Moscow is a circus. As you walk down any street you can see stores that look like bizarre caricatures of real-life shops (I blame communism), with huge flashing lights, bright garish colors and ridiculous fonts. Even stranger is the music these stores emit. Half is various assortments of Russian pop and rock and the other half is either actual carnival music or outdated American songs (and by outdated, I mean 60s and earlier). Combine the music, signs, and street vendors, and you've got yourself a Big Top Spectacular. Now if only I can find the bears on unicycles.
My experience with Moscow nightlife only confirmed my circus-suspicions. So a few of us went out to a "discotheque" with one of our peer tutors and her friend. This discotheque turned out to be a strange dance/concert/variety show thingy in the auditorium of our university. Although it was with students from the university, it SCREAMED middle-school dance. It's first offense: it started at 6. They had to close the curtains to make sure daylight didn't stream onto the dance floor. As soon as we enter, we're greeted by the song from Rocky (wtf) and we go sit down in the audience with everyone else. After some strange, what I'm assuming was MC speech and raucous laughter from the audience (Our eyes were glazed over for most of the speaking part. Not only is young people russian harder to understand for us, but a microphone only muffles and blurs their speech into a fuzzy "blerrrrrrrrrrshmashmablrerefe"). Luckily that finally ended, and we joined in the universal language of "Gettin down and boogeying". The dance floor was hilarious. I'd like to commend Russian men for being confident enough to dance amazingly and hiptastic. The girls were okay. A little too Jersey Shore "I'm too cool to move" for me, but there were some wild cards. The best part was the little circles that everyone was dancing in. Soon the little ones were engulfed in one huge circle, which generally served as a stage for the men to put their hipcat moves on exhibition.
The Rocky music played once again, which was our signal to get the eff off the dance floor and to shuffle back to our seats. A few students (we think) sang and were divas and awesome. One did a great rendition of 'New York, New York', save her "start spreading zeeeee news" line. Shmilarious. Then the tightrope walking CLOWN came out. WHAT?! See! Moscow=circus. So the clown walks on stage to scary creepy clown music, and hoists himself up on a line, and shuffles around a bit. Then the music changes to Titanic-sinkingwe'reallgoingtodieandtherewillbealargeexplosionsoon epicness. Which is of course the appropriate background music to what he was doing: rolling out what looked like tinfoil-covered tires and juggling them. Audrey and I were terrorified/confused, and of course the russians who invited us had left to walk a friend home to the metro. When the clown exited after a roaring applause (is this normal at college dances?), a really awesome band came out and did an amazing set of Michael Jackson, Queen, Maroon 5, U2, and some russian songs. They were called the W (dowbul Yooo in Russian pronunciation) and the lead singer was smokin'. Though it was extremely ridiculous and odd, it was still pretty fun. Okay Russia, that's +1.
Then Matt, the other GW kid in Moscow, and I decided to go to a club with the tutors, which was all fine and dandy until they confusingly pushed us off the metro car and left. After being confusingly abandoned, we decided against the club; we really wanted to go with the russians and not be "those americans". Instead, we decided to explore the area that we had been thrown into, not unlike an unwanted puppy in a shoe box. We grabbed some food, drink, and hookah at this nice restaurant with an indecipherable name. Our inability to read the name had nothing to do with the actual russian, but with the stupid circus-ey font. CIRCUS. But it was a cool place.
Here comes the problem. The metro friggin closes at 1 on weekends. SERIOUSLY Moscow, what the heckamonga is wrong with you? Even DC, the snoreyest of all snorey big cities stays open till 3. When we checked the time at the restaurant it was 1:30. Okay, so we'll take a cab, nbd. Actually, we found out it is a big deal. Considering we didn't want to be buried alive in a ditch on the outskirts of town, or stabbed violently to death, we didn't hire the many gypsy cabs waiting outside the restaurant, but instead decided to call a cab; it's the legit way to not die in Moscow. Of course, being the ritards that we are, neither of us had decided to write down the number of any cab companies when Jon, our illustrious Resident Director, gave them to us. Luckily I used my "I'm a poor poor sad nice little girl. Please help me. I'm pathetic" face to get the number for a cab from some girls who were calling one for themselves. They set it all up and we began to wait. This was around 2ish. Of course, what should slowly walk up to us while we waited but a PONY being walked by some gypsy woman. This pony and its pissed off real-horse friends were being dragged around the streets while the women accosted drunk people for money to ride their probably satanic skull-crushing horses. CIRCUS! That being said, we were tempted to jump on the horses and gallop home on them, instead of waiting for the infernal cab company. After 3 am rolled around and no word from the cab, we were faced with a dilemma. Do we risk being somehow accosted, molested, kidnapped, shanked, shot, or robbed by the inevitable psychotic cab driver or do we wait 2.5 hours for the metro to reopen? We shuffled off to a (thank god it was there!) 24 hour Shokolodnitsa, which is basically the Moscow version of Starbucks/any coffee chain and food and alcohol to await our trip home. Finally, 5:30 rolled around and after paying a disgruntled and bleary-eyed waitress (love Moscow customer service) we jaunted over to the metro. The train didn't arrive until 6:10ish (RUDE), but by that time Matt and I were so tired, it didn't even register that the train was being RUDE. We finally crawled into our respective beds around 7, after surviving a 6pm-6am excursion through the city of Moscow. Ponies, clowns, and possible death. I rest my case.
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