MOCKOB, 30 August 2004

BREAKFAST

It was 5:14 PM and I had not yet had breakfast. Throughout my life, breakfast had always been my most important meal and if I missed it, I would have headaches on the job. Come to think of it, maybe it was the job that gave me a headache, because I don't recall having gotten a headache since in retired in February of 1996!

Today, I left the hotel and decided to walk in another direction on my exploratory mission of the city. I saw this incredible yellow Ferrari; which reminded me of this incredibly blue Ferrari that I saw in Berlin one evening, in a showroom. I took a picture today, as I did then. What a beauty!

I stopped in a book store and tried to find an inexpensive Russian book so I could learn some fundamentals. Imagine, my Russian book from the seventies is now sitting in my little room in Lima, on the second shelf of my bookcase, toward the left. What must have been going through my head not to have brought it, when I knew full well that I would be in Moscow! Even though two foreigners had been killed in Moscow by skinheads, I still figured it was worth the trip. Today, I'm seeing books and tapes that cost more than 600 rubles. I decided that since I had only about 10 days left in Russia, why should I buy anything.

At 1703 hours, I paid for a paperback called English Story with short stories by R. Kipling, A. Huxley, A. Christie, H.G.Wells, K. Mansfield, W.S.Maugham, J. Joyce, M. Spark, G.B.Shaw. It cost 48 rubles, less than $2.

I found a little Japanese restaurant and ordered sushi. They were huge but if I struggled to bite it in half, the other half would spill all over the place. So I put the whole thing in my mouth. After all, the only polite company with whom I was dining was myself.

I paid the bill, 480 rubles, at 1756 hours.

I resumed my walk along Mysanitskaya and made a left at the Turgenev metro station. He, along with Chekov and Pushkin, was one of my favorite Russian writers. I followed Sretensky for a few blocks and made a left on Rozhdestvenka for a couple blocks and a right on Kuznetsky. I entered by favorite block, on which reside NetCity and a bunch of open air PECTOBAHs, that's restaurants for us who speak Russian, and a series of benches. Since it was about 7, and the price at NetCity drops to 50 rubles an hour after 8 o'clock, I sat and read a bit more of Agatha Christie's Curtain. Poirot was now arthritic and one could tell it is going to be his last case.

It's now 9:31 and I have 54 minutes left to surf and catch up with what's up with the world!

Patrick Barry Barr