Putin on the Ritz

Putin on the Ritz. I didn't come up with that. Mark did. Mark also came up with the title of this whole blog. I've come up with nothing.

Marius did come up on Sunday and picked me up in his Rav 4. The temperature was breaking the thermometer somewhere around -10C. But my newly-minted Canada Goose Expedition parka proved its down and I've never been warmer. We tooled around Moscow, destination -- the Obvious.

Traffic in Moscow is as bad as Moscow is expensive. Yeah, you figure it out. Marius flipped a quick u-turn, immediately predicted he would get busted for it and immediately did. He got out of the car pulling out his wallet. "I'm gonna have to bribe him. Be right back." He did and he was.


Lots of things in Red Square are red. So I didn't know where exactly it got it's name. The wind was blowing too hard to ask. But I think possibly you should really come here alone. Because like watching a great white shark pass by within inches, there's an unreality to the whole thing probably due in part to the ineffability of the place. The Place. It's not possible to be overstate the historical magnitude of The Place. So a quick visit leaves you a little helpless, a little, "Well I hardly know where to begin to take in where I am." And so you don't.

Marius was colder than I was. I was, in fact, exceedingly toasty.



Here's what I like about humankind. We're all the same. And we have a few universal absolutes that we can rely on pretty much anywhere in the world. For example, if a woman who does not speak English touches you on the arm and puts a camera in your hand and points at St. Basil's, then you know what is required of you. You wait for them to arrange themselves a short distance away, place (fill in the tourist attraction) in the background, take the picture and hand the camera back with an amiable smile and a nod that says, "Look we're both here!" I like that about humankind.