difference for me is that it is a sad country, they don't smile, and that is scary. Even if I tried (and I tried hard) they never smiled back at me. Poverty also shocked me a couple of times. Not surprising considering the gdp per capita and the prices of Moscow !

We did it all. We walked and WALKED. We saw loads of underground stations. We listened to wiki-paco and all his explanations. We had a great cheesecake in the Cafe Pushkin and I felt as if we belonged to the high class. We tried the gastronomy of Georgia and had our SHOTS of vodka. We took taxis and wondered whether he wanted our kidneys or he was just lost. We walked along the Red Square and saw it completely EMPTY to our astonishment. No need to talk about them (Russian girls) cause he has done it already, and much better than I would never do it.

In all.. I loved the city, and this country deserves more. It is one we will hear more about in the future, and there are still a lot of things to discover about it!

War is a big part of the history of Russia