Today was both quiet and fun filled. Things started when we went to the University, not for classes, but for a farewell party, of sorts. Владимир Алексеевич and a couple of staff members who had been involved in helping our class gathered coke, grapefruit juice, and a really rather yummy variation of pizza from the Caucasus region, put it in the teachers lounge, and basically we all got together and talked, mostly in Russian, about how things had gone, and about home. The pizza came in three varieties: meat, cheese, apple and капуста, aka cabbage. It didn’t involve any sauce, and it was sort of like a calzone it was stuffed into the crust. It was very yummy, and highly filling. We didn’t get any where near finished with it all, although I do believe the others cleaned out the meat option pretty well. It was a lovely way for us to end the month, in my opinion. I am going to miss my teachers, even if I won’t miss Татьяна Алексеевна’s thrice blasted scenarios. The faculty has also been really nice and accommodating. I hope wherever I end up in France is half so nice.
After the farewell party, the four of us set out to achieve a long cherished goal. You see, next to the university, there is..... a chocolate factory. It’s a very good chocolate factory, that makes very good chocolate, and it has a little store that sells chocolate in the form of candy and cakes. Thus, we decided long ago that by the end of this trip, we were going to buy a cake. And we were going to devour it gleefully. So, today we finally did. We wound up coughing up 64 rubles a piece to buy a торте кармен, which turned out to be a sort of cake with a cream filling. The top was covered by a layer of milk chocolate, and (having now eaten my portion of said cake) was incredibly tasty. I highly recommend Болшевик chocolates to anyone who finds themselves in Moscow. One of their stores is on Leningradsky Prospekt. Look for it hard enough, and I’m sure you’ll find it.
Post cake purchase, we headed back to the dorm for a while, and then Carley and I proceeded to the final adventure for the day: the statue park. You see, there is a park filled with interesting statues across the street from Gorky Park. It’s rather fascinating. Some of the statues are beautiful and captivating. Some are ordinary and less than captivating. A good number are creepy and captivating. But still, it was definitely an interesting place to spend an afternoon, even if some of the statues were a little freaky.
Then we headed back to the dorm. End of story.
On a rather sobering note, today marks my very last day in Moscow. It’s rather sad and depressing, but I’m almost glad to be going home. Moscow suits me in some ways, yes, but not, I think, because of Moscow. No, the Russian capital suits me because it reminds me of another capital city in a different country. I like Moscow as much as I do because it is so much like Bratislava. I mean, they’re not exactly the same, but they are similar enough with similar enough languages spoken in the streets that in a way, it feels like Bratislava. So, I feel at home here, but not for the right reasons. I feel like I haven’t been able to give Moscow a chance to really be itself because of that. At the same time, my experience here has been so radically different from my adventures in Bratislava that there’s no way I could ever mix the two up. I would never place Moscow’s traumatizing metro escalators in Bratislava, any more than I would place my late night walks home from two trolleybus stops early here in Moscow. I would never mistake the обшежити for the panelok where I lived with the Klimešes or the Lapinovs. Still, I’d like to come back here some day. It’s a nice place, and I’d like to get to know it better. I just hope I’ll have more than a month to do so.
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