Moscow FINAL ONE

Damn that was a crazy club last night, easily the best club I’ve ever been to in my life. I might have been to crazier ones but theres something about this one that was just insane. Its now noon and we decide to get an early jump on the day so we wont have a repeat of last night where we didn’t get moving until 4 or so. Trying to figure out where to go we decide to check out Freedom park. Since they just got their freedom we figure its probably a cool place to go. So we all put on our jeans and make sure not to wear shorts and take the subway over there and notice the closer we get to the park the more people we see smiling and looking like theyre having a good time. Now seeing Russians having a good time at night at the bars or clubs is one thing, but in broad daylight where the elders can see them is crazy, that type of activity is frowned upon around here. We walk out to the park and its crazy, theres kids skateboarding, rollerblading, cross country skiing on these ski’s with wheels thingies its so not something you see anywhere else in Moscow. I’m not sure who we talked to but somebody was telling us “ya freedom square is like that theres lots of people playing, its very American influenced.” What? I didn’t know we were exporting fun but we’ll take credit for it. These days when American foreign policy is the world punching bag everyone forgets what we did for these people. Obviously I’m not going to get into a big geopolitical and cultural debate here but that statement says a lot. The only place in Moscow where there are people smiling is considered the place that influenced by America. It will really make you proud to go check it out and realize that these people were oppressed for so long and no matter what propaganda they were trying to feed us they really did want freedom and now theres a slow change in the mood of the country and the American influenced freedom square is the center of the change. Hell ya. In the center of freedom square theres a World War II museum. Since all we hear about is the holocaust when we hear about WWII everyone forgets how many Soviets died in that war, it was some ridiculous amount like 25 million or so. There was an exhibit that had these hanging strands from the ceiling representing one for every Soviet person who died as a result of WWII, very interesting stuff. The entire eastern front was handled by the Russians while we were storming the beaches of Normandy they were marching towards Berlin and taking heavy casualties in every way. Anyway it was a very interesting museum even though it didn’t have that much in there it just showed the respect they had for WWII and the way they thought of it is so different from the way we view that war.
When we left the area we realized its our last night in Moscow so we should eat some authentic Russian food. We head to the part of town that’s supposed to have the most restaurants, but as were trying to find a Russian one we noticed that there aren’t any. All the restaurants are from other parts of the world, we even found an Armenian one. So Noubar starts asking randoms where we can get some Russian food and someone actually directed him to TGI Fridays how ridiculous is that. We end up walking into some random place that looked cool and had a bunch of hot girls inside. We walk in and see the TV is on some fashion channel and everyone looks like a model. We think we walked in to some sort of model bar but it turns out that its just your average Moscow spot. It’s has a wide variety of foods on the menu from all over the world but of course nothing from Russia, they did have Borshk which is some Russian soup Noubar was all about so we ordered 3 even though it so wasn’t a place to order it. Turns out the Russians are so sick of eating Russian food since its all they’ve had for about 100 years that they now eat anything else. The only real Russian food I had was still at the Moscow airport during the 11 hour layover to Yerevan where I had the Uzbeki pilaf that was good. After eating and drinking at the model bar for about 2 hours and basically checking out the local talent (ala Martin) we see on the menu that the General Manager was Armenian so we asked to meet him but sadly he wasn’t there that day.
It was getting late and since it was our last night in Moscow we decided to get back to the hostel so we can get to the drinking. On the way home we pondered whether to get the Absinth we saw at the market by our hostel or not. We decided not to get it because it was about $30 US when the vodka was about $1.50 US. As Noubar and I were walking to get the vodka we were randomly talking and I, as an Armenian, was talking with my hands. Now apparently in Moscow you cant do that because cars started swerving thinking I was hailing a gypsi cab then realizing that I was just talking they would be on their way. Its funny how we spent like $80 to get from the airport to the hostel from an official taxi and now the 2 buck taxis are pulling over when I’m not even hailing them. So we get to the market and see the absinth- the conversation went something like this Me: “what do you think?” Noubar: “How stupid are we gonna feel when were paying $35 for a bottle of grey goose in LA or $250 for a bottle at some club and we tell people we didn’t get the absinth cause it was $30” Good point absinthe it is. We get back to the hostel and Sevag was there already sure that there was no way we were coming back without the absinthe. We want to get going early tonight but its already 11 or so so we start drinking. The first glass goes down decently and we start to feel some effects, halfway through the second glass you start feeling what absinthe is and it basically makes you want to smoke and we look at the bottle ¾ still full and say theres no way were finishing that bottle tonight. Well an hour later the bottle is obviously cashed and we’re wasted. We head out to the strip club in the hostel which sucked so we left to the city at roughly 2am. Not knowing where to go I honestly couldn’t tell you where we went at first and obviously the rest of the night is damn hazy so from what I gathered after consulting with Noubar and Sevag was that at one point we were gonna go into a club but it was late or expensive or something so Noubar talks his way into them letting him check it out to tell us if its worth it or not. Apparently Noubar fell down the stairs and was basically sprawled out at the bottom of the steps and nobody inside seemed to care, they were basically stepping over him without missing a beat. He comes outside all injured (even though I don’t remember that) and tells us its no good in there. Its about 3 something am so what do we decide to do? Call the Turkish girl! We figured that’s the great thing about Turkish girls, we could care less if we bother them or not, actually we prefer being a nuisance. So this time Noubar calls so when the Mom picks up he can talk to her, but im guessing after the last nights incident the mom didn’t want to pick up the phone so she picked up and apparently again was really nice and told us sorry she cant go out tonight but to definitely give her a call tomorrow. We’ve called her everyday between 2-3 am and yet she’s still being nice to us, damn Turkish sluts. So not knowing what’s going on or where to go we end up at a strip club with a game plan. We only have so many roubles left with us, actually I think Noubar forgot his wallet and had nothing on him, so we decide to sit there for a while and hang out without getting a lap dance too quick cause we cant afford many. When we walk into the strip club we notice that there isn’t a single other customer in there and theres about 35 girls working there. They see we’re Americans and that we’re customers so they swarm us like crazy. We tell each other to remember the plan but its not looking good. Since Noubar speaks English he’s the main catch for these girls so he’s got basically what was a harem around him and he immediately stopped translating for us while Sevag and I were trying to communicate with random I don’t even remember how. They keep asking us for lapdances and when we say later they ask us to buy them all drinks. Needless to say the plan didn’t go too well, of course after the dance she asked me to “take a walk” with her. Once were done we go back to finishing our beers but they say they’re closing up for the night and Noubar yells at them let us finish our beers like men. That’s the thing with Russia if you don’t have a quick response for them they’ll eat you alive. So we get into a cab to go home and I pass out, when I wake up for some unkown reason we’re at McDonalds. I have absolutely never been so disappointed in my life, what the hell are we doing here I just want to sleep. They weren’t even open and we had to wait outside for them to open up so those losers can have their breakfast egg mcmuffins. As I was passing out over there they shoved a hash brown in my face which I consumed in about 2.2 seconds before passing out again.
We wake up around noon again and our flight is at 3 so Sevag and I leave Noubar and get on our way to the airport. Now it took us 20 min to get to the hostel from the airport so we figured we have more than enough time. Ya right. If you think the 101 or 405 has a lot of traffic then you’ve never seen a Russian freeway. It was so packed that a car put two of its wheels on the center divider and was driving sideways. There were huge trucks everywhere that weren’t moving, after about an hour and a half we hadn’t moved anywhere and we were figuring out what would happen if we miss our flight, we were pretty sure that Aeroflot wouldn’t give us a later flight for free so were calculating a million different things when we notice our driver is going off the road and were in a mcdonalds parking lot adjacent to the freeway going over the grass and through any opening we can find. We get to the airport 30 min or so before our flight and are running full speed and somehow made it on the plane. On the flight back I discuss writing a blog about our trip so I wont forget all the amazing times I just had. I never expected to get it done but apparently im good for something.
The next day instead of being in NY getting a good nights sleep for my flight back to LA and reality I was backstage at a System show in Philadelphia drinking at about midnight while my flight was at 7am out of JFK, and I didn’t have a car. No better way to end a trip of a lifetime.

Nous sommes finis.

gods vengeance

How vengeful can a god get before people start accepting applications for a new one.

I love people who directly communicate with god. I wish I had that talent but I don’t. Now if I go around saying I spoke to god and he told me what he thinks of the current status of the world- you would probably have me committed. OR apparently under the right conditions I could be the leader of an organization that has enormous political power or I could even be mayor of what was once the coolest city in the U.S.

So on January 6 (the real X-mas, we were first so we must be right), Pat Robertson said that the stroke of Israeli Prime minister Ariel Sharon was god’s vengeance for dividing up his land and giving Gaza to the Palestenians. What!? Let me get this straight, this all powerful all peaceful god you speak of just cause Sharon to suffer a life-threatening stroke because, in the name of peace, he gave the Palestinians some of “Gods land.” So god would rather have his land fought over for thousands of more years and suicide bombers blowing themselves up along with hundreds of innocent civilians instead of offering the land to live in peace. That’s just ridiculous.

Fast forward 10 days to today and the mayor of New Orleans just said that the hurricanes that completely destroyed his city was a sign that “God is mad at America”. He said god is mad at America for the war on Iraq AND because the black communities are tearing themselves apart with political infighting.

Lets not forget that on September 13, 2001 the reverend Jerry Falwell said that "God may have allowed what the nation deserved because of moral decay and said Americans should have an attitude of repentance before God and asking for God’s protection."

We’re talking about two major religious/political leaders of this country and a mayor of one of the larger and most famous American cities all making God out to be this vengeful being that punishes those who do not live their lives the way he wants them to.

You know I cared a lot more about this stuff when I started writing but all of a sudden it seems like a boring topic so its not gonna make it to my myspace blog but I’ll have it up there for you blogspot readers.

My bottom line point is that what the hell is wrong with everyone, 1) what kind of people think they actually know what god is saying? 2) what kind of people actually pay attention to the people in point 1? and 3) why would you worship a god that seems to be so vengeful and uses human suffering as a way to show us what we should be doing. I thought Jesus was all about love and peace; have we digressed back to the crusades where God=death? Why cant he just make things good for us so we wont do these “sinful” acts, or if he’s all powerful then why cant he just make us not do these things? I’m not against religion but wake up people! Do you see how ridiculous you are. Sharon’s stroke was because he gave away gods land? It’s the first and possibly only thing he’s ever done for peace in his life. We used to laugh at people who thought this way now they’re the people with major influence in our country with their political capital and devout following.

Ok that didn’t turn out how I expected it to and I’m in no mood to read it over to correct/change anything so there it is. This sucks cause my last Moscow entry is all about observations of life in Moscow and Western influence, now that’s gonna be two non-comedic entries in a row and im gonna lose my audience. Oh well I don’t really have an audience anyway so it doesn’t really matter.

Moscow part 2

So we wake up around 3:30 or 4:00 pm and realize that we basically missed the entire day and we need to get a move on if we want to see anything in Moscow. We discuss where we want to go and quickly come to the realization that we have absolutely no clue what Moscow has to offer. Whenever you ask someone about Moscow you never get a response of you’ve got to see this or that all you get are big smiles and “Moscow huh hell ya that place is crazy” (which actually is exactly the response you would get from me if you tell me youre going to Moscow). So we figure we should go see Red Square again this time sober and in daylight. Noubar and Sevag put on their shorts and we head over to the Subway. The first thing I notice while going down the escalator and into the subway stop is that at the bottom of the escalator theres a person sitting in a booth and simply watching everyone go up and down. Its somebody’s job to simply observe everyone going through the subway, what kind of Communist era holdover surveillance is this. Once we get past big brother watching over us we head into the stop, now I’ve heard the Moscow subway is supposed to be crazy but this is insane. A train comes literally once every minute, there’s even a timer that resets every time the train comes, and it never gets past 100 seconds. When we get into the train its one of the more depressing sites you’ll see. Every single person sitting in the train is either asleep or staring into space looking like a zombie. Now I know people are thinking that’s how every subway is but this is to an entirely different level. There isn’t a single person smiling, laughing, talking, or engaging in any other activity that reflects happiness or pleasure. The people look like the life has been sucked out of them, its really impossible to explain until you see it. I now understand where Russian literature comes from and why its always so depressing, it’s a reflection of its people. Now this is much more true for the older generation than the younger one. (I could write an entire entry on the difference of the generations and the future of Russia but this is a party blog for now so maybe another day)
We get off the subway and head over to Red Square which is a madhouse all of a sudden. All we know of Red Square is when it was empty and lit up now its full of tourists and randoms hanging out. We go into the square and try to get someone to take a picture of us in front of St. Basils Cathedral (the famous church in there, basically the cool looking building you know). Apparently digital cameras haven’t taken off in Russia because the first few Russians had no clue how to use one, with one person we just pretended they took the picture because it looked like they were never gonna figure it out. We go inside the cathedral just so we can say we did something that day but didn’t spend too much time in there because A- its not that interesting its basically a church and B- Sevag was about to pass out since we haven’t eaten in a ridiculous amount of hours. We go to the huge mall attached to the Kremlin and eat the greatest food in the world- fried chicken (no matter where you go fried chicken is always great). Then we just start walking around the city by the river thinking about going to Gorky park only because its in the Scorpions winds of change song which educated us about Moscow more than anything else we knew. We start heading over to the park when we pass by some strip of restaurants and shops that Noubar recognized as the part of town that he always heard about from his Mom so we decide to go there and have a beer. It looks like a touristic area and we quickly get stopped by the cops who ask us for our “paperwork” which means our passports, visa and registration card stamped by our hostel. Now nobody told us we need those items so no all of us have all of them. I have all of mine and Sevag has his while Noubar doesn’t have his hotel registration card which is a small piece of paper that’s incredibly easy to lose, the only reason I have mine is because I had put it in my passport. Noubar starts talking to them in Russian and they don’t realize he doesn’t have everything so we keep moving. We go into a few stores and walk down the street for about 7-10 min before we get stopped again. These cops seem much more eager to find something wrong, they see Sevag’s hotel registration stamp is smeared a bit so they accuse him of doctoring it and are about to make a huge deal out of it until they realize that Noubar doesn’t even have his registration card. You look at these guys and you can see they feel like they just hit the jackpot… these punk Americans kids vacationing in Moscow they must be stupid and rich! So they tell Noubar its his lucky day and they’ll let him off easy with the minimum fine of about $120 or so. Noubar says he doesn’t have anywhere near that amount and we’re all just starving students. They tell him to ask his friends for the money and he tells them were his friends not parents, they go back and forth in Russian for a while. They explain to us how Moscow is a restricted city and you cant just walk around freely with no papers. (I hope tourism isn’t expected to be one of the top economic sectors for Russia) Noubar starts telling them stories how his uncle was a Russian cop hoping they’ll sympathize with him. They finally settle on a great deal of about 5 bucks or so but then as Noubar opens up his wallet they see the 500 ruble bill ($25 or so) in there and quickly raise the price and basically force him to pay that amount, it’s a good thing they didn’t see the $100 bill he had in there. The cops finally leave and we walk into a café style place with outdoor seating right on the strip. We head in there and have beers in huge 22oz glasses and are basically hanging out. We’re telling stories ad laughing when this HUGE drunk guy with arms the size of my head and tattoos everywhere comes up to Sevag and starts pounding on the table while yelling at him about an inch from his face. Sevag has no clue whats going on and points and Noubar to translate when the guy thinks Sevag is blaming Noubar so he goes up to Noubar doing the same thing and Noubar is trying to think and explain as fast as he can but is basically talking nonsense trying to buy time until he says how we’re Armenians and the guy starts asking Noubar if he’s knows of Khatchadoorian and Noubar says ya the composer and the guy says no [estrid or something] and Noubar thank god knew the guy as some Russian Armenian comedian and all of a sudden this guy is our friend. We offer to buy him a beer but he yells at us that he can pay for his own beer. He explains that he’s an ex prison guard from the Soviet era and proceeds to fall asleep at the table. Now were all sitting quietly laughing under our breaths as to not wake him up because we feel if he wakes up he might forget he likes us and try to kill us like some inmate trying to escape. He wakes up and offers to take us to a strip club but we basically want nothing to do with this guy so we explain to him we’re in shorts which means tourist which means were going to get screwed. He tells us not to worry because we’re with him but for some reason that’s not really convincing us. Its getting late so we leave to get some vodka and get to get ready to go out.

We buy two bottles of vodka and start drinking to figure out where we’re going to go. We remember some people telling us about a cool club but we think it might not be happening since its Tuesday night. After cashing the first bottle at about 1am we remember there’s a strip club in the hostel so we check it out. Shockingly the strip club in a random hostel in a not so popular part of town doesn’t have the worlds best strip club so we leave and head back over to Che (the bar we went to last night). We hail a gypsi cab to get out there and get a drink at Che. We leave Che about 2am to head over to the club when we remember about the Turkish girl we met last night who wanted to go clubbing with us. We decide were drunk enough to call her at 2am on a Tuesday and who cares anyway she’s a Turk they killed our ancestors so we can call their sluts whenever we feel like. I use Noubars cell phone that his cousins gave him and I call the number she gave me. I quickly realize that not everyone in Moscow has a cell phone and it’s a house line that I just called. Now how exactly do I realize this? Because her MOM picked up the phone. Her mom doesn’t speak English like she did so I hand the phone over to Noubar who starts talking to the mom asking if her daughter is there (we’re thinking her mom is gonna start yelling who the hell are these drunk guys asking for my daughter at 2am on a Tuesday but Noubar said that she was apparently incredibly nice and telling him to call back tomorrow since she’s sleeping. We get to the club wasted as usual and this is the greatest club ive ever been to. The music is the best trance ever and this place is packed. The music was really incredible but more importantly theres something everyone in the world needs to learn about Moscow. Now theres la hot which is basically a sluttier hot, theres NY/Paris hot which is a more stylish hot, theres model hot which is a combination of both and then theres Moscow hot which is first of all legs, legs and more legs combined with Anna Kournikova bodies and long blond hair. For some reason they wear sunglasses inside this club but who cares it just makes them hotter. Nothing really happened at the club except for the greatest music ever with Russian women everywhere dancing until 10am and did I mention that it was a TUESDAY. This city really is crazy… cant wear shorts, zombie subway rides, corrupt cops, drunk prison guards, hostel strip clubs, partying till past dawn on Tuesdays… and this was our first full day there, only one word can describe it MOSCOW.