Today was our first full day in Moscow and it was an eventful one to say least!
Woke up much earlier than I needed to but I blame the little nap I had a couple of hours before heading off to bed. Ended up going to have a little breakfast at a café with my friend Jeffery because he was looking for an ATM to get some rubles (his card just wasn’t working in ATMs but he could make credit card purchases). Russian pancakes…DELICIOUS! They’re kind of like crepes but a little thinker with more of a texture to it. I ended up have a little dinner at a place near the theatre and they used the same pancakes to make one super wonderful ham and cheese “wrap” (I put “wrap” in quotations because they aren’t rolled like a wrap or crepe but rather folded so you end up with something that resembles the shape of a slice of pizza).
We had a little meeting at ten, the designers had a small break after that to grab a little lunch, and then another meeting with just the designers. After that we all headed out on the three mile walk to the theatre school. You might ask, “Why walk all that way?” Well, I mentioned in my last post about how horrible the traffic was (Moscow was not laid out for automobile transportation) so taking a bus is out of the question. They do have a subway system called the “Metro” but I’ll get to that later…
We got to the America Studio Theatre where the movement, acting, and theatre history classes take place…it also happens to be on the 5th floor of a building with a slow, little elevator that can only hold four people. Looks like most of us will be taking the stairs (I’ll just keep telling myself that it’s a good extra bit of exercise after a three mile walk). We didn’t go in the Moscow Art Theatre School, which is where most of the designer classes are held, but learn in our earlier meeting that about half of our classes are on the 2nd or 3rd floors…but the other half are on the 6th floor! So my room on the 5th floor and about ¾ of my classes are on the 5th floor or higher…my legs are either going to be in super great shape or they’ll just fall off one random day…
After our Theatre History class got out around 3pm, the designers had a little meeting with our new professor. That was followed by a trip to a tiny little art store where we could by Tempra paint and brushes (for those that needed them) for our paint class tomorrow. Lets’ just say that that was an interesting little excursion through the streets of Moscow and we’ll leave it at that.
And now for the Metro…I’ll start by say that if you are ever on Moscow and want to take the Metro, make sure you have someone who can read and speak Russian or I can wager pretty easily that you will make at least one mistake (if not more) and end up someplace where you don’t want to be. Essentially, one of the designers has a tourist guide that has a little Metro tour that takes you to about a half dozen unique architectural points within the system so you only have to pay once to get in to see them all. We had two hour before we had to be back at the theatre to see a show for the evening. We spent about an hour just walking (to the first station, around the stations, and from the last stop back to the theatre), about 20 minutes taking pictures (I got some great one’s I’m put up at a later date), 10 minutes on the actual trains, and about 30 minutes looking at maps and signs trying to figure out where we were and where we wanted to be. Oh, and we only got to two of the six locations! What made the whole thing even worse was that one of our guys got hit by a pick-pocket as we were leaving the train.
The good news was that we got to watch Amadeus at the Moscow Art Theatre. Thankfully, I had TD’ed this show back in grad school so I was able to follow it pretty well since they were speaking in Russian. It was a nice looking set design but I as little disappointed the acting, of course, that could just be what’s lost on the langue barrier…
Well, I need to get some sleep for another event filled day…
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