Celebrating Moscow's Birthday

The Day of the City, Moscow’s 867^th birthday party, is warm and clear. Though, I am told, one shouldn’t be surprised at this; the clouds are seeded to insure that every such holiday has ideal weather. It was certainly true on Victory Day, the day after my arrival.

I find myself in the center, watching the military orchestra parade wind down Tverskaya Ulitsa.

 For me the Irish bagpipers are the most stirring, though the impeccably-timed, white-robed Chinese martial artists are undeniably impressive, and something about the slow, almost funereal music of the Swiss army seems to indicate a view that war is something somber and possibly atrocious, rather than a gay rah-rah event. The Mexican contribution is more along the lines of a mariachi band complete with full, colorful-skirted dancers, even the more militaristic types wearing a sort of sombrero. One has to imagine the Mexicans just not quite conceiving of participating in a parade in any other mode than fiesta, and the on-looking Russian authorities muttering to one another: “Gospodi! What are they doing? Didn’t they get the memo?”

There are crowds of people to stroll through, everywhere things to look at and free things to pick up like balloons and red paper crowns cut like St. Basil’s. While watching the parade I go for a coffee and deep-fried fabulously fattening doughnut item, sending my Russian companion into hysterics over accidentally ending up with a battery-juice double espresso instead of a cappuccino or an Americano. I followed the conversation as far as them not having cappuccinos or, apparently, any cream for an Americano, but must have missed her saying there was no water either, and would a double espresso do?

“You shouldn’t nod your head if you don’t know what they are saying, people think you understand,” my companion tells me sagely and I quite agree, though secretly make no resolve whatsoever: for the most part general nodding is the only way forward.

Later in the day we make our way to a couchsurfing event that’s a pleasant mix of chatting in English, listening to a live band, and drinking happy hour beer. At one point I get involved in a not-entirely-unfamiliar conversation that starts with some racial slurs, which almost inevitably leads to someone making an analogy with African Americans in America, which, as today, often leads me into a rather vociferous (though hopefully good-natured) treatise on how I see race and poverty/opportunity/socioeconomic status as different things, sometimes linked though not necessarily causal, and what, in my opinion, leads to crime or in other ways objectionable lifestyles. The discussion also has the not unpleasant (and also not-unfamiliar) result of people coming up to assure me that ‘really, not all Russians are racist’. And, I’m happy to say, they absolutely are not.

Finally a largish group of between 15 and 20 people set off for a house party at the distant end of the red line, a wobbly commute involving a failed attempt to buy alcohol, a fabulous view of fireworks over the river from the momentarily surfaced metro, and lots of laughter as things are translated between Russian, English and French. At the bottom of the red line our unofficial group leader pauses the group in front of a MacDonald’s, asking “Who needs a piss?” in the group’s three languages. A couple of hours after setting out we arrive at last at the apartment high-rise, one in a circle of blue, yellow and red lit monoliths that make you feel that you’ve just swum into some deep-sea cave, or that you are looking down at the world instead of up, perhaps from an airplane window at night.

We hear the laughter of the party before we see the policemen heading into the building. We pause uncertainly; a couple members of the group approach the policemen to see if they are going to break up our party. The, rather improbable, conclusion of our guide is that they are going to another party in the same building, also hosted by an American. The rest of us look at one another askance but hang about. At last someone decides to send us into the building in waves of three or four, for stealthy party-entering purposes, but as my group reaches the door group 1 comes back down with group 2 in tow, saying that the police are, indeed, in the flat.

So that’s that, and after a rather long metro ride I find myself back at my own flat in time for a late-night grilled cheese. A holiday well spent.