Close up of the Cathedral-


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Walking East on the island, looking across the lake you see this-


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That's a beer bottle (one of many) littered onto the sheet of ice that's covering the lake. Stay classy Moscow!

This made me giggle:







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Iran + Russia + U.S. = nukes in bad hands

Cutting it short..

Moving back to the U.S.

I moved to Moscow with the intention of living here for a couple of years. Learning the language, finding a decent job in Public Health and starting a life with V.
And I am not sorry at all that I am giving it up and moving back to the U.S. (although I still plan on doing listed things in the US....)

I bought my ticket last night! My last ticket (for a long while) between Moscow and the U.S.
It's bittersweet, but I feel relieved with the plans.

I'm not sure what to do with the blog. I'll probably do 2 or 3 more updates before I leave. And 1 after a week or so to recollect and sum up my thoughts. Maybe a few months after I will delete it.
I hope that people traveling to Moscow find this blog and get some use out of it, but I don't think many do. So once my friends/family have read it, I will toss it.

For now, I will share some random photos I have taken around Moscow.


Metro train turned art gallery:





Amateur football games in the sleeper cities:



Interesting stuff in the sleeper city:



Local outdoor market Autumn celebration concert:


^where I buy my produce every weekend

At our metro:


I love walking through the city and stumbling upon beautiful buildings:


French Embassy:

The U.S. Election and Russia

ТВ Центр.




The election results came in around 3 AM to 8 AM Moscow time. A bunch of Americans gathered at the various Starlite Diners(very American style diners) around Moscow. One of my friends invited me and a bunch of other friends to one of the diners where we sat for at least 5 hours, drinking coffee, tea, milkshakes, eating hashbrowns, eggs, and watching the results and cheering everytime the democrats had a success. I would not have been able to get up so early had I not been so excited- I could barely fall asleep the evening before.




I'm so glad I didn't just stay at home and hit the refresh button the CNN Election website all morning.
When Obama was announced as the next President of the United States, everyone in the room was silent, eyes glued to the television, listening attentively to his speech, and nobody could hold back the tears. It really was a beautiful moment.

Only a couple of hours later I had a Russian lesson so I left.
It was a surreal moment. Walking out of the diner that crisp morning, I felt like I was walking out into a different world than what I had last seen before those 5 hours in the diner. At 3 AM it was of course dark outside, which is when I arrived to the diner, and at 8 AM the sun was out, the streets were still quiet and the only person I saw was a street cleaner. The air was chill, the breeze refreshing, my mind a bit warped by the lack of sleep, and what I was feeling in my head and heart was indescribable. But the beautiful morning in Moscow was the perfect setting to walk through as I recalled what had just happened.

What I saw immediately after exiting the diner:


The diner:

Berlin, Germany

The Berlin Wall-


These are both at the East Side Gallery, the longest existing portion of the wall.



Checkpoint Charlie-



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HansWurst-









Fancy french shopping center across the street-




In the embassy-


Outside-




Reichstag, German Parliament-




New architecture around Parliament-

(check out those stairs!!!)


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The Berliner Dom (aka creepy huge building)-




Old + river-


Berlin mascot found all over the city-


Biggest cylindrical aquarium in the world, found in the Radisson downtown-


All vegan store at Gorlitzer-


The vegan store was in an interesting Turkish neighborhood. I found some "sidewalk" stores that I had to take pictures of-


We saw Wall-E one night (I'm sure being in a German city with a pregnant woman is quite a buzzkill) and the theatre was underground, underneath this scary UFO thing-


Alexanderplatz-



U-Bahn stop Spittelmarkt-


Downtown near Checkpoint Charlie (only a few blocks from where we stayed)-


Also in our neighborhood-


And my favorite part of German culture that I can enjoy as a pregnant woman-





"Berlin ist mehr ein Weltteil als eine Stadt" ("Berlin is rather a part of the world than a city")
(Jean Paul, writer, 1800)[2]