Borscht is the BEST

Dasha enjoying her first borscht in Moscow, and the best part is that it was homemade with local ingredients by our wonderful freind Olga !!!   I didn't know she could cook up a storm.   I really cannot describe how good this soup is, and while it is not an outright russian invention (it's ukranian), it's served all over eastern europe, and is quite common in moscow.  In the winter it can warm your bones, and in the summer can be eaten cold, with sour cream on top for an extra kick.   LOVE IT (and Dasha does too) !     

GOOOAAAALLL

Throwback photo from my first trip to Moscow from '09 - but had to post it with the world cup going on right now.   Too bad Russia and Iran both flamed out in the group stage (and actually no Eastern European teams remain!!)

Russian Berries

Goose Berries, Black Currants, Red Currants and Forest Berries - - each simply amazing, and put all together it's exotic berry overload.   But then again that's what Moscow is - an overload of the senses.  

Modern highrise architecture - case study

Modern Russian architecture is generally defined from the postware period of the later 40's / early 50's through today.   Here's a quick contrast study (with what's known as the Soviet "Brutalist" 70's architecture on the tower on the right, mid-range 1990's residential tower in the middle, and a much more recently constructed stone & glass high rise on the left).

Photo by me.  Clouds courtesy of mother nature

Цирк ! (Moscow Circus)

Family time tonight @ the world famous Moscow Цирк (Circus)!!  Nearly 3 hours of dizzying acrobatics, stunts, feats, music and dance was a great way to spend a thursday night.   The best part is that the show is not solely geared towards kids, instead there are a lot of fascinating elements in there for grown ups too, including a lot of cirque-de-soleil type of elements (unlike the circus shows in america).    It's no wonder that a huge percentage of professional dancers, acrobats and cirque performers around the world are russian - they just have a knack for this stuff !  

420 hours

We're in Moscow for a total of 17.5 days on this trip.  That is 420 hours in a city full of surprises old and new, in a city that doesn't sleep, in a city of 11 million residents that is is awash in daylight until 11pm in the summer.   A city full of tree and buildings and parks and boulevards and museums.  Full of hot soup and cold vodka.  

How will we spend our 420 hours?    Only time will tell....

A 7 year old amongst 7 Million (first subway ride)

Dasha's first subway experience probably didn't live up to all her imagination probably had led her to believe (such as flying pods underground going at the speed of sound), but it was still awesome to watch this 7 year old navigate the underbelly of the city, study route maps, jump on different lines with us (at rush hour on the way back as well), and be amazed just like I continue to be at the efficiency of the system - - with new trains coming up every 60 seconds most of the day.  

7 million riders a day on these tracks, and one special 7 year old on her first ride.

Hailing the russian summer

a surprise hailstorm decided to sweep through today (just as we were on our way out the door!).   Luckily we were able to avoid getting pelted by it, and instead enjoy watching it from the balcony.      

Velcome to Russia

grab a fur hat and some hot soup for self, then go make friends with couple bears in the forest

world cup fever in moscow

World cup fever is truly a global phenomenon, and it's certainly huge in Russia.   In fact футбол (Futbol) is right up there with Ice Hockey in terms of favorite national team sports. The Russians squad in Brazil has one last chance tomorrow night to qualify for the next round if they can beat Algeria and hope for a South Korea loss or tie.

In the meantime I saw a bag of Lionel Messi green onion potato chips and proceeded to smash it to bits as payback for his goal helping Argentina beat Iran in stoppage time last Saturday !

BACK in the USSR

BACK in Russia after just over than 1,000 days since my last trip in 2011.  So excited to reconnect with the russian culture, and hopefully serve up a more honest perspective of life here instead of the biased / negative propaganda the american media keeps providing.

We're also extremely excited because Darya is joining us on this trip the first time, on her first ever visit to Russia!   She's proving to be a very handy translator so far (and keeps quizzing me on russian to keep me sharp).  The irony is that I'm giving her farsi lessons at the same time she's teaching me russian, so either we're both gonna be super linguistic in a short amount of time, or both be totally confused !!!

Longest day of the year & First Transatlantic flight

We decided to spend the Summer Solstice yesterday making the long trek to Moscow.  One 12 hour plane ride covering nearly 10,000km (that's over 6,050 miles for the yanks back home), added to grandpa's ride to LAX, boarding and the final shuttle from Sheremetyevo to the apartment mean that we spent more than 17 hours.  Yikes.

Some factors made it a pretty smooth trip however.  First was the excitement that came with it being Darya's first Transatlantic flight to Europe.  The Aeroflot airline was also pretty awesome, their service really keeps getting better ever year (it's quite good now), we were treated to a brand new A330 plane along with some nice kids games and gifts they gave to Darya.  With it being the longest day of the year and having the flight route go up over Canada and Greenland, we were also treated to full sunlight for the entire course of the flight.  Sounds cool on the surface, but winds up being quite tricky trying to get a 7 year old on her first transatlantic flight to go "night night" for a few hours during the flight when it's still completely sunny outside the windows for the whole flight (impossible basically!!)  

Glad the travel is over - we're settling in now and getting ready to explore the city.    More to come soon!