Shelley got the Boob Shirt for winking at an old man who sat at their table at the hotel bar last night. Cradle to the grave, our group respects no age limits.
I continued to find new mosquito bites on my person. They came from the pools of stagnant water outside the Novgorod hotel.
Galina took us on a tour of the Moscow Metro, known for its Communist artwork:
Komsomolskaya station.
Lenin bust at Komsomolskaya. Communist icons like this and the hammer and sickle are gradually being removed.
Mosaic at Novoslobodskaya station.
We came up for air to visit the Central Armed Forces Museum. On the way to the museum I enjoyed this ad:
Muscovites still think she's Cher-rific.
Kursk memorial outside the museum. The Kursk was that submarine that sank.
As usual, no photos were allowed in the museum, which sucked because one thing on display was the remains of the American U-2 shot down in 1960. I touched it. There was an outdoor area filled with tanks, missiles and helicopters.
Back in the sahb-vey:
Lenin mosaic at Kievskaya station.
Ploshchad Revolutsii station. Every archway is like this--the figures are supposed to represent Soviet citizens ready to fight the capitalist enemy, even underground.
After this we went to the Museum of Contemporary History of Russia, where people kept setting off alarms and we couldn't really figure out how to avoid it. Here Galina gave us a good idea of how her generation was indoctrinated and brainwashed by Communism. I suppose if you have ideas drilled into you enough and your mind isn't yet sharp enough to tear them apart, you'll believe in them. This is why religion and the Democratic Party still exist.
At night we went to the circus, which truly was awesome, unlike the ballet which I was just kidding about. The highlight was this little dude (the Man-Child) flipping off a seesaw and spinning into a chair, which was on top of a pole, which was held by a guy on stilts. There were dancing horses and acrobatic chimps, one of whom was seen beating beaten for his insolence.
Later at the hotel bar, I found out from the others that Ronald Reagan had died the day before. Thanks for the prompt notice! We also tentatively settled on Rob for the Boob Shirt because he took money from a beggar earlier in the day, but the next official presentation wouldn't be till our next ride on the coach.