27. November
My watch stopped working at some point yesterday. Very annoying. I am the kind of person that starts to hyperventilate if they don’t look at their watch 300 times a day.
Irena and Grandma spend a long time fussing over me to make sure I get the right tram into town. Which I do. Was quite sweet really. Nice tram! Actually had heated seats. After a bit of searching I finally manage to locate the Maxim Gorky’s house and the museum therein. It was fairly interesting and similar to the Dostoevsky house I visited in St. P. Nice old dear showed me round the rooms speaking rapid Russian which I struggled to keep up with. Haven’t ever read any Gorky but maybe I should – seems like an interesting enough guy. After that I wandered back to Minin Square opposite the Kremlin and had a look around the market nearby. Couldn’t find a cheap watch to replace mine (which has stopped) so bought some shashlik spices instead. Then called into a smart café nearby for a coffee and a slice of salmon quiche which was really tasty. Neither is going to help me tell the time of course.
Later in the afternoon I visited the State History museum which is set in a big old former Russian aristocracy pad. Basically the antithesis of the Gorky House in every sense. Probably the kind of thing he was writing indictments about in fact. After paying the inflated price for my ticket for being foreign I suddenly found myself swept up into this massive tour group of old crusties (trans. pensioners) who entered the museum at the same time as me. I tried to detach from the group and wander around the museum by myself (as I am used to doing in museums) but some unpleasant little attendant told me to get back in the group and not to break rank again. I explained – in pretty good Russian I think – that I wasn’t part of the group. I then proposed that I wander around the museum at my own pace. But this proposition was met with a negative response. As it was, our tour guide, Olga, was actually very good. It was basically like going round the equivalent of an old English stately home – National Trust or suchlike. The type of thing Jane Austen fans and old people love. There were lots of ‘ooohs’ as we entered the ball room. In fairness it was pretty impressive – evocative of Tolstoy & co. The best thing was how good the restoration job was. Especially the paint-work. They had really managed to recreate what I assume was the original opulence of a place like that. I suppose people get a vicarious thrill from that kind of place: imagine themselves teleported into that lifestyle somehow. Beats grim reality in fairness. I would have liked to have learnt more about the building’s history. Like what happened to it under the Soviets.
On that note I called in to a café on Pokrovskaya with a CCCP theme. Actually a nice plain kind of place – not contrived and good value. The décor included a bust of Uncle Joe and loads of photos of all the major players including that freaky one of Lenin when he was a baby (even then it looks like he’s wearing a wig). Ordered Siberian beer and dried calamari.
Back home at the flat Yuri treated me to a slide show of every photo on the family computer. When we’d gone through those he fetched the old physical photos albums and we went through all of those. Pretty exhausting looking through 600 photos of people you don’t know but it was a good way to practice Russian. Lots of holiday shots from a place called Krim – near Yalta I think.
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