Moscow, Friday night, 10 F going to -4.  Ouch.

Winter has come with a vengeance and is here to stay.  Oh, well, just one more.

We are well.  It is the Christmas season, of course.  Things are a little odd here.  The Orthodox Church likes to old ways so they have stuck with the Gregorian (?) calendar which runs about 12 days behind the current, regular, calendar.  A consequence is that Christmas in Russia is celebrated on January 7th instead of December 25th.  So, 12/25 will come and go for us w/o much of  a blip in activities.  We might take the day off work if we can get the slave-drivers to agree.  They have not heard that the serf system was abolished in Russia in 1865.

I moan but everyday goes by like a blur.  Looking forward it seems like we have a long way to go.  Looking backward it looks like it has gone fairly quickly.

I believe that I have mentioned that we have a 'devotional' in the office each morning.  Yesterday was my turn.  I told the assembled throngs a little about some of our family Christmas traditions and how much the children and grandchildren have come to expect them and how unsettled they are if we vary from the norm.  However, we have heard no complaints about our absence from home this year except for one issue.  The grandchildren wonder how they are going to get their yearly allotment of pajamas without geezpa and geezma being in Utah.  Great minds (Becky) are working on a solution.

We had our last Visa Trip yesterday.  This is the drill the Russian government requires of us (at least Americans) which is that we fly out of the country and come back in so that they can keep track of us and give Aeroflot some additional revenue.

We had the worst day of our sorry Russian lives.  Everything that could go wrong did go wrong.

The plot was to fly from Moscow to Riga, Latvia (that's one of the Baltic states, Dave Paull), stay a couple of hours and fly back to Moscow in the evening.

We were just a little late leaving the flat to get to the Metro to connect with the express train to ride to the airport.  I (Mr. Metro-Expert) forgot which Metro stop had the train station.  By the time I realized my mistake we had lost about 30 minutes.  We got to the right station, got on the next available train and got to the airport with about 45 minutes to flight time.  The lines were long and it took approximately forever to get to the check in desk in order to get a boarding pass.  A young man was helping us, but it was clear that something was wrong, but of course Russians know nothing about customer service so he told us nothing.  He left his station to find a supervisor to ask about whatever the problem was.  She wandered over to the counter and we asked if something was wrong with our passports.  She said, 'no', but offered no further information.

By now, of course, our time was drifting away.  The kid kept looking at his screen, pretending to be studying something (sort of like Dave Paull when he is using his computer) but saying nothing to us.  Finally another supervisor lady came over and told him to give up on whatever he was doing.  So he gave us three boarding passes.  One for me to get from Moscow to Riga and one to get back, and one for Marlene to get from Moscow to Riga, but not one coming back.  Apparently the system would not spit out four boarding passes.

Well, enough of that story.  After a half dozen more glitches we finally made it back to Moscow at about 10:00 p.m.  There was some wind blowing last night so on the walk from the Metro to the dump I about froze my (beautiful) face off.  Ooo. It was cold--sort of like Craig Thomsen's heart.

Here is a sampling of the 400 pictures we have taken since the last blog.

The senior missionaries had a conference Wed. and Thursday.  Marlene wanted to preserve this picture.  We are not in it.  We were on our way to Riga.

I wonder how many of those ladies got up off their knees by themselves?

The view out our window.  The lakes are now ice.

This is the youngest Johnson grandchild, digging for gold apparently.

And Emily says she won't eat anything!

Christmas decorations in the flat.  Pretty nice, eh?

Riga yesterday.  The Millett's on the left and Sister Adams kindly picked us up at the airport and drove us part way to town so we could have lunch together.  

Thanksgiving dinner at the Walker's home with some of the missionaries.  It was all very nice.

Oleg Rumyantsuv, the man on the right is our wonderful Area travel manager.  He and three of his staff took us and the Walker's to lunch for being visa couriers.  They are Irina, Zhenya, and Natasha.

We are at our second Mexican restaurant since coming to town.  Cafe' Rio has got nothing to worry about.

We got an exclusive invitation to a multi-embassy fund raising event, along with about 5,000 other people, at a fancy hotel.  On the way to the exhibit rooms we stumbled across this St. George meeting room--for Rusty and Tammy.

We thought these were the cleaning ladies, but it turned out they were part of the entertainment.

They are Ukrainian songstresses.  One of their numbers was, "Mowing the Grass with My Grandma."  I thought it was pretty catchy.

Seeing these babes we were sure we had found the cleaning staff, but no ...

They were dancers.  They did some super dooper Korean thingee designed to impress the emperor into  letting them clean the palace.

As we left the fund-raiser we found these boots that Rachael had left behind.

Outside the hotel, proving that Russians love Christmas just as much as any other retailer.

Some interesting buildings and a tourista with toasty ears.

This is a multi-venue performance center.  We will watch The Messiah here on the 28th.  We have come to pick up our tickets ahead of the event.

Elder Jones had a birthday the other day and they kindly invited us to come and share their chili dinner with them.
I asked them to provide gas masks and this was the solution.

This is before any chemical reactions have taken place.  It was all very nice--in the short run.

We don't see this much anymore and so we take a picture whenever it appears, in case our memories fail us.

The Area employees were kind enough to invite some of the missionaries to their Christmas devotional program and lunch.
This is our secretary, Oksana reading a nice (I presume) Russian poem. 

Stake conference was this past weekend.  This is before it got really cold, but you know these folks know how to dress for the weather.  Every child draws Marlene's attention.

Inside the same building where conference was held (a live theatre facility) was this lovely restaurant with this impressive display.

As part of the senior conference we went to a dance performance on Wednesday evening.  This is the theatre (Tchaikovsky) where we went with the children when they were here.  I could find the place blindfolded.

Pre-dance frivolity by Elder Storm and a sister I did not meet.  The young man just behind Marlene is spending his last night in Russia with his mission president and wife prior to going home to Georgia.

Some of the early dances required that Sister Sorenson hold her hands over his eyes.  The dances were no problem for us, of course, because we are so sophisticated that we can appreciate the art w/o noticing the bumping and grinding.

Riga last night.

(Dave, Notice that 'air Baltic' on the airplane?  Riga is in one of the Baltic states.)

Sister J. near the end of a long day.  We started at 0530 and got to bed at 2300.  (11:00 p.m., Dave.)

I am really starting to get worried now.

Marlene has gone native.  She is starting to pose for pictures!

Good grief.  How am I going to be able to keep her down on the farm?

21 Nov 2012

Finally, some excitement in our lives!  We went to a professional soccer game last night.  It was a very unique experience.

Nathanael put us onto the fact that Barcelona was coming to Moscow to play a Champion's League game.  Barcelona is a great team and has one of the two best players in the world, Lionel Messi.

So we got some help from one of the young men in the office and bought some tickets fro $75 apiece and got ready for the game.  I had Goggled the location, time, something about the opponent (Spartac Moscow), the right Metro stop, etc.

We have seen the stadium several times from the hill south, and above it.  The hill is where Napoleon overlooked Moscow in 1812 and where the huge Stalin-era building sits on the Moscow State University campus.

My internet research had taught me that the game was to start at 1800 (6:00 p.m. for us Americans.)  We needed to eat before the game so that gave me an excuse to head for a McDonald's on the way to the stadium, so I located the nearest Metro stop with one close to the stadium.  I wanted to be plenty early at the stadium because I wanted to soak in the experience.  It will almost certainly never happen again in this lifetime.

So we left work at 3:00 thinking that we would go to the flat, change into some warm cloths, hit the Metro, get to McDonald's about 4:00, eat and finish the ride to the stadium at about 5:00--giving us an hour to spare.  Everything went swimmingly until we got off the Metro stop and started walking the half mile, or so, to the stadium.  There was hardly anyone around except police and soldiers.  This is strange, I thought.  Even in Moscow soccer fans would know about Barcelona and want to come and see Messi play.

So I checked the tickets and sure enough the date was right, November 20.  We went up to the stadium and walked right in, past the turnstiles, etc.  I thought, again, this just can't be right.  They can't have all of these soldiers around and just let any doofus walk into the stadium.  So I got the tickets out again and noticed, for the first time, that the start was set for 2100, not 1800, as my 'research' had discovered.  (Maybe start time was 1800 in Barcelona?)

Anyway, we had four hours to kill, and it was colder than a well-digger's behind!  Duh!  I felt about as stupid as a liberal must feel every day.  Ridiculous!  I am going to have to retire I guess.

Well, we killed 2.5 hours and then went looking for our seats.  Here are some pics and some commentary.

The is inside the Metro stop.  For you who visited, this is the one that sits above the Moscow River.  It is quite a lovely station and has some striking sports memorabilia throughout.

Here is some hockey stuff.

You can see the Metro stop behind Marlene.  Doesn't she smile nicely?

We are walking beside the 1980 Olympic swimming pool on our way to the stadium.

It holds about 90 or 100 thousand folks.  Pretty impressive except for the open roof.

That hill and building in the background are those things I mentioned earlier. Our Utah visitors have seen booth sights and looked down on the stadium from Sparrow Hill.

This is what you get when you are four hours early--the place to yourself.

This is the east end of the stadium and pretty close to where our (useless) seats were located.
We, and everyone else stood for the whole game.

Right side.

Left side.  We had soldiers about every five feet.  That helped Marlene's confidence--not.

The little yellow canvas thing in the center of the picture is where the players came on and off the field.

The hole in the roof.

Troops marching for the heck of it.

Mr. Lenin.  I guess he is not in that mausoleum on Red Square after all.

Another example of the 'midget-scale."

Whew!  We were able to find our seats and lucky us, we only have another hour and a half to wait.

See the soldiers standing among the seats  to Marlene's left?  They are just kids, of course, but they were everywhere.

The jumbo screen on our end of the field.

You can't tell it, but those are the team logos:  Spartac (Spartacus) on the left and Barcelona on the right.

I am wearing my newly purchased Spartac scarf just to make sure the locals know I am a loyal fan.

We had a funny thing happen to us as we approached the (now-manned) turn styles.  We got near the front of the line and a nice looking couple off to the side and out of the entry line was calling to us. The ticket taker somehow communicated to us that this couple wanted to talk to us.  Since there was no press of people to get into the stadium we got out of line and went over to see what they wanted.  They started jabbering to us in Spanish, asking if we were Barcelona fans.  I know a little Spanish of course, so I was able to tell them Nyet.

We puzzled over why they would think we were Spanish and I think tonight Marlene has just hit on the answer.  We saw not one other babushka in the stadium.  The people who wanted to talk to us must have thought, "No sane Russian babushka would come to a soccer game.  That lady, therefore, must be a Barcelona fan, and therefore Spanish."

That was funny.

Here are some Spartac players warming up.  We were on their end of the pitch for the first half and about 50 meters from the field.

They watered the whole field prior to the came.

We wondered, when it was 90 minutes before the game and no one but us was in the stadium, if we would have any company.  They filled the joint.

The UEFA emblem has been brought to the center of the field.

The Spartac mascot.

Everyone's seat had a piece of plastic wrap on it.  The colors were different depending on the seat.

The full crowd on the other end of the field is holding their plastic sheets up, spelling Spartac Moskva.  Pretty cool, eh?

The teams are walking onto the pitch, with the children along side, as they always are.

The camera is panning down the line of players.

You can see the plastic thingees being held up by the fans on our end.

Getting warmed up and ready to start.

Messi is number 10.

Some of the Spanish players are quite small. 

Much of the first half of the game was played in our end.  Barcelona dominated in ball possession, which is almost always how they play.

They just press forward slowly, slowly, until they get an opening and then they pounce.

Messi just hangs around in the center of the field waiting to take charge.  On the other hand the Spanish can hurt you with any of their players.

Getting ready for a corner kick.

Spartac played okay.  They have some skilled players, but not as skilled as the Spanish.  Barcelona pressed them constantly and they could not hold the ball.

Spartac would occasionally get a break toward the Barcelona en but the Spanish were more than equal to defending their goal.

Here is the half time score, and the final score.

Messi's goals were not works of art, but they did not have to be.  I got the impression that he is an assassin.  He just waits for his chances and then he kills you.  And he has got so much help that the opposition cannot focus on him.

I'm sure he can dribble in a phone booth and is as quick as a cat.

The half time show.  I think they are either the Courgettes, or more likely, the U. of U. ettes.

It got really crowded once the game started.  The aisles were full of fans, everyone was standing.  Half of the people were smoking.  It got pretty uncomfortable for us--cold and lots of smoke.  We left with about 15 minutes left in the game and with the Spanish just holding the ball, running out the clock.

It was a great experience.  Thank you, Nathanael.

We hope you all have a wonderful Thanksgiving.  Love America and love your families.