Love and Whatever That Is

We've made it to our apartment and now the fun begins. What is all this stuff?

Our front door key is (no joke) a skeleton key that must be inserted a certain angle then turned a certain way and basically it takes five minutes to lock the front door. You also have to have said key to lock it from the inside when you're in. This is no big deal unless the only in-flight movie you watched was "The Pianist" a movie about a Polish Jew hiding out during the Holocaust, being locked into different flats and almost starving to death because it was locked from the outside. Needless to say, Hubs doesn't go anywhere without me.

There are two doors to get in to our apartment, both heavily padded. Not sure what that means. Nor do I really want to know. And that is all I have to say about that.

There's some toilet-sink looking thing that we don't know how to work and even if we did, what the heck is it for? Hubs' guess is a foot wash. I'm not even making an attempt. I embarress myself enough as it is walking out around town wearing Northface.

Some things are really cool! Hubs' favorite part are the full-length mirrors throughout the apartment. This is a first for my 6'10 husband, this seeing his whole self in a mirror. Although slightly terrified by his own reflection at first, he has since overcome and now I can't get him away from that thing. I don't blame him. He is a handsome devil.

We were brave the first day and ventured out. Found a McDonald's right down the street and felt a little more at home. Although it was the largest McDonald's I had ever seen and it was packed! I guess if we Americans would get our happy asses out of our car and go inside to get our greasy food, it would probably be that busy too. At first we felt right at home, until we saw a picture advertisement for what we think is a breakfast taco and includes a piece of bacon, sausage, egg (that part was sketchy), potato and what I imagine was ketchup.

We found a French Bakery and bought our dinner and breakfast and everyone was really nice. Its easy to assume someone's being nice when you don't actually know what they're saying. But even had they been rude, the food was totally worth it.

After our afternoon out on the town, our confidence was up pretty significantly. We may not know any Russian, or how to use public transportation or where anything is, but we made it just fine and even got some tasty treats. Because a smile is the same in any language. I always say. So we used this new confidence to find a grocery store. Hubs gets the credit on that one. Hubs and Google Maps.

You would not believe this grocery store. It was nicer inside than most museums I've been in. Such intricate molding and statues inside, it was beautiful! It really did look almost cathedral-like with its high ceilings and artistry. The deli/meat market was in the center and held all sorts of foods and meats in its windows framed by rich mahagoney. If you're trying to get a mental image of what we looked like in all this, just imagine Beverly Hilbillies, only decked out in yuppie winter wear. Which is probably why a security guard tailed us all the way to dairy. (please, please let that be why...)

I know I say this a lot, but we don't speak or read Russian. Which made grocery shopping interesting. First on the list? Milk. We found the dairy section alright, then couldn't decifer the milk from the cream. And a popular brand, apparently is Parmalot. Now, all I know about Parmalot is the powdered stuff we had to take on camping trips when I worked in Tennessee and it's pretty awful. So we skipped that and grabbed a small carton of something that said 1.5%, which we thought we understood.

The rest of our trip was uneventful (minus that security guard following us and mumbling in his radio). We found couscous, pasta, spaghetti sauce, hummus, cheese and a delicious-looking meat pinwheel thing. (What kind of meat? Who knows. Green stuff inside? Meh. Your guess is as good as mine.) The eggs are possibly sketchy. The date on them was March 21st and we bought them on the 30th. We'll let you know very soon if that was an expiration date or a "we just got these from whatever animal laid it" date. Then we had to order some meat from a pretty burly woman behind the counter. Terrifying experience. I'm just glad she didn't have a giant meat cleaver in hand when we pointed at our meat of choice and smiled. That smile is still the same in any language, right? But we even survived that. Hallellujah. Things got even better when we found the wine and discovered that box wine is universal and cheap in any country.

After a couple declined credit cards, we finally found one that works and snuck out with our four bags of groceries costing us a total of $83 or 2,715 rubles and headed home.

The meat pinwheel thing was delish! It was turkey with some green stuff inside. Maybe pesto. Maybe finely diced and gooey spinach. Hopefully not green beets because I liked it and I've sworn to everyone that I hate beets. Hummus? Yum! Felt like home. The cheese we picked out tasted kind of like provolone, but we're still not sure what kind it actually is. And the wine? A much deserved bottle of cabernet from the south of France. We were pretty proud of ourselves.

Then, we decided to try the milk. Hubs loves milk, and since this was a taste test, I even granted permission to drink straight out of the carton. So he takes a huge swig of the cold, milky goodness to wash down our delicious meal....

And immediatly he spits it out and drinks the tap water (yuck!) straight from the faucet. Must be bad. It is bad. Literally. Because we bought buttermilk. I bet our checkout lady felt much better about all the declined cards she had to deal with us knowing that those stupid Americans would be drinking buttermilk that night. I knew I saw a rare, faint smile as we were leaving.

Quite a day, indeed. Not sure what we're eating, pretty sure I tried conditioning my hair with body wash and the only television we have is "The Walking Dead", which I swore I would never watch, but it's really not that bad and I didnt even have any nightmares last night!

Cheers to the smiles we give, intentional or not.