When one thinks of Russia, one thinks of spies. Its president is one of them, after all. This association comes to mind especially vividly in the light of the spy novels I’ve been listening to lately. Their well-developed Moscow plot is centred around Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service, with the headquarters in Yasenevo.
I must admit I used to be rather suspicious of Instagram. I did believe that its sole purpose was to enable absolutely anybody to instantly share the pictures of their food or of themselves in the lift – and to twist them up with filters to make them feel like art. Don’t get me wrong, there is absolutely nothing bad in it, it’s just nothing I would be interested in. Then, one day, convinced by an Instagram-addicted friend, I gave it a go – and I was stunned by what I found. It turned out that Instagram is full of wonderful photography.
There are some places in Moscow which always make me think of Christmas, no matter what time of the year I happen to stumble upon them. The shopping window in the Old Arbat which you can see above is one of those places.
Taking pictures of strangers still petrifies me – yet every now and then I kick myself out of my comfort zone to do what I promised myself to do. Here is yet another one of the last metro stations – Planernaya, the north-west end of the purple line. Its name sounds almost like Planetarnaya, which would mean The Planetary Station. I find this association highly relevant, as the very back of it looks like the exhaust pipe of a giant spaceship.
Quite clearly, I am failing miserably at keeping up with my New Year’s resolution of writing here regularly. I still have six months to improve. In the meantime, here is a note from a little holiday I went on a month and a half ago.
My obsession with the Moscow metro does not seem to decrease with time – and I must say that it does not come as a surprise to me, since my life here is centred on the metro – the times when it opens and closes, the location of the stations, the intervals with which the trains depart. Moscow metro is an institution in itself, the most important means of transport, a major meeting point, a witness of history, a tourist attraction.
I will remember my first week in Moscow as a crazy sequence of random streets, metro stations, hippie post-soviet apartments to-share-maybe-with-me, and running around from one hotel to another. Now, however, all my problems have been solved and I can truly say that I live in Moscow. Here you have a couple of first impressions of the city.
I have just moved out of Edinburgh. Forever. I don’t think it has fully hit me yet. Edinburgh has been the first stop in my independent, almost grown-up life. This is where I’ve learnt that moving to a foreign country is not as easy as it seems (and that, quite frankly, it’s a rather traumatic experience), but that it is worth every single minute it; and that you cannot really run away from yourself, no matter how far you go or how hard you try; and that the world is full of so many different people that you don’t have to try to fit in anywhere, as there will always be someone compatibly quirky; and that the more diverse your closest circle, the better; and all sorts of other truisms that you are aware of, but don’t fully realise when you’re nineteen and freshly out of a small town in Poland (no matter how well-travelled and well-read you are then).
