It's the Little Things

sometimes when working on a production, you have to wait.  you have to wait for decisions to be made, graphics to be drawn, budgets to be approved, whatever.  yesterday, we had to wait.  and so we were literally given the task to "find out what's around that would be fun for our team to do."  this is my favorite task!  i didn't buy all of those guidebooks for nothing! i am very good at travel research.  :)  so a few of us ventured out to explore the neighborhood around the office.  the office is located on the outskirts of the Presnya neighborhood.  pretty urban, and according to "lonely planet moscow" only one metro stop away are plenty of hip bars, restaurants, and cultural sites.  the sun was shining (kind of...more than we've seen anyway!) and i was ready to put some more moscow puzzle pieces together,  ready to practice reading cyrillic in the metro (NO ENGLISH at all) and ready to find some good food! bring it!

first of all, we found the moscow zoo!!  we didn't actually go into the zoo, but it has giant windows along the sidewalk, so you can peer into it.  this alpaca and the other unidentifiable brown shaggy creature behind the tree were the only animals we saw.  oh!  and get this.  there is a restaurant in the zoo...it is a sushi place!  we wonder if they just harvest the sea life from the zoo as a measure of population control...

we also saw this cute park...geogievsky park.  it's just like in brooklyn!  prams all in a row...  i can't wait for spring lunches in this park.

here are my metro pics...the first is of a mural in the ceiling...moscow is known for it's gorgeously ornate metro stations...and they are not kidding...some even have chandeliers!  and there is NO trash, graffiti, or dirt ANYWHERE.  i took my coffee on the train one morning...i was the ONLY one.  and there were NO trash cans, so i had to just carry it until i got to the office.  amazing.  also, just like in nyc - the E train comes to mind - the stations are very deep in the ground.  so you ride the escalator, and the hand rails move ever-so-slightly faster than the stair bits...so you have to adjust your hand placement about half-way up, otherwise, it starts sneaking into the space of the person in front of you...just like in new york!  (ps - bonus points for finding the hammer and sickle in this pic...)

i love this photo.  we could be back in the 50's!  except that he's probably texting someone.

food.  on this excursion i was desperate to find an actual restaurant with actual yummy food where i could sit down and they would bring it to me rather than having to pick thru a luke-warm buffet of strange meat combo's and peculiar cold veg dishes as we do at the hotel. (tho we have smoked salmon a lot, which is fantastic!!  and we don't pay extra for it, so again, that is fantastic).  with "lonely planet moscow" in hand, we were on a scavenger hunt thru the Presnya neighborhood for fun restaurants.  and we found one!  a burger joint, to be exact.  ok, so it's not terribly russian, but it was fantastic.  and i had mulled wine, one of my faves!  next door to the burger place is a gorgeous bakery-cafe.  we of course bought treats for the office!  the best part...they serve their "to stay" items on fishes eddy-brand trays with the skyline of nyc around the perimeter (which anne loved, having moved here from nyc) and they serve "crack cake" like what you find in the momo fuko pastry shop in new york.  and then, in true tourist fashion, we had coffee at the tchaikovsky concert hall cafe.  like eating at the cafe at the met.  very silly, but damn if they weren't the best macaroons i've ever had.  

yes, we are in a foreign land.  yes, reading cyrillic all day long makes my brain hurt.  yes, the sculptural figures in the metro carry massive guns. yes this is an amazing and difficult journey.  but i don't want to be back in america right now, as tough as this is.  so i ate eat a burger and fries, a tasty cupcake, saw my friend smile over a serving tray, saw families enjoying a park, rode the metro at rush hour, braved the icy streets and basked in the warmth of the winter sun.  just like at home.  yes, it's the little things.