Brendan Moran's Exciting Travel Adventures

7-24-06

I am now watching men's volleyball on TV.  Russia vs. China.  Men's volleyball certainly isn't women's volleyball.  It's kind of like watching tennis. Who really wants to watch men play tennis?

It's raining in Moscow so we're probably going to hang inside the rest of the night.  Tomorrow we board a train to China.  It's five nights and six days.  I'm really looking forward to it.  It's called the Trans-Mongolian Express and I think it'll be a bit like jail.  What I want most these days is a little reprieve from the everyday struggle of traveling.  The train will be easy.  Lots of time to read and three (hopefully) hot meals, except unlike jail my cellmate will be my wife and not a hairy man named Bubba.  Today we found an English language bookstore to buy some stuff for the train.  I picked up White Fang, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Treasure Island.  They were cheap and I feel as though I should revisit the classics since I have the time. 

Moscow has been interesting.  It's very European in that it's large and the traffic is a joke.  We've been walking around just looking at things instead of hammering out an itinerary of museums and forced culture.  It's better that way.  Besides, hitting the big art museum here runs $40.  That's just too much money, especially when the impressionist paintings are closed off (as they were at Moscow's Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts). 

Russia has a two games to one lead.  They're taller.

We've been gone almost two months and it feels like a year.  I'm not really worn out, but the magnitude of this trip is finally beginning to sink in.  I think about how it's still three more months until we even go back to the states (my sister is getting married in November in Chicago, so we're flying back) and i just have to remind myself to relax. We have a few more big crazy cites to see (Beijing and Ho Chi Minh City) and then life should slow down a bit.  I hope.

7-20-06: Moscow

We are in Moscow, now watching Russian MTV.  It's pretty bad. however, I find I can tolerate MTV in a strange language, just not my own. 

I feel like I should be able to blog more than I do, but the business of travel takes a long time.  Looking at maps and trying to find good supermarkets takes up a lot of our day.  Plus, we walk everywhere.  Again, lots of time.

We've been in Moscow for about two days and have seen not much besides Red Square.  We now have a map, but before we got there, we walked blindly in the direction we thought it might be.  The big church in the distance helped.  The reason we weren't sure is because for the first time, we don't have a guidebook.  The lack of which I am beginning to like.  It's kind of fun walking around not knowing what you're looking at.  It's even more interesting when the building in question is guarded by guys with machine guns.  We have to go back to Red Square because that's where the embalmed body of Lenin lies.  We'll pay our respects tomorrow. 

Russia is very expensive.  We are surprised that's on the same level as the states, but I guess that's the price (so to speak) we must pay for "wild capitalism", as they call it here.  Though a part of me wishes Russia never came out of the Soviet era, because I think that's the Russia which fascinates me.  The Russia of "Red Dawn".  Some of the big streets here could pass for New York City.  There are ads for cigarettes and cell phones everywhere and a McDonald's every mile (which by the way I am really close to going in and getting a double quarter-pounder, possibly two).  Plus, as we were in St. Petersburg, we are right around the corner from a Columbia Sportswear store.  Sure, it's nice to know how close we are to brand-name fleeces, but I just wish Moscow was a little more exotic.  I mean is it too much to ask for a bread line?  (too far?) 

Got to go as "Sabrina the Teenage Witch" dubbed into Russian is on.   

St. Petersburg

7/11/06

It's just past midnight and dusk has settled over St. Petersburg.  We are about as north as the southern tip of Alaska so it's bright well into the evening this time of year.  I was in Alaska once and I remember large mosquitos biting my arms through my long sleeve shirt.  Same goes with St. Petersburg.  It was built on a swamp.  It's actually more humid here than it was in Istanbul, where we left early last morning at 2 am.  Damn it.   

I was glad to get out of Turkey.  We had been there a month, and I just couldn't take another meat kebab.  I liked Turkey, but Istanbul had begun to wear on Sarah and me.  We were staying in the touristy old section of town and it felt like we couldn't escape it.  The last week in Istanbul we would slowly pace through the day trying not to admit to ourselves that we were slightly bored.  I feel bad saying the word 'bored', but that's what it was.  We were just ready for the next thing. 

We walked up and down Nevskiy Prospekt today.   It's St. Petersburg's answer to 5th Ave.  It's wide, clean and very different.  There are fur stores selling fox scarves (with face still attached) and every third person walks around with an open 16 oz. can of beer.  Not that they're drunk and begging, it's just the thing to do.  The other thing to do (if you're a young woman) is dress as suggestively as you can, or just downright slutty.  It must be the hottest time of the year for these people, because the women sure are letting things breathe.

I am so happy to be here.  Coming to Russia has been a dream of mine for many years.  I think it traces back to growing up at the tail end of the Cold War and the idea Russia was cold, dark and much meaner than the USA.  Either that, or Rocky IV had a bigger impression on me than I ever knew.  I am a bit nervous about this place though.  There are constant warnings about theft and dirty cops wanting bribes, so I'm always looking over my shoulder at what usually turns out to be a pack of Japanese tourists with shopping bags.  Everyone else seems to be enjoying themselves with their digital cameras in plain sight, so why shouldn't I be able to as well?

I feel I will be eaten alive by mosquitos tonight.

Life in Istanbul

7/03/04

Istanbul is hot.  Today, however, it looks like we're going to get rained on.  It will be the first real rain we've seen in about a month.  We've been here for three days already and have not made it out of the main sight seeing district called Sultanahmet.  There is a lot to see here, besides we're not leaving for another week. 

This is one of the few places so far we've been where I don't become bored with the history after a few hours.  It's not that I'm not interested, it's just that after seeing the fourth ruined church of the day, they all seem to blend together.  Istanbul is different.  Possibly because all the churches aren't ruined and anyway they aren't even churches, but mosques.  Mosques are fun and different for a former altar boy.  They have a no shoes rule.  Women can't show too much skin either.  Sarah turned up in her best peasant girl outfit on our mosque field trip.   Mosques are everywhere.  We got lost the other day, and wound up about four miles out of town because we got our mosques confused.  What we thought was the famous blue mosque was in fact the mosque on the outskirts of town near the Plastic Garbage Can district.  Every few blocks there is another district here.  For instance, we are staying in the Pay Too Much for Beer and Kebaps district.

We've been watching a lot of soccer.  Not a lot really, but it seems like the thing to do since the whole city shuts down to watch the games anyway.  It's been somewhat rewarding because at this stage in the World Cup the rules state that someone must actually WIN THE GAME.  I know it's an old American complaint as to why professional soccer hasn't caught fire there, but call me American.  We watched Germany beat
Argentina and then Italy over Ukraine while sitting on the main tourist drag the other night.  Dozens of TVs set up right on the street so everyone sitting in open air cafes can watch right along with the street traffic.  People sip their beer here, instead of actually drinking it, and I'm trying to learn this new and fascinating concept since the waiters don't ever come around anyway.  Really.  It's considered rude to bring the check, so you have to flag them down to get it.  I know it's a cultural thing, but sometimes I don't want to sit at the table for another ninety minutes discussing politics as the Turks do.  Sometimes I just want to go back to my pension and catch a little X-Files on the CNBC channel here.  They're at the part where Mulder is missing and Robert Patrick does his impression of a wall.