Monday, January 29, 2007

Kremlin, With a Side Order of Ballet

Yesterday was our first chance for some cultural enrichment in a while. We joined a group of Russians and boarded a bus full of people at 9:00 yesterday morning. The bus ride was about three hours and was pleasant enough except for the leader of the trip giving a year-by-year, blow-by-blow history of the Russian ballet. It was like a Russian museum tour, without the museum!

We got to Moscow had had enough time to hit up a fast food restaurant (there are none in Vladimir, so this was a novelty.) Joanna and Eric chose McDonalds; Molly, Nicole, and I chose Sabarro; and Sara chose to stand in line to try to see Lenin's waxy dead corpse before they closed the mausoleum at 1:00. She succeeded, so we were all very jealous, because Lenin is not something you find around every corner.

After that was a mad dash to get through Kremlin security and into the hideously, gloriously Soviet building that hosted the ballet. It was originally built to house Communist Party functions in the 1960s, but now serves different purposes. Plus, it's huge! We all had a good time with Esmerelda and the man with no pants who served no purpose to the plot other than to dance at the ball. After the ballet we piled back on the bus and headed for Vladimir and another day of work.

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