Inspired by a few wonderful strolls we've had over the past week, I planned to post a 100-percent positive entry about Moscow. I swear I did.

But then something interfered - because it's Moscow after all, you know, and it's best not to expect anything good from it, and that's the beauty of it, I guess, the beauty of running into stuff that pleases you when you least expect it - and then running into stuff that pisses you off and reminds you of where you are.

Anyway. Vorobyovy Gory is such an awesome place, especially now, when everything's blooming all at once: lilac, apple and cherry trees, chestnuts, dandelions, and tulips (in Kyiv, each of these plants has its own blooming season, but here, somehow, it's different, at least this year).

They've set up what they call an Ecological Path on Vorobyovy Gory, and although it's too close to a couple major highways, there're so many trees that the quality of the air is really nice. Even despite all the smokers out there.

We like to take a boat there - a very handy means of transportation, especially on a rainy day like yesterday (I got totally soaked, but Marta didn't even wake up, not until we were safe inside the boat).

And it's lovely to watch all those people jogging and roller-skating, very inspiring - and they do outnumber the smokers.

Then, there's also the Luzhniki Stadium, across the river from Vorobyovy Gory. The air's not that great, but it's surprisingly clean there, lots of flowers, too, and the tennis player in me is itching for some athletic activity (after, like, nine years of being a lazy ass). Lots of kids playing basketball and doing all kinds of extreme bike and skateboard tricks right underneath the subway bridge. Way cool.

So I was all excited on our way home today, and was composing this positive post in my head, but then I decided to stop at a tiny grocery store near where we live. I had no idea it was so tiny, but once I was in there, with the stroller and Marta in it, I was reluctant to go elsewhere. It was late and the place wasn't crowded, no more than three or four customers other than me, and I thought I could survive it. I placed a ton of cookies and chocolates into my basket (just couldn't resist it, must've been those imaginary athletic activities that did it to me), and I chatted about some baby stuff with a friendly shop assistant - and then suddenly this young guy, the big boss, I suppose, started yelling at me:

"Zhenshchina, zdes nelzya s kolyaskoy! Eto vam ne supermarket! Lyudi rugayutsa!" ("Woman, strollers aren't allowed in here! It's not a supermarket! People are complaining!")

It was so shocking, you know. I turned and asked him who was complaining. He repeated what he'd already said: "Lyudi rugayutsa!"

And I looked into my basket, and it was so full of stuff, and I did a quick calculation of how much money they were going to lose if I just left, and then I put down the basket and just left. They must've spent the next hour or so getting all the stuff I didn't buy back on the shelves. Bastards.

I could've fought for my right to shop there with the stroller, could've cited some legislation, I guess - the way one Moscow blogger did a while ago - but I went to a real "supermarket" instead and bought all I needed there, minus most of the cookies and other sweets - and minus the pain in the ass. This is another thing I like about Moscow (and any other big city, for that matter): you're not stuck with just one option, there's plenty to choose from.

***

A few pictures:

This year, I didn't post anything on the 63rd anniversary of the deportation of the Crimean Tatars, but here's a link to J. Otto Pohl's entry - please read it.

Below is an excerpt:

On 18 May 1944 the NKVD began the systematic round up of the Crimean Tatars in accordance with GKO order 5859ss. In the early hours of the morning a total of 23,000 officers and soldiers of the NKVD internal troops and 9,000 NKVD and NKGB operatives started going door to door and expelling the Crimean Tatars from their homes. They quickly roused the still sleeping Crimean Tatars from their beds and transported them to rail stations. They had only a short time to gather a few possessions to take with them into exile.

[...]

The Soviet security organs worked extremely fast. Already by 8 pm on 18 May 1944 they reported loading 90,000 Crimean Tatars into 25 train echelons. The first 17 of these echelons had already left on their way to Uzbekistan with 48,400 deportees. During the next day the NKVD continued this frantic pace. The NKVD had counted loading 164,515 Crimean Tatars into train wagons and dispatching 136,412 deportees to Uzbekistan during these two days. Finally, the NKVD finished the operation on 20 May 1944. The officers in charge of the operation initially reported deporting 180,014 Crimean Tatars on 67 train echelons and mobilizing an additional 11,000 men for forced labor. The NKVD thus recorded the forced removal of 191,014 Crimean Tatars from their ancestral homeland in only three days. The Stalin regime had ethnically cleansed the Crimean peninsula of virtually all Crimean Tatars. [...]

Ah, the joys of blogging.

First, I'm blasted for being a Russophobic sovok, then some idiot calls my photo of a woman fishing in the Bosphorus "Jewish crap," and before that, in a personal email, I get admonished for making fun of a Jewish last name (a misunderstanding I'll write about later), and one day before that, I'm accused of cheating in both the Eurovision 2007 and Ukraine's 2004 presidential votes.

All that within a week or so.

Fishing in Istanbul:

Kokorec in Istanbul:

Two women at Sultanahmet Mosque in Istanbul:

Roasted chestnuts in Istanbul:

Grapefruit juice in Istanbul:

A door ad in Moscow:

A DOOR nicknamed THE BEAST, a chain of stores all around Moscow: "IT'S EASIER to break into the FBI's website."

Stretching and hugging in Istanbul:

Fishing in Moscow:

To prevent people from going to Dissenters' Marches, authorities in cities like Chelyabinsk are threatening to draft them.

Nice army they're gonna get this way, very efficient, very reliable.

Again, thank you all for kind words and advice. I'm now writing down everything that Marta eats during the day - and it sort of looks okay, I guess. She's smaller than other kids her age (and smaller than some of the younger ones, too), and this is another thing that's making me nervous, but I've read that growth rates are all really individual, so I hope there's nothing much to worry about here. She's so much fun now, such a precious sweetheart...

***

On to some negative stuff:

I was at Staryi Arbat a few days ago - one of the most touristy places in Moscow, where they sell all kinds of souvenirs, etc. A foreign-looking couple was picking postcards outside a store when two cops approached them and asked to see their IDs. One of the cops was huge, fat, capable of knocking down half a dozen people with no special fighting skills but his weight alone, I guess, and he was the one who addressed the couple menacingly:

- Molodyye lyudi, vashi dokumenty! ("Your documents, young people!")

And the "young people" looked totally innocent, so like everyone else in the crowd around them. The woman was beautifully plump, something that caught my eye even before the cops showed up. And it was so shocking to see them singled out like that, like some "dangerous element." It was embarrassing.

I didn't pause to see the rest of it, whether the cops succeeded in extorting their beer money or not. But I can't get it out of my mind.

It's been years since I last worried about my own status here, and I believed everyone was feeling more or less at ease in Moscow by now. Well, everyone except for all those dark-haired migrant workers. But turns out nothing has really changed. Just think of it: they are brainwashing the people about all kinds of terrorist threats, but in the meantime, they are hunting down harmless tourists.

It's making me miss Istanbul so much more.

It also got me thinking that even if you stay away from politics here, this ID-checking shit should give you such a perfect glimpse into what this country is really like and how all this "widespread corruption" business really works.

And even if they elect themselves a saint as president, nothing's gonna change, ever.

Sorry for not writing here. All my energy goes into trying to get Marta to eat. I think I'm failing miserably as a mother.

Serbia has just won the Eurovision - I liked Marija Serifovic's voice.

I voted, like, 14 times for our Verka Serdyuchka (I'm in Moscow, not Kyiv, so I'm allowed to do that), and I also voted four or five times for Romania.

Ukraine came in second, and I'm sort of glad, maybe because we have Euro-2012 to prepare for, and hosting the second Eurovision in three years would've been too much.

Estonia gave 12 points (the highest mark) to Russia.

Turkey gave 12 points to Armenia.

Very strange - and moving.

Then there's all the diaspora voting: "France" giving 10 points to Armenia, "Portugal" giving 12 points to Ukraine.

Israel gave its 8, 10 and 12 points to Russia, Ukraine and Belarus (maybe not in this order, though).

All the former Yugoslav countries voted for Serbia.

Maybe Eurovision should replace politics. Eurovision and the World Cup (football). This would make the world such a passionately friendly place.

:)