CornFed Invades Moscow by CornFed (superbooks4u .TXT) 📕

Mama always told me that there are 3 places one should not visit.

“That sinful Amsterdam”

, she’d say, “because of the drugs and those women sitting in the windows looking like 5 out of the 7 deadly sins”.

Next on her list was Thailand. “My god the sexual atmosphere in Bangkok would make a hard man humble! They also have drugs there too, the kind of drugs only the jungles of Cambodia can produce!”

Lastly, she’d always roll her eyes a bit upward, looking at the heavens, as she would introduce her number one place her number one, and only son, should never visit. “Moscow. A den of iniquity I tell you! It’s got the kind of corruption Washington DC could only dream about. There have vats of heroin in the city square where everyone shoots up like it was an Easter Sunday chocolate fest. And don’t even get me started on those lustful women there. All they want is your money and your body. They don’t care about your soul at all. Plus, Moscow is as expensive as hell. Son, please stay away.”

I don’t know what quite triggered this diatribe from my very Southern Belle Mama, her cute little accent making words like “drugs” and “sin” sound almost comical. Perhaps it was her warm and caring demeanor and staunch Southern Baptist upbringing that wanted to warn me of the dangers of the life outside of the farm. Maybe, just maybe, she was given a warning by the Lord Himself to prevent her son from venturing out into lands far away.

Personally, I think she watches too much CNN but that’s just me.

And it was on this fateful day, in the year 1999, that I fired up the internet, did a search for all those dreadful destinations she mentioned to me, and realized that I had bookmarked all of them on a drunken “where can I live crazy for 10 days” internet binge of travel destinations. As I perused the travel stories of each location again, it seems mama had left out one tiny detail in her story. Moscow was no longer expensive. It seems the Ruble had fallen to some dastardly lows, the kind of lows that make cash laden Americans grin with the kind of pride you’d expect to find in a den of lions.

Corruption, the plight of the locals, and sinning never sounded so cheap.

There were no direct flights to Moscow from the cow-pasture airport a few miles from the farm. Not even Atlanta could convince their jets to fly directly into Moscow, apparently unaware that the Cold War had long since pasted. And we all know Soviet missles don’t really hit their target 90% of the time. But the British seemed to have not fear and I was well on my way to London Gatwick within a week, the only delay being the strange concept that Russia requires I be “invited” into the country by some entity in order to obtain the necessary Visa. I didn’t have any relatives there, unless mama had “more” stories hidden in her heart, but the hotel was kind enough to extend the invitiaton.

Getting to London was fairly uneventful. Well, honestly, even if it was eventful I wouldn’t have had the foggiest idea what had happened. There are mixtures that are very useful on 8-hour flights, particularly anything sleep aid related and alcohol. I called this particular cocktail the Midnight Assassin, a mixture of Jack Daniels and Tylenol PM. I woke up the next morning with my lower lip clued to my shirt. Apparently drool does form a sticky consistently at 35,000 feet.

One thing the British have not mastered is the art of moving from one plane to the next plane. They use these buses, the kind that look like the long and tall tourist buses you find in European based movies, to move passengers from the arrival terminal to another terminal. You would think, given all the transportation trains in this country, the airport would get a clue but it appears re-purposing long lost touring buses makes more economic sense. But I arrived at the British Airways terminal ready to board my trip to Moscow, the land of sin and degradation.

Making my way through the Moscow International You-Can-Smoke-And-Drink-All-You-Want Airport, felt more like a pool-hall for the blind than an airport. I had no idea what the signs said, all these characters kept trying to hustle me for cash to “speed up the customs process”, and I could see the 9-ball of cars at the exit sign but no friggin’ idea how to get there. Then I remembered..

“I am a cash laden member of the favorable exchange rate country of America.”

The dollars, not the ruble, talk in Moscow. I never exchanged the first dollar. I just “flashed the cash” and had myself a man zipping me out of customs, another man toting my luggage, and a Mercedez sitting there waiting for my every command. He spoke the kind of English that took me way way back to a Rocky movie where he fought the Russian and all his trainers would talk to each other about the upcoming fight.

“Wherreea wood ze likez to go?”

asked the cab driver.

“Hotel National.”

said the visiting redneck.

“Wood ze likez a giirl?”

asked the sinful cab driver.

“No, I’m hungry for catfish. Do you have any fish places around here?”

replied the visiting redneck.

Chirp.
Chirp.
Chirp.

Crickets were a common sound heard in Moscow during intense dialog.

The ride to the hotel took me straight through the main thorough-fare in Moscow, the kind of street that had a name so long, you couldn’t even put it on a road sign unless you invented a language that was full of symbols. Hence how they likely came up with Cryllic, the Russian alphabet. What would take me 21 characters, the Russians can accomplish in 4.

Moscow had a very 1980’s feel to it. Everything you saw in the movies about Russia seemed to be playing itself out right before my eyes, sans the snow. Tall, dilapidated apartment buildings with large green army vans cruising the road, potentially full of soldiers with those wonderful AK 47’s. The locals seemed to be a mix of 75% pedestrian/train and 25% “holy crap, I own a car in this economy!” travellers. The cars looked like, well, how can I put this….they looked like someone took a cat-terd, tried to clean it off, put wheels on it, a lawnmower engine on the front, strapped in some seats and put a cover on top.

The hotel National was quite the amazing looking hotel. Situated across the street, the likes of which you can only cross underground since cat-terd cars don’t have brakes, was the Red Square. There was nothing really red about it though. Hell, it didn’t even look square. It sort of looked like someone had built a small mall in the middle of a city and then ripped out the stores and the ceiling, leaving only the flooring and the people wandering aimlessly, looking around, oblivious that the shops are now gone.

Inside the National, once you get past the doorman who doesn’t wear deodorant and looks like someone ripped him out of the Royal Palace before he put on his tall hat, the décor was what we country boys would call “What the hell?” Every colonial gene in me revolted at the mere site of the wonderful paintings, the delicate music softly caressing my guitar-stained ears, and the immaculate furnishings. The only part of the hotel that looked familiar to anything I had seen was the bar. Universal is the purpose of a bar, more so than the faith the different religions bring.

The room was the only part of my stay that I knew was going to be expensive. Anything that relies on outside currency to exist has that wonderful stigma of “All of our relatives are homeless. But dammit you shall still pay full price or not stay at all.” For the equivalent of 250 bucks a night, I had myself one of their standard rooms. Another 1,500 dollars and I could have stayed in the Stalin Room, a room that Monsieur Stalin himself stayed in while he plotted whatever destruction or dismay he was destined to intrude onto the world around him. As the luggage boy opened the door, my room reminded me more of the Don’t-Fall-Off-The-Bed-Or-You-Will-Hit-Your-Head-On-The-Toilet room.

Where in the hell was I going to put my cooler full of beer?

The first night in Moscow was one of linguistic adventure. I had purchased a book that was supposed to teach me how to speak the native tongue for simple things like locating beer, locating beef, and locating bathroom…the essential B’s for any country boy visiting a foreign country. What it didn’t tell me was how to form complete sentences. I may be able to say “Beer, Beef” but a taxi cab driver can read all sorts of things into that sort of conversation.

But, on the whole, the cab drivers speak enough English to keep one from ending up in the Siberian mountains. I managed to make it a restaurant that served some pretty good salmon but that was only I ended up at McDonalds and happened to meet someone who could speak some English. Of course, every single one of them offers up “Girlz?” as their first warm-up conversation piece. Weeding through that is usually followed with “Guyz?” I usually lost them at the world “catfish”.

Eventually, I figured it was time to hire myself a real guide to help me maneuver this landscape. One of the guys who posted reviews of Moscow was from Chicago and had spent 6 months living here. He responded to my request for help and before I knew it, for 50 bucks a day, I had myself a real live former Soviet fighter pilot who doubles as a taxi-beer-food-whatever-you-want service for foreigners. I could never say his name so I just referred to him as Masked Wrestler Number 2. Apparently he was familiar with wrestling and loved his new found fame.

The only way to really learn about Moscow is to hear it from someone who lives there. While his English was iffy at best, on par with my own families for that matter, he explained to me the current living mindset for Mother Russia’s own Moscow. To paraphrase a very long conversation, it sound something like this, with a Russian accent:

“Ze people are Ze poor. But Ze people do love Ze life!”

And so, after we finished dinner at a foreigner friendly restaurant, Masked Wrestler Number 2 took me to a nightclub to experience “Ze life!”.

“What is the place called?”

“Ze Hungry Duck!”

I admit my first inclination was to wonder why we didn’t go there sooner and eat some good ole duck and then enjoy the nightlife. I soon found out that the Hungry Duck isn’t exactly the kind of place you eat at. If anything, vomitting your previous meal seems to be mandatory. And so it was, Cornfed and Masked Wrestler Number 2, made our way down an alleyway to the entrance of the Hungry Duck.

I don’t know how to best describe this place to you, only to say that it reminded me of a honkey tonk saloon with sawdust floors and a hundred drunk patrons while a women danced half naked on the bar with the cowboys holllering