I saw that fabulous Moscow Metro back in 1981 when I traveled to communist Armenia, by way of Leningrad (now back to St. Petersburg) and Moscow.
That place was the ONLY impressive thing about the whole friggin city.
My parents took me and my brothers out of summer-camp and flew us there, totally against our wishes, to show us where our ancestors supposedly came from. There was absolutely nothing to do and nothing to eat or drink that didn't taste like stale left-overs from 2 weeks ago. St. Petersburg was a beautiful city but there still wasn't anything to do (the highlight was a Pink Floyd cover band playing "Another Brick in the Wall"). Moscow was a boring city with a fabulous Metro as its only jewel and Yerevan was dirt poor and everyone lived in small, prole apartments packed like sardines, sometime 8 people to a less than 800 square-foot space. The bedrooms didn't even have walls, only dividers. The highlight in Armenia was my cousin playing Deep Purple songs on his guitar, which he learned from tapes he bought from the black-market.
The punishment for getting busted selling shit on the black market?
Russian dungeons that make American prisons look like country-clubs, overcrowded and dirty, sometimes forcing 50 people into a single cage. These same prisons still exist in the Putin era.
Or if you're shit out of all luck:
Siberia and forced labor in sub-zero temperatures that can reach 60 degrees minus zero fahrenheit. Where your spit turns into ice before hitting ground. Basically certain death by inhuman torture for everyone but the strongest and toughest individuals.
4 comments:
Congratulations on the new blog, Whooli. May this be the first of many Saturday mornings we spend together!
I saw that fabulous Moscow Metro back in 1981 when I traveled to communist Armenia, by way of Leningrad (now back to St. Petersburg) and Moscow.
That place was the ONLY impressive thing about the whole friggin city.
My parents took me and my brothers out of summer-camp and flew us there, totally against our wishes, to show us where our ancestors supposedly came from. There was absolutely nothing to do and nothing to eat or drink that didn't taste like stale left-overs from 2 weeks ago. St. Petersburg was a beautiful city but there still wasn't anything to do (the highlight was a Pink Floyd cover band playing "Another Brick in the Wall"). Moscow was a boring city with a fabulous Metro as its only jewel and Yerevan was dirt poor and everyone lived in small, prole apartments packed like sardines, sometime 8 people to a less than 800 square-foot space. The bedrooms didn't even have walls, only dividers. The highlight in Armenia was my cousin playing Deep Purple songs on his guitar, which he learned from tapes he bought from the black-market.
The punishment for getting busted selling shit on the black market?
Russian dungeons that make American prisons look like country-clubs, overcrowded and dirty, sometimes forcing 50 people into a single cage. These same prisons still exist in the Putin era.
Or if you're shit out of all luck:
Siberia and forced labor in sub-zero temperatures that can reach 60 degrees minus zero fahrenheit. Where your spit turns into ice before hitting ground. Basically certain death by inhuman torture for everyone but the strongest and toughest individuals.
Enjoyed your posts there, Neg.
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