Day one without hot water......

Poor Olya forgot today and hopped into the shower and waited for the water to heat up, and waited and waited and waited. We are now bathing nomads, chatting up total strangers to see if they still have hot water and if we can shower in their place. Have ducky, will travel!

Luxury is a water boiler...

Somebody copied our idea!!! They will be hearing from our lawyers!







Our hot water gets shut off on monday, for three weeks. It's pretty standard in Russia, they shut off the water region by region for three weeks every summer. According to Olya, our resident Russian, it's because they have to replace the pipes every summer because they use cheap ones. Why a country with billions of dollars in excess oil revenue still has to do it is beyond me. So it'll be cold showers for us for the next three weeks (except I'll be in Dublin for ten days of that, nicely planned!) or else randomly call over to friends living in different regions with towel and rubber ducky under our arms.

For some reason I was volunteered to help man the Irish stand at Europe day in Red Square e.g. stand around with Zac,in a stuffy marquee, holding each other up, both of us feeling a little bit worse for wear after friday's party and attempt to answer Russian's questions that ranged from 'are you really Irish?' to 'tell me about Irish dogs' to 'I want to correspond with Irish people, give me your email address' (cue blatantly fake email address) There was very slim pickins around food-wise, except for the weird nutty swissroll that I got from Hungary. We were beside France but they were making people pay for their yummy croissants, cheap ass frogs! It was all looking pretty bleak until the giant bodhrán player from the Rostov-on-Don Irish trad band (none of whom have ever set foot in Ireland but who do a very impressive version of 'Whiskey in the Jar') dragged us behind the stand and forced a shot of vodka down our necks. At 3pm. Avert your eyes Mum! We felt soo much better afterwards and were dancing around the place. I'm pretty sure one of the major signs of alcoholism is if you need alcohol the next day to feel better, oh dear!

I blame the band...

The leaning tower of Petya:
We had a party on friday night, all good clean fun, need to censor the rest of the pics before I put them up. Petya made the mistake of falling asleep near the end of the night, when everyone was feeling mischevious...




Rachel started it all, seeing what she could balance on him.




It all got slightly out of hand...





And he slept through it all!

This is a 60's popart display in the window of a book shop in the city centre, it's all about the vintage. And yes, that is the exact same model of oven as the one we have sitting in our kitchen. As long as you don't mind singeing the hair off your hand when trying to light it and you're not fussy about a constant temperature, then this is the oven for you! Only the best in Soviet engineering for us.

Quality parking: This car has managed to park on a corner, spanning TWO pedestrian crossings and obstruct rush hour traffic. However, because it is a fancy car it won't get so much as a ticket because the cops don't want to anger the fat cats of the city. If it was a lada, such as the quality example in the background of the picture, it would have been hauled out of there as soon as the driver stepped out of the car. The horrifically badly parked cars in Moscow are always mercs, lexuses (lexi?) or hummers. Need to get me a fancy car...


This was a 'before' shot of myself and Anna last night pre-club. The lady in the red top was feeling a bit poorly today and wouldn't let me take an 'after' shot, spoilsport.


Victory day was last tuesday, which meant that we got a second four-day weekend in a row, yay! It's quite the surreal day, when Russians try to convince themselves that communism was 'this close' to taking over the world if it weren't for those pesky kids in 'the West'. The whole day involves military parades, general showing of force, the shutting down of most of central Moscow and veterans moseying around the city, wearing all of their medals and their uniforms, meeting at prearranged points where they've met every year since the end of 'the Great Patriotic War.' Random strangers give them flowers and thank them for saving their fatherland from the horrors of fascism, its all quite sweet. Personally I was quite impressed at how they managed to fit into their uniforms over 60 years later, there must be amazing give in them.

It's also a huge day for the remaining communists in the country, we ran into two rallies and saw the bizarre sight of a guy in his early twenties, clad in gucci shoes and a gucci bag and very well dressed, toting a massive communist flag.

The young soldiers here were guarding Lenin's tomb. Almost all of them were well under 6 foot and looked like they needed a good feed. If they are the defenders of the fatherland these days, the fatherland should be worried and look into getting an alarm system.


They were everywhere, complete with what looked like gas mask holders. Notice the ubiquitous embracing couple, the pda's are out of control here.


Communist rally anyone? Caoimhe, you came a week too early! Look at the next generation of Lenin followers in the foreground of the pic.


We repeatedly lost Anna during the day, this is her lost, even though she was standing right in front of us. We are going to invest in a wrist harness for her so we don't lose her anymore.


I desperately wanted the giant USSR flag for the flat, I think it would complete it.

Our friend Eeva is Estonian, her country was invaded on Victory Day and suffered Soviet occupation for years afterwards. The orange and black ribbons are for victory day, she hopes her grandparents don't see this.

Another fine example of Moscow thwarting my best laid plans: I had to change my flight home the other day and duly went to the CzechAir office in Moscow as instructed by the friendly lady in the Dublin office. Stepped out of the metro on the street I was directed to, to realise that said street ended at number 29, when I was looking for number 31. Cool. Cue much aimless wandering around looking for the phantom building. Two phone calls later, one from Paris and another to Anna, I had the proper street address and its whereabouts. It was a beautiful day so I was still in a good mood. While moseying down the street, keeping an eye out for number 31, I realised that buildings number 39 and 29 were right beside each other. No sign of numbers 30-38. At this stage my patience was wearing a little thin. When I eventually found the elusive office it had closed 10 minutes previously. I had spent the best part of 80 minutes looking for it. It was lucky that I've recently expanded my Russian expletive vocabulary as I had a few choice words to say to the locked doors. They were very sympathetic.

I used my credit card earlier to make a 10 euro purchase (let's face it, I was just too bone-lazy to go to the cash machine) and the girl working in the shop scrutinised my passport, including the visa page, made me put in my pin code AND made me sign the docket so I would have the privilege of purchasing an item in her establishment. If I had known the Russian for retinal scan I would have offered that to her too.

With the warmer weather Muscovites are excelling themselves with the fashion on show, our college in particular is a delightful microcosm of fashion disasters. In the past two days I have seen crochet see-through tops, both leather and stone-washed waistcoats and plaid lumberjack shirts...all on guys. The potential for people watching is huge. I'd love to take some pictures, I think I would be run out of college if I did.

Our toilet has started to constantly flush, any ideas how to make it stop? It's like having our own private waterfall.

Our resident socialist Caoimhe had discovered Lenin's tomb and was on the hunt for comrade Marx's statue.


Anna gets on down to the funky music with her bad self...literally.



We were invited to the American Embassy Dacha (summer house) last weekend, this is how we roll in Moscow! It was like a mini frat party complete with beer pong and marauding US marines, it culminated in people who should have known better (for once, not me!) jumping into what was a glorified paddling pool in the middle of the night. In their defence, they were promised an outdoor heated swimming pool and weren't satisfied with the tennis and volleyball courts. The place was such a party house, it felt like a place where somebodies parents had gone away for a year and hidden all the valuables. The picture above is of my very good friend Alesia who happens to have a Fiona growing out of her neck. She left our fabby city on Monday to go back to NYC, for some reason she thought that five years here was long enough. She'll be back....

Had the weirdest experience the other night, we were in a taxi (well, a random car that we hailed on the street as is the way to get around here when the metro closes) and the driver remembered me from when he took me home in november. He remembered where I live, where I had come from, that I was Irish and that I was a student. It was totally bizarre because it's not like we hailed a taxi, it was just a random car. He said the next time we meet I'm getting a free lift home...I hope we meet in Petersburg or Vladivostok.

I'm now the proud owner of a fish and three plants, the responsibilities, it's not just about me anymore. Also I was stealthily attacked in my own room last night and I'm now the proud owner of 6 mosquito bites...the summer begins!