Everything Old is New Again - for Me

I’m having a really good time in Russia. It’s still a sufficiently alien environment for me that places I’ve gone multiple times can come across as a completely new experience on a subsequent visit.

Last weekend, I went back out to Izmailovsky Market, the sprawling open-air bazaar. Jim (my fellow, well, fellow) and I were nominally charged with securing yams for thanksgiving dinner and we decided to make a day of it out there.

We started at the tourist entrance, the pristine area where foreigners flock for their souvenirs. Everything in this part of the market takes place in English. We weren’t distracted by the boring souvenirs, like refrigerator magnets, or even the cool ones, like central asian daggers. We made our way purposefully to a little corner where Alexei sells all your favorite CD’s and DVD’s. The movies are completely authentic – well, that is, fully featured. Each has the graphics and additional features one expects on a DVD release. They’re not the absolute newest movies (those come out at the same time as the theater release in the US and are for sale around the corner), but they’re the highest quality you can get on the market here.

Now, I’m not sure if they’re fully licensed and all that. Actually, I’m quite sure that they aren’t. Mainly because each CD or DVD is 100 rubles ($3.60). And Alexei throws in generous discounts for multiple purchases. Anyway, I screwed a few of my favorite artists and we were on our way.

We exited through the side of the tourist market and entered the general bazaar. The contrast couldn’t have been more stark – huge crowds were jamming roughly into narrow corridors, 2 security guards were violently ejecting a struggling woman, vendors with huge carts were shouting for people to make way, and suddenly, in the midst of it all, a black Mercedes appeared – patiently making its way through the throng.

We walked a short distance and turned a hard right. But we may as well have taken a long flight. Suddenly, all the trading rows were labeled in Asian languages, the colors changed, the people looked and sounded different, the goods for sale were practically unrecognizable. Butchers were using axes to chop huge pieces of meat on wooden stumps, then displaying the goods in their open-air stalls.

Jim led me to the second tier of stalls – up a rickety staircase and catwalk – to a Vietnamese restaurant. We walked in and were warmly greeted in, well, Vietnamese. No one spoke even halfway decent Russian – including us – so ordering was a little difficult. But Jim had one recommendation and we communicated it as best we could.

While our lunch was being prepared, I noticed the other patrons at the communal tables. Whole families crowded into some booths. In others, business was being conducted over huge stacks of rubles. The wall was lined with jars of pickled plants and snakes in exotic colors, all helpfully labeled (in Russian) “Display Only. Not for Sale.” Strange-looking Vietnamese farm implements were hung as decoration. On the whole, quite charming.

But not especially clean. Anyway, our lunch consisted of a big bowl of pho, a Vietnamese noodle soup. It was fantastic and ridiculously cheap – and fit our criterion that whatever we eat should be thoroughly boiled.

We went back downstairs into the market frenzy to find yams. Outside one of the shops we found a box labeled in Czech or something that looked like it might have said “sweet potatoes”. The shopkeeper wasn’t a lot of help, since we couldn’t really find a common language as he busily and messily bagged livers. No erring on the side of caution for us, we bought them all.

Regardless of what exactly we had purchased, we declared victory and decided to leave the field. The market was closing at that point. Open air markets tend to close as daylight wanes – and in Moscow right now that means about 3:30pm. Security guards began closing gates at points throughout the market, so it was difficult to find our way out. At one point, the path snaked through the first floor of what appeared to be an elementary school.

In all, it was yet another fascinating experience at Izmailovsky. The beauty of this trip is that the surprise may last right up until Thanksgiving dinner. After all, that’ll be the moment of truth for our Russian-English-Vietnamese shopping skills.