The pilot has got to be listening to Shake Shake Señora…
In my in-flight boredom in seat 28A of flight AF1945, I decided to cathartically and perhaps egotitiscally dispel my thoughts on Russia.
Kafkian doesn’t begin to cut it. From the start, I realized that Russia wasn’t Europe. But it wasn’t third-world (oops– I mean “developing”) either. I was expecting the Czech Republic, as one of those half-hearted satellite nations of the USSR (btw: CCCP, the russian spelling, is actually pronounced S.S.S.R.), to be filled with Ladas and Nivas in the streets. But no– it was Europe, whole-heartedly. Russia, well, not really. St. Petersburg was amazing– the trip went flawless. Free wireless Internet (hmm..), the Ermitage blew my mind (much more so than the Louvre), Catherine’s palace, etc. And people were, all things considered, nice. Moscow, on the other hand, was the heart of the Revolution. And as far as revolutions go my friends, I can’t see one that has been more retrograde than what I saw in Moscow. It’s a LOT like São Paulo. It’s completely urban, gritty, and despite the relative absence of skyscrapers, it did posses the 7 Stalinist towers which made my jaw drop (They weren’t like 1984, they were 1984). The metro stations were architecturally and historically luscious. Red square, the Kremlin and co. were also phenomenal. In short, the city as a landscape was brilliant.
As we checked into the hotel (Also very very purdy) I noticed all these 18- to 20-year old girls hopping around in tracksuits. I checked an easel set up in the lobby: “WORLD SYNCHRONIZED SWIMMING CHAMPIONSHIPS.” . . . . . . . I was speechless. I’d just spent the last 4 days with a group who was so old they had first seen Russia in Movietone News reels. I knew I’d have some fun then. Oh yeah, and the Bïerstube at the hotel had Paulaner Weissbier, the only beer which competes for my adoration of the other weissbier, Erdinger. So in all, a winning combination.
Russia has become the land of oligarchs. In that, it terribly resembled São Paulo. S-class Mercedes everywhere, the G.U.M. with all the snazzy shops. As the guide said it, Russians went from having money and nothing good to spend it on to having tons of imported products and no money to afford them. The fluctuation of the Ruble a few years back literally decimated everyone’s savings overnight (Joseph Stiglitz had some great thoughts on it in Globalization and its Discontents.)
Our troubles soon began. I figured out soon enough that this wouldn’t be like Venice, where no one picked us up at the train station, or Rome, where they “misplaced” our hotel reservation. Two of us had wrong dates on their exit visas. Fudeu. They spent half the day on Monday fixing it with the consul at the airport. Five hundred dollars later, they had their visas.
When we checked in today, after eating a burger which, despite almost mooing back at me, took 20 minutes to prepare, the Air France attendant informed me that we were 16 kilos overweight in our bags. This was told to us after the bags themselves were well on their way to the cargo hold of the A321-100. The attendant, expectedly, spoke no English. While I did my best to remember my long-forgotten French past-irregular syntax (The only thing that I remembered, appropriate as it was; je suis foutu.), the immigration line kept getting longer and our patience shorter. When I asked to hurry up the baggage back so we could re-manage the weight, I received the following statement from the Air France agent: “This is your problem, not mine”. Short of deservedly revoking the fifth commandment on her ass, I tried everything I could think of to “remedy” the situation. After all, for $15 a kilo, our bill would’ve been more than the ticket itself. Eventually we paid (with a disputable signature on the credit card bill). But, as the genial Pythons commanded, I looked on the bright side of life and was grateful for not being the Angolan diplomat before us who had a 45 kilo excess and a $46-per-kilo charge for his two-legged trip to Luanda. But he had just finished a 5-year tour of duty in Moscow, and I had the feeling this wasn’t the worse he had seen here.
So I enjoyed Russia. I left with a sense of Vini, Vidi, Fac ut Vivas, but all in all I’m glad I came. Besides, where else could I leave humming:
“Her name was Lola, she was a swim– err, showgirl…”
ric
P.S. I had no need to crash Václav Klaus’ daughter’s birthday party. He came out in the hotel’s bar and I got what I wanted. 
