first impressions of Russia

I'd been prepared for Russians to be grumpy and possibly hostile, especially towards Americans, but most everyone that we've met so far has been really nice. The guy who picked us up from the airport was smiley and helpful (as soon as he saw us he pointed at his jacket and said "outside! cold!" so I dug out my fleece), and our bellboy was super friendly (turns out he's going to Egypt on vacation next week). For dinner, we ventured out to a nearby cafeteria-style restaurant called "Mu Mu", and one of the guys behind the counter turned out to have excellent English, so he followed us from display to display, explaining what everything was and helping us pick our dishes.

Anything involving process takes forever. When we were in the immigration line, the pace was something like one passport every three minutes. There were at least ten people in front of us. However, Russians are pretty orderly and respect lines; the ticket line for the Armory (at the Kremlin) was not well defined but people managed to stay in order. We were chatting with some other tourists and apparently the non-Armory part of the Kremlin has been closed for three days straight, and no one could figure out why (the ticket lady helpfully told us "Kremlin closed!"). Later our concierge told us that they're preparing for some kind of festival for the first week of November.

Interestingly, US passports seem to carry some clout here. (I would have thought the opposite.) We got through immigration very quickly compared to everyone else (maybe one minute instead of three) and once we showed our passports and told them where we were from ("California") we were not required to put our luggage through the x-ray machine, even though everyone else on our flight from Istanbul seemed to be doing it.

Two black guys got picked on by security while in line; they had to show lots of extra paperwork and went to another room for awhile. Not sure what was going on there, but we had been warned about possible racism, so I'm thinking that's a distinct possibility.

There are lots of Asian-looking people around, but they all seem to speak Russian perfectly, so it seems they're locals and not tourists. Twice, we were approached by people speaking Russian asking for directions. Maybe our scarves, hats, and gloves make us blend in enough that we could possibly be mistaken for locals? Odd.

However, only about half of the people on the street are wearing hats these days. I guess barely sub-zero isn't considered very cold around here. There are definitely lots of women running around in spike-heel knee or thigh-high boots and short skirts, with about a foot of skin exposed in the middle. Did I mention it's sub-zero out there? Yikes.

Russians walk VERY VERY fast. I thought I walked fast, but I'm the slowest person on the street. Honestly, New Yorkers have nothing on Muscovites as far as speed goes. One girl (four-inch heels, tiny skirt) stopped to give a panhandler money and was still walking faster than me). No wonder they're skinny here.

Russians are also very tall. I think the guys average something like 6'3". It's harder to tell with the girls because they're all wearing such high heels, but with heels on, they probably average around 6'0" too. Apparently I'm a midget who walks too slowly and needs new shoes.

Oh, and according to D, the Russians have taken over the "hottest girls" award for this trip. I think generally they look a little pouty but they're certainly tall and model-thin and very trendy.

In the tourist areas, lots of people speak a little English, or at least understand it. Outside the tourist areas, people speak no English at all. At the train station, several people were trying to be helpful but literally could not tell us whether to go "left" or "right". One policeman ended up walking with us for awhile in the direction we were supposed to go, because he couldn't explain it to us. Nice of him, though.

The Metro is quite nice and very comprehensive, covering a lot of ground. The stations are all decorated differently, and the trains run constantly; on a weekend in the middle of the day, the trains were coming about every two minutes. The longest we've ever waited is maybe four minutes.

The Metro is pretty cheap (22 RUB = 70 cents) but everything else is very expensive. We spent 700 RUB (> 23 USD) on a cafeteria-style dinner, entrance fees are like 500 RUB per person (18 USD) and we were also quoted a taxi price of 500 RUB for a relatively short drive (we opted for Metro).

It appears that glasses are relatively uncommon in Moscow. The entire day, I spotted maybe two women wearing glasses, and maybe twenty men. This is out of hundreds, maybe thousands of people that we passed in the subway, on the street, etc.