I woke to the smell of breakfast cooking. After dressing in blue jeans and a comfortable shirt, I sat down at the table in the kitchen. Since I make 4, they needed to pull the table away from the wall and find another chair. Soon, breakfast is placed in front of me. "Kasha", they tell me. It looks nothing like what I expected. I thought it would be like oatmeal, or maybe corn mush. Instead, it is a creamy white substance that looks very familiar, in fact, it looks like,. . .

. . .Cream of Wheat! For those non-Americans who have not had the joy of this amazing food, Cream of Wheat is a hot cereal your mother cooks on the days when you wear your long johns. It's white, pasty, and must be heavily sugared and drenched in milk to be eaten. The milk is essential, because after you pour the milk in, you can find all the lumps.

This kasha, on the other hand, is remarkably lump-free and has a naturally sweet taste. Elena plopped a big half of a canned pear in the center of my bowl, and I began to dig in. There are other foods available for breakfast, but the sensation of lump-free Cream of Wheat is so remarkable, I don't remember what else was served.

We were eating later than usual. Elena has been out trying to find the train schedule. A telegram had arrived yesterday from her mother, telling Elena she was coming from the Caucuses, but didn't give an arrival time. Elena had warned me her mother was a tsunami. As I finished licking my bowl, I said to Elena, "I hope you can find out what time your mother comes. I want to put on my best clothes for her."

Elena is still smiling at this, when the doorbell rang. The door was opened to reveal a smiling mountain of a woman, loaded down with bags of stuff. Babushka! Her name is Anna, and after her arms swallowed up her grandsons in hugs, she turned her attention on me. Her face is split in two by her smile, and it is impossible to look at her and not smile back. I must have passed muster, because I get the full hug treatment too.

We are soon in the kitchen, where the contents of the bags are revealed. Along with two huge slabs of meat, there are onions, cucumbers, tomatoes (both the regular round kind and the oval Italian kind that make great sauce), and other produce. All of it from Anna's garden, and all of it the most flavorful I have ever had.

Among the bags of produce is a bag of walnuts. Soon a nutcracker is produced and I am permitted to do my manly duty and crack the nuts. Even though the nuts will be used in cooking and looks don't count, it is a source of pride and vanity that I can crack the shells and extract an entire unbroken walnut half. All the while Elena and Anna are catching up on gossip and family news, all in Russian. Anna is an excellent mime, and it became very easy to know what she was saying and talking about. She let me know she likes me because I have a beard. Her husband has a mustache, so she considers facial hair a sign of quality.

The nuts were cracked, and next, Elena and I went to the market in Ivanteevka to buy additional food. The market is just a few blocks away, a set of kiosks in the town square, with one large "supermarket" and other smaller stores surrounding it. The sky is still overcast, giving everything a gray tint. It is also still very cold. Elena worried very much that I was going to be cold, and of course (since I suffer from testosterone poisoning) I denied it.

We bought drinks from a kiosk -- cola, mineral water, and canned gin and tonic. I had never seen such stuff in America. The stuff in the can is only a little stronger than beer. Elena loves it. We buy eggs from one stand -- brown eggs only, which I found odd. Maybe those stories I grew up with (brown eggs are a communist plot to weaken America) were true?

By the time we got back, Anna was busy cooking up a storm. I took this opportunity to give her the gifts I bought for her -- plastic wrap, aluminum foil, and plastic baggies. She was not quite certain what to do with them, and that took some explanation which I'm not certain got translated accurately. ("Do you really think my husband would like me wrapped in that?")

Soon, huge plates of fried chicken are produced, along with bowls of something like onion and vinegar. Even though I just finished breakfast an hour and a half before, I was expected to sit down and consume mass quantities of food. This will be the pattern for the rest of my visit. Anna grew up during the Thin Times, she was justifiably proud of her cooking, and she appeared to have made it her personal goal to have me gain at least 5 kilos by the end of my visit. (She almost succeeded, too.)

As a point of interest, Anna is not native Russian. Anna is Polish, she married a man of Cossack descent, her daughter married a man who was half Russian and half German. That makes Elena's kids Polish-Cossack-German-Russian. When I bring her and her kids over, they will be pre-hyphenated Americans.

Anna's arrival put an end to any plans we had about going to Moscow that day. We went for walks around the town and through the forests. The woods around Ivanteevka are still very thick. I got a feel, brief though it was, what it must have been like in medieval times. Elena told me they still had some problems with wolves, and many people there hunted deer.

That evening we had a very enjoyable time. Elena's youngest son Dima asked if I wanted to play some chess. He's about 9 years old, and very smart. It's been quite a while since I've played, so I decided we would probably be evenly matched. 15 minutes later, Dima captured my queen. 15 minutes after that, I set my king on his side. Dima said, "Spasebo," packed up the pieces, and wandered off for something a little more intellectually challenging.

The highlight of the evening was coming back from walking Donny to find "Terminator 2" on the tube. (Funny thing is, I've never seen the beginning of that film. I always come in at the same point. Kind of annoying, actually.) At least now they have a female voice reading the female lines. If I listen very carefully, I can still hear Arnold in the background over the Russian. The neat thing is, Elena is sitting next to me, watching the movie. It turns out she likes Arnold Schwartzenegger action films. Hey, this is one cool lady!

That night I woke up again promptly at 3:00AM, but with a difference. Now I've got Lenin's Revenge -- a sour stomach with lots of gas. I need to get this sleep thing fixed, or I'll have the second half of my airplane book read well before my return flight.

The next day, after sleeping late (again -- "Don't wake him up, kids, he needs his sleep"), I woke up to one of Anna's breakfasts. This morning we are going to Moscow to find a new place for me. For my bags, actually. Elena has made it clear she wants me to keep living at the apartment, but the apartment is so small, with 5 people in there, even stuffed into a corner they are posing a major hazard to navigation. The plan is to get a single room at the Traveler's Guest House and use that as a base of operations for exploring Moscow. Elena is dressed in a stunning outfit (as usual), but before we go, Anna fixed a small lunch to hold us. While we wait, Elena put a tape on and we began to dance. She is an excellent dancer, and I am having more fun than I've had in years.

The trip to the Guest House was uneventful. If you are planning on staying there, you need to read the building numbers carefully. When the Lonely Planet book says there is nothing to mark this building, they mean it. The room is small but clean, comfortable, and very inexpensive. What's more, for the first time since I came to Moscow, the sun broke through the clouds. The city sparkled!

Unfortunately, the cloud fairies worked fast, and by the time we got to the street again, they had fixed the hole in the clouds where the sun broke through. Sigh. The first place we visited was the best: Red Square! We came out of the metro next to the Kremlin. Some kind of party/concert had taken place here the night before, and crews were beginning to take apart the stands. I whipped out my camera and started snapping photos, when suddenly I heard my camera start whirring.

I had bought a new camera before going on my trip. I had decided to get one of those new APS cameras for the simple reason that the film loaded in a cartridge. Just before our first baby was born, my ex-wife and I had bought a new camera to record the events. My wife insisted on loading the camera, and a week after the birth, we learned that the film had not been loaded properly, the film had not been advancing, and all those photos didn't get taken. I did not want that to happen this time!

The only problem is, I had forgotten two things: 1) to look and see how many photos were left on the cartridge, and 2) to slip one of the 5 rolls of film I had brought with me into my pocket. When Elena found out what was wrong, she said, No problem, we'll go to GUM.

It was a strange feeling entering the Kremlin. We passed through an arch that framed St. Basil's Cathedral, and I began to get a feel for the size of this place. On our way there, we passed by a beautiful little church that was being refurbished. The atmosphere inside was dark and thick, with tiny beeswax candles providing small islands of illumination. The icons inside were beautiful. I began to get a feel for the very deep spirituality of the Orthodox communion. Then we went outside and made our way over to GUM.

I'm not sure what I expected -- something like an overgrown Macy’s department store, perhaps. Instead, GUM turned out to be a very nice and trendy mall, that would not have been out of place in Southern California. Elena took me down one corridor, turn left, down another corridor, turn right... This place is big! We haven't even looked at the second floor! We found a camera shop, and sure enough, they have APS film. Now that the camera is recharged, we burst forth into the cold Moscow air, and recommenced sightseeing.

For some reason or another, the museums in the Kremlin are closed that day, but we found a sightseeing tour bus that left in a few hours. To while away the time, we went to a Mexican restaurant just outside the Kremlin. The food there was so-so, the service even more so, and the meal cost $56 American. Unfortunately, they only take dollars with American Express cards, otherwise you need to pay in Rubles. Luckily, there was a money exchange in the lobby of the building, and I get some money. I had some problems paying the bill in Rubles, though. I kept putting Rubles into the waiter's hand, and he kept looking like he expected more. Maybe the problem is that I'm not used to dealing with currency that has so many zeros in the numbers. Finally, the manager came over, looked at the bill, gave me back two notes, and that was that. After I walked away I realized what the problem was: The waiter was expecting a much bigger tip. As it turned out, he didn't get any. I don't like doing that, but as I said, the service was only so-so.

We made our way back to Red Square and the tour bus. On the way, I am really glad I have the APS camera, simply because there is a setting on the camera that lets you take panoramic photos. When you are in Moscow, that is a requirement! We walked past Lenin's tomb, past St. Basil's, and down into a parking lot across from the Rossoya Hotel.

The tour bus was very nice. We stopped at a place across the street from Moscow University (Elena pointed out where she taught) and on a hill that gave a marvelous view of the city. Elena went to buy pop for us, while I wandered over to a trinket table. I wound up buying a matrushka doll for my oldest daughter and two beautiful lacquered boxes for my other two daughters. It took some negotiating, but I got all of that for $40 American and maybe another $10 in Rubles. Did it all cost too much? Not when I saw the looks on my daughters faces when I gave them their gifts.

The entire tour lasted about 3 hours, and it grew dark long before we returned to Red Square. I was having a difficult time staying awake in the bus, and when we got off the bus, we both agreed it was time to go home.

This time at the train station, instead of madmen rushing about, there was definitely a party atmosphere to the place. A radio was blaring somewhere, the kiosks were open and selling everything from food, to clothing, to flowers, to Barbie dolls, to videos. Some of the videos appeared to be of the "marital aid" variety, but I recognized some of the other titles, including "Twister" (which looks really strange written in Russian) and "Batman and Robin", which I don't think was available on video in America yet. I tried to buy some flowers for Elena, but even though it was late and other flower vendors were packing up, the vendor refused to budge on the cost of the flowers and Elena insisted they were too expensive, so I gave up.

When we got off the train, I remembered I had forgotten to get Elena one of those small mag-light flashlights. One would have come in handy right then. Luckily, Elena knew the way to go and we made it back safely. We entered the apartment to find Anna, Kostya, and Dima all watching "Return to the Planet of the Apes." All in all, a very satisfying day. Now, if only I could sleep the whole night through, and not deal with Lenin's Revenge...

To be continued...

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