Family, Love and Fidelity Day

It has been a quiet week in Lake Wobeggon as well as in Moscow. Midsummer is behind us, moving towards fall, and some of us long for the start of the "rakfisk" and "lutefisk" season. Some look forward to the hunting season to secure traditional meals based on patience and sweat. While we wait, we'll have to endure vacation and summer.

Summer can be hectic at a hotel like ours. It's not only this year's guests, contracts and preparations for next year need to be in place before we can be pining for the fiords.

Our Silly Walks Department, our Parking Department and the Division responsible for sending out insane messages are all closed for the summer. This is a problem for the blog editor since their work has been the basis for this blog. However, the blog must go on and fortunately there are substitutes.

Rumours say that the FSB (KGB) has increased their honey trap activities. Be warned! Recently a video with this unfortunate UK diplomat and two girls was posted on the internet under the title "The adventures of Mr. Hudson in Russia". The diplomat resigned and the FSB pretends to be upset by accusations that it's their footage. He's divorced and this story has no implications on his civil status.

The main event last week was the Obama visit and not the adventures of Mr. Hudson. On the other side of the river, the nabour had a party for the Obama's.



Last year the First Lady, Svetlana Medvedeva, snapped her be-ringed and manicured fingers and decided that July 8th should be celebrated as the "Day of Family, Love and Fidelity" symbolized by cheesy pop concerts and daisies. You should have taught that most people would have forgotten, but this week daisy banners was rigged up on Tverskaya and elsewhere.



They could have been for the Obama's visiting, but the Obama's left for Italy together with Dmitry. The daysies was to remind of the "Day of Family, Love and Fidelity". Was it irony when she spoke of family values? I've heard it before - have you? Isn't the family value thing © of rightwing Republicans and KrF. In Italy her hubby Dmitry was posing with his pal Silvio currently struggling hard to be a family man. The First Lady is indeed very modest with limited income and wearing expensive jewellery and the latest fashion as well as long nails with a pearly manicure and carefully done hair almost as she had been to a "Hair and Nails" shop in Houston or L.A.



Unfortunately her new day is not the kind of holiday qualifying for a day off from work.

This weekend the nabour on the other side of the river was not home.



This morning I woke up to the bells of my closest nabour, Tserkov Svyatovo Klimenta or Church of St Clement. St Clement is a splendid baroque church by the Italian architect Pietro Antonio Trezzini dating back to 1720 with a rectory and belfry from the 1750's. The red and white church has four blue domes with golden stars and a fifth golden cupola in the middle. Last October it was wrapped in and isolated. Work has continued through the winter and now it's being unwrapped.

My 2007 guidebook says; "Unfortunately, the church has been unsafe to enter for some years and it is unlikely that it will reopen in the near future". Now, it's open! The church has a small shop selling traditional decorated bread and honey.



A few hundred meters to the West I see Tserkov Bogomateri Vsekh Skorbyshchikh Radost or "Church of the Consolation of All Sorrows". This church was built after the great fire in 1812. Further to the West is Tserkov Voskreseniya v Kadashakh or "Church of the Resurrection in Kadashi" from 1687 with its golden cupolas.

I long for having and driving a car. It doesn't need to be a big car. Two seats will do for me. All kind of people drive cars, even those women whose husbands bought their driving licenses and cars as a birthday presents. A car with a driver is not a real option. This car issue is about risk and reward. As always in life there is a relation between the risk you take and the reward you get. If you stay away from risks your rewards will be minimal unless your name is Gladstone Gander.

If I had a car, and if I had a girlfriend, (and YES I have a very good one), I would ask her; "My girl, would you like to go to Yasnaya Polyana this weekend". She would say; "Yes, I will - haven't been there for years." Maybe Mr. Levin or Leo himself is home?

If it was a convertible, her hair was blowing in the wind as we were driving South towards Tula.

As we drive cornfields and herds of grassing cows fills us with joy. We are free - free to roam. Then I realize the hotel is waiting and it's up early tomorrow morning. The dream is over and fortunately the Metro will be running.