site-seeing

so we've been walking around, a lot. between spending all day on my feet adn sleeping on springs that make my legs numb, i'm not sure how long i will last. but...
today we visited the church of christ the savior and the mausoleum. the church was rebuilt in 1997 after years of standing destroyed by the soviets (the foundation left served as a public pool). the church was beautiful from the outside, great gardens and nice architecture. the inside, apparently, one had to wait in line, which i wasnt going to do. the only drawback are hoards of italian tourists who for some reason decided to ruin every one of my attempt to take a pic by getting right in front of me. bastardos!
then, off to the mausoleum. we encountered our first tourist cluster-fuck, when a whole group of asians, simultaneously squatted down in the middle of the square to distribute food. there was this long line for the mausoleum, which was made longer by super rude police lady that refused to answer my questions in any polite form. they made me store my camera for 20 Rubles, then off through the graves of soviet heroes and past soviet leaders along the outside wall, we snaked towards the mausoleum. its black granite on the inside, dimly lit by some hidden candlelight, with police dudes standing silently at each turn, slowly motioning which way to go next. the whole experience is creepily similar to a haunted house, especially since one of the guys had his head down adn for a second i thought he was dead. lenin didn't look too bad. i was worried, thinking i've had enough of anatomy lab and would not want to see that again. but he is relatively well preserved, laying waxy in his dark velvet casket with a light (the only bright light in the whole place) shining on his face. and then i got snapped at. it's a somber silent procession around the casket adn i lingered for a sec to check out his hand to see if the muscles can be seen preserved. the police guard snapped his fingers and pointed to the exit. no soup for you! we walked around the graves and plaques of important past people, seeing both stalin adn gagarin, sverdlov (leader of the revolution) and voroshilov (a general during WWII).
then we walked toward the eternal flame and watched the changing of the guard. these little boys (yes, they looked about 17) were marching in the most awkward way. i understand that it's marching and they're trying really hard to be serious adn military-like, but lifting of straight legs parallel to the ground, the balancing of gun (loaded i think) on one palm while swinging the other back and forth and lefting pointed toe to opposite knee to take a step (not to do a jazz peroutte), made me laugh. i felt bad laughing at them, i'm glad we saw that. some guy was taking pictures of people for money with snakes and iguana. he offered to photograph me with a snake, "like britney spears?", i said. he didn't get it and offered me an iguana, a big one. after snaking through the subway (which is a whole other post in teh making) we arrived in teh office. we're waiting for a cab driver to take us to prostitutes. we'll see how this goes.