This is What Russia Looks Like

When the next bubble inflates, you'll want to put a trip to Moscow on your credit card.
By Jordan Burchette
Maxim.com

You don’t find a lot of deals to Russia on Travelzoo.com, so when Russian Standard Vodka offered to host us in the former Soviet superpower to sample its bourgeoning jet set, we nearly crapped our Capri pants. After I explained to Jimmy and Berko what a Russia is, we paid all of our outstanding parking tickets, pulled all of our Pride parade photos off of Facebook, and applied for the travel visa.

The first thing we had to do upon arriving in Russia is forget everything we thought we knew about the place. Seventy years of communism may have temporarily held it back a couple grades, but the last 20 years have acted as a graduate equivalency degree, drawing back the Iron Curtain to reveal imposing architecture, sleep-slaying nightlife, and a female populace hot enough to play professional tennis.

The ride in from the airport in Moscow, however, is surprisingly not unlike commuting to work from New Jersey: large swaths of nothing, dumpy American-style strip malls and the occasional crumbling, Communist-era residential megaplex. Cross the river into town, and you put it all behind you, infiltrating the second most powerful city of the 20th century.

Moscow is a haphazard reflection of the decades of erratic rule that have marked Russia's last 100 years. Mighty monument to monarchy here, sterile structure of Stalinism there, craning commemorative to capitalism over there. We were hooked immediately and it was 11 AM. (3 AM EST)

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This is, er, Mockba Wepemetbebo airport (obviously). To think, this is the last thing Nicolai Volkoff saw before coming to America. This is ИKEA, where Muscovites buy all the home furnishings they don't need to last longer than December. Enter by simply storming these ramparts in a Navy PT boat.

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Now this is more like it. If you're an American visiting Moscow, it's holdover remnants like this from the Soviet era that you expect to see. And if Russian Standard hadn't cared for our accommodations, this is exactly the kind of place in which we would be staying.

 

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This is another monumungous residential filing cabinet from the Cold War. And it's still nicer than my apartment in New York. Cross this river and it's like driving 50 years in as many seconds.


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See! This is a mall from the future!

 

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Things are only going to get more insanely opulent from here. The country's oligarchs are in an arms race to out-lavish themselves, beginning and ending with this, the biggest apartment building in Europe. Like I said: Things will only get more insanely opulent. Take Makaboto's Caviar McNuggets, for instance, an indulgence fit for the gods.

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Sights like this were common in the area around our hotel. I swear, Russian architects' doodies are guilded in gold. In the U.S., you might see perfect little environments like this at Disney World or Dick Cheney's fallout bunker. In Moscow, stuff like this is reserved for public bathrooms.


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The Ritz-Carlton Moscow, our home for the next two days. Normally, I wouldn't have been able to afford to tip the doorman for kicking me out of the lobby. We met these girls in the hotel bar. Even Russia's loiterers are hot.