Moscow - Day 4

We got to the gigantic, humongous, enormous flea market/outdoor mall. Wow. Huge. Got any other synonyms? It was basically a collection of individually rented booths crammed to the warehouse-high ceilings with stuff. All manner of stuff. Bicycles, underwear, jeans, fur coats, DVDs, books, jewelry, crappy plastic toys... Think the area of the entire state fair packed with stuff. And then more stuff. But strangely enough, not souvenirs. We'll have to resort to Arbat street.

The cool thing about the market was that everyone was foreign, so we were normal. There were Georgians, Chinese, Vietnamese, Russians of all types. We didn't hear English once, but for our own talking. There was also a lot of food we could eat.

Big Boy and I managed to negotiate an acceptable price for his new fur hat. The woman started out at 4400 руб and we got her down by more than half. She did at first mistake us for Russians, but then realized we were not and slowed down so I could understand more than half of what she was saying. She thought she wasn't getting enough money, we thought we were still paying too much, so it seems to have been a successful mediation. We're not sure what animal it is, but it's not mink. Nor is it rabbit. Or squirrel. But likely Big Boy will have to keep it out of the pooch's reach. And the kittens in the fall.

We then took about 12 metro trains to get to Dinamo stadium to watch a soccer game. After much walking back and forth to get the tickets, get some food, get something to drink, get some nuts, get to the correct entrance, we finally had our seats. It was a good game, with the home team getting robbed of two goals (at least one of which should have counted) and then scoring three more (one on a penalty kick) while shutting out the visiting Rostov team. Russians whistle when they disagree with a ref's call or the other team does something unsportmanlike. They can whistle really loudly. Especially the guy behind us. They also swear like sailors, so Big Boy tells me, but I couldn't catch any of the words.

After another 12 metro trains, we got back to our temporary home on Arbat. One of the managers here has become our friend. She claims to have more trouble with English than we have with Russian, but we seem to speak Russian most of the time, with a few forays into the dictionary. She is definitely one of the nice Russians we've met here. We're monopolizing her time, but we're all having fun, so it's all good.

There's a couple from Columbia who live in the Netherlands who are vacationing here. They were very surprised that we thought Muscovites are more friendly than those in St. Pete. They speak English, Spanish (which I can just barely follow, but can't think fast enough to talk) and they're learning Dutch. But no Russian. Signs have got to be a major pain. A German Chinese guy (German nationality, but Chinese ethnicity) came in to the hostel and I was helping to facilitate communication between the manager and him. His English was hard for her to understand and he doesn't speak any Russian. Afterwards, he says to me, "You have excellent English, where are you from?" Gee thanks. Umm... "America."

Tomorrow we're headed to the Kremlin. It had better not be closed this time.