I don’t suggest that you eat breakfast in Russia. Ever. If you can help it. Blini are delicious, but they can be eaten at anytime, and probably won’t be for breakfast.
But the Hotel Yunost’, which is not recommended anyway for potential travelers, is particularly bad. We had three breakfasts in the hotel restaurant. I will share. Because I didn’t actually have to repeat kindergarten.
Day 1
* Slices of dry bread with a thick slice of cold butter and red caviar. Caviar has not made it into the list of things I want to eat again, and is most certainly not a breakfast food. By the way, the vegetarians were served dry bread with slices of salmon.
* A small cup of yogurt.
* Pre-packaged, crumbling, dry, pies.
* An “omelette” consisting only of egg whites.
* Tea or coffee, and the waitress had no concept of asking for preferences. Fortunately, I was sitting with a Russian girl who is very good at taking charge of things and demanding that situations be fixed.
Day 2
* Dry slices of bread with butter and kol’basa. Might be okay for dinner, or a snack, but breakfast?
* Small cups of yogurt.
* The horrible substance that is carbonated water.
* Dry slices of bread and jam.
* FLIPPING SOSISKI! (Hot dogs) My arch nemesis! That which my host family fixes every other day with pasta for dinner. Imagine this, please – hot dogs – for breakfast. Nothing to go with them. Just hot dogs and a bit of ketchup.
On this day, the vegetarians received an apple each, a dish of plain rice, and hard boiled eggs.
Day 3
* Bread and kol’basa. Yes, it was still dry.
* Yogurt.
* The crumbling pies again.
* Are you ready for this? Beautiful, flat, still, uncarbonated water!
* And – this really excited me – two fried eggs and ham. Real breakfast food. Pretty good too. Accompanied by a piece of sosiski.
What’s the real kicker? Our baby-sitter revealed how much was shelled out by the program for this “breakfast.” Fifteen dollars per person. Yes, my friends.
The lunches and dinners were quite good. They weren’t at the hotel of doom. Several variations on a delicious mushroom soup. Salads. Pirogi at one place we ate at twice. (Pirogi are little pies, and these were very good.)
So, now, I have returned to my host family. For the delights of kasha (oh, and they’re increasing the amount of salt in it), and vtorog (that’s the curds from cottage cheese pressed with dried fruit – it would be great in a smaller portion as a side dish – but not in a block slightly bigger than my palm), and salty grechka (buckwheat porridge – can be good, I had some cooked in milk the other day that was delightful, but generally, no), and my current favorite – myusli. Which is apparently not just a Russian thing, I saw a reference in a Margaret Atwood novel. But, it’s a cross between granola and oatmeal, and actually a satisfying breakfast food in and of itself.
Tonight was a sosiski and pasta night. But there was a slightly different pasta – hooray, I think.
Oh, how I miss lentils! And spices! And decent meats! And being able to eat breakfast on my own time as coffee or soda and maybe a granola bar.
Thursday, November 8, 2007
Moscow, Part One – Dead Lenin
I have seen Dead Lenin. I was deeply saddened by not being able to take a picture of myself with Dead Lenin. Yes, I know that’s more than a little disrespectful, but . . . I want a picture with Dead Lenin! I mean, right around the corner of Red Square I could buy Lenin T-shirts – come on now!
Incidentally, if you seriously want to pay your respects to Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, I do not recommend the Lenin Mausoleum as the place to do so. You walk through, and keep moving. If you don’t keep moving, the young soldier in his incredibly awesome winter uniform will shoo you on with a whistle. No, this did not happen to me, I just watched a lady you was actually there to pay her respects to Lenin – not gawk at a body that’s been on public display for eighty odd years.
I got shooed away by guards at the Lenin Mausoleum much later, after dark, taking silly photos with the girls. I don’t think they appreciate it.
Incidentally. Lenin’s looking distinctively corpish these days, but still good for his age. Although, he needs a bit more than a rose colored light to bring out the color in his cheeks. In all honesty, I’m caught between morbid amusement with the entire Lenin experience, and being quite disturbed by the preserved body.
See, I don’t like the whole decomposing thing. The idea of being decomposed and, say, mixed back in with earth, doesn’t particularly bother me. But the notion of dead bodies slowing rotting into nothing creeps me out. It’s the slowly part. I’m really bothered by embalming, lead lined caskets, steel burial vaults, etc – anything that drags out the process further. In fact, I’m very, very much in favor of cremation – not only for myself, but I would generally prefer it for bodies I was close to when they were people, not that I necessarily get a say in such matters.
I also want to know if all the church bells and liturgies in Red Square (since at least one or two churches have been reopened) hurt Lenin’s waxy ears? Further, how does Lenin feel about hanging out next to the establishment of CAPITALISTIC PRIVILEGE that is the GUM – only the biggest and priciest of the at least four mega-malls of bourgeois privilege surrounding Red Square?
As I said, caught between repulsion and morbid amusement – welcome to my mind.
In further news, when they exhumed Gogol in the 1950s, they found him curled up on his side, not laid out in a neatly Orthodox manner on his back. It is believed that Gogol was buried alive.
Imagine the story he would have written from this.
(This would be a photo of Gogol's new grave, in which he was placed while most certainly dead.)
Incidentally, if you seriously want to pay your respects to Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, I do not recommend the Lenin Mausoleum as the place to do so. You walk through, and keep moving. If you don’t keep moving, the young soldier in his incredibly awesome winter uniform will shoo you on with a whistle. No, this did not happen to me, I just watched a lady you was actually there to pay her respects to Lenin – not gawk at a body that’s been on public display for eighty odd years.
I got shooed away by guards at the Lenin Mausoleum much later, after dark, taking silly photos with the girls. I don’t think they appreciate it.
Incidentally. Lenin’s looking distinctively corpish these days, but still good for his age. Although, he needs a bit more than a rose colored light to bring out the color in his cheeks. In all honesty, I’m caught between morbid amusement with the entire Lenin experience, and being quite disturbed by the preserved body.
See, I don’t like the whole decomposing thing. The idea of being decomposed and, say, mixed back in with earth, doesn’t particularly bother me. But the notion of dead bodies slowing rotting into nothing creeps me out. It’s the slowly part. I’m really bothered by embalming, lead lined caskets, steel burial vaults, etc – anything that drags out the process further. In fact, I’m very, very much in favor of cremation – not only for myself, but I would generally prefer it for bodies I was close to when they were people, not that I necessarily get a say in such matters.
I also want to know if all the church bells and liturgies in Red Square (since at least one or two churches have been reopened) hurt Lenin’s waxy ears? Further, how does Lenin feel about hanging out next to the establishment of CAPITALISTIC PRIVILEGE that is the GUM – only the biggest and priciest of the at least four mega-malls of bourgeois privilege surrounding Red Square?
As I said, caught between repulsion and morbid amusement – welcome to my mind.
In further news, when they exhumed Gogol in the 1950s, they found him curled up on his side, not laid out in a neatly Orthodox manner on his back. It is believed that Gogol was buried alive.Imagine the story he would have written from this.
(This would be a photo of Gogol's new grave, in which he was placed while most certainly dead.)
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