We started off with French champagne and ended with making gingerbread houses. I now have a gingerbread floor. Hope yours was insane as well. More photos here on facebook.
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moscow does not believe in cheap bags
For two years, in San Francisco, I proudly carried a purse that I found in the trash. And I got compliments on it.
Normally I walk around Moscow saying, "Seriously Moscow?" to the mullets and the head-to-toe-leopard. You know your perceptions are changing when the $160 fur wristlets at Max Mara don't seem all that ourageous. I mean, that's worth it, right? Or should just I just buy two fox tails for $5 at Ismilova market and make my own? My thoughts about fur are totally twisted now, by the way. I try not to eat meat every day, but hey, fur, it's warm. In the store--I can't believe my luck! I find an adorable made-in-France-Repetto-bag at more than 75% off that makes me swoon. (If at least one article of clothing isn't patent leather right now--boots, shoes, bag, headband, corset-under-your-mink, whatever--you look like something is wrong with you.) I will be the girl with the huge super-soft-black-patent-leather-with-all-these-clever-ties Repetto bag, eeeeeeeeeee! And it's not so over-the-top that I can't look semi-normal in California next month. Then I stood behind this woman to pay.
Okay, her boots are extra-cute, her all-navy ensemble is cool, but um, did you notice her bag? I did. I noticed the Hermes seal in gold when she pulled out 40K rubles in cash for her purchase. On ebay, right now? That pink ostrich Birkin is selling for $20K used. She bought a Christian Lacroix bag, which they put in a gorgeous embroidered dust bag and then in a box, and then in another bag. And the 40K rubles she paid? It's like $1000 plus change. Maybe she'll use the Lacroix as a trash bag? I dunno. Made me and my poor little originally $500 Repetto purse (no dust-bag, no box) feel...bohemian. Maybe I should use it to line a bird cage. And then throw it in the trash and dig it back out because it is so cute.
I wish I knew where pink-ostrich-Hermes-bag-lady's garbage was.
lost in moscow
I have begun to slowly venture out in the car. We made a trip to our farmer's market and grocery store and yesterday I took our friend Aleen to a frame shop and another grocery store. It was nice since it was kind of rainy and I got a chance to check out the new GPS.
After returning home, we got a call from Camille asking us to pick her up from a friends house. It was getting dark and she was somewhere way out on the outskirts of town. I tried to plug in the address in the GPS but was not able to get a map course. So I printed out instructions off of Map Quest. It looked fairly direct and I had been on most of the roads before so I had some reassurance that I could follow it at least out to the general area where she was. So I drove off!
One of the many problems of driving in Moscow is that there is usually a lot of traffic. The other problem is that the streets are not well marked and in the dark, it is near impossible to see their names even if you know where to look. It took about an hour crawling through heavy traffic to get onto the main thoroughfare. Then all of a sudden, everyone was going about 80 miles an hour, straddling lanes, cutting in and out between cars, and slamming on their brakes to avoid hitting slower cars. The four lanes were not well marked. I was in the 3rd lane from the right and knew I had about 12 kilometers to drive before I needed to turn off. Suddenly the two left hand lanes separated and the two lanes on the right veered off. I entered a tunnel and was wondering if I was still on the road I needed to be on or not. It was about another 3 kilometers before I could pull off.
Lost, I was trying to decide if I should turn around and reverse my steps up to the point of highway separation, knowing well that to do so was quite problematic. Plus, I couldn't just pull a U turn and left turns are not legal unless there is a green arrow allowing you to do so. I pulled over near an apartment building and suddenly saw that the road I was on was the road I needed to turn off on to but I had no sense of where on that road in relation to the exit I was at. Camille called and I spoke to a Grandmother who told me to look for a "Seventh Continent" grocery store landmark. I drove about 10 minutes and traffic was starting to get heavy again with road construction and an accident. I stopped to ask a passerby who told me there was such a grocery store another 2 kilometers up the road. I kept driving and never saw it.
Suddenly again the road split and I found myself on an on-ramp onto another freeway. I stopped as soon as I could and asked directions back to the road I was on. It was complicated but eventually I succeeded and with the help of Camille's friend's father, he navigated me by phone to their house! At one point he told me to hang up for 2 minutes because I was about to drive past a police station and if they saw me on the phone, they would pull me over and not release me without a bribe. It took a little over 2 hours to find her.
Camille and I followed the Map Quest instructions most of the way home. It went pretty smoothly until we got to the center of Moscow where we were looking for the #1 Tushinsky exit. I saw the #3, then #2, but no #1! The exits were practically on top of one another at this point. I had no idea where to go. Suddenly Camille shouted, "Pop! I know where we are!" She recognized some landmarks from the route her bus takes home from school. She guided me into the thick of central Moscow and got me onto the Flower Ring Road that our embassy is on. Elated, we felt as though we had beaten the odds and found our way home just like a cat that can be taken miles away and comes back the very next day - just like in the song.
what not to buy
Normally I walk to the closest grocery, Ramstore, because it has everything we need, you know, bread, yogurt, bananas, caviar-flavored potato chips.
Yesterday my friend braved the streets of Moscow and drove us to the American Women's Club Christmas crafts fair. I admired the carved Santas, and beautiful matrushkas, Lomonovsky porcelain, and I almost bought a pretty bird etching. I lingered over everything but didn't buy anything except my first piece of Russian jewelry. A lady selling amber had a couple Japanese women in a frenzy, and I thought about Christmas gifts, but Peter bought a bunch of amber in St. Petersburg, and I couldn't remember our inventory. But there was one ring I couldn't leave behind. The design is sort of art nouveau, and in a sterling setting, two things I really like. The amber has insect wings trapped in a pretty cabochon bubble of yellow.
Then my friend practiced her triple-parking moves on the ring road and we stopped by the fancy grocery store. Why do I never shop there? Beautiful lighting, beautiful displays, interesting imported items--penis-shaped pasta anyone?--my atm card worked at the check out and the cashier didn't insist on exact kopeks.
I bought a huge pork roast for like $10 and the dairy and bread prices are the same everywhere. The French yogurts were a fortune, but a better treat than the Italian cookies I didn't buy. I bought two portabello mushrooms that were $7, and then I bought a butternut squash that cost even more than that. I drew the line at buying bananas there, knowing they would cheaper at my corner veggie stand.
Today I walked to the veggie stand and bought bananas. Then the lady showed me this gorgeous mango. We had such good mangos in Portugal; I'd forgotten how much I miss them. So I bought a ridiculously expensive mango. Walking back to the house, I realized I just paid the same amount for the mango as I'd paid at the craft's fair for the beautiful amber ring. I dunno. Maybe I shouldn't have gotten the ring.
portugaland
Walking to the cento historico part of Lisbon today, Stefan announces he can count in Portuguese: onze, douze, thirteen-say, fourteen-say, fifteen-say...I think after Russian we all have this bizarre sense of being able to speak the language. If scuzi, isn't polite enough, how about, pardon? Limondada? Rosa? Grande? Beeg? Okay!
After touring like rock stars yesterday and going no where but the hotel bar and falling in love with boots at the mall, today we ventured to the old part of a very old town.
We saw a glove store that's been around a couple hundred years.
(That's Stefan wanting desperately to not go in.)
Then we went to a candle store that's been around since 1789.
Stefan says Lisbon reminds him of Portland + Budapest, I say add in a little San Francisco: