Getting to Know the ‘Hood

Four consecutive nights in the same hotel is so welcome.  The Arbat House is in Moscow’s Embassy Quarter and but a short walk to the Metro.  We eventually figure out how to ride the AeroExpress train from the airport into Moscow’s city center.  We drag our bags and our tired selves to the Arbat, arriving late afternoon.

We also locate a bank enroute so that we can make a money exchange and receive our first Russian roubles.  Russia guards its colorful currency by allowing only in-country sales and purchases of roubles.  There are way too many zeroes in the conversion of US dollars to roubles to assure us about the resident economy.  And guardedness continues inside the banks; we must enter the privacy of a tiny room behind a closed door, to complete any documented money exchange under the watchful eye of a single, currency exchange worker.  Invariably, the bank employee doles out large denomination bills.

Our neighborhood market. Vodka’s for sale behind the curtain toward the back.

We learn early in our visit that we must ask for “small money,” or small denomination bills so that we can do business in the shops where large bills are sometimes turned away.     The bank employee uses her discretion, or perhaps even a governmental guideline that we are not privey to, to give any amount of the requested “small money.”  She doesn’t look up as she dispenses only part of the total requested small bills.

We carry on.  As does the fledgling, capital economy.  The economic mood is similar to the translated instruction printed on our hotel fire extinguishers:  “Never give up.  Do not panic.”

Our guide at Estonia’s KGB Museum noted that many KGB agents became suddenly unemployed when the Soviet era ended.  Many former security personnel continued work at hotels.  We recall her comments at the Arbat, as a burly man in a suit maintains his vigilant presence throughout the hotel.  Throughout the City, including at the Arbat, we see doors with one-way glass and no marked purpose.  We see serious men in suits in Moscow’s Red Square and in the shopping galleries, keeping their visible presence without any obvious purpose.

On arrival, our tiredness combines with cultural awe as we slog past a row of shops selling $15 sweaters next to vendors selling $20 half-dozen roses.  We check in to the hotel and enter the elevator.  Silver buttons pop out loudly from the control panel with a sharp bang at each floor.  No safety bumpers line the elevator doors.  No Otis leaves us a repairman’s love note with his promise of a perfectly inspected lift.

Our fatique tempts us to surrender.  But we join the most hopeful of Moscow’s new consumers and buy bright Gerber daisies to counter any rain against the hotel room’s window.  We also coddle vodka, the clear and inexpensive Moscow Water, while deciding to Never Give Up, and Not Panic.  Nyet.

Dinner at the hotel is delicious.  Our young waiter, Demitry, is always smiling, but our waitress, Irina, is easily irritated.  It seems a passing thing on her part, especially after I ask about the live canary in its pretty cage next to our table.

“What is the bird’s name?”

Irina answered, “Froella,” while trying in vain to hide her amusement at my interest in befriending a bird.

Later during our visit, we are on the sidewalk behind a young woman who  is chatting on her cell phone as she walks.  She kicks at two pigeons in her path as she makes an audibly strident point to whomever is on the other end of her call.  The birds fly up in a quick wind of wings.  Her small kick causes her to make a partial turn in our direction.  She notices immediately that we are laughing at her unintended choreography.  She also laughs, while motioning cheerfully to us and acknowledging in English,  “Not so good mood!”

Nice for the world that Russian moods can so readily change.  Da.

Across from our hotel window is the window of a neighboring apartment.  A child’s Pooh Bear sits propped in the apartment window, looking at nothing and everything.  We collect square boxes of matches from an empty ashtray in the hotel’s lobby as we return in the elevator to the hotel room.

Matches, you might wonder, when no one smokes anymore?

Yes.  You might be in the mood to change sometime soon.  Be ready.

And never give up.  Or panic.

Nothing is here.

The Estonian wool knitters were happy to have a chill mist greet us this morning.  We indulged a practical shopping urge and bought hand-made gloves and mittens.  A blue hat for Judi substituted for the blue sky we expected, but had grey instead.

August 20 is Estonia’s national holiday, marking it’s Restoration of Independence.   A little more than twenty years ago, Estonia voted in unprecedented number for a constitution following Soviet rule.

Today, Estonia’s flag flew proudly, waving a band of blue for the sea, black for the bad times, and white for liberty.

In the streets, soldiers in shiny black boots marched and sang. The sense of nationalism was palpable.

As ironic balance, we visited the Russian KGB museum at the top of the Hotel Viru.  Before glastnost, this was the surveillance headquarters for the Baltic.   A listening room was manned by ten KGB officers during the decades ending in the late 1980s.  They disassembled equipment piece by piece for smuggling it out of the hotel when they returned to Russia.  Even this act maintained  the policy of denial to the very end of Occupation.

The door to the electronic transmission room remains lettered to this day, with a warning in Cyrillic and in the Estonian language, “Nothing is here.”

Of course, there must be food as part of our day.  Three of us found the Bear Bar, featuring bear cutlet.  Despite the theme and the sad picture outside on the marquis, the kitchen had no bear.

I wouldn’t have it any other way.