Super-Duper Wacky n' Tacky Euro Adventure: 2005-10-30

Finally got a pic...

1 comments Published Friday, November 04, 2005 by Beto Juarez III.

This is from one of his five henchmen following him around with a camera everywhere he went. This didn't end up in any newspapers (I don't see why not!) but the peeps at the world bank were nice enough to save a copy for me. The man to my right is none other than the infamous Sasha Abashkin, director of the Stanford in Moscow Overseas Program. We owe this guy a lot over here and I definitely owe the fact that I even have an internship to his mad hookup skills. These are sort of like num-chuck skills but even better.
Last night I met up with World Champion Sacramento Monarchs Nicole Powell, Tisha (don't know her last name), and another WNBAer Isis who all had a game in Moscow yesterday that I unfortunately had to miss. All three of these women are taller than me without heels on. Isis had did have heels on last night and was a full head higher than me. Whoa. We had a crazy good time at Benni Hanna's (didn't even know they had one here!) where there were more bottles of wine ordered than I could keep track of. We then headed off to Karma Bar which usually has hip-hop night Thursdays, but since today was a national holiday, the Russians were out in full last night, and there was probably a total of 20 minutes of hip-hop compared to three hours of Euro trash. Boo. On the other hand, Nicole is my new favorite person. She's earning mad bank playing for a pro team from Istanbul; this after just winning a national championship in the states. Whoa. That and she's the most down to earth, crazy individual I have ever met. She's probably also the most famous person I've ever known that knows my first name as well! Can't believe I got to meet this girl I have been admiring from the sidelines for over five years. Bad ass. Pics from last night soon to come.
On a sad note: It is now 5PM and the sun is almost completely dark outside. Didn't get to see much of that sun today. Oops.

Why is Beto Freaking Out???

0 comments Published Thursday, November 03, 2005 by Beto Juarez III.

Becuase in the course of decalaring, I just found out that ALL of my classes in Paris will be in French. I expected a nice mix or perhaps most of them. But all of them? And they're all either counting for my major or my minor! If I had to take classes in Russian after just a year of taking it I would die. Now my French is almost non-existent and I'm freaking out!!!

Alright, on the plus side, 1) I'm finally declaring! 2) It's a beautiful 8 degrees and sunny right now and will be so tomorrow as well. 3) I'm finally starting with the World Bank today! and 4) My French will be really damn good by the time I get back to the states. Sweet!

Alright, gotta bounce. Have a meeting with the grumpy Azeri at the World Bank.

More Random Rants...

0 comments Published Wednesday, November 02, 2005 by Beto Juarez III.

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!