moscow

i wish all libraries were as user friendly as the good old lenin library. i walk in with a list of things i want copied, give them to a babushka, along with some money, and one hour later i pick up all the materials freshly copied and organised for me. then i pay someone else to have them all neatly bound so they can be easily transported. no one lectures me about copyright laws or copyright infringement, and i get what i want. (not that i plan to circulate the copies, they are for strictly personal use, and no doubt of interest only to me.....i just dont have time to sit and read them all on the spot, and therefore find it easier to get them copied so i can read them elsewhere)
when i am not in the library, i get taken shopping to see all the places that have opened up in the 8 months since i was last here. russians have a talent for spending money. at least some do. and the fact that there is now plenty of money in the city, and plenty of places to spend it, adds to this tendancy. some of my friends find it normal to spend 100 pounds on lunch. every day. and even more on dinner. these same people find it normal that reserving a table for a birthday part at a cool nightclub can cost 30,000 euros or more, not includding the food. overnight, everyone i know has acquired a blackberry and a personal driver who appears at all hours, even in the middle of the night. and some of these people have relatives working in other parts of the country with no hot water, hospitals, or normal roads.