Not-Boring Garden

Friday was basically the highlight of my whole entire life, because we went to the chocolate factory! Babaevsky, to be precise. Fun fact, the factory/company was named by the state after a revolutionary in the Soviet era.

Unfortunately, pictures were not allowed inside the factory, so all I have to offer you is this photo of my really stylish shoe covers.

The factory floor was basically exactly like the factory in the Willy Wonka film (the Gene Wilder one where everyone is on drugs). Except with humans instead of Oompa-Loompas and a surprising lack of chocolate river.

But actually, our guide would just pick up trays of chocolates (in their various stages of completion - so just the filling, or freshly glazed, etc.) and let us take however much we wanted. Soooo...I may have eaten a meal that was 100% chocolate. (Also, our guide told us that the workers are totally allowed to eat chocolate during work. So forget science writing, I've got a new dream job. I knew Russian would come in handy.)

Saturday I went to Нескучный Сад, or Not-boring Garden. I was thrown off by the "garden" in the name, so I went for a sundress, expecting a civilized outing to a pristine park. Nope, instead I spent my time picking my way through this in my sandals:

I did get to do some dramatic poses, though, so it all worked out.

And there were a few gardeny areas, like the rotunda celebrating the founding of Moscow.

In fact, I was having quite a nice time until I made the extremely stupid mistake of standing on a low part of the river bank as a huge tour boat passed by. Yeah, I was just lucky to be wearing a skirt instead of pants, so my clothes had that much less drying to do.

ooh artsy

Sunday was a very cultured day. I visited Gorky's house in Moscow, which was super cool, but I didn't want to pay the fee for photography, so enjoy these photos instead.

After eating more delicious Georgian food (complete with the best sherbert ever), I went to Part II of the Tretyakov Gallery. It's basically the chronological continuation of the other Tretyakov Gallery (which I have yet to visit). The one I visited has Russian art from 20th-century on. Even though I'm not really well-educated enough to appreciate modern art (being diplomatic here), I thought the official state art produced during the Soivet era was pretty interesting.

I also went to my first movie in Moscow this week - to "practice my Russian" ostensibly, but actually it was an English movie (The Grand Budapest Hotel - it was awesome and I recommend it to everyone). I was "reading the subtitles" to practice, but yeah...no.

In terms of actually learning Russian, I've found that I now understand pretty much everything that is said to me in a normal interaction (restaurant, grocery store) and upwards of 70% of what is said to me in class. I think I've reached the level of competency such that I can take the Trans-Siberian Railroad and not starve or die, so everything after this is kind of icing on the cake.

Also, getting super pumped for our trip to St. Petersburg in a month. We're taking the overnight train. Overnight train. Is that not the coolest thing.