Old Post

(This post was secretly written last week. Another post about Moscow and the rest of the trip's denouement will be forthcoming.)

My time here is coming to an end; I'm leaving in two weeks and it's way too soon. So the past few weeks have been tinted with that sadness, but other than that they've been good. Highlights include

Two fabulous concerts at the Kazan State Conservatory. The first was Sergei Stadler, a Russian violinist, playing several concertos with the Kazan State Conservatory Symphony, including the Mendelssohn concerto I'm working on now. The second concert was a German organist playing a two-hour solo program on the biggest organ I've ever seen. One of our teachers, Galina, also loves classical music and has been inviting me to these things. It's great having someone to talk to about composers and acoustics and all that nerdy stuff.

Reading "The Master and Margarita" by Mikhail Bulgakov. The "most mysterious of novels in the whole history of 20th century Russian literature" (says the blurb on the back), The Master and Margarita is a sort of retelling of the Faust myth in early Soviet Russia. I'm reading it in Russian, so it's pretty slow going even with my dictionary and participle chart. I highly recommend it in Russian or in translation.

Discovering a sheet music store, where I bought the Debussy violin sonata.

Playing music with my friends Tamara and Nayil. Tamara sings and Nayil plays piano; today we played the jazz standard "Summertime" for another one of the epic concert/contests of which Russia is so fond. It was like "Day of the First Years" - reloaded. Enough karaoke to make your ears bleed. I like playing with them, though; we have some good jam sessions. Almost buying Sam a rocking giraffe for his birthday. We got him gloves instead.

Working on a techno remix of our friend Ilsur saying "Moi dorogiye druzya!" ("My dear friends!") This remix has all the salient aspects of Russian techno: random baroque music, repetition, and applause.

Thanksgiving: Forrest and I decided on a whim to make banana bread. What followed was a culinary undertaking of epic proportions - the brown sugar was really rock candy, the eggs were scrambling, we found the baking powder just in time. Then we went to Will's apartment, where half the city of Kazan was gathered. Forrest brought in a stray cat named Ishbishmak Chakchakovich. Ben and I played some Irish music. We had a Battle of the National Anthems that the Russians won, and I destroyed everyone at a Russian game of Mafia.

The day after, Friday, was Kurban Bairan, a Muslim holiday. So there was no school, and I went to my host grandparents' house for a holiday lunch, immediately after a feast of bliniy. Sometimes I feel like this whole country is conspiring to feed me. Saturday was warm and sunny and we went to the park and played frisbee and watched the sun set, enjoying the weird looks from passerby as we frolicked in the wet grass.

Sunday we visited Sviarsk, a once-island now-penninsula with a lot of old monasteries and churches, some of them from Ivan the Terrible's time. It was cold, but a good excursion. After that we went to an American-owned cafe and met the people there. It really felt somehow more American than being around my fellow American students. The conversation there felt louder, stranger, anachronistic somehow, in ways I can't really articulate.

On Friday we're going to Moscow to see the sights and stay in a hostel. Everywhere I go I hear songs about Moscow: "Moskau" by Geghkis Khan, "Moscow Never Sleeps," etc. Then we're coming back to Kazan for another eight days. Then back to America, my home sweet home. How the hell did that happen? This whole carpe diem thing is starting to rear its ugly head.

What will I do in America, in a world without 40-ruble tvorog bliniy, public transportation, Comedy Club, the scowling oxraniks and friendly coat-checkers, and most of all without the Russian people? I've met too many amazing people here to count, and I've come to love this city where nothing is certain and everything is more interesting.

What will I do in a world more reasonable and yet more shallow? I'll get home and be reunited with the people I've missed and sit on the couch with my gecko and the Sunday Times. I'll be just in time for the holiday season, America at its finest. I'll see so many relatives and show them so many photos. I'll have six million medical appointments and go back to planning and dealing with the minutae of life. I'll play my new viola and visit all my old haunts and finish my old projects and plan my next adventures. Go West, young man. All this will be wonderful, but I know I'll spend plenty of time looking out my window at the empty street and imagining trams lurching through the mud, the clack of high heels on the avtobus, junk sales and buses on the sidewalk, ice fishers on the Kazanka, ravens flying over the ruins, two guys leading a live sheep through the bazaar. God I'm going to miss this place.

Here are some photos for you:

Our new mascot, Chebby, at the Kul Sharif