Finally...

Yesterday was a kinda shitty day: our camera broke (hence the lack ofblogging), our phone was stolen (we got a new one, tho), phone cards can't besold to foreigners or Russians who live outside of the federation....many hoursor dull stares and waiting in lines to get a new phone. Anyway, just in case youwere thinking of it, I cannot do enough to advise you against visiting the cityof Perm', or Sperm, as the locals call it. We've been a ton of places last Iwrote. From Kostroma, we went through Krasnoe na Volge (population 500,counting the goats, then to a nameless town across from Plyos, then privatemotorboat across the volga to Plyos (THAT was an adventure...we were planning onswimming across and stealing a fishing boat...we were already naked for the swimwhen this dude boated by....anyway, Plyos is a sort of Tourist town from theSoviet era, which is being renovated, according to rumors, by Germanbusinessmen, or some kind of representative of the evil New WorldOrder...anyway, their offenses include paving and installing a public toilet.From Plyos, we went down through Ivanovo to Vladimir, then from Vladimir, wewent back north to visit Suzdal' (look it up, we didn't take many pictures, butit's a really famous spot on the Golden Ring), then back to Vladimir. We triedto take the bus from Vladimir to Nizhny Novgorod, but I got some kind of foodpoisoning.....in short, after a charming visit to the Russian Forest, wehitchhiked our way to Vyazniki with an interesting trader of shapkas anduniforms, which he has a factory to make in the middle of nowhere, where it'scheap, in order to move them to Moscow and sell them to tourists on the Arbat.Anyway, we caught a bus from there to Nizhny Novgorod (where we'd already stayeda few days with this sort of Orthodox political activist and organizer of theUnion of Orthodox Citizens). On the bus, we met this Chuvash woman flying infrom a three month work-vacation in Greece. I couldn't quite believe my earswhen she said "well, ever since my husband died, me, my two nubile daughters,their young, female, music student roomate, and associated friends have reallybeen pining for male company. You can stay with us for free if you'd like..."To make a long story short, especially since my mother will be reading this, westayed like three days in Cheboksari, the capital of Chuvashia (sort-of Turks,speak a language related, but not very closely, to Uzbek), which is a city fullof model-looking girls and drunk, incoherent, impotent creatures of the malegender. The cities of Cheboksari and Kazan', where we went next, are reallysurprising. Cheboksari is like an experiment with Swedish-style communism: it'sreally clean, there's free government Internet, even on cell phones, there'sRussia's best laser eye surgery clinic, and many other super-westernadvancements. Also, it's the only city we have been in where people don't thinkof black people as violent monkeys. Kazan' was incredible. We rented anapartment for 2 days with a girl we met in Cheboksari who is fanatic about shoeshops, american pop culture, and Turkey, especially Turkish guys. She's datedtwo already, and she's only 19. (remember, she's from theimpotent-man-with-no-conversation capital of Russia). Kazan' was by far themost beautiful city in Russia so far (this is Az's opinion): Kazan' is thecapital of Tartarstan, and it's generally more first world than any other cityin Russia. It's more or less clean, they've gone ahead and removed theever-present Lenins and Hammer-and-sickles, Krushev ghettos, etc, and replacedit with an amazing variety of architecture. Our camera was broken, but somehighlights of the new architecture were a giant pyramid-shaped mall, a hugegolden ring hanging out the side of a gaming arcade (hard to describe, but like50 feet in diameter, think Vegas), and a truly amazing mosque. Look for Kazan'on the Unesco site. It's inside the local Kremlin. The local museum was reallyprofessional: it looked like they'd brought in some Japanese people to designit, so everything was very high tech. There was even automatic bide (bid-day,no idea how to spell it) in the toilet! The nightclub we went to, Doktor,was...extreme. They have a bubble night: they unleash foam, like out of alaundry machine, on the crowd, which is somewhere like 500 or 1000 people insidethis enormous club. To get in, we pulled the trick from the hitchhiker's guide:marina boldly strode in, turned around, and said that me and the other girl werewith her. We got in for free, which was a major accomplishment, there were like100 people hanging around outside, trying to get past the Fejs Kontrolj (read itlike Croatian). From Kazan', we went on to the soviet hellhole of Sperm on a 12hour bus ride. It was actually a great busride: it was a german bus, whichmeans a: it goes, b: it has ventilation, and most importantly c: it has a television and speakers throughout the bus to blast american and Russianpopmusika to the entire bus from the hours of 11 to 4 in the morning!. Sperm was hard to escape, but we finally caught a fairly miserable bus to Ekaterinburg, were we currently find ourselves. Russia is really huge, especially the eastern part, and this trip to Vladyvostok, while we're still planning on doing it, is looking more and more imposing. The problem is thatthere's no trains, because you can only buy tickets in Moscow. Russia is run like an empire: all the rights and privileges are in Moscow, so only if someone cancels a ticket can you buy one somewhere east of Moscow. Similarly, when, for instance, a box of crackers is made in Moscow, it sits there for like a week,and if it's not sold, then it's moved to somewhere like Ryazan', then if itdoesn't sell there, it's moved to somewhere like Kasimov. Russia is one of the world's few countries where citizens need to get a special visa to visit their own capital. I'll post some pictures of our travels in a second if the guy lets me, the camera's only half-broken, its card can still be read.