One more gloomy Moscow shot:

You know how in Turkish the word "saray" stands for "palace" - while in Russian "saray" means something like this:

January 10 in Moscow:

Everyone's linking to this BBC piece on Kyiv's real estate, so I'll do, too:

[...]

Yet Kiev is now believed to be the most expensive city in Eastern Europe in which to buy a home.

Prices increased by 10-25% in just the final two months of 2006.

[...]

The cost of apartments has already overtaken some EU cities like Amsterdam.

[...]

"Kiev has experienced such a property boom. I bought a flat three years ago for $30,000, and now its worth up to $200,000."

[...]

"In my experience the most expensive places cost $25,000 per square metre," says Parker and Obolensky's Ruslan Suchkoe.

"That's not a joke. Apartments of this price are about 100 to 300 square meters in size."

Such a valuation would put the top of the market at around $7.5m.

[...]

But despite the building frenzy, Ukraine remains one of the poorest countries in Europe.

The cheapest one-bedroom flat in Kiev costs in the region of $100,000- far beyond the reach of most people in a city where the average salary is about $200 a month.

[...]

***

I hope they do a piece on Kyiv's Lexus boom next.

***

Here's what's being built right outside our window at Besarabka:

Our neighbors must've been doing Christmas cleaning today: they got rid of a bunch of books, placing them by the window at the smoking place in the hallway.

Mishah picked up Yulian Semyonov's Seventeen Moments of Spring, on which the legendary Soviet-time film is based (somehow, I always assumed it was a bookless film).

I took something Soviet about the Spanish Civil War (signed by the author, some obscure but high-ranked military guy) - and a few rather old English textbooks, among them a two-volume "Advanced English," published in 1947 in Moscow, in excellent condition, a treasure.

Here's the beggining of the text about London (p. 219, vol. 2):

London, the stronghold of British imperialism and the vital centre of the United Kingdom, was built up gradually in the course of many centuries.

And, closer to the end of the text, something that I knew would be there:

In a somewhat quieter section nearby is the British Museum and its splendid libarry [sic], where Marx, and later Lenin, came to study and write. Marx' London home in Dean Street and the house where Lenin lived in Regent's Square are both within walking distance of the place.

If you think the textbooks that we used 40 years later were much different, you're wrong: for the most part, they were as sickening. No wonder I preferred to study the lyrics of Madonna's songs instead. And Sinead O'Connor's. And lots of really silly pop songs.

"Hazard" by Richard Marx - I heard it on the radio today and was telling Mishah that this song might seem worthless now, but all those years ago, it wasn't all that obvious that "man with a badge" (who "came knocking next morning") was a cop - to figure it out was quite a language exercise.

And the very first song for me was the Beatles' "When I'm 64" - taught to us here in Moscow in 1986: God bless the teacher, Irina Vitalyevna (Makarova, I guess, but I may be wrong) for her creative approach.

And there was also the BBC Russian Service, sometimes jammed, sometimes not, with Seva Novgorodtsev (he's on Nostalgiya TV channel now, by the way), and they also had a show where they presented English-language songs line by line, translating them, and I still remember a tiny bit of a Chicago song they dissected (Chicago the band):

After all of these years
I'm still trying to shake it
Doing much better
They say that it just takes time
But deep in the night it's an endless flight
I can't get you out of my mind...

It was my beautiful music teacher, Lena, who inspired me to listen to BBC - she was studying English that way herself then, getting ready for emigration to the States... She also tried to get me to listen to Joan Baez, but I was too scatterbrained for that at the time... (Thank you again, Lenochka!)

And now everything's so easy: there's the internet, and a thousand different textbooks at every store...

Moscow, Novyi Arbat, no snow, the locals are really depressed by now...

Moscow-City:



And this is what they hope it'll look like when they are done building (picture from the Russian Wikipedia entry; the English one is here):

Another one - Novodevichiy Monastery:

Moscow, yesterday:

I'm 33. Oh.

Thank you all for your wishes, dearest friends. I love you all.

(And this is my 1,500th post here...)

A bit of shameless self-promotion: little by little, I've been assembling my old pieces in one place, a pseudo-blog place called Filed Away: pre-blog stuff, mostly.

I've posted only five texts there so far - and tonight, it's my July 2003 story about a train ride from Kyiv to St. Pete, via Belarus. I re-read it and really, really loved it. I can't write like this anymore, I'm afraid, but Mishah says I can, so I'll wait and see, and won't despair, not yet.

It's here now. (The online journal that ran it first, Newtopia Magazine, is no longer there - it's been three and a half years...)

A baby-shower card:



I received this card in early September 2005, some three months before Marta's birth. Among other things, my dear friend wrote: "I guess this isn't the most appropriate baby-shower card! Oops! Though motherhood feels like this in the middle of the night sometimes..."

(Thank you, Julinka, and happy New Year!)

:)))

The way we lived for the past year - the way Mishah lived, that is... A glass box containing nearly all Mishah's train tickets from Marta's first year: Moscow to Kyiv and Kyiv to Moscow. These aren't all of them, though - he lost a few along the way.

A few hours after I posted the previous entry, when it was still Jan. 1, Marta made her two real first steps!!!!!!!!!

Then she did it three times more!

Mishah was there, stretching his arms towards her, asking her to "tip-top" to him - so she did have enough motivation. And she looked very proud of herself, too!

I'm so happy!

Happy New Year, dear all!

Z Novym Rokom/S Novym Godom from the three of us here in Moscow!

Both Mishah and I managed to catch a cold last week, so it was a rather sneezy celebration, but we still loved it. Watched Ironiya Sud'by, ili S Legkim Parom - ha-ha, if you skip it for a couple of New Years, you'd feel like you're seeing it for the first time, almost (for more on the film and other New Year's traditions in Russia, please see this entry at Snowsquare). We also watched Moskva Slezam Ne Verit yesterday; it won an Oscar in 1980 - has anyone else felt what I feel about it: that this film is so like a Soviet version of Sex and the City?..

***

Marta stayed up till around 1 am and ate as much of that sweet Tatar thing - cham-cham? - as she wanted. In general now, she acts as if she's jetlagged - goes to bed and wakes up really late. But Mishah's vacation is over, so we'll all have to switch back to a less relaxed schedule beginning tomorrow... I think Marta's overexcited from all the things she's got to explore here (just like I am) and from her new ability to crawl anywhere she wants (in Kyiv, mainly because of the cats and the mess they cause, we didn't allow her to get out of our room).

***

Here's our picture from yesterday:



***

And here's a New Year's video that Mishah insisted on making: Putin's address was on nearly every Russian channel, and we kept clicking until we reached the new favorite of mine, Nostalgia, and they had Brezhnev there, greeting the Soviet citizens with a really strong Ukrainian accent that I had no idea he had - and such a transition, from multi-Putin to Brezhnev, was funny as hell...