Super-Duper Wacky n' Tacky Euro Adventure

So this one won’t be quite so long but hopefully still interesting.

So one of the things I was first overwhelmed with when I first got here was the Metro system. It can definitely be intimidating. Thank God the Stanford people had already gone through the hassle of getting us Metro cards by the time we all arrived; because otherwise, I quite possibly could have died. I can barely ask someone to politely move out of the way right now, I couldn’t even imagine having to fill out forms and haggle with old Babushkas at the Kacca when I had a total Russian vocabulary of about 5 words.

So on the first day of classes my Host dad Iosef escorted me along the usual hour-long journey to school through the most intimidating mass transit system that ever existed. Okay, maybe not THE most intimidating, but the Moscow Metro is the busiest in the world, carrying over 8.5 million passengers a day. That and the Moscow traffic is estimated to now be worse than that of Los Angeles! But that’s another rant for another day. As soon as I got over the 100+ vertical feet of escalators that first day, I couldn’t help but be transfixed on the advertisements on the way down. Since I usually have nothing better to do during the five to ten minute wait going down the escalators I am forced to occupy my time with the amusing advertisements.

Okay, so one out of every two advertisements may actually be advertisements encouraging businesses to advertise on the Metro; but you have to admit, they’ve really saturated the market. The most amusing and interesting of the shameless advertisement advertisements are the ones depicting Olympic events and hype. It’s that exact hype that almost didn’t exist as Moscow ran a bare-bones campaign to host the 2012 summer Olympics a few months ago, running with the like of London, Paris and New York. In a bout of fierce denial, the metro latched on to the dream of hosting another Olympic games and rolling in the advertising revenue. Given that even the most optimistic of Russians (do they even exist?) would not have believed Moscow would be hosting in 2012, I seriously doubt the Metro saw any advertising boosts. You can tell, however, from the ad ads how much Moscow really enjoyed hosting the games in 1980. They still have an entire district in the north of the city of mostly run-down Olympic buildings with architecture that resembles something that was probably considered very modern ages ago but just looks terrible now. Iris tells me that the Russian national teams still use the facilities to train. I guess if it ain’t broke. Either way, I don’t foresee any rise in advertising revenues due to the Olympics for a very long time in Moscow.

Of the other ads there is pretty much just one rule that holds true the world over: sex sells. And this rule is usually just focused on one of the sexes. I couldn’t imagine what it would be like trying to take my elementary-age son on a ride through the Metros of Moscow, but hey, I guess a kid’s gotta learn some how. I’ll let the pictures do most of the talking, but needless to say I, had fun searching for examples to photograph.

One of the interesting things is the heavy advertising for new books. The cigarette and alcohol ads are to be expected, but the books are a pleasant surprise. They are ads that one would normally find in the Sunday New York Times Book Review but placed in a high traffic area. One positive thing that can be said of the Soviet socialism is that the literacy rate is very good here considering income levels. And beyond that there exists a genuine reading culture that might even rival the publishing industry of the U.S. at least given the relatively small amounts of disposable income available to most Russians. The huge bookstores that line the biggest (and most expensive) streets of Moscow are only another testament to a pleasant Russian past-time: reading! My personal favorite is Knigi Moscva on Tverskaya. They even had two different English translations of The Master and Margarita! They also stay open till one AM everyday if you really have a hankering for some Pushkin (Texan accent please!) after hitting the bar. Some day I hope to be able to stumble through a Garry Potter book or two po-Ruski. Unfortunately on my short journey today to search for pics, the book ads were never to be found, but I will continue searching.

Ok, so enjoy the pics that I did manage to find. Tomorrow I’m off to see a Russian-Turkish women’s basketball game! Should be hella fun. Haha, listen to my NorCal slang!