This morning we left the dorm at 10:30 am and dragged 20 people through the metro to the Novodevichy Cemetery where people like Stanislavsky, Nemirovich-Danchenko and Chekhov are buried (among countless other super cool people). I always feel weird in historical cemeteries like this – taking pictures of grave sites and such, wandering around these monuments to remarkable people who are just gone (and in this cemetery, these people are grouped according to what they did in life – so the theatre and literature folks are together, the politicians are together, etc.) makes you feel so temporary. But it was still nice to go pay our respects to the guys whose work brought us all there. After taking a little time to contemplate and wander, we went back to the metro and headed to the flea market. Yup. Cemetery… flea market. It was one of those days. But we’ve all been waiting for this fabled flea market. You have to pay 10 rubles to get in, and then you just wander through booths and booths and booths… it’s frickin’ ginormous! I found all kinds of ridiculous kitschy, touristy things there… and I’m fairly certain that many of you blog readers will be getting to know some of these items extremely well. We spent about two hours wandering around and haggling with vendors (I didn’t get as into the haggling as some people did – for some people it became an all-out mission). Then we headed back to the dorm, at which point Aaron, JT and I headed out to the park for one last scholarly session over cigars and beer (no cigar for me… but I did enjoy the beer!). I went to a hotel to exchange my rubles into Euros (so I’ll have something while we’re in the Paris airport tomorrow) and then I slowly worked toward packing. In fact, I’m still slowly working toward packing right now. I’m sure you’ll note how much my blog writing is assisting in the packing process. Ah well. The bus will be here to take us to the airport at 4:30am… so I’ve got about eight hours to get my act together. I’m sure I can procrastinate that long!
Saturday, July 2, 2011
Last Day
This morning we left the dorm at 10:30 am and dragged 20 people through the metro to the Novodevichy Cemetery where people like Stanislavsky, Nemirovich-Danchenko and Chekhov are buried (among countless other super cool people). I always feel weird in historical cemeteries like this – taking pictures of grave sites and such, wandering around these monuments to remarkable people who are just gone (and in this cemetery, these people are grouped according to what they did in life – so the theatre and literature folks are together, the politicians are together, etc.) makes you feel so temporary. But it was still nice to go pay our respects to the guys whose work brought us all there. After taking a little time to contemplate and wander, we went back to the metro and headed to the flea market. Yup. Cemetery… flea market. It was one of those days. But we’ve all been waiting for this fabled flea market. You have to pay 10 rubles to get in, and then you just wander through booths and booths and booths… it’s frickin’ ginormous! I found all kinds of ridiculous kitschy, touristy things there… and I’m fairly certain that many of you blog readers will be getting to know some of these items extremely well. We spent about two hours wandering around and haggling with vendors (I didn’t get as into the haggling as some people did – for some people it became an all-out mission). Then we headed back to the dorm, at which point Aaron, JT and I headed out to the park for one last scholarly session over cigars and beer (no cigar for me… but I did enjoy the beer!). I went to a hotel to exchange my rubles into Euros (so I’ll have something while we’re in the Paris airport tomorrow) and then I slowly worked toward packing. In fact, I’m still slowly working toward packing right now. I’m sure you’ll note how much my blog writing is assisting in the packing process. Ah well. The bus will be here to take us to the airport at 4:30am… so I’ve got about eight hours to get my act together. I’m sure I can procrastinate that long!
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