Dom, Sweet Dom

Oh Moscow how I missed thee. Some things will never change. As soon as you leave the airport, at least a dozen men approach asking if you want a taxi then follow you when you say no. I hear the trip from the airport to the city in London costs 20 pounds, roughly 40 dollars. The trip in Moscow is 20 roubles, roughly 75 cents. I hate my giant backpack which betrays my status as a tourist. I want to pick up right where I left off but my rusty Russian says otherwise, and my finely tuned metro skills have somehow vanished in the three years (to the month) I've been gone. One note on the metro--you have never ridden an escalator until you've ridden the ones in the Moscow metro. They move at lightning speed and are sometimes so deep you can barely see the end when you start.

The hostel I stayed at my first night was on Stariy Arbat, right by my old stomping grounds. I start to remember, not just the dance of the metro, but my Russian. I can ask for directions, buy train tickets, and help translate at the hostel for the tourist with no Russian skills and poor English. I ditch the backpack and even remember how to glare at strangers so they think I'm a local.

It's a hard city, and a fast city, but I remember why it's my city. It can be incredibly cruel to strangers, but more generous than any other to friends. I met up with my good friend Alex, a Russian I met while studying here in fall 2003, who I've since seen only a few times while he was on business trips to San Francisco. He offered to let me stay at his place in Chekhov, a quiet town just outside the city. His mother, whom I had never met, waited up for us and provided a full meal, a hot shower, and a comfortable bed in a room that didn't have 8 other people coming in and out at all hours of the morning. The hospitality they bestowed on me was enormous, not to mention the home-cooked food which was ochen fkoosna (very delicious).

Today, my travel buddy Valerie gets in to Moscow. With any luck we will find each other between the tracks of a metro station, and depart for Sverdlovsk on Friday. We only have tickets to Sverdlovsk because the woman at the train station was either too impatient to sell me more, thought they were too expensive, or didn't have tickets to Tomsk. I'm not entirely sure. Well, I am sure, and it's all three of the above.

Sverdlovsk, at least I hope, is the alternate name for Yekaterinaburg, the city just past the Urals where the last Tsar and his family were killed. At the very worst, we'll be spending a lot of time there. At best, we'll leave the next day for Tomsk.

Lots of train ahead, probably not a lot of internet. Ostarozhna, dveri zakrivayootsya. Sledooshi stantsi, Sverdlovsk.