A Day of Touring

In the morning, we toured the outside of the Kremlin and the Red Square. From there we took a taxi to a shopping market called Izmailovo Market where they sold Matrechkas and other goods. Matrechkas are famous Russian dolls that open up to discover smaller dolls, until you have the smallest one. We were not able to perform jumma because our guide did not know where there was a masjid and we were running out of time (it would take to long to go and come back). Moscow, with a population of approx. 10 million has about 1 MM official muslims and another 1 MM not registered. Despite this, I did not see, as we drove, any visible signs of Muslims or mosques.

We arrived at the Domodedobo Moscow airport a little early since traffic on Friday’s gets very bad as people leave work and head out of town for the weekend. We spent about 4 hours at the airport hangin’ out and one interesting thing that happened was that while I was using the restroom, a woman cleaning lady walked in and began cleaning the room. There were other people there in the restroom, but I was the only one surprised that she was in there!!! After leaving, I told the story to our guide, and he just smiled and said “this is Russia.” The conversation turned into a discussion about the “liberal” nature of society when it came to sex, dress, etc. It was my observation that people in Russia and Eastern Europe (from my Bosnia trip) were generally more open about their sexuality. I explained to our guide that they were much more open than Americans and he was completely surprised. But its true, the things we complain about as being too liberal on public TV would be no problem here. I seriously doubt that a Russian version on CBS would have been fined when the Super Bowl incident happened. Walking in the malls of US compared to here, you immediately realize the difference with the way women are dressed. It is not the same with men as they are dressed very similar. One explanation could be that as the East begins its road down capitalism and wants to emulate the US, the programming they receive about American culture is from cable TV and Hollywood, hardly a depiction of US culture.

We finally boarded the flight and made our way to Nalchik. This was the first time in my life that I had flown on Russian jet, it was a Ty 154 and looked similar to a Boeing 727. Our guided mentioned that in 1991, after the breakup of Aeroflot, there were aprox. 500 airlines and that number has dwindled down to approximately 200. That seems like a lot, but in reality, most are airlines that own 1 or 2 airplanes and operated regionally on a limited basis. Thus many routes have no competition and one could tell this be being on the plane. Most planes in the world are old as regular maintenance keeps them running for a long time, and airlines do spend money in renovating the interiors. Not here!!! The plane looked like it was from the 1960s, with old seats, open overhead luggage compartment, and don’t even let me get started on the bathroom. I prayed that the engine and exterior maintenance was better than the inside.

Once we landed in Nalchik, there was tractor waiting for us to to board the passenger compartment and then it towed us into the main terminal. Our luggage arrived in a dump truck. I am literally explaining the situation with no exaggerations. Being the only “brown skinned” people on the flight, we stuck out like soar thumbs and were asked to come in for checking to make sure our papers were in order and we had permission to be here. The security office was located in the departure building and the sign outside the office said: “Agricultural Quarntine Area”, as pointed out by our guide. The whole process took 1 hour and then we were let go. Getting in our cars and leaving out of the airport, we were stopped again for further checking by other guards. I guess I better get used to this for the next few days.

Till Next Time,
Babi