After meeting Liz at JFK Airport in New York, we both hopped on a direct overnight flight to Moscow. I watched four in flight movies, opting to stay up until nighttime in Moscow--in hopes it would ease the 10 hour jump ahead in time. (Maybe? this is working...I just feel like I need coffee every hour or so, but unfortunately a cup of espresso goes for 3.19 USD here!) Anywho, we decided to grab a cab from the airport, rather than navigate the leviathan maze that is the Moscow underground with our ~150 lbs of gear. This turned out to mean a 45 minute ride with a smelly cabbie who seemed to have learned his driving skills playing the game Crazy Taxi. (This guy literally turned down an exit ramp, then cut back over the grass to jump 2 cars ahead in the gridlocked highway from the airport! He probably cut off 200 cars and a pedestrian during our harrowing ride, with Liz slumped over her suitcase, trying not to puke airplane burrito all over the back seat.)
Anyway, we made it safely to the Darwin Museum where we are staying for two days. (Disappointingly,after the one night, we have yet to see Attila the Hun or Ben Stiller, but we've still got another night...yes Becca, that's a movie reference...) We spent the majority of yesterday evening and today with our collaborator, Alex Rubtsov, running errands all over the city. We had to get a SIM card for our phone to get in touch with local contacts, get a few extra field supplies, buy train tickets for the next leg of our journey, and register with the authorities so they can make sure we're not up to anything suspicious. We also had to get immunizations and pills to protect us from a particularly nasty form of tick-born encephalitis and Lyme disease, which are apparently common in Siberia. This all meant an extensive and exhausting tour of the city via the subway. As I alluded to before, it is awesome in architecture, scale, and complexity, but was also PACKED, meaning we REALLY got to rub shoulders with the locals. So that's about it so far. We'll leave tomorrow morning with Alex to go to a field station driving 2 hours north of Moscow. We will spend the next week there, hoping to catch, measure, and record songs for as many barn swallows as possible. We likely won't have internet access out there, so I will post photos as soon as I can when we get back. Til then, до свидания.
-Matt
-Matt