the culture of excess

is what my boss referred to as this musical dinner celebration thing he attended, while i was at the bolshoi. he prefaced it by pointing out that he does not mean it in a negative way. but this is kind of what i mean. following the lavish first night dinner, we arrived at the conference a little after 830. we were herded into the queen's office to drop off our coats. there was a line of people outside the door. as it turned out, it was her birthday and all these people were the clinic staff awaiting to wish her a happy birthday. the office was filled, overflowing, with flowers, all from colleagues. it felt like a flower shop, and you had to compete with space with beautiful baskets, arrangements, and bouquets. a ton of flowers, in the middle of january in moscow. the flowers migrated into the conference hall and now line the staircase down to the podium. the snack table made laid out for us while we're dropping off our coats? gets replenished daily. it is full of snacks, nuts, and chocolates; blinis, caviar, and fruit. although i'm pretty sure the fruit bouquet is not faring so well as i think i spotted a moldy strawberry. for lunch, we are herded into the tiny clinic cafeteria where simple mortals are fighting to quickly grab a pre-made and undoubtedly stale piece of bread with a slab of bologna on top and coffee in a plastic cup. we are served a 3 course meal, shitty, but three courses, complete with wine, appetizers in the form of head cheese and blinis with caviar. this morning, my boss tapped me on the shoulder on the bus and said "guess what they served for breakfast? a large bowl of caviar!" now, the thing is I dont think it's a purely caviar-centric obsession. I think it's just part of that thing where you treat your guests well adn show off by offering the best-est. so then i started thinking more about excess in russia, or in russian culture more specifically. watching 'boris godunov' the opera, i was amazed at the brilliant period costumes. i mean, shiny gold sparkle everywhere. joseph and the amazing technicolor coat has nothing on this. and the thing is it's likely true to life. this opulent shiny rich garb of the tsarist russia, the pelts of the boyars. peter built a new capital and a navy, on a whim, to compete with european capitals. he succeeded and people died, but who cares. st. petersburg adn the court culture it created was on par with the courts of europe, if not more, since russia continued to have serfdom well into the 19th century. but fine, maybe all of that can be chucked to monarchy and autocrat rule. maybe, like the kings of other european countries, it was just supposed to be. ok. let's move out of the monarchy, but even in the twentieth century, the soviet union just continued the trend, if not excelled in it. the powerful soviet empire, wiht happy fulfilled citizens portrayed on the world stage, who exceed at sports, the arts, adn such, come from socialist equality, where basic necessities, the daily things of life are hard to procure. i'm not talking about a full explosion of consumerism, i'm talking about recycling old clothes because you physically cannot find new ones in stores. today, the russian economy is tanking. my dollar is worth so much more than last time i was here. as we were driving to the conference this morning, one of the delegates pointed out that the city was eliminated. it is still dark at 8:30 and the city is truly lit up with christmas lights, lanterns and other such things. the conversation went along the lines of how in this economic crisis, moscow still can afford to light up the city. i suspect russia is not short on fuel, but still, the question remains, and the culture of excess continues.