We Finally Visit the Starlite Diner

Last night we visited one of Moscow's Starlite Diners. These are 1950s American-themed diners, complete with the retro look, waitresses in cheerleader attire, walls stocked with American pop-culture memorabilia (circa 1950s), and, thank God, American-sized portions of very American food.

The location we visited was adjacent to the historical and beautiful Tchaikovsky concert hall, which gave the whole place an even greater surreal effect. Joey, Isaac and I had been meaning to visit one of the Diners for some time, not so much for the food, but for the experience, and we weren't let down.

We decided to start the meal with an hors d'oeuvres of buffalo chicken wings, complimented with blue cheese dressing and celery sticks. Delicious. Nearly all of us opted with burgers of some variety for the main course. The sizes were a gastronomic challenge, and both Michael and Guillaume ordered the largest burger on the menu: a 3-patty high meat skyscraper of cheese and grease-drippings. To my surprise, they both attacked their meals with gusto, although in the very french manner of impeccable table manners, using a fork and knife the entire way through. For dessert we all went with milkshakes, and to my astonishment, the Starlite offered a peanut butter milkshake. I of course ordered this and it was incredible.

Having Michael, Guillaume, and our Russian friend Kristina along for the experience allowed us Americans to offer guidance in navigating the menu and also provided us with some memorable questions: "Do you eat food like this every day?" "Is this real American food?" "Are burgers in America really this big?" "Is this a typical American dinner?"

US Embassy (again)

I know Isaac and Joey have already beat me to blogging on the US embassy, but here it goes anyway:P

On Monday we visited the US embassy, which is a pretty large compound near downtown Moscow. So large, in fact, that it's the butt of several Russian jokes. I remember our Russian teacher Vera even cracking a few jokes about its size.

Well it is imposing enough to warrant a few jokes, but to my delight, the "tour" of the embassy was a very informal and friendly lunch. Morgan Haas and Scott Reynolds of the USDA met us in the embassy's cafeteria, and for the next 2hrs, we ate and talked about what it is that they do in Moscow. You can check out Isaac's blog for that info, but I just wanted to say how oddly enjoyable it was to talk to other Americans and eat standard American cafeteria food. Maybe I'm a little homesick:P

Shashlik

This past weekend our classmate Maksim invited us to his hometown of Kaluga to celebrate his birthday. It was nice to get out of the city, and we all had a blast. We visited the space museum in Kaluga (check out Joey's blog) and were taken on a tour of the city, guided by Maksim's father.

On Saturday night we celebrated Maksim's birthday by grilling shashlik, a traditional type of Russian barbecue. The recipe is as follows: make a fire pit, marinate a cooked meat for several hours in a closed bucket, build a fire, collect the coals from the fire, place them in the fire pit, roast meat over the coals. It was simple, and incredibly delicious. My thanks to Maksim and his wonderful family for the hospitality they showed us, and thanks to Michael for the photos.

Picture: Grillmaster Michael watches over the shashlik.

Spring

Spring is finally here. Most of the snow has melted around the city and on the warmer days, in sunlight, you can actually feel comfortable wearing short-sleeves. So with the weather being good today, I decided to take a break from my homework and go for a walk.
Lo and behold I discovered a fairly large park about a mile and half from our hostel. It's basically a forest a few dozen acres large, and if you didn't know any better, and you didn't strain your eyes too hard to make-out the high rise apartment buildings cutting through the tree line, you could almost imagine you were in a forest and not in the middle of Europe's largest city.
Lots of people were in the park, grilling shashlik, walking, riding bikes. As I made my way further into the forest, I heard some festive music and saw a group of people huddled together. When I got closer I saw there was an old man playing an accordion. He was really belting out some good tunes, and I sat down on a park bench a few meters away to enjoy the scenery and music.
After switching a few songs, he stopped and then slowly played out a few notes. I guess the song must have been a well known one, because the group of people stopped talking and faced the man. The music picked up its pace, and then a couple got up and began to dance to it. Soon the group of people started clapping, and then they began to sing. It was all very beautiful, but soon it was time for me to get back to the hostel and finish my homework.

Champignon

On Tuesday we visited a mushroom factory. You can check out Dr. Layfield's blog for a more detailed look at the tour. I just wanted to say that thanks to that tour my love of the humble fungi has been reawakened. I've had mushrooms in some form for 3 of the last 4 meals I've eaten.They're incredibly simple to prepare. From the advice of our guide, I just saute them in some butter or oil with onions and serve with Smetana.

American Cuisine

A few weeks ago I mentioned how our Chinese friends Micahel and Stacy had us over for an incredible dinner. This last Saturday, Joey, Isaac, and I attempted to return the favor and cooked some "traditional" American dishes for them.

Pancakes, fried chicken, and shrimp and grits were on the menu. Cooking in the hostel was somewhat of a challenge, but to our delight, everything turned out quite well, including the pancakes which were made with kefir (due to the curious absence of baking powder in Russia).

Arbat Street

March 8th was Women's Day, and so we had the day off of classes. Later in the evening Denis, Galya, Isaac, Joey and I took the metro down to Arbat Street to take a walk.

Arbat Street is in the historic center of Moscow near Red Square, and is one of the oldest surviving streets of Moscow. The place reminded me of downtown Charleston, and like historic Charleston, the Street was bustling with tourists and pocketed with coffee shops and cafe's.

Pictures:

1. Isaac, Joey, and I in front of a stautue of beloved Russian poet Pushkin and his wife Natalya
2. Galya, me, Isaac, and Joey on Arbat Street
   
3. Arbat Street at Dusk (from Wikimedia Commons).
   

Chinese Hospitality

A few weeks ago at the cultural exchange dinner I met a Chinese student named Michael (this being his chosen English name). Since then Michael has started hanging out with Joey, Isaac and I, and so we've had the opportunity to experience Chinese tea, more Chinese cuisine, and Chinese hospitality in general. Last Sunday Michael and his girlfriend Stacy (again, this being her chosen English name) were generous enough to prepare an incredible Chinese dinner for us.

Train

These past few days were a holiday weekend for Russian's, and thankfully for us as well. Defender of the Fatherland Day, colloquially known as Men's Day, is celebrated on the 23rd of February. You can check out Joey and Isaac's blog for more info on the holiday.

In celebration, we were invited to Stas' dacha and bathouse (or banya), located in his hometown. Being carless and busless, we travled by train. Tickets were cheap (100 rubles for students) and travel was a peaceful 2hr ride, interspresed with the marketing speels of the vendors who ride the trains selling everything from dvd's to cucumbers.

Moscow State Zoological Museum

On Sunday, Isaac, Sergei and I took a trip down to city center to check out the Moscow State Zoological Museum. For fifty rubles you get three floors of some of the strangest, and most majestic, albeit dead, members of the animal kingdom. Enjoy the pictures.

Behold Dish One for the Cultural Exchange Dinner!

This Wednesday MSAU is having a cultural exchange dinner. Where in addition to us, Chinese, Russian, Turkish, and French students at the school will cook a traditional dish and perhaps perform a traditional song or dance. With a surplus of peanut butter, Joey, Isaac and I decided PB&J's would be an easy dish. And besides, what could be more American? However, in an effort not to have our dish seem like a cop out, we've decided to make a second dish, perhaps hamburgers. As for our traditional song or dance, Joey suggested the Hokey Pokey. Much better than the National Anthem, I think.

Learning the Language.

At some point soon, one of us will have to get our Russian tutors to pose for a picture. Their names are Vera and Liudmilla (American spelling), and they have done what I thought was the impossible: they are actually teaching a class of five students, none of which have identical Russian language experience, and who come from two different countries with different native languages, Russian language. And with noticeable progress each and every day!

Happy Birthday Guillaume

Yesterday was our French classmate Guillaume's 23rd birthday. In their typical generosity, our Russian classmates prepared a birthday dinner celebration, which included a fine dinner of spaghetti with cake and tea for dessert. They even bought a present for him: a mock military style ushanka. After the meal we played Charades for several rounds, but with three different languages spoken between the group, it was an English vocab only game.

Eating In Russia

Food in Russia has been a pleasant surprise for Joey, Isaac and I. As it turns out, the food here is delicious, affordable (at least at the school canteen), and very hearty.

A typical dish is dominated with mayonnaise, a meat, vegetables, eggs, potatoes, and almost always bread. No doubt this ingredient list can be deceiving, and often the appearance of a particular meal is as well. For instance, if I hadn't experienced a Russian "salad" (a casserole like dish that seems to involve mayonnaise, cheese, and just about any other ingredient you could mix in) I would have been wary of it. But I've been nothing but pleasantly surprised at all the prepared food I've had.

The canteen offers a wide variety of food that you pick out in cafeteria line style. However, even with the help of my Russian classmates I never know exactly how much I've bought, but it always ends being more than enough and at an average price of six dollars I can't complain.

Preparing our own food has been relatively simple. We have a kitchen with three stoves and ovens on our floor and recently received some plates and silverware left over from previous students. Along with the food we've brought from home (largely being a healthy amount of peanut butter and candy) , the store across the street from the hostel offers a fair amount of food that is again priced very reasonably. Fresh fruit, milk, delicious Russian black bread, cheese, and really about all the normal staples you'd expect to find in a small American grocery store can be found there. Cooking a meal in itself is really no harder than it would be back home, but cleaning is often more tedious due to the fact that the water in our hostel is not potable. After preparing a meal, we scrub out the pots used, place our silverware and cups in the pots, and then fill them with water and boil the whole affair for a few minutes.

The First Few Days

I've been in Moscow now for three days. After an initial two days of obligatory paper work, ID photos, and cheerful haggling from the hostel guard who insists on speaking in rapid-fire Russian to non-Russian-speaking me on each occasion I've met him, we got a chance to see Red Square tonight. In a word, it's majestic. Check out Isaac's blog entry for more info.

My first impression of Russia was not the weather; it was airport security. I had heard and thought that Russian customs was a nightmare, and visions of army green guards denying me entrance to the country while I fumbled through stacks of labyrinthine paperwork haunted my dreams on the flight over. How different customs ended up being! Entering Russia was no harder than buying a ticket to an amusement park. There were around ten attendants, maybe my age or slightly older, sitting in box-office-like booths. No armed guards, no confusing paperwork. I simply handed my visa to the attendant, he looked me over, looked over my visa, and without saying a word to me, quickly stamped my passport and handed it back to me.

As for the weather, it's cold here. That's no surprise. But it's hard to explain the cold. Your face hurts when you walk outside, and the bottom of your nose feels like its splitting open. Your lips swell up, and when you pose for a picture, you can't help from blinking because the cold makes your eyes water. I never cease to be amazed at the Russians I pass who all seem to be wearing half the layers I do, but seem less affected by the cold.

If all Russians share this cold resistant trait, they also seem to share a trait of incredible kindness and generosity. From the moment we arrived in Moscow, our hosts have fed and shepherded us around. They are our constant translators and without them it is not hard to imagine what a different experience these three months would be. At times I almost feel awkward from their generosity, because I simply don't know how to repay them, and there is nothing and no one in America that I've met that I could compare it to.