Here we are at the end of a long weekend. Long in a good sense, of course. It started on Thursday, as weekends are wont to in Moscow. The Gang, as Faizal likes calling it, had dinner at Simple Pleasures for Pang. It was the usual mix of highjinks in Russian and English, with Vika and now Marina serving as cross-cultural conduits. My Inessa took a couple of nice photos of the event, which I feature here.
The real weekend, though, started rather inauspiciously when work forced me to keep my muirnín waiting on Friday evening. It had been five days since her birthday on 7 August, and I promised to take her to dinner at the summer patio at the French restaurant Paname. At 9 pm, I was already starting to get antsy at the departure area of Sheremetyevo airport. While it was a relief that the flight out to Bishkek did not seem delayed, our guests seemed to be in no hurry to go through the final check before boarding.
9:15. They were still distractedly chatting away while other passengers on the same flight were already on queue at Gate 20. I tried not to appear in the least bit concerned while at the same time making an attempt to start them on their way. In the end we were only able to see them off at half past the hour. Even though the road was unbelievably clear - the traffic lights were green all the way from Leningradskoe Shosse down to Smolenskaya Ploshchad - I was only able to show up at the corner of Stoleshnikov and Petrovka at quarter past 10. My Inessa didn't see me nor the car at first but when she did, she was genial as usual.
Dinner at Paname, after what Parisians call their city, was memorable, if not for the pâté de fois gras or the aromatic Fitou wine from the Languedoc-Roussillon region, but more for the way the waiter had this habit of purring his reassurances in a gently drawn-out and mildly rising "Uh-huh". Dearie and I couldn't stop laughing later with the recollection. Bad service is a cliché in Russia, and it's so easy to complain as a means of self-affirmation. But it's more fun to appreciate and remember excellent and thoughtful service, which is less and less rare nowadays.
On Saturday, I stayed puttering about at home almost the whole day after a technician fixed my broadband connexion. In fact I was a bit slow on the uptake to get what Vika meant about going to see the Dances International Music Festival at Hermitage Garden at 4 pm. If not for my Inessa, who was hurrying to join Lyosha and Natasha there after meeting up with Seryosha, an old friend from Cherepovets now studying in Germany, I probably wouldn't have hurried to leave the flat. Stepping deep into a cavorting mass fully in party mode, I felt like a traumatized warrior returning in the middle of the annual village carnival. Maybe I'm just a grouch but thoughts of that annoying evening at Café Margarita after my trip to Ukraine in June came back to me.
Fortunately things got better when Neck, a six-piece London-based Irish folk-punk group that specializes in the unique psycho-ceilidh sound, stepped up the main stage and played some electric-punk rock-powered jigs. Leeson O'Keefe and his whistle, fiddle, banjo, guitar, bass and drum crew were such good craic I'd have to be a real ogre not to have cheered up. So much so that not even a downpour dampened our spirits. Still we had to take cover at Sobraniye, where Vika, Pasha and a couple of friends managed to get a table at the veranda for a smile and 2,000 rubles upfront. After that rainy intermission we were treated to one of the oldest groups in World Music, the legendary West African Latin-tinged band, Orchestra Baobab. 'Twas really good stuff: a bit like Buena Vista Social Club, Bob Marley and Youssou N'Dour put in a blender and served with whipped cream and cherry. Except that the Dakar-born band predated them all, 1973 - as old as my youngest sibling. We would've seen them end the festival until 10 and the obligatory fireworks, doing the merengue and the salsa. It's just that we were famished and preferred instead salsa and meringue - the edible sort. And so it was that hunger drove us from Karetny Ryad to Bolshaya Yakimanka, specifically to Pancho Villa, where we had dinner at close to 11 pm.
And then there was today (to use Marina's idea that tomorrow doesn't become today until you've gone off to sleep), the penultimate goodbye gathering for Pang. True to her hospitable self Pang hosted the last party we would have at her Sukharevskaya flat, gathering The Gang again this time with the young officers of the Thai Embassy. If Inessa and I thought we came to party late (had to go to Kievsky rynok for a send-away bouquet then to a produkty for kury gril' or grilled chicken and beer) the Thais - Go, Kate, Art and Ben - came past 9 pm. The photos should speak for themselves.
The real weekend, though, started rather inauspiciously when work forced me to keep my muirnín waiting on Friday evening. It had been five days since her birthday on 7 August, and I promised to take her to dinner at the summer patio at the French restaurant Paname. At 9 pm, I was already starting to get antsy at the departure area of Sheremetyevo airport. While it was a relief that the flight out to Bishkek did not seem delayed, our guests seemed to be in no hurry to go through the final check before boarding.
9:15. They were still distractedly chatting away while other passengers on the same flight were already on queue at Gate 20. I tried not to appear in the least bit concerned while at the same time making an attempt to start them on their way. In the end we were only able to see them off at half past the hour. Even though the road was unbelievably clear - the traffic lights were green all the way from Leningradskoe Shosse down to Smolenskaya Ploshchad - I was only able to show up at the corner of Stoleshnikov and Petrovka at quarter past 10. My Inessa didn't see me nor the car at first but when she did, she was genial as usual.
Dinner at Paname, after what Parisians call their city, was memorable, if not for the pâté de fois gras or the aromatic Fitou wine from the Languedoc-Roussillon region, but more for the way the waiter had this habit of purring his reassurances in a gently drawn-out and mildly rising "Uh-huh". Dearie and I couldn't stop laughing later with the recollection. Bad service is a cliché in Russia, and it's so easy to complain as a means of self-affirmation. But it's more fun to appreciate and remember excellent and thoughtful service, which is less and less rare nowadays.
On Saturday, I stayed puttering about at home almost the whole day after a technician fixed my broadband connexion. In fact I was a bit slow on the uptake to get what Vika meant about going to see the Dances International Music Festival at Hermitage Garden at 4 pm. If not for my Inessa, who was hurrying to join Lyosha and Natasha there after meeting up with Seryosha, an old friend from Cherepovets now studying in Germany, I probably wouldn't have hurried to leave the flat. Stepping deep into a cavorting mass fully in party mode, I felt like a traumatized warrior returning in the middle of the annual village carnival. Maybe I'm just a grouch but thoughts of that annoying evening at Café Margarita after my trip to Ukraine in June came back to me.
Fortunately things got better when Neck, a six-piece London-based Irish folk-punk group that specializes in the unique psycho-ceilidh sound, stepped up the main stage and played some electric-punk rock-powered jigs. Leeson O'Keefe and his whistle, fiddle, banjo, guitar, bass and drum crew were such good craic I'd have to be a real ogre not to have cheered up. So much so that not even a downpour dampened our spirits. Still we had to take cover at Sobraniye, where Vika, Pasha and a couple of friends managed to get a table at the veranda for a smile and 2,000 rubles upfront. After that rainy intermission we were treated to one of the oldest groups in World Music, the legendary West African Latin-tinged band, Orchestra Baobab. 'Twas really good stuff: a bit like Buena Vista Social Club, Bob Marley and Youssou N'Dour put in a blender and served with whipped cream and cherry. Except that the Dakar-born band predated them all, 1973 - as old as my youngest sibling. We would've seen them end the festival until 10 and the obligatory fireworks, doing the merengue and the salsa. It's just that we were famished and preferred instead salsa and meringue - the edible sort. And so it was that hunger drove us from Karetny Ryad to Bolshaya Yakimanka, specifically to Pancho Villa, where we had dinner at close to 11 pm.
And then there was today (to use Marina's idea that tomorrow doesn't become today until you've gone off to sleep), the penultimate goodbye gathering for Pang. True to her hospitable self Pang hosted the last party we would have at her Sukharevskaya flat, gathering The Gang again this time with the young officers of the Thai Embassy. If Inessa and I thought we came to party late (had to go to Kievsky rynok for a send-away bouquet then to a produkty for kury gril' or grilled chicken and beer) the Thais - Go, Kate, Art and Ben - came past 9 pm. The photos should speak for themselves.
