- 3/2/2008 10:00:00 PMMoscow Trip - Day 21This is the Lord's day. It is also election day in Russia.
Marina's brother came to her flat to bring her to the poll to vote. I don't think she was interested in voting. All along she said that the leading candidate Dmitri Medvedev) who was hand picked by Putin and Putin's controlling party would win anyway. There is no viable alternative candidate.
While she and Sasha were out voting, I tried to call Delta to rearrange our flights. Here is an FYI for you, if you need to change your flights - Delta airlines has business hours of Monday through Friday, 8:00 AM to 6:00 PM and 10:00 AM to 12:00 PM on Saturday. So if you need to change, do it during the week.
Today is Moscow circus day. We will be going for the 6:00 PM show. Dima will pick us up around noon and we are going back to the open air market to grab a few things we missed. Michael will stay with Grandma while we're out. He gets a little bit of attitude when he is forced to do things he doesn't like (such as stand around while Mom and Dad look at things he is not interested in).
Dima drove us to the market where we met Bill and his new son. Bill is picking up a few things from a list his wife left before she returned home with their other children. All morning and all afternoon, the skies were gray and their was a steady drizzle. One thing we saw a lot of that we hadn't before is stray dogs. I think I saw about 30 today. And their big dogs too! Perhaps 40 to 50 pounds. I realize that there are bigger dogs than that, but this is their starving weight. If healthy they might be some where between 60 to 80 pounds. Either way, there was a lot of them. They walk in and out of the crowds of people. They wait at the corner trolley stops, they hang out near the food shops.
We purchased the things we needed and then quickly headed back to Marina's for a fast early dinner. Michael got ready and we headed out. As it turns out, the circus is in one of the buildings where we took some photos earlier. There were lots of children there and thankfully all of the adults were dressed appropriately. I asked Dima what the difference was between our American circus and "The Famous Russian Circus". He said, "It's more professional!". On thing about Dima and some other people we've spoke with is that there is always this sense that everything in Russia is the best and everything else comes in a distant second or worse.
Once again, when we entered the circus building - I was impressed with the building itself. They operate a one ring circus and the seats are in a steep bowl around it. All of the pre-announcements are in both Russian and English. This tells me they get a fair amount of foreign traffic.
We stood in line to check our coats. When it was our turn, the elderly coat check lady mumbled something to us and Peggy replied, "English?". This simple word set the coat lady over the deep end. She looked at Peggy with a crabby face and then down at the ground. Under her breath she began to utter something again in crabby sounding Russian followed by "grumble grumble grumble... english...grumble grumble grumble" and then exclaimed, "TICKETS!". I'm not sure what the translation on that is but it think it is something like, "I hate stupid Americans and their stupid English... and I wish they would beat me over the head..." Ok, maybe not the last part. But definitely the first part.
To sum up the Russian Circus - it was very cool. And very professional too. They had the hula-hoop girl, the juggling act, the lion tamer... It was more of an "acting/acrobatic" kind of show. No high-wire, no man getting shot out of a cannon, no elephant. Their clowns were not the same as our clowns. It was two women and a man. They just did silly things like try to crack eggs over each other's heads, sang silly songs and tease the crowd a little. Michael got bored watching them.
They also had this one lady who is waaaay to flexible. I foresee a woman with severe spine related problems when she gets older. She did some things that should not be done. The worst of which was bending backwards so far that - not only was her head between her legs but the back of her knees were resting on her shoulders. She was literally folded in half - backwards. Wrong, wrong, wrong. that's all I have to say about that.
Marina gave Michael 100 Rubles. That's about $4.00. As with most events such as this, all of the good junk costs way more than that. Michael - perhaps not used to having money, held his Rubles out for everyone to see. He waived them back and forth as if to say, "This baby is too hot for my pocket and I must get rid of it now. Please take it from me." I kept trying to tell him to keep it in his pocket and just look until he finds something good to waste his Rubles on. Counter after counter, they told him, "sorry, you don't have enough". He moved slowly everywhere. He was not able to get everything that caught his eye and the attitude began.
Before the circus began, Dima said he would be waiting out front for us. When it ended, we waited for the crowds to die down a little so we would not have to stand among pushy people waiting for our coats. Afterwards, we went up to old miss crabby coat lady, grabbed our things and headed for the door. As we stood on the steps outside, we could see Dima's battle wagon approaching in heavy traffic. We told Michael, "come on, come on". The more we said it, the slower and pokier he got. Finally we each took one of his hands and carried him down the stairs and onto the street. "Come on! Come on!", I called to him. Dima slowed down in moving traffic.
poke... poke... poke... poke... If he moved any slower, he would be stopped.
I picked Michael up and put him on his feet into the side door of Dima's van. He didn't like that at all and came to a dead stop blocking the way into the van and leaving me on the street. This is one of many issues we will tackle when we get home.
Other than some bad attitude, it was a very nice circus. A little different than an American circus and definitely more "professional".
