Sneakers

There is no snow in Krasnodar! I’m wearing sneakers and not boots! It’s overcast and cold, but I don’t have to wrap a scarf around my neck and wear heavy mittens. Buds are even appearing on the trees and pansies are I. The flower beds. It’s a very attractive city with distinctive architecture. I don’t see all the big, Soviet-style high rises that I see in Kazan. It has a real Southern European flair about it with the architecture and the vegetation. The pedestrian zone extends about two miles along Krasnaya Street. There are removable flower planters and if I understand the signs correctly, they are placed at the cross streets to Krasnya on Friday nights and then removed for the weekdays. People were out in masses. There are lots of bike riders and lots of accommodations for bike riders. There are bike parking places all over and painted bike lanes. And, of course, Krasnodar has a much longer bike season than Kazan. After breakfast at the hotel, We stopped at the tourist office first thing, got maps of the city, and spent the whole morning walking in the pedestrian zone looking for the monuments and buildings. Trees were blossoming and pansies were growing. One place actually looked like Highland Park. There was a mall, Galleria, which was one block long and two city blocks wide. It has everything in it. We stopped in there on our travels just to use a bathroom. Then we walked farther until I needed to stop in MacDonald,s to use the bathroom. I never should have had three cups of coffee for breakfast. By the time we got to the end of the pedestrian zone, we were pretty much beat, so we stopped in a restaurant where both Sonia and I dozed off while waiting for out food to come. I had some nice, spicy Tom-Yom soup again, like in Nizhny Novgorod. We sat for a long time and just relaxed. Then we decided we should try the buses here in Krasnodar. We got on one of the little ones and wanted to get off to walk to a water tower we wanted to see which was supposed to be a really attractive engineering feat. We get on this little bus with about 20 other people and we’re decising where we should get off when one young lady who speaks English tells us the bus won’t stop unless you tell it to. He only stops when necessary. So I yell “next stop” and he stops all right, but I’m the third lane from the curb. He let us out and we had to cross two lanes of (stopped) traffic to get to the sidewalk. I was glad we were at a traffic light. So then we start off in search of this water tower. We can’t find it anywhere that we think it’s supposed to be. But we did find the eternal flame in honor of thevsoldie4s who died in the many wars and, even more interest8ng, behind it was a Soviet military cemetery. It was very moving. It was somewhat neglected, but obviously very important to the citizens here. We left the cemetery and decided we had searched for the water tower enough, so we started walking back through the pedestrian zone to the hotel. Naturally, there were all sorts of “special offers” from the restaurants and especially from Dodo Pizza. The line was almost out the door. And there were all sorts of street performers, two of whom had some monkeys and a falcon that they were getting people to take pictures with. Of course, Fouad jumps at the chance. To his credit, he asks for how much and the guy tells him 10 rubles a picture. But not with the guy’s camera, with Fouad’s own camera, taken by Sonia. The guy encourages Sonia to take or3 pictures and you can tell the poor little onley is scared to death. Finally we say, enough, and the guy tells Fouad he has to pay hi 1000 rubles. I stepped in, to,d Fouad to give the guys just 100 rubles and to let’s go. The guys were drunk and become aggressive and Fouad keeps arguing with them! Sonia tries to get him to shut up and she’s finally able to pull him away. The one guy starts following us down the street, still arguing with Fouad. I tell Fouad to call the police. Instead, the busker calls the police and complains that Fouad cheated him. After about four blocks in which the busker argued with the police the entire time, the police must have told him to go sit on it, because he hung up the phone, turned around, and walked back. Not a fun experience. I was glad to get back to the hotel. I ate a croissant and some chips and then just sacked out at 10. It was an exhausting day.