Another introduction: Yannika – the Finnish girl.
We went to the laundrette together, had to pay €10 for only1 machine and came home with shrunk clothes. So that’s one jeans down… Time for some shopping???
On Saturday I thought I’d be brave for a change and went to the famous “Tretyakovsky Museum”, together with the Russian and German girl.
Arriving there, our hearts quickly and deeply sank into our boots. It was huuuuuge! 60 rooms – think enormous ballrooms – full of paintings, drawings, sculptures, icons, … Still, we were able to recollect our courage and dared to go in. And, surprisingly enough, I really enjoyed it. The building was overwhelming, lots of exquisite pieces of Art, a nice and relaxing atmosphere,… In the end we stayed there for more than 4 hours and I must admit it completely ruined me. So yes, I keep on discovering new passions of mine (e.g.: Russian culture and literature, law about which I’m planning on writing my thesis, Lost, yoghurt which I never ever liked, aromatic toilet paper J and many more). Mr. Tretjakov & co. will have been very proud of me!
On Tuesday evening me and the Russian girl went to see the main building of Moscow University and the parks surrounding it. And waw, I think that’s the most beautiful building I’ve ever seen – probably not but I easily forget those things because of my very very very short-term-memory.
I’m certainly going back during the day next week, when I have more time, more opportunities of taking nice pictures and am able to go further (2 girls alone, at night, in a dark and deserted park in Moscow is not the most genius idea ever, you see).
Talking about genius ideas; this brilliant and exemplary J student came up with one for her thesis. I went to the Moscow “House of Books” (as the literal translation would be), which is the biggest – read: ridiculously huge maze – bookshop in Moscow and possibly Russia. I thought I’d go there, walk around a while and draw some interesting inspiration. And so I did…The Russian Constitution! “Boring” I hear all your great minds think but no no, your brain is surely deceiving you. The idea is the following: I translate a book about the Russian Constitution when it was part of the Sovjet Union from Russian into Dutch, then I comment on this translation process and make a glossary of the technical words and then I write a piece about the comparison between the current Russian Constitution and the one during the Sovjet time and the current Constitution of the other former Sovjet States. Again no no no, that is everything except boring, as Russia is certainly not always following its own Constitution – bad bad Russia – and I thus get the chance of doing some research about it and writing it down without getting thrown in prison (or so I tend to hope). Man…how brilliant can one be?!
Last time I already complained about the ridiculously long and difficult text we had to translate from Dutch into Russian by last Friday. Good news: I did it, I was able to translate it all having worked many hours on it. Bad news: I was having a baby on the morning of the class and thus was an hour late. Maybe some explanation (calm down mum): I’ve been having some crazy dreams since I’ve been here. Really weird as I rarely have and/or remember them. One of those dreams is me being pregnant and all the other times I woke up after a miscarriage but this time I was about to have the baby and my mum was getting ready to bring me to the hospital. All of the sudden I woke up, considering it was half nine and I needed to be in class at eight. Oooops-a-daisy! So yes, I had to give up my future baby for the translation that had cost me a lot of time and effort – and thus now also my descendant. Scary??? Yep, I agree…
And then the night fell… Many nationalities in 1 small room in Moscow, could that ever have an happy ending? Well, actually it certainly had but the next morning I surely had to deal with the rather painful consequences – if one knows what one means.
There’s not much to say about it, we just had a good laugh and got to know each other better. And, on such a nights I seem to talk the Russian language rather fluently ;-) Win-win situation, losing I did the next day…
So that notorious next day we decided to get a breath of fresh air at the Moscow Botanic garden. 2 problems: no sign of fresh air as it was really warm and sunny (What’s that all about? Over 20 degrees, end of September in Russia? Where’s the snow?) and no sign of the garden, which was rather essential for our initial plan. HA…us Belgians and us having no experience with large cities. So we just walked a while in another park of which I obviously forgot the name. But here it is, a nice green park in the middle of Moscow:
There you go, you made it to the finish! You are now entitled to a week’s rest. Till then!
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