Last night, handful of my friends and I were planning on going to Kruzhka, a bar, and then over to Propaganda, a club in Kitai-Gorod. I'd been to Kruzhka on Tuesday and liked it--60-ruble ($2) house beer (which I wouldn't drink more than one of, anyway, so it's quite cheap for me) and it's such a dive. In a very charming, pleasant way. Not much different than the Skull in Athens--only beer, for instance--but about 5 times larger. Anya and Grisha said they'd never go there. Cheap, they said--which is, of course, why we go there. Anya thought it was the sort of place that would have rowdy drunk men who want to fight and hit on young women. But we weren't bothered at all while we were there, and mostly the patrons were young, many of them women. The tables were lit by long candles stuck in beer bottles, and the light actually made the place look pretty classy. Plus they have bathrooms with toilet paper that you don't have to pay for, a rarity here.
I started getting stomach pains on my way to Kruzhka that made it difficult to stand up. But I powered through and made it to the bar. On the ride/walk to Propaganda, it just got worse and worse, and we weren't far when I realized there was no way I'd be able to dance. So Rachel and I took the metro back to our station. I called Anya and stumbled home. When I got there, she was waiting with a box of medicine labeled "Живот" (stomach) and gave me something that tasted like Mylanta. "I hope it wasn't our food!" she worried over and over, suggesting maybe the mushrooms were the culprit. But I'd been eating that dish for the past few days. I didn't say so, but I think the problem was that for dinner, Grisha poured a bunch of leftover vegetables into a skillet and warmed them up with A LOT of cheese. It was so good that I ate the whole pan that he made, and I think that's what did me in--I have a suspicion I'm developing a mild lactose intolerance. But I really hope I'm wrong.
But the night ended up being AWESOME. We talked about movies and music, and sat around for hours sharing music with one another. Anya gave me a bunch of CDs to listen to (including 5'NIZZA, woo!), and when the conversation died down she started watching Friends in Russian on her computer! She said she wants to buy it in English. We are amusingly alike--they don't have a TV, but they watch House on the computer, and now I find out she likes Friends. Grisha and I have very similar taste in movies. We, improbably, share a love for the Jim Jarmusch film Dead Man. He's more into Tim Burton than I am, but he also likes the Coen brothers. I was shocked to find out that Anya hasn't seen any Coen brothers movies, though she certainly knows who they are. I'm going to try to convince her to watch O Brother, Where Art Thou with me today in Russian. She found it on the Russian Facebook, В Контакте (I think). They can, apparently, stream almost any movie very easily. Their licensing laws for movies and music are much different than ours--they can get almost anything free or at least cheaply.
I feel better this morning and I'm excited for today, even if I just end up watching movies with Anya at home.
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