Blue sky

After a nice break in Spain, we are back in Moscow. Today, for the first time since we got here I have seen a splendid blue sky!!  As blue and nice as it was every single day I was in Spain, here it only happens once every 2 months…

But a blue sky comes with a high price… a very high price…. to the point that I don’t ever want to see a blue sky anymore…

A temperature of -16 Celsius (3 Fahrenheit) that feels more like -25C (-13F)… So, yeah, it was cold today. I felt my alveoli freezing, my eyes drying and snowflakes building up in my nose blocking my airway… Winter has come!

The shortest day of the year

The shortest day of the year is coming up! It’s a good thing because it only gets better after that. Sadly, I won’t be in Moscow for the most misserably short day of the year. I will be in Spain, where the shortest day is not that short…

So on December 22nd:

– Moscow –> Sunrise: 8:57am / Sunset: 3:58pm. Total of 7 hours and 1 min of “light”.

I put “light” in quotes, because most days in cloudy Moscow I wouldn’t say there is an abundance of light… So this is by far the worst place I have ever lived in terms of hours of sunlight during winter. Compared to:

– Madrid –> Sunrise: 8:34am / Sunset: 5:51pm. Total of 9 hours and 17min of light.

– Baltimore –> Sunrise: 7:23am / Sunset: 4:47pm. Total of 9 hours and 24min of light.

– Dayton –> Sunrise: 7:54am / Sunset: 5:16pm. Total of 9 hours and 22min of light.

To be honest I am surprised that Madrid doesn’t have the longest day of all.  But it makes sense because it’s about the same latitude as the US East Coast. So it’s probably the weather that makes it feels that the days are even longer than they are!

But, it could be worse, we could be even further north than here…

– St. Petersburg –> Sunrise: 9:33am / Sunset: 4:18pm. Total of 6 hours and 45min of light.

I decided not to look any further and just feel sorry for the inhabitants of these places… It could also be so much better, we could be in the Southern hemisphere where the summer is about to start and days are looooong!

– Sydney –> Sunrise: 5:40am / Sunset: 8:05pm. Total of 14 hours and 25min of light!!!

It’s Christmas!

Yes, Christmas comes early to Moscow, too! And you can’t pretend otherwise. GUM (literally “main department store”) was built during tsarist-times.  In the Soviet Union, GUM was the main gallery for all the products socialism built.  In the post-Soviet era, it morphed into the city’s premiere shopping destination.  It’s now full of very fancy, pricey stores! This is how it looks when it’s not Christmas.

The gum

But now, it looks more like this! It’s pretty easy to get lost among all the decorations and designer wear and never find your way back out…

Shopping center

The view of the building from Red Square is beautiful:

Christmas tree!

It’s cold and dark, but they make it so pretty!

I really like this building for some reason. The lights in contrast with the sky make it look cool…

There is also a cute Christmas Market with a bunch of gift shops.

Cute little market!

We even have a Christmas tree at the entrance of our apartment. Needless to say, a tree like this wouldn’t have lasted long outside our building in Baltimore…  Hell, we couldn’t even stop our recycling bins from getting stolen there.

MEEEERRY CHRISTMAS FROM MOSCOW!!

Danilovsky Rynok (Market) is sweet!

When we thought everything was lost and we would have to survive on Iranian cucumbers (the size of tiny pickles) and Serbian pears, we found this amazing market! Not only do they wash their carrots (for a little extra money) but they also stock delicious Belarusian/Spanish tangerines! And it’s super close to our apartment!

This very nice arrangement of colorful fruits comes with a lot of handling… so we make sure we wash throughly… not the tangerines…

Any possible fruit you could ever imagine… well, almost…

Normally I am not bothered by the look of the animals I eat at the grocery shop. But I find it completely unnecessary to leave some of the skin on the paws of the poor bunnies… yeah, ok, it’s not a cat or big rat. I get it.

A lot of spices and dried nuts! It reminds me of Turkey!

They even have a couple of small restaurants and a pastry/coffee shop area that smells wonderful! The only downside of this place is that it requires a level of Russian speaking skills I don’t have at the moment… Pointing at things helps, but it’s nothing like a Russian speaking husband, which does wonders!

First snow in Moscow!

Not too bad; yesterday was December 10th. I can take snow during December, January, and February. Anytime before or after that is too depressing.

This picture was taken this morning at 11am…

This one was taken yesterday at 3:30pm. It’s as sunny as it gets here!

Also with the snow comes a little bit of nasty slushy snow/mud/corrosive … mix! I hope I don’t ever fall in this…

It makes cars really … gross…

Your shoes don’t look much prettier, especially if you have my husband’s ability to splash gunk on the toe of your shoes…

The thought of sliding in this terrifies me.

I am glad our car hasn’t made it to post yet… I am hoping “he” doesn’t have to live through this nightmare.

Grocery shopping. It gets crowded…

Obviously, one of the first things we needed to do when we got here was to buy food. People kindly offered to take us to two different stores during our first couple of weeks here. We went to a store call Ashan, first. I didn’t realize until I got there that it was Alcampo, the grocery/housewares chain in Spain!! Only when I saw the bird logo did I put it together… turns out it’s actually a French chain. It made me happy to recognize the store. Until we got in there… I ended up leaving somewhat disappointed.

Ashan or also known by me as Alcampo…

The second weekend we went to a store called Metro. I have to say it was waaaay better!  The first trip to Ashan to buy groceries was schedule at 9am to beat the rush (more on that in a minute)… a little too early for me but you know, whatever. The trip to Metro was at 7,30 am… WTF! I thought, we suck… other families seem to be a lot more productive AND active than we are. Probably the baby will shake things up. The truth is that both times, the stores were way too busy for how early it was…

After these two trips we decided to go back to Ashan. Not because it was our favorite but because it was closer and doable without a car.  But we went there on our schedule… Saturday afternoon. It was… a little busy… just take a look…

Going through with your cart it’s almost like Mission Impossible!

Onions and carrots are brought to the store with the entire plot so you can dig through the ground to find the ones you like!

To me it doesn’t look like something I want to buy…

If you don’t pay attention it looks like just trash… but there are some onions in there if you look carefully!

A woman digging for carrots!

Veggies, you mostly buy in the frozen section…

Next to the delicious dried fish… to me it’s just a waste of delicious fish!

It just breaks my little Spanish heart…

The “Cheese selection”, to call it something… it’s neither a selection, because despite having different names it all looks and smells the same, nor cheese… It’s more a like a yellow synthetic salty chewy plastic… And thought American cheese was horrible…

I don’t have words for this…

Let’s not forget about the coconuts about the size of kiwis!

Coconuts the size of kiwis!

And lastly, but not less important, after this battle for a few goodies, this…

Happy shopping!!!

Knitting paradise in Moscow

I love knitting! I really do. I wish I could spend my entire day just knitting… In Moscow I found the most fabulous store ever! It has every shade of yarn you could possibly imagine. It’s not only the colors, there are also tons of thin yarns. It was kind of hard to find thin yarn in the States unless I was willing to pay a lot for a tiny skein of yarn. Regardless, for most of it I had to go online. Here it’s everywhere! Also, most of it is wool. And the best part of all… it’s super cheap!!!! I got 10 skeins of yarn for $16, that’s $1.6 per skein vs. $5-$8 in the States! I want to buy it all!

Paradise in Moscow!

I could spend all my time… and money there!

Endless possibilities!

One month!

We arrived here just a month ago! It feels like we have been here a lot longer. When we arrived the weather was cold, but temperatures were above freezing. We have been watching temperatures drop in a very consistent manner. It almost feels like it drops a degree a day… no breaks, no random increases. It steadily goes down… We have also witnessed days getting shorter and shorter quickly. Right now sun comes up at 8:34am and sets at 4:02pm. But the good news is that we only have 21 more days and then days will start getting longer again, slowly but surely! Anyway, I think I was mentally preparing myself for the worst and it hasn’t been too bad yet. It hasn’t even snowed yet! Making it to December without snow is a super plus!

Yesterday, we went out to celebrate our one month here with some delicious food at a nearby Georgian restaurant. It was delicious! Although, not as good as the khachapuri our friends made for us back in DC not so long ago!!!

Georgian food!