Moscow News

2006-06-17T22:49:00.000+04:00

Week three without hot water (I managed to avoid most of it!)

Back in Moscow to find it covered in weird floaty, fluffy pollen things. It's the second coming of the snow! It's like someone blew a giant fluffy dandelion all over the city, bizarre and a nightmare for hay fever sufferers! Starting work on Monday, after not very academically challenging year it will be a major shock to the system to start working a 40 hour week. (Whaddya mean you want me to start before noon, that's outrageous!) But before then I'm studiously avoiding writing my essay, still, to the extent that I was on a jet ski this afternoon. As one does, dahling. My mum helpfully informed me that my insurance doesn't cover dangerous sports and to be careful. You gotta love the Moscow life.

I'm off to unpack the suitcase that is glaring at me in the middle of the room.

2006-06-07T09:18:00.000+04:00

Apparently, according to one of our Russian friends who knows about this kind of stuff, I was probably bitten by a snake. Is it bad that I'm kind of proud about that? Can walk much better today, should make the 12 hours of travelling that much easier.

Home today for the first time in 5 months, YAY!

2006-06-06T15:24:00.000+04:00

Passport...Check!
Tickets...Check!
Migration Card...Check!
Visa...Check!
Invitation Letter (to get visa to get back in)...Check!
Massively swollen foot...er...Check!

So some enterprising little insect bit me, THROUGH MY SOCK, on sunday. No biggy, I'm a mecca for biting insects, they love me. Yesterday I noticed that my foot was a little swollen and when I got back from picking up the necessary documents to get me out of the country and back in again, I noticed that it had gotten a lot more swollen. By 1 am last night, it was resembling the nutty professor's foot, before he took the potion. Olya and Anna went to the chemist for me to buy antihistamines at that stage (the legends) but by this morning it was still swelling and REALLY itchy. So off I hobbled to the 'European Medical Centre' (for that read ridiculously expensive money printing business), I was overtaken by a little old lady with a walking stick on my way, the shame. Later, with a sore ass (from an injection), a sore arm (from blood tests) and a sore credit card (231 euro for 20 minutes, nice work if you can get it!), I went to college to do my oral exam. On my way home I got a call from the doctor saying I had to come back in because my foot was infected and I need to go on a drip, cool. I've picked up the weirdest injuries this year...

And the moral of the story is... I should never, ever try to leave this country, something is bound to go wrong (see the visa fiasco in december for details!)

2006-06-05T11:51:00.000+04:00

Week one without hot water....

My group of friends has split into two groups: the haves and the have-nots (hot water). The have-nots are split again into the subgroups of haves and have-nots (boilers). The have-nots who have boilers are the most self satisfied of the whole group while the the have-nots who have not share battle stories about hilarious scrapes with transporting boiling water from kitchen to bathroom, wearing copious amounts of perfume and always wearing their hair tied up. (for some reason all of my guy friends here have access to a boiler for when their hot water gets turned off so their little selves don't get too cold, it's a Russian conspiracy I tells ya!) Home in two days for a proper shower...yay!

Other things are actually happening in my life apart from the inadequate plumbing. Summer arrived very suddenly yesterday, it had been cold and rainy all week and then yesterday the temperature got up to 30 degrees and it was beeyootiful. We had amazing thunderstorms all last night as well. Went to a jazz festival with a minigarch (not quite an oligarch but well on his way) yesterday too, found out where all the Russians with fashion sense were hiding...

2006-06-01T18:39:00.000+04:00

Day three without hot water...

Here's the method the ladies of the flat have adopted to maintain our usually clean selves.
Step 1. Boil water in every available vessel
Step 2. Enlist friendly flatmate to wash your hair, doing it yourself in a basin is just way to much hassle.
Step 3. Boil more water. Throw water in general direction of self and hope for the best.

I've started having dreams about showers.

It would be ok if it was the middle of summer and really warm. A cold shower might even be refreshing, as it is, the weather has been the wrong side of dry for the past few days and bloody cold. Who do I complain to about this, it's JUNE for crying out loud.

On the upside, we are finished all but one of our exams. We were supposed to do our oral today but the lecturer who was supposed to assist our deaf Russian teacher was missing, presumed drunk. If I don't get it done by tuesday I'll never get it done because this time next week I'll be home, busy eating my parents out of house and home, yay!

2006-05-30T17:31:00.000+04:00

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...

2006-05-24T18:17:00.000+04:00

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.

2006-05-22T17:08:00.000+04:00

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...

2006-05-21T16:08:00.000+04:00

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!

2006-05-12T23:54:00.000+04:00

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.

2006-05-12T23:03:00.000+04:00

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.

2006-05-04T17:20:00.000+04:00

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.

2006-05-04T00:58:00.000+04:00

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!

2006-04-25T17:59:00.000+04:00

Spring has finally sprung here, birds are chirping, grass is growing and, despite our Russian teacher's prophesies that there will be snow soon, it looks like summer's on its way. With it comes the end of term and a 3000 word essay in Russian that is the biggest thing we have had to do all year and is just hanging over our heads. At the moment I am firmly in denial (not just a river in Egypt!) and plan on staying here, the food is good!

I've just signed a contract with Ernst and Young for the summer, as of the 19th of June I will be an intern in their tax department, human capital section. It kind of sounds like slave trading but I don't think it is. In my contract it specifies that business trips are an integral part of my job, I hope they send me to Siberia!

I'm going to be inheriting a goldfish soon from my friend Alesia who is abandoning me and going back to New York. She never actually named the poor thing so I have to christen it soon. Suggestions for names are welcome, leave them as a comment. I'll have a pic of him soon, he wasn't in a posing mood the other day, he was having a fat day.

2006-04-21T16:13:00.000+04:00

We just found out that the multi-entry visas that we were given before christmas that were supposed to last until June entailing lots of international travel this term expired in February. Great. Really happy that I wasn't at a border crossing to Kiev in the middle of the night when I found that out!

It's still raining...boo.

2006-04-16T15:51:00.000+04:00

Rory and Ramona have just been whisked off to the airport, in an actual taxi, quelle decadence! Had a great time with them when they were here, they brought me trashy magazines, easter chocolates, rashers and sausages and books on Russian history and for all of that I will be eternally grateful!

Another great example of Russian efficiency; a bureau de change has just opened in one of the many 24 hour flower shops on our road. It has a big sign outside it saying that it's open round-the-clock, we went in there the other night and it was closed. The next day we went in to change our hard-earned euro and they had no rubles to give us, clearly that was our fault. Third time was a charm though, went in last night and caught them at a rare time when they were both open AND had local currency to exchange. (They have very good rates, that's why we keep going back....fools!)

Happy Easter, it feels weird here because Orthodox Easter isn't for another few weeks. I have just beheaded my chocolate Easter bunny, he is not long for this world.

2006-04-14T13:04:00.000+04:00

Petersburg in 14 hours (It only took 16 hours of travel!)

Myself, Rory and Ramona made a snap decision to go to Petersburg for the day on Wednesday evening, arriving back in Moscow on Friday morning, leaving us 14 hours in Petersburg and 16 hours on the train. Good idea?

We decided to go second class there, because the beds are more comfortable and we thought we would get a better sleep. The snory man in the top bunk had other ideas, if I knew him I would have thrown everything that wasn't nailed down at him.

THE SNORING MAN!!!! He even managed to snore when he was sleeping on his side, I think he was in training for the snoring olympics. He slept very well on wednesday night, we didn't

Rory wanted to show the world how much he was enjoying his blini with ham and cheese. The world really didn't need to know.

We saw the army and navy band rehearsing for hours in palace square for some holiday celebrations, there were some quite impressive choreographical moves. We were pretty safe in the knowledge that they weren't going to ask us for our passports, they were too busy with their step...pivot...pivot...step... step. I liked the dude standing on the little platform, it was carpeted and everything!

Sean (our man in Petersburg) ordered a cup of green tea, which turned out to be a never-ending pot of green tea. It had quite comical consequences, he was buzzing for the next three hours or so and kept having to make toilet stops. Quote of the day 'tea is not supposed to make you feel like this!' He was last seen wandering off with a purposeful look on his face muttering something like 'just one more cup.....'

Answers on a postcard please to explain why a garden needs to 'dry.'

These dogs really really liked each other, I was quite jealous of their new spring coats.

Rory got dog poo on his shoes, he was disgusted, wouldn't let me take a picture so I had to take a covert snap. We blame the dogs in the natty coats.

Ramona ended up buying a load of pictures from this man, who was like forty coats on speed, if you don't know who forty coats is then disregard the last remark.

Rory is trying manfully to keep his eyes open on the train home.

Look how chirpy they were before we headed off!

2006-04-09T03:57:00.000+04:00

My boots that have served me well for the past 7 months decided to not be waterproof anymore yesterday....and it has started raining. Lots. For the first time in about seven months.

2006-04-05T18:10:00.000+04:00

I was running late to meet friends last night and decided to splash out the hundred rubles (about 3 euro) that I had just found in my pocket on a taxi into town so I would get there faster. Just before we got into the centre we hit a traffic jam, not unusual at any time in Moscow. What was unusual was the fact that ten minutes later we hadn't moved an inch. I was sitting in the back of the car knowing that as soon as I got out of the car the traffic would start moving but I was so late to meet my friends that I eventually had to hop out and walk. As I came to Pushkin Square, the intersection of six of the busiest roads in Moscow I saw that traffic police had stopped all the traffic from all directions and were even keeping pedestrians from crossing the road. At this stage I had resigned myself to being very late, the temptation to run whooping across the deserted square was huge but the police shoot to kill here so I refrained and waited to see what all the fuss was about. A few minutes later about 15 blacked out mercs, hummers and police cars all with sirens going came speeding up one road, made an illegal u-turn and sped away. This was followed by another cavalcade of expensive german-made cars, one of which had a russian flag on its bumper and the roads were quiet again, apart from the honking of the irate drivers who had been at a standstill for more than 15 minutes. It was Mr Putin, heading home after a long day of limiting free speech and selling oil. It's quite the phenomenal party trick 'hey look guys, I can stop traffic!' It would almost make me want to run for office and just spend the day driving around disrupting traffic...

2006-03-29T14:41:00.000+04:00

Week of DOOOOOOOOOOMMMM!!!

Sorry I haven't updated in a while, I've been busy trying to shift the black cloud of dooooom that has been loitering in the region of my head for the past few days. (and in an entirely unrelated matter, my parents were visiting) Here, in no particular order, are some examples of dooom that I've been affected by recently:

My drink was spiked and I collapsed and had to be carried out of the club, that was the fatal night that I was separated from my ipod, phone, credit card, and contents of my bag.
The tunnel in the metro collapsed (the dooom cloud also affects those around me)
The flat that I had organised for my parents fell through, twice, and it looked as though there were going to be 8 of us staying in a small 3 room flat for almost a week.
The flat that I eventually found, last minute for the 'rents was very very soviet, there was food that had seen better days in the fridge and clothes in the wardrobe. The day that my parents were due to leave, having agreed with the landlady that they were going to be there until the evening, herself and her son moved back in before noon. My mum rang me to say that the son was blaring mtv all over the flat and she wanted out. Cue a hungover madcap dash to pick up the parents from the flat.
It took over an hour and a quarter to buy four return tickets to St Petersburg, we were the only people in the ticket place so that time does not include queueing.
Thought I had escaped the cloud of dooooooom in Petersburg as the weekend went really well, until we turned up to the train station for our trip home and our train wasn't there. Beware, anyone who is travelling to Moscow from St Petersburg, although there is a station called 'Moscow Station' where every train is in fact going to Moscow, there might be a tiny letter on your ticket denoting that your train has in fact left from Finland, will briefly stop in a station on the other side of town and carry on to Moscow. You won't need to worry about how long it will stop for because you've missed the train anyway. Neither I, nor anyone I've spoken to about this, has ever heard of trains to Moscow not leaving from 'Moscow Station'. My parents had to be in Moscow yesterday to catch their flight home. Anyhoo, long story short, we attempted to bribe ourselves onto the next train and, shockingly, it didn't work. The russian-speaking member of the party may have burst into tears on the platform from sheer frustration. We managed to buy ticketsfor the next train, my parents in 2nd class and us in 3rd class and things were looking up. We settled my parents into their 2nd class compartment, and went to our carraige to be told that we were on a different train and what were we thinking. So we waved the parents off and bought a bottle of champagne to celebrate a total cock-up and then almost managed to miss our train. There is a russian system of train numbering where the higher the number the better the train. My parents were on train number one, theoretically the best train in Russia. We were on train number 236, not the best train in Russia. You can imagine the rest yourselves.
My parents taxi managed to get lost on the way to the airport yesterday, I live on the airport road, its a straight road on the motorway. The third time that they passed the same IKEA i got a panicked call from my dad, wondering if they were ever going to make it to the airport. I think my dad is mystified as to why I love this city so much.

I think I've managed to shift the cloud of doooooom, by reading this post you have agreed to a legally binding contract taking on aforementioned cloud of doooooom, if you have any problems you can talk to my legal representatives.

2006-03-20T11:54:00.000+03:00

My phone, my ipod, my credit card, my house keys and myself were all upsettingly parted from each other on Saturday night, it was a painful experience. Just to let anybody who may have been texting me that I'm not ignoring you, I'm just phoneless. Should be remedying the situation soon.

The tunnel that collapsed in the metro is on our line, two stops from where we live, miraculously nobody was hurt. The beautifully Russian reason for its collapse was that there were guys drilling without a permit up above the tunnel and they drove a concrete cylinder into the tunnel, hitting a train and causing a fire. What a country!

2006-03-18T18:06:00.000+03:00

Spot where the Irish live! It was actually only up yesterday but if you can't hang a giant tricolour out your kitchen window on Paddy's day when can you? We were invited to the embassy yesterday, managed to arrive too late for the food and had to make do with large quantities of free guinness and jameson, it was a struggle I tells ya! What with the Ireland-England rugby game this evening and the Paddy's day parade tomorrow (yes, they shut down a major street in Moscow so everyone can pretend they're Irish, nice!) we are having quite the Irish themed weekend.

2006-03-16T16:22:00.000+03:00

Its warmer in Moscow today than it is in Dublin. How are those light snow showers treating ya?? Our snow is meeeelting....

2006-03-15T17:04:00.000+03:00

The boots were saved, following a madcap dash through rush-hour metro traffic, for those of you who were losing sleep over their safe return.

A fine example of Murphy's law: last night myself and my friend were walking to the metro station, discussing the hazarous footpaths in Moscow at the moment. The ice and snow is melting during the day and then refreezing into lovely patches of black ice. She mentioned that she regularly falls on the street but has never really hurt herself. Like a fool, a fool I tells ya, I said that I had only fallen once this winter and hadn't really hurt myself. The words were barely out of my mouth when we hit a patch of black ice, Rachel slipped and I tried to grab her and she knocked me over like a skittle, the two of us fell pretty hard (I landed on my poor defenceless computer!) and the two policemen standing about two metres away just looked at us, god forbid they would ask us if we were ok or help us up from our fallen turtle impressions. If it had been womens day they might have but they don't have to pretend to be chivalrous anymore. So two bruised knees and two bruised egos carried on their merry way.

In other news, Slobodan Milosevic is probably going to be buried here. They love him here, the russian media was full of glowing praise for him, they thought he was a misunderstood genius and that the Hague is a murder machine. I don't really get Russian logic sometimes....

2006-03-14T17:06:00.000+03:00

I've just dropped in my favourite pair of boots to the metro-adjacent shoefixer (cobbler?), after I'd handed over my babies I got a whiff of vodka off him and thought that they were in trouble, he said he could re-heel them for me and I should pick them up at six. I said that actually six didn't suit me and would he mind awfully if I picked them up in the morning. He repeated in no uncertain terms that I was going to pick them up at six or the consequences would be dire for my poor booties (he didn't actually say they would be dire but I got the strong impression that they would be destroyed or sold if I wasnt there at six on the dot, not a minute before, not a minute after!) So basically my plans for the day have been scrapped because I have to save my shoes later.

Russia, the homeland of customer service!

2006-03-10T11:42:00.000+03:00

This morning I was rudely awakened by the dulcet tones of the Spice Girls blaring through from next door, followed by 'Oh Come All Ye Faithful', in latin, accompanied by what sounded suspiciously like a mouth organ. An hour and a half later, I'd been subjected to more Spice Girls, the Corrs and various opera classics, all sung along to very loudly by our deep-voiced neighbour, I was up. This was the same person who played 'O Sole Mio' on repeat for 3 1/4 hours the other night nearly driving Anna mad in the process. When does it become acceptable to bang on the wall to voice your annoyance???

2006-03-09T03:30:00.000+03:00

Today was women's day, proudly described by our wizened russian teacher as 'the day when women get a day off, they can go for a walk while their husbands clean the dishes' (from the meal that their wives have cooked). We got a day off, missing a three hour class with said old lady in the process, not too shabby. Apparently, according to Irish radio (thanks Rory!), the police here who stopped women for minor traffic offences today gave them flowers instead of fines. All I had to do was steal a car and I could commit some minor traffic offences...

You couldn't swing a cat on the metro without hitting a tacky bunch of flowers being cradled by a smug girl but the holiday reeks of insincerity here. In a country where almost 40 women A DAY die at the hands of their partner and there are no laws against domestic abuse (a husband is perfectly entitled to beat and rape his wife, she is his property after all) it seems ever so slightly hypocritical to buy the missus a bunch of carnations and continue on with the beating as normal. Sorry, end of feminist rant...

I think we have a few holiday free weeks now, boo!

2006-03-07T03:00:00.000+03:00

I know I'm crap, and thanks to John Bloxham and Aisling who reliably informed me that I hadn't been updating in a while, I've just fired myself and am currently interviewing for a replacement. Had quite the interesting weekend, went out for 'one drink' that ended with myself and my new favourite half american/half cypriot (moscow is awash with 'em, I swear!) sneaking in to the flat at around the 5.3o mark, trying to be quiet and finding my hedonistic flatmates still up drinking in the kitchen. Naturally we went straight off to bed and myself and Alesia DIDN'T crack open the bottle of champagne in the fridge...ahem.

Saturday dawned bright and sunny, much like Sinead's mood when she arrived on our doorstep at 10.30 in the morning from Saratov. We weren't quite so bright eyed and/or bushy tailed but we made rashers (the last of the stockpile) and eggs and tea and discussed all that was wrong with the world. There was a pre-paddy's day irish pub crawl planned for saturday night (it was all in the name of serious journalism, honestly!) Unfortunately after the 20 or so willing participants were installed in the first pub, our spiritual home in this neck of the woods, with its reasonably priced drinks and free, yes free, irish stew, leaving didn't look like it was going to happen. The other 3 pubs were either faaaar away or prohibitively expensive. So an executive decision was made to stay put in said pub and consume more long island ice tea, whaddya mean there are four litres of alcohol in this, it tastes just like coke...

Then all 20 of us hopped on the last metro and crashed a party, some of us knew the people throwing the party, most were just well wishers. A fun night was had by all, concluding with one member of our party being extricated from the grip of a pervy russian dude, the person in question was maintaining that she would catch up to us and was going to hang out with the long haired dude that she had never met before. Just after she gave him her number she was fireman's lifted outta there and we were on our merry way.

We have a grand total of three days off this week, we always have tuesdays and thursdays off this term and wednesday is 'women's day', god bless russia and her random holidays. We have just finished maslennitsa, in the grand fashion of never doing things by halves, russia has pancake week instead of just a tuesday, nice. Though this means that lent has started, I'm not giving anything up because I'm not a quitter.

Person we love today : The lady who works at our vegetable stall, who asked me how life is treating me today and then said that she loves seeing myself and Anna because we are always so happy. It's always nice to get a compliment when one is buying potatoes. Can I bring her home?

Person we don't love today : Our ageing Russian teacher who blathered on for SEVENTY MINUTES non-stop in our class today. And its an oral class. She asks questions and then when you are opening your mouth and inhaling to start your answer she'll launch into the answer that she's looking for. I almost jumped out the window to ease the physical and mental pain I was in to have to put up with her.

Anyhoo, it's 3.20 am here, not entirely sure why I'm still up, off to bed for me....

2006-02-23T20:00:00.000+03:00

Temperatures have soared to zero degrees in Moscow, its pretty bad actually because its snowing rainy snow and the rest of snow is melting, meeeeeellting! It nessitates either wearing skirts or tucking your trousers into your boots, not as sartorially dodgy as it sounds, because otherwise your trousers would be turned an interesting shade of pooey brown. I stepped in what looked like ice today and ended up ankle deep in water, my waterproof boots performed admirably though!

2006-02-22T19:50:00.000+03:00

Day of the protectors of the Fatherland:

So tomorrow, the 23rd of february, is the 'day of the protectors of the fatherland'. So what does that mean I hear you say? Basically we get a day off which, considering our recent hectic schedule in college, is very welcome. Also its construed as 'man's day' so even though I don't know any actual defenders of the fatherland (nor do I want to judging by their VERY dodgy reputation!) the men that we know have been mentioning that its their day tomorrow. Basically the men of Russia see tomorrow, as they see most holidays in this country, as a day when they should be given presents and as an excuse for public drunkenness and debauchery.

Roll on womens day on the 8th of March!

(Whaddya think of my dodgy propaganda poster?? Does it make you want to defend your fatherland and get drunk in the process???)

2006-02-20T12:21:00.000+03:00

29 balloons and two girls in winter garb into the back of a lada zhiguli is quite a snug fit!

Anna sits down in the snow to demonstrate her haul of helium balloons, we're still
not sure how she made it out of the club with them!

We may have crashed a birthday party on friday, we possibly may have ended up in a swanky club that we could never have afforded, there are rumours that we didn't pay for a drink all night but consumed large amounts of vodka and champagne, unreliable witness accounts may have placed us dancing on the bar, speculation abounds that Anna left the party with 29 helium balloons attached to her left wrist and Fiona with a membership card.

Clearly it's all unsubstantiated lies, we were doing our embroidery on friday night!

2006-02-15T20:32:00.000+03:00

Yesterday I attempted to buy phone credit at the phone credit shop, they couldn't sell me any credit. Today I tried to buy a baked potato at the baked potato stand (thats their major product!) and they didn't have any potatoes...I love Moscow!

2006-02-12T16:30:00.000+03:00

Ok, so maybe we didn't make the snowmen, but there was about one hundred of them on a major street in Moscow...MAD!

2006-02-08T20:27:00.000+03:00

We had a bit of time on our hands yesterday so we decided to throw together a few snowmen...as one does.

We got quite a few done before it got dark...

We hauled our asses out of our comfy warm beds this morning at 8.30am (didn't even know that existed anymore!), made ourselves eat a proper breakfast in preparation for the long day ahead, took about ten minutes putting on layers for the -24 outside, were involutarily impregnated on the rush hour metro, managed to make it in to college an unheard of SIX MINUTES EARLY! Unfortunately, Moscow kicked our asses again, and we were actually 24 hours and six minutes early, doh. The first time we were early for something in....ever....and there was nobody there to see it!

Our options were to go home to bed or stay in town....our credit cards didn't know what hit them. Ah retail therapy, works a charm to alleviate the pain of accidentally getting up too early.

2006-02-07T22:48:00.000+03:00

We heart Saratov!

These are only some of my Saratov pics, the site doesn't want me to put any more on, sorry Martina I think you are just destined not to see the pictures of Sinead! After many attempts I'm throwing in the towel...damn you russia, you've beaten me again.

Mr Guevara makes exceedingly good cheap wine, can only be bought in Saratov, unclear why! Note the Dunnes Stores bag in the right of the pic, they've made it down south!

The aisle entirely consisting of different types of ketchup in Sinead's local supermarket, the mind boggles, no sign of any heinz though...

Sinead keeps an axe in her kitchen, we don't think she was planning on using it on us, we slept with one eye open all the same.

Our seven-week christmas holiday ends tomorrow, just as we were getting used to being laydees of leisure, tomorrow we have the baptism of fire that is a two hour history lecture and four hours of russian language, score.

2006-02-05T16:37:00.000+03:00

Our internet is down at home so still no pics of Saratov but here's a few points about the lovely town on the Volga:

Going there on the train, expect to be stared at by one man who is bookless, paperless, radioless, basically has nothing to do but stare at foreign girls...for 16 hours!
The volga, Russia's longest river, separates Saratov from Marx and Engels, its neighbouring towns... it was frozen.
If you fancy grabbing a quick bite to eat in the town, don't even think of trying it without reservations. You can walk into a deserted restaurant to be told that they have no free tables (but I have all this money and I just want to eat!)
Don't expect to be able to buy phone credit in the phone credit shop, Sinead's local had run out of credit, the mind boggles.
If you are going to only have one famous son of your city, you could do much worse than Saratov's famous ex-resident, Yuri Gagarin, the guy who beat those arrogant yanks into space and then snuffed it in a weird, covered-up, air accident.
There's a cool irish pub (now there's an oxymoron!) there that does amazing steak cooked by their french chef who comes down to say hi to you and which plays very eclectic music such as Mozart (for his birthday, I think) mc hammer and the wolfe tones...nice!

We went to see the Nutcracker in the bolshoi today, after buying our tickets from ticket touts outside, it was brilliant, except for one tiny thing...we were sitting on the far right hand side and all the action seemed to take place on the left hand side of the stage (think about it!) so a good few times we were left staring at a blank stage...nice!

Its -20 outside today, thats a whole 42 degrees colder than the current temperature in the flat.

2006-02-01T16:32:00.000+03:00

Saratov pics and news to follow in the next post, I'm a few days behind, sorry! Before my battery goes I just want to tell about the beyootiful irony of the woman sitting beside me on the metro yesterday, she was covered from head to toe in fur (not a rare occurence here) but she was carrying a bag emblazoned with the words 'animal friend'...oh dear!

Josh and the moose try to get over the crippling pain of a broncos defeat....the moose has gone off on a vodka-fuelled bender and hasn't been seen since.

Anna wearing a sleeping bag, all of her clothes and my hat (bobbles are in people, you heard it here first....) in a vain attempt to warm up the next morning.

Clearly the language barrier is getting to Vlad, I don't think he understood the concept of a hair brush...

Josh is clearly delighted at having his hair cut at 3 in the morning after one too many vodka shots!

The free wireless that we were stealing in the flat has dried up so I've had to remove myself to a cafe to rob internet there....it hoits! I'm also way behind with my putting up of pics, these are of Josh's birthday party in his ridiculously underheated apartment, it has warmed up now though!

2006-01-26T16:40:00.000+03:00

Tip for the day: While it is usually a good idea to use your windowsill as an overflow freezer when the temperature is below zero, beware placing kamikaze pizzas on the windowsill, they would rather take their chances with a three storey fall rather than be baked. Had to retrieve a thin-based mushroom variety from the snow drift under our kitchen window.

Off to Saratov for the weekend to take a walk on the frozen Volga, talk more tuesday.

2006-01-25T00:46:00.000+03:00

I really shouldn't have mentioned having good karma in my last post because it has all come back to bite me in the ass ( and elbow!) . It's highly ironic that with the copious amounts of snow and ice around I managed to have quite the comedy snotting taking a corner too fast in our flat in socks (there should be a health warning attached to the little blighters!) on our super slippy floor and now my elbow, my ass and my ego are badly bruised....poor me!!

2006-01-23T23:14:00.000+03:00

Back in the USSR

Saturday afternoon I arrived back in Moscow, after possibly the most uneventful two flights ever, I wasn't charged excess baggage for my clearly overweight/small house bag, I got a seat with the most legroom I've ever seen on the flight from Dublin to Prague, saw an amazing sunrise in the morning over Dublin and a cool sunset later that afternoon over Moscow, my bag actually managed to make the difficult transition from Dublin to Russia without needing an overlong rest in Prague (a first for me!) and I got a taxi home, with a seatbelt (shock horror!), for a not too extortionate price...in short, it was all coming up Fiona. (I figured I was owed a lots of good travel karma after the recent horrible travel experiences!)

Saturday night our friend Josh had his birthday party in his flat. You may have heard whisperings that Moscow is a tad on the chilly side at the moment so Josh was a bit worried that the atmosphere in his apartment would be slightly frosty seeing as his heating isn't working. We were all warned to dress for the occasion so when we turned up wearing our layers (some of us may have still been acclimatising and may have been wearing 2 feather and down duvet-coats,a wooly cardigan, two tops, a thermal vest, tights under her jeans, two pairs of wooly socks and three pairs of gloves/mittens, the michelin man look, trust me, its going to be huge!) the apartment didn't seem to be too cold, the kitchen especially seemed to be almost tepid. Josh explained that he had recently had the novel idea of turning on the oven to full heat and leaving the door open, instant heater, just don't stand too close. It actually worked quite well, especially seeing as nobody pays for gas in this country. A good night was had by all, though Josh may have woken up with less hair than he had woken up with the morning before, the result of over-zealous 'I'll just cut off the little curly bit at the bottom....now I just have to even it up...' oh dear! I'll have pictoral evidence in the next post, I promise.

Last night, newly-shorn Josh, Anna and I went to the friendly neighbourhood casino to watch what we were told was a very important american football game - Denver Broncos vs Pittsburgh Stealers. Josh having being born in Denver he's quite the fan and his mum had threatened us earlier in the day saying that we had to go. Unfortunately the Broncos didn't manage to seize victory but myself and Anna now semi-understand American football. Josh was last seen drowning his sorrows in a large bottle of vodka (see earlier post from St Petersburg, that size!!)

Thats all the scandal for now, its actually not that cold here, you just need to wear as many clothes as possible! We are very much enjoying the fact that we have no classes to go to and are spending our time sleeping, reading and watching dvds, not too shabby!

2006-01-19T03:05:00.000+03:00

A Belated Post
The wonder glass - is it a square, is it a circle, nope it's a squircle!! Magic!!! (Sorry, I know I'm sad!)

Where else is one to go in January but Paris, especially if one's plane ticket cost less than entrance into a not so fancy club in Paris and one drink! Had a great weekend, which coincidentally happened to fall the same weekend as the start of the parisian sales, entirely by accident I swear! Thanks a million to Caoimhe and Niall for putting up with us and for letting us take over your apartment.

We went ice skating for the bargainous price of 5 euro, and you could stay on as long as you wanted, we actually found something that was cheaper to do in Paris than in Moscow OR Dublin...shock horror! We weren't exactly pro's but two of us managed to stay upright, someone
else who shall remain nameless, got a little too cocky and may have fallen twice!

The lads wait for the in-boat movie to start on the river trip on the Seine, they'd still be waiting there if they hadn't gotten hungry and removed themselves to the classiest of french restaurants, McDonalds (insert snooty french laugh here)

I've decided this is where I'm going to live when I make my fortune studying Europeans (I swear, there's money to be made...honestly!) One simply must have a townhouse on the left bank of the Seine, dahling!

The ubiquitous 'I went to Paris and saw the Eiffel Tower' picture.

Our host and hostess with the mostess for the weekend, the very hard-working Science Po students Niall and Caoimhe. They put us up in their fancy apartment in one of the swankiest areas of Paris, 'tis far from Armani and Dior they were reared!!

This was possibly the tallest man I've ever met, when I was talking to him I didn't realise quite how tall he was, then when I looked at the picture I realised that yes, 6'9" is actually quite a bit taller than me! We were all standing up!!

Some Dublin pics : Ok girls you made it onto the blog, we can pretend this was taken in Moscow!

Richie (the camera whore) and the soon to be Dr Amy, she will be writing prescriptions for all!

The beautiful scarf that Richie's granny knit with her own fair hands to keep me warm in the wilds of Russia, apparently its -26 degrees celcius over there at the mo....ooh that's cold! I'll be back there on Saturday afternoon, in time for Josh's birthday, just look for the block of ice in my next post.

2006-01-09T23:23:00.000+03:00

Happy New Year everybody!!

The Conor Pass in Kerry, pretty aint it. Went on a road trip this weekend, froze ourselves on the top of a windy mountain, took a few pictures and then went back to the pub!
The American returns to his spiritual home...

An ice cream called nogger, surprisingly tasty for such an unappetising name, Sinead models her 'I'm so happy to have a four hour stopover in Prague' face.

I miss Moscow and its snow!!!!

Just wanted to put a few pics up, what with finally being in a house with broadband and not having to wait all day for a picture to upload. Hope everyone had a happy new year and has started the post christmas detox. Booked my flights back to Moscow, the updates will start again properly from the 21st of January, I promise!

2005-12-25T02:20:00.000+03:00

I should change the name of the blog to dublinfi now because, despite the best efforts of russian bureaucracy, we all made it home in one piece last night. We had a few last minute panics with our visas. when we got our visas back on thursday we realised that the intelligent being who processed them had stamped them SEVEN TIMES (the stamp is all important in Russia!) but had forgotten to actually sign them! So a mosey down to our friendly passport office and three hours of waiting later they finally managed to find the guy who processed them and got him to sign them. We were on our way...or so we thought.

11 o'clock on friday morning, just as we were getting ready to leave for the airport, we realised that our migration cards, seemingly unimportant little bits of paper that you fill out when you enter the country and forget about, were still in college because they had taken them off us on the first day. These cards are ridiculously overimportant if you ever feel the need to leave the country. Cue a panicked dash into college to be told that they couldn't find them and that they were only a formality anyway (without formalities and needless paperwork Russia wouldn't be able to function!!) Anyhoo, we headed out to the airport, determined to play dumb and priming ourselves to turn on the tears if necessary (shameful I know, but very effective!) First hurdle;overweight bags, solved by checking in seven of us all together and hiding the big pink elephants that were the slightly big-boned bags. Second hurdle; passport control, surprisingly easy for those of us who were without migration cards, still not sure why. Not so easy for sinead who was told that there was a problem with her visa and when she returned with it to Russia she would probably be deported, nice!! They let her through after much humming and hawing and we were on our way!

Once we got to Prague, the quietest airport in the world ever, we were in the EU and nobody could touch us dammit! Arrived in Dublin last night and were dropped into the shameless overconsumerism that is the city at christmastime and the joy of an overstuffed fridge and mammy cooking! Its good to be home. I'll probably be dying to get out of here in about a week...

HAPPY CHRISTMAS!

2005-12-22T23:28:00.000+03:00

We got our passports back this afternoon and only noticed by accident that the muppet who had processed our visas had managed to stamp it SEVEN times but forgot to actually sign them. So a speedy trip to the passport office and a three hour wait later we got ourselves sorted 15 minutes before the office closed, we'd have been rightly screwed! You gotta love the ridiculously overcomplicated Russian bureacracy!

So I've decided that mocking is catching and I'm not going to say anything about what could go wrong with our flights and just decide that we will be in Dublin at 8.45pm local time tomorrow evening...YAY, roll on Christmas!

2005-12-21T20:31:00.000+03:00

So we are due to fly home in slightly over 36 hours and we were informed today, over a week after we surrendered our passports to get our exit and re-entry visa (its a fun process!), that they needed black and white (?) , matte passport pictures yesterday in order to process our visa's in time for our flights. So we are passport-less and visa-less but not worried....yet! I'm sure we could find a turkey in Russia....

2005-12-16T18:27:00.000+03:00

We are heading home a week from today, I started thinking about the things that I'm looking forward to and the things I'll miss when I'm home.

Things I'm looking forward to:

IRISH FOOD!!!!! Mammy food, rashers and sausages, anything involving sun dried tomatoes(ok pedants, I know they aren't Irish but they are just so expensive here!) O'Briens Sandwiches, opening the fridge safe in the knowledge that there will most likely be food of the edible sort there, possibly even a selection, most definitely an improvement on the current situation in my fridge (a sad looking pepper, a long life yoghurt and a block of cheese that promises it won't go off until next june....worrying!!)
My bed.
Dishwashers!
Being able to satisfactorily argue in shops and defend my place in queues without being laughed at for my accent.
Being able to walk down the street without having to stare at the ground, comparatively safe in the knowledge that the worst I'm going to step in is a puddle. Here we've all had a few run-ins with the ice on the footpath, I almost had to grab a few old ladies for support as I skidded past them with all the grace of a baby elephant and we know of a few people here who, painfully for them, hilariously funny for the rest of us, have fallen down open manholes!
Being able to wear impractical shoes at night time, knowing that there's a pretty low chance of losing a toe to frostbite.
Oh yeah, and seeing my family and friends.....of course!

Things I'm going to miss when we are home:

Being able to hail a car on the side of the road, any car, and preagree the price, usually you can get almost anywhere in the city for about 4 euro. I don't think I can handle the queueing for taxis and watching the meter lark in Dublin!
Being able to buy a litre of vodka that won't strip your insides for 5 euro (honestly mum, I'm not an alcoholic!)
SNOW!
My friends, especially our americans who are bailing out and going back to the motherland (or France!) , DONT LEAVE US!!!
The metro; it may be overheated and overpopulated by fragrantially (its a word!) challenged individuals but its so fast and cheap, Dublin Bus has a long way to go....

Thats it for now, we were supposed to have a politics exam today, our lecturer couldn't stay for it so we didn't have it....nice!

2005-12-13T18:32:00.000+03:00

In a further act of procrastination I've just joined bebo, something I swore I'd never do, oh dear. Its a slippery slope, this presentation isn't going to write itself!!

2005-12-13T17:37:00.000+03:00

Iris was chosen as the unfortunate victim of the 'tequila boom-boom' shot, her hat says 'help me', shortly after this pic was taken the hat was lit on fire, she was hit on the head with a flaming bat and we could do nothing to help her....we were all on the floor laughing. Iris is currently searching for a chiropractor in the greater Moscow area....

Ok, I'm going to write my presentation now, damn procrastination....

2005-12-13T17:13:00.000+03:00

Our 'exams' start on Thursday, the teachers seem like they could be less bothered about them, they are all oral which will entail lots of filler words in Russian and very little actual information. At the moment I'm trying to write a presentation on Alexandr II, a nineteenth century tsar (oh the excitement!) due to a lack of source material (i.e. I was too lazy to actually find anything in the confusing college library, and anyway, its all in Russian!) I'm working off a children's book about the tsars, VERY patchy lecture and tutorial notes and, the saviour of lazy people everywhere, wikipedia. Unfortunately, seeing as I have to be connected to the internet to get Wikipedia, I'm getting easily distracted, like by writing emails, blog posts etc. They have a particularly fine definition of a skanger on wikipedia.com....
Ok, back to work.
Another fascinating weather report...its -1 in Dublin today and +1 in Moscow, whats going on with the world???? Ankle deep slush, soo not conducive to wearing anything you don't want destroyed.

2005-12-12T00:45:00.000+03:00

Last Sunday there were elections for the Moscow City Duma, kind of like the city council. The build-up to the elections started back in early October, with the Moscow Times (our only source of english-language news at the moment apart from the internet) running daily articles on the various wheeling and dealing of the parties with parties being excluded from the elections for running blatantly rascist advertisements. Anyhoo, polling day arrived and during our next politics lecture the question was asked how many in our number had voted. In a class of about 45 students, who CHOSE to study politics, only 2 students went to vote...one of them was too late to the polling station so didn't quite manage to cast their vote, the lecturer didn't even bother to vote!! It's good to see that the electorate are flexing their collective muscle in this country!

Finally got another proper fall of snow, makes an improvement on 'black friday' when it was -11 degrees after we had rain and sleet, the roads were like glass and the 5 minute walk to the metro took me about 20 minutes, almost got intimately acquainted with the footpath about 10 times. We now have nice crunchy snow, that your shoes can grip, instead of a walking surface more suited to ice skates!

2005-12-09T16:38:00.000+03:00

Just a quick post to say that I had a quick look at the weather in Dublin today....a positively balmy +11 degrees, the temperature in Moscow, a slightly chillier -11 degrees. Winter has arrived!! Josh finally managed to leave the country, we hope!

2005-12-07T19:42:00.000+03:00

A Weekend in the West!

The 'Church on Spilt Blood' in Petersburg, cool name and pretty cool looking!

Building an outdoor ice bar on the main street of Petersburg....as one does. You'll notice its dark, quite the running theme for winter in the city!

We were promised that this river, the Neva, would be frozen and that we would be able to walk/skate/ fall on our asses across it at this stage of the year, damn global warming, the Russians love it though because it means their winters are getting much milder, they can't seem to understand it's got slightly more catastrophic results in other parts of the world and keep belching out their pollution. Anyhoo, if it wasn't frozen last weekend we are just going to have to come back after New Year....ho hum!

3.75 Litres of tasty vodka for 30 of your european Euro, when Russia gets it right it does so in style!! (Margaret, I think I've found your spiritual home!!) Honestly lads, it was empty when I found it!!

The birthday boy, a few hours into his night out!!

A weekend trip to St Petersburg was called for in honour of Sean (who does business and Russian in Trinity, but we won't hold that against him), he was hitting the ripe old age of 20 and he came to the shiny metropolis of Moscow for my birthday so my arm was twisted to repay the favour. Had a fantastic weekend, St Petersburg is soo much cheaper than Moscow, spent 250 rubles (about 6 euro) on a night out and that included a trip to KFC AND a taxi for four people home, bargainous! (the cheapness of the night may have had something to do with the MASSIVE bottle of vodka which was opened before we went out...see above) We did the touristy things during the day (which lasted about 4 hours, the sun set at 3:49pm on the sunday) its definitely a prettier city than Moscow. My love of Estonians was confirmed, they speak such a cool language (the number four is 'nelli' so listening to Sean's girlfriend say four thousand four hundred and fourty four was worth the trip alone!) and they are just mad people.

One of our friends, Josh, was leaving to go back to the states for chrismas this afternoon, tearful goodbyes all round and then we got a bit depressed because he was the first of our friends to start the mass christmas exodus. Imagine our surprise when we exited our local metro station this evening to be met by...Josh! After quickly confirming that we hadn't gone back in time, we established that even though Josh had confirmed his flight to Geneva last night, booked his hostel to stay over night there and said goodbye to his babushka (more on her later!) when he went to check in today he was informed that he was in fact booked onto the 9am flight to Zurich and why had he missed it! The beauty of Russia is that in any other country this would have been a major mix-up by the airline and they would bend over backwards to fix it and immediately offer some sort of compensation to allay the pain of missing a flight you never even knew you were booked on, not the case in this fair country. Josh had to traverse the city to try to sort out the problem, all the time being blamed for someone else's mix-up, long story short he's booked on the flight he thought he was booked on, tomorrow, and is staying with us because he can't let his babushka know because heads will roll in the airline industry!

Which leads me nicely to Josh's babushka, or Baba Sasha as she prefers to be called. Not actually his grandmother but more like his roommate/landlord. She spends most of her time with her family in the states so Josh has a pretty sweet deal in the apartment on his own. Yesterday was the first time that we met this living legend, we went to Ismailovsky Park, russian souvenir mecca, and the woman was poetry in motion with her haggling. She managed to disparage almost everything and not only got the Russian price for what we bought (dual pricing, we are never going to be able to get around it) but managed to bully the stallholders into giving further discounts, not easy with these hardcore traders. When she heard that we were Irish she said that she LOVED Riverdance (foolishly, Lui said that he could dance better than Michael Flatley, hands up anyone who doesn't see that coming back to bite him in the ass!!), wondered at why none of us had red hair or freckles and said that she didn't think there were any good looking Irish people (we took it as a compliment!) An absolute legend, we are thinking of bringing her home and putting her on our windowsill!

2005-11-29T18:09:00.000+03:00

I don't know if this will come out properly but this is Sinead, standing by an extension cable that is coming from the sky, lying in the middle of the street. We weren't sure where it was plugged in or what the person who had left it there was planning to plug into it. The mind boggles...

Three classic examples of the 'metro face', a necessary survival tool in Moscow. Always look vaguely annoyed and distinctly unapproachable, don't make eye contact and for god's sake don't even think of smiling, you may have just agreed to marry someone!

Catherine, fresh from the provinces, hadn't really grasped the concept of the 'metro face' just yet. She's now engaged to an Azeri street trader and working with him selling onions.

I tried to take a few pics of the many Dunnes bags moseying about Moscow but people look at you very strangely when you start taking pictures of their plastic bag!!

Dunnes Stores bags in Moscow.....Whaddya mean there's no Dunnes Stores here???

So after you've spent, oh about a week in Moscow, you notice the abundance of Dunnes Stores bags around the place, imagine the ensuing excitement, finally somewhere to buy affordable but good quality underwear, food and assorted other consumer goods, god bless Ben's Boutiques, they really are everywhere. Then imagine the crushing disappointment when you realise that there is not a single Dunnes anywhere in Moscow, or in the rest of the great country that is Russia but that the Dunnes Stores 'bag for life' and hilarious knock-offs of it ('Flower Stores' anyone??) are the bags of choice for the discerning Muscovite about town. You see Russia copped on to the beauty of charging for bags long before the powers that be in our fair isle cottoned on to the fact that there was money to be made for it. Also Russians don't believe in carrying a rucksack or any type of big functional bag when they can use a perfectly good natty plastic number. So its very common to see assorted babushkas standing around metro stations and markets with armfuls of plastic bags, the most common of which is the Dunnes one (though there have been sightings of River Island, Selfridges and a Londis (!) bag!) This raises a number of questions: do we have to start carrying our lives around in plastic bags to avoid standing out like the decadent westerners that we are trying not to be? Why on earth has the Dunnes Stores bag been chosen as the prestigious bag to be seen with? Is someone actually making them or are they falling off the back of a lorry on the way to Ireland? What happens when the 'bag for life' breaks and, according to the promise on the bottom of the bag, if it is taken to any Dunnes Stores outlet it will be replaced, free of charge? There will be a national scandal, all these babushkas looking for the shop to replace their bag and unfortunately they won't find one, trust me, I've looked!!

2005-11-24T19:13:00.000+03:00

Women have to cover their heads before they go into orthodox churches, (why hair is offensive
I have no idea) this is Anna doing her best pious Mother Theresa impression!

This is the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, it looks pretty fancy and old, it may be fancy, its not old! The first one was built in 1839-83 to commemorate Russia's victory over Napoleon. Stalin in his infinite wisdom decided to destroy it and build a 315m high 'Palace of Soviets' with a 100m statue of Lenin (there really isn't enough references to Lenin in this country!) but after they knocked it down they ran out of money so they decided to put the world's largest heated outdoor swimming pool in the crater of the holy site instead, as you do! They rebuilt it recently, finishing it in 1997, in the space of two years, it looks quite impressive from far away but on the inside, even though all the wall space is covered in icons and religous images (they are big into decoration in Orthodox churches, not big into seats OR short and sweet ceremonies) they are all mass produced and the church just doesn't feel used. Interesting story behind it though, would have loved to have seen the pool there, especially when it's -18 degrees outside!
This was the view from my window this morning, very randomly it was colder in Dublin the other day than it was in Moscow, I'm sure thats not supposed to happen, at least not in November! We got our snow last night and this morning it was snowing heavily on our way to the metro station, when we got off the metro, ten minutes later, there wasn't a flake to be had, no fresh snow had fallen and we were only a few miles away! It didn't snow all day in the centre and it's still snowing out in our neck of the woods, very strange!

Today is Thanksgiving so in true American stylee we are stuffing ourselves with traditional pilgrim food....rashers, sausages and pudding that Catherine's (one of the Trinity girls in Saratov) parents brought over for us. They also brought us out to dinner last night where we ate ridiculous amounts of indian and georgian food so I'd like to profess my undying love and admiration for them both.

Sinead and Catherine are up from Saratov with us for the week, they can't get over how expensive Moscow is. They both had birthdays while they were here with us, so did two of our other European Studies friends, Siobhan in Salamanca and Gui Xi in Strasbourg, whats with all the third week of November babies on our course???

2005-11-18T18:28:00.000+03:00

This is the entrance to our new gaff....honestly it is, marble staircases are so now. Its so hard to get good help to hoover the carpet though!

This is my room, complete with chandelier number two (one is never enough dahling!) Its interesting to note that even though the walls are very thick and its an old building, I can hear the man next door, a total stranger that I've never even seen, snoring gently every night! (This pic is especially for you Ciara, sorry it took so long!)

This is our kitchen radio. It has only one station. The government channel. Almost all of the ads start with 'dear pensioners'. Oh dear.

This is our kitchen, complete with soviet stylee oven (it works, thats all that matters!!), surpisingly low sink and a red scrubbing brush with a suction cup on it, clearly a must-have purchase from IKEA!

This is our bullet-proof, fully padded double front door(love the dodgy marble paint effect!). Not entirely sure why there's a safety chain, to use it you would have to open the first door, then open the outer door, swiftly close the first door and slide the chain across ensuring that whoever was trying to break into your flat would be in the kitchen, boiling the kettle for a cup of tea and rooting for biscuits at that stage! Clearly the horse had to make the move from our previous abode, she doubles as a bouncer for undesirable guests! Note also that we've turned Russian and all shoes are shed at the door, we maintain its so the wooden floors don't get damaged, we just don't fancy getting the hoover out!

This is Anna's room, complete with bedside table that she assembled herself!

This is Anna studying in our living room/Lui's room, it was the night before the fateful test! Yes that is a chandelier you see hanging from the ceiling, we are decadent westerners after all!!

Lessons learnt by the occupants of number 57 Konstantin Simonov Street (thats us!) in the past few days....
1. If you try to run the washing machine and the kettle at the same time, it blows a fuse and all power is lost in the apartment, though inexplicably this doesnt happen with any other combination of appliances.
2. Having people over for a quiet dinner on a thursday night won't end any time before 5am the next morning, not good when there is work and college to stay awake in!
3. You may live close to the metro, this does not mean the the metro has the ability to travel at warp speed just because you left ten minutes after you are supposed to be in town! (We are embracing the Russian philosophy that you aren't technically late until you are 9 minutes late, not sure who came up with that number....we are often technically late here!)
4. We live beside the motorway where Liam Lawlor met the great tribunal in the sky.
5. Surprise history tests, this time on Russian history, written in scrawled Russian lecturer handwriting and being the same test as the Russian students had to take (they can speak russian, so not fair!) are very easy to fail. We got praised for getting 2 out of 10 questions right, Lui got 4 out of 10, the boy can do no wrong in this country!
6. We live upstairs from relatives of Mikhail Gorbachev, we have to be careful when we have people over, the last thing we need to do is piss off a former leader's family.

We are the only people complaining about the lack of snow in Moscow, apparently we have been having unseasonably good weather, it rained yesterday for the first time in weeks but we want snow dammit!

2005-11-15T04:24:00.000+03:00

I know I've been slacking on the post front, I'll try to improve, promise! I've been busy with the new flat, it had to be christened, so far I've managed to explode most of a bottle of sovetskoe champagnskoe all over Lui's rug (that the landlady later took for her own house...oops!), smashed a 3/4 full bottle of perfume so my bedroom now smells of chanel chance and I don't and spilt a glass of water everywhere...I'm hoping thats the third and last one! We are just over a week in our little pied-a-terre (I'm not entirely sure what that is but it sounds fancy!) and the student accomodation and its narky babs are but a distant memory. The only reason we MIGHT miss them is that we now have to empty our own bins and buy our own toilet paper (evro standart....clearly the creme de la creme of papers for the discerning derriere!) The bad thing about being only twenty minutes from college is that we still manage to be 10 minutes late on a good day, the teleporter is on order though so that should cut down on our commute time. Another trip to IKEA was quite clearly called for to make our bachelor(ette) pad more homely but that place is just dangerous.....clearly I needed to buy 8 colouredy boxes that all fit into each other, thanks Josh for talking me off the ledge for that one. Even when you leave the place, complete with food coma from the yummy cheap swedish food, slightly light-headed from the pour your own draft beer tap(friends don't let friends IKEA when drunk!) , lots of assorted furnishings that are all so cheap separately but suddenly seem to add up when you get them to the checkout and leaving behind the colouredy boxes, the Swedes still catch you out...I definitely paid for a jumbo packet of candles that never came home, still making a profit out of me, this is war IKEA!

I had a ridiculously surreal experience the other week, a two hour conversation, with a Ukrainian (nothing too weird there) in IRISH!! So random, the guy teaches Irish in Moscow State University and he asked me to go talk to his students who were very excited that they would get to talk to a native speaker. So I ended up on the campus on MSU the other day, two enthusiastic girls (the advanced class!) sitting across from me waiting for me to dust off my rusty Irish. These two girls who had never left Russia spoke with very strong Connemara accents when they spoke Irish, sounding remarkably like my biology teacher, they are reading 'Peig', 'Na hOileainigh' and 'Caisleain Oir'!! Most of those books mean nothing to non Irish speakers but the last one is particularly painful for anyone from Scoil Chatriona who's sat through a whole year of Seimi and Babai Mhairtin! Anyhoo, I think I've been roped into meeting with them every few weeks to speak Irish with them, its so surreal here though because I'm speaking Russian all day when I try to speak Irish its a weird slavic version! Definitely a very interesting experience having a conversation in Irish on the Metro, with the Muscovites, who love a good one-way staring competition, shooting you daggers wondering what weird language you are speaking and who let you into their country.

Myself and Anna discovered today, to our dismay/giddy amusement, that even when you are allowed to use a dictionary and your class 'notes', the teacher leaves the room for the duration of the 1h and 20 minute class and there is much conferring and strangely identical answers that it is still possible to spectacularly fail an exam! We had our first exam today, in the subject that myself and Anna have a tutorial in on our tods cos we're special, so it was just us sitting in the room. The sad thing is we were being examined on the french, american and british revolutions, WE SHOULD KNOW ABOUT THEM!! Looking back over the 'notes' we had taken in the lectures expecting them to be clear, concise and loaded with interesting titbits of information that were guaranteed to get score us extra points and the undying respect of our lecturer, we found lists of vocabulary and incoherent ramblings vaguely related to history. So it was good news that I now know the russian for 'to sneeze' and 'livestock' but they were not going to cut the mustard come exam time. To make it worse, the exam style here is different to home, with history in Trinity they aren't too concerned about whether or not you know the date when something happened, just as long as you know the series of events and why they happened. Of course, this being Russia, they have to be different, they want to know the date, time of day and whether it rained that day (well not really that detailed but you know what I mean!) So after resisting the impulse to either run from the room or hide in the surprisingly large wardrobe in the corner, we settled in to making up some history, what do you mean the french revolution wasnt entirely based around cake??? Should get the results next week, seeing as the answers were practically identical I hope the grades will be too!

2005-11-07T15:58:00.000+03:00

Why Fiona, is that a lease you've just signed after a soul-destroying search through the dark underbelly of the Moscow real estate world?? Funny you should ask, it is! We finally found somewhere to live, that doesnt involve furnishing it ourselves, living almost halfway between Moscow and St Petersburg or exorbitant rent. We signed the contract on Saturday and moved in about an hour later, thank god we have moved out of the student accomodation. Our new gaff is practically palatial in comparison. Its very soviet chic, with an antique cooker and fridge and our very own meat grinder should we feel the need, A WASHING MACHINE (our clothes are clean again, happy days!), three big rooms, a doorbell that sounds like a bird and no less than three loud phones! I'll have more info soon, I'm running out of time cos I took too long putting pics on!

The boots that are keeping my tootsies warm in the snow here, no teddy bears were harmed in the making of this footwear!!

Our old washing machine, neither Lui nor a spin cycle included!! (tried to turn the pic, no response from the computer!)

The horse loses the run of itself with its new fancy hair and has to be reined in by its previously masked handler!
The first appearance of the horse that terrorised the club on halloween, it hasn't gained its fetching 'do just yet.

Iris practices her best metro face (whaddya mean my halo's slipping!) on halloween, Eric is being chalked by a masked fencer....don't ask.

Lui 'I'm a serious journalist and I'm here to review your gentlemens club' Smyth and Anna 'I've got a tail this evening' Bloxham. ( I tried to rotate the pic but the computer's not cooperating!) It should also be remembered that it was around -8 degrees in Moscow that night!

Our new washing machine.....look at how pretty and functional it is, our clothes were definitely NOT getting any cleaner and our jeans fit again, we are happy bunnies!!

2005-11-01T02:50:00.000+03:00

A busy weekend this weekend, I'm going to have to explain it without pictures, accidentally ended up in the internet cafe so I don't have my camera with me, I'll have the pictures to go with the story in the next few days, promise! We went out for halloween on Saturday (in a city of 15 million people the nightlife is dead on a monday!), when a night starts with a cheerleader, an angel, a masked fencer, a cowboy and zorro (complete with horse's head on a stick that neighs when you squeeze its ear) in a metro, wearing their best 'this is what I wear every day' faces, it's never going to be normal. We started in the local Irish pub (our choice had nothing to do with the fact that they were offering free cocktails to everyone in a costume) where we were joined by Lui, dressed as a hula dancer, and Anna, dressed as a tiger (furry tiger print shorts...with a tail, a tiger hat affair and a tiger cape, it actually worked) and some becostumed americans. Lui had to review a club, so Anna (dressed as a tiger) and two of our friends (dressed as themselves) went with him. For the entirety of this story you have to remember that Lui, the serious journalist, was only dressed in a grass skirt, boxers, and cheap flowery garlands. But it didn't matter, because everywhere in Moscow was having a costume night on Saturday, weren't they?? Anyhoo, the tiger, the hula dancer, the russian and the american, all well inebriated as a result of the toxic free cocktails from the irish pub rolled up to the club. It had only just opened and hadn't advertised all that well so they were the only patrons, and looking around, it appeared that there was a definite female majority in the room and nobody else was wearing a costume. On closer inspection, the topless dancers and unimpressed prostitutes all wearing matching blode wigs in the room might point toward the fact that the club that Lui had been sent to review was in fact a brothel. This view was reinforced when Lui hoola-d downstairs for the tour of the 'VIP' area, complete with beds and porn on the tv....nice! Still haven't read his review but apparently its very hard to disguise the fact that most people who go to this particular club do very little dancing, Lui had to look elsewhere for his luau!
For the rest of us non-brothel patrons we waited in well below zero temperatures to be allowed into a club by the SOLDIERS who were on the door, they take their face control very seriously here! When we eventually got in, if the many many pictures are anything to go by, the horse on a stick took over, it ended up wearing one of my sparkly pompoms as a wig and pestered the entire club. You just cant bring stuffed animals on sticks anywhere these days... (pic of the offending animal to follow!)

I got an i pod for my birthday recently and am busy stuffing it with songs. One of the beauties of this country is there are no piracy laws so there are huge big warehouses legally selling pirated cds and dvds. Blithely ignoring the sticker saying 'dont steal music' on the i pod, we went out to the cd market and splurged on mp3s. You can get an artist's entire back catalogue for about 3 euro, if you buy more, you can haggle (the key is, never ever look like you actually intend to buy the product....ever!) Between 3 of us we spent 40 euro and got about 100 albums, love this country!!

The granny of a very good friend of ours here died earlier in the week so we decided to go to the funeral to show our support. He met us and brought us to the funeral home, then disappeared. Because he was organising the funeral we assumed there was something he had to do. So when people started to walk into the chapel we followed them in, covering our heads as we went in. It was an open casket so myself and anna really didn't want to look, I'd never met the woman, didn't really want to see her in death. There we were, best solemn funeral faces on, when Lui motioned for us to go back outside, I thought he just wanted to leave the family to it, it was only when we got outside that he said that if it was the funeral of Oleg's granny, it really shouldn't be a man in the casket! We managed to gatecrash the wrong funeral and the ceremony we were supposed to be at was just finishing up next door. Lesson learnt today, if you absolutely should not laugh, under any circumstances,its the hardest thing in the world to hold it in! We swiftly exited stage left after the funeral party departed for the cemetary, feeling slightly sheepish and deciding that Russian funerals weren't for us!

2005-10-27T19:36:00.000+04:00

Freezing Rain.....as fun as it sounds!

So the snow yesterday was all a ploy to get silly foreigners overexcited about Russian weather, today we have freezing, sideways-blowing rain and a low of -6 degrees, I think I'm gonna need another coat to go on top of the one I already have! The update on the apartment that in hindsight has become the greatest apartment in the world ever is that the owner is missing, presumed skiing in Switzerland, and they can't rent it to us without his say so. My theory is that they have found someone to rent it for a higher price and are just seeing how crazy they can make their story. So, our rent in the student accomodation runs out on monday and we've got the weekend to find somewhere to live. It'll never match the pimped out mirrored hall, MASSIVE fridge, leather couches, piano and general great location of the last one....sniff!

Lui has been doing some work for a magazine here and they asked him to do a club review at the weekend. There's an interesting institution here in nightclubs called Face Control, basically bouncers on the biggest power trip in the world...ever! They are so inconsistent, you might get in somewhere five times in a row and then they'll turn you away point blank the next five times. Anyhoo, the magazine had been invited by this club to review it and, being the concerned citizens that we are, Anna and I went with Lui to help him spend his drinks budget. Couldn't find the club for a start (they love hiding their clubs down dark threatening alleys here, they make you work for your carousing!) and when we made it to the door the knuckle draggers in charge wouldn't let us in! Lui explained to them that we were there to review the club, on foot of an invitation from the management, they answered that it didn't take four of us to review a club and they would only let two of us in. They didn't seem to understand the concept that Lui had the power to be VERY nice about the club or verrrrrry stingy! Long story short, if your interested in the review that he wrote, based on his spending a total of 1 minute in there and his friends being left outside its at www.elementmoscow.ru%2Farticles.php%3Fi%3D123000%26s%3D10-night-life. Say it with me kids....Moscow, there's gotta be a better way! (its a running theme here, still love this dysfunctional city though!)

No pics today, the computers not cooperating.

2005-10-26T20:12:00.000+04:00

Lessons learnt by Fiona today
1. Don't count your chickens, they'll all get bird flu.
2. Don't believe a word Russian letting agents say, ever.
3. Never think that just because you have agreed to rent a flat, have withdrawn large amounts of money to pay for it and arranged a meeting time to sign it over to you, that the letting agent ever had any intention of ever considering renting you the flat.
4. Russia....There's gotta be a better way.

2005-10-26T18:31:00.000+04:00

LET IT SNOW, LET IT SNOW, LET IT SNOW!!!!!

It snowed today, real proper big flakes of snow and we crunched and slid our way into college, all excited about the prospect of a white winter, it snowed heavily all day, the city looks amazing covered in snow. Imagine our disgust this evening when we left the warm cafe that makes great sandwiches (an unfortunate rarity in this city) to see that it was raining!! Our snow was melting, meeeeellllllting!However we have been reliably informed that we will be well and truly
sick of snow by mid-december and what were we getting so excited about. It's definitely still a novelty for this girl from a temperate climate! This is the view from my bedroom window this morning, even our local building site manages to look festive!!

Chilling out in college, my ass is still defrosting! Spot the hardcore Russian without a hat!

The Big Move....Maybe.

We have found ourselves an apartment, within walking distance of town and college and five minutes from the nearest metro stop (which happens to be two stops up from college, not that we won't be powerwalking into college everyday!) It's got three big rooms, a piano (ooh, fancy!), a bath, a washing machine (a luxury item that I never even considered a luxury until I moved to this country, handwashing everything is the biggest pain in the ass ever!), a big telly, one of the biggest fridge/freezer combo's I've seen this side of the atlantic (or the pacific, depending on what direction you feel like travelling!), BROADBAND INTERNET, an oven (see entry on luxury items above) and a general lack of babushka's. So after living in the same house for 20 years I find myself getting ready to move for the second time in two months....the monster suitcases make an appearance again! Though the path to living in an apartment in this country is never smooth, of course they like to keep you on your toes. For a start the prospective tenant, not the landlord who's making all the money, has to pay the agent a finders fee for about an hours work. This can be as much as 1 months rent, when we are going to be paying 1000 dollars a month for the privilege of staying in the place, it cuts deep to fork over hundreds of dollars on top of that. Also, having told the agency that we will take the flat and are willing to move in right away, they told us they would ring us back to organise a time to sign the relevant documents (along with the ubiquitous stamps that go on everything here, documents, restaurant menus, even bed linen, if you stand still long enough you'll end up getting stamped!) and we still haven't heard from them. I've never heard of a letting agent playing hard to get like that, we've got the dollars burning holes in our pockets, just let us move in!!! The moving trauma updates will continue...

A High Class Evening

We pretended that we were cultured for an evening last night and spent the evening in the Bolshoi Theatre. Anna and Lui bought me tickets to see the opera 'Tosca', sung in Italian, with Russian captions, which was great for the 2 out of the 6 of us who can speak fluent Russian, for the rest of us it meant a crash course in operatic Russian, but the whole show was amazing. We even got the tiny little opera glasses and pretended that the view was better with them, I wasn't people watching with them...honest! Its amazing how people can be tortured and killed and still manage to sing in perfect pitch at the same time! The Bolshoi theatre itself is being renovated at the mo so we were in the temporary building.....which for a stop-gap was amazing, blinged up with chandeliers and general fanciness. We are definitely going to be returning, have to see the ballet, where better to see the Nutcracker than in Tchaikovsky's home country? That didn't sound pretentious at all...did it?

2005-10-26T01:43:00.000+04:00

Its not going to get much colder than this.....
is it????

Ive decided that group emails are too much effort and I'm going to try out this blog idea, I'm informed that it's so hot right now! Hopefully I'll be able to get pics up on to it so anyone who's interested can see how we are getting on. Two months in, I'm still trying to understand Moscow, it's quite the class city but every day it turns around and reminds you that you are never going to understand what the hell is going on. Plus it's getting really cold and it's only October!! This is me and Lui near college, in our snazzy new duvet-esque coats.....freezing our asses off!!

Last week I had my twenty-first here, it was really weird not being at home for it and I had visions of me sitting in a corner on my tod, with a party hat on, singing happy birthday to me. It wasn't quite like that! We have been really lucky here making friends, Russian, American (for that read Mexican, Chinese, Armenian, Cherokee (one of them swears his great great great great grandparents were native americans, I'm not so sure!) and various other random nationalities via America!), Estonian, Polish, German and more Irish people, for some reason we just find each other. There was quite a mixture of people out last saturday night, the spoken language was mainly english and pigeon russian. I refused to get a birthday cake, anyone who has ever experienced the sickly sweet wrongness that is Russian birthday cake will know why, so instead, Sean and Kaspar (our visitors from St Petersburg) made me a birthday watermelon...saturated in vodka. The Russian way, sometimes its the best way!!

Le Birthday Delicacy, dodgy stuff!!

Our next big adventure is trying to move out of our student accomodation, we have our own rooms, they are nice enough but for the low, low price of 300 american dollars a month each we have the privilege of a shared kitchen with no oven that is also the designated smoking area, temperamental showers (believe me, living in Moscow, its never a good time for a cold shower!), sporadic supplies of running water, the woman who is inexplicably either always washing her clothes (we have no washing machine so our communal bathroom always resembles a chinese laundry) or cooking up HUGE pots of food in the kitchen, narky acrobats and assorted other circus people and their offspring, AND, the icing on the cake.....the babushkas! They are supposedly employed to keep the place clean but we really think they are making sure we aren't breaking any rules. Every morning they open our doors, then knock, empty our bins, pick one thing to dust (the top of the tv is a favourite!), give out to us in Russian about whatever's annoying them that day and then leave. They have been known to clean the toilets at about 4.30 in the morning (obviously I have never seen them, I'm always tucked up in my bed by 11!) and mop the clean floor about 4 times a day. Basically they are a prime example of russian overemployment, they could just do an hours work for the day, then leave us alone! There is also a different breed of younger babushka downstairs on 'reception'. They watch tv and smoke all day and if one was to come in late to the building (not that I would, as I'm always in bed by 11 of course!) one has to wake them up in the middle of the night to get ones key, and a torrent of abuse. I have a mother, I dont need about 8 more! Anyhoo, long story short, we are looking for a flat, all we want is three rooms, a washing machine (oh the luxury!), a proper kitchen, proximity to a metro and not too high rent. Sounds simple....nothing is simple in this city! The search continues....

I got VERY excited when I realised I could buy Irish brown bread and assorted other 'cuisine de france' goodies in Moscow, slightly more expensive than home but most definitely worth it. All I have to do now is find the shop selling Irish sausages and rashers and I will be a very happy bunny!

For the record, I was nowhere in the vicinity of Liam Lawlor's accident, honest Guard. What the hell was he doing in Moscow? He made the Moscow Times, described as a disgraced politician.