About MoscowBlog and Me

I am American living in Moscow, Russia since March 2005. This blog was started to provide a forum for me to relate my experiences here. I wish I had started it earlier, but c’est la vie.

My impressions of Moscow are quite positive. Most people I spoke to about Moscow before coming kept telling me how loud, dirty, expensive, and big Moscow is. Perhaps, but not to a fault. It’s not so loud that I can’t sleep. It’s not so dirty that I’m disgusted to go outside. Expensive? Well, yes. And big? Is that a bad thing?

Yes, there are some things about Moscow which baffle (no internet via cable?), astound or simply amuse me. But there are other things which I would not have expected anywhere, much less in Moscow.

For instance, I bought tickets to the Bolshoi Theater before it closed for renovations. I lost them (found them later acting like a bookmark). I returned to the ка�?�?а and asked what I could do. I was told to return on the day of the concert and we’d be issued tickets to get in. If someone was in our seat, we would be out of luck. If not, sit down and enjoy. Our seats were, of course, empty and we enjoyed the show. Can you imagine this happening at in New York, London or Paris? “Excuse me, I lost my tickets to Cats, can you let me in?”

And this is not the only such instance of unexpected kindness. But, since I didn’t have a blog before, I didn’t record them. Now I have a blog, so I’ll let you know about it.

By the way, yes the blog uses default colors and everything. I want to change that, but first I want to write. One step at a time.