Ramblings of a foreigner leaving Russia

[sabotabby]

Had something else I was going to add here. Can't remember what, though.


Friday, April 28
St. Petersburg to Moscow

I'm on a train, beginning my journey home. From Moscow, I'll catch a plane to New York and then back to Toronto.

Both Anya and I are sick, although she's worse off than I am. I'll probably be a mess by the time I get home. [I kind of was. Not physically, which was a surprise.] Neither of us felt like doing much today. A woman Vova knows drove us almost to the train station. I say "almost" because she was driving a Lada and it broke down. Heh.

On the way, Anya and Vova argued about Russian politics. At 40, Vova is nostalgic for the good old days of what he saw as functional socialism. I felt—for once—disinclined to comment. I don't see this country's history as a series of events and upheavals. Much of the authoritarianism that marked the Soviet era was borrowed whole-cloth from the age of tsars. (Even the execution of the Romanovs seemed to have a certain ring of familiarity about it; the royals were always killing people by the family. It isn't enough to just kill your enemies. You have to salt the earth and such.)

Russia's new "freedom" seemed to me to be the freedom to choose between Boss and Prada. Legless veterans and pensioners beg in front of American and European chain stores. The press is still not free. [In a Moscow Times article I read while I was there] Putin claims to be the heir of both tsarist and socialist traditions—United Russia has just named its platform "social conservatism." Political rights can stay suppressed, Russia participates in imperialist wars, but capital, as always, is free.

This place will make you depressed as all hell about politics, I tell you.

I'm glad I came here. I think I'm having the good kind of tired, where I've experienced far too much to process right now. More later, maybe.

[I'm still processing.]


Not the worst toilet in all of Russia. See ru_toilet for how bad it can actually get.


The best piece of graffiti I saw. Anya was astounded—and a bit offended, I think—to see the Romanov emblem everywhere. Someone had the right idea.


My next entry was very short, so I won't bother putting it behind a cut or anything:

Saturday, April 29
New York

Fuck Homeland Security sideways with a rusty tent peg.

[I almost missed my flight home because they insisted on fingerprinting all the Russians, and didn't think that the Moscow Airport's quadruple scanning and searching everyone's baggage was good enough. I suppose it could have been worse—I wasn't strip searched—but on my next intercontinental flight, I'll pay extra if it means I don't need to stop in the U.S.]

New Gaybortion!: Get in your seat!

Comments

[terry-terrible.livejournal.com]

It's kind of funny, I once new a girl who's grandpa was a general in the Albanian Army and thet he right-hand man to Hoxha, she had all sorts of tales about how screwed up he and the people who surrounded him were.